The Daily Beast Podcast - The Media is Ignoring Trump’s Advanced Age at Our Peril

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

New York Times technology reporter Mike Isaac joins The New Abnormal to unpack the civil war currently roiling OpenAI. Plus! A conversation with Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella about Joe Biden's chances in the 2024 election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella joins us to talk Danielle off a ledge about Joe Biden's chances in the 2024 election. Then New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac is here to tell us all about open AI CEO Sam Altman's troubles and horrible no good, very bad days during his ouster as CEO of the company and the calamity that followed over the next five days. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, welcome back from our Thanksgiving break. I hope you had a good holiday. A lot has changed since we last spoke.

I'm kidding, actually. Nothing has changed. I was like, did I miss something? Donald Trump is still out there. He's saying a lot of crazy shit. He's been getting a lot of stuff wrong. We've talked about it on this before. He'll say World War I.

one instead of World War II or World War II instead of World War III. One of the things he's been saying is that he'll sometimes refer to Joe Biden as Barack Obama. And he is now, his thing now is that he's doing it on purpose. That's his claim. He posted on a truth social. He said, whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence running our country. And then he went on to say, people go wild, saying that Trump doesn't know the name of our president. He must be cognitively impaired. And then he said, no, I know both names very well, never mix them up, and know that they are destroying our country. So this has become like a thing on the right now to act as though

Barack Obama is somehow in the shadows running the Biden administration and running the government. And it's a very weird thing in that it seems like this whole thing started with Trump mixing up the names. And then in order to cover for him, this whole thing got launched on the right saying, like, no, what he's actually saying is that Obama is secretly running the government and he's right. And that seems to be where we are now, where Trump screws up names and then we get a whole theory about it that the right gloms onto. Yeah. Here's something funny. Over the holiday, I was watching the WeWork documentary with my family. At one point in there, the former CEO of WeWorks was ordering a drink from the barista at the we work. And he ordered what he thought was a cappuccino or a latte.

And the reporter who was interviewing him ordered the opposite drink. The barista mixed up the drinks or so they thought, but they realized that they changed the name of a cappuccino and a latte. They interswitched them so that Adam Newman wouldn't feel bad about how he ordered. They changed the fucking reality of what a latte and a cappuccino was in this infrastructure. called WeWork so that he wouldn't have to remember his actual drink order. That's the type of shit that people do inside of cults. Like, oh, if Donald Trump decided tomorrow that the sky was orange, then the Republican Party would create an entire dissertation around why he was right and why that's a brilliant idea to say that the sky is orange. And they would all start calling the sky orange.

This is the shit that they do. And the fact that we have not still fucking almost nine years later figured out a way to combat it. And we just allow them to continue to create their own reality knowing good goddamn well that everything that Donald Trump is saying is actually a mix up. So, okay, so if Biden and Obama are interchangeable, what is their now miraculous excuse for World War II and World War III? Like, what's their excuse for his other mix-ups? Like, are we just to all divorce ourselves from reality and just exist inside of Donald Trump's mind? Well, they're alternative facts, Daniel. We know this.

We learn this. Yeah, you're right. There were facts and they're all alternative facts. And the fact is that because when Kelly Ann Conway made that comment in the very beginning of Trump's administration, we laughed it off. We said, oh, look at them. they're crazy, they're silly, this, that, and the other thing. And now we're living inside of this upside down world because we allowed that to just pass. Yeah. And I think we should talk about also, because this is something I was thinking about why this theory has come up and why

people on the right. And I'm talking about, you know, Megan Kelly has suggested it. I know Fox News, anchors have suggested it. So when I say it's out there on the right, I'm not making that up. I'm not being Trump here. It's out there. And it goes beyond the two people I just named. But it seems pretty clear to me that there's a sizable segment of people on the right who still can't deal with the fact that we had a black man as president. So what they're doing here, I think at least this is some of it, is, well, first of all, you've got a black man in the shadows pulling the strings because black people are not to be trusted. But also, that means that the 2024 election in their minds is between Trump and Obama because they want so badly to beat Obama in an election. which they were unable to do. And this gives them a third shot at doing that in their minds.

But I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong here. And I don't know that any of them have come out and actually said that. They probably haven't. So I'm speculating here. But it does seem to me there is something to the fact that Obama as a black man is the subject of these theories, much as Obama as a black man was the subject of the racist birther theory. Yeah.

I mean, many on the right can't rock their mind around the fact that black people were emancipated. You know what I'm saying? Well, they can. They just don't like it. Right. They can't. They just don't like it. I look at this and I'm like, why are we even doing stories about the, I mean, the story should not be that Donald Trump says that his cognitive exam is 100% because we don't even know who the fuck is giving the exams. The question should be like, is Donald Trump fit for office. Like, we have no problems running 1,0001 stories about Biden's age and all the candles on his birthday cake. But I have yet to hear Joe Biden mix up important parts of history, important people's names and professions, and just go off on tangents that don't make any sense. I have yet to hear

any of that happen. And yet this happens on a regular basis every time Donald Trump opens his mouth and the Republican Party's response is, well, it's intentional and isn't it genius? I think that's exactly right. There is no way to look at the speeches that Trump has given over the past, I don't know, six months or whatever time frame you want to put on it, and not conclude that this is a guy in cognitive decline. As you said, he gets names wrong all the time. He gets historical facts wrong all the time. And they're not small things. I mean, saying World War II instead of World War III, that's a problem. But you're absolutely right. The problem here is that we've been talking now for like seven minutes and we haven't bashed the media yet. And so I think

that might be a new record. And I don't want to let it go on any further. The media needs to start focusing on Trump's cognitive skills with every bit of concentration that it does on Joe Biden's cognitive skills. Because they're simply not. And like you said, what we tend to do, is when Joe Biden says something, everyone to use a favorite media word pounces. When Donald Trump does it, we shrug it off and say, you know, that's just Trump or he's kidding or as we've said earlier, or there's a certain segment of people who will just say, no, he's right. Leaving them out of it, I'm talking about the media here, there need to be more articles, more pieces, more examination, more thoroughness in covering Trump's cognitive decline. And some are out there doing,

it, so I don't want to paint with a broad brush. But overall, I think if you look at the mainstream media, I am willing to bet some money that if you counted the number of articles talking about Joe Biden's, cognitive abilities, and counted the number about Donald Trump's, that Joe Biden's would be significantly higher. Dare we say it would trump it. The funny thing is, so talking about alternate facts and reality, Donald Trump wants to campaign on the idea that somehow he is a modern on abortion. And I am so confused by this because he appointed, had the ability, thank you Mitch McConnell, thank you Democrats and your fucking apathy, to appoint three Republican right wingers to the bench, to the Supreme Court, who said that they were going to uphold precedent, who absolutely didn't.

And because of them, we no longer have a 50-year-old right in this country to bodily autonomy for people with uteruses. And that is all because of Donald Trump. But somehow he's in a space right now where he thinks that he's going to convince the public that he's somehow okay with abortion. I just, again, it's this rewriting of fucking reality that now comes into not only campaign,

but it's like part of policy. I'm so outdone by this, but of course the entire party will back him. But what we know is that every time that abortion has ended up on the ballot, since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Republicans lose. So I don't understand how Donald Trump is going to take those losses that happen because of him and his judges and somehow turn that into a win for himself. Right. But that's exactly what he's trying to do, at least in terms of policy. He or the people around him have noted exactly what you just said, as most of the country. has and has decided, hey, we got to moderate what we say about abortion. So we're going to back off

all the things that we've said in the past, at least behind the scenes, they're at least honest about this. What Trump is basically saying is I don't have to tow the evangelist line, the hardcore anti-abortion line, because that's how powerful I am right now in the Republican Party. So I don't have to worry about losing those people. This is pure, I guess, triangulation would be the word. He is saying, hey, those people are going to vote for me.

This goes back to that I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue thing. He knows that he can say whatever he wants about abortion, and those people are going to vote for him anyway. And I suspect that's because they know he's not a moderate on abortion, that it's at least partially because of that. The other part is the cult thing.

So what he's trying to do is triangulate and get moderates, the ones who are, you know, showing Republicans who have shown Republicans since Dobbs that they're not happy about that. He's trying to get them. So, look, this is just, it's pure political calculation. And like you said, the key thing here is, are these people going to believe him? And I would like to say, well, obviously, they're not going to believe him. Here's his record. Here's what he did. Everything you just said, Danielle. But I can't say that. I can't say that because there are people who believe anything he says. It honestly really is wild. It really is wild to have a man who seems so

mentally unfit and unwell, being able to command and create an entirely different reality, an entirely different circumstance. He's like a magician. I mean, and these people, like, the man is the reason why we no longer have abortion in this country. By the time this campaign season is done, he will have been the man that ushered an abortion in America. Right. Do you know, like it's just so fucking nuts. The other thing that he's adding on is now he's back to dismantling Obamacare. How long has Obamacare been around? Like at this point, how many millions of people are covered with health insurance because of Obamacare, this imperfect thing, but because of it, millions of people are insured? 40 million. 40 million people. And Donald Trump is

it wants to get back up on the campaign stump and talk about taking away health care to 40 million Americans. Yeah, it's been, I guess, 14 years since Obama. I think 2010 was when Obamacare passed. Look, this has been, this is another interesting one because it feels like every Republican candidate since 2010 has campaigned on the promise to end Obamacare and not a single one of them has done it. This gets interesting to me because what he said was that he's seriously looking at alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. First of all, I don't believe that because he has never seriously looked at anything that has to do with policy. That's not true. He looks at classified documents all the fucking die.

He doesn't seriously look at them. He waives them in front of reporters. My question would be, what are they going to replace it with? because I don't think anyone wants to go back to the old system where, as was just pointed out, 40 million fewer Americans had health care. On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act has a lot of flaws. I'm speaking personally about this because I'm dealing with it now. So if you want to look at an alternative, that's fine. Again, I don't believe that. But there's a big difference to me between, like, it'll be interesting to see where his rhetoric goes with this, is I guess what I'm saying.

If his rhetoric is we need an alternative to the Affordable Care Act or to Obamacare because it's not working all that great. A lot of people may go for that. If he talks about we need to repeal Obamacare and go back to the way things were because things were so great back there, my guess is that's not going to play very well. And as always with him, who the fuck knows which way he's going to go on this. But it feels like he's just starting to creep into this. And he's been talking about this for a long time. He talked about it. I think even when he was president, he talked about doing it.

But basically, he knew he couldn't get it through Congress. We have to take him seriously because if he says this, then there's a good chance. And I'm not saying that he's not serious about it. I think that he is. I think that Republicans have been serious about it for the last 14 years. But when given the opportunity to present a policy plan to the American people to replace what this imperfect health care system, they've come up with nothing. How many fucking votes did the Republicans do in order to vote down Obamacare? Probably just as many times as Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.

And they come up with nothing. Because at the end of the day, the consistency here is that Republicans are really good at complaining. They're really good at witch hunts. They're not good at governing. So yeah, do I believe that if Donald Trump puts in all the right lackeys and somehow the American public, I don't know, has a lobotomy between now and 2024 and, you know, the Republicans take back Congress and Donald Trump enters into, you know, the White House, then yeah, we're pretty much screwed. Like,

there's no second bite at the apple here. And so, yes, people should be taking it seriously because this man, the man that doesn't know the difference between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, the man that doesn't know the difference between World War I and World War II, the man who just casually mixes up facts and goes on and on and on and doesn't really know anything, but everyone caters to him and says that he's the smartest person in the room as well as the thinnest and, oh, the best looking, they say all of these things. This man has a 50, 50 chance. And if you look at the fucking polls, higher than that of becoming president of the United States. Our last, let me, let me say that again, our last president of the United States. I don't even know.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. My friend and Democratic strategist, Kurt Bardella, joins us at a time when Kurt, let me tell you something, I'm not feeling too great. As you know, as we've talked over the years, I'm not a person that holds a lot of stock in polls, particularly polls that are 12 months out from an election. But I have to tell you that after celebrating the holiday with family and friends, that, the sentiments, the mood around this current administration, the Democrats, Big D as a whole, doesn't seem to be good. And the mood is coming from people who are educated, who are thoughtful, are not about what is happening right now with the Biden administration. Tell me your read on what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling as we see these numbers and just, I don't know,

read the comment section, which I actually hope, you know, they say never read the comment section. I actually hope that White House staff is reading the comment section. Well, I can tell you they're not. Here's the thing. Ultimately, no matter what people want to say and no matter how legitimate and fair that the criticisms are of President Biden and his administration, he's going to be the Democratic nominee in 2024. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee in 2024. The choice is very simple that people have to make. Do you want to return to Donald Trump or will you continue to just at least allow democracy to win? Will you allow a Democrat who picks judges to stay in office? Will you allow a Democrat to stay in office who will veto any extreme legislation sent to

him by crazy Maga Republicans from Congress? Do you want to have a Democrat running the Justice Department, a Democrat running, the Health and Human Services Department, the Democrat running, the State Department, or do you want to hand over every reign of government, every single piece of power to Maga Republican extremists who have told us very openly what they intend to do if they're able to return to power, that they will target those that they disagree with, that they will look to act on their autocratic fantasies, that they will continue to try to purge women's rights and women's health care choices in America, that they will continue to surrender American exceptionalism to people that are adversaries to the United States of America like

Russia. I understand that there are those who are not enthusiastic about Joe Biden, who wish there was an alternative, who think he might be too old, who, all the complaints, I get all of that. But compared to what is on the other side of that equation, it's not a hard choice and it really shouldn't be. And to anybody who thinks themselves, well, I'm just going to sit this one out. Ask yourself how that worked in 2016 when you did that and look at the composition of today's Supreme Court. It's not that hard. I hear everything that you're saying because it's the feelings that I have as well, that when you're looking at a decision between not the best or catastrophe, I'm going to choose not the best. And by that, I mean, this president took on a lot of

lot, took on a lot, a failing economy, a pandemic, a lot when he came into office in 2020. We all coalesced, though, Kurt, around this idea that it was either we were going to choose to live on Earth 1 or we were going to live on Earth 2 in Magistan. Right. However, the decision that I'm hearing that people are looking at is saying, well, this president says that he supports democracy, but. I'm not seeing it. Your support for democracy and true democracy can't just happen in this country. You say, you know, that you are going to relieve our economic anxieties, which people actually have

when they're going to the grocery store and they're watching their bill go up, but their cart be kind of empty. When you're dealing with and saying that, well, you have to vote for me. Otherwise, the bottom is going to fall out. And people are just like, I'm still trying to spackle and paste my way back into having a bottom. Yeah. What does the breakthrough message look like? Because Joe Biden getting on television and telling us the economy is strong when people don't feel it, telling us that like all is well in our democracy when there was a shooting of three

U.S. college students whose ethnicity are Palestinian. If they're not reading the comments, how do they know how to pivot? And if they are reading the comments, what Kurt does that pivot? begin to look like? The reality is this, like, the economy isn't going to dramatically change between now and next November. There are parts of this economy that are doing well. There are parts of this economy that are still very much a struggle for everyday Americans. That's just reality. And the answer is like, I don't know what the right answer is, what the right message is per se,

but what I do know is we're going to spend the bulk of 2024 watching the Republican nominee for president in courtrooms trying to overcome 91 indictments. We're going to watch an unheaval hinged lunatic threaten the entire justice system every time that he goes and walks out of a courthouse. I guess I'm of the mindset that all the other things that we debate and discuss and are critically important, they ultimately don't matter if we don't have an actual person in the Oval Office who believes in American values. Yeah, healthcare is too expensive in some places. The cost of grocery store items keeps going up. It's harder to own a home with interest rates at, you know, 8 to 9%. We live in a world where we're terrified that when we send our kids to school,

they may not come home live. All of that, yeah. But at the end of the day, which side is more invested in trying to solve those problems versus the side that's looking to continue to exploit those problems, to give more of a voice to gun manufacturers than to gun victims, to stay in the pocket of big pharma instead of trying to make healthcare more equitable, of banning books versus trying to expand education access. It's like Joe Biden is not the be all end doll, but the Democratic Party is bigger than Joe Biden. And I think the difference between the two parties really is that the Republican Party is

Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a Republican Party. There's no lot of separation there. The Democratic Party is much bigger than Joe Biden. And for me, at least, the decision in 2024 aligns with which portrait of America do you believe is best represented by either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, which one do you believe? And I think that even for all of his shortcomings and outright failings, Joe Biden still represents a better version of this country that I want to live in than the one that Donald Trump is going to offer us. And I think that what you're saying is correct. I worry that this administration is kidding themselves in thinking that just telling people, just telling the voter, vote for me or else your life is going to get worse.

and they start thinking about the last 10 years, they start thinking about the last four of voting in the middle of a pandemic before there were even vaccines available, thinking that they were voting not only for their survival, but they were voting for change. And then what they recognize now, you know, coming up on four years later, is that that change actually wasn't for the better. That each election can't just be about staving off the way. worst case scenario. That's what I'm hearing is that you can't just continue to tell people, this election is the most consequential election of your lifetime. I said in a video recently, this election is not about voting for perfection. It's about voting to hold the fuck on.

Like that is literally what I said. Kurt, the comments were crazy. The comments were crazy. Because people were just like, hold on to what? So at a time when there is still, I like, believe that there is still time for us to actually listen to and hear from the voters. And I'm not just talking about the fucking white people that are sitting in diners, you know, in the Midwest, where cable news and corporate news only want to go to. I'm talking about every day Americans that find themselves in a difficult spot. What should be said to them? Because it can't just be about Donald Trump's 91 indictments or, frankly, the fact that the person that's sitting two heartbeats away from the White House is a absolute anti-LGB, homophobic, transphobic lunatic, because that doesn't seem to be jarring

enough. So what do you think is the thing or the things that we can be discussing in a way that is not just going to place fear in people's hearts that they've been living with for the last 10 years, but is going to place hope there? Yeah, I mean, I think that the message that that speaks to that is, and if I were President Biden, you know, I think this is where I would kind of lean into is making the contrast of, listen. Like, you know, the story of America is an incredibly imperfect story filled with imperfect people who at bearing points throughout our history have been the architects of some absolute debacles that have shaped the world that we live in today. But I still believe in the American story. And that story is about that in one generation,

we can have people go from minimum wage to being a CEO, that we can have kids who are the first kids in their family to go to college and to succeed. Ultimately, the American Dream is about going from, you know, the poor house to the top, to the penthouse in one generation and providing the framework so that that can be attainable for as many people as possible. We used to be the country that waged war on poverty. not waged war on one another. We used to be the country that held education as the silver bullet, not the country that mocked those who are educated. I think we need to get back and we need

to start talking about America in those terms and with that contrast, because I think that's where that's where hope exists. That's where, yeah, we can acknowledge things are tough. Things are bad. Things are divisive. We are in the most toxic, perhaps the most toxic moment since the Civil War in this country. But the way. way back and the way forward is returning to a time where, you know, we, we harness American ingenuity. Like, we still have the best academic institutions in the world. It's why everybody wants to come here to train their scientists, their doctors, their lawyers, their businesses, their everything.

You know, we are still a place that can harness innovation and lead the world in technology and advancements and a growing and changing and innovating economy. We're still a place that a kid born in Harlem can unlock the secret. of the entire universe with just a tablet in his hand, regardless of where his zip code or geographic station is, like, we have so many things today that certainly I can say growing up I didn't have access to that I could not have imagined would have been even attainable in a public school. There is a lot in this country to still be excited about and hopeful about. And we don't talk about that enough.

And I think that does start at the top. And I think it does start with the president talking more about things than just catchphrases like Bidenomics or talking points about the GDP or the unemployment rate. I think that's how you make it real. I would like to see more of that from not just the president, but from Democrats in general. It's becoming clearer to me that we're not just battling misinformation, which is of itself its own massive problem. But we really are dealing with a just siloed reality.

where everyone is receiving the kind of information that they want, no one is operating on the same page, we're all craving hopefulness because we're literally just walking around traumatized over the last several years of living in this country. And I say that from an extraordinarily privileged place because there are many countries that have been experiencing what we are just being hip to now for decades and decades and decades. decades. Is this what it's like to be in a declining empire? And if that is the case, like, I don't know if

in history there is a point where reversal actually happens. Because if the people themselves are saying, we're not going to vote for this person because he's not perfect or he no longer aligns with my values, knowing good, goddamn well, who the alternative is, it's like, Like, how do you turn around the Titanic? And that, what I'm talking about, is the administration. Like, they're like, oh, no, there are clear skies ahead. It's, it, the water looks calm. Yeah, I hear all of that.

And I'll tell you the one thing that continually gives me hope. I agree with every single thing that you said. I think that actually the current generation of, we'll call it, quote, leadership has abysmally failed us from basically 9-11 until the present. It has been one disappointment after the other. It does give me a little bit of hope when I look around. Honestly, God, it's the younger people. This next generation that's coming up after us that has more tools and more awareness,

certainly than my generation did, I can say, who are actively engaged and involved and expressing themselves and electing new people like a Maxwell Frost is a good example. The way in which this generation coming up is participating in the political process. I mean, people don't realize this. But the youth vote here, especially in more recent elections, a single-handleys saved democracy in terms of how they have shown up for us, especially in places like Georgia. These citizen activists who truly are on the front lines of the democratic process, who are posting and tweeting or exing or whatever the hell you call it these days,

who are using the tools of the 21st century. Who are using that site. Yeah, that site that shall not be named. Even when I look at particularly young girls and the awesome power that young girls have now, And led by, frankly, Taylor Swift in a lot of ways, who has been using her platform, who single-handedly got like, you know, tens of thousands of people to register to vote by just posting about it. When I look at culturally how movies like Barbie did, that was all about women empowerment, how we've

seen in the most recent elections in Virginia and Ohio and Kentucky, how women have single-handedly changed the balance of power and ensured that extreme MAGA people like Glenn Yonkin who dress themselves up nicely with the veneer of a fleece, don't pull one over on us, end up losing and not getting the majorities and the legislators to roll back abortion rights in America. In spite of everything that's really going pretty awfully, there are these glimmers of hope that I see in these most recent elections, particularly where we flipped Virginia in the state house. We kept the governorship in Kentucky. We won the ballot initiatives in Ohio. There are still incredibly active and engaged people who are showing up for the fight and not backing down

despite how unhappy or dissatisfied they are with the top of the political leadership and the Democratic Party. They haven't given up. They're not retreating. And frankly, Republicans are giving us reasons every day to show up. They are reminding us every day. Donald Trump is talking about repealing Obamacare again. Speaker, Mike Johnson, you know, in his checkered past of saying insane things, particularly about the LGBTQ community and imposing. religion on government. It's like these guys are showing us every day who they are. And even if Joe Biden isn't enough to get us to the polls, everything that Republicans are doing sure is how it has been. Yeah. Kurt Bardella, my friend, we will leave it there today on a high and positive note.

But we will absolutely be checking in with you as we turn the calendar year. We have been doing this, you and I for so many years now. Whether it was 2018, 2020 or the 2022 midterms, I have, I've always been the optimistic guest who said like, I know it's bad. I know it's dark, but it's not as bad as you think. And I'd like to say that so far at least, like in these three election cycles that I've been doing this with you, that has borne itself out. There was no red wave. We did win the 2020 election.

We flipped the House and Senate in 2018. We've won governorships throughout this country. Like, bad as it feels. And God knows it feels pretty fucking awful. I try to be the voice of optimism. And I have not failed you just yet. Yeah, you have not failed me yet. And for that, that's why I keep coming back. Appreciate you.

We'll talk to you soon, my phone. So it started on Friday, November 17th. Sam Altman was removed as CEO of Artificial Intelligence Research Startup OpenAI, a position he had held since 2019 by the company's board of directors. Then two days later, Microsoft announced it was hiring Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who quit after Altman's dismissal. The following day, over seven 100 of OpenAI's 770 employees signed a letter saying they were going to join Altman and Progman at Microsoft if Altman wasn't reinstated as CEO. And one board member said he regretted supporting Altman's removal. And the day after that, five days after being ousted, Altman was reinstated as OpenAI CEO.

Joining me now to possibly explain to my confused ass just what the hell happened here is New York Times technology correspondent, author of the fantastic book Super Pump, The Battle for Uber, And self-appointed King of the Rats, Mike, thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I will try to explain this. I'm not sure if I have it all in my head, but we can see. All right. It's only one way to find out.

So before we begin, I have to tell you, I'm in a Discord chat with several people, smart people, the best people. And on Monday the 20th, I posted that I was enjoying watching you being driven insane by what was happening. And I put it in a screenshot of two of your tweets, one that said, this is the craziest shit ever. and then there was one a day later that was simply a two-word review, fucking shit show. So I have to thank you for that. So I guess, let me start with what started this shit show.

Why was Altman ousted? A Times article that you co-byline said that his departure drew attention to a rift in the AI community between people who believe AI is the most important new technology since web browsers and others who worry that moving too fast to develop, it could be dangerous. Was this a big deal? Yeah, 100%. So it's funny because a lot of my friends over the weekend, most of it was spent inbound with reporting

and then other friends saying, who the fuck is Sam All right? Which is like most normal, like non-steeped in tech people don't know who this guy is. But I think he's one of the most important fast-rising celebrities in Silicon Valley right now and has been a mainstay of the community for years now. But I think the entire saga really is sort of foregrounded by, you know, a rift in these two

sort of philosophical camps and the development of AI. And I think everyone who's steeped in it believes that, or everyone who's sort of involved in building the technology at least, believes that AI is going to be powerful beyond what we can really even imagine right now. I still have skepticism on some of this. I still think people really sort of buy into a lot of these, like, crazy scenarios, but for the purposes of explaining it, just assume that all of these people think AI is going to be crazy powerful someday. The two camps are composed essentially of what are called

effective altruists who are folks who believe that this stuff is going to go skynet and kill everyone and destroy humanity. It's that powerful. And not even like as a sort of joke or offhand reference, like they do believe this is going to bring the end of the world. That is mainly a number of people on the board are kind of in that camp, I would say. They kind of refuse to say they are, but they are. And then you have people like Sam Altman, which are called the accelerationists, right? And their whole point is AI is going to be super powerful, but we need to develop it and sort of productize it and put it out into the world as quickly as possible because the world will be served by the advances that it can bring rather than like, we're doing a disservice to humanity.

by not putting it out there faster. So the example that many of these folks use is, most people in the world don't have access to adequate health care. You can't give someone in a developing world necessarily a direct interaction with a doctor, but what if you could give them access to an AI that could answer enough medical questions that it was better than nothing? That is their version of accelerating it. And Sam Altman was in that sort of accelerationist camp.

So essentially it broke down to the board of directors. felt he was moving too quickly and not being completely forthcoming with them on a number of the governance issues of how they're developing the technology that it came to a sort of abrupt head last Friday, and they pushed him out in a move that I don't think anyone outside of the company or even inside of the company really foresaw. So tell me about Helen Toner. My understanding is that she was a board member and she wrote a paper that Altman didn't like and that this may be precipitated what happened? I think the other thing to think about in this company is like it's a lot of like academics and people sort of steeped in the tech who are concerned about it, who are open

to criticizing it, at least internally. And it's real deep philosophical shit in that like they believe in it and like run their lives this way, right? Helen, I think is one of those academics. She works with Georgetown and one of their sort of like technical centers. And, is very convinced that the sort of potentially dangerous power of this technology. And she wrote this paper, you know, it's pretty long and convoluted to people like me, at least. It had some sort of latent criticisms of open AI in the academic paper. And academic papers are open for everyone in the academy to read and you can find it online right now. And Sam Altman didn't like that.

He as CEO basically had a discussion with her where he was like, you shouldn't be criticizing our company as a member of the board of directors. There's like a case for that, right? If you're a CEO of a company and your job is to protect the company or whatever, you can be like, can we please not have our board members opening us up for attack, right? But I think also it kind of speaks to like the type of people who work here, the original purpose of the company, how it was essentially a nonprofit. It still is a nonprofit with like sort of capitalistic structure bolted on the back end,

essentially. And the initial mission that Helen, I think, and a number of the board members believe, which is that they're trying to develop AI for mankind to do good things and do it safely and not harm the world. And so I think that's an important lens to sort of look at the actions of the board over the past week and months. We're working on another story that's like trying to explain this even more because of how crazy it is. But I think that, like, the true believers on the board can throw out the 80 to 90 billion dollar valuation and all the potentially lucrative money here because they really just want to keep this safe for everyone. And again, like, I think it's right to be skeptical of, like, how doomery you should be here, but that's the

way they're thinking. I think anyway, that brings us to maybe Ilya Sitskova, who was a board member. Yeah. He's one of those guys who's been. been very vocal in mourning about the potential dangers of AI. He's also one of the, I think, one of the co-founders of the company along with Altman and some others. But he sort of took toner's side on this and at least originally and voted to remove Altman, right? Yes. I think he was, I mean, this is the sort of other weird thing is that this company has been around for eight years and no one really cared about it outside of this group of very smart, also highly, weird and peculiar people who have these strange beliefs, or at least strange to some of us,

but are increasingly more mainstream in sort of internet and Silicon Valley circles. And they were all kind of thrust into the spotlight by the media, including my own paper, over the course of 18 months, I would say. Open AI became like huge. They were doing cover stories. And I think this was like a level of fame that they were all not used to, except for Sam. Sam like fully embraced it, right? But the other folks are like, they're like computer scientists who don't always

interface with the world in the same way that we do. So or the same way that others like, let's say like Sam does. And I think for I'll, we're still trying to crack the like flipping back and forth thing, but there were elements of power struggles in there that I think also went to this. Some other folks internally got promoted and were on sort of even footing with him. Just to interject, the back and forth is that Sitskever, after VIII, voting to get rid of Altman a couple days later tweeted that he regretted that. Yes, which we're still trying to crack, but all the reporting we have so far is basically

like this dude, I can't explain enough how the entire Silicon Valley world and all the employees in the company came down on him and the board of four people at the same time when they booted Sam. Like, Sam is not a technical person, but he has marshaled the support of everyone inside of the company that they rallied around him quickly. And I think Ilya didn't understand or realize how much blowback he would get for this decision, especially when it started focusing on his role in pushing him out. So is that how we go from on a Friday? It's, hey, we don't trust this guy to have the best interest of humanity at heart. And then the following Tuesday, it's welcome back. Sammy, oh, my God,

we missed you so much. Yes. So, like, I also think the board, I mean, I've covered a few, like, dysfunctional boards in my career. And there's a ton of dysfunctional boards in the valley. But I think this one got an order and amounts of attention because of how highly valued it's worth, how many people have money tied up in this. If you believe the future of humanity and AI is very powerful and important, then that's another factor. I think the board didn't think they were going to go through the level of blowback that they did, at least. They definitely didn't expect the employee uprising that you were talking about earlier, like literally 90. D5, 97% of the company ready to walk out the door.

They didn't expect the pressure campaign from, which Sam waged clearly. He sort of marshaled all this support from everyone in the Valley, like investors, Satch and Adela, the CEO of Microsoft helped him. Microsoft's a whole other thing because they have tons of money tied up in this thing. But I think the board underestimated how intense the blowback would be. And then also their communication strategy was just not good, right? They pushed out a blog post on the Friday before Thanksgiving week. I don't know what they expected, but if they expected Altman of all people to go quietly

and everyone to just be like, all right, then I think they're deeply nice. Yeah. And it goes to like none of these people are like professional board members on other company boards necessarily, which like, look, is fine, I guess, but also like once a company gets big enough or important enough or scrutinized enough, then your actions are really closely looked at by everyone, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So people like Helen Toner, Ilya Sitskova, they're off the board now. So what does the new board look like besides white and male? Just to your earlier point, like they almost immediately, the next day almost realized that

they screwed up. And like as employees were defecting, as people were sort of flipping sides, they were like, all right, this isn't going to work. We need to figure out how to get Sam back, but also deal with their initial concerns of keeping him in check, you know. And I think that, look, Sam is a salesman. He also, like, talks to a lot of people. I think some of their concerns about, are you being up front with us all the time, you know? Like, it's not crazy. There's other folks in the Valley who have similar feelings.

And, like, the role of a board of directors is to have, is to govern the company appropriately. And only the board, really, can remove, of a private company can remove the CEO, for certain reasons, you know? And like, for this, they terminated him for cause. So the new board is part of their way of having better governance and checks to Sam's power just in case things go awry again. The lineup right now is Brett Taylor, who is a Silicon Valley executive. He was on the board of Twitter. He was the former CTO of Facebook. He used to be a co-CEO at Salesforce. People I talk to just kind of describe him as Switzerland in that he's not aligned with any one camp, but he's like tries to be neutral in a lot of this stuff, you know? And a non-threat to either camp is how I would

probably describe him. Then you have Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary of the United States, and no one seems to know how he got there. Okay, well, that was going to be my next question. We're digging on that right now, but literally, we spent like days being like, where the fuck did Larry Summers come from? Because that was everyone's question. Like, why is Larry Summers involved? Yeah. He has made strong public opinions on the role of AI and the economy and the workforce. Like, that is actually like a drum he's been beating for a little while. And he obviously comes with a lot of specific baggage to him. But I think that like the folks at the top of the

company or the folks on the board were like, all right, Summers is not stupid about AI. Like, surprisingly, he sits on a number of tech company boards. it's on blocks board, a few other, like, random-ass companies that I don't know. And then, like, so they're like, well, we can do this. It doesn't seem to be clear whether or not he's sided with anyone can't, but he hasn't publicly sort of said as much. We're still digging on where the hell that came from and how, but like, it's not like picking like a dude off the street, I guess is what I would say.

Plus, like, just like power, I think, just like random, like, oh, you're powerful and you have a big name. This is how people get put on board. Yeah. that's what it sounded like to me. Yeah, whether you like are good at it or not. Like, right, right. It often seems to be, I mean, like, I would never get picked to be on board because

I'm not good at it. B, I'm a journalist, but C, like, I'm not powerful enough and like, don't get random headlines just because I was on CNN or whatever, like Summers does. So that is what it is. And then the last one, just to round it out, is Adam DeAngelo, who was on the previous version of the board, who is refused to step down because he, Again, he wants to make sure there are still checks built into Sam's power when he comes back. Now, this is described as a provisional board.

So in the coming days or weeks, we're going to figure out what the rest of the board will eventually look like. There's going to be more board seats. I'm not sure if DeAngelo is going to stay on. But I think he wanted to stay on long enough to make sure proper governance was set up if he departs. That makes sense. And it's also not clear if Altman will get a seat on the. board, but I don't think he will. So what is Q-Star and what is AGI, and do they have anything to do with this whole situation?

Oh, God. So that was a whole mess. Two things. One, just briefly, AGI is basically the idea, like artificial general intelligence, basically like a fully sentient AI, you know, if you look at like how a chatbot interacts right now, it's pretty shitty or at least pretty limited. And if you go play with Facebook's new chatbots, right? Like, they're pre-programmed.

They can only do as much as they know based from the data sets they've learned on. And they aren't really creative in their thinking necessarily. AGI is the idea of having like human level artificial intelligence, which is the ultimate end goal for a lot of these people. They're pushing towards AGI, safe AGI, I guess is what I would say. And there's a lot of disagreement on how far away we are from it. I tend to believe we are very far away, if ever getting there. But like, there are people who would tell me I'm wrong and that we're a couple years away, you know, so there's that. Last week,

as all the shit was going down, a story broke in Reuters saying that this AI breakthrough happened inside of Open AI and Q was this sort of like name for this technological breakthrough that could eventually spell danger in the end of humanity for everything. And that was the reason that Sam got fired. A few hours later, they walked it back. They overblew it, which I think is very easy to do in these scenarios because even like the best tech reporters don't know shit about this technology. I'm learning as I work. I've been learning on a crash course for 18 months. And like it's really hard. And it's very easy, especially like in a high pressure scenario like this where like no one knows anything and you're just scrambling for sources. Like this shit can get

blown out of proportion. In short, I don't think you have anything to worry about, about Q, at least in the short term. If I'm wrong, we'll all be dead or enslaved, so I guess it won't matter anyway. But I think it was like a sensationalized story just because the reporters thought they had something, but not realizing that everyone in this field says everything's a fucking breakthrough and everything's like going to change the world. And like, you have to sort of navigate this world with a level of skepticism that I think a lot of tech reporters are very new to because there hasn't been a ton of people flocking to deep AI reporting until the last year, basically. Right.

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I guess we'll know if you're right or if this Q-star is super powerful. If when this interview comes out, we'll see if all your words have been changed to talk about how great Q-Star is and how we should. All hail Q-Star. Mike, thanks so much for breaking this down. I have a much better understanding now, I think, than I did beforehand.

And always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks, man. I will call back if it changes yet again by next week, which it probably will. Okay. Thanks, man. Thanks, Mike. Andy Levy. Who is your fuck that guy to start our post- Thanksgiving?

I don't want to chew our own horns, but I will. That you and I had been talking about the Heritage Foundation for quite some time on this show. before it got headlines. And why were we talking about the Heritage Foundation? Because in broad daylight, they are putting together an actual shadow government that will be ready on day one. God forbid that Donald Trump becomes president again, that they have put together policy plans,

they have staff ready to go, everything, so that they can finish the hit job, that the first Trump, administration put out on our democracy. So lo and behold, now people are starting to report on the Heritage Foundation. So what NBC News is reporting is that in 2022 last year, that contributions to the Heritage Foundation increased to $95 million, a jump of 26 percent compared to the previous year. These people are doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on their desire to create a fashistic authoritarian state and have all the players in place on day one of a Trump administration.

That they are not going to waste time testing the fences like they did in Trump's first term. That they are just going all the way out with a plan in the first 100 days. to dismantle our Department of Justice, to dismantle what's left of the EPA, to take over our public education system and put Betsy DeVos's vision of a privatized education into play. Like, these people are serious, and they have serious money. And to pretend, you know, that we all believe, like, oh, Donald's, there's no way that he can become president again, the Heritage Foundation is not fucking around.

And for that reason, they are my fuck that guy this week and until this election season is done. Because I'm like the billionaires that are backing. Like Donald Trump does not have to be the smartest guy in the room. He doesn't have to be the wealthiest guy in the room. He just has to be the puppet that they all prop up in order to get what it is that they want, which is a Christian fascist society. This blueprint is up in broad daylight on their website. And folks need to be paying attention to that.

Yeah. You don't think this is our fault, do you? Because I was thinking, you know, we've been, like you said, we've been talking about them a lot. And then I'm wondering maybe if, you know, if people are listening and they're like, you know, maybe they're half listening because they're making dumplings or they're buying, you know, cage-free butter at Whole Foods. And they're just like, well, Danielle and Andy are talking about this a lot. And I trust them. You know, they seem reliable. So they must really like it.

I'm going to give them some money. I hope that's not what's going on. You make a valid boy. I don't really think that's what's going on. Our listeners are way too smart for anything like that. But yeah, fuck those guys. You're right. Not our listeners.

Fuck those guys. Not our listeners. 100%. Andy, how are you kicking off this post- Thanksgiving coma of a week? I can't even believe this is real. But as we're recording this, Elon Musk is in Israel, meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and doing God, God knows what else. It's embarrassing. I don't have the words. And thankfully, the editor-in-chief

of Har, it's one of the biggest news outlets in Israel, agrees. She tweeted, blatant-Semite and publisher of anti-Semitism Elon Musk should be persona non-grata in Israel. Instead, Netanyahu, plumbing new depths of amoro sycophancy, gifts him a PR visit to the Kibbutzim devastated by Hamas, profane, venal, bilious, both of them. Those are the words. She had the words, and she used them really well. It's so gross. Honestly, for purposes of this, I do not care what quote-unquote side you're on in what's going on over there. This is gross. This is disgusting. Elon Musk is exactly how Esther Solomon described him, a blatant anti-Semite and publisher of anti-Semitism. And the fact that Netanyahu is meeting with him. And I can't. say it's a surprise because I don't care what side you're on. Netanyahu sucks. He absolutely sucks. But it's so disgusting that they are giving him sort of the imprimatur of the Israeli government in his little visit over there, which we have to remember. The only reason he's over there is because he tweeted something so incredibly anti-Semitic that there was no other possible way to

look at it. And he's losing advertisers left and right. So this is sort of his, you know, look, I'm not an anti-Semite. I'm meeting with the prime minister of Israel. Well, so anyway, there's a long history in this country of anti-Semites supporting Israel. And we're seeing it now. And Pastor John Hagee spoke at the big rally in Washington. And this is just another example of that. And unfortunately, the Israeli government is helping him launder what he said. So I guess my fuck that guy is actually, it's a combination of Elon Musk and Benjamin Nitt and Yahoo. Just fuck those guys.

You know, I'm sure that that's not the only thing that he's over there for. I would argue that maybe he's also coming with some coins as well. And folks should look and, you know, follow the breadcrumbs. What I will say about Elon Musk and this whole charade that he's putting on is what the mayor of Paris said on his platform, which is calling it a, quote, gigantic global sewer. And that's what it is. And he's trying somehow to save it, I guess. But the fact is she's quitting it and so are a lot of other fucking people because Elon Musk is

captain of the sewer. He is trash. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse. Canon and Seamus Calder.

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