Simon Marks reacts to 'staggering' AI video of Trump wrestling tiger

Simon, did the president of the United States of America really share footage of that poor young man? In a tiger enclosure in a British zoo, I'm afraid he did, James, with a caption that said, "You've got to be careful how you handle nature," with an exclamation mark on the end of it. I mean, it was staggering. I spotted that post shortly after it was published, and then of course he followed it up with this AI version of exactly the same kind of angle on the awful video showing William Chapman after he entered that enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, in which the president wrestles a tiger to the ground. I mean, this is not the action of a sane human being. This is the action of someone who is determined now on a daily basis to do whatever he wants. Take actions that absolutely shame the office of the presidency and shame his own country. Take actions that present a huge challenge for the Chapman family, which of course has spoken out and now said that William Chapman was suffering from long term mental illness. They want all of this nonsense online to stop because it's so deeply hurtful. It's a challenge for our own government. Is our government going to stand up for a British family that is having the demise of one of their loved ones paraded by the president of the United States, a man with whom Andy Burnham says that he wants to build bridges. At the same time that everything else is taking place, the complete deliberate undermining of Vladimir Zelensky, the creation of this hard alliance now with Vladimir Putin, the clear evidence that what Donald Trump wants to do is establish business ties with the Russians, even while they are continuing to pump up Ukraine's energy infrastructure, and then say to the Ukrainians, "Oh, and by the way, you are not allowed to do the same thing in return." These are the actions, not just of Trump now, but a group of people as we're going to talk about, who are absolutely determined before and possibly after the midterm elections to keep pushing the envelope. And you've got to go back to before Trump returned to office. The man who is now his director of office of management and budget, Russ Vote, one of the architects, one of the authors of Project Twenty Twenty Five, the document that told us all what Donald Trump was going to do over nine hundred and twenty pages in a second term in office. Russ Vote argued that one of the reasons why you needed to bring someone like Elon Musk in to fire hundreds of thousands of federal government workers was because you wanted to create a sense of terror. You wanted to terrorize Washington. You wanted to make people fearful of going to work essentially to try and force them out. You wanted to get rid of all of these civil servants in that case, who were working for the good of the country, because you really needed to replace them only with people who were working for the good of your own particular hard right brand of ideology, and all of this, including even the dissemination of that shameful and disgraceful tiger video last night, is relevant. Of that, he wants to drag the country away from the moorings and the foundations of decency and sort of a greed conversation that always exists. And take it to the ideological extreme. Yeah, we talked last time about this, didn't we? About actually being the the the destabilisation of the United States while they talk about destabilisation of Russia in Europe. That's often the case. Every every accusation is a confession, but that is what they are doing. I read a great line. I am sure you've seen it as well with regards to live streaming the execution of a disabled terrorist, and it's it's not about punishing the culprit; it's about training the audience. Yes, and and some members of the audience, by the way, pushing back. And if you saw yesterday, but the military family is Religious Freedom Foundation, which we talked about before on the program. Yeah, they now receive approaches from sixty serving members of the military who are in the potential pool to be on the firing squad. That will dispatch Major General Nidal Hasan on December third. That is the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood terrorist gunman who killed thirteen people and wounded thirty two others in an attack on the military base in Texas back in two thousand nine. That Pete Hegseth says he wants to be a public execution. Sixty troops have now already come forward and said they are deeply concerned about this. They have no desire or intention of serving on that firing squad. So there is some pushback coming, but it is extraordinary how far you can boil that frog in the saucepan without the frog completely. Well, I know. I go back now sometimes, and I've stopped doing it on air. But I am reminded of my own car that the gold star soldier killed in service of the United States of America, a captain in the in the U.S. Army, killed in two thousand four in Iraq, and I am. When his parents criticised Donald Trump, Donald Trump attacked them. Um, you know, literally when, and it was very mild. There's no flaw, but there's never a gold star. But that was in what twenty sixteen, I think. I mean, again, and he was only just getting started then. Mayor Angelou said, "When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time." Speaking of unrealities inside the president's head, he had a little fantasy of his own, didn't he, related to a tiger, a story in this country which is horrendous, and he's picked it up and run with it, and is finding it quite. Amusing. I think this is, in some ways, the even more telling story about the Trump era and politics in the Trump era. I never thought I'd say Yorkshire Wildlife Park and Donald Trump in the same sentence, and yet here we are. Here we are. It tells us many things, doesn't it? Um, it tells us that Donald Trump's. Capacity to insert himself. Or allow himself to be inserted into every and any story, no matter how apparently parochial. Is truly remarkable, or tragic. Secondly, pardon, or tragic. It's a tragic story. Whichever, whichever, yes, whichever way. I don't mean that in a in a positive sense. I just mean it is sort of breathtaking. Yeah, you know. Secondly, I think it shows us how much time he spends on his phone. I'd love to see his screen time. I sometimes look at my screen time and think, Christ, Lewis, what have you been doing in all that time? I bet it's it's double. He is something we talk about. Young people being addicted to their phones. We don't talk enough about older people being addicted to their phones. Sheila and I think Donald Trump is, is second to none. With in that regard, he absorbs and produces all content. He's a content input machine. He's a content output machine. And thirdly, thirdly, I think, of course, it reminds us that this is a man who has almost nothing in the way of um of of personal decorum, uh, or sense. Frankly, which does border on the frankly almost in other people you might say just does not speak of a particularly well man. The fact that he did not think at all, look to that story. I mean, maybe he wasn't aware. Maybe he just saw the video. Who knows? But if he was even vaguely aware of the background, which he may well have been, then of course any person with any sense of decency or honor would not retweet that or would not post that for a single second because you'd be thinking about the family. But look, this is you know we know this just in the last week. I want to say is not well man. I mean, earlier this week he literally said that well he was talking about bringing back he talking about bringing back Christopher Columbus. So you know this is a man who we know doesn't necessarily live on a plane of reality. And fourthly, what I think it shows us genuinely on this, I do wonder. I Trump is a very pro AI president. He has rebuffed calls from even within his own party. The AI industry very controversial with elements of the Republican Party for all sorts of reasons that need not to say in us, but which are vaguely obvious. And he has refused to regulate. He said he has no interest in doing so. He sees this as a huge threat to the United States and a huge bit of geopolitical advantage. I genuinely think I wonder, particularly for a man of his age, I genuinely think Donald Trump might well think mainly the point of AI is to produce brilliant content, which shows him and inverts him in all sorts of crazy, unlikely scenarios, which he just loves. I do wonder whether genuinely the person who is probably most important right now in regulating this technology, which is Going to define the twenty first century, and sees it as back on these years. Sees it as his toy. Our leaders were doing. I think he genuinely sees it as basically something that creates hilarious videos of him and hasn't much cognizance of it beyond that.