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- [00:06]
A
We are joined today by Mike Nealis. He is the former advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. He is a social media impactor, entrepreneur and an AI political expert. How all that works together. And so I'm fascinated by the role that AI is playing right now in our politics. Specifically, when you get into these super right wing or even super left wing centers where they just feed you what you want, how is that impacting our elections, do you think?
- [00:42]
B
Yeah, well, there's just a ton of AI generated slop and basically no regulations to prevent it from happening. Although the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, just suggested a 90 day moratorium in elections in New York for AI. But I think what it's going to do is AI is sort of like every other facet of the Internet. It's going to make everything good potentially better, and it's going to make everything bad potentially significantly worse. And so to me, there's a million different tactics that have always been unsavory in politics. Like when I was in high school, I was volunteering for a state senator back home in Nebraska, and the Republicans would hand out flyers saying, you know, Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote on Wednesdays. Right now you're going to get a million things like that, except the scale will be bigger, the imagery will seem more real. And it's going to be hard. And unless Congress and local government step in, we're going to have a massive problem. And I think in this election. And it's only going to get worse from there.
- [01:33]
A
Well, and we see that Trump doesn't want any regulation on AI for obvious reasons. But how do you see, we saw the horrific murder shot in the face, Renee Good, by ICE agents. What is the role of AI in the propaganda that is being pushed out by the Trump administration? Because it amazes me the lack of shame. And I think, how can anybody look at that video and not be outraged? So what the role in AI with AI in that?
- [02:02]
B
Well, the first thing is AI sort of can detach people from reality. Right. It's going to make it harder for them to know what's real and what's not real. And if you look at MAGA circles right now, they're sharing all kinds of fake videos of what happened to Renee Good. And let's be clear, she was, she was murdered by that ICE agent. There was no reason for him to shoot. There was no reason for them to escalate. And now they're sharing fake videos, they're sharing fake information about her life and her kid. And I saw One that popped up on X, which continues to be a complete cesspool, where they were showing her basically in a lewd way is maybe the nicest way I can describe it. But they were trying to undermine her credibility, which happens to a lot of women. And I don't know if you follow the story at all, but like on X, Elon Musk has this AI tool called Grok. And Grok has its own image features. And all these image features have been, you know, sort of spiraled out of control in the last week to the point they had to shoot them down, where you could basically create child pornography and you could be, you know, creating naked images of people, and it's very horrific. And again, it's like you come back down to this core fundamental thing. Do you trust Elon Musk to hold the future of the Internet? Or can we get somebody in the government at some level to step in and regulate this stuff? Because it's going to destroy whole industries, but it's also just going to continue to hurt people. So I think for Trump, he wants to use AI to create, you know, silly stuff like fake endorsements from Taylor Swift, which I think everybody knows is generally false. But it's going to be hard because I'm imagining you go back to 2020, where they were claiming that Democrats were stuffing ballot boxes. Like, now you're going to have AI generated images of Mike Nellis stuffing a ballot box because, you know, the Republicans want to create that and a lot of people won't be able to tell the difference.
- [03:33]
A
Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. And then the role that AI is playing in these protests, and I and our producer Kylie, always has to tell me, no, that's an AI video. But you see on the right wing, you see all this propaganda and all these people and all, and then you find out it's AI. Are they using it better than we are on the left? Or is the right just without conscience in terms of using AI or. That's probably not a good question, but you know what I'm saying.
- [04:07]
B
Yeah. Well, I mean, they're always going to have, I guess, a strategic advantage by having a lack of morals. Right. Like one of the problems that Democrats run into. Right. I got helps. Helps and hurts, I guess, because I think it hurts them when they're trying to actually legislate and help people. They can't do it. Like, they just cannot seem to come up with any solution that's going to improve your life or my life or anybody's life. And so, but I think there's practical uses of AI and then there's just sort of like the skeevy, bad, sloppy, poor uses of AI. And I think Democrats are doing a good job on the practical uses. Right. How can we use this to speed up our content creation? How can we use this to take rote tasks that we're doing that are taking up a bunch of humans time? Like on most political campaigns, the amount of time that's taken on data entry from people who go door to door and talk to voters is, you know, hundreds of hours on every campaign. AI can actually do that pretty effectively. It isn't really taking away any jobs. So, like, it's worth investing in tools like that. And I think we should do more of that. I think the content creation side, Republicans are probably winning, but I don't know that they found like, a really practical use for it. Like, most of the AI stuff that we've seen has just been pretty silly. It's been like, you know, like, just trying to create attention and stuff like that. I work with Adam Schiff. I worked at Schiff for a long time, and a couple of years ago, we created an AI generated image of him on May 4 for Star Wars Day, of him as a Jedi for the campaign. And like, that was like a big deal. Got press. Like, that's fine if it's like a stunty use of it. But they are getting more and more salacious. And what I worry about is less so when there's something that goes crazy viral on X that isn't true and a lot of people believe it. I worry about the stuff in like a small community where there's like a. A school board race and a fake AI generated image of a school board candidate, a Democrat starts going around tech circles and no way for me to even know about it, let alone be able to, you know, push back on it. So this is kind of stuff I worry about. I worry, like, just gets really gross and hard to track down.
- [05:59]
A
Okay, switching gears a little bit. As a former strategist for Vice President Harris, who is thoughtful, she weighs every decision, every comment she takes in. She's surrounded by experts. When you see the decisions being made out of this White House and the people that surround him, what's your first thought? What's your gut reaction? Having someone that's been inside these same offices, what is your reaction to that?
- [06:31]
B
Yeah, well, I wish Kamala Harris was present right now.
- [06:34]
A
Yeah. We wouldn't be here. We'd all be on an island.
- [06:37]
B
Right? Right. I told you off stream. I was like, I was going to retire and leave politics, but, like, on election night, I was like, I can't. I have to. I got to stick this out for another four years and figure out what to do. I mean, look, I think Kamala Harris would have been a phenomenal president, and I think she was also dealt probably the worst hand of any person who's ever run for president in American history. Giving her 107 days was disastrous, in my opinion. Just not enough time for her to improve as a candidate, to build the team, to come up with the agenda, to do the necessary research. So, but again, I think, you know, we're not in as bad of a situation as it seems like, again, America's in a very bad situation. But I think the party has an opportunity to come back. I was grateful that Kamala Harris decided to write her book and that it was at least her truth and it was interesting. Like, a lot of politicians write very boring, basic books. I was grateful that she told her truth, even when there was stuff I disagreed with in it. But, you know, I think I want her voice and I want her engaged. I don't know if she'll run in 2020. That's up to her and Doug and the rest of the family. But, you know, I, I wish you were president right now. Just sort of my main reaction, because everything happening in Washington right now is about Donald Trump. It's about putting money in his pocket. It's about protecting him from things like the Epstein files. It's about him going after his political enemies. This Jerome Powell stuff from, from last night where he's using. Oh, it's crazy. I mean, but he's going to go after anybody that he thinks is a threat or won't stand in line. And he also wants to send a chilling message to everybody else in his administration and in the government that if I can go after Jerome Powell, who is the independent head of the, of the, of the, the Fed. Of the Fed, then he can go after basically anybody. And that's going to send a pretty chilling effect. Same way that the pardons for January six, I think, emboldens ICE officers to do things like they did this week to Renee.
- [08:12]
A
Good, I agree with that. Okay, let me ask you this. I, Jennifer and I both have just been profoundly disappointed with Democratic leadership's response to all of Trump's stuff. Saw today an article in one of our ihips that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries defending ICE is not on the table. The response has been so Lackluster. As a Democratic strategist, as somebody who's been inside. What. What is your opinion of the current Democratic leadership that we have?
- [08:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that Chuck and Akeem are in difficult situations. Right. Which is one in the American system of government, you, when you're in the minority, you have very limited powers. Right. It isn't like Chuck Schumer can pull.
- [08:59]
A
Mitch McConnell did a lot when he was in the minority.
- [09:02]
B
Yeah. They were able to slow things down in, like, legislative wise. Right. And I think if you look at it, this is the least productive Congress in American history. Now, most of that is because of the Republicans. They just don't even want to legislate.
- [09:12]
A
Right.
- [09:12]
B
They've completely given Congress to Trump. Speaker Johnson basically works for Trump, which is insane to me. I can't even. Mitch McConnell didn't work for, like, George W. Bush.
- [09:19]
A
Right.
- [09:19]
B
He was working for himself and his interest. But I, I think Democrats be stronger. And to me, I think that starts with generational change. And we talk a lot about generational change with being, you know, Joe Biden is this old and Chuck Schumer is this old, etc, but I think it's more. We need like generational change at every level of the party. We need new consultants, we need new influencers, we need new candidates that are going to run. We need new people that are building technology. And I just think that they're in a difficult situation, but they've also gotten, I think, a lot more. Right. And I'm not going to, like, fully defend everybody here. Like, to be clear, I think the Democratic Party's got to do a lot better. But like, during the shutdown fight, and I know people were mad about the way the shutdown fight ended, I think one of the best successes for Democrats was the decision to frame it around the health care subsidies, which changed the whole conversation on the election away from executive power, democracy. Trump was doing all the chaos that he was creating to affordability, which is a better terrain for Democrats to be on. And that was a decision that Chuck Schumer and Akeem Jeffries made together, I believe. So. I think it's, it's not as bad as it seems, but I think all the critiques that, like, you have and others have are fair.
- [10:19]
A
But. Okay, so. But when you talk about this, this authoritarianism and let's just start with Doge. Okay, so Elon Musk comes in, he slashes the federal government. It seems to me that Democratic leadership should have been out front all day, every day, talking about the dismantling of the federal government against the wishes of Congress, against the branches of government, all of that. You just didn't hear that. It just seems that the Democratic Party as a whole is polling like 16, 17% because we' not seeing fighters. And so how do we get our Democratic leadership to be fighters? Because I look at Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer's and I don't see fighters. I see a very weak opposition because they are not saying, we want Christy Noman here. We're stopping off funding until this happens. They're not like, reporters were asking questions to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries about, should we do this, should we do that to combat that. It was crickets. I mean, so like, why does a reporter have a better option than leadership? So how do we move them as a party?
- [11:31]
B
Yeah, well, let's diagnose a little bit of the beginning, right. Because in the beginning of the Trump administration, Democrats were completely flat footed. And I think it's one of the reasons that I became like a content creator and started just like saying my piece was there wasn't anybody out there trying to rally people together. And so, like, I was pretty pissed off too that it felt like, okay, we're going to try to work with Trump at the beginning of administration and acting like this is normal when it's not. And I think that was a strategic mistake. And you saw it took like 90 to 100 days for Democrats to go, okay, we have to get back into a, a fighter position because Trump has sort of given us enough to work with. I, I, I think that, which is, and then compare that, by the way, to the Republicans under Obama who immediately were like, we're not going to help you on anything.
- [12:09]
A
Yeah, they weren't hot flop headed right now.
- [12:11]
B
The thing, the thing about Doge is, and I diagnosed this a little bit with my strategist hat on for a second is like, doge is not a bad idea. It was a good idea, poorly implemented by bad people, in my opinion. Right. And so I think Democrats wanted to, on some level, give them the benefit of the doubt, which you should never give the modern day Republican Party the benefit of the doubt. Let me be clear about that. But I think they wanted to try to give them that. And I also say on the dismantling of the government, like, let's talk about USAID for a second. I think a trap that Democrats fall into all the time is we're constantly explaining process and we're constantly lecturing people about what's legal and what's not legal. And a functioning system of government, a functioning society, never elects somebody like Donald Trump in the first place. So people do elect him to disrupt the system. And then Democrats are over here, kind of like the nerdy guys at the table telling you what the rules of monopoly are. And it's really kind of frustrating. Like, USA is the perfect example of that. To the average person. USAID is like sending money over to Africa to help kids. And we're all supportive of that, but we're like, I want that money here, building roads and bridges. The same reason I think people hate what Trump is doing in Venezuela right now is because they don't want their money going to Venezuela or Colombia or Argentina, where he gave $50 billion. So Democrats were standing in front of the USAID headquarters and they were trying to explain to people why it was important. And what they weren't doing was framing it about why it's important to you. Right. And my complaint in that moment was, instead of talking about the legality of it, which clearly people don't care about, if they cared about Trump breaking the law, they would have ditched him a million years ago. Explaining why US Aid's valuable to you, which is that when there's foreign policy, there's hard power and there's soft power. Right. Hard power is the military keeping us safe, doing the work that it needs to do. And soft power is our influence. And what happened was we with withdrew ourselves from the world through usaid. All those programs didn't necessarily go away, although a lot of them did. But China and Russia started filling the gap. And so China is ascendant on the world stage. And the question I would have been asking in that moment to every American is, do you feel safer if China is more powerful compared to America? Because I don't. And that's how I would have framed that. And that's the problem that Democrats went into. We care so much, we give a shit about starving kids in Africa, and that's the right thing. We should. But it's still about soft power, and it's about keeping the American people safe. And Trump understands that, I think pretty, in a pretty savvy way that he can just sort of bypass that and go, well, I don't give a shit about them. I care about you and I'm going to help you. Which is obviously, you know, bs But I think that's the trap we run into. And Democrats are getting better at that in this last year, but it's still, like an ongoing problem.
- [14:36]
A
Yeah, it's. And I appreciate Adam Schiff and Chris Murphy and those senators that come out and they are very clear about what the message is. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing that with the majority because I would think it would be so easy all day, every day to call Donald Trump dementia. I mean, he's corrupt, he has dementia, he has no plan, and he's does not give a shit about foreign policy other than to do Trump's bit. I'm sorry, Putin's, you know, Putin's bidding. He's not doing anything he says he was going to do. And I don't. I just don't see that response. So hopefully, since you have more connections than me, you can help effectuate change in the Democratic Party so that we can hopefully have robust primaries and elect a new generation of people that are willing to fight and not be. For my. For my money. I appreciate integrity politics, but integrity politics assumes everybody in politics has integrity. And I think we've. What we found out in a big way is that's not true. And what we needed to be doing is. Is fighting. So.
- [15:47]
B
Yeah, well. And if I can. If I can, like, yes. And that is okay.
- [15:51]
A
Yes.
- [15:51]
B
And, yeah, what I. My old improv chops are coming back up in the moment. But what I worry about is I worry that we're going to get so frustrated with all the things that Trump and MAGA are doing that we become, as a movement, this mirror reverse image of maga. Right. Which is where all we're doing is trying to piss them off instead of trying to help people. And that's where this grievance politics that the Republicans have embraced, I think makes it hard for them to legislate, which is what I was talking about earlier.
- [16:16]
A
Right.
- [16:17]
B
I had a content creator on my show a couple months ago, and she said, I want to elect a Democratic president that stays up late at night in front of a fire twirling brandy and thinking about ways to piss off the Republicans. And I reframe that for her, at least at how I see it is I want a Democratic president, and I want a Democratic Congress that has the will and the ability and the understanding of power that they're staying up late at night thinking about how to help people not go bankrupt when they get sick, not be drowning in student loan debt, be able to buy a house, take a vacation, start a family, et cetera. And if it also pisses off Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, that's great, but it's a bonus. And so I think, to your point, we can't fully lose our soul. But I do think we have to be tougher and we have to understand that we are playing against cheaters. We are playing against people who do not care about the average American. And we also have to deliver for folks. I love Joe Biden, but a lot of Bidenism was predicated on the idea of having a second term to continue that work so that people can see it. And by the way, he inherited an absolute mess under, after Donald Trump and Covid and the economy and everything like that. But we've got to make sure that people feel the impact of our actions every single day and we're actually delivering for them. And I don't want any American to ever be wondering what the Democratic Party has done for them lately. And unfortunately, you look at the focus groups and the polling data, that's how people see us. They're like, oh, good, well intentioned people. They're fighting for other people, not for me. They're delivering for other people, not for me. And some of that's true and some of it's not. But we have to fix that perception the next time we're in office, which I believe will be sooner rather than later. Otherwise we're just going to elect an even worse version of Donald Trump, you know, four years from now, five years from now.
- [17:49]
A
Now, I agree with you. I want, if they, if I piss them off, great. But I want them to have health care. I want the minimum wage for everybody, not just Democrats, to be raised. I want everybody to be able to live with dignity and have a livable wage. And whether that pisses off the Republicans or not, that's just a bonus. And I feel like the incremental nature of Joe Biden's presidency, which was consequential in terms of legislation, that it just didn't go fast enough and it wasn't marketed enough. And I'll die on this hill. Why we did not put Donald Trump behind bars under the Biden administration, I'm afraid, was the biggest failure. That that's going to cloud that presidency forever. That we didn't appoint a special or that Biden didn't appoint a special counsel January 21st to look into all of his crimes. But we could go on forever. You have a real job, a real podcast. I need to let you off, but I just want to thank you for coming. Thank you for the AI stuff, because that is something that I have a real blind spot for. And I think you're right. I think as we get further and further into this we're going to see the best and worst of it.
- [19:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about AI. Nobody ever asks me about it. I really was grateful for that, to be honest with you.
- [19:09]
A
All right.
- [19:09]
B
Bye.
- [19:09]
A
Bye, Mike.