The Texan Podcast - Biden News, Trump’s Middle East Trip, AI Searches: SMSS Ep. 16

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

On this episode of Send Me Some Stuff, the Cameron and Rob start with President Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, and the nuances of who might have known of his cognitive decline, such as touching on Jake Tapper's book, "Original Sin." They also discuss the persistent inaccuracies in polling data concerning Trump supporters and the geopolitical significance of Trump's Middle East tour. Finally, they explore Google's AI integration into search results, and how AI is reshaping technology and society.Listen to more Send Me Some Stuff podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello and welcome back to send me some stuff episode number 16. It's weird to think we've been doing this for what? Almost a year and a half now. It's blown by. Absolutely. It's all a blur. I've been here for now almost a year since Brad left the podcast so that he could focus on Smoke-Filled Room with Mackenzie.

And now the wonderful Send Me Some Stuff viewers get to listen to our nonsense for an hour. It really is a lot of nonsense. This is more focused than our actual conversations in the office, which are much more rambling No, it's true. Those tend to go all over the place. So but yeah today We got a lot of interesting stuff. We're gonna cover There there was the big announcement that former President Joe Biden has cancer And we'll talk about how that news came out in conjunction with the original Sin Book by Jake Tapper.

And he's been sort of doing the podcast circuit as well, talking about the book. So we'll get some more clarity on what's going on there. We'll talk about it. It came across another interesting story in the New York Times about how Democrats are going to be launching this huge multi-million dollar initiative to try and build out podcasters, a kind of alternative to what they're calling the new establishment. We'll talk about that in the Tim Dillon interview on CNN. I don't know if you got a chance to watch it, but I watched the whole.

I am not, so I'll be learning about this in real time. Oh, I'm very excited. I watched the whole thing. It was amazing. You pulled up a really interesting story about some polling data and some issues that have occurred over the past, let's say, decade or so. Yeah, just about. Since 2015 when current president Donald Trump first announced he was running for president, there's been a consistent problem with

under polling the people who do intend to vote for him and pollsters have just been... It's a fantastic piece. I got a chance to read it the other day when you shared it with me, so I'll be excited to talk about that There's been a lot of geopolitical news recently, especially with Trump Visiting the Middle East and his Middle East envoy Steve Wittkopf and some of the the deals and negotiations that are occurring We'll talk about that a little bit and then you pulled up another story about artificial intelligence and how search engines. Absolutely.

AI is the buzzword of the day. And it continues to reshape the way that the technologies we've all gotten used to over the last decade and a half have started to operate. And so this might be, I would say, it's probably the biggest change since since the smartphone so definitely a lot of interesting stuff we'll be talking about today. Yeah so I think we should

actually start with the President Joe Biden cancer diagnosis and for everyone that hasn't heard he put out this press release or his team did that talked about he has this aggressive form of prostate cancer. He is an 82 year old man and it's aggressive in the sense that it's metastasized, it's spread to the bone, so it's in these advanced stages. it's spread to the bone. So it's in these advanced stages. And so it was really sad news, really. You know, you want to, you pray and you hope for, uh, for Joe Biden in this case where he has a speedy recovery, hopefully he can, everybody who's anybody who's lost a family member to cancer can sympathize with

the family in that situation. Absolutely. And putting that aside though, there was a lot of discussion after the news came out of the cancer diagnosis where people were asking if this is such an aggressive form, it's in these late stages, why didn't we know about this sooner? I don't know if you saw some of those discussions going on. Twitter has been a buzz talking about this news. A lot of claims being thrown around right now about how is it possible that they missed this? Was there some kind of cover-up going on? And that ties into a pre-existing conversation about an alleged cover-up regarding President Biden's health. Yeah, and that those health issues were something that many people on the political right, let's say, were discussing for the, you know, past four years. Absolutely. But really came to fruition

when Donald Trump and President Joe Biden at the time had their debate. And it was an absolute catastrophe for the Biden campaign at the time. We talked about it a lot on previous Send Me Some Stuff episodes, but that's when really we saw the quote-unquote democratic establishment start to become more vocal about the cognitive issues that President Joe Biden has – was displaying on that debate stage. There was Wall Street Journal who had published pieces about some unnamed sources, let's say, who had blew the whistle essentially on some of the issues they've experienced with Joe Biden.

But it wasn't until the debate that really the American public at large and then Democrat supporters started to pull back their enthusiasm for Joe Biden running for president again. He eventually dropped out. Kamala Harris stepped in. But now we have this new book, Original Sin, by CNN host Jake Tapper, Axios reporter Alex Thompson, where they really depict the longstanding issues that their sources have told them that have occurred with former President Joe Biden's cognitive deficiency. So tell us a little, you sent me this Atlantic piece that sort of goes a bit into it. What are some of your big takeaways on all the news that's come out surrounding Joe

Biden with the book, with the cancer cancer diagnosis What's your initial thoughts here? So Mark Leibovitch had this story in the Atlantic titled Biden's age wasn't to cover up. It was an observable fact now, I think a lot of people read the headline and Didn't read the article because from some of the discussion I saw around this piece online. There seemed to be the attitude that the discussion I saw around this piece online, there seemed to be the attitude that, uh, Leibovitch was saying, Oh, you know, nobody was covering up anything. They were just, you know, it was obvious, right? And that's not really what he's saying in the piece. What he's saying is that the, he's trying to argue, I think that this

isn't as extraordinary as some people made it out to be. It was a simple case of the fact that Biden's people, the White House team, other Democratic officials, were doing essentially their job in just saying what benefited their political party. You know, he says it's cynical, but that's politics, right? He was, and Leibovitch has been saying that Biden was too old to run for years.

He was, he was a prominent, he was speaking out about that before the CNN debate, even before, I think back in 2022, actually. I think he ran an article saying that. But, yeah, his argument is just that it's not as, it's not a cover-up. They're just simply, you know, they're playing defense for their team, right? Now the problem is, of course, like a lot of headlines in online media, it is, I think, intentionally ambiguous enough to enrage people just enough that they will spread the article. And unfortunately, in the modern media environment, you'll notice this on Twitter. People don't link to articles anymore.

They just post a screenshot of a headline and nobody should ever do that because you don't give people the ability to read the article or at least post the link with it, right? The Atlantic doesn't have a, does the Atlantic have a paywall? I'm not even sure, but you know, you can read a lot of the Atlantic stories. So yeah, it's, it's a difficult, you know, the accusation being made on on the in the conservative space right now is there is no way that Biden's team didn't know about this cancer diagnosis, and that they are cynically now releasing this information in order to take away from the the oomph of this book and a lot of the details in the book are also you know pretty unfortunate right it's a pretty it is an unfortunate situation for President Biden all around I mean one of the stories details how he met George Clooney at a fundraiser oh yeah he

didn't recognize Clooney. And one of the aides had to tell him, Oh, this is George Clooney. And he said, Oh, hi, George. And Biden has known Clooney for years. And one of the I think it was the aid that Tapper interviewed in that book was talking about. He said, you know, at a political fundraiser, if you don't recognize the guy throwing you the fundraiser, that's really bad. Yeah. Right. So the book has has all of these, you know, unfortunately, embarrassing details about Biden and many on the right are saying, oh, well, they must have known about this diagnosis in advance. They must be releasing this information now solely to combat this narrative about, you know,

saying, oh, well, you can't, you can't bully Biden, right? He is, he is an old man with cancer and you need to give him his space and his peace and whatnot. Yeah. But the other side of this argument is that in fact they didn't know about the cancer diagnosis because it's, you know, not as common to scan for prostate cancer in men once they're over the age of 70. So the argument relies is essentially now revolves around you know did they know in advance because do they actually perform this this kind of scan on a man as important as the president or did this really just go missed which unfortunately

is kind of a bad situation either way because it either shows that they weren't performing the kind of extra medical exams that a person as important as the president should probably be receiving, or which is the far worse option is that they actually knew about this and it wasn't being discussed. So yeah, and that's what that's that's the big You know and as of this point right now, it is kind of there's no facts to substantiate necessarily either claim right, so it's it boils down I think to your Existing political alignment will lead you to your interpretation of the facts. Yeah. Well on the cognitive deficiencies front we've seen a number

of democratic elected officials or activists or advisors comment not just in the book but publicly about the issues that have occurred since it was revealed that Biden has had some of these issues in his performance on that debate stage. Most recently someone from Texas, we saw Beto O'Rourke say his decision to run for re-election was a terrible mistake. There's a comment in the original sin book by David Plouffe, he's the Kamala Harris senior advisor. He says here that Plouffe called the efforts to defeat Trump on a truncated timeline a quote, effing nightmare, and it's all Biden. He totally effed us. So it's a difficult thing, of course as well because just like with you know the argument over how your political view shapes the facts, if you are a Democrat

who supported Harris, you believe that Harris getting less time to campaign hurt her because then she could have shared more of her ideas with the country and people would have been more willing to vote for her. Now if you're a conservative Republican, you might believe actually that it's the other way around, that if Harris had had more time, if you believe that she's a bad candidate, then maybe her having more time would have delivered Trump an even bigger electoral victory. So obviously, you know, there's no way. History is not science because we can't

run those kind of experiments, but it's something that's going to give book writers something to talk about for the rest of the century, probably. Well, I think what is interesting to look at is with this book it's sort of an admission that people knew what was going on and like you said they chose not to say anything because it was politically advantageous for them to do so but if you go if we go back to November 2022 there was an investigation into classified documents being being held by Joe Biden.

There was a special counsel, Robert Herr, that was designated in 2023 January to oversee this investigation. He would, Herr then interviewed Biden October 8th, October 9th. We saw a report come out in 2024. And in that report, her described Biden as, quote, sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. And since then, because these were interviews that were taped and recorded,

we've seen these audio recordings be released. And in those audio recordings, it is quite apparent where Joe Biden is unable to remember certain dates, not just like of random events, there were dates related to when he left the office of the president, or vice presidency, when his son died and so it's it again and at the time people look you you know there were Democrats who accused Robert Herr of creating sensationalism right and exaggerating and

now that the audio has been released I I think it's clear that he he was not sensationalizing or exaggerating his description of Biden. If you listen to the they're all on YouTube From Axios. I think there's a total of five hours of content there and it's it's clear that he wasn't he wasn't just making stuff up So yeah, and so I think that's an interesting transition to talk a bit about how You you just mentioned the framing by the some in the mainstream media about how hers comments were being framed at the time and where once Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Kamala Harris entered the race and it was

Trump and Harris running for the presidency in 2024, we saw a rise, not really a rise, but Trump take advantage of going on independent media platforms that you might not normally say are aligned with quote unquote conservatism, but these are maybe anti-establishment voices people like the Yvonne Andrew Schultz Joe Rogan Certainly not like, you know firing line or something being done by the Heritage Foundation Daily wire, but they're kind of outside of that mainstream media environment. Yeah, and something we talked about a lot, again, how going onto these platforms help

propel young voters to the polls to support Donald Trump. He did see a rise in support from young men, especially in the presidential election. And now we're seeing the Democratic Party notice that they're losing young men, losing young voters. And so they're actually going to be launching a multimillion dollar campaign here to start build out a Essentially a podcast liberal podcast circuit. I Don't know what do you do you think this strategy is good like actually? building trying to build a grassroots podcast or alternative media Environment well, I think like with a lot of things with the Trump phenomenon,

there are certain factors that are not there was lightning in a bottle. Right. Yeah. The article, by the way, for those who are interested, is Democrats throw money at a problem countering GOP clout online in The New York Times by Theodore Schleifer. Great article just detailing some of these some of these media organizations that national Democrats are interested in as ways to grow their their cloud online. But with the Trump phenomenon, again I believe the Trump phenomenon is largely lightning in a bottle. Donald Trump was already a

famous celebrity who many believed was like a living embodiment of America for lack of a better word before he even ran for president he was already famous everybody knew who he was I mean I remember when I was watching election results with my family my mom was trying to explain to my sister and I and she said this would be like if Kim Kardashian won the presidency right nowadays I mean it's crazy to think there's an entire generation of young people coming up now who will only know Trump as a president. Because for a while he was already famous. So he already had that appeal. He already

had a very strong brand, right? And then all of these alternative alternative Media sources these podcasts arose kind of organically around him, right? Like they weren't being they weren't being funded by the National Republican Party No, these these things just grew up around him And so, you know, I would say this is a good move by Democrats to try and build up their media to try and build up their Presence in the alternative media space. However, there is something, I mean it's difficult I think for the, frankly it's difficult for major democratic donors to I think authentically sponsor truly alternative grassroots media sources? I mean there

are plenty of alternative grassroots like like left-wing progressive media out there but are those the people who are going to be getting money from the DNC? That's that's the question. Well and I think the so like you take people like Tim Dillon or Andrew Schultz, Joe Rogan, these aren't conservatives. But what has happened is the Democrat Party adopting this form of hall monitor progressivism. That's how they described it in the article. It is not attractive to these freewheeling conversations

that comedians and podcasters want to have. And so that's what's, that authenticity is what is attractive to this growing base of voters, these young people that they're trying to attract now. I think there's a good term that's been used for this which is the South Park conservative, right? Have you ever run into this term or the bar stool conservative? Yeah, I'm familiar with the bar stool conservatism. So a lot of young people, a lot of these young voters are attracted to the Trump movement and this current kind of wave of anti-woke free speech conservatism in the same way that

a lot of young people were really attracted to Liberalism during the Bush administration because those young people perceived the GOP as Something oppressive and wanting to silence you and being no fun, right? Whereas a lot of young people coming up now see the Democratic Party as that party of hall monitors who don't want to have any fun. And this is why during the 90s and 2000, Bill Clinton, right? Mr. Jogs to McDonald's, what's the comedian's name? I can't remember it off the top of my, John Mulaney. John, am I thinking of his name right?

He has a great bit about how cool Bill Clinton was for kids in the 90s. But it's that factor that now they have to try to authentically build something authentic that is nonetheless going to work towards the benefit of their party in particular. But the interesting thing about some of this Trump stuff is that these people are loyal to Trump the individual, not to the Republican Party? And in fact as we've seen over this one big beautiful bill debate A lot of these people are willing to come out and declare that every Republican who won't get behind Donald Trump is bad Right, they're loyal to the person. They're not loyal to the party. And so that's I think gonna be tough

well, and I think the that's I think gonna be tough. Well and I think the so this this leads into a different conversation though about the the new rise of a new type of conservatism that is within the Republican Party and I think there is a sort of battle going on about what the future of the Republican Party is going to look like Is it going to look more like Trumpism? Or is it going to revert back to and hold on to some of those principles? like you're mentioning during the Bush era Bush era, so that'll be something to watch but

something worth mentioning is There was a interview that was conducted by CNN With Tim Dillon who is a who has a massive platform? comedian Again, not someone who is a conservative but someone who is anti-establishment Right, maybe libertarian might be an appropriate term for it. Yeah, yeah, you really can't put a label on Tim Dillon. But in this interview, it was very interesting because the interviewer essentially called Tim Dillon and these new podcasters the new establishment.

And Tim Dillon pushed back on that quite a bit because as he said, what are a few podcasters as compared to these giant established institutions like the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN itself and SMBC. There is this, but in some sense, there is this rise in alternative media platforms and a decline in people having trust in these legacy media institutions. It's this sort of diversification of information that is occurring where people have more of a choice now

about where they're getting their information. Would you agree, disagree, what's your sort of quibbles with how CNN is characterizing the rise in podcasters as being quote, a new establishment Well the fact that they helped perhaps swing a single election. I don't think makes them a new establishment right now Here's the problem with this here's kind of the interesting thing is By by referring to them as the new establishment I think that's already kind of seeding ground to Dylan and other people like him because it seems to suggest that being the

establishment is bad so they're trying to say well you're the new establishment really if you think about it which is you know it's already you're already ceding ideological ground to people which which you know when when you know I've had this conversation when talking with friends about politics many times,

but you know that when your opponent starts using your own language against you, that they are starting to slip a little bit. I remember you told me that you were pretty confident Harris was going to win, I'm sorry, that Harris was going to lose the presidential election once she started running to the right on issues like guns. When she said, oh, I would shoot somebody to defend myself. And you were like, that's the moment where you knew that those internal polls must not be looking so good. Because once you, if you have to start adopting your opponent's viewpoints, then it goes to show your viewpoints aren't working. Yeah. Well, because it's one thing to run to the center in a general election. It's another thing to adopt. Yeah. It's like how in, you you know and this is of course the the history nerd and me

coming out but in 1940 the Republican Party ran Wendell Wilkie to run against FDR and do you know what Wilkie's platform was? I'm gonna do everything FDR did I'm just gonna do it better. That was basically the platform the New Deal was so popular that there was no real resistance to it and the Wilkeism was just well, I'm just gonna basically do everything he did. We're just gonna do a little bit better. Yeah, we're just gonna do it a little bit better than they did and he lost because this is really not a winning strategy, I think, when you have to run like that. But something else...

Oh, sorry. I was gonna say I want to get back to this CNN interview because I thought there was an interesting point in the conversation where the interviewer from CNN essentially went down this line of argumentation that podcasters have much more, they need to be paying attention much more to what they say because people are going to them for not just opinions, but to get the news of the day, where instead

of going to the New York Times or the Washington Post to read about what's going on overseas or what's going on in domestic politics, they go to Tim Dillon's show to form watch TikTok videos to form their opinion. And so she the interviewer was essentially saying there is the podcasters need to be much more aware of this and they need to push back on the guests that they have or not just be there for entertainment but is podcasting a new form of journalism. Tim Dillon again he said no that's not my job my job is to be entertainment for people, to put on a good show, to talk to interesting people and have interesting conversations. It's not to be a journalist.

I don't know what your thoughts are. Should podcasters, now that they have these giant platforms and people are going to them more frequently as an alternative to these mainstream outlets. Should there be a greater emphasis on telling both sides of the story, or should they place greater emphasis on being more journalistic in how they are discussing issues, or should they just continue on just focusing on entertainment? I think if they were more journalistic, they would lose the appeal that has allowed them to become so popular in the first place.

I think that, you know, a lot of people do watch 60-minute interviews, but they also want to watch a rambling three-hour conversation between someone like Joe Rogan and JD Vance or Donald Trump because, and it's because in those interviews with journalists that are often, you know, very pointed, very questioning, right? Like we're getting down to brass tacks here. This is serious. But in these podcasts, you can see a more kind of human side of the politicians. Like JD Vance in his interview with Rogan talked about, I think it was he was getting the call from Trump about being chosen as vice president and his son was like babbling in his ear talking about

Pokemon right and that's one of those things people and this is a phenomenon of again the Trump the entire Trump thing right call it what you will but it's that authenticity people want want to believe that they're politicians, they want to see that authenticity, right? A lot of young people, again, is more loyal to Trump, the individual than they are to the Republican Party, which is why when Trump finally does bow out of national politics, I don't think anything's really going to fill that void. I don't think anything's really gonna fill that void. Well, and then going back to what set us off on this conversation, I think that's gonna be the biggest hurdle for Democrats to have to navigate here is the authenticity issue when the ideas within progressivism, big P, progressivism, right?

Where it's really built on, in some sense, policing what people can and cannot say. Where you will see public pushback if you make disparaging comments about certain demographics or identity groups, which is not allowed within that frame of progressivism. And what do comedians do? Make fun of everybody and say disparaging things, but in a humorous way.

And so- You can joke about anything if it's funny. If it's not funny, then you lose your right to joke about it. That's right. But you need to have that space and that ability to play around with those ideas And the the left did have this in the United States in the 90s and 2000s You know like a arguably a more libertine time than today, right? And in terms of just how much people could get away with right just how much

How how you know it seems like nowadays perhaps in the era of the era of, how, you know, it seems like nowadays, perhaps in the era of social media, you know, the cyber panopticon where everybody's observing everybody else all the time. Maybe that's made people a little more anxious about being as expressive as, you know, it's the old joke people say, oh, thank God I graduated high school before smartphones, right? Right. I'm sure, see, I was in high school when smartphones were a thing, but you were not so I'm sure you feel that way I was in high school and self smartphones were I thought you were like 40 or so But speaking of speaking of bad numbers, this is a great segue into our next topic about polling. Yeah, so

Tell well you sent me this story from the Atlantic. Tell me a little bit about what's going on here. Yeah, I'm sorry about the crack on your joke, but the crack about your age, by the way. But as you said, you got to be able to joke about everything.

So polls is so the the this article is titled Polling was quietly still bad in 2024 by Mark Novikoff, also of the Atlantic, which is just the Atlantic is just really a great source of ideas good and bad. It is a great place to find conversation starters. But this article talks about how even after the 2016 election, even after the 2020 election, pollsters in 2024 still dramatically underestimated Trump. I think one of the most famous examples of this was that Ann Selzer poll in, was it Iowa?

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, they talk about that in the article at the very end. And she was, she predicted that Harris was going to win the state of Iowa by, I believe, three points. And Trump won it by 13 points, which is, and then she retired from polling. And Trump himself has now gone on a tirade about this saying that it's fake news, called it like election interference. You know, it's just, it's in the, so what this article is basically talking about is

the fact that pollsters have a significant problem with non-response bias, which is where people who would vote for Trump, people who intend to, do not respond to pollsters asking about who they intend to vote for. So when pollsters gather their data, the number of people who don't vote for Trump are significantly underrepresented which gives this massive skew essentially. Right and in the article they detail some of the previous attempts to weight these polls so they could get accurate numbers and still they were unable to properly calculate these polls and they continue to miss. And one of the other things I think is interesting with the issue with polling is because in decades

past when they would conduct phone polls, they would just call someone's landline, the person would pick up and they would conduct the poll if they agreed to it. But now with our smartphones, when you have caller ID and you can see on your phone a number that you don't recognize. This is the joke about generation Z, right? Is that we don't pick up the phone if we don't recognize the number. Well, and so what happens then is the, uh,

pollsters conduct online surveys and what that requires is people to actively go to these polling companies, sign up and then conduct a poll on their computer or laptop, whatever it may be. And so you are skewing your poll in some sense to someone who is wanting to take a poll. Which is often not Trump supporters who are distrustful of institutions, who are very distrustful of the media. So what you get is polls that seem to exclusively, not exclusively, of course, but dramatically over-represent non-Trump voters. Right.

So I'll be, I don't know how this issue is going to be solved that with polling because there is a long history of polling in the in our country there's Millions if not billions of dollars thrown at it every election cycle and it goes back decades the issue I mean you had of course Dewey beats Truman, right? The great headline that never happened. So it's, and even remember in 2016 they found all those magazine covers of Madam President, I believe from Time magazine, which obviously you've got to print that kind of stuff in advance if you want to beat everybody else on the day after election day. But it just goes to show that, know the kind of faith that people placed in polling really

It wasn't unfounded back then necessarily they could still predict things But it has lost its predictive power because the Trump phenomenon is in some sense immeasurable Well, I and you can't you can't narrow it down. Well, it'll be interesting to see You can't you can't narrow it down. Well, it'll be interesting to see like you have mentioned throughout our conversation today what happens with polling once Trump is Has withdrawn from the political scene as a candidate, right?

will The traditional style of polling with a more traditional style of candidate Produce the type of results that they got with polling before Trump was a candidate. So it'll be something to keep an eye on, something really interesting, something that we've talked about before. So- It is funny how have you noticed that even in the first hundred days of Trump's administration, the talk on everybody's lips is what happens once this is done.

Everybody's always talking. People were speculating on 2028, the day after election day. But and now even still we're like, oh, well, what happened? Trump, of course, is also an old man. So he's not going to remain in politics for the rest of it for for much longer. Right. So once he once he finishes his second term and probably continues to play kingmaker in some role after considering the fact that he is currently the head of the party, like it or not, I mean he is the... he leads the Republican Party in a way that the Democrats do not have a just a simple a single leader You know, so that's that is one of the big interesting differences between the parties

I think is the way that the Republicans have this single guy who is really you know, there's resistance to him But he is he is the figurehead. Whereas in the Democrats, it's kind of that jockeying between figureheads. Whereas in the Democrats it's kind of that jockeying between different sources of power. So yeah that'll be interesting but speaking of Trump we can deviate away from domestic policy for a little bit and get into some of his foreign policy because did he did he go on a vacation is that what happened? He did go on his grand tour of the Middle East? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. Well he's he went all over the Middle East. He was over there talking with leaders

from a host of different countries. There was really this meeting that was happening in Saudi Arabia, and there was meetings in Qatar, the UAE, and I think the biggest, well, the most controversial aspect of this Middle East trip was the Qatar plane gift. Yeah, the plane you got from Qatar. And so there was somehow a controversy regarding was it a personal gift, was it a gift to the Department of Defense, and how is it going to be used? And so from my understanding, it was a gift to the United States government and after they check it out or use it in whatever way, it's going to be placed at the Trump Presidential Library. the controversy about gifts between foreign leaders and Donald Trump and how that isn't appropriate in common international relations.

So that was sort of like the big thing that was occupying a lot of conversation online. But it was also interesting to see how Trump has been trying to broker deals in the Middle East regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, trying to negotiate a peace deal where a sort of Abraham Accords 2.0 trying to develop some economic relations between Israel and these other Middle Eastern countries and coming to some sort of agreement with other countries that are used to be huge opponents to the United States but if you can come to some sort of diplomatic agreement by taking, I think it was refugees from Palestine going to Syria, trying to, trying to, you know, it's a very complicated situation, but utilizing diplomatic efforts instead of military interventions

in these regions. One of the most interesting things is the fact that you know in the way it's been reported in a lot of media outlets is that Trump is kind of leaving Netanyahu behind right rather than bringing Israel in as a partner on all of these conversations with these Arab states, he is instead going to them directly, to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, you know, all these oil-rich Arab kingdoms and trying to forge an alliance that is not – now, obviously, the United States maintains its support for Israel but Trump is I think Trump is not the kind of guy who believes that he needs to go through people to get what he wants he believes he can go there

directly and strike a deal and figure it out right yeah he's mr. deal that's that's his mentality of himself and You know, he's received criticism for example for meeting with the new president of Syria after The former president Bashar al-assad was overthrown That feels like it was a long time ago, but it was really only a few months ago. Yeah, and He was overthrown by a an Islamist guy who had been an Islamist terrorist, and Trump had referred to him as an Islamist terrorist.

But Trump is willing now to meet with this guy. He said, oh, he's a good leader, he's got potential. And I think that speaks to the fact that Trump's mentality is that you can criticize people all you want to, but at the end of the day, international relations is kind of a dirty business. And, you know, you can't, you know, it's funny for a man who is famously a germaphobe, right? Trump is, is when it comes to this kind of international relations thing, he's

like, he's not a germaphobe in the sense he's willing to meet with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. He's willing to speak to Putin. He's willing to speak to the leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharah, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, but his mentality is that, you know, in comparison to a lot of Americans I think who view this kind of, they view it as a sort of America's kind of dirtying its hands talking to these authoritarian leaders. Whereas in Trump's mentality, that's the reality of the situation, right?

Trump's mentality is not that Saudi Arabia needs to be liberalized and democratized. It's that this is this country, and what can we do to benefit ourselves and strengthen our position? Yeah, and I think that's a great articulation of the Trump America First foreign policy agenda is negotiating on behalf of the United States

with these leaders across the country instead of negotiating on behalf of other countries. And so it'll be interesting to see because obviously the conflict between Israel and Palestine is ongoing, like you mentioned. There's been some pullback from the Trump administration in their coordination with Netanyahu. So we'll see what develops over the next few weeks

as more negotiations occur. I put in our docket to talk about Steve Witkoff. He has been on the forefront of many of these negotiations, most recently getting the American hostage back from Hamas. And since then then we'll see what happens because I've seen reports about Israel actually ramping up some of their more assertive aggressive responses to Iran specifically. I was about to bring up Iran, so I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did. And Trump has been very vocal about coming to a deal with Iran, with their nuclear program. So with Israel being more, like I mentioned, aggressive in military intervention against Iran,

but Trump wanting to be more diplomatic and coming to some sort of a new nuclear deal. How that will be worked out between these three nations, we'll see what happens. It really is all up in the air. Well, something that can't be understated, I think, when trying to understand the Middle East today is the fact that a lot of conflicts in the Middle East

are proxy conflicts between Saudi Arabia, which is a Sunni Muslim monarchy, right, and Iran, which is a Shia Muslim Islamist Republic, right. The Iran used to be a Shia monarchy until the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 79 and a lot of Muslim monarchs in the Middle East were afraid that the Islamic Republican movement was going to come for them as well. There was an eight-year long war between 1980 and 1988 between Iraq and Iran. Although I believe that wasn't, wasn't I believe because Iraq is a majority Shia country, but I Believe that they were under the the Baathist movement, which is the Arab nationalism as opposed to Iran

Which is not an Arab country, right? So you have all of the you have the ethnic and religious tensions there But you know if Trump can forge a stronger relationship with the Sunni countries, like for example, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, I'm pretty sure Qatar, Sunni, the UAE, then that kind of boxes Iran in because Saudi Arabia and Iran have been beefing for a very long time. But in 2023, they restored diplomatic relations after China brokered talks between the two of them and a Sunni Shia alliance across the Middle East that is allied towards Russia and China Would not be good for the US's global position. So well in that was rumored to happen under I believe it was the Clinton

Administration there was sort of this pan-arab agreement that was attempted to That was being attempted ultimately didn't come to fruition right really over the issue of Palestine and that's the thing is Israel has become more aligned with the Sunni states for example the Abraham Accords that Trump brokered was 2017? Or it was during his first administration that tried to normalize relations between, was it Egypt in the Abraham Accords, or was it Saudi Arabia?

Or it brought in several countries. It was United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain. But that's trying to point at this point, right? If we get Israel to be more aligned with these Arab states, then we can further box Iran in and stop them from getting a nuke, which has obviously been the concern for the last 45 years and will continue to be the concern. This was a big deal during the Obama administration with the talks about the Iran nuclear deal, the fear of that Iran would get enough nuclear material to make a weapon.

It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Well, we still – well, there's still needs to – And they're still trying to renegotiate that now. Yeah. Well, and there still needs to be evidence presented that they have the capabilities. That's the thing is, you know – and of course the fact that the kind of uranium that is used as we talked about on a previous episode of send me some stuff the uranium you use for nuclear reactors for energy is not

the same that you use for weapons the enrichment level is very different so it a lot of details on that but speaking of Technology for another segue into our final topic of the day from wired.com Great source for of course technology news with AI mode Google search is about to get even Chattier by Reese Rogers So you ever googled something and you find that there's a little text box that appears above your results, trying to summarize results for you? Yeah. You ever noticed that it's wrong sometimes? Right.

Now Google's AI mode is going to answer queries for you in just a longer, more detailed explanation so that when you search something, rather than just getting websites explaining things, Google itself is gonna try to give you an answer. So what we have created now is a computer that is capable of doing what a human can do and just telling you whatever it's heard and whether or not it's true.

So we've invented a computer that is about as accurate as just like asking any random person you know about anything. Well, the thing that Google search has done with incorporating their AI model into the search function is the click through rate has fallen off a cliff where people are putting in their search queries and they're getting the answer at the top of the first page of search results.

And they're not clicking through to links. And so that just trusting what they see on it. It's a trust in what they see with that. Grok is this true? If you've been on Twitter recently, of course you see people who I'm, I'm certain that some of those people have to be paid by X to be asking that Grok is this true. But I'm also certain some of those people do it because it's just too funny to be constantly asking

for every random thing, Grok is this true. Well, when you're searching out, you have a question you want to search for, what's your default search browser? Google, probably. I think Google has, I think that they've slipped a little bit Google seems nowadays It puts a lot of advertisements up top. I mean duck duck go is good being is not actually that bad for search results It's just that Google was just that much better But I think a lot of people feel a kind of fatigue with Google now how many

Advertisements you get when you search something up. So I don't like AI overview. I am just old fashioned enough that I do in fact like finding my own results for things. Well, so I utilize perplexity probably for 90% of my... What company's perplexity? Is that also Google? Is that open AI? No, it's its own entity. And what's interesting about what their AI search engine does is it provides the sources for the answers that are populated after you put in your search query.

And what I make sure to do is go to the links and then follow the links within those articles that I'm reading to you know double triple check what is being provided to me now that's what people recommend you do with something like Wikipedia right yeah they say don't trust the necessarily the text on Wikipedia go to the sources so you can kind of generate your own Wikipedia article then and gives you, now these are real sources right? It's not like that time when you know that that famous post about, or I don't remember if it was a just a post on X or a study about AI was

asked to find sources, find academic papers about a topic and it hallucinated like half of them. They were real papers Yes, we're just totally made up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's something we We've begun to see stories about with legal document filings is there has been cases where Attorneys are submitting

attorneys are submitting briefs to the court, but they've used AI to generate some of the case sources that are being cited within the brief they're filing, and judges are saying this isn't a real case. Have you seen even like all these articles from teachers talking about their students using AI? Oh my gosh, yeah. I am glad that I graduated college right before this stuff got big because this wasn't even because even if you're not using AI there have been cases of students who've been told their writing sounds like AI

who've been who've received charges of plagiarism which is a very unfortunate way of telling you that your writing sounds very boring and robotic. ChadGBT sounds very boring and well I talked about this on the weekly roundup this week is actually about one of these stories where Students were talking about their use of AI On submitting assignments But then the teacher was using AI to grade and provide feedback on those same AI generated essays. So as AI grading the AI providing feedback using AI.

So I was kind of thinking to myself, is there any, what is going on here? Is there any learning? Human interaction going on at all, or have we completely outsource that entire procedure? Yeah. So we're entering a new age with AI in it. Very, very early days still. No, it's true. It's only been a few years. I mean, everybody remembers when AI-generated images started getting big, the audio started getting big.

I like those AI, I like the memes people make using AI-generated audio of the presidents, for example, talking. Like people make the people make Biden, Obama, Trump, George Bush. I've seen Richard Nixon, JFK playing like video games or ranking things or just having conversations as if they're a group of like teenage boys talking about stuff. And it's there's there's also, you know, there was even the case, I remember, of that court case where a man who had been killed was, his family created an AI video of him talking to the jury, which is creepy. It's like digital necromancy, you know, it's definitely a new territory it's a new territory terra incognita well but it could also be seen as a way to preserve someone's and that's true that's true and personality for forever that's true but my I'm see my problem is I'm very cynical about this stuff so my concern is

how do you know that that is even an accurate representation of that person, right? How do you know it's it's I I'm just My problem is I always try to foresee the bad stuff My favorite science fiction author William Gibson likes to describe how when he tries to perceive the future He says I don't imagine it doing what it's advertised to do I imagine what it's doing ten years later when it's sitting on somebody's desk collecting dust you know what kind of role does it start to play after it's what does it use for its unintended purposes right that's how you got to

think about technology well my favorite frightens me a little when I think about AI well my favorite techno futurist philosopher, Nick Lamb would say this is inevitable. We're headed towards an acceleration period. So we'll find out. We'll end it there. Thank you everyone for tuning in to Send Me Some Stuff, episode 16. If you have anything to send us,

you can reach us at thetexan.news. Go to thetexan.news for all of our articles, podcasts, and newsletters. Absolutely, send us articles, interesting things you found at editor at thetexan.news, and it might even end up in an episode of Send Me Some Stuff. Thank you for joining, and we'll check in next time.