Sept. 13 — Speaker Mike Johnson, Pete Buttigieg and Jacob Coxon

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0:46Kristen Welker: This Sunday, money matters. With just 51 days until the midterms, oil prices rise and the trade war intensifies as President Trump rallies his party for the fight ahead, asking them to pretend he's on the ballot and promising payments if Republicans win in November. I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for$5 ,000. I'll talk to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Plus, drawing the line, the Supreme Court blocks a Republican effort to redraw Missouri's congressional districts, helping Democrats and complicating the final sprint to the midterms.

1:33Kristen Welker: And Digital Doomsday, a whistleblower working on artificial intelligence, warns it could kill us all by the end of the decade as the CEO of Anthropic calls for the industry to slow down. Just how dangerous is AI technology? These people are begging for regulation. You know, they don't want to end the world. It's just they think someone else will get there first. I'll talk to Jacob Coxon. Joining me for insight and analysis are Jonathan Martin of Politico, Mark Short, former director of legislative affairs for President Trump, and Ashley Etienne, former communications director to Vice President Harris.

2:13Kristen Welker: Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press. From NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Kristen Welkin. Good Sunday morning. Just 51 days until the midterms and the economic pressure is building. Oil prices are surging. The war with Iran is disrupting global energy markets. The trade war is driving prices higher and Americans are feeling it at the pump. Regular gas is now more than four dollars a gallon, up more than a dollar since the war began. diesel is now more than six dollars a gallon it comes as president trump is putting himself at the center of the republican campaign at the gop's first ever midterm convention in dallas he told republicans to pretend he's on the ballot then made a stunning promise five thousand dollars for every adult citizen if republicans win the house and senate please pretend that i'm running If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get five thousand dollars.

3:27It will be called the Trump dividend.

3:31Kristen Welker: And joining me now is the Republican Speaker of the House, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Speaker Johnson, welcome back to Meet the Press.

3:42Mike Johnson: Hey, Kristen, great to be with you as always.

3:44Kristen Welker: It's great to have you this Sunday after the Republican convention this past week. And I want to start right there at the convention. President Trump made a promise that he would send five thousand dollars to every American if Republicans hold on to the House and the Senate. Is that a plan you support, Mr. Speaker?

4:08Mike Johnson: Well, look, what the president was doing is reminding the American people of our extraordinary record of success and the fact that they have more money in their pockets under Republican control of Congress and the White House. I mean, look at it. Under this regime and under this presidency and our Republican majorities, we've given the largest tax cut in U.S. history. Wages are going up. In my state of Louisiana, I'm there this morning in my home state, and the average Louisianian has over$2 ,900 more in their pocket they did not have to send in in their taxes. and the average take-home pay has increased nearly$8 ,000 for every taxpayer.

4:43Mike Johnson: Ninety-seven percent of filers got a tax refund this year, and that's all because of our policy. So elections have consequences. What the president is brainstorming about is ways to further incentivize and grow the economy and make sure that Americans keep more of their hard-earned dollars. So that's an idea, a new one, an idea that we'll process through Congress and talk through and debate and discuss. But we're going to continue on this pace of an incredible record of achievement. Also, in addition to the economy, of course, I mean, we talked about at the convention highlighting all the great wins.

5:18Mike Johnson: And listen, this is this is real statistics. You know that we have the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years. We have the lowest level of illegal border crossings in over a century. We have the biggest decline in drug costs, prescription drugs in over 60 years. And of course, we gave the largest middle in working families tax cut in U.S. history. more wages, more jobs, more onshoring of American manufacturing. And that was a lot of fun to town at the convention and draw people's attention to it because we have a contrast election coming up here on November 3rd.

5:49Kristen Welker: Mr. Speaker, I hear you saying wages are going up. It's worth noting wages went up 3.1 percent, inflation 3.4 percent. So not keeping pace with inflation. But to my question, do you support sending$5 ,000 to every American citizen if Republicans hold on to the House and Senate?

6:08Mike Johnson: Like every idea that the president comes up with, he's a great idea generator. We're going to process that in Congress and figure it all out. But I'll tell you that the trend will continue. And what the president is trying to emphasize there is that the American people want to continue on the pace we're on, which is more economic growth, expanding the pathway to poverty for more people, providing more jobs and higher wages. We need to stay on track and continue with these big ideas. He's the big ideas president. We're going to try to implement everything we can.

6:36Kristen Welker: Mr. Speaker, I want to read for you something that Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said about these$5 ,000 checks. She wrote, quote, tax and spending decisions should be made based on the needs of the American people and the state of the economy. They should not appear to be tied to election results. The president said that these checks are contingent on election results. Is this an attempt to buy votes?

7:06Mike Johnson: No, of course not. Remember, the Democrats who are making that claim are the same ones who gave out COVID checks and all sorts of stimulus checks. Well, she's a Republican. Susan Collins is a Republican.

7:19Kristen Welker: Yeah, I understand that.

7:20Mike Johnson: Sure, sure. But that's right. And so is the president. He's the lead Republican in the country. And what he is articulating there is the obvious truth that you have more money in your pockets with Republicans in control than with Democrats. And at the same time, we are cutting government spending and doing it responsibly. Remember, in the big, beautiful bill, the working families tax cut, we also cut$1.6 trillion in wasteful government spending. So it's about prioritizing spending and making sure that hardworking families can keep more of what they earn. And we're going to look at every ingenious idea on how to make that happen and it'll be all be part of the process.

7:57Kristen Welker: Mr. Speaker, since he took office, though, inflation is up, gas prices are up. Estimates show tariffs have cost American households nearly two thousand dollars so far. I know you're saying Americans have more money in their pockets, but as you well know, many Americans say they just don't feel that. Is there a disconnect there in terms of what you're saying, what Americans are feeling?

8:19Mike Johnson: No, I mean, we have to consider all the facts, of course. Remember that when President Trump took over, the economy was in shambles. I mean, we reached a 40-year high of inflation under Biden and Harris, 9.1%. At this stage in President Biden's presidency, it was about 8.3 % inflation. Right now, it's 3.4 % under President Trump. Now, that's too high, of course, but we are the team that has the policies in place to continue to bring that down. The inflation is tied right now, as we all know, to this trade of Hormuz and the fact that the commerce there is not reopened and stabilized as much as it should be.

8:53Mike Johnson: But we all believe, and the president's working around the clock, that that will come to a resolution here very soon. And I think it's going to be a combination of our allied nations, our friends in NATO and other Arab states in the region over there, in that Gulf region, who will come together to help make sure that the Stradar Hormuz remains open so that that stabilizes gas and fuel prices and brings down costs overall. I think that's the next phase.

9:16Kristen Welker: We're going to get to Iran. It is worth noting inflation was at 3.0 percent When President Biden left office, it's now at 3.4 percent. But let's talk about the price tag because there's been a lot of discussion about that. The checks would cost the government an estimated$1.2 trillion. I want to play for you something that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said about how this plan would impact the nation's already$40 trillion debt. Take a look. What I don't think you want to do is borrow another million trillion and a half dollars and then just try to flood that into the economy, because that will lead to more inflation.

9:54That will lead to more debt and more inflation.

9:58Kristen Welker: In the past, you have called the national debt the largest threat facing the country. Why would you want to add to the debt, Mr. Speaker?

10:08Mike Johnson: I don't want to add to that, Kristen. And I guess we're going to spend the whole segment talking about this one issue when there's so many other things.

10:15Kristen Welker: No, we're going to get to other issues.

10:16Mike Johnson: We've actually done and not ideas on the table. OK, I'd love to. But let me just say, no, we don't want to add to the debt. But if you look at what Commerce Secretary Lutnik said in the last 48 hours or so and and what the president himself has said, this is not to add to anything. It's not going to take taxpayer funds. We're not going to get further in debt if this idea was implemented. This would be, in the president's mind, in the way he analogized it, like a dividend check for shareholders. That's how he thinks of it. If a corporation does well, everybody gets the benefit of that. And he thinks of it this way.

10:48Mike Johnson: They're talking about the new tariff revenue and other revenues coming into the country. He said at the convention, trillions of dollars had come into the country since he took office because the new trade deals, the things that are more advantageous for America. and he wants to make sure the American people feel the good effect of that. So, again, we've got to process it. Like, every idea will work that through Congress, but you and I are wasting a lot of time this morning when there's other important things to talk about.

11:14Kristen Welker: Well, you still haven't answered the question. Let me just button it up. We're going to move on to a number of other topics, but do you commit that if Republicans hold on to the House and Senate that Americans will get those$5 ,000 checks?

11:26Mike Johnson: I commit that Congress will work through it and find consensus on that like I have to do everything else. We have a small margin in this Congress. We've had the smallest smallest in history, one or two vote margin on every given day. So it takes some time. I never go out and get big commitments on the front end because I've got to work through it. And that's what we do every single day.

11:42Kristen Welker: President Trump promised that to voters, though. You're not willing to double down on that promise.

11:48Mike Johnson: I'll work with the president hand in hand, as I do all the time. We'll deliver for the American people. That's the promise.

11:53Kristen Welker: All right. Let's talk about Iran. President Trump said this week that the war will probably last beyond the midterms after initially he said, Mr. Speaker, it would only last for a matter of weeks. Congress controls the power of the purse. Does the White House have a blank check to continue this war, Mr. Speaker?

12:12Mike Johnson: No, and the war is not continuing. What we're trying to do now is resolve what has already been a big success. Operation Epic Fury, of course, achieved the objectives. We had to make sure that the largest state sponsor of terrorism did not have a nuclear weapon. That has been an objective and commitment of every administration for almost a half century. and everybody around the world. And the world is safer and Americans are safer because we took care of that problem. Now we've got to resolve it. And the president's spending lots of time and energy every single day making sure we do that. But it has to be in a way that's advantageous for the American people and keeps the American people safe.

12:48Mike Johnson: And so we've got to make sure they can't restart a nuclear program. But at the same time, we've got to make sure that gas prices are down at planet Earth. And so that's what the president works on every single day. The Iranians are not trustworthy negotiating partners, Of course, they lie every day. They sit at the table, tell you one thing, do the opposite. For some of them, it's part of their religion. So this is a difficult, complex situation. It will involve, I think, other, as I said, other allies and partner nations around the world to ensure that we keep the region safe and keep all of our own countries and our people safe.

13:18Mike Johnson: And that's the objective.

13:19Kristen Welker: Mr. Speaker, there are still 50 ,000 troops deployed to the region. You still have a naval blockade in place. President Trump continues to refer to the conflict as a war. Let me ask you, are you confident this war will be over by the next presidential election, Mr. Speaker?

13:39Mike Johnson: Oh, of course. We certainly plan for that to be true. And I would like it to be done, of course, today, certainly before the midterm election. But that's just about a little more than 50 days away right now. And so we're going to be realistic about this. It's a complex situation, as we all know, but it's one that everyone, I mean, it's quite literally an all hands on deck approach to resolving that for the American people. And by the way, the president's right, what he said at the convention has said consistently all the time, as soon as that is resolved, the Strait of Hormuz, the commerce there to get, you know, oil, you know, transferred and transported through that that international waterway, that will bring down the cost because it's not just fuel and everything related to that.

14:21Mike Johnson: It's, for example, grocery prices, because your grocery prices are higher because of the transport costs. So we've got to do that. We have done every we put every economic condition in place in this Congress and in this administration to bring down costs and put more money in Americans' pockets. And so this is the last little piece of that. We believe it'll it'll be resolved soon. And the president says right after the election, and I certainly pray and hope that that's right.

14:46Kristen Welker: All right. Well, I have to talk to you about AI. I will be speaking with the AI researcher who warned this week that AI could kill us all, this dire warning. And then, as you know, the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, came forward and said the industry does, in fact, need a global slowdown. That was echoed by Elon Musk and others. There are calls for you from Democrats, Mr. Speaker, to cancel recess, to keep Congress in session, to pass legislation that would better regulate AI. Will Congress take action to regulate AI before the November elections?

15:23Mike Johnson: This is a very important issue, and it's not one that we can rush into. And we have been very deliberate about this. I mean, right after I became speaker almost three years ago, we put together a task force, bipartisan, a large group of members of the House. Both sides of the aisle, it worked deliberately to look into and research and debate and deliberate over what's the best way to do this. Here's the challenge. We have to put some guardrails, some safety measures in place to ensure that AI doesn't run away, you know, that we don't have an out of control AGI, artificial general intelligence.

15:57Mike Johnson: But at the same time, we've got to make sure that we don't lose our edge in the global competition on this with China, because that would be a national security threat. And so we've got to balance that appropriately. Now, look, I've talked to all the providers of AI. I mean, Amadei and Altman and Elon and everyone, all of them. And they all say that we need some guardrails, but they all have very different ideas on what that looks like. So they don't themselves even have the answer as of today. So we can't rush in and have Congress do something that would be detrimental to national security. We're going to balance this.

16:30Mike Johnson: We're going to have steady hands at the wheel, as we do on every issue. And I believe we need to summon the platform providers all to one big meeting and work this out together in the same room. They're also competitors with one another. Right. So they also have a corporate responsibility to be safe in the product that they are producing. And all of this has to come together in a way that can't be haphazard or rushed.

16:51Kristen Welker: Mr. Speaker, very quickly before I let you go, are you willing to cancel recess to address it? And do you think unregulated AI is a threat to humanity?

17:01Mike Johnson: I think I just answered that question. I think we've got to have meaningful regulation that does not smother American innovation. Now, how to solve that equation, no one knows yet. We're not going to rush in and pass a piece of legislation that would do harm to the country and put China as an edge. And so we've got to do this carefully. Of course, we'd vote on that tomorrow if we had the solution. And I'll call everybody into session any day. But we have to make sure we're doing it the right way. I think the first step is to have a meeting of all the platform providers. I've talked to the president about this and others.

17:34Mike Johnson: I believe that's the next step. I think we need to do it quickly. And each of them, even those gentlemen that I've named, they all agree that that would be an efficacious thing. And so we're going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way. But it is a top priority for me and for the Congress.

17:48Kristen Welker: All right. Well, we will track that meeting very closely. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, thank you so very much for joining us. We appreciate it.

17:57Mike Johnson: Thanks so much.

17:58Kristen Welker: When we come back, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins me next.

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19:14Kristen Welker: Welcome back. And joining me now is former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Secretary Buttigieg, welcome back to Meet the Press. Thanks for having me back on. Thank you so much for being here. I want to start by getting your reaction to some of what we heard at the Republican convention where Republicans spent two nights calling Democrats, quote, communists, extreme anarchists who hate our country. This weekend, you've been campaigning in Arizona. You're in New Mexico right now. How do you think Democrats should respond to those allegations? Well, look, they're doing that because they cannot defend their results and they cannot defend their unpopular agenda.

19:58I mean, I just heard on your program Speaker Johnson hemming and hawing because even he can't endorse what President Trump has been saying, like this idea that everybody's going to get$5 ,000. I think that tells you everything you need to know, that that's just not going to happen. And the tragic thing about it is that, you know, extra cash would mean a lot to a lot of families that are hurting in the Trump economy. I've been traveling all over the country. Yesterday was at a county fairground in Arizona, about a thousand people turning up to support Joanna Mendoza, who is the Democratic candidate there.

20:33And we're seeing that kind of energy, that kind of momentum around the country because you can't fool people about what's going on in their own lives. They see that this economy is worse. diesel right now is at the highest price ever recorded in American history. They've seen so many broken promises from Speaker Johnson, House Republicans, and this White House that they are ready for change, even in districts where I didn't think we'd be able to compete if you had asked me six months ago.

20:59Kristen Welker: Well, I want to ask you about another moment at the convention, this surprise when Democratic Senator John Fetterman appeared by video. He criticized far-left Democrats and talked about the importance of reaching across the aisle, working with President Trump. Take a look. I'll get your reaction on the other side. I'm a common sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes in socialism and that anti-American way of life. We'll work with President Trump to fight and defend the Steel way of life right here in the Steel Valley. Mr. Secretary, do you want Senator John Fetterman to stay in the Democratic Party?

21:45Yeah, of course. And look, the issues that he ran on to become a U.S. senator are those common sense Democrat issues. And they're the issues that I see people across the country running on. I wouldn't even call them just Democratic because there's such a strong American majority that believes that, for example, it makes no sense to be dishing out tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country at the same time as you're cutting Medicaid and cutting food support like Speaker Johnson and President Trump have done. You know, another thing I'm noticing in a lot of my travels is I meet a lot of people who volunteer or work in food banks, and they're talking about the lines getting longer, people coming in, working people who never had to access a food pantry before.

22:26That is the reality of the Trump economy. And again, we just saw a few minutes of it in Speaker Johnson's interview. You could see him trying to do the same thing I see Republican Congress members trying to do across the country, which is to shake off this Trump stink that is making it almost impossible for them to earn the support of voters, not after they cut health care, cut taxes for the wealthy. You know, there's rural hospitals around where I'm sitting right now in New Mexico that are in danger of closing. And again, families paying more for groceries, paying more for gas, paying more for mortgages as a direct result of Republican policies.

23:03Kristen Welker: But let me just follow up with you, because Senator Fetterman, according to a recent report accused by some of his own staffers of not meeting with his own constituents. I know that some lawmakers in Pennsylvania were livid with his appearance, saw it as a betrayal. Does any of that concern you? Sure, but we've got bigger concerns right now around the country. Our nation is at war, and it's a war that we were told would end in a matter of weeks, and there is no end in sight. People are hurting economically as inflation is at a higher level than it was when President Trump took office. I mean, look at where we're at right now, right?

23:43Every promise that they've made, the opposite has happened. They said when they put in these tariffs, it would add manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are down. They said we needed the tax cuts for billionaires in order to speed up the economy. Economic growth is slowing down. And when it comes to the dangers of AI, which may well be the most important issue in the world, they're doing nothing. Congress under Speaker Johnson has done nothing. And the White House has done nothing real to get on top of that issue.

24:10Kristen Welker: Well, and let me ask you about AI, because as you note, it has become a major flashpoint, particularly in the wake of the warning that was sounded by Jacob Cox and the urgent and growing calls to regulate AI. And yet a lot of Democrats right now are running on outright opposition to AI. Mr. Secretary, do Democrats need to better address AI head on? I think we do need to address it head on. And this is an issue that shouldn't be partisan. Although, again, I'm very concerned about a White House that has just told these companies to run free and basically opposed any kind of meaningful regulation.

24:48and you look at Congress, I mean, I was shocked to hear Speaker Johnson just now saying, you know, we really shouldn't be rushing. We shouldn't be moving too quickly on this. You know what's moving quickly? AI is moving quickly. And for Congress to just sit on its hands, for the White House to do nothing real is something that is deeply dangerous to the American people and the world. There need to be safeguards. There need to be rules. There need to be limits. There needs to be a kill switch on rogue AI. You can set up frameworks that can be adjusted and changed. Every 30 days, you might want to revisit some of what's happening because it changes so quickly.

25:21But the idea that you're just going to sit around and repeatedly say, no rush, what have they been doing this entire time?

25:27Kristen Welker: Let me ask you the same question I just asked Speaker Johnson. Do you believe AI poses a threat to humanity? Of course. And so do the people in charge of it. That's the really shocking thing. You've got people leading these companies and they're the ones saying, hey, we've got to tap the brakes, but there's no one other than the White House that has the convening power to bring them to the table. And that's something that should have happened a long time ago, as well as making sure that there are rules, that there are observers embedded. It's nice to see some of the companies now promising to do that voluntarily, but it shouldn't come to that.

26:06Look, we as a country have a track record of dealing with new complicated and dangerous technologies from nuclear weapons to making sure aviation is safe. I've heard a lot of people comparing AI safety to aviation safety, and I think there are, obviously that hits home with me because of having worked on that, and there are a lot of parallels. Think about what it takes to make sure that any given year about a billion people can get on commercial airliners, and in a typical year, at least when I was secretary, zero fatalities in a form of transportation that involves being propelled through the sky by flammable liquids at nearly the speed of sound miles above the surface of the earth.

26:44We have ways of taking this on, but it requires the people in charge of the government to be serious, and it requires them to be sober, and it requires them to act with urgency, not keep saying no rush, no rush, no rush, like Speaker Johnson, or say, go do whatever you like, like Donald Trump has been.

27:01Kristen Welker: Let's talk a little bit more about the midterms, your role in them. You have been crisscrossing the country. You've become one of the more accurate Democratic surrogates, in fact, out on the campaign trail. Active, I should say, surrogates out on the campaign trail, including with black candidates in Arkansas and Georgia running long shot house races in deep red districts. In 2020, of course, you did struggle a bit to build support among black voters in your presidential run. Is part of your strategy to try to build up that support among black voters now that you didn't necessarily have then? Well, any strategy to make sure the Democrats win nationwide and in these key races has to include making sure that we engage and support and turn out black communities, especially at a moment like this where the Republican project of systematically dismantling black political representation, especially in the South, has hit home in the wake of that horrific Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.

28:06Look, you know who definitely understands the power of the black voter is Republicans who have been working to suppress it in a number of different ways. And so I think it is very important to be supporting these candidates, to be supporting these communities, And that's been a big part of my travel, campaigning with these candidates who've taken on tough races in places where I really believe that we can win. You mentioned Georgia. Little Rock saw hundreds of people to support Chris Jones there. We even saw hundreds of people to support Sean Harris, a retired general and cattle farmer who is in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district.

28:42Something big is happening in this country. And, of course, any big wave of Democratic momentum, black voters are going to be a critically important part of it.

28:49Kristen Welker: Well, you raise the Supreme Court. You take me to my next question. Some Democrats, like former Vice President Kamala Harris, have called to expand the court. As you know, in the past, you've even supported increasing the number of justices from nine to 15. As we sit here today, Mr. Secretary, do you support adding seats to the Supreme Court and how many? Yes, I talked about this years ago when I was running for president. At the time, it was a pretty lonely position. People were looking at me funny when I was talking about reforming the Supreme Court. I think with the years that have come in between, a lot more people are onto that idea because it has become a nakedly partisan institution.

29:29And I want to be clear, the idea is not to just add justices for its own sake. The idea is to reform the institution to make it less partisan. There's a measure right now for term limits. I think that's a very common sense measure. But I think it's likely that we need to do more. And as this country has done, by the way, several times in our history, we should look at the size and makeup of the Supreme Court as part of that reform.

29:52Kristen Welker: You supported 15 back then. Do you still support 15 justices today? Is that what you're calling for? Well, again, the number is secondary. I proposed or was interested in a model where you have 15 justices, but it's called a balanced bench. Five of them can only be seated if there's a consensus among the other 10. It's a way to make sure that you have more independent-minded justices and that it's not purely partisan. Some believe that it should be 13, which would mirror the structure of the appellate court, the number of circuits that are out there. To me, it's not about the number, although I believe we will need to add justices in order to make this work.

30:31The point is that we cannot go on like this, where the Supreme Court is losing legitimacy each passing year because it's viewed as a totally partisan body.

30:40Kristen Welker: I do want to talk a bit about your political future, Mr. Secretary. Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote in her book about the 2024 election that you came close to being her running mate. Let me remind people of this passage. She writes, of the eight names on the list for vetting, I might as well say that Pete Buttigieg was my first choice. He would have been an ideal partner if I were a straight white man. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. She was essentially saying that she didn't think America was ready for a gay vice president with a black woman at the top of the ticket.

31:16Kristen Welker: Let me ask you today, do you think America is ready for a gay president? I wouldn't have run for president in the first place if I didn't believe that, of course. And look, my experience in South Bend, Indiana, getting reelected with 80 percent of the vote after coming out and my experience right now traveling the country shows me that what's really on people's minds isn't about you, your identity as a candidate. It's about them. It's about their lives. Right now, Americans are hurting in Trump's economy. There's an opportunity to change that. And the voters that I see, they're turning out in levels I didn't think was possible coming out hundreds and hundreds at a time because they want to be part of this effort, this conversation, this movement to change the course of our country before it's too late.

32:02Kristen Welker: You have said you are inclined to run for president. If you had to make your decision today, are you running in 2028? I don't think now's the time to even be talking about that. We're about 50 days away from a critically important midterm election. When are you going to make your decision, Mr. Secretary? One that I believe Democrats are going to win. It's 2026. We've got to focus on what's happening right now. That's what I'm doing. I think by my count, we've been to 35 states since I left the cabinet. I don't want to do anything that would take the focus off of that. All right. You are in New Mexico, which is on the primary calendar.

32:35Kristen Welker: So you're still leaning heavily and seriously considering it. I'm in New Mexico, just like I came to New Mexico when I was secretary of transportation and excited to campaign for Gabe Vasquez, somebody who grew up in the borderlands, understands the issues here, has delivered and is exactly the kind of candidate who I think will continue to make it possible to have a Democratic majority. We're going to win, but we've got to stay very, very focused here and around the country. All right, Mr. Secretary Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thank you. When we come back, President Trump's$5 ,000 bet.

33:13Kristen Welker: Will it work with voters? The panel's next.

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34:53Kristen Welker: Welcome back. The panel is here. Jonathan Martin, politics bureau chief and senior political columnist for Politico. Ashley Etienne, former communications director for Vice President Harris and Speaker Pelosi, and former Trump director of legislative affairs, Mark Short. Thank you to all of you for being here. Jay Mart, I have to start with you. So did President Trump put his party in a stronger place coming on the heels of this convention? Well, after so much polarization and division in this country, I thought it was heartening this week to see the two parties unified for once. President Trump wants to make the election about himself, and so do Democrats.

35:29This is the challenge the Republicans have, is that they have the golden handcuffs on, the big, beautiful golden handcuffs. They can't get rid of Trump because they need him for their base, but they can't embrace him because he alienates the center. And so it puts them in an unenviable position. And then on top of that question, they go to Dallas for this convention, And what's the reward they get? They get this thing dropped in their lap about giving away money to the American people. And you saw from the speaker's reaction when you interviewed him. It's embarrassing because it's just the culmination, or maybe not the culmination yet, Mark, but it's one more element that is, it's not remotely conservative, a small government approach.

36:08My colleagues had a story this week that he keeps trying to give checks away to Americans and Congress has been stopping him all year from doing this, but they couldn't stop this. You know why? They didn't know he was going to say it. Johnson and John Thune didn't know this was coming in the speech. And now they have to defend it for days afterward, knowing that it's never going to happen and knowing that their base doesn't necessarily like it. Because, yeah, it does smack of socialism.

36:34Kristen Welker: Mark? Or bribery. More to the point. More to the point. Right. For the Democrats who promised free health care, psych after psych on how much is bribery. But, look, Kristen, you know, nothing says we're going to beat socialists like saying I'm going to tax the hell out of you with record tariffs and then I'm going to redistribute the wealth to every American across the country. I think that the convention was fine. I think it continued to rally Trump supporters. But the problem is that polling continues to show more and more Republicans are now identifying again as traditional Republicans. And those are the ones who are disaffected who feel like they don't have a home right now.

37:07And so, yes, I think Ashley's party has nominated people who proudly wear a socialist banner. and are real significant threats. But it's harder for us to make that case when it's this administration that has seized 30-some private companies. It's this administration that has pushed forward price controls. It's this administration just two weeks ago, J.D. Vance, is pushing for expansion of giant new entitlement programs. So it's harder to make the case economically that there is a limited government party there for you still.

37:34Kristen Welker: Ashley, and of course this comes as we got this news out of Missouri, that basically to whittle it down, the map that favors Democrats is the map that's going to be voted on in November. What is the reaction to all of this been? I mean, I think we're incredibly excited about that possibility. I mean, the president has continually, if there's one thing he's been consistent on, and that's trying to cheat the elections, Republicans move forward with trying to redistrict all of these key states so that they would have the advantage going into the midterms. They clearly have not succeeded in that. Now you see all these signs of desperation from the$5 ,000 the president's offering to trying to mucky up the system by eliminating mail-in ballots.

38:16I mean, you know, it's consistently trying to cheat the election. But here's the reality. You heard what Speaker Johnson said. You know, it could have been a Freudian slip, but really what it exposes is the political vulnerability of the Republican Party right now. He said that they're creating pathways to poverty. That's what's going to be top of mind and that's going to win all of these races. He's starting to lose support even among Republicans on the issue of the economy. Ninety-four percent of the country believes we're in an affordability crisis. So Democrats are going to continue to run on not putting Donald Trump at the center of the election, but putting the American people and their economic anxiety at the center of this election.

38:53Well, they're making Donald Trump own the economic fortune. Look, AAA had the average price of gas at$4.30 on Friday. Diesel is now at six, as people who judge masterfully read off from his litany of talking points there. Sort of the shorthand that I use, guys, is every nickel that the average price of gas goes north, you can add one more Democratic House seat to their pickup. It's directly correlated to voter sentiment right now. And if you talk to smart Democrats, they're holding their breath right now. It's September 13th. And I think the view of Democrats right now is the onslaught is coming.

39:30There's going to be a massive financial edge here in the next couple of weeks for the GOP because the money is finally flowing. And it's all going to be on the culture wars. If on October 10th those Democrats are still leading their races after that onslaught, I think this is going to be a ban or a cycle for Democrats. But these next few weeks are crucial because the money is finally here for Republicans.

39:49Kristen Welker: Mark, how do you see it? Look, I think that the money matters less and less today. It matters still some, but I think that— It can mitigate, right? It can mitigate, sure. But I mean, we're talking about$48 million of president spending across 12 states. It's not like it's really going to have, I think, enough to change the dynamic. I think Mike Johnson did a much better job of explaining what the economic record of Congress has been than the president's team of looking to say we're going to take this tariff revenue and redistribute it. Ashley, final 30 seconds. Final thought. No, I think Democrats are feeling really good going into November.

40:20I think the question is, is we've got to keep our we've got to run our own race. And that is ensuring that we're investing money in the ground operation. That's always been our advantage. There's reports now that are suggesting that Democrats are divesting in the ground game, and that could be a problem.

40:35Kristen Welker: Huh. OK, we'll watch that very closely. Thank you all for a great conversation. Still ahead, does AI mean the end of humanity? I'll talk to Jacob Coxon, who is sounding that alarm. But when we come back 25 years after 9-11, we remember the resilience in the aftermath. Armita Press Minute is next.

41:03Kristen Welker: Welcome back. 25 years have passed since the September 11th terrorist attacks. A whole generation has grown up in the shadow of that horrific day. Following an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, Tim Russert ended this broadcast with a personal message for America during one of its darkest hours. Like all of you, I've spent this week wiping my eyes and grinding my teeth and wondering why. I've drawn strength from a story about a man I knew, Father Michael Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, a Franciscan. He raced to the World Trade Center after the explosion to comfort the injured while administering the last rites to a dying rescue worker.

41:46He himself was killed by flying debris. New York's bravest physically carried Father Mike away. They brought his body first to the altar of St. Peter's Church, where it would be safe, then to their firehouse on 31st Street, Hook and Ladder Company No. 24, directly across from the friary where he lived. They wrapped him in sheets and placed him in one of their own bunks. They asked his fellow Franciscans to cross the street and join them. Together, firemen, priests, and brothers wept and sang the prayer of St. Francis, May the Lord bless and keep you and show his face to you and have mercy on you.

42:25That is the way of New York. That is the spirit of America. From February 1945 at Iwo Jima to September 2001 at the World Trade Center.

42:48Kristen Welker: Welcome back. This week, artificial intelligence researcher Jacob Coxon set off alarm bells across the country when he resigned from AI giant Anthropic, writing, quote, The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. His resignation post received more than 160 million views. Jacob Cox and welcome to Meet the Press.

43:30Nice to be on.

43:31Kristen Welker: Thank you so much for being here. So why did you sound this alarm right now? So there were two factors that led to me wanting to sound the alarm right now. The first was the rapidly accelerating pace of capabilities. So these AIs are getting smarter very, very quickly. And in particular, in the next six months to a year, I expect the capabilities of our AI systems to be quite scary. And the second reason was recent incidents such as the OpenAI hacking attack on the website Hugging Face, which showed that these AIs really can just go rogue. Yeah, I think that that certainly did send shockwaves across the country.

44:15Kristen Welker: And as you know, in the wake of your resignation this weekend, Anthropics CEO Dario Amadei called on AI companies to slow their development in an effort to try to manage these risks. You had Elon Musk, Sam Altman all in agreement. Is Amadei's plan enough to address the risks that you are warning of? It seems like a great plan for addressing domestic slowdowns, so for the frontier laboratories in the West to slow down. But I would guess that part of my worry was that I feel we need international coordination or else we risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous. So there needs to be a global effort, a global coordinated effort.

45:02That's my opinion, yeah. I think there needs to be some sort of global coordination around not racing.

45:07Kristen Welker: Well, I want to better understand what you mean when you say AI could kill us all. What is the worst case scenario or scenarios that keeps you up at night? yeah i think um before discussing specific scenarios it helps to just think of uh building ai as sort of inviting an alien mind onto the planet you're building a human level or super human level mind without understanding what it wants or thinks or the way it thinks and i think that intrinsically should be quite scary and indeed the people who write science fiction have tend to found it scary when they've written about this in the past in terms of uh concrete scenarios.

45:47These AIs are already capable of a certain degree of hacking and also a certain degree of biological research, of autonomous robot control. And if you extrapolate into the future, they could have strongly superhuman hacking capabilities, very superhuman abilities to create novel bioweapons, and also abilities to control, say, autonomous drones or all the robots that are currently being built very rapidly.

46:10Kristen Welker: It's just terrifying to consider. There is, as you know, a lot of talk about a kill switch, some lawmakers even proposing legislation to impose a kill switch. Is a kill switch possible? Is it realistic? Would it work? Well, in Dari Amadei's most recent letter, he mentioned the possibility of, say, a cyber swarm that kind of goes rogue on the Internet and can't really be taken down. and so a kill switch probably would work on a lot of AIs for now although I think it's important to remember it'd be quite a lot of switches we have a lot of our data centers are pretty big it's not the easiest thing in the world but definitely doable while it's constrained to one one sort of physical location but like Dario said very soon there's the the possibility that the kill switch just wouldn't work because a swarm might have might have gone on an internet-wide a hacking run.

47:06Kristen Welker: So this has to be an ongoing effort to regulate and to rein in AI. It can't just be a one-time shot. I think, yeah, from here on out for as long as we're developing it, precisely because it's new every time. And then maybe there's sort of every time there's a change to the recipe for building an AI, there's all sorts of new risks about the nature of the mind-changing. So it's a continuous effort to ensure that every new mind that we create is appropriately kind of constrained. You know, I heard you tell my colleague, NBC's Tom Yamas, and you just repeated it here, quite frankly, that AI models could take over the world anywhere within six months to a year.

47:49Kristen Welker: Let me ask you, if Congress were to act in the next 50 days say, what would you ask Congress and lawmakers to do? So this is my personal take, but my personal opinion would be to insist and allow that the current labs regulate themselves. I do think that the people running the labs, especially their recent communications, are completely genuine. They would like to slow themselves down. And I think the advantage of that is you can move very quickly rather than taking a long time. So I guess I would say that obviously in the future there's the potential for a formal regulatory body to be established.

48:29But in the interim, it seems prudent to self-regulate because it's so much faster that we can get that off the ball immediately.

48:38Kristen Welker: If you are in agreement, though, with what Dario Amadei is saying, why did you resign if you think they do have the capabilities to address your concerns and rein in AI? Yeah, well, it wasn't obvious to me when I resigned that there would be an imminent domestic slowdown. I also still think that coordination with China is important. And I would feel a lot happier working on this technology if I thought that internationally we were likely to not enter into an arms race. People who are skeptical of AI companies who say they can't be trusted to self-regulate, you say what?

49:19I'd say for now it's prudent, but in the long term, I probably agree that we need some sort of international regulatory agency that's independent of these labs. I think that right now in the immediate future, if it's going to be hard to get something through quickly, then it seems like a pretty good idea to let them slow themselves down.

49:39Kristen Welker: All right, Jacob Coxon, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks. And before we go, we do have some very happy news from our Meet the Press family. Our dear friend and senior producer, Sally Bronston Katz and her husband, Michael, welcomed a beautiful baby boy on Tuesday, Theo Ezra Katz. And we hear big sister Frankie is already loving her new role. Sally, Michael, Frankie, we could not be happier for all of you. And Theo, welcome to the world. We can't wait to meet you. We send our love to all of you. That is all for today. Thank you so much for watching. We'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.

51:07We'll see you next time. go earn the degree. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.