10/20/26: Saagar Rips Boomers Over Property Tax, Abdul Shuts Down Questions On Muslim Brotherhood, AI Solves Hundreds Of Math Problems

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So head over, breakingpoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Turning down a property tax, one of my personal pet projects, and yet is now becoming one of the largest tax revolts in American history. And I am not joking. Let's put this up here. On the screen, Politico magazine recently ran this article.

Do you really own your home? A tax revolt says no. They lead with Mr. Ray Warner, a 72-year-old Akron resident wearing a Cleveland Browns coat to fend off the damn chill. He says, I'm old. I've paid my home off. Why would I pay property tax? It's a very interesting, very, very interesting mindset indeed that they delve into. And in particular, what they show is something that I've been warning about on the show now for quite some time. In the last two years alone, plans to substantially reduce our altogether property tax have emerged in more than two dozen states. Georgia, Indiana, and Wyoming have sliced resident tax bills by billions of dollars.

Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have Florida or Texas competing to see who can lower it the most. Gubernatorial candidates everywhere are putting tax reform at the center of their campaigns in the hope of staving off insurgencies that risk overrunning their tenures. Public figures such as Elon Musk and Francesca Hong have already joined the cause. And I shouted out, what's his name, Abdul El-Sayed on this subject as well. And, you know, it really is actually worth going through a lot of these arguments because what they all come down to is a general entitlement, in particular of people who are older, who come to the conclusion that rising rates mean that they don't have to pay them. And they actually do a great job of something that I had

spent some time researching but hadn't fully looked into before, which was the 1970s. And it actually mirrors the same problem that we had back then. So back in the 70s, inflation goes crazy, just like we're in in a period today. So what is the response? The response is that inflation, both in goods and in home prices, is creating problems for a very vulnerable group, seniors, which we'll get to that in a second, whether they're actually vulnerable or not.

This leads to one of the worst single pieces of legislation, or worst single pieces of law ever enacted in American history, and that is Proposition 13 in California, where what it does is it locks the property value and the rise of rate of what you're allowed to be taxed away from the market. It sounds fair. If you've owned your house for a long time, you, quote, don't want to be priced out of your home. What ends up happening?

Very similar to some of the rent control problems in New York. It dramatically restricts the problem of the amount of housing that is available in the Things that eventually do go up for sale go up at massive rates. People get locked in and are not– basically, they're not forced to sell. I'll just use the truth of the matter.

And by not being forced to sell, it artificially drives up the prices of all of these other homes. And then you add on a couple– so number one, it's highly distortionary to the market. It's how that people in the 1990s bought Santa Monica Beach property for a couple hundred grand. They're sitting on $ 3 million with the real estate.

They're paying taxes on a couple hundred thousand dollars, all right? This drives up all of the surrounding prices whenever they eventually go up for sale. It gives them no incentive to sell. And it basically, it adopts this very un-American idea of you have a right to live wherever you happen to live no matter what the conditions are, which is ridiculous and which everybody laughed at in the great financial crisis whenever we were given all these ninja law, you know, ninja loans.

Remember that?

No income, no job loans. All these boomers were sitting in TV like, you don't have a right to own a home. You shouldn't have been doing that. And now that it's their turn to pay in an inflationary home price environment, they say, I shouldn't have to pay because I've been paying for 30 years. And just look at the social contract here, because this is the game that they want to start playing. Let's put D2 up here on the screen. It's from one of my friends, Russ Green.

He coined the phrase boomer luxury communism. So shout out to him. He goes, what do I owe society? If you're just listening to this, let me explain this chart. This is direct entitlements by age. And it shows how 18 to 24, obviously, you're going to get the least amount of direct entitlements regardless between state tax, payroll tax, income tax, Social Security, health care, and other benefits.

All right.

And so the benefits are in green, and then the taxes that you pay are in orange. So you can see how the amount of taxes you pay relative to the amount of benefits that you receive is going to be at the all-time low ratio at your prime working years, between 25 to 54. But then take a look at the green. And don't just take a look at the green.

Take a look at how much it vastly outpaces the per person and actual capital of the taxes that people are paying whenever it comes to age 64 and up. The vast majority, and again, I repeat, the vast majority of people who are over the age of 65 are receiving vastly amount more in Social Security and in Medicare than they have ever paid into the system, all right?

So at the very same time where they are receiving more benefits than any generation in American history and actually pushing all of that burden onto us who are the people who are directly paying for it, they are then demanding a property tax cut which will be highly distortionary to the market, the housing market itself. And what else will it do? It reduces their contribution to even more of society, right? Because what do property taxes pay for?

This guy, I'm old and I paid off my house. Oh, do you use the road outside? What about the garbage? Whenever you call 911, because statistically you're going to need it a lot more than me, whenever these health problems start to catch up to you, who's going to be paying for that? I'm gonna have to pay for it, according to your formulation. Boomers who were 72 years old when your kids were in school were paying property tax, but now it's inconvenient for you. And look, I know that this gets hot and this becomes like a generational thing, but this is actual generational warfare. Like, people think I'm joking.

They are the ones who have instigated this. It has been the most successful tax revolt now in modern history. Like, at the same time, when everybody else, the rest of us, you know, this is my last rant, I'm sorry, But it drives me crazy, this whole fixed income thing. Boomers are on fixed income. Okay, because you're on Social Security.

Your fixed income gets a cost of living inflation adjustment. We just entered our sixth straight month of real earnings turning negative because of the Iran war. Yesterday we covered how the average household has lost $ 2, 000. Well, I don't get an inflation-adjusted raise, and neither does anybody else who's watching this show who's under the age of 65. You can argue, it's like, oh, well, it barely keeps up with inflation. Yeah, I get it. But most people's wage earnings are under inflation. I'm not saying we should take Social Security away. I'm not even saying we should take inflation adjustment away, but don't be coming around telling me that you got inflation adjusted fixed income when everybody else

is taking net negative wage returns and then be begging for, you know, the, the big, honestly, one of the largest tax cuts ever because you just got 88% of seniors pay no income tax on social security. Now they don't want to pay property tax. I mean, these people don't want to pay anything, even though so many other people paid for them in the past and the rest of us are paying for them now. I just think it's sick.

It's totally sick.

I mean, you can understand why the argument has political salience and why it's found so much success because people say, look, I paid for my home. This is my home. And now you keep upping the taxes. And so it's making me very difficult to stay in this home that I paid for over years and years. OK, you can you can understand why that is politically salient. If you zoom out, though, what this amounts to is just yet another tax cut for the wealthy. I mean, that's who will disproportionately benefit. So, you know, I don't like the generational warfare lens because I think it's, you know, the class lens is more useful in this arena as in many others. But you're very fortunate in this country if you own a home

and if you've had the luxury of your home appreciating over years, which is the reason why your property taxes are going up. It's because your housing value has gone up. You've accumulated all of this wealth in your housing stock, which is an incredibly beneficial situation to be in. Zooming out even further than that, I just think our entire tax system is completely broken at this point. because so much of accumulation is about wealth versus income. And we have a tax system that is so much predominantly focused on income that has become wildly inadequate to actually be able to tax and benefit society. And this impulse from the eliminating property tax is also deeply antisocial, because to your point, you know, there's the sense of like, well,

I don't have kids in school because I'm old now. So why would I pay into it? And that's just Again, it's deeply antisocial. I think it's a sign of the times that we live in that you don't feel any sense of obligation to your community, to the next generation, to make sure that those public schools are good and are high quality, make sure the roads and the firefighters and police officers, everybody in the community is well paid for.

So I think it's that as well. But overall, I think we have to do a total rethink. And look, if we are actually taxing wealth and we are able to reinstate a progressive taxation system because we're accounting for all of the loopholes and the way that the very rich benefit And as part of that rethink, we change our orientation towards property taxes.

Yes.

But the reality is right now, if you cut property taxes, what does that mean? At the state level, you can't run a deficit or at the local level, you can't run a deficit. It means you're going to be cutting education funding. It means you're going to be cutting into the bone of services that people need that genuinely benefit society, which is why in some of the states that have had ballot initiatives, these property tax elimination measures have been rejected because people look at what the cost is going to be on the other side of it and they don't accept it.

Yes, all very good point. And by the way, you know, again, they're the ones who started it. Like, I'm not the one who's out here. When I didn't have kids, I'm not like, oh, I shouldn't have to pay property tax for other people's schools. I'm not the one out here talking, taking a little bit of a look at maybe who's consuming all the health care in this country and why my premiums. are sky high. It ain't just capitalism. It's because a lot of people like to drink a lot and become morbidly obese as they age. And so if we all want to take care of each other, I'm fine with that. I actually am. But they're the ones who don't want to take care of us. That's actually what drives me crazier. Last thing, because we have to

move on here for a second. I just want to highlight how many of these, like people really think I'm exaggerating. I'm getting on some high horse about this.

I'm not.

Like as they pointed out, 22 states, almost half the states in the nation are already on track. And in this election, let's put these up in quick succession. Let's put D4, please, up here on the screen. Louisiana has got an amendment which would expand property tax relief for homeowners 65 and older. D5, this is Oklahoma, which wants to adopt similar things to California, lower the amount of percentage that you're allowed to increase your overall property tax rate.

Let's put D3, please. This is Florida. Again, this is the most high profile one, which would effectively nuke property tax in the long run. across the entire state, of which many of the counties say will have to be made up for, you guessed it, in terms of tolls on the roads, which means it's a highly regressive tax that taxes everybody instead of the people who are asset owners.

Put D6 up here just to show you, you've got Vivek Ramaswamy, who wants to dramatically, basically effectively eliminate property tax in the state of Ohio. The governor of Kansas, you got two candidates, both basically trying to run against each other for who can cut property taxes the most. And I've already shouted out Abdul Sayyed, who explicitly wants to do the old age carve out for everybody else.

So all of this, not good. It's going in a very bad direction. And as I know, they're the only ones who vote. So it's all going to pass. And yet I'll still be here screaming about it. Let's get to Michigan.

Up in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed seems to have claimed the title of generating the most viral post of the midterm election campaign, at least so far in this exchange with this man named Tommy, who it turns out after the fact is actually a Republican operative, may or may not have been paid for this exchange. We don't really know that piece. In any case, let's take a look at how this went when Tommy wanted to ask Abdul El-Sayed whether or not he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood.

It's a simple question. No, your friend's got the mic. I'm going to ask you a simple question. You give me your name and I'll answer the question.

Okay, Tommy. Hi, Tommy.

How are you? I'm great.

Are you?

Do you know what the Constitution of the United States is? I have one simple question. Will you disavow the Muslim world?

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely. But I want to ask the question that you're asking. Why are you asking the question? Well, because they're a terrorist group.

Okay.

No, no, but what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn't?

Yes.

Why not? Because I have not heard you disavow them yet. Have you disavowed them? I haven't heard you disavow them yet.

I disavowed them.

Do you? Great.

But here's the thing about it.

You're asking the question because implicitly you assume that I'll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn't disavow or that I'll have some higher order allegiance than the.

Constitution, correct?

Tommy, is that what you imply?

Yes.

Why would you think that about me, though? Because I have not heard you disavow. No, no, no, no. Why would you actually think that about me? Because I have not heard you disavow.

But I just did.

But why would you actually think that? Why would you? Have you asked everybody in your life if they disavow?

I have not.

So why are you asking me? Because I have not heard you disavow.

No, no, no.

Answer the question, Tommy. Everybody knows the answer to it. Answer the question.

All right.

So let me just tell you. Let me just tell you. I'm going to swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States. And that Constitution guarantees us all.

He goes on further to challenge Tommy on whether or not he would reject effectively Christian nationalism. And Tommy's like, nope. And then he sort of leaves the room, tail between his legs after that exchange. I think this highlights a number of things. First of all, Sagar, a lot of what Republicans have done is a lot of this insinuation or in Trump's case, direct outright. You know, he claims that Abdul supports jihad. This is a lot of what they've been running. Mike Rogers is much more like he'll dabble in it, but he won't go quite as far as Trump will, etc. And so Abdul, unlike what I think a lot of candidates would do, where they would just say, of course, I condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, which

is the first thing he does. He really digs in of like, let's talk about why you're asking this and let's talk about why you wouldn't ask another candidate this. And, you know, let's really get to the root of what you're trying to do here. And so it displays both the, you know, the Republican tactics in the race. And again, this guy's a former Josh Hawley staffer. I think his dad is a Republican operative. He may or, you know, again, may not have been paid for this particular interaction, but definitely is on the, you know, Republican operative side. In any case, it also displays some of the different qualities that Abdul has as a candidate. Like he is very confident person. He is very unafraid of sort of giving

it back and which is why he will go on Fox News and fight with Jesse Waters, not afraid of any of those sorts of exchanges. It's very much what Democrats want in a candidate, which I think is a big part of why he was able to overcome this flood of money that came in and apparently Indian bots to support his opponent in the primary. But, you know, one of the open questions that has been raised by this is whether or not this sort of pugnacious, very confident, brash demeanor that he holds, you know, that he has, which, again, I love, is something that is going to resonate as much with the general audience.

I didn't find it that pugnacious.

Really?

I thought it was more, I mean.

I mean, I thought it was great.

I was going to say, no offense. I think it qualifies as pugnacious compared to a lot of Democrats. Exactly, yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Whereas, like, Trump is out here, like. you know, like he'll go after your wife's sister or something like that, which a lot of Republicans loved as well. I thought it was, yeah, I mean, Frank, I guess I'm just looking at it through that lens. I'm like, yeah, it's like kind of very like, I mean, the reason why it went mega viral is just basically created in a laboratory to like tug at the heartstrings of like white liberal educated women, which is fine. I get it. I mean, it's one of those like the vision of the country, you know, the Emma Lazarus poem and all of that. But, you know, my own annoyance at this general aside, it is about a competing vision ultimately of identity. Because one of the most annoying things about the Israel discourse is

that you have a group, and I'm not talking about Jewish people, I'm talking about people who are rabidly committed to the Zionist cause, who actually have straight up dual loyalty and have shown it to us time and time and time again. Again, to be extremely clear, that is not all Jewish because I'm sure that will get clipped out of context. However, what they do instead is they make it so that Islam itself, they basically turn it over and say Islam itself is evidence of being both anti-American and anti-Semitic, that these are incompatible values. And then what Abdul is doing is flipping it on its head and is basically saying, You are the person who is advocating for something which is genuinely against the Constitution. Like,

let's leave it.

It's un-American.

Right, yeah, it's un-American. Like, effectively what you're trying to get me to do. And that's always the most useful framework is to basically shove it back in their face.

Yes.

Because what they're trying to do is they're trying to, basically, it's about heightening the contradiction. to use the Marxist phrase, by trying to shift what they do onto other people. And that, you know, in some cases it can be justified or not. Again, not whether you're Muslim or not, whether, let's say you're like wholeheartedly committed to, you know, I guess the Palestinian cause over the American cause, right? That would be similar evidence of dual loyalty or overt loyalty. But, you know, I don't think we have as much of a problem with that. The point just remains is it goes viral because at a time of Trump, especially with the Iran war, an economic crisis, is this is all they've got, right? This is it.

And by the way, you know, Tommy- Trump making fun of his name and all this crap.

Right, yeah, the name thing and all, and look, obviously it's used to tremendous value for him from Obama birtherism literally onward, right? San Bernardino, a total and complete shutdown, the Muslim ban and all of that, et cetera. I think what it does though is that at that time, that was using it especially to highlight the problem with a lot of like, liberal kind of framing around terrorism.

I mean, you remember this, the whole Hillary can't say radical Islamic terrorism. That's like one of the biggest controversies of 2016. We're just way past that.

Yeah.

You know, it's also I mean, there's such an irony, too, because Trump aggressively courted courted the Muslim and Arab American vote in the state of Michigan with great success in his last campaign, by the way, and now just immediately goes back to complete Islamophobia. And, you know, you said this, you think is tailor made in a lab to appeal to liberal white women. But I think your other comment is more to the point, which is that He is they are trying to frame him as an other.

Yeah, right.

And he is turning it around and appealing to some of the most bedrock American values, which, yes, there is a there is some percentage of the society which prides themselves on their racism and their white nationalism. But that is not going to be a majority view. Those are not going to be the people that are going to be voting for Abdul Syed in the state of Michigan.

And I think he's done this throughout his campaign, not only in this exchange, but I've talked a lot about his flavor of America first leftistism. because what he says about Palestine, about Gaza and about the Iran war is why are we spending this money there when we could be spending it here? And he brings it back to that all the time. Go ahead on that.

No, so he did a clip yesterday. I thought it was so well done. He was like, I forget, some idiot at ABC News is like, is Israel an ally? It's such a stupid question, right? And he's like, is Israel? He's like, well, I don't think they're an ally. And the reason why is good allies don't drag you into war.

He didn't say anything else. He was just like, and we can get to the morality and all that. And this is what the clip that got Tucker in trouble and all these Republicans. mad at me is I was like, guys, he's running an America first campaign. I'm not I don't even agree with the guy. I'm saying, though, I can look analytically as you could at Trump and be like, listen, there's something here. You know, it's pretty much designed. And look, I don't mean to be denigrating, but like there is a literal worldview, which is basically like. American history started in 1964. That predominates the college educated, you know, white upper middle class. Like you could look at the audience of the people who are literally there who are surrounding Tommy.

Right.

I these people are Americans, too. I am not saying you're different than me. But I'm saying that type of rhetoric and all that is very Obama 2008, which is.

He's the most popular politician in America.

I'm not saying it doesn't work.

And had a famously- multiracial coalition and one in a lot of rural areas that have been off the table for Democrats until now, because I do think that this is a very aspirational part of American values that the vast majority of people do subscribe to. So I thought it was I thought it was brilliantly done. And, you know, the reason I raised the question of is this going to be something that resonates in the general election is because I'm seeing a lot of right wing cope on this that, oh, he comes off as an asshole when he comes off as arrogant. And I just look at the landscape. Freaking Donald Trump is president of the United States of America. You think that America is going to be put off by a guy with some swagger? Are

you kidding me? Like, that is part of what has been so lacking on the Democratic Party side. To your point, it's someone who will stand up for themselves. And it's certainly what, you know, the Democratic Party wants to see. But everybody wants to see that because ultimately that means you're going to have the strength to fight when it comes time. And if you're an effective politician and you're, you know, putting out the right things and the right message— then that translates into they're going to be willing to stand up and fight for me when it comes time.

Which was very effective for Trump. Yes, of course. See, that's where I just come down to. I'm like, really? Like, that's that's what that's. that's what does it for people in terms of like, that's extraordinary that you're willing to spar with a, you know, with a, I mean, let's beat the shit out of the protest.

I hear what you're saying, but I do think you have to add, like Abdul is a very impressive candidate. Like he's quick, you know, I mean his ability to, to absorb that exchange and turn it around like that. That quickly is really quite incredible. Let me get to Mike Rogers was asked about this. So I told you part of the Republican cope is to be like, oh, he comes off like an asshole, which I mean, I think we all kind of America likes an asshole. But anyway, and I don't think he comes off that way. But the other thing they've done is just a lie. about the exchange and say that he didn't condemn the Muslim, that he was just spinning the whole time and he never condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, when literally the first words

out of his mouth in this clip are, yes, sure, absolutely. And then he goes on to do the rest of it. In any case, here is Mike Rogers lying about this exchange.

So he said, yes, sure, challenged the voter and said the voter only asked him because he's a Muslim. So Hassan Piker, who really came to the state He had him here multiple times, five different events, took him to college campuses. This guy is full of hate and vitriol, not only for Jewish Americans, but for black Americans. You listen to his comments. This guy is as vile as they come. He has said he was excited about his answer because he did not disavow the Muslim Brother. He didn't disavow it. He goes on this word salad trying to get around.

The fact that he.

Can't do it. No, that's not true.

Dana, listen, I don't know why the press.

Is so eager to protect this guy.

And it is. It's an ideology.

Yes, Dana Bash is so eager to protect Abdullah Syed. She doesn't even quote him properly there, but she at least does push back and, you know, like put a little bit of reality in context to what Mike Rogers is saying the other thing that's happened with the soccer is another yet another like little window into what's going on behind the scenes at CBS. So let's put this up on the screen. One of their reporters, Jan Crawford, originally tweeted out this. Tommy, again, the guy in the video.

Thank you. I had to watch this twice. Now, a lot of people are theorizing, Sagar, that she actually meant to put this out. And this is a high level. She's a national legal correspondent over at CBS News, that she actually meant to DM this. to this Tommy guy and accidentally tweeted it in a total boomer moment. But in any case, she then had to delete it and said earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul Asai town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize. But you can see the tenor of the ideology behind the scenes. And this is someone who is seen very much as being a, you know, Barry Weiss acolyte and protected by her at the network. Apparently, we put E4 up on the screen.

This has caused quite Another kerfuffle at CBS. Justin Barragona, who's a media columnist for Zateo and is a media reporter, says this is spiraling for CBS. I'm hearing from my sources this over-the-top tweet is being discussed internally. At the same time, the same sources noted Jan is protected by Barry and has been a very vocal acolyte of Weiss.

This type of political stuff from an on-air reporter is only going to speed up the audience's escape because their ratings have not been very good.

Yeah, I don't think that'll, that's not what's going to speed it up. What's going to speed it up is the product of shit, but that's definitely part of the media discourse. Yeah, it's, look, Barry's out here obviously serving the state of Israel. She's out here being like, let's prove that Abdul is tied to the, Muslim Brotherhood, which, you know, then this is what also annoys me. Imagine if we were commissioning stories and spending millions of dollars trying to prove, which wouldn't even be hard, let's say in like Mark Levin's case, that his stepson is out here like basically working, you know, to push Israeli interests in the U.S. embassy. If we spent millions of dollars doing that, what were they going to call it? Like

an anti-Semite hate factor, right? And that's basically what they're doing.

Well, and the thing is, it's not like she's applying the same level of investigative scrutiny to other candidates. It's very targeted. Barry's the one who also pushed this weird 9-11 article about Abdul, which, yeah, it was like, I don't even remember, but she was trying to somehow make some tie between him and 9-11 that really was complete and utter bullshit.

Oh, it was this. 9-11 scarred our country in profound ways. What we did after 9-11 scarred millions of people. When we talk about 9-11, we often fail to set ourselves I mean, there's literally nothing wrong.

Nothing wrong with what he said there at all.

And I would say, if that were true, I think I say that every night. Yeah, I mean, I would go further. Every 9-11, I'm like, wait, 3,000 of our people killed, and then we devastated millions of people around the world, and it was totally unnecessary, and it was completely, okay, there you go, you got me.

Yeah, no, but you know, the 9-11 never forget thing, we would have been better off and the world would have been better off if we forgot instantly. That is the cold, hard reality and is uncontroversial at this point. And by the way, Trump won in 2016. by saying yeah by saying something yeah all right so in any case that's what's going on.

Last michigan thing yeah abdul underperforms dems nationally what's.

The take it depends by how much because i think you do have to take into account that he is running against the republicans and some factions of the democrats you have to take into account the way that they've made him a target the national smear campaign from Trump et al.

I think if you win- DSA people really went hard after J.D. when he underperformed Trump.

But if you win- Which is kind of bullshit. If you win Michigan by a significant margin- By how much? By five or seven? I'd say five.

Yeah.

You can't take that away. If it's a squeaker, yes, he underperformed. I think you have to look at that. But I do think that there are some other confounding factors you have to look at there. But in any case, yes, I think if he wins by, let's say, five- then no one can say anything. It's Michigan. It's a swing state.

We're told that these type of candidates can't win.

Which I've always disagreed with because I think that if you have a D next to your name, you're winning. I don't think Haley Stevens is going to lose either. Both of those candidates are going to win whenever it comes to the race. How much do you think she needs to win by to run for office or to run for president immediately? I think it should be, yeah, I think five, maybe six. I would just announce.

To be honest with you.

Yeah.

People are not going to remember that for the long term, just like with J.D.

Vance.

People don't remember for the long term that he underperformed dramatically in Ohio when he ran for the Senate. So I think if he wins, then I think he should consider it.

Immediately announce. Well, consider it. He's got to do it. He's got nobody else who's going to do it on his side. From Michigan, especially?

Yeah.

I mean, he's got a very compelling story. He's a very talented guy. I don't care who you are. You have to hand that to him. I mean, he was one of our, like, Jesse Waters can't help but sing his praises over on Fox News as pissing off Trump. How often he says nice things about Abdul in spite of himself.

I like Abdul, but he's just woke one to his core. And that's just the part about him I just can't.

Get over.

With this guy.

But, you know, listen.

I mean, that's not the campaign he's running here. He's been very focused. He's been very focused. Like, laser focused on a material and anti-war message.

Just because you don't talk about something doesn't mean you don't believe it. If you're going to be given interviews saying Medicare for All needs to prepare for gender transition surgery, yeah.

It's going to be a red line. It is a lot about.

Your priorities, though. But he wants to put Medicare for All as his number one, right? Yeah. Okay, well, then let's have a discussion.

So you would rather people not have health care.

I didn't say that. But that is what you're saying.

No, no, no, no, no.

That is what you're saying.

That's not what I said.

First of all— Because that's the tradeoff.

But I've said before about Medicare for all. I already have bigger problems with the national, like, you know, who gets to pay for what and decide in terms of health care post-COVID. I don't actually support, like, national standards whenever it comes to health care, specifically because of what happened.

So you don't support Medicare for all?

Well, not the way that the Democrats mean it. I support health care for everybody. But I'm not saying in terms of, like, Medicare standards we get to do— reimbursement rates. I want to blow up the hospital system. I want to blow up the doctor's cartel. I don't want national standards. I want like total personal choice whenever it comes to who gets to spend dollars, et cetera. And I think there needs to be like hard red lines.

His Medicare for all includes ability to still maintain your private insurance.

By the way. No, no, I understand all of that. What I'm saying- But you.

Wouldn't accept- health care for everyone if it meant that gender transitions were funded.

Well, you're framing it differently, right?

I'm not framing it differently. That's the choice because you're saying it's a red line.

Well, he supports a national Medicare for all standard, which has, again, Medicare, CMS gets to decide the literal types of procedures, what they do. and do not pay for, and which obviously would replace the healthcare for the vast majority of people and effectively push.

And endorse what I think.

Is Nazi medical science on children.

So it's like, you know, this is a real problem. Still allows private health insurance. But you're avoiding my question. So you would reject the, you know, the Medicare for all that Abdul supports, which includes private health insurance, if it included... that people's gender transitions would be paid for.

Again, I don't even think we should have national health care, period, because of the way that he's saying. We should just have subsidies and or just give people dollars because of the amount of power it gives to the federal government. So it's like the Medicare for all.

So if you do subsidies, if you do subsidies, then that means you're just propping up the whole system.

No, no, no, not health care subsidy. I'm saying people should get direct dollars, effectively HSA style accounts. what that would mean then is that we also blow up the, this is a longer discussion, but the broader point that it all comes down to is I think it's also fine to have social, I mean, I remember you told RFK, vaccine rejection is a red line. I'm sorry, like Nazi science on children, it's not even a question for me.

Like it's literally the idea of taxpayer dollars going towards that. That opens up such like a bigger transhumanist, like insane question and philosophy around like rejection of literal biology that I'm like, I cannot even play in this universe. People can say, oh, that's fine. People have plenty of social red lines, too.

So that's like an end-all, be-all litmus test for you.

I mean, honestly, yeah. You want taxpayer dollars?

Allowing parents and doctors to make their own decisions about their kids' medical care?

You can open that up to literally anything. Do you think that parents and doctors should be allowed to do whatever they consider is fine for them? I think that's fucking nuts. And we have... social standards or we have legal standards around all kinds of different like you can you can you chop off toes because parents and doctors have mass social psychosis they think so no of course not nobody thinks that it's only because they endorse like this specific policy again of mass psychosis which thankfully is actually going down right now i mean this is you know big discussion.

I just i think it's fine to have a social.

Red line like i don't think there's anything.

Wrong okay but that is your position is that.

Well again you're trying to define a narrow.

Allowing i don't agree with Medical care for trans kids.

OK, well, that's a very different framing. No, but no, it's not.

It's it's but that's what you're saying is that that means you would not support any candidate. Who supports who supports no matter how much they support all the anti-war going to stop the war in Iran, going to get people health care, that that's just such a red line for you will not go there.

Yes.

Just as vaccine rejection was for you, for me. chemical castration of children, which is Joseph Mengele-style science, absolute red line, especially whenever it comes to taxpayer funding.

I mean, then that explains why you'd vote for Trump again. Well, I wouldn't.

I didn't say I would vote for Trump again.

Against any Democrat who supported.

No, no, no.

I mean, just not vote. But whenever it comes to affirmative support, I mean, OK, here's my question, too. Do you not think that that's like a real social... position, which first of all, is held by the vast majority of the public. And then second, which is understandable to a lot of people. I just talked to you about COVID.

And part of the reason why you're talking about national health care and the way that you're framing the question is because I'm not going to be living in a world, let's say, where parents are in a position like sometimes in the state of California, where the state gets to come in and rip your child away because you're like, hey, I think this is bad, right? Which is this literally happened in multiple cases. So people talk about parents' rights. No, that's not how the courts are working right now. And a lot of these blue and liberal jurisdictions. Can't you see how that could go in a runaway way, like very, very quickly? It opens up all kinds of crazy questions.

I'm not saying that there isn't political support for the position that you're articulating. I just think it's a little different from how you typically present your views, where you tend to focus more on economics.

Of course.

And on, you know, anti-war.

Yes.

And, you know, American sovereignty.

Yes.

And so I just am trying to nail you down on... That issue actually for you, it's not maybe fair to say it comes before everything, but it is a litmus test issue that you will not vote for any candidate no matter how good they are and everything else. That is an absolute red line for you.

You're talking about affirmative vote. Like I'm saying like, oh, I'm going to go out and vote. No, no, probably not. Honestly, I might just not vote. If I go back in 2024, I wouldn't vote, period, at all. But that doesn't mean that, you know, you're going to come out, endorse somebody, campaign for somebody. you know, raise money for somebody, I can analytically look and be like.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think, by the way, you know, I think any liberal who's sneering at this, you guys all believe the same shit. If somebody was anti-war, if somebody was, you know, pro subsidies for everything, but is, oh, I don't know, against mass immigration or is against abortion, are you really going to vote for that person? Be serious. Like you're not.

And Everybody knows that is that it's a confluence of social position. And of course, many of those other things I talk about, I care, I probably care about war as number one. And I'll tell you this too. You know, I said, never, if it were, if it was existential, if America, if I was like, we're going to go into hundreds of thousands of people will be, let's not exaggerate.

Let's say we're going to get into a real no shit war. Then yeah.

Okay.

You know, I can, we can have a discussion, but I mean, to say that it doesn't rank up there, like it's important. Like, it's very important. And I think it's important for a lot of other people. And, yeah, if liberals want to win elections, like, they should think about that. Because I don't think it's, you know, I could flip it around and be like, oh, it's so important to you to have health care for, again, like child castration. That then, you know, that you're willing to have child castration. You think that's such an important, you know, issue area that you'll deny health care to millions of other people.

That doesn't make any sense.

Well, OK, so then just drop the trans thing.

I mean, no, health care for everyone is very important to me. And I would accept it even if it didn't fund, you know, any sort of. gender care for adults or children. Right, but that's a very unique position on the left. No, I don't think that's true. I think people would accept a level of, because then you can fight on those other pieces. But getting health care for all, I would be pushing to make sure that it's comprehensive for that, for eye care, for dental, all of those sorts of things. But yes, I think the greater good of achieving universal health care That is 100 percent.

I think most people would agree with that.

I think that's a very unique position. And that is not what I think. Then why won't he just say it? Why does he say it in a competitive race? Why does he say it?

Because he has principles and he's articulating his actual view as someone who went to medical school.

Obama lied about being for gay marriage. Politicians lie all the time. Like we're going to sit here and pretend that these people don't have calculations.

Why else? Why else? would he say it?

Yeah, I know, because he believes it.

Yes, because he believes it. He's not lying. He believes it based on his medical background. In any case, we're down a rabbit hole, but it was an interesting discussion and we do have a guest on this question of math and AI.

Okay, let's get to it. Griffin says, uh-oh, woke one debate. He, he, he. Listen, I know that these are contentious and, you know, just to move on in a second, but to be honest, these will be the discussion that will actually have to be had as we move forward because I think All of these questions and, you know, even maybe I'll have to work through it as well. I'm sure you probably had to think a lot about things post-Trump in terms of like litmus tests and like where you go and what for. Because, you know, what we're seeing right now is a moment of extraordinary change. And if anything, my big takeaway from the Weimar book was if you don't talk about it like this, then things go real fucking bad. And,

you know, having a discussion here, I appreciate it. So I don't want to end on a contentious note. There you go. Let's move on.

AI seems to be upending the world of mathematics. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. So after OpenAI solved the Navier-Stokes problem, a so-called Millennium Prize problem, it now has solved hundreds more. And from what I'm seeing bubbling up from the mathematics community, there is a lot of turmoil and upset about what this means for the future of the profession. So rejoining us to break down his view on all of this is Daniel Litt. He is a mathematician and also an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Great to have you back, sir.

Good to see you. Likewise.

Glad to be back.

First, can you just give us a little bit of background on what just happened and why this is roiling the world of mathematics so much?

Sure.

So the short version is OpenAI just released about 700 PDFs claiming to at least make progress on something like 370 open problems in mathematics. So this is obviously a remarkable event. Those problems are things that, you know, some of them are things I like. One of them was a conjecture I'd made that an internal model at OpenAI made some kind of partial progress on.

So this is exciting. I think it's clearly.

Something that, you know, many people in the community are not sure how to react to because it's just a big change to how we operate. Like historically, if you want to make progress on an open problem, you really need a human expert in the loop. And now sometimes you can make some amount of progress just by prompting an AI model. I think it's maybe not totally unfair to analogize it to what happened to astronomy when the telescope was invented. Suddenly we have a new and very powerful tool that's changing the way we work.

So that's really interesting, Daniel. You're basically framing it as a tool for people like yourselves. I'm sure you've seen this. There's been a hell of a lot of discourse. I've seen mathematicians in tears on the Ezra Klein podcast. talking about the meaning of life. Why don't you talk through us about some of your feelings on the subject?

Sure.

So, okay, I am not in tears.

I think that there are a lot of people who are concerned about the future of the profession, and that's very justified. So the way we have to train graduate students will have to change. One reason for this is that, like, you know, When you have a profession or an institution, it needs to measure what people have contributed, what they've done.

And historically, mathematicians have measured that by, did you solve an open problem? That's supposed to measure, did you contribute new understanding to the community? Or have you successfully trained the next generation and so on? That's not such a good measure anymore, because sometimes that can be done automatically.

So I think people are very worried that like the sort of institutional structures of the profession will be overturned. And that could, of course, be bad.

Right.

Like that could end up with a profession that's less successful. But I think there's also, you know, a lot of opportunity there. Yeah. So so my view is that at least for mathematicians, these models are primarily a tool. Um, and of course they can be used in a non tool like manner as well. Um, but you know, if your interest is in understanding mathematics, you need a human in the loop to do that.

So the other thing that I've heard is that part of what draws people to the field of mathematics is this joy of discovery. This, which any human, whether you're a mathematician or not, can relate to. You're trying to figure something out and then the last puzzle piece clicks into place and you have this euphoric sense of, oh, I did it. I figured it out. And so there's this sort of existential fear of, this profession that I chose because I love that particular process, that part of it may be going completely away. And speaking somewhat to that sense, Terence Tao had some comments about how he sees this evolution. He is considered one of the best living mathematicians. So let me go ahead and play a

little bit of what he had to say about this new era of mathematics and get your response.

I guess we are seeing the end of the romantic era of mathematics, the age of heroes, which has happened in other disciplines centuries ago, early as the Industrial Revolution. Somehow, mathematics held on, and we had our idiosyncratic traditions. For example, we all use blackboards, as you can see, and I've got this special Japanese-Korean chalk. And so we have these little quirks, and I do a lot of one-on-one advising individual grad students and things. And we have these mythological stories about Andrew Wiles being locked in his attic for seven years. Do you have Your YouTube channel has covered many of these stories. And I think we are moving to an industrial era where math will become much more

large scale. We'll work in big teams. More like the other sciences, they've already had to adapt to industrialization. And something will be lost. There's something romantic about the heroic age. And hopefully we will keep some of it, at least in our educational system. We will emphasize traditional ways of doing mathematics first before the industrial things. Just like we teach kids how to do arithmetic by hand. before giving them calculators. I think we have to have a similar type of thing. But it is sad, an era which was very nice and slow and maybe inefficient in ways.

And not always that. Hero worship also has a downside. It has winners and losers and whatever. So we are entering, rather unwillingly, but we are entering a new era where exciting new things are possible, but some things are being lost. And the question is, what can we keep that's valuable and what can we let go of?

So, Daniel, do you similarly see it as a sort of end of an era here? And is there something lost for the human beings participating as you move into a world where AI can generate these proofs faster than any living human being can?

I think, yeah, you know, of course, the way we work has changed. And there's some nice things about the way we work. You know, just being able to ponder with a pencil and paper is, I think, a very pleasant way to engage with the fundamental truths of the universe.

Is that lost?

Like, of course, we can still do that, right? It's just not as efficient maybe as, you know, working with our new tools. You know, astronomy, like hundreds of years ago, someone peering up at the sky with their naked eyes and trying to understand what's going on in the universe is also a little bit romantic. But, you know, modern astronomy using a radio telescope has a lot of improvements over that.

You know, maybe that romance is lost.

To some extent, but you can, of course, still look up at the sky and ponder the nature of the universe, but you can also do other things.

So I don't know.

I think we have a lot of opportunities. You know, things are lost. You know, Terry talked about the age of heroes. So maybe ego will play less of a role in mathematics. That doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. So I would say overall, I'm feeling very positive about these changes, even though, yeah, for individual people, you know, your motivations for going into mathematics might change in the world. My motivation has always been about kind of learning something new and fundamental about the universe. And that motivation still seems to be very, you know, something that I think I'll have the opportunity to do in this new future.

Let me push on your telescope analogy a little bit here, because it seems to me like AI is less like the development of the telescope and more like if you developed a telescope that was just going to chart the entire universe. And now rather than your job being looking at the stars at all, your job is to sort through that charting and try to make some sense of it and try to wrap your little puny human brain around the output that the AI has already spit out.

So it seems because the telescope is a tool, you get to pick where to point it. You're still fundamentally looking at the stars and trying to sort through the mysteries there. Isn't that a bit different from what is happening now with AI, where I think the fear is that also it could happen quite rapidly, that humans are not even able to really understand the proofs that are being generated. And they certainly aren't able to work through and really delve into the proofs that are being generated even to, you know, completely determine whether or not they're correct.

So that's a fear.

I think that right now that's not what we're seeing. So, you know, OpenAI released some, what, 700-something papers. What were those papers' answers to? They were answers to questions that human mathematicians had asked. So at least right now we're still pointing the telescope. I think you can imagine a world where you set the models, turning, generating questions and answering them.

That's something you can try to do. And if you run that with current models, you will not produce high-quality results. Yeah.

Um, maybe in a few years you'll produce high quality results, but I don't think that stops us.

From pointing the telescope, right?

Like I'm motivated by trying to understand some specific objects. Um, so I can, you know, use the tools to try to do that. Maybe the models have already generated some, some text about them and maybe, and maybe that understanding will be what I want or maybe not.

Right.

Like there's, um, math is like an infinitely large space you can explore. I think I would be excited to sort through outputs from a model doing some kind of automated exploration, but I'm also somehow not really worried about exhausting the search space, right? Like the sky is, I guess, a relatively small thing to search. Math is infinitely large.

So I'm quite confident that I'll have a role to play, you know, basically no matter how smart the models get.

My last question for you, Daniel, is about the signs that, what would change your mind? Like what can the rest of us look for? And what would really change your understanding of the field or kind of to Crystal's point evolve into a field where humanity is no longer even relevant.

To the question.

That doesn't seem like an output that is like, I don't think there's anything that would change my mind.

So let me, let me briefly explain why.

So, right.

You can imagine extremely smart models that can do everything we can do. And we just put them in a loop generating PDFs. Um, I think in that world where we do that with math, where we do that with basic science. We've just given up control of the future. We've placed it in the hands of the models or maybe the corporations that own them. I don't think that's a future that we want. So I think that there will always be a desire for human expertise and for humans in the loop just to make sure that we retain control over our understanding of the universe and whatever applications.

Come out of that.

Sure.

So last thing, let me get you to respond to a bit of a parody that was published to Terry Tao's blog here. And I'll read you a little bit, put this last piece up on the screen here. So a couple of excerpts. Again, this is a spoof. This person writes, In centuries past, scientists and mathematicians were limited in their ability to solve problems by their ability to understand the solutions. That bottleneck has been removed. Now there's no theoretical limit to the amount of scientific and mathematical factoids we can fail to understand. They go on to write, math and science are about cold, hard answers, just as art is about producing images. Music is about producing sound waves and literature is about producing strings of text. These

things exist to be consumed as content. No rational person, least of all us masters of rationality in STEM, pursues these for the joy of creation, learning, or beauty. All of these are inefficiencies, and we mustn't be inefficient, lest we stifle humanity's progress. LLMs are not burdened with these inefficiencies, and they will be merely the pursuits of those left behind with nothing more productive to do all day. Personally, I look forward to the day when ChatGPT can enjoy a sunset or a nice meal on my behalf and free up my time the same way I save time on scenic hikes using Uber. So very different worldview here written by the author. What are they getting wrong in their perspective?

Oh, I actually love this parody.

I mean, I think that the vision of mathematics where you just run an LLM in a loop with no humans involved works. views the goal of mathematics as, like, automation of the production of PDFs. I think I kind of agree with the author of this parody's viewpoint, that, like, we don't want to know just what, we also want to know why. And a PDF doesn't know why. I mean, you need some human expertise to, like, understand that and get at that and pursue it.

So, yeah, I think that the author of this parody has a.

Very similar view of science to me, actually, that, like, we are trying to understand the world, and that's not something you can automate.

That's cool. I like your perspective, Daniel. I'm going to stick with it. It makes me feel better. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Thank you, Daniel. Great to see you.

Likewise.

Thank you guys so much for watching. Great Wednesday show for everybody tomorrow.

10/20/26: Saagar Rips Boomers Over Property Tax, Abdul Shuts Down Questions On Muslim Brotherhood, AI Solves Hundreds Of Math Problems

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