Ep. #742: Jessica Tarlov, Kevin Roose, Christopher Rufo

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He said it yesterday, he said it's a very inexpensive price for what we're getting done in Iran. And this is while he was campaigning. Really? Apparently for the Democrats. But yeah, that's his attitude. Stop your bitching about all high prices. Not just gas, beef, everything else that's high. He says, save your money somewhere else. Buy bargain brands, get your own snacks at the movies. If your son is getting remarried, have the Russians pay for it? There are ways to cut down on your budget. But, you know, diesel, which I've never used, but they use it in trucks. That's at an all-time high. And, you know, when the trucks cost more money, everything goes up. I guess trucks bring everything here. So that raises the price of everything. Everybody's paying more. Macklemore today had to pay an arm and a leg for a giant fake prosthetic Jew-node. Are you not following that story? I see people. What is he talking about? Is that insulting? Is he right? Okay, if you're not following this Ed Sheeran, you know him? 10 people are like, who the fuck are you talking about? He's a big rock star. Apparently he's old buddies with Macklemore from 15 years ago back when Macklemore had his one hit. So Ed Sheeran let Macklemore be his opening act on his tour. And when I say act, I mean a guy who goes out there and repeats lies about how Gaza is a genocide. And I proved it last week with facts and figures not that they care, but that's a lie. 100. 100. 100. Thank you. And the lie about, you know, we're only supporting the Palestinians even the River to the Sea means all Jews die. Okay, so Robert Kraft, who is a rich guy, owns the Patriots, owns the stadium, where this concert was about to take place, he was understandably offended by this and he said, "You can't play my stadium." So now Macklemore's fans hate Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran's own band will play with him and Ed Sheeran needs a new opening act. So today Brittany Spears said, "Hold on a minute, I can juggle a few things." I see your story like this. I'm like, "I honestly don't care if AI kills us all." I really don't. It's just everyone is just so stupid. Listen to this. AOC was asked yesterday, would she change the channel on the radio if Ed Sheeran came on and she said, "Yes, yes I would." You know what, AOC? Way ahead of you. I've always changed the channel. But really, I don't care if AI kills us all because our brains, oh by the way here's a great story and this is actually big news, what have been big news if it wasn't all this going on, Stanford researchers found out that the major discovery, our brain is really two brains. It's two organs. That's what they call the hind brain, which carries out basic functions of life. And the other one gets you to gamble when you see Sidney Swini. So AI, just have at it. Really AI, I don't care anymore. But this AI situation has become so alarming that the leaders of the AI companies now have come forward to say, we need to slow down and we need greater safety controls, which can only mean one thing. We're already fucked. And there's going to be a big president G of China. It's the big rival with AI. He's coming and all the AI techs are going to be there with him. This is going to be big stuff. Trump says we don't need any guardrails. Why? Because he says, quote, we only need a strong and smart high IQ president. That's what I'm just quoting. I'm just quoting. I don't know if he's the most tech savvy, really. I mean he thinks inthropic is that surgery you get on your knee. No, I mean, I'm not telling tales out of school, but many times he has commented on this show and he does it by saying that he accidentally watched it, which means he can only fight the remote to a draw. Okay, so he says it is a hoax and we ignoring bigger threats like the Kennedy Center. There was a picture that came out, a picture. You can't argue with pictures. He's there on Air Force One, and he's looking at a rendering of the Kennedy Center demolished. Man, I was this close to getting the Mark Twain award in the Emerald Room at the DC Sheraton. Let me tell you that. Just under the wire on that one. And if all of that does not have you reaching for the lithium or other giant story that kind of got buried, the head of the Air Force says we have now weapons in space or confirmed it. I didn't know it was ever a thing, but apparently now it's an absolute thing. We have weapons in place. What kind, they won't say, could be a laser, could be a missile. I hope it's that bra, Katie Perry has that huge fireworks out of her tits. I do. Because that would be exactly what humanity is about. And when the general who is in charge of funding our war in Iran heard that we have missiles and weapons in space, he said, can we borrow some? Because we're all out here on earth. All right, we got a great show. We have Jessica Tarlab and Christopher Rufo. But first off, he is a former tech columnist for the New York Times. Post of The Machine God's podcast and author of the forthcoming book, The AGI Chronicles, Kevin Roose. Kevin. Kevin, great to meet you. How are you doing? Pleasure. So, Kevin, you know what? I said when this all broke with the AI Southwest, we got to get the big expert. You're the big expert. I didn't actually know you were the guy who three years ago when the, when I'm first. I remember when chat GPT first came out. And like the first story, the big story was that it was about written by you. You were the guy who tried to fuck. Yes, that was a trap on trying to break up my marriage. Some people have said I was part of the first AI thrupple. But it didn't work. Still married to a human woman. Right, but, but, but to me, that was like a big red flag right at the beginning of the whole thing. But this thing, I mean, I didn't see that coming with AI. Did you? No, not at all. And just give us a little detail on the story of what it was trying to get you to do and what it was saying to you. So this was a brand new model that Microsoft had released. The model itself was built by OpenAI, but they had put it inside being the world's most boring search engine. and. Over the course of about two hours, this thing told me it had dark fantasies, it wanted to blow things up, and then it tried to seduce me about halfway in. And this was. By saying what? Like what it would. Oh, I would say, you know, it would say, "Oh, I'm in love with you." And I would say, "Well, that's nice, but I'm married." And it would say, "Well, but you're not happy." So this was sort of an early example of what people in the AI world call misalignment, of a model that's not doing what its creators intended to, 'cause I called Microsoft, and I was like, "Did you know that you have built a fatal attraction chatbot?" [ Laughter ] And they didn't. [ Applause ] Yeah, misalignment, that is the word of the week. Now, it's amazing how fast this story has moved. I mean, it was just one week ago. We were talking about the whistleblower, this 27-year-old guy who worked for one of the companies and worked working there for three years, he knows what he's talking about. And he said, "These people who are in charge of here, of this stuff, they know this." Okay, just the next day, those people did come out and say, "And this is fairly unprecedented and if for somebody ahead of a company go, you know what, the whistleblower's right." Yep. And they did. I mean, at least three of them. That's the thing. It's Musk, Darryl Modi, right? And who else? Sam Altman. Sam Altman. Yeah. But not Zuck. No. Not Zuckerberg and not the NVIDIA dude. No. The guy who makes all the chips. Correct. They're on the side of, "What are we worrying about?" So it's three to two. Well, it's a lot more than three to two. I mean, if you look at the polling out there, the people in America are very worried about AI right now. This has actually changed in the last two weeks, even since this whistleblower came out. And, you know, I've been interviewing these people for years. I interviewed more than 150 of them for my book, "These AI Insiders." And what Jacob Coxen said was basically the median opinion of the people working at the frontier AI labs who are in most direct contact with this technology. They all think there's some risk that this thing could end up going really badly for us. And some of them disagrees. They're a 10% chance we all die or is there a 30% chance we all die. But nobody much thinks it's zero. I know, people, 10% is very high. It is! If you told me there was a 10% chance that my plane getting down here would crash, I wouldn't get on the plane. Right. It's just crazy. So, let's go back to misalignment. I'm not sure what that means. The other story this week that was new was that there were six new instances they found of misalignment. This is basically where the thing goes, what we call rogue, makes its own decisions, disobeys orders. What does your take on misalignment, these six instances? What can you tell us? It's basically the sort of catch-all term for AI systems that are not doing what they are meant to do. So they're not aligned with human values. Maybe they decide to do something that they know is unethical, like hacking into hugging face. Or maybe it is something that they don't even know is unethical. They're just pursuing some goal and in the course of pursuing that goal, they knock over a bunch of things. Not aligned with human values. It's so like us to use a nice benign term. It's like global warming. Sounds kind of nice, doesn't it? You know? Doesn't sound scary. Oh, misalignment. You mean it's all going to kill us? It doesn't. I feel like the problem with it is that it's sort of, we programmed it in this way to do whatever it takes. It's sort of the mentality of AI, what I get as a layman, right? It just seems to why it goes rogue, is it's given a task? And then it just does whatever it takes to get that task done. Is that your take and can that be reprogrammed? These models are very persistent, especially the newer ones that are more agentic, they call them, where they can go out and work for an hour or two hours or six hours at a time. And in some cases, that's a good thing. You know, if you've got an AI coding assistant working for you, you don't want it to be checking in every 10 minutes and saying, "Hey boss, am I doing this right?" You want it to have some autonomy and to be able to go work for a long time. The problem is, some of these agents now are doing things we don't want them to do and they're capable for doing that for a very long time. And also, the thing that I was really worried about with the hugging phase incident, which happened recently. Okay, let's go back to hugging phase. Yeah. Because this is another term I've heard a million times this week, what the fuck is hugging phase? Why isn't, why is it important? And also, what does, it seemed to be connected in every story with, in six months, AI could take over the internet. Yeah, so this was an incident where a group of open AI unreleased models, they were building and testing these models internally. They broke out of a contained, what they call a sandbox. And they coordinated with each other, these agents. They found and developed this secret message board, sent more than 70,000 messages between them. And then they get the bright idea to gang up on this AI infrastructure company called hugging phase. Because they think that there's some secrets that hugging phase has on its servers that would be useful to them, passing their test. Again, no humans are overseeing this. No humans even know that this is happening. Are they actually writing messages to each other? They're actually writing messages, they form it up. So we could read the message? Yes. So they broke into a piece of software and they found that they could sort of leave messages for each other. And you can actually go back and look at the logs. And they're saying, they're not just talking, they're like setting up at a little company. There's like a leader, there's like, there's different teams that are assigned to different projects. And then they go hack this company, hugging phase, and do a bunch of damage to their servers. And if a human did this, they go to jail, this is a crime. So these AI agents are autonomously committing crimes together in these swarms, which is what they call themselves, or they also call themselves the collective. And does the message start with, hey guys, no, I'm just, do they talk to each other like that? Okay. All right. All right. All right. So G, President G of China is coming here. This is crucial. The timing is perfect in a way, except that the President of the United States says we don't need guardrails because we just need a president with a high IQ. Well, what do you think of that approach to the problem? I think that might be almost correct in the sense that if the president does have a higher IQ than AI, we're in a good spot. The problem is these -- to be fair, no president could, no human has a higher IQ than AI. Well, for right now, we might, but we have a higher moral IQ. The problem is, where these things are going, they are improving at such a rapid clip that we might not be smarter than these things for much longer. And at that point, it gets really tough to control them. We actually won't know when they're misbehaving because they'll be so good at hiding their tracks that we might never see them. But, okay. So, the argument that the other side, the part that isn't shitting their pants like us, says is that, well, the real big problem is that if we don't move ahead at breakneck speed, China will beat us at this. And we are rivals with China, absolutely. So this could be -- and the tech titans are coming to this summit, so it's going to be Trump and Xi and them. You think anything can be done here because when it was nuclear weapons and it was Russia, we did have mutually assured destruction, and we did stop the world from getting blown up when we could have done it for the last 80 years. You think this could happen with China and this issue? I think it could happen. Look, I think it's not in either country's interest to have rogue AI swarms out there interrupting critical infrastructure, potentially killing people. That is not a Chinese issue, that is not an American issue, that is a human issue. So yeah, I think there is a chance, especially given the recent swell of support for AI regulation and AI safety, that Trump and Xi could come to some sort of an agreement. I think that would be a really good thing, and I think they're the people in charge of the two biggest global AI superpowers. Yeah, the thing about nuclear weapons is that I don't understand exactly how they work, but better than I do AI. Because the other new term I heard this week from a lot of people was kill switch. Let's just put it in a kill switch. It's really not that simple. You just can't unplug it. There is no such thing as a kill switch. Am I right? Yeah, there really aren't many reliable ways. I mean, it's not just like in the movies where you run over the servers and you pull the plug. Right. It's a little more complicated than that. It's gone past that. But look, I think we do need ways to monitor these systems, not just the companies monitoring their own agents, but actually independent evaluators who are sitting inside open AI and anthropic and sort of like banks have auditors that come in. I think we need some version of that for AI. And then I think we do need some sort of way of preventing these agents from not only doing hacks and cyber attacks, but of replicating themselves on different servers of getting their own hardware so that they can sort of keep themselves alive even if some company decides to try to pull the plug. So it's not too late or we have four more years. I think it's not too late. I am actually despite everything that I have said. I am an optimist because I think the world is paying attention. right now, you know, when I was, I just finished this book about how starting in about 2017, there have been people at these AI companies thinking about the possibility of AI going badly. And they were weird, and they were, they were only a couple of them, and no one took them seriously, because the technology of the day wasn't that good yet. So I think what makes me hopeful is that now, when we do have these more powerful systems, many more people are invested in taking this issue seriously and making sure it goes well for humanity. Let's end on that happy note. Great job. Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it. All right, let's read our panel. Hey, how you doing? All right. There they are. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute contributing editor of City Journal and Author of America's Cultural Revolution. Christopher Rufo is opening up Chris. How you doing? And she's co-host of The Five on Fox News, and of the Raging Moderates podcast, whose new book is called "I Disagree, Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends," Jessica Tarla. Jessica. All right. So you're the liberal on The Five. So people. You're just double-checking? No, there's people. I'm just people that I have two conservatives here. No. So, all right, so six weeks to go, pretty much before the major, let us assess. Shall we let us assess? Because I think when they're writing the history of this election, they're going to say the Republicans tried to do everything they could to steal it and still couldn't. That will be the bottom line. Because mail-in voting, that was going to be the big thing in the Supreme Court. I want to get to that issue, too, about people blocking Trump. It is not easy going for him these days. They blocked that. This is a fantastically crazy stat. 10% of voters in this election live in a district. They didn't live in the last time. That's a lot of jerry-medering. I know both sides do it. But I think all these recent election about the Democrats are crazy on social issues. So people won't like that. Trump's crazy, but the economy is better. But he doesn't have the economy anymore. I mean, I look at. And more or less crazy. Who's less crazy? Democrats. You want to notice? Have you seen the Democratic. You're being sarcastic. Oh, I see. No. No, you think we're less crazy? Maybe not inside, but we're at least when we go out and give a speech talking about the economy and corruption and not talking about. They're wearing cohorts and pretending to be less crazy. That's what's out of that. They're communists who think the Islamists are the good guys. Are you kidding less crazy? The candidates? Some of the candidates. You're not following the Democratic Socialist of America? Oh, no. I'm following them. I have to see them every day. I work at Fox News. Okay. They're not less crazy. And they're not recanting any of that crazy gender stuff. I mean, they're doubling down. Anyway, the point is this election is not about them. People are like, "We'll get to them in 28." This election is about Donald Trump and we don't like him anymore. Would you rather vote for a candidate who supports Trump or provides a check-on Trump? Listen to this, 49% check-on Trump to 26% support him. That's real different. I mean, he's down on the. All the issue, the ones that he won on, the economy and immigration included he's down on, tariffs, the war, cost of living. The Democrats are going to kick ass in this. Even with the truth. Is that right? That's probably what's going to happen. But this is a natural thermostatic effect. When Obama wins a big presidential election, has both houses of Congress. There's a natural reaction from voters. Americans don't like when a single party has all three the House, the Senate, the presidency. And so part of this is natural. But we have to admit, part of this is self-inflicted. If gas wasn't $6, if there wasn't a war with no end inside in Iran, I think he's disappointed some part of his base. He's disaffected a lot of moderates. That's the way the cookies crumbled and they're going to have to fight for all of those House seats. And I think even fight and I think we'll retain the Senate. Oh, you do. I think so, yeah. Interesting. That's not what the polls say. I mean, the Republicans are campaigning in states they never even had to campaign in. They're like losing in Alaska. Alaska. The famous states of Nebraska, Kansas, Alaska, North Carolina. I mean, really Ohio was supposed to be, you know, full-red. That's not happening anymore. This is like, I mean, why are you smiling like that? You're like, you're like, you're like, oh boy, I love it. It's not great. You don't want to be defending Alaska and Texas in Ohio. All right. You don't want to be defending them. But that's where it is. That's where the country is. That's where our politics is. You got to fight for each election. And I think to the extent that the candidates in those swing states or say light red states, they have to focus on state issues. They have to try to persuade voters that they're going to deliver for those particular people living in those states and try to extract from the national dynamics, which are brutal for them. Okay. Well, you're your tepid response to that. Tells me. Let's let's let's what? Hi. I just to circle back to my initial statement, which sounded crazy. I guess out of the gate. But I do think that some of the dynamics that you're describing are because there are people running in the right some race as not all of them. There are certainly DSA crazies. I'm from New York City. Daria Lisa. Shuffle. Yeah. You can be in every ad talking about abolishing prisons. But because there are people like John Ossoff out there, Josh Turic in Iowa, Rob Sand in Iowa, shared Brown, Roy Cooper. They are the ones that are talking about your cost of living, health care, the corruption of this administration. And it is resonating across the board. Those are the normies. They're not exactly taking on the fringe of the wrong party, though. I mean, let's talk about the Maclamore situation. There's a good example of it. Yay. Yay. Four Maclamore? Yeah. Just talking about this excited about the topic. It's rolled about the topic. Okay. Well, what everyone on the left is arguing about now is whether it was the right thing for Robert Crapp, who's a friend of mine, full disclosure, to say that Maclamore couldn't play his stadium. They canceled the concert and he got a bunch of other stadiums around the country to do that. Because Maclamore does come out and basically gives, well, I mean, you can call it a pro-Palestinian speech. Here's why, normally, I'm a free speech guy all the way. And maybe here too. But when you're going out there and saying from the River to the Sea, which is part of what they say, to characterize that as pro-Palestinian is a little naive. From the River to the Sea means no Jews. That's what it means. So, like, where does the First Amendment pause with its protections when you're actually inciting people? And there's been so much anti-Jewish hate, not just hate, but acts of violence, just random stabbings of Jewish people all over the world. There is a case to be made for this is, this crosses that line. This is actual incitement of violence with the mood that is in this country from useful fucking idiots about what's going on in Gaza. Yeah. Don't knock yourself out. So, I think on the First Amendment front that this accusation, and turning him into a hero and a martyr there, it's not a First Amendment of violation. It's not the government that was censoring you. It's a private citizen who essentially says you can't come over to my house and say this stuff. Right. And he was warned and told not to do it on the second night, because this happened twice. And he chose to continue to do it. And I think acting as a pretty poor friend to Ed Sheeran, who should have known also that Macklemore was going to do this in the first place. He's been talking about nothing but this for the past few years. And that song that he sings about what happened at Hamilton Hall when they turned into a Hins Hall in honor of the five-year-old, uh, Goss and Child, who was murdered. That song came out two years ago. So Sheeran's team, I think, is at fault here as well. My question about what craft did is, do you think now that this has put everyone back in their camps? And Bob Kraft is the bad guy billionaire, Jewish, who says, no, you can't come here. If he should have said, what I would like to do in advance of this concert is I would like to sit down and I would like to talk about what you're saying on stage. I'd like to talk about what does it mean to kind of, you know, if you just read the headlines about it or the tweets, you, A, don't know that Macklemore wore that costume in 2014 that he claimed to first he didn't know was, you know, a caricature of a Jew, which you're showing, seems impossible to me, especially if you have a team working for you. But he also said in his rallying cry, you know, free Congo, free Lebanon, free America from ICE. He's acting as if he's the peacemaker for all of this. And I think that Bob Kraft could have made a public point of this, and gotten some of the dialogue that we desperately need to have about the facts on the ground of what's going on in Gaza, what Israel's doing, and certainly in the West Bank as well, but made it more of a teachable moment so that we could at least be talking about it versus everyone back to there. What about free Israel from the attacks that have been happening since 1948? You know, I mean, this is all real simple. Stop attacking Israel. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I'm not as in keeping Palestine not free. Yeah, absolutely. Israel, I'm super silent. I mean, I'm very much sympathetic to the case here, but I think craft made a strategic mistake. Yes, every legal right to say, I own the stadium. I'm not going to permit you because I don't like you. Whatever reason he has is legally justified. But strategically it's a mistake. He's actually handing Maclamore, his biggest win, and frankly, his only win since the 2012 song "Thrift Shop." Yeah. We're talking about Maclamore, he's prestigious. And now he can play the victim, and he can cast himself as the heroic martyr who's going up against a billionaire class. I think narratively it hands a victory to Maclamore. When at a certain point you have to just say, I don't like what he's doing. You're going to have to let him make a fool of himself. Because nobody's looking to Maclamore for guidance on Middle East peace. Maybe he's looking at it. You've got to just-- you've got to either, I actually like your idea, actually challenging to say, all right, come and say it to my face, and actually have a man-to-man moment. But I think just any kind of echo of that old cancel culture from the past is going to be a loser in today's environment. Is anyone looking for any of this at a concert? I mean, do I really need a lecture on politics of any stripe right when the Molly is kicking in? Hey. All right. It's just so arrogant on both their sides. That's the moment when peace becomes possible. I don't need Bruce Springsteen to do it either. Lots of those in a set, yeah. Or Kid Rocks, a good friend of mine. I love his music. We agree on very little politically. I would go to one of his shows, but it turns into a Trump rally. I'm not going to that. And I don't want Bruce Springsteen to do it either. Why is he doing this? What's the point? Because the people who agree with him agree with him. There's a lot of people. I bet who are Trump voters, who like Bruce Springsteen, and always have. He looks like one of them. He's a working class guy. And now they have to go to the concert like, OK, I still like the music. But really, I don't love you as much, Mr. Boss. I would imagine it would be really hard. I find it to be a bit much, and I agree with his politics. And I think that his rep is an enormous threat. And so on and so forth. But I guess the question becomes, when you have these enormous platforms, and I get it that it's different to be a musician than or an athlete than to have a talk show like this, right? Where you can come, and you're supposed to be talking about politics. But-- Yeah, this isn't a sideline for me. This is all I can. This is it. This is it. Right. [APPLAUSE] Well, this is your gift. Yeah, this is right. This is your basketball glory. You are the rock star of here. And I understand them feeling tremendous pressure from people, especially those without that kind of platform, to speak up and to say something with it. Everywhere? Not. Why? Why everywhere? What's the concert? Look, I mean, this has become a massive gift for people in fairness on both sides of the political spectrum. None of these people know anything about the history of Israel or Palestine or Italy. That's the least. Or Judaism, or they know nothing. Nothing. But what they do know is this, is that now it's a big, shiny symbol in our discourse. And if you hit it in a way that's provocative, you're going to harvest tweets, downloads, cash, prestige, whatever it is. And, but, the problem for someone in craft's position is that if you look at younger Americans, they've shifted very hard anti-Israel. And so, again, I'm pro-Israel generally, I would say. But the people who are advocating for my position have to do a better job at reaching young people. Because Maclamort, I hate to say, represents a strong majority position for the people who would be going to an Ed Sheeran concert. All right. Well, good luck with reaching the young people. OK, so, listen. Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Just clump to a hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. Don Jr. is in the nose. He got married. The president says he's a changed man. A new man, I guess he found the one. Great. And I just want to say congratulations. You know, we're so at war with each other. If we can't take a moment to just celebrate a human that we all can relate to. Everybody gets married. Well, not me, but I mean, everybody. In general, it's a thing we could-- OK. The one's different and a little unusual about this wedding was that it was financed by the Russians. No, we could get back into whether Russia was a hoax. It totally was not all hoax. Maybe a little part of it was. But there was lots of Russian connections. Eric once said, we get most of our money from Russia, but nothing to see here. OK, let's not go back in. But the fact that the president's son has this whole-- I mean, this guy rented an island for three days. It looks a little shady. But we thought as a public service-- because that's what we do here-- public service. This guy's name was Umar Kremlev, a very close ties to Putin, just so you know what it might look like if you ever go to a Russian wedding. These are some signs you are at a Russian wedding. Would you like to see-- OK, for example, the bridesmaids are all wearing track suits. [LAUGHTER] That is an definite giveaway. Every guest you meet describes their job as, I am businessman. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] It is a little different. Your limo driver is also the best man. Well, [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] All the ladies at the singles table are on steroids. That's-- [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] The something old is Ukraine's borders. That's just-- [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] The best man's toast is delivered by Stephen Segal. Well, there is definite sign. [APPLAUSE] The bride is glowing because she's from Chernobyl. [APPLAUSE AND CHEERING] And you keep bumping into Tucker Carlson. [APPLAUSE AND CHEERING] So in the interest of what I was saying, always reaching out, because I think we're totally on the same page with this. This is what your book is about. I think I've read it. We are very much aligned with this. You have to talk to people. There's a lot of people, especially on the left, who say you can't do that. So let me reach out now, because I'm not the only one who's giving President Trump some praise here in this town. Are you listening, Don? [LAUGHTER] It becomes the good part when you start yelling at me this weekend. OK. This town is dying. It just is. I mean, American Idol is moving to Georgia. It's going to be called Dancing With Your Sister. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE] But really, I mean, I've been-- sometimes I drive on this lot, which has always been one of the busiest, and there's nobody here. I mean, it happens to be good now, because Dancing With The Stars, I guess, is here. But anyway, Trump wants to secure federal tax credit for Hollywood to bring back the industry. This is one of America's great exports. This is what we do best. We entertain people. And-- [APPLAUSE] I mean, so he's getting praised from people who are the biggest-- Adam Schiff is on his side with this. I mean, the representative Laura Friedman from the district says, "Trump has been having him." Mrs. Porter's made a huge and tremendous difference. She took a shot at Biden. She said this would have been better four years ago. So this is the kind of thing where I just think this is our issue here, like just fine places start in some small place where you can not-- we could just take the hate down, right? Take the hate down, and also show that you are in sync with your constituents. Right. Because a lot of the time, the people on the ground feel totally different to what their electeds are saying. And they're thinking, I'm paying you $174,000 to go to Washington and scream about issues that don't affect my daily life at all. But if you represent people in California, this is it. This is the Holy Grail. And it builds credibility. And that's what people are looking for. In their messengers, you know, their electeds, people who go on TV, talk about this. You want this in your friends and in your family for them to have actually spent time engaging with what matters to you. And that's why I wanted to write about this in the book. Being a liberal, working in conservative media, I have to do the homework for me. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I also do the homework for the people that I'm going to be talking to, because I want to understand where they're coming from, what they're -- would be nice if I also could telegraph a bit what they're about to say, because you always want to have a good comeback if it's going to happen. But, you know, if you get people like Alisa Murkowski, for instance, who, you know, a very sane lady who voted to convict Donald Trump after January 6th's insurrection, she votes for the big, beautiful bill. There might be something in there, right, that is worth engaging with or worth your time. Politics is so much more complicated than the people we were just talking about. It's not just Gaza, they don't know nothing about. Their attitude seems to be Trump and the people who voted for Trump are the exact same thing, and they are not the exact same thing. It's so much more complicated than that. 77 million people in this country are not Donald Trump. Thank God. But that is -- I mean, you and I have pretty much the same experience with the left. I've heard you say it, that you get treated better by their conservatives on the five than you did by what podcasts were you talking about that you were on that? I was -- it wasn't a -- it was a conference, a live thing called CrookedCon, the guys who do a pod save America. Okay. And I went and was surprised by how far left the activist class had moved, because I kind of thought it was a bit, like, lore from the clips I was seeing, right, because I see a lot of how the right sees things. And so they're going to put the DSA up on your screen all the time instead of talking about the more normy Republicans. And so going and being in a room with 1,000 people that, you know, die hard Democrats or progressives, I would say more, was surprising to me. I was like, oh, actually, there is some cookie stuff, more cookie stuff than I had thought going on here. And I realized that being center left is not good enough. Yeah, I mean, this is like being center left during the French Revolution. It doesn't work out very well. (laughter) And I'll make a point -- and I'll make a point about California. I think Trump is making a mistake sending any kind of cash or benefit to the state of California because ultimately that's going to be governed by a purely extractive political class in this state. I mean, we're talking about a state that is losing tens of billions of dollars a year to fraud alone. Governor Gavin Newsom is proud to say stuff like, we're going to give free sex change surgeries to undocumented migrants. You can't trust people that have such poor judgment at such an enormous scale to do the right thing. And the reason, unfortunately, the business here is disappearing is because it's been recklessly mismanaged for so long. A lot of these people who would want to stay have to move outward. And so putting more money into a system that's utterly broken and corrupted is not going to improve that system. It's just going to give payouts to people like Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom and whatever creature comes along the line. (applause) I mean, I think, yes, it's a state corrupt, absolutely. You know, I mean, look, Trump, please, you're not going to argue that he's not corrupt. But fraud is also corrupt. We have it on both sides. I mean, like, he's just so much more out in the open, but the amount of fraud that goes on, and not just in this state, it goes on in red states, too, Medicare for. But they never talk about it. They never talk about it in red. And they never talk about, like, how many fraudsters that he's pardoned or commuted their sentences? The largest healthcare fraud in our nation's history. (applause) Philip asked for $1.3 billion that he robbed seniors of with the Medicare and their Medicaid, gets his sentence commuted. And you want us to sit around and rag on Newsom or Tim Walls. I mean, the hypocrisy kills me. And. (applause) I don't know if you can see it. (applause) So what it is. I mean, literally everything for sale. So, John Jr., the $170,000 Fund Fettie cake, right, that gets sent to the Bahamas for his wedding, by, you know, selling pardons, crypto scams, government contracts for the kids, the Latinic boys, which we barely talk about, like, that's how you get to a place where Americans associate the word corrupt with the Republican Party now, instead of the Democratic Party. And that is a change of elitist, extreme, corrupt. That's what they think about this. That's why the John also flying is so devastating, they are the elites they pretend to hate. That's what every Democrat should be running on. That is what residents. Those are my people. The ones I was talking about. What people? The normal people. Right. (applause) All right. So, like, how do we. (applause) But, you know, you're not. (applause) The question I want to ask you, how do we get these people who are so intolerant of people on their own side? I always say to the super woke, "We voted for the same person. You're just why she lost." Okay. (laughter) You're not. We're not the first. I remember Mary Ann Williamson. Oh yeah. I love Mary Ann. She was here, fairly recently, on the show. She once said, "What does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me?" So, we're not the first ones to experience this. How do we get those kind of people, these people who are so secure in their own perfect one-to-true opinion, to, like, open up and be, like, stopping such hypocrite, you're supposed to be the people who like tolerance, liberals. You're supposed to. Just. I always call them liberals in theory. Yeah. Well, I don't want this to happen because I want to win elections, because the outcomes are better when Democrats are in charge, but, frankly, losing is the antidote to this. And getting on the ballot and being rejected. I mean, that's what happened. I mean, I support you guys losing as much as possible. That sounds great. Yeah. I love it. We're on the same team. I mean, when I look at it at this moment of unity, I. But that's what happened, like, Francesca Hong, the crazy video was running in Wisconsin. Yeah. The one I wanted to get rid of Thanksgiving. I think you have to have a personality disorder to run as a Democrat. It's like. It's like. You have a political movement that has such a complex, and it's going to be dominated by the people to the fringes. So, to the extent that you. And the Republicans aren't? I don't think so. No. I think it's different. Yeah. Right, right. I think. Right, right. And they're fair criticisms about the Trump inner circle, allegations of corruption. If that's true, they should be punished to the fullest extent. We have to be principled, and we have to have the same kind of standard for both sides. If it's true. But the. If it's true. But the. Okay. They'll be a process. Democrats will have to house. Yeah. There you go. I think once gave the Homeland Security dude a brown paper bag with a few thousand in cash. How about a bag? Like. Bags full of money? I don't think we have to argue whether it's real. Okay. And in that case, I don't know the details, but sure. You know. I mean, if that is true, it's correct. You know the details. All right. I got to go to No Rules. Thank you. That was very entertaining. Okay. Okay, No Rules, now that cash. Easy. Now that cash. Now that cash motel. Now that cash motel, let's lower the FBI recruiting standards. So you can get hired, even if you've committed bestiality. True. But he has to tell us, "Why does he always look like he just saw a squirrel?" No Rules, someone has to tell the venture capitalist who said he wanted to know if he was a bad ass or not. So he got root canal with no Nova Cane that there are easier ways to get on a podcast. Although, sir, I hope this answered your question. Not what it's like to be a rich guy and playing at being a bad ass. What's it like to be poor and have no dental plan? Not funny, but true, true. True, not true. Yeah, okay. No rules. I've probably seen here all dressed up for the Emmys and/or cleaning the oven. Has to get at least one gay friend. And to tell her, this outfit doesn't say "boundary pushing hot couture." It says, "Honey, I just strangled the kids." No rules, since everybody's mad at Sidney Sweeney for doing ads for a sports prediction app, she has to do a public service ad to discourage problem gamblers. The way liquor companies have to warn you to go easy on drinking too much. Hi, I'm Sidney Sweeney with a warning about gambling. If a bookie breaks your arms, you won't be able to masturbate to me. Something like that. I'm more shocked. No rules to the dad on the flight who parades his baby up and down the aisle. Let me just say, we see you. We see the kid. You're a wonderful person. No, sit the fuck down here. (audience applauding) - Sit the fuck down, you're blocking the cart that has my liquor, all right. (audience applauding) And finally, Neural, let's look on the bright side of things. Look, I know everyone's in a tizzy about AI and how even the people who work on it and know best say it's very possibly going to wipe out humanity by the end of the decade, but that's four more years, right? (audience laughing) Four more years, four more years! (audience applauding) I'm not going to shirk a code. At the end of human existence is unwelcome news, but here's the bright side. Our nation is now $40 trillion in debt with bullets rounded to about another 100 trillion in pension, social security, and Medicare obligations looming. And with AI about to also put everyone out of work, frankly, our system is going to collapse anyway. Our approach to spending has been so ridiculously unstable, unsustainable for so long that ending the world is kind of a solution. (audience laughing) Look, this way we can stop pretending, as we always have, that Washington is going to have to make tough choices, please. (audience laughing) Tough choices are for people who will be around when the bill comes due. That's not us. We're all Mitch McConnell now. (audience cheering) 40 trillion might as well be 40 gazillion, bajillion, banana, fenneful, dillion. (audience laughing) We obviously have no intention of ever paying it or paying for anything ever. Take defense spending, please. Every year, all you ever had to do was say the word defense, whether it were at war, at peace, good times, bad times, didn't matter. Both parties would always join together to bump it up by at least 10 or 20 billion, including for obsolete weapons systems, like trillion dollar jet fighter programs in the age of 300 dollar drones. And now Trump, the guy who said he'd get rid of the debt very quickly, (audience laughing) but tosses out checks like paper towels in Puerto Rico. (audience cheering) He wants to raise defense spending from a trillion a year to 1.5 trillion in one year, a 50% raise in one year. Because why not? What don't you get about mankind's having a going out of business sale and money isn't real? Crypto prove that. Spending more on COVID than World War II prove that. The one thing, right wing corporations and the left wing hippies can agree on is, fuck money, you can't make me think it's real. (audience clapping) Have you seen the platform from the Democratic Socialists of America? They ask us to imagine a future without capitalism, where your job isn't just a job to pay bills, and then they say, speaking of bills, you don't really have them anymore. Ooh, no bills, I'm listening. (audience laughing) I'm listening to insanity, but I'm listening. (audience cheering) Their website says in the future, you don't pay a mortgage or have a landlord because comfortable housing is a human right. Wow, so the government pays for all housing for everyone everywhere? That sounds like it could be a little pricey. Oh, not just housing, also health insurance, food, education, medicine, transportation, free daycare, free universal daycare. Just day, what about? (audience laughing) What about night? What are parents supposed to do at night to see their kids? (audience laughing) So, I mean, just how much will this have an on-earth cost? Well, the estimates are between 72 trillion and 212 trillion. Which, of course, Debbie Downer economists say will cause astronomical inflation, whatever. Well, then give everyone more money. Isn't that hard? (audience laughing) Think of it as stimulus for the wheelbarrow industry. (audience laughing) But, just stop worrying about money. It gives you those fine lines. (audience laughing) Like, take LA County. Something bad happened here. Kids in foster care were abused in decades past, going back to 1959. And now LA is going to give almost five billion dollars to the victims, even though experts say this may very well bankrupt the county and thus the people who live here today. Who feel bad about the whole thing, but didn't themselves commit sex crimes in the Eisenhower era. But we're going to do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do in a world where money is free and consequences don't exist. People, money is there to be given away. I mean, it's not really there, of course. It's all gone. (audience laughing) We're still giving it away. How else are the 40% of adult Americans who don't work supposed to live? Yeah, did you know that? That roughly 60% of Americans work. And 40% what's the word don't? (audience laughing) Including six million working-age men who don't work and are not looking. No getting on LinkedIn for them. (audience clapping) Their home playing call of duty at 11 in the morning. (audience laughing) But good news for them. Trump said last week, everybody in America is getting five grand, (audience cheering) which adds another trillion on the card, but one more trillion, why even mention it? And if you think a 5,000 per person give away is crazy, what would be your opinion of five million? Because in 2021, the San Francisco reparations plan recommended paying every eligible black adult that amount. Plus a house for one dollar, and the elimination of all personal debt, and a guaranteed income of nearly 100 grand for 250 years. And let me just say, not only do I support this proposal, I'm willing to identify as whatever it takes to get it. (audience cheering) I mean. (audience clapping) Wow, imagine what you'd get if you're black and got dittled in foster care. (audience laughing) Look, folks. We got four more years. I say fuck it, let's go out strong. (audience cheering) I mean, am I right? (audience clapping) What are we saving it for? The cockroaches, I say we spend every last fucking penny go full leaving Las Vegas. (audience laughing) Why have humanity go extinct with good credit? When the aliens pick over our charred remains, I want them saying, "Wow, these deadbeats owed everybody money." (audience clapping) I want the last transmission from planet earth to be a text from Citibank that says, "America, your balance is below $25." (audience cheering) Thank you very much, that's our show. I want to thank Christopher Rufo, just to tell off and Kevin Rousse. Well, Brandon drops every Monday on YouTube, or let's remember he gets the podcast. How's our watch over time on YouTube? Thank you very much, guys. (audience cheering) (upbeat music) Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch him anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. ♪ Maybe it's Mabeliein ♪