Tommy Vietor: The Marionette in the White House

Hey, it's Mario Lopez from the All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. All right. Quick question. You ever notice how some cars just steal the spotlight? Well, that's the 2026 Toyota RAV4. It's got bold standout style, intuitive tech inside, and now hybrid power standard, which means efficiency without the need to plug in. So whether you care about looks, smarts, or just everyday practicality, RAV4 brings all of it. If you've been holding out for the right SUV, this is your sign. Check out the 2026 Toyota RAV4 at your local Toyota dealer or visit toyota.com. See packages and options at toyota.com for future availability. This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. We've been talking about Kewpie Mayo for a minute now, and wow, so many of you already love this stuff. And if you're thinking, wait, what is Kewpie? Do you not have the internet? It's the OG Japanese mayonnaise. The one with the red. The one with the red cap. What makes it different? Egg yolks. Kewpie is made with egg yolks only, giving it this rich umami flavor that elevates everything. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. Where chefs work, of course. Food and flavor lovers use it. You haven't tried it yet? Well, find the red cap and see what everyone's talking about, why don't ya? Kewpie. The original Japanese mayonnaise. Kewpie. Kewpie. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of a little show called Pond Save America. He was Obama's, the Obama administration's national security spokesman after being a driver for Barack Obama. He's also the co-host of Pond Save the World, one of my favorites. It's the last time you were on, Tommy, which is in 2025. You haven't come on at all this year. Yeah, I went back to the archive. I mentioned that I dozed off after listening to 26 minutes of Pond Save the World. Well, good news. I made it 39 minutes on this week's episode because I'm like locked in on the horn of Africa. Good. So we're going to be doing a little horn. Yeah, we're going to be doing a little horn of Africa on the show today too. That's great to hear. There's a lot going on. I was going to say, did you make it through the 25-minute Ethiopia segment? I'm surprised you did. Yeah, no, I started to doze towards the end. But I was really worried. I was kind of fighting off, you know, kind of like the nods on the airplane as Eritrea came up. So we'll get back. Much more Eritrea content to come. I want to start here. You know, we're both independent media folks. I think it's important to kind of support independent media. You're a shameless pitch man on your shows. And so there's been some discussion of, I don't know, the publisher of The Bulwark lately, Sarah Longwell. And so I don't know. I thought that, like, for the Clippers out there, I was wondering if you wanted just to kind of start off with, like, any thoughts about Sarah Longwell and whether you think people should support her efforts or not. The thing about Sarah is she did steal my car briefly in college. She has told the story. I've not gotten to tell it on my side. You know when you fill up your car when you're in college and it's sort of like all the money you have. And then she and my friend Laszlo returned it completely empty. So she owes me a bunch of cash. So if you subscribe, it would go towards her paying down her debts. If you subscribe to what now? The Bulwark. The Bulwark is great. We need to support independent media because they are. They're not going to kowtow to the Trump administration. They're not going to build a ballroom or, you know, jump when he says how high. That's why you should subscribe. Not going to, like, nitpick Kamala or anything like that, you know? We're going to focus on the big picture. I think we're all going to nitpick whoever we want. I have to say, Tim, I don't want to turn this into a reach around. I did really appreciate what you guys did for the Haitian community in Springfield. How much money you guys just raised. Because we also covered on the episode before you, after you fell asleep. I did an interview with a guy from the Council on Foreign Relations who had just gotten back from Haiti and wrote up a big report on it. And we are sending 350,000 people back to a literal, like, war zone levels of violence. 90% of Port-au-Prince is controlled by gangs. The sexual violence is just, like, through the roof. And, like, what Trump is doing is so unbelievably evil. And to support people here is a pretty big deal. For no reason, also. I just, I guess, to kind of follow up on the smear and the lie about, like, pet eating. Yeah. Right. It's just total. And it's just dehumanizing. Disgusting. So, I appreciate it. It was really good to be there. And frustrating in a lot of ways. And JVL wrote about this. Like, the tough part about it is, you know, and you guys are out there doing this stuff, too. But when you go to Minnesota, like, there really was this kind of community rallying around, you know, each other in Minnesota. In the face of, like, these jackbooted thugs. And not exactly. What's that? And we were very grateful for the people that came out. People donated in our community. That's, like, not exactly what is happening, really, in Ohio. A lot of the politicians are too scared to stand up for them. And Mike DeWine's not. No. Tim Walz on this front. And, you know, there's just a lot of fear. So, it's brutal. It's terrible. All right. We have very serious topics like that to get to. I want to start with foreign policy stuff. We'll get into politics. But just as a little appetizer, I just have a question for you about something I've been obsessing about lately. Have you seen Trump's legs? Have you been looking? Do you have the picture? Yeah. Can you put it up? Have you been looking about his legs? It's incredible. Yeah, we can pull it up here. Like, the way he's standing. I mean, there's been some discussion for a while that he might. Have some sort of brace. Or, I don't know, maybe just like the weight from his top portion is such that it's like creating downward pressure onto the joints. Yeah. One of the photos I saw, the direction his feet are facing compared to his torso looks like they're about to spin around his body like the exorcist. It conjures up like Lord Farquaad. Do you remember him from the Shrek movies? Of course. Or when you were little, if you like ripped the legs out of an action figure and stuck a tiny ones in, he kind of looks like that. What I'm trying to figure. How does he stay upright? Because he's leaning forward so much. It feels like he should just be constantly falling. And there are a lot of different angles. I've been studying it. You know, I was pretty sold on the fact that he had leg braces until I had Ben Terrace on the pod and he'd just spent some time with Trump. And I was like, did you get a good look at the. And he said he got a good look at the hands and the legs and it looked the leg looked real to him. Natural. But something's happening. I think that's a good reporter. Yeah. I always assumed it was just like lifts in the shoes to make them from like six to six, three or whatever. They claim he is. I have been very reticent to do the like Trump dementia stuff or whatever, because he's like always been crazy. But it's been more and more stark for like if you accidentally come across like a 2016 campaign rally video. Different person. It's really jarring. Yeah, it is. It's like watching a Biden debate from 2007, frankly, compared to where he was the end of 2024. Or just like, you know, pushing Paul Ryan around a little bit. Yes, that was brilliant. Bullying Paul Ryan. I did enjoy that. I mean, nothing they say about his health is honest, right? I mean, I think they release a height and weight for Donald Trump that makes him like the equivalent of DK Metcalf or like John Elway in his prime. Right. So, of course, we don't believe the cognitive stuff either. I have some John Elway stories. You kind of made a pass at my mother one time. Really? That's neither here nor there. Yeah. What's Paul Ryan up to now? Is he still on the board of Fox? Yeah. I'm Googling. Yeah, he's still on the board. That's kind of a that's not really a courageous path traveled. Paul Ryan just kind of slink away. Just quit that kind of crowd. There's this is a funny little inside gag about you. You don't come. This isn't your world. You don't know about these people. But like the the people that are like the the balanced budget conservatives that never got on board for Trump. But also, you know, they kind of wrote in, you know, Edmund Burke or something for president or Jack Kemp or whatever, like that kind of crowd. Yeah, they're kind of starting to their mouths watering a little bit. They're looking at twenty twenty nine. And I think that Paul Ryan. Might think that things are coming back for him. Huh? I'm I have a hard time thinking that debt and deficit is going to be the winner this time. Hope springs eternal, guys. I mean, I guess we're what are we at? Like 40? You don't think in the Democratic primary, we're going to get that? We're not going to get a debt and deficit Democrat in the twenty twenty eight primary. Yes. And I think we're going to fight about modern monetary theory again. Remember, that was like hot in the streets for a while. I don't know. I mean, we're you know, if you're paying six, seven percent, seven percent now on a home mortgage, higher eight. It's getting up there, buddy. Yeah. I mean, you would think that there might be a deficit hawk Democrat. Who do you think? Who would be the person to do that? Do you think Bashir, you know, someone coming from that kind of balance of budget kind of lane? This is what I'm looking for in twenty eight, which goes against kind of what I think the discourse wants. Like, I want somebody that is that goes full Vitor Rhodes on foreign policy, like ordering, like, not quite all the way to like Ben Hamas Rhodes. But like, you know, the U.S. Brotherhood. Yeah. Really should just like totally back away from the Middle East altogether. OK, like go. And then maybe go like try to outflank the leftist candidate on health care. You're like you're Medicare for all. Like I I'm fully, you know, taking over the entire health care system. I'm going full left on health care. And also, too, by the way, I really care about the debt and deficits. I want to fund cops. That's what I want. OK, no. Can somebody like can somebody shake things? I mean, that's not a bad strategy to win. That's a bit of a unicorn just in terms of how we're going to fund all these things. But I guess the nice thing about twenty twenty eight is I think everyone's going to give up on pretending that they really have a plan, so to speak, or a way to pay for all the things we're proposing. I think Trump has given us all permission to just, you know, I don't know. We're going to tax the companies and we'll save some money on the Department of War. And we're going to get rid of ICE. And, you know, we're going to stop giving. rich people. Oh no, boomers are going to get mad about this. We're going to stop giving rich people social security okay i don't know great and then you know we're gonna balance the budget and give everybody health care this sounds great right i think it's a good plan i also think we just if you're listening one of the people who's at two percent right now in the 2028 poll something to think about we also need someone just that's really good looking saying all of it so really like zoolander yeah like kind of yeah like a zoolander style guy um okay maybe rob sand i mean he kills me he was a male model he was a male model if rob wins that race people are going to start talking about him as a 2028 vp nominee or whatever and it's going to make him insane he doesn't want to do it but uh it will be part of the conversation okay let's do some foreign policy then we'll get back to politics let's do it iran war news today the pentagon is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and additional marine corps ships to the middle east adding 9000 to 10 000 more troops obviously a bunch of sailors to the region as president trump considers renewing strikes on iran after the midterm elections this feels like this is happening right i think so there's going to be an escalation period after the midterms i mean how many times do we have to read it trump is floating constantly to his staff that he's thinking about or planning on re-escalating after the midterms they're certainly reloading their capacity in the region like i think there's a good chance that one of those carrier strike groups comes home and gets rotated out so we have two of them there and one comes back and maybe the same for the arg is one of the amphibious ready groups but still a lot of service members permanently in the region it's wildly expensive and i think people don't realize that like we have 11 aircraft carriers by statute but usually it's like a third of them are deployed a third of them are doing training stuff and a third of them are in the dry dock getting fixed or like maintained in some way so there's not like there's not 11 just like ready at all times if you have three of them in the middle of the region you're going to have the least that means one ain't in china that we're not covered in a lot of places i don't know i mean i'm not a military strategy expert and i know that we do have the best and the brightest working on this right now and pete hegs has making sure that we don't have any femboys no yeah no weirdos yeah no bearded ladies uh no people who are into yaoi you know no uh like you know no piss play so taking insurance just just you know straight guys with muscles and uh i don't know and that's and they're doing a lot of t and a lot of push-ups but like we were kind of it seems like we're kind of signaling to the iranians and like they've now had a period of time also to regroup uh while we're like just you know discussing our testosterone replacement therapy and um and i don't know you know the different types of asymmetric options they have in the straight i'm not optimistic i guess i would say no i'm not they live there they have nowhere else to go the irgc lives in iran they have nowhere else to go and so we can conduct another six-month bombing campaign and re-hit all the same sites over and over again that apparently weren't taken out the first time but they've have a capacity to rebuild they obviously have ballistic missiles left they have lots of drones left they can hit all our bases in the middle east they're clearly getting intelligence or targeting information from the chinese maybe the russians that are aiding them in and being pretty effective they've killed what is it 19 or 22 if you believe the washington post u.s service members they've injured 800 more the cost is going to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars like there's no strategy to win this war we can send as many aircraft carriers as you want there's still not a strategy to end this war and also we're running low on all the interceptor missiles that keep people in israel or on u.s bases or anywhere else in the gulf safe so like they're playing for time and i think they have a better hand here yeah they do they do have a better hand like for example like they're like we got a fatty who's into fisting like we're using them okay the iranians are used they're not leaving anybody on the sidelines yeah this guy's gonna throw a punch all right um okay uh i i had a serious question oh i bet um am i i am nitpicking so i i've already i've already fallen down on my promise and beginning of the podcast i am going to nitpick the democrats a little bit are they capturing as much of the political benefit from this shit show as they could be right now because i just don't feel like they are no i i every time i read like a story about trump secretly telling his team that they're going to go back to war after the midterms i would like to hear every single democrat out saying something like release the secret plan or like you know calling on their opponent to tell trump not to you know resume the war and i think that's a really good question i think that's a the war with iran or like framing the entire debate as uh sorry framing the entire election as your last best opportunity to actually check trump and end the war and prevent him from escalating from the very beginning of this war there were a bunch of democrats who were like unsure what to say about it because they hate the iranians they've been lobbied forever to take out the regime like they kind of like wanted to wait around and make sure the war didn't go well before they opposition they need to point out what a disaster it's been that it could only get worse that trump is not reliable or good at this like i know they're not even coming close to capturing the political benefit they're pretty good at if you listen to democrats talk about the war if the war comes up you know like if we were playing a parlor game and you know we've we've dvr'd we've paused you know the sunday show that whatever democrats out on they get the iran war question they're pivot to the economy right and they're doing that well and that's fine and that's good it is important for voters to understand the connection between the higher gas prices they're playing the higher food prices they're playing and the war but like the war is also bad on the merits right and i do feel like they're jumping straight ahead to that and instead of focusing on they have no exit strategy it's fucking outrageous that they're sending our it's not fair to our troops to our sailors to send them to the region to sit on this boat when there's no plan there's no exit strategy it's not patriotic you know it's not powerful it's not strong it's fucking idiotic like they're right they are cowboys they're acting like dumbass fucking cowboys what do you attribute that to kind of like in some again there are obviously exceptions to all this rocana chris murphy others but like what do you attribute to kind of the caution to go at the war for the war's sake rather than always pivoting to the economy yeah i think you're right i mean i'm sure they all got the same talking points from the same pollsters saying always the polling obviously says the economy the focus on gas prices is better obviously sure so yeah i get that yeah and there's also our big donors that like hate you know the iranian regime and want to change for a variety of reasons and i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point security reasons i agree with you i think like i also think there's some dna within the democratic party like that's left over from kind of 2001 2002 2003 4 that feels like you have to be tough when it comes to conflict you have to seem like you're willing to take hawkish positions and wage war in order to seem credible uh i think we're so far past that it's crazy and that the american people now know that more often than not when the u.s launches a military campaign it ends poorly for us it makes us weaker it makes us poorer and then also you have the stories of these service deployments are getting extended by months and months like literally trying to kill themselves by jumping off the ships yeah what about those people you know so i yeah i just like the war is bad it's a disaster doesn't matter with gas prices were low like it's not going well yeah i'm a little bit obsessed over this because i feel like i want i have bill crystalline and bob kagan and i'm like i want to model i want to model some behavior here you know it's like the chief neocon you know dick cheney's buddy can be like this war is fucking stupid it's making america weaker it is you know an insult to our troops like they don't have a plan then why can't a democrat say that it's easy bob k can say yeah let's talk about jared um he's messing around over there in the region we have a good cnn story uh out today well a well-reported cnn story i guess it's not you know good news that says this at the same time that jared kushner has acted as key negotiator in the war in gaza his private equity company affinity partners has held the largest stake in the war in an israeli firm backing businesses involved in israel's military campaigns the firm has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into israel's largest arms manufacturer it also holds stakes in at least eight other companies providing equipment for the israeli military ranging from drones to warships to demolition machinery all nine companies saw their stock value climb last year with many stating the war in gaza had driven demand for their businesses you don't say yeah like this is like a lefty conspiracy podcast dream it's like whatever everything that i guess a horseshoe everything that glenn greenwald ever said about the bush and obama administrations is happening right now it's like the son-in-law of the president is the biggest investor in israeli weapons manufacturers and he's also like not really like negotiating the quasi peace that we have going on yeah in the region yeah i mean like we're talking about companies that are making like high explosive tank rounds and 500 pound bombs and like the optical camera that goes on a drone like this it's not like tangential stuff it's like the shit they're dropping on human beings and killing them yeah my takeaway from the story was like jared is literally a war profiteer and that's what we should refer to him as going forward i think no one thought he was an honest broker like even like well before trump took office again he did this event at harvard where he talked about how well he thinks that basically that you should ethically cleanse the gaza strip and like set up a tent city for them and like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like you know desert and they can all live there because it's great real estate there was all the things about like bb and yahoo crashing at their house when he was a kid but now we know that like not only does he prefer the israeli side than the negotiation But that he, if it drags out, he gets paid more because they're dropping more bombs. Peace would be bad for business. And they're the largest shareholder, stakeholder. Largest stakeholder. In the company. Just one other thing too, like the investors in Jared's fund are all from the Gulf. So like, think about this. The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Kuwaitis seems politically fraught for those leaders if their populations know that like their sovereign wealth funds are going into Israeli companies that are dropping bombs on Palestinians or making the bombs to be dropped on Palestinians. That seems like an insane thing for like politically untenable for those countries. Does seem fraught for MBS, like in particular, you know, who I think it's one of those things where in some ways the MBS Trump parallels is pretty similar from like first term Trump where like, you know, things are going well in the country. People are willing to overlook a lot of stuff. But, you know, now that Saudi is embroiled in a multi-front war, obviously they're, you know, suffering economic consequences from, you know, the, the. What's happening with the Houthis, there've already been some reporting about this, that there's some unrest. So obviously they don't have the kind of money to throw around that they did a couple of years ago. And now it's like, well, also by the way, we're investing in Israeli weapons manufacturers. Yeah. I don't have a lot of pity for MBS, but imagine you're him for a minute and you're like, you're like zero pity, negative pity. You're like, I bribed Donald Trump. I bribed the dumb sons with like the Riyadh Trump tower and the golf courses. I bribed Kushner with his little affinities partner, which he used to invest in all these drone companies. And what do I get in return? I get him starting the stupid war over my objections. They're not defending me when, you know, the Houthi rebels are firing missiles at my pipeline and Trump has just completely hung him out to dry. And you're right. Like they were already kind of running out of, not running out of money, but like things weren't going well with his big dumb vision 2030 plan, which was just this crazy boondoggle for like McKinsey consultants. They already were raining that back. But now they can see some real economic challenges going forward if like the oil and gas industry if their supply is taken offline for a long time. Yeah. We could have warned them, you know, maybe it'd be, it'd be Aspen kind of listening to, you know, independent resistance media, probably wouldn't have liked the kind of hermaphrodite comments that I was making. But like, other than that, like he could have gotten a little tip, I could have seen that these, this wasn't like really a trust for as the counterparty, you know, that might have been something to look into just the connection between the Christian and the Iran thing really quick. Like it is. of a spoof like the idea of the point man for the negotiations like before the war started when they're allegedly trying to come to a new agreement a new nuclear deal like the point man in that negotiation was an investor in israeli weapons manufacturers and an advisor to the saudis who's getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars from the saudis right like no wonder he couldn't come to a deal with iran like what i no wonder we're in a fucking war with iran like the person that was in charge of making sure we had a peace deal is on the take and is incentivized by the interests of israel and saudi yeah it's so brazen it almost seems like hard to believe but although there's been like there's been so much overlap between jared's you know volunteer job and his actual job that like we've seen versions of this remember that jared is technically a volunteer for the government so he doesn't have to release any of his financial disclosure forms or anything but the new york times reported that when he was in davos last year on behalf of the u.s government laying out his gaza reconstruction plan remember that was like a ai renderings of like these fucking jetsons like you know futuristic towers and things at the same time he was there he was trying to fundraise for affinity partners his company we also know that the guy he's been negotiating with with russia is a dude named kiril dmitriev who is the oligarch who runs russia's sovereign wealth funds you think that guy's not going to be doing any dangling deals in front of jared and steve wickhoff like all day every day so like this is kind of part and parcel to just how he operates and how they all do business kiril was the guy that was in florida jet ski yeah yeah like when when trump said that we got to agreement people like what agreement are they talking about it was like kiril had written it yeah he wrote the plan yeah okay good stuff i wonder what's happening on the china side of things i'm sure that there's some cash flowing around there one thing that i had missed but i said you guys had talked about about the china summit that i want to talk about is the fact that the china summit is going to be and then open up to any other thoughts you have about it was that the u.s ambassador to china david purdue lost to john ossoff that's tough tough tough booking he says in the recent meeting trump asked she if china wanted to buy weapon systems from us yeah i saw that headline and i thought what he had to have been kidding right but then you watch the purdue clip i think he said it like fox news sunday yeah and no part of it is true but he said he wanted to buy weapons systems from china david purdue so the part about him is kidding and then trump gets asked about this comment from purdue in the oval office and trump kind of plays dumb he's like oh i don't know he must have met taiwan but like the context here is that xi jinping's mission every time he comes to washington or visits trump wherever is to slowly kind of chip away at u.s support for taiwan we know that the trump administration is holding up a 14 billion dollar arms package for taiwan and now we're hearing that trump is offering to sell the chinese weapons that presumably they would use to invade the island like it's just like it's another example of like it's just so crazy it just doesn't it's hard to like wrap your head around it doesn't make sense it's too on the nose i mean it might make sense if you know one of the kids was on the board of one of the weapons companies right yeah eric maybe despite the fact that the world is falling apart around him it doesn't seem like trump's confidence in kind of the mercantilistic real estate guy view of the world has been shaken at all which makes sense because like if you know trump's backstory like he went bankrupt a million times like there are a lot of periods where things look like they're out of control and like he always kind of wheeled dealed scammed his way out of it right and i think that like that's basically his worldview right it's like well i don't know he doesn't have anything against the chinese he like says the communists are bad because he knows that that's what he's supposed to say yeah he doesn't have any like critiques of the communist system he likes it he prefers it actually i love him and so he's like well why why couldn't i sell them weapons like maybe then maybe we'd like each other more if we were doing weapons deals together right i just think that's his worldview i think that's right too i mean i think also he's always looking for like some announcement of a deliverable that he can pretend is helping the united states but the last deliverable they announced was a sale of a bunch of boeing planes and my understanding is that those purchases have not been made yet they've also they love to like really announce soybean purchases and things i mean i think the takeaway from the summit to me was what was remarkable is how little they accomplished and even tried to accomplish there weren't like months of preparatory meetings between besant and his counterpart like they just punted the trade war pause a couple months until after the midterms they fucking loaned us to pandas tim we didn't even get they don't even get to keep that that was alone they're alone the panda diplomacy is always a loner i thought that was a gift those keys are coming back i i hate pandas do you know that i think pandas are so overrated they're weird they're lazy they can't procreate you know what i'm saying i think pandas are so overrated they're weird they're lazy they can't procreate you know what i'm saying i think pandas are so overrated they're weird they're lazy they can't procreate you know i don't you know i'm not kind of into incel culture at all they are the original incels that's i'm not into it and i'm always like i've always hated panda diplomacy i was fucking pissed was it one of you was it your guys all both of probably was obama was it obama or biden one of those times i remember being in dc being like i'm not going to the fucking zoo to see this they're they're trying to butter us up with this panda keep the panda i think they took our pandas back during the obama administration now they've might be back in dc someone yelled at me about this in the comments i think they're back but like they did take the pandas back for a little while we got a loner of two pandas they're in quarantine right now to atlanta right i'll stop first we're gonna be live in atlanta the bork.com slash events come come come see us tickets still available that was seamless trump picked xi jinping up at the airport which i think he thought was like a courteous move i think that chinese like they care about protocol and i think they think that makes trump look like their bitch and then they don't respect that yeah the whole thing is weird he is their bitch he didn't want to get anything out of it like that's the point like they didn't do all the stuff because what he wanted to do was show off his toys you want them to see the ballroom granite you know you wanted to see the helipad the granite like that was those were the deliverables for him for sure like she's gonna see how cool the van the granite is no doubt okay we're gonna do a little serious breather now everybody and then we're gonna get back into politics but we're doing the horn of africa i feel like if we saved the horn of africa for the end everyone tunes out i think that yeah i think that's a good idea i think that's a good idea i think that's a good idea i think there'd be a risk that people would leave the podcast and be like i'll see you on monday for bill crystal and so we're gonna do horn of africa right here in the middle i became interested in this a couple years ago because i had a friend who's to grian and uh when i did not my party on snapchat we did a whole episode on the atrocities in tagre um and it was my lowest viewed ever episode but i still felt very passionate about it and then recently my former fy pod co-host cam caskey it's kind of a genocide aficionado and um we were he came to visit me and we spent like a friday night like watching two hours of ethiopia eritrea youtube videos oh god where it was just kind of explainers about everything that's been happening and there's like war footage no no not war footage explainers thank you because it's very it's very complicated so we're not gonna be able to do all of it right here we're gonna just do the basics but um i came away from it thinking that i i that we really should consider a regime change war in eritrea and that i think that i'm not going to be able to do all of it i might be for that so we'll get to that at the end but why don't you explain to people what's happening in ethiopia first the very quick version of why i think people should care about this is from 2020 to 2022, there was a civil war in Ethiopia. And the estimates for the death toll is like between 300,000 and 600,000 people. This was the Ethiopian government against the Tigrayans, the TPLF in the north. Biden was able to put a lid on this through a diplomatic deal, but it wasn't fully implemented. And basically Trump dozed a lot of the funding that would have helped make that process go forward. So now, like since we've recorded that episode on Pod Save the World, comes out every Wednesday, subscribe, whatever you get in your feeds, there are now reports of drone strikes in Addis, in the capital of Ethiopia. And so what's scary about this is there could be fighting between these ethnic communities in Ethiopia, but also this time the Eritreans are allied against the Ethiopians. You could see two like major nation states going to war with one another. And Ethiopia has a population of like 130 million people. This conflict could spill over into Sudan, their neighbor. It could spill over into Somalia, their neighbor. And so there's just like the possibility for multiple conflicts to merge in the most disastrous way possible at a time when there's no USAID or assistance budget out there for any of these countries to help them or all the international institutions that might try to, you know, stop the violence are useless. It's very, very bad. And I had a lot of people kind of sounding the alarm to me. Yeah. Ethiopia is the 10th most populous country in the world. So if you just think about the Syrian refugee crisis and what the result of that was, you know, I mean, much bigger population potentially that's not even including Eritrea. And the other thing for people who, you know, just it's been a while since they're in geography class. While you're listening to us, you just pull up on your phone Eritrea and kind of look at the geography there. Like the other part of this is like this is right at kind of the other straight where oil is coming out of the Persian Gulf where there's fighting with the Houthis. The Red Sea. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right across the way is Yemen where the Houthi rebels are. And to get in and out of the Red Sea, you have to go through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. And that's what the Houthis have managed to close. But if all of a sudden you kind of lose access to all this additional coastline or like we lose access to our bases in Djibouti for some reason, like there's lots of strategic reasons too that they'd be worried. Now on Eritrea, tell people about what's happening there because the leader of Eritrea is like 110 years old and he's been there since 1967 or something. And he, and it's basically North Korea. Yeah. I mean, it's called the North Korea of Africa. So like there's very little information flow in and out. I think he's 80 something. What's his name? Uh, Esaias Ofwarki, I think is his name. Ofwarki. Good poll. Ofwarki. He's been around forever. It is like as authoritarian a police state you can find. You can be, you can be conscripted into the military indefinitely, essentially. Yeah. I think they have a constitution. It has not been sort of operational for decades. They have a parliament, but it has not met since like George Bush was president. So it is, um, an authoritarian police state, but again, like if they, if you went to war with the Ethiopians, like that would be two real deal. Military is clashing and God knows who else might get involved. The Egyptians, the Sudanese, like, and then the other sort of the element here, just to complicate this is that the UAE, the Emiratis are just constantly feeding arms into the horn of Africa. They, they give them to the RSF, which is a rebel group in Sudan. They give them to the other parties in Ethiopia. So it's like, there's just a real arsonist here. And Ethiopia is completely landlocked, right? So they don't have any access. And so this is another problem where, you know, there's all this. Yeah. Yeah. This economic strife there, because like they're getting, you know, screwed by the air trains and swines that like, you know, in order to get goods into the country, like you're not able to, they kind of deal with Djibouti and I think of a lot of their port access is through Djibouti. Oh, really? They flirted with recognizing Somaliland as its own state. If you look at Somalia, it's sort of like a comma, you know, and the top part is, would be Somaliland disorder. He, he offered to do that, that he walked it back. Cause it pissed off all the other countries in Africa. Essentially. So, but yeah, water access is a big deal. I missed a huge, that's what she said. Opportunity with getting access through Djibouti and I couldn't let it pass. And it just, I, I was like two seconds late on it and I couldn't let it pass. So the human rights situation, this is where like my two thousands, Tim muscles are flowing and I talked about how my 20, 28 candidate w and, and it's like, you know, we've really struggled as middle East wars, regime chain wars, they've done nothing for us, you know, it's time to maybe step back a little bit. Work more from a diplomacy perspective, you know, think more about trade and working with allies rather than trying to interfere everywhere militarily. I'm like, what if my view is that we should have that policy for the middle East, but maybe like give Africa, just like, let's say we found, I don't know, a leader. We liked in Ethiopia or Djibouti and really just kind of went in there and took out Isaiah and Eritrea and brought freedom to the Eritrean people, like who were being constricted into the military. You know, we then have a nice space of access there on the red sea thoughts. I feel like Marco Rubio just took over your soul and basically you're doing the Venezuela plan for East Africa. No, no, no, no, no. I want freedom for the people. I'm not stealing their gold. Okay. I love the story about how American companies are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not touching that gold. It's like gang fucking looted gold from Venezuela. No, this is like, we'd go for that. We tried to find the Maria Machado of Ethiopia. Maria Machado of Eritrea. What if that Maria Machado of Eritrea really wants to go to war with Ethiopia? I don't know. It feels like a bad idea to me. Okay. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. All right. It's, it's really horrible. I mean, I'm like half joking, but the half that I'm not joking about is like it. Once you really dig in on the potential risk here, but also like the ongoing humanitarian disaster, it's like, it's hard to not just be like. We got to be able to do something talking about like tens of millions of people who could be starving to death. And, and again, even if Donald Trump doesn't care about a single human being in these countries and ascribes no value to their lives, what you talked about earlier, like the migration crisis that could come from a country of 130 million people, like descending into war is hopefully you don't have to explain why that would be bad. At the very least, maybe we could cut off, you know, kind of our economic ties with the UAE. Who's like in there trying to make things worse everywhere around the world. It would be great. If that was like ever a part of the conversation or like when people went to cafe Milano and saw the ambassador there, they said, Hey, maybe stop doing this. Maybe stop funding all these warlords all over the place. Yeah. Maybe knock it off. I mean, knock it off. Maybe that's the first stop. Instead of a regime change where the first step is to go into cafe Milano and talk to some of the UAE diplomats and be like, knock it the fuck off. All right. Yeah. There, as you know, you've been in DC, like you know, that, that embassy is very good at like kind of influence peddling and sprinkling money, different places. Like all of a sudden Mika Brzezinski is doing a like summit on women's empowerment in Dubai and you're kind of like, how does this make sense? It's like, well, it doesn't. Fuck. It's a shitty situation. It's tough. I don't have anything else. Good. The regime change, war on Eritrea. And it was my best idea. I understand the risks. Okay. I understand the risks, but we'll keep monitoring horn of Africa news and if there are other Hugh Hewitt. Is the weirdo conservative radio host to is a total Trump shill and embarrassment. But there's one thing I do like about a show is when presidential candidates come on, he has like a series of like four random questions at the end. And they're like things that he is really interested in. Yeah. I guess Al Gore has a spy, you know, things like that. And maybe when the 2028 is come through, like, what are you, what are you going to do about the horn of Africa? That's good. That's maybe one of my, or how are you going to take down Eritrea? Just lean into, we're not going to take down. Eritrea. We're building it up. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. We're taking down Isaiah's a Forky. Okay. That's what we're taking down. That's my bad. Fucking dictator. You're right. With the ugly mustache. All right. You're right. Let's, let's do some politics. People. You made it through midterms. You said you were in Michigan. Do we in Texas too? Or you just been doing a Texas deep dash was in Michigan and Texas. Yeah. Where were you in Texas? We're in Travis County. So Austin, uh, the, the liberal bastion, but, um, it was great. It was really fun. I went for the, the Texas tribune fest for a couple of days, got to eat some incredible barbecue. Talked to a bunch of people. It was fun. Where are you at on state of play down there? And there's a pull out today. It has Bobby Polito. Um, we've had on, you guys have a great candidate, but Tejano music singer, I was running down at the, on the, you know, kind of one of the border districts, it was a district Trump one. I'm going by memory now, I think 18 and the poll today it was internal, but, uh, had him up 13. So that's a 31 point swing or it was 29 points, like something to that effect. Yeah. I think St. Paul was interesting in that district. Teller Rico was a pie, single digits, you know, who saw the governor candidate was only up one, and this is maybe a little different. You can't really extrapolate that out to the whole state because it's very unique district, you know, a lot of Spanish speakers, et cetera. But, um, I don't know. I'm wondering what your thoughts were on that, on the state of play. Probably. Yeah. I think Bobby Polito, a shout out, Liz Smith, who introduced me to him. He's like a unicorn candidate. He's a very, very famous, like Latin Grammy award. Winning singer and artist. And they recruited him to run for this race and he had massive name ID throughout his community already. And like in a, in a change election, when everyone hates incumbents to say you're like the furthest thing from a politician, you're actually a famous musician. Like it's, it's great. It's amazing. And he's a great communicator. Um, we had him on our show. We got to keep finding more of those, you know, like, I don't know, we need master P down here in Louisiana and I don't know, we need some fucking bluegrass person in Kentucky. - Kentucky, right? - Kentucky. I like that. I think that's good. genuinely, I really think that's a good idea. People with like a brand name ID, like some sort of community. It's good. I'll talk to juvenile. Talk to juvenile. In Texas, generally, I think the vibes are very good. But when you talk to the campaigns, they are definitely way less bullish than the public polls. Like Tallarico's campaign, if you ask them off the record, they'll be like, yeah, we think there's like 30 to 40% chance of winning. Now, probably their expectations managing, of course. But like the polling averages, you'll see we'll have Tallarico up a couple points. And I think that's just, that's not the case. I think the one thing that could help them, did you know that Tallarico, there's a libertarian in that race? So maybe you can get your win number down to like 48, 49. But, you know, like the Democrats have a ceiling in Texas. This year, the ceiling might be 50%. I think Gina's folks are faring, Gina Hosa's folks are, have a little heart of a challenge because Abbott's- That's just a better candidate. Like Ken Paxton is the worst candidate the Texas Republicans could have selected. I've heard that Abbott's internals have him up four or five points, but we'll see. It's all like kind of how you're modeling the electorate. I think Gina needs to win 60% of the Latino vote. She needs to get double digits with independents. She needs to blow it out in like the five big urban counties. But then she's also trying to peel away some Republicans by talking about education and voucher programs and also data centers. I think they're being really smart about that. I think Tallarico has been very smart in how he's run his campaign too. It's not gotten like nationalized as much as say Beto's has, but it's Texas, you know, it's a slog. Even though people kind of misremember Beto's first campaign, it got a little nationalized and he lost by three. And again, it's like Ted Cruz is more of an Abbott comp than a Paxton comp. I just, I don't think you'll appreciate how much less popular and worse of a candidate Paxton is than Cruz because, you know, to the average Pods of America listener, it's kind of like tough to tell the difference between the two of them. You know, but if you're a Republican swing voter in Texas, you can kind of see the different types of bruising. It's different. Yeah. Different. He's worse. And, you know, I think that they've learned some lessons from that. The, he knows race is harder. It's just the state races are harder too than national. And that's a different animal. And Tallarico didn't have this going for him. In 2022, he signed a pledge not to accept a dime of fossil fuel money. On Saturday, his campaign was informed by the pledge writers that he had one week to return $36,000 in donations from oil execs to avoid their wall of shame. Tallarico said, yeah, I'm going to keep it. Campaign City is going to keep it. So I think that, I think being on the, it's pretty funny that the lefty group, I'm sure all people who are, are earnest and of good intent, but the idea that they thought that being on the no fossil fuels wall of shame would be something that Tallarico would be worried about, I think betrays maybe a little bit of a lack of understanding of the incentives of the Texas campaign. Or that we can't just kind of make a greater good calculus in our own head. So we got from an election that, you know, Tallarico was going to help your cause more than Ken Paxton. Yeah. Ken Paxton is like universally loathed down in Texas, even among a lot of Republicans, John Cornyn, for example. I think it really helps Tallarico that Cornyn ran, ran tens of millions of dollars of attack ads against Paxton. Before he was the nominee that said to him, like, I don't know, I've, I talked to someone today who said they're seeing a bunch of internals slipping for Democrats in recent days. And I wonder, yeah. And I don't know if it's like a reversion to the mean, or if it's, you know, tens of millions of dollars in Republican attack ads kind of biting and doing what they're intended to do. We'll find out. Where were those? What states? All over the place. Several swing states. I don't want to blow up my source here, but yeah. Sure. Where are you at on kind of the conversation around the fact that the Democrats have really been overstated in the, in plain states in the upper Midwest for a couple of cycles now. And there's just something about kind of the rural Midwestern whites that they're harder to pull. And that is kind of like a, a concerning factor for folks as they're kind of assessing Ohio, Iowa, Michigan. about the response bias. I mean, I think it's just right now Democrats are enthusiastic. They are the kind of cohorts that you tend to find to be Democrats are more likely to respond to a survey and like get through it all the way. I think that I'm very worried about response bias in these polls. That said, like it doesn't change the fact that the underlying fundamentals are way better for us. Like I believe that Trump's approval is in the tank. I believe that people don't like the Iran war and kind of like the fundamentals. But I think the polling is way too rosy. And like, you know, there was a Marist poll of Iowa the other day. Remember that it had like Josh Turek up like six or something like that. And I talked to a bunch of people in Iowa and they're like, absolutely not. Like maybe we're tied, but it's just, it's not that. Yeah. This one out today, it has Sand up by eight or nine and Turek by two. That could be real. Like I think that Rob is probably several points ahead of Josh in part because he's a great candidate, but in part because his opponent is, doesn't live in the same. State for, but, um, it's going to be a slog, man. It's tough States. And he is the, have you gotten one of his, um, medical devices? No, his opponent. Yeah, I got it right here. This is a, this is one of the Zach, Zach Lane invested in a medical. That's the cock ring. Oh, where do you look at? You can see it here. I'm not, I haven't tried it on yet. Um, so I'll report back. Um, but he's, uh, he has a weaker candidate out of state and Rob's running it. Rob's running a really good race. What do you make of what's going on in Michigan? A lot of Michigan discourse. So open, open-ended for you to take that where you want. I was in Michigan two weeks ago. I saw, I went to a dual town hall, um, and then interviewed him. I saw him in LA a couple of nights ago. I think he's one of the most talented communicators we have in the party. Full stop. Abdul's speeches are excellent. He weaves his bio together with kind of what's happening in the world and makes a pitch that is both like emotional and factual. And yeah, it's exciting and sobering all at once. Like he's just, he's really, really, really good. Um, I do still worry about that bruising primary. I worry about, you know, potential tax on him being perceived as more progressive than kind of the average voter in, in Michigan. And I worry about Islamophobia and people, the, the legacy of nine 11 is, it's got a long tail, you know, and it's clear that Republicans think that essentially accusing. According to one of Sarah's focus groups, it might hurt Vivek and Ohio. I mean, yeah, I'm clear what he had to do with nine 11. I have not read Sarah's full breakdown on, uh, the, the Abdul focus group. I feel like it was a lot, a little more bullish, but like, I think it's a rate. Like I think it's Michigan is a, unfortunately, I think a swing state this year. And I think, you know, Abdul's primary result kind of rattled me. Remember everyone thought he was gonna be up. Like he's going to win by seven. He's going to win by 12 over Haley Stevens. And then it was essentially one point. So I think we got to assume it's going to be that. And there's a spending advantage issue again. I think Abdul's going to win. I think people will misunderstand the Mike Rogers factor. I do also think this we're veering a little into discourse territory with this question, but, um, you know, I, I, I think that his speech is really good and his ads have been really good. And that team knows what they're doing. Some of his interview stuff. I'm like, so he's a little cute trying to, trying to do it. And I'm like, kind of like, why are you doing these? Why are you picking some of these fights sometimes? Like he, he knows he's a good arguer and like, he wants to win the argument. And like, that's not always the best thing to do in interviews. But, um, I don't know, man. It's like, we're looking at Georgia and, and North Carolina and you got Roy Cooper running and he's running away with it so much that the Republicans are not even investing anymore in the state, like North Carolina and Michigan, how we're pretty similar on the presidential state level. Watley is not great. I don't know that. Is he meaningfully worse than Mike Rogers? I don't know. They're pretty similar. And you know, Roy Cooper's running away with it. So, I mean, sure. Some of this might be, Islamophobia or whatever and the bruising primary, but I think it's kind of weird that like that's just kind of blank observation about, you know, where Democrats are running stronger is kind of controversial sometimes when you're talking about how the party should, should look to maximize their advantage. What do you make of that? I mean, I, just on your Abdul point, I hear you on the interview stuff. Like sometimes there've been times where he's said things in interviews where I've like texted him and said, you know, happy, happy warrior Abdul is kind of better than this kind of more brash version or said something to his staff. But that said, like when I was out there at his, at a town hall meeting, I watched him mention Fox news and some like people are catcalling from the audience. Like you whoop Jesse waters his ass and stuff like that. So like it broke through, it got attention. It made him look like a fighter. The fighter thing has been an element we know that Democrats are looking for. But also whenever you talk to campaign staff, even like even, even campaigns that are high profile, like Abdul or James Tallarico, they say the hardest thing is breaking through. And the thing they wake up and have their, they think about every day is like how we're going to get attention today. And so when you fight with Jesse waters, you get a lot of attention. Even if I think like some of that attention might land badly with the swing voters that we all think he needs. Does he need that though? And this, I guess that's my question. And like the Senate race, like, is that necessary? Is that not a presidential cycle thing? I mean, I don't know. Again, Roy Cooper seems to be doing just fine. People just like not count that because they're just like Roy was a popular governor. And so it's not fair, but I don't know. Roy was a recruiting coup, right? I mean, he was just a popular governor, like probably a hundred percent name ID across the state was able to raise money and just kind of like scare out Republicans. Like Wally's a terrible candidate. He sucks. I mean, look, I don't think Mike Rogers is a great candidate. Like if I were, if I was a Republican, I could choose my like dream candidate. Five years ago, Mike Rogers might sound like the right guy, but in the midst of this Iran war shit, like the former czar of the deep state, like that doesn't feel like the best guy. It's already lost on the slocking ticket. Yeah. I hear you, man. I don't know. I just like, I think as an outsider, as somebody who's an immigrant, I just, I think it's strange that there isn't more people being like, you know, Roy Cooper must be doing something right. Yeah. I don't know. Nobody says that. It doesn't benefit, I don't think, anybody's like kind of factional interests. I think Roy Cooper is a great, like Roy Cooper is a very charming person. Like he has a ton of political skill. He's a recruiting coup. I think like where I think about this is, I think we don't give Chuck Schumer his flowers enough for that recruiting for Sherrod Brown, and recruiting Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Like he had some wins there. Michigan, obviously, like I was an Abdul person. I think that he was a stronger candidate than Haley Stevens. It frustrated me that the DSCC was like so heavy handed there. I think we all could agree that Maine was a wash. Maine was a mixed bag by the end for the pro and anti-Schumer. Yeah. So I don't think Janet Mills was like the right candidate. Wouldn't we be okay with Mills right now? Wouldn't we be fine with her right now? I wouldn't. I think you have to. I think you have to show that you want a campaign and can win a primary. You can't quit before the vote, you know? Yeah. She didn't really have the fire in her belly, I wouldn't say, for that campaign. No, you're giving him a wash on Maine. Okay. We'll see what the Clippers think about that. You know, I'm more saying like people were pretty hard on Chuck for a while on that one. And then I think Chuck Schumer had a point when it came to the vetting challenges issues that he had been raising, you know? Yeah. Try to give him his flowers, Tim. Do you have any hope for any of the Indies? Any of the random – like there was a poll that had South Dakota candidate winning by nine, the independent against my grounds. Anything there? Any opium? Can I interest you in a – Bill Kristol was monitoring Idaho? Like, I feel like the best thing we could do for a lot of those candidates is just not talk about them, right? I mean, don't you want to just sneak through if you're Dan Osborne or Bangs or like any of these candidates? The thing that makes me worried is – You think they're going to use you against them? They're going to be like, liberal Tommy Vitor once drove the van for Barack Obama. Barack Obama. And now he's pushing Brad Baines. I don't – what was that his name? Brian Baines. Brian Baines. I think that – I mean, we the collective like National Democratic Party. Here's the thing I think about. Like, the biggest shift we're seeing is like Latino voters kind of last in, first out for Trump, right? It's not the white voters, which is why sometimes I think you see polls that are tighter in Maine or New Hampshire. If I apply that kind of logic or kind of that data to – To some of the other states you mentioned, it just feels like it's going to be a challenge. That's all. I'm hopeful. A big – a huge overperformance here for Democrats, we could certainly take those seats. The question gets hard when you're talking about should you allocate resources to South Dakota that you might send to Iowa, right? Like, that's where this gets complicated. Yeah. I don't know. If you're kind of a hundred millionaire listening to the show, you want to just take a swing for two million and South Dakota. I don't know. Who the hell knows? I mean, Mike Rounds. And Jim Risch aren't exactly lighting the world on fire up there, you know? Did you even know – No, but you're getting at the problem. Do you even know that they're in the Senate? I barely know those names. Yes, I do know. Who's the other – who are the other Idaho and South Dakota senators? Is it still Crapo? It is still Crapo. Good job. Jim Cohn in Idaho. Who's the other senator from South Dakota? Larry Craig? Yeah, Larry Craig. Was he Idaho? Larry Craig was Idaho. I'm going to blow past your trivia because I don't think I know. Oh, is it – no, Heinrich? What was he? It's the Senate – the Senate majority leaders from South Dakota, which is the funniest – the funniest punchline of the joke. Jesus Christ. Because who is that? The dude in the cashel. Jesus, I know his name. Fuck. It's just blanking on it. The good-looking one. The tall guy. Yeah, with the tan. What happened to me? Yeah, whatever. My brain's wrong. We're going to let you – I think it's funnier to not know. I think it's funnier, too. Here is – it's just a brain fart. Here is what I want to get at, though. When you talk to people who are, like, in the kind of consulting D.C. world and they get at this resource allocation question, the challenge that they're having is that a lot of the Democratic Party's traditional really big donors are not giving as much this time because they're furious about 2024 and feeling like money was wasted and because they're worried that Trump will come after them. And so that's where, like, this resource allocation scarcity question, like, becomes a thing. Don't be scared, people. Final topic. Speaking of money, our guys over at the All In, David Balzac, who's the AI czar for the White House. John Foon, Jesus Christ. It took me, like, 10 minutes to get it. And also on the floor of, like, dozens of AI companies while being the AI czar, a friend of the show, Jason Calacanis, Chamath, Paul Hapatia. They were upset with your old boss, Barack Obama, because he's become a little safety pelt on AI and was just discussing in a very Obama-ish way about how we need to, you know, kind of find balance and make sure that, you know, we're getting the benefits from this technology while also considering the risks. It was not, you know, it was not a firebrand type remarks, but he was just kind of. It wasn't Bernie. No, he was just raising concerns. The guys at the All In pod did not like that very much. Let's listen to Chamath. We, as in the world, are about to endow three, four, five, six companies with about $10 trillion of wealth. And what Obama knows very well is that most of those companies are overwhelmingly left-leaning. And what he also knows is that there is a huge portion of that money that will then get put into philanthropic and charitable causes that then he will and the people around him will be beneficiaries of. Remember when Chamath tweeted the exact length of his dick down to the quarter inch? I will never forget that. I did not know that. I did not know that. Oh, you didn't know that? No, I did not remember that. I remember seeing his chicken legs once in a picture and people asking why he keeps skipping leg day. I'm confused by the theory that he's putting forth there. So Obama wants us to slow down on AI because if we slow down on AI, then the companies that are going to profit the most are the existing companies that are liberal, not Elon, not Altman, not Zuckerberg. I don't know which companies he's talking about, but the liberal companies will benefit from the slowdown and they will give money to nonprofits and the nonprofits will give money to Obama. And that is his financial interest in this. That's the case that he's making? That is the case. And I want you guys to know that Tim thought that these comments weren't dunkable enough and I promised him that they are. You got it right. The master plan, you call for basic safety, regulations, you freeze the market where it is, three to six companies that are kind of winning and the others are, they kind of can't get in. Step two, companies IPO. Which might not actually be the case, by the way, but like even taking that at face value. Who knows? Step three, after post IPO, all those staffers set up donor advisor funds and give to charities or give to PACs. Step four, Obama rakes in that cash. He thinks that is the real AI conspiracy. That's the plan. It is not the cabal of guys at the all-in podcast who got themselves access to the Trump administration by throwing fundraisers to the point where David Sachs became the AI czar. And now the VC class, they're very mad because they can't get, they can't make money off of open AI or anthropic anymore because those companies are too frothy. The valuations are too high. There's just like no way to get in and make money now. So what they're doing, what the all-in guys are doing is they're sprinkling bets on all these open source model companies or like software or applications that are associated or getting built around it. And they want to ensure that those bets pay out. So they are literally lobbying the president of the United States, having him call into their all-in pod events and pushing for these like total acceleration as policies. They're promoting Trump on their shows. They're promoting these ideas on their shows and have an overt vested financial interest in that policy. That is not the conspiracy. It's the thing with the charities over here. Like that's a paranoia there. The charities might be the conspiracy. I like these guys are making ungodly amounts of money and are just like, let's just press the gas. All gas, no brakes. And maybe, who knows? Maybe AI could lead us to a great prosperous future and David Balzac ends up being right. I will say, if you look at their record, Chamath was like during COVID. When I first got exposed to Chamath was during COVID because he was pushing these SPACs. And that's why they're calling him Scamoth. And they're like these meme stocks like Clove. I remember a buddy being like, got to get in on Clove because Chamath is pushing that. And that stock went, and it's just like, these guys don't actually know anything. They're just chart go up investors that want to see as much money as possible. They're happy that they have their little marionette in the White House so that they have their own podcast co-host as his top advisor. They're going to get while the getting's good. And so why would we take our pedal off the gas now? Because, you know, who knows? MARK MIRCHANDANI: It's crazy. They're so unbelievably condescending and they like kind of scoff at anyone who's calling for basic safety. But the reality is it's what you said, like these are investors and podcasters, but the people who actually understand the science behind artificial intelligence to the best of their own ability, because no one really totally understands how it works, are calling for basic like common sense safety measures. But like these guys just don't think they can stomach that. Tim, did you see that Trump did a 75 minute Time magazine interview? And in it, he talked about being like a big Grok user. Yeah, I did. We talked about that yesterday and how he thought Grok was amazing because Grok predicted correctly that the people of Venezuela would greet him as a liberator. Yep. So Grok's running our foreign policy. Maybe he could Grok Eritrea. Yeah. Get your answer. Swan was telling me about this. He also was really impressed with the meme making potential. Like literally Greg Brockman and Altman. This is in regime change. So if I don't have this exact. All right, people can check me, but I believe it was both Brockman and Altman went to pitch Trump on chat GBT in Vegas. And like he was really impressed because it was like, show me a picture of Doug Burgum and his wife on a horse in North Dakota. And then it was like the picture went up and he's like, it looks like Doug. That's amazing. Put Doug in a see-through bikini. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Grok. All right, Tommy. Anything else you got for me? No, this is very fun. Thank you always for your insight, particularly, particularly on the Horn of Africa. Give my love to your wife. Well, and oh, wait, I did have one more thing for you. Final topic. Love it said it's okay to call him the F slur now, as long as you're for the Democrats. And so do you just do you want to take an opportunity to do that right now or not? He was defending Mary Paltola and he said it's okay to call him the F slur as long as you're for the Democrats. And so this is your one free pass. I'm resisting. I'm not even making a joke about feeding your lizard. But no, I'm going to pass on that one. Thank you, though. That's Tommy Vitor. We'll be back here on Monday for another edition of the podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Have a good weekend. I would once again find me a friend. Someone to walk with. Too, too many boys. Too small a town. Feels like I'm always wandering the grounds. You call me up. I let it ring. Heartbreak can mean only one thing. Got me again. It's the end of the world. Done with this year. I miss drinking beer. Miss singing songs for you. Too slow to hate. Summer came late. Fires on the west side. I'm rolling the waves. Let's misbehave. Catch it before it's almost gone. Try to pretend it's the end of the world. So kiss me to death. There's nothing left to decide. Nothing to prove. Nothing to lose. Only time. Go tell me your name. We'll burn our minds. mistakes and destroy to the end of the world. The Bulwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DiCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.