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B
So great to meet you.
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A
Maybe even longer. You're at Politico. Give us a little bit of your backstory.
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B
During the Bush administration, I was freelancing for like, the American Prospect, and I went to foreign policy during the Obama administration, then Politico, and then I was at Almonitor for eight years covering the Iran negotiations. And then I've been at Substack for about four years.
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A
Okay, that's great. Yeah, I was following you back in the foreign policy days. So it's been a minute. I wanted to get you because it's the nature of Donald Trump's Steve Bannon flood the zone with shit element is that sometimes it's hard to figure out signal and noise and figure out what is happening and what matters and what's not. And I was following your reporting and eyeing what was happening in Iran early this year. Negotiations were happening in January and February, but didn't really, like, have anybody on the podcast because there's a lot of other shit going on. We're killing people in Minnesota and there's other stuff to cover. And I was like, well, we'll wait and see if this actually becomes a thing before we start to dial in on it. And so I went back and looked at your reporting and I was like, I thought it'd be valuable to just kind of take the lens back for people a little bit to where this started. And I was looking at your substack. February 12, Trump signals interest in an Iran deal. February 17, Vance said Iran talks went well. February 24, Iran wants to make a deal. How did we go from that period in February to bombing a girls school? Can you walk us through basically what happened?
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B
So I think one of the elements is that since the protests in January, when Trump started to talk about sending the cavalry to help the Iranian protesters, Israel called him. The Gulf states called him. Israel said, don't do it till you have more force in place to protect us. The Gulf states said, don't do it. So I think Trump was either keeping his options open while he moved the armada to Iran and was doing negotiations. It could have been a, a ploy to get the forces in place, or he was trying to test out with Jared and Steve Witkoff if he thought there was a good deal available. I've been on a couple backgrounders with them since the war started. Backgrounders with Jared and Steve, senior Trump administration officials. And they were describing the negotiations, the three rounds that they held before two Saturdays ago when Trump started bombing. And I was struck by two things. The senior Trump administration. One said we came back to Trump after the last round two weeks ago and said we could probably get you a better deal than Obama got, but it would take some time, it wouldn't be tomorrow. And secondly, by how much senior Trump Administration Official 1 and 2 misunderstood the Iranian positions. They are not experts on the nuclear issue. They did not bring experts with them. One of the officials was describing things about the Iranian program that are not threatening. Maybe they not only could have gotten a deal, but they didn't understand sort of the Iranian position very well, which is not crazy because it takes time and they didn't have time.
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A
I have a couple of follow ups on that. So initially the Arab states didn't want him to do it because that's something that's been hard for me to kind of tell because there's been some reporting that MBS was kind of back channeling to him that he did want them to go after Iran. And it feels like UAE's position is different privately and publicly. What's your sense?
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B
I don't know on MBS if he was privately lobbying. I mean, all those countries, except maybe, except Oman and Qatar. I think they, they hate Iran and they don't like the Islamic Republic. And if it wasn't going to blow back on them, I think they're not sad to see Iran pounded.
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A
Right.
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B
But it does blow back on them. They knew it was going to blow back on them. I think they've seen the US intervene in the region before and then leave the region to clean up the mess. And I think there are also different outcomes that are not good for them, that might be good for Israel. And I think they're very sensitive about that.
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A
Back to the negotiators, our pals Steve and Jared. Jared isn't in the administration. Right. What is Jared's role exactly?
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B
It's interesting because you saw when Trump was trying to get the ceasefire on Gaza and get the hostages out, Wyckoff was going and going and going. And I think that Kushner did play a successful role in helping organize an effort, that when Israel finally hit Qatar, Trump saw an opportunity that he could force Israel to accept a ceasefire. And they tried to get this 20 point plan. But I think that what Trump has misunderstood about Witkoff and Kushner's success on that is that they speak for Trump and Israel will ultimately do what Trump insists. And I think we've seen, as Kushner and Witkoff have tried to apply their 20 point model to Russia, Ukraine and Iran, they don't have the same, you know, magic silver bullets. Right. And so. But it seems like Trump's not expanding his negotiating. There's only, like, five people involved in these decisions. Even if you wanted to have Jared and Kushner and Witkoff do all the negotiations, you should have a small team of people they trust.
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A
Right.
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B
You know, Iran expert, a nuclear expert. Right. Because you can't. No one could know it all.
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A
Particularly in the Iran situation. For example, Jared is business partners with mbs, who is hostile to Iran. Right. And so it's like you don't have expertise, but you also have conflicts from
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B
Kushner's, the backgrounders that they wanted to give Trump the option. Trump was looking for the option. These guys were doing their best. They didn't totally understand the other side. They weren't bringing the team with them who could help them. They were doing the Russia, Ukraine negotiations. In the middle of the last Iran negotiations, they met with the Iranians, the Omanis. They did three hours meeting with the Ukrainians and their Kremlin friends Kirill Dmitriev in Geneva, and they went back and then they went to Washington. It's a crazy way to do matters of war and peace.
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A
So when Vance was thinking that the talks went well, does it seem like there were misunderstandings inside the White House or that these guys, Kushner and Wyckoff, were kind of out on their own doing the negotiation. We'll see what happens. Vance was more interested in that. And meanwhile, the war planning was happening over here on a different side of the operation.
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B
I think all of the principals are always loath to say anything that would box Trump in. And you even see that I go to the State Department, Gaggles, and there are experts in the department they could bring down to talk to people about Iran, but they're afraid to do it because those guys might say something that the President will contradict the next day. So they never want to get out ahead of him. And you see even on the State Department tweets and stuff that they basically just retweet Trump statements, Trump speeches. And that was partly why you saw them be caught so flat footed on helping Americans get out of the Gulf. When this war started, it was totally an afterthought.
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A
Why? Because presumably nobody for whom, if you had an interagency system, you had the State Department, you had the Assistant Secretary of State. Traditionally, you'd have the assistant Secretary of State in the meeting saying like, well, if we're going to do this, we also got to remember we've got this, that and the other thing in the region. And that was wasn't happening or they didn't care.
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B
Kushner and Witkoff come back from Geneva on the Thursday, Friday. We know Trump made the decision to do Operation Epic Fury Saturday morning. You know, overnight Israel killed Khamenei and the US Started bombing. They wanted an element of surprise, maybe to give the Israelis the element of surprise. They were relying on the military to do all the planning and somehow it just got, was an afterthought.
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A
You talked about how these guys didn't really understand the Iranian mindset. That continues to kind of be the case. It seems like as we now push to forward looking and what they might want to come to the table on. You wrote that you think that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian thinking. There was a Reuters report that the IRGC is firmly in control and they intend to continue launching drones and missiles and to cut out vital energy routes. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to act like this thing could be over tomorrow. What's your sense of the Iranian thinking?
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B
You know, for instance, for those of us who were trying to figure out what Trump was doing a couple weeks ago, he kept saying the Iranians just have to say they never want a nuclear weapon. Right. He kept saying, they won't say the magic words. So the Iranians came to the last negotiation and their, their five page proposal had a cover letter that said, you know, Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. And they've said it over and over again, but somehow Trump doesn't hear it. But these senior Trump administration officials were then kind of mocking that Iran had put that declaration on the front of their five page proposal. The Iranians were trying to understand this administration. These guys don't really understand the Iranians. The two negotiators misunderstood the last Iranian proposal, for instance, said we won't enrich for five years. And then they had various things they wanted to do after five years. That's a really good deal. And they said that they would never accumulate enriched uranium again. And by the way, the Iranians thought they were going to negotiate. And these guys basically seemed to be under instructions to bring Trump back a take it or leave it deal, which is a really hard way to reach a deal.
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A
And so you think that. That Mr. Sunani was based on the fact that there was nobody in the room who could really level with them, that there was a language barrier, history barrier, that they didn't actually care. They didn't really want a deal. It was all Kayfabe and Trump just wanted to bomb. Trump was going to do whatever Bibi wanted.
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B
I think there's cultural differences. I think that they didn't have time. I think it takes time, a few more rounds. I think they didn't bring experts who could have advised them, even though they have them in the US Government if they wanted to avail themselves of them. And I think that Trump is listening to Netanyahu. He's listening to other voices. So maybe there wasn't a sincere interest on the US Side in getting a deal. And also by the time you move in armada to the region, maybe it becomes harder to just say, we got a good deal and we're going home. I think he's tempted.
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A
And then you have Israel that maybe didn't want to deal at all. I talk a little bit about that. One of the problems, I think one of the potential issues is, from my perspective, you tell me, is that on the surface level, Israel and Trump are really aligned. Like you said at the start, they want to do what the other wants. But now, as we get into the more challenging questions about how to go forward, seems to me, based on my reading, that Israel would be happy with, like, a really desiccated Iranian state, and that has infighting and whatever, and Trump would rather have a Delsey Rodriguez type Iranian come forth. And so part of the situation here might have been just kind of a lack of alignment on what each side wants.
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B
I think that's right. I think that they probably were aligned on degrading Iran's missile capabilities. And, you know, Israeli analysts have been on Twitter and writing publicly that for Israel's realistic security needs, they want Iran to be so consumed with what's happening internally that they can't export threats externally. Right. So, you know, that means that a civil war inside Iran, using the Kurds, using the different ethnic groups to go after each other, bombing the oil facilities, having kind of tumult inside Iran, might be an outcome for Israel that is better than the status quo before January. I think that Trump's Gulf allies, remember Syria and how many refugees, how many drugs, how much ISIS terrorism can come from a civil war. So I think that they're not going to want to see Iran descend into total failed states. And today you heard Defense Secretary Hegsett at the briefing. He started reasserting this kind of, we don't like democracy promotion no more. He said, mission creep. He was really walking it back to just, we're going to hit the missiles, the defense stuff, and then we're done. So I think they're starting to signal that they're heading for the exit.
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A
I guess, though, Trump sounds different. I mean, Trump is just all over the place within the same answer to a question. He'll be like, this is almost over. We're way ahead. We've already won, basically. And then he'll ramble, and then the end of the question, he'll be like, you know, but we do want to control the Strait of Hormuz still, and, you know, we want to see who we're going to put in power. And I get to pick who's in power. And so it's. It's incoherent, right? So, like, on the one hand, you've got Hegseth talking about how he doesn't want to do nation building, and then you've got Trump saying he gets to pick who the next leader is. How do you make those two things align?
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B
They've been all over the place. They have. But there was a line from what Trump said yesterday that stuck out to me. We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can't have that, we might as well get it over with right now. And I think this may be wishful thinking on my part, but combined with some other things Hegseth was saying and some other things Trump has said in the past 24 hours, I get a sense that they're going to finish this military mission and they might leave Iran to sort out its internal governance itself. The guy that Israel killed, Khamenei, was 86 years old. This supreme leader, very hard line. But his son, by all reports, is worse. And the one thing about Khamenei, the father who is dead now, he was the one who said, we're not going to get nuclear weapons. It was like a fatwa. Even if that's not good enough for the U.S. that was his public line. We don't know about Mojtiba Khamenei. So to have this intervention and you get a supreme leader who has the same, you know, from the same family who's even more extreme. This is not Dulcie Rodriguez. This is not a softer regime. This is not what the Iranians who were on the streets in January wanted. But it doesn't sound from the recent statements from Trump that they're going to be the ones to try to bring a democratic regime to Iran.
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A
You know, just on a different pod with jvl. And he's talking about how he relies on dependable clothes. Like he looks for a couple of items that he knows are good and then he just buys 100 of those. That's maybe the maximalist position on this, but in general we all feel that way. We're looking for something dependable. And one thing that you can always depend upon is the clothes from our friends at American Giant, especially their full zip hoodie. The greatest hoodie ever made. I've been loving American Giant since even before they're a sponsor. That greatest hoodie ever made. Back when we lived in California, my husband lived in that. It's hoodie weather all the time. Some people say it's perfect weather in the Bay Area because it's hoodie weather all the time. Drove me kind of insane. But if you're a hoodie person, you can't do better than the American Giant hoodie. I also like their kind of staples, long sleeve tees. I got a fun little flannel button up I got from them. Lot to work from. Go check it out. American Giant makes staples that are anything but basic. They get the premium slub crew tee, no bs, High rise pant and slim rough neck pant. It's all born from a commitment to support the communities that create its products. Every American Giant piece is made in America and designed to last, no exception. Stay ready for anything with the American giant classic full zip and save 20% off your first order@american-giant.com when you use code bulwark at checkout, that's 20% off your first order at american-giant.com, code bulwark. Like maybe Trump ends up just pulling the plug on this. I'm a little skeptical that Israel would want the younger Khamenei in there. And obviously Israel has a lot of intelligence assets and I think seems pretty likely that they'd be able to figure out how to kill them if they wanted to. And so that's a wild card out there. Meanwhile, Israel is saying they expect to expand their offensive against Lebanon even after the Iran war ends. I noticed that Lindsey Graham, when he was mentioning on Fox that we are going to march through the world Getting rid of the bad guys. He mentioned Cuba. He also threw Lebanon in there. So there is potentially something there. What do you see?
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B
Yeah, I mean that's been a little bit lower on my radar. But you know, Israel, because Hezbollah speaks, started to attack Israel again. Israel used that as an opportunity to start attacking Lebanon again. And you know, they told all of south Beirut to evacuate. You know, if you're on zooms with Israelis for these think tank events in recent days, people are going to the shelters sometimes from Iranian missiles, sometimes from, you know, missiles coming from Hezbollah in Lebanon. So I would be surprised if the US Gets directly involved. What do you think is happening with Graham? I mean, I've been slightly confused about who Graham is speaking for.
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A
Let's play a little Lindsey Graham. I've got some audio of him that we can listen to.
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C
We're going to blow the hell out of these people.
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A
This regime is in a death row now. It is going to be on its
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C
knees, it's going to fall and when
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A
it falls, we're going to have peace like no other time.
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C
But America first is to kill people
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A
who wish us ill with a record
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C
of trying to destroy us and the
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A
region to take them off the table. I mean he seems like a rabid animal with blood in his mouth right now. I think he's very excited about his success in persuading, manipulating Trump. There's another clip that was too long for me to play but like where he talks about basically he treats Trump like a nine year old and he just like about the games that he was playing with him to try to manipulate him into wanting to do this stuff. But you in that last clip, how he's, how he's trying to redefine America first. I think he feels like as long as Trump thinks that he's winning in these situations, Venezuela, Iran, etc. That he can keep him focused and going on that and that that's going to appeal to him more than, you know, the boring JD Vance pitch.
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B
I mean yesterday I don't know if you saw that Graham was really lobbying the Saudis to start attacking Iran. And it was very strange because I happened to be on a zoom with Saudi analyst at the same time and it did not go over well. You know, they're defending them, they are defending themselves militarily from some incoming from Iran. And one, one analyst was very derisive about Graham, you know, sitting egging them on, you know, 15 hours away. And the other thing is, I don't think the Pentagon needs Saudi Arabia to help. They're having no difficulty finding things to bomb in Iran and they have plenty of planes and munitions to do it. So I don't understand Graham's obsession with getting the Saudis to declare that they're offensively going to attack Iran. Except perhaps that Israel might see that as vindication for their strategy and their vision.
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A
You do serious coverage. You listen to diplomats, you read diplomatic cables. Can I offer the everyone is 12 theory of politics? Lindsey Graham likes things to blow up. Donald Trump likes to feel like he's winning in the game. And rebuilding the hollowed out cities in the industrial Midwest is a lot of work and challenging. Like helping the forgotten man find work again is challenging. Waiting for Jared, his son in law, to negotiate with some Iranian takes time and patience. Killing people and saying that you took out bad guys is something that appeals to the inner 12 year old. And I really think that it's kind of as simple as that.
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B
I think that's right. And Graham's had to kind of suppress his inclinations with Trump on Russia. Right. And Ukraine. He keeps talking about these sanctions on Russia he's going to do. He's been talking about it forever.
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A
And Trump, Trump's not going to kill Putin. Right. Like, you know, he can't get him on board for that.
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B
Well, just, he's not even going to do sanctions.
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A
Yeah, we've, we've eased their sanctions on them. Huge. This has been. Can you just talk about that for a second? It's been a huge win for Russia actually. This war and a gas prices going up is helping them and we need sanctions on them. I mean, they're in economic tough straits and this is, this has really helped them.
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B
Right. And then also the, you know, the west, you know, depleting their supply of, of things. They would have been giving Ukraine or under Trump, selling to Europe to give to Ukraine. So there's a competition for patriots and air defense and interceptors and it's all going to the Middle East. And you could see that some of these Pentagon officials, Eldridge Colby testifying last week, having to kind of, for people
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A
who don't know Eldridge Colby is kind of like the, I would say like the bureaucratic J.D. vance of the administration. He's been representing the isolationist wing, you
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B
know, at a, or the pivot to Asia wing.
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A
Yeah. At a staff level.
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B
Right.
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A
What is your sense for how he's processing, you know, bombing Iran?
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B
You know, you can see that this is probably not the policy they would have chosen, but that, you know, they work for the person who is Doing it. So they're. Yeah.
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A
No, I mean, it's a. It's a complete opposite of the policy. Now, J.D. vance, I think, is a sociopath. So he's. Whatever. He'll figure it out. But Colby, it was a mission, right. Like, Colby basically was fighting for decades. And there are a couple other people in the administration that were fighting against the more interventionist Lindsey Graham, neocon, whatever you want to call it, wing at a staff level. And they felt like they had won that fight.
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B
Maybe that's Graham's exaltation, you know, is that he won the internal pulse for sure. Yeah.
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A
Last thing I want to shout out, my man Sean McCreesh at the New York Times, who was at the press conference yesterday that Trump had. I don't love playing Trump's voice on the pod. I usually don't. But in this case, I think it's important to hear their back and forth on the attack on the girls school. Let's listen.
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C
You just suggested that Iran somehow got
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A
its hands on a tomahawk and bombed
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C
its own elementary school on the first
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A
day of the war.
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C
But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your
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A
shoulder on your plane on Saturday.
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C
Why are you the only person saying this?
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B
Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but tomahawks are used by others, as, you know. Superb question. And, you know, do you remember when the Saudi, then Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had the Saudi journalist butchered Khashoggi? And do you remember Trump saying, oh, you know, they told me they didn't do it? Yeah, you could kind of. There's a certain kind of lie he has when he knows that nobody believes him and he doesn't mean anyone to believe him. And this was in that category of lie. But, you know, you saw John Kennedy, the senator from Louisiana, show how you can answer it. I don't know if you heard him, but he sort of said, it's terrible. We didn't target it. It was a mistake. And he was kind of modeling how you could own up to having done this thing. That was a mistake.
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A
Yeah. Anything else out there that you're watching that we're not? Do you think people should keep their eye on as we monitor how this is going to develop?
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B
The one thing I was thinking about overnight is do you remember when Greg Bovino got fired in Minneapolis and they sent Tom Homan and they didn't say when they were doing that that we're getting out, this was a mistake. But then you saw that we're taking out 200 people, we're taking out a thousand people. I kind of got the sense that that's the pivot that's happened in the last 24 hours on the Iran war. They've decided to we're going to finish the going after the missiles, blah, blah, blah, and then we're going to wrap up the military part. That's the sense that I have here.
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A
That's Laura Rosen. Her substack is diplomatic. She's been following this for a while and listening to the senior administration officials trying to decode the Kremlinology of the Trump administration. And we appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the pod. Thanks for having me up next Sunday. Bench. Why do most of us want to learn a new language? You know, it's probably not about maximalizing your vocab. It's because we want to speak it out in the real world with real people. And Babbel is an app that gets you there fast. Their bite sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine and are also easy to remember. Just 10 minutes a day is enough to start seeing real results. Babbel recognizes the real world connections are at the heart of language learning. Their courses are designed by over 200 language experts to teach you relevant words and phrases you'll actually use. You can start speaking with confidence in as little as three weeks. Bab will let you produce real life conversations step by step without the stress. You'll build the confidence to speak up when it matters, from ordering a coffee to chatting with new friends abroad or at home. One of my buddies was showing me his babble the other weekend and he's doing four languages at once. An overachiever. I can't even remember all the languages he's doing and he's remembering words for every language. You can tell he has fun with it, you know, a little. 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes on this language, 10 minutes on that language. It's good. I've been using it with Toulouse. Sometimes we're waiting for dinner and the eight year old's starting to get a little antsy waiting for the food to come. We'll play a little babble on our phone together. She's already learning French in school so I can learn a little bit on the side. It's great. And if you want to join along with us, here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription at babel.com bulwark get up to 60% off at babbel.com bulwark spelled B A B-B-E-L.com bulwark rules and restrictions may apply. All right, we are back. He is the culture editor here at the Bulwark. He's a man of culture. He also hosts a podcast across the movie isle on the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. It is Sonny Bunch. What's up, brother Tim?
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C
Thanks for having me on. I always love to be on the Tim Miller show and we're going to
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A
get to see you and Dallas. We'll be together March 18th. We have a good show coming together. We also have a show in Austin March 19th. There's still tickets for that one, so go to thebullork.com events if you want to come hang out with us in Austin. I wanted to chat with you about a couple of things. The first thing caught my eye was in your newsletter on Friday. Was it? On Friday you wrote every day we inch closer to a dystopian parody. That's kind of something I've been feeling. You mentioned a few things. The you start with only fans, 100 millionaires. I'm throwing on top AI maga girls that have millions of followers. You talked about AI George Washington. Glenn Beck is having a weird conversation with him. We can gamble on nuclear war. Now there's a big government fight over whether Skynet is okay.
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C
Yes.
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A
Like, that's basically the fight. Like, should we have a Skynet or maybe not?
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C
No, it's even better than that, Tim. The government's like, we want Skynet. We need Skynet. And the AI people are like, I don't know about Skynet. I'm not sure if that's great.
- [31:59]
A
Yeah, can we maybe have like a Skynet minus, you know, something that can spy on people but doesn't have like total power over the entire populace. You know, just living daily life. You know, the video scroll that is now being taken over by AI Slop and people going through things here on YouTube now. I'm kind of offended. There hasn't been an AI Tim Miller yet that I've seen. But there's AI George Conway, Rachel Maddow, George Will, and I've had real humans tell me that they've been tricked by this. And you go to these YouTube feeds and some of them are getting more views than me. So anyway, combination of a lot of things, but a lot there. But where are you on the dystopia
- [32:39]
C
Beat the Question here is, are we just getting older? Right, Tim? Like, this is like, do things just feel weird because we're getting into middle age, we've got kids, we're trying to figure out life and navigating it. What's it gonna be like for them? But I think we're actually. We're pretty close. I like, every time I see a Paul Vernon movie, pretty close to the dystopia. We're pretty close to the dystopia. So, like, every time I watch a Paul Verhoeven movie, and he's the guy who made robocop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall are kind of the movies in those veins. He also made Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Less. Less relevant here, but every time Showgirls
- [33:16]
A
is going to be relevant later in the episode. But we can.
- [33:19]
C
Yeah, we'll come back to Showgirls. Every time I see one of these movies, there are things that happen in them that are patently absurd. For instance, just like the news reports in the RoboCop movies about, you know, nuclear explosions in the Middle east and South America, whatever, that could easily happen. The board games that these people are playing are like, nuclear war, I attacked your camp, Chatka, or whatever. Like, it's. It's a. It's just insane stuff. But it does feel. It does feel very much like something that could happen today. There are other things I. You know, I am a big booster of the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil, which is a movie about the ways in which faceless bureaucracies destroy the human spirit. I am. I am a big squish on immigration. I have complicated thoughts, but one thing I really don't like is the idea of masked government agents grabbing people off the street and taking them to hidden prison camps and moving children around the country and not telling folks where they're going, like shipping people overseas without telling. And that is. That is dystopian shit, man. That is like. That is absolutely. You know, again, Brazil, 1984, whatever that is. That is not. That's not the world I want to live in.
- [34:33]
A
Yeah, I agree. So there's two elements of this I want to kind of tease out, like, the fact that the Trump administration has some dystopian qualities. I think that can just be kind of stipulated. The masked men in the streets, as you mentioned, the weird agit prop coming from DHS about how families should act. I mean, there are some 1984 elements to it. Then there's also just kind of like the way that technology and society is going with AI and with the prediction markets and with the way that people are consuming information on their phones, that side of it. Back to your point about whether or not we're just getting old or whether this is something that people should be deeply concerned about. That's something that I have been trying to think a lot about. I think about, there's the Mad Men scene where the executive assistant dies and the writing are obit and the guy says she was born in 18 something in a barn and she died on the 37th floor. She was an astronaut, right? Like it's not, we are not the first generation of 45 year olds to go through like some dramatic change where it was like, you know, and that person, if you're born in 1898 or whatever you like, rode horses by the time you died, like there was television, you know, beaming stuff in from the other side of the world, right? You know, so other people have gone through dramatic change before and drag change that was net positive generally. I don't think anybody thinks we should go back to the 1890s, not even the maga revanchists, right? And so like, are we just going through that, like a particularly dramatic change in technology? Then we come out the other side and go, oh man, look at all of the human flourishing that's happening or not. And I kind of fall on the side of not. But it's an interesting thing to, to noodle over.
- [36:24]
C
I honestly don't know because look, there is a, there's a counter argument to what I, all of my doom saying here, which is like, look at, look at the utopian science fiction, look at Star Trek, right? You know, they have all this technology and it leads to a society where nobody actually needs anything and you know, they can travel to stars, whatever. Maybe that's where we're headed. Maybe that's where we're headed. But I think two things have happened kind of simultaneously. One, everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket now. You know, you have access to all of the world's information and they use that super computer to sit there and mindlessly scroll through Instagram watching sometimes just funny videos. But like oftentimes videos that are designed to trigger actual chemical responses in your brain that keep you angry, addicted, going more and more. And this is my, my big, my big theory of the moment is that putting, putting a magical endorphin box in everybody's pocket and tying it to their news feeds, tying it to their bank accounts. We, we could, we can debate the nature of sports gambling and the prediction markets and whatever But I think. I think all of this, all of this is very bad.
- [37:34]
A
Having some friction would be. Would be good.
- [37:36]
C
Yes.
- [37:36]
A
Like, I'm for having the right to gamble on things, but having this friction, like, versus being able to instantaneously. You know, we are.
- [37:45]
C
You and I and the rest of the bulwark people are very often accused of changing all of our beliefs on many things. And you, I mean, you. You have changed everything. You're big. Me, I've changed nothing, Tim. I've changed nothing. Except for. No, I'm just. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But I. I like. The one big thing I have changed on in the last five years is online gambling. I used to be like, yes, people should be allowed to gamble on their phone. That's great. Do it. It's. It's fun. People should have the right to do that. And now I'm kind of like, now I'm like, I don't know. This seems bad. All of the ads everywhere. Again, just the addictive quality of it and the fact that you are playing against the house in ways that the house will take away your right to play if you win too much. That drives me a little bit bananas.
- [38:30]
A
I want to check my priors on this. I don't want to be a doomer. I really don't. My nature. I'm not a doomer. I know people listen to the show. They find that hard to believe. I was really techno optimist. I was an early adopter to a lot of stuff, stuff in the 2000s and thought it was all very cool and was very excited for the future where we had access to all these social tools. And I've seen what has actually happened. And if you read the science on this, people that are using ChatGPT or Claude, their brain waves are not functioning at the same level as they are if they're reading or doing other things. You can just see people getting stupider over time as they rely on these things. And, you know, you tie that to the risk profile of the stuff that you have in your pocket. You tie that to the loneliness, right? Like, there's just a lot of things coming together right now that, like, I don't. I don't want to sound like the old guy that's like, don't use the new tool. But I do think that, like, the evidence is pointing us towards a place that, like, this is very. This is damaging to the. To the culture.
- [39:38]
C
Look, I think objectively speaking, people are more isolated than ever. Right. Like, every study shows fewer, fewer friends, less time out of the house, fewer, you know, interactions with large groups of people belonging to fewer organizations. And they have kind of papered that over by being like, no, look, I'm friends with all of these people online. I, you know, I can, I think the real danger of the AI stuff, aside from the fact that we don't entirely understand how it works or why it is telling certain people that they should probably kill themselves and like go on you know, shooting rampages, like, right. What happens is you create an illusion of community and friendship with this thing that doesn't exist. And that's, that is even worse than just being lonely and isolated.
- [40:21]
A
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- [41:23]
C
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- [41:55]
A
You mentioned David Foster Wallace, the entertainment in the column. Riff on that for a second.
- [42:00]
C
If I can go full lip row for a second, which is a thing that doesn't exist, that's not a thing. So David Foster Wallace writes this massive book in the mid-1990s called Infinite Jest. And lots of people buy it and then don't read it because it's very long. It took me like five months to read. It's a real project. You have to sit down and commit to it. But one of the elements of this book is a character in the book creates this thing called the entertainment, which is basically a movie that is so addicting that people watch it compulsively to the exclusion of everything else. They stop eating, they stop working, they stop and they. They wither away and die because they're so obsessed with the entertainment. And this is, you know that joke Tech company builds torment nexus from story. Don't build the torment nexus. Right. Like that is. That is kind of what it feels like the entertainment is. All of these companies are rac toward capturing people's attention fully all the time. This is the goal of TikTok. It's the goal of Instagram reels. It's the goal of all of the short video content that exists to capture attention all the time. I think the downsides of this are fairly obvious. And that's before you get into any of the misinformation, that's before you get into any of the, you know, agitation. Focusing people's attention on their phone all the time is bad. I'm convinced this is bad. You will not convince me. It's not bad. That's my prior.
- [43:23]
A
Your point that the downsides are pretty obvious. I think it's interesting to look at polling on this because I feel like elite opinion is a little particularly elite opinion in kind of D.C. new York circles is a little bit more anti technology and Luddite and anti technology company than the general public. The opinion of Amazon and Meta amongst New York and D.C. journalists and commentators is like 2% support, 98 oppose it. Just overwhelming opposition. Most people like Amazon, it's a useful product for them, right? So there's this disconnect. That disconnect isn't showing on AI. There's an NBC News poll that came out that I wanted to grab. They tested what people's favorability is of a bunch of different things. Politicians and issues topics, organizations. I want to read you the bottom four. ICE has a 38 approved, 56% disapprove. So pretty pretty bad for ICE. AI has a 26% approved, 46% disapproved. So a lot of people aren't sure yet. But of the people who have an opinion, 20% more disapprove. Worse than ICE, the Democratic Party 30% approved, 52% disapproved. So Democrats probably work on that. Iran 8% approved, 61% disapproved. AI is really basically only more popular than Iran. And so to me, that is telling. There's some part of this that's scary. There's this unknown. I don't want it to take my job. I'm worried about that. But there's another part of it that I just, that people sense. They're like, they're looking at the product, they're seeing what they're getting, and they're like, there's something off about this.
- [44:59]
C
I think AI has some positive uses. I feel like the people who use it to vibe code are doing some interesting stuff.
- [45:12]
A
I was talking to my buddy who's a lawyer yesterday, just over the weekend, and he does. He's like a white hat lawyer. He's kind of like a more serious version of Better Call Saul. He's going to the old folks home and he's like, you people are getting screwed over by the management of the old folks home and we're going to get you a class action lawsuit. That's in short of it. His gig AI is unbelievable for him because you can grab all this information where he would have had to go hire for legal assistance. So sorry for those people. It didn't get those jobs and it would have taken them months to go through all the docum documents in the basement of the, you know, old folks home. Like, so. So, you know, it can be used for good medical. On medical side people say that, right? Like there's not. They're obviously good examples.
- [45:56]
C
Well, but let's drill down on that, right? So you have one guy who's like, Yes, I love AI. It makes my job easier. But then you have three people who aren't getting a job and you have 10,000 people who are getting harassed by AI, spam, text, phone calls, emails, who are like, what am I? Why am I getting this? I don't want to sign up for a lawsuit. What am I doing? I think that is a lot of people's interactions with AI. And just consider, for instance, going to Google. If I go to Google and I type into Google whatever information I'm looking for, the first thing at the top is an AI thing. And like 4 out of 10 times when I look at that and I know the subject in question, I'm kind of like, I don't think that's 100% right. I need to. What's the sourcing on this? Sometimes I'm wrong. But a lot of the times the AI is not right. It just is. Like, I think people have enough experience With AI doing things wrong and also killing jobs that they're like, I don't like this. This is bad.
- [46:53]
A
And maybe killing people. In the case of the Iranian girl school. To the last segment, we don't know that for sure, but it does seem like potentially could have been AI targeting on that. Okay, I want to move on to a couple of topics. We're going to go rapid fire through a couple other things in the, in what I consider the sunny oov Warner Brothers discovery getting bought by Paramount. Just a couple of things that and the news have caught my eye on that lately. Ellison said that he promised, quote, cnn will remain independent on a panel recently. I noticed that later in the panel though, he talked about how it will remain independent in the same way that CBS is independent. And so I think maybe his image in his head of what independent looks like is I'm going to hire a lot more MAGA people and then let them do whatever they want, you know, rather than I'm going to tell people what they have to report, which is, you know, that's a difference. It's a category difference, but it's still something worth being concerned about. China is back in the deal. Tencent is in the deal. And you know, we have the Arab nations in the deal. Like where are we at now on this?
- [47:48]
C
The Tencent and Arab kind of wealth fund things is really interesting because Tencent and Paramount Skydance have kind of a weird fraught relationship. Remember during the Top Gun Maverick rollout, there was this big fight about Maverick's jacket doesn't have the, the Taiwan flag on it. They took it off to, you know, to placate the Chinese. And then there was such a backlash to this that they actually put the patch back on the jacket. They probably, they probably like CGI'd it back on after CGI ing it off. And then, and then 10 cent pulled out of that deal. Like Tencent like stopped being a co funder of that film, which probably cost them like $100 million. And they were, they were excluded from this deal because there were national security concerns. People didn't want 10 cent involved in this deal, you know, on the Paramount side of things. So if they're getting back in, that suggests that there is some real concern that the Arab wealth funds, which are, you know, obviously their money comes from oil, the price of which is skyrocketing right now, but might not be able to get out because of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iran war, torpedoing a large portion of the funding of the Paramount Skydance Warner Brothers deal would be one of those weird quirks of history, one of those weird unintended, you know, consequences. Burning a. Burning a MAGA supporter.
- [49:03]
A
Is this like a deal's not done, but deal's done situation, or there's still
- [49:07]
C
major potential hurdles, as we have seen with the Ticketmaster Live Nation thing. The. The Trump administration has no interest in fighting, like, real monopolies like Ticketmaster Live Nation. That's a real monopoly. They control 80% of the market there. They have, you know, vertical monopolies, horizontal monopoly like they are, and they don't want to break that up. I don't think the antitrust division even set aside all of the, you know, maga, Donald Trump doing favors for people stuff like, I just don't think they have any st stomach for trying to break it up. I don't think the state attorneys general will be able to do anything either. I get the sense that it's probably just going to go through. It may take a little while, it may take the beginning of next year, but I don't think it's going to fall apart for regulatory reasons, and I don't think it's going to fall apart for money reasons because Larry Ellison has said he is backstopping the whole thing with his money and he's got a lot of it. So.
- [49:55]
A
And it's corruption all the way down. I mean, there's corrupt finance and the Ticketmaster deal, big donations happening to the Trump Org. I'm particularly annoyed about the Ticketmaster thing. I mean, I'm not like the hugest antitrust guy. I think sometimes, you know, we lean a con on here. And it was interesting conversation because I was like, whenever Lena was talking about, like, small stuff like, hey, there's a little monopoly in this niche area, and she was explaining it, I was like, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, antitrust is called for in this situation. It's obviously called for in the Ticketmaster situation. People are getting screwed left and right on stupid fees, as you know. I know as a frequent concert goer, a lot of times sometimes in the big, there's like also then a utopian side of antitrust. Just like if we just break up meta into three smaller terrible companies and everything will be okay. I'm not really sure that's true. But anyway, that's for a longer day. One other. On the corruption thing, do you see the story about how Trump bought Netflix bonds in December while all this was happening?
- [50:51]
C
I did.
- [50:51]
A
What is the deal with that?
- [50:54]
C
I don't actually understand that. Story because I don't understand the difference between stocks and bonds. That's a Catherine Rampel question. But it's one of these things where why is anybody involved in the administration buying these bonds? My favorite part was the quote. Did you see the quote from the White House spokes who was like, no, no, Donald Trump did not buy this. It's a blind trust that his children run. His children run it. So there couldn't be any corruption here. And I was just. My head exploded cuz I was like, these children are neck deep in all this shit.
- [51:27]
A
A couple more things in the news people are upset about two different topics. I wanted to get your take on on my social media feed. One is people are really mad about the great Timothee Chalamet.
- [51:38]
C
Yes.
- [51:38]
A
I will brook no criticism of Timothee Chalamet on any topic, but particularly on this one. Let's listen. And I don't want to be working in ballet or opera or, you know, things where it's like, hey, keep this thing alive. Even though no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there, I just lost 14 sense and viewership, but damn, I just took shots for no reason. That's not a shot.
- [52:05]
C
I hear what you're saying. Yeah, people are mad.
- [52:09]
A
Oh, he just saw. He does a little opera singing there. I forgot about that part. People are mad to me about that. In my social media feeds, I saw influencers. I don't know who seemed actually upset. One thing I promise to my viewers is I get upset about a lot of things. I don't ever pretend to be upset about anything. So I don't know if these people were pretending to be upset or if they were genuinely upset. We can just join together right now and say that Timothee Chalamet did nothing wrong. Right. It's fine to make little jokes about the fact that people don't go to the opera anymore. That's just real. That's just reality.
- [52:38]
C
Timothy Innocent. 100%. I will say the outrage here is ridiculous because everybody takes everything in the worst faith possible. It is very obvious what Timothee Chalamet was saying in this interview, which is, I am a filmmaker. I act in movies. I like being in big movies, on big movie screens, in big movie theaters. And I do not want to be in an art form that is die.
- [53:03]
A
It's a worry for movie actors. People are worried that movies are dying.
- [53:06]
C
It's a real worry. Look, to go back to the Paramount Warner Brothers thing, the Paramount Warner Brothers deal is kind of contingent upon Paramount saying that they are going to continue to put 15 movies from each studio into the marketplace. And nobody actually believes that's gonna happen. And cutting out another leg of the theatrical experience, the content that goes into the. Is going to be disastrous for people like Timothy Chalamet. And he is right to worry about this. And he's right to say, I don't want to be part of a niche art form that has to beg for its own survival all the time.
- [53:40]
A
If you like opera and ballet, that's fine. I have niche interests that not everyone.
- [53:44]
C
He doesn't even say anything bad about opera. He's not like, I hate opera and ballet. I don't want to be like those losers doing their tights, doing their plays and stuff.
- [53:53]
A
If you're really mad about the ballet, go to the ballet, support it. Tell me who your favorite ballerina is. Okay, here's another outrage that was out there, and me and you are gonna have a disagreement on this. I know from our private messaging. The NBA canceled Magic City Night next week at the Atlanta Hawks game. For people don't know Magic City is a strip club in Atlanta. Does very well. It's doing good capitalism. A lot of people are going there of their own volition.
- [54:20]
C
Totally.
- [54:20]
A
A lot of people are working there of their own volition. It is a cultural touchstone in Atlanta. They wanted to have a basketball game where they gave out merch. Magic City merch would have made a lot of money. And the NBA came in and said, no, you can't do this. And I said, this is in part because this was left wing puritanism. We do plenty of attacking on right wing puritanism on this podcast. This was left wing puritanism. The complaints did not come from the churches in Atlanta. It came from lefty activists who were like, this is marooned to women. I think that the women that work at Magic City are doing so of their own volition and should be honored
- [54:54]
C
for their art form.
- [54:54]
A
And I don't think that this is a big deal. I wasn't keen on canceling Drag Queen Story Hour if people wanted to take their kids to that. And I'm not keen on canceling Magic City Night at the Atlanta Hawks. Nancy Pelosi's daughter attacked me over this on social media. And now Sonny Bunch is on the side of Nancy Pelosi's daughter. Where am I wrong?
- [55:13]
C
Well, Tim, as you know, I'm not really a right wing puritan, but I will say that I. You're insane. This is. I texted my. I Texted my buddy, who is a. Who's the commissioner of my fantasy sports leagues. And I was like, hey, what do you think about Adam Silver doing this? He's like, it's the first thing that commissioner got right. He is. You cannot have at a family sporting event a strip club night. I'm sorry. That's insane. That's just an insane thing to do.
- [55:41]
A
Why?
- [55:42]
C
It's not.
- [55:42]
A
Strippers aren't going to be stripping at the game. It's. It's a sponsorship. What are they.
- [55:47]
C
Are the kids going to, like, wear Magic City T shirts and take them. Wear them into school like their parents? Look what I got at the game. Look what I got at the game. Teacher. That's crazy. That's crazy. I'm in the new world.
- [55:58]
A
We have Mardi Gras. Come on. Would this have been a problem in Europe? No, that's fine. People are a little more.
- [56:05]
C
It would have been a problem in Europe. You know, we were talking earlier about friction. I think it's fine that strip clubs exist. I think if people want to go to strip clubs and indulge their appetites, that is totally. That should be. Be legal. As long as you're of legal age, that is totally fine. But, you know, I don't think having it kind of out, like in a. In a public family setting, it's not ideal. That's. That's where I come down on this.
- [56:30]
A
Whatever. Call me, you know, a decadent. I don't know what would be. What would be your insult of me. Call me whatever insult you want.
- [56:38]
C
That's a very New Orleans thing. I think that's a very laissez faire.
- [56:44]
A
Magic City sweatshirt is shown to. It's fine. It's not a big deal. Who cares? Okay. Anyway, I thought we weren't doing cancellations anymore. That's all I'm saying. We're all. I thought we weren't doing them, but apparently we're only doing cancellations when Rand. When Sonny Bunch and Christine Pelosi and Luke Cornett or whatever his name was.
- [57:01]
C
Nobody's saying that they should shut down the strip club. You just don't do it in the. In the basketball arena.
- [57:06]
A
Final topic, we're over. I need one hot take about the Oscars coming up. And you just. Your newsletter today is about a perfect movie that you saw. I need I to need 90 seconds
- [57:15]
C
or less on that hot take on the Oscars. I think Sinners might pull off Best Picture. This would be a big upset. I don't think it's 100% for sure. And come Sunday night, I will probably be proven wrong here. There's a real sinner's momentum building. I think a lot of people really like that movie. It's a lot of fun. The woke vampire movie set in the south. The woke anti racist vampire movie will possibly win at the Oscars. I think, I think it's. I think it's entirely possible. It's one. It was my favorite of the movies nominated, so I'm pro this. But yeah, I like, I like to. You're one battle after another.
- [57:51]
A
Not Marty. Does Timmy, Does Timmy get an Oscar?
- [57:53]
C
So I think Timothee Chalamet probably gets the Oscar for Marty Supreme. He's very good. He's very good.
- [58:00]
A
Bonus segment on this. This is the thing about every. I feel like this about every big actor and actress that I care about. Like, it's like you with AI if you actually know about their career. It's always like, I feel like they always get the Oscar for like their fifth best performance, you know, because momentum builds over time and it's like, why didn't he win for call me by your name? Why didn't he win for Bob Dylan? Why didn't he win for this? And now it's like, okay, we're gonna give it to him for their fourth best.
- [58:22]
C
Well, I don't. I think that does happen. That absolutely happens. Usually it happens with older actors. This happened with Al Pacino in son of a woman, right? Kind of famously. He wins.
- [58:31]
A
Sen of a woman was amazing.
- [58:33]
C
Well, it's. It's fine. It's not as bad. It's fine. But it's like his 10th best movie. It's his 10th best movie.
- [58:38]
A
This is my fault. I interrupt you. I already said we were over. Talk to us about the perfect movie.
- [58:42]
C
The perfect movie project T. Go see it. You'll love it. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll be thrilled and exhilarated. Great movie. Go see it. Perfect Popcorn entertainment project.
- [58:52]
A
Hail Mary. That's good. Get a break from your phone, from your doom scroll from your dystopia. Sonny bunch. That was great. It's a little preview of what people are going to get to see in Dallas March 18th. I don't think we sell aftermarket tickets, so you might be boned. But we'll put it online and March 19th. Come see us in Austin. Theborg.com events appreciate Sonny very much. We're going to have a little something different tomorrow, okay? So everybody buckle your chin straps and I think it's going to be enjoyable. We'll see you all then. Peace. The Boar Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.