Heat Grows on MAGA Tech Billionaires

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0:55Only the strongest will survive this shedding. Pantene, abundant and strong. Welcome to The Beat, everyone. We have a very big show, including, look who's here, New York Times journalist and bestselling author Maggie Haberman. We're going to get into all of it. Here's where we begin. The president struggling on several fronts, going into what is the midterm high season. The war has increasingly been described as a strategic loss, even by Trump's allies and those who do view Iran as a threat worth countering. They just say Trump has bungled this. Trump's approval rating, relatedly, has now dropped to its lowest level of this term.

1:34And so this is an obvious problem for both the presidency of Donald Trump and his Republican Party. All these problems on all these fronts. And yet Trump appears to increasingly just turn to comfort and personal distraction rather than trying to actually govern on this or even do messaging events at the very minimum. So he is back to his sort of what some have called his sort of first lady vibes of decorating. He's torn up the White House grounds for projects. More widely, he's tried to remodel and remake Washington in his image, often to a degree that has even judges curtailing, limiting or sometimes blocking what are illegal efforts to rush this.

2:17With the White House grounds, if he'd worked with Congress, he'd be OK. But he refused to do that on many of these issues. The AP writes Trump is playing White House tour guide. All of these letters are hand carved and put into the black zone. This grass will look so beautiful. They said to me, sir, we'd like to replace the grass at the White House with the highest quality grass and do a real job. This is a great poll. This is the top of the line. It's tapered. This isn't a straight up and down job, which looks terrible, frankly. That's a tapered poll. Great. I'm very good at flagpolls. He may indeed be good at flagpolls, whatever that exactly means.

2:58But this is more than bizarre when you think about all the other work left undone. And perhaps it is just easier to plaster a gold leaf inside one single room than govern the whole country or try to rebalance a foreign policy on the whole world that has, of course, not worked. Many of the big scoops on some of these issues were first broken in the bestselling book, Regime Change, which I happen to know many of our viewers have read the book. It's been on the bestseller list, but across the entire news media, this book by Maggie Haberman, who's standing by, and her co-author Jonathan Swan, continues to kick up revelations that range from the serious, the significant, the historic, to sometimes the odd or petty.

3:46That's the nature of covering this White House. It has been indispensable to understanding the different second term Trump presidency. was in a series of Situation Room meetings, Situation Room, trying to figure out how to handle the crisis over their boss being in the Epstein files. Quote, behind the scenes, the Epstein crisis was paralyzing the Trump administration to a far greater extent than the public knew. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, these leaders maintained power through theory, said. Who would ever do a thing like that, right? Caroline Lutt once walked into the Oval Office only to find the president, quote, quote, clutching a tube of super glue and attempting to affix gold decorations to the marble fireplace mantle.

4:28The sight of the president squeezing glue onto gilded appliques and mounting them on the wall himself surprised no one in his inner circle. Do you have a cell phone number? Yes, I have a cell phone number. Can we call him right now? Let's not.

4:47That's just some of what has been uncorked from that book. You know, around here, we would tell you it's great if you get some of your news and information by watching the news. But as you see in just that small set of news clips we put together lately, whatever news channel you watch, you are probably also watching some of what was reported out in that aforementioned book by The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, who is our leadoff guest tonight. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. The contrast between what Trump is focused on, the words coming out of his mouth, the things that he says and does in front of reporters, and what I called and some have seen as kind of a lot of governing work left undone.

5:31What is your reporting show there right now? We reported pretty extensively, Ari, as you said in the book, about how focused Trump is on these legacy projects, as his advisors will describe them, whether it is the ballroom, whether it is the arc to Trump, whether it is, you know, gilding the Oval Office and beyond into the White House. he obviously is still paying attention to the Iran war, but there are no good options there. He is not particularly interested in talking about the economy, other than to say that it's doing great. And sure, there are aspects that are doing fine by comparison, but that's not most of them.

6:07There are long-term real signals that are problematic. Inflation is up. It's very hard for the White House to spin these numbers. And so he is not in a particularly great mood. It's a discussion about his mood. But the reality is that in this government, where it is run by, you know, a half dozen people or so, So there is still a real focus on how happy he is or unhappy he is. And it's not a happy place to work right now. Yeah, here's what Mike Johnson was saying about that war and its impact. We set the table for the U.S. economy to take off like a rocket. If you look at it, we were doing that the first quarter of this year.

7:06And then we got into this conflict with Iran.

7:11I would say that's a pretty big exception to make, Maggie, when you have Trump's allies or other Republicans claiming, well, if we didn't start this war, it'd be different. Right. But we did. And now we're well half a year into it, no? Yeah, and it's one of the remarkable factors about this term, Ari, that again, something we focus on, as you said earlier, about how different this term is than term one. This term, Trump's control over the Republican Party, is really complete. I know we've been talking for the last several days about how his winning streak in these primaries has gone down, and it has.

7:45But when you have remade the entire Republican Party so that every candidate is a shade of Trump and it can be pretty indistinguishable, I don't quite know what it says about the future of his power or his movement. Mike Johnson acts as if he is a wing of the executive branch, and he's not. And so having him say, well, if we hadn't gone into Iran, I don't know what other message House Republicans have to run on right now because they're not getting a ton of instruction on the record that they should be running on other than fear of Democrats. Yeah. And what you discuss in the book, and we went into this a little bit when you and Jonathan were both on previously, is how the Trump machine has in the second term changed the operations of the executive branch in government fundamentally, which is different than the first term.

8:40And, you know, as you know, and you just call it straight and you objectively report it, how people feel about Trump can affect whether they want the government to be more or less effective. I mean, someone who is a Trump critic might say if he busies himself enough on decor and doesn't start another war, they'll take it. So that's sort of the political reaction. But I'm talking about the substantive way it works. There aren't a lot of people around Trump who seem able in the second term to use the policy process to even sharpen or refine whatever it is he's trying to do. And so I wonder how you think the things that are troublesome, the high prices, the way the war was started and how it's going, contrast to a first term where if you had a hawkish approach to Iran, that doesn't mean you would have to do it this way.

9:30I mean, even with some of the weaponry problems they've had, you suggest that there was a more competent version. So what does your reporting show on that and even on foreign policy, how few people can refine it? Well, you just hit on it, Ari. I mean, this is a government that is being run by basically a half dozen people, as we say in the book. You know, that was really what our reporting showed. And I don't think that he would have taken the country to warn Iran in term one. That is another way in which this term is so radically different. And that is less about, I guess you could argue it's about process, because it is the degree to which this entire government is so personalist in nature.

10:07It is so much top down from what one man wants. And they have put their entire energies around trying to either figure out what that is or to make reality match what he wants it to be. And so with Iran, he believed, and again, we wrote about this in the book, and I think we've talked about this with you, he thought this was going to be quick. He thought this was going to be a few days. He had a gut feeling. I know they were putting out the government a time frame of four to six weeks, but obviously it has been much longer. The process is the government weighs a series of bad options right now in the Middle East.

10:43But they have given up a fair amount of leverage to Iran, which when you strap any of them to a polygraph, you know, or if you did to talk about policy, they would acknowledge that. But this is all about getting Trump what he wants. And to be clear, he is the president. Presidents make these calls. But he is making these calls so unilaterally, not consulting Congress. There's no true NSC process to speak of anymore. The National Security Advisor is dual-hatted as the Secretary of State. So it is all designed to avoid leaks and to allow the president to make fast decisions, except sometimes policy and expertise are not a bad thing.

11:28Right, exactly. And we're talking about the biggest matters of statecraft, which is when do we go to war and how and people live and die by that. There are other things that are, I call them, Baroque, petty, bizarre, which is what I want to turn to. And for some viewers, that might be more fun than talking about this terrible war. But, you know, I'll say this in introduction to it. You know, sometimes people ask me, Maggie, they say, why did you have Stephen Miller on? You know, like I wanted to create Stephen Miller. I don't view that as my job. I said, Stephen Miller has an important job at the White House.

12:01So we'll look for information there or fact check him accordingly. And so with you, you've been also covering this odd story around this favored aide, Ms. Harp. So, again, not because you got up in the morning and said you wanted to make that a priority, but because the president has acted this way. And so that's a little bit of an introduction to our part two. You've agreed to stay. We'll be back with Maggie on that in 90 seconds.

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14:33President Trump has made it clear his favorite aide in the White House this second term is Natalie Harp. And she has been known for some of what she does, including playing a role in the president's social media. Some around the White House call her the human printer as she works out what he wants to say or review how his tweets and posts are doing. Democrat John Ossoff ignited the kind of current firestorm by going at this whole issue by name checking the president's aide and others have been responding. It's been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week. And whether it's Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump's daily dose of delusion and flattery.

15:18Lavishing him with praise and feeding him positive tweets and news articles to boost his ego. You got to realize it's time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in. And I think that's why he keeps her so close is because she is this sycophant who is so obsessed with him that it alarms secret service. No one cares about their feelings. We are back with the New York Times, Maggie Haberman, co-author of Regime Change. So what matters about this story? You've covered this in the book. You've written recent articles in the New York Times. What does it tell us about where Donald Trump is at? So a couple of things.

16:00John Ossoff obviously got a reaction. He's very good at the attention economy. I believe the senator knew what he was doing when he threw that line out. not getting into what he said that goes beyond our reporting. Our reporting is clear in the book, but they bit in the White House. They elevated this in many respects by circling the wagons, by focusing on this, by actually saying something far more explicit than what the senator said, and this has now become a multi-day story. Natalie Harp is significant because she is the person who is in most of the meetings with the president. She is the person who helps put out his tweets.

16:38She works on them with him. She has large control over his social media feed. And yes, she does produce an amount of positive information for him. This is why she was called the human printer. It wasn't just that she was printing out things to sign off on for him. And I want to make a point here, Ari. The people who have been critical of Natalie Harp are really people who have worked with her in Trump's orbit for a very, very long time. So I understand that this is being framed by the White House as unfair media. This all, you know, was a fact in the primary. These, in the four years that he was out of power, she was leaving these notes, very personal notes in his personal spaces.

17:20The U.S. Secret Service was concerned about her, raised this issue with staff. It became a bigger issue once she went into the White House. It is a government. That is just a different reality. And she does have a significant role as an unvetted channel of information to the leader of the free world. Is it fair to say the notes, which have been described as odd or unusual, came to light because people inside the government were concerned? I'm not going to talk about sourcing or how things might have come about, but these were not, you know, known to exist among a few people. It was fairly broadly talked about.

17:59And so people did not want to upset the president who were in his orbit. But these notes are not standard in terms of what you would see for a campaign advisor. Well, to put a finer point on it, put aside that Democrats brought it up for whatever reason, if this weren't the government, if this were a company and the CFO who was with the CEO on big decisions every day was picked. only because the CEO really loved hanging out with them or felt that they were great on sort of personal time or fun to golf with only at night, but otherwise had little to no qualifications or experience. And then they start making or advising on big decisions.

18:44There'd be a governance question for that company. I mean, isn't this almost that it's been normalized that Trump has his style, he picks his people. But yeah, if she's in the situation room and she's the first and last thought on certain things, It becomes the people's business. I think it's a little more nuanced than first and last thought on certain things. I mean, these certain things are not his PDB. It's not his intel brief. It's not necessarily matters of national security, although there are foreign leaders who do try to reach him through her. There's no question. It is his style. People elected this president.

19:18I don't think there's a single person who votes in the United States who did not know who Donald Trump is or what his style is. And it is true that presidents tailor their governments to what they want them to look like. If this was a private company and it was a privately held company, as the Trump organization is, it might not raise the same level of question. But in a government, it is just fundamentally different. And I know that there is a feeling in the White House that, you know, she did not choose to be a public figure. these are all senior staffers and when you go into the government as an assistant to the president at that high level it just becomes something entirely different oh a hundred percent and public figure she's paid by the public uh tax correct dollars and correct and the reference to her doing her work and whether she's doing a good job at work uh is all fair game i mean we could speak about whether if somebody's going beyond that or personally imputing her fine we certainly haven't aired anything like that here.

20:16And the senator said... We've just written the facts that we know. Exactly. Right. And the senator was talking about how they travel and what at least he publicly argues is Trump's lack of focus. So, yeah, it's all striking in that realm. I appreciate you coming through tonight, being our lead-off guest, Maggie. Again, folks know the book is Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, co-authored with Jonathan Swan. You can get that if you're interested wherever books are sold. We have a lot more coming down the pike tonight, including the accountability-facing MAGA tech billionaires.

20:47I told you we're going to stay on this story. I'm going to show you some really important stuff, some of it terrifying, some of it you need to know in advance. Next.

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22:32turning to a big story that might matter more than anything that most people are discussing in politics these days it's partly about heat on magatech billionaires but it relates to this larger set of investments and possible developments of an ai bubble which we know from history if it involves enough of the economy or banks can lead to those bailouts that end up costing you money whether you're in the market or not. We've been reporting on friend of Trump, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his big debt, which was documented by the New York Times exhaustively, while these other big tech companies that are already making money are going deeper into the AI game, Meta, Apple, Google, and then the new kids on the block that you keep hearing about, OpenAI, which has ChatGPT and Anthropic, raising a ton of money.

23:20So there's a collective bet on AI that now is the U.S. economy and stock market, and it all kind of happened pretty fast. So then we turn beyond the people who think this is the way to make money or Donald Trump, who's been very cozy with these people, to a wider set of reporting and analysis. There are doubters in the markets. Of course, they call that bears or skeptics, and they are looking at this. Journalist Ed Zitron is probably one of the foremost independent expert bears. He's done the reporting and work, and it's led him to these warnings that AI so far under delivers and that financially it's overextended.

24:01If anything, looking at an economy that has a host of challenges, he said maybe we should let AI burn because the industry is losing money so far. He's also written what he calls haters' guides to some of these AI companies. So where he's coming from is skepticism. And he is now in a land where many people are just trying to make money off the hype or kind of stamp AI on anything. And we've seen the backlash to that in labor among students and young people. And, well, a lot of Democratic candidates, frankly, are pushing against the data centers. But Zitron has become the leading expert voice on the bearish case against AI.

24:43large language models are not the future the only reason big tech is investing in this is that they've run out of hyper growth ideas open ai is a load-bearing fail son what do you make of zuckerberg's editorial i think it all exists that distracts from the fact that meta will not disclose its ai revenues they can just sink that cash into more and more investment the problem is that's slowly not becoming true everyone is being sold what i consider kind of a lie. It's honestly kind of a scandal.

25:14The super bear Ed Zitron joins us now. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Great to have you. You're making a name for yourself. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. People really don't like the skeptics view right up until it's important that everyone listens. And I think now, now that it's becoming alarmingly obvious how much money is being lost and indeed how little other revenue exists outside of open air and anthropic, suddenly everyone wants to listen. Yeah, well, we showed you. You've been called upon a lot of places. You're making your debut partly for that reason. So we think folks should at least listen to you tonight, make up their own minds.

25:51Let's jump right in to one of the key problems that you were early to spot, which is if this stuff is so great, why does it need so much subsidy? Why is there what they call this circular financing? One outlet said one of the big chip makers benefits from nearly every stage of AI infrastructure spending. Investors worried this ecosystem becomes too circular and then interconnected or on Wall Street, as I mentioned, they call it technically circular financing because the snake is eating its own tail, which doesn't usually work out well. I also want to note that that chip maker CEO, NVIDIA, says it's not actually circular.