They won their primaries on one message. Now it’s disappearing. Let’s go Off Script

Hey, everybody, I'm Christian Bryant. Welcome to Unbiased Updates Off Script. This podcast

isn't about chasing the next headline. It's about understanding the one we already have

Coming up on the show today, the primary message got them here. Now, some candidates are quietly

rewriting it. Trump references disappearing, progressive priorities getting bumped. We talked to our senior politics reporter who tracked the before and after

Corruption, Congress being more effective, high prices of everyday goods. If those candidates are seeing that, then President Trump's call to pretend like he's on the ballot may not work for Republicans the way that he thinks

Plus, the jokes are real. The comedians telling them, not so much

AI is stealing the material and sometimes the audience along with it

Our digital influence reporter spoke to comedians who've had their material stolen

She hadn't even realized that her joke was on this page before I told her about it

And haven't booked those holiday flights yet? I haven't. Why this year could cost you a lot more, and how long you have to lock in a better deal

Let's start where we always do, with what matters. Then we'll go a step further

The primary's over, and for some candidates, so is part of their campaign message

With the midterms closing in, Republicans who once put their Trump credentials front and center are quietly scrubbing them from the campaign websites

And some Democrats are making their own pivot, putting costs and kitchen table issues ahead of some of the progressive messaging they ran on before

Straight Arrow senior politics reporter Ozzy Pabora tracked the before and after, and I asked him what he found

Ozzy, I was going to start by saying thank you for joining me, but you've been on Offscript before, so thank you for coming on Offscript and letting me interview you about your story. Much appreciated, man

Anytime. So I'm really curious to know, when you noticed this trend of candidates changing their messaging

in a lot of cases shifting away from some of the most well-known, most recognizable figures within their party

when did you first notice that this was a trend? I think I noticed it more recently, although individual episodes have hit my radar for months

Now, each state, many states have different dates for when they have their congressional primaries or statewide primaries

So New York, New Jersey, Connecticut may go at one part of the year

Nevada, Idaho, Iowa, Florida may vote on a different day. So that cross-section allows you to see how candidates are behaving after their primaries

And you can sort of see it in the landscape. But it didn't really crystallize until just a few days ago

One of the things that I noticed in looking at your reporting is some of these changes are really subtle, right

It's removing an endorsement. It's changing a picture. What sort of trends have you seen across both parties with candidates refashioning their messaging as they're heading into the midterms

What is kind of interesting is that Republicans seem to be backing away from Donald Trump after very happily embracing him during their primaries

And a couple of Democrats, not all, but a couple of Democrats who are running in Republican-friendly seats or Republican-friendly states, they too are de-emphasizing how much they're running against Trump because the idea of partisanship is wearing on some voters, especially when you think about kitchen table issues, the cost of eggs, the cost of gasoline, paychecks not rising, and inflation

with those being so in the forefront of so many voters and so much public opinion polling

it's clear that candidates on both sides of the aisle are seeing an incentive to rejigger and

adjust their messaging. Is this something that we usually see during this stage of the cycle

or is there something new or novel about how some of these candidates are changing their messaging

and what they're saying to their prospective constituents. So usually the details change, priorities get readjusted

but the core of a message is not really supposed to change

Obviously, we all change our shoes when we go inside, outside, we change our jackets, depending on the weather

but the core about who we are really doesn't change. And when a candidate tweaks the biography on their campaign website, they're signaling who they want the public to understand them to be

Now, remember, a lot of people are getting information from social media, but also from artificial intelligence, chatbots, chat GPT, and Claude

And those programs are reading websites thoroughly and extracting information from them

So even if you or I don't see these changes, it can filter into the news cycle

It is very common to see candidates talk about certain issues during a primary talk about partisanship even beat up on a member of their own party and then pivot after the primary and say

well, we need more details about this, and try to soften some of their more extreme positions

that they might have to take in a primary. Some of the examples that I've found are more than that

So they're responsive to kind of what's happening within the political landscape. It's not just, oh, I'm, you know, I am refashioning my message for this cycle, but I'm also responding to the things that I'm seeing that you all are feeling

Let me ask you this. One of the things that we talked about before we came on Offscript is that you actually reached out to these campaigns and heard back from at least one of these candidates

I mean, what did you hear from them about why some of their messaging or why some of the aesthetics of their website had changed

uh the first candidate the first campaign to get back to me was dr amish shah who's running for an

open house seat in arizona arizona pretty purple state very contested seat uh and i had noticed

that he had taken down an endorsement from a law enforcement union uh shah is a democrat

running against a republican and he had an endorsement on his web page that said something

about being endorsed by law enforcement and being a lawmaker of the year from a from a reproductive

rights organization he's a state legislator when he won the award at some point the law enforcement

endorsement comes down but then it returns and the uh legislator of the year award comes down and and

and makes uh some kind of return it's a living document ozzy it is a living document it's it's

interpretation and when i asked the campaign about this they said hey look you know it was

it was a reference to earlier to the endorsements were a reference to the 2024 cycle when when the

2026 cycle really got underway we put them back up as they came in and it sort of gave me the

impression that that it was like people who don't take down their christmas tree the day after or

maybe even into the new year. At some point, you have to get that thing out the door

and really ramp it up. This appeared to be a case where a leftover website

just wasn't turned over in enough time before people started noticing it in 2026

Let me ask you this before I let you go. Midterms is going to be the real litmus test

as to whether these strategies are really working for these candidates. What have you heard about how this could impact the outcome when it comes to November

There's a lot of time between now and November. What these changes are signaling is that the people who care most about getting elected, the candidates, are seeing something in their internal data or they're picking up on something that's telling them your best chance to win

is to either talk about Trump or not talk about him, depending on which side of the aisle you're

on. And it's to focus on issues that are going to grab voters' attention. Corruption, Congress being

more effective, high prices of everyday goods. If those candidates are seeing that, then President

Trump's call to pretend like he's on the ballot may not work for Republicans the way that he thinks

Ozzie, really outstanding reporting. I don't have to tell you that. You do it all the time

You can tell me that. Thank you so much. Well, your head's big enough

I don't want to blow it up any more than it is. You know, I really appreciate you talking to me a little bit about your reporting

Thanks so much for joining us on Offscript. Thanks for the conversation. Folks, there's no shortage of opinions online, don't we know it

What's harder to find are answers. We go now to you, where we take your questions and comments and dig for the facts

After our story Wednesday on President Trump's new voluntary AI safety agreement, Brian Borowski on YouTube asked the following

Did any of this self-policing come with transparency on these safety policies or is it just trust me, bro

Fair question, Brian. We do know what the companies are promising. Internal safety controls, outside audits and oversight from their own boards

But here's what the agreement doesn't require. The companies don't have to publicly release those audits, identify who's auditing them or disclose what those auditors found

And there are no penalties if they don't follow through. Trump calls the agreement, quote, morally binding

Whether that's enough transparency, well, that debate is very much still open

Keep those comments coming into us here at Straight Arrow. We love hearing from you

I love reading the comments and responding to you all. you can leave them on our YouTube page like Brian there

or email us at off script at san.com. Off script, all one word at san.com

Okay, let's go inside the story now. You can read the headlines on Straight Arrow

but this is where we go a step further, talking to our journalists about the details that didn fit the questions that came up and the reporting that shaped the story So a comedian writes a great joke right I don know what that like Then an AI

woman starts telling it and getting the views. That's happening to real comedians who are finding

their material lifted by fake online performers, sometimes to build huge followings and drive

people to adult content. Here's the latest example from comedian Olivia Carter. Listen to this

One time I asked out my personal trainer and he said, sorry, I'm not attracted to you

And I was like, well, whose fault is that? OK, here's the AI version

I asked out my personal trainer and he said, sorry, I'm not attracted to you

And I was like, well, whose fault is that? Something sounds a little off, right

Straight Arrow digital influence reporter Rosie Thomas found the real people behind some of those stolen jokes

including Olivia, who you just heard there. And I spoke to her about what they told her

Rosie, our resident comedian, thank you so much for joining me on Offscript. I would love to do

a type 5 workshop with you, but instead we'll talk about something a little more interesting

which is your article. Joke theft is not new within the comedy world as far as I know. Tell

me a little bit about the comedians you spoke to and what they've been experiencing online

Yeah, it's kind of wild. I saw the first of the comedians posted on her Instagram and I follow

her because I, you know, I'm a comedy fan in general. And she posted that a joke of hers had

been stolen, which is a thing that happens in comedy, as you say. But in this case, the joke

was stolen and the person stealing it was in fact not a person at all, but rather an AI bot. So

it's a little ironic because the joke itself is about not being, is about asking out a personal

trainer and that personal trainer saying no, because they're not attracted to the person

And, you know, and whose fault is that? So it's, it's doubly ironic, then to see that joke stolen

by an AI bot, or an AI deepfake of a woman who's extremely hot or attractive, wearing athleisure

and complaining that her personal trainer doesn't like her. I want you to kind of paint a picture for our listeners

I'm going to be very careful about describing the execution of this theft

But I mean, give our listeners a bit of a debrief on what it is that you're seeing in these videos

I invite them to look, but there's something very specific about the videos that are used in stealing the work of these women who are comedians

All of the jokes are about dating or specifically dating men. And they're all jokes from women because the bot, the AI character, is a woman

And also she's an advert for a deepfake fan view, which is kind of like an OnlyFans

so um in many ways uh these stolen jokes are being used to advertise like a paid porn site

um which uh is not like i don't think the original intention of the comedians when they're posting it

and also like obviously this has not been done with their consent this was a reveal in your

piece that i was kind of surprised to see i thought that it was getting to i don't know

like a betting site or something. How unusual is this in the realm of comedy and joke theft

So, I mean, it's, I suppose, novel in that we only recently have entered a period of time where

the technology was available to do this specifically to comedians and obviously

an era in which comedians have to post content online all the time in order to become famous

enough to sell tickets so it's it's a new thing um i mean on the other hand deep fakes and non-consensual

deep fakes of women in general are like an issue on the internet that has been ongoing for you know

maybe like four or five years since uh ai generation of images was kind of more technically possible

and it does speak to that broader issue of kind of like image

theft as well as I guess like intellectual property theft because of the like creation

of the jokes but yeah I think it is it is kind of a weird

thing also for the for female comedians specifically because as one of the people I spoke

to said Sarah she was like usually if If you're that hot, you don't have to come up with a sense of humor

You don't have to... You don have to be funny Obviously kidding And obviously there are lots of beautiful female comics in the world but uh i think it is um it is a a weird feeling for them to realize that like their work

has been taken in this context without permission these comedians are really funny um tell me

what's the impact here how are these comedians personally impacted by this particular form of

joke theft olivia said that she was much less likely to post content that like new content

fresh jokes on her instagram now um despite the fact that obviously that is like going to influence

her career and her reach online. Whereas Sarah said, you know, actually, she'd be more offended

if a human stole her joke and did it on stage and said that it was her own. But she had she

wasn't even aware that this had happened until I reached out to her. So I guess, as with most things

in this kind of space, people react differently. What recourse is there for these comedians, if any

I mean, is there anything that they can do to hold the offending parties accountable

What have they told you? So Olivia's had a few of the videos taken down in the past

And she said, interestingly, the first one she ever saw, the account had blocked her so she couldn't see it from her personal account even when people were

sending it to her from a kind of a recourse perspective on instagram you can uh file a

copyright like i make a copyright claim and you can have it removed and i think that olivia has

had the video that she saw removed um but i don't think that that's the case for sarah's video or

So there were a couple of other people's jokes who I could identify and who I did reach out to, but they didn't want to talk about it

As this technology spreads, it becomes easier to use. I imagine this won't be the last time that we talk about something like this

It sounds like you've even given us a little preview as to what a follow-up could look like where you're actually talking to the AI creators

But we'll leave it there for now. Rosie, thank you so much for joining us on Offscript

We appreciate your time and your reporting. Thank you so much. Again, Rosie's story is titled

Have You Heard the One About AI Stealing Real Comedians' Work? I like that headline

Check it out on our site or on the Straight Arrow app. We can't fit everything into unbiased updates each morning

So here are a couple of stories we think are also worth your time

The latest round of the U.S.-Canada trade war is hitting everything from motorcycles and molasses to a whole lot of booze

President Trump has now banned nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian imports, and alcohol is taking by far the biggest hit

Beer, wine, whiskey, vodka, rum, and brandy are all on the list

The American Action Forum estimates alcohol makes up nearly 9 out of every $10 worth of goods affected by the ban

It's a counterstrike after some Canadian provinces pulled U.S.-made alcohol from their shelves in response to Trump's tariffs

And this fight may not be over. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney isn't ruling out another response, but Trump says he still expects the two countries to eventually reach what he calls a fair deal

Folks, if you haven't booked your holiday flights yet, your wallet may not be thankful

Holiday airfares are hitting their highest levels in a decade, with the Iran War helping drive up jet fuel costs and airlines passing some of that cost on to you

For Thanksgiving, the average domestic round-trip ticket is now $402, $95 more than last year

Christmas, even worse. The average round-trip fare is about $452, up $85 from last year

And if you're thinking you'll just wait this one out, probably not the year

Hopper says fares are expected to climb as the holidays get closer, so your best bet is to book before Halloween

And finally today, here's the kicker, a story we thought was worth ending on

A 200-year-old family mystery apparently solved by DNA and a little bit of hair

Researchers say they now have their strongest genetic evidence yet that Thomas Jefferson

fathered at least one child with Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman at Monticello

The investigation actually started with a strand of hair found inside Jefferson's Bible

Great clue, except it turns out it wasn't his. So researchers tested other hair linked to Jefferson, including a lock cut from his deathbed

and compared the DNA with living descendants. Their conclusion? A 99.96% chance Jefferson fathered at least one of Heming's children

And that mystery hair from the Bible, they say it belonged to a woman in Jefferson's family

Whose? Well, we'll have to give science another 200 years for that

Okay, that's it for us this week. Thanks for watching Unbiased Updates Off Script

For all of us here at Straight Arrow, I'm Christian Bryant. We'll see you back here next week

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