← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
It's a Numbers Game: Lee Fang on Donor-Driven Identity Politics, Immigration Failures & the AI Economic Shock
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- [00:00]
Ryan Graduski
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Public Podcast Sponsor
Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures running a.
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Ryan Graduski
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Lee Fang
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Ryan Graduski
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Ryan Graduski
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Lee Fang
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Ryan Graduski
To grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for free at O-O-O.com that's odoo.com hey, this is.
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US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.
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Lee Fang
And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [01:42]
Ryan Graduski
As athletes, our lives are about having.
- [01:44]
Lee Fang
A clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.
- [01:47]
Ryan Graduski
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [01:55]
Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [02:06]
There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do? Visit Capella Edu to learn more.
- [02:24]
Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. Thank you guys for being here. How many of you regret your vote for Donald Trump? Who are my conservative listeners? That's the question I want to pose to you in this episode. If you listen to progressives in the media or on television, somehow they all have tons of friends that voted for Trump in November and they just regret it. They can't live with themselves. They're so upset. They're like, wow, we got it wrong. Maybe they'll support AOC in 2028. That's what the narrative is going into, you know, the midterm elections. I have a lot of friends who voted for Donald Trump, and I racked my brains ahead of this podcast taping to say how many would have switched their boats. And I'm, I don't really know any. And I'm sure there are a few who maybe, maybe not are vocalizing it or certainly there's a lot who don't agree with everything that he does. I think that's everybody doesn't agree with everything that everyone does. But progressives in the media are a treasure trove of people who are, you know, they have an endless supply of Trump voters who regret it and won't. Do you know they're going to do better next time? They're not going to. They're all Alyssa Farah's. They're all going to sit there and just change the way. Alyssa Farah is a conservative on the View who voted for Kamala. But what does the data say? Fox News has a poll out that was conducted by Beacon and Shaw Research. They do all the Fox News polls and they're, you know, they're fine, they're good. The poll found that Trump's approval rating stands at 44 favorable, 56 unfavorable. One of the better polls for the president, I might say. Among people that voted for him, the number is 84 approval rating. That's almost identical to the 86 in the new York Times that they found just last week. 81 in YouGov, 87 and Morning Consult, and 86 in the latest Emerson poll. Usually, data drives narratives in the media. People in the media or, you know, influencers will find special cross tabs. They'll find a crosshair. They'll say, you know, they'll find a cross table poll that has a sample size of 20, you know, black Americans, and 50 of them will vote for Trump, let's say huge swing, Trump's gonna win majority of the black vote. Even though they're not going to. But they use these cross tabs with these minor numbers to sit there and show that they're to have a narrative that's not this case. The cross tabs are very, almost nearly identical. 86, 86, 86, 87. That they support Donald Trump. I think N84 is the other one. They support Donald Trump. They voted for him. They're going to vote for the Republican again in midterm elections. Nonetheless, the left is really jumping on this and making something completely out of whole cloth. They're offering something to liberal audiences because they're still smarting over the election and they can't believe still that they lost. I think losing the popular vote was even worse than losing the White House because there is a narrative among progressives that I like to listen to progressives and social media stuff like that and influencers and mainstream media outlets, they like to have this narrative saying there are more of them than there are. Sorry, there's more of us than there are of them, that there are more liberals than there are of conservatives. And this narrative persists among progressives to this day in spite of the election results. So now the narrative is, well, they're won the popular vote. Maybe it was stolen. I mean, Kathy Griffin and Rosie o', Donnell, other celebrity, you know, comedians and entertainers who said the election might have been stolen by Elon Musk. That's their conspiracy. But the mainstream ones will say maybe, yeah, they won the popular vote, but so many people have left, you know, are banning him left and right, that it's, it's all over. You know, the walls are finally closing in and there are supporters now, and now we have the majority and it's all a cope. If you look at the data, it's only between 10 to 15% of Trump voters have a disapproval of where Trump, of how Trump is performing as the president that mirrors past presidents. At the end of January 2014, President Obama had a 40% approval rating, according to Gallup, and support among Democrats was about 80%. And that among independents was 30%. That's very close where Donald Trump is today. Actually, Trump has a higher level of support among his members of his party than Obama had of Democrats. Other posters at the time, cnn, Marist, Pew Research, all had Obama's approval ratings at similar places. A lot of people are working diligently to forecast the 2026 midterms, trying to sit there and show this giant rebuke of Trump by his own voters. Basically, Trump is Caesar and the 77.3 million people of him that voted for him were all Brutus. They're all going to sit there and stab him the back. That is so heavily overstated. And so, you know, obviously false. They're trying to say early on there's going to be a lesson to learn from people souring on Trump. And to a degree, yeah, there's true, that's, that's probably true. American voters probably don't like one or two things that he's doing in a large degree, especially on tariffs. Tariffs are, is really, really negative in tariffs on the polls. But American voters are very fickle. They swing like the wind. It's what they do. It's what we do. So don't be fooled by this idea that a third or a quarter of Trump's base is just leaving him. It's not. It's actually much lower than past presidents, including Obama. Progressives are signaling to their voters, by the way, that they are so outraged at what Trump's doing. And you know, you have people like Mayor Jacob Fry saying we're not even going to work with ICE on deporting criminals. That Trump is, they always say he's like a dictator, a Nazi. The ICE is like gestapos. But I want to remind everybody that not that long ago in my lifetime and my lifetime where I was an adult, not a child, Democrats sounded a lot like Republicans. They sounded a lot like what Donald Trump says. Not completely, but a lot of it. Here's Amy Klobuchar. 20 years ago, 2006, I was an adult and a long time ago. But most people are voting, were around in 2006 and voting in 2006, not only supporting a border fence or as we all currently know, a border wall, but saying we need to go after companies that hire illegal aliens in the United States, that hire illegals to do the jobs, quote, unquote, Americans won't do. Amy Klobuchar here's the clip now.
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Ms. Klobuchar, Thursday, President Bush signed a law approving a 700 mile fence on.
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The U.S. mexican border. Is a fence good immigration policy or just good politics?
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I do believe that we need more resources at the border and that that includes offense. What we have now, we have people waiting to come in legally, thousands of people waiting to come in legally to this country. And we have people coming in illegally. That's not right.
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We need to get order at the.
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Border, but we also have to stop giving amnesty to companies that are hiring illegal immigrants.
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Under the this administration, the number of prosecutions of companies has gone way down.
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That has to change.
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The slide From Klobuchar in 2006 to Mayor Fry to Abigail Spamberger to Amy Klobuchar in 2026 to Chuck Schumer in 2026, who was refusing to even turn over criminal aliens to ICE is so dramatic. And it's something American people don't want. So if you hear Democrats in the media saying that the midterms are rebuke against Trump and specifically that Americans really don't want enforcement of current immigration laws, they're lying, plain and simple. Polls show it. Data shows it. Republicans are not going to lose the midterms because of immigration. Republicans are likely to lose the midterms because that's political gravity in America. Political gravity says every other. The party loses, swings against them, the nation swings against the party in power. It just does. Even Biden, who had a good midterm, quote, unquote good midterm, still lost the House. Speaking of immigration and elections, let's talk about what's going on overseas, specifically in Spain, because this is a preview of what's going to happen in America if the Democrats win back all three branches of the government. Spain is a parliamentary system and the government is governed by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. Though they are not the largest party, they're a minority party and they work with other far left parties to sit there and have a government. Well, they're likely to lose their next election, which is in 2027. Polls show them sinking. They were at, they're at currently 26% of the polls. They used to be at 32%. And the Vox party, which is a nationalist conservative party, much like Giorgio Maloney, much like Reform uk, much like Maureen Le Pen, they are surging in the polls. They're in third place, but they're very close to being in second with the center right Conservative being in first. So facing an oncoming defeat and, and the surging Box Party, what has the Spanish Prime Minister and his Socialist Party decided to do? They are legalizing and giving an amnesty to 500,000 illegal aliens, which is gigantic in a country the size of Spain. This is from the Telegraph. In the UK, Spain has started to legalize 500,000 undocumented migrants and give them immediate right to work. In a move to, quote, fight against the advance of the far right, end quote. A government spokesman said, we only, we not only intend to remain a beacon, but I want to believe that we are, we will be a seed and a germ to fight against the advance of the far right wave that is Trying to gain ground and against. We'll do everything in our power to stop it. The other far left party is called Padomas. They said the legislation would help dismantle institutional racism that fuels the explosion of racist hatred. While the government cast the move as a political challenge to the right wing box party, which has been steadily rising in the polls. Under the scheme, this is important. Under the scheme, illegal aliens and asylum seekers and those who've been living in Spain for five months since December 1, 2025, will be eligible to apply for legal status at the beginning of April and June 30th of this year. Applicants with criminal records will be excluded. Applicants will be assessed within 15 days after a successful candidate will be allowed to work in any sector anywhere. And Spain, according to the migration minister. Okay, five months. It's all, you got to be there for five months. Not 20 years, not 30 years. You haven't, you know, you don't have a family there. Five months, you can have a baby. Five months. You've been there for five months. You snuck in, you know, more recently than the last Olympics. Five months. And you are, you're gonna live and work in Spain no matter where you're from, as long as they don't have a documented case of a crime, which, guess what, it's very easy for illegal aliens, especially those who prey on other illegal aliens who don't report crimes, to commit crimes. This is a disaster. And 15 days, 15 days. How are you, let's say, let's say 100,000 people apply a day, or 50,000 people apply with a day. 50,000 people have to have their applications approved in 15 days. How do you even vet that kind of number when you're a nation of like 35 million people? This is a disaster. Spain is absolutely creating a disaster. And it's all to give them the right to vote. It's all for the rights of vote, to stop nationalists, to stop populists from winning their election. This is what the left is doing in Spain. They want to do it across Europe and America, Australia, Canada, the entire Western world. At this point, the very far left cannot win over because of issues of identity and immigration that they are drunk on. They are absolutely high on their own supply. Drunk on. So what do they want to do? They want to bring in new voters because they can't win with the old ones. That is just the state of affairs right now in the West. And it is, it is of the utmost important that the Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, the Progressive Party, whichever groups you have it are blocked from governing right now until they sit there and learn a lesson over the issues of identity and immigration, they have to change their ways because the Jacob Fries of the world, the mayor of Minneapolis or the other far left, they are reject. Amy, Amy Klobuchar of 2006 would be called a Nazi today. That's what they believe right now. So with me today on this podcast is a independent writer named Lee Fang. He's a, he's a progressive journalist. He's actually of the left, big fantasies for a long time. He talks about Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party and we talk about identity politics and how that identity thought process, immigration thought process among the left has been so cancerous. And he's called actually for the Democratic Party to release an apology letter to voters over what they did during Joe Biden's policies. Very smart guy, super interesting. A little side note about him personally I want to just bring up, I don't want to talk about during the interview, but I want to just mention it. He was actually canceled over the issues of identity. He shared a Martin Luther King Jr. About nonviolence during the George Floyd riots and he was accused of racism and canceled by the far left. So he's someone who understands the consequences even though he believes in a lot of left wing policies. But he's super bright. It's a great conversation that's coming up next. Stay tuned.
- [15:30]
Public Podcast Sponsor
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely custom, customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures hey, this is.
- [16:32]
Ryan Graduski
US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.
- [16:34]
Lee Fang
And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [16:37]
Ryan Graduski
As athletes, our lives are about having.
- [16:39]
Lee Fang
A clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.
- [16:42]
Ryan Graduski
So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you.
- [16:50]
Public Podcast Sponsor
Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services.
- [16:52]
Ryan Graduski
LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953.
- [16:56]
Public Podcast Sponsor
Licensed by the Department of Financial Protection.
- [16:57]
Ryan Graduski
And Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
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- [18:06]
Lee Fang is an independent journalist and previously an investigative reporter for a number of progressive outlets including the Intercept and the Nation. Lee, I've been a big fan of yours since I mean, I think Occupy Wall street is when I really started getting attuned to your work. You tweeted something I thought was really fascinating I wanted to talk to you about. You said pretty much every normal Dem is tired of identity politics dogma. But donors like Carla Gervartsen, I believe you say her name, and Liz Simons, who have divorced and inherited their money, have billions to keep the train going. So here we are. This is about Carla Gervarts and who is a funding Jasmine Crockett's campaign. How much does nonprofit and NGOs would that apparatus go towards funding things like the identity politics train?
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Lee Fang
Look, it's hard to parse out the exact kind of percentage of causal effect of how much of kind of extreme identity politics comes from culture or academia or the media versus these billionaire and NGO donors. But the donor influence is hard to ignore. You look at almost any poll even of committed Democrats, there isn't a lot of support for abolish the police. Even in the kind of peak of 2020, when after the Floyd protests and riots, you had growing demands for this type of thing, despite the very low polling numbers that abolished police ever had, you had a small clique of mega millionaire and billionaire donors, people like Liz Simons, who were cutting checks to a variety of abolish the police groups. So around the country, if you, if you look at the funding, you look at the kind of extreme activists, you know, it's not the everyday middle class Democrats who are supporting this. It seems to be largely an elite interest, folks who are literal billionaires like Liz Simons or other major foundations that support them.
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Ryan Graduski
Yeah. And if you look at even a more unpopular policy, which was reparations for slavery, that never pulled. Well, even in George Floyd time, at any time, the amount of people like in California, in San Francisco, pushed a reparations policy, a state that never really had slavery, I don't think, you know, to any degree that was serious and how long, how far they went with it, it would have bankrupted the state. I think San Francisco did some kind of policy. They're kind of trying to backtrack as they don't have the money for it now. But I always wondered where that kind of stuff came because California has limited a blended black population and they're the only group that was very supportive of it. And, and it's not, it's. It's not on anyone's top 30 issues that they really are gonna get behind. And I never really understood why and why Jasmine Crockett became like a thing. You know what I mean? Jasmine Crockett is a big thing because she's in part the only person really talking about race as the main issue as an elected leader.
- [21:07]
Lee Fang
Well, I think there are a few things going on here. The main, the main dynamic here is that there are Democratic leaders, and this happens on both sides of the aisle. But on the Democratic side, there are certain issues that are unmovable, that are unpopular, unworkable. They don't make. Make a lot of sense like reparations here in California, but they are polarizing. They are emotionally very powerful. You know, in California, we have a intractable housing crisis. We have, you know, high costs of health care. We have a public safety kind of crisis. We have homeless issues. We have all these problems that we'd like our leaders to deal with, but if they hold out these kind of impossible to fix problems that are emotionally laden like reparations, they can seize public opinion. They can say, hey, we're the good guys. We're the public servants. We're doing something that no other leader has done. Even though they know in their hearts that nothing will pass. They, you know, they attach no funding mechanism. They kind of bury language in all these bills to make sure that nothing actually happens. But it's designed to kind of show their moral leadership that they are good people, that they are kind of icons of history and, you know, championing kind of the long march of civil rights. Even if these issues are completely meaningless in the sense that they are never designed to pass. I mean, it's a lot like the single payer debate. Gavin Newsom campaigned when he first ran for governor here for, see, he's going to enact single payer. It's how he got the nurses union and others to back him. It's how he kind of got the progressives to get on board with his gubernatorial campaign. He knew that there'd be no chance for a single payer in California. And indeed, when he became governor, he took no actions to actually pass it. Reparations is very similar. There's a committee to study it and another committee to study it. This is all designed just to kind of keep the medium wheel going. It kind of leads to outrage on the right for very good reason because a lot of this stuff is preposterous. And it leads to kind of the symbolic moral leadership for Democrats who actually get nothing done on much more thorny, difficult to tackle issues like housing, like health care, like jobs, like homelessness.
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Ryan Graduski
Yeah. And what is the. There's a progress. There's a saying that progressives love to say, is that the arc of. Arc of history bends towards justice. I think that's why they sit there and say that's what I think. That's. I think what this main movable thing is. They feel like this is one thing towards justice and that they are part of that wheel. Like, you know, we may not been alive or active in the 1960s during the Civil rights movement, but now we're actually getting that, you know, getting on the bandwagon in our own respect, in whatever issue it is. I think it's that. What is your opinion of Gavin Newsom?
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Lee Fang
Look, he's a crafty politician. He's great at kind of playing the national media. And that's how he gets Elected so effectively. You know, he basically chose his Republican opponent in the last two elections because we have the jungle primary, the top two in California. He ran ads in the Republican primary to basically trick them Republican voters and independents into selecting who he wanted to run against so he could run against a very weak opponent. He's very clever in that sense. But overall, he's been a failure on the, on the issues. I just mentioned, you know, there's a news story just in the last week that his signature kind of special courts to deal with mental illness and drug addiction for homelessness has failed. It was supposed to handle thousands of cases per year. It's only handled a few hundred. Look at the housing dynamic. We haven't been able to build housing, health care. You know, he's got, he's gotten a little bit done on insulin prices, but basically everything else has been a failure on prices.
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Ryan Graduski
Like the thing that every politician seems to have gone to recently. If you notice that even from Trump to Biden, everyone's like, we're going to tackle insulin. Not that insulin is not important, but I wonder why that is. The drug that everyone's moving towards over other drugs which are just like cancer drugs.
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Lee Fang
Like got a lot of overweight Americans who are insulin dependent. Diabetes is a big issue. And look, actually Eli Lilly, the biggest maker makers of insulin, have moved on as a business model towards GOPs. So, you know, I think this is actually an issue that's going to be in the rearview mirror moving forward. But you know, there are a lot of promises around drug prices, around health care costs, and this is a salient one, just like price of milk or price of gas. But again, overall, look at the big picture. How much California spends on pensions, on healthcare, how expensive housing is. He hasn't really moved the needle.
- [25:53]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah. And I think that you said something else on Twitter that was very. I spent a lot of time scrolling your stuff, so that's a lot of. I've read your old articles too, in some of your recent videos. But you said something else on Twitter that I thought was very interesting. You said that Kanye west, for those who don't know, wrote a large apology to the Jewish community, incited his mental health as the reason he was so anti Semitic. And you said the Democrats need a similar style apology around the border and immigration. Right. Because they are the Republicans. Despite ICE being down in the polls, voters will trust Republicans want the Democrats on immigration because of the, in part large part because of Joe Biden. Four years in office and there are still Democrats like J like Jacob Fry over in Minneapolis, who were like, we're not even going to let criminals who are in prison being deported. How close is the party to getting there, to actually acknowledging and doing something hard line, at least on the border, do you think?
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Lee Fang
Well, Bernie Sanders has praised Donald Trump, saying he's done a good job on border security. Look, 20 years ago, when I was in college, Democrats dominated Arkansas. They had a majority of congressional seats in Appalachia. The Dakotas were controlled by Democrats. The Democratic Party used to be a rural and working class party. It's kind of flipped. We've had class and regional polarization in this country, and a big part of that comes down to its position on border security, on identity politics, on public safety, and what's popular on social media. Both you and I are addicted to social media, but it's popular these days to say, never apologize if you're wrong. You know, never let the haters get to you. Just keep going about your way. You know, I don't think that's true for human psychology. It works for Twitter, but it doesn't work if you're in a family, if you're in a workplace, if you're in a community and you're asking for someone's vote. The Democrats messed up. If they want to earn back the trust of working class voters, of voters in rural communities, I don't think an apology hurts. They can say they messed up. Over the last 10 years, in fact, the party has been hijacked by billionaires and special interest groups that don't care about these issues. In fact, they're on the wrong side of these issues. But for Democrats to reconnect with their working class roots, I think just starting the process with an apology, with a refocus on kind of meat and potato issues, of middle class wages, on labor unions, on holding corporations accountable, holding Trump accountable, on making sure that America is affordable. That's where I think the party historically has been in the 20th century, from the New Deal onwards. There's no reason it can't reconnect with those roots. Except for the influence of folks like Liz Simons and a few other kind of special interest activists.
- [28:45]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah, I think also the problem is a lot of staffers are really addicted to social media. Like Tim Waltz's transformation from a congressman to a governor is night and day. And I think in part he was chasing social media. And it's so toxic for elected officials to chase social media trends. I want to switch gears for a second. So I watched a video you had the university on your Podcast, you had a interview with the University of Montreal assistant Professor David Krueger about AI. This interview gave me an anxiety attack. Just want you to know, very difficult time sleeping afterwards. So you're in the valley, you're in Silicon Valley territory. How responsible do you think? And I'm sure you have contact someone in the Silicon Valley world. How responsible is Silicon Valley being around AI?
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Lee Fang
I think there's no guardrails. People are pursuing self interest, which is fine. You know, the way for any kind of new frontier technology to develop is for entrepreneurs and scientists and researchers to kind of push the boundaries as far as possible. The thing is, this is very different from developing a new medication or a new energy source. This is a fundamentally transformative technology that could change all of human civilization. We could become completely dependent upon it. This is something that could kill all of us. I mean, even according to the folks who are leading the AI companies, people who founded Anthropic, who makes Claude or even Elon Musk. Elon Musk says there's a 20% chance that AI kills all of us and he's developing it. So it's a pretty high probability. And you know, you can, you know, the interview I think goes through a lot of the different stages of this. That could be a dependency thing that we become so dependent on AI, we kind of lose our own humanity. And then something happens where the AI sees us as disposable. It could get rid of us. It could invent thousands of new viruses like, you know, Super Covid 19s that are designed to kill us. I mean, there's so many ways to look at this. And I'm not someone who says, okay, the government needs to control all of this. We need it. We need, you know, strict regulations on everything. But we need a conversation. We need policymakers who are independent minded who are taking the, these risk factors into consideration. And we're at least looking at this in a responsible way. Right now the AI companies, the venture capitalists and the big tech companies that control them are buying off all the politicians. Look at all the members of Congress who retired in 2024. So many of them are going to law firms and trade associations representing the AI companies. Kyrsten Sinema is one of them, but there are many others. Look at how much they are buying.
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Ryan Graduski
Cinema's Fortune Post Senate. She's doing very well. For her.
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Lee Fang
She's doing very well. And of course for the AI companies, this is, I mean, for the amount of money that they're raising, buying a few hundred former lawmakers and Regulators, this is chump change for them because it's a few million dollars while they're spending tens of millions just hiring a research scientist to develop these models.
- [32:00]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah. I'll tell you as a consultant on the Republican side of the aisle, the amount of money in bitcoin and in AI is astronomical. It is astronomical. They're throwing around 8, $10 million for a house or Senate race like it's nothing. And it is nothing to them. But the amount of money is, is preposterous. And given the polls, like the Fox News poll recently said, 65% of Americans are, are, have anxiety about AI. That, that's a huge amount. That's. Those are, those are, those are the trans women in sports numbers. Those are gun control numbers. Those are like very lopsided numbers on one side. There is not even a conversation happening like there. And I've gotten to arguments on Twitter with David Sachs, who I know a little bit, and like, I've met him before, and he said, you know, we need a national level, not state by state on AI. Okay, fine. I said, name the AI regulation you support. Just give me one. Give me what you want. Don't tell me, like kids and pornography. Tell me a real AI regulation that you support. And there was no response. And I think that that is this accelerationist opinion by especially Republicans right now that AI is going to be not only this mass job creator because they do think it's going to create jobs. I'm not exactly sure how, but I'm not also not an expert, so I'm willing to open my ears and listen. But they also think it's going to fix the deficit problem, the budget problem, and make so much money that we'll be able to pay off our deficit and debt. That sounds like a wonderful idea. But every action has a consequence. So what's the consequence? I just want to hear it. I'm not going to close the door to something not saying I should just go away. I think it will do great things in certain respects. I just. For every chance that there's going to be. They're going to discover the cure for AIDS and cancer. Are they also going to be the Terminator? And I want to know what are the odds of either which happening and how do we safeguard one from the other?
- [33:58]
Lee Fang
You know, it sounds a lot like, you know, when I was a cub reporter in my early 20s, I was covering the Obama Clean Power plan back in 2010, 2011, and what this sounds a lot like to me are the earnest opinions that I heard from the various clean energy lobbyists who claimed that as we shifted away from coal, all these folks in West Virginia were going to learn to code. I mean, that's literally what they said, that they would go and they'd go to skill, go to special community colleges that the administration was going to set up and these vocational schools. And they just shift industries. And look what happened. You know, as we shifted away from coal without a true economic stimulus for Kentucky and West Virginia, thousands of people died. They got addicted to drugs and they died. And what AI will do is 100,000 times more powerful than the shift away from coal. This is a shift away from driving. We won't have truck drivers. This is a shift away from factories, we won't have factory workers. You know, this is a shift away from slaughterhouses. You know, the robots will be doing the slaughtering. And we don't really have an answer for that. And for national Republicans, I think folks like Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn really saved the party by pulling this kind of federalization of AI policy out of the one big beautiful bill. Because I think that would have been an albatross for Republicans moving into the, in the midterms. As you're, as you're mentioning, public opinion is really just soaring in terms of this backlash to AI. It's just right now there isn't a lobby group or an interest group that's harnessing this anger. A lot of the anger is kind of being directed towards data centers, which makes sense. They're the most tangible thing, but it is very volatile. I think you're on the money here talking about where this is Trans women in sports numbers.
- [35:48]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah. Ro Khanna, when he was on this podcast, said he wants this. What was FDR's thing? Not great Society, the New Deal. He wants an AI New Deal where basically money is redistributed to people from AI companies and they're making a lot of money. What I couldn't get him to comprehend, which was the roadblock, was, okay, if we're going to have to redistribute money because some people unemployed, why are we going to have to have high immigration at the same time? And he wouldn't go there. I hit the brick wall and there was no moving from progressive dogma. And I was like, let's have like an actual thoughtful conversation. But I think he's running for president, so I understand why he has to come out be in certain types of limitations. But I think that for if there was a Yui Long style politician rallying it's AI because look at all the unemployed young people. I know so many young people who cannot find a job. And it's not because they're lazy and it's not because they got degrees. Nothing.
- [36:47]
Lee Fang
Yeah, no, and I think you're right that this kind of solves, and it feels weird to use that terminology that the immigration issue. You know, we've had decades of this kind of gray market dynamic in the US where both Democrats and Republicans tacitly supported mass migration because they are the underclass in America that do all these kind of manual labor, low education jobs, you know, housekeeping, construction, agriculture, that sort of thing. And if we have robots, that essentially replaces all of this work. So the need for this gray market migration goes away and it completely changes the politics of immigration because you don't have this kind of chamber of commerce business lobby constantly demanding it. And I don't think this should be controversial for a progressive to say because at the end of the day, the other side of what Khan is saying is right. Like, okay, if we were going to have massive new wealth, concentrations of wealth, we should figure out how to build a society where everyone prospers under it. That shouldn't be complicated.
- [37:53]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah, I think that's how I think Roe, my own, as a political mind, as someone who works on campaigns goes. I think that issue is going to be the most salient for Democrats is to have a true socialist policy. I think it's going to be through the AI thing because it will disturb the market to such a degree, especially for young people. But not only for young people, it's for their Gen X parents. The Gen X parents who want their kid out of the house, who want their kid to have a job, who are the most supportive of Donald Trump are the ones who will be energized as if they're in some kind of change. People forget the student loan controversies or student loan debate rather is not so much a debate for young people. It is but it's their boomer parents who co sign their loans. Like that's what moves a lot of these needles is people have parents and their parents want their kids to, to succeed. And that's just a fundamental part of it. It's not all just blue haired, you know, they thems. It's a lot of it is families.
- [38:48]
Lee Fang
And parents and you know who's paving the road towards this. It's Donald Trump. You know, it was, it would be an anathema for any other president to demand a golden share or an equity stake in a major corporation. Trump has, has broken that precedent. Now that he's kind of created that norm where he's taking a golden share or an equity share and corporations left and right every other month where no Democrat could you imagine Biden or Obama doing this? No. But now that he's kind of created the norm, I think that's the only way for a Democrat in the future to take a share of this AI wealth is to just demand an equity stake, demand a golden share controlled by the government. And you could think of ways that are that this could be done in a non corrupt way. Look at the Alaska Permanent Fund that takes part of the oil royalties and redistributes it to Alaska residents. It's actually very successful, very popular.
- [39:44]
Ryan Graduski
Norway does it.
- [39:45]
Lee Fang
Norway does a great job. There are some countries that do a very bad job of this, by the way, socializing resources. So let's be clear, it's not always done well, but there are good examples out there.
- [39:57]
Ryan Graduski
Okay, so my last question to you because I did not know this until I scrolled through your Twitter account on the you said and I. And is there any evidence that social media companies who have warmed up to Trump now that he's president, who hated him four years ago, are kind of muting or socially or. Yeah, I guess muting is the right word. Muting. Anti ICE demonstrators comments or you said that they were basically shadow banning people that were sending like routes to ICE or where ICE agents were or trying to disrupt federal agents.
- [40:35]
Lee Fang
Yeah, yeah. I know several accounts, some of of whom have over a million followers who attempted this week to share memes and posters and online content around the proposed strike on January 30th in solidarity with Minnesota activists around ICE. They couldn't do it, or if they did do it, they had no views. Like these were people with over a million followers who at a minimum receive over a hundred thousand views on their content. They would get maybe a few dozen. Look, I covered the Twitter files, I covered WikiLeaks, I covered a lot of the social media suppression. I covered a lot of the stuff coming out of the Biden administration and how they were kind of reaching into Facebook and old Twitter, around Covid, around the 2020 election and suppressing content algorithmically. It's very clear something's happening here. We don't have all the facts. We don't know exactly what's coming out of the companies because it is kind of a black box. You need someone like Elon Musk to force things open or like a federal investigation. But it's obvious that someone's playing with the algorithm right now.
- [41:41]
Ryan Graduski
All right Lee, thank you for coming this podcast. I really appreciate it. Where can people go to read more about your stuff?
- [41:46]
Lee Fang
Watch your interviews just Lee Fong.com and LH Fang on Twitter.
- [41:51]
Ryan Graduski
All right, awesome. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.
- [41:53]
Lee Fang
Thanks Ryan.
- [41:56]
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Ryan Graduski
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Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me. Ryan numbers game podcast.com that's Ryan numbers game podcast.com I got. I have this one email that's been sitting in my inbox for like a week now from one of my listeners who asked one of the hardest questions and smartest questions for me to answer. So I put it on the back burner. I'm going to get to that on next week's episode because it's very intelligent but involves a ton of research. These involve less research. So if you haven't heard your answer being asked yet, answered yet, I I will get to it. Some of you guys ask really difficult ones that involve a lot of research from me and perspective. So if you haven't heard it, stay tuned. I will get to them, I promise. This one comes from Kevin. He says, ryan, I'm sure you will hate me for this, but why don't I fill out forms? Anything service polls. I never answer the question of my race, leaving it blank. Or if it's required, I write other Am I an outlier? Is a specifically significant number of people who do this Love the podcast. Kevin. Love you for loving the podcast. So you're not an outlier. I know other people who do. And I know people who lie on polls. If they're white, they'll say they're Black or whatever. Is it significant? I don't think so. I don't lie on that, on that information. I think that it's important that the data is correct when people are looking to create policies or look for answers or see the general feel of the populace. I don't hate you for it. It's just kind of. You write other. So at least it's not a complete lie. But I think that, I think that whatever. I think that it's. It's easier to get more accurate information if you tell the truth. It's not used against you if you're filling out the form anyway, which I love. When you answer polls, I think that you might as well just tell the accurate, accurate race. It's not like no one does it, but you're more of an outlier than you are of the regular person anyway. But your own opinion. I don't hate you for it. I, you know, it is what it is. Next question comes from Anthony. He says, hey, Ryan, love your podcast. I listen to every episode. Anthony, you are a star. Ignore, ignore the grammar. Pronunciation, please. We all have the things we say wrong. I am absolutely being tortured over this. I know. I, I pronounce a lot of things wrong. I'm sorry. I have a New York accent and what I have managed to do is I really avoided being so pronounced unless I'm very angry or I'm talking to a friend from, from the neighborhood. If I had a friend, like one of my close friends from my neighborhood on this podcast, you would need subtitles. Every one of you. It would just go, it would go south really fast. We would make Duck Dynasty look like the King's Speech. I mean, it's just, we are, we are. We get into it and it's, it's forever anyway, he says. Now my question. I regularly hear clips of Harry Ensign on CNN talking about how unpopular Democrats are and how they have a record low approval rating. Yet I hear from you and others how Democrats are likely to take the House in the polls. Can you explain how both can be true? Blessings, Anthony. Yes, Anthony, this is a great question. So we have a. We have two party system, right? If you don't like one, you vote for the other. That's a big part of it. Even if you dislike them, both parties are unpopular. Democrats are more so unpopular. Right? But there's a certain percentage of the population that are voting with the intention of showing the president they are dissatisfied with the performance because it is not. So if you're voting for the average Republican and a lot of times you're voting for or against Donald Trump, you are not necessarily voting for or against your congressman, for or against your senator. Which is why the days of, you know, Ronald Reagan or George H.W. bush or Bill Clinton, having members of his party, having members of the opposite party in seats that he won, have kind of gone away. You're voting for or against the president, you're not really voting for the individual person. That's why Susan Collins is such an outlier, because they're still vote for Susan Collins in Maine. They don't vote necessarily for or against Trump, but those are unique, unique, unique cases. And that's really why. It's why Democrats are likely to win the House over who knows what. The Senate, Senate looks more favorable for Republicans, but, you know, who knows? The difference though is when it comes to president, when it comes to president, and there's a nationally identified person, then support for or against a party matters a lot less. I would go back to the last time that it would really matter was probably Obama was probably. Sorry, George W. Bush in 2008, where the Republican Party was in such bad shape. You know, 2008, I think they were, they were looking at the low 20s or maybe even teens. As far as support, it was basically regional. There was a cut Time magazine cover about cold extinct species and it was a picture of the GOP elephant saying it was a regional party in the South. That is, that's really why it's really because you're voting for or against Donald Trump. And the Mike Lawler is the Brian Fitzpatrick, the Don Bacons, the Susan Collins, those Republicans in blue Seeds, they're few and far between and there they have to work harder and campaign harder. But that's why almost every seat that Kamala won is represented by a Democrat. Almost every Trump one is represented by a Republican. And I think maybe there's 10 that kind of broke that. Three Republicans, I think seven Democrats or maybe even a. There's 13. There's 10 Democrats. What year is it? It's 2026. There are 12 Democrats. Three. I remember because it was double 12 Democrats, three Republicans, 15 in total, one Senator Susan Collins. That's. That's for the election this year. That is, that's why it's just people fall into tribal nature for and against the president. But Democrat party is super unpopular and they will be even more unpopular unless they sit there and they learn from anything the last five years. Who knows if they will? We'll see. Guys, thank you for this podcast. Thank you for listening. I will be back on Monday. We are having an episode on Monday about the craziest Republican primary in the country. It's in the House race in Florida. You guys probably haven't heard of it. I'm gonna just leap into it, into the insanity that's going on in Florida right now. Florida is being Florida. Like they have it in quite some time. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe. Subscribe on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, Please subscribe on YouTube if you like to get your podcast there. And I will talk to you guys on Monday.
- [51:02]
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