9/22/26: Trump Approval Craters, AI Oligarchs Fight Regulation, Trump Bends Knee To Xi

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas Podcast. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Buble, Seth Meyers. And making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters, like Alex and Ashton Earle. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone what to do. Okay, well control is a harsh word. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails, and giving you advice. Listen to Hey Jonas on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Hey Jonas and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. Hey Jonas is sponsored by Edible Arrangements. Order yours today at Edible.com. Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, W. Kamau Bell. This season on my podcast, Who's With Me, I speak with Bruce Lee's daughter, Brandon Lee's sister, and my friend, Shannon Lee. Back to your initial point of stewarding my father's legacy and giving my energy to that. You're lending your life to stewarding somebody else's life. Listen to Who's With Me with W. Kamau Bell. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What up, Crystal? Indeed we do. We're going to do a deep dive into the midterms. Got a bunch of new polls out this morning that are quite interesting. And Trump has just officially hit 29% in his first approval rating to drop under 30%. So that seems like a landmark we should pay attention to. Democratic candidates are apparently terrified of speaking out against AI because they are fearful of millions of dollars being spent against them in their campaigns. We're going to talk to a candidate who faced millions of dollars. In AI spending about what the dynamics look like on the ground. We're anticipating also today a big meeting later this week with Trump and Xi Jinping of China. Already we're seeing some actually encouraging developments in terms of AI coordination. We'll break that down for you and how significant it is. Trump has kicked a bunch of news outlets out of the White House. Now others are boycotting, participating in the press pool in solidarity, leading to some interesting, hilarious moments. DraftKings was caught using AI to target experience. We also have some new, really deeply disturbing video of one of those gambling addicts, how much they are putting down every single week on sports betting. And OpenAI announces they've solved over 100 outstanding math problems. Kevin Roos, formerly of the New York Times, now launching his own podcast, is going to join us to break down the latest developments there. He's also going to take a look at some of these impending IPOs and what we may learn about the financial situation of some of these companies. Kevin's great. He's spent the last year also writing a book called The AGI Chronicles, which is going to come out in a little bit. So we're going to pick his brain on what exactly he's learned and what he can see. He lives in San Francisco. He talks to a lot of these people every single day. Thank you to everybody who's subscribing to the show, BreakingPoints.com. We have our free month trial going on. As I said yesterday and to which many of you listened, thank you to this pitch, is that they all just count for Ryan's total. So just don't even worry about me. Pretend it's not even my voice that is making this pitch. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to the podcast, share an episode with a friend. You know what we need to do? We need to get just like a video of Ryan that we can just play. It's not bad. I actually thought about that. But knowing his sleep schedule, I was like, you know, asking him in the morning is pointless. So I was like, well, forget about it. All right. So as we said, with all of that, let's get to the midterms. So let's start with some video of real voters on the ground in Detroit, Michigan. This is courtesy of a Wall Street Journal reporter. Let's take a listen. What I see is people who are frustrated with a system that has consistently failed them. Detroit's median household income is around $39,000 a year, about half the national median income. Jay Salata has run this auto shop for 15 years. Best shop in the city, man. Right here. He says when people's budgets get tight, taking care of their cars is one of the first places people might cut back. You can tell people are not driving unless it's necessary. They're pushing a lot of the routine maintenance repairs further along. Do I put milk on the table or do I do an oil change? When would you say this started to pick up? Like you notice people just feeling a little bit more cash strapped. It's been the past year, kind of. And then after the Iran war and I felt like it really put a strain on the stress that people were already enduring. It's 65-56. You said you only got 65-10? Yeah. All right, I'll adjust it for you. I'll help you out. Everything is one up. Even the oil change, they used to be $40, now it's 64. If you do vote this November, after you do your research a little bit, what's like the thing you want politicians to focus on the most? Minimum wage. So a lot that's interesting there, obviously, Michigan being one of the most critical Senate races in the entire country. They've been hit by the war. I think it was interesting to hear him connecting directly to the struggles of his business with you. The Iran war and also Michigan, more impacted in the trade war with Canada than other states as well. There's a new poll out this morning. This is from Suffolk, which is a pretty highly rated pollster. They have Abdul El-Sayed at 47% and Mike Rogers at 40%. So that would be outside of the margin of error. I think that would be about what you would expect given the partisan direction of the midterm elections that we've seen so far. Just taking a look, Nate Silver has Abdul at like a 75% chance to win. At this point, it makes a lot of sense. I was telling you before the show, Michigan and we will go through each of these battleground polls, some that you wouldn't expect are tighter and some which you would, or sorry, we wouldn't expect are blowouts and some you would expect seem very tight. This is where the individuality of each state actually makes a big difference. Michigan has always been in the last in the Trump era, the last 10 years, a genuine razor thin battleground. Trump wins by only 10,000 votes. In 2016, loses by some 100,000, wins the state in 2024 by barely a percent or so. Don't forget that the candidate Mike Rogers himself loses to Alyssa Slotkin with a significant portion, some 100,000 or so, of crossover Trump-Slotkin voters at that time who decided not to vote for Rogers in that race. Put it all together, Rogers was facing a very dramatic uphill battle. And this is where even the Iran war itself doesn't just factor in. What does Michigan have? They happen to be near Canada. They have a ton of cross-border trade. Also, the auto industry. So, the auto industry right now, let's talk about this a little bit in China. They are not happy with Trump because one of the things they're currently flirting with is actually letting in a lot of Chinese automakers, which the entire, all of Detroit, I mean, they're dead if any of that happens. So, they are lobbying Trump hard. You also have had inflationary pressures on a lot of the Canada tariffs for auto assembly. Add on top of that high gas prices. I think, what's the average price of gas in Michigan? Michigan is one of those states where generally, yeah, $4.88. So, it's actually up near $5 a gallon right now. I forget exactly why the local conditions make it so for those three particular Great Lakes states. But the point remains that their individual factors were already, like, not just lean D, but like tilt D, I guess, is what I would say. And then, Abdul, on top of that, you have a better candidate. And, I mean, you know, you talk about candidate quality. Having a guy who literally lost in a wave year, like, what are we doing here? Yeah. And it's worth saying they have been throwing, I mean, the Hassan thing. They've been going, you know, overtime for months at this point, hammering, how dare you associate with Hassan Piker. And it doesn't appear that that is going to be an ultimately winning message, although you never know. We'll wait until Election Day. But if you don't want to believe the polls, I completely understand that because the polls have been very wrong. Instead, pay attention to what the candidates are doing and how increasingly desperate they seem in terms of their approaches, their attacks, and their communication. Here is Mike Rogers, who is the ultimate neocon of neocons, calling for some dramatic changes with regard to gas and also calling for an end to the Iran war. This is A5. Let's take a listen. Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet. But Michigan families can't afford to wait. We need to do something now. I previously called for the suspension of the state and federal gas tax, 70 cents a gallon. And another place we can start, diesel. Diesel fuels the trucks that bring groceries to the store. It fuels the tractors that grow our food. And when diesel costs more, it costs more to grow it, ship it, stock it, and ultimately buy it. So until this war is over, I'm calling for a temporary embargo on American diesel exports. Mike Rogers has been supporting us. supporting the Iran war literally decades, literally decades he's been pushing for this thing. So you know those poll numbers are bad when he's having to go, this needs to end, it needs to end quickly, then everything will be okay. He's not the only one, put a six up on the screen, Ashley Hinson, who is the Republican nominee in Iowa. She says, very similar messaging, I think the bat signal went out here, Iowans are being squeezed, shouldn't have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran. We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices, that includes suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, unleashing E15 everywhere we can, that's their ethanol thing I guess, reinstating the $1 per gallon biodiesel tax credit, creating a diesel relief program to help our farmers and truckers. While doing this, we should also ensure our highway trust fund is replenished so Iowans don't suffer from crumbling roads and bridges. These actions to lower costs are needed ASAP and the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end. I'm going to take a look at the results for Iowans, I will work with anyone who is ready to tackle this challenge immediately. This comes on the heels, Agar, of another ad that she had cut where it was all about how she wanted to work across the aisle with Democrats on affordability. So again, you look at the way that she is behaving, she is not behaving as someone who is in a comfortable position in Iowa, which is a very heavily Republican state, went overwhelmingly for Trump, very rural, these are the exact voters that Democrats have really lost and performed badly with over the years. And, you know, he's just got exactly the right message, which is it's all about affordability. And this is kind of what I was alluding to in the introduction. It appears that the Iowa race is much more lean D than Texas. How could that be? Let's take a look at Iowa, the state itself. This is a state which was dramatically hit by what happened with China. Remember, significant parts of their exports were hit with those massive tariffs after the election. Okay, well, control is a harsh word. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is. is do you want to win? You don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complain about the very thing they're receiving. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. 12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dear honeys, this is goodbye. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author, Petra Mathers, and her husband, Michael, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? I would have given a million reasons to not leave this world had I known. I keep coming back to, I truly hope that Petra was a thousand percent on board with the plan. Do you think of him as having killed her? Yes, I do. I hold Michael responsible for my mother's death. I'm Leon Nafok. And I'm Alice Gregory. Together, we set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael's letters. As one married couple trying to understand another. Listen to Death of an Artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the Texas run, it's actually a lot tighter. And so I think we have that poll, guys. We can put it up on the screen. I know I sent it earlier today. I'll just talk a little bit about it. But what it comes down to is Texas Southern University has now released this new one. Very useful, actually, in parsing what's happening. So Texas Senate, they have a Tallarico, 47, Paxton, 46. Now Governor, they have Abbott, 49, Hinojosa, 45. Railroad Commissioner, 44, 42. Patrick, who is the Lieutenant Governor 47, 41. Middleton, 47, 42. Comptroller. Basically, the breakdown is it's like in a normal race, the Republicans leading by six or seven points. But in the tight ones or in the controversial ones, that's where you see effectively a tie within the margin of error, which is 2.3%. Now, why? It doesn't actually make sense. Trump did not win Texas by more than he won Iowa. How could that be possible? That is where the individual factors come into play. Texas' economy is much more robust under the Trump economy than Iowa, in particular because, remember, they actually pump and sell the oil. So there are a lot of people there making insane, like, generational wealth in the city of Houston or Midland or the guys who work in the port of Houston or any of these places, the refineries. I mean, they are making insane funds. They also had the data center boom, which, yes, has a voter backlash in West Texas, but all of those blue-collar workers are printing the data center boom. They're printing whenever it comes to their jobs that they're, you know, the electricians and all that that are working on their behalf. They also had a huge population inflow. They have much better housing prices than the rest of the nation. So the fundamentals of their economy is still very different, and gasoline there is still not even $4 a gallon with where things are right now. So it actually does make sense to me that Texas is going to be a lot closer, and that's where, if Paxton was a normal candidate, he's going to win that race. I'm almost certain of it. But this is, I mean, I didn't think he'd win it by a lot, probably a Beto margin by beats him by two. That's exactly, though, where, you know, I wouldn't yet call it, I think, for Tallarico. Or, you know, I wouldn't call it for anybody, but I would say Tallarico's facing not an uphill battle, per se, but really the fight of his life. And the reason why is that the fundamentals of the state are just really, really different, and you also have this ocean of money, which is now coming in for Ken Paxton. So the, you know, dynamic of the race has changed where a lot of these, like, MAGA billionaires are starting to flood the airwaves on his behalf, not just the Donald Trump, you know, MAGA Inc., the Texas oil men and all those, they're all starting to cut the checks. Elon's starting to put money, remember, I mean, he's got a lot at stake. He's got Stargate and his whole company. I'm pretty sure he's an Austin resident, Giga Austin and all of that. So all the businessmen who rely on the Republicans there to, like, run the state like a machine, like, for them, they're starting to panic and blanket the airwaves. So it's a much more competitive race. You do have, uh, Chris Polster, who is saying, it took me a long time to believe that Texas is real, but Texas is real. The Republicans have a problem there. And, um, you know, I think Paxton, as you said, is a real issue. Maybe without him, they'd be able to eke it down. I think it's a challenging landscape, but we'll, we'll see. I mean, Texas has long been the Democratic white whale. Um, you know, there was an assumption that, okay, because of the demographics, there's a majority-minority population that this should be a place the Democrats should be able to win. They've never been able to pull it off. So we'll see. I know they're going very hard in the paint against Tallarico with a lot of ads about cultural issues. So, uh, we're going to find out whether those have enough salience in a year when, you know, economic concerns are top of mind. But you, you mentioned money, and this is a real, this is a real problem for Democrats. Put AA8 up on the screen. Republicans have way more money. I mean, way more money than Democrats do. They have a financial advantage. In terms of overall spending, this is not just with the candidates, but the super PACs and all in. They have an overall advantage in the vast majority of the key states here. So, um, that is going to be a real challenge. The party and its allies, the Republicans and their allies are planning to spend about $221 million more on advertising than Democrats and their allies from Monday through Election Day. That's according to Ad Impact. So they're tracking how much, um, how many TV ads Republicans have purchased versus Democrats. And so you have a massive, massive margin advantage for Republicans. And I think, I mean, part of this is because you've got a lot of business leaders who want to keep Republicans in power because they're friendlier to their agenda. You also have on the Democratic side, a lot of big donors who are still dispirited about the whole Biden-Kamala situation and feel really burned there. Remember, there's a lot of like questions about how the money was spent under Kamala. And then obviously they ultimately lost. And of course, the whole Biden cover-up of his age and his frailty, his decline, mental decline, that left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. So there's, uh, you know, still a very, even as Democrats are poised for this massive wave year, among the donor base, there's still a lot of apathy and a lot of disgust with the way that the party has operated before. Then you look at the DNC, which is a mess and rambles. And I mean, let's not even get into that. But in any case, it all amounts to Republicans having this massive financial edge. And I would just say, you know, I remember back to 2018, 2018 was a very good year for Democrats, no doubt about it. But some of the reach states, some of the districts that were like, oh my God, like the equivalent of Kansas this time, we were like, oh my God, there's no way Democrats could win there, but they're up in the polls. A lot of that shifted in just the last couple of weeks. Now in 2018, it specifically had to do with Kavanaugh. I've seen the polling. I was involved in some of the races that cycle. I saw the way that partisans were energized and came home because of the Kavanaugh hearings and the way that all went down. You could see something similar happening this time around. That is, I think, very theoretically possible. I'm sure Trump is gonna, you know, what migrant caravan or something is he's gonna try to throw some kind of red meat into the mix to try to get exactly that effect. Because I don't think Republicans can hold onto the House, but can they stem some of the losses in the Senate and some of those reach states in the Nebraska, in the Kansas, in the Iowa, that could still be very much on the table. If they're able to leverage both this financial advantage and some sort of political moment that galvanizes the Republican base. - Yeah, and that's one thing I would say about Texas is just don't underestimate it. It's one of those where, you know, it's one thing for people who are on summer vacation to theorize Tallarico. It is a whole other thing for the evangelicals and the church groups. And look, I grew up there. Like, I know these people. They're not gonna just sit back and let Democrats take over the state, especially Governor Abbott. And that is one where I would say it's a lock unless it's genuine, like insane wave. Where with Tallarico, and this is beyond even the cultural stuff, this is a machine. Like, it's not about Ken Paxton versus John Cornyn. Like I was talking about with Elon, the whole state runs on Republican rule. You can't just let that away. There's billions of dollars that are at stake whenever it comes to, I mean, is Tallarico gonna get you the same tax credit? Is he gonna fight for oil and gas? I mean, this is existential whenever it comes to a lot of these things, how the entire economy is structured. And so I find it hard to believe that they are not gonna crawl over broken glass to prevent a Democrat from winning, especially if it's this close. Iowa is different because for them, I feel like they're disgusted genuinely with Trump. And I think there's a difference between disgusted and disappointed and directly impacted. Texans are just not as directly impacted by this right now. This is my assessment, but I should say, as I said, I think I spoke to somebody very knowledgeable, with real view in my home state and he had told me Look, in a wave election, we will see Hinojosa in the governor's mansion in Texas. Like, that would happen. However, the bigger panic button right now is Paxton. And that is where Paxton, the problem for him is that his candidate quality is just on that side where it's not just the scandals. From what I hear, the guy doesn't like to campaign. Like, he's not even working hard in terms of, like, the way that Tallarico is. And so that, I mean, it matters, right? Like, if you don't come to the county, I'm not going to say this stuff matters a ton. But it's like when you're dealing with margins of 100,000, 200,000 votes, whether you showed up in the town or not actually does seem to make a little bit of a difference. It's just enough there where people in the state are not energized by Ken Paxton. And so I don't know. Like, I would say for, as you talked about with 2018, I would even, you know, it's not even just Kavanaugh. Reality has got to set in for a lot of these deeply conservative voters. They're like, oh, my God. Like, this really could be it. I mean, remember the Virginia thing, which happened where they were changing the map? I mean, of course, the Virginia Democrats won that election. However, Republicans came out to vote a lot more than people had expected because even though they were like, look, I don't like Trump and all that, but like, this is it. Like, we have no representation, period. We got to come out and vote. A lot of people came out to vote for that. So don't underestimate that, too, when it comes to the Senate. People know the stakes, or at least they start to wake up around October. Yeah. Last thing. Just to reiterate this Nate Silver point, because I wanted to get the specific states just to give us all kind of a mental framework here. So, again, if we're talking about an 11-point swing, theoretically, from 2024, he says in 2024, Trump won Ohio by 11 points, Florida, Alaska, and Iowa by 13 points, and Texas by 14. So if you swing the entire political climate 11 points to the left, Ohio becomes a pure toss-up. The rest become almost toss-ups. Even Kansas, which was Trump plus 16, is not that far behind. So that's the type of environment you would have to be in where it's an 11-point-plus swing to expect to see, you know, Florida and Iowa. By the way, there has been some polling that has shown Angie Nixon, you know, with the shot in Florida, which I think everybody had sort of written the state off. I still think that's a very long shot. But when you look at that level of a swing, you have to say, OK, that actually wouldn't be totally crazy. And I've seen some interesting things in terms. I've seen some interesting things in terms of polling coming out of the state and dissatisfaction with Trump on economics and also on immigration in particular in the state. So in any case, that's kind of where the national landscape is. And, you know, some individual state-by-state differences are going to be the key, whether it's candidate quality or specific economic conditions. But, you know, you're looking at some pretty dire situations here for Republicans when you're talking about a state like Iowa being not only in play but potentially tilt democracies. And I think that's a pretty wild situation. Right. And even if they do win it, they're going to have to spend an ocean of money to do so. And they're also dumping money in places where you talked about Ohio. I was just looking. There's not a single poll in the last month that has Sherrod Brown not winning by a significant margin. Like not one. Did you see the Amy Acton, Vivek Ramaswamy ad about Alzheimer? No, I haven't seen it. Oh, it's devastating. Is this about some drug he funded? It's about the drug that he funded. And it's a man who lost his wife to Alzheimer's. And he's like, you scammed me. And, yeah, I just want my wife back. It's brutal. I don't know the specifics or any of that. But I did see Vivek out today with one of his long essays on Twitter. He's like, how we can attack the gas prices. The word Iran, I believe, did not appear a single time. So, I mean, that's a good example. And actually, you know, even better. I mean, in fairness, as governor, it's not like you're going to be voting on the Iran war. For sure. But then why did you run for president and say Trump is your best friend, right? It's like this is one where it's like, well, you have a bunch of opinions about foreign policy. It's like, but now you want to run for governor. And don't forget, a governor is exactly the type of race where blowouts in both sides are actually more likely. Because when the stakes are not national, people don't care nearly as much. Republican states are much more willing to elect Democratic governors than they are Democratic representatives. Because they're not taking up or down votes whenever it comes to the big national issues or supporting Trump. I actually think Vivek could be in bigger trouble than the Republican candidate on the Senate ballot. Specifically just because of the way things have worked there. And it's like Ohio. Again, from what I understand, the economic situation, very similar, I think, to some of these other Midwestern states. It's not great. And the general approval of Trump and everything on the ballot there has not been good. The governor, you know, the previous governor has bucked Trump pretty significantly. And that's the way that he was able to maintain his popularity. Vivek cannot do that because he literally ran for president. Yeah. He's a bad candidate. He just has something about him that people do not like. Well, that's actually a good transition. Sherrod Brown is facing a wave. He has a wave of cash coming in against him from the crypto industry. So it's a good transition to talk about crypto and AI spending in the election with Alex Boras. Hey, everyone. It's the Jonas Brothers with the Hey Jonas podcast. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails and giving you advice. Follow Hey Jonas. And start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests. And they complain about the very thing they're receiving. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgenderism. 12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030. You better be hitting the ground going. I want a heart in the south now. In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know that they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all means. By all accounts, healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they do it? Yes, I do. I'm Leon Nafok. So we've talked a lot about Israel lobby spending on this show. We wanted to dig now into a large source of midterm spending, which is coming from the tech world. There are a lot of very interesting dynamics at play here. And we have literally the perfect guest. To talk about what is going on in some of these races. Alex Boras is a New York State Assembly member. He also ran for Congress and had $8 million in AI super PAC money spent against him in that race. And unfortunately, narrowly lost, I'm sure, in part because of that money. But Alex, great to have you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So let's start by talking about why you earned the ire of these super PACs. Let's put B4 up on the screen. You have been a major advocate for stability. State-level AI regulation in your role as a New York State Assembly member. This Politico article is saying that New York is moving forward with some of the landmark AI legislation that you have helped to draft and push forward. So just talk a little bit about what's going on at the state level in New York. The states are the only level that's actually regulated AI. So when I came into office, I was the first Democrat elected in New York State at any level with a degree in computer science. And so I did a lot of things around. I did a lot of things around tech, many of which were big consensus items and not seen as strongly aggressive. And initially, that's what the RAISE Act was, too. But that is the bill that really drew the ire of the tech industry. The RAISE Act was setting very basic safety standards on frontier AI development, the most advanced companies. So, you know, not by name. We did it by complexity and spending. But anthropic, open. AI, Google, Meta, that's really who we were talking about in that bill. And it required them to have a safety plan that they made public to report critical safety incidents, which when we were arguing this bill in 2025, they said this was all theoretical. I think the summer shows it very much was not theoretical. Yeah. And put some other requirements on them, originally requiring third-party audits as well, although that got stripped out as we worked through the legislative process. And the fact that I had dared. to put any regulation on this sort of development, made me oligarchy enemy number one, and so they declared me their top target in the country, pledged to spend at least $10 million against me at the start of it to send a message to anyone else thinking of regulating AI that, you know, at least the industry thinks that's a mistake. Let's put, what is it, B3, please, on the screen, which details some of this. Big tech spent millions on this single U.S. congressional race, and it won't be the last time some $8 million of pro-AI political action money was funded towards you. Can you speak, Alex, a little bit about who these groups are? Because as I understand it, this is a bipartisan phenomenon. Some of this is also extremely concentrated amongst Democrats, and specifically to try and prevent any sort of legislation or even comment in the vein that you just made. So why don't you break that down for us? Is bipartisan. They're spending in Democratic races and Republican races. Their funding is not that bipartisan. I think the only prominent named Democrat was Ron Conway, who contributed something like $500,000 out of their $100 million plus that they are raising. It's really coming from three people primarily, which are Ben Horowitz, Mark Andreessen, who in the last time was the RNC's single largest mega donor, and Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, who, yeah, who in a previous filing was Donald Trump's single largest mega donor. And so this is why, you know, feelings about AI are actually quite bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans universally want there to be more regulation on AI. I think you're seeing the Democratic Party start to wake up to that, and Republicans are mixed. You've had some really good comments coming from some, but there's just so much more Republican mega donor money pushing against any regulation that I think it's been tougher for them to listen to the American people. So, Alice, break this down for me because it's been a little bit confusing to me. You have leading the future is the pack that you're referring to that dropped millions and millions of dollars into your race to try to make an example of you. There's another, and that's sort of open, Greg Brockman, OpenAI, it's sort of seen as like OpenAI aligned. Then you have public first action, which is seen as more anthropic aligned. In fact, anthropic has given millions of dollars to the American people. So, I think that's sort of open. I think that's sort of open. I think to that super PAC. You also have a new group called Guardrails Alliance, which is made up, actually, it's more grassroots, made up of a lot of tech employees, including some OpenAI employees who have come out and said, we want to do something very different from what a lot of the executives at our company want to do. So can you break down for us, like, what is Anthropic doing? How is their thing different than the OpenAI aligned thing? Help us understand what these various dynamics are. The biggest divide is between the employees and the executives across every company. I think the vast majority of people who are working in the AI space actually want there to be regulations. They're the people who are closest to the technology. They see how powerful it is. And so both in terms of contributions to me, but contributions to groups like Guardrails Alliance that exist to counteract leading the future, you're seeing a lot of people at all of the lab. Say, yeah, we want regulation. This is a intellectually challenging problem that we're building something really powerful. But the question of who decides how it should be used and what the limits are shouldn't be made just in Silicon Valley or just by their CEOs. Now you have some of the executives who don't want there to be any regulation whatsoever. And so they're willing to spend big in order to get that. You also have Chris Lehane, who's the head of global affairs for OpenAI, who helped set up Leading the Future, although he's now stepping back or claiming to step back from it. And so you have like a small executive group that is willing to spend big to have their way with regulation. And then you have the vast majority of Americans, but even just the vast majority of employees that are saying, no, no, no, that is not how we should have democracy here. We should actually let the people decide where this is going. So how do open AIs, like the way they're actually spending money and the way they're lobbying, the PACs they're funding, how does that square with Sam Altman now coming out and being concerned and we need to do something and embracing the call to slow down the pace, which, you know, in my opinion, if you're racing towards a cliff, you should just stop, not just slow down the pace. And I don't think we should leave it in the hands of these guys to decide whether or not they feel that the product is safe or not. But in any case, how do his words and theoretical concerns about safety square with what the money is actually doing? They don't. And I want to be very clear about that. They absolutely do not square. And so when the words are different, the time is for the time comes for actual action. And so if open AI is changing their tune, if the executives at open AI are changing their tune and want regulation, Greg Brockman should defund leading the future. They should declare that they're not going to give any money to build American AI, which is the separate C4 that leading the future established that can spend. Tens of millions of dollars and is doing that as well to make sure there's no regulation. That is the biggest obstacle to getting real safety passed. And as long as executives at open AI are going to continue to fund both of those organizations, they're talking out of both sides of their mouths. You mentioned there Ron Conway. And so that immediately piqued my interest because former presidential candidate Kamala Harris actually just celebrated Jay Carney, who, you know, trip back in time, was the press secretary for President Obama. He left. He went to go work for Amazon. Carney has now actually joined Mr. Conway's new firm to run an initiative called Project Blueprint. The purpose was to, quote, rebuild bonds between leaders in AI and Democrats who are demanding new rules to regulate the technology. This was hailed by Kamala as a step in the right direction. However, you just mentioned Conway as one of those people who actually helped fund the organization. And so I think that's a big step in the right direction. So what do you make of this Carney-led initiative, which appears to be kind of an Obama and a Kamala Harris way of adopting AI safety type legislation? I was pretty confused by the announcement of the initiative. Not of Kamala or Obama saying good things about someone they used to work with. I think that's a pretty normal human thing. But the announcement from Jay Carney was that he's going to have to repair relationships between the Democratic Party and tech. No thanks. And the confusing thing to me is like, if you look at donations from the tech industry, number of donations or volunteers or any sort of engagement, tech workers are pretty democratic. There doesn't need much repairing there. So maybe what he's referring to is repairing relationships with the few executives that are spending tens of millions of dollars to stop any regulation from happening. I don't think we need to repair relationships with those people. I think we need to beat them. Yeah, I think I would like to see more antagonistic relationships with those particular individuals personally. You know, Alex, they really tried to make an example of you by dumping all this money into your race. And because you were such a prominent advocate and because you yourself have the computer science background, that's what made you a target. Put B1 up on the screen. You now have this Politico report saying that Democratic consultants are telling candidates, like, maybe just don't talk about AI. Like, maybe let's just downplay that because we don't want, and this is now I'm reading between the lines, we don't want what happened to Alex to happen to you. So do you think that their attempt to effectively make an example of you, was it effective? Did it work? No. And this is, you know, politics 101 from the super PAC side. If you just want to bury one candidate, you just don't announce it. You spend a whole bunch of money three weeks before the election. You don't announce it. You wait until the election and then you wait until later and see what happens. They announced eight months before my primary that I was going to be their number one target and they were going to spend upwards of 10 million against me. That wasn't to beat me. That was to send a message to everyone else in the country, don't talk about this issue. And when you hear Democratic advisors echo the advice that is coming from the people who are threatening candidates, it's pretty disappointing. I think what my race showed, was that actually standing with the American people, again, regardless of party, we are remarkably unified on this issue. But standing with the American people is actually an electoral boost. And so you're seeing more and more candidates who are being asked about it in their town halls, being asked about it by voters on the street and realizing, wait, this is a core concern and I need a real answer to this. You know, I wonder if your primary was now, if the result wouldn't be different. Like you were just a little bit ahead of the concerns because you can see the way that now people are really paying attention to what's going on. Do you, do you have the same sense? It may be, you know, there's always these if, ands or buts. As I said on primary night, the message that we were trying to send in our campaign was far more important than the actual person that is in this seat. And the message that we sent came through loud and clear that it is time for the American people to have a say in the direction of AI, that doing so is both the right political boost. And I've been very pleased to see that more and more candidates are taking up this mantle. And I am still the only person in America that leading the future has spent money against. They've realized that strategy isn't working and their money isn't there. And hopefully I'll be the last candidate that leading the future ever beats. All right. Let's put B2 up on the screen because it's not just AI coming from the tech world. You also have the crypto industry dumping tons of money in particular into this race against Sherrod Brown. You know, they're they're angry at him for some of the work that he did previously in the Senate. They had already spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him successfully last time around. And now they want to make sure that he remains in retirement. You know, what do you see in terms of how Democrats feel and approach the crypto industry? Because not only do they make an example of him, also Katie Porter had a ton of crypto money spent against her and they were successfully able to defeat her. Did these sorts of things, also put a chill into Democratic candidates who may have previously been open to more regulation or scrutiny of the crypto industry? Anytime there is a, you know, eight figure or nine figure effort in politics, I assure you everyone in D.C. is taking notice of that. I think what's interesting in this spending is they did not announce they announced they were going after Sherrod Brown, who is not in the Senate and so didn't just have a vote on clarity, but not going after Susan Collins in Maine, who voted against Sherrod Brown. And so they're going after Sherrod Brown, who voted against the Clarity Act, which is their stated reason. So it feels like maybe there's some partisan undertones here. I would also point out that Ron Conway famously gave to Fairshake and broke with them because they went after Sherrod Brown and he thought that Sherrod Brown was a good candidate. And so maybe this is a time again where we are seeing a break and what was an ideological vehicle is just becoming a partisan one. We'll have to pay attention. But the big difference between crypto and AI is, crypto doesn't affect everyone. There's a small subset of America who works in crypto. And so they are the voters who are most tuned into it. AI is affecting everyone's kids, everyone's job, everyone's environment. It really is an entire country discussion. And so my guess is that the money that is being spent there to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes will be even less effective. Yeah. I know you were at the event with that Bernie and famously Steve Bannon were both at as well. You know, how are you feeling about the prospects of getting some sort of meaningful legislation passed on, you know, what would likely need to be a bipartisan basis at some point? I'm optimistic, though cautiously optimistic. I mean, at that event, you had not just Bernie and Steve Bannon, but you had Greg Kazar, chair of the CPC and Republican Congressman Chip Roy, both speaking at the same time. You've had comments from Republican senators like John Kennedy saying that AI threats are real and need to be taken seriously from Kevin Cramer in North Dakota, who said that Trump's position on AI is the least popular political position in America. So you're seeing bipartisan voices call for real action here. That gives me a lot of optimism. The one bit of caution is that I think leading the future and build American AI have realized how much momentum there is. And even if they could stop the federal government from taking action, they know that the states are going to continue, right? Where we start, this conversation is the states are the only level that has regulated AI. And the RAISE Act was minor compared to what is going to come in 2027 and 2028. I'm very optimistic about that. But build American AI has realized that. And so they've changed their tune and they've started tweeting and putting out messages of we need to do something this year. The undertone being that something has to include preempting the states from taking any action in the future. And that has to be just an absolute red line for those in Congress. Do not take away the one level of government that has been successful in regulating AI that is akin to taking away Americans' voices. Well said. Alex Boras, thank you so much. This is very helpful. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thank you. Hey, everyone. We've been catching up with some great friends, Paul Rudd, Michael Buble, Seth Meyers, and making some new friends while getting into what's really like to have sisters like Alex and Ashton Earle. She likes to control everyone and tell everyone. It's real. Those are the very people who I always. I always say, vote against their own economic interests, and they complain about the very thing they're receiving. It's raw. These seats, those are moving south. Why did they do it? Yes, I do. I'm Leon Nafok. Turning now to China, previewing a big summit. President Xi Jinping of China will land here in the United States. He'll attend a press conference. He'll attend the United Nations, but also attend a state reception in Washington with President Trump, where they're literally rolling out the red carpet and bending over backwards to try and to please Xi in this high-stakes clash between the two leaders. Let's put C1 up here on the screen. Clearly, the number one topic of discussion, at least in the interim, will be AI. And so Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, previewed some of this, saying that the U.S.-China AI dialogue, will start ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting. The Treasury Secretary said sides are working towards a, quote, shared vision after talks with his Chinese counterpart. In fact, some of the details of this are kind of fascinating. Let's put C3 up there on the screen. This was from Fox Business. Presumably, it was leaked by the Treasury Secretary's team. They say, sources familiar with the talks tell me Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and the U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer have worked out an agreement to have a direct hotline with China over artificial intelligence. This hotline would be similar to the direct line of communication that the current military has, which would allow either side to have a direct line if any issues arise with AI over hacking, national security concerns, rogue AIs, or other AI concerns. President Trump will give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the deal this week before meeting with President Xi. The reason why that's interesting is that that literally only exists for deconfliction in the military, and obviously the historical precedent for it is the Cuban War. Even missile crisis and the hotline between the two countries. So, despite all of Trump's talk and all of that, the proposal itself is now already arising to the way that we have governance of nuclear weapons. And it is interesting because if you'd gone back six months, I don't think AI would have been the number one thing on their agenda. It would have been trade. And let's not forget, I mean, that, if you want to talk about what's going to affect you today, like, that is actually what it is. China's not buckling at all. In fact, from what I've understood, I've been reading some of the analysts. About how they're coming in. They truly believe that they have won the negotiation. Because if you'll remember, after the immediate, like, we're going to 100%, and they're like, okay, we're going to 150. They're like, we don't care. Is that they believe that their ultimate trump card, if you will, was rare earth minerals. Is that they think that the threats over the export control on rare earth minerals, effectively stopping a number of critical industries in the U.S., and Trump's AI bet, mean that they have a stranglehold on this. I don't think they're wrong. So, they're coming in with this kind of theory where they have the upper hand in the trade negotiation and on the AI negotiation. Which is basically, you don't tell us what to do. If you want to keep this export control thing up, we can play the exact same game. They have, from what I, again, what I understand, they have two goals that they want more than anything. They want at least some sort of detente on the trade war. And the number one for them, biggest agenda item, which is the biggest question mark, is Chinese economy. They want to be able to have the kind of deal that we have with Toyota. all the other japanese companies where as long as they build here in the united states they're allowed to sell here so that is number one at least one of the number one items for president xi to get a chinese car factory in the united states yeah i think the ai thing is actually very encouraging yeah i mean i don't want to like oversell it like it's not it's not ever obviously it's not everything that we need but there are two parts of it that i find encouraging first just you have to build on some small wins right right now it feels so impossible oh my god how could we do coordinate an international slowdown how could we regulate the pace of the frontier recursive self-improvement or any of these things because we've got china to deal with when you have these little moments of collaboration you're able to build some goodwill and then those things can build on each other so it's just an encouraging reminder that it is possible as human beings existing in the world to be able to collaborate and institute some sort of global regulatory regime as we did with nuclear weapons and i'm not going to say that uh you know anti-nuclear proliferation has been perfect but the world still exists we haven't blown each other up yet so that seems like a win to me um and i the other piece of this that encourages me is the fact that they do seem to be using that as a sort of model and i think it is the right model based on what we have in history you know it's not going to be exactly the same but at least it's the sort of framework that mentally our lawmakers can work with and start to build out some of this apparatus so that because this is a global development for all of humanity and it has to be dealt with in that manner there's some funny details side by side here of how much trump is bending over backwards uh to meet she so i have it here in front of me trump will actually be waiting for xi xingping on the tarmac okay which she did not do for him whenever he visited china earlier this year then there will be a flyover by b2 and f-22s and a meeting then between the two of them and then there will be a flyover by b2 and f-22s and a meeting then between xi's wife and melania trump none of that happened whenever trump visited beijing she was not waiting for him there were no flyover and there was no meeting of the first ladies and i mean i know this all sounds like stupid but in chinese culture in particular and their diplomatic protocol everything is reciprocity and so they famously did this i think with obama where they made him use the back staircase instead of the main staircase on air force one they're all subtle status games that have been happening in diplomacy for quite some time but then why is trump bending over back he needs them like he really does he needs to strike some sort of a deal what did we open our show up with iowa and how much they're getting punished well chinese are not stupid they know all of this and so what they're doing is they're setting the tone to try and to actually get as much as they can out of trump when he's in a vulnerable position the other thing which nobody genuinely would have predicted both in the remember the original uh meeting between trump and she was supposed to happen i think in april it gets moved by a month because of the disastrous iran war well what do they need right now they need china who's providing all these satellite imagery and all of this technology and all this assistance to the iranians they're going to press them to stop china says okay maybe but if we do we're going to need something out of it and also let's point to what the trump administration actually gives us a view into what they also see very important in this dinner and that comes back to ai put c4 up here on the screen they have invited now elon sam altman and other quote ai giants actually to the state dinner and you know this is actually pretty important because the state dinner where they do these state dinners i've been in this room it is not a big room they're really you can't fit that many people this is part of why trump wants to build his ballroom because he thinks they should be bigger i like the fact that they're small i think that it makes it better but one of the people that they're inviting are all of these you know jensen wong elon sam altman people who have tremendous business interests already existing in china or who have you know people who have like various thoughts and or roles in the ai race for example like dario amadei sam altman um all of these other figures who appear to have at least gotten an invitation in the interim for this state dinner not dario but sam altman and some of the other areas invite got lost in the mail i guess well it's not like she would want to see him he's like dario is the biggest china hawk that there is i just think that when you put it all together what fascinates me is about the jet the role in which she is coming to washington like it is in a role from his position and i would agree with it is a position of strength is that they have you know they have control over the ai industry we'll get to that here in a second they are willing to meet the united states on equal and only equal terms in fact you have the u.s president rolling out the red carpet kind of if you will and the u.s president is a much more vulnerable position with more immediate asks whereas their ass from the trump administration are much more high level trade ai and cars the cars one is the biggest one that'll actually be in my opinion i mean it's the one i'd be the most excited about uh to be able to have their cars here in the united states yeah but it actually would have tremendous impact in michigan because oh the detroit is freaking out yeah this is their number one out of the united states it's understandable yeah i get it they're dead i mean i i when i was in spain i was able to ride in byd because they're a lot of the ubers are byd is very nice car right way cheaper than tesla like it's a no-brainer i did not see a single tesla while i was there it was all byd um and they were very very common um you know that was a lot of the cars on the street were were byd so no it would be it would be devastating to the american auto industry if we just fully let them in i was also remembering you know just recently trump was asked about china in particular reports that china was assisting iran with their um you know satellite information to help targeting including some of the targeting in jordan that led to the the deaths of american service members and trump just he kind of brushed it off he's like yeah well i think they behaved reasonably well that's what he said and i think he may have even done one of those things yeah we do some similar things as well i mean yeah what the ukrainians are pummeling moscow by themselves like be real yeah it's like what they got space satellites but it's just an idea of the dynamics of that relationship where he's clearly in a mood to try to placate them recognizes that yeah we threw the gauntlet down with the the trade war with uh liberation day china said okay fine then you don't get our rare earth minerals and we blinked pretty darn fast so i don't think it's even a question that china has the most important trump card which is there is rare earth minerals and so everything has to be handled in a much more different and less aggressive way than maybe it would have been if it had been done in a much more aggressive way would have been in uh you know if the if the situation were slightly different so uh in any case i think you know i'm i'm encouraged by the the ai talks i think you're right that this would maybe have not been a central focus uh up till uh just a few months ago i think the fact that they are you know we'll see if anything more comes out of this trump's trip to beijing basically resulted in like literally nothing came out of that whatsoever so i wouldn't get my hopes super high for a lot of developments here but obviously this is the most important relationship in the world so we have to watch it carefully yeah and uh from what i'm looking at you know right now there is there's not going to be any real declaration on anything i mean it look it's general it's good for you know for these leaders to meet and we get these small steps but anybody expecting a large breakthrough it's just not really going to happen i did want to note uh this one thing because it's just fascinating let's put c6 up here on the screen is one of the most important people in the chinese military establishment has now been expelled uh from the party and alleged of serious corruption this is from reuters has all been confirmed and put out by the ccp but from what i understand you know he was one of the last remaining members that was on this kind of committee which would oversee you know the chinese military commission and by expelling two of these top military leaders it is genuinely pretty extraordinary he was the vice chair of the central military commission and second only to xi xingping in the military hierarchy along with the chief of staff for the commission's joint staff department so the equivalent of our i guess semi-equivalent of our chairman of the joint chiefs of staff the two men accused of being disloyal and dishonest to the party as well as abusing their power to help others with promotions and improperly accepting gifts enormous amounts of money they seriously violated political discipline and political rules and their cases are now referred to military prosecutors probably never to be seen again and so what does that mean you know i think in terms of the message that they're trying to send they don't do anything for you know they don't do anything without wanting to send a message this is a message internally i obviously will understand that a lot less but i also think it's a message to trump of i have control i have control of our military not just trump to the world where his ability now to either purge or remove so many members that had pre-existed either his relationship or kind of a previous era of chinese politics the full-blown like cult of personality almost maoist kind of takeover of the chinese military establishment is fascinating from a lot of the analysts that i have seen and actually what's interesting too is one of the chief complaints around the ccp prior to him coming to power was corruption and so using corruption there as the reason for taking out a lot of these people again i think it's a message to the world and you know in the way that we look at this it's kind of the same way whenever we remove top generals you're like wow it's a big deal right it's like whenever you prosecute these people and yeah i mean it's a big deal I mean, there's not a ton to say, because we don't know it a lot and we never really will know a lot of these things, but this is the second time actually that we've covered something like this. And I saw an image where one of the last people that remains there is actually somebody I did a monologue about, one of the most fascinating people in modern Chinese politics who really believes in this clash of civilizations between the US and China and this kind of fascinating technological communism and why it's the best system for what it is. And so the fact that she remains at the top and in total control along with some of the people there, we can see the ideology that they seem to believe and what the clash and all of that looks like. Yeah, it is very fascinating. Let's get to media. Hey everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers. Didn't catch the last one? The latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? There should not be a single law enforcement agency that does not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Kamau Bell. 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