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00:00 — Opening: Pratt Falls to Third in L.A. as California Keeps Counting
Walworth, Cannon, and Bevan start the show with California’s notoriously slow ballot counting, injecting some drama and confusion into the Los Angeles mayoral election, where Spencer Pratt has fallen from second to third behind Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. Is there funny business going on, or just the appearance of it?
Watch: Trump: It Takes California So Long To Count Votes Because Democrats Are Cheating; “They’re Not Slow, They’re Crooked”
“I know Trump got into trouble for saying this was rigged… but this does create the perception that there’s something going on,” Tom Bevan said about the uneven, slow count.
***
08:34 — Platner Scandal Looms Over Maine Primary
The panel previews Maine’s Tuesday Democratic Senate primary, where progressive war veteran Graham Platner is facing a media onslaught from some in the Democratic Party who don’t think he can beat GOP Sen. Susan Collins. Will his appeal to the left outweigh the controversies?
Watch: FNC’s Jacqui Heinrich to Hakeem Jeffries: On Platner, What Happened To ‘Believe All Women’?
Watch: James Carville: Maybe We Need A “F–ked Up Veteran” Like Graham Platner in the Senate To Remind Them What War Does to People
“Win or lose, whether he wins or loses in November, with the fact that Ro Khanna is up there campaigning for him… one of these socialists in the House is going to run for president,” Carl Cannon predicted. “If Platner wins, they’re going to be very encouraged.”
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19:42 — Prineha Narang: Military AI Is Now A U.S.-China Battleground
UCLA professor Prineha Narang joins the show to discuss how AI, quantum sensors, and edge computing are changing modern warfare. She argues that the U.S. cannot afford to fall behind China in the race for next-generation military technology and says these systems will supplement, not replace, human decision-making.
Read her recent piece for RCP: America’s Technologists Face a Defining National Security Moment
“At the moment, when you ask someone about AI, they think LLMs, right?” she said. “This is a technology, and I put quantum and AI into one bucket here, talking about next-gen compute, next-gen sensing — we can’t come in second.”
“I don’t view it as Skynet as much as adding to the cognitive capability that a set of people working under a very stressful environment will have, and they can respond rapidly.”
***
34:58 — Trump Walks Off ‘Meet the Press’
The panel reacts to President Trump’s contentious interview with Kristen Welker yesterday on “Meet the Press,” which ended after a clash over election-fraud claims.
Watch: Trump Walks Out on ‘Meet the Press’ Interview: “You’re Either Crooked Or Stupid”
“What you saw there were two people who each had to get in the last word, and Trump finally lost his temper,” Carl Cannon said. “At some point, she needed to quit saying there was no fraud and get on with the questions she wanted to ask, and she wouldn’t do it. She was as stubborn as he was.”
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420:21 — Scott Pelley Says CBS News Is “On Fire”
The episode ends with Scott Pelley’s emotional New York Times interview about turmoil at CBS News and “60 Minutes” under new management. Cannon defends Pelley’s anger as loyalty to longtime colleagues, while Bevan and Walworth argue that Pelley came across as self-important and unself-aware about media bias.
Watch: Scott Pelley: “CBS News Is On Fire,” “There Is a Subtle Political Bias,” “We Need Adult Supervision”
“Folks on the left are viewing him as some sort of hero. He was playing into this caricature of journalists being like firefighters running into burning buildings, when actually what he does is just read words on a prompter that other people have written,” Tom Bevan responded.
“His friends were fired. The network’s changing. People were put in charge of him who he thinks have no experience, and he’s angry,” Carl Cannon said. “It’s called love of your colleagues.”
“These are not lifetime appointments!” Bevan said. “As if he truly didn’t think that ’60 Minutes’ was in any way biased. And now he thinks that it’s being captured by the right wing and it’s going to be totally biased… It’s delusional, and that’s part of the problem.”
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