I don't think Elon Musk will be remembered for inspiring the EV race or getting us to Mars. I think his footnote in history will be that he was the greatest cause of unnecessary death, disease, and disability in history, maybe since Stalin. I think this is a reckless individual, a sociopath who is causing unbelievable harm. Whether it's cutting off aid to HIV positive mothers in Africa, whether it's throttling back Starlink and then refusing to stand on his own two feet and blame the president who's now blaming him. This is what happens when you give one person too much power and that person happens to sleep with a loaded gun next to the bed and be addicted to ketamine.
Welcome to Agent Moderns. I'm Scott Galloway.
Before we get started, I'm so excited about this. Jess and I will be at UVA's Center for Politics this Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern time for a conversation with Larry Sabato, the center's founder and director. If you're on campus, please come join us. Plus, join Jess tomorrow for a live stream with independent Senate candidate in Nebraska Dan Osborne, live on Substack for Prof G Plus subscribers tomorrow, Wednesday, October the 21st at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. All right, let's get into it. Let's take a look at the map. We're officially two weeks out from election day and here are the key numbers we're watching. Morning Consult has Democrats up seven points in the congressional ballot. In Georgia, Quantis Insights has John Ossoff up seven points. In Texas, the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs has Greg Abbott up three points in the governor's race. And Cali gives Democrats, get this, a 64% chance of retaking the Senate. We're at two-thirds, Jess.
President Trump was in Kansas last night rallying for the incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. Marshall is facing an unexpectedly close race with Democrat Adam Hamilton. Here's a taste of that event.
And actually it was strange. I told the generals, they said, 'Do me a favor, General. Would you do me a favor? All these handsome guys, they look like you're always great looking. These four-star guys, I don't know if they get the job by their look. Nobody appreciates how great a president I am.' I say it. I say nobody appreciates that I got 21 trillion dollars invested in our country. Canada's been ripping us off for so many years. People got used to it. I didn't get used to it. We got it under control. No, they're all leaving O Canada. But I do like their national anthem. And I promised them if they become a 51st state, which is actually what they should do. I said, 'I will let you keep ice hockey and I will let you keep your O Canada so they can have it as a state anthem.' No, we're only kidding. We're having a good time.
Like, how does SNL even parody something that seems stranger and weirder than a parody?
Yeah. So look, Kansas last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. The last time Kansas sent a Democrat to the Senate, Hoover was president.
And sliced bread was like a new technology. So the interesting thing here, Jess, I want to get your thoughts, is that when the president feels he needs to fly to Kansas to save an incumbent senator two weeks out, the map isn't expanding, it's literally caving in. And when you're heckled in Wichita, the problem isn't the coasts. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I'm not sure which George Soros-funded group they think were sending the protesters in there, but it was probably just people who can't afford their life anymore, who can't afford gas and groceries and school supplies. This is obviously an enormous uphill battle, but it is in toss-up territory and Adam Hamilton, Reverend Adam Hamilton, I should say, is doing a tremendous job. I also think that Marshall, Roger Marshall is, I don't want to say uniquely vulnerable, but quite vulnerable. He was giving an interview earlier this morning being asked, you know, what's this about that it's a close race. He says it's the price of gas. Well, you've been supportive of a war that's driven up the price of gas. So we could lay that at your feet. But there are these side stories about him that the Hamilton campaign is trying to bring front and center. And President Trump even commented on one of them. So, Roger Marshall was an OB/GYN before he went into the Senate. And there are massively persuasive and kind of harrowing attack ads about what he did when he was an OB/GYN, suing over 700 patients for outstanding medical debts that ranged from $101 to several thousand dollars, going after mothers, elderly, and pregnant women. 81 of these people were arrested. They were also charging his practice an 18% interest rate, which his own lawyer said was specifically requested by then OB/GYN Marshall, now Senator Marshall. No other Kansas practice went over 12%. The New York Times has an article about this, talked to many of the folks who were arrested as a result of this policy. You know, a 68-year-old woman who hadn't paid back $4,561 of her bill for an emergency hysterectomy that she had three years before. And they were taken into custody as their grandchildren were preparing for an egg hunt in the house. The fact that we're talking about like $101 kind of makes your head spin. And President Trump last night at the rally said that it was legally mandated that he sued these people, which absolutely isn't true. And then he invoked the Shylock anti-Semitic trope, which President Trump did a year or two ago and said he didn't know that it was anti-Semitic, so everyone told him that it was anti-Semitic and now he's used it again. And I've been talking about this, that they are closing on gutter politics.
Absolutely. What they're trying to intimate to people is, I mean, first of all, that Roger Marshall, you know, couldn't be guilty of doing this thing that he did by choice and jacked up the interest rate to 18% anyway. But by using Shylock and talking about, you know, people with unpaid bills is obviously invoking a very stereotypical Jewish trope that is incredibly damaging. And I thought it was just a really ugly scene overall. I also, and we haven't talked about this, but Donald Trump is non-stop talking about men and how attractive they are at all of these rallies. Like everything from 'I looked, you know, at John Hoeven's ass' to talking about like big boy, you know, big strapping boys. And what do you think that that is that's going on here? And I get it, like the male form is great or whatever, but like it's a very strange closing message.
Yeah. Like he's always been pretty... look, I think.
But usually it's the girls where he's like, 'Oh, Natalie Harp, could you walk one more time?'
Yeah. Equal opportunity. I don't know. I think it's just an old man who has lost that his prefrontal cortex is starting to shrink and he forgets that he's president and shouldn't be talking about, you know, a general buttocks. You know, he just doesn't... this is, I don't know. This is sort of the...
Well, what do you think about this stuff with Senator Marshall? He's also had to, you know, release statements saying that ICE needs to cool it. The Hamilton campaign found out that they stiffed a bakery and they owed, you know, $678 over the course of six years. So Marshall had to get on that and pay it back. Doesn't seem like a particularly good dude.
Yeah, look, the fact that someone like Ken Paxton is actually still in the running, it probably doesn't hurt that the world's wealthiest man has given him, I think, a third of a billion dollars. But Kansas being in play just shows that a tsunami is forming. Now, whether it actually breaks and reaches shore, we'll see. But I would argue that right now, as much as we'd like to take credit, and there are some outstanding Democratic candidates, and also quite frankly, some less outstanding Democratic candidates, that what you're seeing in a place like Kansas is they're not voting for the Democrat. They're voting against their grocery bill. Affordability and the economy still remain number one. And every day, people are just getting punched in the gut in terms of affordability. And also, just a reminder, if you live in Kansas, there was an interesting study showing that the percentage of miles you drive is correlated to your dissatisfaction because it means you have to go to the gas station more than other people. You know, people in Manhattan don't care much about gas prices. But if you're living in South Dakota and you have to drive everywhere and there's no public infrastructure, you're filling up your SUV and, you know, it's costing you 150 or 200 bucks. I mean, you just feel that every day. And also to hear he was interrupted by protesters, I found it wild. Should we move on and talk about France?
All right. Heading across the Atlantic to France where violent protests continue to shake the nation, where a curfew was instituted last night in parts of Paris and other cities following several days of unrest. The protests began with students mobilizing against teacher shortages and rundown classrooms, but have since expanded to include other groups fighting against the cost of living, rising fuel prices, and growing pressure on public services. Around 550,000 people joined protests in France over the weekend and police arrested around 2,400 people after clashes and looting. Jess, how would you describe the situation in France and any thoughts on what kind of underpins it?
Complete chaos. And if you listen to Macron's address, you can see, you know, the pain and anguish, you know, at monuments and French cities being destroyed by looters. And you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that are out doing this. You know, he has linked it back to the rising cost of living, especially fuel prices driven by the US-Iran war, which makes clear that France did not participate, but that they are quote-unquote suffering the consequences now. But it's important to look at the original impetus, which were the conditions in these schools and that they don't have supplies, enough teachers, you know, really an unfair system to give to kids, and that was the beginning of this. And now it has snowballed into basically any grievance that you might have against the state, and then I assume more bad actors that have piled on and are doing things like looting Chanel's and Celine stores, you know, up and down Paris. But when you see the meme come to life of the French couple sitting there and having a coffee and smoking a cigarette as it burns around them, you know that you're in big trouble. And this has very real political implications. So, they have an election in about six months. Marine Le Pen, who runs every time, far-right candidate, getting 37, 38% of the vote, and then there's a hard-left rival, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which if I butchered that, I apologize, my French is no bueno. That was a joke, I know no bueno is not French, but anyway, it's basically those two candidates, with Le Pen holding a bit of an edge there, and there is nobody in the middle. And we see this bubbling up in countries all over the world where it feels like the extremes are the ones getting all the oxygen. And the raging moderates are sitting there saying like, 'Well, who represents us in all of this?' But I don't know how they're going to get it under control. I mean, they're making arrests. I think it's 2,400, 2,500 that have been arrested thus far. But when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that are participating and that they seem to have no way to really quell this, it's bad news. And then it's also righteous anger. These conditions are not right, especially in a state that is supposed to provide a decent quality of life for people. And I feel like it also gets to the heart of the conversations that we're having here about what the government should be responsible for. You know, what is actually a universal right to decent healthcare and a decent school, and that you should be able to afford a home if you, you know, work hard.
Yeah. And also a curfew in Paris is sort of the government acknowledging that it's lost control of the night. And crowds are about half the 2023 pension [protests], but they're more violent. So a smaller, angrier crowd is probably more dangerous because it's less movement, more rage. To be blunt, I think there's two... I think the spark was underfunded classrooms, but I think the kerosene they're in knee-deep in is a function of two things. They are what the West is headed for in terms of demographics and the dying democracy working too well, and that is old people continuing to vote themselves more money, which at some point begins to weigh on young people's opportunity. France spends about 14% of GDP on public pensions, roughly double the OECD average and about three times US Social Security. So, you know, France isn't a country with a pension system. It's a pension system with a country attached. And pension spending is about 57% — I'm sorry, public spending, government spending is about 57% of GDP. That's the highest in the OECD. And pensions alone are a quarter of all public spending. And if you look at young versus old, schools versus retirees, education gets about 5% of GDP. Pensions get 14%. So think about this. France is spending nearly three times as much on retirees as it is on schools, and on an inflation-adjusted basis they're spending something like 15 to 25% less per student. So the kids are in the streets because all the money is going to the retirement homes, and France has one of the lowest effective retirement ages at about 60. Mr. Macron spends incredible, enormous political capital raising the legal age from 60 to 64, and those riots. Yeah.
So France is where the West is headed, and that is old people vote and keep voting themselves more money and young people get fed up with it. Also, and this is more uncomfortable for progressives, like many countries in Western Europe, they embraced immigration without really understanding or developing a viable strategy for assimilation. So immigrants are about 10 to 11% of France's population and immigrant unemployment runs significantly higher. Also, there's just much greater poverty in France's priority neighborhoods that are sort of sequestered or become sort of ghettos for immigrants. There's definitely some data showing that French companies are less likely or discriminate against immigrants. Callback studies found applicants with North African-sounding names get significantly fewer interview calls than identical applicants with traditionally French names. So this is a couple of things. This is again, we continue to see a transfer of wealth from young to old because kids can't vote and young people don't vote. And the result is essentially France is an economy run for the retirement of workers at the age of 60, which is not demographically sustainable when people are having fewer and fewer kids. So France is what happens when a country makes two promises it can't keep at once, right? To its old people that they'll never have to sacrifice, and to immigrants that they'll be French. The reality is it's kept the first promise and it's broken the second. And young people are the agent for expressing the dissatisfaction here. And I'm just trying to draw a lesson for America. And the way I see it is it's the biggest threat to social stability isn't immigration or aging. It's a system that rewards people for what they already have and punishes those who are just starting out. Again, a largest transfer in the history of the world. It happens every year, and that is young people transfer and working-age people transfer $1.5 trillion to the wealthiest generation in the history of the planet in the form of Social Security. I'm going to continue to touch this third rail over and over and over. We are headed towards France if we don't start acting more responsibly and start investing, for example, more money in kids. We're spending more money on ICE right now than we're spending on kids. Kids don't vote and they're paying the price for it.
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Any closing thoughts on France?
Yeah. I have a question for you because, I mean, you brought up this mass immigration problem that they have had, but the president and Republican allies are saying that this is an Islam problem. So they're taking the immigration but then putting a jihadi hat on it. Have you seen any evidence that this is about lack of assimilation of Muslim immigrants? Because I haven't seen that. I certainly understand the immigration problem, but not that this is, you know, one of those stories of 'this is what happens when you open your doors to Islamists.'
So there's been all this nonsense in Texas from the right that Sharia law is a threat to Texans. 99...
Michigan, I mean, this is what's going on with Abdul.
I know 99% of Michiganders or Texans don't even know what Sharia law is. And I think that there's a certain level of misdirected empathy or at a minimum a refusal to acknowledge or express concern about other parts of the world that are much more depraved, much more violent. And so we have what I would call a certain level of what I call suicidal empathy and a lack of respect and a lack of affection for what is still the least bad system of its kind, and that is America. And I think there's something to the notion that as we come to grips with stains in our history, we still don't acknowledge that we are the best system, I believe, of its kind. And there's just this... the thing that struck me about these protests in France is at all the big rallies, I saw a ton of Palestinian flags. I didn't see one French flag. And I think it's okay to have two thoughts in your head at the same time, that you can mourn Palestinian suffering. I think what you're seeing across Europe is a certain level of fashionability to believe that some of the struggles and some of the Islamophobia, which I do think exists more in Europe than it does in the US, I think it's resulted in policies that are not rational or sensible and also don't, quite frankly, promote Western values or at least acknowledge how important Western values are in the defense of those Western values, and also a recognition that sometimes you're being played. Anyways, I was struck by these protests where I saw Palestinian flags everywhere and not a single French flag. It just struck me that, okay, there is a problem not in Mudville but in France right now, in Marseilles so to speak. Any thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I feel like the Palestinian flag for a lot of people has come to encompass a lot of oppressor-oppressed issues writ large, and that could be anything from affordability to actually what's going on in the West Bank or in Gaza. So I treat it as the umbrella, and I noticed this at the DNC. We were both there in Chicago, and you know how there were the protests from the Uncommitted movement and a lot of people with Palestinian flags, but as time went on you saw there were a lot of signs there. You know, people were there to protest about climate change. People were there about abortion rights. People were there about cost of living. And it occurred to me that this has just become the catch-all essentially for 'something isn't right here.' Right? There's something unfair that's going on. And we certainly have seen European leaders own up to the fact that unhampered or unrestricted migration from Muslim countries has led to bad outcomes. Like look what happened in Germany, right, where Angela Merkel is an enormous stain on her chancellorship. What happened, thinking back to, remember at the markets and all the women were being assaulted. I just hadn't necessarily seen the evidence, which is not surprising, to back up what President Trump was saying about this, that like everything in France would be fine if it weren't for Islam. That is not the case. Kids don't have decent schools and they can't afford anything. And like you said, senior citizens who won't give up their... who keep voting for bigger pensions, and then kids that are flying around the Palestinian flag. That is definitely happening there, but it's not because of a hardcore takeover of Islamist ideology. It feels more like prop play, frankly. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people that are participating in this for fun and that it's something to do at this point, which is a shame. And I hope that if they are, you know, just quote-unquote having fun and then also smashing windows and burning buildings, that they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And Macron seems like he's very serious about that.
I hope so. It's heartbreaking to see these store owners trying to block people from entering their stores and looting them. And look, there's nothing more dangerous than a lonely, broke young man. And the West is producing too many of them because we keep, quite frankly, sending money to old, rich, white people who, you know, believe that they should be able to retire at 60. And anyways, I don't... I think this is... the images coming out of France are heartbreaking because for anyone who's been to Paris, it's this testament to the West and humanity. I don't know if you remember the first time you went to Paris with your partner or a boyfriend. It's just like you just walk out of your hotel, you turn left, you turn right, and you marvel at what men and women have been able to do together in a modern society. It's just such an extraordinary ad for the West. So when you see these riots with flags of other nations and you see this sort of dissatisfaction and tumult, it's very disheartening and you wonder, okay, is this a more depressing... or a harbinger of darker things to come in the West? And I may be... I always have to check my dark moods back because I'm getting darker and darker as I get older. Again, these... we had these... the French love to riot, you know, it's built into their culture, these types of protests. But this one felt especially... especially rattling. And I don't know if that's because everyone has cameras now and they clip the most incendiary moments. There were some nice moments the next day of a lot of neighbors and people like helping to clean up. But again, I just go back to the same thing: too few young people supporting too many old people who keep voting themselves more money. Should we, speaking of old people giving other people money such that they can vote for their tax credits in Texas, should we talk about Elon Musk?
