Yeah.

So he initially was a governor who really did – and he's not alone in this – but he championed bringing in data center developers into Pennsylvania.

There was a big deal with Amazon that he touted last year.

It was really a big economic boost for the state.

And you saw throughout this last year, he initially – Basically came out with these voluntary standards that developers had to meet to get certain tax breaks from the state or that they'd be able to enjoy the full benefits that the state offered these developers.

And by August, you know, he had signed an executive order mandating those kind of optional standards as stuff that they now had to do.

No longer optional.

What are you seeing as the emerging kind of consensus points, the emerging points of differentiation between these ambitious Democrats who might want to be the next president in terms of how they're handling AI and data centers? So what's really interesting,

Yeah.

So he initially was a governor who really did – and he's not alone in this – but he championed bringing in data center developers into Pennsylvania.

There was a big deal with Amazon that he touted last year.

It was really a big economic boost for the state.

And you saw throughout this last year, he initially – basically came out with these voluntary standards that developers had to meet to get certain tax breaks from the state or that they'd be able to enjoy the full benefits that the state offered these developers.

And by August, you know, he had signed an executive order mandating those kind of optional standards as stuff that they now had to do.

No longer optional.

What are you seeing as the emerging kind of consensus points, the emerging points of differentiation between these ambitious Democrats who might want to be the next president in terms of how they're handling AI and data centers?

Yeah.

So he initially was a governor who really did – and he's not alone in this – but he championed bringing in data center developers into Pennsylvania.

There was a big deal with Amazon that he touted last year.

It was really a big economic boost for the state.

And you saw throughout this last year, he initially – Basically came out with these voluntary standards that developers had to meet to get certain tax breaks from the state or that they'd be able to enjoy the full benefits that the state offered these developers.

And by August, you know, he had signed an executive order mandating those kind of optional standards as stuff that they now had to do.

No longer optional.

What are you seeing as the emerging kind of consensus points, the emerging points of differentiation between these ambitious Democrats who might wanna be the next president in terms of how they're handling AI and data centers? So what's really interesting, and I think Shapiro

He's not the only one who's doing this, right? Who else is doing this?

Well, in his same state, Congressman Tom Barrett is also separating on some of these issues, whether it be on data centers or the war on Iran.

He's actually voted for the War Powers Act as it's gone through the House.

Um, so there are candidates in battleground races that are-- they're seeing the lay of the land, and we've heard a lot of Republicans in the last week expressing a lot of concern, uh, about the direction that these races are going.

Um, so you're, you're seeing it with battleground candidates in close races trying to create some distance, which again, it's not that abnormal for a midterm that takes place, especially in a president's first term.

The novel thing about it, as an advisor to Barrett told me, is that it involves Trump, and you just so rarely see Republicans do this.

There have been, though, some instances in which the president has specifically come out against some of these candidates.

So he did, uh, over the weekend, um- Do a post on Byron Donalds, who, you know, had, had removed images of the president and him from his campaign website.

Do you think that, that this, that's right, that this is hurting Trump politically?

I mean, the fact that Eric Adams is out there, you know, calling for him to not do this, right? That's kind of an interesting weathervane because, you know, you mentioned their history, right? Uh, Eric Adams is having this prosecution against him basically not move forward because he was cooperating with the Trump administration on their immigration agenda.

Um, and, you know, we're thinking about what's happening in DC right now.

You know, it, it doesn't take a huge leap to see the potential for, uh, the Trump administration to take similar moves in New York if let's say, you know, Zohar was able to win this fall, right? Uh, New York would suddenly become a much bigger target for them.

Um, and, you know, I'm thinking back to those comments that, you know, J.D. and Stephen Miller made when they were at Union Station today talking about the white hippies outside.

This is very much an effort, uh, an intentional one, to try and divide, uh, Democrats, right? When you're saying, "We are trying to stand up for the Black residents of Washington, DC who are suffering from crime and it's only the white people who are protesting this," that is a direct effort to try and split up, uh, your, your opponents.

Is there any accom- accomplishment that you see that the White House can point to out of any of this?

Well, they haven't really articulated what the accomplishment is that has come out of Alaska, right? That has not happened yet, and if you listen to Trump, you know, talking the last few days specifically, he's really highlighting, you know, these other conflicts that he played a role in helping resolve, um, trying to highlight his role as a peacemaker in these other regions.

... not demonstrated right now.

The thing that I'm really eager to see from voters in 2026 and 2028, let's say we get all these laws through, uh, and again crypto is less regulated, AI, you know, minimally regulated as it's, as it's growing, how do voters respond to that when there's two or three years from now where they actually feel and see the effects of what that brings into the economy? Do they hate it? Do they love it? It's gonna be a huge issue on the trail, more so honestly in 2028 than 2026 once this stuff has a couple of years to really be baked in.

But it's gonna be just such a huge issue, uh, in the campaign in a few years, and I'm just so curious to see how voters, you know, respond to it.

Is this a good time to be making huge cuts when we're having more weather-related events?

So obviously with Texas, it's, it's far too soon to draw a direct link, but, uh, this is gonna be a result of Dodge and all of the very high-profile cuts, particularly cuts, uh, involving science and research and all of this other funding going to universities, for example.

Is that any time you have a disaster like this, this is gonna be a conversation now.

And we know that we're having more and more disasters like this, you know, over the last few years.

So I, I'm not sure that, you know, the administration has thought through necessarily what the impact of these cuts are going to be every single time a disaster like this happens, and they're gonna be having to answer these questions again and again.