Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the utter depravity in conservative media as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder publicly feud as a negotiation tactic, bolstered by Donald Trump's psychotic eulogy of fallen conservative media star Diamond of the Diamond & Silk show. They then discuss the viability of Senator Joe Menachin as a presidential candidate before discussing the future of AI and where it will lead our society.
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Before we get to the show, and it is a jam-packed show, I just want to remind everybody that my book, The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, came out this last week.
Everybody has been really, really kind and supportive.
I'm absolutely enjoying how everybody is experiencing the book and the feedback and, you know, all of the nice compliments.
So thank you for that.
If you haven't already, pick up a copy of The Midnight Kingdom, A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.
It is the story of how the modern world was created using white supremacist lies, conspiracy theories, and how we're being plunged into an authoritarian future.
But more especially, how we can fight back.
You know, again, go out, find it at your local independent bookstore, order it from wherever it is you get your books.
Midnight Kingdom.
Thanks everybody.
Now to the show.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrigg Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
Here's Nick Halsman.
How you doing, buddy?
I'm doing well.
You know, things are moving along, and I feel like maybe at least we're getting entertained.
Is that the thing we could say?
Well, I'll say this.
There's a lot in the water right now.
A lot of things are moving and shaking.
First things first, just an update on a story that I don't want to talk about.
They found more Biden documents.
Of course they did.
They're going to find more documents.
I'm done covering this until there's something else to cover.
Do you agree?
I agree and just know that this is going to be the reason why Merrick Garland won't prosecute anybody, you know, because both of them, he'll make it the same and whatever.
But yes, it's silly.
But again, I full-throatedly support any and all investigations into this.
I agree.
Moving along.
I don't want to talk about it.
If we never talk about this again, I will be totally happy.
Also, it is just breaking in the last couple of hours that the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI's New York field office is under arrest because he's been linked to a Russian oligarch.
We'll have more on this story when we have more details.
But great.
This is great.
We all love it, don't we, Nick?
Oh yes, the old New York FBI office, the bastion of liberty that we know of, so not surprising.
And again, yeah, more information needs to be said, but yes, worthy of at least looking into a little bit.
There's lots of stuff going on that we could talk about that would fill up a few podcasts.
Well, as the show goes on, we've got to talk about humble West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin going to Davos and getting the bug in his ear that maybe he should run for President of the United States.
The robots are coming!
And our host Nick Halseman welcomes our new robotic overlords.
But before we get to all of that, Nick, we gotta take a look, as always, at the right wing.
We gotta talk about the psychology of what's happening there.
We have to talk about grifting.
We have to talk about cannibalization.
We have to talk about the showdown between Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, which is one of the weirdest, wildest crackups on the right that we've seen in a while.
Nick, it seems like everybody within the Republican Party, everybody within the right wing, it is demolition derby time.
They are stabbing each other in the back.
It is madness.
It is.
And are we ready for a clip to listen to it?
Because people might not be aware of who, like, Steven Crowder is and probably need to be, you know, inundated a little bit before we make a decision.
Well, let me tell, unfortunately, so we're all political sickos here.
You know, Steven Crowder is like one of these people, unfortunately, that we've had to pay attention to.
This is, by the way, for people who don't keep track, an absolutely failed right-wing comedian.
I mean, bad.
And I appreciate anybody who will go out there and stand on a stage and say some things and risk, you know, tomatoes and lettuce being thrown at them.
This is a really, really bad, failed stand-up person who has, he's the guy who went out and put up a table at your local university and said, debate me.
He's a misogynist.
He's racist.
He is unfunny.
He is uninteresting.
But he has become one of these right-wing grifters.
To give people, if they haven't followed this, an idea of what's been going on.
The Daily Wire, of course, where Ben Shapiro and like so many of these people are, they offered Steven Crowder, and I'm getting ready to tell you this figure, I want you to prepare yourselves, hold on to your pants, they offered him $50 million to join with The Daily Wire.
Crowder has turned down that offer, and not just turned down that offer, but is now basically declaring war on The Daily Wire and bringing a lot of things to the forefront.
Let's go ahead and hear Crowder himself, and we'll talk about this.
I offered a guide on how to do it.
It is incumbent, this is what this is about, it is incumbent upon conservatives, if we believe what we say, to uncouple, to divest, if you want to use that term, from big tech.
For the business models of the movement, as we move forward, to not rely on playing ball with Facebook And with YouTube.
That is something that we have to move toward.
You know that we've been trying to do that here for years.
That's why every single show we say, hey, if you can watch on Rumble, please do so.
We're not looking to be banned on YouTube.
But we certainly won't compromise the truth in order to be advertiser friendly.
So Nick, as we are starting to navigate this entire thing, again, we're doing this because it's instructive.
I want to point out a couple things.
First of all, this clip is on YouTube.
Right?
It's got millions on YouTube.
Also, because this is an audio medium, he is doing this with, like, a gun in front of him, because that's what you do on the right wing.
Just a reminder, all these people are absolute hypocrites.
You know, he is framing this from the idea that he calls it Big Con vs. Big Tech.
And it's the idea that all these other conservatives are in the pocket of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all these things, and that he has turned down the $50 million because he thinks that the future of conservatism has to be away from those platforms.
Meanwhile, he's on YouTube, he's on Twitter, he's on all of these different places making money from all of them.
Would it shock you if I told you that that is not exactly what happened in this entire situation?
It would not shock me because nobody wants to tell the truth in this whole setting.
And again, if it's a negotiation, they might end up making and figuring out this.
Of course, they're going to tell another version of the story.
Yeah, and so, to give people an idea, this entire episode, he's recorded calls with The Daily Wire, he's been playing those, he's been going after Shapiro, these other people who are involved in this whole thing.
As he's been doing that, by the way, he's been raising funds.
He's been building email lists.
He's been using all of it as sort of a thing that says, look at how, and by the way, he keeps using the term wage slave, which is incredible when it comes to $50 million.
But meanwhile, Ben Shapiro and the people at the Daily Wire, they have already said they find this whole thing Awful.
They're not going to deal with him slandering them, saying that they're tied to big tech.
They've now said that Crowder actually tried to hold them up for $30 million a year.
Nick, I don't know about you, but that's a lot of money.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, it is staggering.
If you look at a guy like, so Crowder's YouTube channel, and this is sort of my expertise, if you will, he's got close to six million subscribers.
And, you know, this video we just had a little sample from has 1.6 million views in three days.
So if you have to understand, like, that makes tens of thousands of dollars for somebody each episode.
So you can imagine if you can leverage that and it makes sense that someone like Shapiro would want to bring in somebody else who can also, you know, you can increase your market share.
They could cover that, I guess.
Like that's not something that they're not going to lose money on that kind of a deal.
That is how staggering it is when you leverage YouTube.
And that's independent by the way of even like leveraging this right wing donation scheme that like Trump likes to do.
Right?
He makes a shitload ton of money here.
They're doing this in some version of a legitimate way on YouTube.
And that's how staggering it is.
And I think, I guess it is rooted in the fact that the right wing masses do like to flock to these things and let it wash over them as much as they possibly can. - Well, and what Crowder is doing, and you're absolutely right.
Like YouTube is a central component of this entire fight.
You'll notice, by the way, in that video about how he doesn't want to be censored by big tech, he also goes out of his way to say, we don't want to be thrown off YouTube.
We just want to decouple ourselves from this entire system.
Meanwhile, what is he doing constantly?
We talk all the time, Nick.
And remember, we had that conversation about Nick Fuentes, right?
Which, that little moment there with him and Kanye.
We said, how did Nick Fuentes build his platform?
How did he build his brand?
He was the guy who would go out and talk about neo-Nazi shit.
He was the guy that would go out and say anti-Semitic things.
He was the one within the right-wing ecosystem that was still sort of quote-unquote mainstream, but he would still talk about those.
Steven Crowder is the guy who will go out and he'll say misogynistic, racist things.
I mean, my god, he talks constantly about, like, racial stereotypes.
He'll constantly peddle these misogynistic ideas.
He is always on the razor's edge of being thrown off these platforms.
Constantly.
And as that happens, the Daily Wire, who were going to give him, I want to remind everybody, $50 million.
The Daily Wire, within their contract to him, said, if you get thrown off YouTube, it affects the money that Nick was just talking about, right?
How could it not?
If you're pulling in tens of thousands of dollars on every episode, if not more, that is going to hurt the bottom line.
He started to push back on that, but what happened?
Like it happens with all this stuff, Nick.
He saw an opportunity to capitalize off of it.
The millions that have viewed that clip, it's professional wrestling!
There's a feud and big conservative.
It's going to drive up the numbers.
They're stomping their feet while they're pretending to fight one another.
But, I gotta tell you, the people at the Daily Wire did not care for this latest stunt in which Crowder started playing the phone calls.
And I wanna hear, let's hear what they fired back with.
Steven, the whole time I've known him, has worked for someone else.
He was paid by PJTV when I met him, which was owned by a billionaire at the time.
Then he was paid by CRTV for a number of years, which was owned by a billionaire at the time.
Then he was paid by The Blaze, which was subsidized by a billionaire.
And he didn't necessarily have to be profitable.
And he doesn't know for a fact that he was profitable.
Because, as he has said, very publicly, All those companies, none of them really shared all the information about what was happening with them.
So Steven feels very certain that his show was always profitable.
But he doesn't know that his show was profitable.
How's that feel to you, Nick?
Well, by the way, it kind of reminds me of what's happening right now with Frank, this company helping students get loans because this lady who started this company faked the entire email list that she had of customers and all in the servicing of getting this big deal, getting bought out or getting brought in by somebody else.
And I almost feel like, you know, and I think she went to Harvard Business School or Wharton or one of the big Ivy League business schools.
And part of me feels like that's what they've learned.
Just fake it till you make it, and that's somehow legal to them when it's not.
Now, it's possible that he was being paid by those people and doesn't necessarily know, like, what his numbers are.
That's a little bit strange.
Like, you generally would still know, like, how you're doing even though they're paying you, like, a flat fee for each episode.
Um, but there's no question that now that he's on, he's on YouTube on his own channel, he would absolutely know those numbers and Daily Wire would never ever offer that much money to anybody without knowing something.
But then again, it just happened with this thing, uh, with Frank, this other company, they didn't know the numbers really.
And they bought it anyway.
So it, it, it, without due diligence, who knows, maybe fucking Ben Shapiro did do this with like stupidly and now is, uh, is so embarrassed.
He's going to try and make it a public thing.
They are torpedoing him with extreme prejudice.
And by the way, one of the most fascinating things about all of this, and this is one of the reasons we have to talk about it, they are pulling the curtain back.
This entire system, nobody has any idea what's going on.
Nobody has any idea what numbers mean anymore.
You know, over on Twitter where, of course, Musk just pressed a button and suddenly it showed the, well, I'm getting ready to put quotes around, the views of every tweet.
Like, they don't mean anything!
You could put 50 gazillion billion next to it and it wouldn't mean anything.
No one has any idea what's going on.
This entire system is completely rigged in weird, bizarre ways, which, it just gets worse every single day.
Now they have gone after each other, and I'll tell you something.
When all of a sudden you get in one of these fights, you start revealing things about yourself.
You start revealing things about how this entire industry actually works.
And by the way, let's go see Little Man Ben Shapiro, and let's see what he has to say about it.
Just so you know, I vehemently argued that we should never have this man's voice on our podcast, but you, Jared, you won.
It's my fault.
I take responsibility.
But I don't, I mean, to have him anywhere near my ears, I'm upset, but here it comes.
Here we go.
I was willing to stay silent on all of this, generally speaking, and not get into the weeds and not get into Steven's personal conduct, until the point when he personally recorded a phone call with my best friend, Jeremy Boring, and then proceeded to release that publicly.
That is disgusting.
It is disgusting and it is vile on a pure human level.
Jeremy, again, has gone out of his way for Stephen more times than I can count.
He has counseled Stephen personally.
And Stephen decided in premeditated fashion that he was going to tape his friend and then release it to grow his email list.
It is that simple.
Maybe let him fight, because that is exactly what Steven Crowder has done.
For anybody who is interested, this whole, like, big con and big tacker in the same pocket, he immediately went out.
And as he's, like, fighting the good fight, because Crowder is claiming this is part of the right-wing movement, right?
This is big conservatism.
It's going to change the world.
Join behind me and take off.
Which, by the way, Nick, if people want to have an idea how this translates into the real world, where, well, and by the way, Ben Shapiro is like a failed screenwriter, a failed Hollywood guy, right?
They're all failed big culture guys.
It's almost like what happened to Conan O'Brien.
If you remember that, when he got screwed out of The Tonight Show, and everybody got behind Conan O'Brien, it was like, no, we're Team Coco, we're going with him.
This is the right-wing version of this.
Steven Crowder has already raised God knows how much money off of basically trying to get more money, holding up the Daily Wire, and then when the Daily Wire didn't go along with what he had to say, he is now going ahead and fundraising off of that.
It is the right-wing playbook to a tee.
Yeah, it's, you know what, I gotta give them a little credit, right?
They've mastered this, they've understood it, and they know how to just, like, what's the phrase you like when you just, you milk it till it's dead?
I don't know whatever they're doing.
You're killing the golden goose.
Yeah, they really know how to do it, and it's relentless, right?
And it's all at the expense of, guess what, the country, basically, right?
This is at the expense of ever having another reasonable conversation with somebody on the other side ever again.
And by the way, that is the whole thing in a nutshell.
When all of these people are within this ecosystem, they are constantly sizing each other up, trying to determine who can help me, who can get my brand to be larger, you know, who can make my platform larger.
And as that's happening, they're just waiting with their sharpened knives.
I mean, like, for those who don't know this about Shapiro, Shapiro was Steven Crowder's personal lawyer for a while.
I mean, these guys go back for years, and they are part of the same ecosystem, and all they're doing at any given moment is waiting on the perfect moment to slit each other's throats.
And we've seen that over and over again.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, by the way, has shown herself to be a hellacious knife woman, you know?
Like, she's just like, yeah, absolutely.
I'm mainstream now.
Let's go.
This whole thing is part of a larger problem in the United States of America.
It is, going back to the conversation I had with Sandra Bloom last week, it is psychopathic behavior.
The right wing, the Republican Party in this country, the conservative movement, is the purest, most focused type of psychopathic behavior that you could ever find.
So here's an interesting question though, because it does feel like legit, like this could be a legit beef, right?
They actually are upset at each other while they're having been friends, right?
Like, you don't feel like this is completely, what's the wrestling term we see?
Wrestling here, right?
It's their work.
Well, so here's what's happening though.
It is both a work and a shoot, going back into the professional wrestling term.
Because here's the thing, Nick.
Crowder's messing with their bottom line!
It isn't just enough for him to go out and say, you didn't offer me enough money.
That would be bad enough.
He is going ahead and using the white hot eye of Soron of conservative politics and saying, you're in bed with big tech, you're in bed with the people who are censoring people and going after people.
Like, he went ahead and like, he escalated this thing in a way that is now messing with their money.
And you can't mess with people's money and get away with it.
That's like the one cardinal sin in this country.
Yeah, and that's exactly what it sounds like for sure.
I mean, this really just sounds like a negotiation to me, honestly.
He wants $50, they want to pay him $30, so they'll probably agree on $40, right?
Or whatever that is.
That's what's going to happen.
And again, it is staggering how much money that is.
But you have to remember, if they're willing to give him $40, they're going to be making more than that on his content in a year.
That is, I want you to understand where some of these channels are.
And there are a lot of channels now on YouTube that can do that in every different version or every different category, right?
Gaming and whatever.
Some of these people, there's generational wealth coming out of YouTube now.
For people who are 22, 23 years old or younger, it really is staggering.
And it's interesting to see how that's going to play out over decades now and what that means to, you know, people who never would have been able to have that kind of money and power in the past.
Well, and they are just absolutely swimming in billionaire donations.
I mean, the amount of money that the concentrated wealth class is just divvying up.
I mean, I don't know if you remember this, Nick, but whenever the whole Groomer Disney issue was going on, Ben Shapiro, who is better than almost anybody at sniffing out these opportunities, was like, the Daily Wire is going to create conservative children's content.
And they just gave them millions.
They just gave them millions of dollars.
Yeah, go out and do that.
There's no proven record that you can do that.
You have no experience of it.
But the concentrated wealth class has so much concentrated capital that it doesn't matter.
And by the way, speaking of, I want to go ahead and shift this over to the best example of who these people actually are.
I want to cue up these clips real fast, and I want to give people a little bit of a quick insight on this.
Again, political sickos out there have been aware of a comedy duo, a Trump comedy duo, called Diamond and Silk.
And Diamond and Silk, I have to tell you, in my times at the Trump rallies, I saw Diamond and Silk perform Nick, I don't know, man.
Two dozen times?
Something like that?
Because this is an African-American comedy duo that, by the way, made people feel like they weren't being racist at a Trump rally.
They were given a lot of time and a lot of spotlight and, you know, they got a lot of time on Fox News as well.
Well, Diamond died.
No one's really for sure what happened.
It's weird.
Silk at her memorial claimed that she was poisoned.
It was an absolutely weird affair, but even weirder because Donald Trump showed up.
And Donald Trump, by the way, you want to know what is at the heart of conservative America?
It is Donald Trump, a psychopathic vision of the world in which he meets people, he uses them, and he throws them out like so much used up tissue.
Let's listen to this.
And, you know, the world has lost one of its brightest stars.
Real star, but I see that we have another star who is equal too, but she stepped up and she is different.
I'm serious.
I thought I knew them both.
I didn't.
I knew Diamond, but I didn't know Silk at all.
I just learned about Silk.
You're fantastic.
You're going to carry on beyond anybody's wildest imagination.
What's going on here?
What is that?
Like, you don't know Diamond.
You have to know both of them, right?
If you know one, you know both.
There's no way you don't know either of them.
He criss-crossed the country with them.
They were sisters.
They never left each other's side.
He knows this person.
He gets up at a memorial and he can't even conjure up in his head that he knows this person.
Undoubtedly, when he saw Silk before this memorial, Silk's like, it's so good to see you again, Mr. President.
These are people who have built their entire lives on him.
But here's the thing, Nick, and this is important.
You want to talk about multi-level scams?
They're downstream from him.
That's the whole point!
They are feeder fish who are following in his wake.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't care if they're alive or dead, which is why he would go to rallies and basically let people die of COVID who were in the crowds.
And if you want to see just how psychopathic this guy is, this clip's incredible.
I don't believe, you know, they told me, they said, give me a little time because I have a lot of people waiting for me back in a place called Palm Beach, Florida.
I said, give me a little time.
What do you think it'll take?
Oh, about 15-20 minutes, in and out.
I said, well, it could take longer.
This is a little longer than 15 minutes, right?
Dude, that's him making fun or complaining about how long he has to be at this memorial.
Can you imagine anything more cruel and awful?
Really?
There's a term for that, right?
When you don't have a filter, right?
He's saying what he thinks.
I'm sure other people might be there, too, going, man, this is three hours.
I want to get out of here.
But you're not supposed to say it, especially not supposed to say it when you are on stage with a microphone in front of you honoring somebody who just passed away.
I mean, we didn't even kind of get into the whole, you know, riff he went on, on the politics side.
He's not talking anymore about Diamond and what she meant, or even in the community.
He just starts ranting and raving about everything else that he's always ranting and raving about.
There's something that he lacks.
He lacks any kind of empathy, which gets him onto the spectrum of psychopaths, right?
Next to serial killers.
It's a psychopathic party.
It is a psychopathic movement.
I mean, it really truly is, and it feels awful to say that, but it is a group of people that have moved beyond any ability to care about other people.
And we've seen it!
I hate to make it so simple, Nick, but there's a reason why these people couldn't wear masks.
There's a reason why these people had to pretend like there wasn't actually a pandemic going on, you know, while a million people died, and God knows how many others died.
Like, it literally was, I don't want to be inconvenienced, I don't want to be kept from going to places I want to go and doing the things that I want to do.
It has become a rallying point for people who cannot even summon Basic human decency and empathy.
It's really almost too horrible to look at sometimes.
And yet, you could tell people that who support him, and it doesn't really matter to them either.
There is a certain personality trait that we sort of discuss all the time about the fervent Trump supporters that lack that, right?
They don't seem to have empathy, and they'll be faced with all sorts of incredibly heart-wrenching stories about people who are Victims of, you know, even the abortion issue.
You continually hear women who are now being forced to be on death's door before they can have this procedure performed on them and risking the chance that they die as well.
And there isn't any sympathy for that at all.
There isn't any recognition that that could be something we should probably change or fix or try.
It simply doesn't matter to them.
It really is an interesting mix because You know, you wouldn't have thought there would be tens of millions of people in this country that could coalesce around this.
And that's the real scary thing.
Yeah.
You know, there was this other story that, you know, just leaked the other day.
It was like, I want to say it was in Louisville.
It was there was like this Republican fundraising dinner and they played like an entire video of someone being killed in the police raid.
And like, people just sat there eating, Nick.
They just sat there eating.
And, like, how do you do that?
You know what I mean?
Like, literally, how can you even exist in that world?
It's so awful.
Well, by the way, we're going to talk about this, but, you know, down the road from me there was a mass shooting that happened yesterday.
Uh, in Monterey Park and again and I had called this I said the way these are going to be broken up now is that some some hero in the crowd is simply going to have to run at the shooter and disarm them because in the time it takes for the cops to come even if it's a minute that's it's you know too late.
Uh, and that's what exactly we have here, where we are now becoming immune to that, like that's nothing, uh, not even a big deal anymore.
And when you hear people on CNN, like, or MSNBC, like marvel at the heroic nature of it, um, you know, as if they were, you know, you hear military people are trained for these things and civilians are not.
Well, guess what?
We're going to see that.
You're going to see classes on how to disarm a mass shooter, and there are going to be a lot of people going to them, and you're going to see a lot more people actually being those heroes because of that.
That is where we're at.
That is where we're moving towards.
That's where we're at now.
And there's no reason to believe that we will not continue to have these two divergent paths.
We're desensitized to all the mass shootings, and these people are desensitized to the empathy that you need for just everyday people.
You know, get me off the ledge, Jared, because I'm heading there right now.
I think we're going to have something that's going to fix this whole thing, but it's going to take a minute.
And by the way, speaking of lack of empathy, we're going to talk about Davos here in a second and West Virginia's favorite son, Joe Manchin.
I just want to share with everybody, well, by the way, all of the tech workers who are listening to this who have been laid off in the past week, solidarity, best of luck to all of you.
I hope it all works out.
But here's a, I just want to share this with you, Nick.
I just found this before I started recording.
This is wonderful.
This is from Inc, which is like one of those like, you know, bootlicking sort of publications for like big tech and firms.
This is an article written called, with three words, Microsoft CEO showed that you can lay off 10,000 people with empathy, which I'm going to read a quick quote from it.
How you feel about that?
How's that sit in your hat?
Let's hear the quote.
Well, here is the passage that this quoted.
We know this is a challenging time for each person impacted.
The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.
Nick, what I love about this is that this came out, and then it turns out of the World Economic Forum's Davos Summit, the Microsoft CEOs, they were partying as they're getting ready to lay people off.
They were listening to the soothing sounds of the world famous recording artist Sting.
Okay.
I love it.
It's as transparent and empathetic as possible.
Yes.
Well, by the way, you know, this whole tech firing thing and all the big companies are laying people off.
I think it's almost like a contagion because the bottom line for these companies isn't bad as far as money goes, like their earnings.
I think that sometimes they feel like, well, you know, Google is laying people off and that, well, we better do something at Facebook.
You know, the boardrooms are getting antsy.
Why aren't you laying people off?
And meanwhile, they kind of might even think That doing that somehow motivates the people that are still there.
As if some sort of notion of being afraid for your job is going to make you work that much harder at that job.
And we've seen time and again how that's just an absolute catastrophe and the worst idea of all time.
And again, there's nothing in the fundamentals of their business model right now in the revenues that would indicate they would need to cut 7% of their workforce across the board like they're doing right now.
Well, big tech sucks.
I'll just go ahead and say that.
On top of that, when one company lays some off, it gives people cover to lay off themselves.
You know, it's just like, well, they're doing it.
We'll do it.
And then we're not going to take a PR hit.
By the way, Nick, before we get to the story, how much do you think it costs to get a private performance from Sting?
Oh, you know, I don't think I even got that.
I didn't think, I thought they were listening to Sting like on the speakers.
No!
Sting came out there.
Maybe, maybe he led some tantric yoga classes.
I don't know.
How much do you think it costs for Microsoft to get Sting to come to Davos?
I'm going to say it costs, I'm going to go a little bit lower than maybe, I'm going to say 10 million.
10 million?
Is that way too low?
I don't know.
The research I did found you can get him for a cool $500,000.
$10,000,000 is incredible.
What?
Really?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay, he had me going there.
I thought, you know, listen, what is money?
What are millions these days?
You could get Beyonce cloned and get her to come out and perform with like an entire Destiny's Child's worth of clones for $10,000,000, I think.
Wow.
For the price of my house, I could get Sting to come out and play for me?
That's amazing.
I thought for sure that would be This has been California Corner with Nick Halseman and Jerry James Sexton, everybody.
All right, so at Davos, which for those who don't know, Davos is the World Economic Forum Summit.
It's where the wealthiest and the most powerful people in the world, they get together, they put on robes.
Wait, I'm sorry, that's not right.
Okay, sorry, I missed that.
They go and they basically have these conversations about what they're going to do, what the trends are in the world.
The major conversations out of Davos were that people are a little bit worried about what's going on in America, as they should be, particularly with the debt ceiling problem, which we talked about on the Weekender edition.
But Joe Manchin, Joe Manchin made an appearance, Nick, and it turns out he wasn't the most popular bell of the ball.
Well, that is not surprisingly.
I mean, he was busy high-fiving cinema about, you know, the filibuster and keeping that going and not being part of the Democratic Party, I believe is what they're called these days.
So yeah, I can imagine that it went downhill from there.
Yeah, so Joe Manchin was actually accosted by several foreign dignitaries and leaders.
Apparently, Emmanuel Macron took him to task.
The entire reason, by the way, is because of something that we've talked about on this podcast, which, for whatever reason, people don't really want to have a discussion about.
They don't really want to talk about the elephant in the room, which is that globalism is rolling back.
And the Inflation Reduction Act, which of course was Manchin's baby, it's his claim to fame, was a super healthy large dose of American protectionism, which starts to roll back.
And by the way, global capitalism is a result of American hegemony.
It's the system that America sits at the top of and sort of runs and filters through the rest of the world.
Now America is suddenly investing in its own self.
It's pulling out from other countries, industrialization in other countries, it's re-industrializing, and they were not very happy with Senator Joe Manchin.
Not a shocker.
Not a shocker.
So he goes, he does this, he gets accosted, Nick.
He comes back to America and he's not so jet-lagged that he can't make a quick media appearance because that man loves him with a camera.
He goes on with a friend of the pod.
Do you want to give this a little run?
And it should be noted that, you know, in the terms of the hierarchy of ratings on the Apple podcast app, the muckrake is above Meet the Press in the rankings, by the way.
By the way, when you told me that, I was like, first of all, surprising.
Second of all, not that surprising.
We give the people a better show than Meet the Press.
But here's a friend of the pod, Chuck Todd, talking with Joe Manchin.
Office in 2024.
You going to run as a Democrat?
Chuck, I haven't made a decision what I'm going to do in 2024.
I've got two years ahead of me now to do the best I can for the state and for my country.
What's on the table?
Is re-election on the table?
Everything's on the table.
Is running for governor on the table or no?
No, I've done that.
That you've ruled out?
I've done that.
So everything on the table, there's basically only one other thing.
The presidency.
Is that something you would do outside the Democratic Party?
The only thing I can tell you is what I will do is whatever I can when I make my decision, what I think is the best that I can support and represent the people of West Virginia, but also be true to this country and the Constitution of this country.
That sounds like somebody that's looking for a way into national politics.
Well, you know, every senator's on a national... I understand that, but you know where I'm going here.
I know where you're going, and the bottom line is... You're not telling me no.
I'm telling you that I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that when I make my decision, I make it based on what's best, what I think I can do to support and best for my country and my state.
Do you want President Biden or Secretary election?
He'll have to make that decision.
I think that's a personal decision.
And you haven't decided?
If he does, you're not ready to support him?
I haven't decided on anything I'm going to do until I see what the lay of the land is going to be at that time.
Because this country needs to unite.
We need to come back together.
We're not coming together.
And it needs to bring somebody that can bring this country together.
I think he's done a good job in so many factions, in so many areas.
I think there's a lot more to be done.
I think he's been pulled to the left too far, and I think I've told him that.
I've been up front with that.
That center is what the country wants.
That's what the people want in America.
They want us to work out of this center that, hey, just because you're on one side or the other, Republican ideas aren't always bad, and a Democrat don't have all the answers, and vice versa.
Work in that.
But don't be pure to where, oh, I'm sorry, that's a Democrat idea and I'm a Republican.
I can't, no way I can agree with that.
That's a lot of words.
Right?
It's a lot of words.
How transparent is this bullshit?
Oh, he's running.
Is that what you're asking?
He's running.
Well, at least somebody, some consultant somewhere, has gotten in his ear, probably as he's flying on a jet back from Davos, that he's the right guy to reunite the country.
By the way, what a schmoozy bullshit interview with Chuck Todd.
He's just like, oh, Senator, I don't know about all that.
What would Joe Manchin get in terms of like a national popular vote if he ran for independent?
Oh, I was going to say, if he ran in the Democratic Party, he wouldn't get the nomination.
He's not funny.
Everybody dislikes him for that reason.
And as an independent, it would be worse.
So yeah, I don't think he's anywhere near... Whoever is saying, oh, you have a legitimate shot, I think should probably Uh, he should not hang around that person anymore.
Well, I gotta tell you, whoever he's talking to, they're already getting checks.
You know what I mean?
Like, they are getting paid to give their opinion and their opinion is dependent on getting paid.
Nobody likes Joe Manchin.
Nobody will be Jewish.
But it kind of makes sense, though.
The position that he feels that he owns right now because of such a razor-sharp margin in the Senate, it makes him feel like he's a lot bigger than he is and a lot more powerful than he is and a lot more maybe even likable than he is.
And that's a real problem because I feel like they've bent over backwards for him so much to get some of these deals through that, yeah, he must think that he runs the party, literally, is probably what he thinks.
There was a strategist that I talked to back in the day, and he used to talk about what he called win-brain.
And windbrain in politics is when you win a couple of elections or when you win a couple of like big national fights and it starts going to your head, right?
It's like an unearned confidence.
It's almost a narcissism.
Joe Manchin went to Davos basically strutting around like he was a sort of a president.
Really, is what he did.
After everything that he did, and we talked about it, it's like he was treated like the de facto president beyond Joe Biden, who wasn't really involved in any of this stuff.
He asserted his authority, of course, with the 50-50 tie in the Senate.
He basically shaped every piece of legislation that came out.
Kirsten Sinema had her fun time when, you know, she wasn't out, you know, whining and dining corporate donors.
But he basically had that position.
He came to believe his own hype.
He came to believe his own press.
He went to Davos, and he's having conversations with Emmanuel Macron, who by the way is also a piece of shit, and he's having a conversation.
He's like, yeah, I think I could get used to this.
I think it'd feel great.
I'm sorry you don't go on Meet the Press and basically wink and nudge and elbow Chuck Todd, I'm going to run for president.
You don't do that when you're Joe Manchin.
This is absurd.
He's not going to be the next president of the United States of America.
He doesn't have the juice.
Nobody likes him.
This is stupid.
This is windbrain.
It's also a bit weird in the sense that, like, okay, going to Davos as a senator isn't necessarily the thing that's going to drop the gauntlet on your presidential run, right?
So why is Chuck Todd even asking him point-blank like that?
That would not be what would spurn my mind if I'm looking at questions.
So the question then is, did Manchin make him ask him the question?
Well, first of all, I call it Davos.
What'd you call it?
I want you to drop it in there and ask them because that's what they do.
Davos.
You know, you want access.
You want to come on the show.
Sometimes they have to agree to certain things.
I don't know.
That's almost what it feels like to me, too.
Like Chuck is in on this whole thing as well.
Well, first of all, I call it Davos.
What'd you call it?
Davos.
Is it Davos?
You know what?
Well, now we'll have something to talk about in the Patreon, what's it called?
The Discord and the post.
Yeah, everybody.
Tell us what you think.
It's Davos or Davos.
Listen, I'm a poor hick from Greene County, Indiana.
I don't know what to tell you.
Lucky I can tie my shoes.
No, it's... and by the way, it's also... this is why Chuck Todd is such an awful, awful host of Meet the Press.
He is the type of guy who, like, follows what happens at, like, a Davos, right?
And he follows it because he's one of the elite.
He's one of the tastemakers.
He has no interest in the journalistic practice that has been charged to him, right?
He has no interest in actually getting into this.
It's the movers, it's the shakers, it's the elites.
What do they like?
What are they doing?
He took this trip to Switzerland.
Chuck Todd did.
He took it at Joe Manchin as basically a coming out party because you have to appeal to those people, not the American people.
They're a bunch of schmucks.
They're a bunch of idiots who cares what they have to say about it.
And you're exactly right.
There was probably some poor staffer who talked to a staffer of Chuck Todd's and was like, hey, maybe you should ask Joe what his plans are 2024.
Oh, it'll end up viral and whatever.
It'll end up in the on the podcast that is ahead of Meet the Prince.
You know, listen, do we have to get we should get kudos to Chuck a little bit.
You know, I'm now I'm blanking.
Maybe you can remind me.
He went in on somebody last week.
Did he?
Oh my god, I'm looking for it right now, I can't remember.
But anyway, he was really tough for a minute there and we're like, Chuck, look at you!
But again, to me it almost sounded like he was, they're not gonna renew his contract.
And at that point, so he's like, fuck it, I'm just gonna go, you know, and he said something, you know, someone's gonna be yelling at me right now because I remember, this is COVID brain, but he, I want to give a little credit, he did have a little backbone and a big pushback for the first time in the entire time he's ever been on that show.
And honestly, don't be surprised if they switch hosts of Meet the Press in like three or four months.
I wouldn't be shocked.
By the way, I was flipping through the channels on Sunday and I saw Meet the Press was on and I just skipped right over and watched like a rerun of an old dog show.
It is worthless.
But speaking of streaming content, Nick, How'd you like that?
How'd you like that transition?
Always the best.
Always the best.
We got to talk about your loved, loved robots.
They're coming.
They're not just coming to take over everything, including streaming content.
By the way, these wild articles now that are saying that 90% of all internet content will be created by robots over the next two years.
We love it, folks.
We love it.
We can't wait until every movie, every television show has been streamed through AI for your Pleasure, my pleasure.
But we have an actual big topic here.
This program called ChatGPT, which I haven't used.
Have you used this?
I have not.
I've seen like the screenshots and whatnot of it, but I haven't used it.
Okay, so ChatGPT is causing a huge storm, and right now it has become such an outrageous success.
It's become such a focus of hopes and dreams.
Google has gone into complete and utter panic mode.
They've brought back Larry Page and Sergey Brin, their founders, And I don't know if you know this.
I don't know if our listeners know this.
Google's entire purpose is artificial intelligence.
Everything from our searches to the books that they scan, all of it is about creating what they believe is going to be the premier artificial intelligence going forward.
Well, guess what?
This small little company that is pushing this chat GPT has lapped them.
And now all of a sudden Google is freaking out trying to push forward their own competitor in this field.
Nick, you like the technology a little bit.
You drive a Tesla.
You keep up on this stuff.
You're a little bit of a tech guy.
How do you feel about this popularization that we're having right now with artificial intelligence and how it's picking up state?
Let me just say this.
What's in my mind right now is somebody who made this thing speak like Ronald Reagan.
You can tell him to be a former politician.
But they made him speak in some sort of Jamaican patois.
That is the extent of where I'm seeing this going.
Some ridiculousness like that.
Are you seeing these AI renderings of people like Adolf Hitler that are basically like, I wasn't really that bad of a guy and I had my reasons for doing it.
They've even got one for Henry Ford.
It's like, well, I wasn't really anti-Semitic and I didn't really help to spread the elders of the protocols of Zion.
The protocols of the elders of Zion.
Like, I actually like Jewish people.
But the thing is, AI isn't new, per se, if that's where we're going with it, because we've rewritten history every century we've had since writing was invented.
The winners get to rewrite history and dictate how we remember these things and who they represent, and that's been the case for centuries.
So the fact that you're going to have those AIs recreate or rewrite what Hitler was like and all that stuff is not surprising at all.
As we see over time anyway, these horrible monsters get whitewashed in the name of power and political control and all those different things.
So that is not so strange to me.
I suppose the volume with which they can now create these histories and rewrite stuff is going to be at a pace that no one can keep up with.
And that will be the death of a lot of things like scholar, you know, scholarly studying and, you know, probably, you know, college and, you know, upper, you know, academia itself.
Yeah, I love, by the way, that instantly everybody, for like two days, was like, this might be the end of college and research.
Right.
And then immediately, and this is very telling, if there's a through line in all this, it's people telling on themselves.
You are not able to open up the New York Times or the Atlantic right now and not read an article by some person who is like, this is really dangerous for white collar jobs, which is, I think, actually going to be important.
And, you know, we can talk about what this is going to do.
This real fast, I'm going to, I didn't show you this and I'm going to read it to you real fast.
This is a, this is a special, a spicy little meatball.
This comes from a friend of the pod, Paul Krugman, who basically has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars the past couple of years to shuffle around and say, I don't know what's going on.
I don't know.
This is Paul Krugman talking about artificial intelligence and the possibility that artificial intelligence will affect white collar work.
Quote, What will this mean for the economy?
It is difficult to predict exactly how AI will impact the demand for knowledge workers, as it will likely vary depending on the industry and specific job assets.
However, it is possible that in some cases, AI and automation may be able to perform certain knowledge-based tasks more efficiently than humans, potentially reducing the need for some knowledge workers.
This could include tasks such as data analysis, research, and report writing.
However, it is also worth knowing that AI and automation may also create new job opportunities for knowledge workers, particularly in fields related to AI development and implementation.
Okay, I didn't write the paragraph you just read.
ChatGPT did, in response to the question, how will AI affect the demand for knowledge workers?
Get ready for that.
You're going to read a lot of that shit in the next couple of years.
They love that.
That's like such a cliche already.
Well, think about that.
You're going to hire a whole bunch of people who are like coders and computer people to basically build this and then make them obsolete.
You're saying replace yourself by doing the work for another for six months.
You have to imagine they're not going to be so motivated to do that.
I don't know.
I've always wondered a lot like about plumbers.
Do plumbers have the motivation to actually fix everything perfectly?
Because if that happens and they never have any more jobs, it's like it's interesting to me.
Wait, wait, did you just... We gotta unpack what just happened.
I just like, yeah, impugned the entire plumbing industry.
First of all, we are very popular with the plumbers of the United States of America.
Yes.
You know, solidarity is our union.
Did you just insinuate that there's a conspiracy among plumbers to not fix things?
I didn't mean to.
I didn't want to.
But no, I mean, I don't know.
Let's call it a theoretical sort of mind exercise.
But, you know, there is this notion that, you know, there are some industries out there where if you did your job perfectly, then you wouldn't have a job.
The Maytag Repairman Complex is what you're telling me.
Yes.
Well, okay, so I'm gonna sit with that for a while.
That's gonna be in my brain stewing like a marinade for a while.
That's telling on yourself right there.
I also want to point out, did you notice that the AI answer even spun the issue a little bit?
The AI was even like, well, maybe we could take some jobs, but it'll be okay, I promise.
It even was like sort of nudging and squeezing the truth a little bit.
Yeah, no, it is it is rapidly becoming indistinguishable.
But there's that there's that movie Ex Machina, right, which is really a powerful concept of like, you know, he thinks he's doing some some research for this guy, when in reality, he's part of the whole experiment.
And and then, you know, proves that they were able to, you know, fool somebody.
So that that really is, we're on orders of of concern here as far as what's going to, because you know, again, what is the ultimate goal here when you watch the sci-fi movies is they're going to, you're going to create these robots of which I'm never, I'm completely for as far as the politicians, but you won't know their robots.
It'll be like Westworld.
Yeah.
I, and, and, And by the way, if you actually want to talk about the day-to-day employment, estimates are that this could affect upwards of 50% of all people employed in the United States of America.
We've talked about it in the past.
What was the new world order?
What was globalization and deindustrialization?
The United States of America, the whole idea is that we were going to get rid of industry, we were going to get rid of manufacturing, we were going to become the knowledge center, the logistics center of the world.
We were going to bring everybody up into the middle class because we were going to take care of looking over the production.
That's why Bill Clinton, by the way, constantly talked about, we're going to get everybody in the middle class, we're going to raise everybody up.
Here we are, Nick.
Over 50% of the population could possibly be replaced by artificial intelligence automation.
I have thoughts on what that means.
What do you think that means?
What happens if you literally affect not just possibly 50% of the workforce, but 50% of the specialized workforce?
Well, having already impugned an entire population of our country on one side, I'm now going to do this, probably the same thing on the other.
No one's going to like me.
But, you know, you know, these investment banker types, the white collar people who sit at a desk and they look at some numbers.
We are not popular with the investment banker types.
I want to go on the record.
That's not our listenership.
All right, so that is probably obviously who we're going to be really, really concerned because if there was an industry that you should be able to reliably replace with AI, it would be that.
Because you're just talking about analyzing stocks and projections, and there really isn't a lot of value to what you're doing.
You're just moving money around from one place to the other, right?
You're not making something.
You're not contributing to society that way.
And so that whole section of the economy could go away or whatever.
They're not actually doing anything.
All of those firms already rely on artificial intelligence.
It's the algorithms that are already doing the money moving around.
It just so happens that they're the people in the office that are like, you know... Sales.
Yeah, that's it.
That's literally all they're doing.
Yeah, so, okay.
Now, so yeah, and again, this is just like life finds a way, right?
At some point you figure out a way then to continue, you know, it keeps popping up in different areas, like the weeds of jobs or a purpose in life, because I think what you're maybe getting towards is life sort of, the purpose disappears very quickly when so many jobs are gone and AI is doing everything for you.
you probably start getting into that Wally, you know, dystopia where everyone just can't walk anymore and they're stuck in these wheeling, you know, these wheelchair things with a screen.
And they just watch TV all day, right?
Because, and by the way, here's the thing, if AI could make enough money and create enough of an economy where there's just so much excess money and everybody could be in the middle of class, it would be nice to be able to lift everybody up and, There's no way!
What in history have you ever seen where a piece of technology has improved things and that excess wealth got spread around?
Yeah, that's a good point.
I have to tell you something, and listen, I understand sometimes I'm a bummer.
I am so sorry.
I am so sorry that I'm a bummer.
WALL-E could very well be the best case scenario.
The idea that you do spread that excess wealth around and people just aren't useful.
There's an argument to be made that as all of this is phased out, you have to create a universal basic income.
Right?
You basically have to create a capitalized, socialist, communist state.
There is an argument that that's the way it could go, but it never goes that way.
You know what I mean?
It never actually occurs.
What I do when I look at this is, I look at this as absolutely being a thing that is going to displace people.
There's no way around that.
But whenever you look at automation and people losing their jobs, it's always vulnerable people that get tossed out on their asses first.
You know what I mean?
It's the labor, it's the people who are expendable.
We're talking about creative types.
I mean, I absolutely, we're already seeing networks and streaming networks using machine learning to understand what their show should be, right?
How to get their demographics all processed and the artists are just there to punch buttons.
The artificial intelligence will take care of it.
The problem here, Nick, is what happens when the middle class itself, like these stakeholders, what happens when they look up and all of a sudden society has moved to the point where they don't need them?
I don't know that there is any way for that to continue.
Do you know what I mean?
Which makes me feel like there is an opportunity, Democrat, Republican, Independent, Democratic Socialist, somebody to say, this shit sucks.
And we need to do something about it, which takes us back to the original conversation, which is big tech is out of control.
Somebody needs to do something about it.
And I got to tell you, you are not going to stop hearing and reading articles about these people being thrown out on their asses.
They're the ones who publish things.
They're the ones who changed the conversation.
It feels like that's how this is going to go socially.
Well, you know, if you think that there's an ability as we evolve and progress into the future with technology, where we do have a UBI, and in theory, that would kind of mean there isn't a lower class anymore.
Everybody is, the lower class would be middle class.
And then in theory, like, would they not have to work to live somewhat comfortably?
And if that's the case, if that's the future sci-fi version of this, they need to do something during the day.
And somebody during the night.
I mean, I would have to imagine entertainment becomes an even bigger thing, right?
Because you're going to need even more content for people to consume.
And that's, then that opens up an industry, a bigger industry, supposedly.
But again, not everybody can entertain that way.
But that, is that it?
Is that all you do then?
You just sort of, that becomes the thing.
You're just staring at a screen all day long.
Or maybe one day we can establish a, another, A society based on help, helping people, you know what I mean?
And giving and creating programs that can help people for varying different things you can help them with in a way that that would be what they do to spend their time, knowing that they're not going to starve, that they have a place to live, you know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
It's an interesting conundrum, but I hear you.
It's not good.
And even if it got to the best version of what I'm trying to describe poorly, it would probably still take decades and generations before you get there.
Just keep me out of it.
I'm not going willfully.
I'll just say that.
I think there's two things real fast I want to touch on.
First is, all of the futurists, your Kurzweils, all those types of people, what did they predict?
They predicted that technology was eventually going to get rid of education because people didn't need to be educated.
And what were they going to do?
They basically were going to make a living basically serving as testers of technology, right?
You go into the metaverse and you're being fed these TV shows and all of that.
What does America do?
What does America provide now?
America, more or less at this point, it provides the consumerism, right?
We're the ones that buy things.
We're the ones that decide what is good and what is popular and what it is we want to do.
Which, by the way, is a large reason why everything now, politically, is cultural.
It's all consumerism.
I mean, Nick, how many times have we had to talk about the fucking M&Ms on this show?
It's funny.
It's incredible, and it just happened today!
The M&M's people, the bars people, had to be like, eh, you don't like our candies, we'll figure it out.
Like, all of this is part of this larger issue, which is, what is America going to do, and what are we going to provide?
And you're right, a lot of people just think, well, just shove the idiots over here, and make them, you know, decide what's popular and what's not.
What is the major movie franchise?
But I also want to go ahead and remind people, because this doesn't get said enough, money is made up.
Classes are made up, right?
We've been told that somehow or another it denotes competence or intelligence, or that, you know, some people work harder and so they're at the upper class, the other people are at the lower class.
There has to be a constant class difference.
That's the entire purpose of this system.
It's to make sure that some people have more than they need and other people are doing without in order to basically keep people working and toiling to keep from joining the underclass.
There is nothing being invented that's going to keep that from taking place.
It's just about how you move it around and what it does and how it serves that purpose.
As long as we keep going down this path, automation is not going to fix anything.
You know, Elon Musk can pedal his happy ass down on stage and have his robot, But it's not going to fix it.
It's not going to deliver us from our toil.
It's going to be used to cut costs and raise profits.
I don't know where this leads.
I feel weird.
I'm 41 years old, Nick.
I'm an adult.
I'm living in this world.
I don't know what to make of it.
I'm trying.
I mean, that's what you and I do, you know, when we do these shows.
But I don't know what to make of it.
I don't even know exactly where it's going.
I just know that it's not going to be some utopia that we're being promised.
Alright everybody, on that note, we're going to be back on Friday with the Weekender Edition.
Go over to patreon.com slash mccraigpodcast.
It keeps us editorially independent so we can have bad shit conversations like this, Nick.
Yep.
Please go over there.
Check it out.
It's a great conversation.
It's a great show every week.
And a lot of you guys listen to the short version.
You might as well listen to the whole thing.
Listen to the whole damn thing!
I promise you, we have more conversations about whether WALL-E is the best possible scenario for humanity.
But if you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
