2/27/26: Zohran Flawless Trump Victory, 1st AI Mass Layoff, Anthropic DEFIES Hegseth

11:44Ryan Grim:It's like, okay. So they did that one. And now people are sharing videos of like, you know, it'll be like seven guys all working together on a corner. And they're like, you know, oh, this make work socialist program. How dare you? And I just hope, you know, I think this critique is really smart and savvy. I hope they continue talking about Zoran Mamdani creating jobs for Americans and like, you know, hiring them to do useful things in the city that benefit their communities. I think this is a bit like I'm devastated by this critique and I hope they continue it.

12:16Krystal Ball:Yeah. Libs of TikTok is on such a such a downslope. It's like they had talk about motion like a couple of years ago. They had some serious motion. And they're at the White House. Like last night, they're like, oh, 16 guys on a corner shoveling snow. Like, yeah, you ever shovel snow? Like if it's one guy in the corner, like you're going to have to wait for the spring for it to melt. Like 16, shovel it faster.

12:43Ryan Grim:You can actually get it done.

12:44Krystal Ball:Like, oh, there's some guys standing around. Yeah, well, it's hard. Sometimes you take a break. Like, relax. Also, you ever go by a construction site? Sometimes people are like leaning on a shovel. Like it happens.

12:53Saagar Enjeti:This also comes during Snowball Gate, which was a snowball fight happening in Washington Square Park where some cops were hit with snowballs, maybe some ice balls. Who knows? These could be hard snowballs. But the NYPD commissioner came out and gave an all hands on deck statement saying we're going to have to catch the people who did this. The right and the Zionists were like, New York City is falling apart. and I think what's so great about Zoran is A, he didn't take the bait on it and was like, no, I'm not going to ban snowball fights from New York City but then he also flooded the zone with like real news so he's like, not only am I not taking the bait but actually, we're actually doing like real stuff here and I think that's so great and you kind of need both to completely disqualify these stupid criticisms and while we were talking about aesthetics there's one more aesthetic that I had

13:44Krystal Ball:One other little ballet move that he had on it was when he finally did put a statement out about it, his last line was something like, if you're going to throw a snowball at anybody, throw it at me.

13:56Saagar Enjeti:Incredible.

13:57Krystal Ball:Which is just completely emasculating to the cops because he's telling them, look, they can't take this.

14:03Ryan Grim:Yeah. It's a subtle way of being like, you know, because he did the thing of like, look, guys, city workers, including cops, are out and we respect them. But if anyone's going to take a snowball, it should be me, which is a subtle way of being like, Come on, you guys are this soft. You can't even take a snowball. Fine, I'll take the snowball. Don't worry about it.

14:22Krystal Ball:Like what I've told my kids, if you're so angry you really need to hit somebody, hit me. Hit me. Go ahead. I'll take it. Because it doesn't hurt when they hit me. Have they done it?

14:34Ryan Grim:Yeah. Have they taken you up on that arm?

14:35Krystal Ball:Have they taken you up on that arm? Have they taken you up on that arm? Have they taken you up on that arm? It's like, fine. If they're really angry, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. And then they feel better then. And it's better than them hitting their sibling who can't take it. So that's kind of the same thing Mom Donnie did. It's like, if you're angry, hit me.

14:51Ryan Grim:New segment, Ryan's Parenting Tips.

14:54Krystal Ball:Pitch that to Miss Rachel.

14:55Saagar Enjeti:And, you know, while we're talking about...

14:57Krystal Ball:Not good parenting advice, but whatever.

15:00Saagar Enjeti:Well, you're talking about ballet moves and masculinity, and I had to flag this one last moment about another aesthetic choice that Zoran made, which was bringing this guy into the White House, his spokesperson, Joe Covello, who of course is like central casting perfect for trump look at this double-breasted suit and the mayor of matt president asked him to come back with some big ideas how we can build things together here in new york city and that's what he did today mayor took him up on this offer and went to dc today to pitch him about a possible project in new york city that could deliver one of the biggest federal investments in housing for the past 50 years boom so i don't know just everything about it is a master class.

15:42Saagar Enjeti:Like, bring a guy in that you know Trump is going to fall in love with. Incredible stuff. Yeah.

15:49Ryan Grim:Well, we know Joe. Joe's been on a lot of different campaigns and, you know, is I'm sure going to be a great spokesperson for Zoran as well.

15:56Krystal Ball:He left Graham Plattner's campaign to join Zoran, actually. I don't think that suit would have fit on an oyster boat. He's on his Fetterman redemption tour.

16:08Ryan Grim:Yeah. Well, I mean, in fairness, many did not see where that was going, myself included. So, yeah, a lot of us need to be on that redemption tour. I'd say Graham Plattner and Zoran Mamdani are a pretty good way to reclaim your cred there.

16:23Krystal Ball:Yeah.

16:25Zohran Mamdani:In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby.

16:47Saagar Enjeti:Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

16:49Zohran Mamdani:But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

17:35Zohran Mamdani:And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen.

18:23Zohran Mamdani:Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

18:31Saagar Enjeti:I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

18:37Zohran Mamdani:Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him.

18:45Saagar Enjeti:If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

18:48Zohran Mamdani:But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral.

19:03Saagar Enjeti:The dating contract.

19:05Zohran Mamdani:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:38Saagar Enjeti:All right, well, moving on, let's do some bad news now. So we've got Blockstock here, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is BlockAI, which is Jack from Twitter's company. Is that correct, Crystal?

19:52Ryan Grim:Yeah, Jack Dorsey.

19:53Saagar Enjeti:So Jack Dorsey cut 40 % of his workforce over the last 24 hours, and the stock is now shooting through the roof. Crystal, what does this mean? him?

20:10Ryan Grim:Well, not only did he cut 40 percent of his workforce all at once, but he put out a statement that said effectively, like, look, we saw the writing on the wall. These jobs are going to go. And so because of AI. And so we had a choice. We could either do this sort of dribbling them out over a longer time frame or we could just do it all in one fell swoop. And he talks about, you know, we're going to give them 20 weeks plus one week per year of tenure of their salaries so they have time to adjust, blah, blah, blah. But basically, we just decided to do the one fell swoop approach and cut 40 % of our labor force.

20:45Ryan Grim:And then, you know, predictably, but it's still noteworthy, the, you know, like the stock market loves when you lay off workers. So for other companies that are looking at, you know, how to approach the AI era, it sends a pretty strong signal that if you're mass doing mass layoffs, your stock price is going to be pretty significantly rewarded. Now, I will say I'm not an expert or analyst. I really know nothing about this company, okay, except what I was reading on Twitter yesterday. But I saw some people who were saying like, yeah, well, what's really going on here is that he overhired during COVID and now he's using AI as an excuse to get rid of, you know, the excess labor force that he really didn't mean.

21:27Ryan Grim:Now, he directly disputed that and said, no, that's not what's going on. Look at, you know, our productivity levels and how much bang we're getting for the buck of all of our workers, blah, blah, blah. But in a sense, I think it's kind of irrelevant because the point here is really the market signal. The story that is out now is when you do these mass layoffs, it will create a massive reward. And then the other piece of this is there is just simply no doubt. And I know there are still people that are in denial about this, but there is just simply no doubt that with the advent of Claude Code and Claude Cowork and where AI is today, there is going to be significant disruption.

22:04Ryan Grim:How quick, what fields, you know, what's the uptake in terms of it takes large organizations a while to figure out how they can do this. Do people do mass layoffs or do they just let people, you know, naturally move on to other jobs and they just don't rehire? That's still all kind of an open question, but that's why this particular move is really significant because this puts some, you know, pushes some chips to the side of companies are just going to start doing mass layoffs and this could accelerate really, really quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

22:38Krystal Ball:And this is not a small company, right? This is Square and like, this is, this is not, these are not just like Jack Dorsey's like side hobbies. Like this is a major company. It was 10 ,000 employees. Yeah. It's huge for, especially for a tech company. Um, so yeah, this is, I just, just, yeah, completely agree with Crystal. Um, and, uh, I think, yeah, the left in particular is going to need to come up with serious solutions to this crisis that are going to require going beyond. Like the baseline has to be some obvious things like Medicare for all. Like that's an easy one. Like it's even easier as you're heading into, you know, mass unemployment.

23:23Krystal Ball:Like everybody needs health care. Like, OK, so that that's an easy one. Green jobs. Easy one. So there's some left-wing ideas that easily kind of translate into this era. But then there's going to need to be a lot of creative thinking, too, about what can you do in a moment of possibilities that is opened up by a rupture of this degree. Like if you do have mass unemployment coupled with like mass fear about where things are headed coupled with rage at billionaires, like what can you offer to those people that isn't dystopian mass surveillance and like incarceration?

24:08Ryan Grim:And a police state. And a miseration. Which is the direction we're headed.

24:11Krystal Ball:Because that's the other thing that will be on offer.

24:13Ryan Grim:So the offer currently, as best I can tell from this administration, is the, you know, the mass surveillance and police state and, you know, the$1.5 trillion defense budget. Like that's the we'll keep everybody in line using guns and surveillance. Right. And then the other thing is this sort of like lotto casino economy where we don't have the American dream is dead. Like no one believes anymore. Can just work hard and get ahead, especially not with AI. So instead, we're going to hold out to you, dangle in front of you the possibility that maybe, as the example I've used before, maybe you'll get cast as the grass in Bad Bunny's halftime show and know who the singer is going to be and be able to cash in on Polymarket.

24:56Ryan Grim:Maybe your parlay is going to hit this time. Like maybe, maybe you just you really know a lot about basketball and you're going to be able to work that out. And that's how you're going to be able to succeed.

25:07Krystal Ball:And so it's a coin you pick like is going to blow up and you get out before the rug. That's right.

25:12Ryan Grim:You're going to pick the right meme, you know, shit coin. And you're going to be one of the lucky few that makes it big before the rug. So that's really the thing that is being offered. And of course, we all know that, and most people, I think, intellectually know that those things overall are deeply, they're extremely predatory, you know, and the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people are going to be net losers in a big way with all of those things. But that's the new the new American dream that is being offered by this administration is like, you know, just a roll of the dice, right?

25:51Ryan Grim:A pull of the slot machine, some hope and a prayer and a wish and a dream and a fantasy that your crypto coin is going to hit. Your parlay is going to hit. You're going to stumble upon some side of some sort of insider information. because, you know, there was a world, I guess, more in the Bannonite lane where you could imagine them creating some sort of social safety net that at least applies to like their quote unquote heritage Americans, but they're not even bothering to do that. So it's even I mean, it's you know, it's it's deeply dystopian what is on offer there. So it shouldn't be hard for the left to come up with a different deal.

26:25Ryan Grim:Like, OK, we're ripping up the social contract. Let's do it. But let's come up with something where people are going to actually benefit, where we're going to have control. human control, like democratic, small d democratic control over this technology so that it's not deployed just for the benefit of a few capitalists, but it's going to be deployed for the benefit of, you know, of human beings, which is not the direction we're headed in right now. But it's going to require a lot, a lot of big thinking, you know, going back to this mass layoff. Maybe this is like an kind of a horrible thing to say, but we were talking, we've talked before about how you need some sort of a shocking event to wake people up and to get them to take this stuff seriously.

27:04Ryan Grim:And in a sense, I'm actually more afraid of the other scenario that Jack laid out of like, I could have done it slowly over time, but I kind of thought it was better to rip the bandaid off. Because if you have a displacement that is large, but still in the scale of things we've lived through historically, there is going to be a lot less political incentive to act. There's going to be a lot more storytelling about like, oh, well, you know, the professionals who were really skilled made it. So just work a little harder, just like college degree a little harder. Just get in your grind set and you'll be fine.

27:36Ryan Grim:Whereas if we have something that is truly, you know, unprecedented or approaching unprecedented or cataclysmic where, you know, the jobs are shedding and there can't be any story around why it's your fault you lost your job. That's when we're much more likely to get actual political action and some sort of coalition together. I mean, I really like I hope you guys know I hate talking that way, but I think that's the riskier situation is actually where you end up in the same place, but it's a slow drip. And so there's no one moment where people are really galvanized to to come together and make, you know, a new social contract, which is what we need.

28:12Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, we're all accelerationist now, I guess. well sort of it's a different kind of it because yeah the old the old accelerationism never

28:25Krystal Ball:stipulated that without it you could have human extinction like that's a significant difference like the old accelerationism was like you know the the contradictions embedded within the system are going to lead to some sort of revolution eventually so we might as well just accelerate it and do it now.

28:43Ryan Grim:Speed up the timeline.

28:44Krystal Ball:Speed up the timeline. The new one is saying, if we don't do something, we might like these AIs might nuke the planet. And that's it. So we need to stop. So it's not accelerationism because you're not trying to bring the future forward. You're trying to stave off a potential future. Deviationism in a different kind of deviationism.

29:08Saagar Enjeti:Pump the brakes-ism

29:11Krystal Ball:for sure. But it can't just be pump the brakes. You have to actually detour also, like you're off the road that we're on. Yeah.

29:21Ryan Grim:But for now, I do think the most important work is just how can we slow things down? How can we resist the data center? How can we slow things down? Because this administration is not going to do anything. I mean, we can there's probably a good transition to the the anthropic fight with the Pentagon, which we've been covering because I think it's so important and so significant. You have the stakes here are anthropic, which Model Claude is used extensively by the Pentagon. They have a$200 million contract. And they believe, their belief is that it's really important to work with the U.S. government because it's much better for a democratic country to achieve AGI or superintelligence first.

30:01Ryan Grim:So they're all in on like the war, AI war against China. They're perfectly happy to like work with Palantir and get this Pentagon contract. OK, so these are not like, you know, super hippy dippy, like whatever. But they had two red lines. One of them is we don't want our tech used for mass surveillance of Americans. And number two, we don't want it used for autonomous killer robots, like no autonomous death machines. And the Pentagon said, absolutely not. And if you don't comply, we are going to either use the Defense Production Act to deem your technology essential and just take it. or we're going to deem it a supply chain risk.

30:40Ryan Grim:And as Dario has pointed out, like these two things are directly contradictory. But anyway, put that aside, a supply chain risk, we're going to cancel your contract and we're going to make it so all of our other contractors cannot use your product, which would be a massive economic hit because of course every large company works with the Pentagon effectively. So today is the deadline. And yesterday, Dario put out a statement saying that, you know, no, we're not going to comply. Like this, they tried to, the Pentagon tried to say, well, we won't use it for any unlawful purposes. And Anthropic said, well, that's really not good enough because technically, like the law has not caught up to reflect the constitutional rights that Americans actually have.

31:25Ryan Grim:And on the Fourth Amendment, it's, you know, the Claris Cut where it's like, yeah, technically it's not illegal for you to use and collect all of this information that exists and use AI to collate it, but it clearly is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So you just saying that you're not technically going to violate the law with it is really not good enough. So no, we refuse. And, you know, and that's kind of where we are. I just saw an update this morning from Sam Altman is saying we're going to see if there's a deal with the Department of War that allows our models to be deployed in classified environments that fits with our principles.

32:01Ryan Grim:So Altman trying to get in there, we'd ask for the contract to cover any use except those which are unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons. I don't know how they're thinking they're going to draw the line in a different place than Anthropic did. But Sam Altman trying to get in on this. Elon, of course, already was like, oh, I have no principles. Don't worry. I'll do whatever you want. Sign me up. But my understanding is that, you know, Claude has already been implemented in a lot of these, in all these classified systems. And Claude is the most effective, like it's the best product for what they want to accomplish.

32:35Ryan Grim:So it's not so simple to just like flip the switch from, you know, Claude to Grok or, you know, Chagipiti or whatever. So it will be messy for them to untangle. So that means Anthropic has a little bit of leverage here. But the quote that I saw from some senior military official quoted by Axios was like, yeah, it's going to be messy. And because of that, we are going to make them pay for doing this.

33:00Krystal Ball:And so the Hegseth had threatened the Defense Production Act, which Trump has shown a willingness to use. He just used the DPA, which is a law that allows the government to force a private company to produce something if it's in national security interests of the country. He just did it for Roundup, bizarrely. He told Monsanto, which owned by Bayer, You need to make more Roundup. And we need more phosphorus. Phosphorus is an issue that the U.S. has. Roundup? Anyway.

33:33Ryan Grim:We need more cancer. That's what we need.

33:35Krystal Ball:We need more cancer. So they threatened that they would use the Defense Production Act to require Claude to work with the Pentagon. That would lead to an interesting court case where you would then have to litigate whether the Pentagon's demand is legal. Like if and if and if their claim that this thing will kill people without due process and will surveil people in violation of the Fourth Amendment is true, then it's hard to see how you can compel the government can then legally compel anybody to break the Constitution.

34:07Ryan Grim:Well, it is. I do want to underscore what I was saying before, the contradiction between these two different paths that they've laid out, either the Defense Production Act or deeming it a supply chain risk. So it looks like they're going in the direction of supply chain risk, I think, probably precisely for the reasons that you lay out, Ryan, that it would be legally tenuous and they'd have a pretty good case at getting that locked. And, you know, the courts are very even up to the Supreme Court, as we saw with tariffs, like they're very pro-business. So I think I think Anthropic could have a pretty good shot at winning that case.

34:41Ryan Grim:But if you do the Defense Production Act, what you're arguing is that they're essential to national security. If you do the supply chain risk, you're arguing they're a detriment. They're a risk to national security. So the fact that those are the two paths that they're choosing from, it's like it's either essential or it's terrible. And it looks like they're going to go in the direction of saying that it's this is terrible for national security. But I mean, we'll see. They may taco, right? They may, especially as we're on the cusp of war with Iran, as it appears, you're going to be changing out the system that you, you know, really rely on at this point and are comfortable with, etc.

35:18Ryan Grim:There's a lot going on militarily. Is that really, you know, something you want to deal with right now? You really want to bring XAI and their total lack of scruples in to fill the, you know, to fill the void there? So we'll see how this all plays out. But I think it's a fairly credible threat that they'll, you know, that they will decide to wage a kind of like both government and ideological rhetorical war against Anthropic and say this is like the woke liberal AI and we should none of us should have anything to do with it. And it's the woke mind virus and it's going to destroy civilization, et cetera, et cetera.

35:53Saagar Enjeti:How much do you think this is like brand preservation by Anthropic that like Anthropic sees the Trump administration, sees people like Pete Hegseth and is like, oh, like I don't want like the Anthropic like brand slapped over a drone swarm that attacks Springfield, Ohio or something like that. Like, do you think that there's some of that where they're like, well, let Grok be the ones that do like the first bad AI incident that kills a bunch of people? Like, because you look at this administration, how lawless they are and how they kind of have gone a million different directions. And it's like, oh, yeah, we easily see how like in the next year we could have the anthropic terminator, you know, I don't know, blowing up all the boats in the Caribbean or what have you.

36:38Saagar Enjeti:I don't know.

36:39Ryan Grim:I think it's pretty. Go ahead, Ryan.

36:41Krystal Ball:No, just that ethics and safety are central to Anthropik's brand. They also just recently dropped their safety, you know, one of their key safety lines that they've been walking around with for a very long time. So, yeah, I think in some ways it could be too much to do that and then follow it up with, okay, fine, we'll do these autonomous drone swarms and mass surveillance for the Pentagon. But I think some of it is, I don't know, real. Like if you read Dario's writing, he's a complicated guy, obviously, and you've got to read everything with a grain of salt. But like, he's been consistent on these questions.

37:20Krystal Ball:Yeah. So you have to credit that consistency with something.

37:25Ryan Grim:I think it's pretty hard to make a case that this decision, bianthropic, is just purely like a capitalist maximizing play. Because the timelines we're talking about now with achieving, I mean, many people, myself included, I'm persuaded that we've already achieved artificial general intelligence. And people keep like moving the goalposts and not really admit that. But I think we're already there. And the next milestone is superintelligence, which will be equally kind of like difficult to draw a line of like, we've made it. But, you know, these timelines for when these things are being achieved are extremely quick.

38:04Ryan Grim:You know, we're talking about like, I'm hoping that we don't get there before the next presidential election because we need time, as we were discussing before, to develop a policy framework from the left and be able to really meet the moment. And that's not going to be that's going to be a very significant task. So, you know, you're looking at three more years of this administration, and this is a critical moment. And if you're having a fight with the U.S. federal government and have your contracts stripped and, you know, who knows what other ways they're going to screw with you and not approve whatever you need approved and block this or that merger that you're trying to do, etc.

38:41Ryan Grim:cetera, it's going to make the task of Anthropic coming out on top in that AI race more difficult. And that's ultimately all of their, you know, that's all of their goals. And Anthropic, their view is like, we need to be there first because we are the only ones that have any, you know, any principles whatsoever. And frankly, at this point, I think that's actually kind of fair that they are correct about that. And so, you know, so I have no doubt that if the Pentagon follows through on their threats, and I believe that they could, that this will be damaging to Anthropic in terms of winning that ultimate AI race.

39:20Ryan Grim:And like I said, because of the time frame, you know, it's, they all see it as very zero sum, like whoever makes it is going to be the model. And, you know, if you were just interested in my model is going to be the one to proliferate, You wouldn't care about any of the safety concerns, even the like really dire ones you lay out, Griffin, of like the drone swarm attacking some American town or whatever. Being the one that gets there first is all that matters in terms of ending up on top as the dominant model.

39:54Saagar Enjeti:Well, that's optimistic. I like it.

39:59Zohran Mamdani:In 2023, a story gripped the U.K., evoking horror and disbelief. who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was.

40:42Zohran Mamdani:No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives.

41:26Zohran Mamdani:And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

42:05Saagar Enjeti:I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

42:11Zohran Mamdani:Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him.

42:19Saagar Enjeti:If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

42:22Zohran Mamdani:But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral.

42:37Saagar Enjeti:The dating contract.

42:39Zohran Mamdani:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

43:12Saagar Enjeti:We don't need to spend a lot of time on this story, but I think just a tag for this conversation that is, I think, thematic. U.S. military uses laser to take down border protection drone, lawmakers say, and FAA closes airspace near El Paso, Texas. It's happening again. These lasers in El Paso. So, yeah. More of that in the future?

43:35Krystal Ball:It's a reverse this time. Last time it was DHS just goofing around with their toys. This time it may have been DHS goofing around with some drone toys and not telling the military that they were doing it. And so the military seems to have very little patience for DHS. And I think and considers them to be amateurs and hacks.

43:57Ryan Grim:Really? Like, why would they where would they get that?

44:00Krystal Ball:I don't know where they would get that. Yeah. They've always been judgy. Oh, my God.

44:06Ryan Grim:The idea that we gave the Border Patrol these freaking like laser weapons and whatever else they have in their arsenal is utterly terrifying. Utterly terrifying. I mean, look at these guys. Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know, guys. I don't know how any of us are going to make it through this regime because these people are evil and buffoons. Like the combination, I didn't, you know, it's not the movie combination you get. And Griffin, you could probably speak to this. Usually like the evil types are like masterminds, you know, they're geniuses. I've had to really, you know, struggle to anticipate and understand the evil idiot, not the evil genius mind, the like evil idiot mind.

44:48Ryan Grim:What does that one look like? What is that one going to bring us?

44:50Krystal Ball:Much more Coen Brothers DHS than anything else.

44:55Saagar Enjeti:Yes. Yeah, it's Fargo, USA here. Well, on that note, what do you got?

45:02Krystal Ball:Real quick, Pakistan and Afghanistan are at war. People can read more about that in our newsletter or elsewhere and go find the details. But yeah, border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan led to Pakistan then launching bombing raids on Kabul and Kandahar. Against the Taliban, right? Against the Taliban. Amid some false claims that the Supreme Leader, seemed to be false claims that the Supreme Leader in Afghanistan had been killed. There's videos going around of the Taliban kind of sacking some Pakistani bases. Because I think on the ground, the Pakistani military is not much of a match for the Taliban.

45:45Krystal Ball:But Taliban has no air force because I don't think we left the keys behind in those planes.

45:50Ryan Grim:haven't figured out how to how why are those bad boys no they need tom cruise apparently

45:55Krystal Ball:no right tom cruise and top gun 2 he just finds an old jet and just hops in it and they so they need somebody like that who can figure out how to fly those without that the pakistan's pakistan uh air force has been been striking afghanistan i saw some conspiracy theories that this was from that this was like that the u.s instructed them to do this to like to weaken the Taliban so that when Iran regime change happens, that things will be calmer on the Iran-Afghanistan border. I don't see any reason to credit any of that. I feel like this has its own logic going on to it. But anyway, just letting people know that happened.

46:38Ryan Grim:Maybe we didn't exactly discourage it. Maybe it's one of those, right?

46:42Krystal Ball:Well, Trump, this could be his, what, 15th war that he could stop? Yeah. If he hurries up and stops it.

46:47Ryan Grim:I lost count after a certain point.

46:49Krystal Ball:Yeah, you do. You do. So much peace.

46:54Saagar Enjeti:Well, you can check out that story at Dropsite News this morning, I'm guessing. It'll be in our newsletter, yeah. Awesome. Well, we've got probably one more story to fit in the first half here. What do we want to do? Do we want to do Paramount? Do we want to do, Ryan, that story you've been working on?

47:10Krystal Ball:Let's do Cat also. You want to do this one real quick?

47:12Ryan Grim:Yeah. Let's do Cat. Yeah.

47:13Saagar Enjeti:What's going on with Cat? So we... Get your explicit reporting. So Kat is running for Congress in Illinois, correct?

47:20Ryan Grim:Chicago area.

47:22Saagar Enjeti:Chicago area.

47:23Krystal Ball:She just had a debate. Kat Abu Ghazala, Palestinian-American, running as kind of the most left-wing candidate against Daniel Biss, who was the mayor of Evanston. And kind of like an Elizabeth Warren-type liberal.

47:39Ryan Grim:Yeah. Proclusive for sure, but not exactly like Bernie Wayne.

47:43Krystal Ball:Right. And then Laura Fine, who is getting all of the APAC support. So it's kind of like a three-way race between them. The latest poll I saw had Biss up by like six, seven points with Kat in second, and then both of them beating Laura Fine, which is remarkable because Fine had the poll position here. but it seems like the APAC money is actually dragging her down. It's this Evanston area. It's a very well-educated district. And so once it got out that she was secretly backed by APAC, it seems like all of that money is as much of a handicap as it is helping her. But so Kat may actually win this race now.

48:33Krystal Ball:And so we went to her campaign. We went to her for comment about what we're going to talk about now. I haven't heard back, told her she's welcome to come on the show to talk about this as well. She has a, and let me put this up on the screen. It turns out her national security advisor is quite the hawk. And so his name is Ben Murmel. And he is a, so he's the guy that does her foreign policy and national security. So there's an email going around in activist circles that has gotten to me in which one of the kind of Washington-based organizations reaches out and says, hey, Kat's doing well. Like, can we get some clarification on what we've seen on her website, which seems to be some unusually hawkish positions?

49:30Krystal Ball:We see on there that she seems kind of more hawkish than Trump on Taiwan, more hawkish than Trump on Ukraine, but she's great on Palestine. So what's going on here? And so they got back, and I agreed to conceal the person's name so that not this person, but that somebody would leak the email to me. Because it's getting a lot of attention kind of in the background, but it's something that the public should know about too. um so here so i'll roll through these these you don't even need the questions but you can pause this and read them if you want because the answers are are fulsome and uh they they they kind of incorporate the question uh one he talks about his role um here so number four

50:17Saagar Enjeti:so this is about china and taiwan you weren't supposed to scroll that far down ryan you're supposed to get tired of reading by that point.

50:26Krystal Ball:So he asked about China because they said, look, on the website, it looks like kind of concerning language on the website. Are you sure? Is this really what Kat believes when it comes to Taiwan? And so the quote here, if elected, Kat would strongly push for amending the Taiwan Relations Act to include language, dropping our strategic ambiguity towards defending the island from a Chinese invasion. Strategic ambiguity is actually precisely kind of what AOC was mocked for presenting when she was kind of babbling and kind of searching for an answer. Like that is literally the current American strategy towards Taiwan is to just babble and not answer so that China doesn't know like what we will actually do.

51:08Krystal Ball:And so what Kat is saying here through her advisor is that that doesn't work anymore, that we need to say that we're going to hit him. So as of now, China knows that Trump won't send the Seventh Fleet or any other Indo-Paccom assets to defend Taiwan in the event of an all-out assault. We owe it to Taiwan and democracy to demonstrate that America will do everything possible to counter wars of aggression with force. Extremely hawkish position from Kat there. On Palestine, strong statement. The genocide in Gaza is a disgusting failure. you know you've heard her talk a lot about the genocide in in gaza and so nothing here would surprise you but then she but then he adds on her behalf that does not mean that our historical impulse to use military force first is correct it hardly ever is and often causes untold damage there are a wide range of options available to both the executive and congress precluding kinetic force from sanctions to NGO support, all of which are likely to produce results when applied correctly.

52:20Krystal Ball:Kat is firmly an interventionist. The world is better off when America takes a leading role in it, but that role must be ethical and lawful and it must place human rights first. So that, you know, so we don't want to necessarily do war, but we do want sanctions. We do want to fund NGOs that do these like protests and, you know, support our favored folks inside these different countries and quote firmly an interventionist. So I don't think that's what people would necessarily have expected from from what from how people understand her when it comes to Palestine. And then on Russia, Ukraine, if elected, let's get to the good stuff.

53:03Krystal Ball:If elected, Kat will hold the line. Russia cannot be allowed to eke out a win in Ukraine and Kat stands firmly against any attempt by the Trump administration to sell out our European allies to Putin's imperialism Kat fully supports funding the Ukrainian war effort to the hilt until the Russian forces are degraded to the point where a mere restoration of pre-war borders is possible or any other outcome preferable to the Ukrainian government she strongly supports the forward deployment of air, naval, and ground assets to the NATO front line, as well as the positioning of dual-use missile and drone interception systems.

53:42Krystal Ball:So ground assets, are we talking about American ground assets? Well, hopefully we can get some clarity from her on that. We must additionally surge MIM-104 pageant, and this sounds like Ben Murmel here is kind of like a bit of a military geek, So he goes deep into the like weapon systems that he wants to see placed on the border. The Chinese are closely watching our actions in Ukraine. And the outcome of this conflict will determine the nature of their attempt to seize Taiwan, possibly preventing it altogether. If Ukraine can pull off a diplomatic win, we owe it to those that gave their lives.

54:23Krystal Ball:Aggression throughout our history and people seeking freedom everywhere to not cower in fear. Kat will be that voice on the Hill and she won't stop until Russia is made to pay for its crimes. So I don't know what, like, what do you, is that what you would have expected from Chandran?

54:42Ryan Grim:Not at all. Not firmly an interventionist. It's like, whoa. And so, I mean, I guess my question is, you know, it's like I have a lot of, I guess, sort of charity towards new congressional candidates. having myself been a congressional kid in the past and knowing where I was coming from is just being like, you know, kind of a regular person who just wanted to serve the country. I mean, granted, Kat has been in the political space for a long time. Right. But foreign policy outside of she's, you know, placed planted her flag very effectively in Palestine. It's not like that's what she's known for.

55:15Right.

55:15Ryan Grim:So, you know, I would be open to the idea that, like, she kind of just she kind of outsourced this to Ben and hasn't really fully thought it through, in which case there's a lot of opportunity to say, you know, this is not, this is how we end up in the Iraq war, right? This is how we end up bombing Libya. This is how we end up with failed states and doing all these like color revolutions. And this is effectively the type of foreign policy we've had for decades going back into the Cold War. And, you know, if you want to do something different, this is not what it looks like. So I am, you know, I'm anxious to hear from her directly on this because this is very, very surprising to me.

55:54Ryan Grim:that this is the type of language that is being used here.

55:57Krystal Ball:There's also one other weird element here. This guy, Ben, according to this GW article, he was at this, he's quoted at a pro-Israel rally

56:15where he's, and I can maybe put this on Twitter,

56:20Krystal Ball:but let me find this. What's his quote here? It's like, what are you doing at the pro-Israel? So Ben Mermel, here it is. Actually, I'll just, here, let me put it up. Ben Mermel, a graduate student in the School of Public Affairs, attended the pro-Israel rally alongside Harris Mowbray, who graduated from the School of International Service in 2002, referring to the nearby encampment. There's a lot of points that they're making over there that I also agree with. I think they've done a bad job policing the anti-Semitism that sometimes rears its head within that movement. And I think that's turned quite a lot of people off.

56:53Krystal Ball:This comment aside, like during the genocide in Gaza, he there was a encampment at GW and Ben went to the her advisor, went to the pro-Israel rally that protested the encampment. So that's why maybe more to your point that she may have just outsourced this to this guy. And he's like, well, and that's getting up on the website and it's getting out to groups as official kind of campaign stuff. So she's responsible for it. But right.

57:27Ryan Grim:If you don't have a really formed foreign policy view, the people you surround yourself with become really important. You know, if you like have a fully formed view and maybe you want someone who has a different ideological orientation to kind of push you and, you know, be the person in the room and says, well, have you thought about this? That's kind of a different deal. But if you're coming in somewhat unformed and you're bringing in this person who is very hawkish and, you know, just a couple of years ago was going to pro-Israel protests, then you're, you know, that's obviously what's going to be reflecting your campaign.

58:05That's going to really help shape and mold your own thinking, you know, as you're kind of coming into this fresh.

58:13Ryan Grim:Yeah, I mean, people have talked about like with AOC, Matt Duss is advising her. And you can see that right in her language and her approach and the things she was saying at the Munich conference as well. And I think foreign policy has always been an area from I remember when, you know, AOC first got elected and she got that question about Israel-Palestine. And she was very like she knew there were things, landmines here, but she didn't know exactly where they were. And she kind of had just like a general instinct of like, I want peace and Palestinians should have rights, but I don't know exactly what to say about this.

58:45Ryan Grim:That's kind of where she was. And I think she's always been much more comfortable on domestic policy than she has been on foreign policy. And so it reminds me a bit of that with Kat. Although, again, I mean, Kat has been a political, you know, she's been a political actor, not a candidate, but a political actor for a long time. So anyway, those are some of my sort of like thoughts and reflections of just, you know, reacting to this in real time. But there's, I am definitely surprised to see what is in this, you know, campaign communication that purports to speak for her and her views.

59:19Krystal Ball:yeah and so also like yeah no the offer offer stands like we reached out to catches and

59:26Ryan Grim:welcome welcome to come on we'll oh yeah absolutely hear her hear her perspective at length on this

59:30Saagar Enjeti:i also think that there is a definite lack of like okay for the taiwan one it's kind of hashtag random like for what we're doing there uh but for the ukraine one i think there is actually like a vacuum of leftist perspective on the Ukraine war. Like, like, like, I don't think that there's like a lot of strong national figures on the left that are talking about how many people are dying every month there that are talking about the average age of the Ukrainian soldier that are talking about how the front lines haven't moved in years, or that we would have to actually deploy ground troops in the start of World War Three to win back this landmine strewn land.

1:00:12Saagar Enjeti:So because there There has not been, even on shows that I like that are pretty leftist. You know, I don't think the majority report talks a lot about that stuff. That's probably one of the biggest leftist shows, probably a show that can't watch us. So I think there has been like that vacuum on the Ukraine thing. But this is still pretty unacceptable. You have to like find like good people to surround you. But, you know, I do like that she's been good on ice. She's been good on Palestine and she's been good on TV, which is important. You know, she goes on these CNN panels and she's awesome. She's like a great fighter.

1:00:45Saagar Enjeti:She's like clearly someone we need. So I'm willing to like say maybe she picked the wrong guy. But if these are her views, this is kind of a classic example of like progressivism being too broad a term and like being like, oh, you can fit all sorts of stuff. You can be a, you know, you can be a, we need to sack Vladimir Putin progressive, or you can be a non-interventionist progressive. And it's such a broad term that it becomes kind of useless. And I think people that are on the more hardcore left should probably depart from the term. But yeah, so Kat, please come on the show.

1:01:18Ryan Grim:I think the Ukraine point is an interesting one to dig into a little bit more. You know, early on in the Ukraine war, I remember there was a group of progressives who tried to put out some letter. I don't remember. It was like, Ryan, you probably remember better. It was like calling for a ceasefire or negotiations or diplomacy or something. It was I remember it being very tame. Right. It was very like peace is good. You know, like that was basically the vibe. And they faced so much backlash for penning this letter. And it worked. Like after that, everyone just kept their mouth shut. And they're like, I guess we're just going to do this war forever and kind of like slowly feed in weapons and, you know, create some sort of like miserable, deadly, destructive status quo.

1:02:02Ryan Grim:And here we are. And, you know, I mean, I understand I understand why Ukraine is a difficult position for progressives, because there are competing principles at stake here. Right. Russia was the aggressor. It is an illegal war. You know, Ukraine is like are the underdogs like it's it's not right. What has been done? I would say what are, you know, screwing around with Ukraine and using this as a proxy war is also not right. And then, of course, the competing principle there is that people are dying. This war has no end in sight. And even though any resolution right now, it's not going to be a just resolution.

1:02:40Ryan Grim:There's just no doubt about that. It's going to be a very ugly and difficult pill to swallow. But meanwhile, people are dying and the more time goes on, the worse the solution is likely to get for Ukraine. So I understand why that is a difficult issue for progressives to just kind of like take a hard stand on. And because you do have these competing principles at play. But, you know, by and large, at this point with both parties and with the Trump administration, I mean, he barely mentioned Ukraine at all in a state of the union. And it's just become another one of these intractable conflicts where it is easy for every political actor to just pretend like it's not happening and allow a horrifying, grinding, deadly status quo and dangerous, by the way, status quo to persist.

1:03:31Ryan Grim:You know, I mean, it reminds in a sense of Afghanistan where it was like everyone knows this a mess. We don't even know why we're there anymore. Like, what are we even doing? And yet it just it creates a logic of its own because politically it's easier just to put it on the back burner and push it out of the news than to actually bring it to what ended up being a rather ugly conclusion from which Joe Biden himself like that's when his approval rating falls off and he never recovers. So that's kind of where we are with the Ukraine war, which is really an across the board, you know, Republican, Democrat, progressive, moderate, everybody issue at this point where it's like no one really wants to focus on it or talk about it because it's easier not to.

1:04:10Yeah.

1:04:11Krystal Ball:And history nerds can fact check me, but this has lasted longer than World War One now. Like four years. This is, and with, frankly, no end in sight, other than the complete demographic collapse of Ukraine, coupled with a genuine demographic hit to Russia, that will resonate and ring out for generations. It's insane. Yeah.

1:04:37Saagar Enjeti:All right. Sorry, did I cut you off, Ryan? No. No. Okay. Just buttering with rage. All right. But Kat, we'd love to talk to you about that. We'd love to keep talking more about the Ukraine war, because I do think it's a topic that fell by the wayside. And it's tough because I think everyone kind of has just shrugged it off as never ending. But yeah, that's going to do it for this first half. We got a lot of topics in the second half. We wanted to talk about some horrible ICE video that's been unearthed by a reporter of a blind gentleman that then passed away after being left out in the cold. We've got some stuff on the SAVE Act that we wanted to get to with Trump.

1:05:21Saagar Enjeti:And then now some China election interference claims about the 2020 election. and of course our friends over at Paramount have won the day and looks like they will be the ones to purchase Warner Brothers. So we're going to get all that some more. And if we do have time this

1:05:41Krystal Ball:plumber from the Green Party Hannah the Plumber just won this massive election that could be like a dagger in the heart of the Labor Party that might make Keir Starmer literally the last Labor Prime Minister in in world history, like ever again in the UK.

1:05:59Ryan Grim:Wow. Wow. Okay.

1:06:02Saagar Enjeti:Let's find time for that. I want to know more. No, we're doing that first, Ryan. All right, let's get to the plumber right now. See you all there at breakingpoints.com.

1:06:11Zohran Mamdani:Hi, it's Joe Interstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023.

1:06:56Zohran Mamdani:But what if we didn't get the whole story?

1:06:58Saagar Enjeti:I've just been made to fit.

1:07:00Krystal Ball:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed.

1:07:02Zohran Mamdani:What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07:16Saagar Enjeti:I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

1:07:22Zohran Mamdani:But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him.

1:07:25Saagar Enjeti:If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

1:07:27Zohran Mamdani:That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral.

1:07:37Saagar Enjeti:The dating contract.

1:07:39Zohran Mamdani:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

1:07:42Saagar Enjeti:This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

1:07:44Zohran Mamdani:I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.