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Speaker 2: This story is important both in honest merits, but also
Speaker 2: in terms of what it says about Trump two point
Speaker 2: zero and the way he's approaching this administration. Put this
Speaker 2: Washington Post hairs sheet up on the screen. I think
Speaker 2: they were the first one to break this news. Trump
Speaker 2: outs at least fifteen independent inspectors general in late night purge,
Speaker 2: So every cabinet level agency has one of these inspectors general.
Speaker 2: We're supposed to be independent. They're actually supposed to have
Speaker 2: lengthy terms, so's you know, serving under one president to
Speaker 2: try to insulate them from political influence. And actually, during
Speaker 2: the first Trump administration, Trump had tried to fire a
Speaker 2: bunch of these individuals, and I think did fire some
Speaker 2: of them, and Congress reacted and a bipartisan manner was like,
Speaker 2: you know, we really need to protect the independence of
Speaker 2: these roles. So we are going to require that you
Speaker 2: give Congress thirty day notice and that you give us
Speaker 2: ample cause for why you're letting all of these people go.
Speaker 2: So Trump says, don't care that there's a law that
Speaker 2: says that I need to give you thirty days notice.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2: They were notified late Friday by emails from the White
Speaker 2: House Personnel Director that due to changing priorities, they've been
Speaker 2: terminated immediately.
Speaker 3: The only ones.
Speaker 2: Who were spared were the watchdogs at homely insecurity and justice,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting. Actually, I don't get to
Speaker 2: that more in a moment. They go on to say
Speaker 2: that dismissals appear to violate federal law, which does require
Speaker 2: Congress to receive thirty days notice of any intent to
Speaker 2: fire Senate confirmed inspector general. The legal uncertainty could create
Speaker 2: awkward encounters. On Monday that would be today when several
Speaker 2: watchdogs who were toltdal they were fired planned to show
Speaker 2: up in their offices to work anyway. So there's one
Speaker 2: person who sort of oversees the entire inspector's general program,
Speaker 2: and he put on a letter saying, listen, this wasn't legal,
Speaker 2: so we don't accept it. So a bunch of these
Speaker 2: watchdogs are going to show up today anyway because they
Speaker 2: view it, I think, very clearly and accurately so as
Speaker 2: being unlawful. One of the fire watchdogs describe it as
Speaker 2: a widespread massacre. They said, whoever Trump puts in now
Speaker 2: will be viewed as loyalists that undermines the entire system.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's interesting, weird whatever here, Emily, is
Speaker 2: that a bunch of these people that he just fired
Speaker 2: were his own appointees from the first term. So it's
Speaker 2: not like this was a bunch of like you know,
Speaker 2: libs put in by Obama or Biden. Many of these
Speaker 2: people were actually Trump appointees. But one of the people
Speaker 2: who survived was an Obama appoint that's Michael Horowitz at
Speaker 2: the Justice Department, and apparently he liked him because you know,
Speaker 2: he had been critical, he had been critical of Trump,
Speaker 2: but he'd also been critical of Biden. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: their role is to try to be even handed, regardless
Speaker 2: whether it's a Republican or Democrat who's serving. The other
Speaker 2: one that he left in place was one of his
Speaker 2: appointees at the Department of Homeland Security. That individual, KAfari,
Speaker 2: has been under investigation for years, but he had done something,
Speaker 2: and he's in charge of overseeing the you know, the
Speaker 2: crackdown on immigration, So it's important to Trump to have
Speaker 2: someone who's friendly there in particular. And he had also
Speaker 2: put out some report that Trump had you know, Trump
Speaker 2: had appreciated, but you know, some of these some of
Speaker 2: these people that he fired had been really critical of
Speaker 2: different Biden actions. The Inspector General at the Veteran's Affair
Speaker 2: oversaw multiple investigations of how the Biden administration handled the
Speaker 2: agency's troubled effort to build a massive electronic health record system.
Speaker 2: Another one uh Trump appoint at the Interior Department who
Speaker 2: was fired, had released a lengthy investigation concluding that when
Speaker 2: the US park Police led law enforcement officers in de
Speaker 2: crowd of mostly peaceful protesters, that he actually he sort
Speaker 2: of backed up Trump's version of events there. You guys
Speaker 2: remember the whole Lafayette Square situation. His report said that
Speaker 2: it was about a pre planned effort to build a
Speaker 2: fence around the park to protect officers and not because
Speaker 2: Trump had like sicked them on these peaceful protesters. So
Speaker 2: you would think that would be something Trump would like.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless that person has fired as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Chuck Grassley responded to this and said, there
Speaker 4: may be good reason the IG's were fired. We need
Speaker 4: to know that. If so, I'd like for their explanation
Speaker 4: from President Trump, regardless of the thirty day detailed notice
Speaker 4: removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress.
Speaker 4: Jonathan Turtley, by the way, agrees with that Chili professor
Speaker 4: at GW Law, somebody who has agreed with a lot
Speaker 4: of Trump's decisions.
Speaker 3: And it's like a you know, regular Fox News kind
Speaker 3: of a guy.
Speaker 4: I think he's a contributor. Yeah, he's willing to go
Speaker 4: out on a limb for some of Trump's decisions, but
Speaker 4: not this one. I think it is because with the
Speaker 4: Senate appointed positions, that is so clear. And what's interesting
Speaker 4: is that you can kind of pick up on scuttle
Speaker 4: butt about policy priorities in the conservative world, you know,
Speaker 4: these igs, we have to have a plan. I don't
Speaker 4: know if this was in Project twenty twenty five. I
Speaker 4: don't remember it. Maybe it isn't. I'm forgetting, But yeah,
Speaker 4: i'd actually never heard that there was a plan to
Speaker 4: gut IG's and it seems like Chuck Grassley hadn't heard
Speaker 4: that either, as somebody who would have a significant interest
Speaker 4: in it, because he says there may be good reason
Speaker 4: the IG's were fired. We need to know that if so.
Speaker 4: John Barrasso, the Senate majority whip, told Fox on Saturday, quote,
Speaker 4: sometimes inspector general's inspectors general don't do the job that
Speaker 4: they're supposed to do. Some of them deserve to be fired.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure, by the way that that's true. But
Speaker 4: I don't know what the evidence is. I haven't heard
Speaker 4: people talking about the evidence when it comes to these
Speaker 4: particular these particular confirmed positions. And one of the interesting
Speaker 4: things also is from an anonymous source in the Washer
Speaker 4: Post story that actually makes a pretty good point, which
Speaker 4: is that igs do what Trump says he wants to do,
Speaker 4: which is cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse. That's right,
Speaker 4: And even if some of these particular igs weren't doing
Speaker 4: the best job of that it. Now, by just gutting
Speaker 4: them right off the bat without going through the formal process,
Speaker 4: you are undermining. Like, whoever is confirmed in the future
Speaker 4: is going to look like a political actor in a
Speaker 4: way that they wouldn't have before, and they shouldn't look
Speaker 4: like political actors. Let's say a IG comes out with
Speaker 4: a great report on the EPA, and this is somebody
Speaker 4: who's confirmed by appointed by Trump, confirmed by the Senate, Well,
Speaker 4: it's just gonna be They're gonna lack the credibility that
Speaker 4: they otherwise would have, yeah, commenting on the waste, fraud
Speaker 4: and abuse at the EPA. So this one could really
Speaker 4: come back to buy Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's possible. I also think it's
Speaker 2: possible that, I mean, he's doing so many things so
Speaker 2: quickly that it is just hard to like focus on
Speaker 2: any one, you know, particular outrage and I mean, so
Speaker 2: you're right down the line, however, thing's unfold It's possible
Speaker 2: that it does come back to bite him. It's also
Speaker 2: possible that, like everyone just capitulates and forgets and moves on,
Speaker 2: and you know, I think that's kind of what he's
Speaker 2: betting on and paying attention to which direction things going
Speaker 2: is really important because again, put actually C two up
Speaker 2: on the screen. This is some of the Republican reactions
Speaker 2: you mentioned. Chuck Grassley probably the most noteworthy because he's
Speaker 2: you know, he's rock solid like conservative, knowing no one
Speaker 2: call him. I don't think a rhino, right, I'm correct
Speaker 2: about that. Yeah, he pointed out like this, didn't thought
Speaker 2: this was illegal. Senator Susan Collins express confusion. You're not confused,
Speaker 2: you know what's going on here. Lisamerkawski loaded then the
Speaker 2: lack of notice, expressed worry over the abrupt dismissal. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the Democrats came out very upset about this. You could
Speaker 2: put their reactions up on the screen.
Speaker 3: Next.
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer characterized it as a chilling purge, a preview
Speaker 2: of the lawless approach. Jerry Connolly labeled dismissals as a
Speaker 2: Friday night coup and an assault on transparency and accountability.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren called it a purge, accused Trump of dismantling
Speaker 2: constraints on his authority. So obviously they're being very aggressive.
Speaker 2: But you know, like I said at the top, I
Speaker 2: mean just on the merits. It's important because genuinely, some
Speaker 2: of these Inspectors General have done important work on behalf
Speaker 2: of the American public and on behalf of taxpayers to
Speaker 2: understand whether it was Trump or whether it was Biden,
Speaker 2: or whether it's before that, where there had been failures,
Speaker 2: where there had been corruption, where there had been things
Speaker 2: that had been just done improperly or unlawfully, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Am I right that Horowitz is the one who did
Speaker 2: the Hunter Biden the Joe Biden report about the classified documents?
Speaker 3: Was that him?
Speaker 4: Or no? That would? That's right? And Trump has said
Speaker 4: that he's keeping Horowitz because.
Speaker 2: He liked thet But in any case, I mean, they
Speaker 2: have done genuinely useful work that reporters and taxpayers rely on.
Speaker 3: So it matters for the merits.
Speaker 2: But I think it is one more indication, and we
Speaker 2: already have many of these, that Trump two point zero
Speaker 2: is taking a truly maximalist approach, because there's not even
Speaker 2: a fig leaf here that this is legal. I mean,
Speaker 2: you had the thirty day period is there's no exceptions
Speaker 2: for it. You have to give Congress thirty day notice,
Speaker 2: and he didn't, So it sets up a showdown what
Speaker 2: happens next, you know, do Republicans just decide like, well,
Speaker 2: he's our guy, and we're just not going to put
Speaker 2: up that much of a fight and we don't really
Speaker 2: want to cross him, and we're just going to accept this.
Speaker 2: What happens when, I mean, you have to the next
Speaker 2: whoever is going to be next hast to get confirmed
Speaker 2: if their predecessor was fired illegally, Like what does that
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: We're going to see how these sort of showdowns really
Speaker 2: unfold and whether he is able to do things that
Speaker 2: are just like clearly unlawful and get away with it
Speaker 2: because you have this, I mean, the birthright citizenship, the
Speaker 2: executive Order. Birthright citizenship is kind of part and parcel
Speaker 2: the same type of approach. A federal court has already
Speaker 2: smacked that down and said like this is preposse, this
Speaker 2: is like the most preposterous thing I've ever seen. Effectively,
Speaker 2: but he feels like he can effectively do whatever he wants,
Speaker 2: and the Sproome Corps basically told him that that was true.
Speaker 3: So is he going to abide by the scored order?
Speaker 2: Is he just going to keep moving forward doing what
Speaker 2: he wants to do and firing him he wants to
Speaker 2: fire and all that.
Speaker 4: This is one of the I think the most important storylines,
Speaker 4: not just for the first week, but I mean this
Speaker 4: is this is going to be a significant snl of
Speaker 4: all places. Had a really funny sketch kind of poking
Speaker 4: fun at the lin Menuel Miranda millennial moment of Hamilton
Speaker 4: back in early Trump days. But Trump was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe maybe we need a king in the in the sketch. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And you know, Republicans, I can evage at a period
Speaker 4: of time when Republicans were just utterly horrified at the
Speaker 4: executive overreach of the Obama administration. And I think some
Speaker 4: of those complaints were entirely valid because there was a
Speaker 4: sort of stretching of the executive branch in a way
Speaker 4: that if you are a sort of ideological conservative, you
Speaker 4: would say, these are power You're usurping powers that belong
Speaker 4: to Congress. And it's actually fueling this vicious cycle where
Speaker 4: Congress just becomes more and more weak because they're punting
Speaker 4: everything over to the executive branch. They know that they
Speaker 4: can't get it done through, for example, the reconciliation process
Speaker 4: because it's not strictly related to the budget, and so
Speaker 4: I mean, some of this is Trump rolling back powers
Speaker 4: that I don't think belong to the executive but not
Speaker 4: all of it is at all. And actually, interestingly, this
Speaker 4: was I was looking this up, well, you were going
Speaker 4: through that. There was some talk about this in the
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five circles, but not I mean, not
Speaker 4: a lot. This was pretty low key. I think it
Speaker 4: was public citizen that picked up on something. A couple
Speaker 4: of people that were involved in Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 4: said about purging igs. But genuinely, like this is if
Speaker 4: that was a serious a serious point, it was really
Speaker 4: low key, and that shows how significant Trump is literally
Speaker 4: taking the blueprints that were drafted over the course of
Speaker 4: the last four years. And a lot of people thought
Speaker 4: they'd be giving those blueprints to Ron de Santis, for example,
Speaker 4: a strict Tea Party freedom caucus, like true Chip Roy style,
Speaker 4: like limited government dude. Although what's happened at the state
Speaker 4: level is testing probably some of his old ideological allegiances.
Speaker 4: But all that is to say, Trump is like just
Speaker 4: taking the conservative movement's blueprints, and some of it I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, like some of this is from my perspective
Speaker 4: as a conservative. I'm supportive of it, but a lot
Speaker 4: of this is significantly testing the conservative movement's actual commitment
Speaker 4: to reigning in the power of the executive branch, and
Speaker 4: this is a great example of that. So how many
Speaker 4: people are going to speak out and get mad about
Speaker 4: it in the same way that they would if Obama
Speaker 4: did it?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: I imagine if Biden did that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine if this was common in office right now
Speaker 2: and she had done it, I mean, or had launched
Speaker 2: a shit going before she It's just like unimaginable.
Speaker 4: Well, imagine if they had been seriously imagine I Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris had been inaugurated with the oligarchs right.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh, I know, I thought a lot.
Speaker 6: Would imagined or gas right if she was there with
Speaker 6: Zuckerberg and Bezos and Musk flanking her like, and then
Speaker 6: immediately doing a presser announcing basically like, we're going to
Speaker 6: support these people spending five hundred billion dollars, these tech
Speaker 6: oligirks to eliminate your jobs.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the.
Speaker 2: Goal of these tech AI developers is to literally eliminate
Speaker 2: all need for human labor.
Speaker 4: And Biden might as well have been flanked by them
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty because that's the way his administration proceeded.
Speaker 4: But this is so so brazen.
Speaker 2: I actually don't think that's fair because the one place
Speaker 2: where Biden really broke from the neoliberal the Obama Clinton
Speaker 2: neoliberal consensus, and the you know area where he was
Speaker 2: most significantly different on economics was this approach to antitrust.
Speaker 4: Trump a little bit too. The Google suit was started
Speaker 4: under Trump.
Speaker 2: Under that is true he did, and I don't think
Speaker 2: we're going to see any of that this time around.
Speaker 2: But you know, there the thing with Biden is that
Speaker 2: there was a story to tell about, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: oligarchy and inequality and breaking up these tech giants and
Speaker 2: why it matters to you, right, why these aren't just
Speaker 2: like theoretical high falutin things that happening in some court
Speaker 2: that really doesn't impact you, like how it connects. But
Speaker 2: first of all, I don't think that he really cared that.
Speaker 3: Much about this.
Speaker 2: He cared about you know, NATO, that was like where
Speaker 2: his brain was. I think these were people under him
Speaker 2: that were more invested in this direction. Number one, number two,
Speaker 2: like he was a million years old and couldn't articulate
Speaker 2: anything about anything. So you end up with a situation
Speaker 2: where he pissed off all of the Mark Zuckerberg's and
Speaker 2: Elon Musk's of the world, and genuinely they felt like, oh,
Speaker 2: there could be some sort of constraint on my you know,
Speaker 2: on my endless power and wealth.
Speaker 3: So they were pissed off while she was a few.
Speaker 2: I mean, how many Wall Street Journal op eds were
Speaker 2: written about how terrible Lena Khan was. Probably over one
Speaker 2: hundred and literally that's not exact. Literally Matt Stuller kept
Speaker 2: track of them. So they're furious, they hate him, they
Speaker 2: know what he's doing, but the public has no idea
Speaker 2: and are never bought in and invested in this project.
Speaker 2: And so when it's you know, usurped and ended with
Speaker 2: a whimper. And by the way, Kamala Harris gave some
Speaker 2: indication she wasn't going to continue in that direction either,
Speaker 2: so you know, keep it's yeah, I want to be
Speaker 2: fair and point that out, but but yeah, so it
Speaker 2: made sense to them, we're gonna line up behind this
Speaker 2: guy who's gonna basically give us whatever we want. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, if it was Kamala with those guys behind him, like, oh,
Speaker 2: the freak out would be insane, and you know, and justified.
Speaker 2: We sew like rightfully so, but Trump because he thinks,
Speaker 2: he just thinks he can get away with anything, and
Speaker 2: he might be right.
Speaker 4: He can right now because the uh, I guess they
Speaker 4: And this is you know, in a weird way connects
Speaker 4: back to what we were talking about with AfD in
Speaker 4: the other block. It's yeah, there have been years and
Speaker 4: this isn't to say that Trump is blameless, but there
Speaker 4: have been years of such terrible policy making that Trump
Speaker 4: was able to successfully exploit that and come in and
Speaker 4: he now has the support of the public on a
Speaker 4: lot of different things. Not everybody, but there are a
Speaker 4: lot of different I mean, he has significant support to
Speaker 4: shake up Washington. And so when you look like you're
Speaker 4: shaking up Washington, people can't pay attention to every tiny
Speaker 4: little thing that's going on, so it looks directionally right,
Speaker 4: and so I mean, there's just not a lot of
Speaker 4: energy or appetite to push back on Trump after Democrats
Speaker 4: and I think we have a list here of how
Speaker 4: democrats or we have a graphic here showing how democrats
Speaker 4: crats reacted to the firing of the Inspectors General. This
Speaker 4: is D three. It just Democrats are going to have
Speaker 4: to come up with a way to make this persuasive.
Speaker 4: Here you have Chuck Schumer saying this is a quote
Speaker 4: chilling purge and a preview of the lawless approach that
Speaker 4: he expects Trump to take. Jerry Connolly and Virginia said
Speaker 4: the dismissals were equal Friday night coup and a quote
Speaker 4: assault on transparency and accountability. And Elizabeth Warren called out
Speaker 4: a quote purge and accused Trump of dismantling constraints on
Speaker 4: his authority. Now let's stick with the Connolly criticism there
Speaker 4: where he says this is a quote assault on transparency
Speaker 4: and accountability that covering up for Joe Biden for years.
Speaker 4: By the way, this is not both sides as them.
Speaker 4: It is saying that it makes it easier for Trump
Speaker 4: to get away with a quote assault on transparency and
Speaker 4: accountability when the people who are accusing him of assaulting
Speaker 4: transparency and accountability have zero credibility to do it. And
Speaker 4: that is one of the major two major political parties
Speaker 4: in this country, and one of them just covered up
Speaker 4: for a president who was ailing in front of your eyes,
Speaker 4: told you that your eyes were lying to you, and
Speaker 4: is now wanting to be upset about transparency and accountability.
Speaker 4: So it actually is not good for the entire country
Speaker 4: that Democrats have so little credibility on that question, because
Speaker 4: it will make it a lot easier for Trump to
Speaker 4: then quote assault transparency by purging inspectors general. Yeah, unlawfully.
Speaker 4: By the way, if he had gone given them their
Speaker 4: notice and done it, that would be another thing. But
Speaker 4: he didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean the same thing is true with
Speaker 2: regards to oligarchy, Like if you want us, if you
Speaker 2: expect the country to take you seriously on these things,
Speaker 2: you can't be like Ken Martin, the guy who is
Speaker 2: likely to be the next day and c chair being like, well,
Speaker 2: we'll take money from good billionaires. It's like, no, how
Speaker 2: about just there are no good billionaires. How about just
Speaker 2: it's bad when billionaires, when unelected billionaires run our parties
Speaker 2: and our government. How about that as a direction. And
Speaker 2: so in my view, that's the choice they have in
Speaker 2: front of them. They can either effectively like capitulate to
Speaker 2: trump Ism, which is the direction they're likely to go
Speaker 2: in and the direction they have been going in, see
Speaker 2: you know, supporting the Lake and Riley.
Speaker 3: Act, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Or they could have a real like whose side, are
Speaker 2: you on moment and decide that they're going to excize
Speaker 2: this influence a big money within their own party so
Speaker 2: that they can offer an actual different vision and direction
Speaker 2: that has some credibility. But yeah, I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: this is the storyline to watch, not just the moves
Speaker 2: that Trump's Trump makes that are already quite maximalist. But
Speaker 2: what's the response. Is there any check on him whatsoever?
Speaker 2: Or can he just do whatever he wants even if
Speaker 2: it's like brazenly unlawful.
Speaker 4: And does it end up coming back on Republicans in
Speaker 4: the midterms. A lot of that will depend on how
Speaker 4: Democrats are able to claw back some measure of credibility
Speaker 4: if they are able to, but Trump is definitely making
Speaker 4: that a little bit easier on those questions.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go on and get to Arnault Bertrand to
Speaker 2: talk about Deep Seek.
Speaker 3: This is a huge.
Speaker 2: Development which has absolutely rocked Silicon Valley in terms of
Speaker 2: Chinese AI development.
Speaker 3: Here he is.
Speaker 2: Very happy to be joined by Arnaud Bertrand. He described
Speaker 2: himself as an entrepreneur who tweets too much, but I
Speaker 2: have found your insights both with regards to China in general.
Speaker 3: But this AI development.
Speaker 2: In particular, I even brought you up earlier, Arnau in
Speaker 2: the context of this fight with Colombia. So great to
Speaker 2: have you here. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 7: Right, thank you as o wise, very good to be here.
Speaker 2: Our pleasure. So I've teased this a couple times in
Speaker 2: the show. But this is huge development from a Chinese
Speaker 2: company which was able with a fraction of the dollar
Speaker 2: amount to develop an AI competitor to chat, GPT and
Speaker 2: all of the other sort of like big players in
Speaker 2: the space. In fact, by some metrics, this new release
Speaker 2: of it's called deep Seek is outperforming the prior competitors
Speaker 2: in the field. This has blown up all sorts of
Speaker 2: assumptions about AI development, about where Chinese companies were in
Speaker 2: terms of their technological.
Speaker 3: Sophistication, about the success of Biden.
Speaker 2: Administration policies trying to limit high tech development in terms
Speaker 2: of China. So are no, just take us through a
Speaker 2: little bit of what happened here so people have the backstory.
Speaker 7: Sure, So what happened doctorin started in December when deep
Speaker 7: Seek released a first modern called V three, which already
Speaker 7: made a lot of waves because it was rebuilt to
Speaker 7: have been trained for only five point five million dollars,
Speaker 7: which is absolutely nothing in this industry. I think open
Speaker 7: Ai spends five billion dollars a year, so one hundred
Speaker 7: times less basically, and uh, and that one was already
Speaker 7: extremely good, already performing a lot of the models on
Speaker 7: on the on on the important benchmarks. And then open
Speaker 7: Ai you know, released a new model called OH one,
Speaker 7: which is really you know, supposed to be the top
Speaker 7: of the range. And then right behind just last week,
Speaker 7: deep Sick released its own new modern called R one,
Speaker 7: which performs or is on par with with Open the
Speaker 7: Eyes h top of the ranch modern on on almost
Speaker 7: all bench parks. And they released it, and that's the
Speaker 7: important bits. They released it open source, meaning that basically
Speaker 7: anyone can download it for free and use it as
Speaker 7: they please. It's it's it's really open source and an
Speaker 7: ma TL sense meaning that you can really, do you know,
Speaker 7: use the other how however you want, which is a
Speaker 7: huge difference to Open the Eye. It's called Open the
Speaker 7: Eye because originally the philosophy behind it was that it
Speaker 7: was meant to be open, open source and so on.
Speaker 7: But famously they've they've taken a much more closed roots
Speaker 7: where they don't realize their mothers in open source, and
Speaker 7: you know, they don't disclose much about the mother It's
Speaker 7: all behind sort of a black well. It's sort of
Speaker 7: bit hidden. And so that's why a lot of people
Speaker 7: are shifting to UH, to d sek now. And now
Speaker 7: it's even demos downloaded app in the US as of today,
Speaker 7: it's UH. It's number one. It's over taken all the
Speaker 7: other apps, including including tipt wow.
Speaker 4: And you know, our friend Matthew Stoller made an interesting
Speaker 4: point in his newsletter Big where he said, when you
Speaker 4: compare what China was able to do here with what
Speaker 4: AI technology is basically the United States or AI companies
Speaker 4: basically the United States have been able to do, it
Speaker 4: almost makes the United States look soviet. It looks, you know,
Speaker 4: like a Leviathan that is just just trudging along compared
Speaker 4: to this alternative method. So could you do do you
Speaker 4: think maybe there's something to that parallel or note or
Speaker 4: is there is there something that we can take away
Speaker 4: from the way American AI businesses are organized in comparison here.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the interesting irony is that maybe
Speaker 7: there was a bit too much funding in the AI
Speaker 7: industry in the US for its own good. They're a
Speaker 7: bit too much of an easy life, because the reason
Speaker 7: why Deepsy I think, was able to come up with
Speaker 7: such a good and efficient modern is because they're very
Speaker 7: much operating under constraints. Right. You had the export controls,
Speaker 7: the semiconductor export control and so China in many ways
Speaker 7: doesn't have a choice if they want to compete with
Speaker 7: the US, given they don't have, you know, such access
Speaker 7: to funding, the latest chips and so on, and they
Speaker 7: need to come up with much more efficient technology. So
Speaker 7: I wouldn't say it's it's exactly the same situation as
Speaker 7: as the Soviet versus the West of the time. It's
Speaker 7: it's a most the situation where you know, you you
Speaker 7: the US kind of rested on its low arms and
Speaker 7: and uh, you know, I did to be tweezy and
Speaker 7: was operating in in too good an environments on China
Speaker 7: because of those constraints the the US put on them,
Speaker 7: they actually have to come up with simply better technology
Speaker 7: if they want to compete on I think that's largely
Speaker 7: what happened.
Speaker 2: I think another piece that you've been pointing to ar now,
Speaker 2: which I find really interesting is China does not our country,
Speaker 2: by and large, a lot of the smartest grads that
Speaker 2: come out with technical degrees or technical know how, a
Speaker 2: lot of them don't go into science or research. They
Speaker 2: go into like financial speculation effectively, and the Chinese government
Speaker 2: has looked at them and said, that's not the direction
Speaker 2: we want to go in, So they crack down on
Speaker 2: salaries for you know, the financial industry, and that creates
Speaker 2: incentives for the best and the brightest lo and behold
Speaker 2: to go into this sort of research and tech development.
Speaker 3: So talk about that piece a little bit if you could.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's one of the most interesting angers
Speaker 7: of Deep Sick because it was actually a side project
Speaker 7: of a Hatch fund and that was released quite coincidentally
Speaker 7: about uh less than one year after China did crack
Speaker 7: down against the finance industry. This uh this this you know,
Speaker 7: overly high compensation in the in the financial industry. Kepting
Speaker 7: it and there has been you know, you you you
Speaker 7: here in China a lot of miscontent in the finance
Speaker 7: industry professioners because, yeah, they can't make as much money
Speaker 7: on it's the industry is becoming less attractive for graduates
Speaker 7: on the and they're seeing a bit of a brain
Speaker 7: drain from that industry. But That is very much the
Speaker 7: point I think that the Chaine government is UH is
Speaker 7: aiming for because they're looking at the US and they're
Speaker 7: seeing which is a shame when you think about it.
Speaker 7: A lot of the top gradiates from Harvard and IT
Speaker 7: and you know, all the Aleage Ivy League schools often
Speaker 7: go in the finance industry. When I mean, think what
Speaker 7: you want about the finance industry, but if you have
Speaker 7: pure genius, arguably their brains would be of more use
Speaker 7: to society they were to develop new technology like like
Speaker 7: AI or working on you know, curing cancer or or
Speaker 7: things like that. And and I think this time gole
Speaker 7: is is UH is fascinating because I mean, it's it's
Speaker 7: it's difficult to put a direct correction. Did they do
Speaker 7: that side project exactly because of that or not? But
Speaker 7: at least it's it's an interesting, interesting coincidence.
Speaker 4: M Yeah. In the stock market, we're already seeing some
Speaker 4: of the effect of this in the stock market. Okay,
Speaker 4: can you talk a little bit more about why it's
Speaker 4: affecting stocks in the way it is and what we
Speaker 4: could expect see going forward as the deep sea deepep
Speaker 4: reckon reckoning goes on yeah.
Speaker 7: So I was looking at it actually a portfolio just now.
Speaker 7: It's very depressing. So Nvidia just so is losing twelve
Speaker 7: percent today, and yeah, the whole tech sector is down.
Speaker 7: And basically because there was this assumption that AI was
Speaker 7: all about compute, like more chips you could get better
Speaker 7: on models, right and on the Deepsy kind of destroy
Speaker 7: that assumption because they don't have a lot of compute
Speaker 7: and they were able to come with a better model
Speaker 7: because they had you know, better algorithms, better software. And
Speaker 7: so what's happening is simply that those assumptions around building
Speaker 7: a mood for us AI company with compute, with those
Speaker 7: massive data, some tools like you know, the Stellgate project
Speaker 7: that Trump open AI on so and just announced, those
Speaker 7: are you know, very much questioned right now. And that's
Speaker 7: what you're seeing I think in the in the stock market.
Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely, I mean so much of the stock market
Speaker 2: value is built on this sort of like hype around AI,
Speaker 2: and so I mean it's incredibly deflating literally to see
Speaker 2: this company be able to you know, build a comparable
Speaker 2: product for vastly less. I will say I've seen some
Speaker 2: theories that they're not being straightforward about the amount of
Speaker 2: compute that they actually used here, most notably the scale.
Speaker 2: AI CEO Alexander Wang and I think he was at
Speaker 2: the World Economic Forum, claimed that he thinks that they
Speaker 2: are hiding the ball on exactly how many chips, like
Speaker 2: what size of the mega cluster that they're using.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to that and get your reaction.
Speaker 3: On the other.
Speaker 8: Side, the Chinese labs, they have more h one hundreds
Speaker 8: than people think. You know, the these are the highest
Speaker 8: powered video chips that they were not supposed to have. Yes,
Speaker 8: my understanding is that is that deep seek has about
Speaker 8: fifty one hundreds, which they can't talk about obviously because
Speaker 8: it is against the export controls that the United States
Speaker 8: has put in place.
Speaker 4: And I think it is.
Speaker 8: True that, you know, I think they have more chips
Speaker 8: than other people expect, but also going to go forward basis,
Speaker 8: they are going to be limited by the chip controls
Speaker 8: and the export controls that we have in place.
Speaker 3: What do you make of that.
Speaker 7: Well, it's difficult to say one way or the other.
Speaker 7: But the good thing but Deep Seek is that when
Speaker 7: they release the modern so firs where the ready is
Speaker 7: the open source, so it's sort of you can see
Speaker 7: what's in the modern and they released on extremely detailed
Speaker 7: paper with it. So he research sho and just go
Speaker 7: through the paper and you'll try to achieve the same outcome,
Speaker 7: which is the based on what they're saying they did
Speaker 7: in the paper on see if if that's true or not,
Speaker 7: or or or if what the method urgy that they're
Speaker 7: saying they posted in the paper is wrong on on
Speaker 7: debating about the number of chips. So I can't say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I agree.
Speaker 2: I read some analyzes you know that looked at the
Speaker 2: paper and said, well, here's the key innovations that they
Speaker 2: use to achieve so much more efficiency, way beyond my
Speaker 2: technical know how. But people who seem to know what
Speaker 2: they were talking about were like, oh, that's how.
Speaker 3: They did it.
Speaker 2: I see, he's very creative and efficient and efficient technological
Speaker 2: development here.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: One more I wanted to get your response to our
Speaker 2: no is Sam Altman weighed in, obviously this is a
Speaker 2: very bad development for him because he has bet so
Speaker 2: much on, you know, now the Stargate program. I know
Speaker 2: he'd been sort of battling with Microsoft for more and
Speaker 2: more money for larger and larger data centers, and you know,
Speaker 2: now this sort of blows that whole direction up.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: D three from Sam Altman, he says it is relatively
Speaker 2: easy to copy.
Speaker 3: Something that you know works. It is extremely hard.
Speaker 2: To do something new, risky and difficult when you don't
Speaker 2: know if it will work. Individual researchers rightly get a
Speaker 2: lot of glory for that when they do it, it's
Speaker 2: the coolest thing in the world. And of course this
Speaker 2: was largely seen as being directed at the deep Sek development.
Speaker 2: What do you make of these comments from Sam?
Speaker 7: Deep seek is definitely getting a lot of glories, so
Speaker 7: I'm not sure exactly what it means. I think something
Speaker 7: very interesting, and I think a big sign is what
Speaker 7: Mark Andresen is tweeting recently. I don't know if you
Speaker 7: if you if you forget what is what is tweeted
Speaker 7: Because obviously Sam at mine is biased. I think Mark
Speaker 7: Andrison is slightly more of a neutral part. He here
Speaker 7: because he's an investor and he literally tweeted count fram
Speaker 7: about the exact good. But that Deep Seek was the
Speaker 7: most impressive, one of the most impressive breakthroughs it's seen
Speaker 7: in its entire career, and that silicons varies mostly gender investor,
Speaker 7: the guy we invented the browser, so you know, it's
Speaker 7: quite it's quite something, right, he.
Speaker 2: Said, one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. And just to clarify that Amen tweet was
Speaker 2: from back in December, so presumably about the initial relation
Speaker 2: of deep seek.
Speaker 7: But okay, yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah. The new murder
Speaker 7: is also quite a bit. It's more of a breakthrough
Speaker 7: than than the three, which was the one in December.
Speaker 3: My last question for you, Arno is.
Speaker 2: Are there is there a legitimate reason to keep AI
Speaker 2: closed source as open AI has has decided, because, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are risks inherent in AI development. I mean there's
Speaker 2: a whole field of AI safety, a lot of concerns
Speaker 2: about what it could do in terms of the labor market,
Speaker 2: especially when it's being wielded for profit by companies like Microsoft.
Speaker 2: There are also some more for reaching concerns about AI.
Speaker 2: You know, once it's AGI and you have this level
Speaker 2: of artificial general intelligence and then super intelligence that you know,
Speaker 2: effectively supplants human beings as the you know, the smartest
Speaker 2: creatures on the planet. What does that mean do they
Speaker 2: decide they want to keep us around or not, so
Speaker 2: there are these sort of like further reaching concerns about
Speaker 2: AI development as well. Do you see any drawbacks in
Speaker 2: the open source model that not only deepseek has pursued,
Speaker 2: but also the Meta has gone in the direction of
Speaker 2: a more open source model as well.
Speaker 7: That's a good question. I honestly see more drawbacks with
Speaker 7: the cruise moder because at the end of the day,
Speaker 7: if it's closed, it's it's it's a limited group of
Speaker 7: individuals who you don't have control over, and you know,
Speaker 7: our oligachx effectively like billionaires and that that take all
Speaker 7: the decisions when it comes to AI, which you're right,
Speaker 7: is going to be extremely disruptive. It's an extremely powerful technology.
Speaker 7: So would you rather have that being controlled by a
Speaker 7: small group of billionaires were you know, very much can't
Speaker 7: relate to the general public, or would you rather have
Speaker 7: the general public anyone who can you know, have an
Speaker 7: influence of that on that with the the open source model,
Speaker 7: I think, I mean anyway that technology has risks, will
Speaker 7: have a big impact, will impact jobs and so on. Uh,
Speaker 7: But I feel more reassured with the idea that anyone
Speaker 7: will have to say on how I developed that it
Speaker 7: is open free. Anyone can come up with uh, you know,
Speaker 7: startup around it freely on his own computer, rather than
Speaker 7: it being kind of uh developed secretly out of our hands.
Speaker 4: And what we've learned from our own private tech companies
Speaker 4: semi private tech companies over the last decade is that
Speaker 4: you will also have similar levels of censorship and political
Speaker 4: corruption whether they're private or public, they get co opted
Speaker 4: or no.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah. On censorship, it's it's an extremely good good
Speaker 7: point because people often you see a lot on Twitter,
Speaker 7: you know, people saying that the deepstick mother is uh
Speaker 7: is censored, and it's true that when you go on
Speaker 7: deepstick dot com because it is hosted in China, it
Speaker 7: is indeed censored because you have censorship lose in China
Speaker 7: and sun where anyone can download the modernate in open
Speaker 7: source you need however they want. If they want to
Speaker 7: turn it into a tool that you know, even generates
Speaker 7: anti China propaganda, they can write. So that's what I
Speaker 7: mean by me being more reassured that its open source
Speaker 7: because anyone can do whatever they want with it, whereas
Speaker 7: open ai, if it's so and so on, it's also
Speaker 7: stands on in its own way. There's absolutely nothing you
Speaker 7: can do for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's true.
Speaker 2: And I did see the comparison of people asking just
Speaker 2: very straightforward questions about like the Israel Palestine conflict on
Speaker 2: ch GPT versus Deep Sick, and I would I would
Speaker 2: say that the deep Seak version was much less censored
Speaker 2: in that particular instance than the Open AI.
Speaker 3: The open AI version.
Speaker 7: Exactly every country has their own baas by the end
Speaker 7: of the day, open source metals because you can then
Speaker 7: under the donother yourself on input your own Yes, Nik,
Speaker 7: it's your own right.
Speaker 3: That's what I need.
Speaker 2: I need the world to reflect my personal bibar No.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: This is so helpful getting your breakdown of these developments
Speaker 2: and what it ultimately means.
Speaker 3: Great to see you.
Speaker 2: We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by
Speaker 2: Andrew Callahan of Channel five, who is out with a
Speaker 2: new documentary called Dear Kelly. Great to have you Andrew.
Speaker 4: Welcome.
Speaker 9: Hey, thanks so much for having me and I'm a
Speaker 9: big fan of Breaking points. I appreciate you guys for
Speaker 9: the platform. It's early morning, thanks to y'all, so thank.
Speaker 5: You for having me on.
Speaker 2: Thank you for waking up for us. We appreciate that
Speaker 2: we are likewise big fans. Let me give people a
Speaker 2: little bit a taste of the trailer here, and then
Speaker 2: on the other side you can tell them the backstory
Speaker 2: of what inspired you to follow this one individual.
Speaker 3: Let's take a look.
Speaker 10: Why did the framework created by QAnon and Trump propaganda
Speaker 10: cause an innumerable amount of people to jump head first
Speaker 10: down the rabbit hole, endangering their safety, lives, and freedom.
Speaker 5: I thought I had it figure out.
Speaker 10: I pointed fingers at the fear mongering twenty four hour
Speaker 10: news cycle.
Speaker 4: There's nothing fake about CNN and.
Speaker 10: At radio hosts who sell supplements and T shirts to
Speaker 10: paranoid libertarians. But deep down I didn't really know that
Speaker 10: was until I met a man named Kelly J. Patriot
Speaker 10: at a White Lives Matter rally in Huntington Beach, California,
Speaker 10: and asked him one question, what's the most painful piece
Speaker 10: of truth that's hurt you?
Speaker 11: Guy stealing my home? His name's Bill Joyner. Financially he
Speaker 11: wanted to destroy me. He destroyed my twenty five year business,
Speaker 11: separated and devastated my family. So that answers your question.
Speaker 5: Dude, sounds like he sucks.
Speaker 11: I don't think he's a good guy. In my opinion,
Speaker 11: he's a bad guy and he's heard a lot of people.
Speaker 11: But then again, look what the Democrats are doing to others.
Speaker 11: Krby Bryant was assassinated by the plins.
Speaker 4: I don't fucking die homies straight up.
Speaker 2: So what was it that caused you to be sort
Speaker 2: of captivated by this guy and to really follow up
Speaker 2: with him and figure out what was actually going on there?
Speaker 9: I think that it came from like a just not
Speaker 9: being satisfied with like my kind of deep dives into
Speaker 9: like the Maga far right for a long time. I
Speaker 9: had just followed Trump campaign trail across the country filming
Speaker 9: for my first project on HBO, and I felt like
Speaker 9: I had sort of been able to document the craziness
Speaker 9: and like a time capsule, but never really been able
Speaker 9: to understand what economic and social factors actually cause people
Speaker 9: to become radicalized, especially dudes through later in life like Kelly.
Speaker 5: And I never really was able to actually dig deep.
Speaker 9: But in his story about Bill Joyner and the foreclosure
Speaker 9: of his house and his family being separated, I saw
Speaker 9: a window and a chance to actually figure out.
Speaker 5: The why of how people get like that in the
Speaker 5: first place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're probably this like central chicken or egg
Speaker 4: question that a lot of your work is based on,
Speaker 4: which you know. I think one of the reasons people
Speaker 4: love your work is you come to this idea that, like,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of very good people who do
Speaker 4: a lot of crazy things and get caught up in
Speaker 4: the fringes, and you include some interesting stats about January sixth,
Speaker 4: and for example people's debt levels, like whether they were
Speaker 4: there on January six if they had particular levels of debt.
Speaker 4: There's just a big proportion of people. I didn't even
Speaker 4: realize that there were numbers attached to all of this.
Speaker 4: I mean, you could see it when you were there.
Speaker 4: But can you tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 4: this experience with Kelly either changed modified added nuance to
Speaker 4: the way you see the world that you know, maybe
Speaker 4: there are some people who come into all of this
Speaker 4: stuff with prior difficulties and then it changes them or
Speaker 4: is it just you know, a one way street.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 9: I mean, before I started documenting Kelly, and this is
Speaker 9: filmed over the course of four and a half years,
Speaker 9: I didn't realize that so many people who like were
Speaker 9: so deep in that QAnon rabbit hole had just normal
Speaker 9: lives like in twenty twenty that were completely derailed by
Speaker 9: financial hardship, and particularly how that coalesced with like political psychosis.
Speaker 9: I don't like using the word misinformation because it's not
Speaker 9: like everything they read is.
Speaker 5: Totally false or consumes false, but.
Speaker 9: It's just being locked in this echo chamber of like
Speaker 9: twenty four to seven outrage content for a long period
Speaker 9: of time. And definitely learned a lot about just people
Speaker 9: like that in general, but also about myself as a
Speaker 9: documentary film and how emotionally invested I want to be
Speaker 9: in the outcome of like a subject or someone that
Speaker 9: I'm documenting, Like by the end of the film, especially
Speaker 9: like after the intervention to spoil it a bit, not
Speaker 9: too much, I was so emotionally invested in Kelly turning
Speaker 9: over this new leaf that it became.
Speaker 5: Like more important than my own life.
Speaker 9: And I don't think I ever want to get that
Speaker 9: involved again, because I mean, I had filmed three hundred
Speaker 9: and fifty hours of footage in total, and I ultimately
Speaker 9: baked it down to eighty nine minutes, But it was
Speaker 9: like my personal expectations were tethered to his in a
Speaker 9: way that I'm not sure was super healthy.
Speaker 2: I think for me, as a democratic socialist who thinks
Speaker 2: a lot about like class analysis, the way you approach
Speaker 2: this really played into some of my sort of mental
Speaker 2: preconceptions because you're like, there was a material harm that
Speaker 2: happened to a lot of these people and it sort
Speaker 2: of pushed them in this direction of radicalization. And that's
Speaker 2: both true and not true. In Kelly's case, like he
Speaker 2: did genuinely go through this foreclosure, which for any one
Speaker 2: is a you know, horrific situation, but the way he
Speaker 2: portrayed it.
Speaker 3: Was also not entirely accurate.
Speaker 2: And then when you're still many years past that financial
Speaker 2: hardship and there's still you know, and you've had these
Speaker 2: this severing of relationship with your kids and you're not
Speaker 2: being there for them as you know, as a father,
Speaker 2: and they're having to have these you know again, I
Speaker 2: don't want to spoil it too much, but they're coming
Speaker 2: to you saying this has really hurt us, and you
Speaker 2: have a chance to turn over that new leaf, and
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily.
Speaker 3: The direction that you want to go in.
Speaker 2: It makes it just makes the picture a little more complex, right,
Speaker 2: It's not as simple and straightforward.
Speaker 3: A sort of.
Speaker 2: Math equation of you know, financial hardship plus loss of connection.
Speaker 2: I mean, you actually have a sort of like formula
Speaker 2: you lay out in the beginning doesn't have to lead
Speaker 2: to this, doesn't always lead to this.
Speaker 3: There are other choices.
Speaker 2: It's not always like as clear a picture as you're
Speaker 2: telling yourself in your head. You know, did it kind
Speaker 2: of challenge some of your conceptions coming in as well?
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 9: I mean I started when I was twenty two, when
Speaker 9: I finished when I was twenty seven, Like the first
Speaker 9: shoot being the White Lives Matter rally on April eleven,
Speaker 9: twenty twenty one, and the last shoot being three and
Speaker 9: a half weeks ago with our friend Uncle Pill at
Speaker 9: a skate park in San Diego. You can see my
Speaker 9: approach like kind of morph throughout the whole thing, because
Speaker 9: midway through, like twenty three twenty four, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 9: gonna be able.
Speaker 5: To figure this out. I've got everything.
Speaker 9: Diagnosed, I have all the ducks in a row. I'm
Speaker 9: going to make sure that he's able to turn over
Speaker 9: a new leaf. The one thing that I noticed, too,
Speaker 9: is that I didn't mention this in the movie very much,
Speaker 9: but the whole the idea of self narrative was also
Speaker 9: very important in his sort of inability to turn over
Speaker 9: that new leaf over time, because it's a comforting self
Speaker 9: narrative for him to have this heroic, black and white
Speaker 9: good versus evil Bill.
Speaker 5: Joiner, you know, screwed me over.
Speaker 9: And you know, the way that morphs with the political
Speaker 9: movement in general is very two dimensional, you know what
Speaker 9: I mean, the idea there's this like nebulous dark force
Speaker 9: out there that's just it exists.
Speaker 5: We don't know what it is, but it's.
Speaker 9: There to rob everything from the working, red blooded American patriot.
Speaker 5: And it might not be my book, you may might
Speaker 5: not be shared by years.
Speaker 9: However, we're all united in our fight against the evil forces.
Speaker 5: And in a way that's comforting to people in his
Speaker 5: position because it stops them from actually picking up the pieces. Right.
Speaker 9: That's why I was, you know, he was spending fifteen
Speaker 9: hours a day putting up leaflets saying Bill Joyner stole
Speaker 9: my home. That time easily could have been used at
Speaker 9: you know, maybe getting an entry level job and trying.
Speaker 5: To save up money to start from the bottom. But
Speaker 5: that's a lot.
Speaker 9: It takes a lot of humility to be able to
Speaker 9: bring yourself back to that level and start from scratch.
Speaker 9: It's easier to revel in the past while simultaneously leading
Speaker 9: a hero's narrative that keeps you in a revenge mind stain.
Speaker 4: Well, and actually I just want to jump on to
Speaker 4: that point because one of the interesting things that you
Speaker 4: touch on is how he grew up in a mobile
Speaker 4: home and I think it was Iowa, and so he
Speaker 4: may have been ultimately a bankruptcy attorney, but there was
Speaker 4: something I think traumatic and I'm curious what you make
Speaker 4: of this for him about losing his kind of upper
Speaker 4: middle class, if not upper class status, and that for
Speaker 4: him was maybe like the truth that he didn't want
Speaker 4: to grapple with you. Hear his kids saying that it
Speaker 4: was like the house. It was he could not give
Speaker 4: up the house. And he's still driving is banged up BMW,
Speaker 4: even though it's kind of big dent in the hood
Speaker 4: as your camera's caught. It seems like there was something
Speaker 4: about growing up poor that made him cling to the
Speaker 4: kind of fantasy of having made it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, definitely, because he sort of achieved the American dream,
Speaker 9: which is just class mobility in general. I mean, especially
Speaker 9: nowadays with the costs of living very few people can
Speaker 9: go from living in a mobile home in their lifetime
Speaker 9: to being cemented as a community member in an upper
Speaker 9: class s gated community. So he hit that at point,
Speaker 9: and I think the material obsessions were his way of
Speaker 9: holding on to what that meant to him, like internally.
Speaker 5: And you see this all the time. People hit the lottery.
Speaker 9: Rappers get a bunch of money, they spend it more
Speaker 9: on like material items because they have a sort of
Speaker 9: imposter syndrome in general, because they didn't grow up in
Speaker 9: the same way that their peers did.
Speaker 5: Because most people who are rich grew up rich.
Speaker 9: Was very little crossover, and so I felt, like, you know,
Speaker 9: he felt it was a huge blow to his ego
Speaker 9: and also, yeah, self perception and self narrative to be
Speaker 9: to be foreclosed upon.
Speaker 2: Are you Are you still in touch with Kelly Is he?
Speaker 2: Is he happy as guys back in the White House?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's.
Speaker 9: I mean, he's actually pretty excited about the film. Like
Speaker 9: a lot of people look at the end of the
Speaker 9: film and they think, like, oh my god, he must
Speaker 9: feel so bad about it, you know, but at the
Speaker 9: end of the day, there is a lot of small
Speaker 9: victories that have been secured throughout the process of the film,
Speaker 9: like him not caring so much about Bill Joyner, which
Speaker 9: is his boogeyman, evil, predatory lump guy that he claimed
Speaker 9: ruin his life. Him not caring about Bill by the
Speaker 9: end is a huge strive forward if you consider that
Speaker 9: in the opening scene it planned Parenthood, he's almost like
Speaker 9: passing out from anger yelling about Bill.
Speaker 5: So, I mean it might not be this. He's never
Speaker 5: met people want.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's never met him, and you know, I'm being
Speaker 9: sued by Bill right now, which sucks. So but I
Speaker 9: also haven't met Bill either.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So more Uh, there's more story to unfold there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with you versus Bill Joyner. Maybe you'll be next the
Speaker 2: next one like Bill Joiner rude my life.
Speaker 4: Next time you're on it, Andrew, it's just going to
Speaker 4: be you talking about Bill Joyner.
Speaker 5: Seen, there was.
Speaker 2: One other thing I wanted to ask you about, Andrew.
Speaker 2: We could put f one up on the screen. You
Speaker 2: put out a very like, you know, pretty aggressive post
Speaker 2: here about Elon Muss, none of which I disagree with,
Speaker 2: but in any case, it's sounds like a little bit
Speaker 2: of a break from the way you normally approach things
Speaker 2: because a lot of times you sort of let your
Speaker 2: you know, your your work, and the characters you follow
Speaker 2: speak for themselves, and I was I just was curious
Speaker 2: what led you to take this more aggressive approach, And
Speaker 2: after having watched the documentary, actually it made me wonder
Speaker 2: if if that was part of your evolution to make
Speaker 2: being more directly personally outspoken.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean a little just like Elon Musk has
Speaker 9: been doing like Nazi dog whistle stuff on Twitter for
Speaker 9: like five or six months.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 9: I know this because I grew up on four Chune,
Speaker 9: like back in the day that the pre censorship free Internet,
Speaker 9: when like half the people were Nazis and half to
Speaker 9: beeople were anarchists like back in the day, but it
Speaker 9: was like either you were part of anonymous or you
Speaker 9: were like a seriously like like like Charlottesville person. And
Speaker 9: so I know that he's been doing these like weird
Speaker 9: not even dog whistles, just like straight up following Nazi accounts,
Speaker 9: reposting Nazi shit. And then when he did that, I
Speaker 9: don't know, I just got triggered. I kind of felt
Speaker 9: bad when I posted it because I'm supposed to be
Speaker 9: like neutral and maintain composure, but that was for sure
Speaker 9: a Hitler salute, and it's you know, it's a Hitler salute,
Speaker 9: not just because of the obvious body language, but because
Speaker 9: the guy has been paying homage to like Nazi ideology
Speaker 9: and accounts on X for the past like six to
Speaker 9: eight months and so. But the comments are crazy. So
Speaker 9: many people are like going to batch for elons or
Speaker 9: like he's just giving his heart out to the people.
Speaker 9: I was like, dude, if you give your heart out
Speaker 9: to the people, you go like this, appreciate you, guys,
Speaker 9: Thank you, guys, heart goes out to you.
Speaker 5: You don't do this siegile.
Speaker 9: But you know, I think we're in this era where
Speaker 9: you know, he could do it and say seghile, I
Speaker 9: don't think people would care to find out a way
Speaker 9: to rationalize it and be like, dude.
Speaker 5: He's just so autistically. You don't know if you've met
Speaker 5: an autistic person, but you're always.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, have you considered you're just being ablest
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 5: Andrew, see now now the the what's it called the
Speaker 5: sites are on me?
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was just like, that's the thing with we're
Speaker 4: all like downstream of fortune culture now that people who
Speaker 4: are not being ironic get away with the shield of
Speaker 4: irony and and to like, in some fairness, it actually
Speaker 4: does make it hard to you know, it doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that irony trolling is right, but it does make it
Speaker 4: hard to like sometimes decode. But I guess Andrew, having
Speaker 4: spent time on Fortune, you speak the language probably better
Speaker 4: than most.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely do.
Speaker 9: And not to mention, he's not from the United States
Speaker 9: and he has a lot to say about migrants coming
Speaker 9: here and ruining shit, whereas this guy is from South Africa,
Speaker 9: of all places, the most racist place that ever exists
Speaker 9: in the history of the world, and he's coming here
Speaker 9: and he's manipulating information that seems pretty treasonous and like
Speaker 9: some foreign interference.
Speaker 5: To me, it's just crazy to think that Trump ran his.
Speaker 9: Whole campaign on getting the deep state bureaucracy out of
Speaker 9: offish and now it appears that he has like a private,
Speaker 9: you know, council of tech oligarchs backing him entirely, so
Speaker 9: it appears that the deep state was elected.
Speaker 2: Well, I personally appreciate the new outspoken mode of Andrew Callahan,
Speaker 2: so I hope we hear more of it. And of
Speaker 2: course I always look forward to to your work tell
Speaker 2: people where they can watch Dear Kelly.
Speaker 9: You guys can watch Dear Kelly at www dot Dear
Speaker 9: kellyfilm dot com for the low rental cost of five
Speaker 9: dollars and fifty five cents, or if you're feeling generous,
Speaker 9: you can buy it forever for fifteen dollars and fifty
Speaker 9: five cents.
Speaker 2: It's worth and he's got some lawsuit costs against Bill Joyner,
Speaker 2: so help him out with that. Guy.
Speaker 9: Shout out to Bill, Shout out to Kelly, Shout out
Speaker 9: to Breaking Points.
Speaker 3: Thanks Andrew, great to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Appreciate you guys.
Speaker 2: All right, really interesting getting to talk to Andrew. I
Speaker 2: really did. I found the film very thought provoking. Yeah
Speaker 2: you enjoyed it too, right, Oh my gosh, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah I did. And I actually one of the things
Speaker 4: I know you talked a little bit to Andrew about
Speaker 4: what moved you, but one of the things that really
Speaker 4: moved me was this isn't a spoiler. He just ends
Speaker 4: up becoming very emotionally involved in Kelly's life and weirdly
Speaker 4: like close with him. Yes that it surprises you towards
Speaker 4: the end of the film. It's not a spoiler. I
Speaker 4: really recommend people watch it play out because that experience
Speaker 4: as a viewer is really compelling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting to hear Andrew talk about like
Speaker 2: that that was something he really had to learn as
Speaker 2: a documentarian, that that that took a very emotional time.
Speaker 2: I mean he's Andrew's really young, right, that was like
Speaker 2: a real emotional toll on him and a learning for
Speaker 2: him through this process. But in any case, I hope
Speaker 2: you guys enjoyed the show today. Definitely check out the documentary.
Speaker 2: Sager supposed to be back tomorrow, so he will be
Speaker 2: in this chair and Emily and Ryan will be here
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, so you got all normal shows, normal shows
Speaker 2: planned for the week. In any case, have you guys
Speaker 2: have a fantastic date and I will see you back
Speaker 2: here tomorrow