E138: Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in conversation with the Besties

00:00:00.000 | sexy. Can you can you come outside your window and I'm

00:00:03.040 | going to start waving and you see me you want to see me?

00:00:04.840 | Zach have two of your butlers hold you up on their shoulders.

00:00:09.680 | I hope this is being taped and part of the show because this

00:00:12.560 | is great.

00:00:12.960 | David, you're wearing blue shorts, right? Yeah. Yeah, I saw

00:00:16.480 | you. Did you see me?

00:00:17.400 | Not in see you? Where are you?

00:00:19.040 | When you look out on the first house, the pink house? Look at

00:00:22.200 | this house. You see that?

00:00:23.280 | I heard you. I couldn't see you though.

00:00:25.760 | Yeah.

00:00:27.680 | yelling like a lunatic. You're the pink house. Look, I'm right

00:00:31.720 | below me or above me.

00:00:33.080 | No, I'm like to your right. If you're looking at I'm at your

00:00:36.400 | right. Your first house on the right. Oh, there. Oh, I see. I

00:00:43.520 | see you. I see you guys are like 12 year olds. Come over

00:00:46.800 | afterwards. We'll have a glass. Okay. All right. I'm coming. I'm

00:00:49.080 | gonna come over afterwards.

00:00:50.120 | Vivek has a hard stop. We should go.

00:00:56.160 | Rain Man David.

00:00:57.200 | All right, Vivek Ramaswamy is finally on the program. He's an

00:01:11.240 | entrepreneur. He graduated Harvard. Yeah, all that kind of

00:01:14.120 | stuff. He was an entrepreneur, then a capital allocator. I

00:01:17.840 | think broad strokes, everybody knows he's a conservative

00:01:20.560 | running as a Republican. He's anti woke. He's pro life

00:01:24.440 | anti affirmative action, pro free speech. And he wants

00:01:28.520 | federal government term limits. And his fans are lunatics.

00:01:34.080 | They've been asking for him to be on the all in podcast every

00:01:37.040 | day. I've gotten about 300 emails from your fans. Welcome

00:01:39.760 | to the program.

00:01:40.400 | They sound like your fans, actually, because I hear it all

00:01:43.520 | the time. It's like blaming me for why I have not been on this

00:01:46.040 | program. And so you guys, this has been like some sort of

00:01:48.760 | idealized experience for me. I'm looking forward to it.

00:01:51.800 | Okay, great. So what we try to do here is have a real

00:01:55.000 | conversation, try to get these candidates off their talking

00:01:58.160 | points. So this isn't meet the press, obviously want to talk to

00:02:00.960 | you like a human being. So the extent that you know, as a

00:02:04.040 | politician, now you can talk like a human being the audience

00:02:06.600 | and we would appreciate it. Meet David Sachs, Chamath Palihapitiya

00:02:10.240 | and David Friedberg. Vivek, why don't you explain maybe your

00:02:14.080 | background as a capital allocator and as an entrepreneur

00:02:16.840 | and then why you chose to run for president at this time?

00:02:19.840 | Yeah, sure. I mean, my parents, like many people, you probably

00:02:24.040 | also know who've had similar success stories, they came to

00:02:26.800 | this country with almost no money. I went on to actually

00:02:30.360 | found successful companies. And so I started my career as a

00:02:34.680 | biotech investor. I worked at a hedge fund in New York when I

00:02:38.040 | graduated in 2007. I thought I was going to be a scientist. I

00:02:41.880 | studied molecular biology, ended up enjoying my time as an

00:02:45.880 | internship at a hedge fund a lot more than that. So I did that

00:02:48.680 | for seven years. Three of those years, I spent law school at the

00:02:51.880 | same time. But then when I finished law school, I had, you

00:02:54.840 | know, I think felt like my learning curve had flattened

00:02:56.920 | from being a pure capital allocator. So I stepped down and

00:03:01.760 | founded a new kind of biotech company that I could, actually,

00:03:05.760 | you guys might be more interested in it than most of my

00:03:08.640 | political audiences. But the basic premise was give

00:03:12.040 | scientists skin in the game in the projects they actually work

00:03:15.520 | on. So if you're a GSK or advisor, or whatever, Merck, you

00:03:20.520 | discover a drug or you develop it, you don't have personal

00:03:23.600 | upside in the individual drug that you develop. You do have

00:03:27.920 | various forms of asymmetric downside. And so people don't

00:03:31.240 | take risks unless they're the same risks that the other pharma

00:03:33.960 | companies are taking. Because if you take the same risk and fail,

00:03:37.000 | but everybody else is failing in a therapeutic category at the

00:03:39.480 | same time, you're safe. But if you take a risk that other

00:03:42.720 | people aren't willing to take and you fail, then you

00:03:45.520 | experience budget cuts, maybe job security risks, social

00:03:49.160 | embarrassment, which is a big factor in big pharma as well,

00:03:51.960 | which in turn created an opportunity that I took

00:03:54.680 | advantage of, which was that there were systematically

00:03:57.560 | categories of drugs that went undeveloped, even after big

00:04:02.840 | pharma had for a long time, spent a lot of money developing

00:04:05.920 | those drugs up to a certain point. So I built a business

00:04:08.960 | called Royven, basically in licensed some of those drugs in

00:04:13.200 | their early stages of development, phase one or phase

00:04:15.800 | two, often for pennies on the dollar relative to what had gone

00:04:19.480 | into them. Often, we would have scientists or drug developers

00:04:23.280 | who are passionate about that very project inside the

00:04:26.280 | companies who would come with those drugs because they wanted

00:04:29.400 | to develop them. But the big pharma company said that they

00:04:32.440 | weren't in that area anymore. And we built a pipeline of such

00:04:36.160 | drugs. The whole plan was some of them would work, some of

00:04:39.160 | them wouldn't, the successes would make up for the failures.

00:04:42.120 | And it's now a $10 billion public company. And it returned,

00:04:45.920 | unlike many private companies, you know, return a billion

00:04:48.400 | dollars plus to shareholders before going public. And it is

00:04:52.680 | doing continues to do well to this day. I led the company as

00:04:56.640 | CEO for seven years, five of the drugs I worked on are FDA

00:05:00.080 | approved today. The one I'm probably most proud of is is a

00:05:03.720 | drug that sexually biologic that is life saving therapy and kids.

00:05:08.000 | Another one's an approved drug for prostate cancer. But that

00:05:11.440 | was my world is the point very different world, maybe more

00:05:15.120 | similar to your guys's world now than the world I'm in now.

00:05:18.080 | Something funny happened in 2020, which was that, in my own

00:05:23.120 | company, there were demands that I make a statement on behalf of

00:05:27.680 | Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd, it was tragic

00:05:31.200 | death in May of 2020. By June, there were demands that I start

00:05:35.200 | making statements on behalf of BLM. And it was a funny time

00:05:39.280 | because only starting that February, I had ventured into

00:05:43.120 | actually exercising my voice as a citizen, while being a CEO at

00:05:47.080 | my own peril criticizing what was then the still new shiny

00:05:50.960 | object of stakeholder capitalism. So I published this

00:05:53.600 | piece in the Wall Street Journal and generated some waves that

00:05:55.520 | February, few months later in May, this George Floyd

00:05:58.360 | controversy comes up. And the long story short, I can go into

00:06:01.920 | it if you guys are interested, but over the next six months, a

00:06:05.000 | series of escalating events led me to face a choice the

00:06:09.640 | following January of, you know, there's three advisors to my

00:06:13.080 | company that stepped down after I wrote a rather, I didn't

00:06:17.000 | intend it to be but a rather controversial piece in the Wall

00:06:19.120 | Street Journal at the time. What was the

00:06:20.680 | premise of the piece?

00:06:21.320 | 21? Yeah, the premise of the piece was that it actually was

00:06:24.760 | controversial on numerous counts. But the basic premise

00:06:27.160 | was, it was the first legal argument anybody had made, that

00:06:30.600 | if the government is pressuring a private actor to do something

00:06:33.960 | that the government couldn't do directly, that that was still

00:06:37.160 | state action. Now, the subtext is this was in the wake of

00:06:40.600 | January 6, when there was widespread systematic

00:06:43.240 | censorship of, you know, political speech in this

00:06:45.720 | country, at least I believe there was. And so at the time I

00:06:48.600 | made that argument, it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory

00:06:50.920 | on the facts. No, that's not happening. It was also dismissed

00:06:54.040 | as a legal theory. You know, this Rube who happened to go to

00:06:58.040 | law school for God his first year where the First Amendment

00:07:00.600 | only applies to state actors. You know, now, fast forward,

00:07:04.920 | three years, two and a half years, we now know those facts

00:07:08.680 | were far worse than even I envisioned at the time. And

00:07:11.480 | actually, the legal argument that I made is now popularized

00:07:14.200 | by Clarence Thomas and others that are finding its way into

00:07:16.600 | our jurisprudence. But anyway, three advisors to the company

00:07:19.960 | found it so offensive, that I would make this argument in

00:07:22.680 | public, that within 48 hours of that piece, they resigned,

00:07:25.800 | that that was definitely a post Jan six mood and reaction, that

00:07:30.520 | I had to then make a choice, right? Because now this is

00:07:33.080 | having potentially an adverse impact on the company. I could

00:07:36.440 | either, all right, call it a year where I experimented with

00:07:39.880 | expressing myself and, you know, wearing my legal academic

00:07:42.920 | hat and call that a day and continue with biotech. Or

00:07:47.960 | legitimately, if I didn't want to have an adverse impact on my

00:07:50.120 | company, I could step down and really speak freely. I chose to

00:07:53.720 | I chose to step down, not in small part, because the company

00:07:56.600 | was doing great. You know, I had a successor lined up. So

00:07:59.160 | there was a fortunate set of circumstances that happened to

00:08:01.800 | be the right time. I just had my first son, my son, Karthik

00:08:05.640 | was born in February of 2020. He was about to turn a year old,

00:08:10.200 | we were in a transitional phase of our life COVID, you know, we

00:08:13.480 | were we had a year away from the office, my wife was filling

00:08:15.720 | her fellowship, there was just a lot going on in her life that

00:08:18.120 | felt like this was a moment for a life transition to focus on

00:08:22.520 | a lot of people, talented people developing medicines, maybe

00:08:26.360 | some of them more talented than me, you know, rove into

00:08:29.000 | successful company.

00:08:30.120 | Did you feel like you were being bullied into making a

00:08:32.120 | statement about Black Lives Matter by your own employees?

00:08:35.080 | And what's your thought? Generally speaking on companies

00:08:38.760 | being politically active and companies having a political

00:08:41.480 | voice because it has come up in our industry over and over

00:08:44.280 | again, you might know Brian Armstrong from Coinbase said,

00:08:46.680 | Hey, we're here to do crypto, nothing else. Please don't talk

00:08:50.200 | about anything political. So what are your thoughts generally

00:08:52.200 | on that?

00:08:52.840 | You wrote a whole book on this, right? I mean, I read your book,

00:08:56.360 | and it's a lot about the distinction between what the

00:09:00.520 | intention is in optimizing for shareholders versus the personal

00:09:04.840 | interests of the executives and those in charge, expressing

00:09:07.720 | their personal points of view through the corporation. And I

00:09:11.160 | think you had some points of view on where that should all go.

00:09:13.880 | But was that in part motivating for you to run for public

00:09:17.480 | office? And why president instead of running for a senate

00:09:20.120 | seat or congressional seat or something else?

00:09:22.520 | Yeah, so it turns out I've written, I wrote three books in

00:09:25.400 | the last two years, and two of them are about this topic. The

00:09:28.680 | first one is Woke Inc, which was for a general audience. And

00:09:31.080 | then there was a second one called capitalist punishment,

00:09:33.720 | which was specifically about the ESG strand of this and

00:09:37.160 | capital markets. And just so people are aware, my general

00:09:40.600 | view is that companies should focus on making products and

00:09:43.320 | services for people who need them without apologizing for

00:09:46.360 | it. And yes, that's how you maximize profit for shareholders

00:09:49.480 | by having a worthy mission and sticking to it without taking

00:09:52.680 | on social missions that are best carried out by institutions

00:09:55.800 | outside of corporate America. I so much believe this that even

00:09:59.480 | before I ran for president, this actually does answer your

00:10:01.720 | question, Dave is, I actually thought the way I was going to

00:10:04.600 | have impact based on this. I enjoy being an author, but I'm

00:10:07.400 | not by nature, just an academic, I like to do things. I started

00:10:11.800 | a company called strive. It's an asset management firm that

00:10:15.560 | directly competes against the likes of BlackRock and State

00:10:18.760 | Street and Vanguard. That's what I thought my next leap was

00:10:21.960 | going to be. Strives first fund launched last August, and less

00:10:28.040 | than a year in it's close to a billion dollars in assets

00:10:30.200 | under management. I think it took JP Morgan two years to get

00:10:32.520 | to a billion when they got into the ETF business. That was what

00:10:35.480 | my journey was going to be is within corporate America,

00:10:39.000 | restore the unapologetic pursuit of excellence over

00:10:42.760 | distracting and dilutive political, environmental and

00:10:45.640 | social agendas. The thing that struck me, I think late last

00:10:50.440 | year, and last December, last year, we had our second son, got

00:10:54.280 | a new company off the ground. You all know what that entails.

00:10:56.600 | It was very much an all in experience doing that. December,

00:11:01.000 | we had some time to take a step back. My wife and I, we

00:11:06.520 | kind of take a moment to ask yourself, why are you doing what

00:11:08.600 | you're doing? It's not a conversation you often have or

00:11:11.880 | take time to do. The question of the why. It reminded me back

00:11:17.720 | of that experience I had at Royman. You asked me, did I feel

00:11:19.640 | bullied? I didn't actually feel bullied. I could imagine

00:11:23.640 | someone in my shoes feeling that way, but I didn't feel like it

00:11:26.440 | was somebody cornering me to do something I didn't want to do.

00:11:29.880 | Others have had that experience. That wasn't quite how it felt

00:11:32.200 | for me. I felt like there's a group of people who followed me

00:11:36.120 | on this mission who look up to me, who were disappointed in me,

00:11:39.720 | actually. I think that was much harder than feeling like I was

00:11:43.000 | being bullied was to have a group of people who followed me

00:11:45.560 | on this worthy mission of developing medicines that pharma

00:11:48.120 | companies weren't, that felt proud of that mission, that now

00:11:51.080 | felt disappointed in me. That was much harder to deal with than

00:11:55.240 | the bullying, but that also opened my eyes to the fact that

00:11:57.960 | I'm here stridently fighting against BlackRock and the ESG

00:12:01.640 | industrial complex, which is a little bit of a deflection from

00:12:04.840 | the essence of what I actually think is going on at the real

00:12:07.720 | root cause, especially amongst young people in the country.

00:12:10.440 | What is that?

00:12:10.940 | This is what I saw in my employees and the experience I

00:12:15.480 | went through. That was formative for me. These are good people.

00:12:18.040 | These are earnest people, many of whom came. In many ways, it's

00:12:21.400 | my fault because the pitch that we made in recruiting, we

00:12:24.120 | recruited from Harvard and MIT and everywhere else. Big pharma

00:12:26.920 | companies didn't recruit out of undergrad. We did. Part of my

00:12:29.240 | pitch was, "Hey, you want to go to a quant hedge fund and turn

00:12:33.240 | that pile of cash into a bigger pile of cash, or do you want to

00:12:35.240 | actually make medicines that impact people's lives and do

00:12:38.360 | well that way?" That was part of even my pitch going in.

00:12:41.000 | We select for a certain kind of person and then they come back

00:12:43.240 | and say they're disappointed in me for not adopting unrelated

00:12:45.960 | social agendas. What dawned on me is that young people in this

00:12:50.360 | country – I'm a millennial. You guys are young. We're hungry

00:12:55.640 | for a cause. We're so hungry for purpose and meaning.

00:13:02.840 | We're hungry for purpose and meaning and identity. Yet, we're

00:13:06.360 | starving for that at a time in our history when the things that

00:13:09.720 | used to fill that void – there's a lot of things that

00:13:12.920 | could fill that blank. I talked about it today at this

00:13:15.080 | Constitution camp here in New Hampshire. Faith, patriotism,

00:13:18.600 | hard work, family. I think there's some truth to what

00:13:22.200 | Brian Armstrong told his employees. A corporation with a

00:13:25.000 | worthy mission can help fill that void too. I think that's

00:13:27.240 | one of the roles that CEOs who feel like they're being bullied

00:13:30.040 | might miss is you don't have people who are bullying you. You

00:13:32.600 | have people who are lost, who are looking to you for direction

00:13:35.880 | and purpose.

00:13:36.440 | You're saying it quickly, but I think that family and religion

00:13:39.640 | are very, very big drivers of that.

00:13:42.440 | Oh, huge. I'm just saying it quickly because I talk about

00:13:44.600 | that all the time. I think the family and faith – these are

00:13:49.800 | foundational building blocks.

00:13:51.240 | They're foundational. I think that when you look statistically

00:13:53.800 | at the decay in the number of young people who are religious

00:13:57.560 | or the decay in the number of young people who actually have

00:14:01.000 | two-parent families, all of this speaks to the fact that the

00:14:05.080 | social norms that gave people purpose have actually gone, but

00:14:09.560 | they haven't been replaced with anything else. I think that's

00:14:11.880 | the vacuum that you're seeing that many of these young people

00:14:15.320 | fall into. They're looking for something, to your point.

00:14:18.760 | The problem with that is not the causes themselves, but the

00:14:24.200 | fact that they're short-lived. Then what's left over is

00:14:27.400 | the need for more and more and more. That escalation, I think,

00:14:30.840 | is very dangerous if you think about where society goes to

00:14:34.200 | from here.

00:14:34.680 | Yeah, I agree with you on that. That's why I have been

00:14:37.800 | characterized – and Jason introduced me that way too – as

00:14:40.360 | anti-woke. I don't like that label because it's not inaccurate.

00:14:47.960 | I don't like it because it's false. I think it misses the

00:14:51.240 | point where I think the way we actually combat – fill in your

00:14:55.880 | favorite blank – wokeism, climatism, COVID-ism, fentanyl

00:15:00.520 | usage, anxiety, depression, loss of self-confidence – these

00:15:04.040 | things are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning.

00:15:07.880 | I don't think you help the matter much by – and I've done

00:15:11.560 | some of this, I will admit this, right? I'm not blaming other

00:15:14.600 | people. Have you read the book, Jason, or not?

00:15:18.200 | I haven't yet, but I will.

00:15:19.400 | Okay. The book is titled and written before the word "woke"

00:15:25.240 | took on its current political valence. I will say that,

00:15:28.040 | actually. Many people didn't know what the word "woke" was

00:15:30.680 | at the time I titled the book.

00:15:31.400 | It was fairly revelatory when you came out and used that word

00:15:34.760 | in your title. It was like, "Let me reveal to you a little bit

00:15:37.720 | about what this thing that I'm calling 'woke' is turning into,"

00:15:41.160 | which is a more broader kind of social, psychological issue

00:15:46.920 | that we're all grappling with. How it's now leeched its way

00:15:50.280 | into politics. It's leeched its way into non-profits. It's

00:15:52.840 | leeched its way into corporate America, into for-profits,

00:15:58.200 | into the military, into government, etc. Obviously,

00:16:01.080 | since that was published, it has now become this hot term

00:16:05.640 | that has different meaning for different people, and it can

00:16:07.640 | be pretty inciting in terms of how people react to it.

00:16:10.600 | I appreciate you saying that, Dave. I appreciate you saying

00:16:12.600 | that, Dave, because my net prescription is actually, we

00:16:15.480 | dilute not just wokeism. I mean, that's just part of the

00:16:18.280 | story. We dilute secular religions, the rise of secular

00:16:22.360 | religions. I don't call them even religions because religion

00:16:25.800 | has withstood the test of time. A cult has not. But the rise of

00:16:28.760 | modern secular cults, we dilute them to irrelevance by filling

00:16:33.240 | that void with an alternative vision. If one political camp

00:16:38.360 | might offer race and gender and sexuality and climate as a

00:16:42.840 | prescription for the void, I think where conservatives fall

00:16:46.760 | badly short is by simply being anti those things without

00:16:52.200 | actually offering an alternative vision of our own.

00:16:55.240 | I am aiming certainly to do that in this campaign.

00:16:58.360 | If you were going to replace race and gender and these kind

00:17:02.280 | of things, what would be your qualities or things to focus on?

00:17:07.320 | So let's do a little face-off. We're talking about race,

00:17:12.040 | gender, sexuality, climate. I pair them up against individual

00:17:17.080 | family, nation, God. I think that there's a substantive

00:17:21.720 | vision here. I think America happened to have been founded

00:17:23.720 | on the latter vision, not the former. So if I'm running for

00:17:26.040 | US president, I think that that already tilts the scales in

00:17:28.840 | favor of this vision because it so happens as a historical

00:17:31.240 | matter. America was grounded on, some people will contest

00:17:34.600 | this, but I think on that vision rather than the genetic and

00:17:38.040 | climate-based one. But I think that that's something where the

00:17:40.760 | Republican Party and conservatives have fallen short.

00:17:42.760 | That's part of what, to your question, Jason, pulled me into

00:17:45.400 | this, is I saw the emergence of what was likely to be a

00:17:48.840 | biographical brawl between two guys who were the frontrunners

00:17:52.440 | or whatever. That's not productive. But I think more

00:17:56.040 | importantly than a biographical brawl, even the question about

00:17:58.440 | who we are, I think the Republican Party and the

00:18:01.640 | conservative movement was in many ways defining itself in

00:18:04.280 | opposition to that alternative vision of identity where what I

00:18:07.560 | want to do, what I'm striving to do, and I hope we're doing,

00:18:09.560 | is actually offering an affirmative vision of our own

00:18:13.720 | that go to the heart of what it means to be an American.

00:18:17.960 | I don't think that national identity alone is going to fill

00:18:20.440 | that vacuum fully, but I think it makes a pretty good darn

00:18:24.360 | stride forward. I think there's roles for pastors and others.

00:18:27.400 | That's beyond my pay grade. I'm not purporting to do that in

00:18:31.320 | this campaign. I speak to it, but that's going to be the role

00:18:33.800 | of people in a higher calling than being US president. But I

00:18:37.880 | think the next US president can play a meaningful role in

00:18:40.920 | filling that vacuum, at least when it comes to national

00:18:43.880 | identity. That's really what this campaign is about. It's not

00:18:47.240 | anti-woke. It is unapologetically nationalist in a

00:18:50.920 | certain sense of that word. Nationalist in the sense of

00:18:53.720 | embracing those ideals that set this nation into motion that

00:18:58.280 | still unite us across those genetically inherited attributes

00:19:02.120 | that we've otherwise celebrated over the last 10 years in this

00:19:04.760 | country.

00:19:05.000 | It's safe to say you believe in American exceptionalism, and

00:19:07.160 | that's your platform for running for-

00:19:08.680 | That is my platform. That is absolutely my platform. The

00:19:11.160 | exceptionalism of the ideals that set this country into

00:19:14.200 | motion. Absolutely.

00:19:15.320 | Absolutely. So, Vivek, let me ask a question around where we

00:19:19.000 | are in the cycle of the American experiment, where we have

00:19:25.000 | obviously allowed the throttle to be full forward, and as a

00:19:29.880 | result, we've seen extraordinary progress emerge from the

00:19:32.920 | entrepreneurial talents and the drive of the people of this

00:19:35.400 | country for the past 250 years. And it's really extraordinary

00:19:39.320 | and it transformed human civilization. We now find

00:19:42.440 | ourselves, particularly over the past 50 years as this

00:19:45.640 | problem has gotten worse, with increasing disparity between

00:19:49.800 | the haves and the have-nots, or those who believe they have

00:19:53.320 | not, which is nearly everyone. Everyone now has some point of

00:19:56.520 | view that they have not got something, and they see other

00:19:59.240 | people that do have something that they do not. And this

00:20:02.600 | inequality and this perception of inequality, both with respect

00:20:05.480 | to absolute amounts of capital, income, earnings, and these

00:20:09.400 | perception issues, have now driven a populist movement in

00:20:12.040 | this country that we have seen historically, many times in the

00:20:15.960 | past, different countries that ultimately turn into either

00:20:19.640 | socialist nations or fascist nations. In all cases, some

00:20:25.720 | sort of autocratic regime seems to have emerged because of this

00:20:29.320 | populist movement that we're now seeing not just in the US, but

00:20:32.280 | across the West. Do you feel like we're at that moment in the

00:20:36.760 | US? And one of the manifestations of that, I'll say,

00:20:39.640 | is government spending. Because everyone demands more from their

00:20:42.680 | government, and the government steps up, and the elected

00:20:44.600 | officials that they elect step up and spend more, and it layers

00:20:47.720 | and it layers and layers. And we now have a $33 trillion debt

00:20:51.240 | load, and we have a $1.5 trillion annual deficit, and by

00:20:54.760 | many projections, Social Security will be bankrupt in

00:20:57.560 | anywhere from 10 to 15 years, 10 to 20 years, whatever numbers

00:21:01.880 | you want to use. The CBO assumes we're going to have

00:21:04.120 | unsustainable, spiraling debt. What is your point of view on

00:21:07.400 | where we are in the cycle, how it's manifesting today, and how

00:21:11.000 | we're going to deal with the fiscal issues that arise from

00:21:13.320 | these movements?

00:21:13.960 | Yeah, so I think where we are in that in the cycle, I don't

00:21:19.320 | take that as a passive law of physics. I think that who runs

00:21:23.880 | this country and leads this country can make an actual

00:21:26.600 | difference in the actual underlying course of that so

00:21:30.520 | called cycle, which is part of what pulls me into this. So I'm

00:21:33.160 | a little bit unconventional on my views on the debt load and

00:21:38.120 | the entitlement spending in this country and our first step in

00:21:40.920 | our way out of it. I don't think we're at a place of having

00:21:44.440 | remotely enough consensus or trust, and I think trust is

00:21:48.440 | probably the more important word than consensus, to begin just

00:21:51.480 | snip snip, make cuts to what people feel like they were

00:21:54.360 | entitled to and promised, especially in a moment where

00:21:57.240 | we're beginning with deep distrust, that will take what

00:22:00.040 | you call those populist flames and throw kerosene on it.

00:22:03.480 | I do, I'm more optimistic about this. And I think this is quite

00:22:06.520 | realistic, actually, is that the next leap forward is we can

00:22:09.720 | grow our way out of, I'm not going to say all but most of our

00:22:14.200 | actual fiscal calamity, pending fiscal calamity. This year, I

00:22:18.440 | mean, I think like right now, last six months, we're talking

00:22:20.840 | less than 1.5% annualized GDP growth, what we're averaging

00:22:24.920 | right now, for most of our national history, we actually

00:22:27.000 | grown at over four plus percent GDP growth. Certainly, if you go

00:22:30.120 | back to the pre gold standard period, and even after going off

00:22:33.320 | the gold standard, we had a relatively stable US dollar and

00:22:36.360 | I am one of these weird guys who believes that the Fed should

00:22:39.560 | have a single mandate of dollar stability without playing the

00:22:43.240 | Phillips curve game. But anyway, put that sidetrack to

00:22:47.000 | one side, we've grown at three, 4% GDP growth for most of our

00:22:51.000 | national history, even relatively recent national

00:22:53.400 | history. And I don't think it's a complicated path to get back

00:22:57.240 | there. I think things we need to do unlock American energy.

00:23:01.400 | There's, you know, we talked about secular religions, I view

00:23:03.560 | the climate cult as one of those secular religions, what's your

00:23:06.200 | energy pack? What was your specific energy plan be

00:23:08.920 | completely, completely unlock the permitting process that

00:23:12.760 | they've used as a backdoor mechanism to shut down American

00:23:15.080 | energy production, drilling, fracking, burning coal, coal

00:23:18.680 | should not be a four letter word embracing nuclear energy.

00:23:21.160 | Later tonight, like after we're having this conversation this

00:23:24.120 | evening, I'm going to be at St. Anselm College, laying out my

00:23:27.400 | detail, it's gonna be like a giant poster, laying out the

00:23:30.520 | anatomy of how I will shut down the Nuclear Regulatory

00:23:33.080 | Commission, which has been a fundamentally hostile

00:23:36.920 | administrative agency to the existence of nuclear power in

00:23:40.680 | this country, actually, even to the detriment of actually

00:23:43.560 | making sure that we are getting our nuclear energy from Gen

00:23:46.040 | two, rather than Gen three or Gen four reactors. But that'll

00:23:49.240 | be for tonight. It's an all of the above approach of

00:23:52.120 | unshackling ourselves to produce energy here in the

00:23:55.640 | United States. To your point about, you know, David made a

00:23:59.160 | good point earlier about the addiction of paying people more

00:24:03.560 | from the federal government that becomes the status quo, if

00:24:05.480 | that's your voter base. That's not even good in many cases for

00:24:08.280 | the people who are giving that money to, I think we should

00:24:10.920 | stop paying people to stay at home. When actually the top

00:24:14.840 | obstacle for many businesses to grow, you guys will know this

00:24:17.320 | well, is filling vacant job openings. And so that is an

00:24:22.120 | obstacle to GDP growth is paying people more to stay at

00:24:25.880 | home than many of them earn to go back to work. Do you think

00:24:28.920 | that the IRA was good legislation? I don't have. It's

00:24:34.680 | not like it's not like my the horse that I'm gonna, you know,

00:24:37.960 | ride right in terms of like the main I'm gonna pin everything

00:24:41.640 | on it. But But I mostly don't think it was it was great

00:24:44.680 | legislation. But like, where are you coming from on that?

00:24:48.040 | Because we might have different reasons.

00:24:49.480 | If you think about what the IRA does for energy, and frankly, if

00:24:53.080 | you just roll up the bi ellipsis chips in IRA, I'm just curious

00:24:57.560 | your thoughts on whether government incentives are moving

00:25:01.240 | in that direction that you actually support, or you still

00:25:04.600 | think it's, it's missing something?

00:25:06.120 | Well, so one of the things that I actually focus on, and I

00:25:10.520 | think is really important is, what can the US President

00:25:15.240 | actually do? I mean, President Trump's I don't know, people

00:25:18.680 | remember this, his main promise, policy promise was actually

00:25:21.800 | repeal and replace Obamacare, which never happened, because

00:25:24.280 | it required going through Congress. So I'm actually

00:25:27.320 | focused on elements that I can deliver on, without asking

00:25:30.520 | Congress either for permission or forgiveness. And so that's

00:25:33.640 | all my answer to Jason was, I go straight to at least let's

00:25:35.800 | focus on actually, the administrative state, which on my

00:25:38.760 | reading of the Constitution reports in to the single duly

00:25:41.720 | elected president. So when I talk about the permitting

00:25:43.800 | process at the Department of Interior, or shutting down the

00:25:46.360 | Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I believe in, you know, we could

00:25:49.960 | go I'm going into details on it tonight, I have the legal

00:25:52.520 | authority to do that as the US President, I think the

00:25:55.240 | legislation is gonna be much more complicated. And I don't

00:25:57.480 | believe that I can be in a position to promise what we

00:26:01.320 | would do legislatively to any of that.

00:26:03.160 | You mentioned getting people to take all these jobs that are

00:26:08.040 | available. Do you want to talk about immigration for a second?

00:26:11.320 | And what you think about that?

00:26:12.200 | Yeah, merit based immigration, immigration, would, would you

00:26:16.600 | are you saying you would cut entitlements like unemployment

00:26:19.000 | or shorten the unemployment period to force people to go

00:26:21.560 | back to work? Is that what I'm reading?

00:26:23.160 | And tie them to work requirements? Absolutely. Yeah.

00:26:26.440 | Would you have a specific for that, like a certain number of

00:26:28.920 | months or, you know, a pretty good, a pretty good, I mean, I

00:26:32.680 | do. But I think that's, again, I'm very clear about what I will

00:26:35.880 | do through executive authority, what needs to go through

00:26:38.680 | legislation. I mean, that's all a negotiation. But I think a

00:26:40.680 | good principle is 1996 or in the 1990s, workfare under Clinton

00:26:46.440 | was actually far more aggressive than the work environment work

00:26:50.280 | requirements that were put into this supposed Republican led

00:26:54.520 | debt deal where, like, what did they say? It was if you're age

00:26:58.520 | 18 to 55, and you are able bodied and childless, then you

00:27:04.200 | have to work at least 20 hours a week in order to receive more

00:27:08.840 | than three months out of three years worth of welfare, right?

00:27:12.760 | You know, Joe Biden as a US senator voted for actually much

00:27:16.840 | more stringent workfare requirements in the 90s. So,

00:27:20.120 | you know, yes, I have ideas on specifics, but I'm not going to

00:27:22.680 | make a promise on exactly what that specific will look like.

00:27:24.920 | But a guiding principle is, it has to be at least as aggressive

00:27:27.640 | as what we adopted.

00:27:28.520 | I mean, to your point during Clinton, we had 69, almost 70%

00:27:32.680 | participation, and we're at 60. And now I think so. It's

00:27:35.720 | obvious that we have to trim that. But to Tomas, next point,

00:27:38.760 | you know, we have 10 million job openings. We're not letting

00:27:41.560 | anybody in. How would you look at immigration? Obviously, we

00:27:44.440 | have people coming in the southern border illegally. And

00:27:47.320 | then we have h1 b visas. And now Canada is saying, hey, we'll

00:27:50.760 | steal all those h1 bs. We'll take them. So how do you look at

00:27:53.480 | immigration to Tomas question?

00:27:55.000 | Merit based immigration? I mean, one of the things that Canada

00:27:58.200 | does have, and I'm not a fan of America imitating Canada or

00:28:01.000 | anything like this in most respects, but they do have a

00:28:04.040 | point based system, right? They have a point based system. And

00:28:06.760 | so I think the point based system should work differently

00:28:10.120 | in the US. But I do favor merit based immigration. I'm a little

00:28:14.840 | bit of a departure from what I think is the Republican

00:28:17.320 | consensus here. You know, people I respect Tom Cotton and others

00:28:20.440 | have proposed bills with a hard cap on the number of immigrants.

00:28:23.640 | I it's a mistake. I think that the cap should declare itself

00:28:27.400 | based on how many people meet the meritocratic criteria.

00:28:31.000 | We're not a little different qualities, then for what would

00:28:33.560 | be your top criteria in this point based system to criteria

00:28:36.280 | skills that match up to job openings in the United States.

00:28:39.480 | But secondarily, and this one's important to me, I would move

00:28:44.120 | the civics portion of becoming a citizen to the front end of

00:28:49.000 | even being granted a visa to enter this country. And I think

00:28:52.120 | that addresses and accommodates an important part of the concern

00:28:56.360 | that many people who are pro immigration cap actually favor

00:29:00.040 | is I think there are legitimate concerns about the dilution,

00:29:02.280 | the loss of a national identity. But a lot of that is conflated

00:29:06.120 | with first the cycle of illegal immigration. I'm a hard liner on

00:29:09.000 | this. I favor putting the US military on the southern border.

00:29:12.840 | I've said I would use it on the northern border. I believe that

00:29:15.800 | we are on strong constitutional and legal authority to do it. I

00:29:19.640 | do not think building the wall was enough. There are cartel

00:29:22.200 | finance tunnels underneath that wall that vehicles literally

00:29:25.000 | run through today. So in some ways, I'm going further than

00:29:27.480 | Trump in this direction. But simultaneously, debureaucratize

00:29:32.600 | speed up the process for merit based immigration. But part of

00:29:36.360 | merit includes not just skills, but also civic commitments to

00:29:42.760 | the country. And I'm, you know, I use the word nationalist

00:29:45.800 | before I know that scares some people. I mean it in a positive

00:29:48.200 | way. I think every high school student in this country should

00:29:53.160 | have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to

00:29:56.360 | pass in order to become a citizen of this country. I also

00:29:59.880 | would favor bringing that on the front end and it selects for the

00:30:02.440 | kind of people who know something about the country when

00:30:04.440 | they enter, which I think is a good thing. It's

00:30:06.280 | people should assimilate. And they should love this country in

00:30:08.920 | order to come into the country. Yes, I do. I think I think you

00:30:12.280 | should want to come here to be an American. Yeah. I think I

00:30:15.160 | think I think you get agreement around the horn here. sacks,

00:30:18.600 | you've heard the vex position so far, you obviously are

00:30:22.360 | passionate about the GOP. What do you agree with? And what

00:30:25.640 | don't you agree with so far? Well, there's a lot of stuff to

00:30:27.640 | agree with. There we're talking about American exceptionalism.

00:30:30.280 | One thing I want to talk about there is that I agree that

00:30:33.880 | America is exceptional. And we're most exceptional when

00:30:38.840 | we're trying to set an example for other nations. We're trying

00:30:41.640 | to be the shining city on a hill, as Reagan put it. But

00:30:45.960 | lately, and really, I mean, over the last couple of decades,

00:30:49.080 | what you've seen is that what American exceptionalism means to

00:30:53.000 | a lot of people in Washington, is that we run all over the

00:30:56.120 | world and impose our ideology and our values on all these

00:31:00.280 | different countries. We began this great crusade to try and

00:31:03.880 | spread democracy in the Middle East, we tried to turn

00:31:06.040 | countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, into Madisonian

00:31:11.400 | democracies, where you now are very, very involved in Ukraine,

00:31:16.360 | basically trying to detach that country from the Russian sphere

00:31:20.520 | of influence and turning it into a member of our military

00:31:23.960 | and economic alliance. So it does seem like American

00:31:28.200 | exceptionalism has taken on this sort of harder, more

00:31:31.000 | militarized edge, where would you draw the line? I mean, like

00:31:35.800 | what makes sense to you? I think I basically agree with

00:31:39.960 | everything you just said. I think as a side note on the

00:31:41.880 | geopolitics of it, I do think Ukraine is on track to become

00:31:45.000 | potentially the next Vietnam or the next Iraq. I think you have

00:31:47.720 | said similar things. I also think there's something else

00:31:51.400 | going on with Ukraine that's fueling this, which relates to

00:31:54.360 | the deeper identity crisis in our country that I described

00:31:58.040 | earlier. I think Ukraine has become a new religion, right, in

00:32:01.320 | the country. And it's a substitute for purpose and

00:32:04.120 | meaning, just like climate ideology or woke-ism is. And,

00:32:07.400 | you know, there's the flag.

00:32:08.440 | It's like a crusade. I mean, you have people like waving

00:32:11.080 | these.

00:32:11.560 | Absolutely. You go to Washington, DC, at least I did

00:32:14.200 | in June, I was there for one of the Sunday shows where my wife

00:32:17.000 | and I are going for a walk. We saw more trans flags and

00:32:20.440 | Ukraine flags than we did American flags on a short walk

00:32:23.320 | that we took through Washington, DC, our nation's

00:32:25.880 | capital. So I'm not whining about this or being histrionic

00:32:30.440 | about it. I just think getting to the essence of what's going

00:32:32.440 | on, I think that's a different element of Ukraine that's

00:32:35.400 | different from even what we saw with Vietnam or Iraq. I don't

00:32:40.200 | think American exceptionalism is foisting our values on anyone.

00:32:43.480 | I think American exceptionalism is about demonstrating

00:32:46.760 | through our example, how America flourishes and is strong

00:32:50.520 | when we live by our own ideals. And I think the best way we

00:32:54.280 | give hope to the free world is by being that shining city on a

00:32:58.120 | hill, not going somewhere else and talking about it with tanks

00:33:01.880 | behind us, while actually suffering here at home. If you

00:33:05.560 | roam the streets of Kensington, as I did a few weeks ago, you

00:33:08.760 | know, you don't have to go to Baghdad to see the third world.

00:33:12.200 | And so that I think is, I think, a big loss of where we are

00:33:16.040 | today in the country. When your president Putin invades Ukraine,

00:33:19.880 | you would sit back, not give any armaments and let him roll in.

00:33:22.520 | Here's what I would do. I would actually be proactive in doing

00:33:26.360 | a deal. And I've been very clear about the deal I would do.

00:33:29.240 | Trump has said he would do a deal in 24 hours. He hasn't

00:33:32.120 | said what it was. I believe there's a deal to be done. But

00:33:35.000 | I also believe it's important to be clear about what the

00:33:37.640 | contours of that deal would be. I would freeze the current line.

00:33:42.120 | Let's take the status quo right now. So I can answer your

00:33:45.160 | question. Or I could answer starting from the present. If

00:33:47.880 | you don't, we could do both. I mean, the obvious Yeah, the

00:33:50.680 | obvious is maybe put NATO take NATO off the table and avoid the

00:33:53.880 | whole thing. But now we're playing. Yeah, we're playing

00:33:56.840 | I would say history. So maybe it's better. Yeah. What's

00:33:59.080 | happening now? Present, right? Because I don't think that we

00:34:00.920 | would have if I was president, I don't think we would have

00:34:02.840 | gotten to the point of those things rolling in Angela

00:34:05.080 | Merkel made some disastrous comments. Putin made a hard

00:34:07.720 | demand. We would have said hard no to Ukraine joining NATO. And

00:34:11.000 | that would have been that there would have been no tanks rolling

00:34:12.600 | in Putin may have taken NATO off the table, Putin may have

00:34:15.240 | still invaded. We don't know. I don't I don't think so. But we

00:34:17.880 | can't, you know, those are counterfactuals that we can

00:34:20.040 | actually, you know, we're not gonna have one side or the other

00:34:22.680 | being able to prove that right. So let's talk about the present.

00:34:27.080 | Right now. Let's say I'm US President, I would freeze the

00:34:31.720 | current lines of control. We have a precedent for doing this

00:34:34.520 | to Korean War, Korean War style armistice. That does give Putin

00:34:38.760 | most of the Donbass region. That's beyond the pale of what

00:34:43.640 | many are willing to accept in either party. But I think any

00:34:45.960 | deal, someone has to win, everyone has to win something

00:34:48.680 | out of the deal, I would further then give that assurance that

00:34:51.400 | NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. But there's a requirement

00:34:56.440 | in return, the biggest requirement is that Russia has

00:34:59.480 | to exit its military partnership with China. There's a 2001

00:35:04.600 | treaty, it's called the Treaty of good neighborliness and

00:35:06.600 | cooperation, military cooperation between the two

00:35:09.160 | countries, that Xi Jinping and Putin ratcheted up to the so

00:35:13.640 | called strategic no limits partnership in 2022. That is why

00:35:17.880 | China is now coming by the way, to Russia's aid. I personally

00:35:21.800 | believe we are absolutely sending Putin into Xi Jinping's

00:35:25.560 | arms in a way that's a mistake. I would also require that Putin

00:35:29.720 | remove his nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad that we take any

00:35:33.400 | Russian military presence in the US in the Western Hemisphere

00:35:35.880 | off the table, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua. I think this is a

00:35:40.520 | deal that Putin would do if we paired it with reopening

00:35:43.000 | economic relations with Russia, which I would do. Because I

00:35:46.040 | think Putin does not and I can give you some evidence for this.

00:35:48.360 | But I think Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little

00:35:51.080 | brother. And so I think that this is actually an opportunity

00:35:54.040 | and I have to confess, I am a guy who sees our foreign policy

00:35:57.640 | prism through the prism of believing that China is the top

00:36:01.000 | long run threat that we face. And so most of my foreign policy

00:36:04.840 | views and national security views, even on topics that are

00:36:08.680 | apparently unrelated to China, I still see it through that

00:36:10.760 | prism. But this one isn't a far leap because China's literally

00:36:13.400 | in a military treaty with Russia and coming to their aid. I would

00:36:16.680 | use the Ukraine war and an end to the Ukraine war as a way to

00:36:21.000 | bifurcate the Russia China relationship and divide,

00:36:25.320 | basically dissolve that relationship. And then actually

00:36:29.400 | that's our best way and most effective step towards deterring

00:36:33.080 | Xi Jinping from going after Taiwan. Because right now Xi

00:36:37.400 | Jinping, I think that there's a mistaken consensus view that the

00:36:40.760 | way he thinks about it is, oh, reason by analogy rather than by

00:36:44.600 | actual analyzing of a situation say, oh, well, he got that piece

00:36:47.640 | of land, maybe I can go get this island. I don't think he

00:36:50.040 | reasons by analogy. I think he reasons by the cards he has in

00:36:54.360 | terms of hard power. So his bet is that the US won't want to go

00:36:59.000 | to war with two different allied nuclear superpowers at the same

00:37:02.440 | time. But if Russia is no longer in his camp, then Xi Jinping is

00:37:06.920 | going to have to think twice about going after Taiwan. So

00:37:09.480 | then I guess my broader Taiwan,

00:37:10.920 | the obvious question there is, you wouldn't defend Ukraine,

00:37:14.360 | would you have America and the allies defend Taiwan if it was

00:37:17.720 | invaded? I would at least until the US has achieved

00:37:21.000 | semiconductor independence. So you would defend the thing.

00:37:24.840 | Yeah, because we depend on them for our modern way of life in a

00:37:27.320 | way that we don't on Ukraine. And then the latter part of this

00:37:30.680 | is sounds a little crass to some people, but I believe in

00:37:33.160 | being honest, I actually think that I'll get to the get to this

00:37:37.800 | point in a second. But to answer your question, yes, until we've

00:37:42.120 | achieved semiconductor independence, I believe we can

00:37:44.600 | achieve semiconductor independence.

00:37:45.960 | Yeah. So it's not your belief is not, hey, these are two

00:37:49.480 | democracies, they both deserve equal defense from the United

00:37:52.760 | States, Ukraine and Taiwan. It's Ukraine doesn't have

00:37:55.560 | semiconductors, we don't have a strategic need to defend them

00:37:58.360 | yet in Taiwan. So it's a lot more of a pragmatic cutthroat

00:38:01.480 | approach to foreign policy.

00:38:02.680 | It is I, of course, you know, resist the characterization of

00:38:08.040 | cutthroat a little bit. I go back to the principle that David

00:38:11.160 | mentioned of what American exceptionalism is, to me is that

00:38:14.840 | when America is strong, and is flourishing, and Americans are

00:38:19.080 | flourishing within America, we set the example for the free

00:38:22.840 | world of what is possible. And so my view is that yes, at least

00:38:27.000 | until time until we're semiconductor self sufficient,

00:38:29.640 | and I think things work out here where I think we can get there.

00:38:33.080 | So in five years, we're, we've got our semiconductors up and

00:38:36.680 | running. You'll let China roll into Taiwan, no big deal for you.

00:38:39.640 | I will say that I definitely evaluate that very differently

00:38:45.960 | than I do.

00:38:46.440 | Sacha, but I but I your thoughts on that is important.

00:38:51.000 | Freebird.

00:38:51.960 | Yeah, let me just ask. So Vivek, I mean,

00:38:53.560 | I think that your point is a really important one, which is

00:39:00.360 | that when we're happy at home, we tend not to look for conflict

00:39:04.120 | abroad. That's almost a universal truth that's emerged

00:39:09.480 | from history, human civilization has shown that, you know, when

00:39:15.480 | the people in a democracy in particular are happy at home,

00:39:18.600 | and certainly autocracies are quite different.

00:39:21.720 | Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, you go

00:39:25.080 | through history, but like when you have a true democracy, you

00:39:27.800 | don't vote to go and you don't support the idea of conflict

00:39:31.480 | abroad if you're happy at home. But the counter is true, which

00:39:34.520 | is when you're unhappy at home, you tend to look for conflict

00:39:36.680 | abroad. And by some assessments, Ray Dalio had this great book

00:39:40.760 | about this. The changing world order, I don't know if you if

00:39:44.440 | you read it. But you know, he makes this point about the

00:39:47.800 | internal strife leads to external conflict, which is why

00:39:51.000 | it felt like we were going to go that way with Ukraine, Russia,

00:39:54.520 | coming out of 21. So I wonder, are we happy at home?

00:39:58.440 | We're not.

00:40:00.360 | And I want to ask it. I want to ask another question tied to

00:40:02.920 | this. Why is Donald Trump leading in the polls? Because I

00:40:06.760 | think that the two go hand in hand, there is something that he

00:40:09.880 | represents. And there's something about his voice, that I

00:40:13.320 | think echoes the sentiment of this populist unhappiness

00:40:17.480 | inside of this country today, that manifests in a bunch of

00:40:20.680 | ways, one of which is the interest in and support for

00:40:23.800 | external conflict. But I don't know if you're up for kind of

00:40:26.680 | thinking about tackling the two questions together. But I love

00:40:28.920 | your your take on that. Great question.

00:40:31.400 | I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you're extending a theme

00:40:35.480 | of where I talk about sort of domestic cultural annoyances, as

00:40:39.960 | a symptom of a deeper vacuum in our national soul. I think that

00:40:44.440 | actually our projection and focus abroad is a lot easier of

00:40:48.280 | a deflection away from the harder step of taking a long,

00:40:52.120 | hard look in the mirror and asking ourselves about the

00:40:54.840 | health of our own nation today. And so I think that's a deep

00:40:58.280 | question. I think we're not healthy as a nation today. I

00:41:01.880 | think we suffer from deep seated psychic insecurity,

00:41:04.840 | psychological insecurities. I think the economic stagnation,

00:41:07.960 | the fact that real wage growth isn't up for the bottom 99% of

00:41:10.840 | the country. A lot of that I put at the feet of the Federal

00:41:13.240 | Reserve. There are a lot of other complex factors behind it.

00:41:16.120 | But a lot of this feeds into what you call populism. I don't

00:41:20.920 | excuse me, I don't I don't like that word, by the way, just to

00:41:24.680 | be clear. I think that it's just imprecise. And I don't find it

00:41:27.720 | useful. That tries to catch too many things, and it doesn't

00:41:29.960 | catch any of them enough. So yeah, yeah, you think what

00:41:32.280 | you're calling populism is actually a failure of our elites.

00:41:36.840 | Isn't that what's going on? We saw during COVID, that all the

00:41:39.960 | health authorities did a horrible job, the CDC, and the

00:41:43.480 | NIH, it turns out they were funding function research, which

00:41:46.600 | may have caused COVID. In the first place, they were doing

00:41:49.720 | experiments on bat viruses, almost certainly did cause Yeah,

00:41:52.600 | exactly. So you know, we keep finding out that the elites are

00:41:56.840 | supposed to be running the country and running these

00:41:58.440 | institutions are doing absolutely horrible job. That's

00:42:01.160 | what the reaction is against. Then people come along and label

00:42:04.360 | a populism and say it's going to lead to fascism. It's like,

00:42:06.680 | come on, that is a way of protecting the people in power

00:42:10.840 | from accountability for the horrible job they're doing.

00:42:13.800 | It's well said.

00:42:14.440 | Absolutely. And the use of the word populism is almost

00:42:19.240 | stacking that debate in favor of saying that those grievances

00:42:22.520 | aren't legitimate. And so I think why is Donald Trump

00:42:25.480 | polling at number one in the polls, because people know the

00:42:29.880 | truth. I think those grievances are absolutely legitimate. Now,

00:42:34.040 | I think the mood of the country has changed a little bit,

00:42:36.200 | including the mood of the hard conservative base has changed

00:42:40.120 | since 2015. I think there is now I think there is now a sense

00:42:44.360 | that what are we actually going to do about it? Are we are we

00:42:47.000 | going to go the direction of a national divorce? I mean,

00:42:49.080 | divorce is one of these things that speaks itself into

00:42:52.680 | existence, maybe applies at the same level of a nation, right?

00:42:56.120 | That's on the table. It's in the it's in the ether. I don't

00:42:59.560 | think most people, including in our hardcore America first base,

00:43:03.560 | I'm part of that base. I don't think want a national divorce.

00:43:08.920 | And so I think that the moment now calls for this why I'm in

00:43:11.400 | this race. This is actually why at this point, I couldn't have

00:43:14.280 | told you this in March, but at this point, I'm convinced we're

00:43:16.200 | actually gonna be successful in this. This is what the unique

00:43:21.320 | fusion we're going to require is not somebody showing up saying

00:43:23.960 | hope kumbaya, let's move forward, compromise, hold hands

00:43:27.800 | and declare its morning again in America. No, that ain't gonna

00:43:30.840 | work. But I think it requires recognizing the legitimacy of

00:43:35.240 | those grievances, not as lip service, I believe, for the same

00:43:38.760 | reason, sexist measure. Many of those grievances are legitimate,

00:43:42.200 | they're grounded in truth. But to say, as I often say to the

00:43:46.200 | left, hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. And we're

00:43:50.360 | not going to choose victimhood. We're going to choose

00:43:53.160 | recognition of truth as our best path to heal over whatever's

00:43:57.800 | happened and then to move forward. That's why I've come

00:43:59.880 | out and been very vocal about the fact that I would pardon

00:44:02.440 | Trump of each of the two indictments that have already

00:44:04.840 | been brought in. If the J six indictment is brought against

00:44:07.080 | him, I would do the same thing. I think that we have to be able

00:44:11.400 | to recognize the truth of our past grievances of our fellow

00:44:15.880 | Americans, and actually, not just pay lip service to it, but

00:44:21.160 | feel into it and acknowledge the reality of them. I think that's

00:44:24.360 | then the table stakes of Vince meeting a demand that many in

00:44:28.440 | our grassroots conservative base have, I'm one of them, a desire

00:44:32.120 | to also move forward as one nation. And I think both of

00:44:34.600 | those elements are going to be required. They don't go

00:44:36.680 | together. I think there are people in the Republican

00:44:38.840 | primary who offer each of those on their own. Yeah.

00:44:42.920 | Whoever's successful gonna have to offer both this morning,

00:44:46.600 | there was a an opinion piece. I'm assuming you read it by

00:44:50.760 | Rich Lowry, chief of the National Review, published on

00:44:54.280 | Politico. Get ready for the Vivek Ramaswamy moment in which I

00:44:59.320 | would say he's fairly effusive about the campaign you're

00:45:02.120 | running, right? I mean, would you agree like if you said you

00:45:04.760 | said, yeah, there was a really, yeah, some really taken that

00:45:07.640 | one. Did you read the piece? I mean, I thought there was some

00:45:09.160 | really nice abusive. Oh, really? He loves you. Yeah. No, he

00:45:13.720 | said, he doesn't love me. Actually, he doesn't love you.

00:45:15.800 | But he said, I think he said some complimentary things.

00:45:18.040 | That's okay. About your campaign about your character,

00:45:20.760 | but said, there's no way you're going to win and win for

00:45:23.000 | president. Well, you went from under 1%. I think now the latest

00:45:26.120 | polls has you above 5%. And we're in the very early

00:45:28.920 | endings here, right? I think there's one that just came. I

00:45:31.640 | mean, yeah, there's some that have, you know, bounced a

00:45:33.400 | little higher than that. But yeah, you're a little higher

00:45:35.000 | before the first debate, the thing that we've done, let me

00:45:37.160 | just state this in observer, and then you can react to it is

00:45:39.880 | that you have kind of inserted yourself in the debate on every

00:45:45.320 | issue. You know, every day as it comes up, I mean, you're kind

00:45:48.680 | of living off the land as a candidate, not out there with

00:45:52.040 | just kind of a traditional stump speech, but you're finding

00:45:55.400 | a way to insert yourself into the debate every day on social

00:45:58.600 | media. I see it, right? I mean, you post a tweet that will hit

00:46:03.080 | the nerve of whatever the issue is going viral that day, which

00:46:07.000 | means that you'll go viral. And so for months, I've been seeing

00:46:09.720 | your tweets go super viral. And so it's not surprising to me

00:46:13.960 | that your candidacy starting to, you know, catch on in that way.

00:46:18.520 | What's remarkable to me is that other candidates can't do it. I

00:46:21.960 | mean, when you first started doing it, I was kind of like,

00:46:23.640 | okay, this is obvious and easy. Of course, this is what you

00:46:26.680 | would do. But other candidates have not really done that for

00:46:29.560 | whatever reason. So I mean, am I correct?

00:46:32.760 | You know, my perspective? Yeah, my perspective on that, because

00:46:35.480 | if we use it like it is when you accuse us of creating a

00:46:38.600 | banking crisis, but other than that,

00:46:40.120 | I do want to close the loop on that one. You can either do it

00:46:44.440 | on air or off. Let's go do it right now. Yeah. You know, so

00:46:49.320 | for the other candidates, I do it's anyway, that's less

00:46:52.360 | interesting. It's fine. Maybe they'll do it. I think it's not

00:46:55.720 | running it through a filter, right? Because because I think

00:46:57.160 | the traditional political thing is, and here's what's going to

00:46:59.560 | happen to me as a consequence, I'm going to eat the consequence

00:47:02.040 | of this, right? Everything comes at a cost. There's no free

00:47:04.280 | lunch. I'm going to say something in real time that

00:47:07.480 | reflects my honest instincts. That's my whole strategy, right?

00:47:09.880 | People can tell the difference. But then I'm going to change my

00:47:13.720 | mind on one out of 100 things. Okay? And that's just going to

00:47:16.920 | happen, right? And I just have to be open to that and eat my

00:47:19.320 | words. And, you know, I'm going to do it at some point. And

00:47:22.600 | that's the trade off we're making is that I'm not running

00:47:25.000 | it through the filters. I'm not making up what I believe I'm

00:47:28.280 | telling you actually, to the contrary, what I truly believe.

00:47:30.520 | But if I'm doing it really that rapidly in response to what's

00:47:34.520 | happening, I think people appreciate that. But I'm going

00:47:36.680 | to eat my words at some point. That's okay. In response to new

00:47:39.320 | information, you might find new information, or sometimes even

00:47:42.680 | in response to reflection, right? So that's a gaffe,

00:47:45.160 | basically, because it's less filtered, is what you're saying.

00:47:47.560 | You might make a gap. Do you want to close the loop on this

00:47:49.480 | other thing? Yeah. Do you think you caused a banking crisis by

00:47:52.360 | using all caps locks when he tweeted? Yes or no? I did not.

00:47:55.880 | I can't tweet on a Saturday night called the back was a

00:48:00.520 | bank run. I did not say I did not. I never said that either.

00:48:04.520 | But we did go at it pretty hard. I think actually, I think

00:48:07.480 | there's a chance we might still disagree, Dave. But I think that

00:48:10.360 | I'm talking to sacks here. But yeah. So, so I actually talked

00:48:15.560 | to a lot of friends who were in the position of running

00:48:21.080 | companies that had some amount of gap. And we talked through

00:48:24.520 | this, like the specifics of the situation, and then it dawned on

00:48:26.840 | me where it might, it's not, it's not necessarily we're going

00:48:31.000 | to agree at the end of this, but there's a chance that we might

00:48:34.120 | actually, which is this. So in the lead up to this before that

00:48:40.040 | Friday, I was already against any governmental intervention

00:48:45.240 | here, let this play out. Why? Because like, let's put aside

00:48:47.960 | all the histrionics do the math on it. And I'm remembered,

00:48:51.160 | there's a little hazy now, right? So on the facts, but I

00:48:53.320 | think it's approximately right. And you correct me if you have

00:48:55.800 | up to date facts on this, but I think it's approximately right.

00:48:58.200 | If everybody had run and gotten their money out, I think it

00:49:03.720 | would have been like 94 cents on the dollar that everybody

00:49:06.040 | would have walked out with. Right. And so what happened on

00:49:09.560 | Friday is in this the part where I want to potentially build a

00:49:12.440 | bridge here. The part that what happened on Friday was that

00:49:16.120 | Friday was the government, FDIC or otherwise froze the ability

00:49:22.840 | to regulator Friday morning. Yeah, yeah, the Friday morning

00:49:25.640 | you much closer to this, you know, in the details, but the

00:49:27.640 | California regulator froze the ability to take out deposits. So

00:49:31.000 | I am more sympathetic to the point that once the government's

00:49:35.320 | gotten involved, because that really is then like, you know,

00:49:38.360 | kind of like an oh crap moment where you're CEO of a company

00:49:41.960 | or CFO and you want to get your money and then you can't now

00:49:44.680 | it's panic, right? Right. And so I think that there's a version

00:49:49.320 | of the world where the version of the world I wanted, I was

00:49:51.400 | talking about this before you and I were talking directly to

00:49:53.720 | each other. I just think they should have stayed out of it.

00:49:55.480 | 94 cents on the dollar. Not bad, which is why the public

00:49:58.520 | didn't actually end up directly using taxpayer funds was because

00:50:01.400 | the bank was healthy in its own right. That's what that's the

00:50:03.880 | worst result of bank run would have produced there, which

00:50:06.920 | actually should have been heartening in terms of

00:50:08.280 | confidence. Let me give you an insight that maybe you weren't

00:50:12.360 | as close to as the rest of us were, which is on all the

00:50:15.240 | boards that all of us sit on. All of the boards were

00:50:17.800 | discussing independent of this show and the conversations in

00:50:20.600 | the media. We need to move all of our money out of all of the

00:50:23.880 | banks that aren't one of the top three and move all of our

00:50:27.000 | money into those top three. So the point is, which is the

00:50:29.240 | shape into the six, you know, to the top four subs. That's

00:50:31.960 | the point of view that we all saw was that there was a mad

00:50:35.240 | rush in corporate America in startup land, in small business

00:50:39.400 | land. This isn't even VC land. This is like everything from

00:50:42.920 | the nonprofits that we sit on the board of to the, you know,

00:50:46.360 | laundromat to the dry cleaner to every business I got you. I

00:50:49.080 | have some money in a small bank was saying I got to move my

00:50:51.720 | money into a big bank now. And that's where the whole banking

00:50:54.600 | system is put at risk. And that is why we all universally felt

00:50:59.320 | that it was important to highlight that the federal

00:51:02.280 | government needs to step in and reassure and rebuild confidence

00:51:05.640 | in the small banks in this country just deposits not only

00:51:09.160 | and that the only way to do that was to say your deposits are

00:51:11.800 | safe. And that was it. And that was the point because the panic

00:51:15.320 | that was going on in small business land in America, which

00:51:18.120 | as you know, employs half of the people in this country was at

00:51:21.240 | risk, and that those people, those small businesses were

00:51:23.880 | fearful, and they were looking to rush to the big banks, and

00:51:26.360 | that would have cratered the small banks around the country.

00:51:29.000 | So and I think it's a difference in vantage point,

00:51:31.000 | right? You have discussion about populism and everything else.

00:51:33.160 | I don't think Dave Sacks caused the bank run any more than I'm

00:51:38.520 | causing populist waves in this country. Again, it was with his

00:51:42.280 | caps lock. But yeah, but I think I think the reality is people

00:51:46.040 | literally have tweeted that I caused the bank runs insane.

00:51:48.120 | But there's, there's a technical there's a technical

00:51:51.000 | point I'll make and then we'll get to the deeper point. The

00:51:53.080 | technical point to close loop is, I think, Dave, I find your

00:51:56.840 | position more reasonable, given that it's after Friday, when the

00:52:02.200 | California regulators came in and locked in. But in my version

00:52:04.840 | of the world, I would have just said, stay the heck out,

00:52:08.200 | government of any kind, 94 cents on the dollar, there's a 6%

00:52:11.720 | haircut. And we've discovered the market actually works. And we

00:52:15.400 | avoid playing favoritism in the first place. And I say this as

00:52:18.680 | somebody who and this is where you understand my vantage point

00:52:21.240 | have been a longtime opponent of the creation of the notion of

00:52:26.280 | sibs, systemically important banks in the first place, as an

00:52:29.080 | opponent to the bailouts of 2008, as somebody who's running

00:52:31.800 | for US President, not to lead incremental reforms, but a sort

00:52:35.000 | of revolution in the kind of restoration and the integrity of

00:52:37.880 | both capitalism and democracy that I think is actually the

00:52:40.440 | best antidote to would you try to construct the sibs?

00:52:43.720 | Well, I mean, given the status quo of where we are, I think

00:52:47.480 | that I would have to offer a credible enough basis to make

00:52:51.080 | sure that people know that if there's a systemic so called

00:52:53.880 | previously known as systemically important bank that

00:52:55.880 | fails, that the public still not going to be there for them.

00:52:58.440 | But in a way that allows for enough of a enough of an

00:53:02.920 | unburdened banking sector that we have resilience in terms of

00:53:06.840 | exactly who can actually fill that void. And I think that

00:53:10.200 | there is a discursive impact on I don't think it has to be. And

00:53:13.960 | this is where maybe I disagree a little bit. And this is a

00:53:15.720 | small scale disagreement. I don't think it has to be a state

00:53:18.440 | of the world where we just assume consumers are dumb, and

00:53:20.920 | don't take this into account. Consumers are in part dumb,

00:53:23.400 | because we treat them as dumb, right? And so these, it's like a

00:53:26.520 | Heisenberg effect, right? You can't, you know, you assume

00:53:30.200 | you're following what I mean is, you know, basic principle in

00:53:35.320 | physics, you can't, you know, observe the spin and not affect

00:53:38.440 | the spin of the electron at the same time. I think the same

00:53:40.600 | thing applies to a relationship between the government and its

00:53:42.840 | people. And so I think part of the reason that people, I think

00:53:46.200 | I feel the same way about the FDA, by the way, I think people

00:53:49.160 | would be far more scrutinizing of the medicines they took, if

00:53:54.920 | it didn't come with the crowding out effect of that

00:53:58.920 | individual level of self responsibility and due

00:54:01.240 | diligence that the government wasn't doing. But now we live

00:54:03.240 | in the worst of all worlds where we have neither. The government's

00:54:05.800 | neither actually protecting nor actually providing the space for

00:54:08.680 | individual responsibility. I just wanted to hear, you know,

00:54:11.560 | you make a statement, you collect data, one in 100, you

00:54:14.840 | say you'll change your mind. I just want to understand with all

00:54:17.800 | the data, the past, the present, and probably who knows every

00:54:21.480 | every incremental day, we see something new. What is the full

00:54:25.560 | 360 degree view that Vivek Ramaswamy has of Donald Trump?

00:54:29.960 | Full 360 degree view. Got it. Yeah, I actually haven't had a

00:54:33.240 | space to articulate this yet. So I think this is useful. So my

00:54:39.160 | view is that he was a successful president, measured by reviving

00:54:44.600 | the economy. It's like a present period. How, why do I say that?

00:54:49.080 | reviving the economy, growing the American economy. I think

00:54:53.240 | that recognizing and speaking to and partially addressing

00:54:57.240 | concerns that had been historically unaddressed by both

00:55:00.920 | both major political parties. We did not enter a major war, we

00:55:04.360 | were on the brink of major conflict with North Korea, on

00:55:07.560 | the precipice and other parts of the world. ISIS was a thing it

00:55:11.400 | is, you know, by it exists, but it's by and large not the same

00:55:14.520 | threat that it was after his presidency as it was when he

00:55:17.080 | took over. These are major accomplishments, right? I think

00:55:20.120 | the immigration crisis, I think is far worse today, precisely

00:55:24.280 | because Biden's in office and not Trump. So I believe he was a

00:55:27.720 | successful president. That's view number one, view number two,

00:55:32.680 | he has an effect on people. About 30% of this country that I

00:55:38.040 | think becomes psychiatrically ill when he is the US. I think

00:55:44.840 | it's just a fact, right? agreeing with things that they

00:55:47.720 | otherwise wouldn't have agreed with because that 30% number

00:55:50.280 | applies on our pod to one and four. Well, I think that it's

00:55:56.360 | just the reality is people lose their ability to process

00:56:00.280 | information. People lose the ability to think independently.

00:56:03.160 | It's like a demonic possession that happens in this country of

00:56:07.480 | about as best I can tell about 30% of the country. And I think

00:56:10.120 | that's not good for the country. And we can debate who's to blame

00:56:13.240 | for that or whatever. But I'm just stating it in observation

00:56:15.720 | that I feel pretty strongly about. And so I think most of

00:56:18.840 | Trump's policies were good. Do I have some policy disagreements

00:56:21.080 | with them? Of course I do. It'd be weird if any two people

00:56:23.480 | agreed on 100% of things. I would reenter the CPTPP. He

00:56:27.560 | exited the TPP. I think his exit of the TPP gives us a stronger

00:56:31.000 | negotiating position with Malaysia and Japan to you know,

00:56:33.720 | fix some of the micro things that we might have wanted. China

00:56:36.200 | is not in the TPP. That's part of the path to actually declare

00:56:39.000 | economic independence from China. If it comes to that. We

00:56:42.120 | could go into a lot of different details. I would have

00:56:43.640 | rescinded the affirmative action executive order that Linden

00:56:46.120 | signed that I asked Trump's people why they didn't they

00:56:48.280 | said it was a political hill they didn't want to die on. I'd

00:56:50.760 | shut down the Department of Education. We can go on. But

00:56:53.560 | broadly, he was a successful president with whom I mostly

00:56:56.920 | agree on his broad policy vision, and especially his

00:56:59.640 | handling of foreign policy.

00:57:00.200 | What did he get wrong? And what and was the election stolen?

00:57:03.800 | Yeah. So I mean, I gave you like small examples of what he

00:57:07.640 | got wrong. But I think the real care, the real thing that he

00:57:10.040 | got wrong. I'm not sure that getting wrong is the even

00:57:14.680 | framing. It's just a fact that 30% of this country became

00:57:18.120 | psychiatrically ill, and you're the leader of this country,

00:57:20.600 | you're leading a nation. And so you can decide whose fault that

00:57:23.560 | is. But I believe leaders are ultimately judged by their

00:57:25.560 | results. And for whatever reason, even when I'm saying

00:57:29.240 | the same things that Trump often did as a matter of policy or

00:57:32.600 | foreign policy, or domestic economic policy. Maybe it's

00:57:37.640 | because people don't, don't yet know me broadly, but I don't

00:57:40.040 | think that's it. Actually. I don't think I'm having that

00:57:42.920 | effect on people. And I think that that's why I'm in this

00:57:46.920 | race to carry forward unapologetic George Washington

00:57:50.520 | America First policies, and to do so more successfully, but

00:57:54.840 | also in a way that unites the country around that vision,

00:57:58.360 | more so than Donald Trump ever did or could in a second term,

00:58:01.000 | was the election stole. Here's the sense in which I think the

00:58:05.640 | election was stolen in a data driven way. I have not seen any

00:58:09.320 | data to suggest that the ballot fraud or anything like that

00:58:12.520 | would have been sufficient to overturn the ballot count of

00:58:16.760 | the ballots. I've not seen any evidence to that effect. What I

00:58:20.680 | do see is hard evidence that people in this country would

00:58:27.480 | have elected a different president. Who's that?

00:58:29.800 | I like this is Tali. This is child number five. Number five.

00:58:37.560 | She's cute. But number one in our hearts.

00:58:39.400 | That's nice. All right. So what's your name?

00:58:43.080 | Are you? I would say Tali Tali. Tali. Hey, I'm away from my

00:58:48.200 | sons. These last few days. So I you know, I'm happy for you.

00:58:52.840 | Hopefully we'll be with our little guy soon. You know what

00:58:55.160 | I was saying is, let me get to the punchline. The sense in

00:58:57.400 | which the election was stolen was the Hunter Biden laptop

00:59:01.320 | story and the systematic suppression of information. I

00:59:04.120 | think that there is no doubt. No doubt. I think that the

00:59:07.880 | evidence strongly suggests that Trump would have been elected

00:59:11.000 | and not Biden had we actually a voter base that had access to

00:59:16.680 | that information. And I think that that is something that we

00:59:19.480 | ought to learn from. And I think that it does cast a lot of

00:59:22.760 | doubt and frustration on the legitimacy of the election.

00:59:26.440 | Let me double click on that. You seem to have said on other

00:59:29.640 | programs, I've heard you at least a half dozen times talk

00:59:31.960 | about deep, deep state conspiracy, trying to frame

00:59:38.200 | Donald Trump, federal indictment of the 37 criminal charges for

00:59:42.680 | the stolen documents refusing to give them back. You got the

00:59:46.680 | New York case 34 more felony counts, we're about to have

00:59:49.240 | another one drop on January 6. You got the Georgia where he

00:59:53.160 | tried to get people to get 10,000 more votes. You got the

00:59:56.120 | New York case where CFO is going to jail. You got him

01:00:00.120 | guilty of sexual assault. And then you got Latita James is

01:00:05.080 | suing the Trump organization of these seven are all seven a deep

01:00:08.440 | state conspiracy. I think it's it's a collective anaphylactic

01:00:13.160 | immune response to an antigen that challenged the system. I

01:00:18.600 | guess really what he did anything wrong, you're using all

01:00:21.320 | seven of these cases. He's Scott free. It's just I want to be

01:00:24.520 | really clear about something. I'm running for US President in

01:00:27.800 | this race against Donald Trump, because I'm the best position to

01:00:30.680 | lead this nation forward. And I was guilty of any of these

01:00:33.400 | seven, I would have made I would have made very different

01:00:35.960 | judgments than he did. But I think criminalizing bad

01:00:38.120 | judgments, especially when done so against political opponents

01:00:41.480 | in the midst of a presidential election, is an awful judgment

01:00:45.160 | for a US President and the Department of Justice

01:00:47.880 | underneath him to make. So you think that the Department of

01:00:52.200 | Justice and the person he put in charge of it, they're all

01:00:54.840 | conspiring, and that he didn't do anything wrong? Well, there's

01:00:58.920 | like a lot in that statement, right? Sure. Does he did he do

01:01:01.880 | things that I think are reprehensible that I wouldn't

01:01:05.080 | have done? Yeah, I think so. I mean, a lot of acts as they

01:01:08.280 | exist. Absolutely. Do I think that Biden and a lot of other

01:01:12.760 | politicians who have come have done things that I would have

01:01:15.080 | done differently and actually think were wrong decisions?

01:01:18.120 | Absolutely. But do I think that conflating a bad judgment with a

01:01:23.720 | breakage of law is a risk to our future? I think it is. Do you

01:01:27.480 | think he sent those people to? I mean, you just go on January

01:01:31.080 | 6? I don't think he did. No, no, I think we need to march down

01:01:35.240 | there. And when he told the proud boys to stand by and stand

01:01:38.200 | back, you don't think that he was inciting them? Let me just

01:01:42.040 | say, I'm not here to defend Donald Trump's behavior. I'm

01:01:46.200 | running for US President. I think we need to but I think

01:01:48.120 | your opinion on it matters. I don't think my opinion on this

01:01:50.520 | matters. Yes, I want to be very clear about that the hat that

01:01:52.680 | I'm wearing. I would not have done what he did. But he was

01:01:56.680 | very clear. I mean, you look at the transcripts, you run this

01:01:59.080 | by as I have First Amendment scholars just to check my

01:02:01.640 | inciting violence is not protected speech by the First

01:02:04.440 | Amendment. There's no sense in which when he tells people to

01:02:08.280 | peacefully make their way to the Capitol that does not meet any

01:02:11.000 | Supreme Court test for what constitutes inciting violence

01:02:14.440 | in this country. I think that let's just take this take the

01:02:17.080 | New York example. I mean, some of the stuff the details actually

01:02:19.240 | let's take the let's take the Oath Keepers one because that

01:02:21.480 | found roads hold on. First, hold on, let me get my first Oath

01:02:26.680 | Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes got 18 years. Do you think that

01:02:29.240 | the Justice Department did that? Because they're trying to

01:02:32.120 | frame Trump and you and Trump told the Oath Keepers to stand

01:02:35.480 | by and to stand back? Do you think he incited the Oath

01:02:38.280 | Keepers? Yes or no? Based on the facts that I have seen, I've

01:02:42.120 | seen no evidence of that. You're delusional. Okay. Yeah, I

01:02:45.800 | mean, that's delusional. Look, hold them to stand by. Okay, so

01:02:50.920 | I'm also there's also an indictment that hasn't been

01:02:52.840 | brought. So I've offered my opinion on the first two

01:02:55.320 | indictments that have been brought against him, right? I

01:02:57.320 | read them. I read all 49 pages in the last one. I'm responsive

01:03:00.840 | to facts. Yeah. On the first two indictments. I think they're

01:03:04.760 | absolutely politically based in and I can go through the if

01:03:09.080 | you're interested, we can go into the specifics of it. I mean,

01:03:11.080 | it might be boring. I'll take your word. Yeah. You know, on

01:03:13.640 | New York, right? I mean, I'll just give you a line on each

01:03:16.040 | right. Okay. In New York. Let's take a fact that it's a state

01:03:20.760 | offense that was up charged to a felony and outside the statute

01:03:24.680 | of limitations, only by tying it to an alleged federal crime.

01:03:28.920 | And what was that federal crime? Failing to report a hush

01:03:32.840 | money payment to a porn star as a campaign contribution. There

01:03:36.120 | would be a stronger case for using and paying hush money and

01:03:39.800 | using campaign funds to do it. That that was a federal campaign

01:03:42.920 | finance law violation, then not actually counting it. So so it

01:03:46.680 | so many counts. That's a politicized prosecution against

01:03:49.080 | anybody else. They wouldn't have brought it documents case. A

01:03:52.680 | 49 page indictment read it twice. That does not once

01:03:56.760 | mention the Presidential Records Act, the most relevant

01:04:00.040 | statute that talks about what the basis is for President to

01:04:02.520 | keep documents or not, and instead charges him according to

01:04:06.040 | I think one of the most un-American laws in US history

01:04:08.840 | passed during World War One to silence World War One

01:04:12.120 | dissenters, including Eugene V. Debs, who Eugene V. Debs, who

01:04:15.400 | was actually put in prison over this. I have long argued that

01:04:19.480 | that was a statute that should have long been over should have

01:04:22.120 | been rescinded. That's now being used to charge a crime

01:04:24.760 | rather than eat more precise crime. So I tend to be very

01:04:27.400 | responsive, maybe to the point of frustration of being

01:04:30.120 | technical on these things, but I believe facts and law actually

01:04:33.400 | matter. I think that if Trump was the best guy for the job, I

01:04:37.000 | wouldn't be running in this race. If Ronald Reagan were

01:04:39.240 | alive and well today, I would not be running in this race.

01:04:42.680 | Got it. So you're not a fan. I want to just go back to the I

01:04:46.760 | have a question. I have a question about these Trump

01:04:49.000 | scandals. Do you think that one of the seven? Well, I think do

01:04:53.720 | you think Trump should be indicted for Donald Trump Jr.

01:04:57.240 | being paid $83,000 a month to serve on the board of a

01:05:00.040 | Ukrainian energy company, despite having no energy

01:05:02.840 | expertise? Oh, wait, that's Hunter and his personal life

01:05:05.800 | being in crisis because he's a drug addict. Him getting that

01:05:09.240 | job three months after his father approved a and backed a

01:05:14.120 | coup against the Ukrainian government. Do you think that

01:05:16.200 | Donald Trump Jr. should be investigated for that? And

01:05:20.360 | David, is this is this also after that Donald Trump then

01:05:24.920 | sends $200 billion of US taxpayer money to that very

01:05:28.280 | country, right after he's elected in office? I think

01:05:31.080 | that's the strongest of the scandals I've heard so far. So

01:05:33.720 | you believe Biden is a great way to say that. I'm a hunter

01:05:36.840 | Biden. Sorry. Well, it's just wrong grifters. What do you

01:05:39.720 | think of Jared Kushner getting taking down 2 billion from the

01:05:42.200 | Saudis after he walked out of the White House? I don't have

01:05:47.720 | that's not a matter that I have views on. You don't have views

01:05:51.880 | on that. But you got plenty of views on Trump. I got he's not

01:05:54.280 | in government. He's not in government. Okay, let's move on

01:05:56.760 | past Trump because this is a great example of why I'm in

01:06:00.360 | this race. I'm telling you this is there's something about the

01:06:03.480 | existence of Donald Trump exactly can't get away from

01:06:05.880 | criminal behavior that deflects our ability to behavior and

01:06:10.600 | trying to carry forward the agenda of this country, much of

01:06:13.960 | which was Trump's own agenda. So Vivek, in order to win this

01:06:17.640 | candidacy, and the reason I brought up the politico

01:06:20.120 | publication this morning, obviously, there was a bit of

01:06:23.240 | tongue in cheek on the effusiveness. But the key point

01:06:25.800 | being made was you have no chance of winning, and that you

01:06:29.240 | shouldn't be in the race at all. Now, look, I'd like that was

01:06:34.440 | the thesis of the piece. Yeah. But what's interesting is where

01:06:37.240 | it's coming from, right? It's coming from the establishment

01:06:40.520 | voice. And I think we'd like to hear just a little bit around

01:06:44.200 | your political strategy. What is your intention around building

01:06:48.920 | bridges and ties to the Republican establishment to

01:06:52.200 | support your candidacy here? Or does the or does the Republican

01:06:56.040 | establishment largely sit on the sidelines right now and wait

01:06:59.080 | to see who emerges with this popular movement and who's out

01:07:02.760 | there, you're obviously running an incredible campaign on the

01:07:05.720 | road, very active, very vocal. And as everyone says, probably

01:07:09.800 | by far the most articulate and most thoughtful and most

01:07:13.000 | intelligent of the candidates in the race today, but lacking

01:07:16.680 | experience, lacking connections, not part of the

01:07:19.960 | establishment, and as a result, cast in this negative light,

01:07:23.400 | consistently by the by these sorts of writers. So what is

01:07:27.160 | your strategy to win this race? Given the is it not important,

01:07:31.240 | as Trump showed in the last election cycle to have those

01:07:34.040 | Republican establishment ties? Or are you going to be building

01:07:37.160 | bridges? And then my follow up question is, if you don't win,

01:07:39.560 | what are you going to do?

01:07:40.200 | Yeah, so let me, let me address the first, it's basically in the

01:07:45.800 | camp that I don't think it's the voters that ultimately matter,

01:07:48.440 | not the people who have appointed themselves in the

01:07:52.280 | reigning establishment, or it's not even the establishment

01:07:54.360 | anymore. It's an outdated establishment that I don't think

01:07:58.680 | actually is going to influence meaningfully the result of this

01:08:01.080 | election, except for one respect, which is money, which

01:08:03.160 | I'll get back to. So the area where we're punching above our

01:08:06.440 | weight, right, debates haven't even happened yet. In at least

01:08:10.200 | in the last week, I'm third in most of the national polls. This

01:08:13.960 | is well ahead of even where we planned to be, right, we planned

01:08:17.240 | to be in third by November, December ahead of the Iowa

01:08:19.720 | caucuses, ahead of New Hampshire, overperform

01:08:22.440 | expectations, and both of those use the momentum to then win the

01:08:24.680 | race. That was broadly the strategy with the debate stage

01:08:27.240 | as the plate as the way where I would steadily work my way into

01:08:29.480 | that. I think we're just now on a different curve, where, you

01:08:33.080 | know, we might be in second place by then and by a smaller

01:08:35.400 | margin than people expected. I think the debate stage is

01:08:38.440 | critical. The campaign strategy is actually to combine the

01:08:41.720 | initial investment that because I've lived the American dream

01:08:44.760 | I've was able to make, but to combine that with a true

01:08:47.880 | grassroots uplift. We've got close to 70,000, maybe more, I

01:08:51.880 | have to check the exact numbers, unique donors already,

01:08:54.280 | you know, former, you know, vice presidents or other candidates

01:08:57.160 | that are, you know, well on their way and struggling by some

01:09:00.200 | measures to get to 40,000, which is the threshold for the first

01:09:03.240 | debate. So our strategy is very much a grassroots strategy. I've

01:09:06.840 | done more campaign events than anybody in the Republican field.

01:09:10.120 | And so this is our strategy is very grassroots driven. So I'm

01:09:14.360 | punching above my weight in terms of events, unique

01:09:18.120 | donations, polling. The one area where I'm punching below weight

01:09:23.080 | is large scale donations. So we are not raising mass numbers of

01:09:28.600 | large check external funds yet into the campaign. My super

01:09:32.840 | PACs, or I don't even, I mean, whatever, they're independent

01:09:35.080 | expenditures. I don't, there's an entity that exists out there

01:09:38.040 | that's been affiliated with me has, based on public reports,

01:09:41.240 | tiny amounts of money compared to those that are supporting an

01:09:46.440 | all in for candidates from Tim Scott to Rhonda Sannes. And

01:09:50.680 | that's also a reality, right? I think that that comes with

01:09:54.040 | competitive advantages and disadvantages. They're two sides

01:09:56.120 | of the same coin. I think I am at liberty, total liberty. I

01:10:00.040 | feel totally unconstrained to pursue the strategy that David

01:10:03.240 | mentioned earlier, which is that I'm reacting in real time to

01:10:06.760 | what I believe. Have you been surprised by the lack of

01:10:11.800 | clarity, maybe of the DeSantis campaign in really creating a

01:10:18.680 | pathway through Trump? And if you are surprised, what do you

01:10:23.480 | think he's doing wrong? If you had to critique it? Yeah, I'm

01:10:26.680 | not surprised because I know him and I think he's a good

01:10:30.200 | executor, right? I think he has been, I disagree with some

01:10:34.280 | other people on this. I think he's been quite an effective

01:10:36.040 | governor. I think that when you're talking about, and Scott

01:10:40.520 | Walker in the last cycle was quite an effective governor. And

01:10:43.880 | for the same reasons that people believed Scott Walker was

01:10:46.440 | going to be the runaway nominee last time around, I think that

01:10:49.400 | people naturally gravitate. People think they want somebody

01:10:52.600 | who has done something as an effective executor. But when it

01:10:56.120 | comes to the US presidency, I think it's a unique role where

01:10:59.080 | what matters is actually having a vision for where we are going.

01:11:02.680 | Right? And so I'm not, without saying things that are

01:11:07.880 | interpreted as being mean about somebody else or not, I know all

01:11:10.040 | of these people, I've known them for a long time. I've shared

01:11:12.600 | stages with them over the course of my Woke Inc book tour and

01:11:16.440 | Nation of Victims book tour. I'm not surprised with how

01:11:20.520 | things are going in this race. I said we expected to be where

01:11:23.400 | we are in November. We're here in July. I'm not surprised that

01:11:26.520 | we're doing well. I understand how audiences across this

01:11:29.400 | country responded to my message in Woke Inc. I'm not surprised

01:11:32.200 | that they're continuing to respond well to Trump. I think

01:11:34.200 | there's nothing surprising about where we are in this race right

01:11:36.760 | now. And so you're not surprised because because

01:11:39.000 | DeSantis is a competent administrator, but that is a

01:11:44.360 | great job as governor, but not the bill of goods for the

01:11:48.440 | president. I'm really at a point in this race from I want

01:11:53.240 | to focus on this, but to be honest with you, I think I

01:11:56.280 | think there's a lot of truth to what you said. Yeah. Don't you

01:11:58.040 | think part of it, though, is that Trump has singled out

01:12:00.600 | DeSantis as the one candidate who he's gonna beat the hell out

01:12:04.760 | of? I mean, I don't think so, David, actually, I'll tell you

01:12:07.000 | why. It's true, right? He has not attacked you. Trump's

01:12:10.920 | actually said good things about you. Yeah, he's not attacked

01:12:13.560 | anybody else in this race. Yeah, exactly. Have you spent

01:12:16.680 | time with Trump? I know all these guys. I know. Have you

01:12:19.000 | spent time with Trump? When's the last time you talked to him?

01:12:21.080 | Not a serious amount of time. I've spent more time with

01:12:23.000 | DeSantis than I have with Trump. Have you spent over an

01:12:24.920 | hour with Trump? Once, yeah. This is long before I was

01:12:28.200 | running for president, but we had dinner. Has his people ever

01:12:31.640 | reached out and tried to build bridges with you? We've talked

01:12:35.720 | backstage. I mean, most of us when we intersect each other

01:12:37.880 | were speaking at the same forums, the NRA, the family

01:12:40.360 | leader thing that Tucker did backstage. We have interactions

01:12:42.680 | with all the other candidates. I'd like to think I'm friendly

01:12:44.840 | with everybody. You know, I don't know how, you know, I

01:12:48.040 | haven't talked to Ron recently, but I've talked to him more

01:12:50.280 | before. But I think the reality is, so Dave, what you said is

01:12:55.400 | definitely true. And I'm not in this to be a political

01:12:57.480 | analyst, right? I'm in this to state what my beliefs are, say

01:13:00.760 | who I am and people can vote for me or not. But I actually do

01:13:03.640 | think, I don't think that Trump's commentary on the other

01:13:06.920 | candidates is having so much of an effect. I think voters, many

01:13:10.040 | people who were maybe initially behind DeSantis, I know many of

01:13:12.840 | them were people who are part of that traditional

01:13:15.320 | establishment that didn't want, that most of them didn't want

01:13:17.480 | to have nothing to do with Trump, but decided that was the

01:13:20.280 | next best thing. So I don't think that Trump's attacks are

01:13:22.520 | going to persuade them one way or another. I think it comes

01:13:25.320 | down to the study of what happened in 2016. Scott Walker,

01:13:28.920 | great governor, really respected guy. And I like what he's doing

01:13:31.880 | in his post elected office life as well. But everybody has a

01:13:36.040 | role to play in reviving this country. And I think we all have

01:13:39.160 | to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, how are we

01:13:41.800 | going to make our unique contribution? And I think it's

01:13:45.400 | going to require governors who are effective implementers of a

01:13:49.480 | vision that makes their states thrive. I think Governor DeSantis

01:13:53.400 | has done a really good job of that. I think Kristi Noem has

01:13:55.080 | done a really good job of that. I think there are people who

01:13:58.520 | hopefully will continue to have an impact on our culture outside

01:14:01.960 | of government altogether. There's a really important role

01:14:04.520 | for that. And Jason, I think that's my answer to your other

01:14:06.760 | question, which I forgot to answer.

01:14:09.000 | Can I go back to two things that you mentioned just in passing,

01:14:12.680 | but I just want you to clarify your thoughts on them. One, as

01:14:16.520 | you said, you would abolish the Department of Education. And I

01:14:20.120 | thought I'd never heard anybody say that, really. So could you

01:14:23.480 | just expand on that what you mean? And then the second, I'd

01:14:27.320 | love for you to talk about some of these Supreme Court decisions

01:14:31.000 | that have come in the last little while, specifically, the

01:14:35.400 | abortion debate, the affirmative action debate, the rights of

01:14:38.600 | businesses to not service people whose ideology they disagree

01:14:44.520 | with. And then, sorry, the third point is maybe use that last

01:14:47.560 | part as a jumping off point. I'd love for you to understand

01:14:50.280 | your position on LGBTQ, the role of the trans movement, what's

01:14:57.000 | happening in schools. Those are the three kind of big, chunky

01:14:59.800 | areas that I think are worth talking about, if you can just

01:15:02.680 | give a few minutes.

01:15:03.400 | Yeah, there's a lot there. So let me, if I skip over

01:15:07.320 | something, bring me back. So Department of Education, I think

01:15:12.760 | the federal government is not as a factual matter directly

01:15:15.000 | involved in education. I think it is a therefore a deadweight

01:15:17.880 | waste for money to cycle from the taxpayers to the federal

01:15:21.080 | Department of Education to then disperse those funds

01:15:23.240 | inefficiently as they do. Tilting the scales to four-year

01:15:26.360 | college degrees over choices that people might have otherwise

01:15:29.480 | made that are better choices for them. Vocational training,

01:15:32.360 | one-year, two-year programs. Using it as a cudgel, and this

01:15:35.880 | relates to the latter issue you asked about, to tell local

01:15:38.840 | schools they don't get that money unless they're adopting

01:15:41.880 | what I certainly view as toxic racial and gender ideology-

01:15:44.840 | based agendas. They use the money as a cudgel to do it. So

01:15:48.520 | I've said that that department that spends about $80 billion

01:15:51.320 | of taxpayer money, I'll shut it down. Tonight in New Hampshire,

01:15:54.760 | I'm laying out the anatomy of exactly how we'll shut it down.

01:15:57.640 | And then return that money to the states, to the people, put

01:16:01.080 | it in parents' pockets. Very specifically, you have to be a

01:16:04.760 | state that has a school choice program in order to receive that

01:16:07.880 | Department of Education shutdown dividend. I think that if

01:16:10.840 | you're such a state, I would also believe that those states

01:16:13.480 | need to write their teachers' union, teachers' contracts in a

01:16:17.240 | way that stop teachers from joining teachers' unions, which

01:16:20.520 | I think have been a destructive force on our public schools.

01:16:23.480 | If you're unionizing against the public, think about who

01:16:26.120 | you're unionizing against, the very kids you're supposed to

01:16:28.280 | represent. Now we have transparency, we have choice. If

01:16:31.320 | you teach it in the classroom, put it online. And then there's

01:16:34.440 | an interesting fact in this country where I think you guys

01:16:37.480 | will appreciate how bizarre this fact really is. There's not

01:16:42.680 | only like a failed positive correlation, there is a negative

01:16:47.320 | correlation, an inverse correlation between how much

01:16:51.320 | money per student a public school spends and the actual

01:16:55.640 | outcomes that that school achieves for its students. So in

01:17:00.440 | my version of school choice, my preferred version, it would not

01:17:03.720 | just be that parents get to get these vouchers and educational

01:17:07.000 | savings accounts to send their kids to some other school.

01:17:09.000 | That's part of the story. It's a first step. But I think any

01:17:11.880 | parent who moves to a school that spends less per student,

01:17:16.840 | which we know based on the data is actually almost equal to a

01:17:20.120 | better performing school as it relates to achievement, should

01:17:23.160 | be able to take half the delta with them. So let's take

01:17:25.960 | Chicago or Pennsylvania spending $35,000, $40,000 per

01:17:28.760 | student. Fifteen miles away, you have a school spending $15,000

01:17:31.480 | to $20,000 per student. I think they should be able to take half

01:17:34.840 | the difference that $10,000 to $15,000, half that difference of

01:17:37.960 | the $20,000 to $10,000 they take with them. You run the math on

01:17:42.120 | normal investment returns. You're talking about a quarter

01:17:44.680 | million dollar plus graduation gift when that kid graduates

01:17:47.800 | from 12th grade. So you tell me which is a better use of money.

01:17:51.480 | It's not even close. And I think the head of the state

01:17:54.360 | That's a great idea.

01:17:56.200 | That's a great, great, great idea.

01:17:57.400 | Did you come up with that idea? Or did is that something

01:17:59.560 | that's not there? I think it was actually another guy's an

01:18:02.280 | arbitrageur who's a friend but who shares similar instincts.

01:18:05.160 | And like, I'm like, I'm a value investor. I believe in market

01:18:08.360 | great, great incentive, which is makes sense in the world.

01:18:11.560 | Yeah. Okay, let's move past education.

01:18:14.200 | Yeah, I want to talk about the specific the gay and the trans

01:18:17.320 | issue. Two questions. One, do you think it's normal to be gay?

01:18:20.600 | And you have any problem with people being gay? And then

01:18:24.520 | No, I do not have a basis, etc. No problem. So then the second,

01:18:28.120 | of course, talking about trans, I heard you on meet the press,

01:18:31.000 | say that trans was a mental disorder, which Yeah, you know,

01:18:35.240 | it wasn't the DSM four, I guess, or whatever the latest one was,

01:18:38.120 | yeah, just a couple years ago, and now it's changed. So maybe

01:18:42.360 | explain why you think differently about those two

01:18:45.320 | things. One, you think it's fine to be gay, but you think it's a

01:18:48.520 | mental disorder in all likelihood, if people want to

01:18:51.080 | transit.

01:18:51.580 | Yeah, so you know, I want to leave you with a good sense of

01:18:56.280 | where I'm at on on these issues, right? So I think it's at least

01:19:00.600 | curious that we take the LGBTQ plus value set and vision for

01:19:08.440 | what the movement stands for, it does require you to adopt

01:19:12.200 | simultaneously conflicting beliefs at once. Right? The gay

01:19:17.640 | rights movement was predicated on the idea, which I'm quite

01:19:19.800 | sympathetic to, that the sex of the person that you're attracted

01:19:22.840 | to is hardwired on the day you're born. But now with the T

01:19:26.440 | component of that same movement that now says your own gender is

01:19:29.960 | completely fluid over the course of your own life. And I think

01:19:32.360 | we're not going to observe the tension between these two

01:19:34.360 | observations. I think that we're purposefully having our head

01:19:38.440 | stuck in the sand. I think what's happening in many cases,

01:19:40.440 | somebody who claims to be trans is really just gay. And part of

01:19:44.120 | what we're saying is it's not okay to be gay. So to answer

01:19:46.200 | your first question, part of what the trans movement is

01:19:48.680 | effectively telling people is that it's not okay to be gay.

01:19:51.080 | You know, who else says that? Iran. Actually, Iran is a nation

01:19:54.680 | that if you are gay, they force you to undergo gender

01:19:56.920 | conversion surgery. It's not that different than what's baked

01:20:00.120 | into the ideological premise of much of the trans movement here.

01:20:02.760 | And so I just want you to come from the fact there's a lot of

01:20:05.800 | people in the GOP who will offer surface level stuff here. I've

01:20:08.920 | spent a lot of time thinking about this. Gender dysphoria is

01:20:13.880 | what I've said is a mental health disorder. I've been very

01:20:17.000 | precise. Let's take the intersex case out of it. Klinefelter

01:20:19.960 | syndrome, Jacob's syndrome, right? Klinefelter is XXY.

01:20:23.880 | Jacob's syndrome is XYY. These are ultra rare. They exist.

01:20:29.320 | They're real. For the purpose of our discussion, though it's

01:20:33.000 | under the broad trans umbrella, I'm going to take that out of

01:20:35.080 | it because that's not a mental health disorder. That's a

01:20:37.240 | genetic reality. But now let's go back to the conflicting

01:20:43.080 | supposition. There's no gay gene, yet the sex of the person

01:20:45.480 | you're attracted to, we accept for civil rights purposes, is

01:20:47.800 | hard right on the day you're born. Yet there are X and Y

01:20:50.920 | chromosomes, and yet your own biological sex/gender is now

01:20:54.520 | completely fluid over the course of your life. There's a

01:20:56.840 | tension there. And I think that tension is best explained by the

01:21:00.440 | way we've treated it for most of our national history, for most

01:21:03.960 | of our medical history, all the way through actually I think the

01:21:06.200 | DSM-5, not just the four, as a mental health condition. And I

01:21:10.280 | think the compassionate thing to do is not to affirm, especially

01:21:14.120 | when it's a kid, to affirm a kid's confusion. I think the

01:21:18.360 | compassionate thing to do is to recognize that there's some

01:21:21.560 | other psychological struggle manifesting itself in this form.

01:21:24.520 | And it is cruel to affirm that kid's confusion. I met two

01:21:28.520 | young women, Chloe and Katie. And by affirm we mean surgery or

01:21:30.680 | hormone therapy.

01:21:31.160 | Surgery, hormone therapy, exactly.

01:21:33.000 | So you would limit that to when you're an adult 18 years old?

01:21:36.760 | Yes.

01:21:37.000 | And you would ban parents?

01:21:37.480 | There's two women I met here in New Hampshire, literally like

01:21:39.400 | where I am right now, who are in their 20s that badly regret

01:21:43.880 | undergoing double mastectomies. One of them underwent a

01:21:46.040 | hysterectomy. Both of them underwent puberty blockers.

01:21:49.240 | So even if the parents and doctors agreed with it, you

01:21:51.560 | would say they can't make that decision for the child?

01:21:53.400 | Just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of 18 in most,

01:21:57.480 | what we say is a decision that you are likely to regret, in

01:22:04.600 | many cases at least, likely to regret later in life. We let you

01:22:07.800 | make that decision as an adult. And I do believe we live in a

01:22:09.880 | free society. As an adult, you're free to identify how you

01:22:12.920 | want, a free to wear what you want. But kids aren't the same

01:22:18.360 | as adults. And even among adults, there's a difference

01:22:21.160 | between living your life freely and expecting that everybody

01:22:24.440 | else changes their linguistic and traditional understandings

01:22:31.080 | in sports and traditional understandings in locker rooms

01:22:35.640 | and traditional understandings in language. That's a

01:22:38.840 | difference. And so I don't believe in a tyranny of the

01:22:40.760 | majority, but I don't believe in a tyranny of the minority

01:22:42.760 | either. Do you think this topic is over indexed on right now?

01:22:45.480 | And is a really important topic presidency? Or do you think

01:22:47.720 | this is like some sort of culture wars thing that this

01:22:50.920 | actually isn't that important to the national discussion should

01:22:53.640 | be held privately? I appreciate you asking that, Jason is, I

01:22:58.280 | think I feel this way about a lot of the topics, right from

01:23:00.760 | racial position on that. I think like, why is this the most

01:23:04.680 | important topic? Yeah, this is this is interesting. Because

01:23:08.280 | it's a symptom is interesting, only to the extent that it is a

01:23:11.960 | symptom of the deeper void of the deeper vacuum. And I think

01:23:17.080 | the mental health epidemic is not limited to gender dysphoria,

01:23:19.640 | anxiety, depression, drug usage, fentanyl, suicide, these

01:23:24.360 | let's have the conversation more holistically, these are

01:23:26.680 | symptoms of the deeper void. And all I care about is running

01:23:31.320 | through these topics without somebody holding the line of

01:23:33.640 | defense by stopping us to get to a discussion about that void

01:23:36.520 | to say no, this is exactly what that kid is. And you're wrong

01:23:39.400 | to think about as a mental health disorder. I think that's

01:23:41.800 | unproductive, because it stops us from getting to the truth.

01:23:44.440 | Over the years, it's been the case that young people tend to

01:23:49.560 | orient to being counter cultural, or anti establishment.

01:23:54.120 | Generally speaking, it's part of the psychological seasoning

01:23:59.080 | of a human to be against the parents against the system and

01:24:02.360 | ultimately to create independence for oneself. And

01:24:05.080 | that's typically counter to what what came before it. And it

01:24:08.200 | has manifested in every generation, with this point of

01:24:11.480 | view that there is some psychological torment that has

01:24:14.280 | taken over the young people that is causing them to act out

01:24:18.200 | from beatniks, to hippies, to punks, to goth, to emo, and

01:24:23.240 | every generation had some cultural representation is your

01:24:26.600 | point of view that gender dysphoria is the current

01:24:29.240 | manifestation of that pattern of behavior that we've seen over

01:24:33.560 | the generations. That's not exactly my view. My view is

01:24:37.320 | that it's not limited to young people. I think there's

01:24:39.800 | something unique going on in America right now. It's true of

01:24:44.840 | all of us. There's some sense, some of this comes from

01:24:49.000 | self-reflection, but I think it's true for most of us that

01:24:53.800 | we're hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

01:24:57.960 | Yet we cannot even answer what it means to be an American, or

01:25:03.480 | what it means to believe in God or what God is. And we have

01:25:07.320 | come up with new false idols that substitute for that. So

01:25:10.600 | I'm talking about generational history. I mean, you know,

01:25:13.000 | Moses, by the time he comes down from the mountaintop, you

01:25:15.000 | got the golden calf, Israelites are lost in the desert. They

01:25:18.200 | say they want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh. Yeah, I

01:25:20.680 | think that the historical trend I'm talking about is a

01:25:22.440 | slightly different one, and maybe has a longer arc to it

01:25:25.400 | than the one you're talking about. But I, but my diagnosis

01:25:29.720 | is not specific to young people. It's specific to where

01:25:32.840 | we are in a national history, when like a bunch of blind

01:25:36.280 | bats in a cave, right? How does a bat figure out where it is?

01:25:39.400 | It sends out echolocation signals, sonar signals that

01:25:42.920 | come back and say, this is where I am. I think we human

01:25:46.280 | beings are wired to do the same thing. And the pillars, the

01:25:50.120 | walls, the fixed points of truth from family to faith, to

01:25:53.160 | patriotism, to hard work, to individual pride, the things

01:25:56.760 | that used to ground us, when those things disappear, we're

01:26:00.360 | now sending out these signals and then nothing's coming back.

01:26:02.760 | And so we're making up new pillars instead. And maybe one

01:26:06.280 | of them is a trans flag. And maybe one of them is a Ukraine

01:26:08.920 | flag. And maybe one of them is a climate cult. And maybe one of

01:26:12.760 | them is a racial intersectional hierarchy. And maybe one of

01:26:16.120 | them is fentanyl. But I think that that's I do have a deep

01:26:23.240 | point of agreement with you and Jason that I think we sometimes

01:26:25.240 | get too hung up both sides, maybe Republicans a lot so

01:26:28.040 | right now, on the symptoms, without getting to a deeper

01:26:31.960 | discussion of the deeper cancer, the deeper void that we need to

01:26:35.960 | fill. And that's what I'm interested in.

01:26:37.320 | Chamath brought up the Roe v. Wade issue. I'm wondering, what

01:26:42.040 | do you think is the most productive path forward for the

01:26:45.480 | country, in terms of reasonable right to choose versus right to

01:26:50.600 | life argument, because you personally feel that abortion

01:26:54.040 | should be banned? Am I correct?

01:26:55.160 | I am personally pro life.

01:26:57.720 | You're pro life. So you don't believe I'll be able to get an

01:26:59.800 | abortion under any circumstances? Or do you have

01:27:02.120 | rape and sex?

01:27:02.600 | My view, as someone who's running for US President

01:27:05.240 | responding to the question about the Supreme Court case, is that

01:27:08.200 | Roe v. Wade was correct to be overturned on constitutional

01:27:11.400 | grounds.

01:27:11.880 | Okay, fine.

01:27:12.360 | It was, it was made up.

01:27:13.240 | It's a legal argument. How do you personally feel?

01:27:15.480 | But it leads also to the path for moving forward, which is

01:27:18.200 | that I think the federal government should stay out of

01:27:19.800 | it. And so there's a discussion amongst Republicans, I think I'm

01:27:23.320 | the only Republican candidate in this field, who has come out

01:27:27.320 | and said that I would not support a federal abortion ban of

01:27:31.160 | any kind, on principled ground, because to me, I am grounded in

01:27:36.840 | constitutional principles.

01:27:38.120 | And I think there's no legal basis for the federal government

01:27:40.680 | to legislate here.

01:27:41.800 | The 10th Amendment says that part of the American experiment

01:27:44.360 | is we have diversity across states.

01:27:46.680 | And I think this is a state issue.

01:27:48.680 | Now, at the level of the states, I'm personally a believer that

01:27:53.640 | unborn life is life.

01:27:55.560 | I think that the pro-life movement needs to, we need to

01:27:58.680 | walk the walk.

01:27:59.960 | When it comes to being pro-life, what do I mean?

01:28:01.960 | I'm pro-contraception.

01:28:03.080 | I'm pro-adoption.

01:28:04.760 | I'm pro-childcare.

01:28:05.960 | I'm pro-more sexual responsibility for men, for God's

01:28:09.560 | sake, we live in an era of genetic tests.

01:28:11.880 | We can actually put more responsibility on men.

01:28:14.200 | This doesn't have to be and should not be a men's versus

01:28:16.520 | women's rights issue.

01:28:17.480 | And nobody on our side is really talking about these issues.

01:28:19.880 | I do, because I don't think this has to be as divisive as we've

01:28:22.840 | made it out to be.

01:28:24.200 | But I can almost prove to you that more people in this country

01:28:27.240 | share my instincts than are willing to admit it.

01:28:29.160 | There's a case, Clarence Thomas brought it up, of a pregnant

01:28:33.400 | woman walking down the street.

01:28:34.680 | She's assaulted.

01:28:36.120 | The unborn child dies as a result.

01:28:40.040 | I haven't met, and I have many liberal friends, most of my

01:28:44.360 | friends growing up have been, have different political

01:28:46.600 | persuasions than I have now.

01:28:47.720 | I haven't met a single one of my liberal friends or otherwise

01:28:52.040 | who says that that criminal does not deserve liability for that

01:28:57.400 | death.

01:28:57.720 | And so I just think more of us share these common instincts.

01:29:00.440 | If one state wants to ban it, they can ban it.

01:29:02.520 | If another state wants to have a 24 week rule, they could have a

01:29:06.440 | 24 week rule.

01:29:07.240 | That's that you are like other Republican candidates, I will

01:29:09.480 | not be signing a federal abortion ban on constitutional

01:29:12.360 | grounds.

01:29:12.920 | And I remain open to persuasion.

01:29:14.200 | If some legal scholar convinces me that the US Constitution

01:29:17.320 | gives the federal government the authority to sign that into

01:29:20.120 | law, so be it.

01:29:21.160 | But I have not been so convinced.

01:29:22.760 | And I think many other principled constitutionalists

01:29:25.160 | haven't been convinced, even though the other Republican

01:29:27.720 | field has all, best of every other candidate in this race

01:29:30.360 | has said they would sign one.

01:29:31.160 | What is your thought on just the gross tonnage of dollars that

01:29:34.040 | we spend on the military and defense and espionage and, you

01:29:40.360 | know, internal, external security?

01:29:43.320 | And then when those bump up against civil liberties, just

01:29:46.760 | give us your kind of framing on how you think about those sets

01:29:49.720 | of issues around national level security, but where and

01:29:53.480 | personal, personal privacy.

01:29:55.160 | So I'm, I, for more of my life than not identified as a

01:29:58.920 | libertarian than a conservative.

01:30:00.600 | And I still have all of those libertarian instincts in my

01:30:03.400 | core.

01:30:04.200 | It's just that I care about more issues than libertarians

01:30:07.080 | care about, because libertarianism is all about the

01:30:09.320 | relationship between the state and the individual.

01:30:11.240 | And I actually do care about culture and the fabric of the

01:30:14.200 | society outside of government too.

01:30:16.200 | It's a long way of saying I'm deeply skeptical of the

01:30:18.680 | national security establishment.

01:30:20.440 | I was deeply skeptical of the Iraq war at the time.

01:30:23.480 | I think I am today in retrospect.

01:30:25.560 | I was deeply skeptical that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay

01:30:28.360 | should have been denied constitutional due process

01:30:30.760 | rights when that's exactly what enshrines the justice system

01:30:34.760 | that we otherwise believe in.

01:30:35.960 | I would pardon Julian Assange.

01:30:38.840 | I would pardon Edward Snowden.

01:30:40.760 | I've committed to a long list of pardons of people who have

01:30:45.000 | taken steps to expose corruption that we otherwise

01:30:47.880 | would not have seen in this country.

01:30:49.880 | And I think part of the reason why is there's a weird

01:30:52.920 | corporate analogy here.

01:30:53.800 | We're talking about companies and finding their purpose

01:30:56.600 | and Coinbase.

01:30:57.320 | I think there's a version of that going on in the US

01:30:59.560 | military.

01:31:00.060 | I think the US military has lost its sense of purpose

01:31:04.200 | actually.

01:31:04.700 | And so my view is the purpose of the US military is to secure

01:31:08.200 | Americans on American soil to make sure that we, when

01:31:12.040 | necessary, win wars and more importantly, deter wars.

01:31:15.320 | And I think part of what you see in the loss of people

01:31:17.800 | complain about wokeness in the military, et cetera, these

01:31:19.720 | are again, symptoms of a deeper loss of purpose of an

01:31:22.760 | institution, not that much different than a company.

01:31:24.680 | But my view is I'm not in the same way with the immigration

01:31:27.960 | debate.

01:31:28.520 | I don't engage in this.

01:31:29.640 | What's the cap, you know, higher or lower?

01:31:33.640 | It's the wrong debate.

01:31:34.520 | Merit, purpose, what are we achieving?

01:31:36.360 | I feel the same way about the military.

01:31:37.640 | It's not a higher, lower discussion.

01:31:39.400 | It's a what are we doing discussion?

01:31:41.160 | And I think there is a legitimate case for the US to

01:31:44.920 | have and continue to have the strongest military in the

01:31:47.160 | world.

01:31:47.660 | But I think that deputizing that military to fight wars that

01:31:52.680 | are really deflection tactics, often for our own ailments at

01:31:55.320 | home, I think has been a mistake.

01:31:57.320 | And we're at risk of making those same mistakes again,

01:32:00.760 | right now, most pertinently in Ukraine, unless we learn from

01:32:03.960 | those past mistakes.

01:32:04.760 | I want to ask you about the division within the Republican

01:32:07.560 | Party on this, specifically Ukraine.

01:32:09.400 | So at turning point, which you just spoke out, and I think

01:32:12.040 | you did very well in the straw poll there, you had Tucker

01:32:15.880 | interviewing Mike Pence, asking him, why should we prioritize

01:32:20.600 | Ukraine over our own cities that are increasingly broken

01:32:25.000 | down, you've got homeless people living on the streets, you've

01:32:28.360 | got this crisis of drug addiction, you've got rampant

01:32:31.400 | crime, you've got schools that are terrible.

01:32:33.480 | And yet, Ukraine seems to be this fixation of the unit party

01:32:39.400 | in Washington, and Pence gave this totally dunderheaded

01:32:43.720 | answer, something like that's not my concern.

01:32:45.400 | Which I guess his apologist said afterwards that well, no, he

01:32:50.680 | was talking about something else.

01:32:52.520 | He wasn't saying that American cities weren't his concern,

01:32:55.160 | which even if you grant that was the case means that he wasn't

01:32:59.000 | really paying attention to Tucker's question.

01:33:01.560 | But then you also had Tim Scott say something, it was

01:33:05.880 | definitely better phrase than what Pence said, but basically

01:33:09.640 | said that he thought it was a good idea for us to be giving

01:33:11.640 | all this money to Ukraine, because degrading Russia's

01:33:16.040 | military was a good deal for the United States, you know, by

01:33:19.080 | which degrade, I assume means killing Russian boys.

01:33:22.840 | And you've heard Lindsey Graham say this sort of thing.

01:33:25.880 | Then I had this Republican pollster named Patrick Rafini,

01:33:30.840 | who I didn't really know before, but he's apparently a

01:33:34.520 | Republican pollster.

01:33:35.400 | He's got Slava Ukrainian his bio.

01:33:37.640 | I'm not quite sure what's motivating that.

01:33:39.240 | But he tweeted at me saying that Ukraine is like number

01:33:42.520 | 17 on the list of GOP voter priorities, despite efforts

01:33:46.280 | by the likes of Carlson and Sachs to make it a thing.

01:33:49.000 | Notice how it almost never gets brought up on the trail

01:33:52.280 | unless Tucker is there.

01:33:53.480 | My response to him was to post a quote from Mitch McConnell

01:33:57.880 | saying that Ukraine is the number one priority of the GOP.

01:34:03.320 | I'm like, you're making my point for me.

01:34:05.240 | I know that it's number 17 in the eyes of voters in our

01:34:09.480 | party in terms of what they think we should be focused on.

01:34:12.600 | But it's number one in the minds of Mitch McConnell and

01:34:17.240 | Pence and Scott and Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham.

01:34:22.040 | These people are obsessed with this idea.

01:34:24.120 | So I guess, A, what is your reaction to that?

01:34:28.040 | B, how are we going to change this?

01:34:29.960 | I mean, it just seems like there's something fundamentally

01:34:32.120 | broken in our party when the base understands that we should

01:34:36.760 | not be focused on Ukraine, focused on our own borders,

01:34:39.800 | our own cities, as opposed to some far away lands, borders

01:34:43.560 | and cities.

01:34:44.600 | And then also in that same turning point poll, 95% of the

01:34:50.040 | attendees that conference were opposed to US involvement in

01:34:54.120 | Ukraine.

01:34:55.240 | It was the single highest number for anything they pulled

01:34:58.280 | on.

01:34:58.600 | I think Trump got like an 85% approval.

01:35:01.400 | Opposition to Ukraine got 95%.

01:35:03.240 | So clearly, there is a fundamental divide between what

01:35:06.600 | the establishment or elite of the party thinks and what the

01:35:10.120 | base thinks.

01:35:10.760 | Yep.

01:35:11.800 | What is your explanation for that?

01:35:13.160 | And how does that ever get solved?

01:35:14.520 | I mean, how are we going to fix it?

01:35:16.840 | I'm going to give you a facile answer, David.

01:35:18.680 | It has to do with why we're doing what we're doing.

01:35:22.360 | I want to be elected the next president.

01:35:24.760 | I think I will be.

01:35:25.640 | And I think reflecting the will of the people in the way this

01:35:28.440 | country is governed, is part of how our system is actually

01:35:31.560 | supposed to work, both in the primary and in the general

01:35:34.360 | election.

01:35:34.840 | And so, you know, we're sitting in different seats, but I'm

01:35:37.960 | sitting in the seat that I am now precisely because I think

01:35:41.240 | somebody needs to actually step up and fix it.

01:35:43.320 | When most of the Republican Party has lock, stock and barrel

01:35:46.520 | for all their criticisms of Biden on the most important

01:35:49.800 | foreign policy matter of right now, have lock, stock and barrel

01:35:53.960 | adopted what is effectively the Biden position, which is

01:35:56.920 | mysterious and it's interesting.

01:35:58.200 | Now, I think that it has become a sort of a fixation, not

01:36:07.000 | because these candidates, I think have arrived at this

01:36:10.440 | viewpoint independently through reasoning their way to it,

01:36:13.880 | but just understanding that that's what they are supposed

01:36:16.360 | to say in the tradition of a party that was historically

01:36:21.320 | based on projecting hard power through deterring the USSR,

01:36:25.480 | not recognizing the fact that people sometimes seem to forget

01:36:28.840 | this fact, the USSR doesn't exist anymore.

01:36:31.160 | And NATO, which was created to contain the USSR has now

01:36:34.520 | expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did

01:36:38.040 | before, which is itself a symptom of a Republican Party

01:36:41.560 | that still sometimes it's like a knee jerk.

01:36:44.600 | It's like a knee jerk militarism.

01:36:46.200 | It's like, it's a muscle memory.

01:36:48.040 | Yeah.

01:36:48.200 | What about the influence of the military industrial complex?

01:36:50.360 | Do you think somehow like it's related to donors?

01:36:52.600 | Like, what do you mean?

01:36:53.640 | Yeah, so I'm a, I'm very open-minded too.

01:36:59.000 | And I'm getting the signal that, so we're going to this

01:37:01.240 | event where we're meeting with parents of kids who have died

01:37:07.320 | as a consequence of fentanyl.

01:37:08.520 | And I don't want to keep them waiting longer than we need to.

01:37:13.400 | But if you guys are down to do this again, this has been a lot

01:37:16.280 | of fun.

01:37:16.520 | No, it's been great.

01:37:17.080 | You gave us 90 minutes.

01:37:18.200 | It's fantastic.

01:37:18.840 | We can wrap it up.

01:37:19.160 | Let me just answer David's last, what was your last question?

01:37:22.280 | Wait, no, no, I have a better question.

01:37:23.800 | Just that last question.

01:37:24.840 | Number one, are you vaccinated against COVID?

01:37:28.120 | Number two, what do you think of Fauci?

01:37:30.680 | And what could we have done differently?

01:37:33.480 | I mean, you're a man of science.

01:37:34.680 | So I'm just curious what you think about the whole thing.

01:37:37.800 | Great question.

01:37:38.360 | So I am vaccinated against COVID.

01:37:40.840 | Had I had the facts that I do now as a young, thankfully healthy

01:37:44.680 | male, I would not have actually chosen to get vaccinated.

01:37:48.760 | I think that Anthony Fauci betrays science by substituting the scientific method,

01:37:56.040 | which depends on free speech and open debate and inquiry with authority,

01:38:00.760 | which is actually fundamentally anti-scientific at its core.

01:38:03.400 | And I think one of our main lessons to have learned from the pandemic,

01:38:07.240 | and I hope we do learn it in the future, is that it is precisely in times of emergency

01:38:12.040 | that free speech becomes most important.

01:38:14.280 | I think if we had been able to debate in the open, the merits of lockdowns for children,

01:38:19.160 | we would not have locked down our schools.

01:38:21.320 | I think we had been able to debate in the open what the origin of the pandemic was.

01:38:23.960 | A lab in Wuhan appears to be the overwhelming, it's the truth.

01:38:27.400 | I mean, we know that that's exactly the most likely to be correct explanation.

01:38:31.880 | It's in the name.

01:38:32.760 | It literally is.

01:38:34.840 | But it was a name you couldn't have said at the end.

01:38:37.240 | You couldn't call it, you couldn't name the unspeakable city for which the virus originated.

01:38:40.600 | So I think one of the top lessons is free speech and open debate,

01:38:43.320 | the path to truth runs through that.

01:38:45.080 | Science depends on the free exchange of ideas.

01:38:47.400 | That's who we are.

01:38:48.200 | And the beauty is our country is founded on that very principle.

01:38:51.800 | It's in the First Amendment for a reason.

01:38:54.040 | We'll let you get to your event.

01:38:56.520 | But I just want to say thank you for being incredibly dynamic and open and honest.

01:39:01.720 | It's really great to have guys like you to talk to.

01:39:07.960 | I appreciate it, guys.

01:39:09.800 | If you guys want to do it again, I had a lot of fun too.

01:39:11.400 | So yeah, I just want to add, I just got a rock.

01:39:13.240 | Thanks for not being like political politicians speak and being so honest

01:39:17.800 | and taking on every single topic we asked you about every single topic.

01:39:21.240 | That's really very candid.

01:39:22.280 | I think you did a great job.

01:39:23.320 | I appreciate it, guys.

01:39:24.440 | Appreciate you guys.

01:39:25.720 | Thanks for that.

01:39:26.220 | We didn't talk about this.

01:39:27.880 | Did you guys mention where you are?

01:39:29.320 | Or is that off limits based on the number of buttons here?

01:39:33.480 | I can tell you I'm in.

01:39:34.680 | I can't you know what I can't talk to myself.

01:39:37.080 | Because, you know, did I ever tell you the story about

01:39:40.360 | two years ago when I was in Italy and the stalkers?

01:39:42.520 | You fucking told everybody you were there.

01:39:44.760 | You know, I didn't everybody was at Chamat's Beach Club.

01:39:48.840 | I took a picture of the ocean.

01:39:50.360 | It was ridiculous.

01:39:51.000 | I took a picture of the ocean.

01:39:52.040 | And in the corner of one of the towels was the logo of Chamat's Beach Club.

01:39:56.120 | And some guys found that logo on the towel, did a Google image reverse search,

01:40:03.800 | found the beach club that Chamat's part of, and then showed up at the beach club.

01:40:08.680 | Well, I was drinking $150 bottles per second on Chamat's account to pitch me their startup.

01:40:14.920 | So I don't want to say exactly where I am, but I'm in Italy.

01:40:17.560 | Where are you guys?

01:40:18.360 | Me and Saks are at shouting distance from each other.

01:40:20.200 | We're about to see each other after this.

01:40:21.720 | Did I ever tell you guys the story about last summer when I was in Italy?

01:40:25.160 | Chamath and I were walking down the streets of Milan.

01:40:28.440 | Yeah.

01:40:29.560 | Did I ever tell the story?

01:40:30.520 | No, no, no.

01:40:31.080 | You didn't tell the story.

01:40:31.800 | Okay.

01:40:32.120 | This was like the last time that J. Cal and Freebird were having a major feud.

01:40:35.960 | And it looked like the pod was maybe about to break up.

01:40:39.080 | So I mean, for real breakup number one.

01:40:40.920 | Yeah, this is breakup number one.

01:40:42.920 | We're maybe breaking more two or three.

01:40:44.360 | I don't know.

01:40:44.760 | But you guys are definitely feuding.

01:40:47.080 | So we're walking down the street.

01:40:48.280 | And all of a sudden, somebody stops us.

01:40:50.520 | And he this is like a fan from I don't know, like.

01:40:54.920 | Are you from the Australia?

01:40:57.880 | Australia.

01:40:58.360 | He was he was Australian.

01:40:59.720 | He was from Australia.

01:41:00.520 | You remember this?

01:41:01.160 | He's Australian.

01:41:01.720 | He was from Australia visiting Milan.

01:41:03.640 | Hi, Mike.

01:41:04.120 | Are you Chamath?

01:41:04.760 | And he stops us in the street and takes a photo and the whole thing.

01:41:08.280 | And as we're walking away,

01:41:09.480 | Chamath says, you better make this thing work because I like being famous.

01:41:13.480 | You can't go back to being not famous.

01:41:18.120 | You guys better not screw this up because I like being famous.

01:41:20.760 | It's a delicate balance.

01:41:21.800 | Fame or being right.

01:41:25.960 | Who knows?

01:41:26.760 | Hey, for people who didn't get the joke last week, I love Freebird.

01:41:29.720 | I'm trying to develop a deep, meaningful relationship with Freebird.

01:41:32.600 | I love Freebird.

01:41:33.080 | What do we think of Vivek?

01:41:33.880 | Let's get back to the brass tacks here.

01:41:36.120 | RFK versus Vivek.

01:41:37.480 | We've now had two of the top five candidates and Chris Christie has agreed to come on the

01:41:42.120 | mooch put me in touch.

01:41:43.160 | I have to be honest with you.

01:41:44.360 | RFK and he are more similar than they are different on a lot of topics.

01:41:48.760 | You know, the contours, I think, are different on a few very specific ones, obviously.

01:41:54.600 | But it's like these outsider candidates, I think, have like a they're just a they're

01:42:00.920 | a breath of fresh air because I think and Vivek said it right.

01:42:04.280 | The he and RFK, they have nothing to lose.

01:42:07.240 | So they just tell you what they think.

01:42:09.080 | They don't have to memorize anything because what they think is what they think.

01:42:12.440 | And so you just consistently get this stream of consciousness.

01:42:15.480 | And the more and more I hear from these kinds of candidates, the more and more they make

01:42:19.800 | sense and juxtaposed against the establishment candidates.

01:42:23.800 | It's very stark.

01:42:24.920 | Would you consider Trump, Saks, you know, as being the sort of precursor to these two

01:42:31.000 | non traditional candidates?

01:42:32.120 | So now we have three non traditional candidates in the mix, Trump, Vivek, and RFK, and they

01:42:38.360 | all are shoot from the hip.

01:42:39.800 | Here's what I honestly think, and maybe more moderate and pragmatic in terms of their positions.

01:42:45.560 | Well, sure.

01:42:46.120 | I mean, Trump ran for office for president without having ever run for office before.

01:42:51.800 | And so yeah, as a democrat, he's a democrat who ran as a republican too.

01:42:55.240 | I mean, and he moved the Republican Party in a bunch of ways that were totally new.

01:43:00.280 | Trump's lasting impact, I think, is going to be on the Republican Party.

01:43:03.480 | I mean, he moved the Republican Party from an open borders, completely free trade, sort

01:43:10.360 | of party, warmongering, knee jerk militarism, neocon to being anti war, wanting to have

01:43:17.880 | strong borders, being at least skeptical of trade, at least with China, if not other countries.

01:43:23.240 | And I think he hasn't wanted to mess with entitlements.

01:43:25.400 | He understands that's the third rail, and very much against like the Paul Ryan wanting to

01:43:30.360 | touch those at least in a non bipartisan way.

01:43:34.840 | I think that for the republicans to take on those issues by themselves, I think he understands

01:43:39.800 | as suicidal.

01:43:40.360 | You lose votes when you start taking on entitlements.

01:43:43.000 | And I think that what Trump also did, which is really interesting, is that it cascaded

01:43:46.920 | a wave of self reflection in a lot of other Western countries.

01:43:51.880 | So Italy's more right, as a result, the UK went right, Spain looks like it's about to

01:43:57.000 | tip right, the Dutch actually just lost their election because of national border issues,

01:44:01.640 | or, you know, they dissolve their government.

01:44:04.200 | So there's like a real clear nationalism, would you say?

01:44:10.680 | It's more of the nationalist inflection as the globalist.

01:44:13.880 | I mean, that's right.

01:44:15.720 | The Overton window, I think, changed quite a bit with Trump in the mix, because now you

01:44:19.240 | actually had this much more America first nationalist orientation as the alternative

01:44:23.880 | to this sort of globalist, whether it's neoliberalism or neoconservatism.

01:44:28.520 | Those two things have more in common with each other than they do with this more nationalist,

01:44:34.440 | populist approach.

01:44:35.400 | Right.

01:44:36.460 | Freebird, what did you think?

01:44:38.200 | What was your take?

01:44:39.160 | I mean, RFK obviously concerns you a bit, because of the I don't want to use the conspiracy

01:44:44.440 | word, but let's just call it maybe, you know, he's open minded to he's open minded to different

01:44:51.080 | theories.

01:44:51.560 | So where do you stand on RFK in relation to Vivek today?

01:44:54.840 | Freebird?

01:44:56.360 | Obviously, I think he's crafted his narrative in a way that can be broadly appealing.

01:45:01.880 | And as I mentioned, in our text stream, I think also appeals to the Trump base.

01:45:05.320 | In a way, it's a very smart campaign.

01:45:09.240 | I think that the strategy, the positioning, everything feels like it's hitting the mood

01:45:18.360 | of the moment.

01:45:19.000 | And, you know, I would argue like, you could probably call any election cycle, any campaign,

01:45:27.400 | one of two things, it's a promise of what can I do for you?

01:45:30.600 | Or how can I go and destroy the system that did bad for you?

01:45:35.400 | And Trump, RFK, and by the way, the higher the magnitude of that statement, the more

01:45:43.400 | appealing the candidate is, I think Vivek is doing a great job hitting a reasonably

01:45:47.880 | high magnitude on the, you know, the system has failed us, we need to go and fix these

01:45:52.840 | problems kind of moment.

01:45:53.880 | And it's really good, but I think it's really good for call it the audience that's engaged

01:46:01.800 | in the intellectual debate around it.

01:46:04.440 | Not necessarily for Vivek.

01:46:06.440 | At this point, I need to spend a little more time with the Santa's to be honest, and understand

01:46:11.640 | where he sits.

01:46:12.440 | I obviously have deep concerns about Biden.

01:46:15.640 | What would your concerns on Biden be his cognitive issues or the out of control spending?

01:46:22.520 | I don't think he's running the country.

01:46:24.040 | And I think that those who are there's absolutely no accountability and discipline and what's

01:46:29.160 | going on with respect to spending, as I mentioned, Vivek did not appeal to me in resolving that

01:46:33.480 | concern either, by the way, he thinks we're going to grow our way out of it, which is

01:46:36.600 | part of the premise of modern monetary theory, which I think is a flunk.

01:46:40.440 | So you still don't have a candidate in terms of controlling spending?

01:46:44.200 | Yeah, look, I think the problem with Vivek is he's not going to be appealing to the masses,

01:46:49.560 | because he's so smart and so articulate.

01:46:52.440 | That it doesn't have the Trump basics.

01:46:57.160 | The Trump basics are insult the bad guy, call yourself the best thing in the world, make

01:47:02.680 | jokes, and people might be over that.

01:47:05.160 | I think people might be over it.

01:47:06.520 | I don't know.

01:47:07.000 | It could be the exact are people over it.

01:47:08.920 | The bullying, the name calling the bombastic Trump nature, do you think people are over

01:47:15.240 | it?

01:47:15.480 | You think that's going to burn people out this election cycle?

01:47:17.560 | Well, not if you look at the polls.

01:47:20.680 | They're not on the Republican Party, I think in the general they might I mean, look, I

01:47:24.600 | think right now it looks like we're on track to have a Biden Trump rematch.

01:47:29.960 | And right now, Biden probably looks like he's going to win barring a recession happening

01:47:34.760 | or the Ukrainian side collapsing in the war, which I mean, I mean, that indictment dropping

01:47:42.280 | sounds pretty, you know, like another bombshell.

01:47:44.760 | So do you think there's any chance?

01:47:46.120 | No, no, no, no.

01:47:49.560 | Okay.

01:47:49.960 | So what's your favorite moment?

01:47:51.640 | You know, from this discussion was where there was there a standout moment for you, sax?

01:47:54.840 | We thought, sorry, I want to hear your question.

01:47:57.880 | Chamath, would you vote for him?

01:47:59.080 | Are you still in RFK camp?

01:48:01.080 | Are you kind of still open minded about everything?

01:48:04.760 | I wasn't sure what his campaign was about.

01:48:06.600 | And and I come away pretty meaningfully intrigued about what he had to say.

01:48:14.920 | I think that there are some fundamental issues that RFK has me on that I wanted Vivek to

01:48:22.840 | own and he he flirted with them, but he didn't quite own them.

01:48:27.320 | Such as?

01:48:27.820 | I think that the just like the deconstruction of the military industrial complex was is so

01:48:35.400 | definitive in RFK.

01:48:37.080 | And it was it was almost quite there with the back, but not quite there.

01:48:40.440 | So I wish he would I wish he would own that.

01:48:42.200 | I think that the deconstruction of the Department of Education, I need to think more about,

01:48:47.960 | but some of his ideas are frankly more compelling.

01:48:51.080 | The pro life pro choice thing, I think is very complicated.

01:48:56.040 | And I think you can go to this place of saying, let the states choose.

01:49:00.040 | But I I'm just not sure whether that's the right ultimate solution.

01:49:04.920 | And, you know, proposing some federal legislation,

01:49:08.920 | or would you want to end up on that you would want to end up like Europe, like a certain

01:49:11.960 | number of weeks federally, and then maybe some local laws around abortion and right

01:49:15.880 | to choose.

01:49:16.520 | I think that there is just like you, you have to fundamentally if you believe in personal

01:49:22.440 | freedom, I think having an arbitrary definition of what a person is, and then what that freedom

01:49:29.240 | means, to me is already the slippery slope.

01:49:33.160 | And so I have a real issue with that.

01:49:34.840 | But I also agree with him about the actual decay of American society, you know, the lack

01:49:40.440 | of religious institutions and the lack of family and purpose, those two things above

01:49:45.880 | all others, I think, are tearing this country apart.

01:49:49.480 | Because people substitute something for it was his point, right?

01:49:52.920 | It's leaving people incredibly empty.

01:49:55.640 | And so I just think that you have to have some of these fundamental protections.

01:50:00.120 | sex, what were your favorite moments during this or moments where you think he stood out

01:50:03.800 | or he shine at moments where you maybe have some fundamental disagreement?

01:50:07.720 | Well, okay, there's a few issues.

01:50:10.200 | Let me respond to so in terms of the vague versus RFK, Jr.

01:50:15.080 | I think where Kennedy really shines is like Jamal said, when he talks about the military

01:50:20.040 | industrial complex, and I would say more generally, RFK has this critique about regulatory capture,

01:50:27.720 | which he describes as the marriage of state power and corporate greed.

01:50:31.640 | And included in that is what's happened to the FDA and big pharma and the whole government's

01:50:38.360 | response on COVID. And then he wraps in censorship as being the way that this RFK thoughts are

01:50:45.800 | very marriage of corporate greed and state power, the way it defends itself that and

01:50:49.720 | that's unacceptable.

01:50:51.080 | So I think like on those issues, I don't think anybody speaks as deeply as RFK, Jr.

01:50:57.720 | Now, when it comes to the list, if you were to like list out all the issues, and where

01:51:02.920 | Vivek is and where I am, it's a pretty close match.

01:51:05.720 | I mean, I'm not aligned with him completely on every issue, but I think it would be pretty

01:51:10.280 | close.

01:51:10.920 | And I do really appreciate where he's coming from.

01:51:13.640 | On Ukraine, he's not afraid to just come right out and say the truth, which is this is not

01:51:19.160 | an important enough American interest to be spending hundreds of billions a year on.

01:51:22.920 | I wish we had more time.

01:51:24.440 | What an amazing moment to actually delve into that.

01:51:26.600 | And particularly, I wanted him to explain what was happening in the party because there is

01:51:30.920 | a divide within the party between these like oxygen area and sort of more establishment

01:51:36.600 | Republicans like McConnell, like Scott, like Pence, the war machine, the war machine, and

01:51:41.560 | then people like him and Trump, and you put Trump in this category to are resisting that.

01:51:46.680 | So I would have liked to hear more about that.

01:51:49.080 | What do you think of the moment where I kind of pinned him and I said, would you you wouldn't

01:51:53.480 | defend Ukraine, but you would defend Taiwan?

01:51:56.440 | And he said, Yes, for the next five years, I would defend Taiwan because of the semiconductor

01:52:01.000 | sharing that I've never heard a candidate say something that pragmatic.

01:52:05.400 | Here's my interpretation.

01:52:06.440 | I described it as cutthroat.

01:52:08.200 | Well, it is pragmatic.

01:52:09.240 | What he's basically saying is that America right now is dependent on these chips, these

01:52:13.720 | very sophisticated high tech chips, I mean, conductor chips, and not just like the low

01:52:17.640 | end ones, the high end chips that are made in Taiwan, and that is a vital American interest.

01:52:22.360 | And until we alleviate ourselves, or wean ourselves off that dependency, by making them

01:52:27.400 | ourselves, or securing some other supply, then we need Taiwan.

01:52:31.960 | And so therefore, we cannot allow it to fall into Chinese hands.

01:52:34.600 | I'm saying a lot more than he did.

01:52:35.800 | But it's kind of an argument like saying, chips is the new oil.

01:52:39.960 | And as long as this is a critical input into our economy, we have to secure our supply.

01:52:45.480 | I can understand that.

01:52:45.880 | The difference being Bush never said, we're going to the Middle East for oil.

01:52:50.040 | He said, we're going there for democracy.

01:52:51.480 | So that's what I thought was like the very candid moment there, Sack.

01:52:54.280 | Yeah, but what always happens is that when America has a vital interest, you always

01:52:59.800 | cloak it in liberal rhetoric about rights and freedom and democracy and that kind of

01:53:04.840 | thing.

01:53:05.160 | Democracy.

01:53:05.880 | But what's frequently driving the decision is American interests underneath.

01:53:10.040 | He's being explicit about it.

01:53:11.480 | What he's basically saying is, as long as America's got this dependency, and we need

01:53:17.480 | Taiwan, we better defend it and protect it from falling into Chinese hands.

01:53:21.480 | But once we don't have that interest, then we don't.

01:53:24.360 | I can understand that.

01:53:26.040 | That was wild.

01:53:26.840 | It was wild.

01:53:28.200 | I mean, refreshing for me.

01:53:29.320 | I thought actually was a highlight of the discussion.

01:53:31.080 | There's a couple other things he touched on.

01:53:32.520 | So we talked about the other candidates.

01:53:34.440 | I think he's being not disingenuous, but maybe a little bit unfair to DeSantis.

01:53:41.000 | I think there's no question that DeSantis alone has been singled out by Trump and not

01:53:46.360 | just Trump, but Trump surrogates to be relentlessly bashed on.

01:53:49.960 | And this happens on social media.

01:53:52.040 | It happens in speeches and talks, all this kind of stuff.

01:53:54.600 | So they are going after DeSantis.

01:53:56.360 | And that has an effect.

01:53:57.640 | For a reason.

01:53:59.080 | He's number two.

01:53:59.720 | Right.

01:54:00.040 | And Trump clearly has pegged him as the biggest threat, and that's why they're targeting him.

01:54:04.680 | So that does have an impact.

01:54:07.080 | The advantage that someone like Vivek has in a way is that he doesn't have a record as

01:54:12.680 | an elected official.

01:54:14.360 | And so he can just go out there and speak freely on these issues.

01:54:17.080 | And like I described on the show with him, he goes out there and inserts himself in the

01:54:23.080 | conversation when an issue is going viral.

01:54:26.440 | He jumps in.

01:54:27.400 | And I think it's very important that he's doing it so quickly, because if you're a candidate

01:54:32.200 | and you wait till the next day, and then the news cycle moves on, you missed it.

01:54:37.080 | Right.

01:54:37.240 | So he's timing it perfectly.

01:54:40.760 | So he hits the sweet spot.

01:54:41.800 | There's only one way to do it, which is not to have surrogates, not to have a process.

01:54:47.320 | Not to have a cabinet overthinking it.

01:54:50.680 | Well, it's the same thing with our portfolio companies, right?

01:54:52.600 | They run it through all these PR people and a PR agency, and it gets reviewed.

01:54:56.840 | By the time it goes through its 10th draft, it's too late.

01:55:01.240 | It doesn't go viral.

01:55:02.520 | So he's running a social media campaign, and it's very effective.

01:55:05.320 | Now, I think that DeSantis is running a different kind of campaign.

01:55:08.920 | DeSantis actually has a record.

01:55:10.680 | I think it's a fantastically successful record as being the most successful governor in the

01:55:15.160 | country, running the most successful state in the country.

01:55:18.520 | So he's out there with this idea that, "Listen, let's make America Florida."

01:55:24.040 | Yes.

01:55:24.600 | So that's what he's campaigning on.

01:55:26.440 | And so he is going out there with kind of a pre-determined agenda and a pre-determined

01:55:32.280 | stump speech, a playbook.

01:55:33.640 | And it's different than someone like Vivek, who's letting the issues come to him, and

01:55:38.680 | then he's responding as the issues come up.

01:55:41.080 | In other words, Vivek is living off the land.

01:55:44.520 | All of that is free media for him.

01:55:47.160 | It's earned media.

01:55:48.840 | And Trump did the same thing in 2016, right?

01:55:52.200 | Every day, he would figure out, like, what are the issues today?

01:55:55.560 | And he'd go out and speak about them.

01:55:56.920 | And you go all the way back to Pat Buchanan working for Richard Nixon back in, I think

01:56:02.760 | it was the '72 election, something like that, where every morning, Buchanan and there's

01:56:06.600 | a couple other speechwriters that open the newspaper and find an issue or two.

01:56:10.600 | And they would go to Nixon and say, "Here's your talking points."

01:56:14.520 | And so they would find an issue that back in those days was going viral and have the

01:56:20.040 | candidates speak to it.

01:56:21.400 | So they were nimble.

01:56:22.520 | And I think that's what they were doing.

01:56:24.120 | And if you want to go viral in the social media era, that's what you have to do.

01:56:27.080 | You have to lean into the issues that people are talking about that day.

01:56:30.920 | And this is the thing is that I think Vivek knows how to do that.

01:56:35.080 | Trump clearly knows how to do it.

01:56:36.760 | RFK knows how to do it.

01:56:38.280 | RFK definitely knows how to do it.

01:56:39.720 | RFK is going viral every day.

01:56:41.880 | They're trending topic natives.

01:56:43.560 | And that's the difference.

01:56:44.760 | Freeberg, did you have a highlight or a great moment or two from Vivek, things that made

01:56:49.080 | you go, "Huh, I really appreciate this person or candidate during the discussion"?

01:56:53.720 | What I appreciated was that we didn't see him, like, fall down on any topics.

01:57:00.440 | And I think that his ability to go through the full discourse with us for however long

01:57:07.400 | we went, 90 minutes or something.

01:57:08.440 | Hour 40.

01:57:09.160 | Yeah.

01:57:09.720 | Hour 40.

01:57:10.360 | Says a lot.

01:57:10.920 | You know, RFK Jr. did the same.

01:57:12.680 | But again, it's a stark juxtaposition from what I have seen Biden do in terms of interview

01:57:18.440 | formats.

01:57:18.920 | He has had his interviews are edited.

01:57:21.320 | They're short.

01:57:21.960 | And so to be able to have this breadth, but also have the data and be able to pull it

01:57:27.000 | from the top of his head and not have speaking notes.

01:57:29.080 | We gave him no questions ahead of time.

01:57:30.760 | There's no agenda.

01:57:31.480 | Of course not.

01:57:32.040 | And I think it's great to see a candidate who can engage in that level of discourse,

01:57:38.120 | which was important and impressive for me.

01:57:40.760 | I just hope it's broadly appealing.

01:57:42.360 | And this, by the way, I just want to repeat something I've said many times in the past.

01:57:45.560 | There are two things I hate about politics, besides the relationship to a growing government.

01:57:52.360 | The first is that people pick politics as a career.

01:57:57.560 | And I think that that's ridiculous.

01:57:58.920 | I think people in a democracy should have a private life and then they should rotate

01:58:04.280 | into being civil servants and go and serve in public office.

01:58:07.560 | It's not the founding fathers intended.

01:58:09.080 | That's right.

01:58:10.200 | And so they were, you know, had they had their jobs and their businesses and everything,

01:58:13.240 | and they would rotate in and then they would rotate out of government.

01:58:15.560 | The fact that people can be a politician for 30 years is ridiculous.

01:58:19.480 | And I think it leads to all of the disincentives that have driven to a large government.

01:58:23.400 | What I appreciate about Vivek and RFK Jr.

01:58:26.680 | is that they come at this from, and even Trump, they come at this from private life,

01:58:32.200 | and they take their turn in government and rotate out.

01:58:35.720 | And that's why I did not get him to answer the question around what would he do besides

01:58:39.640 | being president if it didn't work out?

01:58:40.840 | What's he going to do next?

01:58:42.040 | The second thing I don't like about politics-

01:58:43.560 | By the way, just on that point, there's a lot of speculation about that

01:58:46.360 | within Republican circles.

01:58:48.680 | This is something I could, we just didn't have time to get into.

01:58:50.840 | Let me just finish it.

01:58:52.360 | Let me just finish and then we'll talk about it.

01:58:53.640 | Sorry, yeah, let's come back to it.

01:58:55.720 | But the second thing is just money in politics.

01:58:57.720 | And I hate that you can raise money and get votes.

01:59:00.600 | Just the general concept that you buy ad space and that you get people to change their vote,

01:59:05.960 | I think is the most-

01:59:07.320 | Oh, I love that.

01:59:08.360 | Yeah, I know you do, but I think it's so fucked up.

01:59:10.680 | But what I like about what we just did is we actually had a conversation with the candidate

01:59:15.640 | and people can just listen to the conversation.

01:59:17.560 | That's the old town square that Saks talks about that doesn't exist anymore,

01:59:21.400 | because everything is chopped up and then sold as media bytes on paid streams.

01:59:25.080 | Whereas what we just did is a free conversation with a guy that anyone can tune in and listen to

01:59:29.000 | and learn about him.

01:59:29.880 | And that's what I found most compelling is we had a real conversation instead of watching

01:59:34.120 | a 30-second ad bite.

01:59:35.640 | What's the rumor, Saksipu?

01:59:37.080 | Yeah, so sorry, go ahead, Saks.

01:59:38.280 | The knock on Vivek is that he's basically a Trump surrogate.

01:59:42.360 | And I mean, Trump has said good things about him.

01:59:44.840 | Trump likes him to be out there, clearly.

01:59:46.680 | I mean, Trump has all but said that.

01:59:48.280 | So the idea is that Vivek is out there and initially he's doing this less now, but early on,

01:59:54.600 | he was just launching broadside after broadside on DeSantis.

01:59:58.520 | And so the idea is that he's out there as a Trump surrogate attacking the people Trump

02:00:01.800 | wants him to attack on the whole saying good things about Trump, and that he'll be rewarded

02:00:07.240 | for that somehow.

02:00:08.040 | A cabinet position or vice president.

02:00:09.800 | Cabinet position, people even now saying VP because he's doing so well, or maybe he gets

02:00:14.360 | an endorsement for a Senate run or something like that.

02:00:17.400 | So if we had more time, I would ask him about this like surrogate idea, but I'm sure he

02:00:21.560 | would have said no, but...

02:00:22.920 | That's why I asked him specifically, how much time have you spent with Trump?

02:00:26.280 | And when's the last time you talked to him?

02:00:27.720 | And he was honest about that.

02:00:28.520 | I've only spent like I had dinner with him before I was even a candidate.

02:00:30.920 | So I'm wondering if there's some clandestine agreement with them through some back channel

02:00:35.720 | for him to do that, or if he's doing it on his own accord.

02:00:38.760 | I think, well, clearly his answer would be no, I'm not a surrogate, I'm my own candidate.

02:00:43.800 | And he probably is.

02:00:45.160 | So my guess on it is that you can go out there and act like a surrogate,

02:00:49.400 | knowing that Trump's going to like it, and then you'll be rewarded.

02:00:53.080 | You don't need to have an explicit deal to understand that that would work out for you

02:00:58.120 | in that way.

02:00:58.840 | Can I respond to Freeberg's point?

02:01:00.040 | So Freeberg, you said you don't like the money aspect of politics, and you don't like the

02:01:03.880 | sort of careerist aspect of politics.

02:01:07.080 | I think what we're seeing with candidates like Verve or RFK Jr. or Trump is candidates

02:01:13.160 | who are bucking those two trends.

02:01:14.760 | I mean, clearly these are not lifelong politicians.

02:01:18.120 | They have maybe had a lifelong interest in politics, but they're not like lifelong office

02:01:23.080 | holders or candidates for office.

02:01:25.480 | And then on the money side, what they're all showing is something that we all know from

02:01:29.560 | our portfolio companies, which is that earned media is so much more valuable than paid media.

02:01:35.640 | Totally.

02:01:36.040 | Paid media costs a fortune, and it doesn't really work.

02:01:38.760 | No one really wants to look at advertising.

02:01:41.720 | They block it out.

02:01:43.160 | So you spend a lot of money on advertising, and it never really gets you much compared

02:01:46.840 | to earned media, which is you figure out a way to insert yourself in the news cycle by

02:01:51.720 | appealing to people on issues that are being talked about.

02:01:53.880 | You figure out how to kind of hitch your wagon to, like you said, Jason, a trending topic.

02:01:58.120 | And that's what all three of these candidates have done, and it works so well.

02:02:01.240 | And I think that sort of the career politicians who are proceeding in this very kind of playbook

02:02:06.840 | way, which is we're going to go out, we're going to raise the most money from donors,

02:02:10.040 | that we're going to buy the most TV time, and we're going to be on message.

02:02:14.680 | Meaning we're only going to talk about the things we want to talk about.

02:02:17.480 | The problem is that doesn't work anymore because earned media is so much more valuable than

02:02:21.320 | paid media.

02:02:22.040 | Well, look, I hope that's a trend, and I hope it flushes the money out of the system,

02:02:25.560 | and that candidates win based on the merit of the conversation that they have in earned media,

02:02:30.520 | instead of buying more ad space on paid media, and that it changes the game.

02:02:34.760 | And I hope that the laws change too.

02:02:36.520 | And I also hope that the laws change with respect to career politicians and term limits,

02:02:40.440 | and all that sort of stuff, because this whole career system and money in this thing is what's

02:02:44.440 | driving so much.

02:02:45.320 | One of the contributors to inflation and government spending and government accountability and all

02:02:49.720 | the nonsense that goes on.

02:02:51.240 | And I would love to see a change.

02:02:52.920 | I think the earned media is so valuable now that I think candidates who try to stay on their

02:02:58.200 | message on their agenda, it's going to cost too much money.

02:03:02.040 | It's basically an unsustainable path.

02:03:03.800 | I would urge all the Republican candidates, including to Santa's just to get out there.

02:03:08.440 | By the way, this is a tremendously smart man.

02:03:11.160 | I mean, he went to where is he?

02:03:12.680 | Harvard?

02:03:13.160 | Not on all in.

02:03:13.880 | He's a lawyer.

02:03:15.080 | Where is he?

02:03:15.720 | Yeah, to be fair, I haven't asked him yet.

02:03:17.480 | But why?

02:03:18.440 | Yeah, Chris Christie's coming.

02:03:21.160 | The last time I asked him to do something, we had technical difficulties.

02:03:24.040 | Remember that didn't go too well.

02:03:25.800 | Just for the record, the mooch who loves the fact that a unit of time has been named after him from

02:03:33.080 | USACs.

02:03:33.640 | Any 11 day period is known as a mooch.

02:03:37.240 | So if you have an 11 day,

02:03:38.600 | Scaramucci.

02:03:39.400 | A Scaramucci.

02:03:40.360 | It's a moochie.

02:03:41.000 | Yeah.

02:03:41.240 | Once you love that.

02:03:42.200 | But he he literally introduced me to Governor Chris Christie over text.

02:03:48.440 | So I'm in touch with Chris Christie's coming on the pod.

02:03:50.280 | So that's three of the top six or five in terms of polling.

02:03:53.400 | I'll ask to Santa's to come on.

02:03:54.680 | We never get Biden because he'll fall asleep.

02:03:56.920 | I don't think Biden can do 45 minutes without a nap.

02:03:59.400 | Don't insult the guy that might show up.

02:04:01.320 | Let's see if we can get him.

02:04:02.360 | I think he may, you know, he may get Biden.

02:04:05.560 | I don't know.

02:04:06.040 | Let's let's not I can't.

02:04:07.400 | Yeah, I can ask.

02:04:09.240 | I mean, let's try and get Biden.

02:04:10.360 | I mean, it would be great.

02:04:11.080 | We can get half an hour with him and he can have a real conversation with us.

02:04:13.720 | I'd be thrilled.

02:04:15.160 | The really interesting.

02:04:16.120 | Well, Biden just did freed Zakaria.

02:04:20.040 | It was an interview that was pretty much localized to talking about foreign policy in Ukraine.

02:04:25.400 | He and he also did that other woman on MSNBC.

02:04:28.440 | They're all canned.

02:04:29.640 | He gets the questions.

02:04:31.480 | And then they edit it for him.

02:04:32.920 | So he gets post production.

02:04:34.200 | Yeah, which, you know, then you could shape the thing however you want and shame on the

02:04:38.120 | media for doing that, honestly, to the left media.

02:04:40.840 | You're not helping the democracy here in the United States by, you know, putting the fix

02:04:45.640 | in for Biden.

02:04:46.440 | If he can't do the interview, if he can't handle an hour, at least, then can he be the

02:04:51.400 | president?

02:04:51.960 | I mean, let's be honest here.

02:04:53.080 | Well, they'll get the ratings just in terms of debrief.

02:04:56.440 | Was there anything we want to say about the whole banking crisis?

02:04:59.880 | I appreciate that he tried to find common ground with us.

02:05:02.280 | Yeah, I agree.

02:05:03.880 | I nearly made a joke that you are now going to do a fundraiser for him after that.

02:05:06.600 | No, I mean, listen, he said it himself, I'm going to respond to everything one out of

02:05:12.920 | 100 times I may change my position based on new information, which by the way, we do here

02:05:17.480 | every week.

02:05:17.960 | Every week, we all listen to each other, we have vibrant debate.

02:05:21.800 | And sometimes we change our positions.

02:05:23.720 | You know, like, I think that's what any reasonable person does.

02:05:25.720 | Go ahead.

02:05:26.280 | Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think we were that far apart from him on this whole banking

02:05:30.280 | crisis.

02:05:30.920 | I mean, I think we all agree that there should be no bailout for the shareholders and the

02:05:35.480 | bondholders of these banks that are poorly managed and go under.

02:05:38.440 | And I think that Vivek did endorse a proposal, which we I think Jason, you and I had both

02:05:46.520 | come up with, which was to have a higher level of FDIC insurance, no business banking, I

02:05:53.560 | think it was like 10 million or something like that.

02:05:55.720 | And you know, include that in the cost of the insurance.

02:05:58.360 | Yeah, exactly.

02:05:59.560 | It's just paid by the premiums of these banks for banking insurance.

02:06:02.680 | And Vivek had this point about, you know, if Roku is stupid enough to keep 500 million

02:06:06.600 | in a checking account, and the bank goes under, maybe they should lose it.

02:06:09.800 | It's like, okay, my goal is not to save Roku, if they're stupid enough to manage the money

02:06:13.800 | that needs to save the local school.

02:06:15.880 | Really, the only difference is that and I think free bird, you hit the nail on the head

02:06:20.680 | is when you have a bank run underway, you have to stop it before the panic can spread.

02:06:25.880 | Contagion is real.

02:06:27.080 | The contagion was absolutely real.

02:06:28.520 | I don't think people outside Silicon Valley could understand that because they weren't

02:06:32.200 | in those Friday morning emergency phone calls and board meetings that were happening.

02:06:38.040 | So we know it was it had already moved so far beyond SVB.

02:06:42.440 | At that point, we had founders moving their money out of First Republic and all these

02:06:46.200 | other banks.

02:06:46.760 | Thursday and Friday.

02:06:47.880 | On Thursday and Friday, and they wanted to go to the top four banks.

02:06:50.520 | And if it wasn't a SIB, it wasn't good enough.

02:06:52.760 | If it wasn't called Silicon Valley Bank, this would have been a totally different thing.

02:06:55.960 | And if it hadn't been us raising the alarm, let's be self aware people hate Silicon Valley

02:07:00.600 | tech.

02:07:01.000 | There's this contingent of people who hate Silicon Valley tech and rich people.

02:07:03.960 | And they were just gleeful.

02:07:06.440 | You know, there's 20% of the sort of far left communist socialist, you know, idiots, who

02:07:12.120 | mids Elizabeth Warren's whoever's who are just like, oh, great, Silicon Valley is getting

02:07:17.080 | kicked in the nuts.

02:07:18.120 | They were thrilled to see it.

02:07:19.480 | Right?

02:07:20.200 | I was that was short and Freud.

02:07:21.800 | All right, we got a wrap.

02:07:22.840 | Hey, pull up these pictures real quick.

02:07:24.600 | This is your five second science corner.

02:07:26.520 | Look, these are photos taken on Mars yesterday.

02:07:28.360 | How cool is this?

02:07:29.240 | That's all I had to say.

02:07:30.120 | Those that's exactly the chances of taking a photo on Mars are 3 billion 721.

02:07:35.720 | 12.

02:07:36.200 | If you can see this looks just like this.

02:07:38.040 | So they're taken on those are from Uranus.

02:07:40.200 | Yeah, those are from Mars.

02:07:41.640 | Very similar to the photos I took on my anus last night.

02:07:45.160 | I took my iPhone 14 and I squatted down and took pictures of these dingleberries into

02:07:50.680 | a mirror and I said, what's going on down there?

02:07:53.400 | These these boulders are very similar to the dingleberries.

02:07:57.240 | What?

02:07:57.640 | What are these?

02:07:58.280 | It's my balls and it's my thing.

02:08:01.080 | If you look at those similar to my huge balls, you guys can't put this out.

02:08:07.640 | I love you guys.

02:08:11.560 | Don't you think that's cool that there's these cameras on Mars?

02:08:13.800 | It is incredible.

02:08:15.080 | Yes, I think it's incredible.

02:08:16.840 | And how cool are those photos?

02:08:18.040 | I feel like we should have two episodes this week since there were so many good topics for

02:08:21.480 | us to talk about.

02:08:22.360 | But let's talk about the topics.

02:08:25.000 | But yeah, that was good.

02:08:25.960 | A good meeting with love you guys.

02:08:27.160 | Love you guys.

02:08:28.600 | Hey, if you guys are around, you know, and you want to get a glass of wine and some pasta

02:08:34.840 | wine later, maybe next week or something.

02:08:36.840 | Who knows?

02:08:37.240 | Maybe we all get together in person.

02:08:38.600 | Have a glass of wine.

02:08:39.560 | I see you soon.

02:08:40.760 | I love you guys.

02:08:41.720 | I love you.

02:08:43.560 | Besties.

02:08:44.040 | For the architect himself, the dictator, the Sultan of science.

02:08:49.400 | Obviously, after today's performance, I am still the world's greatest moderator.

02:08:54.760 | This has been another episode of.

02:08:56.440 | The All In Podcast, we're still together.

02:09:00.040 | The band is still together producing hot tracks.

02:09:03.880 | We'll see you next week.

02:09:04.760 | I'll come at you two for Tuesday.

02:09:06.440 | Tears for fears.

02:09:07.160 | Everybody wants to rule the world, including Vivek.

02:09:10.840 | Next time, Chris Christie coming at you 100 Z-Boarding Zoo.

02:09:14.600 | We'll see you tomorrow.

02:09:15.160 | Love you guys.

02:09:15.800 | Bye-bye.

02:09:16.600 | Besties.

02:09:18.520 | We'll let your winners ride.

02:09:20.040 | Rain Man David Saks.

02:09:22.920 | And it said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

02:09:29.960 | Love you, West.

02:09:30.600 | I'm the queen of Kinwam.

02:09:32.920 | Let your winners ride.

02:09:34.920 | Let your winners ride.

02:09:36.920 | Let your winners ride.

02:09:38.840 | Besties are gone.

02:09:39.880 | That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

02:09:43.560 | Win it all.

02:09:44.760 | Oh, man.

02:09:47.240 | My avatar will meet me at Blitz.

02:09:49.240 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just

02:09:52.520 | useless.

02:09:53.080 | It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

02:09:56.040 | Wet your feet.

02:09:58.280 | That beat.

02:09:59.160 | Wet your feet.

02:10:00.120 | Wet your feet.

02:10:00.920 | Beat.

02:10:01.560 | Wet your feet.

02:10:02.520 | We need to get merch.

02:10:03.320 | Besties are back.

02:10:04.120 | I'm doing All In.

02:10:05.640 | I'm doing All In.

02:10:15.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

E138: Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in conversation with the Besties

Chapters