AI Politician Backlash, Perrier Scandal, Crypto Pardon Push, Neo-Nazi Surge, Don Jr.’s Viral Stunt

Today on Filtered, a British politician makes an AI clone of himself, and voters hate it. France's most famous sparkling water brand faces a purity scandal that could pop its image. Crypto's richest man is pulling every political lever to get a Trump pardon and maybe a US market comeback. A neo Nazi network says it's thriving in the Trump era. And Don Jr posts a bizarre White House dildo Photoshop that mashes politics and provocation. All that and more today on Filtered with TJ Walker. Okay, thanks for joining me today. My name is TJ Walker, and this is a new program where we decipher the news. We look at the top business, technology and culture stories of the day and analyze them, filter them through the lens of communication skills. So let's dive right in with story one. British Labor Member of Parliament Mark Seward thought he'd found the perfect fix for his overflowing inbox to clone himself. Sort of. Facing more than 6,000 constituent messages in three months, he unveiled AI Mark, a chatbot with his voice and Yorkshire accent. He says it's about accessibility. Voters say it's lazy, impersonal, and even bad for the environment. Neural Voice, the company behind it, insists it will make members of Parliament more reachable. Similar experiments include Sweden's Prime Minister using AI as a second opinion and AI Steve Robert. Running for Parliament, AI Mark avoided gaffes for the most part, but stumbled on substance, often answering, I don't have that information. On bigger questions, Palestine, the economy. He stuck to safe talking points. The real issue, whether constituents will accept a digital stand in for their elective representative. Judging by the reaction, MPs might want to keep the chatbots as assistants and not replacements. Okay, so what's the real message here? A Member of Parliament used a chatbot to try to help its constituents, and people went crazy. Then we all went bizarre. But you know what else? When people went bizarre the first time they saw a movie and a train was coming on the screen, they jumped out of their seats. People are always scared of new technology. I predict that within 10 years, every single elected official anywhere in the world is going to have a chatbot to answer constituents questions. Okay, let's delve a little deeper. Am I saying this can't be abused? Am I saying that this is the answer to all problems? No. But let's not kid ourselves. If you think a Member of Congress, a Member of Parliament, a member of a huge legislative body, can sit there and answer thousands of questions every day personally, you're fooling yourself. Now, as this Member of Parliament said, he's received 6,000 messages from his constituents in just the first few months. There's literally no way someone working 24 hours a day could answer 6,000 messages. Now I can tell you from more than 30 years ago when I worked for members of Congress, they just had staff doing it full time. And maybe if it was a brand new topic, the member of Congress would take a quick look and say, okay, but you were getting something representing the staff member, the elected official, not the staff member. You weren't getting the actual attention because there's too many people. It just can't be done. Doesn't matter how hardworking someone is. So wouldn't an AI clone that is ingested everything that politician has ever said, every position paper, every speech, if it's uploaded into the clone's brain, the answer the clone is going to give is actually more honest, more accurate than what some 22 year old staffer can just do on their own thinking up what the best answers are. So I see this as a huge step forward, forward now, full disclosure, conflict of interest. I have my own AI clone. You'll see it in a minute when we go to the ads. TJ Walker AI. And I can tell you, some people don't like it. Well guess what, some people didn't like it when the very first people started using answering machines. I remember, I mean for me it was the early 80s. You get an answering machine, oh, what do I do here? This feels strange. Let me hang up. People thought it was really weird when voicemail came in, all technique. You know what people thought was really weird was hearing Edison's phonograph, hearing music come out of a speaker. It was like, oh my God, this room, this house is haunted by ghosts. That was the perception. So there's a long, long tradition of people being scared by new technology. And I don't say this is holier than thou, I won't say I'm scared of technology, but I can be overwhelmed sometimes. I had a brand new popcorn maker on my counter in the kitchen that I bought the other day and it just sat there because I procrastinated. I didn't want to take the time to learn how to assemble it. Finally I found a YouTube video. Did it started to. I realized my daughter had put it together without any YouTube video. She's a little more technologically savvy are savvier than I am. So that's what I think is really going on here. I want to congratulate Mark Seward for trying to be more responsive to his constituents. Because the beauty of an AI clone is it's instant. If you have a question about, you know, what's the new tax policy going to be if I build an addition to my home? Presumably you would want an answer to that right away. Even if you wake up at 5am now, presumably if Mark Seward programmed his clone the right way, ingesting all the laws that he's responsible for, the clone could speak to the constituent and give them the exact precise information. Whereas if you're writing an email on a Friday evening, best case scenario, you want a human to answer it. We're looking at what, Monday afternoon. And realistically, if thousands are coming in maybe a week later. So I see artificial intelligence clones being tools that are going to be really helpful to politicians. Is there a possibility for abuse? Absolutely. Here in the United States, most cloning companies are so afraid to be associated with a politician, there's legislative reasons for them being against it too. They don't want to be seen as influencing elections unfairly because what is possible in the future, And I hope this doesn't happen. But it's certainly possible that a politician could create a digital clone. Not just their voice, but their whole body, their visuals. Just as I have with tjwalker, AI track everything about you from your Facebook post and your social media post, know exactly where you stand on every issue, know exactly the people you hate, the positions you hate, what you love, and then tell you exactly what you want to hear. And in theory, it could be different for every single voter so that every constituent feels like, wow, here's a politician who finally gets me. That's a dystopian future. I hope we don't achieve that. Certainly I'm in favor of legislation that would make that prohibited. That's not what we want. But that certainly does not sound like what the member of the British Labor Member of Parliament, Mark Seward, was doing. It. It is accused of dodging tough questions. Guess what? When you write a letter or an email to a typical member of Congress or Parliament, they don't go out of their way to stick their neck out on tough, controversial issues either. One of the charges from constituents is that it's impersonal. It's seen as lazy. Okay, I get it. It's not as good as a true one on one conversation. But you know what else can be impersonal? An email, a form, letter. All of those things can be impersonal too. So why do we have a bias against the new? Well, it's human nature. We're hardwired to think the new technology is somehow the end of the world. You know, when people saw cars coming the first time without horses, they thought, you know, what kind of satanic instrument is this? How could you possibly have a coach moving without horses pulling it? So there's always this fear of new technology. I give Mark credit for being willing to get out there first. And my prediction is a lot of the politicians who are going tuk tuk tuk tisk on you, within five or ten years they are going to be doing the same thing. It's kind of like ATMs. I mean I'm young enough to remember when you wanted money from the bank, you had to wait for bankers hours. You know, nine to five or nine to four, wait in line, the door would open, wait in another line to a teller and say, hi, I would like my $20. Then ATMs opened up and a lot of people oh, this is awful. This is so impersonal. I don't get to talk to sue, my favorite bank teller. And yet now imagine going back to the days when you could never get cash without going to a bank. How wildly inconvenient that is. You've got to have cash to pay for some ticket. It's 10 o' clock at night on a Friday night, you're getting ready to go to the big show, there's an atm, you want that cash right away. You're suddenly not worried about not being able to talk to sue, your favorite bank teller. And that's how I think this is going to evolve as well. It is so massively convenient to be able to talk to a chatbot versus having to wait for the physical person to talk to you. I think that is what is going to be completely overwhelming in a positive way and why I do in fact predict we are going to see more and more politicians, mayors, legislators, senators and yes, presidents of countries using chatbots. Let's head on over to issue number two. Perrier water scandal. France's most famous sparkling water brand may be losing its sparkle. That's right, maybe losing its sparkle. Perrier is under investigation over claims it illegally filtered its natural water, something EU law says must be bottled exactly as it comes from the ground. Le Monde and Radio France revealed at least a third of France's mineral water brands, including Perrier, used microfiltration to remove contaminants after years of climate driven droughts, lowered aquifer levels and increased pollution risks. The problem isn't safety, the water's drinkability, but marketing filtered breaks the pure from source image. Perrier Sells nationwide. Nestle, Perrier's parent company, admits using banned methods in the past, but insists the water remains pure and legally compliant. A decision later this year could strip Perrier of its mineral water status, a first in its 160 year history. If that happens, the world's green bottle icon might have to rebrand or bubble out of the market. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you buy into the hype of this water is great, or this is all natural, or this is mineral water, you are fooling yourself and you're making other people rich. Have I ever had a Perrier? Sure, the bubbles taste good, but you can make that at home as I do as well, with a canister of CO2. It's not hard to do people fool themselves about water all the time. I see people eating garbage food, processed McDonald's fries, the worst, processed carbohydrates, and, oh, that's not filtered water. Oh, I have to have bottled water. It's absolute nonsense. In most parts of the modern world, even tap water is a thousand times healthier for you than most highly processed food you put in your mouth every day. So let's go a little deeper. Let's dig deeper here. What's going on now? I like the fact that the European Union likes to protect its citizens and does in fact have regulation in Europe. You can't just say, oh, that's regulation, that's bad. The private sector always does things better. Well, no, they don't buy into that. They want consumer protections and they want honesty. And apparently Perrier can't just dip down, get the water from the ground, put it in a bottle and give it to you. Things have to be done to get that nice consistent sparkle. I'm not particularly bothered by that. I think a far bigger issue is the tremendous waste to our environment are of having to make the glass, transport the glass, ship the glass bottles, put the metal on the top, and then, yeah, the glass is more recyclable than just plastic. Fine. Although they put it in plastic bottles too. But you have to spend all the energy it takes to take the recycling bottles away to a plant, recycle them. We would all be so much better off if we simply drink tap water. And fine, get a filter. I use a Brita filter at home. I'm about to put a filtration system into my home so that it really has no chlorine taste in it at all. But that's so much better for the environment, by and large, than any bottle. I'm not picking on Perrier. And I do remember many decades ago there was a benzene crisis. But what Perrier does and all bottled manufacturers do is they play on a fundamental weakness in human beings. We are designed to try to spot risk. So we think, oh, I saw dirt in my water, there's dirt in my toilet. Or the water's a little bit dirty coming out of my sink. Oh, wow, it's so risky. So much safer to have water coming out of this bottle when it is not necessarily any safer. Because here's the thing I remember I've worked with a number of water companies that are US based and based in France. And here's the thing the water executives tell me is that your tap water generally is much cleaner in favor than anything in bottled water. That is because water that went into a bottle might have gone in there six months ago, 18 months ago. There could be bacteria growing. The bottled water may have been perfect when it's put in, but it's in a warehouse. Different heat extremes, rats running around peeing on it. And versus, the water out of your tap was tested today by your local water officials most of the time. So we fool ourselves, we delude ourselves into thinking that bottled water is necessarily safer. I understand we have a lot of friends in India and other parts of the world where, okay, the E. Coli bacteria quotient in tap water is maybe too high and there is good reason for drinking water out of a bottle. But you've got to know your country. And if you're here in the United States, unless you're in Flint, Michigan, it's by most accounts highly irrational. Bad for the environment. You're not doing anything whatsoever for your health by drinking water from a bottle. So please think twice. Don't buy into the hype. More in a moment after these commercial messages.

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Okay, story three crypto billionaire pardon push CZ Zhao, the billionaire founder of Binance, is mounting a high powered campaign for a presidential pardon, and it's as much about business as it is about freedom. Zhao served four months in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2023 to money laundering violations that let sanctioned countries and terrorist groups use his exchange. Well, now he's out and his team is deploying lobbyists with Trump World connections. He's flattering the president and podcasts, and even striking business deals with Trump's family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. Critics say it's transactional politics at its finest or worst. Reward a convicted felon and his company in exchange for business business benefits. The stakes are huge. Clemency could restore Binance's ability to get U.S. licenses and compete directly with Coinbase. Zhao dismisses any link between the pardon push and Binance's Trump connected deal. Yeah, sure, but admits he studied past clemency cases as a playbook. The White House has both Zhao's and Binance's applications on its desk. Okay, so what's the real message here? The guy the idea that this criminal who started Binance, who is part of an organization that let terrorists launder money in America, can now just get a clean slate on his record and be treated like a respectable businessman and do whatever he wants because he's willing to pay off the Trump administration is sad and pathetic. But worse, it's not paying off the Trump administration. It's paying Trump directly and his family and his henchmen. Folks, this is what institutional bribery looks like. This is what a third World dictatorship looks like. You don't even see first world dictatorships run like this. This is really petty Annie, pathetic criminal stuff here. And it says a lot about America's Decline. Okay, let's go a little deeper. So this finance founder wants a pardon now. He's not in prison anymore. He did serve four months. But by getting a clean slate, it opens up his business to really do whatever it wants in America again, to run around wild. And it's sending a message to really every criminal in the world that, hey, you can violate any crime you want in America. Maybe, I was going to say maybe short of murder or pedophilia, but maybe not. You can do whatever you want, even if you are tried, even if you are indicted, tried and convicted, even if you serve time, that's okay. Just hire a bunch of lobbyists, pay money here, pay money here, pay, put, put green in this hand, or crypto in this hand, and this hand, and this hand. You do it and you can have a pristine image again. Chances are you'll probably be at White House dinners, state dinners. You may have photo ops. You may be next to the president for the right amount of money. Now, this is what mobsters do. This is what third world dictatorships do. And we are increasingly seeing this in the United States. It's sending a clear message to the rest of the world. The United States is no longer a country of laws. The rule of law need not apply here. We are run by the rule of mobocracy. If you want to pay off the mob boss, you can essentially get whatever you want. That is the new rule being communicated to the world. So what's the personal development message here for you and me? I want you to have integrity because, A, you'll be able to sleep better at night, B, you're going to do well in any environment unless you run afoul of a mobster or a dictator. But in most cases, you know, there's always going to be a place for you somewhere in the world because most people, I believe, want to deal with honest, ethical people. If you have a reputation of following laws of your nation and of the international community and doing business reputably, I think there's going to be a place for you. Can you get away with stuff? Yeah, I guess I can tell you, I personally don't even want to serve four months in prison. I don't want to spend one night in prison. And thus far I've been able to do that in my life. Avoid even walking into a prison other than on an historic tour like going to Alcatraz as a museum. So I don't know how these people live with them themselves, frankly. But call me old fashioned. Call me old, you say, hey, hey, Boomer, what's wrong with serving time in prison if you get to be crypto rich, get to be a crypto billionaire? Isn't that what it's all about? Well, maybe, maybe not. I'm going to be following this issue from time to time. I would hope that you would take a good look at it as well. And remember, all corrupt regimes fall at some point. At some point, they go too far and there's a backlash. And then the henchmen who were in go on the outs, and it's often not pretty. Just look at the Nuremberg trials to see how people who really had a lot of high power and prestige in one culture moments ago were seen and held up in international disgrace. And I think we're. We're not that far away from those times. Welcome to the program. I'm TJ Walker. This is filtered with TJ Walker every single day. I. And even on Saturday. I'm recording this on Saturday, and we're live on Saturday. I look at the top business, technology, and culture stories of the day, filtering it through the lens of communication skills, what messages are being sent, received, how it's being communicated, all with the goal of improving your personal development and your personal success. So that's what we're about right here on this show, and very happy you joined me today. We try to do this every single day. The show is going to be launching for real. We're in a soft launch right now, but it's going to be an audio podcast on all platforms, and it's going to be launching officially September 2nd. So please mark your calendars. It'll be on every major social media platform, every podcasting platform as well. Okay, let's go to issue four today. Neo Surge, the Aryan Freedom Network, a neo Nazi group run by Texas couple Dalton, Henry Stout and Daisy Barr. They say that Donald Trump's return to the White House has turbocharged its growth. Founded just a few years ago, AFN mixes Ku Klux Klan traditions with modern extremist recruitment. Leaders claim Trump's rhetoric on immigration and Western values has boosted, boosted membership, while his pardon for January 6th. Rioters and a shift of federal resources away from domestic extremism have lowered the pressure from law enforcement. AFN denies promoting violence, but tells followers to prepare for a racial holy war. They hold swastika burnings, and they stage armed gatherings. Researchers tracking the group say its footprint footprint has expanded nationwide through rallies, flyers, and alliances with other white nationalist factions. While Trump's team denies any link to white extremism, analysts warn that extremist ideas once relegated to the fringes are bleeding into mainstream right wing rhetoric. As one AFN leader put it, our side won the the election. Okay, so what's the real message here? This constant messaging coming from Trump? That all diversity is bad. I have good genes. I'm a natural genius. These immigrants are disgusting, sick, pathetic, maybe rapist. It's the best thing that ever happened to the modern white supremacy movement. They're saying, yes, thankfully, somebody on our side. And they are gaining recruits on a daily basis. And when people spend time to say, oh, look how bad liberals are, they don't like Sydney Sweeney because she's pretty. It's a smokescreen to have us not look at the thousands and thousands of people joining these white supremacist movements across the country today in 2025. Okay, let's dig deep, deeper. Again, it's the Aryan Freedom Network. By their own admission, their membership is going way up thanks to Donald Trump and his constant rhetoric implying that white people are good and Nazis are good people. Essentially, they're cutting back on FBI and law enforcement officials looking at domestic terrorism, although they some, they suddenly have a lot of resources to attack and track down elected Democratic officials from the state of Texas. That's horrible. But Nazis holding rallies in Klan outfits with guns, burning crosses, hey, no problem there. We don't need to look at that. No, no need to start an FBI file on that. That couldn't possibly lead to crime. And again, they're claiming they don't want violence, but yet they're promoting a racial holy war. So, yes, in 2025, believe it or not, there are a lot of Americans who believe that only white people should live in America, that there's going to be a racial war, and that brown people and black people and anyone who isn't their version of white is going to be the enemy. And it's going to be a real war. Not a metaphorical war, not a war of burns on social media or memes on X, but an actual war. And they are arming. You know, when you see liberals get together on the Upper west side, the strongest weapon they have is their phone to do a nasty tweet. But when you see white Aryan organizations and Aryan freedom networks getting together, these people have the real firepower with real bullets. And it's consistently ignored by the mainstream media because it's so much more enjoyable to run a video clip of a really sexy Sydney Sweeney. And the fact that two obscure liberal progressive commentators who have a grand total of about five followers said they didn't like the ad. It's much easier to focus on that because you can run this footage of Sydney, sweetie, than it is to talk about an actual growing Nazi movement in America. That to their credit, they're honest about it. They point out, hey, Donald Trump's the best thing that ever happened to us. He's on our side. Okay? Issue 5 Don Junior's Bizarre Photoshop Donald Trump Jr. Is back in the headlines, this time for posting a Photoshopped image of his father, President Trump, tossing a bright green folks trying to make this a family show. But this is what's happening by the first family, so I have to report it to you. Tossing a bright green dildo off the White House roof toward a group of female basketball players. Captioned posted without further comment, the image mashes together two recent viral moments, the president's odd rooftop appearance earlier this week and the string of dildo throwing incidents disrupting WNBA games, most recently hitting Indiana Fever guard Sophia Cunningham. The post drew 80,000 likes, but also a wave of criticism. Some marked the crassness. Others noted the irony of Trump's allies invoking women's sports to attack trans athletes while making lewd jokes about female players. Journalist Mehdi Hassan commented, remember, these are the same people who bash trans people because they care about women's sports, okay? It's the latest example of the Trump orbit blurring politics, provocation, and pop culture into a single social media stunt, one that grabs attention but leaves critics questioning the dignity of the presidency. So what's the real message here? What is the real message here? It's that Donald Trump and his family, those around him, are infected by a disease that says the only thing that matters is attention. The fact that I actually have the greatest power in the world doesn't mean anything. I want more attention on social media. I want people talking. I want to be on tv. I want to be on every social media platform. So Don Jr. Thinks it's cute to post images of his father throwing a dildo off the White House. So I misspoke earlier saying it leaves questions about the dignity of the presidency. No, there's no question anymore. This presidency says we don't care about any dignity as long as we get attention. I don't think we're that far away. Forget images posted on Twitter. I don't think we're that far away from President Trump trying to change attention from Epstein by just coming out on the White House lawn and pulling his pants down saying, hey, take that liberal media. Let's dig deeper here. It's. It's one thing to say, okay, Don Jr. Isn't anybody special. He's not elected to anything. He's just the kid of someone in power. Here's the problem with that. Don Jr. Now has more credibility with the MAGA people than any of the other Trump kids. And I'm not the only one to speculate that come 2028, if Donald Trump has not figured out a way to just have his henchmen on the Supreme Court say that the 22nd Amendment, barring presidents from running and serving more than two terms, if he can't somehow get that eliminated, he could easily run his own son. You just dashed off the signs from before. It still says Donald Trump. You add a little Junior on it and he could simply tell people, hey, I'm the unelected or the volunteer chief of staff for Don Jr. Meanwhile, he gets elected, counts the votes on his terms, and Don Jr goes on a vacation for four years, and Donald Trump's there in the White House saying, well, I'm the chief of staff and I'm speaking on behalf of the president. And it would all be cute and clever and at some level marginally constitutional because it wouldn't technically be the same person's name on the ballot. But that's why I'm especially interested in Don Jr. Because he is. He's definitely his father's son. He's definitely got that trolling instinct. He doesn't seem to have the charm, if you're willing to grant the senior charm. He doesn't seem to have the charisma of his father. But as far as being willing to say anything, do anything, if it meets one criteria, the criteria is does this piss off a liberal, a Democrat, a centrist, a progressive, Someone in any media organization that doesn't back me? If it pisses them off, I'm all in. And, and the problem, if that is your only guiding principle in life, there's just not many guardrails left. There's just nothing. At some point, you inch closer and closer to saying I hate N word, or you start saying Hitler's great. If your only criteria is pissing off people who are not automatically extreme right wing, there aren't a lot of guardrails left. More in just a moment.

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Welcome back. I'm so happy to be here with you today. But confession. My initial plan for this particular hour is to be off playing pickleball today. I've just moved to a new community in Palm beach county and there's a lot of pickleball courts around here. It is my preferred sport, but it's raining today. It doesn't usually rain in the morning here very often, so I'm hoping to play later today. I hope you have a great weekend and take some time off and enjoy and relax. I actually find.