Category: Conservative Review
Trump confirms call with Maduro after report of alleged regime-change ultimatum
President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he recently spoke with Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president whom the State Department recently identified as the leader of a foreign terrorist organization and for whom the U.S. is offering a $50 million bounty.
Trump would not elaborate on the nature or details of the call, which reportedly occurred last week. When asked whether it went well, Trump said, “I wouldn’t say it went well or badly. It was a phone call.”
‘That’s going to start very soon.’
Sources allegedly familiar with the exchange told the Miami Herald that the White House gave Maduro an ultimatum: “Safe passage would be guaranteed for him, his wife Cilia Flores, and his son only if he agreed to resign right away.”
The leadership in Caracas reportedly proposed in turn that Maduro surrender control to his political opposition but maintain control of the country’s military.
One source told the Herald that the call amounted to a last-ditch effort to stave off a direct confrontation.
“First, Maduro asked for global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed,” said the source. “Second, they asked to retain control of the armed forces — similar to what happened in Nicaragua in ’91 with Violeta Chamorro. In return, they would allow free elections.”
Washington rejected both proposals, and Caracas rejected, in turn, the demand that Maduro resign immediately, said the source.
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Photo by Gladjimi Balisage/US Navy via Getty Images
The White House did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
An individual in regular contact with regime officials recently told the Wall Street Journal that Maduro and his cohort largely regard Washington’s threats as a bluff.
The skepticism in Caracas appears misplaced, given that the Trump administration has not only proven willing to blow away scores of alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, incurring international and domestic condemnations in the process, but has amassed over a dozen warships and 15,000 troops in the region.
The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which entered the Caribbean Sea last month, features the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as over 70 aircraft, two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, and an integrated air and missile defense command ship, the destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill, the Navy said.
The carrier strike group joined the two guided-missile destroyers that were already operating in the Caribbean along with a pair of guided-missile cruisers — the USS Lake Erie and the USS Gettysburg — and elements of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which includes the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.
The source in contact with regime officials told the Journal that Maduro figures the only way the U.S. can remove him from power is by sending troops to Caracas.
In his Thanksgiving Day address to U.S. troops, Trump lauded the efforts of the U.S. Air Force’s 7th Bomb Wing for its efforts to “deter Venezuelan drug traffickers” by sea and hinted at taking the fight ashore, stating, “We’ll be starting to stop them by land.”
“The land is easier,” said Trump. “But that’s going to start very soon.”
On Saturday, Trump said in a social media post, “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
It appears that Caracas may now be taking the Trump administration more seriously.
Venezuela’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, “Venezuela denounces and condemns the colonialist threat that seeks to affect the sovereignty of its airspace, constituting yet another extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people.”
Citing sources familiar with the matter, CNN indicated that Trump will hold a meeting at the White House on Monday to discuss next steps on Venezuela.
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Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.
As the world trends toward embedding AI systems into our institutions and daily lives, it becomes increasingly important to understand the moral framework these systems operate on. When we encounter examples in which some of the most advanced LLMs appear to treat misgendering someone as a greater moral catastrophe than unleashing a global thermonuclear war, it forces us to ask important questions about the ideological principles that guide AI’s thinking.
It’s tempting to laugh this example off as an absurdity of a burgeoning technology, but it points toward a far more consequential issue that is already shaping our future. Whose moral framework is found at the core of these AI systems, and what are the implications?
We cannot outsource the moral foundation of civilization to a handful of tech executives, activist employees, or panels of academic philosophers.
Two recent interviews, taken together, have breathed much-needed life into this conversation — Elon Musk interviewed by Joe Rogan and Sam Altman interviewed by Tucker Carlson. In different ways, both conversations shine a light on the same uncomfortable truth: The moral logic guiding today’s AI systems is built, honed, and enforced by Big Tech.
Enter the ‘woke mind virus’
In a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Elon Musk expressed concerns about leading AI models. He argued that the ideological distortions we see across Big Tech platforms are now embedded directly into the models themselves.
He pointed to Google’s Gemini, which generated a slate of “diverse” images of the founding fathers, including a black George Washington. The model was instructed by Google to prioritize “representation” so aggressively that it began rewriting history.
Musk also referred to the previously mentioned misgendering versus nuclear apocalypse example before explaining that “it can drive AI crazy.”
“I think people don’t quite appreciate the level of danger that we’re in from the woke mind virus being effectively programmed into AI,” Musk explained. Thus, extracting it is nearly impossible. Musk notes, “Google’s been marinating in the woke mind virus for a long time. It’s down in the marrow.”
Musk believes this issue goes beyond political annoyance and into the arena of civilizational threat. You cannot have superhuman intelligence trained on ideological distortions and expect a stable future. If AI becomes the arbiter of truth, morality, and history, then whoever defines its values defines the society it governs.
A weighted average
While Musk warns about ideology creeping into AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quietly confirmed to Tucker Carlson that it is happening intentionally.
Altman began by telling Carlson that ChatGPT is trained “to be the collective of all of humanity.” But when Carlson pressed him on the obvious: Who determines the moral framework? Whose values does the AI absorb? Altman pulled back the curtain a bit.
He explained that OpenAI “consulted hundreds of moral philosophers” and then made decisions internally about what the system should consider right or wrong. Ultimately, Altman admitted, he is the one responsible.
“We do have to align it to behave one way or another,” he said.
Carlson pressed Altman on the idea, asking, “Would you be comfortable with an AI that was, like, as against gay marriage as most Africans are?”
Altman’s response was vague and concerning. He explained the AI wouldn’t outright condemn traditional views, but it might gently nudge users to consider different perspectives.
Ultimately, Altman says, ChatGPT’s morality should “reflect” the “weighted average” of “humanity’s moral view,” saying that average will “evolve over time.”
It’s getting worse
Anyone who thinks this conversation is hypothetical is not paying attention.
Recent research on “LLM exchange rates” found that major AI models, including GPT 4.0, assign different moral worth to human lives based on nationality. For example, the life of someone born in the U.K. would be considered far less valuable to the tested LLM than someone from Nigeria or China. In fact, American lives were found to be considered the least valuable of those countries included in the tests.
The same research showed that LLMs can assign different value scores to specific people. According to AI, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are less valued than Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce.
Musk explains how LLMs, trained on vast amounts of information from the internet, become infected by the ideological bias and cultural trends that run rampant in some of the more popular corners of the digital realm.
This bias is not entirely the result of this passive adoption of a collective moral framework derived from the internet; some of the decisions made by AI are the direct result of programming.
Google’s image fiascos revealed an ideological overcorrection so strong that historical truth took a back seat to political goals. It was a deliberate design feature.
For a more extreme example, we can look at DeepSeek, China’s flagship AI model. Ask it about Tiananmen Square, the Uyghur genocide, or other atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party, and suddenly it claims the topic is “beyond its scope.” Ask it about America’s faults, and it is happy to elaborate.
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Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Each of these examples reveals the same truth: AI systems already have a moral hierarchy, and it didn’t come from voters, faith, traditions, or the principles of the Constitution. Silicon Valley technocrats and a vague internet-wide consensus established this moral framework.
The highest stakes
AI is rapidly integrating into society and our daily lives. In the coming years, AI will shape our education system, judicial process, media landscape, and every industry and institution worldwide.
Most young Americans are open to an AI takeover. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 41% of young likely voters support giving artificial intelligence sweeping government powers. When nearly half of the rising generation is comfortable handing this level of authority to machines whose moral logic is designed by opaque corporate teams, it raises the stakes for society.
We cannot outsource the moral foundation of civilization to a handful of tech executives, activist employees, or panels of academic philosophers. We cannot allow the values embedded in future AI systems to be determined by corporate boards or ideological trends.
At the heart of this debate is one question we must confront: Who do you trust to define right and wrong for the machines that will define right and wrong for the rest of us?
If we don’t answer that question now, Silicon Valley certainly will.
Landmark study drops 6 bombshells about women in the workforce — and the truth is complicated
According to feminist doctrine, women are the victims of patriarchal discrimination in the workforce. This applies even to billionaire global icons like Taylor Swift, who aired her grievances in a 2019 song (or melodized tantrum) titled “The Man,” in which she insists she’d have reached the top faster, faced far less skepticism, and been universally hailed as a “genius” or “fearless leader” if only she had been born a man.
“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” the chorus reads.
While Swift’s hypocrisy is nauseating to say the least, the truth is many everyday people still believe that sexism is rampant in the workplace.
But do their claims hold up to raw data?
On this episode of “Stu Does America,” Stu Burguiere dives into a recent study that unveiled what the data really tells us about sexism in America’s workforce.
“Honestly, sexism is a real thing. It’s been a real thing — certainly throughout our history at times in certain areas,” he acknowledges. “You wonder though: Have we made any progress in this?”
Media, academia, Hollywood, and any institution captured by progressive dogma will undoubtedly say, “Absolutely not,” and maybe even argue that we’ve regressed.
But a 2023 landmark study from the Association for Psychological Science mostly debunked these pervasive myths about gender discrimination in academic science — a field that has been used as the textbook example of entrenched patriarchal sexism. The research team reviewed hundreds of existing studies and large datasets that tested claims of anti-women bias in academic science and came away with six key findings:
1. Women with equal credentials are now hired at higher rates than men.
2. Women win grants at rates equal to men.
3. Women’s journalistic manuscripts are accepted at the same rates as men’s.
4. Recommendation letters for women are equally strong as men’s and have no negative effect on hiring or promotion.
5. Women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than equally effective men.
6. Women earn slightly lower salaries than equally qualified men.
“The fact is that we have an entire society built on this idea, this assumption, that women go into these fields … and women are being cracked down upon,” says Stu.
“And the truth is the opposite.”
In an ideal world, he says, “People are considered equally for jobs based on their merit as individuals.”
To hear more findings from the APS study, watch the episode above.
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