i think a lot of people, a lot of americansat least are thinking about the us election in 202a. we know that trump's running for president again. we know robert f kenneder is running for the... sorry. we know that trump's running for the republican nomination for president. we know that people like robert f kenneder are running for the democratic nomination for president. people who have been accused in the past of pushing disinformation or conspiracy theories. gabriel, just to start with you, what do you think? i am always wary dealing in speculation and, you know, us warning what we think is going to happen. but what do you think we need to keep our eye on in the build up to this upcoming election? i saw robert f kennedyjunior speak just a couple of weeks ago actually in miami. and he it was at a bitcoin conference and he was warning about well, his message basically

was that cryptocurrencies are good because the governments can't seize your money. and they talked a lot about the canadian truckers who, some of whom they said had their assets frozen. you remember those protests, etc, etc. so he was sort of in a kind of speaking in a way from a slightly conspiratorial point of view. but in another way, what he was saying was factually true, right? so, you know, if if you have your money in a bank account and somebody somewhere doesn't like what you're doing, those assets can be frozen or confiscated, as many murdering russian officials have now found to their to their displeasure, right? they've had all their assets frozen because the powers that be don't like what they're doing.

so, you know, he's not wrong in saying that if you want if you want to be to live beyond the reach of the powers that be, you know, go for cryptocurrencies or something like that. it depends whether you think that the powers that be in your own country are a sort of malign cabal who may come after you for no good reason. that's a sort of different question. as for what's likely to happen in 2024 on the specifics, ijust i don't know. but i do know that the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, which is believed by tens of millions of americans. so vast, vast numbers of people, basically, most republicans kind of believe that it was stolen. most democrats believe that it wasn't like that...

..that idea has gone nowhere, that hasn't receded. and i cannot imagine that in 2024 these people who believe that it was stolen last time, if they don't win this time are just going to go, "oh, well, this one was fine. this one was just legit. that was it was a textbook perfect election." so, you know, that's my prediction. john, what do you think? well, i mean, right now, at this moment in time, it's going to be a shoo in for trump getting the nomination. i mean, desantis is the best thing that could possibly have happened to trump. interestingly, you know, trump is positioning himself to the left of desantis, and that's working. he's getting, you know, the bernie people. desantis is one thing i like about american conservatives is that they're not authoritarians. and so desantis is going to get nowhere and i hope i'm not going to, like, look like an idiot in six months' time saying this. well, get back, john. we'll get back when we're

like president desantis. you remember that, that clip of george clooney again. donald trump is not. oh, yeah. we have a good question from another america star, barney grant in brighton, asking us about the next election and the different things that might be at play. what impact do you think ai - will have on the next us election now that it is possible relatively easily to create fake video - and imagery of a real person? i'd like to think, you know, i'm still a little optimistic about this, but i've got to say, i think my optimism will probably drain away as ai gets better and better. but one thing i did find quite encouraging, you remember the pope puffer? in his puffer. so for 24 hours, everybody thought that was real. the pope wearing a pufferjacket and then 24 hours later, everybody knew that it was a deepfake. and that's because, you know, society is still relying on rational

humans to to tell us what's true and what's not true. so that was an example of, ok, maybe we're going to be quite good at adapting, but you know who does right now? chat gpt isjust this kind of, you know, that's not going to take over the world. it doesn't even know how many children i've got. i asked how many children i had and it said three. it'sjust nonsense. and i said, no, i don't have one. and i said, "oh, i'm sorry. "yes, you already have one." so right now there's a very big disconnect between the reality of ai. yeah, i agree with you. yeah and the people's fears of it. but i mean, what do i know? like if i really does become sentient and you know, then i guess we are all screwed. i don't know. i think you go, gabriel. you go. well, all i would say is we didn't need ai to make 70 million americans believe that the election had been stolen by a cabal of satan worshipping paedophiles, operating out of a basement in a pizzeria that didn't have a basement, like we didn't need ai for that. so like, you know, maybe it's going to make it worse, but kind of we're there.

that's exactly that was exactly what i was going to say, which is you don't really you don't... i get asked about this all the time and i often say to people a, at the moment i can think of so many examples of harm caused by disinformation or false or false claims, etc, etc, all of which are done in a very low budget, pretty straightforward way. when it comes to ai, a bit like pope in the jacket, people quite quickly say, oh, that's hey ai, that's hey ai. at the moment and so you're not getting that same sort of real world harm, i guess, in the way that you certainly get with some. yeah. i kind of think... well, i can say in the midst of all this, can i, can i say something about the word about the word harm because. oh, yes. i think it's absolutely true that shannon can be incredibly harmful and it's obviously been harmful to faith in democracy in america, quite apart

from the sort of personal stories of people who've been lost to this movement and their family can't get them back. but, you know, a lot of harm has been done to the planet by perpetuating a narrative that actually, you know, we can't really reduce our greenhouse gas emissions that much because it would be harmful to the economy, you know, and climate change denialism. a lot of harm has been done to the planet because of those narratives that, you know, until recently or maybe even still are regularly put forward on mainstream news organisations such as the bbc. i mean, climate denialism, not so much any more, but until quite recently there were. but, you know, this idea of, well, we have to balance the reduction in air travel with kind of economic concerns about growth. you know, there's an argument to be made that a huge amount of harm is being done by those equivocation. so ijust think, you know, it behoves us to be a little bit sensitive to those kinds of things

that that that are very much in our wheelhouse, if you like, to use a horrible phrase. yeah. and i've got to say, you know, in the midst of this, there is something that feels very bleak and dispiriting, which is the fact that all of these people believe that the election was stolen, despite the fact that there were, what, 60 court cases or 61 court cases and all but one were lost by the trumpers and still, everybody believes i'm making series two of things fall apart at the moment and i won't tell you the story, but i was interviewing

somebody quite recently and i said to him, 0k, so, you know, suddenly on the news, there's a cruise ship and everybody's getting sick on this cruise ship and there's a care home, but everybody's dying in the care home. did you think, oh, my god, i've got to go home and stay home till we can figure out what's going on? and he replied, no, i was i was entirely suspicious from the very beginning. and what that says is that people's brains work differently. like i have the liberal sheeple brain, where if i'm told to go home, i'm going to go home. and there's other people out there who are libertarians who just automatically and instantly, not even a cruise ship where everyone's sick stops them from being suspicious. there's some things that can't be fixed. and i think that maybe kind of to finish off really that point about harm because i think it's so important that all of this happens in a wider context where bad things do happen, powerful people do do bad things and all kinds of things cause harm. and when i think about the harm of this and the harm of conspiracies, i think about people no longer wanting to vote because they genuinely don't trust democratic processes any more. and they think, despite evidence to the contrary, that their vote will not count at all. and i also think of it's something i've been talking about with this

new podcast quite a lot, this idea that conspiracy, a lot of conspiracy at its heart is about blaming someone and finding someone to blame for what's going wrong. and that's the bit that worries me, i think, because i think that often it's about blaming an individual and in some ways it's almost better when it's blaming an organisation or a big corporation. it's worse when it's blaming a specific doctor or a specific journalist or a specific politician. and, you know, we saw this kind of incident involving nancy pelosi, the former speaker of the house, and her husband, and these kind of allegations about this, this guy breaking in and whether he was fuelled by some of the stuff he'd seen online. and i think my worry going into 2024 and the thing i am kind of keeping an eye on is how far that blame game goes and how committed people who genuinely believe this stuff, genuinely believed that humanity is under serious threat but believe it on the basis of distorted fact or believe it on the basis of information that's not true, how

far they could go. and i think that's what scares me a bit, because that's it's quite a scary world to operate in when you genuinely believe kind of people are evil and you're willing to go quite far in your attempts to target them. i don't know what you think, gabriel. yeah, no, i think that's right. i think that's right. and they're always the most ugly and the most scary when they're kind of targeting individuals because the individuals can't really defend themselves, even if they're like hillary clinton. you know, it's like whatever you think about hillary clinton, she's not a satanic witch who drinks children's blood. and that is a scary thing to sort of contemplate being in the middle of such a firestorm. i'm going to say something a little more optimistic. go for it. 0k. so when you talk about nancy pelosi and her husband, the first thing i think of is that terrible tweet that elon musk sent the day it happened where he was, you know, implying that it was some sort of sex game gone wrong or something.

and sadly, because if twitter dies, then lots of good things die along with it. but also, slightly encouragingly — it's not working. i mean, i read today that twitter is worth a third of what it was when elon musk took over. so, you know, there's still a lot of people who abandon that kind of disgusting—ness. and we will definitely be keeping an eye on twitter, i think probably or maybe not keeping an eye on twitter if its influence does wane in some way and people don't want to be on the platform, or maybe they do and maybe they stay. and you can listen to the full version of the latest addition of americast on bbc sounds. let's return to the debt deal, which us presidentjoe biden is set to sign. the bipartisan measure sped through the senate by a vote of 63 to 36, a day after it cleared the us house of representatives. president biden has said he will sign the measure into law

and we are expecting to hear from the president in the next few minutes. in his first address from the oval office. special guests to discuss 0ffice. special guests to discuss that. joining me now in studio is bryan lanza, republican strategist and former director of communications, trump transition team and annmarie hordern, washington correspondent at bloomberg. and joining us remotely from atlanta is ameshia cross, democratic strategist and former communications analyst for 0bama. think it's all three of you for being here and to guiding us through what will be an interesting speech because not only is it about the debt ceiling deal which we have been discussing and covering for many days and weeks and months, it feels like but also because this will be the president's first address from the president's first address from the oval office. i want to start up because we have some excerpts from the president's plan for marx and i want to see what you make of them. now in these, just to summarise we have averted a crisis and what we

are doing to protect america's future, passing this budget agreement was critical of the states cannot have been higher and that interesting here, something has repeated, no one got everything that they wanted, but the american people got what they needed. starting off with amber you've been covering this for bloomberg as well with you make of the president's remarks and just in general this interesting setting an backdrop for his address tonight? thank you for having me and we have been covering it since the treasury has been using these extraordinary measures since january. it has been months. they are getting it done with a little bit of wiggle room. june five would have been the hard deadline. i think the president has been really absent talking about it. wanting to make sure his negotiators were handling the way we saw speaker mccarthy almost had a gaggle every 15 minutes it felt like. this past week. so this is the president's moment to claim victory on what he thought the democrats were able to get in these negotiations. also i

think claim victory that it was able