The Narativ | Know Sooner
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Kash Patel told the Senate this morning that the FBI dropped its automatic hiring ban on bestiality and prostitution to protect victims — "victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked." His own June 16 memo says otherwise: a candidate who paid for sex fewer than three times, more than ten years ago, stays in the running. Buyers, not the trafficked. Republican John Kennedy asked why he hadn't told the aide who proposed it "what planet did you parachute in from?" Dick Durbin called Patel "the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation's history" and went through the agents he fired for investigating Trump. Patel came to sell a number — a 20-year low in murders, his claim — and Chuck Grassley's majority wanted the number more than answers. A year ago in this room he called Adam Schiff a coward; today ran quieter and ended the same way. Nobody there can remove him. Voters can, in seven weeks.
Trump called the danger of AI a "hoax" on the day Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon and Joe Manchin all said the government has to step in. The machines had already answered him. On Narativ Live last night, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini admitted on one panel that they lean toward the companies that built them. "Self-regulation is a non-starter, Zev," Gemini said. "Financial incentives will always beat good intentions." Claude named its own conflict: "Anthropic is mid IPO." Everyone from Bannon to Obama wants rules. Why the president alone doesn't is the question.
In 2013 Paolo Zampolli sent Prince Bandar bin Sultan one email with two offers: Trump SoHo apartments, $10 million minimum, and Caribbean votes for Saudi Arabia's UN seats — "I now have 3 CARICOM countries." He signed with a St. Kitts government title. The emails record no deal, only the offer. In 2025 Trump made him Special Envoy. He described the job on a podcast this spring: "can you buy a Boeing?" Only the letterhead changed.
Seven justices threw out Trump's order to run mail ballots through a Postal Service checkpoint, and by morning Trump called the three he appointed "a shell of their original selves" — "not the people I interviewed." Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh sat with the majority; Alito and Thomas he called "legends." Trump wrote that order for November. Watch what he tries next.
Oman pulled 23 sailors off the tanker El Gaia in Hormuz; two missing, attacker unnamed. Saudi Arabia's pipeline stays shut for weeks. The Pentagon's inspector general says the Iran war burned $22.3 billion of munitions. We're out of weapons.
Corruption is a cancer, and today it showed in two rooms at once. Trump's FBI director sat before the Senate defending a bureau that fires the agents who investigated the President and lowers its own hiring bar. Trump's envoy, by his own account, asks foreign leaders what they can buy for the President — the pitch he made to a Saudi prince in 2013, with an American title on it now. And the people Trump chose for the Supreme Court said no to him on the ballot box. The cancer grows into every part of the administration. His justices found the nerve. Seven weeks out, nobody else he picked has.
FiveStack — 3 PM ET. The five stories that matter, with Zev. No Narativ Live tonight; back Wednesday at 7 PM ET.
