I want to turn to the visit uh by President Xi uh to Washington for a state visit.

There are flyovers, a lot of planes and a lot of fancy dinners, but it not much happened.

I mean, unless I'm wrong, we got a lot of platitudes out of it.

We got an extension of this sort of almost like ceasefire in the trade war um um temporarily, but like a two-month two month extension.

Exactly.

Um right when we came into this week with the idea that they would be talking about AI, right?

All of the warnings that we've been getting from kind of across the the political spectrum.

You had Scott Bessant um who said that he met with his his counterpart in China um and that they had discussed a potential sort of like red phone um for AI and a warning system uh on the back end.

But, you know, several days on, what we've seen is that, you know, China didn't come with any of its CEOs in the same way that Trump came with CEOs to when he when he made his visit to China.

So, it was almost as if they were in two different places, right?

Where Trump likes to move fast and negotiate and say, "Oh, we want to we're going to get a deal done right now where China's saying, well, we're still trying to thaw this relationship that has been sort of tense."

Um, and you know, you going through a series of retaliatory trade tariffs.

I bet open AI is building that red phone right now.

That'll be good.

It'll be manned by bot.

Um the um Well, Susan, I want to talk about the AI in China because that was the if there had been consequential outcomes here, that would have been a consequential outcome.

This is what she said this week about um about AI.

Both China and the United States are leading nations in artificial intelligence.

We have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control and serves the well-being of the people.

Trump on the other hand said this week at the UN, "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now here and after officially called super intelligence.

Changing the name and that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake.

It makes it sound fake.

Okay.

So, we're in a weird situation.

Not the first time we've been in a weird situation.

Um that that the leader of the Communist Party dictatorship that rules China rhetorically at least sounds more with it maybe um than the president of the United States on this subject.

Talk talk through their differing approaches.

Yeah.

No, Jeeoff, I mean, if anything, the quote that you read, uh, you know, it's certainly eyebrow raising if the president is his AI approach is to say, "I'd like to rebrand it."

Uh, you know, it's not a branding problem, uh, that's, uh, causing these engineers to say, you know, that expression in Washington, sometimes you have a PR problem and sometimes you just have a problem.

Exactly.

I think these companies have a problem.

Have a problem.

Right.

I mean, you know, the people who are building AI, you know, a good proportion of them are warning us that there's not a zero chance risk of them destroying humanity as we know it.

And apparently that has taken a second priority for the president of the United States to rebranding AI and also showing the leader of China his new helipad.

Um, but you know, if anything, what I was going to say, Jeff, is that your quote is is is one of the less embarrassing quotes, if that's possible.

that Donald Trump gave about artificial intelligence this week.

At his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, he talked about rebranding AI.

He also talked about the fact that AI was just another hoax like quote Russia, Russia, Russia, like climate change, and all the other things that they're trying to fool us with.

And so, what's fascinating to me is that Donald Trump is now viewing the sort of AI doom warnings coming again from inside Silicon Valley itself.

He's now saying that's some kind of a democratic hoax uh like his uh collusion with Russia in the 2016 campaign.

And it shows the extreme personalization of power.

He came out after his first meetings with Xi the other day and he said, "I don't want to do anything about Russia.

Our guard rail, sorry about AI.

Our guardrail for AI is the Department of Justice."

our guard.

Vivian, what the personalization of power is interesting idea, why is Trump slotting AI into this kind of reaction narrative?

Uh, in other words, why is he taking the side of untrabled AI?

I mean, there's the argument that he doesn't quite understand how it works.

And this is something that we hear a lot to be fair that we we we share some of that.

I mean, nobody really there's a few hundred people who might understand.

No judgment.

No judgment.

Just just putting it out there is that, you know, he's someone he's someone who doesn't use email and like, you know, he's he's just uh maybe of a generation or just just the type of man that he is that he just doesn't really um delve into these issues very deeply.

Um there's also the the business side of it.

I mean, we were just talking about the the business opportunities.

you know, yes, she did not show up with CEOs, but the entire state dinner with she was packed with tech CEOs from the United States.

Trump very eager to kind of get them um having a leg up in businesses and especially in China where there are opportunities for cooperation for American businesses to kind of take advantage of some um you know, of the market there.

And I think he sees it as you know, let's wait and see if this is going to be good for American business before we cast judgment too much on this technology.

And of course you have people like JD Vance and others who are younger and a little bit more I'm not agist but putting it out there you know he came from Silicon Valley and kind of is a little bit more immersed in things like this and he's a little more cautious with his language.

Yeah.

I I noticed at the state dinner the head table Trump and she Jensen Hang the Nvidia chairman who's quite bullish in that Trumpian kind of it's all going to be fine and Elon Musk by the way always a surprise guest at the White House these days who has been warning about AI and and and and what a fascinating conversation that could have been because you have the Chinese we've been told in this country beware of China and it's autocratic development of AI, killer robots and killer everything.

But then you have an American president who is taking a kind of extreme libertarian view.

It's all very muddled now.

It's kind of an arms race view of it as well.

Like you know if we don't do it, China will.

And you know, look, there is uh an argument that that you know, could we trust China to restrain itself even if we did come to some sort of an international accord, right?

Had they been good actors on the stage before?

It's an open question, but this reminds us of the early days of the Cold War when nuclear arms were still being uh developed by only a handful of countries and we tried to figure out how do we keep that genie back in the bottle.

Right, Vivian?

I noticed that um as you have that the summit ended uh in a kind of typical way with the Chinese uh ultimately coming back to the thing that obsesses them, Taiwan.

Uh the Chinese put out a statement while President Trump was very keen to just put out that it was a great meeting, they did lots of great things, the Chinese put out a very uh flowery statement where they talked about cooperation and partnership and you know the need to enhance their strategic cooperation.

And then tucked in like paragraph number five was this very stern statement about the need to respect China's um you know territorial claims over Taiwan.

And basically in in summary the US needs to stay out of it.

um and that is very keen especially because of the fact that President Trump has never really been explicit about um his views on Taiwan and he's sort of taking a wait andsee approach on what kind of positions him best with with uh she there's been um major concerns that he will kind of um throw in the kitchen sink or Taiwan if he's to get a China deal and so this has been a concern here in Washington especially including among Republicans who don't want to see that.

So at the end of this summit, we're back where we were before.

We have no sense of whether we understand that China's preoccupied with taking Taiwan by force possibly, and we have no sense of whether the president of the United States will actually do what other presidents we think would have done, which is defend Taiwan.

And his adviserss tell me, you know, there is no change in the US policy toward Taiwan.

And I say, well, why doesn't the president just say that?

And they say, the president's going to do what he's going to do.

Uh, well, I'm going to do what I'm going to do.

going to pivot um to uh well, it's all it's all Trump.

Alas, here we are.

But the press press crisis that we're having, Adam, I wanted to um uh show you a clip of uh uh President Trump addressing Caitlyn Collins from CNN.

You all remember that um he he just booted MS Now CNN Politico.

Judge ordered them back.

Uh but we're in this endless back and forth uh with the President Trump deciding arbitrarily uh which reporters are allowed to come onto the White House grounds.

Just watch this one thing with us.

So, it's an honor to be here.

I'm surprised that CNN is here covering me.

You shouldn't be here.

You should not You should not be here covering me.

You said you weren't going to cover me.

You shouldn't be covering me.

Um, Adam, what's so interesting uh to me is that he thinks based on this performance that he actually is in charge of the press.

You know, it's been his mo for the last, you know, decade plus.

I mean, even when he was a private citizen, this was his MMO, which was trying to control the press, right?

There are reports of him even kind of going back to where he would call reporters and pretend to be his own press secretary.

This is like his his thing.

Um, who among us doesn't who, you know, if I could?

Um but I think what we what we are seeing is a a president who feels increasingly cornered.

Um you you think about the economy, you think about the sort of losing battles um across the board, whether that is with Iran, whether that is the sort of warnings on on AI that might uh in his argument, right, slow down the economy because data centers have been propping up and that the building of data centers have been propping up so much economic uh activity uh that he has defined a sort of enemy and the press is his his usual enemy that he he he goes to.

Right.

Vivian, you were actually on pool due today at the White House.

What's the feeling over there this week?

Must be strange.

It was very strange.

You know, there was definitely a sigh of relief that the reporters who were banned were back, but there's also an eerie feeling and I'm sure they all, you know, Peter and Susan um can attest to this that there's an eerie feeling that it's not done yet.

And obviously, the unprecedented action taken by the president has really shaken the press corps because it is a violation of the First Amendment, just blatantly so.

to ban anyone from the White House grounds, let alone any kind of pool sprays and things like that is next level.

And I just want to point out the irony of all of this is that this week ended with a very quick tour to the National Archives today with President Xi before he took off and President Trump showcasing a lot of the old Democratic documents, the founders documents, and the last one that he showed him was the Bill of Rights.

um on this day an opportunity for both presidents to learn about the first amendment about the well you know right there in in writing was was the first amendment that talked about freedom of the press and Trump standing next to this authoritarian leader who tightly controls the press in his country and he's trying to sort of show off these documents with pride um while also kind of undermining them back at the White House.

It's a very strange reality.

Right.

Susan, I want to read something uh that you wrote this week about the president's new and possibly precarious position in his own party.

40 days before the midterm elections, Washington is increasingly consumed not by Trump's endless antics so much as by the rapidly clarifying political reality of the predicament in which the president, deeply unpopular and trapped in an unwone war, I like that expression.

Of his own choosing in the Middle East, has got himself in his party.

A reckoning one far harsher than was expected even a few months ago.

now seems imminent.

There's a kind of a weird parallelism here with Netanyahu.

Counting out Trump is always a dangerous move for political commentary.

But why is this moment different, do you think?

Well, I mean, look, what's what's fascinating is that you saw so many Republican elected officials and candidates week this week just almost at the same time hit the panic button.

You know, that's the phrase uh been used in some of the coverage.

There's a sense that Donald Trump hasn't figured out a way to dig out of the mess in time for uh them to better their party's fortunes in November.

Across the board, you're seeing uh the nonpartisan election ratings shifting in the direction.

I think just today, Cook Political Report had 15 more races that went in the direction of uh uh Democrats for the House of Representatives.

The Senate is far more in play.

I think if we had this conversation at the beginning of this year, Jeeoff, we would have been very skeptical that that was possible.

I don't think anyone's outright predicting it right now, but things that would have been not even conceivable.

We're talking about Democrats possibly, you know, looking to pick up a seat, a Senate seat in Iowa, uh, you know, which is kind of remarkable.

And Donald Trump is going to Alaska next week to campaign, which is if a Republican president has to go campaign for a Republican in Alaska, that's not a great sign.

But Adam, are you willing to go out on a limb and saying that the Democrats are going to take both houses of Congress?

I going out on that limb is not not my forte.

But what I what I will say what I will say right if you sort of look at the accumulation of data um thinking about the the New York Times at the focus group um recently with voters down in Texas where they were talking about Ken Ken Paxton and and James Terico and the first thing as I was reading it was that this seems like a Roy Moore situation where the the folks are looking at Kim Paxton and saying this one this is someone who is so morally corrupt um that Roy Moore was the candidate in Alabama Roy Moore is the candidate in Alabama who Doug Jones ends up uh ended up ing and and to imagine having a Democrat in um in Alabama after the great switch was thought thought um unthinkable.

And so considering the the quality and the caliber of candidate um um thinking about Kim Paxton, but also the economic issues um when you're considering that gas prices, diesel prices are up.

Um you think about the owner operator truck owners who are spending $1,200 to fend up a fill up a 200galon tank.

It's it's a lot to to to consider, right?

I mean, is that the number one issue?

Diesel and and gasoline prices ultimately if he can't get those down.

Yes.

And you're not going to make a significant difference in the next six weeks probably.

But um I think the representative of a larger uh disappointment on the part of Trump voters.

Our colleague at the time, Sabrina Terni, did a great story this week about the lack of trust on Trump voters as well as Democrat voters as well.

That's a challenge for both party, but particularly for Trump.

people who think they've lost uh faith in him.

Uh one of the voters told her, "I think I was sold a bill of goods.

They now have looked at Trump and said he didn't deliver on what he promised.

He promised a better economy, lower prices, no endless no endless wars."

Well, guess what?

Economy is not good for a lot of people.

Prices are up, gas is up, and we are in what at the moment is an unwone war, right?

Um, coming back to this question of the Senate and the the House, the the Democrats need to flip four seats in the Senate in reality, is that going to be possible?

I think it's more possible now than it was 6 months ago.

Um, I think that's Texas.

Um, if if if Texas is in play, then it it does become Michigan where well, Elsad is actually in the lead in the polls.

Although we did have polling this week saying Collins was ahead in Maine.

The Democrats really need Maine.

There's another poll saying Collins is going to win Maine for the next 300 years.

Well, she might, but you most Democratic maps would suggest that I take that back.

I don't want to be held again.

I don't want to be held against me.

But that's Collins is is another survivor to me.

But Trump's trade war with Canada doesn't help uh in Maine, which is uh you know, deeply affected uh and intertwined with the economy of Canada.

I think, you know, we'll we'll see, but um I think Collins is still a very vulnerable incumbent.

U Vivian, last 30 seconds.

the Iran war.

If he hadn't gone to war against Iran seven months ago, would he be in this shape?

I mean, we've actually seen this force splinter his party in some ways.

People who were devoutly supportive of the president now speaking out against him, condemning him and his decisions.

It's really um torn the party apart.

We're going to see particularly after the midterms whether people like Vice President JD Vance and others will be willing to take a firmer stance just to distinguish themselves moving forward.