00:01:52.800I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports, and giving you the real story behind the headlines.
00:02:00.840And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear.
00:02:08.600Listen to Sports Slice on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:02:17.880here's something that should not be as complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed and
00:02:24.440here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is getting a new one put up in its place
00:02:29.040i'm akilah hughes and rebel spirit season two is about both of those things as i was watching these
00:02:34.680statues come down i was thinking about what it meant that i grew up in a majority black city
00:02:38.140in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people listen to rebel
00:02:42.660Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:50.220So, Ashley, it's so interesting, just a lot of clips out there about you, a lot of energy,
00:02:55.260a lot of, you know, a lot of conversations. And it's, you know, I think a lot of, you know,
00:03:02.780feigning praise, not criticism necessarily, but you're playing to an audience, right? You're
00:03:08.720sort of emerging out of this MAGA sort of, you know, influence space, this surround sound that
00:03:17.380a lot of us are on the receiving end of, including myself. So I have some intimate appreciation
00:03:22.980for what they produce, but I have little knowledge for how they produce it. And so I'm fascinated
00:03:30.620by this opportunity. I'm very grateful for you to be willing to share just your insights without,
00:03:36.000And I'm not looking to tear anybody down, but just to understand the ecosystem that you came out of and why you're coming out of that ecosystem and what all of this represents to you.
00:03:49.000So maybe the best way to start is really for you to introduce yourself in the context of this journey to our audience.
00:03:55.660I have to preface this, too, by saying apologies because I am almost positive I have probably cyberbullied you in my MAGA days.
00:04:03.100Because it's like a prerequisite to being in MAGA, because you're a very popular figure for us to cyber bully. But I got my start very young as soon as I when I started college, right before I started college, there was a Trump rally on my campus. So I was immediately going to that and seeing this energy around it. And then I joined college, I had a bit more of a cerebral side because I was homeschooled in high school.
00:04:27.460So I enjoyed the more political aspects of the Young Americans for Liberty groups that were built on free speech and personal liberties, and then very quickly got involved in the turning point apparatus and tweeting into the ether about these conservatisms, these MAGA-isms, and it just snowballed from there.
00:04:46.500all of a sudden I'm invited to as a special guest to my first turning point event I have Charlie
00:04:51.460Kirk saying you know you're doing a good job and I'm getting praise from Don Jr and as like a very
00:04:57.660broken insecure girl who was looking for some sort of belonging who didn't have that in high school
00:05:04.180that was really attractive to me in a harmful way and then I just I got caught up I made a lot of
00:05:13.000very wrong decisions about who I surrounded myself with and the places that I got validation from,
00:05:19.920which ended up being MAGA and this influencer culture. And very shortly afterwards, you're in
00:05:26.000this environment in which they tell you, you don't need school, you don't need college,
00:05:30.460only listen to, you know, Truth Social and Twitter and all of this. And you're sequestered
00:05:37.300from information, you're told not to trust your professors or these points of authority.
00:05:41.500And I dropped out and just made this my entire identity. So then it's when you leave, I often say it's not just changing your political beliefs and saying, oh, I'm not as fiscally conservative now or I'm more socially liberal. You're blowing up your entire life because your social community, your finances, everything is structured in this way. So it's indistinguishable from a cult in that aspect.
00:06:08.100Yeah, I mean, listening to you describe it, I mean, you, by definition, start thinking in those terms.
00:06:32.000Were you, you know, was your politics sort of leaning in that direction?
00:06:35.700Were you frustrated with the status quo? How did Trump ignite in you, or what was it that ignited?
00:06:45.600It was more of this contrarian take. I always liked being a contrarian, and all of the heads
00:06:50.540of the philosophy department, and I went for philosophy at that time, had signed a petition
00:06:55.020to ban Trump from campus. And in my head, I'm like, oh, that's antithetical to everything
00:06:59.660philosophy is about. But in retrospect, they were right, because this rhetoric was going down a very
00:07:05.300dangerous and violent path. But in my head at that time as this, you know, I hadn't quite turned 18
00:07:12.340yet. I went to this rally at 17 years old and I turned 18 right before I started. And it was,
00:07:18.600you know, to me, I'm like, wow, there's all this energy and people like me and this is fun. And I
00:07:24.140didn't have any of that in high school. I didn't go to prom. I didn't do any of that. So it was
00:07:29.440this validation very quickly that I had never really experienced before. And were you, I'm just
00:07:36.180curious, were your parents political? Were you political necessarily, or just, you just had that
00:07:41.180little contrarian beat? So we moved from South Florida, which was a lot more diverse and all my
00:07:46.820families from New York, from Queens and other areas that are more diverse. But throughout my
00:07:51.960life, we also moved to very rural areas such as Alabama and Montana. And so while I wasn't
00:07:58.980necessarily getting very conservative viewpoints at home, I was surrounded by it. Like in Montana,
00:08:05.060the most unique sentence ever, my only friend there was a female Mennonite lumberjack. And so
00:08:10.900it's like, it's a town of 250 people. And so I wasn't really exposed to varying viewpoints outside
00:08:17.360of the internet. Right. And so you have this moment, they're trying to silence Trump. You're
00:08:25.640like, this is wrong. And by the way, you were quick to say, maybe they were right, but maybe
00:08:33.120they weren't right. And that's a deeper conversation we can have about this notion of free speech and
00:08:37.580sort of the origin story of a little bit of what sort of has created this movement out of anger and
00:08:43.180frustration of quote-unquote being canceled and not having necessarily those platforms that others
00:08:47.800frankly oftentimes take for granted. But I'm curious, you know, you talk about going, feeling
00:08:54.080some identity, some energy. You're homeschooled. Now all of a sudden there's a community that's
00:09:00.420trying to pull you in. Is it just pull you in on the basis of just the joy of being the contrarian,
00:09:06.600the joy of expressing yourself fully and the sort of diversity of opinion? What was the thing that
00:09:14.520sort of attracted? Sort of. It's also just having friends, you know, because when you're in such an
00:09:20.360isolated community, like in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and then you're here and you're being
00:09:24.840invited as a special guest to Turning Point and you feel like you're all of a sudden not this,
00:09:29.960you know, little small girl, you're important and people care what you have to say. That's really
00:09:35.500validating in a harmful way. And was it so you talk about turning point? I mean, that was a
00:09:41.260turning point for you. I mean, was it that organization? What you know, that was sort of
00:09:46.440the beginning of the organization, right? When Charlie? Yes, it was very early on. And it was
00:09:51.600very campus oriented. And again, simultaneously part of it's it coincides with the content,
00:09:58.160right? Because you're also posting online. And there's these stories going up on Fox News of
00:10:03.280professors who say something that's a little too woke. And so you're going to school, but you're
00:10:08.300viewing it through this content brain of, oh, am I going to get one? Oh, I can't trust them.
00:10:13.160And so it really bastardizes your experience in academia because you're viewing it through this
00:10:19.560like Charlie Kirk turning point content brain that is really harmful. And when you were with
00:10:26.320Charlie, I mean, did you, what, what, you know, it's interesting. We started this podcast with
00:10:31.480with charlie and you know obviously tragic what happened to him um and i'm interested and look
00:10:37.160forward to your thoughts about where the movement is today uh but what what aspects of that movement
00:10:42.380what was it about charlie in the beginning of that movement uh that that you really may not
00:10:48.180have identified with necessarily on the substance but just the style that there was something here
00:10:52.640that he was doing that no one else was necessarily doing what was you know success leaves clues and
00:10:57.120he was successful at organizing the campuses. I'm curious, what examples, what cues did you see
00:11:02.680or clues early on of this sort of genesis of success? He articulated himself well, but also
00:11:09.720when you're capitalism brained, you view any mode of success or ambition as a moral good. So ambition
00:11:17.960and success was equated with morality in my head. So I'm like, wow, he's so young and successful,
00:11:23.460And that could be me, too. All I need to do is drop out of school and keep fighting the good fight.
00:11:29.120And so I think that's but Charlie at times was also encouraging, you know, at times when I had tough times in Republican politics.
00:11:38.080And so he had the softer side that was captivating to people who were going through a lot.
00:11:43.900And I don't think he was quite aware of the way in which his organization was and has been used by people much bigger with a lot more money than him to utilize it for their own agenda and mobilize this sort of rhetoric across America.
00:11:59.440So, Ashley, how old were you at the time?
00:12:01.220I mean, you're young 20s at this time or 20s?
00:12:34.560but i dated a man who was 10 years my senior and i met him at the young women's leadership
00:12:40.540conference and within a month of meeting him he's like moved to tampa with me you can just do maga
00:12:46.100influencing he was this big influencer guy dc drano um and he's like here's how you do it here's
00:12:52.840the sign you hold up outside of the ice detention center this will go viral um here's the shirts you
00:12:58.640can sell, the flags you can sell. And that's when I started learning how to monetize activism
00:13:04.720and learn that it's an industry. It's interesting. And you made the point earlier and you're
00:13:11.500reinforcing it now. I mean, the connection between the movement and the medium, which is the media
00:13:17.000and the clips and the virality and the ability to quote unquote influence substantively
00:13:21.600and break through. And so that's interesting. So he sort of, he designed in your mind.
00:13:27.140Yeah, he molded me. Yeah, he molded. And so you see her out there and you're feeling a sense of community, connection, relationships.
00:13:36.860But also fear, because what that boyfriend of mine had drove into my head was there were a few times I found myself in controversy for, you know, stepping out of line, for having a more reasonable take on reproductive rights or immigration.
00:13:51.380and he drove into my head he said never cross the base never cross the base um and that's very much
00:13:57.540prolific throughout MAGA you're not supposed to do that so so while it was these good feelings
00:14:02.160it was also very quickly a feeling of fear of stepping out of line and staying within the
00:14:07.820talking points and you know you're going to get cancelled now you've dropped out of school you'll
00:14:11.940lose your income you're moving to a place far far away from home and so so the fear aspect took took
00:14:19.020a fact very early on as well. It's interesting. And I want to unpack that as well. Particularly,
00:14:25.780you know, what is the base with its basis, whatever Trump says it is, because he seems to
00:14:29.520shape shift often on issues. And with it, the base seems to move along with him. I guess it's
00:14:34.900just waiting for that cue. But I'm curious, just back to your first paycheck, do you remember
00:14:39.540where you actually, you know, someone said, here's a thousand bucks or, you know, how did it,
00:14:44.480What was the formal relationship and role to someone that can write a check, the boss?
00:14:53.060I believe it was just an Instagram message or Twitter DM that was like, I'll pay you
00:15:40.320How much of it was substance versus style?
00:15:43.200meaning were these true believers that you were surrounded by or performers that were just trying
00:15:51.000to sort of you know own the libs own that governor in california and just don't you know don't
00:15:56.020california my montana or my texas i mean what you know what was it about what we're against or but
00:16:01.660what we're for give me a sense of you know who were the early influences for you was it a sense
00:16:07.080of deep sincerity conviction for me say hello to your new favorite drinks introducing new
00:16:13.820mccafe refreshers icy cool undeniably refreshing and available in three flavors strawberry
00:16:20.500watermelon mango pineapple and blackberry passion fruit only at mcdonald's last night a blown call
00:16:26.860changed the game this morning the internet lost its mind highlights are trending opinions are
00:16:31.600flying and nobody's telling you exactly what happened that's where sports slice comes in
00:16:36.040I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines.
00:16:42.520We go straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear, the laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight reel.
00:16:53.800From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered.
00:17:02.320Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them.
00:17:07.120Listen to Sports Slice on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:12.140And for more, follow TimboSliceLife12 and the TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.0.77
00:17:16.980Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect.
00:17:20.760We were God's chosen kingdom on earth.
00:18:57.660And their views have oscillated so much within what's acceptable within the base that they're just deeply broken and insecure people who lack any real sense of identity.
00:19:09.400What was fascinating is when you go to events or you go to the bar with these people afterwards, they can't talk about anything else.
00:19:18.800Like it's they're only talking about, do you see what Joe Biden did?
00:19:22.840They're shells of human beings who are wearing this MAGA costume, and it's become their entire identity. Nobody's really talking about real things. And so I do believe that they're all performers. I believe MAGA has the deepest issues with identity that I've ever had the displeasure of interacting with.
00:19:44.940And again, identity on the basis of just who, I mean, as individuals.
00:19:50.380Who that, yeah, sort of, and they're in the process of becoming and discovering who they are, but they put this mask on.
00:19:56.600They've never had the opportunity to become because they've been plucked and told what to be.
00:20:01.540And so they don't ever have that opportunity of becoming.
00:20:05.000And now with this age of the internet, it's very hard to have that rebirth, to have that reinvention, because you have this permanent digital footprint of you being a racist online. So it's very hard to have a rebirth after that. So they're kind of stuck in that as well.
00:20:23.200So with your own experience and a little bit of with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, you're starting to, you know, ex-boyfriend and, you know, learning how to shitpost, as we say, and, you know, putting on, you know, literally physically, you know, showing up with signs and T-shirts, et cetera.
00:20:44.000Is it a loose confederation or has it evolved or devolved?
00:20:49.420Is it, you know, is it become radically different than it was three, four years ago, Trump 1.0 versus Trump 2.0? Are there sort of central key figures that are organizing and sharing down a vision? Or is it, again, a bottom up, but within the dear leader's frame? How would you describe the confederation or lack thereof, the brand MAGA?
00:21:14.380So a lot of people will say, you know, they were duped by Trump and it's really evolved from what it was years ago. But what I would say to that is it did evolve into the form that people warned us it was going to evolve into. Yes, it has changed, but it changed into what I would say now is like this final form of this authoritarianism that we were warned that it was going to evolve into.
00:21:37.580It was a natural evolution of the things that were being prepped.
00:21:42.020Originally, yeah, it was more open tent.0.83
00:21:44.400It was a little more, OK, we don't hate trans and gay people.0.97
00:21:48.940OK, we love our token black conservatives.0.72
00:21:51.820And then it really, once they gained more of a foothold of power, you saw that section off.0.99
00:22:06.940For power. And that power lies where? Is it Trump himself? Is it Junior? Is it where? I mean, who, you know, we can, and we'll jump into some names and James, more of the contemporary names in the political operation. But early on, where did you see the power reside, you know, four, five, six years ago?
00:22:26.820Four, five, six years ago, the power was really with Trump. And I do believe that Trump as a figure was co-opted by the Stephen Millers of the world and the people who are really financially invested and ideologically invested in their own vision for America.
00:22:42.040And now we're seeing it being co-opted further by the tech oligarchs and all of this, that it's the power is really consolidating among this. I mean, you have Jeff Bezos, who won't say a bad thing about Trump now.
00:22:53.280So they're really aligning with where they see this power.
00:22:57.200Trump was years ago just a figure that they realized we can co-op this guy for our own agenda.
00:23:05.740And early on, who were those early figures and what was the agenda when you first started?
00:23:12.400I mean, obviously you talk about, I mean, there's the issues of reproductive rights.
00:23:16.760You talk about some of those, I think there's sort of contrarian issues and just, you know, anti, obviously the elites and, you know, all those, the Biden and Harris and Obama types, myself, I imagine California included.
00:23:32.220But what was, I mean, what was the uniting construct in the beginning of your experience with MAGA?
00:23:38.100The uniting construct was mostly these MAGA-isms of free speech and holding the elites accountable.
00:23:44.540But there was also, particularly within the right wing online sphere, there was a lot of gendered issues. It was very anti-feminism. It was the birthplace and the foundations of the Andrew Tates of the world. And what we're seeing now that has really evolved, very anti-feminism, very anti-Me Too. Like, why are you just hating on the white guy type of stuff?
00:24:05.200And they would utilize people like me. And I remember there was a very large MAGA figure when I first started blowing up online who came to me and said, you should speak on this issue. I think it was Alita Battle Angel or whatever. They were mad that Brie Larson had said something against white men, straight white men.
00:24:23.580and so very early on I was co-opted to speak on these issues regarding men because it was better
00:24:30.140for it to come from a woman like me um and so that was very pertinent early on was and it's
00:24:38.500interesting you say co-opted meaning at the time you didn't feel co-opted though right no I thought
00:24:43.880they were coming to me because I was so such a special snowflake and so smart and I was like
00:24:49.840i've been chosen um and you know i i call it the pick me isms like i just so wanted to be picked
00:24:56.420and heard and and so in that moment you don't feel but in retrospect i'm like wow i was i was
00:25:03.040used by these people for something really really harmful that i'm scared we're not going to be able
00:25:09.380to undo did you what was do you remember the the post that really where you felt like you're now
00:25:15.900deep inside this? Like now you're actually, you even surprised you how viral a statement was or
00:25:23.200an issue was something that for you became more indelible and a consciousness of how powerful
00:25:28.660this movement is and how powerful even your voice would become. So for a while, I was like mostly a
00:25:34.740shit poster. I would pretend to be serious at times, but it wasn't really until I was with0.99
00:25:41.020Elon that I would see some of these effects of my words or effects of Elon himself that I'm like0.96
00:25:48.740this is actually really consequential and it sounds naive and stupid to say oh you didn't0.57
00:25:53.340realize till then that your actions had so many consequences and that's something that I've really0.70
00:25:58.500had to unpack and unpack the harm that I did for nearly a decade in this movement saying things in
00:26:04.580the communities that I hurt, women, minorities, the trans community, I just didn't even consider.
00:26:12.500I was completely unempathetic to how my words and actions impacted other people. And I've had to do0.73
00:26:19.080a lot of... Say hello to your new favorite drinks. Introducing new McCafe refreshers. Icy, cool,
00:26:26.560undeniably refreshing, and available in three flavors. Strawberry watermelon, mango pineapple,
00:29:05.000I have a very different memory of this.
00:29:06.540We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas.
00:29:10.740And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.
00:29:17.760But thanks for remembering that, guys.
00:29:19.000Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:29:24.280Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.
00:29:27.300Work, making amends for that, and really saying, hey, here's where I went wrong,
00:29:31.320here's where I was lacking, and trying to understand why I made those decisions.
00:29:38.360It's interesting, and I don't want to over-index our time on Elon,
00:29:44.060But as someone that knew Elon, you know, back in the day and seen him radically change from the person I remember back in the early 2000s, particularly politically.
00:29:59.860Yeah, I would say he probably didn't change.
00:30:02.200People just weren't listening to the stories, particularly of women, that he was involved with.
00:30:07.960Because when you do read the words that his first wife, Justine, wrote, it was always there.
00:30:18.600But he came into the movement, it seems, a little later, obviously.
00:30:22.220I mean, he wasn't necessarily part of Team Trump and MAGA, as it's described, despite some of those political leanings, as you suggest, and those values.
00:30:31.140what you know you you describe what a dm that's how he reached out to you just because he was
00:30:37.020impressed with some of the stuff you were posting yeah i was at the babylon b which he had an affinity
00:30:41.740for at that time and he ended up dming me and then we met at twitter headquarters what have you but
00:30:49.320even in his private conversations with me that's another instance of co-opting i i really do believe
00:30:54.600that he finds the these populist movements whether in the united states or the uk or germany
00:30:59.480And he realizes that they're very easy to co-opt and manipulate for his own agenda of basically digitizing these governments and getting an insurmountable amount of data.
00:31:11.380And, you know, that's one conversation I did want to have with you and just ask you, because California was kind of at the forefront of this and allowed for a lot of these Silicon Valley and these tech companies to fester under California.
00:31:29.060And I guess the question I have for you is like Silicon Valley didn't just build software. It's built something that are the civilizational scale experiment that is unreasonably safe. And so why, at least in California, was innovation considered like the sufficient excuse and capitalism considered this sufficient excuse and justification to expose the public to such risk?
00:31:56.060And the most important question I have for you is, did California become so economically dependent on Silicon Valley that it lost the ability to act as an independent watchdog for these organizations?
00:32:09.900And why was so much of this allowed to be built?
00:32:13.760And are there any regrets that you have?
00:32:16.380Yeah, no, look, I think it's a fair question, but I think it lacks any context.
00:32:20.860California is the dominant leader in privacy, dominant leader in regulation.
00:32:29.940We led the nation the first safety measures for large language models, frontier models.
00:32:33.960We created a privacy council six, seven years ago, a statewide council that's focused on data privacy, first state to advance.
00:32:43.280In fact, Connecticut just backed into a similar framework that California laid out as it relates to the DELETE Act,
00:32:49.240which California did as it relates to our own data and having control over it. We led the nation
00:32:54.120as it relates to child protections, but we were sued by these same companies. We're in litigation
00:32:59.480and half dozen lawsuits, but we've led the nation in every one of these categories. We were very
00:33:05.360aggressive. You guys have, and you've done great work in terms of passing laws that help victims
00:33:11.060seek justice after the harm occurs. But I guess what gets me is there was also a lot of conditions
00:33:19.660that were able to be created before the harm was done. And how do we intervene before the harm is
00:33:27.840done instead of placing this burden on victims now to prove the harm after these products are
00:33:33.320deployed, instead of telling these companies to stop and placing a really hard stop on these
00:33:40.400technology companies before they prove safety. And I'm seeing that in the EU too. I have these
00:33:47.640conversations internationally about the harm. And it's like, why don't we just turn the spigot off?
00:33:53.640Is it because they're so powerful? Is it because they have so much force behind them? Why can't we
00:33:59.220turn the spigot off until they prove that it's reasonably safe, just like any other company?
00:34:04.640If a pharmaceutical company has a drug, we make sure it's safe first.
00:34:08.260I think there's no question that the collective we, and this was well before I was even governor, as it relates to social media and its harms, we failed on that.
00:34:19.260I had Tristan Harris on and others that have been real leaders in this calling this out.
00:34:23.560We've talked a lot about it, extensively not only on this platform, but substantively in terms of our legislative efforts in the state to not make the same mistakes with AI.
00:34:33.720And so what you just described are the lessons that we've learned as it relates to adopting safety measures and transparency measures, as it relates to AI and what's happening in terms of how all this is going to be supercharged.
00:34:47.880As it relates to deep fakes, as it relates to privacy, as it relates to child protection, you're talking the governor has more receipts than any other governor in the United States of America.
00:36:53.400I'm signing these laws, but they're litigating.
00:36:56.140And what they're using is the courts now to slow down the progress.
00:37:02.000And it's interesting where they don't have the throw with the legislature or maybe the governor.
00:37:07.740We'll see what happens to the next governor.
00:37:09.300They're counting on the slow system of adjudication with the third branch.
00:37:16.860And time is, that's, you know, that's their ally.
00:37:20.400Yes, especially through, I mean, the way in which they've co-opted the judicial system to just tie all of this up. How do we fix that? I guess you're a better person to ask. How do we fix that? How do we stop that?
00:37:36.660You've got to be ruthless in winning. You can't be winning arguments. You've got to win power. You've got to get power back. You've got to take back the United States Senate, not just the House of Representatives.
00:37:45.120So you have oversight in these federal appointees. We've got to take back state houses so that we have governors that are appointing judges at the state level, particularly in states like California that have outsized role in regulation that reflect the broader values that I think you and I share in this respect.
00:38:02.200I love that approach, too, especially, you know, if we take it back to the beginning of the conversation, too, with the philosophy professor signing that petition to ban Trump, right, and whether or not that's too hard.
00:38:15.560I think right now we're at a point where we can't ask if it's if it's too much or if we need to be centrist or moderate because they're not.
00:38:26.720As you're aware, they're fighting very hard and very dirty to to a point that I don't know that we're going to be able to take that back.
00:38:34.620And so I hope that nobody gets stuck within this point of like oscillating between placating both sides and just sticking to the gutting instinct of what is right. Is this wrong? And if it is, we need to fight back with every force that we have instead of placating people who have been a part of a lot of harm.
00:38:55.820I tend to agree with you. And we manifested quite literally a frame that I think is appropriate to reference. Prop 50 fighting fire with fire. We did redistricting, you know, and I agree with you.
00:39:10.040our way back into power is through the fight, not necessarily through the center. But that said,
00:39:15.780you know, I also think, and it's the reason I started this podcast with guys like Bannon and
00:39:19.940Kirk and people I deeply disagree with and, you know, having people on there that have been
00:39:23.940attacking me and doing everything to take me down, not professionally, but personally. And,
00:39:28.860but I, you know, I still believe divorce is not an option. That's the framework of this podcast,
00:39:33.140that we have to live together and advance together across our differences. And, you know, that's,
00:39:37.900you know, back to sort of my comments about, you know, Trump, I, you know, I'll still talk to him
00:39:42.680open hand, not a closed fist. At the same time, you know, we'll do Prop 50. You know, we've had
00:39:48.34063 or four lawsuits against Trump. We're going to go hard back in terms of, you know, pushing back
00:39:56.760against, you know, all this BS. Though I would disagree. I think divorce is an option when your
00:40:02.240spouse wants to kill you. I think that's, that's absolutely an option when your spouse wants to
00:40:08.380kill you. Yeah, well, you know, and I just, so that's why I wanted to unpack with you a little
00:40:12.020bit more because I, I just, you know, everyone wants to be loved. Everyone needs to be loved.
00:40:17.000We all want to be, you know, the old frame, protected, connected, respected, that we want
00:40:21.440to be respected. No one wants to be talked down to or passed to. We want to be part of something
00:40:25.060bigger than ourselves. And, and so, you know, this, I think all that matters, that sense of
00:40:29.920belonging. And I get that at a Trump rally, people feel connected to something bigger than
00:40:33.760themselves. You talk in terms of relationships and friends, that relationship with Elon led to
00:40:39.760a beautiful child. And that's life. And we all live it. And I don't want to go that we breathe
00:40:46.340the same air nonsense, except we do. And so- Well, some people breathe air that is polluted
00:40:51.520by data centers. So we don't breathe the same air, actually. Some people's air is being polluted by
00:40:59.020mega corporations i get it and we got to call that out you're talking to the fiercest environmentalists
00:41:04.520in the country right here uh despite the fact that i believe in a transition that works we're
00:41:09.940getting that's another subject about the fact i i drove here today and so i yes i went to the gas
00:41:15.400station forgive me so i'm hardly a purist and sometimes i probably feel a little more cynical
00:41:20.480than some uh about maga but it's because i i saw them when they were alone i saw them when they
00:41:28.060were drunk. I saw the things that they did and they said, and, um, I don't think a lot of these
00:41:35.300people particularly in power are interested in some unified front. I don't. And we, we have to
00:41:41.900consider if you're letting the barbarians into the gate, um, when let me into the gate, I had0.84
00:41:48.740zero followers. Actually, you can appreciate this as an influencer. I had zero, uh, when I,
00:41:54.980when Charlie platform me, when Ben and platform me, when all of these guys, you know, Ben and
00:42:01.680others, I, yeah, I'm not platforming anyone. They already have huge platforms. I just,
00:42:07.220you know, I can't, just turning our back doesn't mean they turn off. And I think, you know,
00:42:12.160trying to understand what motivates people, trying to understand, you know, the why,
00:42:16.800what's the Bernie why allows us to be able to position ourselves and, you know, and, and fight
00:42:22.660back in a different way with a deeper sense of understanding. You got to know your enemy, as they
00:42:26.320say. But you also have to understand, you know, I come from the prison, not everyone's an enemy
00:42:31.240that underneath all of it. I don't know. I just, I find I'm a little bit more hopeful and I appreciate
00:42:38.300you're a little more cynical. I used to be you, Ashley. I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that we can
00:42:43.680fight back, but I realize that the optimism has to be based on a really difficult fight
00:42:50.020where a lot of people are going to have to make material sacrifices.
00:42:54.660You know, I don't want to hear about how much money someone made anymore.
00:42:57.780I want to know about the money they turned down.
00:42:59.920I want to know what they've sacrificed.
00:43:02.020And not enough people talk about that.
00:43:48.520But that's what you're doing right now. And I appreciate that. You're just being honest and transparent. And, you know, and you're not dreaming of regretting. I mean, the fact that you're willing to confront, you know, you know, it's well known that you wrote a children's book that you regret writing and sort of anti-trans children book and and but also the things you posted.
00:44:09.980And so I want to talk just a little bit more about that, because, you know, right now, you know, I'm here, you know, stone's throw away where I first learned about this person, Laura Loomer.
00:44:20.460She was dressed up in a costume. She jumped over the fence here at the governor's mansion.
00:44:25.680And she, you know, she broke sort of that barrier of privacy.
00:44:28.920And she did it online and, you know, got a bunch of followers.
00:44:32.540And she's I'm no fan of hers. I don't know of redeeming quality.
00:44:36.720I thought she was, I was a little embarrassed for her, actually.
00:44:48.180I mean, that's, to me, madness that she has somehow has the ear of the president.
00:44:52.660But, you know, you have all these folks in this sort of right wing influence sphere.
00:44:56.500You got the ones like Laura that people seem to know about, Candace Owens that people seem0.96
00:45:00.620to know about, obviously Tucker Carlson people know about.
00:45:03.400but you have also these other characters this jack i can't even remember his name you know
00:45:08.740basobic i mean these are the guys and this mike guy sure up whatever the hell his name is
00:45:14.080yeah these guys i mean these are the pizzagate guys i mean literally these are the people that
00:45:20.260were talking about sexual predators and they were they did nothing when you were being unmasked on
00:45:26.760grok the same they did not especially these people who claim to care about women and children and
00:45:32.460The only time they claim that is when they're targeting the trans community and a section of the population that's less than one percent of the population.
00:45:40.740And what I can say, especially as the Democrats try to navigate and they say, well, maybe we went too far on the trans issue.
00:45:48.100No, you didn't, because these people are targeting less than one percent of the population.0.94
00:45:53.140And that's really cruel and evil. And if we ignore that cruelty that they've done to this very marginalized group of people, it's going to be done to you.
00:46:01.700But what I can say about these influencers is we fixate on the caricatures and not the system and the architecture that has allowed them to prosper.
00:53:39.180But the power of these algorithms, the power that Elon himself has to dialing up rage, to determining what we see, what we hear, how we think, who we vote for.
00:53:54.780the power of James Blair to connect and coordinate with all these influencers to have the daily
00:54:00.400messages. You see it weaponized on Fox, the primetime line up there, which is Pravda. You
00:54:05.260see it on the right, all, all across the right-wing spear. I've watched the New York Post,
00:54:09.540the California Post, the daily, all this stuff, this stuff, and just the connective tissue.
00:54:14.940And, and you were part of all of that. I mean, it's not, we're not overstating this.
00:54:19.780No, no, I wasn't part of that. I saw it and you're not being hyperbolic. And I don't, I don't think there's an under discussed aspect of this as well. Yes, they have the power to influence what you think, who you think about, but they also have the data on what's going to be the most useful and the best way to exploit that.
00:54:40.020If Cambridge Analytica was bad, this is Cambridge Analytica on methamphetamines and steroids at this point. And so it's the how. They know exactly how you think. They're creating this behavioral inference model that they know exactly which part of you to exploit, which vulnerability. It is like being in an abusive relationship where they know exactly where you're vulnerable and how to exploit that vulnerability to make you act in a certain way.
00:55:06.740so i mean and is there any i mean does the do you see anything on the left that's comparable or you
00:55:14.940don't want to see anything on the left that's comparable but do you see i don't want to see
00:55:19.360anything comparable and that's what really terrifies me is when i speak about these things
00:55:23.980i see people on the left and the democratic side saying we need this and no you don't it's it's
00:55:29.280ontologically evil to have such unfettered capitalism and the the effects of citizens
00:55:35.320united so prolific that we don't have these disclosure laws no the left needs to be going
00:55:41.740hard and making sure that you cannot post anything you cannot be paid to post anything whether it's
00:55:48.160an opinion an idea a philosophy that you like rousseau without disclosing that and that's
00:55:55.120what needs to change um rather than building this evil apparatus for for yourselves i think that's
00:56:01.040If I think it's bad on the right, it's also bad on the left. But you can stop them from doing it with laws and regulations.
00:56:08.440Ashley, let me ask you about that, because it's interesting. We have a governor's race literally determined the primary today as we're as we're taping this.
00:56:16.820And there's been a lot of reporting about influencers have gotten hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
00:56:23.100No one was aware of it. There was no nothing transparent about it.
00:56:26.620So is that that's just a space that's the Wild West, isn't it, for candidates and causes where influencers are paid and we think it's their voice.
00:56:36.780But there's no political even in a political sense, there's no rules necessarily for transparency.
00:56:43.660Yes, because the mechanism, as I'm sure you know, is the consulting houses.
00:56:48.160The consulting houses, they are advantaged by a degree of privacy that they shouldn't have.
00:56:54.700I think if you're a consulting house who is on these FEC reports, you should have to disclose everything in your books as well. It shouldn't disappear once it hits a consulting house. That's so easy. I can start an LLC tomorrow. You pay me a million dollars for your campaign and I disperse it to my secret influencers and nobody will ever know. That should not be allowed to occur.
00:57:15.880um i i think this i mean i couldn't agree with you more this is an area that we're gonna have
00:57:21.040to significantly i mean aggressively and quickly tighten up so what you mentioned the other day
00:57:26.040and you know i got a lot of attention um you posted something about 10 000 late i mean what
00:57:32.260what what the hell did you post 10 000 layers the implication the election was stolen all the
00:57:38.300conspiracy theories and yes i knew it you know i had my friends i told you so i'm like oh god
00:57:43.380what's going on here so tell us people people really need to and i want to preface this by
00:57:48.120saying people should vote and they should vote loudly there is some something to say about the
00:57:52.780right saying you know too big to rig everyone should turn out and i don't want to discourage
00:57:56.660voter turnout when i talk about this experience um but shortly before the election in october
00:58:02.120elon had texted me and said you know i'm feeling more optimistic about the election
00:58:06.420and tomorrow i'm going to release my anomaly in the matrix uh i have lasers in space and then he
00:58:12.080quantifies it. He says, I have over 10,000 lasers in space, which is nearly identical to the number
00:58:17.460of satellites he has. And I told him, I said, I'd ask more, but I don't want to be deposed.
00:58:23.040And he said, wise. But something else I had said, I said, you know, if this ends up being your
00:58:27.920lasers in space end up being the reason that Trump wins, this would be like a sci-fi drama.
00:58:33.900And, you know, he replied and agreed with that. So those are important aspects. What that means,
00:58:39.180I'm not entirely sure. I also have other information that, you know, I came across during my time with him and speaking to his engineers. That is incredibly uncomfortable. But this, again, goes back to the governing architecture. Does anybody know? Is there any regulations or laws right now saying you cannot use your data from your satellites for elections or for proprietary data?
00:59:04.200Is all of this being hid under proprietary data and intellectual property?
00:59:10.660And right now, we don't have the infrastructure.
00:59:13.480There's not infrastructure or laws against using data from your space company,
00:59:18.840whosoever space company it is, for whatever purpose you want, if it's private.
00:59:23.560We've had so much hidden under private capital, and that needs to be addressed.
00:59:29.800Why did you feel the need to share that, and why now?
00:59:33.400Because I'm speaking about my entire experience as honestly and openly as I can, including moments that made me really raise an eyebrow and say this is concerning as someone who, you know, throughout my time in this relationship with Elon, he had also sent me data of real time delta vote metrics in October from Pennsylvania and information from his pack.
00:59:57.440And as someone who was cleaning bad door knocking data from blitz canvassing, since I was 18, I looked at that and said, there's no apparatus that I know of that can create that data. So what are your inputs? What inputs are you using? And that's the question that other people need to ask.
01:00:17.440And when people ask them, and hopefully governing bodies who come to me for this information, I can tell them what I know and what I think and the individuals who I spoke to as well. But what inputs create that level of certainty that nobody else had previously about when the election results were in? Those are the questions that need to be asked.
01:00:37.760And when you start to, I mean, you've expressed literal concern for sharing this information publicly. You even suggested, didn't suggest, I think you stated, maybe you can clarify, that there was an opportunity or effort to say, hey, you don't need to share this, Ashley. We'll take care of you. I'll take care of you. Write a big damn check.
01:00:57.440Yeah, I was offered $40 million, which included an NDA and non-disparagement into eternity, which I declined. Part of this information is why. Because I do believe him and his companies and everything that's being built to be incredibly consequential for the future of our country, the future of the country that my children will have to live in, the digital landscape that they'll have to live in.0.98
01:01:21.440And I think there's a lot worse than being middle class in America, and that's okay.
01:01:31.240I'm comfortable with that to keep my integrity, and at least when push came to shove that I was able to turn that down.0.95
01:01:38.980And I also think women need to speak up.0.53
01:01:42.300I think a lot would not be allowed to happen if women stopped keeping a lot of secrets for men.
01:01:48.240And is that because you're uniquely positioned because you have a voice, because you have enough resourcefulness, if not the resources? I mean, what do you say to those other women? I mean, what about all these folks that are sort of trapped in this mindset?0.97
01:02:04.440I think particularly the women of privilege, like I have a level of privilege having some sort of platform. And even if there's material hardship, I do have access to resources and educated individuals and people who are well networked that I can utilize. And there are many women within those Mar-a-Lago and the MAGA spheres that have that same access who can do something. And I'm very concerned about the proliferation of this privatized legal system through NDAs.
01:02:32.300I don't think with most NDAs that there is any meaningful consent when people are signing them to pay their bills, feed their family or whatever.
01:02:41.700So I do think that's another aspect that needs to be addressed because it's how so much evil has been allowed to occur.
01:02:47.660And if we're supposed to be building a system to aggregate humanity and the honest version of it, but the honesty about the most powerful people cannot be said because of NDAs and this proliferation of this industry of silence, then we have a problem.
01:03:05.440Yeah. Well said, by the way. I couldn't agree with you more.
01:03:08.760So look, Ashley, as you move forward, as we move forward, as we move into midterm elections,
01:03:14.200not making everything electoral, as we continue to move forward with this letter rip attitude
01:03:20.380of the Trump administration as it relates to AI regulation or lack thereof, sort of the David
01:03:26.700Sachs vacation of regulatory policy. And highlighted by the fact that Elon and a few
01:03:33.780others. Zuckerberg made calls to Trump to stop him from even a modest executive order to begin
01:03:39.760to do something. By the way, all they're trying to do is preempt California and our leadership on
01:03:44.880this. They've tried to neutralize California. We saw Governor Hochul and now Pritzker back into
01:03:52.260aspects of what California did to lead on some of the safety issues on AI. It's still not enough. I
01:03:57.640get it. And we have more work to do. But the contrast with Trump is pretty illuminating.
01:04:03.780How worried are you about fair and free elections? How worried are you about your son's father is going to be likely the first trillionaire in a matter of a couple of weeks? How concerned are you about capture and these algorithms and just a handful of people deciding our fading future in terms of what we read, see, hear, and believe?
01:04:26.060I think people should be incredibly concerned about the elections just because of the new landscape we're creating. I often describe the Internet as we built this new planet. We're demanding that people inhabit it and live on it. And we have no idea if there's enough oxygen for people here.
01:04:42.200And so we really need to be critical of this digital landscape and terrain that we've built and how that impacts our elections from data to manipulation to perception.
01:04:53.560This is very important. Do I think that maybe there's lasers beaming down from space to change the vote on the Dominion machines?
01:05:01.240Probably not. But do I believe that very powerful technology from very powerful individuals is being exploited to create outcomes that they want?
01:05:09.800yes, that's happened throughout all of human history. And to say that that's not happening
01:05:13.840would be incredibly ignorant to these levers of capitalism. And one thing I want people to know
01:05:20.100is that the Silicon Valley bros would be very proficient in plantation accounting. And these
01:05:25.920are systems that we've seen before, just at a much larger scale. So what you do is, and forgive me,
01:05:37.740I'm just sort of belaboring this and diving deeper. How embedded from your perspective
01:05:45.800are the operations on the inside, MAGA, and those operations with some of these
01:05:52.540elite tech titans in the context of being even more deliberative in terms of hardwiring?
01:06:01.760They are they are intimately intertwined. This is why big tech was at the forefront of all of these issues within MAGA, especially in 2020. And then Mark Zuckerberg changes course. And just look at who was front and center at the inauguration you had.
01:06:16.360But showing up, I mean, there's benefit just showing up, but that doesn't mean you're, I mean, is it your perspective that by showing up, you're, I mean, that they're taking, they're, they're not just dipping their toe of support, they're, they're swimming.
01:06:30.100Yes, they changed the algorithm. Some of these people who were previously banned or not allowed to monetize on these platforms, the floodgates have been opened and they are allowed to do this.
01:06:40.980And, you know, there is an important distinction to make because I was very much on the free speech absolutism.
01:06:47.520And that's different when you're the audience you're speaking to is local or you're making local change or national change.
01:06:53.780But now you're demanding to be on this global platform and your words have global consequences.0.98
01:06:58.240And to pretend like the rules of the Internet and these influence operations and speech can be comparable to that within your local town square is asinine.0.86
01:07:08.400um you're going to law school ashley yes and so what's the what's the i mean is there there's got0.90
01:07:17.140to be a book come on you're telling me you're not working on a book it's impossible you're
01:07:21.020i do write a lot i write enough that if i wanted to make a book i could publish it tomorrow um
01:07:27.020so that's a yes you're writing a book i do i write and i do a lot of like aid memoir um
01:07:32.740but it's not the right time for me to sell anything to anybody right now it's just not
01:07:38.520um i have a lot of work that i need to do and financial amends that i need to make to
01:07:43.560the communities that i contributed harm to and there's there's going to be a lot of backlash
01:07:48.520for a while i think there's also this this effect where i'm the most accessible
01:07:52.740mega figure to many people now so they like to take it out on me and that's okay and i understand
01:07:58.580But there is. When you leave, you realize the vast amounts of harm that you contributed to and the very real harm that I was ignorant to because of my own privilege, like I just didn't have these experiences.
01:08:12.300And there's there's so much happening. They talk about the transfer of wealth. It's not really a transfer of wealth.
01:08:18.600It's a transfer of losses, even if we take the SpaceX IPO. Right. There's a lot of people who are going to lose in their 401ks. And this is their pensions in their 401ks. The losses are being transferred to them because the big banks don't want to take the losses. It's this transfer of losses onto the lesser people that I think we really need to consider and start demanding that people in positions of privilege take more losses on themselves.
01:08:44.920I mean, it's just making me think of Trump and Melania's or Donald and Melania's meme coins and concentrate that all the losses are absorbed by the base of the party.