- There's really two ways to look at this governor's race right now, right?

There's version one.

Helena Foulkes is gonna win this race, hands down.

There's also a second lane, which is that it's not over.

- The main point of Bill Gates, when you see him and the leaders of all the AGI, the AI companies saying, "We need regulation."

The hype is, "Well, this is just to try to get the price up, to scare everybody."

No, it's not.

This is real.

(lively music) - And welcome into our latest episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

We're joined this week by Bill Bartholomew, Founder of the "Bartholomewtown" podcast, and Attorney and former Chief of Staff for Governor Lincoln Almond, Joe Larissa.

The candidates like to say that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.

And in just a few days, we'll know whether the prognosticators were right and who will be leading government in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Plus, the direction Congress will take leading up to the 2028 presidential election.

Bill, let's start locally.

The hot race is the governor's race.

A lot of people are thinking, "Can Helena Foulkes hold on?"

What do you think?

- I mean, there's really two ways to look at this governor's race right now, right?

There's version one, which is maybe common sensically or using political sense, money begets money, action begets action, et cetera.

And Helena Foulkes is gonna win this race, hands down.

She's gonna win by major, major numbers.

And that's just an anecdotal poll sort of assessment of where we stand right now.

There's also a second lane, which is that it's not over.

And Ken Block, in spite of the reality of the money against that he's facing, the headwinds that he's facing, et cetera, we don't really know what kind of grassroot world he's built.

We don't really know how much he's been able to siphon off from Aaron Guckian.

We don't know how many votes he's been able to siphon off from Helena Foulkes.

And until the election itself is complete, we won't know.

- I think I agree with most of that.

Helena wins.

I don't know about hands down.

The big question is does she even reach 50%?

And if she doesn't, there's gonna be a lot of recriminations because Ken Block is strong.

He's in the high 30s at a minimum.

And Aaron's in the race.

If Aaron got out of the race and it was a two-way and his numbers and Ken's add up to more than Helena's, there's gonna be a lot of talk going around.

But I think Helena wins pretty handily.

- Yeah.

I mean, look, it is a three-way race.

It has been that, and I guess it's a five-way race at the end of the day when you really break it down, but it's a three-way race, and we can go back and forth, and Republicans in the state can ask themselves the question of where did things go off the tracks?

How far back did it go?

I remember sitting here on "Lively," what, maybe two or maybe three years ago talking about what Republicans could do, one version of how they can make a move, which is you do a press conference outside of the Washington Bridge every day.

You forget about MAGA, you forget about national issues.

Instead, you turn into the opposition party.

You endorse Ken Block and make him your nominee and get your head to head and basically eliminate the national issues from the table and simply become the opposition party.

- But can you do that?

- But because of the reality of the MAGA brand, no, the calculus probably for Ken Block or anybody looking at getting elected in Rhode Island is, "No, I cannot do that."

- There had been some talk about that, Joe.

If Ken had cleared the field and run as a Republican and then it was one-on-one, you wouldn't have Aaron Guckian, but it is difficult to divorce what's going on in Washington and being an R in any election these days is gonna be tough.

- Yeah, sad, but I have to agree with that.

If he put the R next to his name, that would probably cost him more votes than having the I and having Erin drop out of the race.

You need that I in Rhode Island right now.

But it doesn't mean the Republicans couldn't coalesce around an independent.

And that would've made this, I think, a really, really close race.

- I think the thing with Helena Foulkes is you see these polls lately, her favorable, unfavorable is really tough to get over.

And in a two-way race, you wonder, she just can't break through that mid-40s.

There are a lot of people who are, I think they wanted change from McKee.

Clearly, she trounced them in the primary, but a lot of people aren't excited about this race.

- Right.

And if you look at some of the demographic breakdowns in the two most recent polls, the Salve poll first and then later the Emerson WPRI poll, you'll see that she's not really performing well with men.

That's her weakness.

That's a spot that in terms of unfavorability.

So that's a block that, no pun intended, Ken should probably be looking at and no doubt is, politically speaking.

But where else do the unfavorabilities or the lack of enthusiasm numbers start to really become a problem for Helena Foulkes?

That's what her campaign is hedging against right now.

It's not even so much Ken Block or the existence of other candidates.

It's just the idea that there are a lot of people out there that don't love Helena Foulkes.

- The one race that looks good for Republicans this year is potentially John Loughlin up against Sabina Matos.

The polls have been close, but also, again, I wonder at the end of the day, they always talk about Democrats coming home or Republicans coming home.

Do you have any feel for that race?

Loughlin's run a pretty good race.

- Yeah, I think it's gonna be close.

You remember how close he was to being our governor a few elections ago.

And that shows money doesn't always matter because there's no money being spent in that race.

Not by John.

But yeah, it's gonna be close, first time ever.

But I agree with the Democrats come home.

She probably wins in a really close race.

- See, I actually think that while the lieutenant governor's race is the superior of matchups, it's the better, okay, let's get people in a room and go back and forth.

Literally having moderated the debates, I can say that.

But just on an observational level, I do think that there's more of a, there's something there that interests maybe the person who doesn't go all in on politics.

They may be paying attention to lieutenant governor's race a little more just because it's a good race.

But I also think this race is a lot further apart than what we saw in the snapshot of polling earlier this month, which while consistent at about 44, 43 between Loughlin and Matos, time, number one, and debates, number two, have allowed for both of those candidates to kind of get their positions staked out.

But what you really have to look at is follow the money.

The Democratic Lieutenant Governor's Association, on a national level, has been putting out emails on a weekly basis highlighting races around the country where lieutenant governors, Democratic lieutenant governors are in trouble because of MAGA challengers or Republican challengers, whatever it is.

All three of the blasts that have come out in the last three weeks, no mention of Rhode Island whatsoever, no outside expenditures coming in.

They must see numbers and understand the rhythm of this race better than we do.

- But Joe, you lived it for years.

Rhode Island has had a pension to put Republicans in higher positions, specifically governor.

Ed DiPrete had six years.

Your boss, Lynn Gauman had eight years, two terms, and then Don Carcieri.

And again, maybe the national is bleeding over, but you wonder at some point if the electorate says, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit of something from the opposition party?"

And I wonder whether this is the race maybe that people are thinking about.

- I hope you're right, and I really hope, but I think Rhode Island's a very different place, Jim.

And from my perspective, unfortunately, look at what just happened in Providence when the days we're talking about, that wouldn't even have been a race.

And now we have a socialist mayor heading into Providence.

I'd like Loughlin to break this trend, spending no money, but I just don't see it in this Democratic state.

I think he's gonna lose, and if it's close, that would be a surprise, but I think it's going Democrat and that's it.

- And you had them in studio.

- [Bill] Yes.

- Remember, you did debates with the governor candidates.

You looked at them.

I thought John Loughlin was good on policy in those debates.

- I think John Loughlin's good on the mic, and I think he's a guy who has command of the issues.

He understands how the State House works.

He understands a lot of things that would appeal to people outside of Republicans, right?

But at the same time, right now, you know, a lot of his... He doesn't have the zinger that he needs, right?

We're gonna have an Inspector General, but it's gonna be this convoluted difficult to follow- - [Jim] Open records.

- Maybe.

We're gonna cut your electric bill in half, but it's gonna involve a lot of lingo and jargon about natural gas.

And it hasn't been, like I've been saying over and over again the last couple of days, like Nick Mattiello in 2018 when he was on the fence with Steve Frias coming from the District 15 race, the Speaker of the House, possibly gonna lose his Cranston seat.

They came up with, seconds before they walked out at a press conference, a gimmick.

Let's get rid of the car tax.

And boom, all of a sudden, Mattiello can walk out and say, "Hey, reelect me and we'll get rid of the car tax.

We're gonna phase out the car tax."

Loughlin, Block, none of them have had that zinger- - Game-changers.

- Game-changer gimmick, if you will, that just resonates with people and make them go, "Oh, that sounds good."

- Joe, let's shift over to Massachusetts.

You follow the politics there.

Maura Healey's up in the polls against Mike Minogue in the race for governor.

She runs like she's down 15 points.

I've never seen more Healey ads.

What's your assessment on that race?

- Well, you know the old saying, you run one of two ways, scared or unopposed.

And she's not unopposed, so she's running scared.

I think Mike Minogue's 18 million, from the polls I've seen, they're gonna buy him about five percentage points.

- That's mind-blowing.

- Again, again, it makes me sick.

I'm gonna need the towel, the crying Trump towel I gave to Bill back in a couple of days.

But we're living in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

So the real deal got 34%.

I think Minogue's gonna get 38, 39.

If he hits 40, that would be a miracle.

And Healey is not extremely well liked, so she's not gonna take all the rest.

She may get mid-50s, maybe a little more than that.

So it's a little bit of a wake-up call, but doesn't matter how much money you have, you cannot win, there's no more Charlie Bakers in Massachusetts.

- Well, and think of that.

We were talking about the Republican governors, Charlie Baker, Bill Weld, Mitt Romney.

I mean, you know, deep, deep blue Massachusetts has elected Republican governors over here.

- Yeah, and that's why just kind of circling back to the top of the show, and I do think the MAGA brand, if you will, would make this an incredibly unlikely thing to happen in general.

But I do think that there is a lane, and it's a long play for the Rhode Island Republican Party to self-actualize and say, "What we need to become is exactly that.

The party that is Charlie Baker in nature, in tone, in temperament, is hyper-focused on local issues of good government, and less so worried about, you know, you got this Vic Mellor out there.

I mean, that alone is anybody who was on the fence about whether or not they are gonna go Republican, Independent, maybe Democrat.

You look at the Vic Mellor campaign, which is, to me, it's a dystopian and creepy and frankly scary event that's happening before our eyes.

- [Jim] With a lot of AI in the ads.

- A lot of AI, a lot, just disconnected from local issues.

The guy beat Doc Skoly.

You might not like Doc Skoly on a lot of issues.

At the end of the day, the guy's a surgeon who performs work on difficult patients at the ACI, a member of this community, and he got beat by this Mellor.

- And he was a legend during COVID because he stood up to the vaccines.

- It just shows you how the party has shifted.

And if you have that Mellor out there as sort of like the most high profile guy, if you will, running, that's not the direction that's gonna win, but the Charlie Baker one might.

- Joe, let's shift to Congress.

A year ago, we've had you on periodically over the last couple years.

If a year ago I said, "Oh, the Senate is in play," you probably would've laughed in my face.

Now, what's your assessment of how Congress is gonna go?

- Impossible that could happen.

I just sit here, as happy as I was in the early days and what the Trump agenda was doing and bringing America back is, you asked me if I was late, I was gonna be in a ditch.

No, I'm gonna go hide under a rock of what's coming down the pike.

The only big issue is the Senate.

If the House is gone, but that's normal, 26 is the midterm change.

It's gonna be just about exactly that.

The Senate is a complete shocker.

This was never supposed to even be close.

We could have even picked up a couple.

But to see Texas in play, and Alaska in play, and Mississippi are actually- - And Kansas.

- And Kansas and Nebraska, and the map just keeps more and more and more in play, and the polls keep getting worse and worse.

And if the Senate is lost from people like me, it's, oh my God.

And we know that.

I mean, it's gonna be two years of hell.

Trump will get impeached.

He won't get convicted in the Senate, but Trump is gonna have one hell of a time.

And nevermind any judicial picks.

If the Senate is not lost and it's gonna come down to, Tim Russert used to say, "Florida, Florida, Florida" in the George Bush days.

I'm saying, Texas, Texas, Texas.

We lose Texas, we cannot keep the Senate.

And the sad part is if we lose Texas and it's a 51-49, the President has himself to blame.

John Corwin wins Texas the same way Governor Abbott does, it's gonna be because Ken Paxton- - Because he endorsed Ken Paxton.

- And he put him in there.

So yeah, it's all about the Senate and it's gonna be close.

- Yeah, it's interesting looking at prediction maps right now, and there really is a pathway.

In fact, I was watching on Fox last night.

I was like, let me watch the conservative impression of where things stand right now, both polling and anecdotally.

And they were going around the map and saying, "This state's in play, this state's not."

And Fox News is asserting right now, at least as of last night, that it's really either Texas or Michigan.

If only one of those states flips blue, then that will get to at least 51.

In other words, all of the other swing states, they're measuring as, yeah, they're pretty much going blue at this point.

- Yeah, but Michigan they would hold because- - So if they hold Michigan and/or win Texas, that'll get them to 51 based on the rest of the complexion of the map right now.

- But it's funny.

I mean, you look at Alaska, you look at Maine, you think these were all safe seats.

And I wonder, Joe, you've been a big proponent for the administration.

What has gone wrong over the last year that's led us to this point where some of these seats are even in play?

- It's really, actually, there's pretty much consensus on this, the war and high prices, including gas.

Those are the two major things.

Trump got hosed by COVID the first time, and now it's the dang war in the Middle East, which has led to the high prices.

- A war of his making.

- Yeah, yeah.

And he got some and Netanyahu helped out with that.

But the crazy thing to me, Jim, is just three major, major non-considerations.

One, how easy it would be for Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz.

Two, they will attack their Arab neighbors with just some bombs and blow up the infrastructure.

And three, this wasn't gonna be Venezuela.

You go in, it's overthrown, and it's nirvana.

Those three, he was led to believe were gonna be in his favor.

And all three went south.

- Well, look, or like the Persian Gulf War back in, when it was, you know, it was quick and it was over in a week, you know, back during George H.W.

Bush.

- Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And what moved maybe the person who was soft Trump, soft Republican or, you know, kind of the middle of the road is the cost of living.

And it wouldn't matter if it was inverse and you had Democrats in control right now.

The cost of living is completely out of control for most people.

And that's- - Well, and that's what really hit the election because, you know, Trump can say that it was Biden's fault in 9%.

Inflation was a worldwide problem.

- Yes.

- It wasn't just here, but that was the one thing we heard during the election, "I'm gonna bring your prices down."

I wonder, Joe, if he had not started the Iran War, whether we'd be looking a lot different because you'd have the ripple effect on the economy and on prices and we wouldn't be in a quagmire, as they like to say.

- I think the Senate wouldn't even be- - [Jim] In play, right?

- It's the war and all the fallout from that.

- All right.

We'll know in a week where it comes.

AI, artificial intelligence, has some questioning whether guardrails need to be put up on the technology.

But what about AGI, artificial general intelligence?

That's a hypothetical type of AI that matches or surpasses human cognitive abilities.

Now, Bill Gates is leading the charge and sounding the alarm about what potentially could happen.

Joe, you brought this topic to my attention.

You've been following it.

They had a long form.

Bill Gates had a long form with Ezra Klein.

This is scary stuff.

- Yeah, as he puts it, it can be scary, but it can be solvable.

But the main point of Bill Gates, and I'm certainly not ideologically aligned with him, but when he's right, he's right.

And when you see him and the leaders of all the AGI, the AI companies saying, "We need regulation," the hype is, "Well, this is just to try to get the price up to scare everybody that this is so powerful to buy in."

No, it's not.

This is real.

And as Bill Gates puts it, this is nuclear weapons.

That was scary, but the government controlled the weapons and the government could determine how to deal with them on a government by government basis.

This is all the private sector.

And we have regulation on everything dangerous from cars to medical devices.

This is an existential threat.

So regulation needs to begin.

It needs to begin now.

And as Ezra asked him, "Well, OpenAI, and they said they're gonna be good stewards and guard the technology well and they're abandoning that."

And Bill said, "No, they're not.

That's if you only have one company doing it.

When you've got the marketplace and the competition, you've got to be the best or you're gonna perish."

So it's a race to the bottom, and unless the government comes in and sets a level-playing field with regulation, this is gonna get out of control.

So he's calling for it now.

- Yeah, I think, I mean, there's so much that we could talk about here.

- We could go three hours with Ezra Klein, right?

- Yeah, let's bring him in right now.

But, I mean, look, there's also the reality of the financial implications here, which you've got NVIDIA, which is acting as the central bank of AI.

And now a huge, is it a bubble like the dot-com bubble?

Not really but it's similar.

And the valuations that we're gonna see coming through these IPOs, whether it be Anthropic or OpenAI, and whatever else is to come, as Elon Musk continues to fold his companies into his existing trillion dollar plus company, you know, the economy is being dramatically shifted at the same time as you're gonna see a skillset gap of enormous proportions for so many workers.

And I just think when we talk about K-shaped economy, and when we talk about the wealth gap, or when we talk about opportunities that have already started to feel like the middle class is losing the opportunity to buy a house or whatever it may be, we're getting to a point where we're gonna have to either slow this down economically or redesign the system and probably implement universal basic income.

- I don't know about that, but we are gonna have to come up with solutions.

Until Bill was on, I thought that the trade jobs were all safe.

Well, the computers can take over law, can do so much good and help and help humans, but you still need humans on the ground to lay rows and do stuff.

Bill said no.

Five to eight years at most, we're gonna have robots doing all of that stuff.

And so, you're gonna have to really reinvent the economy.

In a lot of ways, part of it's scary, but a lot of it's good.

If this is used right, it can greatly help human existence and suffering, even end hunger.

But if it's used wrong and if bad actors get ahold of this technology, it can go south.

I was, it may not be this bad, but you look at the movie "Dune," or "Terminator," or those things, and those are complete Sci-Fi fantasy.

But I'm thinking, "Dune" thinking machines.

- We're close.

- That's what we're talking about, thinking machines.

- Yeah, I don't know if it was just to be contrarian, but of course, President Trump took the opposite view.

"No, we don't need guardrails.

We need to compete with China."

So I don't know, especially, you know, we talk about the midterms.

If the Democrats take over, maybe it's a bipartisan effect to say, "We need to put guardrails regardless of what the President is saying."

Do you see that coming down the pipe?

- Well, you know Trump.

I mean, he says a lot of things.

You've got to speak Trumpese.

Yes, he's saying that now.

I mean, he's right on that.

That's one of the big problems is that, okay, if we have guardrails on this technology and China doesn't abide by them, that's a problem.

- Well, it's like climate change, too.

We're doing all we can, and then you have, you know, other countries that are spewing, you know.

- Right.

- But as Bill puts it all the time, we can talk about the analogies of the past.

He's right.

They pale in climate change, nuclear weapons.

They're nothing compared to this, which can literally, it will change the entire economy in the next five to 10 years.

And we've got to be ready for it.

We've got to be out in front of it.

And China could be a bad actor on this.

We've got to engage them.

- That's Bill Gates, Bill, not Bill Bartholomew.

- Yeah, exactly.

- As Bill said, and I thought Bill knows a lot.

- [Joe] Well, Bill probably would say that.

- Well, what is definitely interesting or scary, take a look at what happened in Ukraine, right?

Where you've, I remember the day after the Ukraine, the current Ukraine invasion, Russia invaded Ukraine, whatever.

- [Jim] Four years ago.

- Four years ago.

I remember just randomly seeing Elon Musk post on, I think it was X at that point already.

"Starlink deployed," blah, blah, blah.

And people were like, "Oh, that's so great."

Like, the benevolence of the private sector to like help out the Ukrainians and give them opportunity to communicate, whatever.

The reality is what we're seeing right now is the nation state itself.

So we're worried about China, or the US, or the EU, or the BRICS, or what's... That'll probably be irrelevant soon.

Like, the most powerful people in the world will not be nation states.

Right now you have Elon Musk who admittedly is controlling communications above Ukraine through Starlink.

We don't know what else they're launching into the atmosphere right now, into lower Earth orbit and the satellites.

And it's just a scenario where tech billionaires, right, ushered in by the block of Donald Trump and MAGA Plus, as Steve Bannon calls it.

MAGA Plus with a MAHA.

And this version, it's MAGA Plus day one, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario from OpenAI, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, that's the peer group.

The billionaires who are basically, you know, they've got bunkers.

They're not worried about you or me.

This isn't really about whether or not your job's gonna be lost, it's about whether or not the world is gonna exist, period.

In our lifetime, we face the possibility that will not, at least as currently constituted.

And so, from that standpoint, this is dystopia in action as we speak right now.

- What do you make of that?

- I agree with most of it, but it is solvable.

And that's what Bill Gates... It is solvable.

We've solved all kinds of problems.

- Do you think enough people are paying attention or they're getting... Now we're getting their attention.

I mean, everybody in the know has known this already, but the greater public is all of a sudden seeing some of this stuff and like, "Wow," they don't understand it fully.

Is there gonna be a movement toward regulation?

- Jim, how this always happens in human history, sadly, even Gates agrees with this, it's gonna happen again.

Nobody appreciated that we could have a pandemic, then COVID hit.

Now everybody knows it.

There's probably gonna be a catastrophe.

A rogue actor is gonna get ahold of this.

A bomb is gonna go off somewhere and the world is gonna take action.

- Well, and they've already talked about near that a couple of things have been averted already.

- Yes, yeah.

Will it need to get that far?

I don't know, but if it does, that will be the action that hopefully solves the problem.

Hopefully we won't get that far.

- I agree, and, you know, two quick things.

One, you know, there are people who still maintain that there will always be a human being smarter than AI.

AI isn't smart.

It's good at predicting what letter or symbol or should come next.

It's just pulling from all of our collective information.

As an artist, as a writer of any kind, your intellectual property enters into this realm and it is then redistributed as if it were original in nature when it's really just taking our work as a species.

It's our library.

It's our stuff.

We should all be paid for that, number one.

Number two, look, the reality is we have to ask ourself what kind of world do we want to live in?

You know, do you want to live in a world where death robots where they're making decisions for themselves in war where you don't even necessarily have human beings controlling drones or whatever Space Force is up to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

If you don't want to live in that kind of world, this isn't about Helena Foulkes or Donald Trump or, you know, the Pope or anything like that.

This is way bigger, and we all need to come together.

And if we can do that, you're right, that's the only real solution.

- We're gonna be running this clip a year or two from now.

- Right.

- Think of where we're gonna be, like, in 2028 or 2029.

All right.

Let's go to outrageous and/or kudos.

Bill Bartholomew, what do you have?

- I just want to give a kudo to Judge McConnell, who I think got it right in awarding Miguel Sanchez, the incoming likely Providence City Council President.

He ruled in favor of Mr.

Sanchez who was fired from the McKee administration after Mr.

Sanchez appeared at a pro-Palestine protest a few years ago.

Wherever your thoughts are on that particular issue, the reality is the First Amendment right is you are entitled to speak your mind.

You ought to be able to speak about any issue and not fear that your job is gonna be on the line.

And that includes for government workers.

The McKee Administration took the position, "Hey, you're on the opposite side of an issue of us, and you're out vocal on that.

We're gonna fire you."

McConnell got it right.

It should not have happened.

- And we've seen that play out nationally, too.

I mean, a lot of these suits, it's interesting to see.

And this is Democrat and Democrat and basically free speech beyond what you're doing.

Outrage or kudo, or both?

- We'll do kudo today to the United States of America and our great experiment.

We've gotten by two years with Donald Trump, the left going crazy, Trump derangement syndrome, but we still have a government.

It's still functioning.

We're gonna have another election.

It may well go completely the other way.

If the Democrats, they will take the House.

If they take the Senate, it's going to be a completely different Washington, a completely different government.

And guess what, Jim?

We're gonna survive that, too.

People like me, instead of being jumping for joy, we're gonna go hiding under our bed most days.

But the government will survive and America will survive.

And then there'll be another election in 2028.

And the great experiment that our founders envisioned continues to pace.

- If you were with him in the room and you were a senior advisor, what advice would you have been giving him the last year as he's kind of veered maybe off what he originally wanted to do?

What would you have told him?

- I'm not sure it'd be any different.

There's a lot of competing interests and the war in Iran just completely went off the rails.

He's been chastising Iran.

He's been telling them they're good and bad, and he's just trumping Trump.

I'm not sure there's much more he could have done once he got involved in that war, which I'm sure he knows himself and- - He's trumping Trump.

- He is trumping Trump.

- We'll leave it at that.

Bill and Joe, thank you so much for coming in.

And thank you for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

We'll see you next time right here on "Lively."

(lively music) - [Announcer] "Lively" is generously supported in part by John Hazen White's "Lookout."