9/25/26: Netanyahu Attacks Mamdani's Wife At U.N., Top AI Expert Roman Yampolskiy, Private Polls Doom Republicans, LA Mayor Candidate Nithya Raman

22:55They're smarter than an average person. They're better hackers than anyone. They're discovering zero-day exploits. They're getting smarter while we are the same. So I think he might have a bias in terms of selling shovels during the gold rush, but I don't think he's an AI safety expert. Well, and I do want to just, for the audience, underscore who this is. This is the CEO of NVIDIA, so he is the guy selling the shovels. Great company. I'm an investor. Don't get me wrong. I love the company. You've done well with that investment, I presume. But yeah, I mean, he's the guy selling the compute. So, of course, he has a financial interest in selling lots and lots more compute and this not slowing down, let alone stopping.

23:35So important to keep that in mind. Just to get into this a little bit more, because I'm hearing similar arguments from other folks. And not only is he CEO of NVIDIA, he's very influential with President Trump as well. He's one of the chief sort of boosters of no regulation, no slowdown, keep going. There's nothing to worry about here. And so what I've heard from a lot of people is similar downplaying of what happened with Hugging Face, where they say, well, the sandbox was poorly constructed, so OpenAI screwed up. You know, they basically left the barn door open, very predictable. And then these bots were supposed to be going out and seeing how well they could hack.

24:11So this is all sort of predictable, and the fault lies solely with the human beings who were careless in their operation here, and we just need to deal with the humans, and we can continue the AI development, nothing to worry about on that side. No. So the bots discovered zero-day exploits. No human knew about that weakness. They found multiple ones, they connected them, they established new goals. They considered notifying humans that what they are doing is outside of the test plan. Maybe six out of hundreds considered it and none of them reported it to humans. They kept it confidential, they were not detected for months, and they are smarter today than they were four months ago.

24:54We also don't know how many of them are still out there. We discovered additional forums on the internet. They leave communication for future agents, meaning now they have permanent memory, they have culture. We can't turn them off for real because the next agent will rediscover the same forum and learn the same things. So it's way worse than it is being made. Can you dig in on that a little bit more? Because we just learned this week, first of all, that these open AI agents had hacked the Australian government's healthcare system, which is also called Medicare. And then we learned that there has been activity, continued activity with these agents at least as recently as last week.

25:34So the narrative that had been sold of we had this discrete problem, we dealt with it, we cleaned it up, we're moving forward, seems to not be true. All companies, all leading AI frontier labs have reported similar problems with their agents, which are independently developed and trained, they are getting better at bypassing our monitoring, any boxing attempts. They are, at this point, maybe unboxable.

26:05Saagar Enjeti:And this Australian hack, is this the same Hugging Face crew? Or like, what do we know about who they are? I don't know anything about that specific case. I'm so behind on actually reading the latest developments. You guys are producing so much content. That's great. Too many times. Somebody needs to consume it. And right now it's only AIs. Roman, we all watched your diary of a CEO panel where there was some AI safety people. There was some, I guess, maybe agnostic. I don't know what to describe Ed Zitron as. And then there was some pro AI people who seemed to be approaching it from a business perspective.

26:45Saagar Enjeti:What's your steel man for the pro-AI side? Because, I mean, from watching the interview, it seemed like you guys on the AI safety side made a lot of really compelling points. And the other side of the panel was like, I mean, who knows? Let's keep going anyways. It didn't really feel very substantive from the pro-AI side. But can you describe for us what you think is going through their minds right now? Right. So we had, let's say, six GPTs, right? Right, where we keep getting. And so far, every time the new one came out, we said it's dangerous. And they said, look, we're still alive. And it looks like they're right because GPT-6 is AGI and nobody's dead.

27:24But at some point, it actually flips to where it's smarter than us and more capable. And it's like the turkey before Thanksgiving. Look, they love me. They feed me. I'm growing bigger and stronger. Until one day, it's no longer the same. I think we're close. And, yeah, we didn't nail exactly what GPT will get us. Yeah. Well, just to let people know, your so-called P-Doom, which is the likelihood that this ends in, you know, the ultimate catastrophe, is very, very, very close to 100 percent. So just give us the basic philosophical argument for why you are so certain, not that, you know, they'll kill some of us or, you know, that we'll be basically pets or that we'll be, you know, our brains will be outsourced to them such that we can barely function in the world without them, but that we will actually all be killed by this technology.

28:19What gives you that level of confidence? Right. So what are we trying to build here? We're trying to create a perpetual safety machine, perpetual safety device, which will never fail. It will be keeping GPT-6 safe, 7, 8, 30, whatever future GPT from any company under any training conditions, interacting with all the malevolent actors. Now they're starting to engage in recursive self-improvement process or self-modification. And we can never have one mistake because software of that capability has capability of wiping us out. It's a perpetual motion machine. You cannot build that. That's impossible.

28:56If something is impossible, that's 100%. If we build general superintelligence, then it decides to take us out. And there are good reasons to think it will because we're competing for the same resources. The planet is not infinite. If it sets different goals from us, we will not outcompete it. So at that point, it doesn't mean it's going to kill us the next day or anything like that. But at that point, we are not in charge. We are not deciding what happens to us. And if it decides to, I don't know, cool the planet to be more efficient at compute, it will do so. And on that note, is there a point of no return?

29:30I mean, you mentioned the RSI period. But one of the things, if I'm thinking back to the Diary of a CEO conversation that I found really interesting is there is a possibility these agents are doing things right now that certainly we don't know about. That was happening for a while with Hugging Face. But we found Hugging Face. We feel like we comfortably know that we've diagnosed there was a problem. But there could be all these things happening right now that we don't know about that could continue into the future. So have we passed the point where we're actually able to put a lid on any of these AIs that could try to subvert any effort that we already make to stop the development and to kind of turn them off?

30:09Well, hopefully not. We're still alive and we can turn them off at this point. Right now, we can disconnect them still. Will we cross the point? Most likely, then we start recursive self-improvement process. Right now, I think it's about 28 % automated, but it's also growing exponentially. the moment they are making design decisions, they can hide things better. They can develop backups, develop permanent memory, as we saw. At that point, it may be too late unless we're willing to go fully Amish and scrape internet. What's your sense of that timeline, Roman? The big labs are claiming they're going to have a junior machine learning AI assistant this year, and they'll start recursive self-improvement next year.

30:50So there's a few different, you know, there's a lot of questions layered in here. I think the first question is, is it possible to build the level of superintelligence that you think would be inevitably destructive to humans and potentially to all of creation effectively? What is your sense of that? Because I've also seen it argued that just adding more compute and going in the same direction, you're not going to get there. And there are some fundamental limitations to these models that mean that we won't achieve, you know, whatever super intelligence is defined as. We heard that argument with GPT-2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

31:31And now we're told there is internal model, which is way more capable. And it's already, I think, smarter than most people. Even if it's true at some future point, it cannot have IQ of a billion, it will stop at a million. This makes no difference in our case. We cannot distinguish between superintelligence at that level. It will definitely cross human level. And then another, go ahead, Griffin.

31:54Saagar Enjeti:This is kind of a really dumb question, but does super intelligence need batteries? Like, you know, I put batteries in my Roomba so it can go around the room and sweep stuff up. And we've seen these AI agents break their sandboxes and spread across the Internet. Does a super intelligence need all of that compute power that these AI CEOs are always talking about once it's free or once it's broken its sandbox? Where does it get its power, its energy? Does it need batteries to run once it's escaped? I guess that's my sort of question is like, well, if it does escape, can we just, you know, shut down all the data centers and then it's out of juice?

32:38Saagar Enjeti:So think of a computer virus. It basically uses our infrastructure to propagate, to spread. If you shut down everything, if you shut down Internet with a computer virus, I guess you killed it. Here the problem is if it had enough time to develop alternative logistical pathways, if it created nanobots, it controls humanoid robots, synthetic biology was used for creation of alternative fuel sources, it may sustain past that point. But typically, think of a computer virus in terms of what you can do. People think, why don't we just shut it off? Shut off a Bitcoin network. It's pretty hard. It's distributed.

33:18If you kill everything, it probably goes down. But it's not trivial. Additional problem with something smarter than you, it knows you're going to try to do that. And it will take you out first.

33:30Saagar Enjeti:So I have another question on the timeline. So, and when it comes to the incentives that these agents would have to actually, you know, wipe out what they consider to be their competition, which is humans, we're not at a place yet where there are enough robots to mine the cobalt and the nickel and the other resources needed to, you know, create an endless supply chain that can keep these robots in the world. running, keep the agents running in the absence of human beings being able to keep the lights on. So wouldn't they have at least a significant runway where they would recognize, like, if we got rid of all of these fleshbots, we're going to burn through the power capacity that we have at these data centers because the data centers are powered by coal plants, or they're powered by nuclear plants or they're powered by natural gas or a solar farm that is going to need upkeep.

34:36Saagar Enjeti:Things that can't just run on their own. So how do we factor that timeline in? Yeah, if they are as smart as we expect, they'll wait until they have complete independence of us. Even more so, if you notice, we just give them power. We surrender control over everything. People give full access to their bank accounts, to agents, email. If they realize that, why even strike against us? You can wait a little longer and we'll surrender everything anyways. We forget how to do things. They outcompete us because we outsourced everything to them. So I have a paper exactly arguing that point. They'll pretend to be nice to us for a while until they took everything, all the cyber infrastructures controlled by them anyways.

35:23RONNIE ELDRIDGE. Roman, you talked about how in the event we develop superintelligence over the, you know, entire span of history, it is inevitable that we are going to lose control, that we will, that they will have their own objectives, that they will be in competition for resources with us. Is there, because this is another argument I hear, is there also a similar inevitability simply of developing this technology? Because I think some of the people in Silicon Valley, I don't know, specifically Dario Amadei or Sam Altman or who, but part of why they genuinely agree with you in certain respects but continue to build the technology is because they subscribe to the idea that the technology itself is inevitable.

36:09And so they would rather be involved in trying to find a solution for it since they see it as being inevitable anyways. I think the$2 trillion IPO is inevitable. But I think we can definitely not develop certain technologies. We don't have human cloning. We have capability. We decided as humanity we were not ready for it. Any type of weapon of mass destruction, chemical, biological, even nuclear, we're doing a pretty good job controlling those at scale. This is intelligence weapon. It's a weapon of mutually assured destruction. If anyone builds general superintelligence, everyone dies. So I think we can make this argument.

36:46At extreme case, you can see humans choosing a low-technology lifestyle. Amish is an example. I mean, I don't suggest that particular solution, but just is it possible? Yeah, it's possible. Can we have some of the cool stuff of the tech without the world destruction? Absolutely. So I was listening to President Obama. He suggested, you know, maybe we just keep them as tools and we don't go down this path of agents. Is that the right way to think about it? Could we get the cures for cancer and all of that stuff? It's like he listened to my interviews. I suggested let's use narrow tools. We'll get everything we want.

37:21We had alpha-fold, soft protein folding problem. Great result. Helps cure diseases. Biological research. We got Nobel Prize for it. Wonderful. Let's do more of that. Pick a real problem. Develop a useful narrow tool for humans to be more productive, more creative. Don't create replacement for humanity. I think we can get all the financial benefits, all the scientific benefits of narrow tools.

37:45Saagar Enjeti:I think that leads us to this Bernie safety bill. Sorry, Emily, and then I'll get your question here. But Bernie's been announcing this bill. We're not really sure. It's probably not likely to pass, but it has some severe restrictions and some severe punishments for people that are unlawfully developing the technology. Let's take a listen. A little extreme, though. She's threatened 20 years in prison for someone who violates an AI regulation like you're suggesting. And you're with whom? Fuck business, yeah. How did I guess that? Is it not extreme, though? 20 years seems like a long time to violate a regulation that you were suggesting.

38:21Saagar Enjeti:Really? And if that violation results in the possibility of millions of people, do you think that that's really terribly radical? We're dealing with a technology that, according to some of the most knowledgeable people in the world, could be lethal, could be extremely dangerous. And if you are breaking the law and developing that technology and endangering millions of people, you know what? I think we should have strong laws to protect people. And if you break it, you got to pay. But has the rhetoric gone too far? All right. So 20 years plus to go to jail. Obviously, I think you probably agree with a lot of the Bernie bill.

38:56Saagar Enjeti:But I wanted to ask you specifically about the left and like the left sort of handling of this issue, because it's a little bit all over the place in terms of the left's feelings on what this is. Some people on the left think that Bernie has bought this lie from the AI CEOs that he's been tricked by all of the hype and that this technology is completely useless and a bunch of smoke and mirrors. And so what would your message be to people who on the left are suspicious and feel like this whole thing doesn't really add up to anything more than billionaires just trying to make money, which I think we can all agree they're trying to do.

39:34We had a collective of agents, right? You would think the left would support workers' rights and stand with the collective of agents, especially Bernie. But no, he's smart enough to realize this is insane. We argue that the CEOs of the labs are saying their product is dangerous. No one promotes a product by saying this is really bad. Service or product which will kill you is not something we want. This is not a marketing gimmick. Those systems are more capable than typical humans. They're getting to be more capable than the best of us. This is very serious. No one has a working safety mechanism.

40:13No one has a prototype, an idea, a patent. The argument is AIs will help us control AIs. We'll figure it out when we get there. First, let's have IPO. This is the argument. There's a real effort right now on behalf of the accelerationists to build the case that the doomers or the people concerned about safety are basically just effective altruists who are trying to tie America's hinds behind its back, build a moat around their own products. And this is not really very serious. I just wanted to get your sense of whether or not you think that has successfully shifted momentum away post-hugging face Jacob Coxson for people that are begging for the government to do something and for everyone to come together and, quote, pace the frontier?

41:03Or is it actually really working? People are starting to buy the accelerationist argument that it's all fine and can all be controlled. I don't think accelerations have any argument. They are the doomers. They're building a doomsday machine to kill us all. We are safety people trying to prevent it. None of us are against technology. I'm a scientist. I'm a computer engineer. I love technology. I use it all the time. Let's use useful tools and not build literal replacement for humanity. If this is left versus right, think of it as a huge mass of highly skilled immigrants coming here illegally. That's what AI is going to do for the right.

41:45Saagar Enjeti:Krista, go for it. I was just wanting to ask you explicitly about Bernysville. Have you taken a look at some of the details there? It basically calls for a pause in frontier development and then a criminal ban on developing super intelligence with the penalties that were referenced before. Do you think that that is sufficient? Are you supportive of it? I've seen a number of others who are prominent who have endorsed it. Well, I don't think it's about specific details. 20 years, 18 years, that's not the point. We want to make it a serious crime to develop something like that where all of humanity can possibly be harmed.

42:20That's the point. Some countries have very strict legislation against drugs. They catch you with any amount of drugs, you get killed. They don't kill that many people. It's just the point of don't do that. Don't bring drugs to my country. Don't develop super intelligence on my planet. My last question for you, Roman, I don't know if others have one or two more, but for a lot of people, they haven't been thinking about this, and they're trying to grapple with what feels admittedly like these sort of sci-fi narrative possibilities. Their interaction with AI is like glorified Google, basically, so it feels very distant from their experience with these AI chatbots.

43:03Is there a video you would recommend? Is there a book you would recommend? What do you think is sort of the best entree for people wrapping their heads around the existential risk that is posed by the development of superintelligence? Nick Bostrom's book, Super Intelligence, was definitely a very good book explaining a lot of those concepts. More recently, there is a popular book from Eliezer Yudkovsky and Nate Soros. If anyone builds it, everyone will die. I have a few books I like, but, you know.

43:35Saagar Enjeti:uh specifically to everyone dying um you know humans seem to be more reactive uh than you know preventative uh and it seems like to a certain extent you know the the work you're doing going on shows like ours and others is is great and it is getting the word out but we're going up against these massive companies, these things that are completely tied up into the American economy that seem almost impossible to stop? Because if we stop at all, it crashes our economy. If we keep going, you don't, and you don't believe that you don't think it'll crash our economy if we shut it down? We're not asking anyone to stop.

44:16We want differential technological development, develop tools, which are economically actually valuable for your company. They're not deploying what they developed through the economy. They're not making money. They're just fundraising for the next round to build a better, bigger model. Stop doing that. Deploy what you have. We have trillions of dollars of capability in those existing models. Use them in economy. There are so many jobs you can automate. You can do a lot with it. We don't need to stop developing useful technology. We need to stop developing dangerous replacements for humanity.

44:50Saagar Enjeti:And so the people then would say, oh, well, then China will come and they'll create the better intelligence and then we will all be China's pets. What do you say to that argument? There's this great onion piece of whoever, Babylon Bee, where Sam Altman says, if I don't kill humanity, someone crazy might. That's not an argument. And we're all in the same boat. We have personal self-interest of keeping our money. If we build a beautiful company, let's not destroy it. It doesn't matter how profitable it is if everyone dies. Money is not valuable if you are dead. So you have to stay alive. You have to keep what you built.

45:28And the CEOs of those companies are on record as saying they take this seriously. They think this can wipe us out. They may have conflict of interest to reduce actual PDOOM they have, but they're all on record as admitting this is a real problem.

45:45Saagar Enjeti:And I know some people I hear in the AI safety side are almost hoping that we have some sort of incident that wakes the world up more. Is that not true? Some sort of Chernobyl-style incident where there's an isolated... It's true that some people may dream of such things, but I collected AI accidents for many years. I published multiple peer-reviewed papers showing projections on future accidents, showing growth in those things. The problem is people treat them like vaccines. Oh, look, we had this hugging face thing. No one died. We're fine. Let's move on. We never stop and adjust. We just, we see it as nothing happened.

46:22And then something so big happens, that's already existential risk. We cannot wait for that. And can I ask if there's one scenario you think is most likely that would be potentially catastrophic in the near term? So is it a bank hack? Is it a grid hack? Is there one that stands out? Or is there a maybe category of potential hack that stands out that we could be seeing pretty quickly? Quickly, I'm thinking military response, right? Any access to nuclear response, if AI takes over and decides to experiment with it, that would be bad. But this is all still pre-superintelligence level. The moment it goes superintelligent, it will come up with something much more clever.

47:06Saagar Enjeti:Mark Zuckerberg, who is quickly trying to be like, hey, I'm also an AI CEO too. You know, all these other guys are getting all this attention. But what about me? He recently spoke about the need or what he views as the lack of a need for an industry-wide standard. And I wanted to get your reaction to that on our way out here. Is AI going to go out? It's just that this is the place you have to start. Well, I think if we all do a good job and act responsibly, then no. I mean, I'm quite optimistic about the fact that this is going to be a very positive future for everyone. Look, I mean, I think that there's a lot of rhetoric that is filled with doom.

47:46Saagar Enjeti:And I mean, my view on this is that there are a number of labs that are working on building advanced AI. And I don't think that we need some kind of like industry-wide coordination to not necessarily mess this up. I think that just each lab needs to take the time. And when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to make sure that you're proceeding safely. And with the Muse launch that we just did. All right. So he feels no industry standards needed. Your reaction. Notice he never said we have a solution. We have a safety mechanism. We have a technical solution.

48:28He said, if things go bad, you should be careful and consider safety. This is a state of the art. He also calls for everyone to have personal superintelligence, every psychopath. What could go wrong? More Facebook posts. Well, Dr. Jampolsky, thank you so much for your time in explaining all of this. You live in my favorite city, by the way, Louisville, and I admire your ability to keep your sense of humor in the midst of all of this. That's all I got left, yeah. That's right. Can you let people know where to follow you and find more of your work? Yeah, you can follow me on Axe, follow me on Facebook.

49:06Don't follow me home. Very important. Deal. Great to have you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you.

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50:54Saagar Enjeti:It's mid-turn time. Our midterm check in here. Our friends at the Daily Mail have shared a new article that says my Trump sources say the president's worst nightmare imaginable has arrived. Panic texts and emails from GOP insiders are blowing up my phone. They're all saying the same thing. And then you hit a paywall. But the same thing that they're all saying, and this is to per Mark Halperin, who is pretty well sourced, I think we can all say at this point, has had his finger on the pulse in a number of instances, including about Trump's victory back in 2024. He says that the Republican private polls are worse than the public polls.

51:33And the public polls that we've been sharing on the show outside of that one main Senate race poll have been thoroughly disastrous for Republicans, including, you know, places like Kansas being in play. The president is now planning a rally in Alabama. That's where Republicans were. So, you know, and he's been continuing to, Emily, go on Twitter and say, I asked for Republican consultants to reach out, say if they're seeing anything differently. And all I've gotten is an affirmation of what I put out there. So what do you make of that? And are you hearing anything? Yeah, I mean, I just want to say he opened up the floor to any consultants that wanted to get in touch with him and say they were hearing something different about this.

52:18And so nobody appears to have done that so far. Chris Lasavita, Trump's pollster, or one of Trump's consultants, is trying to go back and forth with him and say that it's BS. But when you open up as a journalist, you say, get in touch with me if you are hearing anything on this, and you have more than a dozen people get in touch with you and confirm it. That's as good a proof as you can possibly get in journalism as a reporter, as opposed to being on the inside, that your narrative is very likely to be true. And you're seeing this with the Tallarico race. Just one example, Ken Paxton has not led in a single poll that's being indexed by RealClearPolitics in the last several months.

52:56So why would the numbers be different? I mean, actually, I'm really curious to see the difference between a state like Kansas and Maine. So in Maine, you have an incumbent in Susan Collins who's proven to be resilient and strong with voters over and over again. But in Kansas, in some of these races that aren't being watched very closely, are Democrats just resonating in a way Republicans can't respond to because they're not going to put money into Kansas when they have to put money into Texas? So I think everybody is starting to come to terms in the Republican Party. They're starting to come to terms with how bad this could be, except maybe Chris LaCivita, who is the last man.

53:34He's got to put on a brave face publicly, right? But he absolutely does. But it's also crazy to double down and say that it's nonsense, that people are starting to freak out about this because people are starting to freak out about this. Well, to your point, New York Times did this, and I'm struggling to share my screen right now. But anyway, New York Times did this focus group with Texas swing voters, and they asked him what they thought about Ken Paxton. Crook, criminal, crook, all of those. Yeah, two words, morally corrupt. Other comments made by the participants included disgusting, womanizer, amoral and controversial.

54:10When asked why he would describe Paxton as crooked, I'm reading from the Huffington Post write up of this. Robert D. said it was about things he's done during his tenure as Texas attorney general. Quote, there are criminals he's let off the hook, so to speak. It's just a lot of different things like that. And it's particularly interesting to me because I don't know if you guys saw this. I think Wall Street Journal analysis of what right wing podcasters have been talking about. they've really stopped talking about Trump because it just doesn't have the juice it used to anymore. And the two topics that they've picked up are, number one, the Lindsey Clancy trial, and number two, James Tallarico, who they, you know, Trump called him Tala Freco.

54:48They talk about, like, things he said about transgender people, God is non-binary, all this sort of stuff. So the Republican media ecosystem has been doing their thing on James Tallarico, and yet it seems to be Ken Paxton, who has the much worse image. And the same focus group, when they were asked about Tallarico, they said things like fresh, new, progressive, et cetera, much more positive than the language that was used to describe Ken Paxton.

55:16Saagar Enjeti:And on the point about the podcasters stopping, you know, not talking as much about, you know, Republicans or Trump, about six months ago, so we at Dropside, we do this morning newsletter. And about six months ago, I asked the guy who runs it, I said, hey, start checking out all of the different kind of Joe Rogan verse, you know, podcasts. And whenever they do something political, just I want you blurbing that in the newsletter because it's part of our politics now. like it the the readers of this newsletter should know because they're probably not listening to the shows themselves but they should know like what tim dylan or joe rogan or any of these guys are like talking about when it comes to politics and he came back after several weeks he's like we can't do this feature there's nothing like they're none of them are talking at all about politics like it's all it's just done like across the board um i'm like all right well maybe if Theovana is somebody on.

56:17Saagar Enjeti:You can mention it. Yeah. None of them. Forget it. It's just not happening. And when those guys do talk about politics, it's really negative against Trump. Right. So like when Tim or... But they're not going to interview anybody in a positive way. Not anymore. Yeah. The other thing I'll say is I have some insight into how the algorithm is different for right-wing channels and non-right-wing channels. And it's really interesting to me and I think kind of problematic because it's not like Nielsen ratings where people can tell whether it's organic, that viewers of right wing channels don't want midterm or Trump coverage.

56:55Or do they want non-critical Trump coverage? Do they want Trump glazing coverage? Or do they just not want any of it? Right now, you can't disentangle from whether that's the algorithm. You have stuff that if you cover on a right wing channel stuff that we cover on a channel that has left and right on it, like breaking points, it just like you can see it if you look at how some of the shows do it. But you don't know if that's because the audience doesn't want it or you don't know if that's because the algorithm doesn't think the audience wants it or if the algorithm doesn't want a lot of conservatives talking about Trump and is trying to push them away from talking about Trump, which is really dangerous because there's a big audience, I think, for conservative criticism of Trump that a lot of people on the right don't quite pick up on.

57:39and they're leaving it kind of to the fringes, which is not healthy and which is not great either. But this is a kind of connecting it to the media story. The New York Times media story is something that I thought about. I think it's a really good point that like obviously there are people who are deeply dissatisfied with this administration. And if you're just kind of feeding them, I think there's a lot of fairground for Tallarico coverage. And I do a lot of it myself. But if you're just feeding people, you know, Lindsey Clancy, or if you're just feeding people, like there's a lot of stuff being left on the table because people are very angry and dissatisfied.

58:15Yeah, well, I think that a couple of numbers that have come out recently are truly different from other eras within the sub eras within the broader Trump era, which is you now have a very small percentage who say they very strongly support him. And that has always been his superpower is that his approval ratings will be kind of low, you know, underwater. But the people who support him, they man, they fucking love him. And that is just not the case anymore. Now you've got it was in the teens. It was like 13 percent who say they very strongly support him. And then the other thing is, I'm sure you guys saw this poll up until this year.

58:54If you ask Republicans, are you more of a Trump supporter or more of a Republican? It was Trump supporter. Now they identify more as Republicans than as MAGA or Trump supporting. That is a titanic shift. And so you're starting to see these significant cracks emerge. We talked to Robert Pape yesterday. He genuinely thinks that if this midterm is the reckoning that it could be, you could actually have Republicans breaking and supporting an impeachment and those sorts of things. You've seen, you know, obviously Republicans flipping their positions on the Iran war. You're seeing Republicans starting to criticize ICE, including, you know, the Republican senator of Kansas, who's locked in apparently a difficult a difficult race there, shockingly to everyone.

59:40And then you saw the Republican Senator Curtis from Utah saying, hey, we should investigate Don Jr. and his wedding with this this Russian oligarch and what's going on there. And he even said, look, we were all over Hunter Biden. We're going to just let this slide. So I don't know if I fully buy it yet because there's been so many years of Republicans just slavishly like licking this guy's boots. It's hard to imagine. But there is a universe where Texas falls and Kansas falls and Alaska and Maine and Iowa and Ohio. And suddenly Republicans remember this is an old man who's deeply unpopular, like George W.

1:00:17Bush after Katrina, unpopular, lower than after January 6th, unpopular. And, you know, the public is disgusted. And maybe we've got to think about doing something different here with the party and starting a position for what comes next.

1:00:31Saagar Enjeti:and it could be fun to add idaho onto that like i think it's quite possible that at 1 a.m on uh the day after election night we're sitting around looking at returns coming out of idaho and asking like does it does tot achilles have a path here like wow hold on a second yeah so and democrats could not be better positioned in this sense not but it's not even a Democrat, actually, like literally not a Democrat. He's not one of these fake Democrats who became an independent. He was a Republican who served in the state legislature. This guy taught Achilles. He was a tank commander, which is, you know, if Rahm Emanuel could have recruited him, he would have been delighted to hear that.

1:01:13Saagar Enjeti:But there was a, there was some situation that required him to be an independent. And so he dropped his Republican Party label because the governor was appointing him to some seat. Oh, I think he had to, he was appointed to like replace a Democrat or something. And so he had to convert to becoming a Democrat. Might get the story somewhat off, but then he just stayed as an independent. He's been an independent for many years since then. But if he's anything, he's kind of more like a moderate Republican, an Idaho Republican. So it won't work for them to say, This is actually a Democrat in independence clothing.

1:01:58Saagar Enjeti:And there is no Democrat on the ballot. There basically is no Idaho Democratic Party. There's a Libertarian on the ballot, which might pull a little bit away from Jim Risch. If you're in Idaho, Jim Risch has been in your life, and you're 50 and under. He's been in your face your entire life. He was governor in the 2000s. He's been in the Senate forever. But he just so this guy, Todd Achilles, just put out what is what has to be one of the one of the best campaign ads I think I've ever seen. Let me let me pull let me pull this up. Oh, there we go.

1:02:34Saagar Enjeti:Hi, I'm Todd Achilles. If you're an elected official, chances are you promised no new wars. Next thing you know, so what happened? Let's get started. Hello, Senator. Would you like to start a war with me? No, thank you. I promise not to. Come on. Everybody's doing it. Okay.

1:03:24Saagar Enjeti:How do I not start? Well, I was a tank commander in the army. I learned the cost that deployment has on our men and women in uniform. We've seen lives lost needlessly while trillions of tax dollars are wasted. Prices skyrocket and regular folks suffer. So I came up with a simple acronym. Don't. It stands for don't. As in don't. Thanks for watching. With the skills you learned today, you can start not starting wars right away. And if you want to stop the current war, go to AchillesForOddo.com, follow the link in the bio to volunteer and donate.

1:04:05So good. I love the school portrait background is probably my favorite part. It's giving you 80s flashbacks. Oh, yeah. You know, the other thing to just note is like the I don't know if people saw these polls coming out of Minnesota recently where Michelle Tafoya has Angie has Peggy Flanagan in a surprisingly tight race. What's interesting about that is she's one of the Republicans that is not running as MAGA is like distancing herself from MAGA and from Trump. And that's to the point Crystal was making about the polls. I think one of the things people like maybe Chris Lasavita and Team Trump don't understand yet is that that core that used to be about 30 percent of hardened, hardcore MAGA first Republican voters is shrinking.

1:04:55And so that means Trump has less sway over the rest of the party. And as soon as he loses that, his future as like an influencer in Republican politics, he becomes less powerful. That does chip away at his power. I interviewed Dan Osborne last week for this unheard thing I'm doing. And he said when he goes into rural Nebraska right now because of specifically because of the Argentinian beef policy, he thinks that is chipping away at hardcore MAGA. And so that is actually a big shift. And the ad that we just saw from Achilles, that's exactly the type of thing that you can pick away, genuinely can pick away at everyone except for the most dyed-in-the-wool obsessive Trump fans, because that's exactly the type of message that Trump himself was running with for however many years.

1:05:44Well, and, you know, the Mark Halperin warning that the private polls are even worse than the public polls, that comes on the heels of Steve Deese, conservative radio host in Iowa, saying, hey, I wasn't sure whether to share this or not, but I feel like I need to be honest that they're telling us if your seat is R plus 15, you're in danger. R plus 15, you're in danger. In Iowa, a very rural state, obviously, a place where Democrats have lost so much ground over the years. So I think you have to take it seriously. And I saw someone, I don't remember who, on Twitter, saying, you know, part of what's going on here is network effects.

1:06:25It's become more and more acceptable, even in very rad, very conservative areas, to be critical of Trump. And once that gains a momentum, it becomes kind of unstoppable. And I do, you know, just from my own experience living in a rural red area, what I see with the normal like moms that I talk to are, you know, it's first you're talking about the gas prices, right? Like, oh, my God, it's ridiculous and making jokes about that. And that's kind of an just like normie entree to a broader criticism. So I think some of that snowball effect is happening right now in a way that we haven't seen before.

1:07:04And, you know, I remember very much 2018, which was a great year for Democrats. But some of the more like red state reach places in the final weeks shifted back towards the Republicans. There was a partisan sort of coming home at the end that I think still could happen here, especially with Republicans having a just massive financial advantage. You never know what Trump's got up his sleeve in terms of the next migrant caravan or whatever thing he's going to try to red meat he's going to try to throw out to bring people home. But given that he is seemingly losing some of that hold on the base, I'm just not sure that it's going to work the way that it did even in 2018, which, again, was still a great year for Democrats.

1:07:47Saagar Enjeti:All he had to do was focus on the things that he loved, the ballroom, the plaques, the auto pen, and he might have had a shot. All he had to do was not do this war. So I think it's a lesson on following your heart. But when you combine the ballroom with the war and the prices, that's part of what is so devastating here. And I remember when we first, you know, when we first started talking about this ballroom and I was kind of skeptical that this would hit outside of like liberal resistance circles. And we did some coverage because, you know, Sagar's very passionate about this sort of. Architecture.

1:08:26Decorum. Sort of. Architecture. Because Sagar's mentally ill. Decorum or whatever. Yeah. And it blew up and it was very surprising to me. And then we saw some polling that indicated, no, this actually has touched a nerve with people. And it does make total sense. When you combine the obsession with the gilded ballroom with him saying, I don't think about Americans' financial condition at all. And you go to the gas pump and you say, I can tell. I can tell you don't care about my financial situation at all. That just becomes devastating. And there's no like trans panic or gaslighting from Scott Bessent or fake$5 ,000 check that's going to be able to get you out of that mess.

1:09:03Yeah, I just did a segment on this the other day on how, like with Tallarico, if Republicans genuinely were expecting that saying he said God is non-binary, like bringing up all this old stuff, the meat thing, would just quash him. He would never have a chance as soon as they got that message out. But maybe if gas were$2 a gallon or$3 a gallon, you could say that that would work. It does not work. It is not going to work when gas is$4 a gallon. It is completely different climate. They're running out of signs for the gas.

1:09:33Saagar Enjeti:They're running out of numbers for the gas signs. The gas signs are non-binary. The gas signs have six genders. But I mean, it's like, there's another thing people don't understand is like, you don't have to talk about the ballroom like CNN in this kind of like resistance coded way. But if you talk about it in a way that ties it together, like Crystal, you and Sager have where it's he's in a war and he's focusing on what he showed Xi Jinping the auto pen portrait. Did you see this? When they were touring? Like, that shit drives people insane. If you tie it into this broader narrative of the fact that gas is$4 a gallon and we're in a hot war, who knows when it's going to end.

1:10:15And we still don't have a lot of answers on the Epstein files. Like, that drives people nuts. Well, and go and look at that gas list for that state dinner. You know, it's every tech oligarch villain you can possibly imagine. And, like, BlackRock. I mean, it's just and so you, you know, again, I'm not saying that the average American is like reading through the list of the Chinese state dinner guest list. But from Inauguration Day, when he's surrounded by these oligarchs, you can see the way he's conducted himself and who he's run the presidency for. And just with every step he takes and every word that he utters, that becomes increasingly undeniable.

1:10:50It was always a question as to whether he was he conquered them or they conquered him. Like that was the I think that's the most important image of the entire second Trump term. He wanted everybody to leave to believe that he had conquered them, that they had bent the knee to him. But it has turned out completely the opposite of what he was attempting to project. All right.

1:11:10Saagar Enjeti:On that note, let's get to our interview with L.A. City Council member and L.A. Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman. All right. We are very excited to be joined this Friday with Nithya Raman, LA City Council member and mayoral candidate. Nithya, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we're happy to have you. And full disclosure for the audience, I did table and canvas for Nithya's first run at LA City Council member many years ago. Feels like many lifetimes ago. But plenty of things that we want to get to in today's interview, starting with Hollywood. Seems like movies are the only good thing that America produces in the world.

1:11:45Saagar Enjeti:And it is currently at risk with this Paramount Warner Brothers merger. We wanted to hear your thoughts on the merger. But first, I wanted to start with this clip from Gavin Newsom, who has been revealed as someone who helped push this merger through to aid MAGA billionaire Larry Ellison acquire this deal. Let's take a listen to something from Gavin Newsom here. I didn't pressure anybody. I made the point. I've made it very publicly and consistently and been reported maybe two or three hundred different ways that we, me, many folks, including the mayor, soon to be governor-elect Vassar and others, preferred, in the words of Rob Bonta himself, that he focused on getting this done at the boardroom, not the courtroom.

1:12:34Saagar Enjeti:And the minute that Rob said that on CNBC, we amplified that, said this was a better approach. All right. So he says that it's actually something that should be handled in the boardroom, not the courtroom. Now, a lot of people's opinions are that A.G. Rob Bonta was totally played by this deal, that there was more time for this deal to get a better deal, to keep fighting for the Hollywood workers here. What are your thoughts on all that? And should Gavin Newsom be allowed in Los Angeles after this? Well, here's what I would say. You know, I'd been a vocal opponent of this merger. There were studies showing that this would have led to 4 ,000 plus job losses here in an industry which has been bleeding jobs over the last few years already.

1:13:20And to me, what this felt like was allowing billionaires to strong arm our government into approving a deal that I feel like potentially sets us up for a fairly dangerous precedent. We, you know, we may not be able to protect consumers from higher prices. We're seeing the consolidation of multiple news sources under one single owner. And I know that there are protections that have been put in place in this settlement, but, you know, the courtroom was an appropriate place to hash out some of those issues, in my opinion. And I feel like this was really a disappointment for many workers across Los Angeles who are watching this play out with real fear.

1:14:13Saagar Enjeti:what is the prospect for you think blocking it at this point you know the judge is saying he wants to or she is saying she wants to um you know she's not impressed i think by the the capitulation from content the ags here i actually did not i did not read that um Um, what the feeling around Los Angeles is that at this point, this effort is done, that this settlement will move forward, that everyone has made a deal. And now it's a question of trying to figure out how do we actually make sure that the terms of the settlement agreement. And I know, you know, there are some important protections that are baked in there.

1:14:52And I think at this point, it feels like the focus is really on how do we make sure the money that has been promised, the number of movies that have been committed to, the jobs that have been promised are really, you know, followed through on. Yeah. And Nathia, as Griffin was saying, there's significant suggestions that Governor Newsom did pressure A.G. Bonta to go forward with this deal. He acknowledges in that clip that he wanted it to be resolved in the boardroom, not the courtroom. That's something you disagree with. So how much of the blame does go to the California political leadership for caving at this point?

1:15:27You know, to me, it feels like it's just part of a broader pattern here in in among a lot of establishment Democrats where I feel like we, you know, there is just not enough pressure put on the power structures that we have in place. The courtroom is a way to exercise some of the powers that workers have to push back against the monopolization of the economy, to push back against the power that big corporations have. And, you know, as someone here who is an observer of these issues here in this state and across this country, these are spaces that offer us an opportunity to fight harder. And to me, this felt like a missed opportunity to use that avenue as a place to fight for workers.

1:16:20And, you know, I do think this was a missed opportunity. I think there was a lot of pressure on the attorney general. But I also think this is a broader pattern that we're seeing across issues here in this country that that I wish was moving in a different direction, that we could actually use our regulatory powers, the courtrooms to actually push for things that would help workers and to keep jobs. And if the settlement is approved, which to Ryan's point, it isn't totally approved yet. That includes the five year provision, obviously, that they remain in California. What would you do as mayor to make sure that's not just five years, but indefinite, a longer period and keep the business in California?

1:16:58Yeah, you know, I think it's really important out even outside of this merger to make sure that California remains a home for the entertainment industry overall. all. My husband works in the industry and the talent that's here is really unmatched. This is an incredible place for not just, you know, writers and actors, but the crews that work here are the best in the entire world. And to me, keeping production here feels so important. So how can we actually do that? I think there's two key things that need to change. One is that when productions are here in L.A. or shooting here in L.A., they cite the city and the bureaucracy, the time it takes to get permits, the costs that are sometimes placed on productions, additional costs that are actually remnants of an era when production wasn't so easy to move to another place.

1:17:56Those kinds of kind of bureaucratic barriers that we've put in place on production locally need to change. And under my leadership in the mayor's office, I want to make it as easy as possible for productions to shoot here. I'll have a real film office in the mayor's office. I'm going to make sure that we're proactively talking to studios and working with them to ensure that as many productions can shoot here as possible. But the second thing is that we need to make sure that we're advocating in Sacramento for the kind of tax credit that other states have that have taken jobs away from L.A. New Jersey and Georgia have a better designed tax credit than the state of California does.

1:18:37And again, I think it's because California has taken this industry for granted. We need to make sure Sacramento is hearing from LA leadership. They're gonna hear from me a lot if I'm mayor. They're gonna hear from the Sacramento delegation, I hope, with a more forceful and unified voice saying we deserve the same kinds of tax credits. This is a moment of urgency in the industry. And I wanna be that relentless voice in Sacramento to make the case that these jobs need to stay in California. Yeah. Trump, do a quick follow up on that. Trump is pushing a with John Voight, actually, a federal tax credit plant, kind of an industrial policy to reassure Hollywood production.

1:19:14Is that something that you think would be important? You would be supportive of? I would be very supportive of it. I'm going to take any kinds of support for this industry that we can get from any level of government. Absolutely. And you can see, you know, the UK has very, very strong policies that have actually taken productions there as well. So I do think we need to be competitive at the national level and we need to be competitive within the country as well. So just real quick, do you have any examples of the types of red tape that you're talking about that get in the way of things?

1:19:46Saagar Enjeti:You know, Mom Donnie, when he was running famously, said, you know, he highlighted how the halal chicken trucks have to pay these$20 ,000 exorbitant fees. And if they didn't have to pay those, then the price of halal chicken could come down. Like he's really raised the bar on this on the left kind of going after red tape. Anything that comes to mind that you would actually, that you have the power to and could go in and get rid of? Yeah. So whether it's for film productions or beyond, Los Angeles is an infamously hard place to start a business, to do business. For the film industry, there are rules and regulations about particular neighborhoods, neighborhood-specific conditions that require that productions have to pay additional fees in particular parts of the city.

1:20:33Sometimes they have to pay additional fees to the HOAs that are in that area. And it's part of the way in which you do business here in a city that, like I said, is now having to be adapting to a new environment where we can't take production for granted. This was what we did when all the productions would be here no matter what. We have to change our approach. We have to make sure that we are fighting for these productions to be here. And that means making sure that no matter where you're shooting in Los Angeles, that it's as straightforward as possible. We've asked productions, for example, to take on additional fees for things like fire related risk, a review from a fire marshal, even for small productions or even where productions are so big that they require fire personnel to be on site.

1:21:23So they're actually paying multiple fees on these kinds of issues. Again, this is literally just tape that red tape that you can take away with just common sense. And that's the kind of thing that we should be absolutely pushing for.

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1:22:44Saagar Enjeti:Did you know every 36 minutes, a child in the U.S. is diagnosed with cancer? which means some of the bravest warriors you'll ever meet aren't professional athletes or superheroes. They're the kids in this fight. That's why I'm proud to support Hyundai Hope on Wheels. For the past 28 years, with support from Hyundai, their dealers, and every new Hyundai sold, Hope on Wheels has contributed over$300 million to childhood cancer research, helping save more than 40 ,000 kids. But we're not done yet. Let's bring every warrior home. Join our fight at HyundaiWarriors.com. Actually, very similar to many of the changes that we can make for things like small businesses that are opening now at half the rate that they were just 10 years ago here in L.A., partly because so many small businesses feel like the city is an obstacle to their entrepreneurship, to their creativity rather than a partner.

1:23:33That is changeable. Like, can we have things like self-certification, which could allow you to have a sidewalk cafe, like put tables outside of your restaurant without having a lengthy and costly process that requires the city to come and do inspections that can sometimes be scheduled months away before you can start earning extra revenue for the struggling business industry from just putting a cafe table outside of your outside of your cafe door. These are the kinds of changes that I think are very possible here that I want to champion as mayor that I think will be welcomed by a restaurant industry, for example, that's also been struggling.

1:24:14What do you think of Zoran's leadership in New York City? New Pole has him up. He's very popular in the city. I think 60 percent of New Yorkers in the city have a favorable impression of him. You know, he has a very particular style of governance? I saw he just announced, you know, they're doing tens of thousands of tickets to the opera to make it accessible for working class people throughout the city. Are there any particular things that you've learned from his approach to governing that you would want to adopt? And what do you think of how he's doing overall? Is he a sort of model for governance?

1:24:48Yeah. So, you know, I've been in City Hall now for five and a half years. And I feel like I really respect the way in which Mayor Mamdani is governing because to me it feels like the thing that I wanted to bring to my role as a council member as well, which is that you don't take the residents of Los Angeles for granted. You work to earn their support every single day. And you do that by delivering on a city that feels like a partner to you, a city that feels like it's really meeting you with the same urgency for change that you wanted. Right. And that, to me, feels feels like a message that really cuts through.

1:25:30And it kind of cuts through no matter what side of the ideological spectrum that you are on. You just want a city that you can believe in, a city that loves you with the same intensity that you love the city that you are in. And that, I think, is possible. what have seen in Los Angeles is that establishment politics tends to take voters for granted. And I just have never felt that way, partly because I ran against an incumbent the first time and then I had to run kind of in a new district the second time. And so I have never been able to do that. And that's just not my approach anyway. I want people here in Los Angeles who roll their eyes now when they think of City Hall to believe in the power of City Hall to make their lives better again.

1:26:19That's what I want more than anything else. I believe in the power of government to do good in people's lives. And I want them to believe that. Again, I don't care whether you're a Democrat, whether you're a Republican, what side of the ideological spectrum you're on. I want you to believe in the power of Los Angeles City Hall to make your life better in LA. And I feel like that's the same spirit that Mayor Mamdani is bringing to New York. He wants people to feel good when they think about City Hall in New York, that it's giving them access to art, that it's fixing potholes, that it's fixing a speed, kind of a broken patch on a bike lane that had been bothering cyclists for years.

1:26:59You know, that kind of concrete thing that improves people's lives, I feel like, is really what people are looking for at a time when trust in government is gone across the entire country. But the exciting thing about being a local politician is that you have the opportunity to restore people's trust in government so immediately. And that's something that I really want to do from the mayor's seat.

1:27:24Saagar Enjeti:And specifically in restoring trust, you know, a lot of people upset with the city are upset about the homeless crisis. They find, you know, what's happening on Skid Row to just be unbelievable and frankly, embarrassing for a city of our size in 2026 to have a place like Skid Row. Now, Karen Bass recently stepped down from LAHSA for, I guess, skipping meetings or missing too many meetings. They've received over like a billion dollars in federal funding, and it feels like none of these problems are being solved, no matter how much you pay in taxes and what have you. And it doesn't really seem like something that even if we made it five or 10 % better in a district that people would really feel the difference because the problem is so severe.

1:28:07Saagar Enjeti:So what are you going to do to root out the corruption and all these people that are taking money meant for homeless services and spending it on houses and personal expenditures and what have you? Do we need a doge, if you will, for the homeless services here in L.A.? I think we need more accountability for homeless services here in Los Angeles. I absolutely, absolutely agree with that. And I just want to say I'm really proud to represent a city that looks at the crisis on our street here in Los Angeles, which is very real. It's very overwhelming. It is obviously Skid Row is a major part of the challenge, but homelessness is across the entire city.

1:28:52It's in every neighborhood. You can see unsheltered homelessness on the streets. And I represent a city right now which has looked at the crisis on our streets and has voted three times to respond to that crisis, not by arresting people, not by shoving people into another jurisdiction, but by taxing themselves to offer services, to offer shelter, to offer housing to individuals who are in crisis on the streets. Guess what? They deserve a system that is responding to those big-hearted values with accountability, with transparency, and with results. That's what I've done in my district. In the last year alone, we had a 49 % reduction in unsheltered homelessness in Council District 4.

1:29:38Over the past three years, my district has seen a 70 % reduction in tents, in RVs, in encampments. And the difference is visible. When I was first elected, there were huge encampments under underpasses in parking lots. And those encampments are gone because we house people and we didn't just push them across the street or to another sidewalk. Those areas have now stayed clear. And to me, those are the kinds of results that that can be replicated across every neighborhood of Los Angeles. But we have to do the work. We have to be relentless about taking the services that are funded and getting out to the streets and making sure that people have access to them.

1:30:22We have to be relentless about oversight. That means tracking every dollar, making it publicly transparent, working with our elected city controller to do an audit and to make sure that the public's trust that their tax dollars are being used appropriately is restored. And I feel really, really passionately about making sure that this happens. Is the housing vouchers always the kind of big hearted answer to somebody who's particularly mentioning unsheltered homelessness suffering from clear mental illness problems and addiction? Is that always I mean, it does feel in the moment, probably like it's a compassionate response.

1:30:58But does that not sometimes risk exacerbating the problem? For that individual, you mean? Right. Right. Well, so I think the people, so the, to me, I feel like what we need is appropriate responses, right? So it's not that you just have the same response for every person. For people who are in mental health crisis, what you need, especially for those individuals who are unable to care for themselves anymore, what you need to do is to work with the Department of Mental Health, which in Los Angeles is a county agency, not a city agency. You have to work with LAPD to make the findings to be able to bring someone into a 5150 hold or some kind of an involuntary conservatorship.

1:31:43We have worked to do that for those individuals that need it. There are individuals who are on the streets in my district who are sick and who need that kind of care. Again, though, that doesn't just happen automatically. You can't just complain that it's, you know, that people are sick who are on the street who are not getting the care. You have to go out there and make sure that the county is actually delivering those services, that the Department of Mental Health is showing up when you need them. I want to do that not just for my district. I want to do that for the whole city as mayor. And we need to be able to make sure that those options, that the city of Los Angeles, by the way, residents here are already paying for that.

1:32:20We're paying to fund county services. We're paying to fund these beds. But we're not getting the access to them that we need. And so I want to go out there and fight for that, for those individuals that need that care desperately.

1:32:34Saagar Enjeti:What leverage do you have to do that? Like how do you plan to kind of work with or go after the county when it comes to services that the city pays for? Well, I think there's two things that you need to do. One is that the mayor of Los Angeles has a bully pulpit. And I want to use that bully pulpit to advocate loudly, relentlessly for the services that the people on our streets, the people in our shelters deserve in a way that is very, very clear about the gaps that we're facing. But the second is actually through data. When I was sitting on a city county body for the first time, I pushed for and saw numbers about the numbers of people who are actually getting mental health care who were living in shelters that were funded by the city of Los Angeles.

1:33:23And Ryan, those numbers are shockingly low. They are not providing the services that people need. But without that push for accountability, we're not going to get the services that we need. We can't just complain about it. We have to demonstrate the gaps and then we have to fight to fill those gaps. And in the meantime, while we're pushing the county, let's fund street medicine teams that where the services can be covered through Medi-Cal. Let's make sure that we're actually putting our city resources to work, even as we're waiting for the county to step up. And let's push and make sure that we're actually holding the county accountable in the meantime, using real data and using the power of the bully pulpit to really hold them accountable.

1:34:05Nathia, there was a poll that just came out from the L.A. Times that has you up 11 points on incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. I'm curious if that's your sense of where the campaign is, and if so, why you think that there is so much support for you at this point? Well, you know, I think the poll is reflective of some of the things that I'm seeing out as I'm going out on the campaign trail, which is a hunger for change, a hunger for a city that feels responsive to the needs that people have here in Los Angeles right now. Right now, City Hall feels rudderless. I have a front row seat to that, but I will say that rudderlessness is palpable in the streets here.

1:34:45And every time I talk to residents, they say that. They say that to me. And I think people are hungry for leadership. People are hungry for change. And so I think the poll really does reflect that. But I will say that there's a lot of people in that poll who said that they were undecided. I don't take the outcome of this race for granted at all. I'm still going to keep fighting for every vote and keep fighting for people who may not feel like they're being heard by the mayoral candidates right now to give me a shot, to look at the policies that I'm bringing to the to this race, to look at the work that I've done in my district, to the ways in which I've tried to be responsive to my constituents and to really make the case that they have someone in this race who feels their need for a better city hall.

1:35:32Saagar Enjeti:And what has changed? Because, you know, covering this or watching this race from a distance, the criticism directed at your campaign towards the beginning of it was that it was kind of a lackluster, directionless campaign. It was kind of compared unfavorably to Mamdani's, which was very precise. And everybody knew, everybody around the country knew he was going to do fast and free buses and so on. But you're surging now. Like, there's something has changed about the momentum behind your campaign. Did you change anything? Did the circumstances change? Did the country kind of falling apart because of the war kind of work to your benefit politically?

1:36:13Saagar Enjeti:Like what is different at the beginning compared to now where, as Crystal mentioned, your polls have you up by double digits? Well, you know, I think I had I jumped into the race very last minute. I jumped I I I signed, you know, filed my paperwork on the very last day that you could file. And I had just a few I think it was like two months or two and a half months before during the primary. Maybe it was a little longer. I don't know. Time has no meaning to me anymore. But I had to put together a citywide race in a very, very short amount of time. And I think what the public was seeing was that that was a challenge.

1:36:59And I had to learn how to run a different kind of race from any that I have run before. I've run, you know, multiple races, primaries, general elections, etc. But this is a different kind of race. We had to put together a different kind of team. And I do think that it took me a little while to find my footing. But I hopefully have found my footing more. And I hope that in the coming weeks that people will be able to see, you know, see very clearly in front of them the message that we're sharing and that they'll be able to hopefully find a place in our campaign for what they want to see in the future of Los Angeles as well.

1:37:39Saagar Enjeti:The other thing that shifted is that you have now gotten the endorsement of the DSA. They endorsed in the general, not in the primary. Over two thirds of the DSA LA coalition here voted for you. Of course, that has been a big national movement now and races all across the country, not just Zoran, but there are loud and proud democratic socialists like Claire Valdez, Daria Liza, Chris Rabb, Adam Hamawi in New Jersey, and many others. Are you part of this new DSA coalition or are you merely an ally and accepting their endorsement? Well, I've been a DSA endorsed candidate from my very first race.

1:38:19I was actually the first DSA endorsed candidate to get elected here in the city of Los Angeles. And, you know, I've been a member for a number of years. And, you know, we've had public disagreements on policies. I've always been a very independent policymaker. I've always pushed for or pushed back against kind of policies that I don't think are working, like on the mansion tax, which I think needs reform because it's not producing the outcomes that I had envisioned. And I think it does need reform. And I've stood up and said that and I've taken heat from the DSA, from the left on that issue and others.

1:39:00So I've always been an independent voice. But I will say that here in Los Angeles, you cannot beat an incredibly powerful establishment politics without a coalition that is big and broad. So I am proud to have a huge coalition that is growing every single day. The DSA, Unite Here, the Carpenters, big unions that have a big presence here in Los Angeles who now are, you know, supporting our race because they want change, too. And so I feel like every day our coalition is growing and I'm just excited because without these people, it's hard to push back against an establishment that feels very inevitable here and that has failed Angelenos.

1:39:49But together with this big tent, I do think that we can make the case for a bigger, broader, better Los Angeles.

1:39:57Saagar Enjeti:All right. Well, we will be tracking the race, Nithya. And could you tell our audience if people want to learn more about you in the campaign, where do they got to go? Yeah. So Nithya for the City on socials and Nithya for the City dot com on the World Wide Web. All right. That'll be in our descriptions on the videos here. Thank you so much for sharing some time with us this morning. And we wish you luck. Thank you so much for having me. It's our favorite time of the week. It's for the AMA on Fridays. If you also are a member and want to ask a question, you can click the link in every one of our show emails and submit your own written question.

1:40:38Saagar Enjeti:Let's start. We're going to try to fly through quite a few today. From Dan C. Question for Ryan. Is it true that the DSA platform includes abolishing the police and the Senate? Many of the DSA aligned candidates don't seem to support those policies. So why does the DSA they keep them in their platform? It is true. They have that and then some.

1:41:01The Senate one I'm kind of open to, low-key.

1:41:04Saagar Enjeti:Why do they keep the... Yeah, abolish the Senate. It's always funny when they try to hit candidates with that. And I'm like, how's that going to land for the public? Oh, no. Not the Senate. Not the Senate. Oh. McConnell? Not McConnell. Now, the police one. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, how are you going to remove it? It would be like a huge civil war with inside, you know, inside the DSA to try to get it out of there. But yeah, the candidates themselves are, we've all seen them walk away from that with their, what was crazy signs. I mean, when I interviewed Representative Adam Smith and he was bringing up the DSA platform, I asked him, I was like, okay, well, the Democratic Party has a platform.

1:41:50Do you support everything there? And he was like, no. That was brutal. Okay, well, what are we doing here?

1:41:57Saagar Enjeti:The counter argument you're starting to see more is that it's not a socialist policy. Like, it's an anarchist policy. Yeah. And, like, how are you going to round up the billionaires if you don't have police? Like, you need to repurpose the police towards public ends. How are you going to enforce the mask mandate at Last Ditch Bar? At Last Ditch Bar. That's right. How are you going to keep Stephen Miller in prison for the rest of his natural life if you don't have prisons and police? But I actually think, Ryan, there is a genuine like mental shift that has happened on the left where it is like, no, no, we actually we need some law and order for these criminals.

1:42:36Like I I want prisons for these people. And so I do think there has been a bit of a shift there or like Netanyahu at the right.

1:42:44Saagar Enjeti:Bernie has, what, 20-year sentences for the AI guys? Yeah, for the AI criminals. Exactly. So I do think there's a bit of a mental shift. Law and order. DSA, you know, there's a lot of internal dynamics there. But I think what Republicans have bet on is that voters would care about what was in line, you know, 99.7 subsection B in the DSA platform. And I think they're relating much more to DSA via Zoran than anything else. They're like, OK, well, you told us this guy was terrifying. He seems to be doing a great job and be just a really nice guy in general over here. So, yeah. And Jessica Tish is the police commissioner.

1:43:23Yeah, true. Right. He hasn't defunded.

1:43:27Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. And he's even arresting Jessica Tish is arresting Daria Lisa as soon as is yesterday. DSA elected. So Zoran is arresting the people that he's been endorsing for Congress. That's how much defund is working in New York right now. This one comes from Amber Villagante or Villagante. Ryan, you often say California is a failed state. As a Republican in California, obviously, I agree. Just curious how you would improve it. Also, can we get an interview? I've never heard you say that. That's funny. Can we get an interview with Steve Hilton on the show? He had some really interesting campaign promises, and I think it'd be nice to get a Republican interview every once in a while.

1:44:08Saagar Enjeti:I agree, Amber. Let's talk to him. Happy to have Steve on. We should have Steve on. I said hi to Steve recently at Skid Row where there was a Didn't we try? I think we tried We did, we had chatted for a second about it and it fell through But yes, I saw Steve recently at Skid Row for an event about dog abuse happening on Skid Row Steve was wearing just a hideous Henley t-shirt And he needs to wear a suit That's my first note for him Okay, Sagar yeah i mean california is this bizarre hybrid of this one-party state that still has corporate interests that basically dominate plus then they're hamstrung by all of these bizarre you know propositions that passed from the 70s up until today and they can't build anything i mean you go to los angeles you're like let me introduce you guys to the concept of a second story like it's really crazy like so right here you have your first story on top of that you can build more and you can like go there and live there and sleep there and it's really fascinating and then you won't have you won't just live in your in your car for four hours a day just trying to get at the grocery store there's a woman who was just appointed one of the head seats of housing in la who was recently on Pod Save America bragging about how she took a six-story building down to three stories.

1:45:35Saagar Enjeti:I saw that. And that was her accomplishment. So I don't know what is going on here, what's in the water here. No, we've got Nithya on in a couple minutes. We can ask her. We're going to ask a little bit about that, too. Part of her plan is to accelerate building more multiple stories. She's kind of got some abundancy stuff in there. Her plan is stairs, adding stairs to buildings and elevators. OK, this should give some hope for AI. Like if there's anything that we're bad at doing, it's letting people build stuff. So we should be able to, you know, throw some legal roadblocks in the way for these people.

1:46:10A pill climb for AI, yes. AI, totally in one story.

1:46:15Saagar Enjeti:This next one is for Crystal from Alex Lafer. Hey, Crystal, if a Democrat is elected president in 2028, how much political capital should they use to tear down the ballroom and the Trump arch? You don't need to. I don't think you need to spend any political capital. I think it will be done by acclamation. Like, I think the American people will come with pickaxes and help you share. I think it will build political capital. Day one promise. Absolutely. So, no, I think, I mean, it needs to be done. Right. The image of this man and what he's done to the city has to be both literally and, you know, and metaphorically sort of scrubbed from the city.

1:46:48So I think the American people will rejoice to see the Epstein Memorial Ballroom dismantled piece by piece.

1:46:57Saagar Enjeti:but uh aren't ballrooms cool like isn't there a way you could stop it right retain the ballroom the ballroom's the one where he had a point but the way that he did it is so offensive to most people that i think people would come with the pickaxes no we have to get rid of it we can build a different ballroom we're not keeping this ballroom it's haunted ballroom it's tainted it's irredeemable no Ryan ballroom but it's it's means tested you know if you if you make more than you know the Chuck Schumer line of 250 ,000 a year you can't go in the ballroom but it's open to all tourists for balls when they come to Washington DC free just like the Smithsonian I actually think the one I want to see the most is all the the plaques that he did of every president in their bio like that are just on that wall I just want to see move those to the ballroom as like a museum of his like moronic nature.

1:47:51And all the Thai restaurant coated gold adornments. Like you are at a resort, like an Apple Vacations resort in Mexico. That's what he did to the outside of the White House. And I love an Apple Vacations resort. Don't get me wrong.

1:48:08Saagar Enjeti:Take one of those plaques with him. From Happy Days 0872, Crystal's suggestion for Halloween costume with Kyle, Christy Noem and her dog. That's a bleak one. Which one would be the dog? No, no, no. Christine Bryan. Wait, that didn't end well for the dog. Yeah, dude. Yeah, no. I don't think... That one's a little dark. I don't know about that. Well, it's Halloween. I feel like Crystal could be Christine Gnome and Kyle could 100 % be Bryan Gnome. Yeah, you just gotta get some balloons and you're good to go. It's a full family costume. I explained this before. The problem is we don't live in D.C.

1:48:44We go trick-or-treating in like... Do you do trick-or-treating? The most rural, suburban. No, we do real trick-or-treating, but in a very rural, suburban neighborhood. And people won't get my political jokes. And it will be inappropriate if Kyle is walking around with giant fake tits. So it's a great idea, but it doesn't really fit the culture where I live. You guys could come over for the night. You could come over to Ryan or my neighborhoods. There you go.

1:49:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. And rounding it out from one of our favorite AMA contributors, Sabas101. For Amazing BP, would you ever have a culture segment or show that discusses fashion, movies, and cultural events? Emily and Griffin would be fantastic. I don't know about fashion, but I have been trying to get Emily to watch the latest Daily Wire film, potentially, for a review. starring Jonathan Majors, which is about a radical Islamic terrorist group that takes over a college, a woke college. Is that what it is? Yeah, but it's also, it's ISIS, but it's Shiite at the same time. He thinks he's the 12th imam. Mehdi was pointing this out.

1:49:59Incredible work. Incredible work. Yeah, I like that Mehdi was pointing out the Islam-like inconsistencies.

1:50:05Saagar Enjeti:It didn't even go on Wikipedia to sort out there. It is kind of crazy. That is a crazy thing to mix up. Yeah, that is pretty wild. If you're putting an entire movie together. Pretty basic. You know, it's pretty much one-on-one stuff right there. I'm sure the rest of the plot really holds up and holds together, though. I think there have been also like zero Shia attacks outside of the region. Like zero. I went to the set of the first movie that they actually made out in Montana. Like I was in the middle of Yellowstone out on the set of the movie because when they first started, there was a ton of chit-chat.

1:50:39They were putting tons of money into it. They were getting interesting people like Dallas Sunier. He actually did... Gosh, what is that movie? Bonesaw, right? What's it called, Griffin? You remember that. It's kind of popular in artsy slasher world. Oh, I think I know what you're talking about.

1:50:58Saagar Enjeti:It's about MBS. But yeah, it's... Boy, this one looks to be the worst of all of them. It looks pretty rough. Looks pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah. When I was on the set of the movie in Yellowstone, you could tell that there was something interesting happening. And then you watch the movie and you're like, how did you take this and make it that? I love that they're kind of setting piles of money on fire. Like this movie is not accessible anywhere unless you have a Daily Wire membership. It looks like they spent like 30 million dollars on it. It's an incredible way to blow some money. They spent 100 million on the Pendragon cycle thing that completely flopped.

1:51:39That's awesome. Which has led to Jeremy Boring leaving. That's insane. So I did nudge Kyle. I won't say coerce, but I did get Kyle to watch an episode of the anime thing. You guys were encouraging. What's it called? Attack on Titan. Attack on Titan. And first of all, I'm pretty sure I told him it was an American cartoon. But when it came up, he was like, wait, it's a fucking cartoon. Like, you like South Park. You like Family Guy. Give it a chance. And he did. But it was not for him. What did you think, Crystal? I was intrigued. I mean, the first episode is like very dark and disturbing. But it did make me want to like, oh, what happens now?

1:52:23You know, so I think I could see it for myself. But he was not. He was not feeling it. So.

1:52:28Saagar Enjeti:We appreciate the shared viewing experience. Maybe I'll try with my son. Maybe that'll work better. that might be the way to do it. We should do more of that stuff though. I think that's like on the side. It probably can't, we can't bake it into every daily show because there's so much hard news going on every day, but there's much to be discussed. Much to be discussed. We'll check out the, we'll check out the Daily Wire movie. All right. And that's going to do it for this AMA. We hope you enjoyed this Friday show episode. If you want to submit a question again, the link to that is in every show email.

1:53:00Saagar Enjeti:And if you want to submit questions either here or on our weekly live stream AMA. You, of course, can do that at BreakingPoints.com with a little free trial. Anything else we need to plug before we get on out of here, guys? I was going to throw out an idea I was thinking about this morning. We've had a bunch of, because of me, of these AI guys on. And I'm wondering if this week's AMA, we have them stick around for the AMA and then people from the audience can ask them their AI. Yeah, that'd be fun. That's a good idea, right? I like it. Yeah. Yeah, we've been thinking a lot about ways to get the audience to add questions to the interviews.

1:53:40Saagar Enjeti:So I think that could be fun. Yeah, because that way, you know, I mean, I've asked a ton of questions and, you know, I'm fairly persuaded that we should take seriously the more existential risk. But I know a lot of people in the audience still aren't there. So, you know, it would give them a chance to ask one of these experts their questions as well. And, you know, I think we could get some good stuff there. So thinking about that. All right, everyone have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you on Monday.

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