Iran’s president is on U.S. soil, giving a UN speech and taking shots at America — while Iran is actively trying to kill Americans in the region. Xi Jinping is inbound to Washington for meetings with President Trump. And at the same UN, the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic are warning the world that AI is racing ahead without guardrails. Paul Rieckhoff joins the show for his weekly hit and refuses to let any of it slide past as normal. Is there any precedent for allowing the leader of a country at war with us to hotel up in Midtown? What actually comes out of a Trump–Xi sit-down when the last three years of “deals” with Putin produced nothing? And why is the industry itself begging Washington for regulation the White House won’t give?
From there, Paul pivots to the underreported 2026 story: independent veterans running real Senate campaigns in Colorado, Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota. Angus King is the only true independent in the Senate today, and he still caucuses with Democrats. If even one of these new veteran independents wins — refusing to caucus with either party — they instantly become the most powerful member of the chamber. This is the rigged two-party system’s worst nightmare, and it’s coming into view faster than the pundits admit. Rigorous, urgent, and grounded in the ground-truth perspective this show is built on.
In this episode
- Iran’s president stays at a Manhattan hotel and addresses the UN while Iran is actively trying to kill Americans — is there any precedent for this?
- Paul’s blunt take: “I’m all for diplomacy. But you usually meet in a neutral place, not on your own soil.”
- Why the UN has flipped from a peace forum into a platform for leaders to “throw bombs at each other politically”
- Xi Jinping lands in Washington — and why China, not Iran or Venezuela, is still the biggest player on the global chessboard
- AI as the new nukes: the case for a modern “red phone” between Washington and Beijing before things go sideways
- Sam Altman and Dario Amodei at the UN — the industry itself is asking to be regulated, and the White House is going hands-off anyway
- The sleeping giant: 45% of Americans are independent, most have never even voted in a primary
- Independent veterans running in Colorado, Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota — and why just one Senate win rewrites the math
- Why an independent who refuses to caucus with either party would instantly become the most powerful member of the Senate
- Joe Manchin’s warning: expect more Republicans and Democrats to defect before or right after the midterms
