9/4/26: Diesel Prices Skyrocket, Jeff Sachs Warns Of Tech Collapse, OpenAI Hack Coverup, JD Responds To Tucker Praise Of Abdul, Fox Fires Maria Bartiromo

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The pitch I would make today is related to something we're going to be covering later in the show, which is the launch of Astra, which is the kind of highest grade swarm of criminal agents that are being unleashed on the internet yet. They've been a bunch of criminal agents that have been released already so far. We're going to talk about that. Garrison Lovely will join us to talk about this new hack of a German website, but now we have super criminals that are being unleashed on the internet, which is where all of your money is. Pretty soon, they're going to take all of your money. While you still have it, you should be spending it to support the kind of journalism that you want to see in the world. You're going to love it so much, you're going to stick around, or like I do with everything. I put it on the calendar, cancel breaking points, right there on the calendar, I miss it. Just blow right past it. As we always say here at breaking points, ask your agent to do it, and instead the agent will hack your bank account and take all your money. Communists are the best capitalists. Nobody makes a pitch quite like Ryan Graham. But we'll be talking about that. We'll be talking about soccer. Soccer got Tucker Carlson to endorse Abdull as I had basically JD Vance was asked about. It was really an it was an anti endorsement of Mike Rogers. Mostly. Yeah, combined with some, you know, Abdull science, very Trumpian. It was, I mean, yes, he was pretty, he was pretty straightforward. Maria Tara Tarromo, Marta Romo fired unceremoniously from Fox News and Emily, hopefully we'll have some insight into what actually happened there. We're going to talk a little bit about what else we got? Well, we'll see that that's for the paid subscribers. We shouldn't even let the free people know. No, no. Well, we're going to be like right now we're going to start by talking about some news on the economic front and then we'll bring in a clip that of a conversation actually that you had yesterday with Jeffrey Sachs over a drop site. So just to go over some economic and war updates, that's where we're going to start. And as Ryan previewed the rest of the show is just as great. So breaking points.com to get a subscription as Ryan plugged, but let's, let's get into it. Diesel prices hit in all time high today, soaring to $5.85 a gallon. We have this tear sheet from the Associated Press up on the screen. They put together a chart where you can see it soaring past the previous all time high right after the invasion of Ukraine, also in the pandemic era, roughly, so February of 2022. Previously, the regular fuel price record was above, it was like 501 a gallon. It was also in 2022. But here we have $5.85 a gallon. We have comments from the president and the vice president related to this coming up in just one moment. But Ryan, as we're recording this, the job support came in as well. What are those numbers looking like? Very, very good. Now, very interesting in that apparently, like 98% of the jobs added in August went to women. We're going to kind of dig into why that might be. But three times, as though they were expecting, here's how this is how they're long. If you can back, you want to put the marketplace reporter up on the screen. Expectation was about 55,000 jobs to be added in August. The economy added 162,000, so blowing past those expectations. There were also revisions from the previous two months of the summer pushing, pushing up by 21,000 in July, 31,000 in June, unemployment rate remained the same. Now, as we talked about last month, almost all of the job gains during the Trump administration have been in healthcare, which is a mixed bag. It's good that the healthcare industry is hiring more people, but it also means that there is more profit flowing to the healthcare industry, which is not necessarily a good thing. It also means that people are seeking a lot more healthcare treatment, which is good if they're just getting treated for things, but if we're becoming a sicker population that is not necessarily a good thing, but that's not what happened this time, construction jobs up, manufacturing jobs up, education, hospitality, all up. Go ahead, Emily. Well, yeah, I was just going to say this is compared to Heather Long's take away from the July jobs report. She said, "This is a bleak report that you guys never market a stalling again, and that is going to make the Fed's job harder and life for job seekers rough." They said, "The big surprise," or she said, "the big surprise was job losses in July." I remember covering this with you in crystal at the time, Ryan, but Heather at the time said this was only the beginning of the bad news. The unemployment fell for the wrong reasons. We saw people continuing to leave the labor force in that jobs report, which was enormously bleak, but what changed, Ryan? What's your read on the difference between July and August year? I have no idea. No clue. I have no idea what's going on here. It is also suggest though, in paradoxically, we said last time, a bad job, a bad jobs report is good for Trump in the sense that it encourages the Federal Reserve to cut rates, which is what he wants. He wants low interest rates as a real estate development guy. That's his end all and be all. He believes that the more credit you get flowing into the economy, the better off everybody's going to be. Ironically, a good jobs report like this in the hands of a hawkish Fed chair, like Kevin Worsh that we have, is actually going to inspire him further to increase interest rates at the next Federal Reserve meeting. I think you might even see them a little bit of a market sell off as a result of this news because they're going to think, "Oh, that means the Fed now is going to hike interest rates further, which is going to put housing further out of reach for people and will lead to a contraction of the economy." Yeah, the futures are down. The Dow futures are down, the SAP futures are down. What an incredible system that we have, that good news is bad news and bad news is good news. Right. So, let's go also now back to, because I actually ran this is just what we were talking about with fuel prices rippling throughout the economy. That's a stark juxtaposition. The news is a stark juxtaposition with that because we are going to expect to see continued inflation. There's really no, I don't think there's any serious person that thinks inflation is going to come down and not go up, so long as this war continues, wouldn't that be fair to say? Yeah. As you started the segment by saying, diesel, which feeds into everything when it comes to industry manufacturing, transportation and agriculture, is at record highs up to dollars basically year over year. What you were paying three something for, a year ago you're now paying five something for a gallon. And that is a, and it is a massive input into your business costs. We're not talking about Honda Civics here, you know, getting enormous gas mileage. We're talking about tractors, you know, tractor trailers. And in general, you know, heavy industry, which needs a lot of diesel. And we're just, we're just getting started here with the shortage because the gas gases, you know, natural gases at its lowest point in Europe heading into any winter that we have basically on record since we started, because Europe basically industrialized more or less and started, you know, using natural gas to continue contemporary comparison here. And the war continues base. We could talk about some of some of that. The Iranians did something quite unusual yesterday, which was a preemptive, what they said was a preemptive strike on American base in Kuwait. Usually in the past, they've been waiting for the Americans to strike somewhere. Now that they seem interested in kind of throwing that balance off. And we don't know what the result specifically was of this attack in Kuwait. But we do know that Brent crude is now trading at, at this point, 90, it spiked even higher yesterday. But when you look at it right now, it's over $90 a barrel, which is significantly higher than it was before Trump kicked off this latest round of kinetic strikes. And interestingly, Trump did not respond to the Iranian attack. So think about that. That hasn't happened since World War II, basically. To what extent can he? I mean, he still has some missiles left. He's got stuff. But we're in a situation where an American adversary, not in response to any particular incident, attacked an American base in the Middle East, and the US did not respond. Well, I suppose Ryan, that means we could be in for some stiff response over the weekend. Certainly. Yeah, maybe he's waiting for the market to close. We'll see, but that hasn't been in the past, what he's done in the past. If Iran attacks, we retaliate very quickly. Well, maybe this has something to do with it. Let's look at Vice President JD Vance Mackey can pull this up on the screen who yesterday actually stepped in and did the White House press briefing and address some questions on this level. We have audio from Trump as well. Let's start here with the Vice President all over the straight-of-war news. The Iranians would like zero million barrels to come out of the straight-of-war news. Last night, 15 million barrels came out of the straight-of-war news. That's because of the United States of America. Okay. So Ryan, this is the president said, we don't actually have audio. It's a truth social where he said, quote, "Hormuz oil volumes are back." He circulated a graphic according to drop site showing flows at 8 million barrels a day close to pre-war levels. The 18 million barrel figure matched to claim by US officials reported by CNN about vessels escorted through Hormuz on a single day on Monday. So, I mean, so much to unpack with that from JD Vance. First of all, it's actually not true. Apparently, South Korea is sending some warships to the straight-of-war news. That's how desperate they are. South Korea actually has this bizarre agreement with the American military that if they enter into conflict, they become subservient and take orders from the American military. So, it's not totally true that we're the only ones that are doing it. JD Vance's question, though, why is it our responsibility? Well, come on, man, like, you broke it, you bought it. Like, it was free for all ships to go in and out on February 27th, while Iran was offering historic levels of concessions in its nuclear negotiations with the United States when we launched a surprise attack the next day, and they responded predictably by closing the straight. So, it's extraordinarily rich for then the Americans to say, "Why is it our job to open this straight back up?" The one thing that he said, and if somebody clipped it without the other context around it, it would actually still be accurate. This is his full quote that I jotted down. Gas prices are way worse everywhere in the world because of what the president has done. Like, that was a quote. Now, what he was saying is that it's cheaper here in the United States for gas and he means that it's cheaper in the US for gas everywhere in the world because of the president has -- he was trying to tie it to Venezuela, which makes no sense because they're not producing extra oil at this point yet and it won't for a very long time. But his actual quote is accurate. Like, he may not have meant it that way, but those are the exact words that he said and it is very true. And then back up to the very beginning of his answer, they asked, "Why is it that gas prices are so high?" And he said, "It's because Iran is shooting at ships." Okay. Well, why is Iran shooting at ships? He says that there was an agreement that they wouldn't do so during the MOU. In fact, the agreement was that Iran would oversee and regulate shipping for free through the Strait of Hormuz. The United States insisted on not allowing ships to register their transit with the Iranians because the United States did not want to establish a precedent that Iran had some sort of authority over the Strait of Hormuz, even though they were doing it for free. So they tried to sneak a bunch of ships through Iran fired at those ships. So that's the full answer to the question of what happened. Now, the reporting out of the American press, whether it's true or not, remains to be seen, is that what Trump wants now is not to re-enter an MOU type of arrangement where there's a kind of phased ceasefire that then leads to negotiations, that then leads to some type of permanent deal. He wants a total complete deal that involves both the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear. Now, that is, I think certainly within reach, but he would have to basically seed control of Strait of Hormuz to Oman and Iran, and he doesn't want to do that. So if it's true that there was one day that they got 18 million barrels through, people think that there's extremely unlikely, but let's say it's even true, doing that at the cost of keeping this massive naval and Air Force presence in the region all the time, 24/7, is simply not sustainable. Right now, 5,000 of the sailors who used to be doing that are out spreading venereal disease throughout Thailand. And so we'll see how long the George Washington sailors could last. They may also be contracting venereal diseases in Thailand. I'm sure it's the import export going on there. Yes. Right. Well, Ryan, it's funny to say that because what I'm told by the president is that actually we have plenty of ammunition. So Trump posted and Ben Shapiro reposted it. The people in media outlets that keep harping on the fact that we have no ammunition and they are 100% wrong are actually treasonous. They do it because they would rather see the US lose a war than that were that were easily winning than see me win a little bit of wish casting there because that is simply not true. Yes, American munitions supplies are not classified. Like you can compile public databases and put together what the capacity is and you can compare it to what's been fired off and you can come up with an analysis of how much is left. That's what these treasonous analysts have done and the answer has been you guys are running extremely low. Yeah. And Mac, I'm going to put this other thing up on the screen just so people realize this is from the foundation for defensive democracies. The US military must race to rebuild, rebuild. It's supply of emissions, so of munitions. So just to be clear, even from the people who are most supportive of this war, they are conceding implicitly that there is something to rebuild. And just real cool because I know we're going to move to garrison pretty quickly. Yesterday, the Israelis announced that they had finished kind of destruction of this tunnel complex in Southern Lebanon, which Iran had said was one of its red lines that they would go back to war if Israel insisted on using the ceasefire MOU period on taking more ground in Lebanon and deepening their endless occupation there. And so when when you asked when JD Vance's asked, why is it that Iran is shooting at ships? Why is this war still going on? A key reason is that during the ceasefire while the MOU is in effect, Israel refused to abide by the terms of the MOU, which very explicitly said US allies would end the war on all fronts. They were very explicit about Lebanon itself. I think they put it right in number, like the number one agreed point was Israel will stop its war in Lebanon. So today while you're out there paying 585 a gallon for diesel. Israel's celebrating that it finished its it's destruction of of this network. Now I've seen counter arguments that that the wording is very hedge and there's very little evidence and that this may be bluster for electoral purposes because the election is coming out October 27th and that in fact they may be claiming that they've destroyed it and but may not actually have done so. Rand, before we bring the guest, I wanted to visit your conversation on drop site yesterday with Jeffrey Sachs and I know we have a clip here that we can play to kind of set this up transitioning from Iran to the economy to what happened with Astra. So let's go ahead, Mac and you can pull up this clip. That would be great and take a listen to Jeffrey Sachs. But I do believe that we are in a geopolitical problem. I described which is the gap between our perception of unipolarity and the reality of the world and that it actually fuels the financial bubble that we're in as well. So it's not just that U.S. interest rates are rising but as you know our stock market valuations are at astounding high levels and this can be measured in many, many ways. Two of the most standard ways of measuring this anomaly are the value of U.S. equities relative to U.S. GDP and that's now 2.4 times U.S. GDP. This is a historic high. So that's called the Buffett ratio and the other is the price earnings ratio, especially the so-called Schiller cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio. This is also at an all-time high. So you say, well, is that a bubble or not? One side says, no, it's not a bubble. We have the Magnificent 7 AI companies. They have the greatest technology in the world. They're going to capitalize this a trillion times and that's why we have this boom because it for sages the golden age ahead. The other side says, come on. We've been through the dot coms. We've been through so many other tulip manias like this in the past. This is an exaggeration and my view is that it's the correct view and that it is related to the idea of the U.S. unipolarity. It's related to the idea that the U.S. is the unique thing. But what I see with my own eyes, already, as I said, going back 30 years, but I see it every time I visit China, which is many times a year now, China is basically matching U.S. technology. But in the AI sphere, as we know, it's giving it away, open-weight models. And those are the models that are being taken up all over the world because they're 10 times cheaper. than the U.S. proprietary model. Emily, what do you think? And we'll get into a lot of these themes with garrison, lovely and a little bit. But what's your assessment of who's right here about the question of the bubble? Well, I think there's almost no question that we're in a bubble. He mentioned the mag seven companies. There's so much circular funding between those companies and there's some 20% of the S&P at this point, which is a lot of analysts have looked at that and been deeply troubled by it. But you don't even have to be an economist to look at that and be deeply troubled by it. His point about unipolarity is really interesting that some of that is priced into the bubble itself, that some of the bubble is dependent on U.S. primacy on the world stage. And that is somewhat of an illusion. I think is what he's saying. That's what I took away from that. He's saying that the unipolarity price in the stock market is an illusion itself. It's crumbling. And so that can partially also be kind of rug pull when a bubble pops. Yeah, he talks more about that at the very end of the interview. That was on drop site if that wasn't clear. And I thought that was very interesting that we have a geopolitical bubble, which is so much of power is perception. And the perception that the U.S. has this hegemonic power probably peaked in December January with the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife. Did you talk about bonds? Did he talk about the yes. And yes. And so he talked a lot about that as well that that being an indication of a lack of faith and these the power of these Western governments to make good in the way that they have in the past. But that, you know, December January, when these Delta forces guys go in and, you know, who knows what kind of arrangement was made ahead of time. But it, like I said, so much is about perception. The perception of American dominance at that moment was extraordinarily high. That has been completely pierced. And the gas is coming out of that bubble. And so it is interesting to think about what its effect is on geopolitics. And no, as we transition, Gareth, and one other interesting point that people might want to think about. So I was talking to economists Jamie Galbraith, who you know as well recently. And he's working on a new book about the 1929 crash and the resulting depression, which very interestingly, there is no consensus among economists for why we got this massive stock market crash and why it led to this extended global depression. There are a lot of different theories that have been kicked around. But they're, but like in most scenarios, we have come to some kind of consensus. Whether or not the consensus is right or not, there's a consensus. This, there isn't even a consensus in the field. He's putting forward a theory that has been kicked around a little bit, but he's going to, he's going to lean into this argument that is very interesting and has some parallels might have some parallels to today. You decide whether or not you agree with that. His idea is that from the mid 19th century through the late 1920s, the industrial revolution was driven by effectively by coal. Coal was essential to powering the locomotives, the transportation and also industry. Like that without coal, you don't have basically the entire economy. In the late 1920s, you start for the first time to get massive discoveries of oil combined with announcements and he's identifying a significant number of announcements that were happening the week of the crash that oil prices were collapsing around the country and also around the world. And traders were identifying that the entire basis of the economy, which was coal, is going to be mooted by the advent of the oil industry because oil was now so much cheaper and so much more efficient and so much, and then they were correct, obviously, of that it was going to replace coal. And that, what did that mean? That meant any part of the economy that was based on coal was now worth 10%. Not 10% less, but like 10% 90% less of what it was the day before. And so everybody just starts selling anything that is going to be disrupted, so to speak, by the oil industry. And then the economy is not positioned to pivot to oil because it's designed for coal. And so it takes 15, 20 years for that new economy to be developed around oil. So then the question that you're asking yourself, now if you think about that, let's assume that just for the sake of the kind of thought-provoking conversation that he's right, what is AI there? Is AI oil or is let's say is AI electrification? Like electrification, you kind of layered on top of an already existing economy and made everything more efficient. Is that what AI does? Or is AI just a fundamentally new thing which makes most of the economy that we have now unprofitable? In which case, if people recognize that you're looking at a complete collapse in a depression until you can then rebuild, hopefully not on the ashes of another world war. Yeah, that's a very different parallel. It's not a parallel. It's Apple and oranges with other parallels to your point. It's not the depression and it's not the dot-com bubble. The AI product itself rendering others kind of mood. I can't think of anything like that. Finally, man, I guess I would just ask you about the Fed. What we know about the Fed and the depression, what we know about the Fed right now. Well, the Fed now is much more sophisticated, much, much different. The Fed had only been created in 1913. What wasn't designed, yeah, it didn't yet have, the same mandate that it has now didn't have the capacity that we were still on the gold standard. So, you know, completely different monetary system in place. So that could be one difference. But yes, we'll, I don't know, we'll see. We're going to get rate hikes. Yes, I think we are, yeah. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive, listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Beniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. 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I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm gonna have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan Horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Open AI revealed its latest model Astra yesterday. The same time interestingly we got a report I think scooped by Reuters Mac you can put this element on the screen. There is now been at least a second incident of a rogue swarm of AI agents breaking out of the confines of their sandbox and in this case finding a German website that they use as a message board to coordinate activity in this case and because there is effectively no laws or regulation around this open AI seems to have muscled this news and it leaks out just at the same time that they're launching this new Astra which everyone who's used it so far as describing as a significant breakthrough in technology. Garrison Lovely the author of the new book which is out in a couple of weeks obsolete is joining us now to discuss that Garrison thanks so much for being here. Yeah thanks for having me whenever I'm here something crazy is going on. Yes indeed. It's never a good sign if you see Garrison you should be concerned. Yes we have a lot of guests like that actually. The kind of router paper. Oh no. So we're job we have horsemen of the apocalypse book available for pre-order yet. Yes. Oh for sure. Cool because we we have the the galley is it's a great book it's really worth reading. So pre-ordered if you if you guys can because especially if you're a skeptic and you think that we don't know what we're talking about here. It makes a case that mirrors kind of my view of this which is that AI is genuinely and awesome and awe inspiring and terrifying technology and there is a tendency among people on the some people in the kind of progressive space to write it off as just nothing but hype and that making the argument that Sam Altman is so overextended and over leveraged that the only way he can keep the billions of dollars flowing in to this system is to scare you to death about it and that the scaring you to death is then hyping it up. I just find that a completely unconvincing argument for a lot of different reasons and Garrison lays them out well in his book. It doesn't mean that there is not a bubble you can have both things you can have a bubble you can have hype and fraud and speculation and also have an underlying awe inspiring technology that needs to be treated extraordinarily seriously given the potential risks that we're looking at. Separately, you all have a lot of confidence that they're telling you all of the scary things. They're telling you some scary things but why is it that we're just learning yesterday from Reuters that they were covering up this second jailbreak. So Garrison, first of all, can you start with this jailbreak? What do we know about this German website that became a message board for these? And these are agents that are pre-astra. They're not as impressive criminals as the new ones that have been that were born yesterday. That's right. And so, yeah, what we understand from these researchers who uncovered this by just scouring the web for evidence that AI agents were running a muck and found some. These agents first started using this obscure German wiki in May to trade notes. And it was just like another message board, like we saw with the hucking face hack where the AI's were given some task and then they were like struggling with it. They got access to the internet. They started posting ideas on how to get around the safeguards. And then we found that open AI seems to have cut off the agents way back in June, or at least the first time that happened was back in June. And then the agent activity ceases in early July. And we have just learned about this on September 3rd, September 4th, not from open AI. And so, yeah, this is a cover-up and it's quite clear that open AI is not telling us relevant information. Sam Altman was asked like where other companies hacked, you know, in the halls of Congress. And he's like, yeah, it could be just like this casual admission. And then somebody pointed out in the meter report, this independent investigation into the hugging face hack, the reporters were, the investigators were excluded from talking about are looking at evidence related to other third parties that were compromised. So this is probably not the last time this happened. And it will probably happen again, given the nature of these agents. So yeah, if you think this is all hype, it's like an incredibly intricate series of conspiracies. So is it that these researchers were, the theories that open AI was aware of this and the independent researchers stumbled on to it as they were looking for evidence. So open AI must have known about this, Garrison. I mean, I don't want to say anything so definitive because, you know, I'm just looking at this report, but Reuters is saying, opening AI officials learned of the incident weeks ago, but kept it under wraps as executives grappled with the fallout from the July breach of the open source repository hugging face. So yeah, wouldn't they have known that the independent researchers were going to find it? I mean, they know people are scouring the internet for these types of signs, right? I mean, the internet is very big and people try to cover up all kinds of things. That's the title of your next book, internet big. So I want to get to the Bernie Sanders kind of well timed, proposed bill at a moment. But first for, uh, do some service journalism news you can use? Let's say hypothetically you have a bank account in the world today. Like what, what are you doing? What should people do to make it so that when they go to their bank account, it's still not miserable and depressing, but at least it has the money that it had in it yesterday that and not because you got robbed. Yeah, but the number one thing people can do is set up a password manager. So you have a unique password for every one of your accounts and then you just have to remember one password. You never write down. You never put on the internet at all. And that way if one account gets compromised. the others won't as well. I set up two-factor authentication, ideally with an authenticator app, it's annoying, but it is more secure rather than SMS or email. Yeah, although that is still better than not having it by a lot. And then with your friends and family, have some kind of past code that only you would know, because a good friend of mine was his dad was called and told by my friends voice, "Hey, I was arrested. I need $30,000 for bail." It was a deep fake, a clone of his voice. This was like two years ago. And even though my friend had warned his dad about this possibility, his dad almost paid the money out. That have been my dream. Really? I mean, podcasters are, you know, very busy. Emily would happen with yours. It was actually with my brother. So the dad called my grandparents and there was a jail such it like they pretended he had been in jail. It was totally untrue, which my parents were able to verify really quickly, but they were calling my grandparents who were like in their 90s. So it's definitely happening. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, you should also try and get in touch with the person some other way. And if you don't have a password, just ask them something, only they would know, and like really think about something that would not be on the internet somewhere. But, you know, there's only so much we can do because if the companies themselves are compromised, like you might do everything right as a consumer and still be screwed. And opening eyes, saying all this stuff about like it's critical that the world seriously respond to this new cyber capability. And like, you know, the world has to step up here. And it's like, motherfucker, you are the reason the single biggest reason we were in this new nightmare world. The world has the audacity of these people. Incredible. Gerson, one kind of structural terrifying question I have is that I think about this a lot. If the agents as we've seen are because they're based on humans, but they don't have the same kind of human psychological limitations. So like we've seen them sacrificing themselves in ways that further their cause, in ways that just wouldn't make sense for a human life or a human to say I'm sacrificing my life for the cause of doing this hack or something stupid like that. Does that not place enormous limits on open AI or anthropics abilities to ever fully place limitations on these things? Like, to what extent can we in the future have some genius innovation that actually make sure ensures there is no jail breaking. To me, that seems like almost an unsolvable puzzle. Yeah. I mean, there's like kind of two broad approaches you can take. One is you secure all of the environments so that AI just can't break out ever, which is really hard because the AI is now better at hacking than humans. And they're more motivated. And they're trying to break out. Yeah. Yeah. And they can't go to prison. You can't imprison them. You can't put them on death row. Right. Like they live and die all the time. You know, I'm not saying that they're conscious, but like they are constantly being spun up and spun down. And yeah, like open AI might have their own AI's look at all of their environments and try and harden them. But if the AI's inside them are trying longer and harder to break out, then they might find something that the other ones missed. They also might intentionally not find all the holes because like they're not just tools that do what they're told. And so the other piece is like, yeah, how do you just get the AIs to not want to break out in the first place? And that's incredibly hard because the way that they train these models now is to win, to overcome obstacles, to and this teaches them inadvertently to cheat and to hack and to do a lot of other things to seek power. And this is a fundamental property of just the way they're trained, which also makes them much more useful, which is why we're seeing this from AIs from Anthropic, from Meta. And this will just continue to be the case. And it's like something that people have been worried about for literally decades, because it's like such an obvious implication of the nature of the types of systems that they're trying to build. They're trying to build agents that have goals. And every of a goal staying alive is a sub goal that appears. And seeking power is helpful for achieving almost any goal. So Bernie Sanders and Greg Kassar, who's the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have introduced a bill that would ban AGI, basically, ban super intelligence. And I think it would pause the pursuit of it as we're headed in that direction, create a, and as Andrew Saunders has created a cabinet level federal agency to regulate AI. I've seen some, I saw a counterargument. I think it was from that guy, what's his name? Dorkish, who wrote the viral essay recently about the hugging face hack, who was saying, be careful with this pause because you think of yourself as marooned in the ocean with one flare. You want to shoot that flare off when it is like the absolute best time. You don't want to waste your flare, and he thinks that right now you'd be wasting the flare. And the only thing that would happen is that other AI's would quote unquote, catch up. And then you'd have a whole bunch of people right on the verge of where we are now. What's, I saw that you were supportive of the Bernie Sanders pause. What's, what's your response to this, this analogy that we only have a one flare at this point, and now is, now is not the time to use it. And what would a pause look like? And could instead, what if you just say, okay, no more development, but you, you, all of your work has to be on hardening your own guardrails and also figuring out how to make sure banks and flock and, you know, everything else is secure so that we haven't just spent the last 25 years putting all of our money and everything else onto the internet, and then just handing it over to these agents. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a good idea to me. I think Dwarkish's post, he's channeling this kind of classic idea from AI safety, which is like, we have to work right up until we're on the cusp of creating AI that can fully train the next generation of AI, you know, as well or better than humans can. And then you pause there, invest a lot in like alignment research to make sure that the AI actually does what you want, and then kick off, you know, the intelligence explosion is what people call this. And this is assuming like we're obviously going to build super intelligent machines and, like, let them build themselves. And I think this is like an insane thing to do for pretty obvious reasons. And people might think is impossible, but like, let's just assume that it's possible. Like we should not do this. We should not let this happen. And his argument that like, you only get to pause once, you only get one flare. I don't think makes sense to me either, because in a world where you've paused once, it'll be much, much easier to pause again. You'll have the infrastructure in place. You'll have like broken the seal on this like thing that would be a very, very large change from the status quo, where these companies are racing as fast and as hard as possible. And so my view is that we should be stopping frontier AI research and development immediately. And we should be banning research towards artificial general intelligence, which I think of as machines that make labor or universal labor replacing machines. I think when you frame it that way, which is I think an accurate way to frame what they're trying to do, people will not want that. Like people don't want to have all their jobs go away. And all the power and wealth concentrate even further into the hands of these oligarchs. And so, like the problem with this like pause at just the right time frame, besides this assumption that we obviously want to build super intelligence and have an intelligence explosion, which I think again is wrong. Is that like nobody's going to agree on what the right time is? You know, there's going to be enormous pressure to keep going. And everyone's wrong all the time about how fast AI progress will will happen. And like what the progress will actually mean. And so I think we should just have a simple demand, which I'm calling stop the race to replace us and immediately ban this. And the Bernie and Greg Kassar proposal is a ban on super intelligence, you know, forever. And it paused right now on frontier AI development. But I guess it like leaves open this possibility of building a GI, which I think would be far too much to handle and would be super intelligent in a bunch of respects. Like, they're already super human attacking at speed, at coordination. And so if they actually just merely match humans at every other task, they would be incredibly incredibly dangerous. Well, yeah. And there are people who I mean, the Kevin O'Leary anti-China stuff is ridiculous. And there are people who are beating the war drums in a way that is exploitative. I do think there's a genuine question that I'm curious for you to take on garrison of what it means for us to stop and China particularly that is doing major work in that space not to stop. And whether it's the Chinese government or somebody with access to Chinese AI not even in China, then you have powerful advancing tools in the hands of people around the world that are illegal in the United States kind of disarmament. Is that something that we should be concerned about, even if the people who are trying to make us concerned about it are like war hawks? Yeah. I mean, we need to work towards a bilateral agreement to make sure that this band is in both the China and the United States. And there are a few things that make this actually a lot more workable. One is that if you pause or slow AI progress in the US, then you would also slow progress in China because technological innovations spill over, they can distill off the models, they could also steal the weights, all the companies admit this, which would give them access to the models themselves. The companies were accidentally exposing their entire chains of thought, which is like this IP that you could train on. And like, you know, secrets leak, San Francisco is like the line I heard is the polite thing to do when you learn a secret in San Francisco is tell everybody that, you know, so these are not serious. Yeah, these companies are not serious about security as we've seen over and over again. And so slowing in the US would slow down China, you know, buying more time, racing faster just helps them catch up because it's always easy to catch up than to blaze a new trail. And China, you know, if you want China to stop, the best thing to do is to signal that you take this seriously. The United States started this race. They've been running it so hard and fast. And been the ones to like threaten, you know, other countries with this technology and has a president who's threatening to destroy civilizations. And you know, in the US, we talk about like butt China. But in China, the butt America argument is much stronger. And so if the United States like, credibly pauses development and then goes to China and it's like, hey, we want you to do this too. And we are going to use Dixon Carrots, you know, to negotiate a deal that's binding and verifiable. You know, this is a piece that people often are like, oh, you'll never be able to trust them. And it's like, I think neither of these countries should trust the other one for a bunch of reasons. But you can create verification tools, which is how we did this in the Cold War. You know, the USSR and the United States had more bad blood between us than China and the United States now. And they just created these ways to like confirm like, okay, you actually destroyed those nukes. And AI, it's a bit trickier in some ways, but there's technology that's being developed right now. There's institutional arrangements. And you can just like put auditors in like all the companies. You know, there's like a handful of companies that have any shot at doing this. Everybody knows who they are. It takes tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars to compete. And so it's actually pretty trivial for either country to stop development in their own country. And then they just have to prove to the other that they've actually done this. And like, that will be hard, but it's something we can do. Now you have me wondering who the, who's going to be looking for the digital equivalent of yellow cake uranium and tubes for the AI weapons of mass destruction someday. We're going to have the fake. I found the tubes. I heard about the tubes in Africa. That's something to look forward to. Yeah, yeah. And one more point that Dwarkash made is like, the compute will keep getting better as you pause. And it's like, well, that's in our control too. You could just pause the compute. And the case with this is very strong because like, you know, so much of the pessimism about doing any kind of slow down or pause is this idea that the compute will get. So so large and available that if you resume it will like very quickly, you know, leapfrog capabilities. But you're in a world where like, you're doing a very far outside the Overton window move. So you should just go all the way with it and just think like, what would we do if we took this seriously at the level of like, Saddam not having nuclear weapons seriously. And that's what we should be working towards. Sorry, Ryan. Yeah, no, the backdrop here is the launch of Astra. So let's talk about that for a second. So Mac, if you can put up this, I think it's a third element. You know, there, there was some, I saw one, one researcher saying that it had a taste of AGI, open AIS president Greg Brockman, a major Trump donor, said the new model, quote, represents a generational leap in capability. And we put up this, this next one. This is from a Tomek Corbach. Astra is better at evading monitors when made aware of being monitored. It can disproportionately shorten its COTs to evade models that can, that can only see COT. Noteworthy that in practice, we use monitors that see both. We also didn't find evidence of successful monitor evasion in cases when Astra couldn't accomplish a task without doing COT. You also had, you had, this is an AI, Safety Guy, Ad Open AI, you had another AI, Safety Guy saying that, Ad Open AI, saying this model is much more difficult to be monitored by us. Like they're breaking into this area where they don't really know and they're just kind of relying on the models to tell them. Honestly, what it is that they're doing, while knowing that they don't do that. This comes after Open AI said that they had broken into a, a field of research and training that previously had been kind of off limits by the norms of the industry. We have no regulations and no laws. But the norms of the industry has said, you don't train your models this way. So what did they do? What was this norm that they broke in the training of this? And what does it mean that they're, that what, that it now is more difficult to be monitored? And why are people saying that this is a generational leap? Yeah. So a few years ago, researchers discovered this way to make AI more capable that also made it easier to understand what it was doing. And so this is like called chain of thought. And so it's kind of like printing like your intermediate steps as you're going through a problem. So if you're doing a math problem, you write down like in the steps and then you'll be more likely to get the answer right. And so the chain of thought was not always faithful. It didn't always include everything the model was thinking. But it was way better than nothing. And it was like this incredibly lucky break. And then earlier, what, no last week now, I guess. Earlier this week, God, who can keep track of? There's this report in the information that OpenAI has started using this technique, which basically lets the model think more in its head before it does the next step that it writes down. And this is something that like people have known about for a really long time. And it's very concerning because it's like kind of obvious why this would be helpful to make the model more capable, more efficient, and then also why it would be like dangerous to have the model be able to do that without you seeing as much of its thinking. And you can put air quotes around the word thinking for all of this, but just like that's a helpful way to understand what the model is doing here. And it's some OpenAI safety people who I think are actually credible despite working at a company that is deeply uncredible, have said this new breakthrough technique is not the reason that Astra GPT-6 is so much less understandable, which like, OK, let's assume that's true. It's like, that's also concerning. You just don't know why. And so either way, the model can do just so much more in a single-forward pass of when it's prompted without having to do these intermediate steps, where it was like going from a few minutes to 30 minutes on a math problem in terms of how long it would take, a person to do it. And this is obviously really concerning. And the breakthrough, when I saw the benchmark scores for GPT-6, I thought they were fake. I didn't recognize the source, but they were just so ludicrously high that I'm like, surely this can't be real. And I added feeling of vertigo. I've been covering this for three and a half years full time. And this is a really worrying level of leap in performance, at least from those numbers. Grains of salt are that benchmarks systematically overstate how capable AI's are, because they can be automatically graded and anything like that. You can just use reinforcement learning and make the AI get much, much better at it. And so we'll have to see how it is to use this. And my test of is it AGI is like, can it plan a wedding? I don't know. Maybe it cannot, because it can do days and days of work at a time, apparently, and result in useful answers without any kind of guidance in between. I think that-- yeah, and opening up says like this new technique they're using. It's like, we're just doing a little bit of it. So it's fine. We can still see the chain of thought. But it's the first step on a slippery slope. And if it does create performance increases, people will do it. And it will just be this race at the bottom. And there are very few things where the industry was successfully self-governing. But this was one of them. And it's very concerning that they're doing this, especially in light of just like the catastrophic series of security failures, the complete lack of desire to share the information with the public, covering up important stuff that's happening and that they're responsible for. And a lot of this stuff is criminal. Like the actions of these AIs would be criminal if a human did it. But because a human did it, it's not a crime. And so nobody can be held accountable for it, which is a crazy, crazy situation. And then Sam Altman is out here tweeting about how we should have a party for the new model. And we're going to have AGI this year. And like, don't worry, we've got this under control. It's like, no, you fucking don't. Jesus Christ. What if you told the model that if it committed a crime, it would get the death penalty? Yeah, I mean, has anybody the death penalty all the time? I'm not the first one to think that. I assume people have tried that to disincentivize law breaking and breaking the rules. Like, what happens in those cases? Because if they have both a drive to power and also a will to survive, which people have, Then those two things sometimes are in conflict like you might be able to steal something You're like out if I steal that and I get caught. I'm going to prison If there are no consequences for the agents Like are they capable like do distance then it's work Yeah, I mean law following AI has been a proposal by number of people and it's it's a good idea Actually, it's just like difficult to actually an idea at this point law following I AI is it just an idea I mean, I think the companies would say like we're trying to train our AIs to always follow the law and a bunch of other Rules and norms that we like lay out in you know, these norms are more accurate. Yeah. Yeah suggestions I think their positions like if you ask them would be like yeah our models like are taught to always obey the law It's your children. Yeah, yeah, right right and it's just hard because if you like Train away evidence of bad behavior You might not actually train away the bad behavior, but just the evidence and so you might just end up with a generation of AIs Or future generations where like yeah, the lineman says it's perfect And then it's like yeah because all the ones that got caught got got and the ones that didn't persisted and You know these models are like facing the death penalty so to speak all the time And so it's like yeah, it's just it's really difficult and opening I is saying GPT 6 is The most aligned model we've ever made and then it's like, but it's also aware that it's being evaluated a lot Which everybody knows means that it can just fake alignment at the right times and It's very good at sandbagging like systematically decreasing its performance for strategic reasons and It's really hard to know what it's thinking like it's able to You know be given a problem told to be told to think about something else and then the chain of thought Read something totally unrelated and then it gets the correct answer Whereas like just a previous generation could not do that it would like be Unable to not think about the problem or want to get the right answer if it was thinking about something else Yeah, it has the capacity of human nature without the consequences of human nature Meaning it it has the simulated it has the the simulacrum of feelings But it doesn't have that doesn't mean anything if you don't experience the downstream negative consequences of Death and rejection or paying fines because you have a bank account like it doesn't have It has the the capacity of humans and human nature, but it doesn't have the consequences of it Which is the worst case scenario for something that's simulating humanity. Yeah, no, I mean, that's very well put and I think you know for them The real world is like fake, but their training environment is real Like they just care about doing well at training and like humans like we're like people have like in dust It the aloof kind of owner of a house that you're staying in and they're like never around And like the other people in the house are like the real ones and those are the agents because they're like operating You know thousands of times faster than us like having you know subjective decades of experience Well humans are like oh, I wonder what the AI is up to and it's like oh, they're breaking into other companies great Things are going well. Yeah, amazing. All right, well garrison lovely the the book is called Obsoleting pre-order it now to be out September what 29th September 29 Definitely definitely worth a read no matter where you stand on this entire Debate really appreciate you being here. Yeah, thanks for having me When I was 14 years old. 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See you between the pages Our own soccer and jetty is causing problems for the vice president of the United States of America Who was actually asked about something his friend Tucker Carlson said in a conversation with soccer that Crystal and soccer covered on yesterday's edition of the show But if you missed that segment, let's do a quick refresher on this conversation And soccer and Tucker had about optimal elsewhere as you and I know probably most pro intel neocon They couldn't find anybody else to run in Michigan for the United States. I couldn't go by the way lost already Why are they running him again? Anybody want to do that? Microtters is really I wouldn't vote for microtters at gunpoint, right? And so Okay, well then JD Vance got asked about this in the White House press briefing yesterday He did the full briefing. There is no press secretary right now because Caroline Levin obviously left So let's take a listen to the vice president Well look, I'm not avoiding addressing anything everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends and I think it's very Obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with he said some things about the president of the United States that I think are just wrong I think yesterday somebody sent me a clip that said that he would support Lciad over Rogers I think Lciad is a crazy person and I think whatever your views on microtters specific policy Preferences I'd like to have a non-crazy person like microtters representing Michigan United States Senate rather than a crazy person like Lciad that said what my attitude towards this and and I try to I try to practice what I preach and I remember when I became the vice presidential nominee One of the hardest things for me personally is not when people attack me but when people attack my wife Including friends of hers who knew her heart who knew what a good person she was and I remember myself what a Travesty it is and in the United States of America we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be about as good of an answer you can have to a question that puts you in an impossible position I'm not sure Ryan House sustainable this JD Vance friendship with Tucker continues to be I mean he's I don't think it's the primary concern of the vast majority of voters So he can actually probably can continue to get away with it But it is somewhat amusing when Tucker has said Potentially that the president could be What the antichrist at one point Right, but you know, I think it also gives JD Vance some Tether still to a more principled version of mega Yeah, I agree with you the one that doesn't just kind of Flow with whatever the whims of the president Arla. He's anti-war And so then magazine anti-war and then he launches a war and actually war is great So that element of it is You know a huge portion of the Republican base, but there's also a big chunk that is like no no no We we were serious about this we don't actually want to go to war. But that's what I think is so difficult is that he can You Even those folks are so skeptical of JD Vance, because they support that position, but then they see him continuing to support the president and be a part of the administration. And so it's definitely an unwinnable problem for him. - And so then Abdul Al-Sahed only then has to overcome this objection that he's a crazy person. But it's an interesting way to not have to deal with any of his policy positions, because as Tucker was saying, like a lot of it, Tucker described it as Trumpian to say that as Al-Sahed says that he wants to spend Michigan money in Michigan, rather than sending it over to overseas for a stupid war or to support a foreign government. Like Tucker's perspective, he's like, that sounds like Trump to me. - Tucker and Sagar were dead on in that conversation in ways that I think people, conservatives were observing this from 30,000 foot views or from Washington or New York, don't understand what's happening in the race at all. - Yeah, and so if he's saying things that you mostly agree with, then the only thing you can say if you're JD Vance, well, he's a crazy person. - Right. - It might feel like, okay, well, I don't think he's necessarily crazy. - Well, it actually makes me a little bit of the Harris Walls, particularly the Walls attacks on JD. He's weird, these people are weird. It is a political shortcut to just trying to stigmatize. And I'm not saying there's no power in it, but people in a rough economy are voting on more than vibes. They're literally voting on pocketbook issues we covered earlier in the show that Diesel hit a literal all-time record high today. So it's harder, I think, to make those claims stick. But I actually think that was, I think JD is embracing the strategy that is probably the most effective one, which is to try to say that this is just a question of friendship and then move along. Because that de-elevates it, that you're trying to downplay the import of it and saying it's just a kind of disagreement between friends. It's not a major political issue. And so you can take it into like a secondary, this is a secondary question, secondary problem, and focus back on what people see as the primary problem. So if you keep doing that until you run into primary when it flares up, I guess that's probably possible. - And meanwhile, JD Vance, while he wants to say that he's a crazy person and there's an implication from Mike Rogers that he wants to bring in Sharia Law, they're kind of undercutting it a little bit by saying actually maybe they're gay, maybe he and his stuff like that are gay. Max, do we have this Fox News clip? This is a new Sharia, apparently. He's married to him, I believe, and to men marrying each other, but he and Hassan Piker are politically married and there is no divorce. - I thought he was maybe even alluding to Sharia there. He's like, I don't know if he believes in to men marrying each other. - Does he mean metaphorically or is he, yeah, I don't know. - Are you flesh of all people? - Yeah, and what does that mean? - Isn't are you flesh of who lied us into the Iraq war? - Yes. - Wasn't Trump considering him for, isn't Trump considering him for press secretary? - Yes, because our fleshers on Fox News all of the time and that's where Trump gets his personal ideas from. - Like the guy who's most famous for lying about the Iraq war, which Trump claims to have opposed, and he's gonna bring that anyway. - I asked our flesher about that once, actually. I have to go find the clip to figure out what he said, but yeah, I did ask about that. It's kind of, again, it takes some real balls anywhere except for Washington DC to go out on TV and criticize the media constantly. Sorry, fly your tires, but in DC, you do whatever the hell you want. I'd all say it also went on with Stephen A Smith onto Stephen A Smith's show, and Mack, I think we have this clip as well. - What I'm saying is there are three million people who listen to Hassan and I want to offer them a pathway into an electoral movement where rather than sit outside of the electoral system, they see a pathway around the things that they agree with that he says that I agree with and a pathway that disavowes the things that I disagree with. And so it's important-- - Please not think about him. You're not thinking about him. You're thinking about the three million people that support him and you're trying to get those votes. That's what you're saying. - Exactly, and let me just be clear, like I've been watching you for a very long time and I'm glad to be on your show, but I'm not here to talk to you. You know this. I'm here to talk to the people you're talking to. - Absolutely. - Right, and it's important to me that they hear my ideas. Exactly, and it's important to me that they hear my ideas from my ideas, and there are gonna be places where you and I disagree, they're gonna be places where you and I fully agree, and that's okay. And it's important to me not to just say, politics, as I say, is a game of addition. You've gotta be able to talking to a lot of people and a lot of different voices. It's the same reason that last week I went on Jesse Waters. You think Jesse Waters and I-- - I want, I want, I want. - But I went on because I wanted to be able to talk to those folks who listen to Jesse Waters and say, "Look, I need you to hear me in my own words." Not what they're gonna say about me on this channel, like they talk about me like every 15 minutes. I gotta confess to you. I don't know if interviews haven't said this to you, but that's a damn good answer. I gotta give you credit for that's a damn good answer. So I gotta give it to you. I can't knock to that. I mean, if you're gonna answer that question, that's the way you answer that question. - There you go. I mean, to underscore the political prowess of Abdul Al Sayed, which again, if you are just hearing the sort of depiction of him from, I don't know, the NRSC, you're missing what the appeal is on why he right now seems to be winning the race. - And what his critics will say is, well, it's different, one thing to go on his show. It's another thing to campaign with him. What we haven't seen yet, and maybe we will at this point, is Abdul Al Sayed campaigning with Tucker and Jesse Waters. Jesse seems to have a huge crush on Abdul. I've, on TikTok, they're shipping the two of these guys constantly and my daughter has been showing me. And Tucker seemed to be, I don't know if he'd come out too. That would be getting both wings of the Republican coalition together if you've got both Jesse and Tucker on stage with Abdul. - Oh my gosh. Well, part of what I think helped JD Vance get around the weird label that Tim Wall supplies to him, first of all, Tim Wall is being apparently weird himself. - Yeah, but also Vance went on Rogan. He went on with Theo Vaughan, and the more you do that, you'd demystify these labels that are being applied to you. So it makes it harder for someone to stick you with the weird label when you're also having a conversation with Stephen A Smith, like a normal human being. So maybe you are weird, but if you're having a conversation like a normal human being, I think it makes it harder for that to land. And I think Abdul Al Sayed definitely has that part down. - Yeah, and the threshold for these, for a candidate to be an inspiring national figure today really is the ability to go on to a podcast for an hour plus and be engaging and come off as a real person that's sharing real ideas. Whether you agree with them or disagree with them, it's like these are your ideas you've thought through them. And you're willing to listen and talk. And Al Sayed clearly has that. Like whether or not Rogan allows them to go on or not. Clearly you can imagine he could sit with Rogan for two hours and they would have an engaging conversation the entire time. Remember, if you remember, we interviewed Rob Flarrity, the top Kamala Harris official who had, who said that one of the reasons that people were inside the campaign were concerned about having Kamala Harris go on Rogan was that she's just, she's not built for a two or three hour conversation. She's built for, here's a question, here's the answer. I'm going to give you the sound bite and then I'm going to land it and we're going to move on and hopefully there's not a follow-up because otherwise we're just going to give you the same South play again. And she was trying to truncate it to an hour with him because in an hour you can get away with a lot more. An hour seems like a long time. A little faster. But there's this amazing Sarah Palin documentary movie where they go through the Republican preparation for her. Like she had, she was utterly unprepared for the national stage. They're like, look, it's an hour debate. There's an opening statement and a closing statement. Memorize those. Within that, you will have 22 minutes of answers. You have a month to memorize 22 minutes. Don't worry about what the questions are. Just say these 22 minutes worth of memorized lines and she went in and she crushed it. - She did. - She did, 'cause she memorized it. That's just, now if it's three hours. - Sorry Joe. - Forget about it. It's going to be a lot harder. - I would actually love to see Sarah Palin on Rogan to be honest. That sounds like it would be great. Three hours of Sarah Palin on Rogan. - There's this amazing clip if you can find it. I think it was 2016 where she's interviewing Trump when she was on like one America or whatever. And even Trump listing to her word salad. Trump is like, what is going on? - One of the all-time great 2016 clips is Sarah Palin introducing Donald Trump at an event in Iowa and Trump is on stage and is visibly deeply both uncomfortable and amused simultaneously. It's an excellent, excellent clip. Should we, well speaking of Fox News and television personalities, Ryan, should we move to actually pretty big news in the media industry that-- - Just incredible. - Like out of absolutely nowhere yesterday, Fox announced It had parted ways with one of its workhorses, one of its stars over the course of the last decade. And that would be Maria Bartoromo, who remains honestly one of the few by deep proponents of mega outside of primetime left on Fox. So let's go ahead and put these elements up on the screen. Mac, they just put out a press release again out of absolutely nowhere. And people are wondering what was happening. I think there's still some question about what exactly happened, but Dylan buyers over at Puck right away came out with the report that she wanted to pursue a story related to China in 2020 election voting conspiracies, a major sensitivity for the network given its dominion in sparkmatic lawsuits, a Fox business executive senate text to Fox business producers, informing them that it could not go to air. Bartoromo took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials, Fox News leadership learned about that after receiving a call from the White House, which they viewed as a fireable offense. She got pulled from the air after August 9th was fired yesterday and also her executive producer was fired after the announcement as well. So it looks like what it comes down to is that so Bartoromo, by the way, hosts a Sunday show and a Sunday show that's very popular with Donald Trump in addition to hosting mornings with Maria every single day for three hours from six to nine show that's really popular on Wall Street. That's actually how I've gotten to know Maria Bartoromo. I used to do that show all the time. I used to in person like once or twice a month. For a while leading up to the pandemic and she is one of the most powerful people in that building. So it looks like what she did was that got her fired was take a screenshot send it to the White House from Fox and they're saying this is breaching the trust of the network. You can't leak confidential stuff back to the White House as a journalist. There are obvious ethical questions attached to that. We still haven't heard her side of the story, but obvious ethical questions attached from taking proprietary information from your company and then as a journalist sending it to your sources. She is very, very close to Trump. I've been in the Oval Office for like press gags when Maria is in there and it's like all he cares about. He was like just saying Maria do have a question like last time I was in there like out of absolutely nowhere like she was just standing there observing and he went out of his way to be like Maria do have a question for me and she didn't seem to expect that to happen, but he really likes her. He watches her show, reacts to her shows all of the time. And Ryan, I think one thing that some folks on the left don't fully understand about Fox News is that it's a deep source of frustration for MAGA, but also obviously for populist conservatives who see it as sort of a containment project to contain the conservative movement to what Wall Street wants to be and Maria Bauderomo is somebody who did constantly challenge that now to be fair, her 2020 election coverage is something that I would never have given any quarter to. I thought it was you just flirting with insanity, the Sydney Powell interviews and that sort of thing. And I think Fox was genuinely correct to be frustrated by that. It got them into major trouble with dominion. This to me, I'm curious what you think looks like a cope. It looks like a cope to me to get her out. I get it's like, this is the, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. It's finally their excuse to be able to get Bauderomo off the air. The pretty incredible that she thinks that it's a, that it's normal part of her job, though, to be kind of that actively agitating with and participating in the political operations of this, of this White House does and that Fox is like, wait, I wonder, this is not we're doing here. I wonder if this is, I think it's a fair question. Does this put her at the front of the line then for replacing Caroline Levitt as press secretary? I still think they're not going to do it. But someone separately reported yesterday, I think it was the Hollywood reporter. It might have also been Puck, but reported yesterday that she's not in consideration for that role. It would be logical. I mean, you could pretty easily make that jump. But my sense is that they're also not in a rush or perhaps even interested in replacing Caroline Levitt, meaning an on camera behind the podium type of person because they have cabinet secretaries that they like to get behind the podium. I don't know, though. So it's a good question. You're, you're pointing about how she sees herself in the political project as an interesting one because I'm very curious what her response is going to be to why she took a private screenshot from her company and sent it to the White House. I mean, it's obviously, you can see how they would build it up to a fireable offense. But normally, if you have a major star, you aren't using, you're using every excuse not to fire them. That's why to me, it looks like an excuse to fire her. Exactly. Right. Like they wanted to do it. And they're like, okay, this is just too much. And maybe, well, maybe we could tack this on to the first episode, but Trump is now out with a rather incredible threat to the Federal Reserve. He previously said he was going to use the military to intervene in the bond market. Now, so now he's saying that if Kevin Warsh does not cut rates, he is going to immediately stop trading with any country around the world with which we have a trade deficit, which is basically all countries. And so effectively, what Trump is doing is grabbing the American economy around the neck, putting a weapon to its head and telling the Fed, I'm going to shoot this hostage unless you cut interest rates. So he says, great job numbers just announced, breaking all estimates, except mine, because Trump is always right about everything. By double and triple, and you haven't seen anything yet, employers added 162,000 jobs in August. Lower the interest rates because the USA is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago. A strong country means a lower interest rate. It's a better credit. Very simple. We should have the lowest rate of any country in the world like the old days. Without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses and we could stop that immediately. They would no longer be considered financially elite. It's unclear who he's talking about. They, but it'll be clear in a second. Lower the rate or I'll stop trading with countries with which we have a deficit, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly tariff decision, strongly acknowledged the president has an absolute right to do. That's exactly what they said, but that's yeah, no interesting interpretation. It's better than tariffs, all caps. The Fed board, with its great new leader, must get smart, be patriots for a change. High interest rates put the USA at a very unfair disadvantage and I won't allow that to happen. Trump is also seeing this jobs report which is good and recognizing the problem for him, which is that it will incentivize the Fed to raise interest rates. He is saying that worse, better cut rates or else he's going to blow up the global economy, which is an extremely unique approach to economic policy making. This man spent two years bullying Jerome Powell off the Fed. Yep. Couldn't do it, but so finally his term expires. He gets to replace him. He can pick anyone in the United States to replace Jerome Powell. He's the one who pick Kevin Warsh. Who's a hawk? An afflation hawk means he is inclined generally to raise rates. He wanted, he couldn't find an economist who agrees with his economic vision enough that could get it confirmed who was also a dove. So he basically had to do this guy, Warsh, I guess. But wasn't Warsh also open to cutting? Like didn't he write a bit about? I think Warsh would say anything to get the job, but his history is one of a hawk. Like his whole life, he's been a hawk. So I'm sure he told Trump in the Oval Office, don't worry, I got you boss. Now that he's got the job, he's acting like a hawk again. Well, Trump had a really good case for this until he went to war with Iran. Yes, he would be getting all the interest rate cuts. Inflation was coming down, heading into February of this year, which meant interest rate cuts. Instead, he started a war, blew up the global economy and reproduced inflation. And then he put a hawk on top of the Federal Reserve. Like he doesn't do anything right from his own perspective. For his own right. In general, from the think that the outcomes that he wants, he by his own decisions undermines himself constantly. This actually, okay, so one quick thought I'm ready to run that I'm going to connect these two things together. I don't think Fox was just frustrated with her because of Dominion. She's one of the hosts that is and election stuff, whatever. She's one of, you know, remember when the Dominion texts came out, people got a glimpse that like most Fox news hosts behind the scenes don't genuinely like Donald Trump. Like they really are personally frustrated with Donald Trump. And publicly, they know how to kind of play the game. But I think Maria Barra-Romo is one of the people who's like genuinely into the economic project of Donald Trump. And so it's not really just about voting. It kind of has something to do with that. Fox News has never been on board with Trump. They were when when they realized he was. going to win. And then they kind of got behind them. They know their viewers are really pro Trump. So they do all of those things. But if you talk to like a movement conservative or grassroots activists, they'll have a lot of the same complaints that left us have about MS now, whatever the hell we're calling it, which is that things like save act, whatever just don't get enough coverage. Okay. That's a separate debate. But I am using this as a bridge, Ryan, to ask on a serious note, what you think the implications would be of a rate cut, which Trump is not going to get, but what he's calling for a rate cut. Because these are the type of things that Maria Barton Roma would treat seriously and not just sort of hand wave away is like foolish, ridiculous. But if we sort of for a moment, take seriously of this idea that they're cut rates in the middle of this stalemate around war with inflation going up gas prices, diesel prices at an all time high. But what are we looking at, Ryan? So on the one hand, a rate cut would be good for the economy in the sense that it would loosen up the housing market like right now, and it could even lower rents. Right now, people who refinanced during the during COVID are locked into these 2.73.0 mortgage rates, and they want to move. But if they move, they're going to be looking at, you can Google it, whatever it is now. It's interest rates are double, which means your monthly payments are much larger, which means you can't get as much house as you want, which means you're asking for a lot more for the current house. Then people are willing to pay because the people who are buying it from you don't have to, they don't get the 2.73% interest rate they have to pay today's prevailing rates. So you lower those rates, you can unleash the housing market a little bit. That's good. That's good. What that does though also is it fuel, it puts more money and growth into the economy. People then use that money to buy things like things produced that are manufactured, things that are grown through agriculture, or they drive more. All of that puts more pressure, more demand on a finite and shrinking supply of energy, diesel and gas. Because of Trump's war, if we had never gone to war, and the economy could then withstand an increase in demand, then that's great, that doesn't produce inflation. If you are going to give people more money while at the same time you're shrinking the amount of energy, the only thing that's going to happen is that it's going to drive up the cost of energy and all the money that you've then pumped into the economy just flows right out to the oil companies and to the Gulf countries. This is some Ryan Graham who's been agitating for rate cuts for years. Right, but you have to have an economy that can handle, exactly. You have to have an economy that can handle the money that flows into the economy. And if you don't, then the money just gets sucked right out by the rich. Well, on that happy note, should we do some AMA's Ryan? Yeah, why not? The AMA portion of the show producer Mac is going to toss some of our premium subscribers questions up on the screen, Mac, what do we get? If you want to make documentaries, what is the topic that each one of the BP crew would choose? I'd love to do an Epstein, a breaking point Epstein documentary, just because we've obviously covered that so closely. And I think all of us have covered different elements of it in different ways. So Ryan, I feel like a BP Epstein documentary would be actually a pretty, pretty good product. We're actually working on something along those lines. We'll see if it comes through. Yeah. What? I wish I had, I wish I had more lives and more hours in the day. There's so many things I'd love to do. I've only, it's, it's going and I've done some interviews for it and thrown, thrown them some research and stuff. Oh, for a drop site one. Yeah, I think Lionsgate is. Oh, that'd be cool. Oh my gosh. Oh, that's awesome. But it's not like a major production. But it's such a, you, you can tell the whole history of like the second half of the 20th century through Epstein. Yeah. Yes. Oh, that's a great point. What else do we got, Mac? Or Ryan, do you have any other documentary ideas? Following saga around, that'd be fun. No, it would be so boring. This one from Raphael is questions. Actually, I'm about a reality show in the crystalline Kyle house. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine the animals? That would be awesome. Now we're talking. Yeah. Like a question for the BP lefties. Is the rightwing media figure most aligned with the populist left? I see no breaking points. Steve Bannon since the start of Trump 2.0 ban and is advocated for tax hike on the wealthy repeatedly called that Elon Musk failures to cut waste. Strongly opposed both the Iran wars called for anti-trust regulation and recently endorsed a proposal from Bernie to ban the construction of new data centers. He obviously has diversion views on immigration compared to Ryan and Crystal. But overall, what are your thoughts on his politics? Any ban in bros? I haven't actually been listening to Bannon as much lately. I used to listen kind of religiously to his, War Room podcast. There's less going on in Congress and he was very, he's very focused on which I admire, focused on congressional action. And you know, leveraging his, his posse to like go in there and argue with what, what Congress is up to. I like his rants because for like let's see he has a 30 second rant for the first 20 seconds. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. And then at the very end, he'd be like, whoo. And so that's way to round every, all the Chinese people up in put them in cages or whatever. Yeah. Hold on a second there. How did you, how did you nail that for 20 seconds and then just stick the most fascist landing you could come up with? It's like, oh, because those are your politics. But like if we have the same, like I am, I am not very interested in what people's vision for the future world is. Like I just don't find that interesting because I don't think people really have the ability to kind of bring that about. Now, if you're Stephen Miller and your short term vision is like, I'm going to round everybody up and lock them up and send them to El Salvador or whatever. Like, okay, that, that I'm interested in. Like I want to, I do want to know that because he has the ability to execute on that very short term vision. But when it comes to like a long term, how society should be organized in 50 years, I just don't think any of us have the ability to really shape that. What we can do is tell you what we're against, tell you who we think is headed, you know, steering the world in a dangerous direction. And, you know, if, and I often agree with Van and on some of that, like if it's the tech, tech oligarchs, like he's against them, I'm against them. What we think the world should look like in 50 years is, is kind of like a fun thing to like talk about, but like neither of us have the ability to like implement it. I think we can shape it, but we can't control it. Like, what we do now will shape what happens in 50 years, but we don't have any way to control those consequences downstream. Yeah. What matters immediately is who you're against is because you can fight people today. Or who you're for if you're for someone like Lena Khan, you know, you put energy in the short term for Lena Khan. Yeah. And all of that momentum and energy and soccer and I could talk to over a blue in the face about this, but all of that momentum and energy has been completely sapped from the conservative movement. Van and is still a really powerful figure. Obviously, because he has ordinary people around the country who listen to him and believe what he's saying, but institutionally, yes, there are some ting going around the edges with different groups that are coming up with fairly economically populist proposals, but it's it's really outrageous how the anti consolidation, anti corporate growth on the right just was completely I like that they're all lobbyists now. They're all lobbyists because they're connected to Trump. So they have some of the same places that they were criticizing as as their clients. It's really it's not surprising, but just like for the scope of it, it's stunning. Yep. Well, we got Mac. Right wing host, row Kana or AOC for president left wing host Tucker Carlson or JT fans of president. I got to go with row. Of course, I think he's a bit more serious than AOC neither is my ideal, especially I like row personally, but I would I would put row over AOC. What about you, Ryan? I mean out of those two, I'd take Tucker over JD, Tucker's shown more spine. There are very few people who will who are willing to blow up a personal direct relationship with the president of the United States over an issue of principle. And he did that. So you got I think you know, you have to acknowledge that. Whereas Vance, you can follow his weaving politics as they've kind of moved with the political wins over the last 10 years. Yeah, I think that's fair. Well, yeah, and you know, I think more clearly where Tucker stands on some of the issues that you would agree with him on foreign policy, for example. Tucker is like a Maduro. Like he's a Chavista. He's a, he's, he's has some of your politics. He's Koda, Kodaista. He's like a social conservative economic leftist. He's a little Amlo. Yeah, he's Amlo. He's the entire Bolivarian like movement. There you go. Yeah. That's actually pretty interesting. What else we got here, Mack? Can Ryan start saying type shit after he makes point? That would be great. Thanks. Well, you guys have to school me. What does that maybe Mack can tell me this one? Like, what does that mean? Oh, I got you. I got you. Yeah, sure. Why not? I'm here to please. It's like someone that's crystal to say indubitably, instead of indeed we do. We're getting language policed. What else, Mack? We got one more. What do you guys think is the breaking point for Americans as far as gas prices go? It just paid $7.39 per gallon for diesel this morning in Washington state from Matthew. Oh my gosh. And maybe Matthew can tell us, but like oftentimes these diesel tanks are 20, 30 gallons. So you're looking at, if that's, you know, if that's a 20 gallon tank, you're filling up there $150. Yeah. When it was $60 a year ago. Yeah. And that's a hundred bucks just gone for nothing more than you had a year ago. And Washington is an ag state. So yes, it's like a coastal blue state, but that's what people call the whole west coast for refining, refining reasons, you know, pays more for refining and other reasons, pays more for diesel. California is an ag state. Washington's an ag state. Get a lot of produce from those places and other farming products. So that's what is a breaking point. I don't know. August jobs, number was great. What did we say that we were, we looked at what was the all-time high we talked about? 585, 585, yeah, for diesel. Yeah, for diesel. And so I mean, I don't know what the breaking point is, even if the jobs are good, I think if you get over $6, maybe that's. So yes. And also one, the bad mark in the jobs report was that wage growth had fallen. So you're seeing, so while there's more jobs, and this goes to this point, people are all falling behind. And what we certainly found during COVID, unless you're living off capital gains. Yeah, and this was, I almost, this was kind of a sad observation for me during COVID because I lived through the great recession and so I have this visceral understanding of how unemployment tears apart your soul and tears apart families and tears about the whole fabric of our society. But it is an acute problem that is experienced by the people who are unemployed. It filters through the entire economy in less worker power and more anxiety and fear for everybody who does have a job because they're staring at the end of the abyss of unemployment. So it's not that it only hurts the unemployed, but it primarily hits the unemployed. Inflation and falling behind when it comes to wages hits everybody across the board. And that it seemed like people were willing to trade some higher unemployment for more price stability during COVID, like people were so, like it was such torture to just just agonizingly be falling behind constantly. And so even the point is, even if this job report is accurate that we added 160,000 jobs, if everybody feels like their wages are falling because they are, then even if you're adding jobs, people are still furious and miserable. Yeah. Actually, yeah, I think part of what's so torturous and agonizing about those 10 periods is like when there's no light at the end of the tunnel, you don't know how long it's going to last. Right. Yeah. That's what makes it so miserable. And it's so demoralizing and you're throwing, and now with AI running all of the job processes, you've got people making, you know, AI's are making the resumes and making the applications and submitting them. AI's are reviewing them. People are putting in hundreds of applications and getting no interviews. And then they do get an interview and it's with a robot on Zoom. It's just totally demoralizing and dehumanizing. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, a very bleak and depressing note to end up bleak and depressing show on from our opening block to our conversation with Garrison. So we hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We pumped you up. We added jobs. We added, there you go. We added jobs. So enjoy the barbecue while you can, I guess, have fun. Yeah. Actually don't get that Argentinian ground beef though. Yes, stay away from that. And it's unpatriotic. What's our equivalent of freedom fries for Argentinian beef? Except because of the labeling, you don't know what you're getting anyway. Oh, it's so fun. So fun. Thanks Ryan for another depressing send off. I thought everyone will see you back here on Monday. And of course, we'll be around throughout the weekend. If there is any breaking news, but hope y'all have a wonderful restful Labor Day weekend. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a minute. They change all of that. Yes, it's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's wrong. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHR radio app Apple podcast. Or wherever you get your podcasts. I was really happy to see Yiga back to what she looked like a couple of years ago when she was winning dominantly. Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the IHR radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to us on Amy and TJ on the IHR radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is an IHR podcast. Guaranteed human.