Alex Bores Discusses House Race and Threats from AI

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1:28Alex Bores:Spring is here, and there's a whole new way to chai at Starbucks that's made perfect for you.

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2:20Ben Meiselas:This is an utter disaster for Donald Trump. He is completely losing his base. some shock polls out this morning. That's a big SOS warning sign for Donald Trump and MAGA coming up in the midterms. In terms of how American people view the economy under Trump, much worse. They say he's making things far worse. And then in terms of a Trump base of people who did not graduate from college, Trump is deeply underwater with them. Now, Trump's regime is out there continuing to talk about how it's going to be a great thing when AI replaces workers. And every time they go out there and they have Kevin Hassett or Donald Trump's, that's Donald Trump's National Economic Advisor, others go out there, they say, right now, we're getting rid of the workers and AI is replacing them.

3:12Ben Meiselas:How amazing is this? That's showing up in the polling data because workers are saying, you're having AI replace us? I mean, you're rooting for that. Didn't you say you were going to help manufacturers? Oh, you're just going to help your right wing AI tech bro oligarchs and screw over the workers? Yes, that's what we've been trying to say. The Trump regime's plan is from the jump. And as I've been talking to people across this country, let me be clear. One of the most important issues that people have is the fact that AI is taking over people's jobs and these big data centers are destroying communities.

3:47Ben Meiselas:So let's just go through some of this data right here. First, let me show you Donald Trump's national economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, like bragging that AI is replacing workers. And even though our jobs reports coming out are going to be terrible, that's fine because AI and the right wing tech bros are making more profits right now. Here, play this clip. The open question really is what's going to happen to jobs as productivity goes up?

4:14Alex Bores:And I think that there's a chance that job creation lags. Productivity skyrockets, profits skyrocket, GDP skyrocket. But then all of a sudden, like you're making 20 widgets and you can make 20 widgets with a fewer person. And then that person has to find a new job.

4:30Ben Meiselas:I think that that kind of transition could happen. Here's another clip of Hassett saying that. Let me show that. Then I'm going to show you what some of this polling data suggests. Here, play this clip. The other thing is that there's a pretty big decline in the labor force because illegals leaving the country.

4:47Alex Bores:And so the break even job number is quite a bit lower than it was under Joe Biden when there were people, you know, basically coming across the border willy nilly. And so I think that you should expect slightly smaller job numbers that are consistent with high GDP growth right now. And that one shouldn't panic if you see a sequence of numbers that are lower than you're used to, because, again, population growth is going down and productivity growth is skyrocketing. It's an unusual set of circumstances.

5:16Ben Meiselas:So here's how Harry Enten describes how the American people feel about the economy right now. Let's play this clip. staggering. You know, the economy used to be the wind beneath Donald Trump's presidency wings, and now it's his Titanic. Because what are we talking about here? Well, let's just take a look here. Trump's economic net approval one year in. In term one, hey, yeah, plus side of ledger, plus eight points. It was his best issue, arguably. But now it's one of his worst. Look at that. Way, way down in the basement. 18 points below water. What is that, John? Quickly, Samantha, was that a 26 point switcheroo in the wrong direction.

5:55Ben Meiselas:This is the type of number that Democratic midterm dreams are made of and Republican nightmares are also made of. So by and large, are voters saying it's Trump's fault? Yeah, this is the key answer, right? Which is why? What is driving these numbers? And it is because the folks believe, the voters believe it's the Trump administration's fault. Take a look here. OK, the Trump admin has made the economy worse or better. You go back to January of 2018, term number one, the plurality winner there was better at 40 percent. Just 22 percent said worse. Look at this side of the screen. The exact opposite story.

6:30Ben Meiselas:What a switcheroo. My goodness gracious. 52 percent. 52 percent of Americans say that Trumpet men, their policies have made the economy the economy worse. And look at that. Just 28 percent say better. Even among the GOP, just 57 percent say they make it better. When you're only getting 57 percent of the Republican base to agree with the positive position for Donald Trump, you know you are in some massive trouble, which the Trump administration and Trump in particular are on the economy. And just remind. And here's another clip from this morning as well about Donald Trump now completely losing his base among non-college voters.

7:07Ben Meiselas:Let's play this clip right here. Yeah. OK, so, you know, if you know anything about Donald Trump, you know that he built his two presidential victories on winning voters without a college degree while Donald Trump's base with non-college voters is absolutely collapsing. What are we talking about here? Well, why don't we just take a look? Voters without a college degree on Donald Trump. Look at this. Back in 2024, he won those voters over Kamala Harris by 14 points. You come over to this side of the screen. What's his net approval rating with him? He is underwater by nine points. That's a 23-point switcheroo with his base of non-college voters.

7:41Ben Meiselas:He is absolutely collapsing with a group of voters that helped put him into the White House, Kate. Wow, wow, wow. I want to bring in right now an individual who's running for Congress right out in New York, who's made a major part of his platform discussing issues about AI, Alex Boris. Let me bring in this interview with Alex Boris. He's a New York State Assembly member. I did this interview with Alex Boris, New York State Assembly member Alex Boris. Watch this because his main thing that he's been talking about is AI. Let's play it. Alex, great to see you. Alex, Assemblyman Boris is running for New York's 12th congressional district.

8:20Ben Meiselas:It's a very competitive primary right there. One of the things most kind of prominently that you speak about that a lot of people don't talk about, which I think is one of the most important issues is some of the threats that are being posed by AI and data centers. You've made that a major part of your platform. After you graduated from Cornell and computer sciences later on at Georgia Tech, perfect. You worked at Palantir. You saw firsthand and you quit after seeing what they were doing with ICE back in 2019. So right now, people are making these connections, Palantir and ICE, but in 2019, you took a principled stand and now super PACs backed by Palantir and others are coming after you because you're one of the big voices in New York and across the nation now, standing up to AI and the threats of AI.

9:14Ben Meiselas:You recognize there's utility, but standing up to the threats as well. So why don't we start there? Because it's an issue that when Senator Bernie Sanders and I always talk about, we do podcasts just on AI. And as he says, it's the biggest issue that people are discussing, but that's not being discussed in the news. So it's like where I want to start the conversation. Talk to us about why that's a major part of your agenda and why people should focus on it.

9:37Alex Bores:People are seeing AI in every part of their lives. They're seeing their kids use chatbots. They're seeing their jobs get replaced. They're seeing their utility bills go up because of these data centers. They're seeing all of these impacts and they're asking, what is government doing about it? And that's not to say, as you mentioned, there aren't some benefits to AI, but there needs to be reasonable regulation. And then they look at DC and with the exception of Bernie Sanders and a few others, mostly they see people either not doing anything or just cheering on the industry and saying, let's get out of their way and let them have their will with the American people.

10:15Alex Bores:And so when you have a few elected officials, a few people running for office that are willing to say, hey, Americans should have a say in this development of the technology that is both A, incredibly popular, and B, incredibly terrifying to the few AI billionaires who have this extreme view that they should have complete control over the American worker and our kids and our climate and our energy bill. And that's why they're coming after me so hard. Right.

10:42Ben Meiselas:And, you know, there's so many issues that need to be focused that way. And you're talking about them all, You know, whether it's affordable affordability in general, but health care, education, housing. I mean, you as a New York state assemblyman, you see these issues firsthand across New York and efforts are being taken now. You know, I think Governor Hochul working with Mamdani, in my view, is a good development when it comes to lowering the cost of child of child care. Talk to us about, though, why I think all of these other issues are still also going to be impacted by AI and by these data centers because it addresses affordability.

11:22Ben Meiselas:And you have a lot of these people behind the AI industry hoarding the wealth as well and refusing to allow others to just live with decency. Absolutely.

11:34Alex Bores:You saw that something like, you know, 75%, 90 % of growth during parts of 2025 were just AI. The normal economy was struggling. And yet you have incredible wealth being concentrated in these AI billionaires whose explicit goal often is just to replace all labor. They say they are trying to build the AI that is smarter than any human. And then you have people like Elon Musk, who separately is investing in humanoid robots because people say, well, white collar work will be replaced, but you'll still do the trades. No, they're coming for all of that, too. So it'll affect affordability broadly. But I think one of the things that people miss is it also affects our ability to have conversations about all of these issues.

12:17Alex Bores:The use of deep fakes, the use of hyper targeted misinformation is making it impossible to have real democracy and real conversations. And as if the direct impact of AI weren't enough in that regard, you have the few billionaires who are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to buy our elections. So, you know, three of the big AI oligarchs and three big mega donors to Donald Trump have put together a super PAC that they're saying will raise$125 million. and they've dedicated at least 10 million of that just to defeating me. Yeah.

12:57Ben Meiselas:And it should be noted that your campaign in New York's 12, you could always fact check me if I'm wrong about this, but you've raised more money than any other campaign other than the super PAC that's raising the money to try to take you out. That's the dynamic, right?

13:13Alex Bores:Exactly right. I've nearly doubled any of the other candidates. There's only two campaign of Of this 12-person race, there's only two campaigns that have raised millions of dollars, plural, and it is me and the super PAC against me. The super PAC did it from like three donations from large billionaires, and I did it from thousands of people coming together, all individuals. I'm not taking any PAC money other than labor unions if they want to get involved, but all of that money was raised from individuals who just want a say in how AI develops.

13:44Ben Meiselas:You know, one of the things that you point out, which really concerned me as I looked at the economy on a macro level is I would see all of these reports about jobs and about income and about inflation. And they'd all be very bad. You know, also the increasing the debt that they haven't, you know, the federal spending is way up. That's why I saw stats like that. Then I would see, you know, the market's doing really, you know, not really well. I mean, especially over the past few days, but the market's chugging along and also not as good as other countries, which America used to lead the world.

14:24Ben Meiselas:But anyway, I'm like, I'm still, but then you would see, it's like, wait a minute, what's going on here? And it seemed to be, number one, hiding the debt in these data center acquisitions to fuel the AI by doing these like lease out agreements so that they wouldn't show debt on the balance sheets. So there was this whole, I don't want to say it's a scam, but it was a scheme, at least we'll say, to hide debt from the balance sheets and just show profits when actually a huge amounts of money, which they called CapEx expenditures. But it was really debt kind of disguised as something. And then they would do all these deals with each other.

15:05Ben Meiselas:And so they would do these press releases. Oracle does a deal with OpenAI. OpenAI does a deal with so-and-so. and they just kept on cycling the deals, but there wasn't extra money. It was just deal flow that was being announced. And now here we are in 2026, Assemblyman, and a lot of these deals that they promised, it's like, well, where's that happening? And it's not happening right now. And it's like, so have you just been lying to us in 2025? And normally, and excuse my rant, we would have an SEC that would look into this stuff and say, You can't do this, but there's no SEC anymore because the oligarchs are hanging out with Trump at Club Mar-a-Lago or wherever.

15:45Alex Bores:No SEC. And also, some of these companies can just stay private for so long now that they don't have to do a lot of the public reporting. I mean, OpenAI and Anthropic and some of the big ones are private. And so some are behaving responsibly, but I'm sure some are not. And the public doesn't really have a way to see their underlying finances. Yeah, I want to be clear that I'm not in the camp that, you know, AI is all fake. I'm actually quite in the opposite camp. I think it is very capable and going to do a lot of things. And that's why government needs to be involved. But even with that said, you're seeing weird financing vehicles that are happening where instead of directly investing in a data center, which would, as you said, show up as debt, they'll have these special purpose vehicles that are somewhat off the balance sheet.

16:34Alex Bores:And so it doesn't really show on theirs. And it's things that are reminiscent of what we saw with the housing crisis with 2008 and what happened with the subprime mortgages. So this is one of the things where the people in the AI industry are really terrified of any bump in the road. And so if it feels like sometimes you want to have a rational conversation about, hey, here are some benefits of AI. Here are some risks. How can we regulate? And you see that especially some of the executives kind of violently react to that even suggestion. Maybe that's because if they have any bump in the road in their growth, they're so leveraged that there is a real challenge of it falling down.

17:17Alex Bores:And so what you're seeing is behavior where they try to stop the states from taking any action because they're losing at the state level. They go and they try to buy the White House. They literally are paying to have the White House demolished and the East Wing ballroom built. They're putting millions of dollars into Donald Trump's super PAC. In fact, Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, in the second half of 2025 was Donald Trump's single largest mega donor. They are spending a lot right now to try to ensure that no one in America gets to have a say in how AI develops except the oligarchs.

17:56Ben Meiselas:Why do you think other politicians, even Democrats, I mean, we know Republicans are not, although some, you may be able to find some bipartisanship when it comes to data centers. So it is an interesting issue. So I don't want to paint a broad brush.

18:12Alex Bores:No, it's like shockingly bipartisan. Yeah, this one hasn't really been polarized yet, other than Trump and the people in his immediate orbit. Most Republican voters you talk to are also saying, hey, what is this is moving way too fast and we want to say in this.

18:27Ben Meiselas:And that's where the that's the thing is that the people you tour the country. AI data centers is like a number one to two to three issue because it impacts all these others. Even where most people to be affordability, generally housing, health care, AI replacing jobs, you know, is right is right up there. Yet it's not talked about. The people talk about it, but it's not making the news. It's not, you know, other than when they announce on CNBC, the deal flow that often is, you know, propaganda. So what do you why is there that incongruity? I mean, you see that when people like you talk about it, yes, you're under attack by, you know, super PACs, but you've galvanized people by making this an important issue, one that you know.

19:18Ben Meiselas:But why is it other people talk about it? Why are other people afraid of this issue?

19:22Alex Bores:Well, I think having a hundred million dollar super PAC out there is scary to many people. But but you're seeing more and more elected officials step up. I mean, you need two things. You need the willingness to go against this industry, to risk your job, to risk your career, but stand up for the right thing. And second of all, you need the knowledge of how to do it. If I'm elected, I'm going to be the second Democrat ever in Congress with a degree in computer science following Ted Lieu from California. You don't need a degree in computer science to engage here, but I think a lot of Democrats are still trying to figure out what our playbook is.

19:59Alex Bores:And so we've been trying to really push out there. Here's a bunch of threats from AI, whether that's democracy, whether that's the kids, whether it's the workers or climate or really catastrophic risks. And here's common sense steps we can take. Once you show people that there's real actions and things that can benefit them, people are galvanized by that. I mean, one of the most common responses I've gotten, even in my role as an assembly member, let alone during the congressional campaign, is people saying, you know, I don't know what we should do about AI, but I am so glad you are there figuring it out.

20:35Alex Bores:Voters are hungry to see real action here. And I think there's a number of steps we could take as Democrats and Republicans today that would start to give Americans more of a say in this technology.