Media Layoffs + AI Deepfakes: Data Centers, Post-Trump GOP, Jan 6 Bombs | Filtered

2025 was a year of massive layoffs in the media industry. Bad year for journalists and creators, at least in traditional media companies. Ker Starmer, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, has been the subject of fake AI videos where he supposedly proclaimed an 11pm curfew. We'll talk about that. And the growing problem with deep fake AI is that AI in general is growing to become a huge, huge, huge political issue. Who is it going to help or hurt more? The Republicans or the Democrats in the United States? All that and more today on Filtered. Hello and welcome to Filtered. I'm your host TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today on location Today, traveling in the northeast, on vacation with family, seeing friends. It's a festive time of year. But for me, vacation means fun. And there's nothing more fun than spending time with with you right here every day analyzing the top stories in the news. So let's dive right in. The last year was a bad year for people in the media industry. Over 17,000 jobs were cut across television, film, broadcast news and streaming in the first 11 months of 2025. This is according to the rapid industry publication. This is pretty much double of what happened in 2023. Now, in news alone, including broadcast, digital and print, there were 2200 jobs cut so far. 179 of those in November. Obviously, if you worked for a newspaper or anything like that, disastrous, disastrous news. Now the most cited reason for layoffs was restructuring and industry consolidation. That's kind of a polite way of saying we're going out of business or we sold our building in our real estate to a private equity company and there's no need for anyone here to lose money. Every month is kind of a polite way of saying that. Over the summer, the FCC officially approved the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media. That led to layoffs across Paramount's entertainment business. That always happens when there are mergers. Disney laid off hundreds this year as a part of the CEO Bob Iger's 2023 initiative. It did start cutting away. A World Economic Forum survey found that 41% of companies worldwide expect to reduce their workforce over the next five years because of rise of artificial intelligence. Media companies are obviously at the forefront of that trend. Other sites that are using more AI and affecting their SEO strategy that are shutting down or drastically reducing Teen Vogue shut down. Layoffs across Conde Nast Penske owned properties. So there's been a lot of cuts. And pbs, the Public Broadcasting System in the United States lost its federal funding under an initiative from President Trump. So they had to fire 15% of their staff. Surprisingly, they haven't had to fire more. But many people don't realize how many partnerships, how much advertising, even though they don't call it advertising that PBS gets. So all in all, not really a good time for people in the media industry, the traditional media industry. I say that now, I'm going to catch some flack for saying this, but I'm going to go ahead and toss it out there. There is a gigantic help wanted now hiring job sign for anyone and everyone who has an interest in the media. It's called YouTube, it's called TikTok, it's called Facebook, it's called Substack, where every day they're hiring. Now I don't mean they're hiring at six figure wages, I don't mean they're hiring, hiring it, even minimum wage ages or wages. But they are hiring in the sense they're giving people an opportunity. Now we saw an announcement earlier this month where the oscars is leaving ABC television for YouTube in just a few years, in 2029. What does that really mean? It means traditional media is, if not dead, it is dying, it's crumbling, the gatekeepers are gone. The person who says, all right, I'm the editor, I'm J. Jonah James at the Daily Bugle and I'm going to give you your break, kid, and you're going to come fetch me coffee and run around errands in the newsroom. And that's how you're going to enter journalism. Something from a comic book, that's something from the history books. It's not how people are going to make it in the media. If you want a job in the media, or for that matter, if you want any kind of business and you want to market your business and promote your business and get customers, you, you're going to have to become your own media company. Now Gary Vaynerchuk is a big proponent of every single business thinking of itself as a media business. You might not want to have 27 full time people following you around and capturing every word you say like Gary Vaynerchuk, but I do think you need to think of yourself as a media business. Media has become democratized now. No, I'm not saying everything is wonderful and fantastic and glorious and it's a great time to be an aspiring city hall reporter. It's not. If your goal is to be the best investigative reporter for your city or on government, not a good time. I don't know how someone like that makes a business a career. Out of it. Because the advertising dollars that funded the local newspaper to fund those jobs has all gone to Facebook and Google and Craigslist. Not coming back doesn't mean this isn't the greatest possible time to be a creator. And one subsection of being a creator is being a journalist. Someone who investigates, someone who reports, someone who gathers facts, puts together a story. Now, that's not what I do. I do a particular type of news analysis, if you want to call it journalism. I do a particular type of opinion based journalism, which is arguably much easier to do than going out and using shoe leather and hunting down leads and investigations and interviewing people and cobbling together stories. That is a harder business model. There's absolutely no doubt about it. But the world changes whether we like it or not. There was a time in any small town you could make a nice living putting horseshoes on horses, because everyone had to have a horse and it needed horseshoes for transportation. Those days are gone. You can lament the fact that you can't be a blacksmith very easily anymore, or you can adapt to change and figure out what can you do to use your skills, your talents, your passion to make money and practice your craft. And I think if you're any sort of a journalist, you have to start thinking of yourself as being your own media company. You're going to have to be entrepreneurial and that's going to mean sacrifice being a journalist. I believe in the rest of the 2000 and twenties, the 2000 and thirties is going to be more like being an actor almost. And that you got to put yourself out there a lot. And you're going to have to have some struggling years where you're waiting tables to pay the bills. You look at almost any successful actor, actress, that's what they had to do quite often. Scrimp live on ramen noodles and take odd jobs, park cars, bartend white tables. What's different though is, is you're not waiting for the big break of some gatekeeper anointing you. No, what you have to do, I believe if you want to be a journalist, a commentator, a creator of any sort, is you have to simply start creating, put it out there, spend almost no money, or no money other than having a laptop, a cell phone, and your willingness to learn every aspect of editing, using AI, researching thinking, writing, learning your presentation skills. And you're going to have to become your own media company. And if you want to report on water use management in California, presumably that could be a beat of yours. And you're going to have to Scramble around for every revenue opportunity and you're going to have to find an audience and it's not going to happen overnight. Now I'm experiencing that myself. I'll be totally transparent with you on what I'm doing with Filtered with TJ Walker. It is about, I guess, five months old. We're coming up on the end of our fifth month, not quite five months old, and we're still not cash flow positive. We're generating, I guess in terms of ad revenue, a few sales and things, maybe about $600 a month and our total cost for editing and other services about 900, 950. So, which is frankly better than I thought we'd be at this point. So we're not that far away from break even. I certainly anticipate getting it break even by first quarter of 2026 and then becoming varying degrees of profitability in the new year in second, third and fourth quarter. Now it might take you a lot less time than that, might take you more time. But I think that if you are going into journalism with the idea of I'm going to major in journalism, perhaps get my master's in journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism and, and have a big media company hire me, train me and I'm in this big newsroom with all sorts of interesting professionals and that's how I'm going to earn my stripes, pay my due, work my way up. I'm sorry, I think you're living in fantasy land now. In a sense, any new media opportunity throughout history has involved some entrepreneurialism, talk show hosting, political talk show hosting wasn't really seen as a viable career option to many people. 30 years ago, 35 years ago when I started, and I gotta tell you, I really, really struggle and frankly didn't make it, I peaked out at about $5 a day as a talk show host. But there are others who really stuck it out, had part time jobs, worked their way up and have done well. I'll give an example of someone. You may or may not like him. He's not really my cup of tea ideologically and politically, but he's got a tremendous work ethic and it's really paid off for his career. Now some of you are going to blanch when I mention this name. If you don't like him politically or you think he spews disinformation, we'll leave that aside for another day. You're not necessarily wrong, but the person I'm going to mention to you is Sean Hannity. I used to debate him several times a week on an old TV network called the News Talk Television Network. He was a talk show host in Atlanta. I was doing a national show out of Tampa and it was. He had more success than I did already back in 1995. But he was only a few years away from having to be a painter, having to do odd jobs just to keep alive his belief, his dream of being a talk show host. There were years when he was paid almost nothing when he first started out. And now if he's not a billionaire, he's probably worth half a billion dollars now. Worked out well for him. Now, leaving aside the, the politics of that particular situation, I think the, the specific work ethic aspect of decide you want a media career, take opportunities when you can. If you've got to do odd jobs, if you've got to wash windows, if you've got to paint houses, do what it takes. Because it's not like getting a law degree from a top Ivy League school and then getting a job as a summer associate. Your first summer, your second summer and then as soon as you finish graduating, having a nice 120, 220 thousand dollar job waiting for you, day one. It's not that kind of a career anymore. A media career can be fascinating, ultimately much more rewarding than kind of a slave wage opportunity like management consulting, finance or law. But the entry point is going to be harder than ever. It's going to come down to you deciding you really want to do it and being truly entrepreneurial. If that's the path you take, good luck. Politics and making it easier than ever to spread disinformation. One of the favorite targets of scammers is Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Great Britain. For some reason, he's a favorite political target. And just in the last few days there have been videos put out on TikTok. A 61 second video where this is what the the fake AI video said. The United Kingdom is set to introduce a nationwide curfew beginning at 11pm each night. This went out to thousands of TikTok videos and caused some confusion. Now it received more than 43, excuse me, 430,000 vote views on TikTok and it inspired similar posts on X and Facebook. Now, according to some calculation, the creator of this account could have made as much as $3,500. So the suggestion here is not that this was terrorism. I mean, telling people they might have to go home at 11 o' clock at night is disinformation. It's not contributing to terrorism. No one's going to get injured from something like that. But it is once again destroying and eroding trust in the media, in political establishments, in political figures. So it is a genuine, genuine problem. Now it was taken down the, the video was taken down by the Chinese owned social media company and it officially prohibits fake authoritative sources or crisis events or falsely shows public figures in certain contexts. So that's the rule. But apparently it's rather easy to slip things through and before you know it, half a million, maybe a million people have seen it. Now in this particular case, it doesn't look like many bad things have happened. But the first thing that pops to my mind and a lot of others is what happens when a nuclear power has a deep fake video of their president, their prime minister, saying we have been attacked by our enemies and we are now counter attacking and sending nuclear weapons to our enemy country. And if you think that's far fetched, you're not following geopolitics very closely. What happens then? If enough people in official channels at that other country say oh my goodness, we're going to be nuked in eight minutes, we have no choice but to retaliate. So even though they company, country A wasn't initially bombing country B, the video from the prime minister, the president of country B says we're bombing country A. So country A then actually does start bombing country B. Country B had no plans whatsoever of bombing, but now they feel forced because they see actual real weapons coming in. So this is a huge, huge concern a lot of people have. And if we simply leave it up to the Tiktoks, the Facebooks, the Googles of the world, it's going to be too late. Their attitude is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, safety all nice, we'll do what we can do. We'll, we'll spend, you know, 0.001% of our staff kind of worrying about integrity of stuff. But meanwhile we're going to keep our staff really low and lean so we can take piles of cash in and keep it for ourselves, for our shareholders and for our founders. That's the attitude of the big tech companies. I don't think they're worried about this very much or certainly not as much as if profits are as big next quarter as they were this quarter, I'll be able to buy another 10 islands in Hawaii. I really think that is the far bigger concern of large tech companies. And keeping the world from melting down has not traditionally been the business of private sector companies. So I can, I'm not saying I'm excusing them But I can understand why they don't quite grasp why this is their problem. It is the problem of governments. Now, am I suggesting every single video has to be vetted by government officials? No, I don't really want to go down that road. But I do think it's important that you and I start to hold ourselves to higher standards. As far as the news sources we get now, if you're watching this on YouTube, on Facebook and tick tock LinkedIn, I appreciate it. Thank you. I don't want to tell you to stop doing it. I don't want to tell you don't listen to TJ because he's not officially a part of ABC News or the Wall Street Journal or whatever news source you respect. I do think all of us have to have some standards for, for our news consumption. And there should be at least one source that you are absolutely convinced will give you the facts, even if it offends your sensibilities. That's right. If there's some politician that you happen to like and your favorite news source never ever, ever, ever says anything bad about that politician, well, now you know that's not a legitimate news source. And I'm also suggesting you need more than one source. I mean, every single day I go to the Wall Street Journal, to the New York Times, to various liberal and left leaning news sites like Slate and the Atlantic. I also go to the Drudge Report Occasionally, Breitbart, fox news.com I try to gather from a collective source across the spectrum and places where I know they hire and pay serious journalists to investigate facts, to vet them. So if the world's ending, I think I'm going to find out if there's just some scam of someone saying the world is ending and it's not on any of those sites, but it's just on this one obscure website or this one Facebook friend. It's no place else. I think I'm pretty safe at ignoring it. There's got to be some form of news literacy taught to in our culture, in our schools, because the idea of us, Oh, I saw it on Facebook. What was the source? Well, it was a major news source. I mean that's unfortunately what happens. People see something, it's triggers. Especially a problem for all of us human beings. I can be guilty as to of this as well. Confirmation bias. You see some figure, whether it's a politician, a CEO you don't like. If you see somebody you don't like and now you see a so called news report of them doing something horrible, outrageous, Something that fits the worst stereotype you have of that person. It's human nature to want to believe it. It's human nature to say, ah, it must be real. Well, no, it mustn't. Not necessarily be real. Sorry if that grammar was a bit garbled, but I think you know what I mean. It's not necessarily real. So I'm urging you and myself to do a better job. When you see information that outrages you, the first question you need to ask is, am I just being played for money? Because that is what the suspicions are about. So many of these videos coming out about the Prime Minister of Great Britain that they're just doing it for money. It's not particularly ideological to have the Prime Minister imposing a curfew even though he didn't. They're doing it for money. So that's my challenge to you, and it's really twofold. If you see some story that's outraging you, first of all, don't just share it. Don't just hit like, click, share. Because that's how these things spread. Look at it, look at the sources. If it's truly a story of monumental impact, look at other news sources before you get angry. Look at other news sources for corroboration before you share it with the world. Because unwittingly, you may be doing a huge disservice to your community, your state, your country, humanity. If you're spreading disinformation that spews hatred and disinformation and chaos, and that is what's happening. Artificial intelligence makes it easier to do than ever. Now, I. I know this personally, not that I've been a victim of it, but I have my own AI clone. In theory, someone could break into it, have me saying anything, and it looks just like me because it's an AI video clone of my face and it's based on video of me. It's got my voice. You could make it so that I sound like anything, but there are other platforms out there that could Simply scrape my YouTube channel or anyone else's and make anyone say anything. So please, I'm urging you, develop some true media literacy. Meaning you've got to seek out information from people who will tell you what you don't want to hear. And now I'm going to name names and I'm going to offend some people. If all you do is watch Fox News and the current President of the United States really does commit some act of atrocity, you're not going to hear about it. You've Put yourself in an information bubble. And while I don't think they're exactly analogous and I don't think MSNBC is guilty of telling overt lies, if there is some scandal involving a prominent Democratic politician, I wouldn't turn there to get the first take on it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't turn there to get breaking news on it. So I'm urging you, seek out trusted news sources from various ideological standpoints. The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, its editorial page, extraordinarily conservative, but it's basic news stories on the front page of every section is written by serious journalists. Same is set could be said about New York Times, obviously different ownership. So that's really my challenge to you, and that's the only solution is these AI deep fakes are only going to get more and more common and more and more political actors are going to be saying to themselves, hey, you know, wouldn't it be cute to make this politician I don't like look like an absolute fool to look like a pedophile, to look like a murderer, to look like a hypocrite. So we're only going to be seeing more and more of these. So beware. Some predict it's the sleeper political issue of our times and it is artificial intelligence regulation. It's becoming a bigger issue all the time. And here's where I hope I could be helpful to you as a sane, sensible centrist because this has an interesting interplay among both parties. There's no clear cut winner or loser yet. Governor Gretchen. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan put out a Christmas card on social media in the past week and it says all I want for Christmas is legislation banning data centers in Michigan. She's that anti these big data centers that are propping up now, the reason people don't like data centers is, is they use massive amounts of electricity and it drives up the electricity prices for everyone else in the community generally. And once it's built, it's true, construction workers are hired, typically locally to build it, but once it is built, you need virtually no employees there. So it does nothing to help the employment of a particular area. So it's kind of seen as a net parasite on communities. Now according to the new Gallup poll, 80% of Americans are feeling negative about AI and want more regulation. So this is becoming a big, big, big issue politically. And as I mentioned to you, it, it cuts across party lines in different ways. This is not a clear liberal, conservative, left right, Democrat, Republican, red, blue type of, of an issue. At least how it's currently playing out. There are factions within both parties that really want A lot more AI regulation. A lot more. Now, according to Gallup, 80% of Americans think the government should regulate AI more, even if it means slowing down progress. Pew ran a study that showed only 17% of America, and this is courtesy of Politico, Pew ran a study showed that only 17% of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years. Even congressional Republican Democrats at a record low 18% approval, beat out AI. Now that's saying something if AI is less popular than congressional Democrats. Now let's look at how this issue really breaks down in terms of, of party politics and economics. The problem with AI is also the good news. The good news, if you're a business owner and AI makes things so much more efficient, if you can fire 80% of your staff, or if you can make your, your company produce 300% more, but the same current level staff, you never have to hire anyone again. Or if you can fire 80% of your staff, now all of a sudden you're vastly, vastly more profitable. Great for you, the business owner, great for your share owners. But for those 10,000 employees who just got canned and not so good. So increasingly we're seeing many Americans view AI as a threat. And guess what? They're not wrong. AI is a threat. Technology is a threat. There's always winners and losers. When the, the loom came out, a lot of people lost their job. When the cotton gin came out, people lost their jobs. When the big phone companies figured out we don't have to have 400,000 women pulling a cord here and putting in here, as happened in 1960, we can do it through automation and technology. 400,000, mostly women, lost their jobs. So there's always winners and losers when it comes to technology. And AI is no different, except for the fact that this may be the big one, this may be the one, according to many futurists and experts like Ray Kurzweil, could make everyone obsolete. But in the short term, it's going to affect certain people more than others. Now autonomous cars are getting better and better because of how AI in their digital brains is getting better at reading roads, reading signals, reading traffic patterns. And we are seeing not only WAYMO cars all over popping up in major metropolitan areas, places like China, they're really getting big and dominating in trucks as well. There are autonomous trucks on the roads in certain states in America right now. You might not realize it because you're looking way up, you can't see that there's no driver there. Warehouses are increasingly becoming more automated, means fewer workers. So this is a big, big political issue. Now on the right, you have people like Ted Cruz and others, other conservatives who want to regulate what AI is doing as far as creating all these, you know, sexy chatbots and, you know, creating porn. Take your favorite movie star, put her face on a porn character and then next thing you know, your 23 year old kid never comes out of his bedroom again because he's addicted to this AI porn. So there are many, many conservatives and Republicans who want strong regulation. You have some, like Senator Governor DeSantis of Florida saying that he wants the ability to regulate AI for his citizens. Now, historically, conservatives would say, okay, federalism, let's let that happen. But that's not what's happening in the current dynamic. President Trump has essentially said to all the big AI companies, all the big tech companies, do whatever you want, I'm your guy. I appreciate you, Elon Musk, giving me a quarter billion dollars for my campaign. I appreciate you, Apple and I appreciate you, Amazon kicking in millions for my new ballroom. So I'm going to give you whatever you want. Forget what my grassroots in the Republican Party is telling me, I'm going to give you what you want. And it's a blank check. And it's essentially through his executive order and other public pronouncements, he's trying to make it so that states do not even have the right to regulate AI on behalf of their own citizens. Now, the AI company's argument is, look, if we don't advance our AI quickly, China will. And whoever gets to the point of general artificial intelligence first is going to win. Because there's never in the history of the world been a situation where one country with dramatically superior technology than the other than others didn't end up dominating politically. I mean, if the United States did not have the nuclear bomb first, we would not have won World War II. I don't think there's anyone who really disputes that. So the AI folks do make a good point. They make a compelling point that if we put roadblocks down for them, slow them down, then it's going to be one of our geopolitical enemies, such as China, most likely, that really is able to grow faster, learn faster, and dominate faster. So that's their argument, and it's not an insignificant argument. But if everyone in your family just lost their job, one person was an Uber, a truck driver, let's say they had a good, higher paying job, maybe even unionized as a truck driver. Let's say someone else was a manager at an Amazon warehouse. Combined, maybe they had a six figure income. If they both lost their job in the last six months and it's 2028 and they're now unemployed and they're saying I did this, certainly there's a good chance they're going to vote for any political party or any politician who says I'm going to be the one to regulate AI the strongest put in its place to benefit you, the average American. That's going to be a compelling argument. Which party is going to do that? I don't know. Again, that's why I'm here today as a sane, sensible centrist. I'm not here to tell you Republicans are purely good or bad on this or the Democrats are purely good or bad on this. In part, I don't think the parties themselves really know. Now, traditionally you have seen Democrats be much more in favor of trust busting of government regulation to protect workers. Certainly the Bernie Sanders, the Elizabeth Warren faction of the Democratic Party has already been calling out for stricter regulation of AI and big tech companies. And some would go so far as to say they need to be really broken up. Certainly Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram should all be broken up. And that's a separate. I mean, it's related to AI, but it is also separate too. If AI had never happened, those companies arguably should all still be broken up because of the monopolistic power it gives meta. But leaving that aside, what do we do just with AI? Because it cuts a lot of different ways. There are many Americans who've seen their 401ks skyrocket, especially if they have any kind of S&P 500 index funds in their portfolio who are thinking maybe, just maybe, we don't want to monkey around with things. Because if you stripped out all of the growth from the top 10 technology companies in the last year, the last five years, your 401k would be pretty much flat. Wouldn't be any growth, you wouldn't feel any extra wealth. It's coming from these big tech companies and their wealth is coming from all the money going into AI. So there's going to be a huge political faction that says, hey, let's not upset the apple cart again. It affects both Democrats and Republicans. The Democratic Party is disproportionately these days the party of the educated elite. A lot of financially wealthy people who are certainly top 10% income who have benefited mightily from the AI tech boom. But you've also got the Democratic Party with its roots in saying government regulation to help the average person is a good thing. It's not immoral. It's not violating some sacrosanct Adam Smith mantra that you can never ever regulate anything in the private sector. So temperamentally you've got a lot of Democrats who are more open to the idea of regulation. And on the other side, again, I'm trying to be fair and honest here. You have a lot of Republicans saying our own constituents do not want to see every single job, every single farm shut down because AI robots can do everything. We don't want to see every bit of farmland taken over by a server farm. And the people in our community having their electricity bills go from $20 a month to $2,000 a month. Now, I'm exaggerating. No one's electricity bill has gone up by that much. But they do go up a lot when these AI server farms take over a community. And they're vast, they're huge. So someone's got to thread the needle. At some point we are going to go beyond mere transactional politics, which is what is dominating this White House. President Trump, I don't think any serious person, whether you're a fan of his or a detractor, would disagree with the sentiment that he's very transactional. And if the big AI boys give him a lot of money, he's going to give them whatever they want. At some point, his reign will, will end. There are going to be new conservative players on the scene, whether it's J.D. vance, whether it's Ted Cruz, whether it's Tucker Carlson. They're going to bring different viewpoints to this. Democrats are going to have new leaders as well. I think right now, regardless of what Democrat were to win the nomination for president in 2028, certainly all of them would favor at some level some type of AI regulation. But it's going to take tremendous political skill and savvy to navigate the different fault lines here in the winners and losers. Because AI, make no mistake about it, it does create a lot of winners. I myself have benefited from it tremendously. Not just AI, but technology itself. I mean, I look back at my own career of how technology allowed me to take what I do one on one and in small groups, media training, public speaking training, and scale it massively by making online video based courses. Now, that didn't necessarily involve AI, but it certainly involved sophisticated technology that I don't know how it works. I just know I can speak, push a button, not have to say it again. And people can watch it every day for the next 15 years and I make money from it. That helped me a lot. And I don't want to appear smug about it, but I do want to be transparent with you. It helped me a lot. But I would certainly imagine that it harmed the income of an awful lot of public speaking trainers, media trainers, who saw their business go way down from people not hiring them for in person workshops or one on one consultations. Because people could get my own online courses inexpensively. And just the math of it. I have 12 million online student enrollments for my courses. A lot of public speaking coaches and trainers in the past have had to go out of business. I've been the beneficiary. They have lost from technology. AI is doing that on steroids and it's going to be doing it. And most serious technologists and futurists predict that the rate of change is going to be going faster and faster and faster. Because right now, even though Elon Musk predicts every five years or every two years that he's going to have millions of robo taxis and autonomous taxis on the roads, he hasn't done that. At some point, it is going to happen and we are going to see unemployment skyrocket. We still have relatively low unemployment in America. It's etched up a little bit in the last few years, but it's still less than 5% by historic standards. That's still great. But at some point, AI is really going to start causing massive unemployment. At that point, you're going to see this become the singular political issue of our time. And anyone who tells you they know exactly what political party is going to benefit the most are be harmed the most is trying to spin you. They're trying to sell you something. And that's not what I'm doing here. Many Republicans are asking themselves these days, well, what next? What happens after Trump? It's inevitable in any president's second term for people to start thinking about that person is a lame duck thinking about what's the next big thing, who's going to be our party leader. Apparently, right now, Donald Trump is admitting to insiders, his chief of staff and others that he acknowledges he can't really run for a third term. And that's kind of just something to put out there to annoy Democrats and liberals. And it's very effective at doing that. But if President Trump does serve a full term in leave, as he's constitutionally required to do, someone else has got to take his place. Someone's going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2028 who's not named Donald Trump, although it could be Donald Trump Jr. Right now, according to betting and prediction markets, it's J.D. vance. J.D. vance does, according to a CNN poll, have the support of 22% of Republicans right now. And he was endorsed just the other day by Erica Kirk, the current head of Turning Points usa, very influential conservative political organization that has a lot of impact in the Republican Party. So there's nobody seen as dramatically ahead of JD Vance, but a lot of people are worried about him. Now, there's a story today in an organization called Raw Story, and it's admittedly not a pro Republican media outlet, but the title is essentially nobody likes J.D. vance. Now, that's a bit of a stretch, but he certainly by no stretch of the imagination has the popular appeal of Donald Trump. He doesn't have the same charisma. And he just seems very much like a sycophant to Donald Trump, willing to say anything and do anything. And I think strikes many Americans as sort of a typical politician played by the rules. So I'm, I'm quite skeptical of J.D. vance being the eventual Republican leader. I will again, I'm here as a fair, honest, dispassionate, sane, sensible centrist. I do think J.D. vance is extraordinarily smart. I think he's well disciplined and I think he's an excellent communicator. I was extraordinarily impressed with his performance in the vice presidential debate last year and said so at the time. So I'm not someone who, who views him as a dim bulb or as someone just pathetic in any way. No, he has serious, serious skills and talents and assets as a politician. Having said all that, he's no Donald Trump. And, and that could be good and bad. He certainly doesn't have the reckless side of Donald Trump. He certainly doesn't seem as though he goes out of his way to alienate people, calling people garbage, things like that. But he doesn't have that one thing that really galvanizes support for Donald Trump. He doesn't have this sense that he's completely his own man, completely independent, calls it like he sees it and does whatever he wants to do and is the antithesis of a politician. In fact, JD Vance seems very much like a politician. Lest we forget, it's only been a few years since J.D. vance was very much anti Donald Trump, said Trump could be the next American Hitler, essentially said he had no respect for Donald Trump whatsoever. And yet the complete flip flop, the turnaround now it is true Donald Trump changes his mind quite frequently on a lot of things, but not typically on something that central to the narrative of the modern Republican Party. You've got that there's also like, how did he rise to power? Donald Trump? The myth is he's this self made man who was a businessman and a billionaire businessman. Now in truth, millions and millions and millions of dollars and bailed him out numerous times. And Trump had tremendous numbers of bankruptcies and was a failed businessman. But forgetting all that for the moment, according to how the average Republican voter thinks, they like the fact that Donald Trump was seen as not a politician, he was seen as a businessman. It's true he was traditional since he went to an Ivy League school, but nobody really thinks Donald Trump went to class. When he went to University of Pennsylvania, he, according to some of his own family members, paid off somebody to take his SAT and get him in. And by his own admission, by the time he was 20 years older, so he was off chasing models and buying his first real estate deals. So Donald Trump is not a culture of the ivy League, whereas J.D. trump, J.D. vance very much is a creature of his Ivy League stamp of approval that was his gateway to the big time. J.D. vance was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth the way Donald Trump was. He was born poor. He documented in his book Hillbilly Elegy and a great book by the way, and some people like the movie. But it was when J.D. vance essentially was an affirmative action beneficiary. Yes, he was. He got accepted to Yale Law School. That was his ticket into the elite. And that's really more the profile of how Democrats are seen and elevated. So in my mind, the fact that J.D. vance has fancy Yale law degree and it, it really made him in some ways makes him more suspicious to the anti elitism narrative pushed by the Republican Party. And J.D. vance is just so obviously someone who's always sort of looking for mentors, sucking up to mentors, playing well to them. Peter Thiel was his big mentor, his big benefactor, gave him his job, gave him millions of dollars, made him rich. And by all accounts, J.D. vance worked hard and was smart, did his job, and then Peter Thiel basically funded his Senate campaign. Now when he ran for the Senate in Ohio, he barely won. I mean, he was really not very popular when actual voters got to look at him, give him the once over and figure out he performed much worse than Donald Trump did in that state. So J.D. vance's own ability to really galvanize voters is very much in Question. What he is good at is sucking up. And he really, really sucked up well to Donald Trump. And that's why Donald Trump made him vice president, but, and made him the nominee. But imagine yourself, just try to imagine yourself thinking about Donald Trump sucking up to someone to get some office or title. Now, he does all sorts of things, but he certainly never puts himself down below someone saying, hey, you're the boss, you're the man, you're great. That's part of why Donald Trump has fans. They view him as he's the big alpha dog. Whereas, whereas JD Vance seems much more of the supplicant, the person who's a part of the court, the person who is the extra, the aide, the assistant. He is happy to assist Peter Thiel in any task given him. He's happy to assist Donald Trump. He's happy to be the yes man. Oh, Donald Trump, you're endorsing tariffs or some other policy that I've always been opposed. Forget everything I've ever stood for. Yes, you're great. You're absolutely wonderful. And there's a bit of a lap dog function to him culturally. There are other things about J.D. vance that I think make him unattractive to the Republican base. Now, I'm not endorsing this viewpoint, but there's certainly a growing, growing sentiment within a faction of the Republican Party. Tucker Carlson is perhaps its largest proponent. Nick Fuentes, who, like it or not, is hugely influential in the Republican Party. They are really pushing this idea that the Republican Party should be about white people, so called heritage Americans. They should have sort of a bigger say in things and also about tradition. Tradition in the Republican Party is for a white male to get the nomination and to have a wife who is very much in a traditional mode. She's a librarian, like George Bush's wife, Laura. She's the fawning adorer who gave up her career to worship their husband, like Nancy Reagan. She's the matronly mom like Barbara Bush. That's been the, the sort of role model for women. And what hasn't been the role model is someone like a Bill Clinton, someone who marries a woman who also went to Yale Law School, who also has her own career, who also seems strong and independent. That, in fact, really alienated a lot of Republicans. I remember back in 1992, a lot of Republicans didn't like who is this uppity woman and what is this two for one type thing. So I think it bothers a lot of Republicans and conservatives for their leader not to have the woman in their life, very traditional. Now, it's true. Melania Trump is not an American or a traditional American born in America. She's an American citizen now. But she is more in the traditional mode. She's there for, let's be honest, she's there for eye candy. Can we just be honest here? She's there as eye candy. She's not threatening anyone. She's not there because she graduated at the top of her classroom, Yale Law School. She's not telling her husband that what policies to have and that it's some two for one special. Her deal is, look, I'm along for the ride. I'm here for the jewels, the parties, the fashion and at some point get most of it or a lot of it. That's her deal. Okay? And at some level, people like that, at least in the Republican Party. And I just think a lot of voters in the Republican Party, they don't like a couple of things about J.D. vance. The fact that he would marry a woman who is intellectually his equal, arguably perhaps even his superior, someone who's hardworking, intelligent, a serious, serious professional woman kind of bod, it seems emasculating Republicans like dominant guy here. Trump is here, Melania is here. And when it comes to J.D. vance, he's made to his credit, he said basically his wife is his equal and she's fantastic, she's his rock. So I think that helps him among Democrats. I don't think it helps him get the nomination. I also think, again, this is ugly to talk about, but I'm here to give you the sane, sensible, centrist, honest viewpoint. I think among a lot of Republicans today, and I have talked about this before, they don't like the fact that J.D. vance has a non white, however you want to define race, wife. They don't like the fact that he has an Indian American wife. They find the names funny, the names of the children funny. And it just bothers them. I don't think it should. But I think that is a problem for the Republican nomination. So I'm going to make a prediction right now. I do not think J.D. vance is going to be the Republican nominee For President in 2028, if I had to guess. And folks, these predictions are worth almost nothing. I'll be honest with you and tell you that I think that there's still a 40% chance. Donald Trump just says I'm staying as president. Whether he cancels the election, imposes martial law, just runs in the primaries. Again, I think there's about a 40% chance of that. And I think there's about a 59% chance he starts trashing J.D. vance, trashing every other Republican except for one, and that Republican is Donald Trump Jr. And he could say, look, we'll just reuse the same signs, you reuse the same slogans, and we make the junior very small. And that would be constitutional. Donald Trump Jr. Is just not prohibited from running for president. He is an American citizen, as far as I know. And then Trump could say, look, that way, I'll just stay in the White House and I'll be the, I'll be the chief of staff to Don Jr. He needs my mentorship. That's. And I think there's a 1% chance this thing just plays out in a normal way. That's my prediction. What do you think? Post your comments here. So what do you know? Another conspiracy theory has had to bite the dust. That's right. On the Sunday night, it was finally revealed that Brian J. Cole did in fact plant the bombs on January 6th at the Capitol. Now, it was a long article of faith by podcasters like Dan Bongino, who's still the deputy director of the FBI, that this is somehow it was planted by the government. It was planted by the government to cause confusion January 6th to give a context for various awful things to happen on January 6th that could all be used to ultimately pin the blame on Donald Trump. So conservatives and MAGA supporters and members of the far right have long theorized how it was an inside job, government job. Well, now apparently it's all been captured on videotape. It's a confession as well. I mean, this to me seems to be a very, very ironclad case of Brian J. Cole getting caught red handed. Fine. Now, it took a few years. It took five years, four years, but the facts came out and it shows once again why people who believe in imbecilic conspiracy theories are deluding themselves and continue to lose themselves. The idea that the government, that anyone in the government, regardless of what political party is in power, has the ability to organize something like this and keep it all secret is ridiculous. The very same people who think anyone who works at the government is so incompetent that the Department of Motor Vehicles can't walk and chew gum at the same time, thinks powerful, dark, nefarious government officials can plant bombs, sometimes take out people, do it all secretly. No one's ever going to find out about it. And they can orchestrate all of that and keep secrets. It's an absurdity. Human beings are horrible at keeping secrets. They just Are. You can ask Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, and a few others. They're horrible at keeping secrets. It comes out eventually. And typically, the most interesting theory is often wrong. The conspiracy theory about how the people you don't like politically all got together to do something to make your guy look bad. That's typically wrong. Not always, but typically. It certainly was this case. Now, this guy, Brian J. Cole, said he needed to speak up because after hearing President Trump, remember him, he was in power back in 2020, complained constantly, nonstop talking about how the election was tampered with. This. This lone nut, and that's what he appears to be. He has no association with the Democratic Party or apparently the Republican Party or any political organization or terrorist organization. He's just a nut, a nutty guy. And he's hearing this rhetoric from someone who's supposed to be telling the truth. Our president, regardless of what party, is supposed to be telling the truth. It's supposed to be someone, an authority figure, calming people down. But. But this is yet another example of Trump's constant need to lie, to prevaricate, to boast, to simply distort reality, to paint himself as the winner, even when he's a big loser, causes problems. Now, should Brian J. Cole be able to say, oh, I. I'm innocent? Because I heard the President say that. No, I wouldn't go that far. But, my friends, words do have consequences. And when a president of the United States actively lies, knowingly lies, and tells the citizens essentially, that their government is being destroyed and being taken over through fraud, it has implications. Fortunately, in this case, these bombs did not go off in the Capitol on January 6, but they could have. A lot of people could have died, and it's because of two men. It is because of Brian Cole, because he built the bombs, and apparently there are receipts from every single thing he needed to buy it from Home Depot. And this seems to be a very ironclad, no, he was not set up. It's from two people. It is from Brian J. Cole, and he does deserve punishment. But it's also from Donald Trump. When you have the bully pulpit of the White House and you willingly, knowingly spin falsehoods about how our country is. Is seeing the entire apparatus taken over fraudulently, which is what he conceded, which what was he was trying to profess, constantly talking about how his election was stolen, it does drive people mad, it does drive people insane. It does try people to commit illegal acts of terrorism, which is what this was time for. Question of the day. This one comes from Amina who is a student in my course, the Complete Train the Trainer Boot Camp. The question from Amina, what techniques can trainers use to make complex topics clear and engaging for learners? Amina, shut up. Now, I don't mean to be rude to you and I'm happy you asked the question. What I mean by that is the biggest problem most trainers have and the problem I had for many years early in my career is trainers like to talk too much. They like the sound of their own voice. They talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. If you want to engage the people you're training, you have to get them to talk. I have a rule now with myself. If I'm doing a day long public speaking training or media training or personal development training, if my voice is at all tired by the end of the day, if I'm physically tired, it means I did a bad job training that day because I talk too much. You've got to get your people talking when you're training them. Now, when it comes to me doing presentation skills training, it's kind of easy in the sense that I have them speaking, I record it, play it back and we critique it. But regardless of the topic, you need to give the people you're training a challenge, an assignment, a problem and then have them stand up and give the solution. Whether it's drawing or speaking or presenting or talking about how they would solve the problem. That's when you know they're understanding it. That's when you know they're engaged. So if it's only a 30 minute training, you can't necessarily do that. You may have to just give information, but even then ask questions, pull from them examples. But if it's a longer training, half day, full day, multi day, you've got to figure out a way to get your trainees up speaking and demonstrating. Only then will you know you've transferred knowledge to them and truly engaged them. Folks, that's the show. Thanks so much for joining me today here on Filtered. I appreciate it as always. I would love to hear from you. So please post your comments whether you're watching this on YouTube or any other social media platform and if you're listening on the podcast, any whether it's Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music. Thank you. You can also leave comments just go to my YouTube page and go to the post tab and you can leave comments there. Would very much love to hear from you if you are listening on a podcast. We're new on podcasting platforms so please make sure to subscribe. Hit that subscribe button, hit the follow button. If your platform doesn't have a subscribe button, you will not be charged anything for that. 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