Trump’s Political Instincts ‘Are Clearly Fading’

I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. And this week I am here with my delightful colleagues, the columnist David French and Michelle Goldberg. Friends is great to see you. Great to see you. Hey, Michelle and Michelle. Yeah, we're going to keep you on your toes today, David. I'm just so relieved that the AI apocalypse has not come for us yet, because I would not have wanted to miss this gathering. So a little presumptuous. Don't take your blessings. Yeah, that's true. It could strike during the apocalypse. We'll be on the front lines. I'm going to ask for hazard pay. We are going to talk about this unnerving week in AI related news. But first, as our reality seems more and more like science fiction, our president seems less and less tethered to it. Which I feel like requires some unpacking. Recently, President Trump and his team have been spending an awful lot of time on social media firing off AI generated pictures and videos of the president and in truly bonkers, self aggrandizing situations. I think we've had Trump as the green lantern, Trump beating Hulk Hogan and arm wrestling, those kinds of things. And then, of course, the president just makes up stuff about his world historic accomplishments pretty much all the time. So David, how would you describe Trump's connection to reality at this point? You've been watching him closely for a decade. What's going on? Well, let's back up just a minute. My grandmother, my beloved grandmother, who's like a third parent to me, she had a saying that when somebody gets older, they don't really change. They just become more so. In other words, whatever is sort of their disposition kind, they become kinder, contankerous, they become more ornery. And you just see this progression with Trump. He is just becoming more of what he's been for a long time. And at some point you become more, you become so much more, you almost tip over into sort of alternate realities. And this is one thing that is just, I will never cease to amaze me is that the independent standard by which he is judged. If anyone else in politics was doing any of this, you would really start to wonder, are they okay? I mean, is this person okay? If you watched your uncle do it, and a lot of people have like that crazy uncle or that crazy aunt who's out there believing all the AI stuff that they see chasing every rumor that they see on social media. And you realize that's the guy in the oval office that's sort of genuinely who he is. He is, he is drawn to fake stories. He is drawn to anything that's going to sort of puff him up as a great man. And that's just getting worse and worse and worse. And so what we were looking at is just Donald Trump becoming Donald Trump. He's just becoming more and more and more kind of of what he's always been. Michelle. Yeah, I'm actually not sure how much of a difference this is from the Donald Trump of either the first term or four years ago, right? I mean, sometimes people write to me and they say why isn't the New York Times focusing on Donald Trump's decline the way they focus so intently on Joe Biden's. And I think there's a couple of different answers to that. I mean, one is just that there's only so much room and kind of, you know, scandal expands to fit the space available. But at the same time, I don't know that I see like a market untethering. I think it's just, you know, maybe you're the way you put it is right kind of more so. The AI memes are not new. There was the one in which he kind of compared himself to Jesus. Well, or a doctor. And so part of the difficulty, I think, and this has been the difficulty writing about Trump all along is that it is a very difficult to maintain the appropriate level of shock. Because you just cannot help get a nerd to this over the last 10 years. And it's a kind of constant struggle to try and maintain some connection to the frame of reference we had for what was considered acceptable or decent a decade ago. And also to the fact that this is the man who was reelected, right. It's not like a situation like John Federman, right where there was almost a sort of bait and switch people thought that they were electing one man and then he became someone totally different. This is Trump. It's always been Trump. It's maybe more visible to more people, because there was a sort of at least for Republicans. There was this like kind of scream of like great man inevitability as if he might have been some kind of mad genius instead of just mad. So as his, you know, as his poll numbers go down and as his catastrophes, like massacresize the sort of mythos that once surrounded him becomes like more and more threadbare, but this is the same person who bankrupted casinos. And you know, this is the same person that like caused me to like, you know, cry my eyes out in terror when he was elected in 2016. My question is always like, what's the line between is he entering some kind of reality of his own creations? He's always been in a reality of his own creation. And how much is he just an in like an egregious if inveterate liar who has gradually discovered that he can lie about everything as many times as he can handle it. I think that it's the alternative reality only because the weird thing about Donald Trump is that he's both an inveterate liar, but also has a hard time saying things that he doesn't believe, which is why he sometimes has this kind of disarming and weird sort of frankness, right. So he sort of will say whatever he thinks is happening. It's just that what he thinks is happening sort of is entirely dictated by his ego as opposed to any connection to external events. You know, one thing that when you litigate for a long time and you and you see people lie at volume and at length on very important matters is you realize that the line between serial liar and alternate reality is very blurry. Because what I've seen is a person will lie so much and create such a sort of cognitive dissonance that over time they morph into the alternate reality they start to believe their own lies, the tension of just overtly saying false things becomes so great that they just start to believe it. And Michelle raises a great point and it's a question I get a lot to because I wrote about Biden's age and the problems with Biden's age and people write me and they say why are you not on that beat with Trump. And I think one of the differences that's very interesting and I think that we're all having trouble kind of processing is how the aging process and Biden and Trump presents itself differently. Now there are some circumstances where it's similar when you see Trump apparently nodding off during meetings and things like that that's a very familiar. Having a very important David. Yes, it's very important but I also quickly I think one difference is that it's not as if we necessarily or at least I necessarily think that Trump would be doing a better job if he was awake. Right. So harsh. But the other thing is some of what he some of this transformation and Trump is presenting itself with kind of frenetic activity. You know, the all night posting things that where it looks like he's kind of a frenetic grumpy cantankerous uncle as opposed to your fading frail grandpa. Right. But the other thing is look one thing that I knew when he was elected was that as opaque as the Biden team was about Biden's health and in ways that we're still dealing with and we're still uncovering. They were going to ultimately end up being a model of transparency compared to however Trump would be sort of think of it this way. Whatever grifting hunter Biden did, you know, the Donald Trump junior world is like amateur let a pro have a go and then you know whatever concealment around age and infirmity that the Biden team had and it was substantial and it was serious. You know, do do any of us think any of us think that this mega cult of personality will be open and transparent or is being open and transparent about the actual condition of the president of the United States. Well, one of the things you see with his people though is a little bit like what you're talking about seeing with the president, which is that his people. And I'm talking about mega voters more than the actual handlers and the White House. They will excuse anything he says as clever and funny as opposed to signs of cognitive slippage. So they are absolutely reinforcing his alternative reality for him. Right. The one thing I would say in this maybe contradicts what I said before about him sort of not being all that different than he was is that his political instincts are clearly fading. Right. He's sort of more he's even more in a bubble. He's not doing as many rallies and so he's not sort of. doing this like real-time crowd work that lets him see what hits and what doesn't. I think we're going to talk about AI, but you see that with his instincts on AI. You know, he hasn't sort of, I think if he tested that in a room with his supporters, he might be sounding different. You know, instead, he just put something, his most recent kind of, you know, all gas, no breaks, statement about AI on truth social, and there's the story in the times about how his fans responded. You know, they were sort of like absolutely not. Well, there was a New York Times Santa poll earlier this week that showed Trump definitely dragging down the party. I mean, Democrats are trusted more than Republicans on the very issues that brought Trump back to the White House like immigration and the economy. Now, far be it from me to, you know, put too much stock and pulling in these matters. But I mean, in my midterm reporting, like traveling around, I've been hearing a lot of grumbling on these topics, including in some extremely red places. Michelle, you've been out there as well. It does this jib with what you're hearing from, you know, people in these areas about their happiness or lack thereof with President's job. Well, I think, I mean, I think more of what I've seen is just the huge energy there is around getting rid of him, right? The huge amount of energy that there is to replace Republicans, right? I mean, it's why you're seeing competitive races. I mean, not just in Texas, but places like Kansas, that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. When I was in Maine on vacation and while I was there, I went to Troy Jackson's first town hall. And I was really curious to see kind of what the energy would be like because, you know, people there have been sort of whipside. There are still a faction of like Grant Platner, dead enders who feel like, you know, this thing was stolen from him. And I won't say that the energy was like as electric as it was for him, but you know, I went to this rally in Lewiston and there was hundreds of people there, right? There is so much like anger and terror out there and a sense that kind of the like adults in the room have completely disappeared. And so, you know, you hear over and over again, like nobody is coming to save us. For anyone out there who maybe like me wants to dig into a lot of the AI craziness of late, you can check it out on the New York Times where our newsroom has been doing magnificent work and like Ezra Klein's podcast has been going deep into this. You can check this all out and you can do it without paywalls during your first month on the New York Times app. You're going to get access to the entire back catalog of our Fantastic Show plus all of the other Times podcasts. So check it out. One of the things that we touched on earlier is the president seems particularly and aggressively disconnected of late on a very hot topic that has popped up as a central campaign issue. And that's AI. Last weekend, a bunch of leading AI CEOs came out ringing alarm bells and saying the government really needs to regulate their creations, which is definitely something you don't usually hear within an industry. Please, please come regulate us. And Trump was just like, who cares? He dismissed their concerns. He dismissed the widespread public anxiety about this. In fact, he said that AI skeptics are backwards and that the only guardrail you need on AI is a smart, strong, high IQ president, which of course should terrify everybody. But I mean, what do you make, Michelle, of his complete disconnect on AI in particular and where that's going? So on, I mean, on a very deep level of the one that I don't think he's articulated to himself, I don't think that he is particularly concerned with the world out living him, you know, and in some ways, it would probably be satisfying to him. I think you're so right. If, right, if sort of, if the end of Trump was the end of all of us, but more than that, it's just, look, he's in a, if he's, he's definitely in a billionaire bubble, right? Those are the people that he talks to most, right? Like Steve Bannon, who's out there with Bernie Sanders, you know, arguing for an AI slowdown is not in the inner circle, the inner circle is people like David Sacks. And so I think that that's part of it. Those are the people he talks to. And then the other thing is that Donald Trump cares much more about kind of short-term economic boom than he does about long-term risks, right? And right now, it is the AI industry that is holding up so much of the economy. Well, the stock market. And he loves that stock market. Whatever's holding up the stock market, all he cares about. Right. So like, AI accelerationism might be an existential risk to the rest of us, but an AI slowdown is maybe an existential risk to his donors in the midterm. David, you know, a couple of things. First, I think Michelle's completely right about the stock market. I mean, this is a guy who, I think at some level knows that many of his policies in the absence of this massive AI spending boom, and it is just massive from the data center constructions. It's insane amount of money being pumped into the economy in the AI arena. But for that, we would be looking at a very different economic reality and probably a very different stock market. But also one of the great achievements of sort of the MAGA movement has been bringing the tech lords to heal. And he loves, he loves being the Zeus of the tech lords. He loves that, you know, he had all those guys behind him, right. It is second inaugural that all of a sudden you have Silicon Valley, which, you know, with the rise of Obama was sort of seen as this bastion of sort of progressive, you know, tech oriented utopianism has now become a much more mercenary kind of culture, a much more almost niche in culture in some ways, as we'll talk about here in a minute. And he loves being the overlord of that. And, and, and I think that, you know, one of the things that has allowed him to be the overlord of that is he's been all in with the crypto industry and the AI industry. What do you need? What do you want? We're going to give it to you. And so, and also we can't overlook how much money he's made from the crypto industry is making the crack on crypto. It's insane. It's one of the great grifts of our time. It's shocking. Yeah. As I've said before, this is the kind of grift and corruption that the gilded age guys are going like, I was totally bored. No, or that, like, Mabudo, Saco is like, it's out of control. Okay. So let's, it's a little bit of attachment maybe, but Michelle, I want to continue on this theme with the overlord of this tech industry that itself seems to be going in a weird direction. You had a great piece less week about the doomsday scenarios of many of these tech CEOs are forecasting and how they plan to just ride it all out somewhere else. In, you know, whether they've uploaded their brains to the cloud or they're on an island and bunker somewhere, just take a minute and walk us through this weird new quasi-religion they're following. Right. So I think that it's important to you understand these kind of philosophical currents to understand like the fundamental question of why it is that people in this industry keep saying we think that there is a substantial chance that it's going to annihilate humanity and we need to go full speed ahead. Right. And like, but I think that the most common explanation for that is, you know, China. If we don't do it, China does. And I'm sure that's part of the story, but I just don't think it is the whole story. And to know that all you have to do is listen to their own words. I mean, if you go back and listen, for example, to the interview that Peter Tiel did with our former colleague, Ross Delphit last year, he's, you know, Peter Tiel has been going on to giving these speeches about the antichrist. And you've probably seen headlines, right, that he has in his kind of candidates for the antichrist or embodiments of the antichrist spirit. He often mentions Greta Thurneberg and Alexandria Casio-Cortez. And, you know, people, I think, roll their eyes at this. I think I just saw you David roll your eyes at this. But they're, you know, and it's like, it's both ridiculous, but he also means it seriously. And the way that he means it is that he has this conception of technology as being almost holy, right? As embodying this spirit of human achievement and creation and dynamism and possibility, and what stands against it, what is in his view, like demonic, our forces of. Belmarais. - Don't let that. - A stagnation and restraint. And then I think the other question about this theology is then what is its apotheosis look like, right? And he also makes that clear. Ross asked him, you know, kind of, well, you do want humanities to survive, right? And he sort of pauses for a while, like an uncomfortably long time. And then he finally after some kind of prodding says yes, but then his next word is butt. And then he starts talking about transhumanism. They consider a sort of an ordinary life on Earth, an ordinary lifespan to be like so sort of, you know, mediocre and almost meaningless. You can see this in Mark Andreessen, the venture capitalist in his tech optimist manifesto, which by the way, like kind of approvingly borrows language from the Italian futurist and fascist Marinetti. And again, talks about how like, there's no more physical frontiers to explore and kind of the, you know, the conquering of the frontiers, what gives human life meaning, but there are technological frontiers. You see it with Elon Musk and his desperation to go to Mars. Jacob Weisberg has a new book called Profiles in Cowardus about it looking at various people in their capitulations to Trump. And if you look at the Bezos chapter in that book, you know, and sort of try to understand this bizarre turnaround by Jeff Bezos, somebody who clearly has screw you money, it's weird to be that rich and that willing to abase yourself. But his sort of ultimate frame of reference is his competition with Elon Musk. And, you know, his own desire to go to space, you know, which is again, I think buttressed by the fact that he has said that the real danger if we stay on earth is that that equals stagnation. - Oh my God, so I'm sorry. I just like have to jump in and say like, this is just the latest iteration of men who think they have almost touched Godhood. Like they're so convinced of their own importance or whatever that they-- - I can't just tell you what's so, what's so bizarre is that these are all people, not all of them, but who are often talking about the need to preserve Western culture and the Western canon and, you know, sort of the J.D.O. Christian tradition. And they seem like wholly oblivious to pretty foundational stories like the myth of, I mean, the myth of Icarus just for a start. - Tower of Babel. I mean-- - I look like David Kahn here, like the J.D.O. Christian underpinnings of those are sketchy, like, best, right? - Can I just, let me just say this. What is the difference between somebody who's quirky, weird, and eccentric, and somebody who is bold, original, and provocative, one billion dollars. - Yeah, that's exactly, it's all funny. When it comes to the actual philosophy here, when it comes to the actual intellectual rigor of what they're spewing out, the emperors are butt naked. There is nothing-- - I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. - You listen to Peter Teele talk about the antichrist, and as a Christian who's, you know, I'll confess, I've read more than one book about the-- - As how-- - I've seen so many movies. - Yeah, of the antichrist. You're just like, what are you talking about? What is this? And you really realize that it is something that is very deeply embedded in human nature. It is when people achieve enormous amounts of power. It is never enough. It is never enough. They want to create something that makes them echo throughout history. And it's like maximus in the opening of the gladiator. What we do echoes an eternity. And that takes low forms and kind of tawdry forms, like Trump's obsession with the ballroom and his arch and the Kennedy Center is gonna go to the ground unless he can have his name on it. Turns into other areas where you see, you know, actually people actually trying to imagine a way to extend life into the indefinite future. And so you just have this grandiose, these visions of grandeur combined with this very weird and eccentric worldview that's often like one dash of something Christianity adjacent. Another sprinkling of weird interpretations of Lord of the Rings. A few sci-fi books that they've read and some philosophy they picked up on the way and more than a little bit of reading of Curtis Yarvin tweets. And next thing you know, you have some sort of bold, provocative new worldview out there. And it's just so weird. Can we just say it's so weird? But I think the weird, but it also I think helps explain why they are willing to risk the future of humanity because the alternative to them seems so intolerable. There's a famous exchange between the podcaster and writer Tyler Cowan and Sam Bankman Freed where Sam Bankman Freed has asked about a wager, would he accept a 49% chance of human extinction for a 51% chance of kind of doubling the earth? But anyway, he says that he would. - So you're actually getting two earths, but you're risking a 49% chance of it all disappearing. So and again, I feel compelled to say like, have you guys here of like, you know how do you really know that's what's happening, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But that aside, take the hypothetical, pure hypothetical. Yeah, yeah. - It's a kind of sociopathic utilitarianism, not even really utilitarianism, but it's the idea that again, that like this apotheosis is so important that it's worth it to risk these absolutely catastrophic outcomes. And the willingness to risk those outcomes is also tied, I think, to a sense that they will have a place to ride out whatever they bring about, if it goes bad. - Well, I am sorry they are suffering from existential on we, boohoo, freaking who. But speaking on behalf of the rest of us who will not get to upload our brains to the cloud or hide in their bunkers under, you know, some strange island or whatever. Like this is not how most of America feels and it is a big issue that's popped up in the midterms, even if it's late in the game. What opportunities do we think this presents the Democrats in this moment? And, or, you know, if you want to take the flip side, like how do Republicans who aren't named Trump deal with this? David, you go first. I'm going to go with the old promise and peril formulation. So here's what's promising. I look at AI and I see promise and I see peril. It's just like with nuclear power, other transformative moments. You know, we're cold war kids. We know what it's like to live under the threat of an almost instantaneous extinction level event that we, where we were putting an enormous amount of trust in government leaders, not just here, but also in the Soviet Union to manage this catastrophic conflict in a responsible way. So some of us are sort of starting to get deja vu when we hear about this extinction level stuff. But at a time when a lot of the leader class and in the world seems to be heedless, reckless, thoughtless, deeply populist. So if you can be an adult in the room, there's an enormous amount of political, I think political promise and enormous sort of blue ocean opportunity for good governance. Now here's the peril. I do think that we're going too far in the sort of the anti-data center movement and sort of in some of these regulatory ideas that are in essence trying to put a hard stop to the kind of technological development that does have a lot of promise. And so we're on the cusp of the technology and I'll use the nuclear analogy even though it's very imperfect. - Well, and also wasn't owned by Elon Musk. - Right, it wasn't owned by, you didn't have a bunch of nukes in the hands of a collection of billionaires, right? One of the problems we have with the AI is that we see who's developing it and there's zero trust in the leadership of these institutions, zero trust for good reasons. So it's a technology that we don't fully understand and the hands of people accountable often to really nobody whom we also don't trust for good reasons. And so that makes us feel different even from the nuclear age, which was much more immediately dangerous at its height than AI is. But the difference is who's in charge? - I also think that so far what people have seen of AI, at least many people, is something that might provide some marginal conveniences. It's a better search engine. But that also in a lot of ways is making life worse. It makes life worse for parents who have to worry about AI and education. The people who are championing this technology often the next breath will warn that it's gonna take your job that's gonna cause massive job losses. It has, I think, a pretty deletrious effect on the culture, which is now kind of polluted with AI slop. It has negative consequences for our sense of a shared reality. And so people feel like they're being asked to take these giant risks for benefits that may or may not come, but that at least at the moment are illusory when the things that they see of AI are often just like a sort of a nuisance at best. And for that, they're supposed to accept these data centers that, you know, like the landscape that they're really loud when you're near one. I wouldn't want one anywhere near me. And so I understand why other people don't want one anywhere near them. And then finally about the distrust, I mean, I've written about this in the past, but there's a reason why distrust in AI is like particularly acute in the United States. And it's because we suspect that there is not a government capable of like harnessing these technologies and ameliorating the downsides. So you know, China, people in China are much more optimistic about AI because you cannot fire someone because you're going to replace them with an AI agent, right? You know, similarly, Scandinavia, people are willing to accept these technologies because there are like mechanisms in place to make sure that they share in whatever gains come. Whereas here, it just seems like a mechanism to establish some kind of techno feudalism. And even if trying to ban data centers is like a blunt instrument, it's kind of one of the few instruments that ordinary people actually have. Yeah, I totally agree. I think the reason the data centers have one of the reasons that they popped up as such a huge issue. Is it something that is physical that people actually can understand and get their arms around a little bit like Trump's obsession with building a wall as the way to address any kind of immigration crisis? Has there ever been an industry rollout from a PR perspective sort of worse than AI, which has sort of been, it's coming. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It might end the world. It could very well destroy your job, but you know, as a consolation, this chatbot will help you describe how to commit suicide. Oh my gosh, David. You know, this is a, the rollout has been one of, and this is a phrase I picked up on a great HBO show, The Comedy Hacks, where one of the characters used a phrase that I love, called forced inevitability, in other words, what the industry has basically said, it's essentially, there's nothing you can do. When you tell people in a democratic society, there is nothing you can do. You know what the people will start to do, especially in America, which has a multi-hundred-year history of saying, don't tell me, I can't to do this, is they'll say, oh yeah, watch us. Unfortunately, we have a strong, high IQ president to protect us all. Well, I think, I think we can save embrace. I think we're going to need to, I think we're going to need to leave it there, although we could do this all day. I like, I could definitely see we doing extended series on this, but it's time for Rex. What do you got for me to? So Jamel isn't here. So I thought somebody needs to fill in the slot of high level literature. And so I'm going to recommend a book series called Dungeon Crawler Carls. Oh, wait, I think, have you read that, Michelle? No, I'm going to be impressed. I thought for a minute, my son was reading it, but I'm not sure, actually. Your son should be reading it, Michelle. Okay. So the premise of this literature is that an alien race comes and essentially flattens earth, wipes us out all but a few million and to live those few million have to enter into a game that is essentially a giant version of like Dungeons and Dragons or World War Craft or whatever. Yeah. My son is reading this. Yes. It is a hoot. It is a hoot. It is. So you cannot put it down. I think I laugh out loud six times an hour when I'm reading it. And as I'm progressing through and you just buy into the premise and everything, the books are getting sort of more poignant. And it is, it's just a delight. Okay. Now I'm from Michelle or tell me you guys. Michelle. I'm going to recommend a less fun book by Emily St. John Mandel called exit party. I'm like a huge fan of Emily St. John Mandel. She wrote station eleven, which I think the book is better than the series, but the series was fantastic. And it's a book that basically like, you know, since 2016, I'm sure you've heard people say like we're on the bad timeline, right? There was this sense that there was this sort of like rupture and the darkest timeline. Yeah. Right. And it's a book that almost kind of takes that and runs with it. And so it's, it begins in a Los Angeles in which there has been a civil war. There's now a Republic of California and all of these characters are, you know, sort of situated in that world. But then there's also a sort of an alternative universe within the book. And in that universe, there has not been a civil war. Instead, there's been this kind of like authoritarian consolidation. And America is like a very technologically advanced to military and surveillance state. Although I've just kind of emphasized the like current events framing, it's not, you know, didactic. It's often like really moving just on its own terms. Well, if I put those two rucks together, my weekend is set for me. Okay. I'm going, I'm going with a listen. I have been digging into a country rock group called the Red Clay Strays, which are straight out of mobile Alabama. They got a lot of heavy dose of soul and gospel in there. And they came out with their third album in June. So they have been on tour. I am very sad that when I was in Nebraska for campaign travel, I just missed them. But they're making the rounds and you can obviously just give a listen on whatever streaming service you like. But Red Clay Strays, that's it and with that, we're going to land this point. Guys, as always, a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We'll have to do it again soon. Thanks, Michelle. [MUSIC]