Bernie vs. the Robots

Welcome to Ponce of America, I'm John Love it.

“Today on the show, I had a great conversation”

with Senator Bernie Sanders on AI, Super Packs, and his journey from a kid on a canvas in Israel to a Senator trying to prevent weapon sales to Netanyahu, and trying to save humanity from robots at the same time.

And then you'll hear my conversation with our friend and journalist Peter Hamby, founding partner of Puck News and host of the powers that be podcasted on the Democratic shake-up in Maine,

the governor's racing California, some news on the DNC, and have the left out of confront political violence.

But first, here's my conversation with Bernie.

Senator Sanders, welcome back to the show. - Good to be with you, John. - So I watched your panel last night on the existential risks of AI, you had researchers from North America, and China,

it was a bracing experience. There's just for people that may not have caught it. MIT's tech marks says, will be like animals in a zoo, and then another researcher named David Kruger

says, "Zoos, most of us won't be so lucky." (laughs) What did you take away? Why did you wanna do this conversation? - Thank you, John, for asking me about that.

I am not a tech guy, but I'm sitting around, and I read, and I listen to people. And it is clear to me that AI,

and robotics are the most revolutionary technologies

in the history of humanity. They are going to transform life for every man, woman, and child, certainly in our country and around the world. How the hell do we ignore that reality?

Why is there not massive discussion about the impact of AI, for example? All right? Who is pushing AI right now? Who's pushing AI in robotics?

The richest guys in the world, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg. What do you think they want?

“Do you think they're staying up nights worrying about your family?”

Write out it. Number two, there are economists all over the place who estimate no one knows exactly. 10s and 10s of millions of jobs are gonna be lost. What happens to the people who's the jobs?

Think to automatically go out and get another job that does not appear to be the case. We are kids, hooked to AI bots, for emotional support, becoming increasingly isolated. Should we worry about that?

Yeah, we should. Politically, but I wanna get to what it will means about democracy and politics in America. It's a big deal. But what last night was about

is having very knowledgeable people talking about the real possibility that AI will escape human control, become independent, do its own thing. And the likelihood that that could lead to catastrophic implications, including extinction.

So my job is not the fear manga, but it says, "Wait a second, "you got no bell prize winners. "You're free hint of saying this. "Do you think we might wanna take a deep breath

"and think about where we go from here?" Yeah, there's this strange fatalism about it.

“And I think about when we've gone through”

other big technological changes. It wasn't assembly lines that put kids in factories. It was people, that own the factories, that made that decision. It's not the technology itself that's being unleashed

in hitting our kids and affecting our media. It's the people who own those tools that are distributing them and profiting off of them. How do we, there's this way in which the technology it seems like magic and we kind of lose our senses.

And one of the things that came out of your discussion last night is treat these companies product, like you would have Toyota or a Toyota or a tortilla chip. So what kind of regulations would you like to see if we sort of got our heads out of our asses here?

- Well, tag Mark, Dr. Tag Mark from MIT said, "Look, you go to a sandwich shop, right?" You know what? It is regulated. The health department comes in to make sure

the food you're eating is edible and none shop is clean. And yet the AI guys want to go forward

with this revolutionary technology with no regulation.

There is an enormous amount of work that has to be done. But John, the first thing that has to be done is that we have got to say slow it down. Let us get our hands around the AI safety element

You, Jason, what do you do?

Well, clearly, you bring people from all over the world last night, as you know, we have scientists from China. Bring them together to sit down to advise governments around the world about how we slow this down

so we don't lose control of the technology. In terms of economics, if millions and millions of workers lose their jobs, what do we do? Well, you know what, extending unemployment ain't gonna be good enough.

We're gonna have to be thinking about a whole new social contract et cetera, et cetera. This is all that I'm saying here. This is a big, big deal. Congress is way behind where it should be.

We need some serious discussion.

So, you had Chinese voices as part of this conversation.

Scott Best in the Treasury Secretary posted a criticism of you saying that the real threat is letting any nation other than the United States set the global standard. What's your response to that criticism? Right, Mr. Best at the billionaire

and the Trump administration billionaires working with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and a host of other billionaires who dominate AI. They're not a threat. Hey, we should all trust them

because they have the betterment of the American people at all. Well, forgive me, I don't accept that at all.

“So, I think in China, they are smart enough look.”

This gets me thinking about the nuclear arms race. You know, you had a conservative Republican named Ronald Reagan

sitting down with Gorbachev, then the premier of the Soviet Union

talking about the reality that a nuclear war would not be good for the Soviet Union, not be good for the United States. They work together on a nuclear arms treaty. You don't want the world human race losing control

over AI, in good for China, in good for America, in good for the world. Of course, we've got to work together. So, as part of this, you were posed a moratorium on new data centers until we have these kinds of safeguards

in place, your colleague, Senator Mark Warner, who's a pretty, I think, mild mannered guy called it idiocy, because he's worried about losing this race to China. And I don't think he is, you know, he's not Trump.

He's not Zuckerberg. What do you say to that criticism for people who both agree

“there might need to, that there do need to be safeguards?”

But also, as much as we worry about these billionaires having so much sway, it would be worse if control of this technology by China surpassed us. - This is not a race with China. This is a question of scientists sitting down

and figuring out how we can prevent this technology from escaping human control with calamitous impact. I cannot believe that any sane person would be against that. That's my view. So, it's not, you know, we gotta get it.

People with China all you want. But we have got to do everything that we can to prevent with some scientists think is a very dangerous situation. - Yeah, I guess I agree with that. But it's almost like these are two separate questions, right?

Because because, because if we were to slow down and China didn't slow down, it's not preventing this, this, this, this, this, this. - So more of the story is not the end. All that I want from the more of the story is to give up,

you know, maybe I'm crazy, John, maybe I am. I know one of the people I hope about including my wife. - If scientists who are no bell prize winners, guys who've gotten the Turing Award, which is the major award given to people in computer science,

if they say to you that humanity is in danger,

“do you think you might want to do something about it?”

Or am I missing something? - You're telling me. - So, no, I, the percentages are also someone, oh, there's only a 10% chance humanity is destroyed. It's like, well, I don't like those odds.

- Only a 10% chance, I don't, I know it. - I'm with you. - This is the point, the point is that, what? Again, either I'm nuts, or a 10% chance. Yeah, that the whole world might be destroyed.

Yeah, I think we might want to get to work to prevent that. And this is preventable by the way. It's nothing that we're competing against China. It's coming together to prevent what might be a catastrophe. - Right, it seems like that, you mentioned this in the past

and last night President Trump and the leader of China, they're gonna meet and AI may be part of what they're discussing. What do you hope, what, what do you hope would come out of that kind of conversation? - I was glad to see that.

The most regional reported that that would be part of their agenda.

And I hope that they sit down and say, look,

your scientists in the United States,

“scientists in China agree, this is a danger.”

It works to nobody's advantage to allow this to happen. Okay, now China, not the United States. Bring together the scientific community to develop some protocols to prevent that. You don't want a technology that can escape human control.

Can we bring that about we can? But you're gonna have to have people from China, the United States, other countries working on something which would eventually then, I suspect, and a little bit over my head, yeah,

you know, become something like an international treaty. - Right, and then in between that, right, there's, so there's the kind of broader threat of this technology escaping our control, but in between there, and now there's the ways in which

kids are getting sucked into this technology, there's the ways it's affecting our media. And it does seem as though the industry would benefit from a set of regulations that allow them to compete on non-evil aspects of the technology

and continue to develop and grow and improve the technology in ways that are beneficial to people, rather than these sort of toxic and parasitic implications. - Let's get to another issue, and to ask,

you know, this is not because members of Congress are dumb or don't know what's going on. It has a lot to do with the power and the financial resources of AI and their superpacks. We're talking about many, many, many hundreds

of millions of dollars coming into the midterm elections right now, so you're running for Congress, okay? And yet a kid, and you worry about the impact of AI, you think you're going to stand up and say,

“well, you know, I think we need some sensible regulations here.”

And then the AI industry says, really? Well, I guess what?

I've got a $10 million check going in

to negative ads against you, which takes us, John, from the dangers of AI to a corrupt campaign finance system which is undermining American democracy. - So I talked to Senator Chris Murphy about this recently, and he's worried about this, too,

that Democrats won't draw an effective contrast with Republicans, Trump and their Republicans, they forget sensible regulations. They even try to prevent state regulations. So they try to take us in the other direction,

but what Murphy was worried about is because there's this sort of dameclease of all this cash hanging over Democrats' heads that people will not take a strong stand. What do you say to Democrats who worried about that?

- Well, Chris told you is right, but it speaks to the need for us to be honest about where we are is a country. Look, all of us are concerned about Trump's pathological line, is attempt to undermine democracy in so many ways.

I think every Democrat, I'm an independent caucuses with the Democrats agrees with that, but there is another threat to democracy. And that is the power of big money over the political process. And that is why I circulated a letter

with a number of my colleagues saying that while we work, what we must work to overturn this disastrous citizens, united Supreme Court decision, which allows billionaires to spend as much money as they want to buy elections,

at the very least Democrats within Democratic primaries, their presidential primaries, as well as congressional and other primaries, got to get super PAC money out of those primaries. - Yeah, no, you sent that letter this week.

It actually follows a letter you sent about a year ago. This was to Senator Schumer, to Ken Martin the head of the DNC. Basically, let's verse where super PACs inside of our own primaries, and Ken Martin responded by saying he's in spirit behind it,

but that his hands seemed to be tied. What is the reluctance to you think of just fully embracing this kind of knee smiling? - All right, John, what's happening? Tell me.

- It's not a very hard question to answer.

What do you think the answer is?

What do you think the establishment Democratic establishment is doing right now as we speak? - I'm hustling this money. - Oh, they're right, that's right. Okay.

- You know, they're hustling money from AI industry, they're hustling money from APAC, they're hustling money from crypto, and from other special interests. All right, they have that money, and they use what they do with it,

what they do, but this is really insidious.

“And I think progressives increasingly understand”

that that money often, which comes by the way from Trumpers, Republicans, is gonna be used against progressives, and decent people who are running in primaries. (upbeat music)

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I'm glad we talked about the super PAC money from APY, but I don't know exactly the economic implications because that's the other part of this existential threat. You've talked about attacks on companies that get rid of jobs for automation or for robots,

but to the point of the scale of this problem

of really a hundred million jobs

of potentially be at risk, to your point, we'd have to think about a much different social compact. Right now, if a company hire is a worker, they pay payroll taxes.

“They are charged money for every worker on the books, right?”

And we've actually shifted the burden of taxes towards income and towards labor in a way from corporate income. If a company buys a machine to do that job, according to our tax code,

you could not only pay no taxes on it, you'd get a depreciation, you'd get a credit. So, any, the proposal you have is a sort of mitigation, but the whole code is tilted against human beings. - Look, I think, we have not yet.

All the way, our main thrust right now is to say, slow it down so we can get our hands around all of this. And I just had a meeting today with my staff to start working on what a sensible solution would be.

And it ain't easy stuff because what we're dealing with is unprecedented problems. But to your point, this, in my view, goes beyond say, oh, we gotta extend unemployment benefits, fine.

Yeah, we need what's called a trade adjustment assistance if you lose your job to AI, we'll retrain you fine. It goes a lot deeper than that, because this technological revolution is so sweeping that what we need to be talking about

is a new social contract. All right, it's not saying, hey, you lose your job, you've got unemployment rate. We need to go a lot deeper than that,

because you may never get another job.

You're a 50 year old truck driver today, and you replace by a driver list vehicle. We even have one, get a job. It's not like you go walk down the street and get another job, that job may not be there.

So we need to think really in new ways as to how we address these crises. - Yeah, you know, I'm talking to you in California, and we live in a kind of signal example of this, because we are in the what the fifth fourth largest economy

in the world, driven primarily from a half dozen companies in Silicon Valley that are growing exponentially,

at a rate to match the scale of their growth. And if we have a tax code in which we've lowered the corporate rate, right? We basically have said, our tax code says, we would rather a company be gigantic and employ no one,

than be kind of profitable while employing hundreds of thousands of people. That is what our tax code currently prefers. - Let me throw something else out to you.

“And again, the truth is nobody knows exactly”

what is going to happen. Honestly, people have different sorts of opinions as to the nature of the job loss, how quickly will the current, et cetera. But if, on the line if, tens of millions of people

lose their jobs, they're not paying any taxes at all on it. How you could sustain programs like social security, medicare, Medicaid, et cetera, et cetera. How you could sustain government, you know? So, you know, these are profound questions

that we've got to adjust, but bottom line is I think we're talking about a new social compact.

How do we make sure this revolutionary technology

improves human life economically, socially, psychologically. And of course, prevents any kind of catastrophe. - Switching gears, in April of last year, only 15 Democrats voted with your resolution of Blockweapon Sounds to Israel.

Now, two weeks ago, 40 Democrats joined you. There is a profound shift happening. Obviously, that is driven by the ways in which Israel has conducted its military campaigning Gaza. The way it has been expanding settlements,

it's incursion into Lebanon. What are you observing about this shift in democratic politics among your colleagues?

“And what does it tell you about where we're heading?”

- What it tells me, and by the way, it is not just Democrats, it's Republicans as well. And I think you're going to see movement in the direction you described among Republicans and they're not too distant future.

Look, we have an economy in which 60% of our people live in paycheck to paycheck. People are hurting, kind of what healthcare, housing, educating their kids, childcare, et cetera. Now, they look up, and they see that President Trump

wants to provide billions of dollars of military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel. And they look, and they say, really, well, what is this government done? And we all know the Hamas's a terrorist organization

that attacked Israel in a horrible way, killing 200 people. Israel had a right to respond, but they did not have a right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people.

2.2 million people in the area killed 72,000 of them.

Mostly women, children, and the elderly. Engine, something like 170,000. That's more than 10% of the population killed or wounded, wiped out almost the entire infrastructure.

“And what people, including myself, I think,”

have concluded this is a genocidal attack. So people are working, then they say, well, that's bad, why would we give money to a government that was that? And then we wake up a few months ago,

and Israel has gotten, now, after 40 years of effort, Netanyahu, who finally found the President, who was willing to go to war against Iran, taxed Iran in the middle of the night, great. We're off in another war, price of gas is now going up.

We're killing school children in Iran.

Israel now is in Lebanon, displacing over a million people,

killing bombing civilian neighborhoods. As you indicated in the West Bank, like vigilante is now killing Palestinians, destroying farms, destroying homes. Who in their right mind wants to continue to fund

a government that does that? And the polls tell us that. And Democrats, look at the polls that they say, I go home, I hold the time meeting everybody. He says, why are you funding Netanyahu's government?

So they're beginning to catch on, and as you indicated, war and more now, we have 40 out of 47 members of the caucus who are saying no more. Yeah, I mean, this has been an issue in primaries across the country right now that are playing out today.

Janet Mills suspended her campaign, which means that Graham Platner will be the nominee. He's somebody that's been outspoken about this. What did you have any reaction to what happened to me? Yeah, I do.

And I got to tell you, John, I've been all over the country. And you have to trust me on this. But whenever I talk about what was going on in Gaza, just people would stand up and really express their feelings. This is a very emotional issue for people all of this country.

We do not want to be complicit in killing women and children and destroying all of Gaza.

he has run a brilliant campaign to my mind.

“Not to similar, it's a main, it's obviously a very rural state,”

but not radically dissimilar from what Mamdani did in New York City, which is clearly the largest city in America. What did they do? They both have taken broad forth an agenda that is prepared to take on the oligarchs

and the big money interest, nobody. But very few people in America think that it's OK that the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93% or that Elon Musk himself owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of the American households.

So I think something sets. So Mamdani talked about it. That's what Platner is talking about. And they have an agenda that speaks the needs of working people, health care for all education, for all, et cetera, et cetera.

So I see that happening, not just in New York City

and Maine, I see it happening in communities all over this country. Tomorrow's matter of fact, tomorrow night, I will be in Ohio, then I'll be in Minnesota, then I'll be in Detroit with Abdul Elzayid

“in Detroit, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota.”

Mr. Pointex, the Brian Pointex, they're in Ohio. People now are raising these issues. Working class people are sick and tired of the greed of the big money interest. They want a government that represents all of us.

Not just the fuel. So you spend time in Israel as a young man on a canvas. You've talked about being part of the Jewish tradition of social justice a few years ago. You wrote about this.

You said your pride and admiration for Israel lives alongside your support for Palestinian freedom and independence. What do you say to people, especially younger Jewish people, who find it impossible to feel any pride or admiration

for an Israel that does not uphold Jewish values? - Well, look, right now you have, you know, when you talk about what I don't like and Netanyahu pushes us all over the time,

then if you are critical of the horrific policies

of the Yahoo government, you are somehow an anti-Semite and that is totally absurd. As that happens, my father's family was kind of wiped out in Poland by Hitler. I am not an anti-Semite.

And in fact, anti-Semitism is a growing and serious problem all over the world. What is gone on for whatever reason

“that I am not the most knowledgeable guy in the world on?”

Israel, over the last number of years, has become gone from being a moderate, liberal type country to a right-wing extremist country in which, by the way, Netanyahu is not even the worst. I mean, you're talking about guys there,

really kind of racist guys who really want expansionism so we have got to oppose that government. And hopefully the day will come when Israel will elect people who understand that we need to, they need to be working with their neighbors

and not just simply trying to dominate them in terrible ways. - What do you say to younger people, especially younger Jews who now feel, you know, they grew up seeing an Israel led by Netanyahu, they've watched these atrocities unfold over the last few years

and it's led them to believe the problem just isn't Benjamin Netanyahu that there's something fundamentally wrong about the project of Israel. - I don't have a magical answer to that right now,

but right now what I am trying to do is to make sure that the United States government is not complicit in the horrific acts of the Netanyahu government. We can talk about, you know, where we go from there,

but that's where I am right now. - What do you think, if you saw that that 20 something Bernie Sanders on a Kabat's and he said, "Hey, 60 years from now, I'm gonna be fighting in the Senate against the robots."

- Well, it's kind of, and by the way, I would tell you when I was, you know, I don't know how much you know about the history of the Kippur team formed by, you know, Jews who left the anti-Semitism of Europe.

When I was at least what very, very progressive entities, women, you know, it was democratically owned and controlled, women had rights that they didn't have in the United States. Well, leaders in a way that was not true. All the people were playing an act of role.

It was, it was an interesting and novel model, which I happened to believe it. But obviously, that is not what Israel is about today. And going from where I was as a kid to being a United States Senator dealing with these issues,

it's been a long journey to say to this, yeah. - Senator Sanders, thanks for your time, good to talk to you. - Thank you, Joe. - Thanks to Senator Sanders for joining us when we come back, I talked to Peter Hempie.

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All right, so I wanna start with your piece on political violence, you wrote. Democratic elected and other party leaders vehemently condemn political violence all the time, but many in the left have become too comfortable,

celebrating violence or bad luck that default their Trumpian enemies. They are too loose with their language who cozy with conspiracies that can lead to a dark place. Now, you're very clear in this piece,

which you wrote after the assassination attempt at the White House Charisma Center, very clear by the ways in which the right looks past Trump's calls to violence, exploits tragedies to target the left, but even still, I am sure there are people hearing this

and thinking the most powerful person on the earth,

encourage an insurrection, seeks to jails, enemies celebrates the deaths of people like Robert Mueller and Rob Reiner, and you're talking about random people on the internet. So, what are you seeing and why do you think it's important?

- I think the phrase random people in the internet actually matters, first of all, and I do wanna say thank you for saying that, acknowledging that part of the piece, 'cause I felt like I wrote 10 paragraphs

about Caroline love it, mischaracterizing, or lying about how various people, I came Jeffree's use terms like warfare, quote-unquote, to refer to redistricting. - Yeah. - The redistricting wars.

I mean, we've both been in politics for a long time, people use terms like combat or murder suicide, or just violent martial terms. This comes up in sports commentary all the time. - Shakespeare was familiar with metaphor as well, I guess.

- Yes, yes. - And I consider he came Jeffree's, the Shakespeare people, they do the alphabet. - Yeah, I do too. - I consider one of the hosts of people who do the alphabet.

He would like that reference.

“I think that the random people in the internet”

thing matters, and I thought about this with John, Fabro, other John, who, after Charlie Kirk, was killed, noticed, yes, random people on the internet, random TikTokers, celebrating his death.

And even as always walking in here,

Taylor Lorenz posted a tweet,

that people are using the sound of Charlie Kirk, getting shot, the gunshot, to do quick cut edits of outfit changes.

“And that just, again, diminishes, I think.”

(laughing) What happened? And like, you don't have to like Charlie Kirk? I don't, this is our thing, John. I know coming in here, this is a founding principle

of crooked media, and I feel like this came from John Love at Brain, which is the DC media's tendency to both sides thing. That is not me, and for the people listening, I'm not that journalist, but I was there in the ballroom,

and part of it too is, I've read polls, right?

In the first Trump term, obviously in the Obama years,

people blamed Trump and Republicans for the crazy, for the conspiracy theories, voters did. NPR had a poll, I think in 2017, saying 70% of voters blamed Trump and Republicans for the toxicity in our politics.

And there was a moral and intellectual high ground. I think, well, in the Democratic Party, there hasn't been widespread political violence coming from the left since the '70s, with the weather underground, black panthers, et cetera.

There's obviously a bit anti-government violence. You've got like black block, antifa types, and whatever. But there has been an uptick in partisan motivated, not just violence, but plots. There was somebody who showed up at the Capitol, last year,

wanting to kill Pete Hexeth, that person was arrested. There's obviously two of the three assassins, attempted assassins on Donald Trump, sounded like they had left-leaning political views. And again, back to the random people on the internet thing,

it's not coming from democratic politicians. It's not. It's really not. Now, there's like Jasmine Crocket posted a conspiracy theory the other day that the attack on the Washington

Hilton might have been a false flag or whatever.

The problem is the diminishing power of people like me

and the mainstream press and the diminishing ability of normie politicians to get out there in the information ecosystem and how people hear them. That stuff is being replaced just by noise and slap on the internet, and it does seem like, to me,

“and I think the evidence and the polling bears us out,”

that liberals and progressives. And by the way, some of these people might just be fake bots. They might be, you know, JD Vance likes to totally, and the right, completely exploit, you know, even the fringiest thing that you found in the internet

and pretend it's like the mainstream view of the democratic party. And I make clear in the piece, as you read, Democrats aren't the one saying this. It is, though, kind of ambient on the internet. And I think I actually wanted to ask you about this.

The Michelle Obama, they, you know, when they go low, we go high thing. That feels dead and gone in like millennial cringe at this point. In the second Trump term,

there has, it has been celebrated that like, we're gonna fight dirty. It's, and I'm not, I'm just trying to be civility police, either, dude. Yeah, no.

But like people just feel like, okay, we're gonna play on their terms, get in their sandbox, we're gonna throw punches, call names. And then, you know, then maybe, maybe,

you end up with a guy who's got a screw loose, who hears all this stuff on the internet and thinks I've got to go kill the rapist fascist pedophile in the White House. I just think that it's easier to hear the crazy stuff

that the algorithms have poured gasoline on than it ever was. And you just hear it more on the left than I think you used to.

“Yeah, there's so many parts that you have to tease out, right?”

Like, there's an, like, a big distinction. It isn't coming from the vast majority of democratic politicians, right? And there is just a distinction between how responsible elected Republicans are,

including the president versus how responsible elected Democrats are. Even this week, we saw what is obviously a ridiculous prosecution of James Komi, the number of Republicans refusing to criticize that

or openly embracing that. People go, members of Congress saying, well, look at all the other bad things, Jim Komi did, right? It is not, it is distinct from political violence, but embracing the jailing of your political enemies

on specious reasons is adjacent to a politics in which people can celebrate political violence. But the challenge is, most Americans deplore political violence, all the mainstream politicians on the left can deplore political violence.

Ninety-five percent of people say the right thing.

Then the next day, 100 percent of people

spend the day talking about what the five percent said and how heinous it is and how it's actually justified in all the rest. We at Kirk and Media, I feel like we take some flag from all directions for this.

But we obviously denounce Republicans when they try to exploit political violence. We also try to go after what we see people, when we see people justify it, John, as you mentioned, did that as well in the piece.

But if everybody but a few are doing the right thing,

I don't know how do you respond in a media environment like that in which I'm, we try to model best behavior. There's the Democrats say the right thing, but you have Republicans that are going to pull out the worst comments from the internet.

You have an algorithm that's going to elevate the most exciting and morally-depraved comments. Like what do we do? Okay, I agree, there's a problem, what do we do? - Yeah, well, that's getting you to say that.

I know, I mean, you're sophisticated to think about this stuff. So it is important to say that there was a problem. And I want to say this isn't just my feelings. This is me being a hack political journalist. I just should point out also in the piece,

the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has measured this in his kept track of incidents.

2025 was the first year ever that left-wing violence

and plots and/or plots surpassed right-wing violence and/or plots. Say, it's only eight plots. That's only eight plots. I don't have a thing I need to say.

Again, there's no violence, no plots for like 30 years. Most of the actual deaths from political violence in this country over the last 30 years have come from right-wing political violence. And we're talking like in the hundreds, okay?

And so yes, the baseline for Democrats and the left, whatever the coalition is, was very low, it just has ticked up.

“And I think you're though right, John, I remember”

when I worked at CNN back when you were in the White House in the 2010s, there was a like, do you remember watching like cable news in that era and CNN where I worked or whatever, like a random Republican state legislator in Missouri

would say something loony about abortion or something racist about Obama? And we would all elevate it. Like this is an example of the Republican Party being nuts. And while the Republican Party

does have a tendency to accommodate and by the way, this is just history, the Berchers and the conspiracy theorists and whatever, you hear from someone on Capitol Hill, like someone from like John Thunes office,

like, why the fuck are you talking about this random guy in Missouri? And so that is a absolute intentional problem

that the press has and kind of always has.

By the way, since then, that random state senator in Missouri is now like probably on Capitol Hill and the mainstream of the Republican Party, I just think it is what you guys do.

“It's that you have to call it out and say there's no room for it.”

And the other thing we're talking about isn't as violence, it is the conspiracy theorizing. And those two are not the same, but they are connected. The people who I think tend to commit acts of violence in the name of politics like season conspiracy theories, they do.

And I notice this on Snapchat, when I work at Snap and like posted on Snap, I had a bunch of people in my comments being like fake, stage, whatever. But it's not, we don't know that these people

are even Democrats, they could just be some teenager, like sitting in their basement somewhere,

but this has been happening, again,

this gets to the higher intellectual standard that I think Democrats use to hold themselves to, in Obama's term, at some point, some press conference. In the Tansuit era, it might have been like Ed Henry. It was like in the White House briefing room,

and there was the latest outrage of the day. Whatever somebody wanted Obama to be outraged about. I think it was Ed Henry, he said, "You know, Mr. President, why am I more outraged?" And I tried to look this up before coming

and I couldn't find it. Someone listening, please find it. It's probably in Phabros and Cyclopedic Brain, but Obama looks at him and goes, "Because I haven't read the briefs."

And that was Obama being a lawyer, but it was also just a smart person who hued closely to facts and didn't want to spout off on something where he didn't know the baseline information. And we've come a long way on the internet since then.

Like social media has rampantly changed how people's instincts when it comes to responding, gathering facts.

“And, you know, I think that's hurt, everybody.”

It's hurt everybody across the board. And, you know, I just think that you see it more now on the left than you used to. I sting out that article with a quote from Isaac Asimov, who was a became a big Democrat later in his life,

hated Nixon, like just a raging Democrat. And he said, like the anti-intellectual strain in this country was always on the right. And liberals would fight ignorance with knowledge. And conservatives would fight knowledge with ignorance.

There's a lot more ignorance out there, man, on the left now. I'm sorry, there just is. And like maybe I'm just being idealistic about, you know, the great thinkers of the American left and what they cared about compared to the right,

but it just feels like the fever swamps of the internet or just grabbing otherwise normal people

And it's depressing to me. - Yeah, I don't know. It's hard not, you know, to be nostalgic for how we used to have information. I do, I look, I see it too.

And I do think it's more than just a few random people. There is something that has happened. And it isn't coming from the politicians. I do think there's a bigger shift.

“And I think it's important, as you point it out,”

there's political violence in our country still is very, very rare. And so I feel like there's these two ideas you have to have in your mind at the same time, one being that we can't allow acts of violence by individuals

who are united, regardless of ideology, by a willingness to do violence.

That's the most important thing about a mass shooter

about the person that shot Charlie Kirk, this person, the person that shot a Gabby Gifford's, right? That they are willing to go to this extreme and do violence and sometimes their rationales are cogent, sometimes their rationales are.

Non-sense, the act of violence that unites them and there's something rising, whether it's people going to shoot up a school, people wanted to go out of blaze of glory. And we cannot arrange our society around that.

We can't allow that to warp our politics too much because it is so rare in our society. But at the same time, it does seem to be an emergent property of the amount of vitriol hate, lack of empathy, cruelty, on the internet and beyond.

“I think that Trump is both a cause of an asymptom of.”

And I struggle with how you think about those two things.

But the comfort that people have, right?

Whether it's the shooting of the United Health Care CEO or the killing of Charlie Kirk, that is morally wrong before you even get to whether it will encourage future violence. It said something really ugly about our politics and our culture and I do think that that is real.

So that's the thing I struggle with. - There's something else interesting. I just, this is not obvious thought, but I just thought about it. When you think about Luigi, you think about the Butler Shooter,

we don't know how it's politics. And the guy from the Hilton, all these people and the Charlie Kirk Shooter are young. And like, obviously there's the idea of the school shooter and the serial killer and the lone wolf killer out there.

You tend to be white men, but all of these examples are people who grew up online.

We grew up online, and middle school and high school,

I just had AOL, but these people grew up phones in their pockets. And so that they have so many more touch points to dark places on the internet. But I'm in dark places.

That's sort of what I'm talking about. It's that, you know, like Jennifer Welch, on the I've had a podcast the other day was entertaining these conspiracy theories about how Trump was like, this was a false flag

so that he could develop the ballroom. That's saying she's spreading hate speech. But like, that's one of the ascendant podcasters on the left. Like, there aren't any real epistemological boundaries of feel like at this point.

And, you know, you can be a liberal in this in Jennifer Welch or this or going to Twitch stream or whatever, but all of those young people, like you said, I'm not being nostalgic for an old media time necessarily.

I'm just like, I call myself a student of media history, but they don't know a time of like monoculture, Walter Clarke, anything. There's no shared facts and like, you know, I just, the conspiracy presses me.

- Yeah, like the conspiracy theory embrace that we see across the board. I do think there's something about, some people think it's just fun by the way. Like, I had friends who were like,

conspiracy theories are fun. - Yeah, there's something about the way in which the internet encourages you that we're all being encouraged to embrace easy and quick comfort across our lives.

And social media does that, right? Like, you don't have to have any discipline of attention whatsoever. You can just get a joke of something fun, something funny, something outrageous, whatever.

Get a quick like hit of an indoor fan or an emotion. You don't have to leave the house to see a movie. You can just stay and bet whatever. You can have food come to your house. Like, we're very, we're easy, easy to satisfy,

uncomfortable with any kind of discomfort. And when there's something horrible that happens like the killing of Charlie Kirk,

“in which you, I think, morally are called to denounce”

the killing of someone you found reprehensible, that tiny bit of friction, that tiny bit of discomfort. The whole, there's a whole algorithm that's telling you, you don't have to feel that anymore. And the same thing with someone trying to assassinate Donald Trump

because of you, you might agree with. Wouldn't it be nice if they're where you didn't have to sit

Well, guess what there is, because it turns out maybe it was staged. And we live in a crazy world in which there were legitimate news stories that in Hungary, Trump's ally. There was a plan to stage an assassination attempt

to help Victor Orban in the final days of the election. That is real reporting about something real that very well could have happened in the world. - It's a fucking conspiracy theory that Trump wouldn't leave office if you lost.

- Of course, of course, and there was a conspiracy theory

that a powerful cobalt of abusers were protecting

Jeffrey Epstein, like a lot of people have come to believe that conspiracy theories had some merit.

“And the truth is, the great conspiracy theories always”

do begin with a kernel of truth in them or a lot of the great ones do. So I understand where that impulse comes from and I understand how the internet feeds it. - Yeah.

- I just think that it isn't combing upon democratic politicians who try so hard to keep the, what was Ernie and the trash can. Like whatever, just like push it down. Like Mark Kelly came out with the,

was it, or Oscar was the grosser. - Oscar. - Ernie's, or Bertner. - Oh, Bertner is the happy gay person. - Oscar was the grosser.

- Yeah, I'm sorry.

- No offense to the happy gay.

- No. - Mark Kelly put out, I mean, the cares of Mark Kelly things, but like a substance. - I care. - Sure, I care.

Mark Kelly. - I care. And I, I think you said the other day on this podcast, the referencing Chris Murphy talking after the, the United Health Care murder.

I forget the anecdote. Why did this come up? I think like Nate Silver wrote about it that he sort of said like, I acknowledge why people like hate insurance companies.

What did Chris, I don't, I was referencing people who had, I was referencing that someone, I think like a prominent conservative had said that the shooter at the White House of our response dinner, his rhetoric is indistinguishable

from that of Chris Murphy, as if that's an indictment

of Chris Murphy.

“- That's what I was talking to, I believe.”

- I think I don't want to pair like Miss Cass with Chris Murphy said he's probably this thing, but again, the press certainly has less power than we used to. And you know, maybe wrongly the press

was the arbiter of common decency for many decades in this country, but you know, politicians are akin to where people get a lot of news now, influencers, creators, they're famous people on the internet, that's who they are.

And they have a responsibility to call it out when it happens. It's just really hard, like, again, this is in a leaderless party. Don't want like attention matters, getting attention matters. This is one of my beats, like Rokana can call it out.

Chuck Schumer can call it out. Alyssa Slough can call it out, but you know, which random normie in Ohio is listening to any of those people? - Well, look, I think sometimes in our politics, we treat Democrats like the protagonist with agency

and Republicans are the villains who will do what villains do. I sometimes think we do the same thing with people on the internet now that, of course, democratic politicians are going to say the same thing, but there's nothing we can do about the influencers.

But I, the influencers have responsibility. And I think part of this is I think, there are some insane YouTube tiles out there, man. There are some four, four, but I don't know. I think sometimes we have to,

if the people who are going to be helping to shape what people view as the kind of bounds of appropriate, political discourse, if that's not going to be coming from politicians or mainstream media, if it's going to be coming from people on the internet,

then that comes with responsibility.

“You know, in 2024, I think a lot of people”

felt like you had people in the kind of manosphere that the kind of independent, kind of right adjacent podcast world embracing their power, but not their responsibility, right? Their power to influence their power to get big people on, their power to reach tens of millions of people,

but not their responsibility. - They're just a non-Frozen kid, man, lawyer. They don't know what's-- - Right, yeah, yeah, I'm just a big chicken, you know? I'm just a big chicken.

But, you know what's funny about that? I have some data on this. This week, the AP came out of the poll about media habits. And it's a really interesting poll because I also poll teenagers, but all the elite sort of things

that we do, as former DCers and political junkies, listen to podcasts, subscribe to newsletters, trying to think of some other one. Oh, pay for subscribe to news. Vast majorities of Americans don't do those things.

They really don't. And by the way, podcast is a little different 'cause they'll also watch it on YouTube or whatever. But the one thing that has really popped is influencers and creators.

For a long time in these polls could be Pew, could the AP that asked people how they get their news. Social media was just sort of an umbrella term that could be SNAP, it could be YouTube, it could be meta, whatever.

- What makes the mainstream content, by the way, as well. - Totally, but they actually asked specifically

And near majorities of Americans say they get news

from influencers and creators now. And that's a huge shift in just a few years. And so that gets to what you're saying about responsibility. Influencers and creators are now on the par on par with, according to this poll, local TV news, radio,

terrestrial radio, still matters, search engines, and still matter, way more than AI. And like television. And so like that's just really, really taken off. And I agree with you.

You've seen that with the Ovan and Andrew Schultz after the election when they're deporting, rounding up and deporting people and separating mothers from their children, or whatever, doge.

I didn't vote for this because I was just playing the humble, unfrozen caveman lawyer. But I think they're becoming more responsible, actually, at least in terms of acknowledging their power. These people are at the inauguration for the president of the United

States. - And I do think that we're due for a similar turn on the left. If people with big platforms, we could pick audience, viewing a responsibility. And like, you know, we're here.

And we try to have honest conversations, but part of being having, I think part of what being responsible

is you try to be honest, critical where you think it's helpful.

Critical may be where you think it's unhelpful, but needs to be said at times. But view what you're trying to do is, as more than just saying what you happen to think or feel in that moment, right?

“Like that's what I think the difference is”

between what Obama did in that press conference you're talking about and what a lot of members of Congress do every time a camera comes in front of their faces, which is just take a moment and say, you know what, I'm going to take a beat

and make sure that I'm sharing good information or like interrogating a bias for one moment. Or knowing that even if I feel something in the moment that I believe is true, I know that I have a responsibility to my audience

to not become a tool of the right.

- Yeah, I also think I really want to pay you guys a sincere compliment.

And I'm friends with you live in the same city. Socialize, I get that. I still listen to this podcast by how knowing how personally annoying each and every one of you is. Because you are willing to interrogate collective assumptions

on the left. You are willing to tangle with those ideas. You know, we saw it this week with the Ken Martin interview, but you guys frequently will have people on. And I think this lot about a variety of left-leaning,

media, you don't just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people sometime, sometimes. Maybe not as much as other news organizations. What they need to hear. And I think that's really important

because I do think that maybe this is the Obama example, but like wrestling with ideas is like really good. It's really good in healthy and not, there's just such blind partisanship now. And this is where I will say on both sides

that the battle for ideas is hard. Well, it's hard to inhabit not the middle, but it's hard to present new wants to people.

“That's why I wrote 10 paragraphs in that freaking puck article”

before I could get to the point because I had to say over and over again, Trump inspired January 6. Trump inspired male bombers. The Trump Republican Party welcomed Nazis and liars

and mainstreamed this poison. But social media has taken it to another level and other people are getting yanked into it. - I think what we're talking about, and that's very nice of you to say.

It is not my experience that there's a lot of blind partisanship on the left. My view of where we're at right now is actually-- - But sorry, blind negative parts. - But negative parts, that's for sure.

No, I agree with that. But what I was going to say only is that I think like what we're circling, which I think relates to the conspiracy theories, the willingness to celebrate or tolerate, or even just minimize political violence.

It's forbearance, which is just the idea of restraint and being willing to lose and willing to take a shot to your ego at times. - In spite, this is why us old millennials are the best generation.

- We are, you know what, we are the best generation. - We are the best generation. - We were vaccinated against Republicans by Georgetown, you Bush. Continue.

- We had debates in our dorms, you know. Georgetown, we had something called Red Square, which was a free speech zone. I know that sounds math but now. But like you could have debates and interrogate things.

“You didn't have social media poisoning it, you know?”

I don't know, maybe that's an elite view. But baby boomers went to the right. - Gen X is the last redout of Donald Trump right now.

I wrote about this last year.

Boomers are just until the left because boomers now are hippies. Boomers are our parents. - But they still hold on to some, you know, pluralistic values.

Gen X is the bad one because they were Alex P. Keaton. Like the thing that happens is your politics in your 20s,

“like that's what it generally is later in life.”

And so Gen X folks, you know, put aside all the rock music and pop culture, like those were the Alex P. Keaton. - So yeah, the Gen X is really kind of moved to the right. But then also some of the Gen Z is moved a bit to the right. And millennials are actually not moving to the right

at the same degree over time as previous generations have. The millennials are holding out greatest generation. - Thank you. - You're the vocal.

- Yeah, whatever, what happened to him? - All right. - Before we go to break, I want to thank everybody who has become a friend of the pod subscriber. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please, please,

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This offers exclusive to our listeners. Make sure you enter our show name after check out. So they know we sent you HelixSleep.com/Crickod. All right, let's hit some more topics. Platinum, Jenna Mills out.

We'll go report yesterday and call from Democrats for Schumer to Trump's involvement in the Iowa and Michigan primaries. What was your reaction to the Mills news and the general state of play in these primaries?

- Surprise, but not surprise.

“I think Mills got in late, Platinum got in”

what last August, September, when Supervile raised a lot of money. Great vibes for the moment, nationally, for Democrats, raging against the establishment. I am more looking forward than thinking about the surprise,

'cause he was up 33, 40 points in the most recent, I think Emerson had him up 33 at the end of April. This is a jump ball race. Like it's going to be very hard and they are, Grand Platinum does have baggage.

It's not even the totem-conf tattoo or whatever. It's the Reddit post, I think. We saw an article in The Free Beacon today, which is an op-o-dump for Republicans, showing that Platinum paid for his house

with a loan from his wealthy father, not the VA, like he said. I just think there's lots of stuff there. And by the way, all of this is to say, he can still win, Trump's at like 33, 34% approval.

I think Maine is tougher than certain states and here's why.

And a lot of times he win with a pure contrast. And she's on popular Susan Collins. I think her own faves are like 57%. They got a win there, they got a win Alaska, they got a win Ohio and Iowa and all these places.

Maine is the oldest electorate in the country. So it's also not very partisan.

You've got a third of the state is independent, John.

“So that helps someone like Platinum, I think,”

like I'm not from the system that could appeal. You've got that Maine second congressional district, which is represented by Jared Golden. For a while, who's a moderate and differently. Like, Platinum's a lip.

Golden was a moderate, both have tattoos. But he won in Maine too, which is a district Trump won his one in the last two presidential elections by being just a purebred moderate, Jared Golden. So putting on Reddit that black people don't tip,

that women shouldn't get so drunk, that they get sexually assaulted, honestly. I love this episode that I forget which content it was from Cricket Media, but Fyfer and Alex Wadner did a piece on this a couple of weeks ago.

And it was really interesting listening to Alex. And I thought she was very sharp, because I think a lot of the initial commentary

supporting Platinum and jumping the race

was coming from men. And when these posts came out, not that Alex Wadner wouldn't vote for Grand Platinum versus in Collins, but I think women might be a little squeamish about this about him in a race against a woman

that has successfully won over and over and over again. Also brought some reporting to the show. I earned journalism, Republic and pollsters that they had 12 to 13% of Susan, Susan, past Susan Collins voters,

going for Janet Mills in this election. So that place of what Schumer was probably thinking about. This is an independent older state, and we need someone's safe to run against someone who's been reliably reelected.

So Platinum's got some work to do, I think. To reish, he's a young millennial of tattoos, a history of inflammatory reddit posts. We don't clearly, I think Republicans are sitting on more stuff.

“That's why I brought up the free beacon example.”

And he's got to convince voters in a state. It's like an old state, and it's going to be tough for him. But in this environment, Trump's approval rings are absolute dog shit. That's why we're talking about Alaska.

That's why we're talking about Maine. That's why we're talking about even Ohio and Iowa. - We're in the home stretch here of the California governors race. The two highest vote getters will move on to the general.

Post-small votes seem polls that show Bessera rising, CBS poll this week. He had Steve Hilton leading with 16. Ben Stire at 15, Bessera at 13. The other polls have Bessera higher.

Where's your head out on this race right now? - I think someone smartly framed it this way to me. And look, nationally, like you might not care about a governor, just say California matters, like Gavin Newsom will set a tailpipe emission regulation

and the rest of the country will follow. Like that's what California is. So yes, these candidates are underwhelming. Someone compared to the 2020 presidential primary, where you've got not just Tom Stire once again,

spending a lot of money, but you've got all these candidates who failed to catch fire. They pop in certain moments and fade. Havier Bessera is just sort of emerging.

“The last four polls, two independent, I think,”

and two sort of partisan, have showed him climbing and having clear momentum. Stire and Katie Porter having a very hard time connecting with high information voters. Their negatives are very high.

For all the money that Tom Stire is spending, he's kind of reheating a ceiling. Bessera has kind of come from behind to go to the front. I didn't quite get it either. It kind of came out of nowhere organically.

He hasn't spent a lot of money on television. - I believe he spent, the money he has, I think he spent. - Yeah, he went up on TV like three or four weeks ago. - At a key moment when he had a lot of jobs. - Right, well, I think as Swallow was dropping

before, Swallow dropped. He's up on the air. - Yes. - And so he's up on the air at a moment where all of a sudden there's all these Swallow voters

saying, "Whoops, yes." And Harvey Versera is a boring person. Harvey Versera, I talked to someone in the Biden administration about this Saturday, kind of a roof is HHS Secretary, not incompetent,

but just sort of like, he's not light in the world on fire, okay? But he does have two things going in form right now in this governor's race, which is, and by the primaries in June, he, there's a lot of confusion among voters.

People don't like the choices, and they're just kind of falling back on him, which is sort of similar to the Biden experience in 2020, right? He just, you can win the primary at 23% of the vote, 25% of the vote, I'm not saying it's totally the same.

And he's Latino, I mean, a third of the state is Latino.

And I think the first part of that spot that went on TV about a month ago, it wasn't like Prop 50, it wasn't like Adam Schiff, Versa's Katie Porter, like, we got a stop Donald Trump, it wasn't like Swallow well. It was my parents were immigrants, and it leads with bio,

affordability issues, health care, prescription drugs. And so, for all of the forgive my term, lipslop that you see in some of these TV ads and campaigns, like just raging against Trump, and trying to go after the hardcore, college-educated,

white MSNBC viewer voter, you know, he reaches a different kind of voter than just that. And that's the thing, like Porter, Styer, Swallow well, there was no data suggesting they had any numbers of people of color in this state.

And so, Bessera, just emerging is like a safe choice right now. Styer is going after him already. He's not a great debater, there's two debates coming up this coming week. I think CNN and NBC. So we'll see if he can make it all the way to June,

but he is the one with momentum right now, but it's sort of like boring momentum. I don't want it for it. - Yeah, I know, I watched the last debate, and I want there was another debate.

- Oh, it's terrible, the first debate.

And there's a moment where they were all asked if they would support a per mile tax for electric vehicles because California has a very high gas tax,

“I think it's like 60 or some on sale, a gallon,”

a little more now. And so there's this proper idea that, while we switch to electric vehicles, then no one's going to be paying for the roads, even though California has the worst roads.

In the country, and we pay the highest gas tax in the country. And so the question is, would you support a per mile tax for electric vehicles? And it got to Becerra, I'm Becerra said, well, it's definitely something we oughta perhaps take a look at.

If that's something the voters are interested in, then I could get behind it. And then you go to, I think it was one of the Republicans, and they're like, you're gonna make everybody log all their miles, help fucking know.

And I was like, that makes, like, there's a, like, the passion on that state. I was, I talked Katie Porter about this in my conversation with her, that California isn't an emergency. We are losing people, we are losing our industries, and the only people up there that seem to have fire about it,

where they're Republican. The right wing sheriff guy was like talking about the humanitarian crisis of homeless people, and like, again, his ideas are probably not great, but like, he had passion, and you nailed it. I was meant to say this about Becerra, actually.

None of these people have big ideas. It stires like, we'll break up the utilities, pass the billionaires tax, whatever. Like, there was a question, this was a moderator issue, actually, in the CBS debate, where they said,

what are the first things you would do in the event of an earthquake, like as governor, your governor, your in that seat, what are the three things you're gonna do? You know, the thoughtful political leader would have said, well, like, let's think bigger, like,

how do we not get in that position in the first place, whatever, but they were all very content to be like, Becerra included, well, we'll call in the first responders, and I'll call the federal government, and then we'll figure it out.

You know, like, just, that's the other thing. Beyond all the charisma and the horse race stuff that has characterized this race, nothing exciting.

Like, big ideas are powerful.

I mean, I know Bernie's on this episode too. Like, there's stires trying to sort of be in that lane a little bit, but everyone else is just sort of like, can you board a reason to figure it out?

“Well, this is where I pressed any important as well,”

because she's talking about this plan to exempt $100,000 from, or people making up $200,000 from the state income tax, and she has a way to pay for it. But, and find like, help people, California's very unaffordable, but like, the problems are so kind of up river from that.

Like, we're, like, the reason California's unaffordable, when it has, like, the income tax rate hasn't gone up, what's gone up is the cost of housing, what's gone up is the cost of living in our state, what's gone up is, and what's gone down is the availability of jobs

for, in Hollywood and other industries, and, you know, I talked to Bernie. The housing conversation, at least in the CBS debate, I watched was infuriating. I mean, Matt Mayhand, at least, was like,

here's what I didn't say on a bill this many units,

Tom Stier said the same thing to me, people hasn't. But like, people just say, like, we are a ghost. So we need to build more housing. No shit. Like, well, I don't know.

There's just not, there's just weren't a lot of compelling ideas there. Yeah, it's been pretty frustrating. But I had a good conversation with Porter. I hope we get to talk to Bissara.

“And so I think we're going to talk to the Stier next week.”

So we're going to talk to all those candidates. Last question, why, why do they call it puck? Is it after, is it after the mid-Summer nights cream? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a puckish organization.

This literary inspiration. But I think John Kelly, who created puck, very literate band, and thought puck would be an inspiration. Because we like to be a little mischievous, I guess. And what do you do?

You're puckish. Please subscribe. Thank you. You as a person, I would have called you. How would you describe puckish the adjective?

How would you define that? A puck, a mischievous is a very good word for it. I would say mischievous with a joyful quality.

I like that, my wife. Thanks.

“You're, you know, a little stinker, you know, kind of energy.”

Uh, Peter Hambi, thank you so much, good to talk to you.

Good to see you, man. And that's our show. Thank you to Senator Sanders.

Thank you to Peter Hambi.

We will see you with a new episode on Tuesday.

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