9/28/26: Ai Industry Data Center Party, Xi Plays Trump, Trump Gaslights In Midterm Ad

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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. So there was a hot party in DC over the weekend sponsored by a lot of AI industry and aligned think tanks, pushing how awesome data centers are in the face of mass public resistance across ideological and rural and urban divides. Let's go and take a look at why some of the party goers were so excited about our data center future. I'm at DC's pro data center party, and I'm asking why people love data centers? Because I love the internet and it allows me to be on the internet. Is there going to power the future? Kind of necessary infrastructure, it's ridiculous to be against them, and I'd rather have them here than in China. I love data centers so I can stream sports and then cry about my sports teams for better or for worse. But yeah, I love streaming sports and that's why I love data centers. Let's go! I love data centers because America is on the verge of one of the most incredible scientific and technological revolutions, and we need to build the infrastructure to make that possible. When you think about why the S&P 500 is higher than it's ever been, you think about artificial intelligence and how this is transforming our economy, and there's only one engine that can propel the S&P 500 to even greater heights in that state of center. That's compute. Amazing stuff there, Saga. Are you persuaded? They changed your mind. I am not, and I hate with no shots at Robbie or Nathan Leamer, many friends that were in the crowd. They're in attendance. I have sincere disagreements with them. But I will say this is the arguments that are presented there. This is the, they always resort to oh, so you're against using the internet again. The number of data centers in the United States, first of all, we actually don't even know the full number. We have to use estimates that are around. What we know is that they were approximately a fourth, a couple of years ago as to what they are today. Yeah. So what they are proposing in terms of the new data centers are specifically hyperscale data centers for AI use. Nobody is against streaming. Nobody was streaming about this when I was leaning just for internet and streaming your sports or whatever. For Twitter, people are like, oh, you're against data centers and you use Twitter. I'm like, well, Twitter has been around since I was like 17, so and I'm 34, so I think we kind of made it out of that one. Okay. Yeah. There were data centers. When was 2007? 2006, I think was the very first tweet that was ever sent. I was literally in high school. So you could see that it's been around for 20 years. Okay. Fine. So for 20 years, yes, we lived in a, like a moderate equilibrium of, yes, we knew data centers were going up and they were largely going up for internet purposes like Twitter or Amazon or any of these. And there were legitimate questions, I think, to be asked around that. But then the scale of that literally multiplied over a three or a four year period. And this is the other key. It's not just the data centers themselves, because they always reduce it to the data center. And not the technology is for what, you know, by the way, I mean, you could make a very good argument that all of those data centers supporting short firm video have done more damage to human society than anything, the history of mankind. I mean, almost single handedly, the internet and short form video specifically is responsible for the greatest reduction in IQ in modern human history. There is extensive amounts of data to show that you are literally dumber after you watch short form video and the amount of time you spend on short form video is directly correlated to the same reduction. So do not watch it. You should actually stay far away from it as possible. So there, you know, even if they're like, oh, I love streaming, I'm like, well, streaming is actually been pretty bad for people. Let's put that aside. Our second part is about hyperscale AI. And what we just talked about with AI, hyperscale AI is one of existential questions, both around the technology, genuinely existential. We can all sincerely disagree and or not as to how it's getting out of control. But really what bothers me was everything that was reduced there was about consumption and economic growth. And I think that, again, is where the problem that we had with, let's say, the first thing we just said where, you know, that woman was talking about S&P 500. I'm like, well, I don't care whether the S&P 500 goes up or not. I mean, I do, I guess personally in terms of my portfolio, but like, I care about people around me. Like, I want us to flourish. I want us to be happier. The S&P 500 going up went 60% up under Biden. I think the country's way worse off. I think the country right now is not doing well despite that the S&P 500 is near record high. That is not correlated in any way with like human flourishing, at least the way that I would define it. And so that's where I just put it all together. And I'm like, look, you know, that party was apparently funded by a lot of these AI companies and others. And I just think it's not going to move the needle in my opinion. Oh, they look like they had fun. And so like I said, I had some friends and tennis and I encourage you to go listen, in-person socialization is good. So that's mine. But, you know, I supported it. That is the irony, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine a single rural American who's right now like opposed to the data center of being located in their town that's like, you know what, some people in DC had a cocktail party and they persuaded me that I'm wrong in my belief. Generally, just some advice that's not really how you move the needle. Personally, that's what I would say. It does give you a little bit of glimpse into the amount of money that they're splashing into. I mean, they had all kinds of fancy drinks and whatever for this thing. Let's see, nine up on the screen, because in a way, this motto or poster or sign or whatever that they had posted here kind of gets to the heart of the problem with the whole data center push. So Virginia's state, state motto is Virginia's for lovers, so they did a play on that and said, Virginia is for servers. And as a native Virginian, let me say, no, the fuck it's not. And this is the thing, it's an anti-human ideology, not to go too deep here because obviously this is just like a goof and it's sort of made to rage-bait people like me, but it gets to the core of the issue, which is that people in towns and suburban communities, rural communities, urban communities are looking at this and saying, no, it's not for your data center. It's not for your servers. My town is for me, it's for my family, it's for my community, it's for the creatures and the trees that live here as well. It is not for your weird techno utopian future vision that you're forcing on all of us with zero democratic buy-in. Virginia is not for servers. Virginia is for the humans who live here and want to have a say, even in Loudoun County, which is kind of like the server data center capital of the world, which apparently they shout it down, there was like a drink there named after Loudoun County or something like that at the party, but even there, the residents, which again, this county's held up as the model of, oh, look at all the economic gains that they benefited from, from these data centers located in their town, there's a massive residence backlash against how far they've gone with these number of data centers. And then if you actually look at the economics across the board, not in just industry selected examples that they want to highlight, the economics of these things are not good for-- Right. I wanted to study that we covered. Exactly. There was a comprehensive study that came out that found, no, the economics of these things are not good for the communities that they located. And there's a lot of concern about water, about electricity usage, about the costs that come along with it. But I really think it goes to this deeper issue of small, de-democratic control. We didn't want this thing. Our town is not for your servers. Our town is for us. It's for our community. And we get to have a say, over whether it goes in or not, the irony of the fact that DC is not going to be the place where they're located. a bunch of these big data centers also was not lost on people here as well. - Well, I will say this too about, and I don't know, I was advised, 'cause I was talking to a friend. I was like, you know, should we talk to about like the beautification? Because I went to loud and I talked to the whole group. I was like, this is the most hideous place I've ever been, the data center alley that I drove down every single corner. There's a gym there, the gym that I go to, and it was surrounded by data centers. I was like, this is weird, man. It's like these small parking lots and this giant, hideous data centers. Like it almost seems to me, and look, ironing out lots, we're here in Washington, like one of the ugliest cities in America with like all this brutalist architecture and this, but maybe it can be tweaked or something, but there is something about it. It just puts me off. That's all I can say. This could be personal. I encourage you, if you live near Loudon, go drive through, like drive through the alley, go drive through that area of town, and there's a lot of homes that are around it too. - It is very, I mean, again, to me, very often. - Sam Allman's vision that he has said publicly. Again, you can just go and listen to what these guys say, as this is again, the positive vision that they're putting forward for this tech, is that the entire world is turned into like a giant computer chip, and that these things are literally everywhere. That is their vision, and their view and their belief is that the more compute you add, and so far, this is true. Like the way that they unlocked these frontier models was they were just like, hey, if we just throw more compute at it, what will happen? And that has actually worked in terms of pushing the frontier bleeding edge of the technology, and they want to do that infinitely, so that they can get super intelligence that replaces every human in your job. Even if you don't get the existential risk, like if you don't buy into that, which is a reason to be doubtful if sounds very sci-fi, et cetera. Their stated goal, their positive outcome from this is replacing all of human labor. That's what they're after. So that's what we're talking about here, brass tax, when you get down to it, with the data centers. Axios had a few details about the people behind this, put this next element up on the screen. DC's latest viral party celebrates data centers amid growing pushback. This was called data after dark, a pro data center party. It happened Saturday at PubKey, DC's crypto-bro clubhouse. God, this is so dystopian. 900 people were approved to attend, I think hundreds ultimately did. Sponsored by groups, like the 76 Crue the Manhattan Institute, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and several AI companies, put the next element up on the screen, and a little bit from Emily Kennard, who's with the Washington Sun, this is the same new outlet that Jeff Stein is with now too. She went to the party, apparently one attendee estimated the ratio of men to women was like four or five to one, not ideal, that person added, I think. I'm probably not as surprised there. That's a little snarky in my opinion. That was a little snarky because I'll say this, that's pretty much the same at every Washington. Many DC parties, it's not uncommon. I'm like, come on, that's watching it. Well, especially when you add-- So Emily, that's bullshit, okay? When you add, this is like a deeply libertarian group, it's very scary. Well, someone made a joke. They're like, yeah, it's a tech party. It's like, have you ever been to a party in San Francisco? Like, that's what it looks like. Anyway, I'll defend them on that one, just because that's literally whatever gathering in Washington happens to look like, unless it's like the League of Women voters or some, or Emily's list or something like that. But look, overall, it's pretty obvious. These guys, I mean, they wanted the coverage. This is what they, this is literally what they wanted. They want a controversy, they want the video, they want to go viral, et cetera. The question is about why? Is I think a lot of their funders, et cetera. They love this, 'cause it's going viral on Twitter, it's creating discussion. I mean, it's really just, if you're talking about brass-tax political judgment, and maybe they just don't care, which is my guess, I don't think they actually do, because they want to win kind of the fights in the elite discourse. But actual voters who, you know, you can look across the nation to Greg Abbott, Byron Donalds, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Ohio, I mean, you know, bipartisan across the board, people who are in trouble, everybody seems to say, "Hey, I'm not so sure about this." And you can call it a panic if you wish, but doing cocktail parties in Washington in our history has never really worked out. In your favorite, let's throw a celebratory cocktail party to show everybody why this is such a good idea. - Let's throw a DC cocktail party in favor of data centers. - I've been doing some historical things. I just remembered one from the Gilded Age. There was a couple, there was like a depression or something in New York, and so this couple, this super rich couple had an idea. Let's throw a ball. And so what we'll do is we'll throw a ball, and everybody will have to go out and get all of their dresses made, and so we will influence the local economy. So by throwing this grand ball, all of the other rich people in New York will go and spend all of this money. It was very altruistic, and so this was, I think it was like the 1910s or 20s, something like that. And for the first time, they're used to an 1870s mindset where people would be like, oh my god, all these fancy rich people. The public massively turned on them, and it was one of the last grand balls in the Gilded Age. And so that's kind of what this reminds me of, is they're like, oh, we'll do it, you know, for to show how awesome we are and to make good arguments. And the rest of the public is like, I don't know. - Yeah, I see. - Yeah. - So there you go. All right, let's get to China. I'm Brett Coleman, and I'm Trevor Sikama. Have you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score? That's exactly why we created NFL Pro. - Bro, it's got a man wide open. 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And so you can see President Trump and Melania were next to she and his wife. But look at the others that are surrounding the rest of them. Every single one of them, Major Tech Baron. So you have there that's Elon. He is the CEO obviously of Tesla and of SpaceX, seated next to him, CEO of AMD, I believe, then Jensen Wong. And then you also have Tim Cook from Apple. So literally surrounded by Tech Titans at the same table. I don't think it's even lost that whenever we say Tech Titans, it wasn't Sam Altman, Dario, or any of the AI people, specifically the chips. industry, the CEO of Apple, who's such a major manufacturer, and then Iwan, who is literally reliant on China to build and manufacture a huge portion of his cars. All of them have massive business interests, specifically in China, and video the CEO having Jensen at the same table as she is another statement because the same administration, Donald Trump, has been flirting with allowing Jensen to export his most advanced ships into the Chinese economy. Remember, too, when Jensen says, I want to beat China, no, he doesn't, he wants to export to them. He wants, he doesn't care whether AI, the AI race is won by China or the US. He's literally said that. He's like, as long as I get to sell my chips, I get to do whatever I want, I get to make money in the process. So some interest in that, but belying this entire summit, there was some reporting that came out of how Trump has been, how she has been deciding to play Trump. And so she is not famous for smiling or for being joking. And yet, there were some public images in particular of Xi kind of cracking up, laughing at Trump's jokes and being jovial. Here's one in particular. Let's put this up on the screen. This is at Trump's wall of presidents, and he showed him, he's joking around there with Trump showing him the auto pen, which is in place of Joe Biden's photo in the wall of presidents joking around about Biden being the auto pen guy. And so first of all, it's pretty insane. He literally have the leader of reform nation. You're shitting on the previous president, whatever, norms, et cetera, have long been done in our society. But what came out from the New York Times, let's put D3 up here on the screen, is inside the room, apparently Xi Jinping not known for lightheartedness, yet he sometimes smiled, and laughed, projecting a warmth very unusual for a meeting between superpower rivals. Behind the show of geneality, however, Xi's carefully chosen words revealed a cooler calculus. In effort to steer Trump towards Beijing position on Taiwan, Japan, and the broader security order in Asia. So on Taiwan, I'll give him this. This is expected, every Chinese leader has done this in their meetings. Mr. Xi pressed Trump to limit American support for the self-ruled island that Beijing claims is territory. But this is where things get crazy. On Japan, Xi invoked history to portray Tokyo and American ally as a resurgent military threat. This is a country with no real military, a resurgent military threat. Well, and we've been pushing them to build up their military. So if they're resurgent militaries, because we've been pushing them in this. Reminding the president, China and the United States had once fought side by side. In fact, he brought up other things, whatever it came to Japan, where he's like, you know, take a look. And this is, he says, United States and China, he's like, remember, we fought against the common Japanese enemy in World War II. He described Japan as fascist and militarist aggressors, reviving an image of Japan as an enemy state that cannot be trusted on the global stage. And this all falls in line with a month's long effort by Beijing to punish Japan over the comments of their prime minister in November made in defense of Taiwan. And so that is where things should get scary. It's fine to say Taiwan longstanding issue. But they're like, hey, Japan fascist militarists, I'm like, okay, it's been 80 years. They got nuked. It's kind of a different entire society literally now. They don't even have their own military, they have a self-defense force. And yeah, to the extent that they're rearming is because we've told them to, because we want them to buy more of our weapons. In fact, you know, we sold them Tomahawk missiles and then we're like, oh, actually, we can't give them to you, because we need them for ourselves. I mean, this is where, this is the scary part, right? Where she is open for business in terms of how they're diplomatically trying to come towards Trump. And he's like, oh, I'll laugh at your silly Joe Biden joke. That's fine. But he's like, you know, what's going on with Japan? And don't forget, remember Trump is a person who in the past has been and made several jokes about Pearl Harbor doesn't go off that well in Japan. I can tell you that. I don't know if I was a Japanese, I'd be very worried right now. You know, the reason why it may land with Trump too. And the way they portray it in this article, which I buy is he's sort of bringing these things up, you know. Yeah, he just, it's like a straight comment. Just keep, you know, keep pushing the narrative, keep pushing the narrative. We all know Trump is very suggestible. Yes. His mind is kind of locked in this late 80s, early 90s mentality and Japan at that time. This was before they had their years of no growth and zero interest rates and all this stuff. They were seen as sort of like the China of the time. There was all this panic and fear mongering about the rise of the Japan and how Japan was going to destroy our economy and they were going to be our near peer rival and all of this sort of stuff. And Trump very much maintains mentalities from that era. So it would not surprise me if this does sort of seep into his mentality and this kind of way. I, I 100% agree. And that is why when I was reading this, I was like, this is a big problem. I mean, Japan, you better start a nuclear weapons program tomorrow because you could see here how this is all going on and the thing is too for Trump. There's the hard power calculus and there's also the suggestiveness. The Chinese are very smart. They have studied Trump. They know, laugh at the jokes, laugh at his silly Joe Biden thing and then you pepper in a few ass. That Taiwanese arms deal. They even talk about it inside the story and in multiple other ones. It was previously a go from Congress and from the administration. It was not officially put on ice. It hasn't yet been delivered. So the big question is, is that going to go through? You could even see how they could easily say, hey, we've got all this stuff going on with Iran. We've got to keep it for ourselves. Right? Well, the Taiwanese, I mean, they have big questions to ask for themselves. They just had this election. However, the opposition leader recently was just fetted in China. The Chinese are trying to pursue the strategy where they don't want a military to take over Taiwan. They've seen what happened to Ukraine and Russia. They don't want to be cast as some global pariah. They need to keep trade. They want to convince the Taiwanese to vote for reunification and that way they can do this under the guise of diplomacy and nudge things a little bit in the direction. But their nightmare is at least from what I can tell, an actual military campaign in the immediate future. Of course, all of their strategic calculus could change depending on the situation, especially if they think that the US is completely weak. But I do think it is very obvious inside of this that Xi and the Chinese really are kind of playing their hands where they can. Like Japan and with South Korea, they see an opening that they has not been in East Asia for decades in terms of, I mean, think about the US security alliance with East Asia. Has been rock solid for decades, nobody, even no Chinese leader has, I think, been this brazen in these bilateral conversations to be like, yeah, they're fascist militarists. We fought together. They're a resurgent military. Any jam, any normal American president will be like, what are you talking about? But this is the reality in the post-Around War situation. And I think I don't think that this came up by accident at all. Now do I think it's going to lead to a war tomorrow? No, that's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is, given the long-term trends of the declining US military power and especially the trade-off that we've now made, and really the sacrificing of a lot of defense in East Asia, I don't think it's an accident that Xi is starting to bring a lot of this up with Trump. Yeah, absolutely. And Trump is also very inclined towards this view of like spheres of influence. So you could see him being like, oh, that's their sphere of influence. So they're allowed to do what they want to do. Let's go put the FT right up here of what went down D4. Their takeaway is pump prevails over substance is Donald Trump host Xi Jinping. I think that's pretty accurate based on what I can tell. There wasn't much that was agreed on. Probably the biggest two deliverables, this number one China is going to give us some more pandas. Amazing, adorable. I think they're going to the zoo in Atlanta maybe. And second of all, this AI red phone that we discussed last week, where there will be a hotline where if there's some sort of an AI incident, the leaders can be in touch with each other. The countries can be in touch with each other quickly, which I think is good. I'm glad to see that and there's some sort of that starts to lead in the direction of gaining confidence about our ability to collaborate on AI, which is going to be necessary because it is a global technology. This isn't something that you can keep within the borders of one country. So that's positive to see other than that, that's really about it. And Trump literally and figuratively rolled out the red carpet for she very different, and all these things are sort of tedious, but they matter a lot in diplomatic circles and especially in a country like China. When Trump went to China, she did not meet him. Coming off the plane, Trump did meet she. Coming off the plane here, rolled out the red carpet, had the big state dinner, brought in all the tech conchos and all of that sort of stuff. That's a win for China that wants to be seen as a peer of the United States. So that for them is a sort of symbolic victory. >> And this has been all over their state media, that thing about Trump meeting him. I mean, I even said it here. I was like, look, I know nobody here cares, but over there, that stuff matters a lot. They're obsessed with protocol. And it was all over their state media. They're a Trump met him there and look at how much respect he gives, chairman, she, and apparently there were all these brawls at the White House between the Chinese press, the American press, about who could stand where. It's kind of par for the course in terms of state visits with China, but yeah, I mean overall, it was a fascinating visit because it was literally all pomp, no circumstances. And I mean, that does say something, that the Chinese were not in a position where they had to say, okay, we'll give you this, okay, we'll give you this, and we'll make you. trade war piece down the road a few more months. - Which always happens. - And, you know, I think this, the status quo there is China basically, when we tried to impose these gigantic tariffs, they were like, okay, well, we can hold your rare earth minerals hostage. And ultimately, we were like, okay, well, you got us there. So I guess we're gonna basically cave. And so we're kind of in this, you know, in between status quo situation with them on that piece as well. So no real progress there, just sort of kicking the can down the road in terms of any larger economic dealings. - Correct. - All right, let's get to the midterms. - I'm Britt Coleman and I'm Trevor Sikima. 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Listen to NFL daily on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - You broke me. On this season of Betrayal, we meet Carl Bryant. - For nine months, someone infiltrated every aspect of Carl's life threatening to ruin him. - You're a supporter. - Listen to Betrayal season six on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - So as we get very close to the midterm elections, Trump is now going up with a new political ad. However, this ad is now being paid for by any pack or super pack or campaign. It is being paid for by you. Blatantly political ad pumping up Trump coming from taxpayer dollars. I actually saw this yesterday, live watching football. Let's go ahead and take a look at that. - This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, marches and fascists. We will grow off the six political class that hates our country. We will route the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains. Once and for all. - So it literally at the bottom says paid for by the US government, by you and me. Our tax dollars going to that. - I was literally in shock. I'm watching, I think it was the chargers game and I see, and all of a sudden I hear this, I'm like, oh, must be some campaign ad. And then I thought to myself, how ironic, will drive the war mongers out of Washington? I was like, bro, look inside that house. You know, I was like, and then I was, I made that comment. I was like, can you believe they just ran this ad? And I'm assuming it's like some local Republican party. And then I was like, there's no way. I said, I even tweeted that. I go, did I really just watch a US government paid ad of Trump saying I'm gonna drive war mongers out of Washington? Like, look inside the building, man. Especially you're in the middle of the Iran War. That's like a campaign speech from 2016. So a couple of things. First of all, crazy that the US government is paying for that ad. Of course, Kirstie Nome has previously ran ads like pumping herself up, which I remember also watching live. On Fox News. But I'd actually pay attention to the message. The fact that they are running this 2016 style ad of like, we're gonna clean out Washington, drain the swamp, no more war mongers, no more globalism. When that is quite literally what you're engaged in right now. So even they know that they have to run a base group, taxpayer funded gaslighting campaign on national television. And we shouldn't underestimate how many people are going to see this ad. Now, do I think that they're gonna see it and that it's gonna be effective? No, I think a lot of people are gonna have the same reaction. Be like, dude, the guy who's in the middle of the Iran War is saying we're gonna drive war mongers out of Washington. So I don't think it's necessarily gonna work out to their benefit. But they bought hyper-expensive real estate across the entire 1am slate for all of NFL football. And I got a lot of other people telling me, they're like, oh, I saw it during this game. I know that it played in prime time. They made a specific targeted ad by for the NFL, which is when the best and most expensive advertising real estate in the nation. Yeah. And to your point about the efficacy of it, normally what happens when you have a very unpopular president during a midterm election, which Trump is now the most unpopular president, incumbent president during a midterm election in modern history. Normally, you want that person to kind of go away and for candidates to be able to assert their independence from that person. So the fact that he's making himself omnipresent here with this gaslighting campaign, again, not sure that's exactly what Republicans are hoping for, interesting moment from Republican Senator Kennedy, who was quite a character. By the way, you may have appreciated his work in the cash betel beastiality questioning if you wanna go back and look at some of his previous comedic stylings. In any case, he was asked, hey, how about this US taxpayer funded ad for president Trump? And again, Republican had to be like, I, yeah, this is not really something I support. Let's take a look at that. - I don't think any public official, including president Trump or Christiano, Marjon Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves. Now, the White House sees it differently, but I don't, I think there ought to be a rule that you can't, well, it probably isn't rule. You can't spend public money to promote yourself. I'm gonna, I may end up with a sombre on my head, but I also think that we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him while he's alive. - There you go. So, you know, pushing back on Trump on two things here, one of them near and dear to his heart, which is the naming of public buildings in this city after him and the other one being this taxpayer funded ad where I like when he catches himself. He's like, there should be a rule against this and he's like, there probably is a rule against this. Yes, it probably is illegal. It is probably illegal to use taxpayer dollars for blatant electioneering of this manner. Now, it can be contested, you know, directly tell people to vote for the Republicans, et cetera. So, maybe it falls into a gray area, I'm not sure, but I think most people will look at this and go, this should be illegal. - Yeah, I mean, we should probably just say the US government should be an ad's period 'cause I didn't even, you know, 'cause I was like, oh, but Obama ran ads for Obamacare. And I'm like, yeah, well, that was Obamacare. I mean, I get it, it's Obamacare, but, you know, this seems to be a little bit different in the lead up to a midterm election. Just look, I'm gonna put all this legality bullshit aside. The fact is, the guy's paying for the ad and literally saying he's gonna stop doing things or he's gonna stop things that he is doing. - Right. - So, how is this gonna work? Like, I can't be the only person who was like, I cannot believe that that was, I can't believe that the person I wore with Iran is gonna say I'm gonna drive the war mongers out of Washington. Like, that just seems totally insane to me. And I think that that cognitive dissonance, but basically, like, outright lying is just going to massively backfire. - Yeah. - Come midterm time. - Let's put E6 up on the screen. So, this is some more New York Times reporting about some of the things we've already covered here, a number of Republicans, including Mike Rogers, who is like quintessential Miyukon for years and years, and pushing for the Iran War, celebrated the Iran War until he looked at the polls and was like, I literally cannot win if I hold this position, is now claiming he wants it to end, Ashley Hinson, in Iowa, a state that should never have been even contested for Republicans, and now it appears to be down in the polls. She has voted in favor of this war multiple times, and now all of a sudden is like, I wanted to end. In any case, this, along with what you heard from John Kennedy, along what we've seen from Senator Curtis in Utah, who wants to investigate Don Jr. and his wedding funding, you are starting to see some Republicans break with Trump. And there is a question of whether this will be a trickle, and then Trump will reassert control, and will replay the same dynamics we've seen over and over again, which is just as Thomas Massey. If you go too far in terms of your Trump criticism, you're going to find yourself out of good standing with the Republican Party, or whether this is the start of a larger damn breaking flood that could potentially come after the midterm elections, if you do have some sort of a massive reckoning. And I think, you know, that is really the kind of question on the table right now. And it's in that light that I see put E5 up on the screen. This Trump freak out over this long time Congresswoman Maria Alvira Salazar, who, yeah, which one is it? It's E5, put this up on the screen. So she put out an ad where she straight to the camera, you know, kind of a chided Trump a bit over the aggressive mass deportation policies. This is very interesting. Her discharge overwhelmingly Cuban. And Cubans have long gotten a pass from other major immigration pushes. They've literally by the law been treated differently. And I was talking to Ryan about this because he's got like family and professional ties in South Florida. And he was like, look, there's a racism to this of like, oh, no, we're not like those people. So the fact that Cubans have also been included in treated the same way in the mass deportation policy has been a big problem for them. So she put out this ad, like, you know, you're going too far effectively in a very diplomatic language. He had a total crash out over this posted like 14 different times was amplifying Laura Lumer saying Republicans should kick her out and find a new candidate for this seat, etc. And the reason I think he's crashing out so hard over this is to try to make an example of her and try to get people back in line. He needs to enforce his control over the party right now because he can also see these few little slippages of people trying to distance themselves. And also worries that if the midterm goes really poorly for Republicans, maybe he does face a little bit of pushback from Republicans that he's really never seen before during his time and off. Salazar is an interesting case. She is best described as one of these South Florida neocons like, you know, literally in terms of we must liberate Venezuela. We have to liberate Cuba. And then we should invite them all here because we love them. You know, I mean, this is why I have no sympathy for her. Like you said, these people like they are, they literally had all these laws like wet foot, dry foot, and all this other nonsense in US immigration law, which basically exempted them from every other type of asylum group on the planet. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, yeah, you're here illegally. Sorry. It turns out, you know, you're not different than everybody else in her district. I will also say she has always been one of these immigrant, like immigration dove, I guess, for lack of the better word. She basically introduced an amnesty bill years ago. I trumped and even say anything at the time. In terms of this ad, the only reason that she's coming under fires because she said that Trump went too far is ironically enough. I see it more in terms of what you're saying. They need to enforce loyalty to him within the party. And I mean, that can go both ways because politicians are deeply self interested people. They will only do what is in their best interests. For now, like what they showed with Massey, he break with Trump, you'll have an ocean of money spent against you and Trump will endorse your opponent. The question is how long that's going to continue to work. I will not, though, let people dilute themselves. The Salas Army win to be clear, just because it's out for us unique, it's just kind of a different place. But overall, Trump is still very popular with Republicans. Like people need to grapple with that, especially primary, primary boomers are mainline and information that you and I would look at and be like, I can't even believe she's real. But that's the reality of Fox News, of Jesse Waters and all of this other stuff that they are getting on an absolute daily basis. So I do think that that's like something I wanted to highlight is that there is, for them, they really are stuck in a very difficult place because nationally, they can be unpopular. But inside the party, there is still nobody like him. It's just not, there's nothing like that there's no kind of force or defection that can actually, there's no defection with a positive incentive. And Massey is perfect, example, a kind of poster child of all of that. And this is kind of how I'm thinking about it going into the midterm. I think after the midterm, though, you are going to see some people who, okay, Trump is, he's old, he's going to be done in just a couple of years. He's deeply unpopular, less popular now than he was after January 6th, okay, deeply unpopular. This committed, die hard fanbase is dwindling you of people who sort of like, tap at least support him versus he used to have this rock solid fanbase. You are going to see some entrepreneurial politicians who think there's a lane to come out in some way against Trump and position themselves for 2028 as the inheritors of the Republican Party and, you know, as a break from what this past era has been. So I do think that creates some dangers for him that perhaps didn't exist in the past, but you're absolutely right to say, you know, mostly these politicians are cowards. They don't want to be like Maria Salazar and be put on blast and have their standing with Republicans threaten, which may hurt her reelection, even though in a certain way, you can look at and be like, well, the fact that Trump's mad at her, maybe that helps establish her position as a more independent voice. On the other hand, if you depress Republican turnout or even have, you know, some right in candidate or whatever that takes a few percentage points away from her, that could all absolutely be devastating. So in any case, most of these people don't want to be put on blast by the president of the United States. So it does help to scare them back into line. I wanted to put E7 up on the screen. This was from, again, speaks to how it places like Iowa. There is, you know, more possibility of Democrats winning than anyone would have expected in Chuck Grassley, who is the 93 year old senator from Iowa, who still has four years left on his term, meaning that if he survives, he will be leaving office at 97 years old. He said at this GOP dinner, quote, one of the reasons I'm worried about who's going to be elected governor. I don't plan on dying in office, but if I did, I don't want a Democrat governor choosing my replacement. And the Senate races much closer, the governor marries, it looks like Rob Sand is going to win. I mean, every poll I've seen has him up. It looks like he is quite popular in the state and that he is starting to pull away in the polling. So just a real statement on the nature of our gerontocracy that one of the chief concerns here is that this 93 year old senator is worried about dying in the next couple of years. And having his appointment, his replacement pick by a Democratic governor, let's go. Last thing I wanted to mention, E4, this has been on my mind. And I do think I'm going to ask Logan about it tomorrow as well, is this was from Luxia Jane, he had an interesting model and take about current polls. He says our model is built on a lot of polling, including our own. It really bothers me how absurdly different the drop off of white respondents are in our polling. Whites who completed our polls swing 10% to the left. Whites who don't barely swing at all. I'm guessing this is not unique to our polling. If a model whiffs badly, it'll probably whiff on whites and it would mean far more low propensity Republicans showed up to vote. It means that the ones who didn't respond to polls were attitudeally very different and shifting far less than the ones who did respond. But we're underrepresented in polling, meaning that we may overproject the swing. I don't think this is the case because people really hate Trump too. I just don't expect them to show up in a midterm like this. It nags me. In other words, if the polls are off, they'll be off for the same reason they've been off for the last 10 years, which is basically you have whites who don't complete college degrees, who are unreachable, don't complete polls, despite the fact that they've had over 12 years I guess now at this time to fix this literal problem, which predates even Donald Trump in 2016. I do wonder. I mean, how much of this, we've talked about it before, like with the DSA effect, where, yeah, I mean, it's easy to see that a highly motivated college educated white base is going to be massively, you know, is going to respond and be involved in politics. Angie Nixon's side, like that's who they are. Well, the vast majority of the Republican base is like low propensity whites and Hispanics. And we have like some data, you know, whenever it comes to those groups, but lack of a response was the number one thing that killed the polls in 2020. That's why I just want to flag it, where remember, remember the polls in 2020, Susan Collins down by 13, she wins by a couple of points. Remember South Carolina, which had, who's that idiot's name, the guy who raised one. Harrison. He's up by 18, loses by the same margin that the previous opponent, the Lindsey Graham, had run against, you know, despite having like hundreds of millions of dollars, I just think it's important to flag. Yeah. It could be off. I mean, look, we could have D+2, but in the way that the media and everybody, including us, have reported this, that would be an underperformance of expectations. Oh, yeah. It would be huge. And that would mean the Republicans would either keep the house or it would be in play. Yeah, completely. I mean, and we don't have to think back long. When we talked about Iowa, do you remember a very wilding off, yeah, the whole seltzer thing, who was known as like the Iowa pollster, I mean, she was the gold standard and she nailed it. And she fell for this exact same problem after time, yeah. And this was exactly the issue that she had is that the people that responded to the poll were the people who were very excited about voting for Democrats and then the people who didn't respond, didn't get captured in the survey. And so she wildly missed what was going on in a state that she knows so well and had previously pulled so accurately. So you have to keep those things in mind that that is certainly a possibility. Now, one thing that's different is Trump is not on the ballot. He's usually the one that causes the biggest miscounts with the polls because he does inspire this different set of voters that don't seem to just show up for regular Republicans. This is part of why he's said to the electorate pretend I am on the ballot. That may seem insane given how unpopular he is and it might be insane ultimately. But that's the group he's trying to reach. He wants that coalition that only turns up for him to show up for the rest of these Republicans. And the last piece here is, you know, that it's important to keep these grains of salt in mind when you see polls like this one, which feel literally unbelievable. This is a South Carolina poll by Trafalgar, which is known for, I mean, frankly, they got it, have gotten it right. When Trump has been on the ballot, they have been able to assess those sort of infrequent voters who don't pick up the phone, etc. But in any case, they have this South Carolina poll that has Darlene Graham, the Republican Lindsey Graham's sister, up by a single point on any Andrews. So it's 43.4 to 42.3 in this Trafalgar poll. And so this is when I have an eye on Ryan and I were talking about this a little bit last week. I, you know, I think Darlene Graham is going to win if I had to like put some money down or like really say or make a prediction today, I would say Darlene Graham is going to win. It's South Carolina. We haven't had a South Carolina Democratic Senator in a very long time. It's a very red state, etc. However, I can imagine people being like, who is this lady? Like they didn't even like Lindsey Graham very much. And now you're just shoving his sister down our throat who clearly knows nothing about anything. It's like very disrespectful. And I do think Americans, wherever they live and whatever political affiliation they have, they really react very negatively to that sort of thing of like, oh, your mom or your dad or your brother was a Senator. Now you think we should just show up and vote for you because we're just mindless lemmings and you're trying to shove this down our throat. So I could imagine, I could imagine it, could imagine there being a backlash to her just being pushed forward and voters resenting that that is the choice that's been put on them. Any Andrews seems like a good candidate too. I mean, the big warning sign for Democrats here is that they're, I mean, first of all, they are behind by a point, but also nowhere near 50% so those undecideds you would think are ultimately going to vote break for the Republicans. But it is one of these polls where you look at it and you go, you know, how far, how far could this go? Like, are we going to see an election that is that crazy where states like Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, Alaska, Texas are truly on the table for Democrats. I just, I have a really hard time believing it. You said a good article. I think we'll talk about it a lot tomorrow. Yeah. Is this '94 or is it 2018? Yeah. And that's a great heuristic. '94, I was two years old, so don't remember it. Have read about it. But the question around it is, can we elect Democrats in red states and not the type of Democrat like us Collins or, yeah, I guess, Democrat or Republican, depending on how you got to think of it. Like, not the type of Maverick, like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and or who am I trying to think of? Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin or who is the guy in Alabama, Doug Jones, right? Because are those the type of people who are the last dying breed who can get elected or is it a genuine real-line men election, a actual complete step change from the partisan era, which has dominated American politics, 2010 to 2026, that's 16 year run. If you look at history and maps and cycling, we're on the table, actually, for a complete shift from where things are, it would make sense that Trump who ushered in the first real line, it could break, you know, kind of the previous paradigm, but in the wrong direction. So that is the open question. I just, I don't know. I always, a one lesson I have from 2016, 2020 to 2024 is you cannot underestimate, like hyper, like, and when I say partisanship, I just, it's really not like I love Republicans. It's discussed with, like, cultural leftism is kind of the best way I can possibly describe it. That's the only through line that runs through all three of those elections, including with the midterms, remember, Kavanaugh, 2018, immigration concerns that happened there at the time. So that's just the last thing on my mind is despite all these polls and all this coverage, they just keep coming back all the time, you know, and we don't have reason to doubt that it's over. I was thinking about, I was actually watching a thing about 2016, which was giving me a total of PTSD, but, you know, Hillary, famously, takes for granted the blue wall, barely goes to Michigan, Michigan doesn't go to Wisconsin at all. They thought they were putting all these other states into play, or like spending time in North Carolina, which Obama had won, but Democrats hadn't been able to maintain their, you know, any sort of dominance in. So they were playing the game with, like, oh, we're going to expand the map. It's going to be a still lacking. She didn't even write a concession speech. She fell asleep while the results were coming in because it was such a foregone conclusion in their mind. And so, and that's what the polls showed. If you were looking at the polls, that's what you would expect. Although if you do go back and look, they were a lot more narrow than was sort of like being felt at this time. But there was just such a, there was such confidence in polling at that point too. You hadn't had these gigantic misses. There were all kinds of confidence in, like, the modelers, the Nate Silver's of the world looking at this and like, oh, Hillary's going to win. Hillary's going to win. It's not even going to be close. And at the end of the day, obviously, we know the history of that. So you could, after election night, look back at it. I think Democrats are going to have a good night. I think they're going to do pretty well. I think the House is pretty much like a foregone conclusion. However, they may look silly the day after to have flirted with South Carolina. Mississippi, we're going to, I want to talk to Logan about this tomorrow. Democrats are putting money into Mississippi, Senate race. You know, Florida, like, these states that it may end up looking ridiculous that there was ever any thought that these things were on the table, and it couldn't end up being much more like 2018, where the typical battleground states continue to be the typical battleground states. Right. I have accepted my long out of touch nature, and I could not imagine. In 2020, I remember, and I was looking at the way that the pandemic and everything was going. And I was just like, you know, I really don't see how Biden could lose this election. I'm like, I just don't see it. I'm like, how is this even possible? And then Trump comes, what, 100,000 votes in three states from winning. They were totally off. Biden winning like 18 points in Wisconsin, and not remembering all the details, but by double digits in some of those blue wall states, it looked like it was going to be a landslide. And it did make some sense, because yeah, the pandemic was going on, Trump was on popular, it was a mess, right? A very chaotic time. And yet it ended up being. 100,000, so look, my thing is just with Trump is he, I'm not counting out till he's out. Like the guy literally won the popular vote two years ago, and very few people, I forget what the odds of that were. It was like 10% or something that were, you know, in terms of a lot of the models. So I just always caution people is, you know, you can have a lot of hope on either side, but Trump is all he's just always been this dynamic force in American politics. But we have history to show that people like that Obama and others have never had the immense amount of success translating that into a midterm election. And so that's always the counterbalance in our view. But I do think it's important that people should, you know, you should consume all the information and realize like, don't just take these things of face value. You have too much data at this point to do so. And you know, it's, we'll always continue to remind you of that. So excited to talk to Logan about that, and we'll see you all tomorrow. >> It's real. >> Black farmers have been under attack. >> It's raw. >> And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for foals. >> Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. >> And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHOT radio app, Apple Podcast. >> Wherever you get your podcasts. >> Hi guys, I'm HOTACOTB, host of the podcast, Joy Wanowan with HOTACOTB. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools through meaningful conversations with fascinating people like my longtime friend Seth Meyers. >> I would often go back to my office and be like, you're not as funny as they are. And the most haunting thing about that is, you know, I'm always searching for inspiration You can't out work talent. Listen to Joy 101 with Hota Kotby on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about mid-life women's health directly to you. Elizabeth Pointer on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human