11/10/26: Jensen Huang Scandal Explodes, Culture War Dead As Kansas Flips Blue, Tech Oligarchs Lies Exposed

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Catch up on Breaking Points with our free daily newsletter. You'll get our breakdown of every daily story. And lots of links in your inbox every day. So head over to BreakingPoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. All right, turning now to Jensen Wong. Many of you might have heard of this as a sex scandal, but we have the details. And this is not just a sex scandal. This is actually a massive corporate and corruption scandal. So ironically, thanks to Jensen. Jensen's own chips, I was able to use Claude to put all of the details together for you guys. Let's put it up here on the screen. So here we have by the numbers, basically, and even this number is currently in dispute. There have been $4.8 billion worth of NVIDIA chips that have been bought by this company called Megaspeed. Megaseed is a Singaporean Chinese state-backed company cutout, which was run by Alice Wong, who is the alleged affair partner of Jensen Wong. She used her proximity. With Jensen, and Jensen used her to purchase billions of dollars worth of chips for this data center and for this company, which specifically was circumventing U.S. sanctions. That's the core scandal here. There have been over $2.5 billion in server purchases that have been cited by the Department of Justice involving a company called Supermicro, which is genuinely about diversion to China, explicit illegal violation of the law, which is linked to Megaspeed. Literally over. For a year ago, October of 2025, the New York Times reports U.S. intelligence has been monitoring this woman, Alice Wong, who was pictured in 2024 with Jensen Wong, basically kissing and hugging in July of 2024 in Taipei. And then finally, only recently in November, have three Republican House chairs requested for a closed-door briefing with Jensen. So we put together this timeline. Let's go to the next one. Again, just to summarize the real scandal here is that in April of 2025, the U.S. government restricted NVIDIA's H-20 chips to China. NVIDIA later says that its China business went to zero. This was a lie. Jensen and Alice Wong in May of 2025 died again in Taipei. That month, he says there is no evidence of any chip diversion. Then the Times reports that the U.S. intelligence monitored Alice Wong, found contact with Jensen, briefed Trump again over a year ago. And then this is the real kicker. What happened is that in October of 2025? Around when this article comes out, is that the Commerce Department, which is investigating NVIDIA, diverting trip chip chips to China, specifically to this company called Megaspeed, which is run by Jensen's now admitted girlfriend. Basically, they say that they have found no Chinese ownership or chip diversion. But the critical part is that they email Crystal, the Commerce Department investigators, the nonpartisan investigators who are looking into this company. And they name drop their boss, who is a Trump appointee who works for Howard Lutnick. And obviously, what hovers over all of this is that Trump has been Jensen's biggest cheerleader, sending a message to the DOJ and to the Commerce Department. Keep your hands off my man, even though he appears to have been flouting. And NVIDIA, specifically the company, has been openly flouting a lot of these export control restrictions. And so that's why this affair. That's why this affair matters. Yes, Alice Wong, we believe that, you know, she might have been a Chinese spy. That's according to U.S. intelligence assessment as of October 2025. But the real big picture here is their relationship is secondary, right, to all of this. Is Jensen is basically she's running this Chinese state-backed company. He's selling her chips, which he's not supposed to be doing. She is involved in all kinds of sketchy stuff behind the scenes, as licked to the DOJ. The Commerce Department starts looking into this about how Jensen is inflating this company and, you know, sending up to $8 billion almost of chips over there, potentially in violation here of U.S. law. And then the Trump corruption angle here of NVIDIA name-dropping the boss of the investigators, being like, hey, he told us, you know, to basically to get into contact with you guys. Lo and behold, they drop the investigation. It gets kicked over to DOJ. Nothing's going on as of right now. That's the scandal that we see right now. So if I can back up for a second and kind of TLDR this for everybody. I mean, first of all, let's contemplate how important NVIDIA is to the entire AI build-on. They're the only company that manufacture these highest-end chips that are essential to especially the frontier models. The Biden administration was quite restrictive in terms of what could be sold to China. The Trump administration has rolled back some of those restrictions. And one of the people who has been a foremost, most influential advocate, of an open trading relationship and rolling back all of these restrictions is Jensen Huang. We all got a taste of this recently in the wake of the Hugging Face hack. You know, Jensen was one of the people who was arguing that, OK, we need to continue to be off to the races with AI development. We need to, you know, expand. We need to do, we need to be interacting with China. We should allow them to buy our chips so that they're using our tech stack in their development. And this is important. Now, look, he has. He has every business incentive to say these things. He is the guy selling the chips. So, of course, he would be also arguing we should sell the chips everywhere as much as we possibly can. However, the fact that he now has this relationship with an alleged Chinese spy does call into question the advice that he is giving, the, you know, the direction that he is going in. And, again, this is someone who is very trusted by Trump and a top advisor. Then you layer into this, you know, this investigation. Then you layer into this company where NVIDIA intervenes and suddenly the investigation is very much changed in the way that it's handling the allegations that, you know, obviously he has been selling massive amounts of chips to this woman that he's having an affair with. And it appears she may have been taking some of those high-end chips, which are not supposed to be sold to China, and shipping them to China. That layers a whole lot onto this thing. And NVIDIA is really so central to the AI buildup. Not only because of that. Not only because they developed the chips, but they also have all of these business dealings, all of these sort of like circular financing deals at the center of all of this. Here's the other piece. Jen Sen Huang is not just an ordinary CEO. You know, there's a lot of ways you can run a company. Some CEOs are relatively hands-off. They just sort of delegate and they handle the high-level decisions. That is not him. He famously runs this very flat organization where he is deeply involved in all of the day-to-day decisions. He has a lot of money. He has something like 60 people who report directly to him. He is very deeply enmeshed and involved in what's going on. Furthermore, there is no succession plan. There is no one who's being groomed to potentially take over in the event that there's some problem with Jen Sen Huang. He is really all they've got. There is no, like, backup plan in this company. So now the board of NVIDIA is investigating all of this to find out what the hell is going on and, you know, the way this affair interacted with the business decisions that were being made. And if anything improper was going on, etc. But part of the reason why everyone from Trump to, you know, all these Silicon Valley guys are basically running cover for him is because he, and this was the headline of an Atlantic article about this, they're like, Jen Sen Huang is too big to fail. He is too important to this company. This company is too important to the entire global economy, but specifically the American AI build-out, which our entire economy is basically bet on right now. So. So, okay, he was with a Chinese spy. I guess we're just going to have to pretend all that didn't happen and keep pushing forward. One more thing before I toss it back to you, that it just should be absolutely insane to people, regardless of how you feel, by the way, about the export controls with China, which I kind of have complicated feelings about. Trump has known about this for a year. He was briefed on this a year ago. Okay. That was before he brought Jen Sen Huang with him on his trip to China. That was before he called him on stage. He called him on stage with, you know, all in and the besties to talk to him about how we got to continue the AI build-up. He has maintained Jen Sen Huang as this very close advisor. You know, put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that you had, you know, the Biden administration being closely involved, you know, closely advised by someone who was having an affair with some foreign spy. People would lose their minds. Trump, again, has known about this for a year and did not change one iota how he was operating. are engaging with this. man. It is really bonkers. I totally agree. Look, there's a great there a fair conversation to be had here about export controls, about openness and all of that. Jensen Wong doesn't care about any of that. He cares about getting rich. That's what this whole thing is about. That's why this is a corruption scandal. What he did is he allied with this woman to divert things directly in circumvention of U.S. law to enrich her and to enrich him and then use his connections with the Trump administration to quash any investigation into that. If you disagree with the law, let's change the law. That's fine. And then we can set level playing grounds. But it shouldn't be that because you're one of the richest man in the world, I believe the eighth richest man in the world, something like that, 200 billion dollar net worth that you're trying to protect your own company and basically cozying up to the Trump administration. And remember, I mean, you know, he's taking calls from Trump at the all in summit. He's just slobbering all over him on the Joe Rogan podcast. I mean, it's just so ridiculous. Also, I have the number here. In video is eight point five percent of the entire S&P 500. So nearly 10 percent of the entire S&P 500, which is where the vast majority of people by index fund are holding all their wealth. Whether you have in video stock directly or not, you bet on this company. The whole U.S. economy bets on this company. And for these tech people, my God, to your point here about Jensen, Jensen not only runs with 60 direct reports, Jensen has near total control, is a very weak board, and he has the ability to go out there and take multibillion dollar flyers because of his inflated stock to go out there and say, let's throw 50 billion at this deal here. Let's throw 100 billion at this deal here. Let's do this co-financing deal here. So remember all the circular financing deal. So we've been talking about for years and video is at the heart of that. He is the beating heart. Jensen Wong is. I saw an analyst, a stock analyst say this morning, Jensen and video without Jensen, the stock is worth twenty five to thirty percent less just because if they'd. Run themselves like a normal company, that's how much of a hit that the stock would take, which means we would all take a massive haircut on our 401ks. And this is why Trump, I mean, is coming out here and basically saying and absolving him of all guilt in his press conference yesterday. He even acknowledges that there's an FBI investigation, but is saying he's going to be fine. Well, since he runs the government, that kind of tells you where things are going. D1, let's take a listen. I would say that when I heard about it, first of all, I was amazed because I view him as a very high quality person. I've known him a long time. It's actually the largest, I think by value, it's probably the largest or one of the largest companies in the world. He did that with a chip. You know, when you think about it, he's got a chip that's ten years advanced. Can't be cut because of the complexity. Can't even the Blackwell can't even be copied. He's an amazing guy. I just hope it's I hope there's no problem. If there is a problem, we'll let you know about it. But I hope there's no problem. I believe he's suffering greatly. I read his statement and I believe he's suffering greatly, more so because of his family, his wife, who he loves and his family. But he is definitely suffering. Just to follow up on the when were you first told of these potential issues with Mr. Blank? You didn't answer that question. I've been hearing about it and I've been reading a little bit about it over a period of time. But. Not too long ago. We'll look into it. I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else. And I think that he'll be in good shape. I asked him today because I did speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right. How you doing? And I asked him about that. And he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. I asked him that question. Did you have any idea that she was a spy? He said, I had no idea that she was a spy. Well, we can always count on Jen. We can always count on you to tell the truth, especially to Trump. Can't we? But look, most noteworthy comment there was him saying again that, oh, the FBI will look into it, but it's going to be fine. I mean, I think and we've already seen this. Senator Warren, Van Hollen, others are all over this. Chris Coons as well. This may end up being one of the most consequential investigations that they run. And, you know, look, I get the tawdry details are everywhere and we'll get to some of the ironically. That Jensen's greatest legacy is chips have created some of the best AI memes I've personally ever seen about this situation. But I will say the details of this have been out there for a long time. I want to give special credit to Culper Research. Let's put my tweet up there, D5. I was doing a lot of research on this yesterday. So Culper Research are short sellers, actually, very similar to the ones who put out bets against Enron. And in May of twenty twenty six, they put out a report. Which details the affair with Alice Wong about the flouting of U.S. law, about the diversion of chips. And they said, this is ultimately why we are short this company. They said they have major problems in China. And it's only a matter of time until regulators come out. And so because they did so much of the work, they have their own sources, which kind of tells them some of the tawdry details about Alice Wong and more. I just want to make sure I give them a shout out. I've really relied on them for the research. And obviously, they've been totally, totally vindicated after all of this has come out. So it's so crazy. And I think, you know, look, not in the immediate term. I think Jensen's going down as a result of this. His fingerprints are all over this. I don't know the way that he has run this company and more. It cannot come unscathed. I don't know. I mean, in terms of the short sellers like NVIDIA is down, but I don't know if they counted on the fact that, yeah, he's he's too big to fail. The company can't take the hit. Like and there is no replacement. And so now you've got the president of the United States like, yeah, the FBI is looking into it, but nothing to see here. And he's going through a tough time, by the way. We should all feel really bad for him. To me, it also just underscores how fragile this whole thing is. Like Jensen has I don't I don't know if people follow this, but he's got like a cult of fans. You know, he's there are tons of Jensen like fanboys out there who love his whole his whole attitude and the leather jacket and fan girls, too. Clearly. And he signs their boobs literally on camera. You can see the video. He's really tried to style himself as this kind of like cool, edgy tech dude. And, you know, and that image has really worked for him, made him obviously extremely influential, extremely powerful, and then come to realize, oh, my God, this is a fallible human being who could have known. And the entire global economy is like resting on the tentpole of Jensen Huang. And turns out that there can be as with any human being, there can be some misjudgments. Oh, my God. Lo and behold, I thought she just loved me. It turns out she's a Chinese spy. Who could have known? Right. And so, you know, this is this is the situation. This is the economy that we have built where if it's not Jensen, it's Dario or it's Sam Altman or it's Elon Musk. Like, there's just a handful that you can name by first name of people who this entire A.I. build out depend upon who are being handed this immense wealth and power. And our future is being sold out to them. You know, they're deciding right now we might get some Democratic push, small D Democratic pushback on that. But as of now, they are deciding how far and how fast A.I. is going to go and the way that it is going to change all of our lives and our children's lives and penetrate society and threaten humanity like that is resting in the hands of these type of people. And guess what? Whether you like them, whether you think they're cool, whether you dig the leather jacket or not, these are fallible human beings. And so everyone needs to take a beat with this and say, what the hell are we doing? What are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. You know, to your point, too, we can even skip the meme thing is stupid just to make a substantive point. Just think about this. This company, which is eight point five percent of the S&P 500, we now found out has no succession plan is a cult of personality with an idiot. Sixty three year old man who wears a leather jacket, which, OK, I think we all know what's going on there in terms of Mr. Midlife crisis. And we also find out I read this today. They had no plan for if China takes over Taiwan. Jensen personally banned a Taiwan contingency plan for NVIDIA, I guess, with the assumption of we're dead if that ever happens. So, I mean, our my child's five twenty nine plan is in the hands of this fucking moron who apparently thinks that she loves him or whatever at this bar in Taipei and who refused to have any succession. Apparently, the board of directors completely out to lunch. This company is worth more than the entire European stock market. It is one of the most valuable companies in the history of mankind. And these are the people who are running it. That is what terrifies me. Actually, more than anything is that it all brittleness comes apart like this. And now the government has to save him. Basically, if there's a normal president in charge, he would be going to jail or you at the very least, he would be removed. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think it's so insane. I really do. And again, no matter what you think about export controls or not, things should not be working like this. They should not be working via your affair partner and more. And, you know, to the board, the board, by the way, is pathetic. They're like, oh, we have no indication that anything was done wrong. I mean, it's people. I mean, what? You know, they're in the same hotel room. Trump calls him every day, all the time. talk about what I'm who knows what they're talking about on the phone, private things that they're sharing details behind the scenes. What's Trump's mood? What's he's thinking? I mean, these are massively valuable to any intelligence service. It's just stunning. It really is. You know, for me, the the mass really came off of Jen's. I mean, there were a number of moments. The Trump speaker phone at the all in summit was one of them for sure. But I watched his interview with Ezra Klein in the wake of the hugging face hack. And he went on to make the case that we can control AI and it's nothing to worry about and we shouldn't regulate and we just need to be off to the races. And I, you know, I assumed that I would hear some like compelling arguments that made my position of like, no, we need to pause. We need to get this thing under control. That would challenge me. And it was some of the worst argumentation I've ever seen. You know, I mean, he literally was like, oh, the free market will figure it out if there's a problem. And Ezra rightly was like, well, that's not how we operate with like airplanes, for example. We don't go, well, you know, a whole plane drops down in the sky and a bunch of people die. The free market will fix it. That's not how we operate. And currently, you know, the AI labs, who is it that says like it takes more licensing and regulation to run the cafeteria at the AI lab than actually develop this very dangerous and so when I watch that, that was already really disturbing to me because I was like, oh, this guy is not the incredible, you know, mastermind genius that he is being portrayed as. And now we see the, again, incredibly human failures of judgment that have massive consequences, potentially criminally. So although I don't think that will come to that under this administration. So this is what we're, these are the types of people that we have put all of our future in the hands of. Congratulations, everyone. Yeah, that's right. Maybe I should sell my stock. I'm thinking about it. All right. Appreciate everybody watching. We're going to skip all in just for timing purposes. We went long with several guests, which we think is more important than dunking on the bros. We'll do it, I guess, on our Thursday show. We'll get to it. It is still important. It's so important. All right. So let's kick it to ourselves with Thomas Frank. You know what made them famous? Do you know who they still want to become? I am Diana Flores, and this is my podcast, Born to Become. Each week, legends in sports, culture, and business reveal their lives beyond the spotlight. We've sort of broken the mold. Like, we're not trying to be quiet. Whatever you said, it's out there. That's it. What has success cost them? Who helped them keep going? I share my experiences, too. We learn from each other. I'm going to give you, like, the real deal. Whoa. It was, like, one of the darkest times. Wow. I didn't know all of that. From handling pressure to bouncing back from rejection, you can take their lessons into your life and career. After all, even your heroes are still continuing to grow. Presented by GEICO. I'm still improving. I'm still growing, but I believe in myself. I love that. 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Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing. I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Steven Root. I think for me, it's a lot more for me to be any good or for any character actor to be any good. You got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the street and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder Alia Mohamed. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Eriko. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, it is quite an honor to be joined live in person here on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in the studio by Thomas Frank, an extraordinary author of many books, including The People Know, Listen Liberal, What's the Matter with Kansas, and his new book, The Creativity Con, which we're going to speak with him about. But first, we wanted to get into a little bit of Kansas convo for you, since you are the resident expert. Great to see you. It's great to see you as well, Crystal. But I have to warn you, I don't live there anymore. I moved out of Kansas some years ago. They chased you out? No, no, no, no. It's a long story. But, you know, life takes you down some strange paths. It's a long story. And I actually live in Bethesda, Maryland now. Beautiful place. Very nice place. The opposite of Kansas. But what do you, I mean, you must have some thoughts, though. First, tell people who, because we have an audience that's relatively young, who may not have read the book, actually. Tell us what the thesis of What's the Matter with Kansas was really all about. Well, it was about how ordinary people were voting for right-wing candidates. So Kansas has always been, or used to always be, a Republican state. I mean, when I was a kid, the neighborhood I grew up in was, I thought, the most Republican place in America. It was up there, like, with Orange County. It was that kind of thing. And so the question is, how do they appeal to, how do conservatives appeal to ordinary people whose interests they don't, you know, they don't share? It's sort of the question of our times, you know? It's the, it's, I was looking for a way to examine or talk about the great right-wing, the great turn to the right that this country has made beginning in the 70s and 80s. And we've never really looked back, you know? We've never really turned away from it. And, you know, this is the question of our time. How did this happen? Why did people sign up for it? And so that's what I did. I studied ordinary people and why they, why they, you know, signed up for this sort of awful movement that was ruining their life chances. And the answer was the culture wars. The culture wars were extremely powerful for the people that I studied and the people that I talked about. By the way, I chose Kansas not only because I come from there, but because it's often used as a symbol of middle America. You know, it's right in the middle of the country. It's statistically very, very average, you know? And so it was, it was very useful for that. But yeah, the, the, the, the culture wars. Yeah. Thomas, I am actually the person who put their request in for you in anticipation of this potential democratic victory, because I said, well, I'm going to do a 22 year later follow-up about what is the matter with Kansas. We pulled actually this video of Adam Hamilton, the Senator-elect from the state. I'm curious what you make of it. Let's take a listen. So I went to the Wizard of Oz museum. And while I was there, I see, I get to watch a certain clip from the Wizard of Oz. You've got Dorothy with Toto. She's on the yellow brick road. They're going to see the wizard and her three trusty sidekicks. You remember the scarecrow, the tin man and who? Cowardly lion. And I'm saying, it's been 20 years since I watched it. I said, okay, what did the scarecrow need? Do you remember? He needed a brain. He needed a brain. What did the tin man need? He needed a heart. What did the cowardly lion need? He needed courage. And I had to laugh and I thought, this is what's wrong in Washington DC right now. We got a lot of people up there. We got a lot of people up there who've lost their minds. They're no longer using critical thinking skills to solve problems. They're not thinking for themselves. They're doing whatever their president or their party tells them to do. That's not good for Kansas. We have a lot of people who lost their hearts in Washington DC, and that's easy to have happen. You go to Washington, you live there for 180 days. You go to Florida for a while, you come back to Kansas and all of your stops are photo ops in front of Cabela's or somewhere else. You got five minutes. You don't actually stop and listen. You have a listening session in Oakley and you get upset. You walk out and instead of listening to people, then you say, you know what? We don't do listening sessions because those people are too dangerous in Kansas. I'm looking at you, even the best friends. You don't look dangerous to me. You got to listen. You listen to your people. And when you do, you find a heart because you see people suffering. You hear their pain and you say, I got to do something about that. And I can't keep voting for things that take away 51,000 people's health insurance in the state of Kansas. 18,000 kids who don't get SNAP benefits anymore. Finally, you got to have courage and courage is when you stand up to your president and your party and you say, this is hurting people back home. And you say it, even if your president's going to bully you, pick on you, primary you and call you names. You still say, this is not okay. A little hokey for my taste, Thomas, but clearly it worked. Come on, that was awesome. What are you talking about? It's the allegory that never ends. You know, so that book was written as an allegory of the populist uprising in Kansas, where the tin man symbolizes the proletariat, you know, the industrial working class. Obviously, the scarecrow is a farmer and the cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan, you know. Oh, wow. And, yeah, the lion that never could really, you know, never get it done. But it's funny how that allegory works, and it just keeps on going. I think that was really wonderful. I thought that was touching. So what do you think of this evolution, you know, to go from Kansas being this really hard right bastion to now? You know, and how does it reflect some of the shifts that are happening in the country more broadly? So Adam Hamilton, good guy, decent man, but was a Republican himself up until earlier this year. Right. And what you have to remember, so in What's the Matter with Kansas? the main tension was not between Republicans and Democrats. It was between these two factions of the Republican Party, the so-called moderates and the conservatives. Right. I grew up in moderate land. All my neighbors were Republican moderates. They loved Bob Dole, Nancy Kassebaum, you know, George Bush Sr., you know, these kind of people. And that group has, by and large, become Democrats here in the last few years. So the county I grew up in, which I was saying, when I was a kid, most Republican place in America, Johnson County, Kansas. This is the most, it's the richest county in Kansas and also has the most people. Has, when I was a kid, very, very, very Republican. When I was there in 2020, it flipped for Biden. And it's just, it's continuing to go deeper and deeper into the blue. But this is the, this is the case that you'll find with every, everywhere where people are affluent and highly educated and white collar together. They're, they're doing this. So that's, I mean, it's, so it reflects, it reflects that divide, that dichotomy in Kansas. I wondered if there's another, we were talking to a strategist, Chuck Rocha, earlier, who was involved in the Texas Senate race. He was involved in Adam Hamilton's victory, also was involved in the Michigan Senate victory. And one of the things he said is that, you know, culture war really sells when people are doing okay economically. Exactly. And yeah, I wonder if that is a part of the story here too. Yes. And when the pain gets too, you know, too deep, obviously people aren't going to be, you know, palliated by, you know, like, like, I don't know, what's, what's the culture war this year? I was sort of out of touch. Trans. Okay, yeah. Or I was going to say the war on Christmas was, was one of the big ones when I was writing. That's a throwback, Thomas. That's a long time ago. I know, I know. There's this endless, endless stream of them. And they come up with new ones every year. But there was this hilarious exchange with Roger Marshall. This is the Republican who just went down. And, you know, you just can't ask for more out of touch. And so in Kansas, like in a lot of states out west, they have this problem where they're, they elect guys to the U.S. Senate and then they never come home. You know, they don't even own houses. Not him specifically, but, but this is, this is a problem. You remember Pat Roberts, who was one of the, so he, you know, he rarely came back to the state. Bob Dole rarely came back to Kansas. None of these guys ever. They intend to retire in Kansas so that he, but he ran this, this, it was either an ad or an interview that I was watching with Roger Marshall where he was saying, you know, you, you, sometimes you just, you have to overlook your economic interests and you have to vote on, on your values and, you know, your culture. And it was like, it was right out of what's the matter with Kansas. It was so perfect. But the strategy failed this time as it does in, in, in, in situations where the pain is bad. The other thing is it fails when there's no daylight. Between Democrats and Republicans. So when you got a guy on economic issues, so when you got a guy like Bill Clinton, who's deregulating wall street banks and the Democrats are signing off on these trade agreements and that sort of thing, and they're effectively that everybody is agreeing on the economic issues. Yeah. The culture wars are going to work. It's a way of doing this kind of anti-elite politics and getting back at the people in charge in your society. But you take that stuff off the table and it's a very different, you know, very different ball game. Yeah. Thomas, I think that's, what's really fascinating is kind of to watch this. I was looking at the results, 1932. That's the last time that Kansas elected a Democrat. Actually, even then it was barely by a point. I didn't realize it was that close. Kind of shocking in retrospect. And McGill actually gets crushed in the 1938 election, I guess, after things get a little bit better. So now that we know what's the matter with Kansas and how to solve that matter, how does an Adam Hamilton, you know, not pull a McGill here and actually. Hold on. I mean, what does he need to do? So that I, that I can't really answer because I, you know, I don't, like I say, I don't live there anymore. I'm not in touch with what, with, with what the issues are, but it's, it's so easy to see how, I mean, how this unfolded this time around. Donald Trump has sort of, you know, gone to his voters and given them the biggest betrayal, I think, that we have ever seen in our lifetimes. You think about what his big issues were in 2016. He was going to drain the swamp. I mean, this is the most, this guy, the corruption now is in your face. It's so, it's so extreme, so incredible. He was going to end the forever wars. Instead, he got us into a new one that just, you know, who knows, is it going on today? Are we bombing today? Are we not bombing today? And then, and then he was going to be on the side of, of ordinary people. Do you remember the forgotten man? A line, by the way, that he swiped from Franklin Roosevelt and, and, and, and now his, who's, who's his best friends? Well, it's all these Silicon Valley guys who are building this new invention. They're innovating this new device that might just end your way of life. It's, you know, it's, it's horrifying. It's frightening. It's terrifying. So it's easy in, in circumstances like that to, you know, to, to knock off. I don't know. Nothing is easy. I've never done politics. I'm sure it's very, very hard, but you've got these out of touch Republican senators who just do whatever the lobbyists tell them to do. Yeah. It's like, you know, good riddance, you know. I share my experiences too. Wow. Wow. Presented by GEICO. I'm still improving. I love that. This whole plan of salvation according to Mormon doctrine is heteronormativity incarnate. You either do this and get this fixed or you're never going to see your family again. And I know all too well what happened. When someone strays from the hive. I'm Kate Kelly. Listen to Camp Shame season two on iHeartRadio. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Stephen Root. I think for me to be any good or for any character to be any good, you've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. And actress and singer Melissa Arrico. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person. Just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. That's actually a good, talking to someone about the tech oligarchs, that's actually a good transition to talk about your book. The book is The Creativity Con, How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket. And, you know, prior to reading this book, I would have said, you're a very creative person, but I don't know, maybe it's an insult after reading the book. Because you effectively argue. You effectively argue. that the whole fixation on creativity in America was a kind of psyop to usher in a neoliberal era to a public that was instinctually opposed to these, you know, arguments about IQ and how some people are just inherently superior. So lay out your argument here a little bit. Yeah. So creativity sounds like this wonderful thing. It's what we want for all our children. And by the way, I started a literary magazine when I was an undergraduate. It's still going. I didn't. And yes. And yeah, I am. You know, I'm very much like all my friends are writers or musicians or artists. That's I mean, that's who I am. But it's never the creativity doctrine. Creativity theory has never been about us. It's never been about people like that. What it takes the sort of nobility of those very honored callings and swipes it and moves it to, you know, Silicon Valley guys, Wall Street guys, the CEO of your company. Why are they in charge? Because they're an innovator, because they know how to innovate. It's basically become over the years. I wouldn't say it was done deliberately as in a psyop, but it's it has nevertheless become a way of excusing or rationalizing the sort of insane, extreme inequality that we live with today. Why are these companies, you know, why are we dominated by this handful of industries? Why does the wealth in this country get more concentrated? Every single year, because they know how to innovate. They deserve it. Why do we offshore blue collar work? Why do we send manufacturing overseas? Because those people aren't creative, which is all false. It's all wrong. But that's what we tell ourselves. That's what we've been told. And by the way, by Democrats as well as by Republicans, this is a very creativity, a very attractive doctrine for all sorts of different reasons. But one of them is that it's extremely conservative, radical. Right. You know, it's all about like this kind of countercultural, nonconformist, you know, zany individualism. But what does it wind up? You know, it winds up being used to like, let's cut taxes. We got to put more money in the hands of innovators, you know. So and you go back down the this is one of the things I do in the book. You go through the history of the neoliberal turn. As I said, my obsessive subject, how did this country move to the right in the way that it did? You go back through the history of the neoliberal turn. And at every event, every stop in this terrible story, creativity and innovation are the reasons that we did what we did. It's why we cut taxes in the 70s and 80s. It's why we deregulated Wall Street in the 1990s. It's why we signed why we why we negotiated all of those awful trade agreements. And it's also when you get up to a guy like Barack Obama, who at first at least seemed like his heart was in the right place, why he decided he couldn't do anything about it. You know, it was all up to, you know, there's nothing he can do to help out people in sort of ruined heartland towns in Kansas and Missouri. The only hope for them is that innovators will innovate something that will rescue them, you know, which is not an answer at all. But that's what he said. The only answer is we can all go out and get STEM degrees and, you know, learn how to innovate. And I'm sorry, I chuckle at inappropriate moments. But it's I mean, it's I don't think that's inappropriate. It's a joke. Yeah, it is. It's so preposterous. And yet that is our country, you know, and until the day that we start seeing through this stuff and and get over this stuff, we're going to be stuck in this in this broken record where we keep looking to these tech titans and pharma bros to rescue us. And they're never going to do it. And by the way, Trump is just as big an offender in this regard as as Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Trump declared last year that we were entering a golden age of innovation to be powered by AI and has gone to great lengths to associate himself with these the various Silicon Valley leaders. You know, he gives them innovation prizes and stuff like this. Really smart, Thomas. My last question for you is why didn't you call it the meritocracy con? That was the last book. Come on, Sager. That's yeah, but it's like the kind of because it strikes me. Everything that you're talking about is basically the same critique I would give of the so-called meritocracy. Yeah. Right. Is that it gives you like the elites of today are just like the wasps of the 1950s. But at least those people had like a familial noblesse oblige, whereas everybody today is like, I earned it. I got into Harvard. Yeah. Right. Whereas last time everybody knew they only got into Harvard because of their last name. It was almost better that way, honestly. Yeah. I mean, that's you know, that's a really good point. And so obviously, meritocracy is a huge part of what of the same story that we're telling. And but what you see with the but how do they how do they sell it? They don't use the word meritocracy, of course, but they do talk about themselves as creatives and as innovators. You go to something like South by Southwest, which is, I think, the part of the book that I'm proudest of. I spent I went to South by Southwest a couple of years ago, stayed for the entire run of the whole thing and really got a lot of creativity and innovation. And basically, this is how our ruling class understands themselves. This is how they present themselves to the world. You know, I was just I was thinking about Jensen Huang on my way over here because he's in the news. Oh, yeah. He's he's he's a very interesting guy. But he also you know, he always wears that black leather jacket. Right. Because he's he's like the tech Fonz, you know, he's but they're all they're all like this. And this is how they their their their authority. And this is how they rationalize this incredible concentration of wealth in this country. And it's how they how they explain to us, you know, our elites. It's not those wasps in the 1950s, who, by the way, the 1950s, we had incredible like by by the standards of today that we had great shared wealth in the 1950s. The affluent society, you know, that's all over now. But, you know, why why do these guys get to live the way they do? Why do they get to consume so much, so many resources? Why do they get to own everything? Because they're these kind of, you know, zany, countercultural rule breakers. They are the incarnation of this doctrine that we all love, this idea of creativity that we're all in love with. And it's, you know, once you start putting these things together, once you understand how critical these words are. And it's everywhere. Once you start seeing it, it's like your eyes open. This is by the way, I say this because this is what happened to me doing the research for the book. Yeah, I intended when I started out, I meant something completely different by it. I was going to do write mainly about the Richard Florida thing, you know, the idea of the creative class. Yeah. But once you once you plug that idea, the creative class into your brain and open your eyes, you see it everywhere and it all starts to make sense. And it's very disturbing. Have you seen you can see everything yet? Not yet. You need to see it. You really need to see it. But my last question for you here, and people should really read the book because it definitely shifts your perspective on things. I hadn't thought about it quite the way that you lay it out at all. Have we actually gotten more creative as this is all foisted upon us and pushed in national creativity efforts and, you know, lionizing the innovators, et cetera? Have we as a population been creative because of this project? It's exactly the opposite and this is the real tragedy of of of what I'm talking about here in for the last 60 years. We have worshipped at the shrine of creativity. Our government has done endless things to promote innovation, you know, endless. I mean, it goes on and on and on. You know, Carter administration, Clinton, Reagan, Obama and now Trump, all of these things to say that they say they're promoting innovation. You look at the actual creative occupations in this country, writing, music, liberal arts, scholarship. All of them, career dead ends today. Everybody knows it. I mean, I remember what F. Scott Fitzgerald used to call writers or poets, the unacknowledged legislators of the world. It was when I was a kid. That's what you wanted to be. You wanted to be a great novelist. You wanted to be a great writer. You wanted to be a great musician. All gone today. You can't earn a living doing any of those things. And the economists have all these different ways to shift slightly. Economists have ways of measuring how innovative a society is. It mainly has to do with GDP growth and productivity growth. By those standards, we are getting worse, not better. I mean, think about it. So I was born in 1965. The U.S. gross domestic product grew by 6% that year. OK, that's an innovative society. That's a society that's growing by leaps and bounds. And by the way, blue collar people work along for the ride. Part of the great society. This was President Johnson's idea. Bring everybody in. Everybody was going to be middle class. Taxes were high. Unions were strong. And America was growing by leaps and bounds. Today, it's like, what, 2.5%, 2.1% what our annual growth is? I mean, if we get to 3% nowadays, I mean, they pop champagne corks. It's like the greatest thing in the world. No, we're on an incredible downhill slope. And it feels, if you're in a place like Washington, D.C., you look around and you say, wow, this country is really rich. This country is really great. Because we've concentrated all the wealth, all the development into these little areas and there's these small little handfuls of people. And so to them, it looks like everything's great. But statistically, no. And in terms of actual creative production, no, this country's totally stagnant. Think about Hollywood movies. Think about classic rock. I mean, can I give you one last example? We're flying B-52 bombers over Iran. These are planes made before I was born. I mean, what kind of innovative society does that? And it's not going that well either, by the way. And they're not even working. Exactly. Yeah. The book is The Creativity Con. Thomas Frank, great to see you. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. My pleasure. Anytime, you guys. You should tell some of your neighbors in Bethesda to listen. All right. I'll do that. Just saying. Just saying. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We will see you all later. Great Friday show. Great Emily and Ryan show for everybody tomorrow. Wednesday. That's it. Yeah. Wednesday. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life, ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans, develop a trip itinerary with daily updates, or create a prioritized schedule so you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at ChatGPT.com. 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