David French: Kansas Hopium

Hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark here. Before we get to David French, I said to get something off on my chest. Following an endorsement announcement last night, Haley Stevens-Fiancé, Jason Turkish, a Democratic mega-donor, has endorsed Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race, saying that he was putting country before party. And I have to tell you, this is in raging. There's some people, maybe some listeners who have said to me and I had some tweets about this who said, "Tim, shouldn't a never-trumper like you respect somebody that's putting country over party, somebody who's willing to go against the partisan wins, to speak to some higher moral and principle?" And I get to tell you, I would be the type of person that would be in favor of that. But that's not what is happening in the Michigan Senate race, okay? The idea that there is some ethic that would call on you to endorse Mike Rogers in the Senate race. Not to say that, "Oh, I'm going to write somebody in or I'm going to sit it out," which I wouldn't agree with, either. But like, to argue that somebody has to stand up to some sort of perceived anti-Semitism or perceived anti-bigotry in order to do that, you have to endorse Mike Rogers is clinically insane. Mike Rogers is running the most overtly-bigoted campaign that I have seen in this country since Donald Trump 2016. Mike Rogers is running an absolutely disgusting, bigoted campaign against Muslims. He is trying to tie Abdul al-Sahed to 9/11. He said, "Multiple Circuits say that Abdul al-Sahed is un-American, including the vice president," saying that even though he was born here and even though that he's a citizen, he isn't really American at all, that he's an invader. He had an endorsement called an invader. RFK yesterday on the campaign trail was talking about how Arabs are stupid. I mean, they are running a campaign against Abdul that is just rank, bigotry, and racism, okay? So to say that you're opposed to racism, so you have to endorse Mike Rogers is the most ludicrous thing that I've ever heard. And it isn't just the rhetoric of Mike Rogers campaign. I think this is really important. And I think it's really important when it comes to the question of anti-Semitism and accusations of anti-Semitism. It's like Donald Trump right now has a policy of putting people into internment camps based on their race nation of origin, okay? We took Venezuela's and because of their tattoos, we sent them to a foreign gulac. We took Haitians and we have put them into shackles and sent them back to certain death and despair and Haiti. We've taken an Iranian family and just because they're an Iranian family, put them into deadly detention center for over 200 days now. Like we literally have camps for people and people are being put there just like in the Japanese internment days based on their race and nation of origin. So that is the policy and you know what? Mike Rogers supports that. Mike Rogers supports camps for people based on their skin color, based on their tattoos, based on where they came from. He's running a overtly racist campaign against Abdul Al-Sahed. He's calling him an invader and not an American and stupid and an idiot and he's getting out the calipers and saying like because he's Arab they're stupid. I mean that's all part of Mike Rogers campaign. They have run a campaign smearing a friend of mine who is a donor to Abdul Al-Sahed calling him a terrorist, calling Abdul Al-Sahed a terrorist, a man who went through like unbelievable torture in Egypt and is also an American citizen of his own. It's come out the other side and is a great American. He endorsed Abdul Al-Sahed but because some relationship to a family member he's now saying that Abdul Al-Sahed is terrorist. So like that they've been making just disgusting, despicable ad hominem racist attacks this entire campaign. There's no even equipment. It's like impossible to even imagine. It would be like the Abdul Al-Sahed campaign didn't John Oswald go through this or whether his Republican opponent put out an ad on his that made his nose longer like some overtly anti-Semitic campaign like that. I'd do what have to do something like that to get even into the ballpark of the degree of racism that we've seen from the Rogers campaign. The argument that one would have to do this because they have concerns about anti-Semitism is insane. I have concerns about anti-Semitism. The answer for solving anti-Semitism is to not put a rubber stamp in for the Trump administration and administration that is running camps right now and that has had a vice president and a president who have circled the wagons around white nationalists within their own administration and who's biggest donor to their campaigns and the biggest donor to the midterms as a guy who spreads white nationalist vitriol on social media constantly. Like the idea that you're concerned about anti-Semitism so you have to get on board with the Trump musk vans Rogers ticket is ludicrous ludicrous okay on top of that let's talk about what this Senate seat means. This is not again for president. It's not a campaign for governor and executive. It's campaign to be one percent of 100 in the Senate and for the Democrats to get to 52 senators where you have a federal improved majority where they can block any Supreme Court justice the Donald Trump puts through they can block any nominee for the secretary of war they can block any other horrific nominations that Donald Trump does like this is an absolutely critical seat. And Mike Rogers we've seen will go along with that Donald Trump could replace you know Pete Higgseth with some other like grouper commentator and put them in charge of the defense department of Mike Rogers or rubber stamp it like we know that if we end up in another impeachment situation in 2029 let's say Donald Trump tries to stay in power like Mike Rogers will be on the side that's defending whatever Donald Trump does just this month we there was a leaked audio that showed that Mike Rogers was advancing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that there was some late night dump in Michigan that allowed the election to be stolen from Donald Trump. He's an election denialist and a conspiracy theorist and and if Donald Trump wants to stay in power at the end of his term I don't think that that's likely because it's possible yeah he tried it the first time if he tries it again Mike Rogers will be by his side if a Supreme Court seat opens up and Donald Trump tries to put in Eileen Cannon or whoever was about to say judge Janine Piro but judge box a Y and got got in trouble for not defending Trump and everything he wanted to do and they're reflecting people if Trump wants to put Alina Haaba or Eileen Cannon into the Supreme Court Mike Rogers will vote for that. Mike Rogers will support that person like the stakes here are unbelievably high and I'm going to have some disagreements with things that Abdul Al-Sahed wants to vote for. I was for Mallory McMorrow in that primary but like the gap between having a Donald Trump rubber stamp who's running an overtly racist and hateful campaign and you know having a Democrat that is too far to my left on some policy issues like is a gap as wide as the grandkin and could not be happier to endorse Abdul Al-Sahed over the human trash that is Mike Rogers. Finally, some people were like oh why are you mad at Hailey Stevens it's her husband and it's like guys this was organized okay I can just tell you that this was organized this was not an accident Hailey Stevens fiance has the right to vote for whoever he wants and the privacy is voting through the idea that you had put out a statement actively put out a statement to endorse the Republican in a race that your fiance ran in like was an attempt to influence this race on behalf of Michael Rogers that Hailey Stevens was clearly unbored for and she was doing an interview on Sunday where she couldn't even say Abdul's name and like I don't really care about why she's but her did I do a try hard enough to reach out to her now probably not I think that Abdul Al-Sahed could have run a better campaign surely but just as in 2024 where I was this agitated about the dearborn crowd that was not willing to go along with Kamala Harris because the stakes were so high I'm equally agitated right now about Hailey Stevens and Hillary Shelton and Jeremy Moss and and Mr. Hailey Stevens like deciding that they can't just suck up some disagreements like Alyssa Slokkin has and go along with Abdul Al-Sahed for the good of the country and to prevent just the trash that is Michael Rogers from getting in there and doing Donald Trump's bidding for the next two years and who the hell knows if JD Vance wins and four years he'll be doing JD Vance's bidding the next four years and by the way if you're concerned about anti-Semitism I think finding somebody that will be a check on JD Vance would probably be a good place to start so that's what we got right now obviously I'm a little hot under the collar the wise David French is going to be next and you know I didn't want to start screaming at him about this at the beginning of the podcast but if you're in Michigan and you like me we're a supporter of Mallory McMorrow or someone else in the primary I would strongly encourage him just vote for Abdul like that's just what we are right now and by the way one more thing that Sarah Long would say in another thing to be this but heard about this after you ran a primary campaign where there was 60 million dollars from a special interest group outside money trying to help you and to try to go after Abdul. It's like guys obviously they're going to be hard feelings after that. So like everyone has to buck up in this big tent of ours and do everything possible to help the candidates, even those that we have certain disagreements with who are willing to defend liberal democracy. And stop the excesses of this out of control Trump regime. All right up next David French. Y'all it's all about ABC with me okay you know it you gotta always be charging always be charging when I fall down on myself when I fail to follow my own ABC principle and I look at my phone and I see the yellow with the red I start to fill the shame and you don't want to you know you don't want to get down on yourself during the day. And so one thing that has prevented me from having to live with that shame is the power bank from our friends at Ridge. 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Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Daily I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted welcome back to the show opinion column that's for the New York Times is also a co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions it's David French how you doing David Tim you didn't even in my bio mention also devoted fan of the undefeated Memphis Grizzlies in the SEC leading Kentucky Wildcats. What are we doing here? I forgot I can't do Kentucky Wildcats talk because of that horrend that game is still triggering but shout out to the Grizzlies while we're doing quick sports at the top shout out to my guy Cam Kasky devoted Milwaukee Brewer's fan world series champion Brewer's long time coming for the brood crew he sat cam sat through a dinner with me recently in New Orleans where he was watching a regular season Brewers game on his phone all the rest of us were trying to talk so that's that's commitment that is commitment and it was great to see I mean I think it was the Milwaukee Braves who had last won a world series in the experience yeah yeah so I mean this has been a long time coming for Milwaukee. Shout out Milwaukee all right I got to go to the bucks finals as my friend was working for the owner at the time so that's a great city I was very well welcomed there all right I want to start with some conserving conservatism talk it's been a long time so we'll be able to do that is that okay yeah let's do it I read something in the national review I have a nice thing to say about the national review your former employer for the first time in a minute so it's not you know it's nice to be nice when you can John Purie wrote over there a kind of a cheeky column about a list of the alarming things Democrats might do if they retake power so somebody might click on it thinking okay well maybe this is a case for why you might want to vote for Republicans and hold your nose in the midterms you list the things that Democrats might do I'm just going to listen some list some of them it's a very lengthy list blowing out the national debt on a party line vote that bypasses the Senate filibuster openly circumventing Supreme Court decision through extra legal executive actions targeting political enemies with selective and pretextual prosecutions handing out taxpayer money to political allies seeking day taught with Putin cozying up to China reigniting a politics of identity and victimhood attempting to stay in power permanently by assaulting America's constitutional order has a series of links to what the Republicans are doing obviously what Trump has done the first two years I thought that was pretty telling yeah that that was the way that he framed it up over there no I thought it was it was so cleverly done because your first thing to think of is okay what's happening here is maybe it's not going to be a you know a pro-Trump piece but anti-anti-Trump in other words yeah you might be disgusted with some things Trump has done but just look at the menu of awfulness coming from the Democrats and then I looked at it I read through the first couple of things before clicking the links and I was like wait a minute I think I know I think I know these news items Tim I here's what I thought was really great about that piece is for a very long time I've had people out in the world tell me okay David I'm with you I don't like Trump you know and who knows if they're telling me the truth but you know they'll say I hear just here this all the time I don't like Trump I like him less and less all the time but but look if you're a conservative there's just one choice here like there's just if you have any hope for any conservative ideas at all and especially in the second term after sort of the purge of the you know Ryan Wing which is responsible for the the Trump tax cuts and Trump 1.0 but I've started to ask in turn ran and say what has been conservative about this Trump term please explain it to me what as a conservative am I supposed to be supporting here because always has been hold your nose on character because there are better policies but the policies have been just going down the toilet so you're holding your nose on character for the most socialist administration in modern American history for the most corrupt administration of my lifetime easily for an administration that is essentially completely abandoned any form of economic conservatism any form of meaningful social conservatism is switching sides with our enemies joining with our enemies are broad what is a conservative am I supposed to like about this administration well I can tell you what their answer is to that question because I visited the Charlie Kirk show yesterday I was invited to try Kirk show I'm Andrew Colvet I've known for a while and I'm a guy named Blake nath co-host the show and and we covered this and and the line you said about socialism was one that I leaned in on when I was over there I was like you guys want to make this about the Democrats being socialists it's like Donald Trump likes everything about socialists except the free health care you know which is maybe the rest of it like that's the only party done like like the rest of it he's on board for and kind of listed all that out and you know their answer to the question was like they really dig in on on immigration so I think that if you are an immigration restrictionist and that's your top issue you're obviously getting something out of this administration we can argue about how American the way that they're you know executing the immigration regime is or how conservative for that matter or how conservative you the other thing that they mentioned is you know the end of DEI and you know white guys get a chance again you know it's not it's finally an even playing field for white guys again and you know that was basically what they had to lay out for people if people want to suffer through the full half hour of me on the Charlie Kirk show I will put a link in the show notes you can kind of hear the back and forth but I don't know what what do you make of that? So on ending the I they did not end DEI they just swapped the beneficiaries if you look at sort of the way the Trump administration and MAGA is developing is really let's go back and think about for example the bow for inch situation you have in Texas a situation where Texas long before ending DEI was cool Texas had inded affirmative race based affirmative action on college campuses it had implemented a top 10 percent plan which is now more like a top six or five percent plan that was hailed you know what does that mean if you're in the top six percent of your class yeah I'm so sorry yeah if you're in the top five or six percent you automatically get admitted to you know, the flagship state of your high school. So that's good for like, if you if you go to a bad school, you know, if you go to if you're in a poor community, you still get access. Exactly. So this was a way, a very, I think, very sound way of increasing diversity and acknowledging the adversity that people have in tough schools without doing explicit sort of race-based affirmative action. It was a, it was a conservative innovation, Tim. And so it has worked really well in Texas, well, except for MAGA, because it hasn't actually had the effect that we learned that a lot of MAGA really wanted, which was in DEI, so that white people do our back on top again. The reality is there's an awful lot of Asian students who do really well in Texas. And this was the heart of the Beau French thing that, you know, from a few, a few weeks ago where there's just too many South Asians at the University of Texas Austin. And you realize, wait a minute, this DEI thing isn't about a meritocracy for a lot of these guys. What they're anti-DEI thing is what you said earlier, well, it's got to be white folks on top again, or something's wrong, and you see that, you know, with the reaction to, you know, that Beau French moment in Texas. Thankfully, some Republicans, often it was the same kinds of Republicans who always speak out, the ones not running for re-election. But a lot of Republicans shout out Karl Rove, said he was endorsing the Democrat. A lot of Republicans did condemn it. And then we're met with that furious MAGA backlash. And then would you ever look at this Trump administration, Tim, and say, at last meritocracy reigns? No, no. So they didn't really end DEI. They just sort of flipped around the beneficiary. Who gets the leg up? And then on immigration, I think it is a very, very valid argument to have about the level of restriction. How much should the border be closed? I tend to think it's a good thing that illegal immigration has now slowed to a trickle on the southern border. But how welcome should we be to legal immigrants? And I think we should be very welcoming to legal immigrants. And then how should we treat people in the country and have been productive in the country for many years? I tend to think that they should be able to stay. And you know who shared all of those perspectives with me was Ronald Reagan. So the idea that it is somehow inherently conservative to not just want the border to be under control, which I think there's a broad consensus in America about that. It's hard to find anyone who wants to go back to the way the border was in the first few years of Biden's term. You just won't find those people. But it's very strong consensus on controlling the border. But this punitive, vicious, lawless, often cruel, and you know, violent of the due process approach to the Trump administration of people who are living here peacefully, who have sometimes American families here, who have been working here for years. To call that quote unquote conservative is really, I think, to just do violence to the term. Well, I've run the gamut on the podcast circuit because I was on Kyle Crystal and friends, our friends on the far left. And they were happy with the Biden border for the first time. There are a couple of people still in there. There are some people out there still exist. That was one disagreement I had with him. Do you know of anyone sort of running to go back to that? Like, I mean, I could be missing it, but I don't know if sort of a prominent Democrat who's running for this. No, no, no, there is. One more thing in the immigration that I'll get to the midterms and my discussion with the guys in Charlie Kirk show was one of the cases I was making about what was not conservative was about the way that interior enforcement is being handled. And I talked in particular about having guys and masks, menacing people, menacing protesters, you know, going after people who are who came with legal, came as a psyllies, you know, kind of under a legal process. And those guys got very upset about that. And, you know, said that whatever the ICE agents are going to get docs, we have to live with mass agents in the streets. And that's fine. And, you know, and basically said that Renee Good deserved what she got. Well, you know, what I saw them saying was that the left wanted Renee Good to be killed. That was very close from one of the guys. Yeah. Yeah. Which? Because they wanted a martyr like that was the argument was that they wanted this martyr and that's and they wanted to demonize the ICE agents. Like that was this kind of projection. I'm very glad that moment happened to him. And I'm very glad you pushed back as aggressively as you did in the moment. Because there's a lot of people who were who had not ordinarily will be watching their podcast who, you know, would see at least the clip because you were on it, right? And then also, I think the people who were watching who are regular listeners of the podcast, who would just normally hear that and think, yeah, of course, the left wanted her to die. Finally got to hear some pushback on that. And the reason why I thought that was important is it showed how much these guys attribute malice to their opponents without evidence. So what they essentially do is they say, they hold this repugnant belief system. They have this horrific view. Where do I get the idea that they have this horrific view? No citation needed. They just have this horrific view. They wanted Renee Good to die. And look, you and I both Tim, we operate in circles where we interact with a lot of conservatives and we interact with a lot of liberals, including a lot of people on the left pretty far left. Yeah. And I have never heard a syllable of anything than utter anguish, only utter anguish about what happened to Renee Good or Alex Freddie. At no point have I ever heard the furthest left person I know be like, the plan has worked. I mean, what are we doing here? And there was this premise like, what was the ramen manual line from a bomb? Like never let a crisis go to waste. Like they're definitely is that mindset sometimes based on certain events, which is like we want to use something that happened to advance our political ideology. Not in this fucking case though, not at all. I never heard that sentiment at all. You know, it's the kind of thing of gasps of anguish and sadness of shock. But Tim, what's so important about this is it shows you the low opinion. You could not have a more low opinion of people than to say they wanted this woman to die or they wanted this man to die just to make a political point. I would think of what you have to think about your opponents. And now look, let me give a bit of grace here. Charlie Kirk was killed. He was assassinated. Sure. That's horrific beyond horrific by somebody who is utterly and completely evil. And that has to be acknowledged and named. And it was horrific. What happened to Charlie Kirk. But then to take that what I saw and I'm sure you've seen it a million times is they took not necessarily these guys, but a lot of people on the right then have started to do this thing called they killed Charlie Cook. They did this. They did that. They took the actions of that individual. And they've translated it all the way across to the other whole other side of the political spectrum. And I it's hard to think of a more effective way of triggering civil strife of separating a country of dividing a people than to attribute all of the evil of one person to a movement to an entire group of millions of other people and then translating that hatred, that malice into all different kinds of contexts. It's incredibly dangerous and it's it's wrong. It is fundamentally, fundamentally at odds with reality. To that point, it isn't just happening on podcasts. We saw kind of a version of this on stage last night with Bernie Marino, Senator from Ohio, who was talking about why Abdul al-Sahed should be opposed. And I want to play that because he's in a race with somebody that just isn't a front to me as an American. By the way, in a front to me as a naturalized citizen to this country, this character Abdul al-Sahed can be nowhere near Washington DC. Do you think he understands that concept that our rights come from God Almighty? That Jesus came here for our salvation? He should be nowhere near Washington DC. Abdul is not American. He even knows he was born here and Bernie Marino is not and he does not understand our system because he can't fathom the concept of rights coming from God because he's a Muslim. Article 6 of the Constitution, the senators and representatives before mentioned in the members of the several state legislatures and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states shall be bound by author affirmation to support this constitution. But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. Maybe Bernie Marino is the un-American one. He was born in Columbia. So just circling back to our discussion about conservatism, Tim, my understanding of conservatism, the conservatism I grew up with was very constitution focused. I like the way that George Will has phrased the purpose of conservatism, the purpose of conservatism is to preserve the American founding. I think that's a brilliant way of putting it. And what's indispensable to the American founding, Tim, happens to be the constitution. There used to be this phrase called constitutional conservative and I was thinking that's redundant. Conservative means constitutional. But what we have seen is just an extraordinary disregard for the Constitution, from this administration and from its allies. And it's not just a disregard for the Constitution, the letter of the law. It's also a disregard for the spirit and the animating purpose of the law. And so what you've got here is a person who is begging voters, begging voters to impose a religious test. That's what he's asking voters to do. Now can he be sued and someone in a court say you can't do that? No. Violate what article 6 is getting at? Absolutely positively, yes. And this is just happening again and again and again. And it goes back to something that Ezra, my colleague Ezra Klein, had this really illuminating an interview with Ben Shapiro and Ben said, "The right isn't conservative anymore. It's anti-left." That's what it is. It's anti-left. And that's the fundamental animating spirit, but it's incomplete because a lot of current MAGA is quite left-wing in its policies on certain issues, yeah. On certain issues, like taking ownership, that's a socialist policy. That's what you would call a left-wing policy and it does that in certain issues. And then at the same time, it says we're saving you from the socialist. So it's not really anti-left so much as it really is just pro-them being in charge. Anti-cultural left, really. Anti-cultural. Anti-cultural. Well, I mean, I gosh, Tim, the sexual libertinism of MAGA is legendary, so like these guys aren't culturally, I mean, what are we even doing here? Yeah. That's fair point. I mean, all the discussion of John Hues says I asked, for example. The other race in Ohio, you wrote about last week, and we've talked about it a bunch, but I just want to touch on it briefly because kind of the fallout from this absolutely disgusting ad that Vivek Ramaswami's campaign put up featuring Amy Acton's abusive neglectful pedophile enabling mother continued a reporter, I guess, went to the home of the stepfather's biological daughter and knocked on the door. She opened. She's crying, talking about how she believes Amy acted. It's just like the amount of trauma inflicted upon people by Vivek and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, by the way, thinking that like the endorsement of this woman might help them skip power. To your point about power, seeking to be the only objective is pretty unimaginable, honestly. It's one of the most vile things I've seen in politics. I mean, when you really break it down here, there are a few things more heinous in the world than the rape of a child, which was what the stepfather was charged with here. Then skips town rather than get a seek accountability. The mother loses custody of the kids, even though knowing that this guy had been accused by another child of assault, apparently chooses him. I mean, can you think of anything more painful, more traumatic than that as a child? And then, for a political campaign, to have the gall to go track down that woman, the who shielded an abuser, and then run her in a political ad to reopen all of those wounds, not just for Amy Acton, by the way, but as was made clear by this reporting, other people, the blast radius of this thing and the lives of innocent people is indescribable. And to do that, to become governor of Ohio, it's so sick and vile. It's hard to put into words how sick and vile it is. And I hope and pray that this is just the end of VFX political career. I hope and pray that at the end of all of this, this is what in the absence of some massive sort of like profumos scandal level of repentance, that this is what he's, what he's remembered for it. And it obliterates his political career now and forever. I mean, going too low for MAGA would be, it would be really appropriate political legacy for Vivek Ramaswamy. It's like nobody thought that you could dig that deep into the core of the earth that you would get so low that it would even cause exile from MAGA and yet Vivek Ramaswamy managed to do it. Truly something. But, you know, what, and I wrote about this, Tim, I think it's really important for us to understand the background and why this, why Vivek would feel like this would be okay. Well, there's a couple of reasons why he would feel like it'd be okay named Donald Trump and JD Vance because they're like, they're saying this is okay. But the other thing is it shows how pervasive cruelty as an ethos has become to MAGA. So it's almost as if performative cruelty has become an initiation right. In other words, nobody's going to know if you're really committed to the cause unless you absolutely just hate your opponents at a level and want to inflict pain on your opponents and the level that in any other context would get you drummed out of polite society but in politics as applauded and it's as if this cruelty has just become nothing but an initiation right. Yeah, the gang initiation fee. You got to go shoot somebody to prove that you're a member of the crepes or whatever. It's really that kind of thing, but retorting. Because if you are a kind person, if you are somebody who treats other people well, you are going to be suspect in MAGA because they won't know if you have what it takes when the time comes like a January 6th. They never want to do a Mike Pence again, Tim. You know, the person who spent several years both supporting Trump and being sort of a gentleman and kind to his opponents. And then when when push came to shove, he was going to throw Trump over the side like he did on January 6th. So they look at somebody who treats their opponents with any sort of dignity, decency and fairness is inherently suspect. So you have to show pure malice to be trusted in the MAGA universe. That's one of the more disturbing things I've seen. That's right. That's insightful. All right. Well, to the good news of the wish of Vivek being cast out of MAGA because he went to depths that people might not expect. I'd like to turn to the Senate polls that we've got from CNN this morning, a little bit of hope, but let's just do it. Michigan. Yeah, let's do it. Well said 49, my graduate's 42, it's a seven point lead for Abdul, Texas, James, Telerico, 49, Ken Paxton, 43, Maine, Troy Jackson, 49, Susan Collins, 45, and then we have Pastra, Adam Hamilton, 49, Roger Marshall, 45, in Kansas, hit it, Jason. I mean, it could, Tim, it could be real, you know, it's so funny. I can't remember who I saw say this online yesterday, but it was, it struck me it's exactly right in my experience and I wonder if this is right in your experience. That the vibes, sort of this, the attitude people have towards these polls is exactly backwards of what you might think. It's that the Republicans are saying we're going to, it's going to be a 55C Democratic majority. And the Democrats are saying I don't believe any of this. I don't know if any of this is real. And when I was down in Texas reporting on the Paxton, Telerico race, what I could tell you is it was a strikingly different spirit than around the Beto race in 2018. Interesting. And Beto, I felt like Democrats felt pretty confident going there. There was this kind of irrational exuberance because Beto was never really winning, but there was like this excitement and it's the thing that I did, I, you know, I love about Beto and I always have a soft stop for him because like, he did this thing that Democrats weren't doing that. He was going to like weird parts of Texas, rural parts of Texas and getting big crowds. And people are like, wow, you know, maybe this is our Trump because Trump had just done the same thing in 2016. Trump was like, oh my God, Trump is filling up a football stadium in Alabama and it's like Beto is filling up this huge, you know, venue in Midland. And so like there was this kind of irrational exuberance, even though the data was never there. Yeah, exactly. And I remember speaking to a group of law students and some of the Democratic law students said, do you think Beto will be Ted Cruz? And I said, no. And they were what? I mean, the momentum, the energy that all of this stuff and the polls were close. And I think people really thought that with the polls at close and all of the momentum and energy, and he came close, but he didn't win. Very different in Texas, every Democrat I talked to is like, we're going to work and our tails off to the very last second before the polls close. And we really hope and pray it's enough. I remember talking to a taleriko volunteer and she said, Democrats in Texas are like the Dallas Cowboys. Now there was a time when that would be more complimentary to him, but she said, we're great until the fourth quarter. And then, you know, then it's basically all over. And so what I kind of got this sense from Democrats in Texas is we're not allowing ourselves to the luxury of optimism. but we are hopeful. In other words, we're gonna work our fingers to the bone, not in the expectation that we're gonna win, but in the hope that we're gonna win. And I actually think that's a healthier perspective that look, it's been Lucy with the football before in Texas for a while for Democrats, take nothing for granted and just work as hard as you can. And I really got that sense from Democrats in Texas. Now the other interesting thing was, when I was in Texas, I found three major factions, Tim, anti-Talarico Republicans, anti-Pakston Republicans, who didn't wanna go very much on the record, and very pro-Talarico Democrats, who's missing, pro-Pakston Republicans, just not so many of those guys. And so it is actually quite hard to win a race when that you've got a headwind basically from the national fundamentals. You've got a charismatic opponent and you've got a Republican that quite frankly, a lot of Republicans in the state hate him. I walked around and I was watching Talarico Volunteers knock on doors and a working class neighborhood in Beaumont, Texas that was about evenly divided Republican Democrat. And there was this lovely woman named Sharon that came out to the door and she told the Democratic Volunteer. She goes, "I'm sorry, I'm a Republican. I tend to vote Republican. I voted Donald Trump three times." And he bothers me sometimes, but we need to change. And then there was like this pause and then she goes, "But I hate that Ken Paxton." And so what is she gonna do? Well, that's a great question. And the volunteers, their eyes light up and they said, "You don't have to go blue. You can just get a little purple for one race." They were very nice and just saying, "Think about this one race." And she was gonna leave her mind open. Her mind was open and I thought, "That's the voter that will tip this race." It's the person who voted for Trump multiple times is the person who's a lifelong Republican, but just like, "No, not this guy. No, not him." Because one way to think of Ken Paxton and a lot of listeners will object to this formulation of Trump is all the corruption of Trump and none of the charm. He's as every bit is corrupt and crooked as Trump is, but Trump does have a bit of a showman in him for sure. I mean, he's honed that over decades and Paxton is like, he's like a charisma minus. He walks into a room and charisma flees. And so if you made me guess right now, I would say it's gonna be a nail-biter of an election, but I would give Talleriko the edge, but I'm very shaky about that. I mean, how can you confidently predict a Democrat in when it's not been since '94 that they've won a statewide race? - Yeah, we also talked about this a while back with Talleriko when you were on. This question of whether going to the seminary and being a minister helps at all, because a lot of evangelical Christians actually hate the liberal Christians even more than they used kind of. But I do think that there is another batch of people out there that still exist. They're not the loudest and they're not the biggest percentage, but it's Hispanic Catholics, it's messidists. It's like safe, old ladies that are Methodists that have been going to church their whole lives and aren't mega church goers. And I do think that it makes a difference. You see this in the focus groups, and I saw it, I was interviewing Jackie Rosas, the strategist in the Rio Grande Valley a couple weeks ago and she was saying that she was seeing it among the abuela's. - So I'm so glad you brought that up because the folks in the Talleriko camp will say look, evangelicals are not the only Christian voters, right? You have Catholics, you have mainline, and evangelicals are not completely all the same either. So you have the very fundamentalist wing. They're not gonna, Ken Paxden could murder someone on live television, they're still gonna support Ken Paxden, right? There are a group of evangelicals who are attracted not to Talleriko's theology. They're not wanting to join his church. They're attracted to his decency. And they're attracted to the way that he treats his political opponents. They're attracted to the way he's running his race and is one evangelical who, you know, again, a lot of these people who wanted to support Talleriko are not wanting to go on the record because of the hell storm that will be visited upon them by MAGA and their communities and in their lives. Like, you know, why don't we try the guy who's decent for a change, you know? One guy who's the evangelical version of the, I would like to have a beer with him test, which is he's a guy I'd like to have a cup of coffee with. And, you know, I think that's why I love-- - I'm talking to him at the picnic. - Yeah, I think he'd be great at the potluck. Yeah, but the, here's what the Paxden people are missing. And look, Paxden may win. It's a R plus 13 stage in 2024. So, but here's what they're missing. They're going after Talleriko on the basis of theology, but it's not Talleriko's theology that's appealing to Christians who are wanting to come over and support him, it's his decency. That's the thing that is appealing. And so, if they're calling him Talleriko, if they're calling him names, that only heightens the contradiction to him, it only makes the case for Talleriko. And they just don't seem to get this. They're so high on that MAGA supply of limitless, bottomless cruelty that they don't even see that they're digging their own political graves, so to speak, with the constant personal attacks. Potentially, potentially. Again, it's a heavy lift to win Texas. - Your lips to God's ears, so to speak. One last little nugget, a Teeleys. We're in Teeleaf times. Autos give us people. This is the kind of thing that political people text each other. I had a friend, I had a friend that texted me that Greg Abbott's election night party's gonna be in Austin. But two years ago, he had it in the Rio Grande Valley 'cause their big thing was about Texas, the Rio Grande Valley going red, and Hispanics going out for publicans. And then that last time before that, it was in Houston, 'cause Bigger venue in Austin's where all the lips are. And they're like, "You know, I'm just reading between the Teeleys, but having it in Austin seems to me to mean that he doesn't think it's gonna be a party." 'Cause I don't think he'd have a big party in Austin, whatever, take that for what it's worth. I thought that was a funny observation. I will tell you this, again, this is one of the things that people text each other is that there is actually, and this is one thing that told me that Talleriko has a chance, by the way, is that there is anxiety about the governor's race. And that tells me that a couple of things at one, the way all our politics is nationalized, the Senate race is the top of the ticket race. And there's a real concern that that top of the ticket race is going badly enough that it could impact. The number two race, which is the governor's race. And nobody saw this coming. Tim, nobody saw any anxiety on that score coming. Much less, we could talk about Kansas or Nebraska, or dare we even utter the word South Carolina. So all of these things, Tim, when you start to say words like, or states like Kansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, I've even heard whispers about Mississippi. That's when my, all my, slow your role instincts. From, like, wait a minute, wait. But what it does tell you is, for example, a North Carolina just gone. Like they're gone, Ohio feels like a very strong chance there that, you know, the Democrats are going to win it. So a lot of these states that a year ago, you would have said, these are going to be nail-biter, potential wins for Democrats are now looking like foregone conclusions potentially for Democrats. And then some states that no one was talking about at all are now taking the center of the conversation. And, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. But let me just say this, the vibe shift is over. Remember all the triumphalism around 2024? That vibe shift is over. Rarely have you seen political capital squandered more quickly and thoroughly than the what Maga did to its 2024 victory. Let's keep it on a high note than I have a couple of, I have a couple of dims warning things to get there. One more though, just for fun. While the vibes were high, Obama was in Georgia yesterday. It feels like this was something scheduled a month ago. So I got a maybe there should be better place for him now. But whatever, you know, he was in Georgia. It's crazy. He didn't even win Georgia. I got for win Georgia. I like this is all, this is such a Trump era shift. And also, you know, I last play, so I had him up 15. I don't know if that's true, but he's he's going to win. That would shock me, but he's going to win, yeah. And he replied to the Cheesecake Factory Discourse. And I thought it was just pretty clever. And I was ready to stop talking about Cheesecake Factory Discourse after, you know, I debunked after some great investigative journalism with me in Pablo Tore. He went to Clay Travis. Cheesecake Factory origin story. I felt like that was kind of the end for me, but I appreciate the way Obama framed this up last night. So let's just watch a bit of it. They did not deny terrorists were contributing to higher costs for families. They didn't say anything about that. I accused this administration based on the facts that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption. The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein a person that part didn't bother him. But he was very upset about the cheesecake factory commerce. He took great umbridge. Great umbridge. He said, "I didn't understand the work of the artisans in the White House." And they mobilized -- this was -- I mean, it's all crazy, but this was the really crazy part. He mobilized a whole of government response to that joke. I mean, it was hysterical, Tim. I'm coming to you right now from Lipscomb University, a small Christian college in the heart of Nashville. I know. I may be one mile as the crow flies from the cheesecake factory that was the foundation of clay traps. This is childhood, apparently. I eat there. Well, it's been opened in 2005. Yes. I eat there all the time. Okay, it's one of my favorite places in Green Hills that's a little neighborhood in Nashville. And can I just say, if you're a cheesecake factory diner, you're in on the joke, man. It is intentionally over the top. It is weirdly lavish decor and everyone laughs at it and enjoys it because it's so crazy. It's so funny because a couple of months ago. It opened in Beverly Hills. It started in Beverly Hills, it was intentionally gaudy and theatrical. Exactly. It's so funny that the cheesecake factory came up because as luck would have it just a few months ago, I was eating and I took a picture while I was eating of the eyes of Sauron Decor that's all through. Be careful with that because you know the cheesecake factory is also a cult kind of the owners of it. Have a cult anyway. I did not. That was a willing stone art. I'll send it to you. Oh, please. I don't want to impure anybody because I read it eight years ago, but I do think that the owners have some weird stuff going on. The eyes of Sauron might be weird. Well, what's the mind about it? It's definitely weird. And you put it up and then everybody starts sharing their cheesecake factory favorite decor. This is a known thing and it shows you how actually out of touch people are. If they don't know that it's a known thing that like cheesecake factory is intentionally gaudy. It's the dumbest thing, but I'll tell you, Tim, it is so weird that you can have a comment like that from Obama. And now compare that to 500,000 Trump insults like that are 50 times more personal, more malicious, more directed. And you got that mild joke about the cheesecake factory. And it ignites conservative media for like 48 hours. These guys, you know, they constantly talk about snowflakeery on all this on the on the left. They treat their own audience as if these guys are the most melty snowflakes in the history of melty snowflakeery. Can you believe what Obama said about your beloved cheesecake factory? Are you kidding me? And by the way, it's not, it's a fine restaurant. I like it. I eat there all the time, but it's not the foundation of mega dining culture. What are we doing here, Tim? You don't see a lot of mega hats when you're at the Nashville suburbs. No, no, I mean, at least at least when we had the fake outrage over cracker barrel. Yeah, that is a staple of dining in the South. But you know what? I was just eating. It's so funny as luck would have it. All the restaurants that have been in the center of everything or some of my favorite restaurants. I just ate last night with the cracker barrel in Franklin with my parents. And nobody was in there like this restaurant does need to do something. It does need to change. But don't tell that to Maga. Sacred and holy Uncle Herschel has to, you know, cannot be disrespected. It's it's so bizarre to him. It's so sensitive. That's kind of like the Fox News ratings being down and cracker barrel in Nashville is empty. Those are bad signs. Those are other bad signals for the midterms. All right, let's do a little bit of den problems that might impede their big Senate majority. Big near time story yesterday about the Dan Sullivan, Michigas in Alaska. Yeah, following this. There are two Dan Sullivan's on the ballot. The incumbent Republican Senator, I forget. I should put it in front of me. I think it's Dan Jay Sullivan or whatever. And it says incumbent next to his name. And then another guy is joining the S Sullivan. I believe as a third party, the Republicans have long been accusing Democrats of being behind this. This little bit of, you know, political chicanery, the DOJ started investigation about this. The day is really focused on going after the real criminals that are threatening Americans right now. And apparently Mary Paltola's fired campaign manager did an interview with the New York Times where she admitted that the Democrats recruited Dan S Sullivan to run. And then tried to weirdly backtrack, call the times and say, wait a minute, I'm sorry. Taking back my quote, not how this works. Yeah. Yeah, just not how this works. And it's just like the whole thing. Well, I've got thoughts on it, but why don't you go first? I mean, it is an indefensible, dirty trick. You know, the legal side of this, I, you know, it's hard to see how it be illegal, although I will say that they did litigate this to the Alaska Supreme Court. And the Alaska Supreme Court had said it was that you couldn't kick the other Dan Sullivan off the ballot. And I do question whether proper accurate representations about his campaign were made to the Alaska court and to Alaska courts. But that's a matter for the Alaska courts to decide. I think it's indefensible. You know, look, I've talked about this a lot on advisory opinions. When you're looking at campaign controversies, there are dirty tricks and there are illegal tricks. And dirty tricks are often quite common, but they're still dirty. They shouldn't happen. And this was a dirty trick doubtful that it's an illegal trick. I mean, the Alaska Supreme Court has ruled on this, for example. But this is indefensible. At the same time, when you look at the actual ballot, Tim, which when the Trump DOJ sued, the ballot makes it very clear. You have to be sort of intentionally confused almost to not see what the, because the ballot not only says Dan Sullivan Republican, it says incumbent. And so it right there, Republican and incumbent. And so it's very clear on the ballot. I don't think this will have a material impact on the election at all, but it's a dirty trick. It shouldn't have happened. It was, I just think it's indefensible. I agree with you that it's a dirty trick and they should have done it. You know, the ethos of this podcast is radical candor. And the thing that makes me the most upset actually is not the dirty trick part of it. It's how fucking stupid the dirty trick was. This is a, this is a pointless dirty trick. If you're going to do a dirty trick, at least do something that could possibly help you win. Like this is, there's rank choice voting in Alaska. So let's say 1.3% of people voted Dan S Sullivan at the top of their ballot. Okay, if they continued on the rank choice and you presume they would have put the other Dan Sullivan, unless they were like doing it as a joke, onto their rank choice ahead of Mary Peltola, all of that person's votes, the Dan S Sullivan's votes would accrue to the real Dan Sullivan. Like this might work in Ohio if you ran John, who stood with an H instead of John without the H. Like that might have worked and we could have argued whether that about, you know, the moral turpitude of that. You know, that's, that would have been a wrong dirty trick. But like, that could have helped Sherrod Brown. This doesn't even help Mary Peltola. This is just incompetence all the way down. And then the campaign manager that you had to fire leaks it to the New York Times. It is, it's like a comedy of errors. It's just so embarrassing to do it. It's dirty, it's stupid. It's also dangerous in this sense, Tim, because you've done a dirty trick. You've been caught doing the dirty trick. And now, the regardless of how this election goes, the Republicans are going to beat that horse forever. Yes. And a lot of people are going to say, And a state like Alaska or Democrats might do pretty well. The second potentially that could be a growth state for Democrats. Now you're giving them this issue that wouldn't even help you to hit you over the head with for years. Well, and let's imagine that it kind of works the way the primary, the first round of voting win. I believe it's about a 49% to 41% gap. The Dan Sullivan issue was not, could not explain that gap between Peltola and Sullivan, the real Sullivan. But regardless of the margin, if Peltola wins, this rate, this is going to be, this is going to be, go into the hall of, mega hall of fame of, quote unquote, stolen elections. This is going to be part of the fuel for that fire. Yes. And we'll rationalize their attempts to do, you know, even more probably competent. Let's be honest. Yeah. You know, anti-democratic efforts in the future. Exactly. Exactly. That's why it's, it's indefensible. It's dumb and as dangerous, like the perfect trifecta. So stupid. I weighed in in the monologue on, Hayley Stevens's fiance endorsing microaggers, which is, you know, going to now like make the last five days of that race about something that Democrats don't want it to be about. I'll just give you the open floor to weigh in on that if you choose to. Yeah. I mean, this race really bothers me, Tim. Elside would probably be my least favorite of the Democratic candidates, because I think, Senate candidates, because I think he's the furthest left has nothing to do with his, nothing to do with his, his and I think he's the furthest left of the Democratic candidates. He's the one I'm going to agree with by far the least. At the same time, the Republican is running a reprehensible campaign of religious bigotry in Islamophobia. I mean, the level of bigotry. RFK was in the state talking about how Arabs are stupid the other day. Like, that was literally the message. Arabs. It's disgusting, what I'm saying. It's just disgusting. And look, you know, I want to put in a plug for George W. Bush for a second. We've just had the 25th anniversary of 9/11. We now have more open blatant Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry right now in the year 2026. Then we had in the days after 9/11, Tim, and what's one of the reasons, one of the reasons why is that in the days after 9/11, George W. Bush went out there and declared the unequivocal truth that we're not at war with a religion, that there are many, many, many peaceful, wonderful patriotic, law-abiding Muslim citizens of our country. We depend on them. And so it shows you the moral power of leadership. A lot of people will ask me, well, why do you, it's all policy is so much more important than character. I'm like, that's a Trump era fiction. The actual reality is that the moral character of the president radiates through the culture in either a positive or a negative way. And what we have seen is, as Trump is radiating malice and bigotry out from the White House, it is radiating through a culture through him, through his surrogates, through his allies, through his friends, through the church, now Tim, for crying out loud. You should see the anti-Islamic bigotry that I see on Christian Twitter. It's stunning stuff. And so, you know, this Michigan race, extremely vexing to me, it's the most left Senate candidate, at least as far as I can tell, a guy I would never, never, never support against, a guy who's running one of the most malicious and bigoted campaigns I've ever seen in my entire life. Yeah. Which is just to me, like, I did the monologue, so I'll just say one sentence on this, but, like, why, it's what we do one thing, hey, we don't need to know what a candidate spouse is doing, like, you don't need to put out a press release, but that's one thing. But if you were to, it's like, it'd be one thing to be like, you know, I can't vote for Abdul Qasabess. I would personally disagree with that, but, okay. But like, to say, I can't vote for Abdul because of my concerns about religious bigotry. So, I'm going to work for vote for Mike Rogers, who's running the most bigoted, you know, really, I can't, the most bigoted campaign based on religion since Nixon ran against Kennedy in 1960. It's fucking insane. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going to start getting right out of again. Let's move on. Okay. Two random things I want to pick, David French's brain on the wall that you go. There's been like some abortion discussion bubbling up again recently. It's just kind of interesting to me as a political science matter. The like, the last damn term, like, when was on the back of outrage over dogs. And like, abortion doesn't even come up now. Yeah. And simultaneously, I saw a study recently that like, abortions are now are up since the dogs rely on large. Yeah. And large are because of, you know, male order pills, etc. In my field of vision, I don't see a lot of, you know, pro lifers out there who are either upset about that uptick of abortions or about all the other, you know, affronts on life that we have. I thought you and Nancy tweeted the other day about kind of the pregnant women. They were treating them in immigration to turn attention centers. Maybe I'm sure there's some pro lifers out, you know, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but I'm not seeing a lot of that. But that's really more kind of your world than mine. So I just kind of want to give you an open, open moment to chat about what's happening in abortion politics, pro life politics probably. Yeah. So in many ways, the pro life movement as a meaningful political force and national politics is just gone. And here's what I mean. So back in 2017, when you talked about abortions being rates being up since dogs, that's correct. But the uptick actually began before dogs in Trump's first term. So if you go back and you look at the history of abortion, rate, ratio, numbers in the United States since row, right after row has decided the numbers spiked massively. And then they started to go down steadily. They went down in every presidency after Carter. So Reagan, Bush, they went down under Clinton. They went down under Bush too. They really went down under Obama to the point where abortion was less common at the end of Obama's second term than it was before row was decided to him. So when abortion was mostly illegal in the US, there were a higher rate ratio of abortions than there was when Obama left office in 2017. And so that changed under Trump. All of a sudden, for the first time in decades, the abortion rate ratio, everything started to go up again. And so already right there, there should have been a nine alarm fire for the pro life movement. After years of faithful work, after years of trying to persuade people to choose life, all of a sudden that was resulted, I think the number at the end of Obama's second term was there were about 330,000 fewer abortions per year than there were at the start of his term. That's a huge decrease to him. That's a lot of lives. And then it changes under Trump. And some of us were waving the alarm, the flag of alarm all the way back in 2018, 2019 when the numbers first started to come. And we were told to shut up that there's only one valid pro life choice. And that's Donald Trump. And we were saying he's ripping the heart out of the pro life movement. Fast forward to 2024. He changes the pro life plank in the platform. Gets rid of it says it's up to states. He publicly opposed until he reversed. I don't know how sincerely publicly opposed the heartbeat bill in Florida. His FDA has approved the generic abortion pill. Where is the pro life movement? There are more abortions. But I'll tell you what's happened to him. And I'll tell you who was early in on this sort of statistician in Ryan Burge. He did a study of the electorate in 2016, the evangelical electorate. And he found out that what was actually motivating the evangelical electorate wasn't abortion as much as it was immigration. And so here's the very sad thing. It appears that so long as Trump cracks down on immigration and continues to crack down on immigration. He's able to sideline the pro life movement because the evangelical public is actually more concerned about the immigration crack down. And you see it in online fundamentalist online mega Christianity. It's all immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration. It's remarkable. And so the pro life movement on the national level is just gutted as many of us who are pro life never Trumpers predicted it would. And in many ways, abortion has kind of receded it as an issue because the pro life movement was so thoroughly politically routed after dobs. And it's from my standpoint, it's one of the saddest things I've seen. And then when you raise it, you know, you're shouted down once again. And you're accused of being a baby killer by raising concerns about Donald Trump's record on abortion. It's remarkable. All right. My final one is, you know, not really. I propose something in the midterms Tuesday, but if I was to have a cup of coffee with David French and that's what this podcast is supposed to be, the thing I'd be interested in is, where is David French at and concerns about the end times, not Satan, but artificial intelligence, or maybe it's both maybe maybe maybe maybe they are one and the same. I don't know. But I'm just kind of wondering where your alarm is. I think that honestly, whatever's on your mind about AI at the end of the world, I would like to hear. So I will say I'm not an AI doomer. I do not have the AI equals apocalypse concern in my top 10 or 15. I see AI is very promising. And I also see it as very perilous. I do not see it as I see it as imminently dangerous to a number of things such as I could easily imagine a situation in which we wake up in the morning and we can't access our bank accounts because there's been some kind of viral AI agent assault on the internet that I can I can imagine AI creating chaos. But here's but I'm actually when it comes to apocalypse, I'm more old school Tim. I'm actually more worried about a nuclear exchange than I'm worried about an AI derived apocalypse because of the revival. I thought you're going to go real old school. I thought you were going to say fire and brins. Fire and brins. Meteor from the heavens. No. I'm more, you know, I think we're underestimating the instability of the world right now under under Trump's leadership or underestimating the potential of a wider more intense conflict. So I actually have that more front of mind than I have AI, which I don't know if that's comforting to people. Don't worry about the AI apocalypse guys. The nuclear one will occur first is not exactly the way you reassure people. But here's what worries me when we've had previous revolutionary technologies like the atom bomb, which is really sort of the first man-made technology that's kind of raised these apocalyptic fears. At the very least we had the atom bomb in the hands of governments and in the west elected governments who are accountable to the people. One of the issues that we have now is with the rise of the tech oligarchs and the rise of sort of the AI universe is enormous power, is now concentrated, not just in private hands, but private hands of some people who don't strike me as the most public spirited, even handed, even tempered sort of people you can imagine, Tim. So think about Elon Musk as one of our AI moguls. Think about his conduct in the way he has deployed and he used and abused SpaceX. That's not AI, but the star shield and all of the star link and all of that. That's a one very rich man making extraordinary decisions, if the reporting is to be believed, just extraordinary decisions impacting global security on the basis not of a mandate handed down by the people, but on the basis of his ownership of a private corporation. And I think that that is something that rightfully makes an awful lot of people really nervous is when you have concentrated, unaccountable power, wielding new instruments of technology that most of us, to be honest, don't understand all that well, that have enormous potential to do good, but also enormous potential to do harm. And if I could sum up, why is there such an AI backlash, I would put it like this. People feel in a lot of ways helpless in this moment in the AI oligarchs have not helped with that because they've essentially treated their technology as an inevitability rather than a choice. That this is something that is happening to you, whether you like it or not. And it's coming from the voices of some of the people that are least trusted in American life. And so you handle that. And by the way, a lot of people trusted them when it came to social media and have come to regret it. To regret it. To regret it. And that's all in recent memory. And I think that that's a really understated reason for the lack of trust. Exactly. We have seen a lot of technological change arrive with a much promise that we now perceive if having done immense harm. And we're thinking we're rinsing and repeating this with some of the same cast of characters. With something even more powerful. With something more powerful. That's where I really root a lot of the extreme alarm is just a total lack of trust that's justified. And look, I'm not saying that all the people in the AI, there's some really good folks in the AI industry. I've met them thoughtful, interesting, really thinking with, you know, in a sound moral and rational way, they're there. And I do not want to cast aspersions on everybody in the industry. But there are also some megalomaniacs in there. There are also some people who seem to be flirting with a God complex. And that when you see that kind of power in the hands of people who are to use what is a Gen Z, they're giving God complex. That creates a real, I think, justifiable sense of concern. Leave it there. Thank you as always for all the time, David. It was wonderful. I hope the Memphis Grizzlies continue on the right trajectory. And that was a little bit of an honest and so we'll, we'll take people back out with Kansas. And if you have any concerns about the AI and Paco is just, just keep checking that Kansas pole again. All right. And now I'll make you, that'll see you with everybody's concerns. We'll talk to you after the election, all right, brother? Thanks, Tim. Everybody else will see you back here tomorrow. It should be a good Friday pod. Bye. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzaly Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.