Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Quinnipiac University national poll finds just
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent of Republicans sixty seven percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: support the BBB. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today as the world churns. Andy Levy stops by
Speaker 1: to talk to us about the fallout from Trump and
Speaker 1: musks exploding romance. Then we'll talk to Blood in the
Speaker 1: Machines Brian Merchant about how AI is already quietly killing
Speaker 1: job prospects in America. But first the news Mali.
Speaker 2: These tariffs, it's never ending drama, just like Trump and Musk.
Speaker 2: Scopist says it's highly likely tariff deadlines will slide for
Speaker 2: countries and talks because sure third talks.
Speaker 1: I was taald that there would be ninety deals in
Speaker 1: ninety days.
Speaker 3: It's infrastructure week too.
Speaker 1: It's always infrastructure week, isn't it.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. This is the new infrastructure week.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the tariffs. Showed Endur's tariffs. There
Speaker 1: are so many different machinations of tariffs in different ways.
Speaker 1: There is a global tariff that Trump put on on
Speaker 1: April second, then he paused on April ninth. Then he
Speaker 1: promised ninety deals in ninety days. I mean, so they're
Speaker 1: less than thirty days to go. There are sixty deals now,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, they're not. There's one framework of a
Speaker 1: deal that's like you remember concepts of a plan. That's
Speaker 1: concept of a plan that's with the UK, one extension
Speaker 1: that's with the EU. Then there's the China disaster. But
Speaker 1: China's tends to be very easy to negotiate with and
Speaker 1: very operating in good faith.
Speaker 4: Just kidding.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just want to point out he
Speaker 1: could make deals with Canada and Mexico tomorrow. They are
Speaker 1: our largest partners, and like all the Canada and Mexico
Speaker 1: stuff is completely self imposed. Crisises that this administration is
Speaker 1: doing because Trump is so unpredictable, Like, make a deal
Speaker 1: with Canada and Mexico. Stop it. This is so stupid.
Speaker 2: It is pretty stupid. Speaking of stupid, a couple journalists
Speaker 2: have identified that there's this feedback group of right wing
Speaker 2: propaganda that keeps kind of fueling what's going on with
Speaker 2: these LA protests. Device and I have to tell you personally,
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe when I looked at Twitter this morning
Speaker 2: how much footage I was seeing of twenty twenty protests
Speaker 2: being passed on as if they're happening right now today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty twenty protests, AI videos stuff from like the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Russia Ukraine War, when the right was
Speaker 1: sharing all these like insane videos where you were like,
Speaker 1: this is not Russia. This is a video game. That's
Speaker 1: what we have here. But you know, you have one
Speaker 1: group of influencers who are again like I don't mean
Speaker 1: to get on my hobby horse, but let me please
Speaker 1: get on my hub person. Congress refuse to regulate, right,
Speaker 1: they've refused to put any level of regulation on the internet.
Speaker 1: So there is no fact checker, there is no truth,
Speaker 1: There is no agreed upon truth. And so now if
Speaker 1: you're a bad faith actor, which a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are, you know, you're either a bad faith actor
Speaker 1: or you're stupid, right, because anyone else has been on
Speaker 1: the Internet so much, they know like this is not correct.
Speaker 1: You know, like I know what looks you know, if
Speaker 1: it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Speaker 1: And I mean that with all the caveat. But what's
Speaker 1: scary about this administration is they actually, like in a
Speaker 1: normal administration, you'd see a picture and the president would say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to my D and I and
Speaker 1: make sure that this is real. In this administration, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is like we have to go to war, you know,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't. There's not a lot of fact checking,
Speaker 1: and like we've seen this get and again, right, go on.
Speaker 2: And this administration. Tulci Gabbard yesterday was busy rattling off
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories on a video for like an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I just don't understand how we are in
Speaker 1: this position again. And there's no like there are a
Speaker 1: few Republicans who are still around who understand that like
Speaker 1: what is real and what is not real. But a
Speaker 1: lot of Trump's people are just like, if he can
Speaker 1: get the base to believe it, who cares if it's real.
Speaker 3: That seems to be the modus operandi.
Speaker 1: Which is really scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's horrible, and it really it was the
Speaker 2: same thing as the thing we know that like Musk
Speaker 2: has incentivized all this information by paying people. There's that
Speaker 2: great article in The Times a week ago about Don Luker,
Speaker 2: and you know that he just doesn't care about what
Speaker 2: he prints because Musk is paying him. Speaking of things though,
Speaker 2: that do break the pattern. Would you believe me if
Speaker 2: I said Mitch McConnell was really hard on Pete Hegseth
Speaker 2: at the hearing yesterday.
Speaker 1: Yes I would, because it's a guy who vote is
Speaker 1: like the one Republican who voted against all the crazy
Speaker 1: cabinet appointees. So I would believe that. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: Mitch mcconald is how we got here, so I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone should be, you know, feeling too bad for him.
Speaker 1: But that said, he has now realized, you know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have power anymore, he's not in leadership, and he's
Speaker 1: realized that this is just a disaster, right, that Russia's
Speaker 1: being allowed to do whatever it wants with Ukraine, that
Speaker 1: America is no longer the shining city on the hell.
Speaker 1: This is what it is, man, this is what it is.
Speaker 1: And I think Mitch mcconald understands that he was part
Speaker 1: of this, and you know, I don't think he wishes
Speaker 1: us well. I do think there's some amount of like Oiva,
Speaker 1: I did this going on.
Speaker 2: So we usually don't wait into foreign policy waters. But
Speaker 2: what are the things you and I have often discussed.
Speaker 1: For anything about it? Yes, go on, we do.
Speaker 2: One of the things you and I often discussed, though,
Speaker 2: is what we do want to do is highlight the
Speaker 2: things we think are not getting discussed in the mainstream media.
Speaker 2: I think it's a little concerned that the US has
Speaker 2: reduced the presence of staffers do de deessential in the
Speaker 2: Middle East as tensions with Iran and rise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, this is so insane.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Remember Donald Trump was like, I'm going to make peace
Speaker 1: in the Middle East in the first day. I remember
Speaker 1: that very well. It's like I'm going to end the tension.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then he was like, We're going to develop Palestine,
Speaker 1: kick out all the Palestines.
Speaker 3: The tension.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is the tension. And now it looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: non essential American employees are getting out of Iran because
Speaker 1: something's cooking. Again. This is all hard, Like this is
Speaker 1: the thing about Elon Musk. Government is actually hard. It's
Speaker 1: just hard. It's hard to get a lot of people
Speaker 1: to do stuff. It's hard to make it work right,
Speaker 1: It's hard. So like making peace in the Middle East
Speaker 1: is hard. So part of Donald Trump's whole thing is
Speaker 1: that he is so brash and caw and sometimes his
Speaker 1: escalatory rhetoric works. It usually works with like sane countries
Speaker 1: that would have been our friends anyway, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: work with places like Israel or Raq or Palestine, and
Speaker 1: so really it is just, you know, it's so fucking bad.
Speaker 1: Excuse my friend, And you know, we just have this
Speaker 1: super disorganized, very craven, extremely ideological administration that is like
Speaker 1: a bull in a china shop and somehow still believes
Speaker 1: that Vladimir Putin is a good guy. And that's why
Speaker 1: we can't stop things escalate. There is no peace. It
Speaker 1: just all of this that we're seeing play out is
Speaker 1: everything we said was going to happen. Yes, we were
Speaker 1: wrong about the twenty twenty four cycle, but no, we
Speaker 1: were not wrong about what Donald Trump would do when
Speaker 1: he got an office. Andy Levy is the co host
Speaker 1: of As the World Churns. Welcome to Fast Politics, Andy Levy.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly, trying not to do something weird anyway,
Speaker 4: I'm here with a New York Times bestselling author, Molly
Speaker 4: john Fest. So what's up with that, Molly.
Speaker 1: Well, we were getting ready to record, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm in Chicago. If I don't sound amazing, Jesse is
Speaker 1: probably going to kill me later. But I did get
Speaker 1: a call from my editor that my book How to
Speaker 1: Lose Your Mother, available in many places, is on the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller list. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: writing is like what I've done my whole life. So
Speaker 1: to be on the New York Times bestseller list, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fucking cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's amazing, especially for a book that's based on
Speaker 4: a sitcom that went off the air like ten years ago.
Speaker 1: It's a book based on a meme. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: a sick it's a meme. It's a mean book. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a meme books being of meme books, I have
Speaker 1: a whole thesis and I'd like to shop it to
Speaker 1: you and our listeners, and you tell me if you
Speaker 1: think that I'm wrong. I'm open to being wrong because
Speaker 1: now I'm in your time's bestselling author, So I have
Speaker 1: that self esteem buttress that I.
Speaker 4: Can set wrong. Sure.
Speaker 1: Last week, despite the fact that Trump World sort of
Speaker 1: spun it in many different ways, Trump did fight with Elon,
Speaker 1: the guy who has all our data. Then Elon called
Speaker 1: him a pedo. Then Trump called him a drug addict.
Speaker 1: Then Elon said maybe he shouldn't have tweeted all that
Speaker 1: stuff that was this week, and also Trump world lost
Speaker 1: in Cord and Trump the trade war. There are no
Speaker 1: ninety deals in ninety days, you know, everything is just
Speaker 1: sort of cluttering along. And then there's also somehow we're
Speaker 1: going to war with ver we're on. You know, like
Speaker 1: it just seems like all of the sort of last
Speaker 1: week you could still blur your eyes and be like
Speaker 1: Trump two point oho is more organized than to Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero. But now all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: that illusion is gone and ad And that same time,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump decides that he should send the National Guard
Speaker 1: in to Los Angeles. Probably a coincidence, right.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's a quincience. Look, I am
Speaker 4: unlike you and Donald Trump. I am not a New
Speaker 4: York Times bestselling author, So I feel kind of like
Speaker 4: the odd man out in this discussion. But I think
Speaker 4: two things can be true as they say. I think
Speaker 4: one is the timing of this is I I think
Speaker 4: you're onto something there. Like I do think that it
Speaker 4: hasn't been a great couple of weeks for Donald Trump
Speaker 4: by a lot of metrics, so his bread and butter
Speaker 4: is always going to be, you know, for his base,
Speaker 4: it's going to be going after brown people and going
Speaker 4: after black people, et cetera. So yeah, I think the timing,
Speaker 4: if it's coincidental, it's it's it's a very I guess.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say it's a good coincidence for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, but it's the kind of thing that may
Speaker 4: be coincidental that it's a incidents think, is what I'm
Speaker 4: trying to say. But we know this is what Stephen
Speaker 4: Miller has wanted from day one, and they may have
Speaker 4: just seen with regard to the timing, well this happened,
Speaker 4: and then they said, Okay, let's do what we've been
Speaker 4: wanting to do. Let's send in the shock troops. Let's
Speaker 4: send in the jack booted thugs, let's send in the
Speaker 4: National Guard, the Marines. I'm worried that we're going to
Speaker 4: be finding a two front ore, one in t i
Speaker 4: Ron and one at the Grove, and that usually doesn't
Speaker 4: go well.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure. I was at the grove yesterday. There is
Speaker 1: no war at the grove. Now that said, it's a
Speaker 1: weird little MALLLL.
Speaker 3: It is a weird little mall yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a weird little mall. Like what I love about
Speaker 1: La Is there so many weird little spots that make
Speaker 1: no sense. I did nearly get hit by a trolley
Speaker 1: at the Grove buck Is there a trolley.
Speaker 4: Trolley was like four miles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But you can still if you're tired enough,
Speaker 1: you can wander in there. So look, I was in
Speaker 1: La till about two hours ago, and I think.
Speaker 4: Did you get breathed?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh it's just it's mayhem and madness. No,
Speaker 1: it's totally fine. There's like a small area where people
Speaker 1: are protesting. I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any smoke. You know, it's not what
Speaker 1: the far right wants you to think it is. Now,
Speaker 1: that is why the far right has And there's a
Speaker 1: really good article about this and Wired and in the
Speaker 1: Times there's a they're spreading all these fake AI generated videos,
Speaker 1: so A generated videos, old videos saying that like Los
Speaker 1: Angeles is a healthcape. I would think they would want
Speaker 1: Los Angeles to be a healthcape. I guess they do
Speaker 1: want Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, they look they want all those pictures
Speaker 4: to be real, you know, we've got that. They're even
Speaker 4: playing the old hits, the Palette of Bricks, right, I
Speaker 4: think that's right. I don't remember what year it wasn't
Speaker 4: that that first top the chart, but they're bringing it back.
Speaker 4: But yeah, look, I lived in LA for ten years.
Speaker 4: I have a lot of friends in LA. Nobody in
Speaker 4: La is talking about the city being on fire or
Speaker 4: they're riots all over in the streets. That stuff is
Speaker 4: simply just not happening, and we're being lied to for
Speaker 4: a change by the top administration and right wing media.
Speaker 4: If you want to talk about the violence, the violence
Speaker 4: is very one sided and it ain't coming from the protesters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think I actually have a friend who
Speaker 1: was protesting in New York and she was telling me
Speaker 1: that the ICE agents are trying to get the protesters
Speaker 1: to act out, like there's clearly a want here for escalation,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily on the protester side. That said,
Speaker 1: you don't you know, you can't be held responsible forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people and
Speaker 1: we saw this, We've seen this with every protest, that
Speaker 1: there are protesters who do stuff that they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to do. So sure, I you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to like blankets, say that no everyone's behaving.
Speaker 4: Well, sure, no, someone is always going to start a
Speaker 4: drum circle and that is reprehensible and should not be
Speaker 4: tolerated in the year twenty twenty five. But there's going
Speaker 4: to be stuff like that, and you can't you can't
Speaker 4: tar the whole of the protest because somebody has a bongo.
Speaker 4: It's just not fair. And by the same token, you see,
Speaker 4: you know, the media, as as people have pointed out,
Speaker 4: the media love to show cars on fire. That is,
Speaker 4: they can't they they cannot get enough of a car
Speaker 4: being on fire. So there could be one car on fire,
Speaker 4: and we have no idea how it happened, but we
Speaker 4: are going to see that image a thousand goddamn times,
Speaker 4: and there's going to be a lot of handwringing about
Speaker 4: the violence because a car in America is sacred, whereas
Speaker 4: the lives of individuals not so much.
Speaker 1: Not so much, not so much. No, yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: don't burn cars because cars for people. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you a question, now that Trump and Elon have broken up,
Speaker 1: is it still a federal crime to hurt a tesla?
Speaker 1: Or is that has that been rescinded.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a good question. And in LA it
Speaker 4: seems to be that the protesters are going after the
Speaker 4: Wainbow vehicles because all these self driving cars have cameras
Speaker 4: of all of them, and the police in law enforcement
Speaker 4: and the FEDS are using them to surveil. So I
Speaker 4: was trying to figure out, Yeah, do you think is
Speaker 4: Elon does he have mixed feelings about this? Is he
Speaker 4: like upset that they're going after cars? But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, it's these Google cars like that are competitors
Speaker 4: to Tesla. This is a tough one to judge. Trump
Speaker 4: said he was selling his or he was getting rid
Speaker 4: of his Tesla, didn't.
Speaker 3: You say that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which doesn't mean he did say he was
Speaker 1: getting rid of He told a reporter in the West
Speaker 1: Way when he was doing one of his many many
Speaker 1: sprays or you know whatever it's called, that he is
Speaker 1: selling his red Tesla out. Let's just talk about this
Speaker 1: sort of musk trying to retrench himself efforts. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: by the way, the polling on the BBB is the big, bad,
Speaker 1: beautiful Buxom bill is bad, bad, bad, real bad. You
Speaker 1: want to know how bad it is?
Speaker 4: How bad is it.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how bad it is. It's bad, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I were pulling that badly, it's like
Speaker 1: black death. And then the BBB Big Beautiful Bill two
Speaker 1: to one. Americans opposed independents are three to one negative
Speaker 1: on it BBB bad bad bad. They should have called
Speaker 1: it something else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I guess the people are on Elon's side
Speaker 4: on that one because he was going after the BBB.
Speaker 1: He was going after it because he wanted it to
Speaker 1: give him credits so that his car company could do well,
Speaker 1: not because he gives talk about the data sets.
Speaker 4: Which, by the way, is the same reason he's apologizing
Speaker 4: to Trump. I mean, yeah, I mean the federal contracts
Speaker 4: between you know, SpaceX and and the favors he needs
Speaker 4: for Tesla. I mean, I have got to think that
Speaker 4: this you know, pseudo apology or halfway apology that he
Speaker 4: that he did was spurred on by the boards of
Speaker 4: some of his various companies, by the Tesla board, by
Speaker 4: the people at SpaceX who were like, dude, if the
Speaker 4: federal government cancels SpaceX contracts, we're out of business. I mean,
Speaker 4: they can't stay in business without that.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk for a second about this, this elon
Speaker 1: apology tour. So his he had an early morning tweet
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, which is either today, yesterday, or five years ago,
Speaker 1: and in it he said he regret regretted going quote
Speaker 1: too far in criticizing President Trump. I assume that's the
Speaker 1: HEADO tweet, but it could have been something else. Love
Speaker 1: this administration. Musk's effort, and I mean that with all
Speaker 1: the disdain in the world, that's irony or is it sarcasm?
Speaker 1: It's circus. Musk's efforts to make amends began on Friday
Speaker 1: when he spoke by phone with White House Chief of Staff.
Speaker 1: This is a reporting from Axios, Susie Wilds and Vice
Speaker 1: President Vance. Three people familiar with the discussion said, so
Speaker 1: one of that's Trump. Vance and Susie told Axios that
Speaker 1: Musk call them it matters. Why does it matter? American
Speaker 1: democracy is going to die. It's Musk is trying to
Speaker 1: get Trump to take him back. And then Musk fears
Speaker 1: Trump's beautiful bill will add trillions the federal deficit. Do
Speaker 1: you think he really fears that. I don't think he
Speaker 1: gives a fuck out.
Speaker 4: I don't think. No, he fears it will add money
Speaker 4: to his deficit, yes, you know, uh not not to
Speaker 4: the federal deficat. No, I don't believe for a second
Speaker 4: he gives a shit about that. I mean I was
Speaker 4: talking to I was talking to Si Cup last week
Speaker 4: on my podcast As the World Turns, available wherever you
Speaker 4: get your podcasts, also on YouTube, and uh, she asked
Speaker 4: me who I thought had more to lose in the
Speaker 4: Musk Trump war, and I said, you know, to me,
Speaker 4: it was obviously Musk. I mean, Trump doesn't need Musk anymore.
Speaker 4: This is separate, by the way, from the Republican Party
Speaker 4: maybe needing Musk because it was his money that was
Speaker 4: that is fueling a lot of the you know, that
Speaker 4: is filling a lot of their election coffers. But Trump,
Speaker 4: at least as of today, isn't running for office again,
Speaker 4: So he personally doesn't need Elon really, and he does
Speaker 4: not give a shit about the Republican Party. We know that.
Speaker 4: So telling Trump he needs Elon because the Elon is
Speaker 4: good for the Republican Party, Trump doesn't understand that. But Elon,
Speaker 4: as as we've been talking about, Elon needs Trump because
Speaker 4: his entire livelihood is dependent on taxpayer money, on federal funding.
Speaker 4: So it's not really. You know, if again, if if
Speaker 4: you ask me which one of them was going to blink,
Speaker 4: I would have said, of course it's going to be Musk.
Speaker 4: He has to.
Speaker 1: So that's the question. Now there is the fact that
Speaker 1: some of the companies that Elon has and I you know,
Speaker 1: like SpaceX and Star like, there's no other company that
Speaker 1: necessarily does. I mean, other companies could catch up, but
Speaker 1: they'll be a lack right, So I'm not sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've certainly read pieces that say and again this is
Speaker 1: really like be this is like internet, you know, like
Speaker 1: this is like foreign policy stuff. It's just a little
Speaker 1: bit out of my skill set. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what this you know, what satellite manufacturing looks like in
Speaker 1: other countries. You know, I don't know what the what
Speaker 1: the companies are, but there definitely is I don't think
Speaker 1: Elon can be I mean, I don't know that he
Speaker 1: can lose all those government contracts right now, but he
Speaker 1: certainly can lose like EV credits and Tesla is super overvalued,
Speaker 1: right everyone's you know, that's a sort of no known
Speaker 1: So I do think they're and you know, Elon is
Speaker 1: so overleveraged, you know, between X, I mean, he's very rich,
Speaker 1: but he's very leveraged, so you know, there could be
Speaker 1: the margin call from hell there. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: don't know enough about his finances, but I certainly know
Speaker 1: that the fact that he's trying to get back into
Speaker 1: Trump world, you don't do that. Like if things are
Speaker 1: going great, it seems hard for me to imagine that
Speaker 1: he's going to go back and eat grow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and look, I think you know, Starlink maybe almost
Speaker 4: a one of a kind thing now, you know, with
Speaker 4: satellite Wi Fi and or satellite internet whatever and all
Speaker 4: of that. But again, it is pretty wholly dependent on
Speaker 4: government contracts, not just ours, other governments as well. And
Speaker 4: the thing is, if if Trump decides he's going to
Speaker 4: destroy Elon, you know, damn well, he's gonna tell other
Speaker 4: countries to get rid of their startling systems or to
Speaker 4: not invest in future ones. And that's really like, like
Speaker 4: you said, they may be the only you know, player
Speaker 4: in town right now, that doesn't mean they always will be.
Speaker 4: And they need these future contracts to keep growing as
Speaker 4: a company because that's all that Wall Street Etca. Cares
Speaker 4: about his growth. So I think that's where and the
Speaker 4: same goes for SpaceX space X. Yes, they're kind of
Speaker 4: you know, Bezos has his his his own little penis
Speaker 4: replacement thing going on. But but space X is really
Speaker 4: the only player in the game.
Speaker 3: But they are the player.
Speaker 4: They're a player in the game again because of the
Speaker 4: government contracts, because of contracting with NASA and and things
Speaker 4: like that. So you yank all of those and you
Speaker 4: can say, well, but no one else is doing with
Speaker 4: what's SpaceX is doing. But SpaceX ain't going to be
Speaker 4: doing that if it's just dependent on the private sector
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, it's a I think this is a
Speaker 1: real these both of these men are not in great situations.
Speaker 1: And that's okay. That's okay with me. I'm good with that.
Speaker 1: So I just don't understand why there's not more discourse
Speaker 1: about this. So I'm going to make you talk with
Speaker 1: me about it.
Speaker 4: Just about your booking the New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: No, but it is. I'm very excited. But the BBB
Speaker 1: is this bill that got through the House and then
Speaker 1: you had all these House members being like, I didn't
Speaker 1: really know what was in it. I just voted for it.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green. You know, all these people voted for it,
Speaker 1: and it passed by one vote. Okay, So now it's
Speaker 1: going through the Senate. It's wildly unpopular. You have Elon
Speaker 1: tweeting about it still, uh, And I just wonder like
Speaker 1: why are Democrats not getting you know, like Rand Paul's
Speaker 1: already and now so we know Rand Paul's in now,
Speaker 1: and you know that you only need like three more okay.
Speaker 1: And we have like Bill Cassidy, the Senator from Louisiana
Speaker 1: who's a doctor and should know better. He made a
Speaker 1: deal with RFK Junior where r FFK Junior said, I'm
Speaker 1: not going don't worry. I love vaccines. I just have
Speaker 1: been saying that they cause terrible diseases. So he fired
Speaker 1: the whole vaccine board and he's going to replace them
Speaker 1: with new better maga the doctors okay maybe or just
Speaker 1: not that doctor Oz right and doctor Phil and so.
Speaker 1: So this is a guy who's really been rolled. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I just don't understand why there isn't why Schumer
Speaker 1: is not out there whipping votes against his bill, like what,
Speaker 1: don't laugh at me, don't laugh at me. I were
Speaker 1: Senate Majority Minority leader, I'd be out there being like, look, man.
Speaker 4: This is what I to say, but you can't possibly
Speaker 4: expect that Chuck Schumer would do that. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: what I'm laughing at, is the idea of Chuck Schumer
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 1: Well, if he should be doing that, are you sorry
Speaker 1: to tell you?
Speaker 4: Yes, there's a whole laundry list of things he should
Speaker 4: have been doing, and should be doing and should do
Speaker 4: in the future, and he hasn't really checked off any
Speaker 4: of them as far as I can tell. And you
Speaker 4: know you're right. Look the Democrats. You started your question
Speaker 4: and by saying why are Democrats? And I thought you
Speaker 4: were going to stop there, Like I didn't realize that
Speaker 4: this was going to be about something specific, because the
Speaker 4: question I'm always asking is why are democrats? Because it's
Speaker 4: so frustrating. It's just the fact that there's only like
Speaker 4: a handful of elected Dems who understand what is going
Speaker 4: on right now in this country. There are the people
Speaker 4: like Chuck Schumer who will say that they understand, but
Speaker 4: they won't act like they understand. And as many people
Speaker 4: have said, like we just spent a whole election warning
Speaker 4: about what was going to happen to democracy under Trump
Speaker 4: two point zero, and then as soon as he got
Speaker 4: elected the Democrats acted like they hadn't been running on that.
Speaker 4: So I agree with you, but I think, you know,
Speaker 4: putting your faith in Chuck Schumer. You know, it's like
Speaker 4: seeing a bowl on the table with popcorn in it
Speaker 4: and just assuming it must be you know, fresh new
Speaker 4: popcorn for no reason at all, and then eating it
Speaker 4: and getting botulism and diner.
Speaker 1: That was. That was. I had no idea where it
Speaker 1: was going, dying as I was saying it.
Speaker 4: I had no idea where it was going.
Speaker 1: Andy Levy, Andy Levy, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: Always a pleasure, Molly, Always a pleasure to talk to.
Speaker 4: A New York Times best selling author.
Speaker 1: Brian Merchant is the author of the book and the Substack,
Speaker 1: Blood in the Machine, and host of the podcast System Crash.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Fine, thanks so much for having me, Molly.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about AI. It's going to replace us
Speaker 1: all and solve all of our problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Let's just uh, let's head out to
Speaker 3: the park, let's have a picnic, and we could call it,
Speaker 3: call it, call it a call it a century.
Speaker 1: Sadly, no, I'm going to put it on the blockchain.
Speaker 1: I am married to a venture capitalis he's a good one.
Speaker 1: He's one of the few good ones because he's farf education. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they were like about five years where everything was
Speaker 1: going on the fucking blockchain. You know, what's on the blockchain? Nothing? Nothing,
Speaker 1: that's on the blockchain. So Trump trump coin, Yes, on
Speaker 1: the blockchain, So can we put this on the blockchain?
Speaker 3: You know? AI is.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because it's not the same level of vaporware
Speaker 5: right where you know, in some cases maybe would be
Speaker 5: better for people who are getting affected by this stuff
Speaker 5: if it were. But like on a couple of different levels,
Speaker 5: like one, like the investment in AI has been through
Speaker 5: the roof. It's bigger than you know, anything related to
Speaker 5: blockchain or NFTs or the metaverse. The last you know,
Speaker 5: handful of cycles from TA come out of Silicon Valley. No,
Speaker 5: Silicon Valley has decided that it's you know, for all
Speaker 5: intents and purposes, all in on AI. So that's one
Speaker 5: of the things that is so unnerving about this moment
Speaker 5: because they're pouring capital into it, whether or not a
Speaker 5: lot of these products can do what they say they
Speaker 5: can do, whether or not they work, whether or not
Speaker 5: they're you know, bullshit machines. Can I say bullshit on
Speaker 5: this show?
Speaker 1: Oh please? This is not cable news, just curcip of storm.
Speaker 1: My listeners love profanity. I wonder I really hate AI,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why because I'm a writer and
Speaker 1: I love beautiful pros and I care deeply about my
Speaker 1: words being written by human Am I going to be
Speaker 1: just completely fucked in about two years?
Speaker 3: So as writers?
Speaker 5: You know, I'm a writer myself, and we we are
Speaker 5: used to being fucked right, like we're used to getting
Speaker 5: from all corners.
Speaker 1: I come from a you know, my grandfather, my mother,
Speaker 1: so I am quite used to just watching the business
Speaker 1: definstride itself over and over again.
Speaker 3: But this is new.
Speaker 5: The scale and the ease by which we can be
Speaker 5: fucked now is new and is alarming and is doing
Speaker 5: real wrecking ball level damage to the industry, especially, you know,
Speaker 5: it's especially certain segments of the industry. Right of different,
Speaker 5: there's I think journalism and writing like for magazines. They're
Speaker 5: not going to be replaced outright, but we can already
Speaker 5: see sort of what the glut of AI generated content
Speaker 5: that's showing up in blogs, that's being used by place
Speaker 5: like my former employer, like right, I used to write
Speaker 5: the tech column at the La Times, and after I left,
Speaker 5: they started using this AI insights tool to try to
Speaker 5: add value to it. You know, BuzzFeed is using AI, Sports,
Speaker 5: Illustrated Cnet, all of these places where like AI is
Speaker 5: like coming in from the sides, and it's this. It's
Speaker 5: very cheap. It's just cheap content doing what a bunch
Speaker 5: of cheap stuff does to any market. It degrades it,
Speaker 5: It lowers the value. It makes it harder for people selling,
Speaker 5: you know, the real stuff to make a living. And
Speaker 5: this is happening to artists and writers, graphic designers and marketers.
Speaker 5: This is real and it is you know, like I
Speaker 5: wrote a book about the Luddites, So this is exactly
Speaker 5: what happened to the Luttites who made craft goods, who
Speaker 5: made you know, cloth goods, who produced cloth stuff. Automation
Speaker 5: flooded the market with cheap stuff, and factory owners, you know,
Speaker 5: exploited cheap labor to compete with the people doing the
Speaker 5: real stuff who still wanted to make good quality garments,
Speaker 5: and then put them out of business through push them
Speaker 5: to the street.
Speaker 3: So I think that's where we're going.
Speaker 5: I mean, I I worry there's a lot you know,
Speaker 5: people like you said, people are really desirous of having
Speaker 5: you know, human connection, like reading words written by human
Speaker 5: people don't really seek out AI generated stuff the watcher
Speaker 5: to read, right, Like yeah, So like I think that
Speaker 5: there's still going to be a desire for that, but
Speaker 5: I do think the market's going to be a lot worse.
Speaker 5: And you know, like for people like you and I
Speaker 5: I think it might eat away at our margins. But
Speaker 5: you know, we've been at it for a while, Like
Speaker 5: you know, I have established contacts at different places, like
Speaker 5: I'll probably be okay, You'll probably be okay. But it's
Speaker 5: the people coming up in the field, Like how do
Speaker 5: I get started? Well, like, we just have an AI
Speaker 5: that like generates like our our marketing copy or our
Speaker 5: blog posts for products, or even like doing our sort
Speaker 5: of introductory editing work because it's just cheaper to do.
Speaker 5: So where are people getting footholds in these industries? Where
Speaker 5: are people you know, finding opportunities to sort of even
Speaker 5: break in? And I think AI is just like flooding
Speaker 5: those zones and making them pretty unnavigable and so like
Speaker 5: that along with the creative industries is where I really
Speaker 5: fear for you know, AI's impact here.
Speaker 1: One of the things that seems to super suck to me,
Speaker 1: not to put too fine a point on it, is
Speaker 1: the fake AI art. Now, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've been told again and again is that AI is
Speaker 1: getting better and better and better. So even though right
Speaker 1: now it's kind of you can still tell what's written
Speaker 1: by AI and what's written by people, you can still
Speaker 1: see that AI art looks a little weird, right there's
Speaker 1: still little bits of reality. Even like the AI videos
Speaker 1: that I've seen, you can sort of tell it's fake.
Speaker 1: I've been promised that everyone's getting smarter and smarter and smarter,
Speaker 1: and that AI is just going to keep going and
Speaker 1: that we're just going to be fucked. But is that
Speaker 1: really true or is that sort of like the blockchain?
Speaker 5: Well, that's you know, the six million dollar question is
Speaker 5: whether or not they can figure out what's called scaling,
Speaker 5: because scaling, you know, training more basically open AI, which
Speaker 5: has led this AI boom, its key insight, can really
Speaker 5: just be boiled down to that. Like they figured out
Speaker 5: that if you scale up the models, feed it more data,
Speaker 5: feed it more compute, feed it more energy, then it'll
Speaker 5: improve the quality of the results, and that has in
Speaker 5: recent months, I kind of hit a wall where like
Speaker 5: some things are getting better, other things are getting worse.
Speaker 3: Reliability is getting worse.
Speaker 5: What's so called hallucinations where it just makes stuff up
Speaker 5: is getting wrong. So there's it's that's not to say
Speaker 5: that they won't figure these things out, but there may
Speaker 5: be sort of a limit to you know, what is
Speaker 5: possible and what we can expect. Certainly, I think the
Speaker 5: quality won't be exponential as the as Silicon Valley it
Speaker 5: likes to sell us.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, right, but I would also.
Speaker 5: Just say, like look at what they're I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 5: what they're trying to do is like make it so
Speaker 5: that like you can have that picture of like a
Speaker 5: Disney you know, animated film quality still and just sort
Speaker 5: of poured it over, or you can like famously studio
Speaker 5: ghibli style art and then it can do like a
Speaker 5: service of serviceable enough job. And I think you can
Speaker 5: see like the intent here, which is ultimately like why
Speaker 5: why do we want this stuff to be so good?
Speaker 5: It's like, well, so we don't have to pay animators
Speaker 5: anymore and we can just produce this stuff in our
Speaker 5: own backyards and sort of cut the you know, the
Speaker 5: human artistry element out of the picture, so we can
Speaker 5: save some bucks. That seems to be especially with this
Speaker 5: video generation, especially with the image generation. Like what else
Speaker 5: besides that intent, besides automating human creativity and human work?
Speaker 5: Like why why do we even want to do this
Speaker 5: in the first place, other than to do that or
Speaker 5: to end to make an ad for the capabilities of
Speaker 5: these AI companies so that investors will come and keep
Speaker 5: from feeding money into into the machine.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about this super
Speaker 1: interesting GOP campaign to I love that nobody in Congress
Speaker 1: left or the right has any interest in passing any regulations, right,
Speaker 1: the one thing that they could fucking do to help
Speaker 1: the rest of us. No interest. Okay, God forbid, we
Speaker 1: tell you guys what to do. Don't want to regulate,
Speaker 1: but they do want to prevent other people from regulating.
Speaker 1: So talk us through this. When I saw this, I
Speaker 1: was like, if we all survive this, it will be
Speaker 1: because these people are fucking moron. But so this is
Speaker 1: an idea here that this is a proposal to ban
Speaker 1: AI lawmaking in the reconciliation. How you put that in reconciliation?
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know. You can't cover dental care and insurance,
Speaker 1: but you can put you're not allowed to regulate AI
Speaker 1: in a reconciliation built spoiler, maybe the parliamentarian now just
Speaker 1: as crack and doesn't do any other stuff, so maybe
Speaker 1: she's good with this, but talk to us about this.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna prevent regulation.
Speaker 5: Like wild, wild stuff, Like I mean, I'm old enough
Speaker 5: to remember last year when GOP was like the Party
Speaker 5: of States Rights when the issue was abortion. It's like, oh,
Speaker 5: let's let the states decide because states rights, states rights.
Speaker 5: When it comes to AI, though, like it's just like
Speaker 5: this innovation is just too precious to be regulated. So
Speaker 5: we're going to pass this bill sort of an amendment
Speaker 5: nestled into reconciliation, which is it. I've never seen anything
Speaker 5: like this before, like this is it's it's totally totally
Speaker 5: wild and you're going to love like the justification that
Speaker 5: they give because I called up Energy and Commerce and
Speaker 5: I talked to them about it and amazing and they
Speaker 5: told me how they're planning on justifying this. So yeah,
Speaker 5: So basically, it's this ban on any state's ability to
Speaker 5: enact or enforce laws about AI. That's like you just can't.
Speaker 5: They're saying you can't do it, Like, is it constitutional?
Speaker 5: How are they going to enforce this ban? These are
Speaker 5: great questions, but it's clearly aimed at a few places, right,
Speaker 5: like California being the big economy that it is and
Speaker 5: having passed influential statewide legislation that has then had like
Speaker 5: a knock on effect that everybody that you know, for
Speaker 5: good examples automakers, right, they passed like exhaust standards, and
Speaker 5: then suddenly all the automakers had to just decided to
Speaker 5: make them for the whole state. So Jill p Yeah,
Speaker 5: they don't like this, they don't like that California has
Speaker 5: this power. So it's pretty chiefly aimed I think at
Speaker 5: California and whether or not it might because it's threatening
Speaker 5: to pass a bunch of pretty like pretty common sense
Speaker 5: AI stuff. There's nothing even that's even that crazy. I
Speaker 5: talked to that allowed, yes, con.
Speaker 3: But not allowed at all. Yeah, I talked to one
Speaker 3: of the bill co authors.
Speaker 5: It's stuff like, if your employer is going to use
Speaker 5: AI to like hire or fire you, they have to
Speaker 5: let you know they can't use Yeah, well they have
Speaker 5: to tell you, like right, that's beyond the pale, like
Speaker 5: very common sense stuff. But anyways, the AI industry, Open AI,
Speaker 5: Meta IBM even they've been lobbying full force against this,
Speaker 5: and they've got Trump's an ear because there's so many
Speaker 5: you know, tech folks.
Speaker 3: And they got the money, and they got tech folks
Speaker 3: in the in the White House.
Speaker 5: They had they got Mark Andriesen and David Sachs and
Speaker 5: all these guys.
Speaker 1: Those guys seem great. They seem very yeah.
Speaker 3: Real, real, real shining stars, real wonderful.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: The GP slides this in and they're going to say
Speaker 5: we're gonna stop California from being able to do this
Speaker 5: before they even succeed or try. And their justification is, well,
Speaker 5: we are going to start using AI tools to modernize
Speaker 5: like the Department of Commerce, and we're gonna have a
Speaker 5: chatbot in like the GSA and C and the you know,
Speaker 5: Government Services Administration. And if we have these AI tools
Speaker 5: there and we're like you know, buying them from an
Speaker 5: AI company and California regulates it, that might make AI
Speaker 5: more expensive and therefore it's a budget issue that we
Speaker 5: can put into reconciliation. That's their justification that regulation might
Speaker 5: make AI more expensive, and that then they that they could,
Speaker 5: they would have to the government would would have to
Speaker 5: bear those costs, and therefore they have to ban the state's.
Speaker 3: Ability to regulate it whatever. I know, they're just making
Speaker 3: up at this point, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, at this point one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've really been impressed with in this administration is just
Speaker 1: ability to completely lie about almost everything, with making Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero really look like salad days of moral confidence.
Speaker 5: It's really wild like that. They and yeah, they're just
Speaker 5: making shit up to justify it. It does not matter
Speaker 5: like it does. He could have said anything, even though
Speaker 5: they still have something. I guess they just can't tell
Speaker 5: a reporter were just going to do it. We want to,
Speaker 5: we want to.
Speaker 3: That would be a refreshing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what about the like doomsday scenario AI. We've seen
Speaker 1: this before in movies, right, automates whatever ends up in
Speaker 1: a sort of cold war situation, I mean wargames. Right,
Speaker 1: We've seen this in the eighties, the idea that AI
Speaker 1: would would create nuclear holocaust, Like, what are the adds
Speaker 1: to that? Fifty to fifty forty nine fifty one, I mean,
Speaker 1: tell me what you think.
Speaker 5: So everybody thinks about skynet, right, but I think the
Speaker 5: reality you know, skinett is where like the computers decide.
Speaker 1: To explain that desk because I have no idea what
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Skynet is the villain of the Terminator movies. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: we're an AI that has been integrated into the the
Speaker 5: you know, the military, the Department of Defense, becomes self
Speaker 5: aware and then it decides that humans are you know,
Speaker 5: they're trying to shut it down because it becomes too powerful.
Speaker 5: It decides humans are a threat, and then you know,
Speaker 5: the Terminator franchise takes place where the machines try to
Speaker 5: exterminate humanity because it's a threat to AI obviously. And
Speaker 5: that's a lot of like sort of the worst case
Speaker 5: scenarios that are sort of pedled, I think quite usefully
Speaker 5: by the Silicon Valley companies, Like they have an interest
Speaker 5: in us being afraid of this all powerful technology of
Speaker 5: you know, these doomsday scenarios, because then it kind of
Speaker 5: just suggests, right that like their technology is that powerful,
Speaker 5: it has that capacity, and it may not be an
Speaker 5: alluring prospect to have humanity you go down in flames,
Speaker 5: but if the software is that powerful that it can
Speaker 5: certainly like you know, replace Joe at his corner office,
Speaker 5: and they can sell you some enterprise software for a
Speaker 5: profit in the meantime. So they've had like an interest
Speaker 5: in selling this sort of doomsday scenario. But I think
Speaker 5: the real issue is just as scary, and that's that
Speaker 5: it starts getting everybody to sort of outsource their thinking
Speaker 5: to AI, or to feel comfortable just letting AI do
Speaker 5: it and not checking it. And increasingly we are having
Speaker 5: these automated systems that aren't so sophisticated they're going to
Speaker 5: methodically wipe us all out, but that are so clumsy
Speaker 5: that they allow for grave errors. I think like that
Speaker 5: extends to geopolitics, right as we're.
Speaker 3: In we're going to die, so we we may die.
Speaker 5: And you know, one of the things that was going
Speaker 5: on in Israel Gaza was that they were using an
Speaker 5: AI system for like targeting, and they were outsourcing their thinking.
Speaker 5: People were just hitting the button because the AI system
Speaker 5: isn't that sophisticated enough to like really pick the right
Speaker 5: target through it. But it creates that bureaucratic sort of
Speaker 5: buffer zone where people can just feel like, oh, well,
Speaker 5: it's not my problem, it's the AI. And they're hitting
Speaker 5: the button and selecting a new target. And now we
Speaker 5: have all these talks about open ayes, we'll talking to
Speaker 5: the Pentagon and Palenteer, which does AI is taking on
Speaker 5: a larger role with all this targeting software, and I
Speaker 5: think we can expect it's called scientists and researchers called
Speaker 5: this cognitive offloading. So more people are just cognitively offloading
Speaker 5: their tasks and their work to AI systems. And I
Speaker 5: think the result could be a disaster. Yeah, absolutely, Well
Speaker 5: that's good.
Speaker 1: Result could be a disaster, nuclear holocaust, Jesse.
Speaker 2: Any thoughts, so, Brian, I'm particularly obsessed with this not
Speaker 2: hiring young people out of college and what this could
Speaker 2: do that you've wrote about.
Speaker 3: Could you talk a little bit about that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So there's an interesting figure that's began to surface in
Speaker 5: the economic data, where you know, typically one of the
Speaker 5: most hirable sort of demographics is recent college grads.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: They're young, educated, willing to work for less money, and
Speaker 5: they're ambitious.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: Usually it's like kind of a no brainer for companies
Speaker 5: to hire these folks. And in recent years that number
Speaker 5: has started to do the number of unemployed recent college
Speaker 5: grads has gone up, and there are a number of
Speaker 5: different theories behind why that may be, but a big
Speaker 5: one is is that more and more companies might just
Speaker 5: be filling those roles with AI or a combination of
Speaker 5: AI and like part time like algorithmically curated gigwork, where
Speaker 5: so instead of like, hey, we don't actually need to
Speaker 5: hire a new salaried person and give them healthcare, they
Speaker 5: were just going to be sort of like writing our
Speaker 5: sort of like our website copy and kind of learning
Speaker 5: the ropes anyways. And now we can have AI just
Speaker 5: like write the website copy or do any number of tasks.
Speaker 5: And so the fear is that like that very important
Speaker 5: sort of ladder you know that I alluded to earlier
Speaker 5: is getting sort of knocked away. And you know, these
Speaker 5: entry level jobs are are getting harder to get and
Speaker 5: taken over by AI because they're also the ones that
Speaker 5: are the less complex and easier to perform by by
Speaker 5: an AI system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw a report this weekend that Amazon coders
Speaker 2: are saying they're being treated like the warehouse workers now,
Speaker 2: and I thought that was particularly telling.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean coding, most of the sort of the
Speaker 5: most vocal sort of opposition tends to come from people
Speaker 5: in creative communities. We have all of these lawsuits from
Speaker 5: artists and authors and people who are standing up and
Speaker 5: you know, the screenwriters and the WGA and the Screen
Speaker 5: Actors Guild that like really fought against companies using AI
Speaker 5: in their last strike.
Speaker 3: But it's starting.
Speaker 5: To hit you know, the software and engineering community really
Speaker 5: hard too. And so far, what I'm hearing from a
Speaker 5: lot of folks is less that it's you know, erasing
Speaker 5: my job, but it's making it suck. Right Like now
Speaker 5: my job is to just produce even more check AI
Speaker 5: generated code. The creativity that went into writing a new
Speaker 5: program has largely been taken away because we're being told
Speaker 5: to sort of churn more stuff out. And so yeah,
Speaker 5: when I saw that Amazon report from workers there who
Speaker 5: are saying that it's you know, they're being turned into
Speaker 5: sort of assembly line workers or feeling like factory workers,
Speaker 5: I could not have been less surprised. This is what
Speaker 5: I talked to a lot of workers affected by AI.
Speaker 5: It's just what, you know, what I did. I put
Speaker 5: out a call, you know, that's my ongoing project is
Speaker 5: called AI Killed My Job. And so I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 5: soliciting testimonies from workers and talk and interviewing workers who've
Speaker 5: had AI come into their workplace, and yeah, I'm hearing
Speaker 5: from a lot of coders and tech workers who say that,
Speaker 5: you know, it has an eraser job out right, but
Speaker 5: it's it's made it a miserable experience, and I think
Speaker 5: that is going to be increasingly universal. I also just
Speaker 5: talk to therapists, therapists who they're being told to integrate
Speaker 5: AI into their work process, and certain steps of the
Speaker 5: of the process if you work for a company like Kaiser,
Speaker 5: are being handed over to AIS in some pretty scary ways,
Speaker 5: like when you call in if you have a mental
Speaker 5: health issue, and now you get an algorithmically dictated system
Speaker 5: that is supposed to weed out whether or not you
Speaker 5: need to talk to a real therapist. So if you're
Speaker 5: in real trouble, then the system is supposed to flag you.
Speaker 5: But the system's wrong a lot. And this is just
Speaker 5: to cut out a job that used to be a
Speaker 5: trained therapist job to you know, say, okay, I understand
Speaker 5: that you're in severe danger to yourself and others.
Speaker 3: I'm going to put you through to a therapist.
Speaker 5: Now we're entrusting that job to an algorithm because Kaiser
Speaker 5: wanted to save some bucks and so This is happening
Speaker 5: in jobs and professions, you know, everywhere where, like illustrators
Speaker 5: and artists and things are like actually, you know, getting
Speaker 5: their work replaced and wiped out everywhere else. It's like
Speaker 5: this degradation and this thing that we really have to
Speaker 5: deal with.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Brian, Thanks so much.
Speaker 4: Molly, No moment of Andrew le Molly john.
Speaker 1: Fest What is your moment of fuck ray?
Speaker 4: First of all, this segment has a familiar ring. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure why, but it reminds me of another segment
Speaker 4: for some reason.
Speaker 3: It'll come to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, My moment of fuckery is Trump saying that
Speaker 4: I guess see and Christy know them together, saying they're
Speaker 4: gonna phase out FEMA after the twenty twenty five hurricane season.
Speaker 4: They sit there and they say things. Christino sits there
Speaker 4: and says things like we all know from the past
Speaker 4: that FEMA has failed thousands, if not millions of people,
Speaker 4: and President Trump does not want to see that continue
Speaker 4: into the future. First of all, that's not true. Second
Speaker 4: of all, if FEMA's that, man, why are you waiting
Speaker 4: to laughter the hurricane season like it today? You know,
Speaker 4: if you've got a better idea, you know, this whole
Speaker 4: idea of sending it back to the states, when the
Speaker 4: whole idea is the states are the ones who ask
Speaker 4: the federal government for help when they need it when
Speaker 4: they can't do it on their own. But we're in
Speaker 4: sort of this post federalist world where the federal government
Speaker 4: can nationalize the National Guard on a whim, and then
Speaker 4: at the same time, you know, they can take away
Speaker 4: state resources by getting rid of FEMA. The whole thing
Speaker 4: is just beyond fucked up.
Speaker 1: Yes, Christinome's the one who shot her dog, right, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I want to be taking advice from that person.
Speaker 1: I feel like her takes may be suspect from the
Speaker 1: fact that she decided that the scene where she shoots
Speaker 1: her puppy and buries it in a gravel pit was
Speaker 1: a good thing to put in her memoir.
Speaker 4: Yeah. On the other hand, she's now the director of
Speaker 4: Homeland Security.
Speaker 1: I don't know, she's something. Maybe she's the Secretary of State.
Speaker 4: She wrote that memoir and then got a promotion.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow. I don't know if working in the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is really a promotion for her.
Speaker 4: She thinks it's a promotion anyway, I mean, and she
Speaker 4: certainly has more power now. So it's like, I'm just
Speaker 4: I'm looking at these quotes. The FEMA thing has not
Speaker 4: been a very successful experiment, and he says, that's what
Speaker 4: you have governors for. When you have a tornado or
Speaker 4: a hurricane. They're supposed to fix those problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, FEMA hasn't prevented any hurricanes.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 1: It has not prevented a single hurricane.
Speaker 4: That's because the Jews are more powerful than FEMA.
Speaker 1: Look, man, you said it. I didn't. I'm just agreeing,
Speaker 1: but you know it. I certainly don't control the weather.
Speaker 4: I'm just books don't just appear on the New York
Speaker 4: Times bestseller list.
Speaker 1: Molley, that's right, we use the weather machine. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Andy Levy, Will you come back?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Excellent. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune
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