TSMC Execs Dismiss OpenAI Chief's $7 Trillion Chip Plan as 'Podcasting Bro' Vision (msn.com) 114
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) executives have dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ambitious chip-making proposal as unrealistic, according to The New York Times. Altman, seeking to boost AI computing power, pitched a $7 trillion plan to build 36 semiconductor plants over several years during a visit to TSMC's Taiwan headquarters. TSMC leaders reportedly found Altman's proposal so far-fetched that they privately referred to him as a "podcasting bro," reflecting skepticism about his grasp of the semiconductor industry's complexities. The world's largest contract chipmaker, already grappling with multi-billion dollar expansion projects, viewed Altman's scheme as overly risky given the massive capital requirements and market uncertainties.
The problem with tech bros is (Score:5, Insightful)
However hare-brained their "visions" are, they're still dangerous and nefarious. Particularly Sam Altman.
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Not a bad FP, but I'm wondering why you think Altman is particularly "hare-brained", "dangerous", or "nefarious".
Well, I see a joke around the "hare-brained" part... How many Watts for a rabbit brain? Considering that the rabbit is in many ways more capable in the real world than large AI systems, it seems like the bunny wins. I've already mentioned the book from Jeff Hawkins that explains (among other matters) why the current AI summer is almost surely heading for another AI winter. (For PoC reference I ke
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The bunny community feels left out.
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s/human being/human brain/
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Considering that the rabbit is in many ways more capable in the real world than large AI systems,
Well, the reverse is also true. Ask your bunny to help you programming (or any of the other thousands of different things people daily successfully use AI for). All you'll get is a confused look and some bunny excrement.
it seems like the bunny wins.
So no.
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Well, you could ask his sister what she thinks of him...
good for them! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:good for them! (Score:5, Insightful)
a pitch to this company to invest billions, hence the need for actual ROI projections based upon some level of reality.
Pitching the idea to build 36 chip fabs with $7T in the next several years is like pitching an idea to increase the birth rates in some countries by flying in a lot of women to those countries. Only on the very surface level does it make any sort of sense. The part Altman got right is the money required. The practicality and details are ignored.
Let's start with building 36 factories has so many logistical issues to overcome. Zoning, land ownership, facilities resourcing (these plants use a lot of water and electricity). These are also specific type of factories that requires expertise to build. The local house builder, Bob, is not likely to know how to build these factories.
In the case of chips fabs, the main limiting factor is even IF the site could be built with all the working facilities, there is only 1 company right now that make the lithography equipment, ASML. If you are not already on the waiting list to get a EUV machine in the next several years, the wait time could be 5 years at this point. Lastly, with all the equipment up and running, it is not guaranteed that fabs will instantly be making product. It takes time for ramp-up for a single fab. Right now TSMC is struggling with its Arizona fab due to cultural differences like US working hours and harsh treatment of workers.
The divorce from reality is that Altman is pitching this to TSMC who has been doing this for decades. I imagine it would like pitching Apple on how to design smartphones.
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Re: good for them! (Score:2)
None of that is particularly hard to do. Factories are built every day, the problem is the investment. 7T doesnâ(TM)t fund 36 factories for their lifetime (unlikely even for the first 5 year) and by the time they are built, OpenAI will have been bought out or gone bankrupt. Even if you get to production, you now have 36 more factories on the market that have to sell, Altman isnâ(TM)t a capitalist so he doesnâ(TM)t understand that the market already is drowning in chips that are âoegood e
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like pitching an idea to increase the birth rates in some countries by flying in a lot of women to those countries.
Obviously a nonsense plan. Far simpler to fly in a few virile men instead.
Re: good for them! (Score:2)
...and they would carry out the babies how, exactly? :-)
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a pitch to this company to invest billions, hence the need for actual ROI projections based upon some level of reality.
Pitching the idea to build 36 chip fabs with $7T in the next several years is like pitching an idea to increase the birth rates in some countries by flying in a lot of women to those countries.
Altman has essentially zero experience with building or operating fabs. He thinks that he just needs enough money and the fabs will build themselves ... like sort of how Intel is so successful.
Who in their right mind is going to give him $7 billion to jump in and build and operate fabs. Altman is not crazy. He sounds like a great con man. The people giving him money ... those are the crazy people.
Re: good for them! (Score:2)
A breakthrough? Yeah it probably qualifies as that. Will it lead to the singularity? Mmmm. Maybe in a few thousand years at the very earliest.
So, no. No government is gonna hand him a trillion dollar check. He can talk about it all he wants. Iâ(TM)m sure the TSMC execs we
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doesn't appear to take into account anything in the real world...
Welcome to tech bro land. Two drink minimum.
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Agreed. I think he should at least have shown them a credible business plan (maybe he did behind closed doors?) and taken part of the risk.
Such as Open AI paying for half of the investment, repayable in manufactured goods. Then if the grand vision collapses into fairy dust, TSMC would have gained a manufacturing plant at half the price.
Anyone can say big numbers. (Score:3, Funny)
I think a quadrillion dollars should be invested in chipmaking. Altman doesn't have real vision. Every man woman and child should be making chips.
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I think a quadrillion dollars should be invested in chipmaking. Altman doesn't have real vision. Every man woman and child should be making chips.
Well AFAIK they all do.
But we don't call them "chips" where I live.
(And people do make trillions shoveling them. Like Sam Altman!)
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a few quadrillion dollars does sound about right, i think that will also give me my flying car and cold fusion
Those who know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel put a LOT of money into trying to get their chip making back on track, and so far have failed miserably. It's not just about spending money, it's about having the right talent, even when you have the right equipment. The people at TSMC understand this all too well.
Re:Those who know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. If it was just a case of throwing money at it, the Chinese would have had the whole market sewn up long ago and you better believe Apple wouldn't be using TSMC fabs.
But even if it could be done. Nobody is going to be giving Sam Altman 7 trillion to make chatgpt chips. AI might be important, but its not THAT important. Not yet, anyway.
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Right. If it was just a case of throwing money at it, the Chinese would have had the whole market sewn up long ago and you better believe Apple wouldn't be using TSMC fabs.
But even if it could be done. Nobody is going to be giving Sam Altman 7 trillion to make chatgpt chips. AI might be important, but its not THAT important. Not yet, anyway.
China doesn't have access to the equipment now. They were on track and were strategically blocked.
They don't have access to ASML equipment. They can't make their chips on TSMC either. However, they are welcome to buy Apple products made from these technologies but not the nVidia chips that could do AI.
Re: Those who know... (Score:2)
Didn't read the thread huh? These guys won't have access to ASML hardware within the stated timeframe either
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Even with that ASML equipment(which Intel did buy), Intel is still having problems getting the new fab processes working. This is where you can have professional tools, but if you don't know how to use them, you STILL won't be getting things done anywhere near as well as a professional. TSMC has professionals, Intel employees are wannabes.
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clearly you are not understanding AI
all you have to do is
dump 7 trillion dollars in altman's bank account and profit.
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Canon is making high end fab machines now too.
I wouldn't underestimate China. Every time we do, they somehow get ahead anyway. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had cutting edge fabs by the end of this decade.
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I wouldn't underestimate China. Every time we do, they somehow get ahead anyway. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had cutting edge fabs by the end of this decade.
Sure, China has spies and they don't give a shit about intellectual property. But even so, your estimate seems optimistic.
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They have a lot of engineers too, and pay the Taiwanese ones willing to come and show them how to build a fab a lot of money.
Think about Apollo. The US went from having just done a sub-orbital flight, behind the Soviet Union which did a full orbital flight, to landing on the moon in 9 years. When the government sets a goal and throws money at the problem, it can be solved remarkably quickly.
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Think about Apollo. The US went from having just done a sub-orbital flight, behind the Soviet Union which did a full orbital flight, to landing on the moon in 9 years. When the government sets a goal and throws money at the problem, it can be solved remarkably quickly.
You seem to ignore that US was behind the USSR by a month in 1961 when it came to orbital flights. Project Mercury started 3 years earlier in 1958. The US did not start from zero in 1961 to the moon in 1969 with no background. Also you seem to ignore that the US did not have crippling sanctions placed under them while trying to get to the moon. That is what has do. Build from zero lithography to EUV while under sanctions.
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China already has a working 7nm process. People thought it would take them years to develop that, and that the sanctions would make it almost impossible.
Re: Those who know... (Score:2)
Chinaâ(TM)s not starting from zero either. I bet from Soviet eyes, the US was sanctioned, and they certainly werenâ(TM)t sharing their IP with the US. ;). China is hardly under crippling sanctions, and you can bet your arse that theyâ(TM)re working to be independent of western technology, at which point sanctions will mean diddly squat.
Re: Those who know... (Score:4, Insightful)
China already has a working 7nm process. People thought it would take them years to develop that, and that the sanctions would make it almost impossible.
And where did China get that 7nm process? It is a modified DUV process from ASML. They did not develop any of that but are taking credit for it. That's like me buying a Tesla and saying I invented a new EV car line.
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Of course it's based on existing technology. But it was engineered domestically, by Chinese engineers.
And even if you are right, if they did it for 7nm they can do it again for smaller nodes.
Attitudes like yours are why we keep having shocked Pikachu face moments when we assumed that sanctions would hold them back, and then discover that they caught up, or worse surpassed up. How many times does this need to happen before we do something about the state of our own R&D?
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Of course it's based on existing technology. But it was engineered domestically, by Chinese engineers.
Again, you missed the point. The point is that China cannot make EUV machines. In this case they didn't. They used DUV which they already had. Again, I can paint a Tesla cybertruck and called it a brand new line of EV trucks according to your logic.
And even if you are right, if they did it for 7nm they can do it again for smaller nodes.
Please explain how DUV can go below 7nm again. There is a reason why ASML and the rest of the world are not using DUV for anything lower.
Attitudes like yours are why we keep having shocked Pikachu face moments when we assumed that sanctions would hold them back, and then discover that they caught up, or worse surpassed up.
And you keep bending the truth whenever it suits your narrative. For example, Canon is not making EUV machines despite your as
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It's not just China saying they have done this. Huawei has been shipping these things for a year already, and Western observers have verified that they are indeed 7nm parts by stripping them down and using a microscope.
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It's not just China saying they have done this. Huawei has been shipping these things for a year already, and Western observers have verified that they are indeed 7nm parts by stripping them down and using a microscope.
And I am saying don't automatically believe the Chinese propaganda. No one in the world has every said DUV cannot be used to make 7nm parts. No one. What is said is that China cannot make EUV machines; that is still true to this day. The main reason DUV is not used is that at 7nm, DUV is, under the best conditions, just barely profitable. If China is willing to throw money to make chips at a loss for the moral victory, no one is going to stop them.
The other thing which you ignore is that the DUV machines a
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Canon is making high end fab machines now too.
Canon has starting shipping nanoimprint lithography machines (NIL); however, even Canon says their machines do not compete against ASML's EUV [tomshardware.com]: "Canon says its strategy with its nanoimprint lithography machines is not to replace DUV and EUV tools from fabs but rather to co-exist with existing tools. If not for logic chips, NIL could be used to make 3D NAND. . ."
I wouldn't underestimate China. Every time we do, they somehow get ahead anyway. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had cutting edge fabs by the end of this decade.
Japan and the US companies, while under no sanctions lost out to ASML when it comes to EUV. But you think China could do better. Sure . . whatever.
Process? (Score:2, Offtopic)
This is a bad time to start building AI fabs.
Some bench prototypes use 1000x less power using different techniques.
AI problems, at least some classes, are robust against small error rates.
Traditional calculations need traditional chips with perfect error-corrected outputs.
Engineering trade-offs are obvious.
But OpenAI would love a $7T investment. In SV the biggest failures can be rewarded.
Altman and TSMC guy are optimizing for different optima.
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it's now almost 2 years after the release of ChatGPT. There are many vendors pitching x10 and more from ASIC to FPGA to Wafer. Hard to understand that in 2 years matrix-vector optimized for transformer training and inference is not all over the place in lieu of the absurd pricing for CUDA devices.
Submitting a more than 100k context right now - just first step initially processing it is probably more than 0.5 kW.
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BS and correction from before it's probably in the O(1 kWh) for a 100k token context SGEMV operations alone
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If you neither care about performance nor efficiency.
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Performance/efficiency, depends on what you need. For most of the stuff we do with "AI", we are limited by data throughput, not by the GPU. Pre-trained models are a thing and even larger models run on my laptop and respond in half a second, which is faster than OpenAI "slowly printing" the response.
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So ChatGPT is behind the North Carolina gubernatorial election!
Money is not capital (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is what happens when you either think money can buy anything, or that money is capital. We use money to measure capital, but capital is actually the physical assets and human capital (available labour) that we can use to accomplish a project. When you're talking about the chip industry, which operates right on the edge of what's possible, the capital available to expand it by leaps and bounds simply doesn't exist, no matter how much money you throw at it. If you try, you'll just cause massive inflation in the industry. Yes, you'll end up spending 7 trillion dollars, but you'll only get marginally more for it.
Well, if you seize/steal the physical assets and force the human capital to work for free, you don't need any money right?
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Well, if you seize/steal the physical assets and force the human capital to work for free, you don't need any money right?
Altman's plan was to build 36 new plants. How do you seize something that does not exist yet?
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Well, if you seize/steal the physical assets and force the human capital to work for free, you don't need any money right?
Altman's plan was to build 36 new plants. How do you seize something that does not exist yet?
Seize Intels.
They don't know how to use the equipment they have anyways and are just producing junk.
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Seize Intels.
And which Intel's plants are those? Intel has about 20 plants all over the world. [wikipedia.org] The vast majority are in the US. I do not see someone being able to "seize" them. They have a chip packaging plant in Malaysia that will open this year. There are not 36 of them to seize.
They don't know how to use the equipment they have anyways and are just producing junk.
Let me see if I understand you correctly. Altman's plan it to build 36 new plants for manufacture chips. Your solution is to seize plants in the US that are experiencing problems producing chips. How is your solution even under the best of ci
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Capital is the things you use to make things, essentially tools.
Labour is a separate thing, one reason for which is that we think owning capital is good but owning people is bad. "Human capital" is a finance invention of the same quality as "money is capital."
I point this out because other than that you're right, and also believing in "human capital" is how you spend billons of dollars buying a company for "the team" and then everyone quits. Or a little more apropos to this story, converting your company to
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Well, you can count your people as capital if you're running a certain kind of country, sure. Countries where the government tells you to do something and you do it.
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Every so often someone comes along at just the right time and rolls double sixes 100 times in a row. Musk. Trump. Now Altman. The man walks on water. When he picks his nose, journalists gasp and write that is the most amazing snot ever picked out of a nose.
I do strongly suspect that he is just trying to leverage his influence to this purely ridiculous level of "vision" while he still has currency. I can imagine a lot of peop
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When you see what he Xitts on Xitter... quite a bit of it is really unhinged...
wrong investment (Score:2)
The tech behemoths now want a nuke plant and a dedicated fab plant for each of their new AI data centers. Not happening, and even if it could happen it would take many years to assemble.
Meanwhile a small fraction of that money could be invested in figuring out how to optimize existing resources. Make NPU's and TPU's that are much more computationally powerful and yet consume far less electricity. This has been the tech trend for CPU's and it would most likely be the best path forward for AI.
Re: wrong investment (Score:2)
Stop saying "bro" (Score:1)
Caught with Knickers Down (Score:3)
One day, some day, some brainiac in a lab is going to find a way to perform the same AI calculations using some ingenious new mechanism with 1/100th the power demand and 1/10 the circuitry, if any circuitry at all - maybe biologics will be the next big thing. If that happens halfway into a $7-trillion chip plant build-out, a lot of investment money is going to be stranded high & dry. And I'll need a new graphics card.
God that rocks (Score:2)
Simple math (Score:3)
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When you have only bad choices go for the least damage. 4 years max or 8 years max is the hidden variable.
I know, everybody thinks the wrong one will spell the end of civilization, just like the previous six times.
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When you have only bad choices go for the least damage. 4 years max or 8 years max is the hidden variable.
I know, everybody thinks the wrong one will spell the end of civilization, just like the previous six times.
The difference is only one of the two choices has actually taken fairly concrete steps to destroying the US's tradition of performing willing and peaceful transfers of power.
So I need to have dinner with Bill, or a tiger that will eat my face. The problem is I've always found Bill really disagreeable and called him a 'face eating tiger'... so I guess the choice really is a toss-up.
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How about we elect the boring but sane one, the one who believes in elections and the peaceful transfer of power. And for the love of all that is decent, during the next primaries how about we pick some worthy candidates.
I don't know how you're so confident of Harris winning the primaries. She didn't last time, and next time she'll be running at a huge disadvantage from people feeling like they had no choice but to vote for her. Are you that confident she'll be such an amazing President that everyone will l
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Harris only one the debate because should the moderators were on her side, doing everything they could play gotcha with Trump while giving here a pass. They even admitted they only planned to fact check Trump.
Harris for her part managed say EXACTLY NOTHING during the entire debate. She clarified no positions on anything and articulated no substantive policy on any subject. She won sure, but only because a massive handicap, given to her. In any other venue it would have been an embarrassing performance.
aww did I hurt your feefees? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Fuck your feelings, Trumpanzees.
He destroyed himself in that debate by repeating the couch fucker's Haitian migrant lies.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
Source? Even if that were true, still fuck the troll mods' feelings.
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Go watch the debates and point me where they fact checked anything Harris said.
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Noooooooooo!!!1!11! Why can't you just let me stir up hatred against immigrants by falsely claiming that they're eating your pets!!!!! So unfair!
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Harris only one the debate because should the moderators were on her side, doing everything they could play gotcha with Trump while giving here a pass. They even admitted they only planned to fact check Trump.
Bahahahaha. They fact checked Trump because he tells such blatant lies they have to correct him. For example, the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are not slaughtering pets. Even now he refuses to acknowledge none of that was true; however, spreading those lies means the Haitians have to endure harassment like bomb threats. [npr.org] But what are other people's lives to Trump. Nothing.
Harris for her part managed say EXACTLY NOTHING during the entire debate. She clarified no positions on anything and articulated no substantive policy on any subject. She won sure, but only because a massive handicap, given to her. In any other venue it would have been an embarrassing performance.
Bahahaha. When asked Trump about his plans, he didn't have plans. He had "concepts of plans". That's like my plan to get rich by doing no
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
Trump: I don't have plans, I have ideas for plans ...
You: Harris didn't present any plans.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
Harris: dictators like Trump because they know they can manipulate him to do what they want. Watch how easy it is...
(proceeds to easily manipulate Trump)
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The debate was a wash.
No it wasn't.
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You have missed some really basic things about elections:
First, not only can people be FOR a given candidate, they may also be against a given candidate. This is where people having a track record will either help or hurt. There are the Trump supporters, and then you have the NOT-Trump people who will make a point of trying to get almost anyone else elected, just to keep Trump out. I've been saying that that is why Biden won in 2020, not so much because people loved Biden, but because of the "Not Trum
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The debate was a wash. The only purpose for candidates to debate is to shift public opinion and gain voters. Neither gained or lost any measurable number of voters overall from the not-debate. Therefore no one won or lost. It was 90 minutes of nothing.
I don't watch Fox News. I watch her interviews. She's a moron.
Well, I heard about hotties eating cats (pussy).
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:1)
You don't watch Fox News but you think the debate didn't move opinions in favor of Harris? I call bullshit, since that's whose polls are showing that.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:1)
Youâ(TM)re a bit delayed as the polls have shifted back to basically where they were before Joe Biden checked out. The question is really how reliable those polls are since I cannot believe there is anyone that hasnâ(TM)t made up their mind by now, I think we are just getting measurement errors. The choice is quite clear and you are either going to agree with a mainstream narrative and keep the same policies that put us in the current position or you will vote for change, whether that is objective
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The debate was a wash.
Literally not even most republican talking heads think that. You are really dumb (ironically for your user name) if you think it was a wash. Polls showed Harris won the debate by a comfortable margin, and even if it were "a wash" that is still a massive failure for republicans who universally were claiming Trump was going to end Harris. He didn't. He got rolled. Then cried afterwards that he got fact checked about people eating cats and dogs.
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Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:3)
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Harris said a lot of false things and never got called on it.
BS. They found one thing she said that was questionable. Please provide a few of the "false" things she said.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:1)
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saying Trump said called the white supremacists "fine people" or something like that
You are right, that was wrong. He called them "Very fine people". Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] note the question specifically included white supremacists. And then when someone low-balled the government with the perfect question to backtrack a few days later he doubled down saying he "answered perfectly".
Another is attributing whatever project 2025 is to his candidacy. It's just some conservative group that puts out goals every year. Nothing to do with Trump.
The group literally is made up of ex Trump staffers and was stood up to make a plan exclusively for an upcoming Trump election due to the fact that Trump was roadblocked from his insa
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
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No it wasn't taken out of context. The context was in the question. I posted the full video with the question you can view it, and again the context complete with shock and outrage of his answer was queried the day after at which point Trump made no effort to in anyway clarify or back down or criticise the people.
The "context" argument loses all meaning when even the original person being criticised doesn't even attempt to defend or clarify.
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The fact check thing was BS though. Harris said a lot of false things and never got called on it.
Trump said a lot of false things and never got called on it too. The fact checker isn't there to Google every word said, just to address the most egregious and boneheadded lies at the core of their point.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:1)
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I don't care what it takes people to register to vote, so long as they vote. You seem worried about your side losing. But you need not worry, Harris is going to win by a wide margin, and her policies are far better for America than the convicted orange felon. He's already proven how bad he is, but you gobble up his rapist, racist bullshit.
>If you think 500k people in deep blue cities will change any