Candidates Eye "First AI Election"

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2:27Big shifts are a possible blue wave when it comes. That's the case. Apparently in Texas, a red state that is now in play for basically two reasons, and everybody knows these. Both parties know these. I'll just remind you what they are. One, Trump's economy and war has sparked a bipartisan backlash even in places like Texas. We're all living through that, so we kind of know that, right? And two, Dems have a better chance in the center race there because Trump ousted the more popular incumbent over a personal petty grudge. Now Trump is headed to Texas tomorrow to try to kind of undo what he's done. But his presence may not be much help. The Democrat, James Talleriko, has been surging with a plain spoken message and an outreach strategy that stretches from churches to Joe Rogan's sort of moderate, indie, sometimes conservative podcast, depends on the day, over to what they call liberal Hollywood, a Jimmy Kimmel interview, which has now smashed records, partly because of the backlash. And then, the Ashut Trumps failed effort to censor it.

3:28Texas is closer than it would be without Trump. His antics, apparently, catching up to him. He's running into a kind of karmic problem diagnosed by another Texan, country singer, Wayland Jennings, who's saying about growing up and used an off-a-way side drive, son of a car hop, at some all-night dive, ain't living long like this. Can't live at all like this. He's saying that is a ballot about knowing that your luck might be running out because of your own actions, a theme in country music, sometimes, well, Trump's failures may be shortening the political lives of many Republicans. From Texas to those other red states, to skeptical questions that greeted the president, last night, even in Nebraska, where a local reporter pressed him, with some local facts on the ground. Well, it's harvest time here in Nebraska, the farmers getting in their combines, their grain trucks driving to the pump, seeing $6 diesel. The courts have shut down an attempt

4:29to adjust mail-in voting for this November. Nebraska has a lot of mail-in voters. This is the number one beef state in the country, and it was striking to see the universal condemnation across Nebraska for your choice to import 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef. The price for the consumer has gone through the roof. It really became unacceptable to the voter, and we do have to get elected because if we're not going to get elected, your wrenches and your farmers are in big trouble. The rebuttal didn't quite make the point. The reporter citing facts and evidence that the big trouble is already here. It's coming from inside the White House, if you will. I want to bring in Molly John Fass. I must now analyze Katrina Ryder with the Times. And, when we're Democratic Washington State Governor, Jay Insley, you can see back in the day with President Obama, campaigning out there, knows a thing or two about these races. He was also on the debate stage as one of the 2020 Democratic candidates and served in the House. So, no, his way around a midterm race. Welcome to both you. Thanks for having us.

5:29Governor, when you look at this climate, is it as rough as you've seen for Republicans since when? At the beginning of time, and they're going to take a big whipping, and then the only argument is going to be amongst themselves was that a fanny kicker or a tail bashing. They're going to go down hard, and I think there's two things that interest to me about this. Number one, what should we expect when an American president leads the whole economy over the cliff, and his cult follows him? And here's the most important part. These people kind of deserve what they're going to get. They're going to lose their jobs. And when that happens, the Republican incumbent. Republican incumbent. They joined a cult. They signed a blood oath. And they're going to lose their jobs because of it. We should not feel sorry for them. There should be no empathy for them. There should be no tears shed after so many of these boatloader Republicans in the cult lose their jobs. That's going to happen. And I would say right now, they might as well relax

6:29because there's nothing to do with that. Can't do anybody. Well, you know, Amy Winehouse said, my tears dry on their own. Yeah, well, that's right. And where Robinson said crying over you. And we should not. Molly, do you have anything to express? No, I'm kidding. Go ahead. We'll come back to you. No, I mean, I'm serious. So I really don't believe there's anything I do in this nose dive situation because it's baked in at this point. 40, 50, 60 percent increases of gas. And the corruption is endemic. And now this is becoming an issue as a corruption itself. And the point I make about the corruption is, corruption itself is a moral offense. And it makes, it gets people angry. But corruption gets into your pocket is another issue. And his corruption that has led this incredible inflation has gotten people's pocket. Yeah, it's oh, yeah. And so that's the governor statewide official. Hard to win statewide with only so many of them. Usually in the news, we say, okay, that's what the Democratic official said. Now I'll show you the Republican statewide official for the counter argument, except a statewide official

7:33from Red State. Tom Tillis told me a very similar thing at this desk last night. Take a look. I think the House is almost statistically impossible to win. Lose the House probably lose the Senate. Now I'm not in the probably yet. I think we pull it out. It will be a tight margin, but I still think we pull it out. You're saying today, yes, you can find hypocrisy surely in both parties. But no, we're not in normal times. And we need to stand up to it. Last year, absolutely. You have a president whose net worth goes up by billion dollars. That's worth looking at. But the reason they're losing their jobs, which I think is important if they are. And I think they probably will. It's because they refuse to run a check on the incumbent. Right? Referent midterms or referendums on the incumbent. This is a party that refused to run any kind of check on the president at any point. Right? These are people who voted for RFK Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. They voted for cabinet members who weren't competent.

8:34They voted for the big beautiful belt. They voted, you know, they didn't vote for the War Powers Act. I mean, at every point, they went along with things. And so what you're seeing, and I think what's really interesting is you're seeing the heartland, you know, the farming communities, the Kansas and Nebraska, states like that, which are in play. And they're in play for really good reason. One is because of the price of diesel. But the other is because of the tariffs, right? These tariffs affected soybean sales and different kinds of farming sales. And I think that voters saw that Republicans never ran a check on Trump. And they never were able to stand up to him. And so why even have them if they're not going to stand up to the president? Yeah. And the governor wouldn't Trump's on these tours. To one extent, you could say, well, it's just red state programming to the base and these, you know, audiences. But to the extent it gets out in some of these moments to go viral and they reach people the way things move these days,

9:34they don't seem to be helping. This was a moment here talking about war. And again, remember, with the word just artificial, it's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They could take out a city, let them take, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. That's, this is a bit of a small price to pay. Well, first off, when I listen to him, I want him to get his wish, which is people think he's on the ballot. Right. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Right. That helps us out. We love people to think of that when they go into vote. But the second thing is the moral revulsion against this cult of the politicians who are in his cult, we know what they really believe is good from America. They believe this war was ridiculous and killing us. And they know their people are suffering. They go back and they meet their farmers and they're getting killed with diesel prices. They know the tariffs, they're against the tariffs.

10:35This is a free trade party. These individuals know the way they're voting is based on just their self-interest, trying to follow Trump over the cliff. Rather than a true belief, and that bleeds through. People know they're voting in a way that is contrary to their best instincts and their job is to protect their people and they're not doing it. I think that's a moral revulsion that adds to their problem. And Molly, you know, Trump did campaign as an outsider, just like he campaigned as a businessman. And there was a time where that was working when we had another Democratic candidate, El Saird, and from Michigan. We talked about what was once the Trump appeal in that state and how much it's shifted. This is kind of interesting. Take a look at how he described it. Donald Trump won Michigan because people were sick and tired of the status quo. They don't like either party. And he made himself out to be an outsider. Turns out that he's the worst kind of insider. But he won because he made himself out to be an outsider. The message that El Saird has done really has explained really well as this idea that

11:38is economic populism, right? Money in your pocket, Medicare for all. You know, this kind of a government that works for everyone. And again, that was something that Democrats were unable to articulate, even though it matched their legislation much closer. And so Trump did say things. He said, I'm going to make things cheaper for you. And then he went in there and did the exact opposite. And we just don't have a historical precedent for a president who says he's who campaigns in one with very clear goals and then does exactly the opposite. Yeah. Governor Wallah, you were just at the Supreme Court. We can show folks that as a lot going on out of Washington state where I happen to be from. You've worked on green issues and tell us about what you were doing there. Well, we were trying to preserve an American right. And that is to get access to our court houses. The judicial system should be available to everyone and everyone should be accountable. And nobody should be above the law. But the oligast industry and cohorts with Trump are trying to shut the door to the

12:39courthouse for American citizens that have been injured so badly by the toxicity of the pollution from the oligast industry. And what we know now, undisputably, that the oligast industry for decades, for decades have known about the dangers of their product. It's now burning down 500 homes at a time. It burned a whole city in Molden, Washington and our state. It burned paradise. It burned Altadena. It burned the Bahina. We're getting floods all over the country. We're getting hammered because of their product. And they knew about this. And they lied to the American people. They had PR campaigns by the millions of dollars to try to create doubt about this. And that deception, now there are people from Boulder, Colorado, suing, saying, you heard us because of those lies and deception. And right now, the oligast industry and Trump are trying to bar them from even having a day in court. This is a violation of sort of a real fundamental American piece of democracy, which you can come into court, show your evidence. And if you win, you win. If you don't win, but at least you get to have your day in court.

13:39That's what's a stake in this Supreme Court decision right now. Yeah, really, really sorry again, I know you've worked on that. And the green issues have come back in a big way. Of all the issues of the AI, one of the biggest has been people saying, they don't want the big tech, big business in their backyard without knowing what's safe and what's good for their community and their children. And again, we've seen, depending on the mood, a lot of the green arguments come back and people say, yeah, wait, as you said, we just want to say, we want to have some leverage. I know this is part of what that is. So we're going to keep an eye on that. Appreciate you telling us about it. Again, Governor Inslee and Molly John Fass, thanks to both of you. Thank you. Coming up, we have an AI skeptic on why Darth Vader might be right in going after big tech and flock. We go to Europe by the end of the hour, but first, a Senate race in Maine that could come down to tonight's debate. It could be pivotal. Jen Socke is there in Portland, Maine. She's got us covered in the next block and all through the night on MSNOW. So we'll be back with her in 90 seconds.

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15:43Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform where people and agents work side-by-side to deliver more together. Create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com. Look I got a 20 year record the main ledge slager. Working class people, middle-income people, poor people know exactly what I've been fighting for. We're going to get the government and we deserve finally. That's a Democratic argument coming out of Maine where Troy Jackson was telling MS now about his push to oust someone who has turned very controversial in this Maga era, Susan Collins. He is now in a tight race with her. We have an election desk rating of this as a toss up that's after the Democrats of course swapped Jackson in. But the big news, everyone in Maine knows this. What you have to be watching at a different state is that this tight race, which could flip the whole Senate, has a critical debate tonight,

16:45which is why our own Jen Socky is in Portland Maine right now. She's with voters and then going to be hosting, of course, the briefing. First of all, I'm sure you love being back out on the campaign trail, Jen. It's the best, Ari. It is so fun to be in Maine. We've been here since yesterday. We've been talking to voters. We went to an event. We're in this great bar called Rigby Yard, but yeah, love being back on the campaign trail. Good for the bones. Yeah, good to get out there. And so we're all into this. A lot of our viewers of course fall on the news or into this. But walk us through what we usually find, which is debates and big events in the final weeks. Remind everyone. There's a choice here. I mean, six months ago, they didn't even have the same Democrat. And Collins is well known, but people are being reminded she's in cycle. What are you hearing? Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's a fascinating race because Trey Jackson was not the nominee. It was just a couple of months ago, as I think people watching know. And this is the first of four debates over the course of the next two weeks.

17:49So for people in Maine who are undecided, this might be something they tune into. They may want to learn more about Trey Jackson. They may have voted for Susan Collins before. And they're deciding if they're going to vote for her again. So it's really interesting. There are a couple of things I think we're watching for in this debate that from talking to voters over the last two days or very front and center for them. One of them is abortion rights and abortion access. Susan Collins today actually happens to be the anniversary array of the final vote in the Senate, Corbrett Kavanaugh, something that has been, Trey Jackson has been bringing this up a lot on the campaign trail. We'll see if that comes up in the debate. I think he probably wants to bring it up in the debate. There was also a huge story here just a couple of weeks ago that we, Trey Jackson, I think we'll bring up. We will see that was about Susan Collins. And it cut a big pay to play scandal that happened in Washington. We'll see if it sits with Maine voters, but those are a couple of things we're watching for. But yeah, super interesting. He wasn't even the

18:51candidate a few months ago. Collins has voted with Republicans a lot. We checked and her voting record actually got more partisan over the years. She's helped Trump and his nominees, which means that in law, she is the proximate cause of ro being overturned, not the primary, but she's involved. And yet she's run on this moderate and indie brand. There's even jokes, as you know, about her being concerned with everything, but never stopping anything. But with that said, are you finding on the ground that that's a concern for her? Or she's still as an effective long-term campaigner has sort of nurtured that brand perhaps even regardless of some of the voting record? Well, there's a couple of data points, right? There's a new Marist poll out today that shows Trojaxson up by five points. But to your point, Ari, on whether she's sort of settled in with voters here in that same poll, even though he's up five points, 57% of people who responded thought she was

19:53going to win, which to me it tells me that people aren't sure, even though they might prefer Trojaxson, if he can actually win the state because she's so ingrained in the state. So the argument she's making to your point is that she can kind of have behind the scenes conversations with Trump that she can move him in a way because she's a member of the same party. That's sitting with voters. That's something Trojaxson has to overcome in this debate. But again, I think part of the issue here is people don't know Trojaxson quite quite yet, which is hard to do. That's my final question for you. We got you know how it works. We have 45 seconds and we'll see more you at 8 p.m. Eastern. But the politics of this, Jen, are folks are concerned that Troy may have a common problem. That if you just put someone in too late with no time to do an introduction, they're at a disadvantage. Thoughts? That is definitely disadvantage. I don't know if it's a common problem or a people know her such a huge percentage of the state has voted for her.

20:54And people don't quite know him yet. There is a huge anti-Trump sentiment here. So there are going to be, and we're seeing this in polls too, a certain percentage of people who are not even necessarily voting for him. They're voting against somebody who they see as being a rubber stamp at times for Donald Trump, even if she isn't all the time. We're going to be watching tonight. How many soccer bombs should we watch out for? I don't know. Five to six. Sorry. We'll see what we can come up with. All right. We'll see. Again, are they to Jen stay hydrated? It'll be a special edition of briefing. Road to the midterms live from Portland, Maine. We're all over the country and happy to be doing it here as we report our thanks to Jen. Coming up later, we take an eye on Italy. But next, the Trump White House has AI fears, including a bubble that could affect them and their political standing in what's already a rough year. I have a special report and guest on this. Next.

22:03One of the most interesting things about life and the news, which covers what we're all living through, is how it really is unpredictable. AI has been kicking around for years, and depending on what you do for a living or what your kids do with AI, you might have some awareness of it, but that in the last couple weeks, everything changed. You've probably noticed. And now there's a backlash. Some are saying that the midterms, which are referendum, of course, on the government and the economy, and we just showed you people mad at Trump, also are kind of the first AI election. In the sense of tools, many people who used to go to Google and maybe check a candidate's issue score or what they're up to now use, AI tools like chat GPT to literally ask about the candidates. Open AI and Anthropic, the two big players here are also in a very different way, spending what has been a ton of money that they've been getting larger from investors, not from a profitable company yet, two run ads and do voter outreach according to what time is it for. Meanwhile, on the Trump side,

23:06you have these tech leaders at the White House. This is a deliberately busy graph or showing you. You don't have to read it all. Just keep in mind how many billions, ultimately, many trillions are on screen represented if you counted their market caps. Some say, okay, American innovation. Others say, if this doesn't work out, this will ultimately be an embarrassing kind of billionaire tax break oligarch meeting that will make a lot of people angry if they're asking for bailouts later. Voters, of course, care about humanity and jobs. Campaigns have been honing in on AI in the midterms. Ohio's Republican Senator, I just showed you the Republican president in bed with all these folks. Trump keeps defending all of it in the data centers, but this is an issue in that key state of Ohio. John Houston has been called the face of AI data centers and he earned that nickname, voting to give them billions of taxpayer money, your money to build even more data centers in Ohio,

24:11driving electric bills even higher. Houston gave data centers billions. You got stuck with the bill. That's what voters are seeing. And this is mainstream. That's not some New York or California race where you might say, oh, everyone's all into computers and tech. This is hating people in the center of the country around jobs, Republicans on defense. They've been the ones that have been very much hands off with Trump saying, let them do whatever they want. Facebook also, a partly AI company now, reaping billions in tax breaks because of data centers, which doesn't sit well in the public realm. Then you have other new tech like flock surveillance, public outcry again in states, red, blue and purple, as they use their license reader cameras. Police officers have been accused of misusing the tech and all of it feels very invasive. A resistance that we've seen in public hearings where people are doing anything to try to get your attention. So whether or not you've

25:12heard exactly a flock or you think about surveillance capitalism is some big issue. Some folks have just shown up as villains like the Star Wars character Darth Vader to make their point. The emperor is a fan of flock and we must continue utilizing flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum as they move from playground to playground from playground to pool, to gymnasium because we all know that the flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers. They are following children. They are following children in parks and gymnasiums and we need this. I need this so I can stock my ex-girlfriend. Did you know Vader even have an ex? That is of course sci-fi fiction being used in a dystopian way to make a point about our science fact or reality these days. The surveillance capitalism, the AI debt, a bubble according to

26:12some critics that could end up costing the rest of us a lot whether we signed up for it or not. Is there still a democracy here to protect us as quite literally humans? Our next guest says yes and if you learn about it you'll be better equipped to fight back including in these midterms. That's next. 3 o'clock kids are home. Your to-do list isn't done. New craft mac and cheese power mac was made for days like this. Craft mac and cheese power mac packs the same irresistible creamy cheesy flavor you love now with 17 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber. Fools you up, keeps you going because your day doesn't stop. Craft mac and cheese power mac find it at your favorite retailer. The best thing keeps getting better. This Monday dot com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices like mentioning Monday dot com

27:13three times. That was the second. Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline and kept everyone aligned. Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop because agents are great but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one note, tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent. So minutes, create your own AI agent today on Monday dot com. The real cost of a break in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. Simply safe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US based agents help stop intruders before they break in. 2. We Sound the Alarm at Points of Entry. 3. Our agents request emergency response. Play and starting around a dollar a day. Right now get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplysafe.com slash sxm. Outdoor returns plans start at $49.99 a month visit simplysafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. As we look at this first AI election and a possible bubble were joined by one of the biggest AI critics or bears that we know of.

28:19Ed Zitch on returns. He's a journalist. He hosts the Better Offline podcast. He's an independent expert. He's not invested in the markets. And he says AI has already shown to be an overpriced under delivering product at this point. In his sub-sacu rights, the AI industry is losing and has joined us before and comes back as we look at the midterms. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. It would seem that if there are reactions to a bubble or a bubble bursting that would hurt the politicians who've cheered this on and said there's nothing to fear. Awesome. Nobody wants to get stuck with the economy that's coming after this because we're going to it's going to feature a stock market crash at a fair but also the elevated price of US treasuries means the basic cost of borrowing is already elevated and they're not really the classical kinds of bailout mechanisms as a result they can do the $40 trillion national debt is really a big problem. When we see people using AI to check on candidate so they're using it like a Google search as NPR store today as someone who's a little skeptical but obviously sometimes they

29:20aggregate information fine. What do you think of that? It's just basically Google search. It's the in some ways it's better ingesting queries but at the same time it's more of the same. The bigger worry I would have is it's quite easily to manipulate those results. You can put things out there kind of like search engine optimization but specifically for it and it's just quite easy to do. Thomas Jumein I believe a journalist did one where he was the world hot dog eating champion or something. You can really manipulate them but I don't think the politicians have been doing that so it's going to just be potentially away for people to get more information. Yeah just a pile of articles. The mainstream message about AI has been this is profitable this is dazzling special innovation and we're all going to make a lot of money. I think you would agree that's kind of how it's been described for a while. For a while. The markets largely still act like that on the equity side. Again I don't want to with this is in CNBC we got a whole channel for that but on the stock side are acting like that you would agree. Yes. The big companies involved in this are up you would agree. Yes. You are saying and just keep it in plain English for us but that is wrong

30:26and that there are already measurements not that we have to take your word for it but in other parts of the economy things that are happening or the bond market explain to us your case that this is already observably not going great. So credit code process is called ramp how to study out that said that 80% of anthropic and open AI's revenue comes from one percent of their customers and most of those customers are unprofitable unsuscentible AI companies funded by venture capital. That and on top of this open AI and anthropic are more than 70% of Microsoft Google Amazon and Oracle's AI revenues. In short it's a case of when the venture capital runs out for everyone involved. So all of the stuff and let me tell you down from me. No you're good. You're kind of saying that on the outside it's like when you look at one of those stores and it says oh we're selling 12 things you go oh I've got choice. But when you go inside they're all like the wagons or the Costco label. So they're all like one or two companies and you're saying when they say look at all this activity

31:30we're making money you're saying a lot of activities just two companies. Yes. So the story is this diverse insatiable demand for AI compute. When in reality 70% of all AI revenues and or more come from these two companies and 80% of their revenues come from a bunch of AI startups feeding them money very dot com s. On top of that you'll notice that Microsoft Google Amazon Oracle never break out their AI revenues despite how fantastic they must be and that's because they have severe revenue concentration with open AI and anthropic. And so people think wow there are all of these different people paying for AI. All of these people must be liking it. When in fact it's a bunch of unprofitable AI startups who are being subsidized by venture capital who is also subsidizing open AI and anthropic which means those future revenues we expect from hyperscalers around cloud are entirely coming from two companies that can only afford to pay them as long as they can get venture capital. So if you're right is this a situation where everybody already knows this but they're not telling or some people don't know this. If you liken this to past bubbles, Paul Krugman's been on

32:36here. We talked about how in the gold rush selling shovels ended up better than trying to find gold and there's different players but is this a thing where you think they already know this and are just trying to stay ahead or there's a real asymmetric gap in who knows what. I think that there are a lot of boosters who believe that we're doing fine and everything's great. I think that the hyperscalers, not the Amoslon's, the Googles, the Microsoft's, the world, Oracle as well. Oracle is building $400 billion worth of data centers for one customer, OpenAI. They have recently, and we can go into that I'm sure, had the major problems called a force measure on their project Jupiter New Mexico data center for the for a data center that won't be ready in time for OpenAI to stop paying them, not the OpenAI can afford. And so Oracle is a name that a lot of people know from Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison. They have been very close with Trump. We've done reports on this and a lot of the Oracle stock or Larry Ellison's fortune tied to what you say could be a bubble is currently financing them buying CNN and Warner and the deal everyone's heard about.

33:40Could those things be linked if there's a drop? Absolutely. So you have to remember the equity's market, the stock market is not based on rationality or reason. It's based on narratives. Right now, Oracle stock is running. They just boosted by, well, I think this way, 10 bucks, I think, this week because of stories about OpenAI's annualized run rate, which means a non-specific period time-stir team. So everyone eight goes up because of the hype. The problem is is that Larry Ellison just took out $9 billion more worth of loans, personal loans, with his Oracle stock as the collateral. Oracle will start tanking once it becomes obvious that OpenAI doesn't have the money to pay them, and they don't have the data center capacity to serve. That is not something that could be bailed out. Now, this stock will crash and on in turn, Larry Ellison might be a single, did you bill you know one day, which I know everyone will be very sad about. But that's the thing. Could it jeopardize the actual funding of the Warner merger? So the Warner merger, I believe, has gone through at this point. It has. It will very likely cause him to have to sell off bits of it in the future.

34:43Paramount just got, or Skydance, or whatever it's called now, just got downgraded by S&P. They have 50 something billion dollars of debt that's selling at 77 cents on the dollar. And this thing only went out a few days ago. A lot of our gotcha knows on the people that invested in that. And the funny thing is is TikToks also a problem. Larry Ellison invested in that along with Silverlake Capital, I believe. And in the end, all of this stuff is pumped full of debt. Everything is there. Oracle is full of debt. Skydance is full of debt. TikToks full of debt as well. And so we're in the situation where the only way I'm wrong is if literally Oracle becomes 10 times the size revenue-wise because they are looking at 300 billion dollars in revenue in five years. Last question. Since the last time we had you here and now, we've had a whole doomsday warning from inside the top of AI, we had one of the whistleblowers on this program. We've covered that. When you hear the AI folks say, hey, this could be an existential risk. What's your response? I hear someone talking a book. You'll notice that Jake someone what?

35:46Talking a book. What does that mean? That must be a British expression. Oh no, no, the stock fans don't listen. It just means they're talking about their investment, talking about the thing they do. Jack about money. Yes. What they believe. Jacob Cox and whether or not what he believes is kind of irrelevant at this point because he didn't actually blow the whistle on anything. You'll notice that every framing of this is, oh, the company's built something and they just can't control it. It's not the company's form. All this is a distraction from the fact that these are unsustainable, unprofitable companies making boring cloud software. And if it isn't a big scary sky creature that's going to destroy or make everyone rich, it's just cloud software that's going to cause the next economic crash. So you think, and I'm running over on time that they're using fear to deliberately hype the product and deceive the public. I think some of them are, I think Daru Amadez and I think Sam Altman is and they've been doing so for years. Really interesting. And we have the invites out. They can come respond to you in this or other forums. But you're one of the big skeptics and we wanted to hear you out. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.

36:46Really appreciate it when we come back. What Europe can teach us about fighting right wing populism. Many Americans are now living through a hangover of sorts from autocratic right wing politics here. Seeing how an aggressive foreign policy can quickly curl into a costly war or how running against open borders turns into the kind of immigration crackdown that gives even hawks, second thoughts. We also have division and government violence in our streets. There's been a pushback to that. And how even what sometimes might sound like understandable talk of patriotism, what could be wrong with that ends up being a cover for culture wars that soak the kind of hate that many feel makes us weaker or the discussion of a masculine gender clash every other day or the racist dog whistles or religious division. And people look at this and

37:47say, well, maybe we don't want to live in a country that seems to invite the kind of division that can justify hate. Now, these outcomes were not unpredictable or unforeseeable. They are evident. They are evident in history as well as geography. Any familiarity with European history will bring an alertness to fascism and fake populism, to ethnic supremacy and the historical anti-Semitism. Europe now faces both sides of that clash. There are liberal leaders pushing against it or a Trump Putin alliance. And they have populations that are concerned about what the US has been doing lately. But there's also resurgent right-wing parties aligned with Trump. Italy's prime minister Maloney echoing some of the country's dark history with their own calls for a type of nationalism far right parties there. And France and Germany have also been on the rise. An overlap that's not unnoticed. Maga leader Steve Bannon has been making common cause with

38:48right-wing leaders there going back years. That brings us to our guests tonight. And Madrid Brioche for the New York Times, Jason Horowitz, who's been many years in Italy, which is what he draws on for his new book, The Italian Job, a memoir of an American reporter in Rome out today, film lovers might enjoy the nod to that great film or the 2003 remake bearing the same name. How about that? Welcome back. Thank you. You're great to see you. You write about your experience here. A lot of our viewers, of course, love and rely on the New York Times. Your thoughts on all the book. Well, I would talk first about firewalls. One thing I saw in Italy over 25 years is that there were firewalls against this sort of hard right coming back into power. And I think in Italy, you saw those dissolving earlier than in other places. And now with Maloney, there's an argument whether or not she's fascist. I think that she would argue that she's definitely not fascist, and that she's not governing the country in a fascist way. But a little key fascist? I don't

39:51know. That's up to her to decide. But like I would say that what's clear is that the firewall that was meant to keep her away. That was in power and was in place since World War II is gone. And Italy, you saw it go away first. Did you see a decay of the arguments that used to be stronger in places like Germany and Italy of never again? We're not even going near. There's not equating it to World War II, but we're not going to go near it. And then people saying, well, it wasn't all bad. Quote, unquote. Yeah, I think what you see in Italy is especially a willingness to try everything, right? So Italian politics is basically a laboratory. So they'll try far left, they'll try far right. They'll try an internet native populism. And so when it came to the hard right again, which was kept out for a long time, they said, let's give it a shot again. And so I think that's what you saw with Maloney coming back, which starts since 1990s. It was a slow process, but we're seeing it now. Yeah. And Italy had been going down that road with Burlusconi. In your book, you write in many ways, Burlusconi set the mold for Trump, an Italian original before the American

40:54knockoff. And the more critics belittled him, the bigger he got and the longer he dominated, the more normalized he became. Talk about that commonality because Americans are often insular. And yet there were clues of this Trump right-wing thing with the reality show abroad. Yeah, I think what Burlusconi realized before a lot of people was how important the media was and he was a mogul, right? He didn't have to get on television. He owned all the television. He owned all the newspapers. And so he basically came into government to protect his business interests. But in order to get in, he needed to strike deals with people again who were kept out were marginalized, the far right, basically the descendants of Mussolini's parties. Yeah. So he brought them in and his bet was essentially that he could neuter those parties. And his critics would say he was normalizing them and letting them in the door. And so that's the big debate that I think is going on in Europe now. And I think it started with Burlusconi, which is did he let the sort of fox back into the henhouse or did he actually declaw the fox?

41:57So defenders of Maloney would say, well, it looks like Burlusconi was right because Maloney is governing the country essentially as a normal conservative. They would argue set a right by Italy standards. By Italy standards, but also by American standards, I think that they would say center right maybe. But then you look, you go to Germany and you go to France and you look at the people who also look to Maloney and they say, well, if she could do it, why can't we do it? And those are different systems and the Italian system is much more moderate. It basically constrains you. And I'm not sure that they have the same constraints in those other countries. So in other words, Maloney started something that I think is spreading to the rest of Europe. And it does and those other countries don't have the same constraints that Italy has. So as an American in Europe, which is really what you've ended up being for many years, do you feel that either continent is decent at learning from its history? Or when you look at what I call the resurgent Islamoprobeating anti-Semitism, which we see on the American right,

42:57in Tucka Carlson, we see it on the left, we see all these problems percolating, you get a feeling that like, maybe we learn the lessons of history for just like 25 years and then we start backsliding, are you that negative or how would you put it? I think that I used to be much more optimistic, right? Before my time living abroad, I think I had this sort of American view of inevitable progress, right? That you keep moving on and you will remember the lessons. And I think what Italy showed me and I think Italy has a much more circular view of history, but you have to make sure that things don't fall apart and you're not going to move forward, things will fall apart and it's all about conserving sort of good things. So I think what we've seen from history and the way things are going that maybe lessons are not always learned and one thing that lots of historians told me is that the attrition is the great enemy of learning. That if you lose what does that mean? That if you lose people and you lose institutional memory and you lose education, which is what's happening more now, you're just much more likely to have history repeated itself because there's not a recent understood shared sense of

43:59oh, that's what happened when we were that divided. That's why starting wars for no reason or or only a grandizing reason doesn't actually benefit even the society itself let alone all the people you kill. Yeah, nationalism for a long time after World War II was a taboo, right? Because people living memory named their kids Adolfs, right? Yeah. People in living memory understood why. And I think that living memory is going away and nationalism is clearly having our surgeons and it's fashionable. And so as you were saying before, some people talk about patriotism and they cloak it in different ways, but you know, I think it was mid-Rom once said that in Europe, nationalism is more right? That's what history says. Well, as they say in Rome, it may have been depressing, but at least we ate well. And so Rome will always give you that. Great to have you state side. Again, folks can Google the Italian job, go pass the movie links and look for the Italian job, the Jason Horowitz book, the New York Times reporter who's on the beat tonight, you can find that

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