The Bulwark Podcast - Tommy Vietor: The Marionette in the White House

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

What is going on with Trump's legs? He appears to be wearing a brace and a recent video shows him standing in a most unnatural way—as though he is mid-exorcism. But his apparent health issues don't seem to be stopping the administration from re-escalating against Iran with an additional 10,000 troops on their way to the region. Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law, Jared (AKA the point person on the Gaza peace deal) turns out to be a war profiteer heavily invested in Israeli bomb-making companies. Plus: Some of the recent polls have been too rosy for the Dems, Islamophobia may be at play in the Michigan Senate race, Tim makes the case for regime change in Eritrea, and the cabal of guys at the All-In podcast—who bought their access to Trump—are some of the loudest voices pushing for his all gas, no breaks approach to AI. Tommy Vietor joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes: Tommy’s “Pod Save the World” Recent video of Trump standing Closing Song: Orville Peck - “It’s the End of the World” The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield The Bulwark store

Hello and welcome to the Bull Work Daily. I'm your host to Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show, co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of a little show called Ponsave America. He was Obama's, the Obama administration's national security spokesman after being a driver for Barack Obama. He's also the co-host of POD Save the World, one of my favorites, the last time you were on Tom,

which was in 2025, you haven't come on at all this year. Really? Yeah, I went back to the archive. I mentioned that I had dozed off after listening to 26 minutes of Pod Save the World. Well, good news. I made it 39 minutes in this week's episode because I'm like locked in on the horn of Africa. Good. So we're going to be doing a little horn. Yeah, we're going to be doing a little horn of Africa on the show today too. That's great to hear. There's a lot going on. I was going to say, did you make it through the 25 minute Ethiopia segment. I'm surprised you did.

Yeah, no, that's where I started to dose towards the end. But I really, I was really working, I was kind of fighting off, you know, kind of like the nods on the airplane as, you know, as, as airtria came up. So we'll get back. Much more Eritrea content to come. I want to start here. We're both independent media folks. I think it's important to support independent media. You're a shameless pitchman on your shows. And so there's been some discussion of, like, I don't know, the publisher of the bullwork lately, Sarah Longwell.

And so I don't know. I thought that, like, for the clippers out there, I was wondering if you wanted just to kind of start off with, like, any thoughts about Sarah Longwell and whether you think people should support her efforts or not. The thing about Sarah is she did steal my car. briefly in college. She has told the story. I've not gotten to tell it on my side. On my side, you know when you fill up your car when you're in college and it's sort of like all the money you have. And then she and my friend Laslow returned it completely empty. So she owes me a bunch of cash. So if you subscribe, it would go towards her paying down her debts. And I would- If you subscribe to what now? The bulwark. The bulwark is great. We need to support independent

media because they are not going to kow to the Trump administration. They're not going to build a ballroom or, you know, jump when he says how high. Yeah. That's why you subscribe. Not going to like nitpick Kamala or anything like that, you know. I'm going to focus on the big picture. I think we're all going to nitpick whoever we want. I don't want to turn this into a reach-around. I know.

I did really appreciate what you guys did for the Haitian community in Springfield. How much money do you guys just raised? Because we also covered on the episode, after you fell asleep, I did an interview with a guy from the Council on Foreign Relations who had just gotten back from Haiti and wrote up a big report on it. And we are sending $350,000. people back to a literal like war zone levels of violence. 90% of Porta Prince is controlled by gangs. The sexual violence is just like through the roof. And like what Trump is doing is so

unbelievably evil and to support people here. It's a pretty big deal. So for no reason also. I just I guess to kind of follow up on the smear and the lie about like pet eating. Yeah. It's just totally and it's just dehumanizing, disgusting. So I appreciate it. It was really good to be there. And frustrating in a lot of ways. I JVL wrote about this. Like the tough part about it is, you know, You guys aren't there, and stuff too, but when you go to Minnesota, there really was this kind of community rallying around,

you know, each other in Minnesota in the face of like these jackbooted thugs. And not exactly what's at. And we were very grateful for the people that came out. People donated in our community. That's like not exactly what is happening, really,

in Ohio. A lot of the politicians are too scared to stand up for them. And Mike DeWine's not, no Tim Walz on this front. And, you know, there's just a lot of fear. So it's brutal.

It sucks. It's terrible. All right. We have very serious topics like that to get to. I want to start with foreign policy stuff. We'll get into politics. But just a little appetizer. I just have a question for you about something I've been obsessing about lately.

Have you seen Trump's legs? Have you been looking? Do you have the picture? You put it up. You've been looking about his legs. It's incredible. Yeah, we can pull it up here. The way he's standing, I mean, there's been some discussion for a while that he might have

some sort of brace or I don't know, maybe just like the weight from his top portion is such that it's like creating downward pressure onto the joints. Yeah. One of the photos I saw, the direction his feet are facing compared to his torso, looks like they're about to spin around his body like the Exorcist. It conjures up like Lord Farquod. Do you remember him from the Shrek movies? Of course.

Or when you were little, if you like ripped the legs out of an action figure and stuck a tiny one's in, he kind of looks like that. What I'm trying to figure is how does he stay upright? Because he's leaning forward so much. It feels like he should just be constantly falling. And there are a lot of different angles I've been studying it. You know, I was pretty sold on the fact that he had leg braces until I had Ben Terrace on the pod and he'd just spent some time with Trump. And I was like, did you get a good look at the, and he said he got a good look at the hands and the legs.

And the leg looked real to him, natural. But something's happening, I think. That's a good reporter. Yeah, I always assumed it was just like lifts in the shoes to make them from like six to six three or whatever they claim he is. I have been very reticent to do the like Trump dementia stuff or whatever because he's like always been crazy. But it's been more and more stark for, like if you accidentally come across like a 2016 campaign rally video, it's really jarring. Yeah, it is. It's like watching a Biden debate from 2007, frankly, compared to where he was the end of 2024.

Or just like, you know, pushing Paul Ryan around a little bit. Yes. That was brilliant. Bullying Paul Ryan. I did enjoy that. I mean, nothing they say about his health is honest, right? I mean, I think they release a height and weight for Donald Trump that makes him like the equivalent of D.K. Metcalfe or like John Elway in his prime, right?

So, of course, we don't believe the cognitive stuff either. I have some John Elway stories. You kind of made a pass at my mother one time. Really? That's neither here nor there. Yeah. What's Paul Ryan up to now? Is he still on the board of Fox?

Is he still on the board? Yeah. I'm Googling. Yeah, he's still on the board. That's kind of a, that's not really a courageous path traveled by Paul Ryan. I just kind of slunk away. That kind of crowd, this is a funny little inside gag about, you don't kind of, this isn't your world, you don't know about these people, but like the people that are like the balanced budget

conservatives that never got on board for Trump, but also, you know, they kind of wrote in, you know, Edmund Burke or something for president or Jack Kemp or whatever like that kind of crowd. They're kind of starting to their mouth's watering a little bit. They're looking at 2029, and I think that Paul Ryan might think that things are coming back for him. Huh. I have a hard time thinking that debt and deficit's going to be the winner this time. Hope Springs Eternal, guys. I mean, I guess what are we at, like $40 trillion? You don't take you in the Democratic primary? We're not going to get a debt and deficit Democrat in the 2028 primary? I think we're going to fight about modern monetary theory again. Remember that

was like hot in the streets for a while? I don't know. I mean, we're, you know, if you're paying 6, 7%, and 7% now on a home mortgage, higher, eight. It's getting up there, buddy. Yeah, I mean, you would think that there might be a deficit hawk Democrat. Who would be the person to do that, do you think? Bashir, you know, someone coming from that kind of balance the budget, kind of lame. This is what I'm looking for in 28, which goes against kind of what I think the discourse wants. I want somebody that is, you know, that goes full Vitor roads on foreign policy,

like bordering, like, not quite all the way to like ban Hamas roads, but like, you know, the U.S. Yeah, really should just like totally back away. Okay. From the Middle East all together. Okay. Like go and then maybe go like try to outflank the leftist candidate on health care. You're Medicare for all.

Like I, I'm fully, you know, taking over. the entire healthcare system. I'm going full left on health care. And also, too, by the way, I really care about the debt and deficits and I want to fund cops. That's what I want. Okay. You know, can somebody like, can somebody shake things up a little bit? I mean, that's not a bad strategy to win. That's a bit of a unicorn just in terms of how we're going to fund all these things. But I guess the nice thing about 2028 is I think everyone's going to give up on pretending that they really have a plan, so to speak, or a way to pay for all the things we're proposing. I think Trump has given us all permission to just get to that later. We're going to fund it.

You know, I don't know. We're going to tax AI companies and we'll save some money on the Department of War. Tax on Malman. And we're going to get rid of ICE. And, you know, we're going to stop giving rich people. Oh, no, boomers are going to get mad about this. We're going to stop giving rich people social security. Okay. I don't know. Great. And then, you know, we're to balance the budget and give everybody health care. This sounds great, right? I think it's a good plan. I also think we just need to make sure. If you're listening, one of the people who's at 2% right now in the 2028 poll, something to think about. We also need someone that's really good-looking saying all of it. Really, handsome.

Like Zoolander. Yeah. Like kind of, yeah. Like a Zoolander style guy. Okay. Maybe Rob Sand. I mean, he kills me when I mentioned this. He was a male model.

If Rob wins that race, people are going to start talking about him as a 2028 VP nominee or whatever. It's going to make him insane. He doesn't want to do it. but it will be part of the conversation. Let's do some foreign policy, then we'll get back to politics. Let's do it. Iran war news today. The Pentagon is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group

and additional Marine Corps ships to the Middle East, adding 9,000 to 10,000 more troops, obviously a bunch of sailors to the region. As President Trump considers renewing strikes on Iran after the midterm elections, this feels like this is happening. Right? I think so. There's going to be an escalation period

after the midterms? I mean, how many times do we have to read it? Trump is floating constantly to his staff that he's thinking about or planning on re-escalating after the midterms. They're certainly reloading their capacity in the region. Like, I think there's a good chance that one of those carrier strike groups comes home and gets rotated out, so we have two there and one comes back. And maybe the same for the ARG is one of the amphibious ready groups.

But still a lot of service members permanently in the region, it's wildly expensive. And I think people don't realize that, like, we have 11. aircraft carriers by statute, but usually it's like a third of them are deployed, a third of them are doing training stuff, and a third of them are in the dry dock getting fixed or like maintained in some way. So there's not like, there's not 11 just like ready at all times. If you have three of them in the Middle East, that means one eight in China that we're not covered in a lot of places. I don't know. I mean, I'm not a military strategy expert and I know that we do have the best and the brightest working on this right now. And Pete Higgs has making sure that we don't have

any fan boys, no yawai. No bearded no weirdos. Yeah, no bearded ladies. No people who are into yaoey, you know, no no, like, you know, no piss play. So, I can sure it's just

just, you know, straight guys with muscles and I don't know. And that's, and they're doing a lot of tea and a lot of push-ups. But like we're kind of, it seems like we're kind of signaling to the Iranians. And like, they've now had a period of time also to regroup while we're like discussing our testosterone replacement therapy.

And I don't know, you know, the different type asymmetric options they have in the straight. I'm not optimistic, I guess I would say. No, I'm not yet. They live there. They have nowhere else to go. The IRGC lives in Iran. They have nowhere else to go. And so we can conduct another six-month bombing campaign and rehit all the same sites over and over again that apparently weren't taken out the first time.

but they have a capacity to rebuild. They obviously have ballistic missiles left. They have lots of drones left. They can hit all our bases in the Middle East. They're clearly getting intelligence or targeting information from the Chinese, maybe the Russians that are aiding them and being pretty effective. They've killed, what is it, 19 or 22, if you believe, the Washington Post U.S. service members, they've injured 800 more.

The cost is going to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. There's no strategy to win this war. We can send as many aircraft carriers as you want. They're still not a strategy to end this war. And also, we're running low on all the interceptor missiles that keep people in Israel or on U.S. bases or anywhere else in the Gulf safe. So, like, they're playing for time. And I think they have a better hand here. Yeah, they do.

They do have a better hand. Like, for example, they're like, we got a fatty who's into fisting. Like, we're using them. Okay. The Iranians are used them. They're not leaving anybody on the sidelines. Yeah. This guy's going to throw a punch.

Fist and fissing fatties. All right. I had a serious question. Oh, I bet. Am I? I am nitpicking, so I've already I've already fallen down on my promise from the beginning of the podcast.

I am going to nitpick the Democrats a little bit. Are they capturing as much of the political benefit from this shit show as they could be right now? Because I just don't feel like they are. No. Every time I read like a story about Trump secretly telling his team that they're going to go back to war after the midterms, I would like to hear every single Democrat out saying something like, release the secret plan, or like, you know, calling on

their opponent to tell Trump not to, you know, resume the war with Iran, or like, framing the entire debate as, or sorry, framing the entire election as your last best opportunity to actually check Trump and end the war and prevent him from escalating. From the very beginning of this war, there were a bunch of Democrats who were like unsure what to say about it because they hate the Iranians. They've been lobbied forever to take out the regime. Like they kind of like wanted to wait around and make sure the war didn't go well before they criticized it. I think they need to be full-throated in opposition. They need to point out what a disaster it's been that it could only get worse that Trump is not reliable or good at this.

No, they're not even coming close to capturing the political benefit. they're pretty good at, if you listen to Democrats talk about the war, if the war comes up, you know, like if we were paying a part of their game and, you know, we've devoured, we've paused, you know, the Sunday show that whatever Democrats out on, they get the Iran war question. They're going to pivot to the economy, right? And they're doing that well, and that's fine. And that's good. It is important for voters to understand the connection between the higher gas prices they're playing,

the higher food prices they're playing, and the war. But, like, the war is also bad on the merits, right? And I do feel like they're jumping straight ahead to that. And instead of focusing on, they have no exit strategy. It's fucking outrageous that they're sending our troops. It's not fair to our troops to our sailors, to send them to the region, to sit on this boat. When there's no plan, there's no exit strategy, it's not patriotic. You know, it's not powerful.

It's not strong. It's fucking idiocy. Like, they're right. They are cowboys. They're acting like dumbass fucking cowboys. What do you attribute that to kind of like in some, again, there are obviously exceptions of all this, Rokana, Chris Murphy, others. But like, what do you attribute to kind of the caution to go at the war for the war's sake

rather than always pivoting to the economy? Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I'm sure they all got the same talking points from the same pollsters saying always get an actually. And the polling obviously says the economy, the focus on gas prices is better, obviously. Sure. So, yeah, I get that. Yeah, and there's also a big donors that, like, hate, you know, the Iranian regime

and want to change for a variety of security reasons. I agree with you. I think, like, I also think there's some DNA within the Democratic Party, like, that's left over from kind of 2001, 2002. 2004, that feels like you have to be tough when it comes to conflict. You have to seem like you're willing to take caucus positions and wage war in order to seem credible. I think we're so far past that it's crazy and that the American people now know that more often than not, when the U.S. launches a military campaign, it ends poorly for us. It makes us weaker. It makes us poorer.

And then also you have the stories of these service members whose deployments are getting extended by months and months, like literally trying to kill themselves by jumping off the ships. Yeah. What about those people? You know, so I, yeah, I just, Like the war is bad. It's a disaster. It doesn't matter with gas prices. We're low. Like,

it's not going well. Yeah, I'm a little bit obsessed over this because I feel like I want, I have Bill Kristallon and Bob Kagan and I'm like, I want to model some behavior here, you know? It's like the chief neocon, you know, Dick Cheney's buddy can be like, this war is fucking stupid.

It's making America weaker. It is, you know, an insult to our troops. Like they don't have a plan. Then why can't a Democrat crowd say that? It seems easy. Bob Kagan saying.

Let's talk about Jared. He's messing around over there in the region. We have a good CNN story out today. Well, a well-reported CNN story, I guess. It's not good news. That says this. At the same time, Jared Kushner is acted as key negotiator in the war in Gaza,

his private equity company, affinity partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel's military campaigns. The firm has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Israel's largest arms manufacturer. It also holds stakes in at least eight other companies providing equipment for the Israeli military, ranging from drones to warships to demolition machinery. All nine companies saw their stock value climb last year, with many stating the war in Gaza had driven demand for their businesses. You don't say. Yeah.

Like this is like a lefty conspiracy podcast dream. It's like whatever, everything that, I guess a horseshoe, everything that Glenn Greenwald ever said about the Bush and, Obama administrations is happening right now. It's like the son-in-law of the president is the biggest investor in Israeli weapons manufacturers. And he's also like not really like negotiating the quasi piece that we have going on. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like we're talking about companies that are making like high explosive tank rounds and 500 pound bombs and like the optical camera that goes on a drone. Like this is not like tangential stuff. It's like the shit they're dropping on human beings. killing them. Yeah, my takeaway from the story was like, Jared is literally a war profiteer, and that's what we should refer to him as going forward. I think no one thought he was an honest broker, like even like well before Trump took office again, he did this event at Harvard where he talked about how, well, he thinks that basically that you should ethically cleanse the Gaza Strip and like

set up a tent city for them in the desert and they can all live there because it's great real estate. There was all the things about like BB then Yahoo crashing at their house when he was a kid. But now we know that like not only does he prefer the Israeli side and the negotiation, but that he, if it drags out, he gets paid more because they're dropping more bombs. Peace would be bad for business. And they're the largest shareholder. Largest stakeholder. The company. The investors and Jared's fund are all from the Gulf. So like think about this. The Saudis, the Emirates, the Kuwaitis, seems politically fraught for those leaders. If their populations know that like their sovereign wealth funds are going into Israeli companies that are dropping bombs on

Palestinians or making the bombs to be dropped on Palestinians. That seems like an insane thing for like politically untenable for those countries. It does seem fraught for MBS, like in particular, you know, who I think it's one of those things. In some ways, the NBS Trump parallels is pretty similar from like first term Trump. We're like, you know, things are going well in the country. People are willing to overlook a lot of stuff. But, you know, now that Saudi is embroiled in a multi-front war, obviously they're, you know,

suffering economic consequences from, you know, the, what's happening with the Houthis, there've already been some reporting about this, that there's some unrest. Obviously, they don't have the kind of money to throw around that they did a couple of years ago. And now it's like, well, also, by the way, we're investing in Israeli weapons manufacturers. Yeah, I don't have a lot of pity for MBS, but imagine you're him for a minute and you're like, you're like, zero pity, negative pity. You're like, I bribed Donald Trump. I bribed the dumb sons with like the Riyadh Trump Tower and the golf courses.

I bribed Kushner with his little Affinities partner, which he used to invest in all these drone companies. And what do I get in return? I get him starting the stupid war over my objections. They're not defending me when, you know, the Houthi rebels are firing missiles at my pipeline. And Trump has just completely hung him out to dry. And you're right. Like, they were already kind of running out of money, but like things weren't going well with his big, dumb vision 2030 plan, which was just this crazy boondoggle for like McKinsey consultants.

They already were raining that back. But now they could see some real economic challenges going forward if, like, the oil and gas industry, if their supply is taken offline for a long time. Yeah, we could have warned them. You know, maybe had had had I been kind of listening to, you know, independent resistance media? Could be the most of the Borg podcast. Probably wouldn't have liked the kind of hermaphrodite comments that I was making. But like, other than that, like, you could have gotten a little tit. I could have seen that this wasn't like really a trust for as the counterparty.

You know, that might have been something to look into. Just the connection between the Kushner and the Iran thing really quick. Like, it is almost out of a spoof, like the idea of the point man for the negotiations, like before the war started, when they're allegedly trying to come to a new agreement, a new nuclear deal. Like, the point man in that negotiation was an investor in Israeli weapons manufacturers and an advisor to the Saudis, who's getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saudis. But like, no wonder you couldn't come to a deal with Iran. Like, what? I don't wonder we're in a fucking war with Iran. Like, the person that was in charge of making sure we had a peace deal is on the take

and is incentivized by the interests of Israel and Saudi. Yeah, it's so brazen it almost seems like hard to believe. But although there's been like there's been so much overlap between Jared's, you know, volunteer job and his actual job that like we've seen versions of this. Remember that Jared is technically a volunteer for the. government, so he doesn't have to release any of his financial disclosure forms or anything. But the New York Times reported that when he was in Davos last year, on behalf of the U.S. government laying out his Gaza reconstruction plan, remember that it was like the AI renderings

of like these fucking Jetsons, like, you know, futuristic towers and things. At the same time, he was there. He was trying to fundraise for affinity partners, his company. We also know that the guy he's been negotiating with Russia is a dude named Kirold Demetriev, who was the oligarch who runs Russia's. sovereign wealth funds. You think that guy's not dangling deals in front of Jared and Steve Wickoff like all day every day? So like this is kind of part and parcel to just how he operates and how they all do business. Kirol is the guy that was in Florida. Jetsky. Yeah. Yeah. Like when when Trump said

that we got to agreement, people like, what agreement are they talking about? It was like Kirol had written it. Yeah, he wrote the plan. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. I wonder what's happening on the China side of things. I'm sure that there's some cash flowing around there. One thing that I had missed, but I said you guys had about the China summit that I want to bring up and then open up to any other thoughts you have about it was that the U.S. ambassador to China, David Perdue, with lost to Chan Osloff. That's tough. Tough. Tough booking.

He says in the recent meeting, Trump asked Xi if China wanted to buy weapon systems from us. Yeah. I saw that headline and I thought, he had to have been kidding, right? But then you watch the Purdue clip. I think he said it on Fox News Sunday. And no part about him is kidding. And then Trump gets asked about this comment from Purdue in the Oval Office. And Trump kind of plays dumb.

He's like, oh, I don't know. He must have met Taiwan. But like the context here is that Xi Jinping's mission every time he comes to Washington or visits Trump wherever, is to slowly kind of chip away at U.S. support for Taiwan. We know that the Trump administration is holding up a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan. on. And now we're hearing that Trump is offering to sell the Chinese weapons that presumably they would use to invade the island. It's just like, it's another example of like, it's just so crazy. It just doesn't, it's hard to like wrap your head around. It doesn't make sense. It's two on

the nose. I mean, it might make sense if, you know, one of the kids was on the board of one of the weapons companies. Right. Yeah, Eric, maybe. Despite the fact that the world is falling apart around him. It doesn't seem like Trump's confidence in kind of the mercantilistic real estate guy view of the world has been shaken at all, which makes sense. Because if you know Trump's backstory, like he went bankrupt a million times, like there are a lot of periods where things look like they're out of control. And like he always kind of wheeled, scammed his way out of it. Right. And I think that like that's basically his worldview. Right. It's like, well, I don't know. He doesn't have anything against the Chinese. He like says the communists are bad because he knows that that's what he's supposed to

say. He doesn't have any like critiques of the communist system. He likes it. He prefers it, actually. And so he's like, well, why couldn't I sell them weapons? Like maybe then we'd like each other more if we were doing weapons deals together. Right. I just think that's his worldview. I think that's right too. I mean, I think also he's always looking for like some announcement of a deliverable that he can pretend is helping the United States. But the last deliverable they announced was a sale of a bunch of Boeing planes, and my understanding is that those purchases have not been made yet. They've also, they loved to, like, re-enounce soybean purchases and things. I mean, I think the takeaway from the summit to me was, what was remarkable is how little they accomplished and even tried to

accomplish. There weren't, like, months of preparatory meetings between Besson and his counterpart. Like, they just punted the trade war pause a couple months until after the midterms. They fucking loaned us to pandas, Tim. We didn't even get, they don't even get to keep the pandas. That was a loan? They're alone. The panda diplomacy, he's always a loner. I thought that was a gift. Those keys are coming back. I hate pandas.

Do you know that? I think pandas are so overrated. They're weird. They're lazy. They can't procreate. You know, I don't, you know,

I'm not kind of into in-cell culture at all. They are the original insults. I'm not into it. And I'm always like, I've always hated panda diplomacy. I was fucking pissed. Was it your guys? Both are probably,

was it Obama or Biden? One of those times. I remember being in D.C. being like, I'm not going to the fucking zoo to see this. They're trying to butter us up with this panda. Keep the panda. I think they took our pandas back during the Obama administration. Now they might be back in D.C. Someone yelled at me about this in the comments. I think they're back. But like, they did take the pandas back for a little while.

We got a loner of two pandas. They're in quarantine right now. To Atlanta. Right. Awesome first. We're going to be live in Atlanta. Thebork.com slash events. Come, come see us tickets still available. That was seamless. Trump picked Xi Jinping up at the airport, which I think he thought was like a courteous move.

I think that Chinese, like, they care about protocol, and I think they think that makes Trump look like their bitch. And then they don't respect that. Yeah. The whole thing was weird. He is their bitch. He didn't want to get anything out of it. Like, that's the point.

Like, they didn't do all the stuff because what he wanted to do was show off his toys. He wanted them to see the ballroom. Granite. You know, you wanted to see the helipad, the granite. Like, those were the deliverables for him. For sure. Like, she's going to see how cool the van, the granite is. No doubt.

Okay. We're going to do a little serious breather now, everybody, and then we're going to get back into politics. But we're doing the Horn of Africa. I feel like if we saved the Horn of Africa for the end, everyone tunes out. Yeah, I think there'd be a risk that people would leave the podcast and be like I'll see you on Monday for Bill Crystal. And so we're going to do Horn of Africa right here in the middle.

I became interested in this a couple of years ago because I had a friend who's Tigrayan. And when I did Mount My Party on Snapchat, we did a whole episode on the atrocities in Tigray. and it was my lowest viewed ever episode, but I still felt very passionate about it. And then recently, my former FYPod co-host Cam Caskey, it's kind of a genocide aficionado. And we were, he came to visit me, and we spent like a Friday night,

like watching two hours of Ethiopia, Eritrea YouTube videos. Oh, God. Where it was just kind of explainers about everything that's been happening. I think there's like war footage. No, no, not war footage, explainers. Thank you. Because it's very, it's very complicated. So we're not going to be able to do all of it right here.

We're going to just do the basics. But I came away from it thinking that we really should consider a regime change war in Eritrea. And that I think that I might be for that. So we'll get to that at the end. But why don't you explain to people what's happening in Ethiopia first? The very quick version of why I think people should care about this is from 2020 to 2022, there was a civil war in Ethiopia. And the estimates for the death toll is like between 300,000 and,

600,000 people. This was the Ethiopian government against the DeGranes, the TPLF, in the north. Biden was able to put a lid on this through a diplomatic deal, but it wasn't fully implemented. It basically Trump doged a lot of the funding that would have helped make that process go forward. So now, like since we've recorded that episode on Ponce of the World, comes out every Wednesday, subscribe, whatever you get in your feeds. There are now reports of drone strikes in Addis in the capital of Ethiopia. And so what's scary about this is there could be fighting between these. ethnic communities in Ethiopia, but also this time the Eritreans are allied against the Ethiopians.

You could see two major nation states going to war with one another. And Ethiopia has a population of like 130 million people. This conflict could spill over into Sudan, their neighbor, it could spill over into Somalia, their neighbor. And so they're just like the possibility for multiple conflicts to merge in the most disastrous way possible at a time when there's no USAID or assistance budget out there for any of these countries to help them or all the international institutions that might try to, you know, stop the violence are useless. It's very, very bad. And I had a lot of people kind of sounding the alarm to me.

Yeah. Ethiopia is the 10th most populous country in the world. So if you just think about the Syrian refugee crisis and what the result of that was, you know, a much bigger population potentially, not that's not even including Eritrea. Then the other thing for people who, you know, just it's been a while since they're in geography class, while you're listening to us, and you just pull up on your phone, Eritrea, and kind of look at the geography there.

Like the other part of this is, like, this is right at kind of the other strait where oil's coming out of the Persian Gulf, where there's fighting with the Houthi. The Red Sea, yeah. Yeah, right. Right across the way is Yemen, where the Houthi rebels are.

And to get in and out of the Red Sea, you have to go through the Babelamandep Strait. And that's what the Houthis have managed to close. But if all of a sudden you kind of lose access to all this additional coastline or like we lose access to our bases in Djibouti for some reason, like there's lots of strategic reasons, too, that they'd be worried. Now, on Eritrea, tell people about what's happening there because the leader of Eritrea is like 110 years old, and he's been there since 1967 or something. And it's basically North Korea. Yeah, I mean, it's called the North Korea of Africa. like there's very little information flow in and out.

I think he's 80 something. What's his name? Esaias of Worke. I think is his name. Forky. Good poll. Forky. He's been around forever.

It is like as authoritarian of police states you can find. You can be conscripted into the military indefinitely, essentially. Yeah. I think they have a constitution. It has not been sort of operational for decades. They have a parliament, but it is not met since like George Bush was president. So it is an authoritarian police state. But again, like if they,

went to war with the Ethiopians, like that would be two real deal of militaries clashing. And God knows who else might get involved, the Egyptians, the Sudanese. And then the other sort of the element here, just to complicate this, is that the UAE, the Emirates, are just constantly feeding arms into the Horn of Africa. They give them to the RSF, which is a rebel group in Sudan. They give them to the other parties in Ethiopia. So it's like, they're just a real arsonist here. And Ethiopia is completely landlocked, right? So they don't have any access.

And so this is another problem where, you know, there's all this. economic strife there because like they're getting, you know, screwed by the Eritreans and swanlons that like, you know, in order to get goods into the country, like you're not able to. They kind of deal with Djibouti and I think of a lot of their port access is through Djibouti. Oh, really? They flirted with recognizing Somaliland as its own state. If you look at Somalia, it's sort of like comma, you know? Yeah.

And the top part is, would be Somaliland. But sort of he offered to do that that he walked it back because it pissed off all the other countries in Africa, essentially. But yeah, water access is a big deal. I miss a huge. That's what she said, opportunity with getting access through Djibouti. And I couldn't let it pass. And it just, I was like two seconds late on it and I couldn't let it pass. So the human rights situation, this is where like my 2000s, Tim mussels are flowing. And I talked about my 2028 candidate. And it's like, you know, we've really struggled as Middle East wars, regime chain wars. They've done nothing for us. You know, it's time to maybe step back a little bit.

bit, work more from a diplomacy perspective, you know, think more about trade and working with allies rather than trying to interfere everywhere militarily. I'm like, what if my view is that we should have that policy for the Middle East, but maybe like give Africa, try? And like, let's say we found, I don't know, a leader we liked in Ethiopia or Djibouti and really just kind of went in there and took out Isaiah and Eritrea and brought freedom to the air-trained people, like who are being constricted into the military. You know, we'd then have a nice base of access there on the Red Sea. Thoughts?

I feel like Marco Rubio just took over your soul. And basically, you're doing the Venezuela plan for East Africa. No, no, no, no, no. I want freedom for the people. I'm not stealing their gold. Okay. I'm not stealing their gold. I love the story about how American companies are like, whoa, whoa, we're not touching that gold.

It's like gang fucking looted gold from Venezuela. No, this is like we try to find the Maria Machado of ETHO of Eritrea. What if that Maria Machado of Eritrea really wants to go to war with Ethiopia? I don't know. It feels like a bad idea to me. No bad idea isn't a brainstorm. All right. It's really horrible.

I mean, I'm like half joking, but the half that I'm not joking about is like once you really dig in on the potential risk here, but also like the ongoing humanitarian. disaster. It's hard to not just be like, we got to be able to do something. Talking about like tens of millions of people who could be starving to death. And again, even if Donald Trump doesn't care about a single human being in these countries and ascribes no value to their lives, what you talked about earlier, like the migration crisis that could come from a country of 130 million people, like descending into war, is, hopefully you don't have to explain why that would be bad. at the very least maybe we could cut off

you know kind of our economic ties with the UAE who's like in there trying to make things worse everywhere around the world. It would be great if that was like ever a part of the conversation or like when people went to Cafe Milano and saw the ambassador there, they said, hey, maybe stop doing this. Maybe stop funding all these warlords all over the place.

Yeah, maybe knock it off. I mean, knock it off, maybe that's the first stop. Instead of a regime change, where the first step is to go into Cafe Milano and talk to some of the UAE diplomats and be like, knock it the fuck off, all right? Yeah. As you know, you've been in D.C., like,

that embassy is very good at, like, kind of influence peddling and sprinkling money, different places. Like, all of a sudden, Mika Briggsinski is doing a, like, summit on women's empowerment in Dubai, and you're kind of like, how does this make sense? It's like, well, it doesn't. It's a shitty situation. It's tough.

I don't have anything else good. The regime changed war and error tray up, and it was my best idea. I understand the risks. Okay, I understand the risks. But, uh, well, keep monitoring the Horn of Africa news. And if there are other, Hugh Hewitt is the weirdo conservative radio host to as a total Trump shell and embarrassment. But there's one thing I do like about a show is when presidential candidates come on.

He has like a series of like four random questions at the end. And they're like things that he is really interested in. Yeah, because Alger has a spy, you know, things like that. And maybe when the 2028 has come through, like what are you going to do about the Horn of Africa? That's good. my, this maybe one of mine. Or how are you going to take down Eritre? I just really kind of lean into it.

We're not going to take down Eritory. We're building it up. Sorry. Yeah, right. We're taking down Isaiah a forky. Okay. That's who we're taking down the fucking dictator. You're right.

With the ugly mustache. All right. Let's do some politics. People you made it through. Midterms. You said you were in Michigan. Were you in Texas too? Or you just been doing a Texas Deep Dash?

Was in Michigan and Texas. Yeah. Where were you in Texas? We're in Travis County. So Austin. The liberal. But it was great. It was really fun. I went down there for the Texas Tribune Fest for a couple of days, got to eat some incredible barbecue,

talked to a bunch of people. It was fun. Where you had on State of Play down there? And there's a poll out today that is Bobby Polito who have had on the U.S. have a great candidate, the Tehana music singer. I was right down on the, you know, kind of one of the border districts. It was a district. Trump won. I'm going by memory now.

I think 18. And the poll today, it was internal, but had him up 13. So that's a 31 point swing. or it was 29 points, something to that effect. And if you looked at the same point, it was interesting in that district. Tala Rica was up high single digits. Hino Hosa, the governor candidate, was only up one. And this is maybe a little different.

You can't really extrapolate that out to the whole state because it's very unique district, a lot of Spanish speakers, et cetera. But I don't know. I wonder what your thoughts were on that on the state of play, probably. Yeah, I think Bobby Polito, shout at Liz Smith, who introduced me to him. He's like a unicorn candidate. He's a very, very famous, like, Latin Grammy Award winning singer and artist. And they recruited him to run for this race.

And he had massive name ID throughout his community already. And, like, in a change election, when everyone hates incumbents, to say you're, like, the furthest thing from a politician, you're actually a famous musician. Like, it's great. It's amazing. And he's a great communicator. We got him on our show. We got to keep finding more of those, you know?

Like, I don't know. We need Master P down here in Louisiana. There we go. And I don't know, we need some fucking bluegrass person in Kentucky, right? Kentucky. I like that. I think that's good. Genuinely, I really think that's a good idea.

People with like a brand name ID, like some sort of community. It's good. I'll talk to juvenile. Talk to juvenile. In Texas generally, I think the vibes are very good. But when you talk to the campaigns, they are definitely way less bullish than the public polls. Like, Tala Rico's campaign, if you ask them off the record, they'll be like, yeah, we think there's like 30 to 40% chance of winning.

Now, probably their expectations managing, of course. But like the polling averages, you'll see will have Tala Rico up a couple points. And I think that's just, that's not the case. I think the one thing that could help them, do you know that Tala Rico, there's a libertarian in that race. So maybe you can get your win number down to like 48, 49. But, you know, like the Democrats have a ceiling in Texas. This year, the ceiling might be 50%. I think Gina's folks are fairing, Gina Inahosa.

folks have a little hard of a challenge because Abbott's just a better candidate. Like Ken Paxton is the worst candidate that the Texas Republicans could have selected. I've heard that Abbott's internals have him up four or five points. But we'll see. It's all like kind of how you're modeling the electorate. I think Gina needs to win 60% of the Latino vote. She needs to get double digits with independence. She needs to blow it out in like the five big urban counties.

But then she's also trying to peel away some Republicans by talking about education and voucher programs and also data centers. I think they're being really smart about that. I think Tala Rico has been very smart in how he's run his campaign too. It's not gotten like nationalized as much as say Beto's has. But it's sexist, you know, it's a slog. Even though people kind of misremember Beto's first campaign. It got a little rationalized.

And he lost by three. And like Ted Cruz is more of an Abbott comp than a Paxton cop. I just don't think you will appreciate how much less popular and worse of a candidate Paxton is than. cruise because, you know, to the average Pots of America listener, it's kind of like tough to tell the difference between the two of them, you know? But if you're a Republican swing voter in Texas, you can kind of see the different types of bruising. It's different. Yeah. Different. He's worse. And, you know, I think that they've wanted some lessons from that. The, he knows race is harder.

It's just the state races are harder to than national and it's a different animal. And Talariko did have this going for him. In 2022, he signed a pledge not to accept a dime of fossil fuel money. On Saturday, his campaign was informed by the pledge writers that he had one week to return $36,000 in donations from oil execs to avoid their wall of shame. And Tala Rico said, yeah, I'm going to keep it. Campaign said he's going to keep it. So I think being on the, it's pretty funny that the lefty group, I'm sure all people who are earnest and of good intent, but the idea that they thought that, being on the no fossil fuels wall of shame would be something that Tala Rico would be worried about,

I think, betrays maybe a little bit of a lack of understanding of the incentives of the Texas campaign. Or that we can't just kind of make a greater good calculus in our own head. So we got from an election that Tala RICO was going to help your cause more than Ken Paxon. Yeah, Ken Paxson is like universally loathed down in Texas, even among a lot of Republicans, John Cornyn, for example. I think it really helps Tala Rico that Cornyn ran tens of millions of dollars of attack ads against Paxton before he was the nominee. That said to him, like, I don't know, I've talked to someone today who said they're seeing a bunch of internals slipping for Democrats in recent days. And I wonder.

Really? Yeah, and I don't know if it's like a reversion to the mean or if it's, you know, tens of millions of dollars in Republican attack ads kind of biting and doing what they're intended to do. We'll find out. Where were those? What states? All over the place. Several swing states. I don't want to blow up my source here, but yeah. Sure.

Where are you at on kind of the conversation around the fact that the Democrats have really been overstated in the plain states in the Upper Midwest for a couple of cycles now? And there's just something about kind of the rural Midwestern whites that they're harder to pull. And that is kind of like. a concerning factor for folks. Is there kind of assessing Ohio, Iowa, Iowa, Michigan? I worry a lot about the response bias. I mean, I think it's just right now Democrats are enthusiastic. They are the kind of cohorts that you tend to find to be Democrats are more likely to

respond to a survey and, like, get through it all the way. I think that I'm very worried about response bias in these polls. That said, like, it doesn't change the fact that the underlying fundamentals are way better for us. Like, I believe that Trump's approvals in the tank. I believe that people don't like the Iran war and kind of like the fundamentals. But I think the polling is way too rosy and like, you know, there's a

merest poll of Iowa the other day. Remember that it had like Josh Turrick up like six or something like that. I talked to a bunch of people in Iowa and they're like, absolutely not. Like, maybe we're tied. But it's just, it's not that. Yeah, this went out today has sand up by eight or nine and Turk by two. That could be real.

Like, I think that Rob is probably several points ahead of of Josh, in part because he's a great candidate, but in part because his opponent doesn't live in the state. But it's going to be a slog, man. It's tough states. And he is the, have you gotten one of his medical devices? No.

His opponent? Yeah, you got it right here. This is one of the Zach Lane invested in a medical device. That's the Cochering? Oh, where do you hook it? Yeah, you can see it here. I haven't tried it on yet. So I'll report back.

but he has a weaker candidate out of state. Rob's running. Rob's a really good race. What do you make of what's going on in Michigan? A lot of Michigan discourse. So open-ended for you to take that where you want. I was in Michigan two weeks ago. I went to Adul Town Hall and then interviewed him.

I saw him in LA a couple nights ago. I think he's one of the most talented communicators we have in the party, full stop. Abdul's speeches are excellent. He weaves his bio together with kind of what's happening in the world. makes a pitch that is both like emotional and factual and, you know, it's exciting and sobering all it once. Like he's just, he's really, really, really good. I do still worry about that bruising primary. I worry about, you know, potential tax on him being perceived as more progressive than kind of the average voter in Michigan. And I worry about Islamophobia and people, the legacy of

9-11 is, it's got a long tail, you know, and it's clear that Republicans think that, essentially accusing. According to one of Sarah's focus groups, it might hurt Vivek in Ohio. I mean... Yeah, unclear what he had to do with 9-11. I have not read Sarah's full breakdown on the Abdul focus group.

I feel like it was a little more bullish, but like I think it's a rate. Like I think it's... Michigan is a, unfortunately, I think a swing state this year, and I think, you know, Abdul's primary result kind of rattled me. Remember everyone thought he was going to be up?

Like, he's going to win by seven. He's going to win by 12 over Haley Stevens. And then it was essentially one point. So I think we got to assume it's going to be that. And there's a spending advantage issue again. I think Abdul's going to win. I do too. I think people misunderstand the Mike Rogers factor.

I do also think this. We're veering a little into discourse territory with this question. But, you know, I think that the speech is really good. And his ads have been really good. And that team knows what they're doing. Some of his interview stuff, I'm like, he's a little cute trying to do it. And I'm kind of like, why are you doing these? Why are you picking some of these fights sometimes?

He knows he's a good arguer and like he wants to win the argument and like that's not always the best thing to do in interviews. But I don't know, man. It's like we're looking at Georgia and North Carolina and you got Roy Cooper running and he's running away with it so much that the Republicans are not even investing anymore in the state. Like North Carolina and Michigan were pretty similar on the presidential state level. Watley is not great. I don't know that is he meaningfully worse than my garage? I don't know, they're pretty similar. And, you know, Roy Cooper's running away with it.

So, I mean, sure, some of this might be Islamophobia or whatever and the bruising primary. But I think it's kind of weird that, like, that's just kind of blank observation about, you know, where Democrats are running stronger is kind of controversial sometimes when you're talking about how the party should look to maximize their advantage. What do you make of that? I mean, just on your Abdul point, I hear you on the interview stuff. like sometimes, there have been times where he said things in interviews where I've, like, texted him and said, like, happy Warrior Abdul is kind of better than this kind of more brash version or said something to his staff. But that said, like when I was out there at a town hall meeting, I watched him mention Fox News and some, like people are cat calling from the audience.

Like, you whoop Jesse Waters his ass, or stuff like that. So like, it broke through. It got attention. It made him look like a fighter. The fighter thing has been an element we know that Democrats are looking for. But also, whenever you, you talk to campaign staff, even like, even campaigns that are high profile like Abdul or James Tyler Rico, they say the hardest thing is breaking through. And the thing they wake up and have their, they think about every day is like how we're going to get attention today. And so when you fight with Jesse Waters, you get a lot of attention, even if I think like some of that attention might land badly with the swing voters that we all think he needs. Does he need that, though?

I guess that's one question in like the Senate race. Like is that necessary? Is that not a presidential cycle thing? I mean, I don't know. Again, Roy Cooper seems to be doing just fine. Do people just, like, not count that because they're just like Roy was a popular governor and so it's not fair. But I don't know. Roy was a recruiting coup, right? I mean, he was just a popular governor, like, probably 100% name ID across the state, was able to raise money and just kind of like scare out Republicans. Like, Wiley's a terrible candidate. He just sucks. I mean, look, I don't think Mike Rogers is a great candidate. Like, if I was a Republican, I could choose my, like, dream candidate, five years ago,

Mike Rogers might sound like the right guy, but in the midst of this Iran war shit, like the former czar of the deep state, that doesn't feel like the best guy. It's already lost on the Sloccan ticket. Yeah. I hear you, man. I don't know.

I just like, I think as an outsider, as somebody who's an immigrant, I think it's strange that there isn't more people being like, you know, Roy Cooper must be doing something right. Yeah. I don't know. Nobody says that.

There doesn't benefit. I don't think anybody's, like, kind of factional interests, I guess to say that. Roy Cooper is a very charming person. He has a ton of political skill. He's a recruiting coup. I think, like, where I think about this is I think we don't give Chuck Schumer his flowers enough for that recruiting for Sherrod Brown, recruiting Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Like, he had some wins there.

Yeah. Michigan, obviously, like, I was an abdual person. I think that he was the stronger candidate than Haley Stevens. It frustrated me that the DSCC was like so. heavy-handed there. I think we all could agree that Maine was a wash. Maine was it? Maine was a mixed bag by the end for for the pro and anti-shumor. Yes. So I don't think Janet Millis was like the right candidate. Wouldn't we be okay with Mills right now? I think you have to show that you can you want a campaign and can win a primary. You can't quit before the vote,

you know. Yeah, she didn't really have the fire in her belly. I wouldn't say for that campaign. No, you're giving them a wash on Maine. Okay, we'll see what the clippers think about that. You know, I'm more saying, like, people were pretty hard on Chuck for a while on that one. And then I think Chuck Schumer had a point when it came to the vetting challenges issues that he had been raising, you know. Try to give him his flowers, Tim. Do you have any hope for any of the Indies? Any of the random, like there was a poll that had South Dakota candidate winning by nine, the independent against my grounds.

Anything there? Any opium? Can I interest you? And Bill Crystal was monitoring Idaho? Like, I feel like the best thing we could do for a lot of those candidates is just not talk about them, right? I mean, don't you want to just sneak through if you're Dan Osborne or bangs or like any of these candidates? The thing that makes me worried is the biggest shift. You think they're going to use you against them?

They'd be like, liberal Tommy Vitor once drove the van for Barack Obama and now he's pushing Brad Baines. I don't know. Brian makes. I think that, I mean, we, the collective, like, National Democratic Party. Here's the thing I think about. Like the biggest shift we're seeing is like Latino voters kind of last in first out for Trump, right? It's not the white voters, which is why sometimes I think you see polls that are tighter in Maine or New Hampshire. If I apply that kind of logic or kind of that data to some of the other states you mentioned, it just feels like it's going to be a challenge.

That's all. I'm hopeful a big, a huge overperformance here for Democrats, we could certainly take those seats. the question gets hard when you're talking about should you allocate resources to South Dakota that you might send to Iowa right like that's where this gets complicated yeah I don't know if you're kind of a hundred millionaire listening to the show

and you want to just take a swing for two million and South Dakota I don't know who the hell knows I mean Mike Rounds and Jim Rish aren't exactly lighten the world on fire up there you know did you even know but you're getting it you even know that they're in the Senate I barely know those names

MCS. Who's the other, who are the other Idaho in South Dakota senators? Is it still Crapo? It is still Crapo. Good job. Jim and Idaho.

Who's the other center from South Dakota? Larry Craig? Yeah, Larry Craig. Was he Idaho? Larry Craig was Idaho. I'm going to blow past your trivia because I don't think I know.

Is it, no, Heinrich? The Senate majority leaders from South Dakota, which is the funniest punchline of the joke. Because who is that? The DUDD. D.D. D.

Jesus, I know his name. Fuck. It's just blanking on it. The good-looking one, the tall guy. Yeah, with the tan. To me. Just get, whatever. My brain's my way.

We're going to let you. I think it's funnier to not know. I think it's funnier too. Here is, it's just a brain fart. Here is what I want to get out, though. What do you talk to people who are like in the kind of consulting D.C. world, and they get at this resource allocation question. The challenge that they're having is that a lot of the Democratic Party's traditional,

really big donors are not giving as much this time because they're furious about 2024 and feeling like money was wasted and because they're worried that Trump will come after them. And so that's where like this resource allocation, scarcity question, like becomes a thing. Don't be scared, people. Final topic, speaking of money.

Our guys over at the All In podcast, David Ball Sachs, who's the AI czar for the White House. John's Jesus Christ, it took me like 10 minutes to get it. And also, on the floor of dozens of AI companies while being the AI's are

a friend of the show, Jason Galakianus, Chimath, Paul Hopatia. They were upset with your old boss, Barack Obama, because he's become a little safety pilt on AI and was just discussing

in a very Obama way about how we need to kind of find balance and make sure that we're getting the benefits from this technology. while also considering the risks.

It was not a firebrand type remarks, but he was just kind of- Wasn't Bernie. No, he's just raising concerns. The guys at the All-InPod did not like that very much. Let's listen to Chimov. We, as in the world, are about to endow three, four, five, six companies with about $10 trillion of wealth. And what Obama knows very well is that most of those companies are, you know,

are overwhelmingly left-leaning. And what he also knows is that there is a huge portion of that money that will then get put into philanthropic and charitable causes that then he will and the people around him will be beneficiaries of. Remember when Shemot tweeted the exact length of his dick down to the quarter inch? I will never forget that. I did not know that. I did not know that. Oh, you didn't know that?

No, I did not remember that. I remember seeing his chicken legs once in a picture and people asking why he keeps skipping leg day. I'm confused by the theory that he's putting forth there. So Obama wants us to slow down on AI because if we slow down on AI, then the companies that are going to profit the most are the existing companies that are liberal, not Elon, not Altman, not Zuckerberg. I don't know which companies he's talking about, but the liberal companies will benefit from the slowdown. and they will give money to nonprofits, and the nonprofits will give money to Obama, and that is his financial interests in this.

That's the case that he's making? That is the case. And I want you guys to know that Tim thought that these comments weren't dunkable enough, and I promised him that they are. You got it right. The master plan, you call for basic safety regulations, you freeze the market where it is, three to six companies that are kind of winning,

and the others are they kind of can't get in. Step two, companies IPO. Which might not actually be the case, by the way, but even taking that at face value. Who knows? Step three, after post-IPO, all those staffers set up donor advisor funds and give to charities or give to PACs. Step four, Obama rakes in that cash. He thinks that is the real AI conspiracy. That's the plan.

It is not the cabal of guys at the All-In podcast who bought themselves access to the Trump administration by throwing fundraisers to the point where David Sacks became the AI czar. And now the VC class, they're very mad because they can't get, they can't make money off of open AI or anthropic anymore because those companies are too frothy. The valuations are too high. There's just like no way to get in and make money now. So what they're doing, what the all-in guys are doing is they're sprinkling bets on all these open source model companies or like software or applications that are associated or getting built around it.

And they want to ensure that those bets pay out. So they are literally lobbying the president of the United States, having him call into their all in pod events and pushing for these like total acceleration as policies. They're promoting Trump on their shows. They're promoting these ideas on their shows and have an overt vested financial interest in that policy. That is not the conspiracy. It's the thing with the charities over here.

Like that's what paranoia there. The charities might be the conspiracy. These guys are making ungodly amounts of money and are just like, let's just press the gas, all gas, no breaks. And maybe, who knows? Who knows? Maybe AI could lead us to a great prosperous future. And David Balsack ends up being right.

I will say, if you look at their record, Chimoth was like during COVID. When I first got exposed to Schmast was during COVID because he was pushing these SPACs. Yep. And that's where they're calling him Scamoth. Yep. And they're like these meme stocks like clove.

I remember buddy being like, got to get it on clove because Chimoth is pushing that. And that stock went, And it's just like, these guys don't actually know anything. They're just chart go up investors that want to see as much money as possible. They're happy that they have their little Marionette in the White House so that they have their own podcast co-host as his top advisor. They're going to get while the getting's good. And so why would we take our pedal off the gas now?

Because, you know, who knows? It's crazy. They're so unbelievably condescending. And they're like kind of scoff at anyone who's calling for basic safety. But the reality is it's what you said. These are investors and podcasters, but the people who actually understand the science behind artificial intelligence to the best of their own ability because no one really totally understands how it works are calling for basic like common sense safety measures. But like these guys just don't think they can stomach that. Tim, did you see that Trump did a 75 minute time magazine interview in it he talked about being like a big grok user?

Yeah, I did. we talked about that yesterday at how he thought Grock was amazing because Grec predicted correctly that the people of Venezuela agreed him as a liberator. Yep. So Grock's running our foreign policy. Maybe he could Grock Eritrea. Yeah.

Swan was telling me that this. He also was really impressed with the with the meme making potential. Like literally Greg Brockman and Altman, this is in regime change. So if I don't have this exact right, people can check me a bit. But I believe it was both Brockman and Altman went to pitch Trump on Chad GBT in Vegas.

And he was really impressed because it was like, show me a picture of Doug Bergam and his wife on a horse in North Dakota. And then it was like, the picture went up. And he's like, it looks like Doug. That's amazing. Put Doug in a see-through bikini. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, Grock.

All right, Tommy. Anything else you got for me? No, this is very fun. Thank you always for your insight, particularly on the Horn of Africa. Give my love to your wife. Well, and,

oh wait, I did have one more thing for you. Final topic. Lovett said it's okay to call him the F slur now as long as you're for the Democrats. And so, do you want to take an opportunity

to do that right now or not? He was defending Mary Peltola and he said it's okay to call him the F slur as long as you're for the Democrats. And so this is your one free pass. I'm resisting making a joke about feeding your lizard,

But no, I'm going to have someone to take a pass on that one. Thank you, though. That's Tommy Vitor. We'll be back here on Monday for another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Have a good weekend. Out once again, find me a friend.

Someone do walk with too, too many boys, too small a town. Feels like I'm always wandering the grounds. You call me up. I let it rain. Heart breaking me only one thing got me again. It's the end of the world. Done with this year, I miss drinking beer, miss singing a song's for you. Too slow to hate.

Summer came late, fires on the west side. Let's misbehave, catch it before it's almost gone. Try to pretend it's the end of the world. So kiss me to death. There's nothing left to decide. Nothing. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper,

and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.