In this episode, Glenn Blumberg sits down with Andrew Yang to discuss his new book, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, and why he s running for president in 2020 as a Democrat. They also discuss Yang s views on abortion, capitalism, and the future of our democracy.
00:07:23.620I mean, anyone listening to this or watching you is probably on the same page where we don't think things are exactly heading towards a scenario we'd like to pass to our kids, truly.
00:08:39.040I'm not that interested in holding elected office.
00:08:41.760I will confess that, too, that it's not like that if I could just finagle my way to some, you know, like like a appointed role or elected office, then, you know, like I don't care about most of those things.
00:08:58.260You know, but I think that's what Americans are looking for.
00:09:01.940Partly that was part of the charm of Donald Trump.
00:09:55.140And I would honestly rather talk to you or Elon Musk about solving our problems than any politician in Washington, because they don't they have no vision over the horizon.
00:10:07.380Well, they're not rewarded for having that vision, Glenn.
00:10:10.760One of the big themes of my book is that people are following their incentives.
00:10:15.980And unfortunately, we're at a time in American life where if everyone does the reasonable thing according to their incentives, we are sunk.
00:10:23.120Now, you'd imagine that our government leaders would have some rewards for trying to plan for the future and AI and compete against China and a bunch of other things.
00:10:32.420But it turns out their job security and their rewards have nothing to do with whether they actually are planning for the future in that way.
00:10:39.920They don't understand most of the issues because, as you say, many of them are in their 70s or even 80s.
00:10:45.480And they might not have even answered their own email, much less reckoned with what's happening in the world, right in the world of technology.
00:10:56.080It's not that I mean, you know, my my parents are old.
00:11:16.760A lot of them have been in office for 20 to 30 plus years.
00:11:20.980And I do think that one of the frustrations a lot of Americans feel is that our system is not rejuvenating itself or renewing itself.
00:11:28.340You know, like you have folks who have been around for a long time running the country into the ground and everyone's like, oh, this doesn't seem to be going well.
00:11:38.560But the system can't challenge itself that the system is going to just keep grinding on.
00:11:45.260It's one reason why I think many people did support Donald Trump is because he represented some something different change.
00:11:52.340I think Donald Trump and Barack Obama were elected in many ways for the same reason.
00:11:58.340They both campaigned basically on change.
00:12:26.800Well, my book starts with polarization, which is that right now, the extreme points of view on both sides are whipsawing our politics and our media.
00:12:39.780And there is a whole set of people who don't feel like they have a voice in our politics, by the way, because they don't.
00:12:47.200You know, like they feel that way because it's it's kind of accurate and we're realistically careening towards some version of Civil War 2.0 more quickly and and powerfully than we are leading to some kind of national renewal or coming together.
00:13:07.880I'd say that dysfunction is making it so that the other problems on the offing, like, for example, China's lapping us in AI or climate change changing our way of life.
00:13:21.520Like our government isn't able to have any kind of coherent strategy around technology or other issues because the polarization and dysfunction are so baked in.
00:13:34.220So what is the I mean, that's why I started with the bill of rights.
00:13:39.140I mean, that's that's where government they're handcuffed.
00:13:43.200And if they just actually did just follow those rules, a lot of our problems would go away.
00:13:49.960A lot of our problems would go away because they're not they are not defending them, following them.
00:13:59.340And a lot of our our discontent is because the government is actually fostering this us against them.
00:14:10.000And the media is following into that as well.
00:14:12.700If you just looked at the freedom of speech and somebody was saying, look, everyone has a right, you're not going to like it, you're not going to like it.
00:15:32.440And it started out as a northern anti-slavery party, like around the Civil War era.
00:15:39.140The two parties were ideologically closer together until the 1960s when the civil rights movement started to change things.
00:15:49.220But this duopoly we take for granted is very much a fabrication.
00:15:54.000Like they came up with it at some point later.
00:15:58.460And then when you talk about the politicization of our media, at this point, unfortunately, media organizations have made a choice and said, look, we're going to either cater to one side or the other because that's what the audience has now been trained to expect.
00:16:13.900So our founders would be shocked and horrified if they were to just sort of wake up and look around and be like, wait, what's going on?
00:16:34.120They wouldn't they would not believe that this is run by the Constitution that they wrote.
00:16:40.300There's there's no way they would believe that.
00:16:42.760Yeah, we layered in all sorts of stuff.
00:16:46.860A lot of the stuff is not serving us well at all.
00:16:50.600And I know that a lot of people that may be watching or listening to this have a libertarian.
00:16:56.540Impulses, if you are a libertarian in this country, you must feel completely left out and marginalized because, you know, even though that libertarians are clearly the closest thing we have to a third party in the U.S.
00:17:13.540It's very difficult to so much as get on the ballot in a lot of races.
00:17:17.560You get completely locked out in the media.
00:17:21.100Like people are just brainwashed to think that you can only have an R or a D in office in the vast majority of the country.
00:17:28.400And this is something I would love to see.
00:17:30.760But I, you know, the problem with speaking just of libertarians, because I consider myself a libertarian, but I'm not pure enough for other libertarians.
00:17:44.180Libertarianism should be about the freedom to be you, you know, and we're going to disagree on things.
00:17:50.620But that doesn't not make me a libertarian.
00:17:53.780That makes me somebody who thinks differently than you.
00:17:56.900And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because I really disagree with UBI, but I see exactly the same problems on the horizon that you do.
00:18:25.220Can you explain the problem of why we would need a UBI?
00:18:30.720I have a lot of friends who work in Silicon Valley, tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and 95 percent of them are convinced that artificial intelligence is going to wipe out millions of jobs in industries around the country.
00:18:47.980And an obvious one that most people will understand and have direct experience with, there are two million Americans who work in call centers right now, picking up the phone, customer service.
00:18:57.040And Google's AI now can do that job better, maybe right now, as we're having this conversation.
00:19:07.280And so if Google's AI ends up sweeping away hundreds of thousands of jobs, what do those families do?
00:19:15.660The scenario I was warning about on the campaign trail was imagine autonomous cars and trucks where when you call Uber, just an Uber shows up.
00:19:28.680And that is going to happen, that will happen.
00:19:32.700Yeah, that that will happen to the extent that there are impediments in that direction.
00:19:37.560And a lot of them are regulatory, you know, and one of the things that you're going to see, Glenn, is that certain industries, let's call them doctors, are going to lobby very actively saying, no, no, no.
00:19:49.920Like, you can't have a lot of surgery.
00:19:51.620Doctors were the ones who came out against anesthesia in the 1800s because they were not good.
00:19:59.960If you were based, if you did surgery, the best doctors were the fastest doctors.
00:20:07.600And so when anesthesia came, now you could finesse, well, those guys who were really fast were not necessarily the best.
00:20:14.700And they campaigned against anesthesia.
00:20:17.960That's the problem is, and that's where government always gets involved and says, well, now, wait a minute, we'll make the, no, let it change.
00:21:48.800They'll just look at it and be like, well, you know, these are just the facts.
00:21:52.960So even now, a doctor should be consulting with an AI and getting confidence levels or probability levels, being like, okay, there's an 85% chance that, you know, you should be thinking it's this.
00:22:05.780And the institutions right now are protecting doctors because the doctors are very, very powerful.
00:22:13.880I mean, this is something that I would like to see change.
00:22:18.300The other really unconscionable thing, Glenn, we have to know we've had a massive doctor shortage in this country for decades.
00:22:25.580You know, you go to rural areas and you have to drive two hours to get to a doctor, a specialist.
00:23:42.400So right now there's a higher appetite for a third party or moving on from the duopoly than there has been ever, essentially.
00:23:53.680Almost two-thirds of Americans say they want a choice aside from one of the two major parties.
00:24:02.600Independents are the most numerous group in terms of self-identification relative to Republicans or Democrats.
00:24:08.980This is particularly true, by the way, among young people.
00:24:11.020Young people, like, are allergic to the two major parties.
00:24:15.160I think the only difference between many young people and maybe people of my age, and there's fewer on my age, but there's still a lot.
00:24:26.780The only real difference was we've seen the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and everybody else try it over and over and over and over again, and they never get traction.
00:24:37.740And so, I mean, with youth comes a little more optimism.
00:24:40.720What is going to set this movement apart from any of those other movements that marveled at 6% of the vote?
00:24:56.280Is that if you run as a Republican or Democrat, then you have a lot of voters who are conditioned to vote for you.
00:25:06.220You have media organizations that will support you and elevate you, and then you have a donor network that will enable you to run and compete.
00:25:15.740If you try and run as a Libertarian or a Ford Party or anything else, then none of those things exist.
00:25:25.480The votes, like the votes, the media, and the money are not in place to support you.
00:25:31.060Also, by the way, the mechanics work against you because the two parties have made it very, very difficult even to get on the ballot as another party in a lot of districts.
00:25:42.000So in that environment, then it's extraordinarily difficult to try and compete.
00:25:50.260The plan is to actually go and change the mechanics at the state levels so that different points of view can emerge and you have a chance to compete in a more genuine way.
00:26:01.640It turns out because our founding fathers were not into political parties, nothing in the Constitution about it, all of the inventions and fabrications around the two parties are at the state level.
00:26:16.640The states have set it up so that you have certain rules, and so you can change it at the state without an act of Congress.
00:26:29.760Federal government should not be doing it.
00:26:32.140Yeah, I'm going to suggest in this case, this is our saving grace because the fact is, if you had to try and get something through the U.S. Congress, you know.
00:26:38.340The reason why I ask that is because there's a push to federalize all that, which would be a nightmare.
00:27:24.100You just get enough people in Alaska or Missouri or Massachusetts or wherever and just say, look, we'd like to change it so that anyone can run from any party in the election and may the best person win.
00:28:21.660If we get enough people, Americans, standing up and saying we're sick and tired of this mess, this dysfunction, we can flip this switch.
00:28:28.960And then if you flip the switch in, let's call it, I don't know, six, eight states around the country, then a state like New York, where I live, is going to be shamed.
00:28:37.220Where everyone's going to be like, wait a minute.
00:28:38.420Like, why is it that other states have it so that you could vote for anyone of any party?
00:28:43.480And here in New York, it's just like, you know, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.
00:28:50.580And I would love for us to get some real life examples of more states following Alaska's lead in 2022 so that then this wave can take place around the country and free us from the madness.
00:29:04.760So that's the project of the forward party is to enable true lowercase d democracy in states around the country as quickly as we can.
00:29:25.500The decision is made, you know, long before people actually vote.
00:29:31.240Not, I mean, they still have the right to vote for the individual, but I have a, I'm building a museum of American history and it includes all the good things and the bad things.
00:29:41.980And one of them is a ballot from Alabama.
00:29:45.780And the Democrats were trying to say, no, no, no, we're not racist.
00:29:51.200We, blacks can vote, except they can't vote in the primary.
00:29:55.940And so we have a ballot of the Alabama white primary.
00:29:59.900So an African-American could not vote in the primary, but hey, vote for any white person you want after that.
00:30:12.800Yeah, there's a famous quote from William Boss Tweed, who ran the New York political machine, where he said, you can do the electing as long as I get to do the nominating, which, by the way, is exactly what's happening in races around the country.
00:30:26.820It's like, oh, you can show up to vote after we've made it so that, frankly, you know, you don't have a meaningful choice.
00:30:32.540And a lot of Americans sense that that's what the game is.
00:33:56.160The Republicans are big government, but the Democrats are like Stalin-sized government, crazy-sized government.
00:34:06.040So I'm a big fan of trying to solve problems in the best way possible.
00:34:10.620It's one reason why I'm for something like universal basic income because I think that people are better situated to be able to make their own decisions.
00:34:18.340And, you know, like if you have economic resources in their hands.
00:34:22.060I do think there is an appropriate place for government on things that, frankly, you know, like no individual or even set of individuals can solve for.
00:34:30.100Something like climate change, which I, by the way, think is a very big real problem.
00:34:34.340But what I'd love to see is the government get out of our way for the things that it should be getting out of our way for and then do a better job on the things that it purports to be about.
00:34:46.680Because right now, the frustration that I think a lot of Americans feel is that you have the government not doing the things it's supposed to do well and then sticking its nose into things that it also isn't able to.
00:34:59.180Like the government's not good at a lot of things.
00:35:01.900And we have to try and focus on its core competencies.
00:35:06.240I guess I sound like a business guy when I talk like that, but that's pretty much what I am.
00:35:10.180Let's go to climate change for a second.
00:36:11.320I actually championed nuclear energy in the Democratic primary and got beaten up for it because I think that that is where the numbers lead you.
00:36:19.280And it's a very it's it's it's the safest, safest form of energy ever created by man.
00:36:27.460Yeah, it's a very safe, sustainable source of energy.
00:39:21.420And then if you say, well, you know, that bakery or that mixed martial arts dojo doesn't matter in the scheme of trying to drive our GDP to the moon,
00:39:30.480You know, it's like you have people doing things that they'd find worthwhile and exciting.
00:39:36.580And one example I'll use in real life, too, is that I spend some of my time in a college town.
00:39:44.680And college towns look a certain way in part because there's just some, you know,
00:39:48.460kids with money walking around who, like, want to get a beer on Friday night or whatnot, you know.
00:39:54.920So I think that if you had UBI, you would actually have more towns resemble college towns because people would just have some more money in their pockets.
00:40:04.980But let me take you to the opposite side.
00:40:08.720You then have the very top controlling AI, controlling all of this stuff.
00:40:16.880You know, you want to talk about the ability to influence people, get them to behave in any way you want.
00:40:26.660You put it up in those into the Silicon Valley tech leadership and what's right on the horizon, what they're already doing in China.
00:40:36.240You've got a very dangerous situation.
00:40:38.400How do you not have those who are getting the thousand dollars and doing their little thing in their little town and that gap gulf between that and those who can really control the strings?
00:40:54.180Oh, we need to tackle that problem, too, in a very, very serious way.
00:40:58.840And one of the arguments I make in my book that's related to what you're describing with Facebook's ability to control our democracy and subvert free will on some level is that they sell our data for $200 billion a year, every year.
00:41:17.560And we're becoming like rats in a maze.
00:41:42.960So this is a movement around data rights and data privacy and data autonomy that needs to get made yesterday,
00:41:51.920where these social media companies right now are almost like governments unto themselves.
00:41:59.120And they've been taking advantage of this massive, massive, frankly, like just failure on the part of our leaders to understand what the heck was going on.
00:42:12.740They looked up and said, hey, you know, and there was a period, too.
00:42:15.640I mean, people probably sense like I like technology.
00:43:17.540So once again, the hope comes at the state level where if you want Congress to pass data rights legislation, well, first, I will suggest that there are good examples going on in the EU where the EU has been passing various rules saying, look, tech companies access your data.
00:43:36.220They have to do X, Y and Z. There is now this thought that people are going to get paid for the use of their own data, which I would suggest would be very, very positive.
00:43:44.200So it is possible, the EU is showing that.
00:43:47.840Here in the U.S., Congress is, as you'd imagine, out to lunch.
00:43:51.980And so one state has passed data rights legislation and created a consumer data protection agency and enabled individuals to have organizations bargain for their data rights collectively.
00:44:08.480So you could have data unions, you could have, you know, like a representative come and say, OK, like if you're going to do this, then you have to pay our members this, this and that.
00:44:19.700They passed data rights law last year.
00:44:23.480And now they're putting the agency together.
00:44:26.700And so the argument that I would make to people listening to this is like, why do Californians have more data protection rights than you do?
00:44:33.920You know, like at the state level, they should just take if they want to just be lazy, which I have nothing against laziness.
00:44:40.480I'm an entrepreneur and like entrepreneurs often just frankly take ideas from someplace else.
00:44:45.020So, like, if you just take the California rule, Montana, and just be like, hey, why don't we just adopt this too, then, you know, you too can have more protection for your consumers.
00:45:01.060Like, is anyone in your state going to be unhappy that all of a sudden that they have more rights and protections to how their data gets used?
00:45:08.500So hopefully we can make it so that that California rule is the like the start of a wave.
00:45:16.640I was part of passing that California referendum.
00:45:20.600It was a ballot initiative, essentially.
00:45:23.300And then if enough states do it, then maybe Congress will get its act together.
00:45:26.380How do you turn that congressional wave when you have Congress and the administration and everybody else not even giving you a right to what you inject into your own bloodstream?
00:45:41.600I mean, we're losing the right not only of our mind and what we do, you know, in cyberspace.
00:45:50.160We're losing the right to actually say, no, you're not putting that into my body.
00:45:55.160Well, again, I don't think Congress is going to be the answer for a lot of these things.
00:46:01.380I feel like the progress can be made at the state level where the incentives are different.
00:46:07.300If enough Americans get together and say, look, like I want data protection.
00:46:14.040I want this sort of ability to make certain kinds of choices.
00:46:18.740I want to be able to choose a candidate from any party to support or just have an eye next to their name as an independent.
00:46:29.920And one of the frustrations I think a lot of people share is that our politics have really become nationalized in a particular way.
00:46:36.300Right. And I, as you can probably tell, like I'm I'm just trying to get stuff done.
00:46:42.040I'm very practical. And so if you sense that it's not going to happen in D.C., then you have to try and make it happen at the state level.
00:46:49.500Well, what California does is California's business. You don't like it. Move.
00:46:53.860I know that's horrible, but I shouldn't. Texas should not be able to influence California.
00:46:59.220A couple of problems with that on the state level, on the federal level is the change that the progressives made with the Senate.
00:47:07.240But on the on the other level is at some point, I've always wanted to live in California, but it's run by crazy people.
00:47:19.660And I know that that state is going to fail at some point if they stay on this same course.
00:47:26.480It's unsustainable. I chose not to live there.
00:47:30.880But when it fails, I'm going to be taxed to pay for it.
00:47:35.860And as far as I'm concerned, Californians, you voted for it.
00:47:40.760You wanted it. We should not have everybody else bail you out because of those bad decisions.
00:47:48.860Nobody learns anything. Do you agree with that?
00:47:53.040Because you can't you can't have the 10th Amendment right for the states if there's no penalty, if it doesn't work.
00:48:01.060Well, I think that it's fair to to say, look, another state can make a decision and it shouldn't necessarily, you know, like have any repercussions like across the country.
00:48:47.340Took me a year or a year and a half to build two studios up there.
00:48:51.600I took the Paramount lot in Texas and changed it to a digital space in a week in Texas.
00:49:01.340I didn't have to jump through all these kinds of hoops that they had me and jumping through in New York.
00:49:06.920I mean, it's impossible to do business in some of these states.
00:49:10.900Yeah, no, the red tape is out of control in certain parts of the country.
00:49:16.560The concern that I articulated in my podcast not that long ago was around some of like the rising theft and crime rates in parts of the Bay Area where, you know, like I walked into a Walgreens and it got robbed in front of me.
00:49:36.000And then a week later, Walgreens announced they were closing a number of Walgreens in the Bay Area.
00:49:43.540You know, like some of these things are are having very, very negative impacts.
00:49:51.960And then, you know, people are voting with their feet.
00:50:28.620Talk to me about the thing that really concerns me is the Fed.
00:50:37.080If you read any of their either papers, the Treasury and the Fed, they're very much into a Fed coin, which completely defeats the idea and the real love for something like Bitcoin.
00:51:09.780I want Bitcoin or others to to be able to work.
00:51:13.340But that's an awful lot of power for the government to let go.
00:51:19.340Do you see cryptocurrency actually surviving China, the United States and Europe coming up with their own coin to be able to control cash and control people?
00:51:33.860I'm a big proponent of cryptocurrencies generally, Bitcoin in particular.
00:51:41.780And you're right that the incentive among certain government actors is going to be to try and kill it.
00:51:49.200You know, there's been a clear tendency among certain Treasury officials to try and go in that direction.
00:51:55.760And I I tweeted not that long ago that, look, if you have a trillion dollar industry that could define the future and create thousands of jobs, try not to screw it up like that.
00:52:12.260I want the forward party to be an interface for the cryptocurrency community in D.C., because to your earlier point, a lot of folks in D.C. have no understanding or grasp at all on blockchain or the potential of this technology to help democracy function, help make it so that you don't have so much red tape.
00:52:39.280Imagine a world where you could vote for anyone you wanted from your smartphone and know that it was hacker proof and the rest of it.
00:52:45.960I mean, like these things are things that are conceivably possible if we invest in these technologies instead of seeing them as some kind of.
00:52:58.520So the forward party hopefully will end up trying to bring some kind of sensible integration of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into the financial system.
00:53:07.360I'm not someone who thinks that, you know, it's realistic to expect there to be no regulation or no taxation.
00:53:13.400But you have to try and make it so that they're sensible and don't kill innovation and jobs and an immense amount of value creation that could be on the table.
00:53:39.760Clean energy at this point is unstable and very expensive to make it stable.
00:53:47.260The idea that we are going to get rid of cars and be a green economy and shut down our coal plants and our nuclear plants by 2030 is insane.
00:54:04.400Shouldn't we be looking for the things that actually work and then help foster those things without getting into the free market?
00:54:16.040Just get those prices to get them to work, get the prices to go down, which is all through innovation and get the government out of it.
00:54:26.580I don't see how we're going to have electric cars if we don't have coal plants in 2030.
00:54:35.160We should be trying to build on what works.
00:54:37.400I did have the pleasure of sitting down with Elon Musk to talk about what the heck we should be doing in this space.
00:54:44.000And he's a huge believer in solar, which makes sense.
00:54:49.240And he explained the potential of solar energy to me.
00:54:54.300And he kind of painted a picture more effectively.
00:54:59.120But I'm with you that you should be making decisions based upon an effective transition and not for political purposes.
00:55:08.240You can tell that there are some people who look at it and just say certain form of energy bad, certain form of energy good.
00:55:14.420Let's get rid of the bad, especially when in many cases there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who are doing jobs in a particular area.
00:55:21.300And anyone who thinks that we're going to magically be able to transition tens of thousands of people to some other role,
00:55:27.020like hasn't actually spent any time in a freaking like, you know, coal town, manufacturing town, et cetera.
00:55:36.240It's like it's like thinking, spending time thinking.
00:56:19.740And when you said before where you agreed with me on the diagnosis of the problem and then you weren't, you know, you were negative on UBI as a solution and you're still trying to work out what the solution is.
00:56:31.700I've had versions of that conversation with hundreds, even thousands of people over the last number of years where they're like, OK, I get it.
00:56:38.180I get that AI is going to start replacing not just call center workers or Uber drivers, but eventually bookkeepers, insurance agents, actuaries, you know, like doctors.
00:56:52.880It'll keep on just eating through things.
00:56:59.460And I'm saying we should begin the wholesale transition for society.
00:57:04.920And also, by the way, be realistic about how lousy our government is trying to address these problems at scale and let people solve their own problems and say, look, we're going to take some of the incredible gains from AI and the rest of it and just distribute it to everyone in the form of like a thousand dollar dividend a month.
00:57:23.980Now, there are people like you who look at it and say, OK, like I don't like that particular solution.
00:58:16.160And that to me would be one way we can manage what's going to be a hellacious transition period.
00:58:21.340I mean, this is one of the things I was arguing about in my last book is like, look, if you did everything right, this is going to be a very, very difficult time.
00:58:29.340But we are doing very little right, which is going to take a very difficult time and make it potentially catastrophic.
00:58:36.000So when you see what is, you know, I, you know, who Ray Kurzweil is, do you know him?
00:58:58.000So I, I said to him at one point, you are the most fascinating and exhilarating mind I have been with at the same time, the spookiest damn mind I've been with because his, his logic is we just won't do that.
00:59:17.300When you bring up anything that's could be a bad thing.
01:00:18.120And then you, then you wind up in race singularity pretty quickly.
01:00:21.500Um, but, uh, I'm less concerned about that, that version of like the super intelligence, uh, than I am of, uh, the steps on the path there, where I think that you can have something fall short of real, uh, general intelligence.
01:00:41.820Um, that is still powerful enough to upend the labor market and the way of life for millions of people.
01:00:48.400Uh, so that, that, that's where a lot of my attention is.
01:01:27.260Uh, so I agree with you and I also agree with your critique of Ray's general optimism that there's, uh, there's a strain of techno utopianism that assumes, uh, the absence of ill intent that I, I find unrealistic.
01:01:49.120Expecting men to be saints is a really bad idea.
01:01:52.380Uh, so you and I are aligned when it turns out, uh, on this set of issues where I look at and be like, guys, uh, this is going to be a fiasco, you know, like, uh, if we do get to that level of, of AI, it's going to probably be used for, um, something we're not excited about.
01:02:16.320Uh, and the steps on the way there are, are each also going to be.
01:02:20.840I'll tell you one thing too, Glenn, like I ran for president, um, and my concern level has gone up in the last two and a half years in part because of my interactions with the, with the news media where it turns out.
01:02:34.740So I would talk regularly about the fact that, look, we've lost four manufacturing, 4 million manufacturing jobs over the last number of years in, by the way, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, uh, Iowa, the swing states that, um, uh, the Democrats need to win.
01:02:50.060And then used to win Missouri, like, you know, used to be a swing state.
01:02:53.560Um, uh, and, uh, a lot of those 4 million manufacturing jobs were lost due to automation.
01:03:00.560Um, and I would have conversations with various media outlets about this.
01:03:04.720And it was like, I was speaking out of language.