Original subtitles

Start the clock.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you, people.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I welcome you.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you so much. I can see it in your eyes.

I know why you're happy today.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are going back to England.

I tell you, that ice doesn't fuck around, huh?

It's not that. This was Harry's idea. He wants to be closer to the family that's

not speaking to him.

And I think...

I may be getting out just in time. I don't know if you saw this week's big

news. The national debt now has crossed $40 trillion, and not in the right

direction.

This is the only thing that we do in a bipartisan way.

You know, we just spend money we don't have. Both parties are totally into it.

It has doubled in 10 years and quadrupled in the last 20, like Russell

Crowe.

I love Russell Crowe.

But remember, don't freak out about the debt because it only matters when the

Democrats are in power.

Speaking of that, we have a new attorney general. Have you

seen this guy, Todd Blanch? He was on Meet the Press this week. They asked him

if he would refuse to make a pledge that he would act independently from the

White House.

And he refused.

This is sort of the main thing the Attorney General is supposed to do.

I thought it was also very concerning that every time he used the phrase, the

law, he used air quotes.

Is that just me?

But let me tell you, the Democratic Party has a new attack

dog, and he's very good at it, Senator John Ossoff of Georgia.

Okay, he's got fans here.

He really went after Trump this week, and in the middle of it, he mentioned

Natalie Hart. That's the young lady who works for Trump. When he got on the

catering cart, she came with him off the plane.

So this has had all sorts of rumors going on now about their relationship.

Okay, let me tell you, folks, I got sued about this once.

No, not the orangutan.

No, this was just a couple of years ago. Laura Loomer sued me.

Okay, I won, by the way, but... Okay, but...

It's expensive and unpleasant to get sued, so you know what? I took one for

the team on this. You handle it.

All I'm going to say... Now, Natalie is kind of Trump's emotional

support employee. That's true.

Well, she's...

She travels with him everywhere, and she brings a portable wireless printer so

she can print out flattering news articles. Trump is old school. He wants

hard copies of the smoke blowing up his ass.

But

that's

on him.

I don't know why you have to go after her.

You know, she seems incredibly devoted to her job, never takes a day off.

Sometimes when she works so hard, she forgets to eat and sleep.

And now everyone in America is saying the same thing. Why can't I get a

millennial who works like that?

You know, and there is, you know, a little more to the story. She had

bone cancer in her 20s. She likes Trump because he speeded up experimental

treatments, which she believes helped.

Helps her. But, you know, in America, it's just like, oh, good, someone new to

hate.

Trump met, did the podcast of Michael Cohen this week. Remember Michael Cohen,

his fixer, who once called Trump a cheater, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a

racist, a predator, and a con man.

His own vice president, Vance, once said he might be America's Hitler.

His secretary of state, Rubio, at the debate, made fun of his dick size.

Let the man have one fucking friend, okay?

Because,

look, the war is not going well. I mean, we had a 60-day

ceasefire. That ended. So for all our ships in the region, it means battle

stations for those who haven't already jumped overboard.

Well, you know, we had some...

Some bad reports about what's going on in those ships, but it doesn't need to

bother Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of War, he was at the Iowa

State Fair this week, and he said, we do training, not traning.

Well, it went over pretty well with that crowd, although the bearded lady did

walk out.

But, uh... Well, you know...

Our whole argument about the Strait of Hormuz was always that it's

international waters, no country can claim it.

Well, now Trump has claimed it.

Of course. He said, quote, he said, it's new U.S. territory.

The Strait of Hormuz is new U.S. territory. I don't know if this is

related, but today it turned green and the bottom is peeling.

heard about this, they called on Trump, and I quote, they said, accept reality

and defeat and stop indulging in delusions.

Yeah, guys, we tried that.

That didn't work for us. I don't know if it's going to work for you.

But no, Trump says he's not going to do that. He has a new strategy now.

Economic strangulation.

That's where we're going now.

He's done firing missiles, because we don't have any.

He says we're going to destroy their economy, and I'm with the president on

this one. If there's one thing I know he can pull off, it's driving something

into bankruptcy.

All right, we've got a great show. We have Dana Bash and Jeremy Peters.

Wow, what a panel. But first up, he is a contemporary American artist, best

-selling author, and recovery advocate, Hunter Biden. Ladies and gentlemen,

Hunter.

Hello.

Thanks for doing it. Thanks for being here.

All right.

All right. Hunter Budd.

All right. Don't be nervous.

We only have like three minutes.

We only have like 10 or 12 minutes.

I'm so sick of all the things that we get into the weeds with, and I see you

with another. Your laptop, your obituary, the third word will be laptop.

I know everything about the laptop, more things than I want to know.

I've seen you with your dick out. I've seen you with a crack pipe in your

mouth. My question, are you running for president?

Exactly. Have you thought about that? No, I haven't.

Here's my thing. If I announce for president, then somebody should check

and see if I relapsed.

I don't know if everybody is aware, but you have

been completely sober for seven years?

Yeah, June 1st, 2019.

How do you like it? I love it. You do? Yeah, I do. I do. You know, my whole

reason for being out there as much as I have been is, at least from my

perspective, they built this platform to beat the hell out of me for about a

seven-year period of time.

And when the crowd went home, the platform was still there. And, you know,

there's 50 million Americans that are still sick and suffering every day from

addiction. And I get to go out there and I get to speak to them. And even if it's

one person that sends me a message any day and says, you know, I saw your

message and I didn't drink today. And I've done something that I think is

incredibly worthy. I think

I would say to you what I said to Charlie Sheen. You did some bad things,

but I don't think you're a bad guy.

Is that fair?

The thing that has been the most edifying for me over the course of this

last few months is the realization that my addiction isn't something that

disconnects me from people and the experience that I went through.

And the fact that I had to have it all play out on a national stage and then,

you know, I was on the cover of the New York Post more times than I think anyone

ever in the history of the paper.

Right. And the thing about it, though, is what I realized is that All those

things that they thought were going to kill me were the things that people

identified with. And not necessarily, you know, crack or, you know, but, and I

mean, that's like the shocking part, right? When you say that word, it's kind

of like, ugh. But everybody, everybody has a brother who's suffering from

addiction. Everybody, including themselves, have gone through periods in

their life in which they've struggled.

Not just with addiction, but with grief and loss.

You know, I was speaking about my dad's health. And, you know, the thing that is

the most astonishing to me is all of the things that we all experience, these

painful things.

are things that everybody's gone through, but we never speak about it.

And nobody ever comes on a show like this and openly talks about it. Well, I

don't know about that. This is America. We talk about it a lot. Well, I don't

know. Come on, let's be real. We talk about it a lot. We talk about addiction.

We talk about grief.

Yeah. But you know what? I think that we talk about addiction and grief, but not

in terms of our own personal experience in which the vivid technicolor pictures

have been released to the entire world.

And there's that piece of it. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, well, I

think a fair person, and there's so few left in America, because everyone just

likes to, as I was saying about Natalie, you know, everyone just, oh, good,

someone to hate now. Someone we can hate now. I don't know, Bill.

Here's the thing. Can you imagine if this 35-year-old staffer that wrote this

note that has this relationship, and we were talking about Barack Obama, what

would be the reaction then?

Do you think that there wouldn't be a howl from the right that this is an

inappropriate relationship? Of course, because everybody loves to hate. That's

what I'm saying. Does that make it right?

It doesn't make it right. It's on him.

Okay,

let's not talk about her. That's not the point.

The point I was making is that I think a reasonable person who's not filled with

hate would say, You both took advantage of some of your privileges by being the

son of a president and vice president, and you also were a target in a way that

a normal person would not have been. Is that fair?

There's a part of that that is fair.

One of the things that people, I think, don't understand is that when my dad was

president, I didn't do any business. I sold paintings.

And I sold paintings to people that then had to testify before Congress under

oath. I made an average of $225,000 a year. Would you have been working for an

energy company out of Ukraine?

Was that really the thing you studied in school?

No, you're right. I went to Yale Law School.

You got that job because you went up just a minute. Yeah, 100%. As I've said

on a million interviews is that, you know, I'm incredibly privileged.

I mean, beyond anyone's wildest imagination, not only because of who my

dad was, but because of the father that he was.

And so a lot of privilege comes from that.

And I don't deny that in any way. And also a target on your back.

Yeah. By the way, and also a target on your back. And also a resume, though,

that includes being, you know, I taught at Georgetown University's master's

program in the School of Foreign Service. I served on a dozen boards.

I went to Yale Law School.

I worked for Boy Schiller Flexner. When I took that role, I was the chairman of

the board of the U.S.-U.N. World Food Program at that time, which serves 70

million people in 82 different countries. It's the largest humanitarian

organization in the world. I was chairman of the board. vice chairman of

the board of Amtrak for over five years. And so it wasn't about whether or not I

had experience.

My judgment, however, was absolutely, completely, ridiculously off. I didn't

realize the snake pit, and I was naive in that sense.

And I gave them something on a silver platter.

And by the way, let me also say this.

I did it for the money.

And that's what other people won't say. I absolutely 100% did do it because it

gave me a sense of freedom, particularly when Beau was diagnosed with cancer. But

all for me.

And so 100% all happened when the last year and a half of my father's vice

presidency. None of what happened that they have created and spun up these

conspiracies have anything to do with when my dad was president. And just for

perspective, I mean, whatever you made, it's pennies compared to... Don Jr.

is making, I mean, billions.

In the last 500

days of this administration, Don Jr.'s company has taken in over $3

.4 billion in Department of Defense contracts. He got a $640 million loan.

put through by the White House, the largest single loan to any private

company ever given out by the Department of Defense.

And that's just a fraction of it. Forget about what they've done with

cryptocurrency now, which is a bank in which they are able to go and launder

their money. It is an abomination. And that doesn't even include what Jared is

doing and Ivanka are doing. He gets paid over $100 million in fees by the Saudis,

the Saudis alone.

For a $6.5 billion fund that he controls, which is all Gulf state money,

and he is our unelected, unappointed emissary to the Middle East for a

war that nobody asked for. It is absurd.

It is literally absurd.

Not nobody.

Well, that's true.

Bibi Netanyahu asked for it.

I mean, your father, your father, among every other Democrat.

Excuse me. Every Democrat said Iran can't have nuclear weapons. And every

single Democrat and every president said Jimmy Carter refused what the Israelis

wanted. Refused what the Israelis wanted was to bomb Iran.

Every single one of them. The only person who fell for it was Donald Trump.

Yeah, true. Yeah. Okay. So let me ask you this because you hit on this a

minute ago.

You created a tough situation for your father. Yeah.

Politics is the roughest game there is. They will look for any vulnerability,

any opening. And you kind of gave them one, like you said, on a silver platter.

Did you ever apologize to your father? Every day. Really? You said to him,

look, I know I gave... From the moment it started, every day.

It's one of the greatest heartaches of my life. I talk about this in terms of

the...

The trouble with recovery is this, is I get to get out here and I talk about how

I've been healed, how I'm, you know, I'm stronger than I've ever been. I've taken

all of this and I'm, you know.

The people that get the most hurt, for those of us that survive, those of us,

the addicts that make it through, the rare ones that make it through, the real

harm happened to all of the people around them.

And the trauma for them goes very, very deep. And they don't get to come out on

this show and talk about how well they're doing and everything's all

great. And, you know, I think about my daughters. I think about every day.

And the fact that, you know, for a two-year period of time between 2017 and

2019, they lost the most important person in their life and also the other

most important person, my brother.

And I was not there for them.

And I can never make up for that. And same with my dad.

My dad is unconditional love, is not love without consequences.

It's not a love that doesn't have a limit.

It's a love that is limitless in this, is that no matter what, he would always

be there for me. But it doesn't make up for the fact that, you know, every night

he had to go to sleep when I was in that state and wonder whether or not I was

alive just after losing Beau. And, you know, guilt.

is an appropriate thing.

It's absolutely, as the addict, you've got to go and you've got to make amends

as much as you can. And sometimes the greatest amend that you can make is just

living a life by doing the next right thing.

That's what I hope I'm doing right now.

Well, I know your father is

struggling right now.

Yeah. Would you tell him, myself and the audience, wisdom?

a peaceful rest of his days for us. He's watching it.

I'll see you on my podcast, I hope. All right.

Hunter Biden, everybody.

Thank you, Hunter. Let's meet our panel.

Hey, how are you?

All right, here's the national correspondent for the New York Times and

author of Insurgency, How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They

Wanted, Jeremy Peters.

Season anchor and chief political correspondent for CNN, whose forthcoming

book, The Elections That Changed the World, is available to pre-order now.

Donna Bass.

Hey, how you doing?

Okay, so it's almost Labor Day. Wow, we blew through another year. I can't

believe it. Merry Christmas, because that's what's coming next.

They say that people don't pay attention until Labor Day, right? So let's pay

attention for them, because we have been having primaries, right?

A lot of them. A lot of primaries, and they do tell us a lot.

I feel like people are reluctant ever to say that, oh, Trump is toast, because

people have said it so many times before, and it's not been true.

I think he's toast.

Because, well,

I'm just going by.

The approval rating now is 33%. That's the floor.

Well, maybe.

No, I think it is. I think that is the people who just absolutely hate

Democrats. So it really doesn't matter.

whatever he does.

It's just that.

I don't think it ever gets... They used to be called birchers, then they were

birthers, their tea party.

That's the 33%. That's also the Democratic Party's approval rating, by

the way. I mean, they're in... As a party. As a party. And Chuck Schumer's

approval rating is actually lower than that. So as a party, they have not

managed to move up in favorability since Trump took the oath the second time

around. And that's pretty damning.

Okay.

Endorsement, though. Yeah.

Trump used to win all his endorsements. Now he's winning almost none of them.

That's right. He lost Wyoming a race there. Five governorships have not gone

his way. Two people in Florida, which he calls his home state.

The people are kind of over the corruption.

That message got through.

Inflation and gas prices, which is what they hated Biden for.

He always got in front of that banner that said promises kept.

The war.

They see that as.

A promise not kept, I won't get you into wars. Epstein, they didn't like that.

I think this election coming up, the midterm, is a referendum on the

president. It almost always is. So I don't think there's any way the

Democrats can possibly blow this, although they will try.

But I feel maybe, I feel like this election is, no,

we have to be mad at Trump first.

And then the Democrats will lose the 2028 president.

Except I agree with you on everything you said about the endorsements, because

I think it's up to 10 or 11 now.

House endorsements, governor's endorsements. He did pretty well in some

races that the Republicans who want to win are really pissed at him about, like

in Texas.

They're really not sure that Ken Paxton is, I mean.

It's Texas, so he'll probably win, but it's not a shoe-in like John Cornyn

would have been. He's a very hard right-winger, Ken Paxton, right? And

he's got some ethical issues, and James Tallarico is... A young Democrat.

Christian, and so forth.

But I will add a... Well. Well, I mean, he wears his faith on his sleeve in a

way that he believes will help him. Well, in the Democratic Party, as long

as that faith isn't Jewish, you're good.

Which, well, you said it, but... Yeah, I said it because it's true.

I do want to put one more data point into your thesis there, and that is that

if you look on the Democratic side, one thing that happened this week is that

Alexander Bindman...

It was a huge surprise.

Let's remind the audience who isn't political junkies. So Alexander Vindman

was in the military, and he went and testified against...

President Trump and Trump won because he heard the phone call between President

Trump. The perfect call. The perfect call between President Trump and the

Ukrainian leader. He's a big hero of the left. Exactly. He is a part. And he

lost. And he lost. But he's a part of the Trump resistance. And another

pattern that we have seen is people who have become prominent in the Democratic

Party as part of the Trump resistance also losing.

So it's not just that the president is.

not doing as well with the people in his base, he's lost his luster with the

people who hate him on the left.

And let's not forget that the Democrats...

have a real enthusiasm problem, right? I mean, a lot of voters are looking at the

Republicans and Trump and the Democrats and saying, I'm not thrilled with either

choice. And so that enthusiasm problem, even though, Bill, you're right,

Democrats would really have to screw something up to lose in this midterm

election. It's really not clear how well they will do even if they have a

majority because the Democrats in the House that I talk to are really worried

that if they don't pick up a dozen seats, they're going to be beholden to

the new squad and this handful of Democratic socialists who will

essentially have veto power over the entire Democratic establishment agenda.

That's a big concern.

Will they?

They will.

If it's a slim majority, just like you're seeing on the right with the Tea

Party and a little bit less so now, if it's a slim majority, minority rules

within the party.

And so if you have, let's say, I mean, you had four members of the squad and

then it was growing. Let's say you have 10 people who are absolutely, I'm not

going to do anything unless you pass Medicare for all, just for example.

Hakeem Jeffries, if he doesn't have a majority more than 10 people, he's

screwed. Almost like a parliamentary government where you bring in, like in

Israel. And the government only exists because they had to bring in like four

or five members of the far, far, far right wing party. And they do control in

a lot of ways what goes on in that government. Yeah, they absolutely do.

And they're not running to be members of the Democratic Party. They're running

many of them anyway, as democratic socialists. It's a totally different

political organization.

And in fact, they want to take out the Democratic Party. I mean, it's their

stated goal. They not only want to take out the Democratic Party, they want to

take out the entire constitutional.

system that the Democratic Party is allowed to participate in government.

And they like communism.

I proved it here a couple of weeks ago just by quoting them. They use the word

a lot. They're not actually trying to hide it, although if you ask them, they

will deny it. Yeah.

It's so interesting.

They will. But some of them, I mean, this is why El-Said did quite well in

Michigan. This is why the woman who is running against Karen Bass as mayor of L

.A. is doing quite well because they've learned how to sand down the rougher

edges and they don't talk about socialism. They don't talk about seizing

the means of production and stuff like that.

They're getting many of them. Some of them are not quite ready for prime time,

let's be clear. But a lot of them have really done a good job of selling

themselves to the public as quite reasonable mainstream politicians.

And that's how.

Angie Nixon, who beat Alexander Vindman in Florida this week. Okay, so explain

who that is. She is a Democratic Socialist who raised like not even a

million dollars. That's right. And he raised about $16 million.

So I'm not a mathematician, but I think that's like 16 to 1. And she crushed

him. In Florida. In Florida.

Which is a red state now. Yes. But this is, of course, the Democratic primary.

It's a Democratic primary. And a lot of people will say. But she did it by,

she's a Democratic socialist, but she did it by really narrowing down her

message about.

about money, about trying to, you know, live the American dream in a way that...

But again, this is a race within the Democratic Party. Correct. So when she

runs in the general against the Republican for governor... It's going to

be very hard. Right. Very hard. She's going to run against Ashley Moody, who's

the sitting Republican senator, and it...

I mean, I don't want to say impossible, but if there is an impossible race, that

could be it. So what do you think of this new star, John Ossoff, I mentioned

in the monologue? I mean, we've mentioned him before. He's been there

for a couple of years in Georgia.

He's kind of Obama-esque when he speaks. And he really lit into Trump in a way

that people seem to be certainly on the left.

thirsting for.

And the problem is he's Jewish.

I mean, I know we don't want to talk about that, but we need to talk about

that because that is the situation in the Democratic Party.

They think Gaza is a genocide.

It is not. There's an actual meaning to the word genocide. It doesn't come

close. But as long as you tag that name, genocide, of course.

What kind of normal person would not hate someone who's responsible for a

genocide? And they've all just signed on to this because they're just big on

buzzwords and long signs and bumper stickers.

That's as deep as they go. And likes on their social media. And like.

So they... You have to say it.

There was a...

Congressman Scott Wiener, he's, I think, going to take Nancy Pelosi's seat in San

Francisco. And he wasn't paying genocide.

And they surrounded him, a mob, and yelled at him and said, you're not gay.

He's gay.

They're not really gay. What the fuck does that have to do with genocide?

Say it. And he did. Because the Democrats are cowards. What a coward.

This is factual. Do you know the only country in the Middle East that has gay

rights? Of course. Yes, that's why the people with the Queers for Palestine t

-shirts are so out of their mind. Can I say one thing about the Jews? Because I

actually, earlier this summer, I interviewed Josh Shapiro, governor of

Pennsylvania,

running for re-election, but also very much in the conversation about 2028.

And I asked him this question point blank. Do you really think that a

Jewish... politician can win a Democratic primary for president in this

environment for Jews.

And he gave an answer about how he's been talking about his faith a lot. He

doesn't hide from it.

Pennsylvania is a purple state.

He's very popular in Pennsylvania.

And, you know, I thought a lot about it. We'll see. But the other thing that I

thought about, Bill, is that even Or maybe despite this climate, you have

Josh Shapiro, John Ossoff.

J.B. Pritzker, Rahm Emanuel. I don't remember a time where there were more

Jews who were even thinking openly about running for president in the Democratic

primary. We'll see what happens when they get asked about Israel.

Bill has a good point that they twist themselves into knots over it because

the activist left has done such a good job of making this a third rail. Like,

you know, you have to buy into the rhetoric, just like you used to have to

say, I want to defund the police or I want. It's a litmus test. Yes, exactly.

And as often the case, and this is something I think Democratic strategists

worry about privately, is the absolutist nature of some of the activism rhetoric

on the left is a real problem because they're always trying to explain it.

away, right? Well, we don't really mean to defund the police. Well, we don't

really mean that Donald Trump is a king.

Or they're using kind of jargony language like, let's, you know, stop the

oligarchy or, you know, whatever that tour is. And ordinary people don't know

what that means. They don't. It just.

It doesn't resonate with them. Or care. Or care, right?

And unless Democrats learn how to talk to voters in a way that is more

to their hearts rather than to their heads and to a political dictionary that

you need to translate what they're saying, this will be a difficult year.

But I think back to what you...

What you said about John Ossoff, that is one of the main reasons why he's taking

off. I watched that whole speech that he gave last Sunday, and it wasn't just the

line that everybody's talking about, about Natalie.

The whole way that he wove in the heart and the soul of

fighting for affordability but also fighting against Donald Trump was

incredibly unique.

Again, these issues like corruption.

I mean, the world financial, is that Trump's crypto?

He's got his own crypto company. And I see today, now they're letting them have

a bank.

It's very close to just backing a truck up to Fort Knox.

And people get that.

You know, it's like we're struggling. You said you were going to stop our

struggling. You said gas prices and inflation were going to go down. They're

not. But you guys are making out great.

All right.

It is back to school time.

So that includes college. And for some reason, college includes Arizona State.

I've never understood that.

They are in the news because they have a Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and

Mass Communication.

Guess what the new curriculum is about?

You're going to be able to get a course in influencing.

I wish I was just making this up.

You can literally get a BS in BS now. Would you like to hear?

Would you like to hear?

a hold of the syllabus.

Would you like to hear some in the course? I'm sure you would.

For example, there's intro to influencing.

Duck lips, peace signs, and you.

You need that intro course.

Of course.

Strategies in making a toilet seat look like a private jet.

Oh, yeah.

Biology 301.

Diagnosing yourself with something you googled this morning.

Math 101, why you don't need it.

Camera phone mechanics, how to make your tits the focus of whatever you're

yammering about.

Unboxing 101, losing your shit over new material goods in an age of socialism.

Intro to public speaking. Tips on shaming people in public who aren't

really even doing anything.

Career development. Explaining to your grandparents what exactly it is you do.

And senior seminar.

When to call it quits and transition to OnlyFans.

Let's talk about higher education, shall we? Because this is not the only story

in the news. Quite a few.

University of Michigan?

Mm-hmm, where I went, yes. That's where you went. I did, yeah. Okay. I wish I

wouldn't have had grades. I would have had grades. Right.

They're going to no grades now. And the reason given? Just as freshmen or for

the whole thing?

I'm not sure about that.

It doesn't matter.

It's ridiculous. And they're saying it because sometimes the kid gets a bad

grade and it makes them sad.

I can't. I'm not making that up.

I mean, no grades. And what does that school cost? It's not cheap, right? It's

not cheap. I can tell you what it was 25 years ago.

No, but look, this is part of the coddling of the American mind effect

that we've been reading about and scholars smarter than I am have been

writing about for 15 years.

I don't see how when you have a student age population that is already losing

its jobs, losing what they trained for to AI, and how they're

basically as a generation having to face what a future looks like on a planet

that is so hot and so inhospitable that it's rejecting human life. I mean, yeah,

it's not a great outlook.

I grew up, I'm Gen X.

So I grew up basically feral, like the rest of our generation.

I'm a boomer. You think you're feral.

Yeah, I mean, and so, yeah. At least you got out of the dump, yes.

I mean, literally. So the idea that we can't, I mean, look, I understand there

are very real mental health challenges that people, not just kids, but people

have for many, many reasons, including their phones, and there's a cultural

issue. But, like, come on.

I mean, I know Trump University is a scam, but when there's no grades, isn't

that a scam, too?

I mean... Well, it... I mean, what... It goes to the question

of what college is, what a four-year degree is really training kids for.

Well, let me answer that. Now, this is... Nothing.

This is the second. This is even scarier.

AI, which in the old days, like two years ago...

Was writing the papers and sometimes grading them.

Now it can take the course all by itself.

This AI taking college courses, this is from your paper, with simple commands

like log in and complete my quiz.

It can lecture, watch lecture videos, take tests, write papers, and chat with

classmates about reading assignments.

Students may never meet with their professors or their peers.

What's the point? What the fuck?

Let me just take a little bit of an unorthodox approach here and defend the

kids because I don't actually think that all of this is their fault. They've been

told by CEOs from AI companies that this technology is going to replace them. So

to a certain degree, it seems like a lot of them, by adapting to this technology

and having it do everything for them, are basically saying, all right, let's

get on with it.

time what they could be doing with this what like how dana uses ai how i try to

use ai how i'm sure you do is to make your make yourself better at the job

that you're doing more efficient i don't use it what they're doing i don't want

it at all nothing i don't want it in my phone the second i the second people

started having it and telling me what it did and and oh it It knows everything

about you. It's in your phone. It sees every one of your pictures. It knows

every text you ever send. You think I want that in my fucking phone?

You people are crazy if you're doing this. You're crazy.

And it can't do my job.

That is for sure.

What people have told... I hope.

Thank you.

What the heads of these AI companies have been all too eager to tell us is

that this technology is going to replace us, that it will do everything that you

used to do.

Really, it's not going to do that. It's never going to replace human beings.

It's going to make our jobs easier and in some ways make workers more

efficient. So people should really, you know, if you're teaching students how to

use this as a way to not do their work instead of using it as a way to improve

their work, it's just not going to ever be a tool that they learn how to use

appropriately. But I think one of the, if there is a benefit from AI, I think

it is if you think about it.

it is a reminder of why human interaction is so important. Like, I

mean, just even here, this is not, you can't have this as an AI experience.

There are real human beings here watching a...

I understand that there are some reasons why students want to go online, but it

is also a reminder of how great it is to have a human interaction with fellow

students in a classroom, with a professor.

There are things that you just can't learn or even pretend to learn if you're

dealing with AI without that human interaction.

I take your point. It's not all their fault. But it's also, I've said this

before when we talked about AI, it is also their place to stop it.

They're the younger generation. When they want to protest against something,

they're not shy about it. Right. Okay? So they're using it. If AI can do the

job of going to school for you completely, why wouldn't it be able to

do the job you were going to get trained for in school?

So you're building your own gallows. It's up to that generation to stand

across history and say, stop.

I don't think you can look.

to the Silicon Valley companies for any type of moral leadership on this issue.

I mean, and that's a big, you know, when you talk to the heads of these

companies, which you and I have both done as part of our jobs, what's

striking is how often they liken their work to a humanitarian cause, to saving

civilization. I'm not kidding. They really see it this way. And if this

doesn't sound too much like Facebook as, you know, the promoter of democracy and

free speech in the town square that was going to be good for us all, then...

You know, I think you should take another look at how you're reading this.

And you also talked about something I think you and I both agree on, that this

is not just the beginning, I mean, the end of the rot in higher education. It

started long ago when they stopped teaching people things because they

became indoctrination centers.

Two stories from this week, I think, will show you that this has now infected

our political discourse.

Megan Romer, she is the...

co-chair of the dsa she was on david remnick's podcast and she talked about

taxing the hell out of them and he said um what do you mean by that and she said

uh well you know i don't really have a solid and then just dribbled off yeah

and he said but shouldn't you shouldn't you be more specific about what taxing

the hell means they don't know anything okay okay then lindsey graham's sister

was running and is now running in south carolina

She was asked about Taiwan, and she said, I'm not that informed on national

security. Well, you're running for the Senate.

That's not an answer that is acceptable. I'm not that informed.

I guess my question is, does it matter that people don't know anything?

Yes.

I'm so glad to hear that.

I'm so glad to hear that.

One word answer, yes, it matters a lot. It matters a lot. But I will say that...

That interview that David Remnick did with the DSA chair is something that

everybody should watch as hopefully an antidote to what you just said.

This is like real life. This isn't just a string of slogans put together.

actual policy that when you get to a place where you're running for elected

office, or if you actually are successful in elected office, you got to

know stuff.

Yeah. And by the way, there's been a slew of interviews just like this, where

candidates who represent the Democratic Socialists of America have really

struggled to articulate how they don't subscribe to communism, whether or not

they really believe in Marxism, and basic facts about how their ideology

would help them govern the United States out of this affordability crisis.

Look, a lot of these people are really talented politically.

I think, you know, Mamdani is a generational political talent. He's out

of the Democratic Socialists of America.

This is Saeed Al-Saeed in Michigan is also very talented. He's not a

Democratic Socialist, although they do claim him as one of their own.

But by and large, a lot of these candidates come out of the activist wing

of the party. They're very academic. They're very into reading Karl Marx and

left-wing theory.

And we've seen time and time again that a lot of them just don't withstand the

scrutiny.

There was a story, I mean... If you're going to talk about academics this week,

I just have to bring this up, this Jason Arday story. He's a professor. Very sad.

Very sad. It was a suicide. I mean, a week ago, it was not that story.

He was the first black professor at Cambridge, I think? Yes. Young. And the

youngest. The youngest.

Okay, whenever I hear a story like this, first of all, I don't believe anything.

I don't believe anything anybody says.

Right. I have to read two or three more articles, do a deep dive. But the first

story was, okay, this guy.

was just wanted by the left to be what they wanted him to be, which was the

first hero professor, black professor.

But really, he was guilty of plagiarism and all sorts of incredible lies.

They're so captivated by DEI and wanting this, they just let him pass. And I

said, well, I'm going to check this out. No, that's exactly what happened.

It's the soft bigotry of low expectations. And it's not just that

they let him pass.

It's that they ignored the glaring red flags, like grammatical errors in his

thesis and things in his backstory that just didn't add up, like running 30

marathons in 35 days.

And to me, Cambridge has a lot of explaining to do about how they seem to

have really... cynically used this person who was obviously struggling with

mental illness to further their own diversity and inclusion goals.

He didn't learn to speak until he was 18, right? He said he was autistic.

He said a number of diseases, he said.

He was, where was...

Oh, I can't find it, but he was just crazy. Oh, he's got testicular cancer,

brain tumor, epilepsy, locked-in syndrome. I don't know what that is. He

said he ran the marathons with a broken leg.

He said he was mute until age 11 and illiterate until 18 and then became the

greatest professor.

I mean, it's like a prank. Like, can we make liberals who want to believe this

actually do it? And they did.

And it's not much more complicated than that. White people are crazy.

And to back that up, what is sad and tragic is, as you said, perhaps

Cambridge let him down. But once this got out and the investigation began,

then the mob went after him.

And it was, you know, in the UK, the press are tough, to say the least.

and kind of what you were talking about before about sort of the hate mob.

And that's what happened to him. Now, if he had underlying, I mean, obviously he

had underlying mental health issues. He took his own life. But it's those two

things combined that is such a cautionary tale of where we are right

now societally and culturally.

The system played a huge role in his death.

And if Cambridge is doing an honest examination of this, they could address

that. All right. Thank you, guys. Time for New Rule.

Okay.

All right.

New Rule. Everyone in the media is having a good time mocking Kaia Gerber

for revealing that when she was a child, she had an exorcism performed on her

with a dirigidue.

Is missing the point.

It works.

Because when some hippie starts playing the dirigidoo, even evil spirits say,

let's get the fuck out of here.

Neuro drug companies have to make at least one ad for prescription medication

where no one becomes a DJ.

Or at least list it as a possible side effect.

Stop using scarizzi if you're a white man in your 40s and you experience the

uncontrollable urge to drop sick beats.

Now that researchers have proven that dogs can tell if people are happy or sad

by reading our faces, they must teach dogs to do that with legs.

They always seem to read as asking for it.

New Rule, don't be surprised that Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris, says

he would make her finish her homework before he'd let her go outside and play.

That was Michael's way. He was always very hard with kids.

New Rule, now that Air France...

decided to close the sauna area in its Paris lounge because passengers were

using it for inappropriate activity.

I have to ask, what happened to you, France?

You gave the world inappropriate

activity.

The French kiss.

The topless beach.

Lingerie. The menage a trois.

That thing where husbands and wives don't ask each other where they were

from five to seven.

And now you're Utah with croissants?

I'm sorry, but if two, possibly three, consenting adults can't do it between

connecting flights in the airport, then maybe Tucker Carlson is right. Why did

we even defeat the Nazis?

New rule, free the workplace romance.

Let's go back to letting love connections happen at the office. It's

funny, all I hear about these days is the loneliness epidemic and how nobody

socializes anymore and Gen Z isn't dating, Gen Z isn't fucking.

Here's a crazy idea.

Stop being overly paranoid about power imbalances in one of the last places

humans actually interact anymore and let people fuck at work.

I don't mean literally have sex in the supply closet, but flirt, acknowledge

mutual attraction, and maybe get into a relationship.

And then have sex in the supply closet.

But that's not really where we are, because America

always overreacts, usually on the side of too much safety.

We did it with overprotecting our children.

We did it with drugs.

Because some people get addicted. For decades, no one was allowed to even

smoke pot legally.

And we do it with sex.

In Congress, they already have a rule that says you can't date anyone in your

own office. And now, they're considering one supported by Speaker Mike Johnson

that would ban members from dating any staffer from any office.

Because telling people who they're allowed to love is repulsive when the

Bible does it. But it's okay when it's a weirdo like Mike Johnson.

Mike Johnson, who has an app on his phone called Covenant Eyes, which scans

everything you open and reports any porn use to a sponsor, which in this case is

his son.

Ew.

But, you know, Mike is not the only one who supports this. It's bipartisan.

AOC agrees.

Yeah. She says no one who works on Capitol Hill should ever date anybody

else who works on Capitol Hill.

Okay, but where else are they supposed to meet? It's where they spend all their

time. They run home to get four hours of sleep, eat a toaster strudel, and run

back to the office to write the actual bills that their bosses, the elected

representatives, don't even read.

But AOC says there are a lot of fish in the sea.

If someone is seeking a part, we don't need to necessarily do that here.

Uh, no, you don't have to, but maybe if you did, your eggs wouldn't be in a

freezer on 14th Street.

Please, I'm all for it.

freezing eggs, or whatever you want to do that's consensual. And that's the

point. Stop punishing all the people who want a consensual relationship because

offices contain some male creep, as does everywhere in life. The question is, is

it the smart thing to throw out the baby-making with the bathwater?

And... According to a recent article in

Inc., called Gen Zers and millennials want workplace romance normalized even

if it breaks company rules.

No, it's not.

Because here's the thing. While there are plenty of fish in the sea, there

aren't a lot of seas.

That is, not a lot of places to meet fish.

The workplace is where most people have always done it. It's where most married

couples caught their fish.

Forbes did a study and found 43% of workplace romances ended in marriage.

The other 57% ended on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert.

Is the workplace the perfect place

to be? No.

But what's better?

Dating app?

Bars? which are now places where people go out and yet somehow are still on

their phones.

Of course, no woman in an office wants the guy in the next cubicle giving

unsolicited back rubs or making comments about her appearance, unless he's cute,

and then it's, why is he ignoring me?

But that stuff is already, if not outright illegal, very frowned upon.

This is 2026.

Every company has an HR department now.

When a true predator like Eric Swalwell was finally exposed, people said, what

took so long?

Well, what took so long is nobody reported it for a long time.

Now, does it take guts to do that? Sure, yes. But call me a radical feminist, I

think women in 2026 are capable of guts and of handling most clumsy overtures

without an act from Congress.

There is a congressman from North Carolina, Chuck Edwards, Republican,

Christian, married to the same woman for 40 years. Not really my jam.

But I also don't think he should have been forced out of his race, which he

was, for what he did, which wasn't much.

A bipartisan House Ethics Committee did a full investigation and found zero

evidence of sexual activity.

physical contact, or lewd propositions.

No, what Chuck did was buy the women in his office gifts.

A lot of them. He bought shoes, jewelry, purses, cell phones, laptops, massages,

kitchen appliances, spa treatments.

You know, a real monster.

One time.

One time, after a staffer had a bad breakup, Congressman Edwards paid for

her and a friend to go to New York and see Hamilton.

Without him on the trip.

The only thing this guy couldn't keep in his pants was his credit card.

There's a song in Hamilton called The Room Where It Happens, and this tragic

castrato literally couldn't get in the room where it happens.

A room he paid for, which explains his campaign slogan, I still believe in a

place called the friend zone.

I tell you, thank goodness we stopped this sick, demented fuck before he sends

another poor, defenseless woman on a spa.

weekend.

This maniac even once arranged for a singer at a

staffer's birthday party, and this was so traumatic that one staffer confided

in a friend that she was low-key scared.

The congressional panel also found some women were uncomfortable with the gift.

Yeah, but not so uncomfortable they didn't take them.

Maybe let's all try a little more romance and a little less hypocrisy. You

know, we hate it when people have sex in the office, but you know what TV show we

love? The Office.

The most popular sitcom of all time, reproduced all over the world, and the

entire show is an HR department's worst nightmare.

Everybody is either fucking or trying to fuck everybody else, and it doesn't make

anybody low-key scared.

Jim and Pam, Jim and Karen, Michael and Jan, Michael and Holly, Aaron and Gabe,

Aaron and Andy, Aaron and Pete, Ryan and Kelly, Angela and Andy, Angela and

Dwight.

There was less incestuous fucking in Fleetwood Mac.

All right, that's our show. I want to thank Jeremy Peters, Dan Abash, and

Hunter Biden. Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube.

or listen where you get your podcasts, or go watch Overtime on YouTube. Thank

you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.