David Pakman & AG Raul Torrez

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What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, What kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Carolyn Levitt says truth social posts are straight from Trump, except when they're not. A week after his team blamed a staffer for in Obama as ape video. We have such a great show for you today. The David Pakman shows David Pakman stops by to talk about Trump's Epstein cover up. Then we'll talk to New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres about how AGs can regulate big tech. And New Mexico authorities are going to investigate Epstein's Zorro ranch. But first, the news. Somalia, I heard you go to fancy universities and win debates. Oh, let's talk about me winning a debate against a writer at large for The Wall Street Journal. I went to the Yale Institute of Politics and we had a debate. Jerry Baker and I, Jerry Baker was the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal from some point in the mid 2000s. He is conservative. And so we debated over whether his theory, which is that journalists are responsible for the lack of journalistic trust. What do you think of that? I think it's a ridiculous thing that he should have been embarrassed to debate you on. I won 23 to 16. The thesis, the central thesis, it was sort of based on a column he wrote last week where he talked about how democracy dies in darkness. was a self-aggrandizing bon mot cooked up by journalists when, in fact, it was popularized by one Jeff Bezos, very much not a stalwart of journalism. I think of him as the wokest guy in CEO land. But you want to know where Democracy Dies in Darkness actually comes from? Tell me. It comes from Justice Keith, the grandson of enslaved people, who was a Sixth Circuit justice. who ruled in a case called Ashcroft v. Detroit Free Press, ruling against immigration hearings that were private, that did not allow reporters in. This was right after 9-11 in 2002. And the government was trying to make it so you could do these immigration hearings without having any kind of oversight. And Justice Keith said, in fact, that he said something to the effect of, you know, you have to allow sunlight in in order to have democracy. So it was, in fact, the opposite of a self-aggrandizing journalist. It was a judge who had found journalism helpful in protecting democratic norms. Interesting. Hard to think of a better way to debunk than just to actually show that my opponent was completely wrong about everything. Invite me to your college because I will now debate. Thank you. So speaking of being completely wrong about everything, I think of a company called Meta, who I hate to death. One of the things that's been argued is that when Democrats get the levers of power again, we have to treat the Internet as pipes. and that social media cannot be controlled by these groups because they hold too much of their own interests and not our public goods interests. And Meta has decided to show that in the way of forming a $65 million election push to advance the AI agenda, which is, as we see in each poll, is getting more and more unpopular with the American people. There are a number of these kind of things starting already to push midterm legislation. So this is what's happened. We have these midterms coming up in nine months. Many different groups have figured out they can buy American elections. So we have Meta making this $60 million investment to push an AI agenda. That means to support AI friendly candidates. We have there was another story that we had in here about AIPAC, the lobby that protects Israel wanting to put money in elections. We have gambling, right, because gambling is a big business in America, wanting to put money in elections. We basically have now a system where our elections are sold to the highest bidder. Now, I want to remind you that the richest man in the world was very involved with helping to elect Donald Trump. So there really is a sense in which these people are buying elections. Now, that said, what we saw, at least what we saw in that Wisconsin Supreme Court case right after the election of Trump was that despite the fact that the Republicans way overspent, the Democrats still won. So it's not entirely clear that it works, but we're certainly going to see that. And in a world of AI and a world of, you know, not a ton of public accountability of fake videos, fake recordings, fake pictures, it's going to get harder and harder to figure out what's true and what's not true. So buckle up, team, because there's going to be a bumpy ride. Yeah. So here's an interesting one. Quite a stark headline. Jeffries puts rare public pressure on fellow Democrats, kind of a contrast with Nancy Pelosi, who is known for going to people's office and saying, get in line, motherfucker. I think that this is a pretty interesting move right here. So here's what I would say just to get back to Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi didn't put public pressure. She put private pressure. And that, I think, is an important difference because I don't think she would put public pressure, but I think she would, you know, go to your house and make sure you voted the way she wanted you to, which is, I think, a testament to her as a leader. But a lot of people, including you, are very crabby with Jeffries because of his complete refusal to say things like abolish ice. And also, you know, he feels very kind of meandering and doesn't he doesn't feel like he's fighting. And that's a complaint we hear a lot. Now, I don't feel quite as mad at Jeffries as you do, but he is really, really, really wants as many Democratic-controlled states as possible to redraw their legislative maps to counter the GOP's mid-decade redistricting. This is quite good, and it is quite a good thing for him to be focused on. So basically, Maryland Governor Westmore has had a really hard time getting the Democrats in his state to do what he wants. And Jeffries is out there, I think, providing support and hoping to get that going. And it is not great that these Democrats have gone against him because remember, Wes Moore is a pretty talented governor and a lot of people would like to see him on a bigger stage. And this kind of thing, if you can't keep your state reps in check, that's not great. So I do think Jeffries is doing this with an eye on the future. And I actually think that Jeffries, again, I know you're going to be mad at me, but Jeffries, I think, is actually pretty smart. I mean, I think he's I know. See, he's laughing. He may not be as lefty as you like. That's not what it's about. It's that this time needs a real leader and he's horrible. I don't know that he's a leader, but I think in this particular moment, he is being smart here and trying to back up Westmore. And that's what this is about. and trying to continue redistricting. I have been very critical of Jeffrey's. I still think it's possible he's trying to get his footing, whereas I feel much more negative about Chuck Schubert. This is such a critical time to have somebody who's shown such a bad record. It's abhorred to me. You know, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'm just saying that let's see it play out. So speaking of how things play out, imagine that before somebody self-immolated, for those who aren't familiar with the term, that is a horrible way to die. Imagine that you would text people that you had an affair with your boss, who is Representative Tony Gonzalez, a Republican of Texas. So this is a horrible story. Just a horrible story. He has this Uvalde office. You'll remember Uvalde. It's right on the border. You've recognized the name because there was a mass shooting there. In typical America fashion, this aide, 35-year-old, The people who worked with her described her as like one of the greatest people. She was extremely beloved in the office. And basically, she fell in love with her boss. They had an affair. It was an open secret. Then she got depressed. The congressman did not visit the office. He canceled all sorts of different meetings when he was supposed to go there. And then she killed herself. Now, who knows why people kill themselves, but it is still just a horrible story. And it's not again, this is like the Epstein files. It's not partisan. It's just horrendous. And an attorney for the husband told the Express News, by the way, none of this would be reported if there wasn't local Texas news. Another thing like we need to know this stuff. These are the people who are making the laws that dictate whether your daughter can get an abortion. OK, you know, he's a member of Congress. This is, I think, important to know about. The attorney for her husband said that the affair was an open secret, but he didn't believe it was the cause of death. Again, just atrocious behavior from a Republican member of Congress. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when you and I were a bit younger, where in a pre Epstein world, People would always tell us the reason we couldn't have these congressmen having affairs, despite the fact that, you know, the Chandra Levy's, et cetera, all these things were clearly happening, was that they could be blackmailed and then extorted to support things they shouldn't be done. That conversation this age of corruption seems to have just elapsed. Well, I think the idea is that Trump has basically burned it to the ground. It's like, wait, is being blackmailed bad? Is that something you don't want from an elected? Because I think we're seeing a lot of that. Yeah. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats texts emails even his personal diary Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer no doubt no question of his life And that a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The third episode is out now from our series Project 2029, a reimagining where we examine what went wrong with Democrats' approach to policy and how we can correct it and deliver changes for the American people. The first episodes dove into campaign finance reform, antitrust, and regulation. Our newest episode is on how we solidify reproductive rights for women. We talk to the smartest names in the field, like Abortion Every Day's Jessica Valenti, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, UCLA's own Mary Ziegler, and the Guttmacher Institute's Kelly Badden. Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power. Democrats need to be too. So please head over to YouTube and search Molly John Fast, Project 2029, or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and you'll find it there. Help us spread the word. David Pakman is the host of The David Pakman Show. Hi, David. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Delighted to have you. The idea that the Epstein files are still, and I'm glad of it because I think it's the only way we can get the American people to have this conversation. But it's interesting to me that the way Trump has behaved around it has only made it more of a story. That's right. And, you know, there was this moment where there was a little bit of finger wagging. You know, if these files really come out, it might be bad for some powerful Democrats. And everybody I know on the left has said, OK, we'll let the chips kind of fall where they may. We don't we don't really care about that. And then, oh, OK, well, then we've got to come up with a different reason to try to cover these up. Listen, the polling is pretty clear, which is that even half of Republicans now think that this administration is trying to suppress the full Epstein files. Right. But the question is why? And I'm very open to the idea that Trump is not implicated in the files as a criminal perpetrator himself. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. Until I see evidence of that, I don't know. But it's very clear that he has an incentive and a reason for wanting to cover this up. And maybe it's because he believes that it would be bad for people he needs on his good side who will come to him and say, why didn't you prevent this from coming out? Right. I don't know what the reason is, but this is not the behavior of someone who believes full transparency will be vindicating. If you believed that, then you would actually push for the full transparency. Yeah, you know, it's really a smart point to talk about that because it is like it's bad enough without getting into total paranoia or like, you know, even just the reality of what we know is worse than many, many conspiracy theories. Right. I like the way you're approaching this, because I think that even just the truth as we know it is still incredibly damning. And, you know, today, Les Wexler sat for deposition. Les Wexner is the CEO of the limited brand who gave Jeffrey Epstein the townhouse, his New York City townhouse, who was intimately involved in all of this. But we don't really know how, whether he was blackmailed or what it looks like. And he did say that he had not been interviewed by the FBI, which in itself is, in my mind, absolutely flabbergasting. It is absolutely. And the fascinating role of the FBI at the middle of this is kind of being accentuated because it just so happened that the people who ended up as director and deputy director for a period of time, Of course, Dan Bongino now went back to podcasting, which is a whole other story. They spent years trading in the social media space on the idea that there was a lot that people still needed to find out about. And Trump was the guy who was going to reveal it, which there's a bigger story here, Molly, about populist ideologues where they build a movement around personality. And it's very easy to make economic and other promises when you're campaigning. And then all of a sudden you're in the position of power and somehow all those promises become very, very inconvenient. But as soon as Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were instated as FBI director and deputy director, respectively, they all of a sudden said, hey, you know what? Epstein did take his own life. There's really no client list. There's no more perpetrators. There's not going to be more prosecutions. And that is also interestingly a real problem with a lot of these Manosphere podcasters who now are saying, wait a second, you expect us to forget about the years you spent trading on the possibility of what is going to come out now, just accept there's nothing there. So there's all these different layers to the story. I wonder if we could talk for a minute about this idea. Like they do both go into government. They both go from we're going to find out the story behind the Epstein files to there is nothing here. A more paranoid person might be might find this suspect. Yes. Well, even people who are not predisposed to paranoia and conspiracy theories are finding the suspect. There's a couple possible explanations. And the answer is probably a few different things. One, we know that before they were in government, they were exaggerating for clicks. So that's like that's number one. If the if the truth is here, at one point they were way over here because their goal was to sell. clicks and make money off of their podcasts. Okay, cool. Then they went all the way to this side, which is, this is like nothing, nothing, nothing. There's no book. There's no perpetrators. There's no anything that is suspect because it seems as though now you're participating in a coverup because the truth, which is here is going to be bad for some people that, that you probably want to protect, but it has been kind of an interesting exercise and how, and you know, on the other side, It's sort of happening with Zoran Mamdani in New York City as well, where all of a sudden it's, hey, maybe a nine and a half percent increase to the tax. And now I'm going to be doing the clearing of the homeless encampments. At some point, the rhetoric becomes reality. And this pulls people towards the middle. I mean, that's a really good point. And it's true. I mean, it's something I wouldn't have like quite have jumped from. But I do think it's important to see the difference between government service and podcasting. And from campaigning to governing also. Right. For sure. It's interesting to me just to go back to the Bongino, Kash Patel thing, because so Bongino leaves the government now, is having cash on his podcast. He had that moment where he's like, I've seen things that have, you know, whatever, have made me humbled. And then, you know, it's too much work and I'm out. I wonder if we could talk for a minute about like the sort of nuts and bolts of Epstein. So we have Pam Bondi. She brought these conservative influencers into the White House. I actually think it was weirdly like it sort of made sense in that world, right, because they campaigned with those people. So they'd keep them going, brought them in, gave them phase one. Phase one was just Xeroxes of stuff everyone had already seen. And then she said, there's a client list on my desk. What do you think she was thinking there? Do you think she was thinking that they would just forget about? I mean, like, how do you get yourself all like, how do you get yourself into such paint yourself into such a corner? I think there were two calculations she was making. One was that this wasn't going to create the uproar that it has. Right. Even from the people on the right who are now realizing we believe there's a cover up here. So I think number one is she didn't expect the pressure to get to be what it was. And number two, I think she probably assumed because remember, that was long before the Epstein Transparency Act was passed and to what degree they're being held to it is a different question. But I think at that point she might have imagined we're going to bury all the serious stuff in paperwork, ongoing investigation, redactions, victims must be protected, you know, just like do the full treatment and the stuff wouldn't see the light of day. And then I think that that calculation started to change as people clearly made it obvious that they weren't going to forget about this. The Epstein Transparency Act went forward. I think it was fundamentally a miscalculation. The client list. What do you think she meant? You think she just made that up out of whole cloth? Or, for example, we know that Thomas Massey has this list of 250 people who have been named by the victims. We don't know exactly what that means, but it's not unfair to think, you know, there were these 10 or 8 to 10 co-conspirators. It's not unfair to think that some of those might have been, quote unquote, clients. No, it's not. And so what I don't think the client list means is Epstein's Rolodex, you know, the black book, because that's been out. And that includes all sorts of different people, men, women of all different ages. So I don't believe that that's the list. I don't really know that there is a file that is here's the list of people I have helped, whatever. Right. Who as as clients providing them with women or I don't even know. I don't know that there is a document. I think the totality of the files is the meat from which you would build a list. And with some of them, it would be communications that make it clear that there was a relationship here of providing whatever it is. I think it's the information from which you would make a list. I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't like a specific. Here's file 386 and it's the list. What do you think about this idea that News Channel 4 has that only they looked at the telebytes and the gigabytes? And I'm definitely getting this wrong, by the way. And they decided that only two percent of the files have been released. Do you think that's right or do you think that's a sort of mistake? I genuinely don't know. You know, at one point it was three million of six million have been released. At another point, it was 30,000 of the three million. I really don't know. I mean, I think there's two important points here. One, they still aren't being transparent and just releasing everything that we know. What percentage exactly? I'm not really sure. And two, what's been released already is not being treated as seriously as it should be by the DOJ, because just what's been made public should be enough for further investigations. It may be criminal prosecution. I don't know. But Bondi has said, like, this is the end of the road. There's no more prosecutions. There's no more anything. So that that we know what percentage we have right now. I'm not sure. Yeah. And also, I think that the files that are still redacted that are supposed to not be redacted, you know, there are these two rounds of redactions and there's this this original redaction that went to the DOJ already redacted and those were supposed to be unredacted. And every redaction was supposed to be justified, which that has not happened at all. So I wonder if you could talk with me for a minute about what you think about this moment. Like for nine months, the midterms, Donald Trump full on freak out largely, which is not so unusual for him. But like there is a Republican, there's a larger Republican freak out going on about the midterms, about the polling, about inflation. Like, what do you sort of I would love you to just sort of give me your thoughts on this moment and and what you think is happening and where you what you're sort of focused on. Well, I think if we start with the stakes, the stakes, I think for Trump are increasingly about legacy and for Republicans, they're increase increasingly about post Trump and post Trump means potentially the last two years of Trump's term, because if Republicans do lose the house, Trump is sort of like a giga lame duck where he will get nothing, nothing done. So the post Trump era in a sense might start in January. Trump is trying to secure, you know, additional land. He's trying to change the structure of the White House. This point of what Trump is doing is he wants to do irreversible or difficult to reverse stuff because he's now thinking about legacy. He knows that executive orders he signs can be very quickly reversed. And so he's thinking about what can I do that's permanent here? And that's the reason for a lot of his motivation. Republicans are increasingly contending with the promises on the economy. He clearly isn't delivering on voters are going to hold us accountable when it was Biden. Biden telling everybody the economy is awesome didn't work when people didn't feel it. And similarly, Trump telling people the economy is awesome when people don't feel it isn't going to work. So Republicans are in a position that I guess is sort of like technically difficult. I don't mean I feel bad for them or no, but it's sort of a decision they have to make is the wrath of abandoning Trump And to what degree do they abandon Trump in order to save themselves What the balance Does attracting Trump attention because you say hey Trump hasn delivered on this stuff vote for me anyway because I will deliver Is that going to turn Trump's ire on you in a way that could be damaging? So Republicans and Trump are kind of in two different positions, but the polling data is a disaster, certainly for the house. You know, I there's talk of the Senate being in play. I guess it might be in play, but it doesn't seem very likely that Democrats would take control of it. But losing the House would be bad enough for Republicans. Right. Because if you lose the House, Trump gets impeached. And even if he can't be removed, the trials begin in the House. And Trump does not like the trials. Now, that said, I don't I agree. Like, I'm always skeptical about the Senate because especially with this map, it's a heavy map. But if you were ever to have a an environment where you could do that, it would be now because you've seen such overperformance in those specials. And then you have Sherrod Brown in Ohio. You have, you know, like Texas. I'm old enough to remember Beto O'Rourke. So, you know, there's been a lot of, you know, just like I'm old enough to remember Sarah Gideon in Maine. So there's been a lot of money spent on some of those on trying to flip those Senate seats. But it is interesting. Like if you look at New Jersey and Virginia and those off year elections, it was a huge overperformance. Yeah. The numbers are crazy. And, you know, it is both true that those numbers represent a huge swing from November of 24 against Trump and also that special elections and off year elections don't necessarily map perfectly to a midterm. But I think if you're Republicans, you have to err on the side of this could be a disaster and we've got to dump huge amounts of money and resources in. Yeah, and I'm so struck by like Munich, the Munich Security Conference, because, you know, it just happened and there was really like J.D. Vance did it last year. Marco did it this year. There's like this sense that these two feel that they're the heir apparent to Trumpism. And it's great because J.D. Vance is absolutely the single least talented politician I've ever seen. I mean, do you just watch him and you're like, who is this for? No, it's remarkable because he is so unlikable. He lacks charisma to a degree that is almost difficult. Like you'd need an actor to say, I'm going to play the least charismatic person you could even dream up. And I think, you know, it's it's a little early to read into Trump not saying, of course, I would support J.D. because it just is very early. We don't know what J.D. is even going to want to do. But it is interesting that Trump keeps saying Marco is very talented. Marco and J.D., these are both really, really talented, talented guys. It doesn't seem that it's clear that Trump is ready to say J.D. is the future of MAGA. And it's not clear Trump will have that power, depending on how the next two years go. Well, and it's also like if you're a person who loves to keep power, the minute you endorse someone. I was thinking about like Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk immediately endorses J.D. Vance. And I was like, Charlie Kirk never would have done that, because as soon as you endorse, you are tied to that person. Whereas if you're playing them against each other, you have way more leverage. And the truth is, we're still miles from 2028. 100 percent. And you don't need to endorse anyone. It's interesting because Erica Kirk, if she had waited on that, number one, would have built interest in the idea of courting Turning Point USA for an endorsement and would have made it sort of more interesting in terms of the direction that Turning Point would go because Turning Point was so MAGA adjacent. It's whatever Trump says goes. And that would have also been an interesting scenario. So I think it was a political mistake from naivete that she just said, of course, we're working on J.D. Yeah. No, no, totally. And and, you know, she's not expected to know that stuff. I do want to talk. I think this is relevant. You know, there's this Democratic primary in the Senate in Texas. We talked about it. It's or it has gotten a lot of airtime because of the Colbert, Tellurico thing. But in the Republican side, it is bat shittery in the most incredible way. Can we just talk about it? Because it's like my favorite kind of candidates. We have Cornyn, who is relatively speaking the most normal. And then we have my man, Ken Paxton. Yeah, I think it's interesting that Trump isn't endorsing, but I think there's a very simple explanation as to why, which is Trump likes to run up the score of his endorsements by picking mostly obvious winners. And I just think that Trump is being told you should wait on this one. You don't want to end up on the wrong side of it. You should you should kind of take a breather. And he's praised both Paxton and Cornyn over the years. So I think it's Trump wanting to figure out how can I make sure that I get credit for this one? And there's Representative Wesley Hunt, too, of Texas. But it really is a two man race. As a Democrat, you want Paxton as the nominee. You do, unless you're convinced that it's going to be another one of these. Texas is in play. It's in play until it isn't. And then maybe Paxton is the next senator and he's far crazier than Cornyn. That's always like a strategy thing. But no, I think Paxton is far more cartoonish. And in a debate setting, assuming there will be general election debates with whoever is the Democratic nominee, Paxton's going to make their candidate look much worse for sure. Yeah, no, it's a good point. And like the road to Trump 2.0 is filled with gaming it out for the craziest candidate. And I certainly remember talking to people from Biden world who are like, Nikki Haley cannot be the nominee because she'll win. And like, we'd all be a lot better off if Nikki Haley were president right now. That's absolutely true. It turns out, I don't know that it mattered that much who the Republican nominee was going to be. It didn't seem like it was going to go particularly well for Democrats. Yeah. David, you're so great. Will you come back? I'm glad to come back anytime. Thank you so much for having me. Raul Torres is the Attorney General of New Mexico. Welcome to Fast Politics, Attorney General Torres. Molly, it's good to be with you again. You're a blue state, but in the middle of you got ice, you got it all happening there. Talk us through first this case you're working on with technology and meta. So this is the first state-led action against Meta, specifically highlighting the danger associated with Facebook and Instagram. I think a lot of people are increasingly aware of the psychological harm, the addictive nature of some of these products. But our case is a little bit different because not only do we talk about that, we also really focus in on the ways in which the platform actually permits and enables sexual predators. I started off my career in an internet crimes prosecutor nearly 20 years ago. And what we did was we had to go into the kind of the deepest, darkest reaches of the internet to find people who were trading child pornography, people who were soliciting people or children for sex. Now all of that behavior has migrated into the biggest platforms that most people download on their phones. And a lot of adults, frankly, and parents are unaware that the social media platforms are a place where their kids can be targeted. And so our lawsuit really focuses in on that and the way in which the company has known about it for years and lied about it and deceived consumers about it. Part of my passion project is the fact that government refuses to regulate any kind of technology. Basically, they become like cigarette companies and oil companies. So this is like low hanging fruit when it comes to regulation because it's easier to prove harm, right? Yeah, I mean, our consumer protection laws, they frankly haven't been updated and they need to be updated. That's one of the things that we'll be working on through the legislative process is really trying to adapt our consumer protection laws to deal with the new behavior that we're seeing on the part of a lot of these companies. Now, to a certain extent, to your point, this is not that dissimilar from past corporations who have created known, dangerous, and addictive products that they've specifically marketed to kids. That's exactly what Big Tobacco did. And it was the actions of the attorneys general, you know, 30 or 40 years ago that really led to wholesale changes in how those markets were regulated and those products. were sort of, you know, brought into line. But the reality is, is there's another important lesson here, specifically for Democrats, where we are locked out of power in Congress. We clearly have the Trump administration aligning itself with big tech, aligning itself with the billionaires like Zuckerberg and Bezos and others. And because of that, a lot of the instruments of enforcement and accountability are off the table at the federal level. It's time for us to rediscover this notion that the states can and do have enormous power when it comes to trying to protect our citizens. We need to update the law and be a lot more aggressive at pushing back against this kind of misconduct. Sexual predators, sexual exploitation of kids, the psychological harm to kids is an obvious thing for us to try and step in and stop. But there is a lot of other behavior that we have to be really mindful of. And I think empowering state level action and state level enforcement is a good way to balance out the needs and interests of the party who is currently struggling to find its footing at the national level. There's still a lot of work that we're trying to get done at the state level, and we hope we can get some people to pay more attention to that. So AI falls into this category to talk us through that. Well, so artificial intelligence obviously is the arms race is on. Right. And meta is a big player in that. And some of the same groups and individuals and companies who have mishandled and created dangerous products in the social media landscape. Well, they're now at the forefront of artificial intelligence. And the concern that I have is that we will be making progress to try and deal with and mitigate the harms that, you know, we've seen in the last 10 or 15 years without thinking, you know, five or 10 years down the road and empowering the same people like Zuckerberg to create the digital ecosystem that will enable AI systems to develop without necessary guardrails. And one of the things that came out yesterday is some very disturbing information about the failure rate that the company is seeing in its own AI chatbots. Nearly 70% of the time, a red team that was working on testing those products found that it failed to protect users from sexual exploitation. There is some debate right now about what version of the AI chatbots were pushed into the marketplace. But the bottom line is the same move fast and break things ethos that has been driving these guys for decades now is really what's underpinning AI. And Congress is sort of locked in place. The president has been very clear at trying to preempt state action. That's why he issued that executive order. What they're trying to do is to not only keep Congress in line, but keep the states in line at the same time. And there needs to be a lot more attention paid to the work that can be done at our level of government. When you go to New Mexico, you guys have humongous data centers already. Huge. They take up a ton of water. They take up a ton of electricity. They're completely unregulated. First of all, in New Mexico, do residents pay for data centers, water and electricity? And if so, can you stop it? And if not, how have you prevented it? Yeah, well, one of the things that we've been working on is an update to the Public Utility Act, because, again, a little bit like these consumer protection laws, they were built at a time where this new emerging technology was just not in anybody's worldview. The explosive growth in the demand for power generation, for the use of water, wasn't something that was top of mind for anybody when they were building and constructing these laws. So we need to update our Public Utility Act to make sure that residential users, small businesses, low-income people, working people don't subsidize big tech, right? We have seen that in places like Virginia. I know it was a big political part of the recent elections in New Jersey and in other places. New Mexico is just now bringing on some of these data centers online. It's a little bit different because we've got a microgrid bill that right now sort of empowers them to generate their own electricity and keep it on site. But there is now real concerns about whether or not that is in alignment with the climate mandates that we've got in the renewable portfolio that we've established in the state. So all of this is to say we need to have a lot more attention paid to the costs associated with this technology. I think people still want to keep the door open to responsible economic development and ethical business practices, but there have to be protections put in place. And at this point, there is, and I think people recognize this, there's not a lot of trust when people in these companies say, oh, believe us, we're not going to shift these costs onto other people. We're not going to make other people bear the burden of these things. No one is going to take that at face value. And we need to have laws in place and enforcement mechanisms in place that really make sure that the interests of everyday people are secured first and foremost. So New Mexico has been in the news. Yeah. I'm sorry to tell you. And part of it is you guys approved this comprehensive probe of Epstein's R.O. ranch. It was sold. It's in the state legislature now. I actually pretty impressed that the state legislature has passed this It doesn seem like anything I quite understand How does that work and what kind of power does the state have to do that So they've established this truth commission to get to the bottom of what was going on at Zorro Ranch. We'll be working with them and making sure that we're communicating about the different investigations and efforts that are underway. I will tell you that I come at this as a career prosecutor. And so I am faced with the possibility of effectively establishing and recreating an investigation into something that goes back two decades. Right. Which means a loss of of witness testimony, the destruction of physical evidence and all of those other things. So it's going to be very difficult, frankly, for our investigators and prosecutors to be able to put together something that may result in a case that can be presented. And leaving aside, obviously, Jeffrey Epstein, but anyone else who was involved in trafficking at the ranch. The thing that is going to be also very difficult is parsing real information in leads and real evidence from all the conspiracy theories and all of the other stuff that comes our way. So we are in preliminary talks with folks to see if we can get direct access to the ranch. Early indications are that the new owners of the ranch are willing to cooperate with law enforcement. That's a good thing. We'll do what we can. But this is, you know, I want to set expectations at the appropriate level, which is what we're able to find at this late date and who we're able to locate and get testimony from is going to be difficult. It is strange to me that there was a lot of like leads that were never followed. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you that I'm disappointed. Obviously, I wasn't in the position, so I can't really speculate as to why. I do know there was some communication, at least in 2019, between this office and the Southern District of New York, the U.S. Attorney's Office there, that effectively said, you know, pause what you're doing. The federal government's going to take the lead on this investigation. And so it's my understanding that back in 2019, at least, this agency responded to that request from the federal government, which said, you know, we're going to take the lead. Now, why more wasn't done in the 10 years before that, I frankly don't know. I don't know what kind of information they had or evidence that they had. At this point, what we're trying to do is follow every credible lead, speak to those survivors and witnesses who are still willing and able to speak to us about what transpired there and do a thorough investigation, but one that is obviously limited by the passage of time and the loss of evidence. And so the only other thing that I would flag for people is they are right to be outraged by this criminal misconduct. They are right to be shocked by the revelations in the Epstein files. I just I hope people recognize that we have human trafficking cases right now, right, that are being perpetrated by people that are not famous, that are not connected to the White House. And part of my obligation is to give those cases and those victims as much time and attention as we give to others. And so I just hope that this interest in stopping human trafficking and the sexual abuse of young girls and vulnerable people doesn't disappear when this political firestorm disappears. because we have agents and prosecutors that do this work all the time. And they could certainly use more resources and more support and more awareness in the public about this kind of behavior, because it certainly didn't stop with Jeffrey Epstein. It's an ongoing problem. It's an international problem. We really need to pay attention to it. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I come at this in a different way, which is that we come from a culture where people just don't really give a fuck about women and girls, period. paragraph. So if this is a case where for whatever reason people are interested, he probably will be the largest sex trafficker in American history. So just by sheer scale, you know, more than a thousand women. And you think about like so much of the victims we see in regular everyday life tend to be its family members. It's often a sort of different calculus. And so I almost feel like any attention, any sea change is important. So even that some people are coming to this from a partisan angle or they're coming to it because they like the QAnon like backstory, that if you get people at least rooting for these women, it's in itself a big change for the culture. No, it's and that's and that's my point is, is if people were motivated to focus on this for other reasons, I just hope that they stay engaged and focus on it. We had a case just last week in a small town in New Mexico where a father was trafficking his daughters, as some as young as four and five, for drugs, right? He was trafficking his girls to finance his drug habit. That happens a lot. That happens all over America. And it happens in ways that, frankly, are unseen by people in their communities. They often think about that as something that happens, right, on Jeffrey Epstein's island or at Zorro Ranch or in these places that are way off in parts of the world that they don't know anything about. And what I hope this case does is open their eyes to the fact that this is happening around them everywhere all the time. And frontline law enforcement could really use a lot more help and support in trying to educate people, but also getting ahead of these things. I wonder if we could talk about ICE because ICE was not in New Mexico. and then it was and now it is. And I hear that, like, there's a lot of engagement. Talk us through what ICE is doing in New Mexico and what it looks like and how disruptive it is. Well, look, I will say this. I'm a former federal prosecutor, so I have a sort of a different perspective on it. When I would start by saying that ICE has been operating here for a long, long time, right? They've been doing investigations and removals, deportation proceedings and enforcement for a very long time. Obviously, the brutal and inexcusable tactics that we've seen by the Trump administration all over the country and obviously in Minnesota has been absolutely horrific. Thankfully, we have been spared from that kind of surge in enforcement operations. But we're, you know, we're prepared as a blue state, as a community that, you know, resists a lot of what is happening from the Trump administration. We're prepared for the possibility that they come here and engage in those tactics here. And I'm obviously in a position to push back as, you know, my colleagues around the country have also Keith Ellison, Rob Bonta, Dan Rayfield in Oregon and others have had to push back. We'll do that. We'll stand up and try and protect our people the best we can, inform them of their rights, make sure people understand the limits of federal power. We have thankfully been spared the worst of it. And my hope is that the Trump administration itself has learned that most people do not support that kind of brutality and that kind of unconstitutional and lawless behavior on American streets. So hopefully what we've seen in Tom Homan's retreat or retrenchment in Minnesota marks the shift in the administration towards a sensible and targeted policy. But we have to wait and see. Do you think that there's any way to sort of like put any kind of guard rails at the state level? Like I've talked to Illinois people in the Illinois state ledge. Like, are there laws you can, you know, pass that give sort of like limit their immunity or make it so there's more civil protections? Yeah, I mean, my view is, for example, take supremacy clause immunity and some of the other qualified immunity doctrines that shield them both to a limited extent from certain types of lawsuits or make it more difficult to prosecute them for violations of state law. A lot of that is built into federal precedent, Supreme Court precedent and the like. And so states don't have as much direct authority there in terms of setting the standards of conduct and behavior or also limiting the extent to which they can claim immunity. You know, obviously, J.D. Vance is unfamiliar with criminal law and the basics of the Constitution when he comes out and says that, you know, there's absolute immunity. That's not true. That's never been true in this country. It is procedurally more complex to bring a case against a federal agent for violating state law, but it can be done. And certainly something that I would imagine will be looked at in terms of those places where they've had fatalities and they've had these really abusive tactics. I think it is Congress, frankly, is overdue in regulating a lot of this. Right. When and again, I think we've talked about this before on your show that when Joe Biden came in, there was this assumption and a very dangerous assumption that Donald Trump was a one off. It was an aberration and he wasn't going to come back. What happened is there were a lot of changes to federal law that could have happened, that should have happened. You know, getting rid of the Alien Enemies Act, changing the way in which the Insurrection Act operates, limiting the ability of the president to deploy these resources, conditioning federal funding on certain codes of conduct and behavior and training. And none of that was done because we just moved on. I hope whatever Democrat finds themselves in the Oval Office after the next presidential election doesn't make that mistake again and understands that there is real work that needs to be done at the federal level. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that a lot of that can be effectively done at the state level. Right. California tried to do some of that. It was struck down by a federal judge. And I think you're going to see more and more of that. Now, I'm not saying it's not right for states to try and push back where they can. One of the places I think states are going to have a very strong case is if there's any encroachment on their ability to manage elections. Right. That is built into the Constitution. And there is a lot of established case law for us to dictate how elections are conducted. But in terms of policing federal law enforcement agents with state laws, that's a very challenging and difficult thing to try and do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, General Torres. Molly, it's always great to talk to you. And now your moment of suffering. We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The third episode is out now from our series Project 2029, a reimagining where we examine what went wrong with Democrats' approach to policy and how we can correct it and deliver changes for the American people. The first episodes dove into campaign finance reform, antitrust, and regulation. Our newest episode is on how we solidify reproductive rights for women. We talk to the smartest names in the field, like Abortion Every Day's Jessica Valenti, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, UCLA's own Mary Ziegler, and the Guttmacher Institute's Kelly Baden. Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power. Democrats need to be, too. So please head over to YouTube and search Molly Jong Fast, Project 2029, or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel page and you'll find it there. Help us spread the word. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. 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