Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Elon Musk joked quote unquote in a church about someone killing the vice president. By the way, not the first time he's done this. We have such a great show for you today. Former Senate staffer and he really knows what's going on. Adam Jendilson stops by to talk about the state of the race.
Then entrepreneur Mark.
Cuban will talk to us about why Donald Trump is just wrong about America's economy.
But first the news.
So, Mollie, one of the things that you and I know that a lot of people kind of miss the news is that if there's one thing you could do, you could always bet that you will age and to be write about something Trump's flag about. And I'm going to shock you all the things we said in Project twenty twenty five documentary we made continue to age like fine wine into being more and more true. What are you seeing here with his ties to Project twenty twenty five.
So Jesse and I and really it was Jesse who was the driving engine behind this and really got me to grow up and do a really good job. Remember all the time when you were like your roomors do echoey, I'm going to kill you. But Jesse did this incredible documentary which I basically just narrated on Project twenty twenty five. You can find it on YouTube. And we did it because we were worried people weren't talking about it enough. We did it this summer in July, and I don't
think we were the causality. But luckily a lot of people have started talking about it. That said, putting together, threading the needle to show that it was Trump who had these people who worked in his administration, and then later wrote Project twenty twenty five that wasn't as commonly known, especially because Trump immediately as Project twenty twenty five got more famous, it got more unpopular because a lot of this stuff and it is real Christo fascist stuff, and
then he disavowed it, quote unquote. But the Yek Times is a really great, really beautiful, very well laid out piece as they are able to do, which sort of breaks down who from Trump world wrote what in Project twenty twenty five.
And none of this should be a surprise.
None of it's a surprise to us probably none of it's a surprised to you, but large portions of the mandate for leadership, the driving document behind Project twenty twenty five were written by longtime Trump loyalists who were advisors during Trump's first term. Okay, so let's just break it down for a minute. Eighteen of the forty authors and editors worked on the documents worked on the documents served in the first Trump administration. That's eighteen out of forty.
Of the two hundred and sixty seven additional contributors to the Project twenty twenty five playbook, at least one hundred and forty four also worked in mister Trump's administration or on his campaign or transition teams. Twelve worked both in mister Trump's first administration and on one of his transition
or campaign teams. Anyway, the point is twenty twenty five, which was thought up by the Heritage Foundation, has a lot of ties to Trump, and it really was written as a playbook for if Trump could get back in office. So if you don't like Project twenty twenty five and you don't like the eyes to ears behind it, you're probably not gonna like Donald Trump's second term.
Smiley I have been tuning into John Stewart's Monday night daily shows because I've been finding them fun. But something that I though you have a little umbrage with is uh. In the opening segment, he made a lot of jokes of saying like please come last, stop going near the Cheney's and then he turned to Governor Walls and said, you know, what the hell are you doing around these people? Gave him a light scolding for bringing them around. What are you seeing here?
As someone who has generationally my grandfather hated the Cheneye. My mother thought did Cheney was pretty much the evilist person to walk the face of the earth, I want to make a case for the Cheneye here. Okay, the reason why Harris is campaigning with Liz Cheney is not because she likes Liz Cheney. It's not because she wants to enact Liz Cheney's policies. She's doing it because Donald
Trump is not normal. Donald Trump is an autocrat. Liz Cheney is, and Liz Cheney is campaigning with Harris because she wants to signal that too. This is not about policy, This is not about beliefs. This is about stopping a singularly destructive force in American politics.
And while it's.
Annoying to many of us who don't believe in the Cheney zeitgeist, who don't believe in Cheney's policies, all of us see, or at least I see, what this signals. And it signals that American democracy is way more precious than any of the sort of larger policy agenda. And the reason that these two unlikely seed mates are touring.
Is because of that.
You really want to appeal to these people. You want to give them permission, You want to say, look, you know, you may have never voted Republican before. Because for Harris to win this thing, Republican women need to step up. And we know from twenty twenty two that Republican women do not like the Dobbs decision. They are largely pro choice. They don't like the idea that they can't get medical care in the first trimester, that they can't take medicine
if they are having a miscarriage. They don't like a lot of the Project twenty twenty five agenda, and yet their whole lives they have voted Republican. So Liz Cheney is a symbol right the idea here is not that Liz Cheney is where the Democratic Party is headed. The idea here is that Liz Cheney can say to these women it's okay to vote for Harris. And I think it's powerful, and I think that the idea that this has anything to do with anything else is really misguided.
This is the hill I'm happy to die on Somali.
A lot of fundraising news with the PC filings coming out. What are you seeing here?
This is like just what you think it's going to be, right Donald Trump. I mean, I guess maybe it's not in a way because Donald Trump did so well in his first run with small dollar donors that maybe it's a little bit surprising. But this second run is largely funded by billionaires and trillion you know, billionaires, people like Elon Musk, people like Maryon Adelson. Basically, the transactional nature
of Donald Trump has gotten these billionaires very excited. Right, So Mary Adelson got a lot of stuff that she and Sheldon had wanted in the first Trump Admin. They are hoping that in the second Trump Admin he's dead, so just her, she is hoping the second Trump Admin. Who even knows what she wants for Israel? But something crazy.
And then you've got Elon Musk yesterday the New York Times that are really really important piece about how Elon Musk was fighting with every different federal regulatory agency and how he was being fined by different agencies. And remember, Elon Musk has planted himself in Pennsylvania in the hopes of helping Trump win, which we'll see how that works. He clearly has decided that this could end well for him. So we see that Donald Trump is getting this last cycle.
He's raised half a billion dollars and donors giving one million or more or super packs have given about half of it.
So, Maley, if we think back to four billion years ago with Kamala Harris whooped Donald Trump's ass during the presidential debate, one of the many shocking moments that just kind of disappeared the next day was that he really said some nasty things about the Exonerated five formerly known as the Central Park Five. What do you see here?
We had a member of the exonerated five on this podcast, Usef Salam, and he's a city councilman in Harlem now, which is exciting. They're all in their fifties now, remember their own lives were destroyed by this experience, and Donald Trump took out a full page ad saying that they should get the death penalty. He has continued to defame them. You're going to be shocked to hear it, because that's
what he does. And now the five men have filed the lawsuit in Pennsylvania suing the former president, accusing him of false and defamatory statements he made during the presidential debate in September where he continued where he continued to defame the exonerated five. So we'll see what happens, but certainly looks like we're gonna see more of this story. Adam Gentlelsen is a former Senate staffer for Harry Reid and John Fetterman.
Welcome back.
I don't actually know if you've ever been on this particular podcast, Adam, though I was with you before, yes, in the olden days, before you went back into staff or land. So I want you to give our listeners just a little biography of your political history, if that's okay.
Sure.
Well, I've been doing this about twenty years now, and we're so old.
I know I know what that got.
Sorry, No, I'm forty six. When you said that I was like, oh, yeah, twenty years ago.
Right, well, you know, like green Day albums are being reissued, right, real, real, reality check.
I am was a band we listened to Yes.
Continue exactly, yes, now these are classic rock backs right. So anyway, so I you know, in my twenties, I worked with a bunch of different campaigns, a couple of presidential campaigns, some other campaigns, and then so of worked.
Non Mike do Caucus. No, I'm just kidding, We're.
Not quite but you know, yes, don Erry.
I think at this point is about you know, same reference points for a lot of people who are listening to this. And then eventual on my way to the Senate, where I worked for the Democratic leader Harry Reid for him for about eight years and was mostly doing communications. It was his books for a while, rose to be whif a staff, learned a lot about the Senate, learned a lot about how politics works, and then left that back when Trump was elected was the same time when
Reid retired. So went back to the nonprofit world. Decided to use my experience to the Senate to write a book about the Senate called Philibuster. Yeah, to make the case for why the philibuster is bad and needs to be reformed. And then was sort of happily living the nonprofit life. And then I hooked up with the Betterment Campaign in Pennsylvania in twenty twenty two and then was asked to come in and be as chief of staff.
So did that until very recently left the Senate in June, and I'm now a floating Democratic strategist doing consulting for various projects to try to advance the cause of good here in this world.
So let's talk first about Harry Raid, because he sort of held up as one of the masters of the Senate, like Lyndon Johnson level Senate organizing whipping.
He created a machine in Nevada.
So can you sort of just give us a little bit of a thought of what sort of where he is right now and what you think sort of his take on this is and your take on this and having worked in an organization, you know, having sort of done for him and been able to sort of move that along.
Well, I think if you were here with us today, I mean, he would be unsurprised that things were are as close as they are. He would be unsurprised that it's coming down to a very close race in Nevada
because he you mentioned the read machine. I mean, this is this sort of legendary organization that he spent the better part of twenty years building up as sort of a union of organized labor, state party and align nonprofit groups that work year in and year out to do things like voter registration, field organizing, driving message selecting high quality, successful electable candidates, and working hand in glove with organized labor.
And the reason he built that is interesting because I think it sort of showed his premonition of what was to come. You know, back in two thousand and four, the Democratics kind of leader was a guy named Tom Dashel from South Dakota, and in what was considered a major violation of norms at the time, Republicans campaigned against Dashel on a national level. Republicans were coming in from out of state campaign against him, and they succeeded in
knocking him off. And so when Reid became leader, he knew he succeeded Dashel, and he knew that he was going to have to fight not just the normal forces that Senators were used to fighting, but he knew the national Party was going to come after him and make him a target, and so he spent enormous amounts of time building this machine, and I think that was a precursor to the partisan politics that lay ahead of us. So he would not be surprised that things have gotten
as polarized as they are. You know, a lot of his set of leadership was premised on the idea that Republicans were acting in bad faith and people he had previously worked with and found able to work across the aisle on legislation, with all of a sudden, we're responding to forces like the Tea Party and going all out and obstructing anything Democrats wanted to do, regardless of the merits.
So he was sort of an early adapter, and I think a visionary in a lot of ways at seeing the partisan political environment that was to come and building structures that could advance democratic interests and fight back against Republicans in the face of those gathering forces.
God, that's so interesting and I think, yeah, that definitely tracks with my sense.
So you went to work for Fetterman.
That was a race that even though twenty two was a lower turnout because it's a midterm, it does speak you know, Pennsylvania has become the star of the selection, right, and I'm wondering if you can sort of take your experience from twenty twenty two and sort of broaden it out to talk about where we are in Pennsylvania and twenty twenty four.
Absolutely, I mean, I think I see a lot of similarities, hopefully good ones, as well as difficult ones in Pennsylvania this cycle as last cycle. I mean, look, the thing about Pennsylvania is it's one of the states that most closely mirrors the nation. It's demographics breakdown in ways that are very similar to the overall national demographics of the country. It's got really dense urban areas in Philadelphia and the Coller Counties. It's got very populous suburbs around Philadelphia, and
Pittsburgh is a big population center as well. In the western part of the state, and then in between and especially in the west, you've.
Got a ton of rural areas.
You've got a ton of farmland, lots of different industries, and lots of towns that have been pretty hard hit places where industry has left, steel towns that there are no more so, you know, you really the rust belt starts in western Pennsylvania, and so it's a microcossum as
a state of the entire nation. And I think what you're seeing there, I believe, is a similar strategy by Democrats to win as the one Federman used to win in twenty twenty two, where they are definitely focusing on driving up turnout in the big urban areas, and that's always very important, but they're also focusing on the suburbs and the caller counties where there are a lot of people who might have voted Republican in previous elections, but who are alienated from Trump by his style, by his
disrespect for democracy, his authoritarian tendencies, and also by his stance on abortion and his opposition to abortion and his is desired to take health care away from people. And then the third thing that's part of the strategy is focusing on the rural counties and not letting Republicans run
up the score. You know, Democrats are not going to win a lot of these rural counties or a lot of these forgotten communities, but to win the state overall, it's really important to hold down Republicans' margins of victory in those rural counties, especially in the western part of the state. And if you've been watching Vice President Harris's travel schedule and Governor Wallace's travel schedule, they've been spending a lot of time in that western part of the state.
Not because they think they're gonna win out right there, because holding down those margins will help them win the state overall. Ultimately, I think that that is going to succeed.
So I wrote this piece for Fanny Fair just like a day ago, about how twenty twenty four is not twenty sixteen though, were all still so super traumatized. And one of the things I went back and looked at Clinton's travel schedule. You can say a lot of things when you're talking, you can criticize her for whatever, but if you look at the actual dates, it's really anemic. Right, Like she spent twelve days in Florida. She didn't go
to Wisconsin. Now, obviously there were reasons they thought that her going to Wisconsin would not necessarily help her, but like even three days in Pennsylvania, you know, it just wasn't a ton of time. And I talked to a congress person who said to me that, in fact, Harris is doing the exact opposite of what Clinton did, and that every time they're trying to make plans, she's coming back to the state. He's in Pennsylvania, and I'm wondering if you can sort of talk us through that.
Yeah, I think that they are taking nothing for granted. I think, you know, look, the Clinton campaign was very tough. There was a misread of the data, and there was a level of cocky nests going into the final weeks that, as we all know, proved unfounded. So you know, the Hairs campaign is not taking that approach. They are being extremely smart with the candidate's time. They are going to all the places that are must have so she's not
spending a lot of time in nice to have. So I think I was reading an article just yesterday on I think it was October twenty fourth, in twenty sixteen. So even later in a game that now, Clinton went to Arizona trying to put that on the map, which she ended up losing, you know, by a lot. So Hair's campaign is not doing that. She is in Texas today,
but that is for a different reason. She's in Texas for a very smart reason, not because they think they can win it, but because it is a state with obviously very draconian abortion laws, and that is one of their strongest closing messages.
And so she's using.
That appearance to generate what we in the business called earned media, but regular people call clips and news coverage about abortion. She's raising the salience of this critical issue by going there. So it's a really really smart play because you know, so you have to keep generating material for stories, you can keep talking about abortion, and you can put it in paid media.
All of that is smart.
But going to Texas, highlighting the laws there, talking with real people, generates a different level of coverage that drives one of their strongest closing messages. So I think they're being really really smart about how they use the candidate's time in these closing days, and ultimately I think that's what's going to deliver the election there.
One of the things that I want you to talk about is that Elon Musk has planted himself in the state of Pennsylvania and is now doling out million dollar checks, maybe because it's Elon Musk, maybe not for people who sign a petition saying they agree with the First and Second Amendment and are registered voters in the state of Pennsylvania. Do you think that a South African billionaire like Elon Musk will help Trump in Pennsylvania.
We live in this era where it's like you never want to say something that strikes you is totally off and weird. It's going to end up playing that way with the broader electorate because it's been really hard to read the way the electric reacts to things the last cycles. But having said that caveat, I will go out on a limb and say, I do not think this is going to help Trump. I think that they've sort of
over orked the dude bro messaging a little bit. And I want to be precise here because I do think that if there will be an enormous gender gap, I think that Trump will run up the score with men, and particularly with young men. But the problem is a lot of the messaging that he's using to try to run up a score is having you know, everything has it as an equal opposite reaction, right, basic laws of physics.
I think here the equal and opposite reaction is it's turning off a huge number of women and men who aren't into that version of masculinity. And so I think when you look, when I come back to the collar counties around Philadelphia, right, and the suburbs there. And I think about the people in the suburbs who are potentially very moderate, maybe voted for some Democrats, maybe voted for some Republicans in their lives, and when they see a clown like Elon doing what he's doing, that just adds
to their sense. If they're undecided at this point, part of the reason is that they fear the chaos and messiness and disorder of a Trump presidency, and Elon adds to the sense that that is what's coming down the pike if Trump wins, not to mention that, he's probably going to stiff the people that he's promising these checks to and it will probably generate a lot of negative media in addition to some of the sort of positive
media around the promise that he hopes it will will generate. So, you know, I think on net Elon is a polarizing figure, and I think the people who are undecided at this late stage aren't looking for more polarization, looking for a reason to believe that their lives are going to improve, and I don't think Elon delivers that, right, But he.
Did go to pen so I love that.
So at this moment, if you're watching this election from your living room and absolutely freaking out, as is everyone, I know, what would be the things you would sort of be looking at to tell you how it's going.
I think the thing to remember is this is going to be a very close race, and we're an all likelihood going to go into election day without a clear sense of who is going to win. But that's a good thing in the sense that two or three months ago we were very far behind as Democrat, and you know, Harris has put herself in a put in to win, and that's in and of itself as a huge improvement.
She had also improved across the board on really key underlying metrics like who people trust to handle the economy, who people trust to handle jobs. She's even improved on immigration and overall favorability. So she's really done a remarkable job at driving up the positives on the issues that people are probably going to use when they are late deciders.
What gives me confidence that even in a very close race this is going to tell her way is that her coalition is being built on pretty reliable frequent voters, and Trump is counting on a historic over performance among unreliable voters. He's counting on what we in the political science call race depolarization, where democrats historic high performance with non white voters is going to break off break his way.
Now.
I'm sure that will happen a little bit because we've seen it happen in past election cycles and it definitely is this broader trend that that is occurring. But for Trump to win, he needs it to happen a lot. So I think that's you know, if you ask what am I looking at, I'm looking at Harris's performance in the suburbs with white college educated voters, and I'm also looking at Trump's performance with non college non white voters, And if Trump has huge margins with that crowd, then
he has a decent shot at victory. But if Harris has huge margins with the white suburban crowd and the college educated crowd in general of all races, then I think she's going to win.
Yeah.
I think that what you're saying is that relying on hyperpensity voters is usually a better bet than relying on low propensity voters.
That's right, Well, I mean, especially because Trump is relying on low propensity voters to do something they've never done before, and that is break heavily for a Republican candidate. So it's betting against history, and it's betting against pretty reliable trends. And again he will have He might perform better with them than any other recent presidential candidate, but that's not necessarily.
Enough to win.
He needs a really significant overperformance with those groups in order to deconstruct Democrats winning coalition. And I don't think that's going to happen.
Yeah, really important point.
Can you explain to us, really there's a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, You know, there are a bunch of Senate seats that are like his two right, Rosen and Nevada, people who are like really sort of known quantities who are defending their seats in states that are unpredictable. If you're looking at that map, do you have any thoughts you want to add there?
I feel pretty good about our Senate map.
Which is amazing considering how bad a map it is, the way that incumbency has worked out it is.
It's a really really challenging map for Democrats. It's one of our most challenging maps in several election cycles. Ultimately, I think incumbents like Senator Casey, Senator Rosen, Senator Baldwin, they have incredibly strong records. They've got not just strong legislative records, but electorally, you know, a strong record of connecting to the people of their states and representing their interests in not necessarily a showy way, but in a
way that really delivers results. So they've got great records to point two, and I think that's going to be what carries them over. They've also got, especially in Casey's case, of pretty flawed candidated Dan McCormick Republicans. He simply can't seem to find a candidate who lives in the comonwealth of Pennsylvania to run for Senate there. Yeah, I think that's going to be a factor as well. You know, it will come down to probably one or two seats
in Ohio. But I think Senator Brown is looking very strong, has run an incredibly strong campaign. Talk about a guy who fits the state. I mean, he really really fits that state well and has always represented its interests very well. If Tester could pull out come from behind victory in Montana, it would not be shocking because he's done it before and he knows that state incredibly well. But then Democrats also have some outside shots at states like Texas and Florida.
There's Dan Osborne running in Nebraska as an independent, Yeah, the last he would couct us with.
We've had him on the podcast.
Yeah, and he's running against the Republicans. So Democrats are going to make it really close and then have a few shots at getting to the magic number of fifty. If this is an election where leaked deciders break Harris's way and break democrats way, I think that's going to boost these set up races in a really, really important way.
Yeah, thank you, Adam.
You are welcome, Molly, so good to see you again.
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Mark Cuban is an entrepreneur and post of the show Sharp Tank. Welcome to Fast Politics, Mark Cuban, Thanks, Molly, so excited to have you.
You are everywhere explaining tariffs. Just explain to me.
Is it that Donald Trump just fundamentally does not understand how tariffs work.
I think he used to. I think he used to have a really good grasp of prey to a certain extent in the late nineties and early two thousand and I think he just doesn't any longer. And he's more salesperson than anything else. And sometimes when you're selling something, you get so caught up in what you're saying, then you can't go back on it because you said it too many times. And I think that's where he is.
And then I think there's people in you know, the Peter Navarro's and the Lighthousers who have kind of explained it to him in a way that kind of reinforces it so that you know, all those things go. He'll talk about one thing and they'll try to do something different.
Right, It strikes me that there is a kind of collective amnesia too. Like one of the things I think has made you a very effective messenger here is that it feels like Trump can only be debunked by someone of sort of equal or greater celebrity status known for being and you are actually someone who understands finance.
But do you see this strange paradox?
Yeah, for sure, because you know, people know me from Shark Tank, and so they me talk about businesses and talk to businesses and invest in hundreds of businesses, so they know I've been through it. They also know, from the most part, I'm an entrepreneur, so I've been through
the struggles of starting a company with no money. So I can relate to people at all level, from people who are sleeping on the floor like I did trying to start a business, to people who've gotten fired, to people who have had success and had excess in their companies. And so I've been through all that, so can I relate to them? But I can give them specific examples to prove that I've been there. That's something that Donald Trump can't do because he's never been there.
So you also actually like live in a red state and have been very involved with the MAVs and like the sort of larger trajectory of Texas. More broadly too, when you talk to people, you know, like the whole argument for Trump and more generally the Republican Party is this idea that Republicans are very good for business. So when you sit down and you say, well, you know, these sort of more broad tax cuts actually don't necessarily help the economy, and you know, stuff like this sort
of go through it. This is a question I have to ask as like someone who grew up liberal, do they ever go oh, yeah, wait a second, you're right, yeah, of course no.
Look, people look at politics in the state of Texas and go these people are crazy. But on the flip side, they get out of the way and let business do their thing. Now there's a downside that people understand as well. One, you know, well there's no income tax, but there's a huge property tax. And two there are casualties. There's collateral damage with kids and lack of daycare and lack of you know, lack of healthcare in many respects, and so
they understand there's collateral damage. But it's hard to really come up with an equilibrium for people of Texas, right that they don't look at it that way. It's just like the state of Texas gets out of the way. I ignore the politics of it all. Just let me do my thing. And for most people, that's their life, and that's okay. They're not going to be you know, people don't want to be deep thinkers about their life.
They just want to live their lives. And if you're in business, Texas is actually is a good state because they do get out of the way. But you know, I think most people here that I talk to, they don't we just dismissed our politicians in this state is crazy, right.
The problem I think with this sort of modern trump Ism is that some elements right, our hands off, but things like for example, the abortion ban and it's case against metha pristone and their you know, the abortion pills and the birth control pills. That's actual like major federal intervention at the state level.
Yeah, of course, but I mean state versus federal two different conversations here in the state of texts. You know, It's not like people look at Peceessions or Ted Cruise and go, Okay, they're doing a great job representing us and represent us in Congress. They don't look at that at all. It's just like that's why you hear, you know, talks of secession. You know. And so when Donald Trump starts talking about healthcare and abortion and medications, he just
goes along with the flow. I don't think really cares one way or the other what happens there. He just wants to know. Look, he's a salesperson just selling himself, and the currency he wants is both, and he will say whatever it takes, which is what led to is kind of turn around on choice right, on women's right to your own reproductive health. He doesn't care. And when you don't really care it and you only have one of objective, and that is to get boats, you'll say anything,
and you'll flop in the wind no matter what. And it's not that it's bad to change your mind, but if you're going to change your mind, have at least a reason that you're doing it rather than just panderings or boats. And I don't think Donald cares what the reason is. He's just going by the polls and what works.
Elon wants to start a government efficiency agency, which is again a government efficiency in itself is the dream.
Of all of us.
Right, you like the federal government, you hate the federal government, You want it to be efficient. From the reporting about Elon's fights with different regulatory agencies, it doesn't seem like his motivation is fully philanthropic.
No. I don't think he thinks it's stilanthropic at all. I don't think Edy Button does. I think everybody realized it's self serving, but it's in tune with what Donald Trump needs. Elon realizes that in order for him to be effective, he's got to play to his strengths and what he sells. And Trump realizes in order for Elon to help him, he's got to use Elon's grant and what Trump sell. This is all salesmanship. But with Elon,
you know, he's not talking about conflicts of interest. He's not talking about subsidies from the government, you know, and saying, well, you know, I realize I benefit, so that's going to be I know that those programs, so those are going to be the first things I got. He doesn't give any specifics whatsoever. He's just an industry plan, if you will, just for Donald Trump to talk about because it sounds good.
What do you think the game is with Elon? What do you think the ultimate goal here is what's run NASA?
He wants to go to Mars. If Mark Cuba's ultimate goal was to put people on Mars, then what's better than running NASA?
But don't you think it's also AI trying to control AI, try and stop government regulation of his many industries.
Oh, you can't. He already knows you can't stop you can't stop.
AI, right, but I mean can sort of have an upper hand when it comes to AI.
No, you can't control it, you can't regulate it. Some kid is going to have access and do something crazy that we didn't expect, and that's going to change everything, you know. And so I don't think he's worried about government regulation of AI at all because he knows that there's nothing they do, There's nothing you know, you can put. You know, you can put guardrails on it and hope
they were, but they won't. And then somebody's just going to move to the Caymans or something and just have access to a you know, put a cloud up there with some Nvidia chips that do it down there. Part two to that is, you know, the way you build models in AI is getting more and more cost efficient over time and more powerful over time, so it won't cost as much to do the same amount of work. So I don't think it's this fear of regulation of AI at all, because he knows that's almost impossible.
And the government has been terrible at regulation, like they haven't even regulated Facebook, So why they would regulate AIS mystery?
Yeah, No, I mean, and look, you know, the ultimate imperative for the United States of America is to win the AI race with every other nation. We have to win it because whoever wins in AI, and right now we're the leader by a long shot. Whoever win in AI dominates the economy, dominates, technology, dominates the future, dominates military. It's not a zero sum game, but it's pretty damn close.
So you and I have literally had conversations about AI where I don't I just can't understand what you're talking about, but I appreciate that I don't understand it and know that it's enormous and coming.
So you've been.
Out on the road really interesting talking to different groups. You did this amazing town hall with Latino men. Can you talk about that and what it was like and sort of did you feel that you were communicating well?
And just tell us about that.
I went to Phoenix and did a group there of Latino men, and always it was a bunch of primarily Latino but also black business people who were mostly small business. Are all small business, and I just talked about why kam La Harris is better for business. One. You know, there's thirty three million businesses in this company. Ninety nine percent of them are small business. Ninety nine percent of the entrepreneurs that started those businesses will run those businesses.
Use something called pass through you know, they're passed through company their sole proprietorship sub chapter. Well, you know with your businesses right right, I have one. Yeah. So because of that, they when Kamala says, if you make four hundred thousand dollars or less, your taxes are not going up. And for one hundred million people in this country, your taxes are going down. And that applied to all of them, you know, because people get kind of confused when Trump
talks about cutting corporate taxes, that's for sea corps. Those are there's only twenty thousand companies with five hundred or more employees. That's who he's talking to. For everybody else that was in that room who was certain, it was like, no, you're you're going to be okay. Your taxes are will only go down, they won't go up. And that was one thing that was important. The second thing that was inflation.
And you know, you have to get past the point where he says, look the twenty percent increasing in prices over the last four years. I might even go in cause that we can talk about that for days, but we are where we are. The question becomes, you know, what do you do to offset those costs? And that's where I started talking about healthcare because as small businesses, healthcare is terrifying. On one hand, they can't just go out there and get a great policy with a low deductible.
So not only did they as a company have a high deductible we're applicable, but their employees have super high deductibles. And I explained to them that Kamala Harris has already talked about removing or tamping down the pharmacy middleman called pharmacy benefit managers, and you know, making that whole pharmaceutical industry transparent and from my experiences with costpos Drugs dot Com.
Then you know, I tell them that's going to cut your cost out of pocket for you and your employees by twenty to thirty percent, and we'll extend that the healthcare over time, and that'll include that'll cut your other healthcare costs down by twenty or thirty percent. And then I asked them the question how much would that help?
Oh yeah, that more than compensates for inflation. Oh yeah, you know, because they know as small businesses that when your employee is sick and they can't afford their deductible because the cost of medication is too high, then they don't come to work. And if they don't come to work, then there's just a cascading list of problems. And so I just through the whole idea that healthcare is that offset to inflation that everybody's asking about. And Donald Trump
only knows concepts. He doesn't know healthcare at all.
He has concepts of a plan.
Concepts of a plan. Yeah. Then I talked about deportation, not about immigration, because you know real Briefly, I said, look, I disagree with a lot of the way the administration handled immigration. But we are where we are and now with the executive order, the numbers are, you know, comparable, if not lower than when Trump was in office. Both candidates have said that they're going to deport any non citizens that have broken the law and violated the law,
So they're both on equal footing there. But then the question becomes what comes next? What happens with deportation? If you want a restaurant, what happens now? You know, as an employ lawyer, with your I nines, you have to say whether somebody is an American citizen, whether they have
their papers, et cetera, et cetera. But still, what happens if Stephen Miller's in charge and all of a sudden they're knocking on your doors saying, okay, give me the names, address, social Security number, and immigration status for everybody that works for you, and we're going to go visit their house because we want to know if Brampa is legal ing on what happened to your community. Those people are not
going to be able to come to work. Those people that you know, you have worked with for years and years and your years that bust their ass, Now all of a sudden they're getting dragged out, you know, Elli and Gonzales Stock, is that what you want? And just see their eyes open up because they hadn't thought about
it that way that every diverse workforce. Know, somebody who you know, whether it's re said, you know, over the last ten years or over the last forty years, you know, may not have their citizens uh cistenship chat their immigration status completely worked out. And I think you know, Donald Trump could be knocking on their doors, just dragging them out, putting them on the bus and shipping them somewhere, or putting them in a camp. Kamala Harris is going to
have a very transparent process. You might not like everything that she says she's going to do. She may be struck stricter than you would like, but you're going to know exactly what's involved to either change or deal with your immigration status. And she's not going to come and just close your business down by dragging people out. She's going to have, you know, a process in place, which would you prefer.
What Trump is advertising here is mass deportation camps like what happened to the Japanese.
They were terrified, but they don't really look at if people hadn't really looked at it as a business issue. They looked at it as a social issue. And the people if you run a company, if you were in a small business you have a diverse workforce. You understand completely because you have to file these I nines and using Verify and all these different tools to determine their
immigration status. And if you've worked with somebody long enough, you get to know about their family and if your employee may be as legal as the day is long and have all the right paperwork. But if grandma does it, Grandma goes home to the old country, and you don't want grandma being dragged out. And then you know, there's the sol issues of you know, if a community has you know, one hundred grand has tracked out using them as an example, that community is not going to be happy.
I dude knows how they'll respond.
Yeah, exactly, you're talking to people on the ground. Do you think that Harris is able to make the case. Do you think that she's attracting these sort of the voters she needs to get over the finish line?
You know, honestly, just to be brutally honest, I think Joe Biden first was the worst salesperson I've ever seen. He tried, but he didn't know how to sell. Kalma's not a great salesperson, She's not. She's great at policy, she's got GRADYQ, she can communicate with people. What she does in rallies is phenomenal, and so that's why I think she's just going place to place to place and doing rallies. When I've sat down and talked to her
about business, she's great. She understands, he understands technology. She understands the importance of cutting the deficit and using technology to approve efficiencies. She knows that she's not at geek, but she understands it, and so her getting out there where whever she has touch points is always important. But she always also knows what she doesn't know, what she's not good at, which is why I'm out there, which is why Scaramucci is is out there, which is why
you know Bacari Seller's. So many people are out there as surrogates, and I think that really helps. The first gentleman, Doug I did in an event with him in Grand Rapids, which also had a lot of small businesses but mostly black businesses. But he was great too, he's a great surrogate. He talks business, he understands business, He's been there, done that, and people. He's a great speaker too, so people understand. So I definitely feel that there's a great path there.
I would like to see us, you know, sell better. But I also think that's why he's given me basically, you know, said just go be you mark, you know, go do what you do, be out there talking. You understand what I'm trying to accomplish. You understand are you know our based realities and the qualities that are important to me. And I'm like yes, And so that's you know, They're telling me to go out there and I'm talking to as many people as I can. But all that
creates a network effect. It's not just one thing that comlict can do or Doug can do. There has to
be a network effect. And then the other thing is like when I was in Grand Rapids the other day and I was talking to business people, I tried to make them understand that voting and getting people to vote and getting them actually to register and getting to the polls is one of the best things you can do to help yourself make more money because you know that startup fifty thousand dollars credit if you're getting ready, you know, because all those people are going to have passed through
tax situations sub chapteristic, et cetera. Like we discussed. That's like money in the bank up to fifty K that goes against your other income and that's going to increase your refund and that's going to help you fund your business. The child tax credits, all those things, those are things that are money in the bank. The healthcare, those are
things you need. So by going out there and getting your friends and getting people you work with and people in your network to realize that voting is important, that is probably the best thing you can do for your business. And that was the message that I was giving a lot of these entrepreneurs one on one. And then you can see the light go on, you know, because I've done so many of these. You can see the light go on when I say something that they hadn't you know, put those two pieces together.
Yeah, you told me that you were at an event and Fox News was setting up and you went over and just did Fox News. And I think you're brilliant, Sarah good and able to go on Fox News. Can you explain to our listeners. Why going on Fox News is important.
Yeah, because I don't need to convert people that are already converted. I need to talk to people who are either undecided or maybe you know, hardcore Trump. But I'll say, all it takes is one little thing that triggers somebody to say, oh my goodness, maybe I hadn't thought that through. That's why, you know, he talked a lot about tariffs and the impact on small business. That's why I called Donald Trump the grinch that is stealing your Christmas because
people aren't extending. They think Trump's and they think tariffs, and they think, you know, that's the tax of four thousand dollars tax, and that's true. But then you really have to take it further. You have to ask the question this next year, if Donald Trump is president and he's put on sixty percent tariffs on Chinese goods, do you realize that we import so so much of what we buy is imported from China? Your books, you know, your sporting goods, on your backpacks. The list just goes
on and on and on. So this time next year, if he's put on those tariffs and you're thinking about Christmas presents to buy for your kids and your family and friends. Those prices are going to be up, aren't they. Yeah yeah yeah, So you're gonna have You're gonna have to buy fewer Christmas presents, aren't you Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. And when you buy fewer Christmas presents? Who else?
Does that affect? Every small business? The little dress shop down the street, the little knickknack place where you bought candles and cool stuff, the sporting goods store, will you buy all the gear for your kids to play whatever sports they play. Those businesses are going to get hurt and a lot of them are going to go out of this. And Donald Trump doesn't care, nor does he understand. He doesn't understand tariffs and these aren't some esoteric things.
You have to understand that tariffs will m pack your family. He is the grids trying to steal your Christmas.
Yeah, so interesting, Mark, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And it's not Molly always enjoy I keep on doing what you do. No moment.
Oh fuckly Jesse Cannon.
Smile junk fast, one of the we just got done. In the news segment talking about Trump to faving people, you may recall that he said some very not nice things and some disinformation about the FEMA workers down in North Carolina after the hurricanes, and he was confronted about that and I'm going to shock you what happens here.
And when the rest is charge to make the threats gets FEMA workers on Saturdays.
Ago, DIEMA had a safety stand down. They could incredible threat. Is it helping the recovering up to the North Carolina complain to exclaimed that demas not doing the job well. I think you have to let people.
Know how they're doing. If they were doing a great job, I think we should say that too, because I think they should be rewarded. But is they're not doing to does that mean that if they're doing a poor job, we're supposed to not say it. These people are entitled to say it. And these are honest people behind us. If FEMA were doing well, they would be saying they did a good job. They're not for the most part, political people.
For the most part, they're.
Not political people.
But you've obviously seen nothing but you know, very bad statements coming out about the job that FEMA and this administration has done having to do with this area at North Carolina as a whole, and by the way, other states also they're also complaining.
But look, it shouldn't surprise that Donald Trump is spreading lies about FEMA when not cause playing a fry chef at a McDonald's known for stiffing its workers and refusing to say anything about raising the minimum wage. I'm not surprised, and I think we'll definitely see more of this. Look, you know, Donald Trump hates the federal government and wants ultimately to you know, make it so small that he
could drown the federal government in a bathtub. And I think that, you know, his war on FEMA is that.
But that's not.
Really what you want in an emergency situation. But it definitely tracks to what we've seen in Trump world, and that is highly That is a very very very moment of fuckery moment.
That's it for.
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