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What do we have, Krystal.
We do many interesting things continuing to unfold. So we have a continuation in the war between Sam Oltman and Elon Musk. But Trump is kind of undercut by this one as well, because Elon has taken shots at his big Stargate project that he announced with great fanfare. So anyway, there's a lot of drama going on there and also
some real concerns about the direction of AI. So we'll show you a lot to do with that, going to undate you on the latest with regard to immigration, what we know about Trump's plans, what they're moving forward with, also the polling about how Americans feel about this new war hardline direction on immigration, So break all of that
down for you. Also kind of break down for you this controversy over the bishop who spoke at the National Cathedral and the right was very upset about what she had to say, So we'll show you that and show you that controversy.
Et cetera.
Cibers had a little bit of inside reporting about some pushback, some war between the various factions within the Trump administration, the more sort of like hawkish Neokhon pro Israel faction versus some of the new people who are being brought on board who maybe have a different view and different direction they want to go, and so that's very interesting. We also got Steve Wikoff sounding off and planning a trip to Gaza, so we'll see what comes of.
That and where that's all going.
You know, there's some troubling indications, but there's also you know, that's one at least positive indication. So break all of that down for You've also got Trump weighing in on his approach to the Russia Ukraine War. We're trying to read the tea leaves there as best we can, and we're going to investigate whether there is some social media
new censorship going on in the new Trump era. And also a weather lady weather person I guess meteorl meteorl at anyway, a woman local news station weather castor will go with that, who was fired because she criticized Elon Musk's salute. We'll leave it at that to avoid Sagera.
And I having to drag me back. Don't drag me back.
Before we get into any of that though. Thank you guys so much for your support of the show. We're really excited about what we have to bring for you this year. Obviously, there are going to be a million things for us to cover, so it is going to be eventful if nothing else.
Look and there's a lot, there's a lot that's in play. You know, I'm gonna be talking a lot about that today. It's really interesting being, you know, getting some of the inside knowledge and all that. I really want to try and share it with some of you. And thank you to everybody who's you know, supporting the show and others. There's our ability to be completely independent and also have a little bit of a line, not claiming to have a total line or whatever on what's going on the inside,
I think is kind of unique. And so that's one of the things that you can help us do here Breakingpoints dot Com and continue to build that out as the Trump administration really comes, you know, really starts to take shape, and also with the democratic response and the
podcast selection and all that. So the narrative is really on our side if we want to do something interesting over here, So Breakingpoints dot Com and you can go ahead and support us, But let's get to stargate because this is ai one of the stories, Crystal, that we've been wanting to focus on now quite some time. Fundamentally, probably the most the thing that will be when historian
looks back at this time period. You know, a lot of the crap that we talk about here, you know, to day to day whatever controversy, none of that is even going to be a footnote. It will be about the big macro economic trends and artificial intelligence and the eventual you know, how it comes to be shaped, the corporate influence and all of that as we see here with the development of star Stargate could be a big jump off in that period.
Incredibly consequential. And so Trump made this big announcement counterpoints cover. I'm sure you guys saw this too, that these private companies and investment funds were going to put five hundred billion dollars into building out AI focused data centers in the US. One of the companies that was involved in that is open Ai, headed by Sam Oltman, who was formerly up until like five minutes ago, major Democratic donor.
Actually full disclosure, he had previously contributed to a project that I ran to try to recruit working class candidates to run in Democratic primaries. So he was, you know, buddies with Reid Hoffman, all in on the Democratic side. Once Trump won, suddenly, oh let me give you a million dollars to the inauguration fund. Here I am at the inauguration singing a very different tune, et cetera. The other piece of the backstoring need to know is that he and Elon are at war. Elon has sued him.
They founded open AI originally together. They had a falling out. You know, they both have different versions of what that falling out was over but in any case, they're at war with one another. So let me show you a little bit of Sam Altman at this announcement, you know, really buttering up Trump and doing the whole dance as part of this Stargate reveal.
Let's take a listen, to create one hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here. We wouldn't be able to do this without you and mister President, and I'm thrilled that we get to.
I think it'll be an exciting project.
I think we'll be able to do all of the wonderful things these guys talked about, but the fact that we get to do this in the United States is I think wonderful.
So thank you very much.
First, let me talk to you, Sam about what.
This means for AI and the future for the US investment here.
This means we can create AI and AGI in the United States. In America, wouldn't have been obvious that this was possible, but I think that's a different president might not.
Have been possible.
But we are thrilled to get to do this, and I think it'll be great for American's great for the whole world.
And that's great for the whole world. I'm sure. I'm sure it's great for the world.
Great for you, for sure, and the oligarchs who are you know, at the forefront of this. But you know, I don't know. If you watch the whole press conference. I did watch the whole deres of conference. Everybody would say, oh my god, Trump, President Trump, this is soone like this never would have happened without you, blah blah blah. And it's it is a little odd because there's no indication at least that public money is going into this.
This is just like businesses who were doing a thing Trump gets to take credit for and look like he's making this, you know, giant investment, et cetera.
Et cetera.
Also an opportunity for them to like kiss the ring and bend the knee and tell him how wonderful and great and brilliant he is, et cetera, et cetera. Open AI put out an announcement on Twitter. Let's put this up on the screen. I'll read a little bit of the way that they framed this. They said, the Stargate Projects, a new company intends to invest five hundred billion dollars in the next four years building new AI infrastructure for
Open AI and the US. Would we can deploying one hundred billion immediately this infrastructural so caure American leadership and AI great hundreds of thousands of American jobs. I'll believe that when I see it, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire World's project will not only support the reindustrialization of the United State, it's quite the opposite, actually, but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national
security of American and its allies. We don't have this part up here, but they go on to name all the partners soft Bank, Open AI, Oracle and MGX.
By the way, MGX is a.
UAE based investment fund with huge investments from the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. Strange group of bad fellows. Anyway, the whole thing is a little bit odd. But the key part of this is underneath this big announcement, you know, it's a big Trump initiative, something he's taken credit for. Elon Musk, Trump's first buddy, says they don't actually have
the money. So Elon coming in hot, taking a shot obviously at Sam Yes, but also inadvertently perhaps taking a shot at Trump and this, you know, big glossy announcement that he made there.
Yeah, I mean it's there's several dimensions to it. Obviously, where you have a basically Elon is now a White House official. So can we say that a senior White House official is pouring cold water on Stargate? But Stargate itself is really worse looking at and saying what the hell is going on here? Because effectively, the way I've come to understand it is that this is supposed to be a Manhattan project for AI to compete with China.
There's only a big difference here, which is it's not being run by the United States government or to the public interest or with the coherent goal involved, and instead is basically being outsourced to the private sector. Now, the real reason why everyone should pay attention is, first, let's just look at the colossal amount of money that we're
talking about here, five hundred billion. Look, I understand here that we can talk every once in a while like one hundred billion, two hundred billion, five hundred billion is half a trillion dollars for a private mark. For a private corporation or even corporations to be able to come up with that sum is extraordinary. I mean, just think about that in terms of actual cash and dollars even over a ten year period, we've very rarely seen ever
such private investments. Now, if if that's going to happen, where does that money come from? And that's kind of what Elon is getting at here when he says they don't don't actually have the money. Now, Satya Nadell, the CEO of Microsoft is said I'm good for my eighty billion, But I mean, keep in mind, this is a two trillion dollar market cap corporation. Where is open AI's money
coming from. Even Masa, you know over at SoftBank. A lot of people probably don't know a lot about SoftBank, but I encourage you to go and read some of the histories of Uber and we Work, where Masa was very very important in the development of those companies. Masa is literally the guy who told Adam Newman to do all of this crazy shit over at we Work, and he was like, the only thing I don't like about you, Adam.
This is direct quote. He said, the only thing I don't like about you, Adam is that you're not crazy enough. And he's the one who encouraged him to go from an office space company, to we live and we care and you know, drive a forty billion dollar company into the ground that eventually gets sold for scraps over to to like a private equity giant or yeah, Adam.
Will be We'll be taught for years as a corporate cautionary tale.
That is who we're talking about here.
You know, I guess because I read the news, I'm aware of who these people are. It's really important to first think about where this money is coming from. As you said, the Ua Masa in the past has taken tons of money from the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. Do we really want all of this money to be involved
in our Matt Manhattan project? But secondary to that and part of the reason why I'm really concerned about the lack of oversight and where I at least look, you know, and somehow in this war, I'm like on Evon's side where I'm like, yeah, I'm not so sure about all of this is this is a corporate conglomerate which is totally which is basically coming together as a cartel with all of these big tech companies who are now getting
to decide our future of our economy. That's right, how our medicine is we're about to show you which they're openly bragging, which will replace humanity, which will develop mRNA vaccines in forty eight hours.
How amazing. I'm sure sure they'll work. And you know all of that.
If we put this stuff together, you're looking at it literally like an elysium led society, and they're not even shy about saying it all out loud.
That's the crazy part.
That's all so well said.
And that's not to say that there aren't potential benefits to society from AI. But as we'll get to in a minute, you also should like, this technology already exists, so we should also look at the way it's already being deployed. And many of the ways it's already being deployed are to eliminate jobs, make your health care worse,
kill people in kill Palestinians in Gaza. So it's you know, listen, anytime you put the corporate profit motive at the center of innovation, then definitionally the benefit of humanity.
Is not going to be the primary goal here.
So the fact that it is being celebrated and so on, it is all really wild. Just to get take you quickly through the Elon Musk, Sam Altman drama, because of course human drama is always interesting, and it's also another indication of the way all of these tech oligarch types are, even if they were previously totally on board with the Democratic brand, now completely bending the knee and sucking up to Trump because that's where power is, that's where them is,
et cetera. Let's put this up on the screen. A little bit of this back and forth. So Elon says, hey, they don't actually have the money.
By the way, Elon.
Also self interested here has his own AI developments, et cetera. Sam Altman chimes in, Elon, I genuinely respect your accomplishments, and I think you're the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time, because again he sees who has power and Elon Musk as a lot of position and powerless.
Put the next piece up on the screen.
So Elon says, SoftBank has well under ten billion dollars secured. I have that on good authority. Sam says, wrong, as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already underway. This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies. But in your new role, I hope you'll mostly put America first. Let's put the next piece
up on the screen. As this continues, you had someone who pointed out online basically like in one tweet, Sam being like, oh my god, Elon's so amazing, and then in another tweet, you know, criticizing him, and Sam says, well, both sentiments are true. I don't think he's a nice person or treating us fairly, but you have to respect the guy, and he pushes all of us to be
more ambitious. Elon again chimes in with them excellento on the screen, pointing out as I recently did that Sam, and was until five seconds ago totally tied in with the Democratic Like what with the Democratic machine? I mean, I'm tired that he puts significant financial resources into the Democratic Party and various Democratic Party projects. So you got Cernovich here pointing out that Sam was involved with Reid Hoffman, who was involved with the what he describes as law
fair against Trump. Sam said, very few people this was back twelve fifteen twenty one. Very few people realized just how much Reid Hoffman did and spent to stop Trump from getting reelected, it seems reasonably likely to me that Trump would still be in office without its efforts. Thank you read and Elon quote tweets all of that and says true. So, I mean the thing that's funny to me too. So it's like, it's not like Maga is
even buying this new act from Sam Olman. It's just so shameless to completely change your tune and change your colors on a dime. Now that there's a new new regime and power and a new vibe out there, and you want to secure these partnerships and you know, whatever deregulatory stuff you want and be hand to the cannot be subject to any sort of retaliation. Now you've got Elon and you're at war with Elon.
Et cetera.
So it's just so this is one of the most brazen and shameless possible examples. I mean, Zuckerberg is really up there too, given how much Heat changes it on the dime. Not these people really ultimately believe anything. They're just in it for themselves. I trying to position themselves in the best possible but self interested.
I would put Zuck at the top of the list, and Sam Hall that would be your ranking simple. I mean, it's just sous just too much, really so much. Yeah, it's you know, I just can't handle it all sometimes. But Sam Altman is definitely up there as well. Like you said, this is a lifelong Democrat guy who put tens of millions at the least possibly hundreds, you know, who know who even knows into the Democratic machine over the last several years. Completely switches about how incredible Trump is.
But really the game for Zuck and Altman are all the same. Remember Sam Altman, you know, even though he might appear to be like some meek, mild mannered guy, this is a person who took a nonprofit and has turned it into one hundred and some things of billions of dollars company who himself is now worth untold sums. Transferred this NGO nonprofit into a partnership with Microsoft. Ye I mean he took the entire idea of open AI
is really one I could get behind. Right, It's like, Okay, this is going to be a fundamentally transformative, transformative technology. We're going to make sure this technology is open source, is not profit driven, and is for the benefit of humanity. Great, Well, the problem is they strike gold with chat GPT and they're like, oh, there's a lot of money to be
made here, license it off to Microsoft. Now you're turning it into a major service, and now there's all this you know, censorship stuff going on behind the scenes.
Well, and let me just just to chime in and to back you up.
We have to take a look at what they're doing now with this tech which already exists specifically at Microsoft, and dropsite has new breaking news just that I just saw this morning. Guess who one of the top customers for Microsoft's AI services is right now at this point in time.
Oh, that would be the Israeli military. So you know, all of your oh, I'm.
Going to do good for humanity and just be the best thing ever for mankind. What they're actually using the tech for right now is to kill Palestinian civilians en mass. And we of course reported here talked here about the nine seven to two magazine reporting about the way that AI program was used to have algorithmically generate this mass number of targets, many of them including civilian infrastructure, et cetera. So those are the sorts of things AI is being deployed for right now.
Today we mentioned a couple of days ago.
But on January eighteenth, members of Open Ai apparently had some closed door briefings with US officials. Let's put this up there on the screen from Axios, which alludes to some of it. They say Open AI product chiefs says that the world is on the verge of AI agents now. According to Axios, members of open AI and others are poised to announce a next level breakthrough that will unleash PhD level super agents to do complex human tasks. Such a breakthrough would push generative AI from a fun, cool
aspirational tool to a true replacement for human workers. This is apparently something that has already been developed inside the company and that was briefed to senior members of the Trump administration in terms of a warning about what is coming now when we pair that with now the illusions of all of these people Ellison for replacement for him again saying we're gonna have mRNA vaccines, like basically talking in a full scope of replacement of technology with any
human check. And also more importantly for Stargate, here is no government or policy check that's gonna be the most important. And honestly, there's still there's some huge battle lines here to be drawn because part of the thing that Stargate reveals to all of us is the scale and the cost of compute with open AI or with AI in general. So we could say it's nice, it's like, oh yeah,
we want open AIS theory and or open source. But the truth is is that the development of these models cost you know, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to build these data centers and video the amount of power that they consume that could go on forever.
So the scale of the cost means that it naturally lends itself to existing technological monopolies people like Facebook, Google, Amazon and others who have hundreds of billions of dollars and profits that they can burn just to develop the new future technology. So they're the ones who are getting to decide all of our future. And as we all saw like with Google Gemini, you know, with the crazy censorship going on, as we see also if you have political questions to ask to chat GPT, this has real
scale implications for if you're going to replace humans. You know, humans are complex systems, complex theories in terms of our ability to intuit what is maybe good and bad and to debate democratically about whether this is something that we all even want. And they're the ones who very openly are pursuing like transhumanism and complete replacement of the human being in the US economy.
Like openly.
Yeah, like they always we're about to show it to you.
Talk about that being their goal. And I think that is the most important point. Is I really want It sounds insane, but I really want people to reckon with the fact that a really quite small number of people, a handful of mostly billionaires, interested billionaires, are deciding things that will be just immeasurably consequential to the future of humanity.
And especially for workers.
Like that is a really important piece right now, is I mean, they talk openly about wanting to replace all of the human labor force, and this is happening behind closed doors, zero democratic input. I mean, at this point, I'm not particularly hopeful that there's even a chance to turn it back, because a lot of this has already a lot of the direction has kind of already been set. That this is all happening with a handful of elites with no democratic input whatsoever, and it is.
Deeply, deeply troubling.
So here is the anthropic CEO talking about how the thing he's happy about with AI is that it will render all humans useless ultimately if he accomplishes his goal.
Let's take a listen to that.
Oh no, exactly when it'll come, I don't know if it'll be twenty twenty seven. I think it's plausible it could be longer than that. I don't think it will be a whole bunch longer than that. When AI systems are better than humans at almost everything, better than almost all humans at almost everything, and then eventually better all humans than everything, even robotics. We make good enough AI systems,
they'll they'll enable us to make better, better robots. And so when that happens, we will need to have a conversation at places like this, right, at places like this this event about you know, how do we organize our economy? Right? How do humans find find meaning? Right? There are a lot of assumptions we've made when humans were the most intelligent species on the planet that that are going to be invalidated by what's happening with AI. And I think the only good thing about it is that we'll all
be in the same boat. I'm actually afraid of the world where thirty percent of human labor becomes fully fully automated by AI and the other seventy percent that's going to cause this This just incredible, you know, class war between the groups that have been in the groups that haven't been, if we're all in the same boat.
Yes, so yeah, I mean listen, maybe they're high on their own supply and this is preposterous and it's never going to be this transformational thing that they think.
But he's like, oh, when it happens, we'll have that conversation.
Maybe we should have that conversation now, whether to your point, we even are interested in moving in a direction where all human labor is irrelevant and you know that being a concerted goal now being led pushed by our government, but led by a bunch of self interest did corporate oligarchs with driven by a profit motive? Maybe that's something we should be talking about right now instead of, you know, years down the road when it is far too late to change anything.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And not only that, you had these images here of like what AI is currently better at humans for, So let's put those on the screen please, just to give everybody an example. You say Amazon used AI to automatically fire low productivity workers, the lavender of the AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza, and United Health uses faulty AI to deny elderly patients medically necessary coverage
lawsuit claim. The point is is that any large scale organization, either bureaucratic or corporate, which relies on data to make quote unquote better decisions, and by better they mean increasing the bottom line, is something that AI is really good at. If you've ever used I use it all the time, you know, whenever trying to calculate a budget or something like that, or doing financial projections, looking at like retirement savings.
It's really good. And crunching big amounts of data.
Where it would have taken me hours in Excel to do something like that, it can build me a model in seconds. It's like, well, now imagine that at scale, but for what end and what purpose? And that's exactly the issue is when you really see what's happening. China is a very good example. They use AI, facial recognition, all of that to increase censorship and citizen control. It's
really good at that. By being able to remember in China, they are able to predict almost with ninety nine percent accuracy based off of their cameras to surveil the entire population and keep people on their best behavior. You can actually watch videos online of people crossing the crosswalks and they're being identified with their name and their social credit score and all of that.
That pops up. It's out there, it's open. We saw a lot of that during COVID.
That is the dream of the security state and of the corporate you know, the big corporations, because it's very good at increasing profit. The question is is about what about all of us, and it's our country. We should be able to get to decide.
That's exactly right.
And that technology is also deployed in the US and not just at airports. But there was an example I think we talked about on the show of someone who was wrongfully arrested accused of I think stealing like a purse or something like that, based on this facial recognition technology no other evidence than that. It wasn't they got the wrong guy. It wasn't even it wasn't the right person.
He had even been in the state, and they arrested him and he was held for quite a while under you know false like under just something that was totally wrong and false simply because this police department was using some of this facial recognition technology. Well, whatever's been dabbled in thus far, they want to take nationwide, global, et cetera. Here's oracles Larry Ellison talking about how AI will make sure that quote, citizens will be on their best behavior.
Let's take a listen.
The police will be on their best behavior because we record. We're constantly recording, watching and recording everything that's going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on, and it's it's unimpeachable. The cars, the cars have camera, you know, cameras on them, all right, we have I think we have a squad car here someplace, but those kind of applications using AI, if we can use AI, and we're using AI to
monitor the video. So if that altercation had occurred, that occurred in Memphis, the chief of police would be immediately notified.
You guys want that? Do you want?
You want to at least be able to have some input into whether or not that's the direction you want the society to go in. And so you know what I really want people to understand, is that a lot of the actions and the posturing that you see from these tech barons, what it really is about is AI development, the amount of money that's at stake, the amount of prestige that is at stake, and some of these people,
it truly is like a religion. I mean, I'm not even kidding when I say many of these people think that they will be immortal because they'll be able to use AGI to upload their consciousness to the cloud and live forever. I mean it really has this like cult like religious dimension. Not to mention massive billions trillions of
dollars at stake. And so to bring it back to the beginning here, when you see Sam Altman do a political one to eighty like that and give Trump a million debby at the inauguration, Oh my god, mister Trump, thank you so much for so amazing, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, that's what it is really all about. The H one B fight too, oh huge. That's this is the real
ballgame here. So keep your eye on these developments because they could end up being truly the most consequential, generational type developments that shape all of our future for better for work.
I am also hoping that this is an area where Elon can be helpful and just be like just so you know, mister President Sam Altman is you know, look at his track record, big democrat has gone from nonprofit and talking greatly about humanity to enriching himself and Microsoft and turning it into the greatest big data tool.
How do you think Trump though, likes him undercutting him on this and being like that on the money.
I don't know. Yeah, I'm actually curious to see that's how that was old.
Well, it's incredibly I mean, you know, in some sense it's nice because this is an og Elon issue and I know maybe we wouldn't be even able to talk about it or whatever if he wasn't be able to get behind it. This is again where where some of the battle lines are not so clear. For example, like you have Andresen and his people being much more in favor of you know, free and open like open source ai as an Ewon is kind of like that, even though.
He's got groc going on.
But Altman and Sachia Nadella and all those and Larry Ellison, et cetera, they don't care about they don't want open source, they want all the money for themselves, they want the data.
Obviously Nvidia and these other companies.
I mean, we didn't have time to get into this, but there was this huge thing behind the scenes where the Biden administration in the very very last days made it more difficult to export chips to China, and Nvidia was openly campaigning against it because they care about money. Like even though this is the company on our soil, manufactured in Taiwan, all right, so they don't care about fi geopolitics.
And even though their stock is up what by like ten thousand percent or.
Whatever, they know they want even more. They need this, they need to keep this thing going, the money train. And so this is where the Democratic you know, input and all of that is really really important. And I am curious to see how the White House is going to handle some of this because already you see major magas skepticism, not just over Sam Altman, but that clip like of Larry Ellison talking.
About We're gonna be able to have mRNA vaccine.
It's like, yeah, good luck, good luck, you know, telling people that, or look, Trump was elected you know with the most working class Republican coalition literally ever, do you think those guys in the Rio Grande Valley who are working, you know, working class, or the guys in the Permian basin who are sitting there like you know, like pumping oil, they really want to be replaced, you know, by machine like.
No, this is a very common concern. Anybody who doesn't have.
A college degree, which is sixty two percent of the US population is in danger. And actually, the crazy thing about AI is it also means that people with college degrees, who are entry level.
Even sooner probably than the blue collar work.
Are also really vulnerable to all of this. So unless you're super rich, you know, you should be afraid. And even if you are, they might be able to take that from you too.
And again maybe they are full of it and high on their own supply, and they will never achieve their dreams and goals and ambitions. It will never be come to be what they think. But I want you to understand their goal is to replace you. That is what this money is about. That is the goal, as explicitly stated by them at times. That's what they're trying to do here is to replace your labor and make you
completely irrelevant. And this is all being decided by a few oligarchs behind closed doors with hundreds of billions of dollars to throw at it.
So good luck humanity.
Yeah, I really do think this will be one of the central stories of the Trump administration, and it will there's gonna be some big democratic questions that actually have to happen here and when the scale and the fights of this come, you know, really, I think in a couple of years as well, really crescendo too, just because that's when the alleged breakthroughs and all that we'll actually know a little bit whether it's their screen, whether they
were bluffing or not. The geopolitics are going to get real messy because it's only January twenty third. Tariffs and all that can come as soon as February first, and maybe all the way up until March, but all of that is going to have significant impact on this. And then bigger questions too about who's coming up.
With all this money? Is this Saudi money, a UAE money?
I mean, I don't remember the Saudis or I don't know a similar power, super rich nation in World War Two investing in the Manhattan Project. You know, I think that's bad. Actually, Yeah, right, So let's think about that too. Let's get to immigration. There's been a number of moves in the last seventy two hours which have really showed how much of a different political landscape that were in. First and foremost was this, let's put it up there on the screen. The Lake and Riley Act has now
passed the House of Presentatives. The vote was two hundred and sixty three to one hundred and fifty six. Forty six Democrats joined with every Republican to support that bill, and it will now be the very first bill that
President Trump will sign into law. Just in terms of how you guys can see the vibe shift, Lincoln Riley Act, as a reminder, is one that allows the federal government to deport individuals illegal immigrants who are here who have been convicted, have been charged with a crime, even a misdemeanor offense.
It's a little different than that. It requires them to detain undocumented immigrants even.
Before they're tried, even before they're convicted.
So if they're accused of a crime, even something low level like shoplifting or something like that, then they are required to detain them and.
To expedite their deportation.
So that's what the bill does right ahead. In previously that's legal standard. It not previously existed. You know what's crazy.
Because there's no due process, but.
Oh right, the process applies to US citizens. Right, forgot about that. But if we think about how different that this changes is it's the first bipartisan piece of immigration legislation that has passed the US Congress in almost twenty years. Just to give people the scale of how much of a change that has now happened. So that's crazy, first and foremost, Past the House, past the Senate, the House of Representatives, the forty six Democrats joining on is a little bit.
You know, it makes sense, but it's not like it's a big part of the coalition.
The crazy part is it was after enough to get a filibuster proof majority through the through the Senate. That's actually the big hurdle that happens. So Trump will sign that piece of legislation into law. Let's continue here, Let's go to the next part just to show people like who voted for the bill, so you can actually see all of the states. I mean, it really does go the gamut in terms of both the House Democrats, people
like Josh Gottheimer from New Jersey. By the way, chrisl I don't know if you know this, he's been passing around packets of salt around the house because he's so enthusiastic way.
The Republican support.
Well, he gives them the immigration thing and then maybe they'll give him an increase in the stalt cap for his rich constitution.
I mean, yeah, you've got him.
You got Richard torres On there, quare folk?
What's that?
Who are some other high profile folks here?
Kaars there makes sense though.
Well, and I mean I was also right wing, consistently sort of right wing. So my new congressman, Congressman Vinman, Oh no, I don't know.
So he's an ally with you in this one.
Terry Sewell, she's an African American woman congressman from Alabama Jared Golden, who also is one who's kind of like, I don't know, his politics are a little hard to describe. Lucy McBeth Lake and Riley's was from Georgia, So you had a number of Georgia members here, plus both Georgia senators.
We're not gonna off both vote for it as well.
Right, Let's continue along that there has been a glut of polling now after the election around immigration and some of the individual actions, and mass deportation in particular has been one that's been polled, but also all of kind of the sub ideas of immigration, running from ending birthright citizenship up to just deporting illegal immigrants who came here under the Biden administration.
CNNs Harry Enton broke some.
Of that down.
Some of it is popular, some of it is very unpopular.
Let's take a listen, all immigrants who are here illegally fifty five percent of the New York Times Marquette sixty four percent, CBS News fifty seven percent, ABC News with a slightly different question fifty six percent.
So what you're seeing essentially here is very clear indication that a majority of Americans, in fact, when they're asked this one question, which I believe gets that the underlying feelings, do in fact want to to port all immigrants who are here illegally. There's no arguing with these different numbers because they're all essentially the sam us four different posters. You go back to twenty fifteen, I'm gonna come to your side screen, it's forty two percent. Hello. Go to
twenty sixteen, it was thirty six percent. Look at where we are now, this was taken at the end of last year, fifty six percent. This is twenty points higher than it was just before Trump got to office the first time.
There you go, that's as clear as day in terms of mass deportation. But like I said, I got to present all sides of the picture. Birthright citizenship, though, is significantly underwater. Ending birthright citizenship what I mean one of those executive orders that Donald Trump signed on the first day of office.
Let's take a listen to Harry on that.
I mean, Look, I think Donald Trump is by pushing policies like this or just trying to eliminate his honeymoon period completely because this is just not a popular policy. And birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants illegally here look at this, just thirty five percent support the clear majority fifty three percent of pose. And I've looked at multiple polls, looked at the question, asked multiple different ways. If anything, this under sells the opposition by a little bit.
If you don't in fact mentioned for tiltren born to immigants here legally and just and ask about ending birthright citizenship, the opposition shoots all the way up to about seventy percent. But this fifty three percent is clearly indicative of a country that does not want to end birthright citizenship. Simply put, this is not a popular policy. And if Donald Trump pushes policies like this, his honeymoon period will squeeze and be even shorter than it was back in twenty seventeen.
Okay, have opinion.
So you can see there that definitely opinion runs the gamut, and it all shows you that's not necessarily as a rosy as I might like it to be. Let's put this up there from the New York Times, because they also did a good job of breaking down each one of these individual questions. So, for example, which of the following comes closest to your opinion about our nation's political system? It has been broken for decades, It has been broken only for the last few years.
It is not broken. I can report that only nine percent of US adults say it is not broken. I need to meet these.
Days, you know, I really interviewed those folks.
But on im creation actually is where things get really interesting.
So from the New York Times, do you support or oppose each of the following deporting immigrants we're here illegally and have criminal records eighty seven percent, ten percent of POSE. Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and arrived over the last four years sixty three percent, three thirty three percent of POSE. Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally aka mass deportation fifty five percent, forty two percent of POSE.
Then ending birthright citizenship for born to immigrants who are here illegally is forty one percent. And then finally the least popular one is ending protection from deportation for immigrants who were children when they entered the US illegally, otherwise known as DACA recipients and or dreamers. So you can see here that what Trump I believe has happened and from my speaking people who are around the administration is
they're trying to flood the zone strategy. So what do you do when you're doing something unpopular, You also need to do something that's really popular. So they are trying to keep it so that the conversation is not around any one issue, but is just a flood of executive orders and a major change to the status quo. That's where mass deportation and some of the actions we're about to talk about really come into play in addition to
things like the Lake and Riley Act. But really, what I see is a basic collapse of the democratic argument around immigration. I mean, I'm happy to see it, but it is really interesting because I think it just demonstrates how fake democratic opposition has been on this issue now for so long. It's like we've talked about, I mean, maybe this is where we can find some common ground.
It's like, hey, people don't believe anything. You went from twenty eighteen weeping outside of these you know, deportation camps or whatever, and the screeching, you know, and the and just oh, the fascism argument to voting for the Lake and Riley Act, a position that you all opposed on
the stage. You remember in twenty nineteen on the Democrat every single candidate on that stage opposed what is now being passed in the Lake and which is passed a super majority through the Senate and through the House of Representatives to send to Donald Trump's desk here, So what's happening exactly with that or we just we're all supposed to have amnesia.
They're cowards by and large, Like obviously there are you know, there are some Democrats who there are most of the Democrats a opposed as blah blah blah, but certainly the level of consistent opposition to Trump immigration hawkishness is gone.
It's gone. I mean, and this happened even before Trump was elected.
You remember, they decided like, oh, we're going to show the Republicans, we're going to get behind this like hawkish border security owned only bill with no pathway to citizenship. We're going to show them that we're the ones who are really tough on the board. I mean, think about how much Kamala Harris positioned herself as like, I'm the only person here who's prosecuted transnational gangs. You know, I'm
the real border hawk blah blah blah. So I mean, the bottom line is that they are mostly cowards who don't really many of them have their own ideology or have things that they're willing to fight for even when it's a little uncomfortable or even when at that particular political moment it's you know, a little unpopular. They and this is this is a core rot of neoliberal brain which infects you know, corners of both parties, but notably
not Trump. Trump is willing to like bulldozer through whatever he wants to.
Even if you know, ending.
Birthright citizenship is dramatically unpopular, He's going to go ahead and do it, even hardening j sixers who beat cops obviously wildly unpopular.
But he'll just bouldoze through and do it.
And you know, on the the neoliberal brain says basically like I don't have any values of my own. I outsource all of my thinking to markets and polls. And the extension, the political ideology extension of that is quote unquote popularism, where it's just let me rather than having my.
Own like vision and view of the world.
I'm going to take a poll, and I'm going to treat that poll as gospel as to what people think and where they are, and I'm just going to cater to that in the focus groups whatever. It is a completely failed way of doing politics. And this is what I've been trying to shout for the rooftops. And you know two people who are very different ideologically who seem.
To understand this are number one, Donald Trump, who will.
Just relentlessly push his view and his vision of the world, however it polls and however people may you know, complain about it, and Bernie Sanders, who has his own very specific and clear cut vision of the world and isn't buffeted around bio. A pole says this today, or a pol says that last week, or oh it's a little uncomfortable.
Et cetera, et cetera. And guess what, people respect that.
And that's how if you care about actually implementing your principles and ideology, you have to be a leader and make the case to people and push them to your position. And that's what Republicans on mass deportation have successfully done, and specifically Donald Trump.
Has successfully done.
Part of that is, yes, the reality of war people come into the border, although at this particular moment in this drop happened even before the election, we're at like a five year low in terms of number of illegal crossings. But you know, there was the reality migrants getting bus to staties, et.
Cetera, et cetera.
And it was also Democrats abandoning the principles that five seconds ago they claimed they stood by.
So of course the public's going.
To look into well, both parties basically agree that this whole immigration thing is like a real problem. These migrants are a big issue. So where do you think the polling is going to go? So this is the piece the part of politics that liberal Democrats are fundamentally incapable of really wrapping their heads around.
You have to be a leader.
People's opinions are not set in stone. I mean, even the immigration like polling that we're showing you right now, which put the AP poll up on the screen as well, it's not you know, depends on how people are asked the question, and it depends on how you frame it and what particular part of the policy you're asking about. Most people are not like hardcore ideologues the way that
frankly you and I are sager. Most people are like you know, it depends on kind of the vibes and the moon and what they heard and how the questions asked, et cetera. You can move people and change public opinions.
So in this poll, about four and ten American adults support deporting all immigrants living in the US illegally, and a similar share are post So it's pretty much like fifty to fifty here or forty forty, and I guess the other twenty percent like I don't know, but another they test in another policy that it was just announced that they're lifting the restrictions on deportations from quote unquote sensitive places. That's places like churches in school, wildly unpopular
to do that. Only twenty percent support arresting immigrants at church. Eighteen percent support, you know, pulling kids out of school to deport them. Relatively few Americans, only three and ten in this particular pole somewhat are strongly f change in the constitution so kids born in the US are not automatically granted citizenship. That's the birthright citizenship thing that we were talking about. So there is even within the Trump policy right now, if Democrats decided to have a principle,
there are plenty of things to go after. But to your Pointzager, the flood zone strategy is not just to try to counterbalance the things that are unpopular with the things that are popular. It's also to try to keep the opposition from settling on one consistent attack and to keep them sort of like scattered. And you know, the crazy thing to me is, like, you know, looking at a political party, is they a lot of these executive orders that he signed. It's not like they were a surprise.
Many of them were in Project twenty twenty five. Many of them are things that he's been advertised and I've been leaked to the press for weeks and weeks now, and where is there is really no consistent, like sort of unified democratic plan to attack any of these things right now, let alone imm ag So anyway, that was a long Seriit about like sort of my political you know, meta political views and how these things work. But the Republicans wanted to make the country more nativists and more
hawkish on immigration. They did that, and the Democratic opposition completely collapsed, and not only did they lose the battle on the issue, but they also showed themselves to be fundamentally on principled.
Yes, I agree half of that in terms of there are unprincipled. As I always say, I think reality played a role of the people. Actually reality played a role fair enough, but I'm saying Biden was a huge part of it. He could change the immigration status quote more than any president in modern American history in terms of the number of illegals who entered under his watch. So okay, yeah, of course that's going to radically change the way that I mean. You know, it's funny if you look at
support for mass deportation. It was underwater in twenty sixteen, as Harry played, even with Republicans, people were not bought in.
Yeah, but when you have the border.
Basically have ten million people who come here illegally in a four year period, well, yeah, that's going to completely change. Well here Trump also played a big role in that, right, the status quo change on top of the argument it basically aligned perfectly then with also the popular vote, and then the collapse of democratic argumentation means that they are I mean, people who are immigration restrictionsts like myself have
never been in a more powerful posiness. This went from a fringe position of Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions in two thy fifteen, ten years ago, one member of the United States Senate and a guy named Stephen Miller to the policy of the United States government.
And here's what I want people to understand. That position was wildly unpopular at the time. Did that make them go, oh, we can't We just got to we got to do you know, we got to do a gang of eight immigration, We got to move to the.
Left on this, We got to accept kill a gang of eight was was a part of that.
No, it did not did not cause the Stephen Millers and the Steve Bannon's and the Donald Trumps and the Jeff Sessions of the world to suddenly change their position and bend to the current political moment. Instead, they made it a project of over years pushing a consistent vision and message, and guess what, You're right, Sager, they won. And you can see democratics democrat pathetic, like just complete capitulation.
To this worldview.
Now, what I would say is the caution is that after Trump was elected and began implementing, you know, child separation policy, and we had those you know, horrific like I would say, cruel images coming out from the detention center, kids being intentionally taken away from their parents, etc. And orphaned in certain instances, and the public had a revulsion to that. The support for those immigration policies dropped even further, so that there was the lowest level we've had in
the past number of decades. It's for hawkish immigration policy that we've seen. And that's what Democrats responded to in that twenty twenty primary, and why they were all in a very different place was because the pulling was in a very different place at that point. So there is a risk here because they are planning on you know, they got rid of the restrictions on the pulling people out a church or pulling kids down at school. Obviously child separation is going to be back. They actively well,
I don't think you would disagree with this. They actively want some of those images of you know that are aggressive and unsettling and you know, cruel and all of those things, because part of the goal is they don't have the resources to deport everyone who's in the country. So what part of their ideology is, is you want to scare people into number one, not coming in number two quote unquote self deporting.
Well, that's already working.
Actually already we see images from the border where people are like, without CBP one, it's never going to happen.
I should just go back. I actually just read a.
People they were I mean, but those articles, those are people who are trying to come legal, trying to follow a legal process. So yeah, if there's no legal process, they're like, okay.
Yeah, I mean I think it's great.
And it's like, well, if you can go back, you weren't really fearing for your life, were you, It's not so untenable.
Let's put this.
Up there on the screen. Yeah, fine, go make your own country great again. We wish you the best. Let's put the ap up on the screen. The Pentagon is sending up fifteen hundred active duty troops to help secure the US Mexico border. That will be in addition to the twenty three hundred troops that Donald that President Biden sent actually to the border.
It's actually less than Biden.
Ironically, these troops apparently will be helping with some ISR and a few other things.
There are a lot of legal restrictions.
That apply to active duty US military troops operating in the United States. They can't actually participate in law enforcement. All they can really do is support it.
That's a little unclear because well, in terms of so the number is roughly equivalent to what Biden sent in terms of active duty troops, Biden used them purely in those support roles that you know, are more sort of clear cut in terms of you don't want to run a foul of possecoma tatis, which is a restriction on you can have the military doing domestic law enforcement effectively.
But Trump is.
Declaring a national border emergency, and Wall Street Journal is reporting that part of the reason for doing that is to try to get around those laws that prohibit troops from engaging in law enforcement functions. So even though it's the same roughly number of people, the goal and the plan in terms of how they're used is quite different.
Now that will certainly face legal obstacles, and it's yet to be seen whether Trump actually you know, deploys them in that way where they would be the ones detaining migrants and you know, holding them and rounding them up and all those sorts of things which normally has been completely out of bounce, but the declaration of a national emergency, which says, oh, this is a national security issue, ergo.
I can use my military.
Part of the goal is to directly enlist the military in those sorts of you know, typically law enforcement functions.
A lot of this is also just because the border patrol just there's a lot of funding problems, like that's all controlled by Congress.
The exact number of the people that they're allowed to hire.
So if you do we even want to change the status quo, they don't have the employees at ice at border patrol, at DHS, so it would require you not just it would require basically a bipartisan act of Congress to change that status quo.
Let's go to the next one. Here is a change in policy.
We had previewed some of this where they say US border agents have instructed to summarily deport migrants without asylum hearings. What they have done is they have resurrected that Title forty two Law of Public Health concern and two twelve F that allows the presidents to suspend the entry of foreigners whose entry is deemed to be detrimental because of
public health concerns. This was one that the Biden administration used for the first what was it two years, I think the first two years of the Biden administration with COVID as a justification.
Trump had put it in place and they.
Maintained the policy going forward. It's a public the document site the public Health related to twelve F. It applies to quote aliens that have traveled through a country with a communicable disease, and given that there are communicable diseases in Guatemala, Mexico, and Central America, it's pretty easy to justify. It's basically just a legal workaround to enforce the remain in Mexico policy. As the only viable path for asylum
status in the United States. And what it means is that not only will there be deportations to Mexico, but remain in Mexico. Requires these people to remain in Mexico, as it means as they adjudicate their asylum claim, only after being legally approved they allowed to enter the United States. It's part of the reason why you know, you were saying that there has been a drop off, but the
drop off from the drop off is even crazier. So the day before Joe Donald Trump took the office, four thousand people entered the United States under this CBP one asylum app It's dropped to five hundred. So we're talking about like, what is that am an eightfold decrease in the span of two days for what the policy looks like in practice, this, I want to be clear, will all face insane legal scrutiny. So for anyone who thinks that this is policy law of the land, yeah, that's
not how it works. Title forty two and all that will make its way to SCOTUS, I'm sure very soon. That's what the immigration groups are doing to biden the PASTA coomatatis stuff is absolutely going to be under legal review birthright citizenship. I believe multi what was it, twenty five states have already filed suit against that, which means it will almost start, it'll be blocked by court tomorrow, almost certainly, and by that time it'll take a year
and a half to go to the Supreme Court. So none of this is to be taken as this is one hundred percent what's happening. It is a preview of what they want to do and are trying to do, but what will inevitably face a lot of legal scrutiny from the courts and what they are allowed to do and and whatnot.
So I do want people to keep that in mind as well.
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