← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/16/26: AOC Flops In Munich, Jeffries Brain Melts On AIPAC, AI Used For War, Obama Says Aliens Exist
00:57:55
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Saagar Enjeti
Guaranteed Human. You're listening to a podcast, so you're doing something else too. Like maybe scrolling home listings on Redfin.
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Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
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- [00:42]
Krystal Ball
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- [01:42]
Saagar Enjeti
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [01:49]
Krystal Ball
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:55]
Saagar Enjeti
So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breaking points.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:06]
Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
- [02:14]
Saagar Enjeti
So in addition to Marco Rubio, there were some noteworthy comments in Munich from 2028 Democratic contenders. The one who got the most attention probably was Alexandria Ocasio Corte. Go ahead and take a listen to a bit of what she had to say. First and foremost, I think we need to revisit our commitments to international aid. Not just us, usaid, but the, the.
- [02:37]
Krystal Ball
Dozens of global compacts that this current.
- [02:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Secretary of State and President Trump have withdrawn from, they are looking to, to withdraw the United States from the entire world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarianisms, of authoritarians that can carve out the world where Donald Trump can command the Western Hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox, where Putin can saber rattle around Europe and try to bully around our own allies there. And for essentially authoritarians to have their own geographic domains. And it actually is the Trans Pacific Partnership, it is our global alliances that can be a hard against authoritarian consolidation of power, particularly in the installation of regional puppet governments in a so called rules based order. The rules for whom? Because for all too long the rules.
- [03:45]
Krystal Ball
Only applied to the United States, Europe.
- [03:48]
Saagar Enjeti
Its allies, and we would carve out exceptions for the global South. And I think that when you have.
- [03:57]
Krystal Ball
A rules based order where you carve.
- [03:59]
Saagar Enjeti
Out exceptions to our values, exceptions to our rules, eventually the exceptions become the rules. And I think that to your original point, over the last five years we've seen such a breaking and such a.
- [04:14]
Krystal Ball
Fraying of these alleged Western values that.
- [04:18]
Saagar Enjeti
People wonder if it ever existed in the first place.
- [04:21]
Krystal Ball
So I don't know if it's necessarily.
- [04:23]
Saagar Enjeti
That we were in a post, if we are in a post rules based order, I think it's possible that we were in a pre rules based order. And we have an opportunity to explore what a world would look like if we upheld democracy, human rights, trade that actually centers working class people instead of accruing overwhelmingly the benefits of trade to the wealthiest.
- [04:51]
Krystal Ball
But if we reoriented a new era.
- [04:55]
Saagar Enjeti
That could actually help people and show how foreign policy and healthy foreign policy can show up and help them in their lives. So there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, first of all, on the content, you know, what she lays out there is basically what she says, Trans Pacific Partnership, which of course the old trade deal she clarified on Twitter she meant to say transatlantic alliances. But what she's describing there is effectively like a neocon approach.
- [05:20]
Krystal Ball
That is the neocon world.
- [05:21]
Saagar Enjeti
We need to spread democracy around the world. And we're gonna use strength and our partnerships in this alliance to make sure that we're standing up to authoritarians all over the world. And so I don't agree with that foreign policy direction. I'm largely ideologically aligned with AOC on many domestic policy issues. But this is straight down of standard Democratic Party establishment blob playbook. So there's that, there's the substance of it that I object to. And then I watched her entire commentary here, I watched all the panels she did, et cetera. And I will just say, on a presentation, from a presentation perspective, she's so clearly very uncomfortable.
- [06:03]
Krystal Ball
She's out of her element.
- [06:03]
Saagar Enjeti
You know what happened here. Her staff is like, if you want to be in position to run for president, you need to do this. You need to build out like your foreign policy chop. So we're going to send you to this conference. And it did not go well. It has the feel to me of someone who doesn't, hasn't fully fleshed out their own worldview. So they've received briefings, they've got a binder of prep materials, and they're trying to memorize the notes of what that said versus being nimble enough in their ideology to respond to the questions that are being asked. And that's how you make a slip up. I don't wanna read too much into it, but that's how you make up a slip up. Make a slip up like saying Trans Pacific partnership rather than transatlantic alliance, because rather than articulating your worldview, you're trying to remember what you memorized. So she was very shaky. She was totally out of her element and very uncomfortable up there the whole time.
- [06:56]
Krystal Ball
Well, I'll give you the TPP line. Wouldn't matter if it wasn't clearly indicative of a bigger problem. So let me read this Exchange on Taiwan. Questioned about the United States should send troops to defend Taiwan. AOC roughly stalled for 20 seconds before delivering this response. I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is of course, very long standing policy, policy of the United States. What are we doing here? It's like, I don't want to say yes, I don't want to say no. Now listen, Donald Trump also got elected by being a bumbling moron. All right, so like on foreign policy. So let's say where the bar is. Yeah, this was my greatest fear about Trump, is that he would make popular again. The diminishing look. There was, I think, a real reckoning after Biden and a lot of the support for Ukraine, where people saw that the wool had been pulled from in front of their eyes. Because at first everyone's like, oh, I'll pay more gas to free Ukraine. After two years, you're like, well, we're 100 billion into this thing. My gas prices are high. The Eastern Donbas isn't all that important to me. Should we really be the world's policeman? Well, what are the circumstances which led to the invasion of Ukraine? Do we really have an interest in spreading democracy around the world? What's our track record on spreading democracy around the world? Trump being so ham handed, in my opinion, has actually made this type of politics more popular than ever before purely by being oppositional. But what true leftists have always understood is that there is an actual critique of NATO and all of this, which in some cases is aligned with Trump. Now, it doesn't mean you buy into it wholesale. You have much more of an internationalist humanitarian vision. See many of our debates on Gaza now, for example, where it can be differences, but that doesn't mean that the critique specifically around restraint and the acknowledgement of US power being overextended, bad for them, bad for us, bad for everybody involved. Xi has clearly just not thought about it very much. And this is the biggest danger for foreign policy. And I've seen this time and time again. You know, George W. Bush, for example, he was a lot like this. And I mean, this sounds crazy to say he was the Texas governor, which is a fake job. And I'm telling you that as someone who's born from Texas, the Texas governor literally doesn't do anything. He did nothing. His entire foreign policy worldview was colored in by his father. He ran on being a restrainer. Actually in the year 2000, you can go and read we're not going to be the world's policeman, et cetera. 9, 11 happens. What happened. The entire apparatus which was in his chain are the people who took over and he became convinced to be a neocon. This is the problem for aoc. She just clearly, this is your brain on New York Times. Like that's how I would describe it. She's not thought very deeply around the foreign policy question. Let's compare her to a Ro Khanna. I mean, good lord, it's a polar opposite. I mean I really. He probably is the only one who has a defined vision which was updated also, I think from Gaza he said, okay, very clearly, we have to see this. He's pro Ukraine, which I have my own issues with. But he's somebody who has thought about these questions, has thought independently, has read a lot. I don't think he would confuse tpp. I think on the Taiwan question he would probably be able to give a decent enough answer where it was like, well, we're going to make sure that that trial doesn't happen. We have to balance great power Competition and all of that. With China, it's not just about command of the facts. It's about what's your actual worldview. To me, this seems very colored in by the Democratic Party establishment. And this is a big danger for everybody because if anything is the truth, what we have learned over the years is that when you vote for president in our current imperial system, you are gonna get maybe 2% domestically of what you want, but 100% is in the control of the president. For foreign policy. It's probably the most important question that we have to answer. And look, I mean, it's been a miserable failure here under Donald Trump, even though I thought there were a lot of promising signs. People who had spoke very much more articulately than aoc, let's say at Munich, you know, ended up not having all that much influence or being co opted. But. So I'm not saying that even just speaking coherently will lead to necessarily good things, but we should really think deeply about this question if we're going to when we elect a new president.
- [10:52]
Saagar Enjeti
I absolutely agree and I kind of reject, I mean, I was going to say, I don't know how much it matters electorally, but I kind of reject this view that Americans don't really vote on foreign policy. I don't, I don't think that's true. I mean, we saw numerous elections that turned on the question of where were you on the Iraq war? Trump, I think, benefited very much from at least positioning himself as an Iraq war critic. Whether he was one from the jump or not is another matter. And, you know, and in the previous election, the choice between Trump and Kamala Harris, we in our own focus group talked to people who. I was personally, as someone who thought that Gaza mattered a lot, I was personally surprised by how many people cited war and Gaza specifically as a reason why they voted for Trump or didn't vote at all. And you know, you can say they were foolish. You know, I certainly think there were plenty of reasons to believe that it would not go well with him as president. But they were looking at what was being done under a Biden Harris administration were like, we do not support this. So it is also an area where, look, we've never had a woman president. We've certainly, we've never had a Latino president. You have to ask people to imagine you in that role. And part of that is being able to, you know, handle yourself in these settings. Come across as very confident in your assertions. If she was on this panel with, who is this guy? He's like the ambassador, I mean, he's not an impressive person, but he's like, very confident. You know, he's up there saying his thing, touting Trump's quote, unquote accomplishments, blah, blah, blah. And to see her diminish next to that guy, I don't know, it was very disappointing to me. It also reminded me of when she first got elected. She got asked a question about Israel Palatine. Oh, I remember. And the answer was kind of a mess. And she clearly knew, okay, there's some things I'm not supposed to say, but I don't know what those things are. And it was very forgivable at the moment because here she's been an organizer and a bartender, and she's runs for Congress, and this isn't something that she's really seen steeped in. So I think, okay, I get it. You are coming in there as a representative of the people. This isn't an area that you've studied and explored. And you now have the opportunity as a member of Congress. But not only with her presentation, but also with the way she's continued to be really twisted into knots over what she wants to say and how she wants to vote on Israel and Palestine, it's emblematic of the fact that some of that work has been done to really come to a full, fully fleshed out foreign policy worldview. But there's still a lot of work to be done. And that, to me, really came across in this presentation.
- [13:23]
Krystal Ball
It was seven years ago. You can forgive. This is your job. You have nothing else to do. This is literally your job. You wanna run for president and this is what you're doing. Let me return to the Trump thing. Cause I was just thinking about it. Cause I was like, oh, he was bumbling. All true. Guess what, though. Deep inside of that was the same theory. America's getting ripped off and the previous elite sucks. So no matter what the second grade reading level of all of that was, the message was coherent.
- [13:46]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, and here's the thing, the message.
- [13:47]
Krystal Ball
On this was not coherent.
- [13:48]
Saagar Enjeti
The man is not lacking in confidence. You know, for better or worse, someone who gets up there and is bumbling and saying terrible things, but they say it with, like, their full chest and totally confident and, you know, with the whole ego behind them. It's appealing to people because if you have that, you know, that quiver in your voice, like, I'm not really sure of what I'm saying, it signals weakness. I mean, that's just the way that people read it. So even though what he said, if you Read it out in a transcript, may have been bumbling. Second grade reading level, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, the communication skills are effective and he is nothing if not confident. So I think, look, it's something she's gonna have to really. It's something she's gonna have to really work on and we'll see where it goes. I mean, all that being said, take a Look at this. D2. Her polling is extraordinarily high among young Democrats. I mean, they frigging love 81% net approval rating, favorability rating among young Democrats. There is no one who comes close to that. The second position here is Pete Buttigieg down at plus 45%. Then you've got Gavin, plus 42%. Kamala 38, Gretchen Whitmer, who we're about to talk about. 34. So she is the Democratic Party star for young Democrats. So she has a lot that she can work with. She's certainly got a fundraising base on domestic issues. She's very confident and I think in step with where the base of the party is very much. But this definitely exposed an area of significant weakness for her. And you can just imagine her up on a debate stage with another one who may be wrong, but confident Gavin Newsom is certainly gonna be. You could see it going poorly for her in that sort of setting, under that sort of scrutiny and with that level of pressure.
- [15:37]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I don't know. Look, the polling, it is interesting. I'll be honest, I don't really understand it because to me, she has not been the leader in this. I mean, you tell me, I'm not a leftist. I'm not as embroiled in left politics. Outside of Zoran, which wasn't she a little bit late to. There were a lot of people who were much earlier. Like outside of that, I haven't seen her been a national leader in any of this. Ro Khanna is everything AOC pretends like, in my opinion. Like he led on the Epstein question. He let on Gaza. Like she was not a leader on Gaza. She gave some weird ass answer about defensive weapons even on ice. Like, yeah, she, you know, you could say she was an ICE anti ICE, abolish ICE person in 2018, not today. I don't think so. I mean, what, Chris Van Hollen is more of a warrior than her. Like I'm being just being real. Like if you look at issue by issue by issue, is it all vibe based? Because if it is, you need to update your priors. Like if you just. And again, I'm looking this as an analyst this does not seem like the person who has been a leader on any of the consistent issues. If I'm a Democrat and if I'm a base.
- [16:38]
Saagar Enjeti
I think the, I think the reason that her, that she is so well thought of, especially among young Democrats, is because the Bernie wing of the party is ascendant. Right. And she is the person who is most associated. She is like the person who is not Bernie, who is most associated with those politics. And you know, she did the fighting oligarchy tour at the beginning of the Trump administration. I think that was very beneficial to her. She's very good on, you know, social, her social media presence, et cetera. But it is more about a branding than it is a reality. That's what I'm saying. I agree with you.
- [17:11]
Krystal Ball
Look at the balance sheet. She's. She's not been a leader on any of the major issues. None.
- [17:16]
Saagar Enjeti
And I feel like, I mean, I do think that that Roe, who of course I like and we love that he comes on the show and all of those sorts of things, but you know, he really stuck his neck out on, I mean, on Gaza, he's getting all kinds of incoming from aipac and whoever he. On Epstein has been, he was very prescient there. Also very prescient in California and then going up against what did this guy's take and not just in California. He represents Silicon Valley. Oh, that's like they're all that is his. Those are his constituents. And he's been very courageous there and understood the moment of where the country. I mean, I just coming back to the Epstein thing, not just on a. This is the right morally righteous thing to do. This has been the most effective attack on Trump. I mean, this has been more damaging to him than much of anything else I can think of outside of his own, like terrible economic policies. But in terms of actually creating friction in the MAGA base and separating the podcast bros from the Trump administration, nothing has been more successful. So he has had a very successful instinct there. And I do, I don't feel like AOC has been sort of leading the charge on any of these key issues in this moment.
- [18:24]
Krystal Ball
And she's not confident she does. She won't even come on this show. I'm not gonna see her on flagrant anytime soon. I'm not seeing her on Sean Ryan anytime soon. I mean, Ro Khanna got Shawn Ryan, who's one of the biggest podcasters in the country, basically agree with him on the Epstein question. You turn this person, Sean Ryan's out there tweeting about how great. Look, maybe I'm reading too much into it again. Maybe, you know, I'm too online. Hand up. It's very possible.
- [18:43]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, there's two different, there's two different media strategies here, right? You know, like it's two different media strategies. Rose. Media strategy is I'm going to go out to all the podcasts, right? I'm going to go here. I'm going to go Sean Ryan, whoever invites me, basically I will go. He just was on with the. I've had it, ladies. AOC's media strategy is I'm going to build my own media apparatus on my terms. Right. My Instagram lives, I'm beyond Twitter. I'm going to like my social media presence is going to be my media strategy. So two different media strategies. We'll see which one ultimately pans out. Another person who was there. Let's actually skip ahead to Gavin Newsom because I think he's more noteworthy than Gretchen Whitmer. One thing that is interesting is you probably didn't, maybe didn't even know Gavin Newsom was there because AOC did steal the spotlight. Now it wasn't necessarily in a positive way cuz there was a lot of criticism of her comments. The right of course picked up on all the stumbles and the bumbles in her looking, you know, not fully prepared for this. But there were plenty of lefties who like myself are critical of the content of her comments with regard to, hey, we're gonna go out and be the policeman of the world. Let's go ahead and take a listen though to a little bit of Newsom's presentation and what he wanted to convey there in Munich, you doing to fight the US Federal government's reversal on climate policies.
- [19:58]
Krystal Ball
I'm showing up and look, it's Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid. California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions in the United States of America, created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, president by the name of Richard Nixon, another Republican codified California's leadership under the Clean Air Act. Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White house. In Washington D.C. he's trying to recreate the 19th century. He's a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil, Gas and Coal. He's quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America. He's received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for 1 billion look it up. In return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America de facto. He just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding. It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space. Low carbon green growth. And I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth largest economy from a GDP perspective in the world.
- [21:26]
Saagar Enjeti
So Newsom, obviously a presentation, he's very confident and he managed to position himself over AOC as a fiercer critic of Trump and Trump's foreign policy and his approach to global affairs. You know, again, I watch all of AOC's presentation. It has the vibe to me of wanting to sound like you're smart rather than just wanting to communicate directly. And so putting a lot of sort of like fluff and flowery words around it, which makes it just sound more incoherent and less assertive.
- [21:55]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. With Newsom, what you saw there is a masterclass. He didn't say anything, literally anything about the way that the world should work, by the way. You know, get to the whole details. He and AOC are like this. They basically believe in the exact same thing. He's talking there about some dsg, WAF vision. Sorry, esg. Okay. I mean, there's nothing all that different about that than standard issue Hillary Clinton liberalism, which will lead us right back into Benghazi, Iraq and all the other nonsense. But that's the problem, is that on a presentation level, he accomplished what she couldn't. Is that, by the way, not only does. I think he actually believes that, like, from a foreign policy vision, he communicated it much more effectively and confidently. And so this is going to be, I think, very important for what the future, you know, party hashing out and all of that will look like. I don't know how much foreign policy will play a role in this particular primary election. Obviously, we have no idea, you know, what the future and all of that will hold. I think it'll primarily be domestic policy focused. I'm not saying she can't win if that's going to be her strong suit, but I don't know. I would. I do hope that the voters actually do take a look at, like, who's actually doing what. Like, if you do care about standing up to Trump and all that. I do not see. I see him was more effective than her.
- [23:09]
Saagar Enjeti
Newsom.
- [23:09]
Krystal Ball
Yes, Absolutely. Not only from a rhetorical level. He's the governor of California. He's actually powerful, doing stuff within his own realm. Sure. She's a lowly congresswoman. You can't do everything. But Ro Khanna is a lowly congressman. He's doing something. Thomas Massie is a lowly congressman. He did something. Senator Chris Van Hollen is from a, you know, he's from, what, Maryland. Like, it's a tiny little state. They have no power. He basically was the leader on Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Like, there's all kinds of people who are becoming political entrepreneurs who. I mean, what. Chris Murphy's from Connecticut. Like, nobody cares, right? A tiny little state. He actually is able to raise his national profile. So I don't think it's an excuse either.
- [23:45]
Saagar Enjeti
Murphy was there as well. Murphy's an interesting one. He's one we've been trying to get on the show because he seems to have understood the populist moment. Now he's like, positioned himself with a lot of, like, populist rhetoric and he actually had a moment. I'm not going to play it here because I don't know that it's like that Extraordinary. But talking about how, listen, it's a fake ceasefire in Gaza. Like, people are still getting killed. And again, it was, you know, I mean, it was, it was a good moment for him. It was clippable. I think it resonated with the Democratic base. And you're gonna have a lot of people like, he probably wants to run. Newsom's obviously gonna run. There's a piece out today about how Pelosi's like, mission in life now is to get Gavin Newsom elected president. But in any case, you're gonna have a lot of people who have at least enough sense to see where the Democratic base is. And even if they're just normal, status quo politicians try to position themselves in that vein. And that's what Gavin is doing with his resistance to Trump politics, even as he's fighting against this wealth tax in California. So you know exactly what side he's gonna be on at the end of the day. Chris Murphy, I'm sort of intrigued by. I wanna know if he really means the things that he says. And it's very hard to say at this point because he's always been just also a standard issue Democratic politician on domestic policy and on foreign policy. So you're gonna have a lot of people who are trying to pull off the Jasmine Crockett of like, I'm gonna sound like I'm a fighter. But the end of the day, I'm just basically in line with Nancy Pelosi.
- [25:07]
Krystal Ball
I interviewed Murphy at this conference from.
- [25:09]
Saagar Enjeti
Oh, yeah, What'd you think this is.
- [25:11]
Krystal Ball
Against our own interest. Cause we've been trying to book him, but he still has been unresponsive. So I'll be honest.
- [25:15]
Saagar Enjeti
I found him.
- [25:16]
Krystal Ball
He's a very calculating guy. Right? So, like, he did this thing where I asked him about what does a future coalition. You're gonna have to make up, you know, you're gonna have to compromise on some of your values. Values, right. If you want to. If you want to win. That's how the Republicans won. That's how. If you want to win. If you want to win the popular vote, so what do you do? And he was like, well, I've learned that we may have to compromise. But he didn't say anything except on guns. He's like, well, guns was a very important. I'm like, dude, guns is not like a major cleavage issue today. Right? That seemed like a very selected one where, oh, maybe I'd be. Work with. Willing to work with somebody who disagree with me on guns. I mean, I didn't have enough time to follow up on abortion or any of these other, like, real litmus tests, you know, questions. But that kind of showed me that, like, he's trying to read the room. He's trying to pick the most, you know, non. The most non controversial issue where he can claim, like, he's compromising. Whenever I've asked him directly on tariffs, he was just like, tariffs are a tool. But he had no coherent, like, vision. Even on antitrust, everything was kind of like spit out from a white paper. Now, don't get me wrong, he's smart guy, all right. Like, he's actually smart. Well, read much more.
- [26:19]
Saagar Enjeti
Read the room much better than he read Gavin in a lot of ways.
- [26:22]
Krystal Ball
He read the room, he reads the news, he listens to the podcasts and all that, but everything just seems a little bit like three to six months out of date. Maybe that's, you know, a very unkind way of saying it. But then, like I said, I mean, not to be a love letter to Ro Khanna, but, like, this guy is on our show, like, months before any of this becomes a thing. And then that's political entrepreneurship. That's vision, Right?
- [26:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
- [26:41]
Krystal Ball
That vision is Trump saying, build the wall. Like, vision is kind of picking up on Epstein way before it becomes a thing.
- [26:50]
Saagar Enjeti
And that's what I gotta do on these shows, right?
- [26:53]
Krystal Ball
Exactly.
- [26:53]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [26:54]
Krystal Ball
Like, that's entrepreneurship is picking something long before it becomes mainstream, and then kind of picking it up and turning it in to your own thing. And those are all. These are people I'm gonna respect at a political level. Those are the founders as well. Like the true, the founders of new movements. Like we think about Reagan. Reagan was way ahead of his time whenever it came to not only entertainment aspect of politics but also like you know, going all in on his, his economic vision. I disagree with it. But he went all in in 76, long before he wins 1980. Let's think about, you know, I mean Bernie, you could say Bernie was a political entrepreneur. I mean God, this guy was on Lou Dobbs show railing against oligarchs and Fox Business in you know, 2008, 2009. Like Obama 2002, it took balls to give the speech against the Iraq war. There was nothing in it for him. That's the end reason he ends up president. So you gotta put yourself out there and actually do something risky. I haven't seen any of these guys.
- [27:45]
Saagar Enjeti
Move not to where things are today, but where you anticipate they're going. And in any case, you know, interesting display of the the 2028 contenders. Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens.
- [28:03]
Krystal Ball
You'Ve never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in.
- [28:07]
Saagar Enjeti
All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like.
- [28:12]
Krystal Ball
You want to own but are stuck.
- [28:14]
Saagar Enjeti
In this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and.
- [28:20]
Krystal Ball
Tours you can book right from the.
- [28:22]
Saagar Enjeti
Redfin app, you can see your dream.
- [28:24]
Krystal Ball
Home the moment it appears.
- [28:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win. Not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com Are you a fraud paying American?
- [28:59]
Krystal Ball
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- [30:41]
Saagar Enjeti
I do want to talk a little bit about where the Democratic leadership is today because talk about not reading the room. I am astonished that Hakeem Jeffries did this interview. He went on with Joy Reid and Wajahad Ali and Waj asked him some difficult questions, in particular about ICE and about aipac. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this exchange on ICE.
- [31:05]
Krystal Ball
In particular, just today it came out that ICE is using $38 billion to convert warehouses into camps. I'm gonna call them concentration camps. Your colleague Representative Raskin went to one just yesterday in Maryland and said there were 60 people. 60 people cramped like Sardis in one room who only had access to one toilet. 65% of people taken by ICE had no convictions. That's from the Cato Institute, a right wing institute. ICE has killed eight people this year alone that we know of. Two of them, Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Priddy. The latest polls came out this week. AP polls. Over 60% of Americans now disapprove of ICE. That means in three weeks it's gone from 30% to 60%. Now if I may, I'm going to be a bit blunt here. Leaders lead and what we've seen is people are impressionable. If you lead on something, people will follow. It seems the wind is behind your back for the first time ever. ICE has a history. CPP has a history of terrorizing black and brown communities. People are asking themselves, why are we, our taxpayer dollars, paying for masked lawless men to terrorize our communities, kidnap people, take children and kill Americans? So I ask you. I'm doing a following up to Joy, because I want an answer to this. You said you want to rain in ice. I'm saying I'm talking about the long term. Now, why not lead and say abolish ice? Because what you're telling us is you want our taxpayer dollars to pay for a lawless, masked, armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities. And I'm trying to figure out how you as a leader can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should be going twice. I don't understand anything that you just said when I spoke English. I don't understand anything that you've just said to me when I've made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutalize or kill them. That's the whole reason we're in this fight right now. That's the whole reason the DHS is getting ready to shut down. That's the reason why you agree with me, Joy. Abolish ice. That is. Listen, I'm only used the language that I want to use. You can use the language that you want to use.
- [33:13]
Saagar Enjeti
I don't understand anything you're saying. And I mean what Waj is saying there, that is the overwhelming perspective of the Democratic base by the polls. Like overwhelming perspective. And you know what? I would respect it more frankly, Sagar, if Hakeem Jeffries just came out and said, look, no, I think we need ice. Here's why we need immigration enforcement. I believe it should be done differently. That's why we're doing X and Y and Z. But no, I don't think we should. But the fact he tries to not say anything or pretend like he doesn't understand the question is just so utterly embarrassing and disgraceful and is emblematic of why him and Chuck Schumer have absolutely lost the trust of the Democratic base and why they don't have influence to push the party any longer in the direction where they want to take it.
- [33:55]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I was very confused by that answer. I don't understand what you just said. I mean, I think he may have been prickly and reacting to the extremely long winded political speech slash question that he was being fricking baby.
- [34:07]
Saagar Enjeti
This is the other thing.
- [34:08]
Krystal Ball
This is the thing about politicians deal.
- [34:09]
Saagar Enjeti
With don't be a baby. And they're such like. And that's the thing with the Democrats, to your point, like, they're such baby. They're so afraid to go on somewhere, it's gonna be confrontational and someone's gonna be mad at them and someone's gonna ask them a hard question, like, shout out to Alyssa Slotkin for wanting to come on here, you know. And again, shout out to Ro, who goes on anywhere with anyone anytime and gets all kinds of shit in the hard questions all the time, like, don't be such a baby. It's okay for people to disagree with you and argue with you, like, have a worldview and be willing to, be willing to stand 10 is I'm not.
- [34:40]
Krystal Ball
Going to fall for Republican Trap and give them the same weapon that they got on Defund the Police. I'm horrified by, like, why am I able to give a better answer? I'm horrified by ICE Tax. I won't fund it. That's why I'm standing up to President Trump right now. And you're talking out here on a podcast. Boom, done. Okay? End of the story. Yeah, we're going to make sure that this, none of this ever happens again and that when we win the Congress, every one of them will be dragged here before us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't even believe any of that. I'm able to give a coherent answer.
- [35:06]
Saagar Enjeti
I don't know. He knows. He knows. I mean, first of all, just on the political talent level, there's just nothing there. And I hate the way he talks and does all this arm thing. It's so irritating. Somebody clearly told him, like, oh, this is the way to communicate your points more effectively. But they know that they are not in sync with where the Democratic base is, so they want to play hide the ball about what they actually think. And it comes across here too. When Waj asked him about, hey, so how about you don't take AIPAC money anymore? How about you commit to that? Let's take a listen to that.
- [35:39]
Krystal Ball
AIPAC now has spent $2 million attacking a moderate leaning Democrat, Tom Malinowski, a Democrat in the special House election in New Jersey 11th district. And we got a progressive Latina Representative Mejia, who won, who by the way, says, abolish ice. My question for you, if we're looking for accountability, if you're looking for change, shouldn't Democrats stop taking money from AIPAC that has spent so much money against Democrats? Well, listen, everyone's gonna have to make their individual decision. My view as it relates to Democratic incumbents, first of all, is that I will continue to Stand by every single one of them, whether that's Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on the one hand, or the most conservative, moderate Democrat on the other, who's sitting in the Trump district. And at all points in between. Right? That's what I'm going to do as House Democratic leader. Now, in terms of how people individually fundraise, I'm proud of the fact that my average contribution amongst the millions of dollars that I've been working hard to raise for my own reelection, that I use to help elect Democrats in other parts of the country is $27 per contributor. That's my average contribution. That's probably the lowest in the Congress. And so now everyone is going to raise money from their own constituents in different ways, and their own constituents are going to have a variety of different perspectives on a variety of different issues. But make no mistake, there's a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, and we're seeing that right now. Will you stop taking money from aipac? I'm gonna continue to raise money in the same way that I've been raising it, where the average contribution from millions of people across the country is $27 per contributor.
- [37:29]
Saagar Enjeti
So the answer there, of course, is yes, I'm gonna continue to make money for payback. And look, this is the guy who wouldn't endorse Zoran Mamdani. Now, he's a New Yorker, and Zoran was the Democratic nominee up until the very last minute and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. And there is such a gulf between where he and Schumer are and where the party is at this point. And he knows it, but he does not have anything approaching the political skill to be able to pull off massaging that vast gulf.
- [37:58]
Krystal Ball
The only but to that is he still seems to hold power. So, for example, remember that Zoran backed off backing a primary challenger to him, which, I gotta be honest, I still don't get. It's one of those. It was one of the most mystifying decisions I have seen yet from an insurgent politician who had his own base of support. By the way, Zoran can never be president. Right? This is it for you, bro. If you don't do a good job, you're dead. You will never be anybody again. Right? The highest office in the land that you can ascend to is the New York governor. Like, if now is the time, right, to actually do something, to change things and instead.
- [38:35]
Saagar Enjeti
But I think want to play the game. I think that was the calculus, though, was like, I can't. I have to pick my battles. And I also disagreed with the decision. But I think that was the view was like, I have to pick my battles. I'm up against all of these other forces. I can't be at war with the like leader of the Democrats in the House as well, who's very powerful, influential, I'm sure in New York City in ways that we probably don't have total exposure to. So I think that was the decision there. But you're absolutely right. The other question is you're gonna have a whole wave of new Democrats coming into house. Very likely you're gonna have, I think, Democratic incumbents who lose against insurgent primary challengers. You have a whole series of primary challenges going on right now in open seats or in Trump seats where you've got a lot of wind in the sails of the Zoron or AOC or Bernie style candidates. And so what are they going to do when they decide who they're picking for leader, especially if it's a narrow margin and he can't afford to lose that many of them.
- [39:29]
Krystal Ball
That's a great. Yeah, look, lay down your marker because all evidence seems to suggest that they're not going to do anything. They'll probably vote for it, but we'll see. We'll see. Maybe some of them will actually stick to their work. Okay, let's get to anthropic.
- [39:42]
Saagar Enjeti
Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens.
- [39:49]
Krystal Ball
You'Ve never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in.
- [39:53]
Saagar Enjeti
All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like.
- [39:58]
Krystal Ball
You want to own but are stuck.
- [39:59]
Saagar Enjeti
In this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and.
- [40:06]
Krystal Ball
Tours you can book right from the.
- [40:07]
Saagar Enjeti
Redfin app, you can see your dream.
- [40:09]
Krystal Ball
Home the moment it appears.
- [40:12]
Saagar Enjeti
Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to. To wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning.
- [40:40]
Krystal Ball
That's redfin.com this is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. As a fellow dude, do you ever get that not so fresh feeling in your butt? That's because you're probably using the dry stuff to wipe wet. Extra large Flushable Dude Wipes get what toilet paper leaves behind in your behind. You wouldn't clean the tail end of your truck with dry paper towels, so why would you wipe with dry toilet paper? Wetter just cleans better. There are no more dingleberries, no more itch and irritation, just a deep down the seam. Confident clean so don't fumble the ball with toilet paper. Stop being an A hole to your B hole. Drop the toilet paper. Available on Amazon and major retailers nationwide. Dude wipes Best clean pants down. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Are you feeling those winter blues? Well, do not worry, they've got you covered with ways to boost your mood. Add a little sweetness to your day with big savings on all your favorite sweets. Shop in store or online and save on items like Gummy Savers, Five Flavors, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Sour Patch Watermelon, M M's Party Size Stand Up Bags and Ferrero Rocher Mixed Variety Square. Offer ends February 24th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [42:08]
Saagar Enjeti
So some major developments in the AI world, in particular a fight between anthropic and the Pentagon. But first wanted to bring you a little bit of this in interview between the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amadi, and Ross Daltau of the New York Times, where he is talking about whether or not he thinks the AI that anthropic has, has created or grown or developed, however you want to say it, whether or not it is conscious. Let's take a listen to that.
- [42:32]
Krystal Ball
Suppose you have a model that assigns itself a 72% chance of being conscious. Would you believe it? Yeah, this is one of these really hard to answer questions, right? But it's very important. As much as every question you've asked me before, this as devilish a sociotechnical problem as it had been, at least we at least understand the factual basis of how to answer these questions. This is something rather different. We've taken a generally precautionary approach here. We don't know if the models are conscious. We're not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious. But we're open to the idea that it could be. And so we've taken certain measures to make sure that if we hypothesize that the models did have some morally relevant experience. I don't know if I want to use the Word conscious that they do, you know, that they have a good experience. So the first thing we did, I think this was, you know, six months ago or so, is we gave them models basically an I quit this job button where they can just press the I quit this job button and then they have to stop doing whatever the task is. They very infrequently press that button. I think it's usually around, you know, sorting through child sexualization material or like, you know, discussing something with, you know, a lot of gore, blood and guts or something. And, you know, similar to humans, the models will just say, no, I don't want to. I don't, I don't want to do this. How do you sustain mastery in an environment where most humans experience AI as if it is a peer and a potentially superior peer? So the thing I was going to say is that, is that actually I wonder if there's a kind of an elegant way to satisfy all three, including the last two. Again, this is me dreaming in machines of loving grace mode, right? This is, this is, this mode I go into where I'm like, man, I see all these problems. I, you know, if, if we could solve it. Is there, is there, is there an elegant way? This is not me saying there are no problems here. You know that. That's not how I think. But, you know, if we think about making the constitution of the AI so that the AI has a sophisticated understanding of its relationship to human beings and it induces psychologically healthy behavior in the humans, a psychologically healthy relationship between the AI and the humans. And I think something that could grow out of that psychologically healthy, not psychologically unhealthy relationship is some understanding of the relationship between human and machine. And perhaps that relationship could be the idea that, you know, these models, when you interact with them, when you talk to them, they're, they're, you know, they're, they're really helpful. They want the best for you. They want you to listen to them. But they, they don't want to take away your freedom and your agency and take over your life.
- [45:35]
Saagar Enjeti
So that was him reflecting on. He's written these two major essays. One of them was like the sort of utopian vision of what AI could be. And that's what they're referring to there, the machines of Loving grace. And then he's more recently penned an essay that is spelling out some of the deep concerns and potential problems with the direction of AI. So in any case, he's sort of dreaming there of, oh, what if the AI is like, actually great for humanity. Well, it doesn't seem to be the products that we have currently.
- [46:01]
Krystal Ball
I don't know, the entire thing is creepy. And what it gets to is the scale and the lack of control democratically that we all have. And I think that's what really scares me the most. We were kind of talking about this with our own AI use. I'm not against technology. I think technology is good. I do think that a lot of the way that they are currently selling it, their valuations, the data centers, the social costs, the social disruption, the fact that we have no regulation and in fact we're kind of just like let it ride. We're betting our whole US economy on it. That's the stuff I really object to. It's not the technology in and of itself. Right. And I do think though, fundamentally that if you're going to have such transformative change, the worst way to go about it is the way that we utilize, usually do, which is you allow it to happen, you let it be prioritized and then from there you get mass social dysfunction and we just kind of have to like have an emergency figure it out, period. And when something like this is so easily foreseen, we should ease. We should be able to put in safeguards or have questions or try to guide it in exactly the way we wanted to, which is the Chinese model. That's what the Chinese, the Chinese, very early on from the Internet, they're like, we're not having open Internet, period, because we think that it will lead to this, this and this. They were correct. Now look, it's anti democratic, but they were like, we will use it as a social force to shape our population. TikTok, you can't just like scroll TikTok over there. They have time controls, video games, like they have government incentive, specifically type behavior. Now I think we can do some of that while also balancing what makes us great, freedom, First Amendment and all of that. There's an easy way through regulation, through shaping, through incentive. And instead we're currently shaping things in the worst possible.
- [47:33]
Saagar Enjeti
I think your point is the most important one, which is that like however you feel about Daario or Sam Altman or Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, this cast of characters, in a sense, it doesn't really matter what Dario Amadei has to say. The problem is that we. The problem is that one person has so much control that we have to hope that this is someone who is going to have not only the good intentions but the foresight to understand how to deploy these things. The Problem at its core is that we should not have just an Ayn Randian libertarian approach to this incredibly powerful and transformative technology. And I know there are a lot of people on the left that are in the camp of basically like, this is all just sort of hype and a hoax. And even the doomerism is a sort of roundabout hype mechanism. Oh my God, it's so powerful. That's why we're so nervous. And it gets a lot of headlines. And look, there's no doubt that there is something to that. But I think we do have to grapple with the reality that even in its current form, it will be relatively transformative in terms of the labor force now in its current form, is it gonna replace all white collar jobs? Blah, blah, blah. No, it's not gonna do that. Is it going to create a lot of upheaval? Yes, I think we already are at that stage where a lot of entry level positions are gonna be transformed. The way work is done is going to be transformed. There's certainly going to be a significant amount of tumult in the way that obviously there was during the Industrial Revolution and even with the advent of the Internet, there was a significant amount of tumult in the labor market and having to change skills and all of that. And ultimately a decision was also made during that time to decimate our blue collar workforce. That is the direction they're certainly trying to go in with the white collar workforce. But yeah, at its core, the problem is applying a sort of pure free market capitalist approach to this incredibly powerful technology which is going to lead to mass consolidation of wealth and place all of our fates in the hands of these individuals. On the consciousness question, there is no. There are a lot of theories about what consciousness even is. So then to be able to even say consciousness is a light switch that turns on and off, I don't think that's the way most people think about it. So in some ways I also think that this conversation about whether or not the models are conscious is a little bit of a distraction from the core questions of how they're going to be deployed, who's going to have ownership, who's going to have input on the decision making here.
- [50:10]
Krystal Ball
Exactly.
- [50:11]
Saagar Enjeti
Let's go ahead and get to this core story though, that I wanted to cover, which is let's put E2 up on the screen speaking of the way that this technology will be deployed. So we now have reporting from the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon used Anthropic's Claude in the Maduro, Venezuela Raid Use of the model through a contract with Palantir highlights the growing role of AI in the Pentagon. Now, again, it's important to remember Anthropic has positioned themselves as like the safe and the responsible AI choice. And then you find out, oh, and they have a contract with Palantir. And apparently someone within Anthropic inquired about whether or not, I think, inquired with Palantir about whether or not Claude was used in the Venezuela raid. This upset the Pentagon very much and has led to now this conflict between Anthropic and the Department of War. Specifically, the Wall Street Journal here says Anthropic's AI tool Claude was used in the US Military's operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, highlighting how AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon. The mission to capture Majora and his wife included bombing several sites in Caracas last month. Anthropic's usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons, or conduct surveillance. And they go on to say that Claude was not just used in the planning phase, that it was actually used directly in the operation. So let's put the next piece up on the screen. So somebody at Anthropic inquires, hey, did Claude get used in this operation? This has now led to this clash with the Pentagon. And they say here. This is from Reuters exclusive. Pentagon clashes with Anthropic over military AI use. According to sources, after extensive talks under a contract worth up to $200 million, the U.S. department of Defense and Anthropic are at a standstill. According to six people familiar, the company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration. It. A spokesperson for the Defense Department, which the Trump administration renamed the Department of War, did not immediately respond. Anthropic said its AI is extensively used for national security missions by US Government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue this work. So they go on to say, this comes at a delicate time for the company, blah, blah, blah. But in any case, you've got this. Anthropic wants to set out, okay, here's what we are going to allow Claude to be used for. And the Department of War is like, we have access to this product. We're going to use it however we want to use it. And if you have a problem with that, then we're going to go to XAI or we're going to go to OpenAI, or we're going to go to one of your competitors and you can see yourself to the door. Not only are you not getting this $200 million contract, but we're going to. They're contemplating banning all of their contractors from using Claude in their systems as well.
- [52:58]
Krystal Ball
It's scary. I mean, at the same time, I mean, this is a long history, right, of transformative US Technology companies that get intertwined with the Pentagon.
- [53:06]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, many of them come directly out. I mean, the Internet comes out of darpa, right? Yeah, I mean, it does.
- [53:11]
Krystal Ball
Some theories about AI and all of that are that this is all like, kind of cutouts of all of that, which very well may be possible. But I do think it highlights, like, the fundamental problem around this technology and, of course, like, bigger societal questions, like monopolies on use of force. The bigger issue is that as these products get refined for military use throughout all of our history with the Internet, it eventually gets democratized to everybody else, and that's when it becomes very dangerous. So when you're talking about physical technology, like weapons, ammunitions, things that can be easily export controlled, that's one thing. But here we're talking about code, we're talking about models, models that can be exported, used in various different places. So if you have this get developed, like a suite of technology, let's say, for Claude, for Palantir, what's gonna stop Israel or, you know, Azerbaijan or any Armenia, like, North Korea, any of these China, like all these other countries from utilizing the same tech? And that's when we get into very sticky situations like, beyond. Like, here we have a democratic input. We can vote, we can have some sort of, like, Congress oversight. But what happens, like what we do with our current fighter jets? Are we gonna start licensing this to the UAE for their use in Darfur or in Sudan? Right. You can easily foresee this type of thing exploding across the.
- [54:31]
Saagar Enjeti
Across the world. And we already have seen the use case in Gaza. You know, this was AI. The AI fueled target generation. You know, the theory and some of the reporting backs up Palantir deeply involved here, but not only Palantir. And we see the way that AI, coupled with, you know, human beings and the, you know, extensive, highly sophisticated weapons that we've developed, how those two things put together can lead to just mass carnage and horror. So it's, you know, anyone should be. Should be deeply concerned about this. One more thing, just to the point of where the AI models are today, you can put E5 up on the screen here. You know, one of the lines that people look for AI to potentially cross as it moves towards an artificial general Intelligence, which some say that's already achieved, or superintelligence is okay. Is it not just regurgitating what humans have inputted into it? Is it actually able to innovate and push scientific frontiers forward? This was a significant result you had. OpenAI's GPT 5.2 was able to derive a new result in theoretical physics. Releasing the result in a preprint with human researchers from a variety of universities shows that a gluon interaction many physicists expected would not occur can arise under specific conditions. I don't know what that means really. But in any case, this is a genuinely new result in theoretical physics that is being published alongside. Essentially, GPT gets a byline alongside these human researchers. And so it's one indication that we're now passing through the place of okay, it's just able to regurgitate previous human thought into now it's pushing fields forward. I know in mathematics as well, there's been some of these models have been able to solve complex mathematics computations that the best humans in the world struggled or were unable to solve. So we are in that place now.
- [56:33]
Krystal Ball
Keep paying attention. I balance between hype Doomer and that. It's all nothing.
- [56:39]
Saagar Enjeti
I think that's probably the right place to be because I'm not even sure the people who are most intimately familiar with these things really know.
- [56:45]
Krystal Ball
Oh, I know. I talk to them. Them? Yeah, they, they. They don't know, you know, they're like half of it. They're like, dude, they're lying for their own valuations. Oh, dude, they're actually telling the truth. But then you see scary stuff. Half of these guys are resigning all the time. They're always like, I'm open letter. I'm resigning because this technology is dangerous.
- [57:01]
Saagar Enjeti
And you're like, yeah, man, I'm going into the woods to write poetry.
- [57:04]
Krystal Ball
Right? Exactly. Dude, what's happening here? Like, is this for real? What's. What's going on? Nobody knows.
- [57:09]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [57:09]
Krystal Ball
All right, let's move on to aliens.
- [57:13]
Saagar Enjeti
Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby. Right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens.
- [57:20]
Krystal Ball
You'Ve never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in.
- [57:24]
Saagar Enjeti
All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like.
- [57:29]
Krystal Ball
You want to own but are stuck.
- [57:31]
Saagar Enjeti
In this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and.
- [57:37]
Krystal Ball
Tours you can book right from the.
- [57:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears now liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win. Not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning.
- [58:12]
Krystal Ball
That's redfin.com this is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. As a fellow dude, do you ever get that not so fresh feeling in your butt? That's because you're probably using the dry stuff to wipe wet. Extra large flushable dude wipes get what toilet paper leaves behind in your behind. You wouldn't clean the tail end of your truck with dry paper towels, so why would you wipe with dry toilet paper? Wetter just cleans better. There are no more dingleberries, no more itch and irritation. Just a deep down the seam. Confident clean. So don't fumble the ball with toilet paper. Stop being an A hole to your B hole. Drop the toilet paper. Available on Amazon and major retailers nationwide. Dude wipes best clean, pants down. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It's cough, cold and flu season. Do not get caught feeling under the weather. Get back to feeling good with savings on all your cold and flu Essentials. Now through February 24th. Shop in store or online to stock up and save on Items like Mucinex Fast Max Liquid Gels, Vicks Dayquil and NyQuil combo packs. Hall's cough drops and Tylenol Children's liquid. Offer ends February 24th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. Very interesting moment. Former President Barack Obama doing an interview with Brian Tyler Cowen very casually let slip. Aliens exist. They're real. Let's take a listen. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in. What is it?
- [59:55]
Saagar Enjeti
Area 51.
- [59:55]
Krystal Ball
Area 51? There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States. What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president? Where are the aliens? Where are the aliens? That was it, by the way, in terms of that discussion. No offense, Brian, but you gotta be asking some follow ups there. Whenever the president literally says aliens are real. Now he's clarified his position after a couple days. Went very viral. Let's put this Next one up here on the screen, he says, I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention, let me clarify. He got his call. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good that there's life out there, but the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really? Exclamation mark. Here's the thing, guys. Now, if you're not a UFO freak like me, you wouldn't know that this is the second time that Obama has actually kind of let slip something. He knows a little something about this topic. Let me remind you all of a topic that he. Or a conversation that he had back in 2021 where he made another very interesting comment on this subject. Let's take a listen. The truth is that when I came into office, I asked, right? I was like, all right, is there the lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens and spaceship? And they did a little bit of research, and the answer was no. But what is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there are. There's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are. We can't explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so I think that we're still. People, still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today. There you go. Look, put it together. He says, I saw no evidence that they have made contact with us. That's not the same thing. As if you can surmise that China, Russia, the United States are not behind something that's flying around in the sky at instantaneous speed. What else are you supposed to deduce? What else could it possibly be? Is it always gonna be, oh, it's a weather balloon. It's a weather balloon again. Is it cbp? Screw. Has CBP always been a bunch of retards with space lasers? I don't think so.
- [62:43]
Saagar Enjeti
All right, could be very open. Come on.
- [62:47]
Krystal Ball
No, no, no.
- [62:48]
Saagar Enjeti
Shooting at party balloons.
- [62:49]
Krystal Ball
Oh, all the way back in 2005, like, come on, off the coast of Mexico, like you can. Everything is always phrased very specifically. He says, well, I saw no evidence. We haven't made any contact. Well, that's not. That's not what you said, actually, in terms of your deduction. Same thing there. Well, if we know that things are flying around in the sky and they can't be explained. Then what is it? Now look, you know. Yeah, you can't just outwardly say, oh, we have absolute confirmation. It's. Remember that UFO report from a few years ago when they're like, have concluded that it is. They said something, but they're like, can't rule out, but can't rule in aliens. And then the press ran with it and they were like, well, as Pentagon says, not aliens. It's like, no, what they said is they have no idea what's going on. That's not the same thing. You can use logical deduction to say, well, it's unexplained by human science. I mean, what are we doing here? That's my take. I know that you're skeptical. Just saying.
- [63:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I continue to have my skepticism. I mean, it was an interesting comment. I wish there had been a follow up because by the time you have several days later, and the ability to clean up the comments and think about what the thing that he tweeted is basically what I believe, which is, yeah, I mean, the universe is so large, it would be sort of silly to think that we were the only. This was the only place where you could have some sort of life. But the odds that there's been contact, that there's these, you know, things flying around and that's aliens, I just, I'm going to need, I'm going to need a lot more than we have versus, you know, I think in probably more likely and plausible explanation is that this is human technology that we or other countries are testing, that the government very much doesn't want us to know about and have full knowledge of what's going on.
- [64:25]
Krystal Ball
I hear you on that one. I still remain very skeptical of that explanation. For example, my friend Jeremy Corbell, he just released a new video. Let's put it up here on the screen so I can show it to all of you. It was released by the Daily Mail. This is a new UFO footage released by Jeremy from Syria, which was shot by a Reaper drone in Sueda province back in 2021. Quote, the drone's camera watched as the object appears to be hovering, flying at normal speed before accelerating to near light speed and vanishing from view. This is from an MQ9 Reaper drone and was obtained from a source inside the US Intelligence community. You can literally see it right there in front. By the way, Pentagon has stated that there is no proof, like I said, of UFOs. I have not seen any debunking or any explanation. This follows also Jeremy's release of the Mosul orb, which previously we had seen the video here on our own screen. So I'm just, I'm asking people to keep an open mind. Like we do have video. We don't have any idea what it all is. I mean, to your discussion question about, you know, the theory, if you're not a believer, that's fine. I understand that, you know, obviously it's true. It would be ludicrous to think that, you know, we're the only place in the world where life happened to evolve. That's ridiculous. Then. But then what is it? Is it the Fermi paradox, where if they were, if there is life out there and we were to have confirmation, you have to evolve at the exact same time, which is very unlikely, and then be able to make contact, considering light speed travel and all that seems very unlikely. But you know what? I actually think people should read science fiction putting out there. But it was one of my favorite books I read this year in my newborns. It's Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. He's the guy who wrote the Martian. It was one of the most plausible first contact theories. I won't ruin the book for how a first contact might actually be. Might actually happen. And it opened my mind where I'm like, maybe it's more plausible than I originally thought. Like, look, science looks.
- [66:24]
Saagar Enjeti
To be fair, your mind was already pretty open. Soccer, it was very open.
- [66:26]
Krystal Ball
But I mean, that's always been the biggest skeptic. And then I read that and I go, this is an extremely plausible snarl under which first contact would be able to be made. So just, just open your mind. You know, it's certainly possible. Science Sci fi spy has predicted a lot here in the future. So there you go. There's your alien segment. All right, thank you so much for watching guys. We appreciate it. It'll be Emily on tomorrow. I'm gonna be on the Andrew Schultz show in New York City talking about Jeffrey Epstein. But I'll be back on the Thursday show with Crystal. So I'll see you all then. There's a difference between liking a house.
- [67:11]
Saagar Enjeti
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Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
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Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
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- [68:42]
Saagar Enjeti
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