Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free, and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Tonight on All In. I want to thank President Clinton for being here today. Republicans interviewed the wrong president. President Trump is the one who wants this to go away, but it will not go away. Bill Clinton testifies under oath, while Donald Trump is the opposite of fully exonerated. I don't know anything about the Epstein files, you know. I've been fully exonerated. Tonight on the anniversary of the Bondi binders debacle in the driveway. Now, what's interesting is we're all waiting for bombshells, we're all waiting for juicy stuff, and that's not what's in this binder. That's not what's in this binder at all. The bombshells are coming from inside the White House. We know the Department of Justice has deleted things having to do with Donald Trump, has deleted things having to do with Howard Ludnick and people connected to the administration. Then Donald Trump melts down after an AI company refuses to give in. and its primary season in America. What to know about the biggest races ahead of Tuesday's election? But All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes, just about 36 miles north of where I'm sitting at, of all places, the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center. The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee spent six hours deposing former President Bill Clinton over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. This comes just one day after the committee deposed his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who by all accounts never even met Epstein or even corresponded with him. Both Clintons requested repeatedly to testify in public because they say they're committed to full transparency. Somewhat oddly, it was Republicans who refused and insisted on holding the depositions behind closed doors. From what we can tell, President Bill Clinton was at the very least friendly with Jeffrey Epstein. The men were photographed together on multiple occasions. He took multiple rides on Epstein's now infamous private jet, though he denies ever going to Epstein's island. Now, crucially, those rides on the jet were in the early 2000s, before Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor in 2008. Former President Clinton says he had absolutely no idea that Epstein was abusing women and girls at the time. In his opening statement, which was released to the public, he said, quote, I saw nothing and I did nothing wrong, Adding, quote, but even with 2020 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We were only here because Epstein hid it from everyone so well for so long. And by the time it came to light with this 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him. Now, of course, a lot of former Epstein associates say they never saw any signs of his abuse of women and girls. And I'm sure the House Republicans on the Oversight Committee were eager to press Clinton on that denial today when he appeared before them for six hours. Curiously, however, there is another president who was friends with Epstein also before his 2008 guilty plea, who spent quite a bit of time parting with him and knew him well enough to know he had a type. You might recall that back in 2002, Donald John Trump went on the record with New York Magazine, quote, I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. Again, no indication Trump knew Epstein was abusing underage girls, but they were clearly friends for a long time. Jeffrey Epstein once told someone he was his best friend for 15 years. And something that is at the very least worth exploring in a deposition with the House Oversight Committee, you'd think. Especially when paired with the birthday card that Trump hilariously denies writing to Epstein, which features Donald Trump's signature and a doodle of the body of a young woman inscribed with a message that says, among other things, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? Happy birthday. And may every day be another wonderful secret. Would be kind of interesting under oath to ask the person who wrote that card, you know, what it meant. Again, if this committee insists on deposing Hillary Clinton, again, who says she has no memory of ever meeting Epstein and Bill Clinton, who did take trips on the jet and appeared friendly with Epstein, shouldn't they want to hear from Donald Trump? Of course, the Republican Control Committee would never depose Donald Trump, certainly not about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. They basically admitted as much after today's deposition. Mr. Chairman, President Trump said today that he knew nothing about the Epstein files and he was exonerated. Do you agree that he is exonerated of this matter? From all the evidence I've seen, he's been exonerated for a long time. And would that preclude your committee if that's your position from your committee calling him? We'll discuss that as we move forward. Obviously, we've got more people to bring in and we'll see if any new evidence arises. But right now I haven't seen anything. And if anybody can just say this, the Epstein victims have exonerated President Trump. This is a trope that you guys are a rabbit hole. You guys are going down. But he has been exonerated over and over again by Epstein victims. By the way, that's just not true. And in fact, multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein came forward to say that that's not true. There's no collective vote they've taken to exonerate Donald Trump. And also that there's no evidence against him doesn't quite seem accurate at this point, because we have the missing pages from the files, including multiple FBI interviews with a woman who says that she was repeatedly raped and abused by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 13 or 14 years old and subsequently sexually abused by Trump when she was 13 or 14 years old. The FBI interviewed her about those allegations. One of them we have access to. You can read it online. The one about Jeffrey Epstein. It's unbelievably, unfathomably disturbing and upsetting. Now, as you just heard, Trump said today he is totally exonerated by the files. The DOJ says it didn't delete anything. So it doesn't sound like a subpoena is coming. But not everyone in Trump's orbit may be so lucky. Remember Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, who was Epstein's next-door neighbor for many years and was caught telling a very public, very emphatic, very embarrassing lie about the nature of his relationship with the child sex trafficker? Remember this one? As Lutnick first told it four months ago, he went to Epstein's house with his wife and just immediately decided he would never, ever, ever associate with him again. I say to him, massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage? And he says, every day. And then he gets weirdly close to me. And he says, and the right kind of massage. Now my wife is standing here. So she looks at me and I look at her and we say, I'm sorry, we have to go. And we left. and in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross. I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. Never in the room with him socially, for business or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn't going because he's gross. That's pretty definitive and pretty emphatic. But then not too long after that interview, the Epstein files released. It seems as though Secretary Lutnick may not have been entirely truthful. Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with, they were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island. That is true, for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife. You realize that, you know, this visit took place after he'd been convicted, right? I mean, you made a very big point of saying that you sensed that this was a bad person in 2005. And then, of course, in 2008, he was convicted of soliciting prostitution of a minor. And yet you went and had this trip and other interactions. Ah, yes. Of course, Lutnick did meet with him a few more times, and he did go to Epstein's private island after the guilty plea with his family, his wife, his kids, his multiple nannies. This is the person that was so disgusting, they would never talk to him again. But maybe, you know, lunch on the island with your fam. Lutnick says he did absolutely nothing wrong, nor did he see anything wrong, which, again, I mean, I kind of believe he's there with the whole family and the nannies. To his credit, he does not seem to be doing anything wrong in this picture from the Epstein files. Shows a man in a blue shirt and white shorts that appears to look a lot like Howard Lutnick. I think with his family, we don't know. Hanging out with Epstein on the island, which again, looks beautiful. One of the big draws of that island. Now the photo initially appeared to be missing from the files. It has now been somewhat oddly restored. DOJ claims it was initially flagged for, get this, nudity. But I think it's fair to say that Lutnik has some more questions to answer. Today, Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina called for Lutnik to be subpoenaed. Democrat Ro Khanna of California says he thinks there are enough votes to do so. Trump is standing by his man, however. They have a vote to subpoena Howard Lutnik. What is your reaction to that? Well, Howard would go in and do whatever he has to say. He's a very innocent guy. He's doing a good job. He's a very innocent guy. I guess that settles that. Trump says Lutnik will testify if subpoenaed. Still no word on a deposition of his own, though. Congressman James Walkinshaw, Democrat of Virginia, serves on the Oversight Committee. He questioned both Hillary and Bill Clinton in their depositions and he joins me now Congressman I wonder if you can give us a little color from inside the room today Well look we had two depositions over the course of the last two days And you know, Secretary Clinton's deposition, I found to be unserious, unproductive. President Clinton's deposition today was was serious and I think productive. There's no reason that Secretary Clinton should have been deposed. She had nothing to do with Epstein. President Clinton did, and he was open and answered questions fully for six hours today. The questions he answered, the responses he gave were, in my view, consistent with other things that are in the public record, including the files. We're going to go back and review the transcripts to ensure that that's the case, but I think it was a productive session today with President Clinton. That's interesting you hear you say that. I mean, I think the position that a lot of people have, You know, there's been this sort of strange thing where it's very evident the Trump administration is like, oh, what about Bill Clinton? I think most people say, yeah, sure, you should sit down and answer questions. And that sounds like that's what he did today. That's right. Absolutely. And look, you know, the question that I've had for everybody who had a significant relationship or relationship with Epstein is what, if anything, did you know about the crimes and when did you know it? And President Clinton answered tough questions about that today. Quite frankly, I think the questions from us Democrats were tougher than the questions from our Republican colleagues, but he answered them all openly and in great detail. And I think the question for us moving forward is now that we've deposed one former president or one president, when will we get to sit down and depose the current president, President Trump? I mean, before we get there, let's talk about Howard Lutnick, because that seems like more of an approximate possibility. Nancy Mace suggested she supports it. Ro Khanna, as I just said, suggested maybe their votes are there. Is your sense that there might be the votes on the committee for that? I think there will be. And look, what you showed a few minutes ago, I think, demonstrates the importance of getting folks under oath. You know, Howard Lutnick on that podcast, I guess it was, felt completely free to spin a complete and utter fabricated story related to his relationship with Epstein. When he was under oath in front of the Senate, he had to fess up and tell hopefully something approximating the truth. President Trump has lied. We know he has lied about his relationship, the extent of it with Epstein because he hasn't been under oath. He needs to get under oath and answer those questions. So does Howard Lutnick. We've got to get them under oath and answer all the questions. We've done that with both Clintons. Now we need to do that with Trump and folks surrounding him like Howard Lutnick. Nancy Mace in that tape we played earlier says that she he doesn't need to talk because he'd been exonerated by the victims, by the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. I have to say, I found that a pretty distasteful statement, but I'm curious your reaction to it. Yeah, so my guest for the State of the Union was Jess Michaels. One of the survivors was raped by Jeffrey Epstein, and she put out a very powerful statement this evening clearing that up. So for Congresswoman Mace, we can clear that up for you. The survivors have not exonerated President Trump. No one has exonerated President Trump. I think this is an important point. Nobody is exonerated yet. Even President Clinton, who I think has been consistent in his stories, but nobody's exonerated until all the files are released and all of the illegal redactions are unredacted and we pursue all of the information that exists. Nobody is exonerated. certainly not President Trump, who has been dishonest with the American people about his relationship with Epstein. Well, that brings me to this question of these missing files. I mean, I got to say, I went back and read, I reread what's called the 302. That's a kind of standard form the FBI does when they interview witnesses and they sort of write down the characterization, the kind of narrative of what that witness says. And I reread the 302 of the individual in question who had an allegation against Jeffrey Epstein. It's profoundly upsetting. Now, again, we have no independent verification or corroboration of that, the set of claims there against Jeffrey Epstein. We just have one person's account. She gave it to the FBI. It may be that in subsequent interviews, there are things that actually show that Donald Trump couldn't have possibly been in the place that she says he was or that things that don't match up, right? Like you can ferret it out. It just seems crazy to me that thing is still being hidden. Is there any progress on it being made public as the law requires? Well, we're going to continue to fight and push for that. And I think this is an important point, too. Look, the crimes that were committed here by Epstein, at least, and perhaps others, are so heinous that I would never say the cover up is worse than the crime. But the cover up is a crime here. And President Trump and others in the Trump administration are going to need to testify under oath about this cover up. There is no legal justification for those documents that you refer to to be redacted. There are illegal redactions throughout the files. There are three million files still being withheld. Whether the Trump administration likes it or not, or whether they think it might be embarrassing to President Trump to fully release the files, the law, the law that he signed, requires it. It must happen. And those who are preventing it from happening will have to testify to that under oath, and they will be held accountable for it. Congressman James Waukesha, thank you very much. Thank you. Coming up, one year after Trump's Epstein binder debacle. Remember that? The cover-up continues sporadically, not that effectively. Next. The U.S. military deployed on the streets of America. Whole communities targeted for removal. And when accountability finally came knocking, the burn order to cover it all up. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. All episodes available now. This has been the biggest week in the Epstein Files story so far, since essentially a year ago today when Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a bunch of right-wing influencers to the White House. Big pomp and circumstance and gave them the phase one of the Epstein Files and they all posed and they took their selfies and they did their videos and they all merged from the White House with their binders only to realize that they had been absolutely duped. The binders were filled with just stuff off the internet, like existing public materials, heavily redacted documents. As one conservative podcast host put it, the file drop turned into a nothing drop. And now here we are, a year later, with nearly 3 million files released. They have been caught red-handed, hiding files that are legally required to release under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Lisa Rubin, senior legal reporter for MSNOW, she's been all over the Epstein Files, working basically every waking hour of the day. She joins me now. Just to start with that, to take a step back, like it is crazy when you realize just how much they have attempted, how much effort has been put into for a year now, going back to that date, avoiding having this stuff be out in the public. Well, and there was an, I want to say like an interrupted purpose. I'm sorry, I'm going to take my thing off because I'm getting an echo. But there was a period of time where they were making a different decision, right? They had said for some period of time that they were going to review the files. This is after those binders were released. But before we ended up with the Epstein Files Transfrancy Act, it seemed as if they were going to make a legitimate effort to actually review files and produce them. And that occurred through March, April, and May of last year, May being the critical telling point. Because May was when, apparently, Attorney General Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Blanche walked into the White House and had a conversation with the president that went something like, sir, you're all over these. Exactly. And that's how we got to the memo in July, the three-page memo unsigned by anybody in the Department of Justice that said we are not releasing any more files because we do not see evidence that anybody else could be charged. And therefore, we do not believe it's in the interest of justice to release anything more. That's how we got to where we are now. And think about, I mean, think about the fact that just the files that have been released, right, there's still three million more they're hiding and there's heavily redactions. We have seen the former prince arrested in the UK. One of the most prominent Labour Party operatives is now facing possible charges in the UK. The head of the School of Visual Arts, the dean, had to resign. And Larry Summers, one of the most sort of biggest, you know, economists and Democratic, you know, policy advisors has to step step down for the Harvard board. I mean, it's kind of like crazy that, you know, this whole like, well, there's nothing to see here. It turns out there actually was a fair amount to see there. Absolutely. And it also turns out that there are multiple forms of accountability. And I want to like I want to pound the table about that, because everywhere I go, people in my life ask me, why hasn't anybody else been charged? Is anybody else going to get arrested? And my response to them is it's complicated. Right. There are only certain sex crimes that can be charged federally. Everything else, for the most part, is chargeable by the state. And here in New York in particular, with a couple of exceptions, rape in the first degree being one of them, all sex crimes in New York have statutes of limitation between five and ten years. And yet that's not the only form of accountability we have. Who is the person who's had the most accountability against the president with respect to his alleged sexual misconduct? That would be one E. Jean Carroll, who has two civil judgments for him, against him rather, having to do with his defamation of her when she came forward to say that he sexually assaulted her. Right. So we don't have to have people go to jail for there to be societal accountability. And I hope that our viewers will keep that in mind as we continue to follow this story. And in fact, I think this is a really important point. I had a conversation with Rebecca Tracer on my podcast. Why is this happening about this? It's like we're sort of reliving, relearning all the Me Too stuff. Right. One of the big things we learned Me Too is like it's real hard to bring sexual abuse and sexual assault cases. When you start out with what we know from how many women have been sexually abused or assaulted through polling and you get down to how many men are convicted from the crime, like there's an enormous gap between the two. Yes. And, you know, there's a reason for that. Part of that has to do with like the heavy standard and burden of proof There a whole bunch of other reasons But there another reason for that too And I so glad that you raised this because one of the other reasons is just how law enforcement responds to allegations of sexual assault and abuse One of the things you can see if you read these documents, particularly the ones going back to 2006, 2007, 2008, when people are being interviewed by Palm Beach Police and by prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, is that we've learned a whole lot as a society about how to talk to people who have been victims of abuse, particularly people who might be minor victims. This is a great opportunity for the FBI to do some navel gazing about how it interviews people and to do some work about trauma informed interviewing of assault victims. Maria Farmer, who's one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, has sued the FBI basically to get them to do exactly that, basically saying, I came to you in 1996 and nothing happened based on my allegations for another decade. And then it took another decade plus more for the Southern District of New York to reevaluate that. And we're still dealing with the fallout. What is it going to take for the Department of Justice and the FBI to look within themselves about how they respond to allegations of child sex abuse? I really hope that this promotes a widespread reexamination of how federal law enforcement responds to those allegations. The other reason this week has been so big is the story that you published earlier this week about the missing files. And again, we don't know what's in the files. And the allegations contained therein, which we have a kind of capsule summary and a point or two, are unverified. And Donald Trump says he's been totally exonerated. It's pretty crazy to me, though, that we now find ourselves in a situation in which there is an allegation of sexual abuse against the president in the files. There is. You know, for a long time, in the first few weeks, I think the sort of sense of it was there wasn't. We kind of know there is one now. We don't know if it's true or not. I certainly can't say. But there is one. And also it's being hidden. Yes. And I want to say that we also know that it still exists and is in the Department of Justice and or FBI's possession. How do we know that? Because The Guardian has now public reporting saying that they've obtained it and they've looked at it. That verifies for us not only that it exists, but an unnamed administration official is quoted in their story essentially saying, well, we didn't release these because they're duplicates. No, duplicates in legal parlance refers to like a text message or an email exchange of which there are multiple iterations because people go back and forth and back and forth. You don't produce the earliest iteration where you've got 25 messages later down the chain. That's a duplicate. An FBI 302, meaning an interview memo where somebody repeats some of the same things they've said at an earlier interview, that is not what lawyers consider a duplicate. That's a flimsy excuse. Produce the files. Lisa Rubin, thank you very much. Sorry. Still ahead. Donald Trump's AI temper tantrum. What in the world is he talking about? What does it mean for America and American national security? Next. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, follow along with the MSNOW newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people. The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at ms.now slash project 47. We are watching the biggest buildup of U.S. military power in the Middle East since 2003. And it's being overseen by Pete Hegseth, the least qualified, most reckless Secretary of Defense I think we've ever had, certainly in my lifetime. And as he beats the Iran war drums, Hegseth is also attempting to coerce an AI developer into letting the Pentagon use their technology without any restrictions. That company is Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI chatbot. And Anthropic raised concerns after reports that Claude was used by the Pentagon to plan the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolau Maduro in January. Hegseth responded by demanding that Anthropic agree to give the DoD full access to Claude for whatever it wants. Or else the DOD would force it to hand over that access and blacklist the company from current and future contracts. After a very tense meeting, Anthropic has refused. In a statement Thursday, the company said it cannot loosen its restrictions against Claude's use in two specific applications. Fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. They said you can use our tech for anything but automated killing machines and spying on people. Which, by the way, I think is probably too much anyway. But what did the Trump administration say today? Well, Hegseth called Anthropic a supply chain risk, declared anyone doing business with them would be cut off from working with the federal government at all. And then Trump announced on social media the federal government will phase out its use of Anthropic. Quote, the left wing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a disastrous mistake trying to strong arm the Department of War. We don't need it. We don't want it. We will not do business with them again. Adding, Anthropic better get their act together and be helpful during this phase-out period, or I will use the full power, capital F, capital P, of the presidency to make them comply with major civil and criminal consequences to follow. Ben Rhodes served as Deputy National Security Advisor, President Obama. He co-hosts Crooked Media's Pod Save the World, which you can start to watch here on this station when Crooked on MSNOW premieres tomorrow. Ben Rhodes joins me now. Well, Ben, you worked on the National Security Agency, and one of the things about the U.S. security state that I think is easy to not appreciate when you're outside of it, but is so clear when you're anywhere inside of it is how much interface there is between the Pentagon, the national security state and private corporations. I mean, this is part of how American defense works. What do you make of what happened today? Well, you're right. And that's evolving, Chris, because, you know, when I was there, right, it was still that the major defense contractors were, you know, Raytheon, Boeing, people that made tanks and planes. Increasingly, the technology companies are going to become the defense contractors of the future because AI is going to be integrated into many aspects of what the Pentagon does. And what we're seeing at the same time is this explosive and exponential growth in AI that is totally unregulated. There is no regulation from the United States government on the use of these technologies. I think, frankly, the United States government doesn't even know as well as an Anthropic or an open AI where these technologies are going. And so the only regulation is the terms of service that are written by the companies themselves. And in this case, you have basically a company saying, well, wait a second, we don't want our technology to be used for mass surveillance, or we want a human being to be in the chain of command if someone's going to be killed with an autonomous weapon. And you have the Pentagon saying, no, no, we get to decide how your technology is used, not you. And I think it's a seismic moment because it's getting at this question of, are we going to have completely unregulated AI with no guardrails used by our military? And by the way, potentially by other militaries around the world. So it's a very critical moment. Well, so here's what's so interesting about that. I mean, first of all, that, you know, we've had no regulation and now we have like the most heavy handed. Right. So Trump is saying like you, all the federal government has to cease using it. Pete Exeth has declared a supply chain risk, although they also are required to stay with deploying with the Pentagon for six months, which is a little like your supply chain risk that we have to use for six months. It's currently the position of the Trump administration that it is fine for NVIDIA to ship its best chips to China to deploy in the Chinese military, but you cannot use Claude and NVIDIA can't work with Claude. It's a ludicrously incoherent set of regulations. Not just that, Chris. Let's not forget that a 49% stake was bought in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto business by the UAE. And then $2 billion was kicked in through the Trump family coin by the UAE. And then lo and behold, shortly thereafter, Trump goes to the UAE and he lists all restrictions on advanced chips and data centers and computing power flowing out to the UAE, which had been a security concern for the U.S. because the UAE, well, first of all, it's supporting, you know, genocidal violence in Sudan, but also it can be a backdoor to China. So essentially, they are prioritizing the profits of these AI companies, particularly the ones that are friendly to Trump, like NVIDIA and several others. And then they're saying, we want to decide exclusively on our own how we in the Department of War, let's call it the Pentagon, are going to use these technologies. And so they're flooding the world with the technology and trying to insist that as that is happening, there is no effort to put any guardrails around how it might be used. And we're at a tipping point where AI the next two or three years, if not already, is going to reach levels of intelligence that we don't understand, frankly. The only people that understand this are the people at Anthropic. And let me tell you something, The fact that the people at Anthropic are worried about this enough to want to put that in their terms of service tells you everything about the scenarios they're concerned about, which is that if you have mass surveillance of the U.S. population with AI, I mean, look, when this came up in the Obama administration, one of the things I would always say to people is, oh, it's not like everybody can sift through all your emails. Well, AI can do that, right? And so if you combine the collection capabilities of the U.S. government with the ability of an AI agent or capacity to sift through that, you know, we're in a whole new world here that is kind of like what we've been warning about the Chinese Communist Party and their mass surveillance. That's all that Anthropoc is saying that they don't want. what's so crazy about this, though, to get back to the point that you just made where we started about, you know, one of the things that's been crazy, particularly about the Trump administration's perspective, is there's zero regulation to the AI companies. And someone once compared it to me of having a nuclear arms race, but with private companies, right? So at some level, I think, well, I want the government to regulate this. But now here I am, and the government's regulating. I'm like, no, no, not like this, right? Now we're ending up in a weird place where you're kind of rooting for the private company to essentially regulate the government conduct. But in the end, it does feel to me like there has to be some sort of like civilian regulatory oversight situation that is not what we have now. If we lived in any kind of normal times, Chris, you would have legislative efforts to regulate AI. You would have international negotiations to form norms, if not treaties about AI. The U.S. and China right now should be negotiating to make sure that AI is not in the nuclear command and control system, I think should be negotiating things around what Anthropic put forward, which is a human being should make the decision if the AI is going to take violent action. Like these are things that normally would be a subject for Congress and for the international community but neither of those two entities work anymore They totally dysfunctional Congress does nothing The international community is split apart And you right It this kind of reverse regulation where they saying no there must be no rules for how we use this technology. It's like the opposite of what you'd want the U.S. government to do. And again, it's fundamentally not in our self-interest, number one, because I don't want mass surveillance, but take autonomous killing, right? We want to set a standard and try to get other countries to abide by that standard. And you're sending a message now to China or whomever else. Like, we're in a new Wild West where you can build the killer robots. Yeah, it's why we're a party like the Chemical Weapons Treaty, right? It's like we don't want to use it. We don't want other people to use it. Like, the whole point is that you have to create something like that around this. And now we're advertising everyone. No, we don't want a human in the loop. It's really unnerving. Ben Rhodes, thanks so much. Thanks, Chris. Still to come, the 2026 midterm season officially kicks off on Tuesday. We're going to break down the most important races before voters head to the poll. That's next. On Tuesday night, we will bring you special coverage. The midterm election cycle kicks off with primaries in three states, Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas, where a surprising number of really high level competitive races are in front of us. One of the incumbents in the hot seat in that state is Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez of San Antonio. He's a Trump ally who is now facing calls to step down from multiple Republican House colleagues. The third-term congressman is also awaiting the results of an ethics investigation into an affair he reportedly had with a former staffer. Gonzalez has denied those allegations for months. But earlier this month, the San Antonio News Express obtained text messages in which Gonzalez pressures that staffer, Regina Santos-Avilas, into sending explicit photos and engages in sexually explicit conversation that Santos-Avilas herself describes as going too far. In another text to a co-worker, she appeared to confirm the affair with Gonzalez. Santos-Avilas and her husband separated after he learned of the affair, and last September she died in a horribly tragic and very public suicide. At least eight House Republicans, including three from Texas, have called on Gonzalez to resign or drop out of his race. Lauren Boebert, Tim Burchette, Brandon Gill, Ana Paulina Luna, Nancy Mace, Thomas Massey, Chip Roy, and Keith Self. Now, in the era of Donald Trump, it takes a lot to cross any kind of line in the Republican Party. But Gonzalez is also facing a stiff primary challenge from the right in the form of Brandon Herrera, a pro-gun YouTuber. were Herrera to win that primary in a seat that's like an R plus five, it would likely make that district pretty competitive for the Democrats. It's just one of at least three fasting races just in Texas that will be decided on this Tuesday night. Tori Gavito is based in Austin, Texas, serves as the president of Way to Win. Alencia Johnson is a Democratic strategist who serves as a senior advisor to Biden's 2020 campaign, and they join me now. Alencia, let me just start with you because there's such a sort of, you know, interesting rock and a hard place dilemma for Republicans on this. Trump was down today in Corpus Christi, and he gives Tony Gonzalez a shout out and congratulations. Little unclear for one. Take a listen. Congressman Tony Gonzalez is here. Tony, congratulations. Congratulations. At one level, like Tony Gonzalez, that's a competitive district. It's our district, but it's like a plus five. He now has a ton of that baggage. And the story of this really awful. His primary challenger is pretty hard right, I think, would set up the Democrat in that race for a good race. And they seem a little torn right now, Alencia, about what exactly the top of the Republican establishment wants to do here. Well, look, I mean, I think he gave him an early congratulations for actually losing the race himself, because I think what we're seeing in Texas and why we're talking about it here in D.C. and New York is because Democrats all over the country have upset Republicans ever since Trump's second term. Right. If we are thinking about what happened in 2025 up and down the East Coast with Virginia, New Jersey, New York, all of those different races. And I think and what I'm hearing from voters in Texas, they're really excited about an opportunity to flip some seats. And Republicans continue to just kind of serve on a platter, great material for Democrats to work with. And as they, as I always say, kind of cannibalize each other on the right, it gives the left and Democrats an opportunity to say, hey, let's continue to try to figure out what are the candidates that are going to work in some of these races. Now, the reality is, what is going to work in that district may not work in a different district in Texas. And what actually works in the Texas Senate race for Democrats may not actually be what's going to work in another state. But it is a pressure point for Democrats. And that's why there are so many eyes on it and to see what Texas Democrats are going to do on Tuesday. Well, the other big the other big really interesting Republican primary Tory is, of course, the Senate primary. And there's, you know, this is such an interesting grace because John Cornyn, who's the incumbent, Ken Paxton, who is challenging him from the kind of MAGA right. There's been like these desperate behind the scene efforts to not get Trump to endorse Paxton. I think the conventional wisdom among the folks I've talked to is that Paxton would be a better matchup for a potential flip for the Democrats. Do you see it that way? The last time there was a wave year in the state of Texas is 2018. And Beto O'Rourke came within two points of defeating a bad Republican in Ted Cruz. So, yeah, I do see it that way, that it really matters who's going to come out of the Republican primary. And the reality is they are painting themselves into a deep red corner with hate filled messages. Gobs of cash are being spent online on this. And it's only driving enthusiasm for the Democratic side. We've got the early vote numbers are out. There's a that's one hundred ninety percent up on the Democratic side in the primary such so far. They're outpacing Republican voters by about one hundred and fifty thousand votes. So these are conditions that were not in place in 2018 when Beto had that breakout moment. So this is definitely a year for Democrats who have had Texas on their mind for a while to double down. Let me let me stay with you here because your way to win is neutral in the primaries, my understanding. And you've got two different and interesting candidates. James Tallarico, state legislator, Jasmine Crockett, who is a member of Congress. Kamala Harris, I think today, endorsed Jasmine Crockett. Jasmine Crockett also in the headlines today for her campaign, kicking a reporter out of a rally who was trying to ask questions of supporters. She denied it and then audio came out. Seems like very clearly did that. That race, I think there's two ways to think about the race. The race has been pretty intense and at times gotten pretty nasty, as often is the case, I think, in Democratic primaries, like sometimes along lines of identity that can be tough and sort of toxic. The other way to think about it is contested primaries are good for motivating voters. I'm curious which of those you feel like has been the case in the dynamic here so far. Democratic primaries are good for motivating voters. I mean, we're seeing that. And Democrats are turning out. The raw vote on the D side is up about 150,000 votes over the R side. And I will say for anyone that's watching this primary and sees it getting nasty, it's mostly online. I mean, everybody knows now anyone running needs to have a campaign ready for the attention-based economy. And some of that work has gotten a little spun up online by creators. But I will tell you, I would rather energy than a sleeper because sleepers don't. Sleepers don't do what you need to do in Texas, which is draw out the base and persuade the middle. You've got to grab people's attentions on all parts of this ideological spectrum. Let me ask you this. You know, there's going to be there's going to be if Democrats were to take the Senate. Right. They're going to have to win some seats in really tough terrain. So like Ohio, Texas, Iowa. Those are the sort of the three, you know, that there's like North Carolina opportunity for a pickup, Maine opportunity for a pickup. And then you start moving in more difficult terrain. How much do you think that the primary candidate that emerges and the national brand is going to matter in those races to kind of pull off the improbable in those places? Look, I think the thread through for all of the races, regardless of which state it is, is going to be that the base wants to see a fighter. Again, what that fighter looks like, depending on the state, is going to be determined by those voters. And so I think that's a tension that the National Party is wrestling with. Again, it's been wrestling with it since the 2025 election. But the two things that are consistent is that they want a fighter who's going to stand up to Donald Trump and the corruption, as well as this conversation around affordability. The other piece that I will say is really important for any of these races, especially what we'll see on Tuesday, is who is the candidate that's going to be able to expand the electorate? I think that's why there's a lot of energy around both of these candidates, especially Jasmine Crockett, because folks believe that someone like her expands the coalition. Now, Tallarico is just as amazing because he can shut down some of the Republicans' conversations when they co-opt some of the religious framework. And so Democrats are going to have to figure out the tension between both of those. But like Torrey said, folks love both of these candidates, and it's only going to drive enthusiasm regardless of who wins. I mean, these are both really like toss up races. I mean, the polling sort of been all over the place. I'm really curious on Tuesday night what what we see toward a Gavito, Lencia Johnson. Thank you both. Appreciate it. Stay tuned, because tonight on the briefing, we'll hear from Soledad O'Brien on the MAGA media takeover. That's right here at 9 p.m. Eastern. We'll be right back. As we mentioned, this Tuesday is primary night in America, the first of what will be many during this midterm. So please join me and Rachel and the whole team for analysis throughout the night with the one and only Ali Velshi at the board breaking down real time results. That special coverage begins Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern. Market calendars now on MSNOW. That is All In for this week. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MSNOW. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.com slash All In With Chris. Start your day with the MSNOW daily newsletter. Sharp insights from voices you trust. Stand out moments from your favorite shows and fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. 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