Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO

00:00:00.000 | How good do I look? I'm so sunkissed.

00:00:02.300 | How many buttons down are you?

00:00:04.000 | Oh, my God, I have three buttons.

00:00:06.540 | OK, three buttons.

00:00:07.740 | No, look, look, look, look.

00:00:10.700 | Is there a button below that we can't see?

00:00:12.480 | No pants!

00:00:13.440 | No pants either?

00:00:15.440 | Are you free buttoning and free balling it?

00:00:19.980 | Is both happening or what?

00:00:21.240 | I'm going all in.

00:00:22.980 | Don't let your winners ride.

00:00:25.780 | Rainman David Sasson.

00:00:28.120 | I'm going all in.

00:00:30.080 | And it said, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

00:00:33.920 | Love you guys.

00:00:34.420 | Ice Queen of Kinwan.

00:00:36.220 | I'm going all in.

00:00:38.360 | Hey, everybody.

00:00:39.120 | Welcome back to the All In Pod.

00:00:41.220 | This week, our hostess with the mostest,

00:00:44.120 | Jkal is out with COVID, getting treated,

00:00:48.400 | spending the day in bed.

00:00:50.260 | We wish him well.

00:00:51.360 | We wish him a speedy recovery.

00:00:53.440 | We are going to plow forward like all championship teams do.

00:00:57.540 | This week, I think we're going to kick it off with a conversation

00:01:01.280 | about the election update.

00:01:03.240 | Obviously, Harris came out, guns ablazing in the media.

00:01:07.780 | The accolades seem to be flying.

00:01:10.220 | And the polling data is starting to become worrisome,

00:01:14.260 | it seems, for the Republicans.

00:01:16.160 | Just this week, Nate Silver released his newest model update.

00:01:20.260 | The Silver Bulletin, I think he's got it

00:01:23.400 | trademarked as nowadays.

00:01:25.180 | And in the model, he tries to estimate what does the polling data show us

00:01:29.140 | with respect to the Electoral College

00:01:31.980 | and the popular vote in the upcoming presidential election?

00:01:35.540 | Harris currently has a 42.5%

00:01:39.520 | probability of winning the Electoral College.

00:01:42.020 | Trump, 56.9%.

00:01:44.760 | Kennedy coming in at 0%.

00:01:47.160 | On the popular vote,

00:01:48.800 | Harris has a 57.1% probability of winning the popular vote,

00:01:54.000 | 42.9% probability for Trump.

00:01:57.780 | I guess I'll start it off with David Sachs.

00:01:59.880 | Sachs, given the momentum coming out of the gate

00:02:03.280 | since the announcement of Harris as the Democratic nominee

00:02:07.480 | and this recent polling data,

00:02:09.360 | what's your read on the landscape today?

00:02:12.020 | What's your read on where we stand and what's ahead here?

00:02:14.720 | And what do you take away from these polls?

00:02:16.860 | Well, look, I think what happened is that

00:02:19.600 | Biden dropped out of the race, he abdicated,

00:02:22.000 | Harris took over,

00:02:23.000 | and it created a sense of euphoria on the part of the left

00:02:26.300 | because they thought they had a surefire loser with Biden

00:02:29.240 | and they were divided.

00:02:30.400 | And then once Harris replaced him,

00:02:32.980 | they thought, OK, now we got a shot and we can fully unify

00:02:35.680 | and get behind this new candidate.

00:02:38.340 | So what you've seen is over the past couple of weeks,

00:02:41.960 | the mainstream media has gone all out

00:02:43.860 | on behalf of Kamala Harris.

00:02:46.620 | And yes, this has led to a rise in the polls,

00:02:50.820 | but I think that the highs that Trump were at

00:02:53.160 | were always a little bit artificial in the sense

00:02:56.160 | that if the Democrats could field a candidate

00:02:59.040 | who could campaign,

00:03:00.540 | it was always gonna be a close election.

00:03:02.380 | Biden was artificially depressed in the polling

00:03:06.180 | because he just couldn't campaign.

00:03:08.120 | He could barely read from a prompter,

00:03:09.280 | he couldn't do interviews.

00:03:10.620 | So I think you're seeing the race normalizing.

00:03:13.180 | This is gonna be a close one.

00:03:15.220 | It's gonna be a nail biter.

00:03:17.180 | But I think the question about this honeymoon period

00:03:20.380 | that Harris has right now is whether it's sustainable.

00:03:24.860 | I mean, she has not done any press interviews.

00:03:28.960 | She has not done any press conferences.

00:03:30.400 | She's not answered one question.

00:03:33.040 | She's not been asked one tough question by the media.

00:03:38.500 | She has only read from a teleprompter.

00:03:42.260 | She's only done scripted appearances.

00:03:45.260 | And yet at the same time,

00:03:46.460 | she's basically been changing all of her policy positions

00:03:50.040 | and running from every position she ever stood for.

00:03:52.640 | So for example,

00:03:55.080 | she said that she was in favor of single payer.

00:03:57.140 | Now she's against it.

00:03:58.540 | She said she was in favor of court packing.

00:04:00.380 | Now she's against it.

00:04:01.780 | She said she was against fracking.

00:04:03.480 | Now she's in favor of it.

00:04:05.420 | On the border,

00:04:06.260 | she said that we should consider abolishing ICE.

00:04:08.260 | Now all of a sudden,

00:04:09.100 | she's in favor of more funding for border patrol.

00:04:11.860 | On crime,

00:04:12.860 | she used to take kind of the BLM position

00:04:15.260 | that cops don't make us safer

00:04:17.440 | to now she's saying that she's a cop

00:04:19.320 | and prosecutor herself.

00:04:21.040 | She used to be in favor of federal gun buybacks.

00:04:23.020 | Now she's against them.

00:04:24.360 | It just goes on and on.

00:04:25.380 | I mean, in the 2020 riots,

00:04:27.660 | she raised money for the legal defense of rioters.

00:04:30.860 | Now she's distancing herself from those positions.

00:04:33.300 | My point is this,

00:04:34.300 | is that after spending really her whole career

00:04:36.820 | staking out positions on the far left,

00:04:39.060 | she has now dropped all of these positions

00:04:41.640 | for political expediency.

00:04:43.940 | And the question is,

00:04:45.540 | what does she stand for at all?

00:04:47.100 | Does she just kind of blow with the wind

00:04:48.460 | and say whatever helps her

00:04:51.220 | win whatever the next election is?

00:04:52.940 | I mean, I think that's basically what's going on here.

00:04:55.720 | And normally what happens is

00:04:58.420 | the press would ask you that question,

00:05:00.000 | but she's been getting a free pass

00:05:01.940 | because the mainstream media has basically been operating

00:05:04.020 | as a division of the DNC

00:05:05.820 | and they're not holding her to account in any way.

00:05:08.260 | They're not requiring her to answer any questions.

00:05:10.740 | And as a result, yes,

00:05:12.260 | you're seeing this bounce in the polls.

00:05:15.600 | But I think the question is,

00:05:17.180 | can she sustain this for 100 days?

00:05:18.820 | Can she really get through the entire election

00:05:21.180 | without having gone through a primary,

00:05:22.500 | without ever having to explain her positions on issues?

00:05:26.620 | And she just does these short scripted appearances.

00:05:28.740 | I just think that at some point over the next 100 days,

00:05:31.660 | that approach is just gonna fall apart.

00:05:33.940 | She's gonna have to do a debate.

00:05:35.380 | She's gonna have to answer questions.

00:05:36.860 | At that point, I think the bloom

00:05:39.300 | will come off the rose a little bit here

00:05:40.860 | and you'll see the polls normalize.

00:05:44.140 | - Do you think that J.D. Vance

00:05:48.100 | has negatively affected the interest in Trump,

00:05:51.400 | that he, you know, there's a lot of media coverage

00:05:53.220 | about J.D. Vance being potentially the wrong pick

00:05:55.940 | for vice president

00:05:56.860 | and that he's creating more of a challenge

00:05:59.620 | for the president's campaign than a boom?

00:06:02.980 | - No, listen, anyone who Trump chose

00:06:05.060 | was gonna be absolutely smeared by the other side

00:06:07.980 | and by the media.

00:06:09.340 | If it had been Doug Burgum,

00:06:11.260 | there would have been nonstop coverage

00:06:12.460 | of the six week abortion bill that he signed.

00:06:14.860 | - Right.

00:06:15.700 | - You could go down the list.

00:06:16.540 | I mean, look, what Democrats will say

00:06:18.820 | is we just wanna see a moderate Republican,

00:06:20.420 | but when Mitt Romney ran, they were calling him a fascist.

00:06:23.800 | So the reality is that the mainstream media and the DNC,

00:06:27.300 | but I repeat myself, are gonna smear anyone who's picked.

00:06:30.780 | At the end of the day, I don't think that it matters.

00:06:33.820 | What matters is the top of the ticket.

00:06:35.940 | - Jamal, what do you think about the Harris campaign,

00:06:38.140 | how it's going and the momentum

00:06:39.900 | that is being projected in the media

00:06:41.820 | and the polling data is clearly demonstrating

00:06:43.940 | an improvement over Biden's standings in the polls?

00:06:47.420 | - I mean, I think we had a situation

00:06:49.060 | where one candidate was not real.

00:06:52.020 | And so Sachs is right that a lot of the polling

00:06:57.100 | up until basically last week is not really reliable.

00:07:02.420 | Now you have this snapback effect,

00:07:04.980 | which is more about a lot of people

00:07:08.300 | that were coming around to this idea of voting for Trump

00:07:13.100 | because Biden was such a bad option, now flip-flopping.

00:07:18.100 | And so I think that's what explains the snapback.

00:07:21.920 | But Sachs is right, 100 days is a really long time.

00:07:28.580 | And what Nate Silver's poll essentially shows

00:07:32.460 | is if she wants to win, not the popular vote,

00:07:36.220 | because at this point now, three or four elections in a row,

00:07:38.940 | that just doesn't matter anymore.

00:07:41.180 | If you wanna win the electoral college and be the president,

00:07:43.980 | you gotta go and win five states.

00:07:45.860 | And in order to do that, you have to be very precise

00:07:49.180 | on about four or five specific issues.

00:07:52.220 | And in the absence of her defining herself

00:07:54.820 | on those four or five issues, she's not gonna win.

00:07:57.900 | She'll win the popular vote.

00:07:59.220 | But again, when people win the popular vote

00:08:01.620 | and lose the electoral college,

00:08:02.800 | we've now gone through that enough times

00:08:04.380 | where that's just a fait accompli

00:08:05.700 | inside of American electoral politics.

00:08:08.400 | So I think that the Trump campaign

00:08:10.740 | and the Harris campaign need to agree

00:08:13.140 | on some schedule of debates.

00:08:14.740 | I hope that they do two, and ideally three,

00:08:18.900 | and that they both get after it in front of each other

00:08:22.500 | so that those five states

00:08:24.700 | that are really going to decide this election

00:08:26.540 | has an opportunity to make a decision

00:08:29.140 | on behalf of the rest of the country.

00:08:31.340 | - Yeah, Nick, if you pull that chart back up again,

00:08:33.660 | based on Nate Silver's model of polls,

00:08:36.140 | where he takes all the polling data

00:08:37.940 | that's been collected by different third parties,

00:08:40.460 | he weights them based on the performance of those polls

00:08:43.740 | in terms of predictive power historically,

00:08:45.940 | and he creates this kind of macro model.

00:08:47.580 | That's the Nate Silver approach here.

00:08:49.700 | He's estimating that within the 80% bound,

00:08:52.900 | every state on this list is up for grabs,

00:08:55.460 | as you can see with the gray lines shown there.

00:08:58.340 | There's a very slight margin on the average

00:09:01.860 | in Wisconsin for Trump,

00:09:03.980 | in Michigan for Harris, in Pennsylvania for Trump,

00:09:07.260 | in Nevada for Trump, in North Carolina for Trump,

00:09:10.540 | in Virginia for Harris, and so on.

00:09:12.580 | But each of those margins is so slim

00:09:15.360 | that there's still quite a lot of decision-making

00:09:18.300 | ahead for voters.

00:09:20.580 | So pretty clearly on point

00:09:22.900 | that this is still very much an open election.

00:09:25.340 | I'll give you guys my read.

00:09:26.420 | I think that there's five camps of voters

00:09:28.540 | going into this when Biden was a candidate.

00:09:31.580 | The first is anti-Biden, anything but Biden.

00:09:35.180 | The second is anything but Trump.

00:09:38.340 | The third is pro-Biden.

00:09:39.780 | The fourth is pro-Trump.

00:09:41.820 | And then the fifth is the other.

00:09:43.780 | And I think that that entire bucket of anything but Biden

00:09:47.660 | just became available once Biden dropped out of the race.

00:09:50.620 | And it was a pretty sizable bucket,

00:09:52.580 | that there's a large number of voters out there

00:09:54.940 | that felt pretty strongly that Biden

00:09:56.860 | poses such a significant risk for leadership in this country

00:10:00.060 | because of the mental issues

00:10:01.980 | and the performance issues that we had seen

00:10:04.220 | that as much as people didn't love Trump,

00:10:06.620 | they were willing to vote for him because he's not Biden.

00:10:09.980 | Now that camp has an option, and that option is Harris.

00:10:12.620 | So some percentage of that camp,

00:10:14.380 | and I would say probably a super majority of that camp,

00:10:16.900 | is now switching into the Harris bucket.

00:10:19.540 | The pro-Trump bucket doesn't move.

00:10:22.100 | The pro-Biden bucket probably doesn't move,

00:10:24.980 | it sticks with Harris.

00:10:26.660 | And the anything but Trump bucket doesn't move,

00:10:28.780 | it sticks with Harris.

00:10:29.940 | So the fact that there is probably

00:10:32.020 | such a sizable number of voters

00:10:33.980 | in the anything but Biden camp

00:10:35.820 | is what's probably helping Harris at this point

00:10:38.100 | and creates a bit of a handicap for Trump

00:10:40.140 | going into this last stretch of the campaign.

00:10:43.140 | That's my real,

00:10:44.100 | 'cause I know a lot of people with that point of view.

00:10:46.100 | - That's an interesting point of view,

00:10:47.100 | and let me just respond to that for a second.

00:10:49.660 | So one of our critiques of Biden,

00:10:53.500 | not just in this election cycle,

00:10:54.860 | but probably going back a year,

00:10:56.380 | is that Biden had become basically a figurehead president,

00:10:59.980 | almost a construct,

00:11:01.660 | and he was fronting for a shadow cabinet

00:11:04.140 | or a group of powerful staffers

00:11:06.140 | who were really running the country,

00:11:07.700 | basically because of his cognitive decline.

00:11:10.580 | And we sort of joke that whoever the White House intern was

00:11:13.260 | who was running the social media accounts

00:11:15.340 | or the staffer who was running the teleprompter

00:11:17.420 | was basically the president

00:11:18.780 | because they could dictate what Biden said.

00:11:22.500 | Now, I think the question to ask is, has anything changed?

00:11:25.980 | Kamala Harris refuses to do any interviews.

00:11:28.780 | She doesn't wanna do any unscripted appearances.

00:11:31.260 | She's abandoned all of her policy positions

00:11:34.060 | that have been longstanding

00:11:35.340 | and were the reason why she ran for president

00:11:36.980 | in the first place in 2020.

00:11:39.380 | So the question to ask is,

00:11:41.420 | do we still have a construct as the president?

00:11:44.100 | I mean, the Biden staffers who are running Biden

00:11:46.700 | are now just running Harris.

00:11:48.620 | We don't know what she stands for.

00:11:50.980 | We don't have her appearing in

00:11:53.980 | unscripted natural appearances.

00:11:57.420 | We don't have her being challenged by the press.

00:12:00.420 | She's not willing to do what Trump did.

00:12:03.620 | Trump just walked into the lion's den yet again

00:12:06.500 | at the NABJ.

00:12:07.740 | - National Association of Black Journalists.

00:12:10.060 | - Right, exactly.

00:12:10.900 | Trump walks into a very hostile interview at NABJ.

00:12:15.020 | Harris was supposed to come and she didn't come.

00:12:16.900 | She would have gotten a very softball interview.

00:12:19.580 | She's not even willing to do that.

00:12:21.900 | I think that in substantive terms,

00:12:23.380 | I don't think that much has changed this election.

00:12:25.580 | The Biden staff is still running for president.

00:12:27.460 | I mean, that's what you're voting for.

00:12:28.860 | - I would disagree on this

00:12:29.980 | because I think in the last two weeks,

00:12:32.460 | what I've seen is statements coming out of the Harris camp

00:12:35.460 | that clearly distinguish her and her campaign

00:12:38.980 | from Biden's policy positions

00:12:40.580 | and Biden's campaign rhetoric historically.

00:12:44.100 | Most particularly Sachs is on Israel.

00:12:47.300 | When Netanyahu came to visit the United States,

00:12:50.220 | she put out a very pro-Israel statement

00:12:53.020 | that we all know the Biden camp has largely avoided doing

00:12:57.060 | because of the concern

00:12:58.220 | over the pro-Palestinian rights movement's reaction

00:13:01.460 | to the Biden campaign pro-Israel.

00:13:04.340 | And the Harris statement was pretty finely worded

00:13:06.860 | and pretty strongly worded

00:13:08.500 | that she is very much in favor of Israel defending itself.

00:13:11.380 | She acknowledged that there's a loss of Palestinian life

00:13:14.060 | that matters and we need to acknowledge and address it,

00:13:16.940 | but she was very much in support of Israel,

00:13:18.780 | which is not a position we've seen the Biden camp take.

00:13:21.420 | And I think that we're starting to see

00:13:23.500 | what is a little bit more of a fracturing

00:13:26.260 | between Harris being allowed to be free

00:13:28.740 | and being allowed to have an opinion

00:13:30.740 | outside of the party line dictated by the Biden camp.

00:13:34.140 | And I think we'll probably see more of that

00:13:36.020 | in the next couple of weeks.

00:13:37.340 | And we'll probably see her starting

00:13:38.660 | to be a little bit more refined

00:13:39.820 | in what differentiates her from Biden.

00:13:42.740 | Because I do think that's what's gonna allow her

00:13:44.420 | to win this election is she's gonna stand up and say,

00:13:46.500 | here's why I am not Joe Biden.

00:13:48.460 | And here's what makes me different from that individual.

00:13:50.300 | I respect him, I love him, he helped me,

00:13:52.300 | but let me tell you why I'm different

00:13:54.620 | and why that should matter.

00:13:55.540 | - She snubbed Netanyahu, Freeberg.

00:13:57.420 | I don't know what you're talking about.

00:13:58.540 | She snubbed Netanyahu.

00:13:59.740 | - I think you're an example of the people

00:14:01.820 | that want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

00:14:04.020 | - Okay.

00:14:05.340 | - I think there's a large fraction of those people.

00:14:07.260 | - That's not true.

00:14:08.100 | No, that's not a fair way to characterize me at all.

00:14:10.940 | I'm simply pointing out that she made a statement.

00:14:13.140 | I'm pointing out that she made a statement

00:14:14.580 | that's different than what Biden said.

00:14:15.740 | That's it, that's all I'm saying.

00:14:17.100 | - Hold on a second.

00:14:17.940 | I think on Israel, so first of all,

00:14:19.900 | she didn't write that statement, the staff did, okay?

00:14:22.300 | Now, what is the staff trying to accomplish on Israel?

00:14:24.540 | They actually have a genuine dilemma

00:14:26.660 | on the whole Israel-Palestine issue

00:14:28.420 | because the Democrat party is very much split on this.

00:14:31.500 | The Democrat establishment is pro-Israel,

00:14:33.460 | but the progressive base is very pro-Palestine.

00:14:37.420 | And even polling among youth

00:14:39.780 | shows significant support for Hamas even.

00:14:42.380 | And a lot of these people are very much

00:14:44.100 | within the sort of hardcore left-wing base

00:14:47.940 | of the Democrat party.

00:14:49.100 | So what the Biden administration has been doing

00:14:51.620 | and what I think Harris is continuing

00:14:54.020 | is a process of talking out of both sides of their mouth.

00:14:57.420 | Biden went to Israel, bear hug, BB,

00:14:59.980 | basically supported his policy,

00:15:02.220 | but then gave some lip service to the idea

00:15:05.740 | that he would limit the weapons that Israel is able to use.

00:15:08.860 | Harris puts out this very pro-Israel statement,

00:15:11.500 | but then snubs Netanyahu

00:15:13.260 | at that speech he gave before Congress.

00:15:15.580 | So look, the Democrats are trying to have it both ways.

00:15:18.140 | They have a base that is fractured on this issue.

00:15:22.220 | And so they're trying to thread that needle.

00:15:24.140 | Now, you're right that, let's just up a level.

00:15:26.860 | Let's move off the Israel issue for a second.

00:15:29.620 | There's no question that Harris wants to run from her record

00:15:34.140 | as being Biden's vice president.

00:15:36.100 | There's a good reason for that.

00:15:37.660 | The Biden-Harris administration is historically unpopular.

00:15:41.300 | What you have to ask though is whether it's credible.

00:15:44.300 | Harris suddenly is in favor of more money for border patrol.

00:15:48.020 | Why didn't she advocate for that

00:15:49.180 | when she was Biden's border czar?

00:15:51.780 | The media is fiercely scrubbing its websites

00:15:54.100 | to remove references.

00:15:55.420 | Hold on, they're removing historical references

00:15:57.900 | from during the Biden administration

00:15:59.820 | when she was openly called the border czar.

00:16:02.180 | They're trying to memory hole that.

00:16:03.660 | So look, I have no doubt that the Harris campaign

00:16:06.660 | wants to drop every substantive policy position

00:16:10.060 | she's ever taken

00:16:11.260 | because they just want her to be a construct.

00:16:13.860 | They just want people to be excited because.

00:16:16.740 | - I do think that what you're saying

00:16:18.420 | is exactly what she needs to answer to in public

00:16:21.020 | in the next couple of weeks to earn credibility

00:16:23.460 | on what is she different from the Biden administration on

00:16:27.380 | in terms of policy.

00:16:28.900 | And why did she not make that clear

00:16:30.940 | when she was in the Biden administration?

00:16:32.340 | And she can say, "I didn't agree with it."

00:16:34.660 | Or she can say, "I've changed my mind."

00:16:36.820 | And I think both of those might end up

00:16:38.900 | being where she needs to go to.

00:16:39.940 | But you're right, she does need to answer to that.

00:16:41.660 | - I don't think it's clear she has to do any of that.

00:16:44.220 | - You think she can just hide out and coast?

00:16:46.500 | - No, right now the calculation is to get as many people

00:16:51.500 | to basically move into the not Trump voting stance.

00:16:56.820 | And they're giving as much time as possible

00:16:59.700 | to measure that and see if it's a winning strategy.

00:17:02.380 | But again, and I think we just talked about this.

00:17:05.300 | Mathematically, it can win the popular vote

00:17:08.060 | but it will not win the electoral college.

00:17:09.860 | So she is going to have to appear

00:17:12.940 | and be in a position where she's confronted

00:17:15.140 | on about four or five key issues.

00:17:17.220 | And that's where this presidency is going to get decided.

00:17:20.580 | Four or five issues in four or five states

00:17:23.020 | and we'll all know where she stands.

00:17:24.860 | On the border, on the economy.

00:17:27.140 | By the way, the problem is,

00:17:28.220 | and if you look at what's happening now,

00:17:29.980 | we are in a recessionary stance.

00:17:32.940 | There's going to be a lot of ink that gets spilled

00:17:35.860 | starting in September on the fact that X of a handful

00:17:38.500 | of companies were basically in a recession.

00:17:40.940 | So that's gonna have to get put on the feet

00:17:43.260 | of the sitting president and the sitting vice president.

00:17:46.220 | So there's a whole set of complicated issues.

00:17:48.820 | I think it's smart actually for her to strategically

00:17:51.820 | kind of stay quiet right now and just kind of see

00:17:56.260 | all the goodwill that's pent up to the not Trump candidate

00:18:00.420 | is going to flow her way.

00:18:02.420 | The problem is that that's not enough

00:18:04.060 | to sustain yourself for a hundred days.

00:18:06.260 | And so she's just going to have to take a point of view.

00:18:09.700 | - Well, it might be if the press lets her get away with it.

00:18:11.860 | - No, because I think, David, I think you're right.

00:18:14.020 | Because when you go into a debate

00:18:15.780 | or when you go into these places,

00:18:18.300 | people will want to know the answers to these questions.

00:18:20.580 | And if the media tries to memory hold this thing,

00:18:24.780 | I think the thing that they most don't want,

00:18:28.340 | which is another Trump victory

00:18:30.020 | will actually happen because of it.

00:18:32.340 | Because people will come in,

00:18:34.220 | this kind of like ambivalent group of folks

00:18:36.860 | that are or independent group of folks

00:18:38.540 | that are looking for very clear point of view

00:18:41.580 | on four or five issues, maybe we'll come to a rally.

00:18:44.660 | And instead of that, they'll hear Megan Thee Stallion

00:18:47.260 | and they'll wonder to themselves,

00:18:48.540 | well, this is not what I came for.

00:18:49.980 | I came to know where you stand on these four or five issues.

00:18:52.700 | So if the media actually,

00:18:53.980 | in order to give her the best chance of getting elected,

00:18:57.420 | and this is counterintuitive to them,

00:18:59.020 | which is why they probably won't do it,

00:19:00.900 | they'll have to confront her on these issues.

00:19:03.780 | - Yeah, I think that's fair.

00:19:04.940 | And that's why I invite Vice President Harris

00:19:06.860 | onto the "All In" podcast to join us for a conversation.

00:19:09.420 | I think we all really enjoy that.

00:19:11.220 | And just to declare my position,

00:19:13.460 | I am in camp five, the other camp.

00:19:15.900 | I am not pro or anti either of these candidates.

00:19:18.860 | I obviously have issues that I think are far more existential

00:19:22.660 | to the longevity of the United States and the Republic

00:19:25.740 | that need to be addressed,

00:19:26.700 | that don't seem to be a priority

00:19:27.820 | for either candidate or either party.

00:19:29.380 | As I've mentioned many times on the show,

00:19:31.780 | that's where I stand.

00:19:33.540 | Let's move on.

00:19:34.380 | Sax, I just wanna ask,

00:19:35.460 | do you think that Trump is at risk

00:19:37.580 | of shooting himself in the foot by being too public,

00:19:40.260 | too open and too engaging?

00:19:41.980 | If we take a look at what happened this week,

00:19:43.620 | the National Association of Black Journalists

00:19:45.340 | had a convention on Wednesday.

00:19:46.700 | It sent interview requests to both President Trump

00:19:48.860 | and Vice President Harris,

00:19:49.940 | and Trump accepted and went in person.

00:19:51.740 | Harris said she couldn't do it in person or via Zoom.

00:19:54.620 | And according to the National Association

00:19:56.620 | of Black Journalists,

00:19:58.100 | Harris is in talks to do a Q&A session with them

00:20:00.140 | at some point in September.

00:20:01.220 | There were two moments that are making a lot of news.

00:20:03.100 | One was the first question,

00:20:05.660 | Nick, can you play this?

00:20:06.660 | Where ABC's Rachel Scott went after Trump.

00:20:09.060 | - A lot of people did not think

00:20:11.020 | it was appropriate for you to be here today.

00:20:13.660 | You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals,

00:20:17.180 | from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama,

00:20:19.700 | saying that they were not born in the United States,

00:20:22.100 | which is not true.

00:20:23.460 | You have told four congresswomen, women of color,

00:20:25.820 | who were American citizens,

00:20:27.100 | to go back to where they came from.

00:20:29.180 | You have used words like animal and rabbit

00:20:31.740 | to describe black district attorneys.

00:20:34.300 | You've attacked black journalists,

00:20:35.580 | calling them a loser,

00:20:36.620 | saying the questions that they ask

00:20:38.500 | are, quote, stupid and racist.

00:20:40.900 | You've had dinner with a white supremacist

00:20:42.420 | at your Mar-a-Lago resort.

00:20:44.380 | So my question, sir,

00:20:46.180 | now that you are asking black supporters to vote for you,

00:20:49.900 | why should black voters trust you

00:20:52.220 | after you have used language like that?

00:20:54.380 | - Well, first of all,

00:20:55.220 | I don't think I've ever been asked a question

00:20:58.020 | so, in such a horrible manner,

00:21:00.900 | a first question.

00:21:01.740 | (audience laughing)

00:21:02.580 | You don't even say, hello, how are you?

00:21:05.700 | Are you with ABC?

00:21:06.780 | Because I think they're a fake news network,

00:21:09.020 | a terrible network.

00:21:09.860 | (audience laughing)

00:21:11.180 | And I think it's disgraceful that I came here

00:21:16.180 | in good spirit.

00:21:18.340 | I love the black population of this country.

00:21:20.660 | I've done so much for the black population of this country,

00:21:23.980 | including employment,

00:21:27.460 | including Opportunity Zones

00:21:29.980 | with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina,

00:21:32.740 | which is one of the greatest programs ever

00:21:34.900 | for black workers and black entrepreneurs.

00:21:38.740 | I've done so much.

00:21:39.940 | And you know, when I say this,

00:21:42.460 | historically black colleges and universities

00:21:45.340 | were out of money.

00:21:46.300 | They were stone cold broke.

00:21:48.020 | And I saved them and I gave them long-term financing

00:21:51.980 | and nobody else was doing it.

00:21:53.620 | I think it's a very rude introduction.

00:21:56.180 | I don't know exactly why you would do something like that.

00:21:59.740 | And let me go a step further.

00:22:01.620 | I was invited here and I was told my opponent,

00:22:04.300 | whether it was Biden or Kamala,

00:22:07.100 | I was told my opponent was going to be here.

00:22:10.140 | It turned out my opponent isn't here.

00:22:12.220 | You invited me under false pretense.

00:22:14.500 | And then you said, you can't do it with Zoom.

00:22:17.380 | Well, you know, where's Zoom?

00:22:19.540 | She's gonna do it with Zoom and she's not coming.

00:22:22.100 | And then you were a half an hour late,

00:22:23.420 | just so we understand.

00:22:24.660 | I have too much respect for you to be late.

00:22:26.660 | They couldn't get their equipment working

00:22:28.220 | or something was wrong.

00:22:29.060 | - Mr. President, I would love-

00:22:29.900 | - I think it's a very nasty question.

00:22:31.580 | I have answered the question.

00:22:34.420 | - Zacks, is he shooting himself in the foot

00:22:36.020 | by agreeing to show up?

00:22:36.900 | He showed up to the Bitcoin conference,

00:22:38.300 | which obviously went phenomenally well.

00:22:40.260 | But Zacks, is he shooting himself in the foot

00:22:42.020 | by being too open and engaging too much?

00:22:44.460 | And should he lay low?

00:22:46.020 | - No, I mean, look, what kind of president do you want?

00:22:49.620 | I mean, I want the president who is fearless

00:22:51.860 | and willing to walk into the lion's den

00:22:53.540 | over and over again and answer tough questions.

00:22:55.940 | What you saw in that soundbite here

00:22:57.620 | is that Rachel Scott, the interviewer,

00:22:59.300 | that whatever she was doing is not journalism.

00:23:01.700 | This is supposed to be a journalism association.

00:23:03.660 | She turned that interview into an ambush.

00:23:05.460 | It was hostile, what she did, and right out of the gate.

00:23:09.260 | I mean, the first question, she's attacking him,

00:23:11.180 | and he pushed back on it.

00:23:12.580 | I mean, I think you saw him push back on the media

00:23:15.300 | in a way that only Trump can do.

00:23:17.540 | Now, you also heard there, I think, a really key point,

00:23:20.660 | that Harris basically passed on the opportunity to attend

00:23:24.340 | when she was originally supposed to.

00:23:26.660 | That would have been a softball interview for her,

00:23:28.300 | but she is not willing to do

00:23:29.940 | any kind of interview right now.

00:23:31.540 | No questions, no unscripted appearances.

00:23:34.180 | She just wants to read from a teleprompter.

00:23:36.660 | That rally she did in Atlanta

00:23:39.500 | that had Megan Thee Stallion perform,

00:23:41.660 | so it was a free concert,

00:23:43.260 | that drew out a huge number of people.

00:23:45.980 | Then Harris spoke for 17 minutes,

00:23:47.700 | and people were leaving five minutes in

00:23:49.060 | because they were just there for the concert.

00:23:50.860 | I guess the question that people need to ask,

00:23:53.020 | I understand why this is strategic for her.

00:23:55.060 | I mean, obviously, it's better for you

00:23:57.140 | if you don't have to take any positions whatsoever,

00:24:00.780 | and you can just abandon all of your previous positions

00:24:03.420 | without any explanation whatsoever,

00:24:05.180 | and the media gives you a free pass on that.

00:24:06.900 | I can understand why that's strategic,

00:24:09.020 | but I think that voters need to ask the question,

00:24:11.500 | who do you want representing the United States right now

00:24:14.260 | in a world that's on fire?

00:24:15.740 | Who do you want to stand up to Putin or Xi

00:24:19.020 | or make peace with them?

00:24:20.380 | Who do you want to stand up to

00:24:22.580 | or be allies with Netanyahu, for example?

00:24:25.780 | The United States right now is in a very difficult situation.

00:24:28.580 | We can't have a teleprompter president.

00:24:30.260 | We need a strong president.

00:24:32.060 | I appreciate the fact that Trump

00:24:33.660 | is willing to take on all challengers.

00:24:35.820 | I just think it's manifestly clear

00:24:37.180 | that these are the qualities and traits

00:24:39.180 | you want in a president of the United States.

00:24:41.460 | - Okay, so your opinion is Trump needs to continue

00:24:44.620 | to engage openly and publicly.

00:24:46.380 | It shows strength, and it shows a capacity

00:24:49.500 | to deal with adversity and conflict.

00:24:51.940 | Point taken.

00:24:52.780 | So let's pull up the next clip

00:24:54.300 | where Scott then asked Trump if Harris was a DEI candidate,

00:24:58.580 | and here's his answer.

00:25:01.100 | - I've known her a long time indirectly,

00:25:03.140 | not directly very much,

00:25:05.100 | and she was always of Indian heritage,

00:25:08.620 | and she was only promoting Indian heritage.

00:25:11.580 | I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago

00:25:14.660 | when she happened to turn black,

00:25:16.340 | and now she wants to be known as black.

00:25:18.420 | So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?

00:25:20.700 | - She is always identified as a black

00:25:22.260 | when she went to a historically black college.

00:25:24.060 | - I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't,

00:25:26.980 | because she was Indian all the way,

00:25:28.780 | and then all of a sudden she made a turn,

00:25:30.580 | and she went, she became a black person.

00:25:33.180 | - Just to be clear, sir,

00:25:34.020 | do you believe that she's- - And I think,

00:25:34.860 | I think somebody should look into that too

00:25:36.740 | when you ask, continue in a very hostile, nasty tone.

00:25:40.740 | - Timoth, let me ask for your response.

00:25:42.620 | Did Trump shoot himself in the foot with that comment?

00:25:46.060 | And maybe you can give us your read on how he's doing

00:25:48.500 | with respect to this, you know, active engagement

00:25:51.660 | with obviously adverse, let's call them, you know,

00:25:54.420 | journalists and interviews and forums.

00:25:56.420 | - Well, I'd love to hear from the Caucasians.

00:25:58.580 | What do you guys think about that?

00:26:00.940 | Yeah, I'm not talking about the answer itself.

00:26:02.260 | I'm talking more about Trump getting out there

00:26:04.060 | and like engaging in this way.

00:26:06.540 | - Yeah, here's what I will say.

00:26:07.660 | I think that from now until the end of time

00:26:12.460 | with social media tools replacing traditional media,

00:26:19.260 | and then with AI tools that are going to create

00:26:27.180 | enormous amounts of very sophisticated misinformation

00:26:30.740 | and disinformation, I think the only strategy

00:26:33.980 | for politicians from here on out is to leave zero ambiguity

00:26:38.140 | between what you think and what you say.

00:26:41.140 | And so without judging the quality of the answer,

00:26:46.180 | I think the thing that is going to be the most critical

00:26:49.660 | for people is to know that the person

00:26:52.540 | that you're voting for is in charge.

00:26:54.580 | And you get a great chance to vote this person up or down.

00:26:58.220 | And the more content that that person puts out directly,

00:27:01.300 | the less likely it is that this ambiguity exists

00:27:03.860 | that can then get exploited,

00:27:05.100 | whether it's by internal people inside of a country

00:27:08.540 | or whether it's foreign adversaries.

00:27:10.940 | And so my perspective is it's pretty fearless of somebody

00:27:15.940 | to just constantly say what they think.

00:27:19.300 | And again, I'll just go back to what I said before

00:27:23.700 | with respect to the Harris campaign.

00:27:25.500 | I think that Americans were smart enough,

00:27:29.380 | and I think you did a good job

00:27:30.500 | of dissecting the electorate into five groups.

00:27:33.700 | Americans were smart enough to basically say never Biden

00:27:37.780 | because of the risk it represented

00:27:39.260 | to not know what one was voting for,

00:27:41.020 | irrespective of whatever your historic allegiances were.

00:27:44.540 | I think they're smart enough now to demand answers

00:27:47.020 | to the four or five questions that really matter.

00:27:49.060 | And I think if Harris wants to really win this

00:27:52.140 | and give it a legitimate shot,

00:27:54.380 | she's gonna have to take a point of view

00:27:56.060 | on these five things.

00:27:57.580 | And she's gonna have to step into the lion's den

00:27:59.980 | and be asked very tough questions

00:28:03.420 | by a lot of different people.

00:28:04.740 | And she's going to have to leave no ambiguity

00:28:06.900 | that can be then exploited by misinformation

00:28:09.660 | and disinformation between now and the election.

00:28:11.980 | So that's honestly my reaction.

00:28:14.180 | Zach, final word?

00:28:15.820 | - Yeah, look, I would say that in that clip

00:28:18.660 | and other clips from that event,

00:28:19.980 | I think you should pay a lot of attention

00:28:21.220 | to the audience's reaction

00:28:22.940 | because what do they do in that moment

00:28:24.780 | when Trump was supposedly committing a faux pas

00:28:28.300 | or getting into dangerous territory?

00:28:29.740 | They laughed.

00:28:30.580 | You know, when Mitt Romney spoke to this group

00:28:33.740 | a number of years ago when he was running for president,

00:28:35.420 | he got booed.

00:28:36.620 | Trump never got booed.

00:28:37.580 | He got a lot of laughter.

00:28:38.620 | There was a lot of appreciation.

00:28:39.860 | Why?

00:28:40.700 | 'Cause Trump is always authentic.

00:28:41.740 | He's always who he is.

00:28:43.220 | Whereas Mitt Romney always appears to be scripted

00:28:46.140 | and frankly sort of patronizing.

00:28:48.460 | So I think the audience appreciated Trump for who he is.

00:28:51.820 | I think that when Trump goes into these areas,

00:28:55.180 | there's always a grain of truth to what he's saying.

00:28:58.260 | I think that Harris has leaned into different parts

00:29:01.660 | of her heritage for different audiences.

00:29:04.340 | But I do think that this is ground he should get off of.

00:29:07.860 | And I think a much better line of attack

00:29:10.620 | is to talk about the fact that she has dropped

00:29:13.660 | all of her left-wing policy positions

00:29:15.900 | and refuses to answer questions

00:29:17.940 | or do unscripted appearances

00:29:20.580 | without having a teleprompter in front of her.

00:29:22.220 | I think that's a much better line of attack.

00:29:23.900 | - Well, I do agree.

00:29:25.100 | - And I think that's what the campaign

00:29:26.100 | will be about from here.

00:29:27.420 | You know, I don't think we want this campaign

00:29:29.460 | to be about identity.

00:29:31.620 | - I do think that the rise of the authentic politician,

00:29:36.620 | the rise of the authentic CEO/typically founder,

00:29:40.740 | the rise of the authentic celebrity

00:29:43.900 | is definitely the trend that we're seeing,

00:29:45.580 | which is that authenticity counts for more than anything,

00:29:47.940 | regardless of one's position.

00:29:49.220 | And, you know, obviously having trust in the individual

00:29:54.220 | is rooted in the authentic capacity of the individual

00:29:57.300 | rather than the teleprompter CEO

00:29:59.060 | or the teleprompter politician

00:30:01.140 | or the teleprompter or buttoned-up

00:30:04.020 | or image-managed celebrity.

00:30:06.820 | And that's definitely been a trend

00:30:08.420 | that's been building over the last 10 years,

00:30:10.620 | culminating in a lot of these changes

00:30:13.260 | that we're now seeing. - Totally.

00:30:14.460 | I mean, look, just think about what's gonna happen

00:30:16.380 | over the next four years if Harris is elected.

00:30:18.340 | I mean, you're gonna have a prompter president.

00:30:20.380 | I mean, she's just never gonna be off-prompter.

00:30:22.700 | It's gonna be, like, Biden at least tried to go off-prompter.

00:30:25.860 | Whenever he did, it was a disaster,

00:30:27.940 | but at least he tried. - By the way, I mean,

00:30:29.100 | this is one of the criticisms of a lot of hired

00:30:31.460 | large enterprise CEOs is that they come in,

00:30:35.780 | they have all their words written for them by a media team.

00:30:40.060 | They have all of their communications scripted, managed.

00:30:42.700 | Every press interview is with the right journalist

00:30:45.020 | said in the right way.

00:30:46.620 | And the CEOs that seem to build the greatest value

00:30:50.980 | are those who are typically founders

00:30:53.140 | because they're willing and able to be authentic

00:30:55.300 | because they weren't hired by the board.

00:30:57.020 | It's their business that they built.

00:30:58.740 | And so they're willing to be authentic.

00:31:00.060 | And the CEOs who operate at scale with authenticity

00:31:04.180 | build the greatest market value.

00:31:05.460 | - I agree with you that whether you're a CEO

00:31:07.580 | or you're a politician, authenticity counts.

00:31:09.500 | But I think this election's gonna be a test

00:31:12.420 | of what people want in their president.

00:31:15.660 | I mean, do you think the president

00:31:16.820 | needs to be a chief executive

00:31:18.420 | who at some level is calling the shots,

00:31:20.620 | or do you think it's good enough for the presidency

00:31:23.380 | to essentially be a construct

00:31:25.140 | and to be a manifestation of the staff, right?

00:31:29.180 | - I think voters look at policy sacks

00:31:32.260 | and they look at character.

00:31:33.900 | And with respect to character,

00:31:35.620 | there's a certain value that they ascribe

00:31:37.500 | to this authenticity component,

00:31:39.460 | which is typically lacking in most politicians.

00:31:42.020 | And Trump delivers that authentic component

00:31:45.940 | in how he talks and how he's off the cuff and so on.

00:31:49.140 | He's got other character issues, which I think hurt him.

00:31:51.580 | And on the policy side,

00:31:52.900 | people really kind of look at those objectively,

00:31:54.540 | those points, what's your policy?

00:31:56.460 | And do I trust you as your character?

00:31:59.460 | - Right, but see, I think it's more than that,

00:32:01.380 | because I think any large organization

00:32:02.980 | needs a chief executive.

00:32:04.500 | What happens when you don't have a chief executive

00:32:06.620 | or you don't have a strong chief executive?

00:32:08.620 | You get drift.

00:32:09.860 | The organization strategically drifts.

00:32:11.820 | - 100%, yeah, it gets driven from the bottom

00:32:13.660 | instead of from the top.

00:32:14.500 | - Yeah, the decisions that get made

00:32:15.700 | are the result of bureaucracy

00:32:17.180 | and political infighting and staffers, exactly.

00:32:19.820 | You need someone to control that.

00:32:21.820 | And I think it's really interesting

00:32:23.340 | that when Biden was still the candidate,

00:32:25.820 | but everyone could tell that he was sort of impaired,

00:32:28.380 | that the arguments you started hearing

00:32:30.060 | from Democrat partisans and the media

00:32:32.740 | is that, well, you're voting for a team.

00:32:35.060 | You're not just voting for a president, right?

00:32:36.580 | You're voting for a shadow cabinet.

00:32:38.060 | Exactly the thing that we criticized

00:32:39.340 | on this pod for the last year.

00:32:40.820 | My point is that you're still voting for a shadow cabinet.

00:32:43.500 | Unless Harris is willing to get out there

00:32:45.340 | and answer questions and be unscripted,

00:32:47.900 | you're just voting for a staff.

00:32:50.100 | And I don't think that's good enough.

00:32:51.780 | When we're in a world where we're in a proxy war with Russia

00:32:56.260 | and we could be in a war with China

00:32:58.620 | and we have these problems in the Middle East,

00:33:00.460 | I want a decider.

00:33:01.580 | I want to know that the buck stops here,

00:33:05.420 | not the buck stops wherever.

00:33:07.540 | - Let's shift topics.

00:33:08.380 | I'd like to talk about what's been,

00:33:10.820 | I think, a lot of chatter amongst friends of ours

00:33:15.820 | who are active in the market

00:33:17.980 | that at a policy meeting on Wednesday,

00:33:19.980 | the Fed held rates steady.

00:33:21.460 | Jerome Powell said, quote,

00:33:23.020 | "A reduction in our policy rate could be on the table

00:33:25.660 | "in September if inflation continues to fall."

00:33:28.300 | He said, "We're getting closer to the point

00:33:29.940 | "at which it'll be appropriate to reduce our policy rate,

00:33:34.220 | "but we're not quite at that point."

00:33:36.380 | The next Fed meeting where this rate cut could happen

00:33:39.460 | is September 17th and 18th.

00:33:42.300 | And if you look at the futures markets today,

00:33:45.220 | the market is now estimating a 20% probability

00:33:49.140 | of a 50-bit rate cut in the September meeting,

00:33:52.900 | 80% probability of a 25-bit rate cut

00:33:57.900 | and basically no probability of no rate cut

00:34:01.380 | anymore in September.

00:34:03.300 | Chamath, is that your read on where we're at?

00:34:05.300 | And is the Fed appropriately reading the economic tea leaves

00:34:10.300 | given the recessionary indicators

00:34:12.180 | that you just mentioned earlier?

00:34:13.740 | And what else we're seeing that the Fed's mandate,

00:34:16.660 | obviously, is meant to support both the monetary policy,

00:34:21.260 | but also employment in this country?

00:34:23.380 | - I think we're in a recession.

00:34:24.860 | And I think the problem with a recession

00:34:27.660 | is even as inflation diminishes,

00:34:31.900 | if your purchasing power is shrinking faster

00:34:33.900 | and prices fall, it still feels like prices are going up.

00:34:37.540 | I don't know if you guys have been reading

00:34:38.540 | the Wall Street Journal, but the last couple of days,

00:34:40.660 | they've been doing a whole series on people

00:34:42.740 | that have been left behind by inflation.

00:34:44.740 | And I was really surprised as I read those articles,

00:34:48.340 | just the sheer quantity of impact

00:34:52.900 | in terms of the number of people

00:34:54.300 | it's touching independent of salary.

00:34:56.580 | And so my takeaway kind of just reinforced the fact

00:35:01.380 | that we've sort of looked past the problem

00:35:04.500 | because of the stock market going up

00:35:06.420 | for the last few quarters because of seven companies.

00:35:11.380 | And now that people are sobering up to the reality

00:35:13.700 | that even they don't have an answer

00:35:15.660 | for all the money they're spending,

00:35:17.420 | the stock market's down next to those seven businesses.

00:35:20.820 | And I think that you're gonna start

00:35:22.300 | to see some real pain in the fall.

00:35:23.980 | So Jerome Powell is probably gonna cut 25.

00:35:26.620 | And I think that if they get to him, he'll try to cut 50.

00:35:31.180 | But the problem is it won't solve the problem.

00:35:33.220 | And I think if this is again, where Kamala Harris has to be,

00:35:37.580 | she's gonna have to make a very difficult calculation here,

00:35:40.180 | which is she's going to have to throw Joe Biden

00:35:41.980 | and the economic team in the White House under the bus here

00:35:45.180 | and say, that was them.

00:35:46.580 | Yes, they screwed it up.

00:35:47.620 | It was against my wishes.

00:35:49.300 | And here's my vision for how we fix this

00:35:52.020 | because otherwise the Republicans will be all over it.

00:35:54.100 | And I think if you have a bad economy,

00:35:55.940 | like what it looks like going into November,

00:35:58.780 | it's gonna be very difficult for the Democrats

00:36:00.820 | to win the White House.

00:36:03.340 | - Well, without bringing it back to politics,

00:36:04.820 | Sachs, economy, good or bad?

00:36:06.820 | And is Jerome Powell gonna cut rates 25 bips, 50 bips?

00:36:09.540 | Do you agree with what the market's forecasting?

00:36:11.300 | - I guess what I would say about the economy

00:36:13.060 | is that in nominal terms, we're not in a recession

00:36:18.060 | according to the data that's come out.

00:36:20.220 | The Q2 GDP was roughly 2% GDP growth.

00:36:24.060 | However, I think there's a couple of problems.

00:36:25.900 | One is that what we've seen over the past year or so

00:36:29.020 | is that the economic data that comes out

00:36:31.300 | keeps getting re-forecast down.

00:36:33.500 | So they put out a provisional number or an estimate,

00:36:36.660 | and then when they finalize the number

00:36:38.900 | three months or six months later,

00:36:40.940 | it always seems to go in one direction.

00:36:42.500 | We've seen this over and over again

00:36:44.060 | with new jobs being re-forecast down.

00:36:48.060 | And we saw this with the Q1 GDP

00:36:50.660 | where initially they were reporting,

00:36:52.420 | I think it was like a 1.8% number,

00:36:54.100 | and then it got restated down to 1.3%.

00:36:56.740 | So the Q2 GDP number was around 2%, it was good,

00:36:59.580 | but again, it's a provisional number,

00:37:01.860 | and let's see where it actually ends up.

00:37:03.420 | The bigger problem is government spending.

00:37:05.500 | The deficit is running at 6% of GDP,

00:37:09.500 | whereas economic growth is at,

00:37:11.860 | let's call it charitably 2%.

00:37:14.700 | Well, government spending is included in GDP.

00:37:18.560 | So if you were to balance the budget,

00:37:21.460 | let's say that you were to make government

00:37:23.460 | live within its means and not have a deficit,

00:37:26.700 | we'd have negative 4% GDP growth.

00:37:30.500 | So the only reason why we're in positive

00:37:33.020 | GDP growth territory is because of

00:37:36.540 | massive government spending

00:37:37.780 | that we know is not sustainable.

00:37:39.760 | And at some point, the bill is gonna come due for that.

00:37:43.320 | So I'd have to say that,

00:37:46.200 | you asked me, is this a good economy?

00:37:49.000 | I mean, it's not the worst,

00:37:50.620 | but there's definitely unsustainable things propping it up.

00:37:54.540 | And I do think that the bill will come due

00:37:57.500 | at some point for this.

00:37:58.340 | - It's not just fully supported,

00:37:59.900 | it's overly supported by the federal government

00:38:03.020 | in the United States.

00:38:03.860 | And I mentioned this last week,

00:38:04.940 | federal government spending is over 2x

00:38:08.020 | the sum of all state spending.

00:38:10.100 | Federal government spending into the next year

00:38:12.140 | with the Biden budget proposal, $7.3 trillion.

00:38:14.940 | That's like 30% of GDP.

00:38:18.580 | And I think you guys may remember this analysis

00:38:20.580 | I pulled together a couple months ago,

00:38:22.580 | where I estimate something close to 30% of US employment

00:38:27.580 | is either direct government employment

00:38:31.700 | or indirect government employment

00:38:33.380 | through government payments to third parties

00:38:35.100 | that are employing those individuals.

00:38:36.840 | So the government is becoming an integral part

00:38:41.500 | of maintaining the flow of dollars in the economy

00:38:45.580 | because they are such an integral buyer and seller

00:38:48.100 | within the economy and an integral employer

00:38:49.900 | within the economy.

00:38:51.020 | And so to reverse that trend is what I worry about

00:38:53.380 | more than anything, as I've shared many times,

00:38:55.580 | which is why I question whether either political candidate

00:38:58.060 | actually solves this problem for us.

00:38:59.540 | And we're almost like, you know,

00:39:01.020 | arguing over which marbles I get

00:39:02.540 | while the Titanic is sinking,

00:39:04.540 | that there is a real fundamental issue

00:39:06.500 | with how this economy is structured.

00:39:08.260 | I will tell you anecdotally,

00:39:09.420 | I have a lot of conversations with folks

00:39:11.020 | that work in the agriculture industry,

00:39:13.380 | in the food industry, in the industrial industry,

00:39:16.060 | many of these industries

00:39:17.660 | that have a very different capital flow cycle

00:39:20.020 | than we all deal with typically

00:39:21.140 | in Silicon Valley and software.

00:39:22.860 | And many of them are struggling.

00:39:24.340 | I mean, these are businesses where some folks have told me

00:39:26.340 | orders completely fell off a cliff in capital equipment,

00:39:29.500 | that some small business owners

00:39:31.260 | that sell whatever piece of equipment

00:39:32.860 | you wanna come up with, they are not getting orders.

00:39:34.740 | There's no revenue.

00:39:36.380 | There are massive oversupply and underpurchasing happening

00:39:40.940 | in the food and ag markets.

00:39:42.380 | And yet folks are still trying to push up prices

00:39:44.700 | in order to make the debt payments

00:39:46.180 | that they have to make on their high interest debt now.

00:39:48.380 | And that creates a crippling condition for them.

00:39:50.620 | Across the economy, I think there's the haves

00:39:52.820 | and the have-nots as is indicated in this article

00:39:55.740 | that was just pulled up,

00:39:56.940 | where there are some parts of the economy

00:39:58.460 | where you have low debt, high margin businesses

00:40:01.660 | that can continue to scale and continue to raise pricing,

00:40:04.340 | have a lot of elasticity in pricing.

00:40:06.900 | And then there are the others that operate

00:40:09.620 | on 1% interest rate charges,

00:40:12.700 | the changes drive their profit or loss for the year

00:40:15.260 | in a pretty meaningful way.

00:40:16.580 | And that's the part of the economy that's really suffering.

00:40:19.260 | And unfortunately, the action that will be taken

00:40:22.140 | to resolve this isn't necessarily a free market action.

00:40:25.020 | It's gonna end up being some sort

00:40:26.300 | of government intervention,

00:40:27.580 | which furthers the government's involvement in the economy

00:40:30.260 | and furthers the tentacles that make it much harder

00:40:32.700 | to ultimately pull out of this spiral in this problem.

00:40:35.300 | That's my rant on this whole point, but.

00:40:37.820 | - Yeah, no, I agree with that.

00:40:39.300 | I agree with all that.

00:40:40.140 | I've seen some reports that a crazy percentage

00:40:42.420 | of the job creation over the past year

00:40:44.860 | has been government jobs.

00:40:46.900 | - All of it, more than 100%.

00:40:48.540 | So basically there has been a net loss

00:40:51.060 | in private market jobs,

00:40:52.420 | net of the effect of government employment

00:40:54.820 | or government spending on companies

00:40:56.340 | that then use those dollars to go hire people.

00:40:58.340 | Let's talk about the impact on markets.

00:40:59.860 | So, as a result of this rate cut announcement

00:41:03.420 | or this rate cut indication,

00:41:05.300 | markets have rallied a little bit,

00:41:07.060 | but to Chamath's point, there are definitely

00:41:10.140 | the haves and the have nots.

00:41:11.940 | AMD beat.

00:41:13.380 | They were up 4% after hours on improved AI chip sales.

00:41:17.900 | Their revenue was $5.8 billion, up 9% year over year.

00:41:21.620 | Microsoft had so-so results.

00:41:23.780 | NVIDIA jumped 12% on some comments made by Meta

00:41:28.700 | and Microsoft that both said

00:41:31.140 | that there's increased AI demand

00:41:32.740 | and they're gonna continue to build that capacity.

00:41:36.300 | So Chamath, I know you've talked a lot about this

00:41:38.100 | in the past.

00:41:38.940 | Maybe you can give us your read

00:41:40.220 | on the comments that were made this week.

00:41:41.660 | You've historically said that a lot of this build-out

00:41:44.460 | is well ahead and there's no real ROI yet,

00:41:46.980 | but clearly some of the buyers of this capital equipment

00:41:49.700 | are saying, "Hey, there is ROI.

00:41:51.180 | We're gonna continue to build aggressively."

00:41:53.540 | So maybe you can share a little bit on,

00:41:54.820 | is anything different or are we just kind of

00:41:56.980 | seeing folks justify the decision statement?

00:41:59.700 | - I mean, sadly, this is another case of sell the news.

00:42:02.580 | These things rallied phantom in the after hours

00:42:07.140 | and if you look at them,

00:42:07.980 | they've all just given back every dollar of gains.

00:42:11.620 | So I think that people know that we're sort of

00:42:16.140 | at the tail end of the hype cycle in AI.

00:42:19.740 | And every chance, every time these things spike,

00:42:23.180 | people take an opportunity to just massively sell.

00:42:25.580 | I mean, Nvidia's turned over 308 million shares today.

00:42:30.140 | - Yeah, it's crazy.

00:42:30.980 | It's literally-- - We're just at the beginning

00:42:33.020 | of the day.

00:42:33.860 | - It's trading like a penny stock.

00:42:35.180 | - It's going straight down like a lead balloon.

00:42:37.700 | - Yeah.

00:42:38.540 | - Meta rallied, they've basically given up

00:42:41.820 | all of their gains.

00:42:42.660 | It's gone kind of straight down today.

00:42:45.220 | But the point isn't that these companies are going to zero.

00:42:47.700 | That's not the case.

00:42:49.020 | It's just the point is that right now,

00:42:50.580 | people are optimizing, they're selling every chance they get

00:42:53.300 | to kind of book the profits.

00:42:54.820 | And I think that that's fair because at some point,

00:42:58.180 | nobody knows when all of this phantom money

00:43:00.940 | is gonna show up.

00:43:02.420 | - Right, so this is independent of what we would call

00:43:04.700 | the economy, independent of the recessionary conversation

00:43:07.940 | we just had. - The problem is that,

00:43:10.020 | look, I mean, I'm in the middle of this right now

00:43:12.260 | with 80/90.

00:43:13.100 | It's been one of the joys of my career

00:43:14.780 | to actually start a company in the middle of what I think

00:43:18.540 | is the most important wave that I've ever seen professionally

00:43:22.060 | since social networking.

00:43:23.860 | And I jumped into the middle of that wave

00:43:25.700 | and I kind of tried to ride the best wave I could there.

00:43:28.980 | I'm doing it here.

00:43:30.220 | But my honest takeaway after being in this thing now

00:43:35.020 | for seven months intensely, and I'll be into it

00:43:39.500 | for as many years as it takes to build a successful company,

00:43:42.500 | is that AI is massively deflationary.

00:43:46.220 | It takes not that much money and the results

00:43:50.900 | are really meaningful in terms of the amount of efficiency

00:43:54.620 | that you can capture and the costs that you can save.

00:43:58.340 | And the right business people, i.e. startups

00:44:01.140 | that are starting from scratch like myself

00:44:03.340 | and my co-founders at 80/90, we will pass that on

00:44:07.100 | to our customers because it allows us

00:44:08.780 | to differentially price versus incumbent solutions.

00:44:12.140 | And so I don't see a path where all of a sudden

00:44:16.220 | a multiple of the money that's been spent shows up.

00:44:19.620 | I don't see it.

00:44:21.220 | I do see a path where companies find tremendous,

00:44:24.580 | like think about it this way.

00:44:25.700 | If you looked in the 1980s and said,

00:44:29.940 | what is the most profitable operational company

00:44:32.820 | that existed in the '80s?

00:44:34.740 | I don't know what that company was,

00:44:36.420 | but I suspect that their EBITDA margins

00:44:38.980 | were roughly in the 30 or 40% range

00:44:41.260 | and it was probably incredible.

00:44:43.460 | If you fast forward now 40 years,

00:44:46.100 | the most efficient company is probably sort of 50

00:44:49.140 | or 60% EBITDA margins.

00:44:51.940 | The reality is that the best AI enabled company

00:44:56.460 | will probably have margins that are 70 and 80%

00:44:58.980 | in the next 15 or 20 years.

00:45:01.300 | Now that's an incredible thing.

00:45:03.740 | - That's a big prediction.

00:45:04.820 | - But that will again spur the principle law of capitalism

00:45:08.340 | that everybody keeps forgetting,

00:45:09.700 | which is you compete out excess return.

00:45:13.100 | And so while you will have many companies

00:45:15.540 | that have 60 plus percent operating margins,

00:45:18.660 | they'll be in much smaller markets

00:45:21.220 | and there'll be thousands and thousands and thousands of them.

00:45:23.660 | So I suspect what happens is that the overall market grows,

00:45:27.700 | but the number of companies grows

00:45:29.420 | by an even order, larger order of magnitude.

00:45:32.780 | And in all of that,

00:45:33.940 | the reality is that it's going to be very hard

00:45:35.660 | for these big folks to sort of see this value capture

00:45:38.900 | that makes any of this investment worthwhile.

00:45:41.220 | So I think that you're going to have to have

00:45:43.420 | some sort of reset in terms of the CAPEX

00:45:45.860 | that's happened here.

00:45:46.820 | - I want to switch gears yet again

00:45:48.020 | and talk about the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.

00:45:52.980 | I hope I pronounced that right, Haniyeh.

00:45:55.420 | He was killed by a bomb

00:45:57.580 | while staying in a guest house in Tehran,

00:45:59.420 | according to the New York Times.

00:46:01.020 | Earlier reports indicated that he was in fact killed

00:46:03.940 | by a missile strike from Israel.

00:46:06.180 | But just this morning, the New York Times reported

00:46:08.420 | that the guest house where he stayed

00:46:11.020 | is run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

00:46:14.460 | and is part of a large compound known as Neshat

00:46:17.500 | in an upscale neighborhood of Northern Tehran.

00:46:20.820 | And the article in the New York Times goes on to report

00:46:24.380 | that according to several Middle Eastern sources,

00:46:27.740 | a bomb, a remotely detonated bomb,

00:46:31.700 | was actually planted in this guest house

00:46:33.780 | over two months ago in anticipation

00:46:36.780 | of the Hamas leader's stay in this guest house.

00:46:40.700 | And it was then set off

00:46:41.860 | once he actually stayed in the guest house.

00:46:44.060 | This obviously represents kind of an incredible feat

00:46:47.700 | in operational capacity and intelligence.

00:46:50.620 | I think we've known and talked a lot about,

00:46:52.740 | and the media has kind of covered quite a bit

00:46:54.580 | about the capacity of Mossad.

00:46:56.780 | But I just want to kind of get your guys' reaction to this.

00:46:59.420 | I think that there's a bigger and important story here

00:47:02.140 | about the strength of Israel's intelligence

00:47:05.140 | and military capacity in the region

00:47:07.340 | and what that could mean for their posturing

00:47:10.380 | and their demands and their activity in the region

00:47:12.940 | in the months and years ahead,

00:47:14.900 | particularly with Netanyahu still in charge.

00:47:16.980 | So Sax, maybe you can kick us off

00:47:18.820 | with your thoughts on this article

00:47:20.660 | and Mossad's role in the assassination of this Hamas leader.

00:47:24.300 | - Well, there's no question that the Mossad

00:47:27.380 | established or reestablished its reputation

00:47:29.700 | for extreme competence here.

00:47:31.540 | Being able to infiltrate Iran

00:47:33.660 | in order to assassinate the top political leader of Hamas

00:47:37.620 | while Haniyeh was a guest of Iran,

00:47:40.420 | I mean, that's deeply humiliating to Iran.

00:47:43.580 | I think he was there, Haniyeh was,

00:47:45.300 | for the swearing in of the new president of Iran.

00:47:49.220 | So for them to be able to target him

00:47:52.860 | while he was there and set up the bomb months in advance,

00:47:55.220 | I mean, that shows extraordinary planning and intelligence

00:47:58.860 | and a huge failure on the part of Iran.

00:48:01.300 | I think in terms of the larger significance of this,

00:48:05.300 | you know, in the wake of October 7th on this pod,

00:48:09.380 | I said that I hope that Israel did not go off half-cocked,

00:48:14.380 | responding the way that the United States did after 9/11.

00:48:18.420 | And when they started bombing Gaza,

00:48:19.940 | I said this is gonna backfire.

00:48:22.060 | And, you know, boy, was that an understatement

00:48:24.940 | in terms of the reaction of world opinion.

00:48:26.940 | I mean, Israel went into Gaza, basically leveled the place,

00:48:30.940 | and has alienated practically the entire world.

00:48:33.380 | The only country that's solidly with Israel anymore

00:48:35.460 | is the United States.

00:48:36.540 | And even within the United States,

00:48:38.180 | roughly half the people are now against Israel.

00:48:41.420 | And I think what I said at the time

00:48:43.060 | was that Israel could pursue or should pursue

00:48:46.020 | a more targeted strategy the way that it did

00:48:49.180 | after the Munich Olympics.

00:48:51.060 | This assassination within Iran

00:48:53.940 | shows that the Munich Olympics strategy,

00:48:56.820 | I mean, they've basically shown that it's successful.

00:48:58.860 | They've been able to do it.

00:49:00.420 | I wish they had limited their response

00:49:02.620 | in this more targeted way,

00:49:04.380 | because I think that the destruction of Gaza

00:49:06.780 | has created tremendous humanitarian suffering,

00:49:10.300 | and it's alienated just about the whole world.

00:49:12.860 | And what has it accomplished?

00:49:14.100 | I don't think they've gotten rid of Hamas.

00:49:15.740 | They have not been able to kill

00:49:17.460 | the military leader of Hamas, which is Sanwar,

00:49:21.340 | who was the actual military planner

00:49:23.740 | of the October 7th attack.

00:49:26.060 | And they have radicalized.

00:49:29.580 | Whatever part of the Palestinian population

00:49:31.060 | was not radicalized has been radicalized.

00:49:33.660 | And they've turned so much of the Middle East

00:49:35.980 | and the world against them in such a strong way

00:49:38.660 | that, again, I wish that they had pursued

00:49:41.780 | the more measured strategy.

00:49:43.980 | It's still a tough strategy.

00:49:45.100 | I mean--

00:49:45.940 | - Let me put you in Netanyahu's seat.

00:49:47.940 | You are leading Israel.

00:49:50.820 | Hamas comes into your country, attacks,

00:49:54.820 | kills lots of people.

00:49:56.500 | What is your measured response to that attack from Hamas,

00:50:00.460 | given the capacity you have?

00:50:02.780 | The Israeli Air Force, by the way,

00:50:04.860 | is second only to the United States.

00:50:08.340 | Just to give you some statistics,

00:50:11.220 | the Israeli Air Force has 90,000 active

00:50:14.020 | and reserve personnel and 614 aircraft.

00:50:17.020 | Israel is reported to have up to 400 nuclear weapons.

00:50:20.100 | And they have this extraordinary technical capacity

00:50:22.540 | with Mossad and operational capacity

00:50:25.100 | that is kind of unrivaled pretty much

00:50:26.660 | anywhere in the world, it seems.

00:50:28.300 | What do you do if you're sitting in Netanyahu's seat

00:50:30.340 | that provides a more kind of measured response?

00:50:32.860 | And how do you kind of lead your nation?

00:50:35.740 | - Well, first of all, I'm not, obviously,

00:50:37.380 | sitting in that seat.

00:50:38.220 | I don't live in Israel and I don't have skin

00:50:39.820 | in the game that way.

00:50:40.860 | So I think the first thing that they would say is,

00:50:43.820 | you're not us, you're not sitting here

00:50:45.980 | dealing with all of our enemies in the region.

00:50:47.820 | And they would have a point.

00:50:49.580 | But what I advocated, I think, months ago

00:50:51.740 | was to take a more targeted, measured strategy

00:50:55.140 | that I think the assassination of Haniyeh

00:50:57.780 | shows that they could have executed.

00:51:00.260 | And I understand why they went into Gaza

00:51:02.620 | and why they felt they needed to go into Gaza.

00:51:04.420 | But I just, this is not an anti-Israel statement.

00:51:07.820 | It's just a questioning of the strategy.

00:51:09.340 | I just don't see that it's produced much good.

00:51:12.300 | I don't think they've solved their Hamas problem.

00:51:14.780 | They have not gotten Sinwar.

00:51:16.580 | And they've lost a meaningful amount of global support.

00:51:19.460 | - Yeah, Chamath, do you have a read?

00:51:21.180 | - I think that it was, in hindsight,

00:51:23.540 | a pretty big miscalculation by Netanyahu

00:51:26.140 | to pursue the strategy that they did.

00:51:28.580 | And I would have much preferred what you're seeing now,

00:51:33.180 | which is a very targeted approach.

00:51:36.100 | I think it preserves, and it would have preserved,

00:51:38.980 | not just world political support,

00:51:42.140 | but just individual people's support,

00:51:45.660 | where instead of going into Gaza, leveling the place,

00:51:48.580 | creating all of this death and destruction,

00:51:51.460 | and amplifying and confusing people

00:51:54.460 | where they now all of a sudden had to make a decision

00:52:00.380 | between these two groups

00:52:01.540 | and now get confused with anti-Semitic sentiment.

00:52:05.700 | That should never have happened.

00:52:07.340 | It's clear that Mossad is incredibly competent

00:52:11.380 | and incredibly capable.

00:52:13.180 | I do believe that sovereign countries

00:52:16.980 | have the right to defend themselves.

00:52:19.500 | But then there was a bridge too far,

00:52:22.020 | and I think the Israeli government has crossed it.

00:52:25.580 | In hindsight, and I think I told you this story,

00:52:30.140 | and I may have relayed this in confidence,

00:52:32.100 | but I'll just say it again.

00:52:34.100 | On October the 8th, what was offered,

00:52:36.940 | and I'm not gonna say by who,

00:52:38.860 | was sort of a meeting of the right political leadership

00:52:43.860 | from the Middle East, Israel, and the United States,

00:52:48.540 | where they were all willing to sort of come,

00:52:51.220 | and the idea would have been to extend

00:52:54.180 | some sort of structured solution

00:52:58.860 | for the Palestinian people.

00:53:01.060 | Now, that would have been so unintuitive and unexpected.

00:53:04.700 | I think everybody would have been

00:53:05.900 | a little bit on their heels,

00:53:06.980 | but I think what it would have done

00:53:08.340 | is it would have passed Netanyahu in an incredible light.

00:53:12.780 | It would have passed Israel in an incredible light.

00:53:15.500 | They would have still preserved the ability

00:53:17.220 | to go and kill the individual leaders that they wanted to,

00:53:20.380 | but it was rejected.

00:53:23.140 | And I think that when we look back,

00:53:24.580 | these are the kinds of decisions

00:53:25.940 | that hopefully history documents accurately

00:53:29.860 | so that folks who are in the seat, to your point, Freeberg,

00:53:33.380 | the next time around can make a different calculation.

00:53:36.020 | I see, you see the pictures,

00:53:37.820 | and there's just no way that you can turn them off.

00:53:40.660 | You know what I mean?

00:53:42.420 | - I think Israel's biggest asset

00:53:44.900 | is probably also their biggest liability,

00:53:47.500 | which is their military and intelligence strength.

00:53:50.540 | And it emboldens them in a way

00:53:53.860 | that they can be more aggressive

00:53:56.400 | than perhaps they need to be

00:53:58.620 | with respect to maintaining the security of the state,

00:54:01.380 | but perhaps being vengeful and vindictive.

00:54:04.700 | And I know that that's a very controversial statement

00:54:06.620 | to be made.

00:54:07.520 | I wanna underscore the strength

00:54:09.460 | of this military and this intelligence.

00:54:11.180 | Do you guys remember the Stuxnet worm

00:54:14.740 | from a number of years ago?

00:54:16.140 | - Yeah. - That story was incredible.

00:54:17.900 | The New York Times broke this story in 2012.

00:54:20.220 | Stuxnet was a malicious computer worm,

00:54:22.160 | and I'm reading off of Wikipedia

00:54:23.300 | 'cause there's a lot of reporting

00:54:24.300 | that has different opinions on this,

00:54:26.180 | that was first uncovered in 2010

00:54:28.820 | and was thought to have been in development

00:54:30.740 | since at least 2005.

00:54:32.680 | Now, this computer worm was supposedly developed

00:54:35.420 | by Mossad and the NSA.

00:54:38.000 | And it was a malicious computer worm

00:54:39.900 | that ultimately allowed intrusion

00:54:42.580 | into the control systems of the centrifuges

00:54:45.700 | of Iran's uranium refining systems.

00:54:49.360 | And they basically were then able

00:54:50.640 | to make those centrifuges go haywire

00:54:52.840 | and destroyed themselves.

00:54:54.460 | And they did this over and over for several years,

00:54:56.600 | and the Iranians could not figure out

00:54:58.180 | what was going on or why.

00:54:59.600 | They kept it completely secret.

00:55:01.420 | Ultimately, it was revealed that there was this operation

00:55:04.280 | organized by the United States

00:55:05.460 | called Operation Olympic Games

00:55:06.840 | that was a cyber disruption operation,

00:55:08.780 | and that Mossad had a critical role in.

00:55:10.660 | By the way, there are two other stories

00:55:12.520 | that build on top of this

00:55:14.060 | that are tangential but related.

00:55:16.100 | One is that there was a nuclear engineer

00:55:19.600 | that Israel felt should be unlid.

00:55:23.920 | And the way that they did it was via

00:55:26.820 | some remote control machine gun

00:55:29.980 | that they planted off of a highway

00:55:31.960 | where the car egressed off the highway,

00:55:33.900 | and then all of a sudden, the thing was shot up.

00:55:36.240 | A different example was there's a story

00:55:38.340 | about how they figured out that Yasser Arafat was sick

00:55:42.120 | because they were able to collect a stool sample

00:55:44.120 | from a pipe that left his home,

00:55:47.360 | and they were able to kind of diagnose

00:55:48.960 | that A, it was his stool,

00:55:50.240 | and then B, he had some chronic illness.

00:55:52.960 | My point, I think, in all of this

00:55:54.640 | is kind of where you're going,

00:55:56.280 | which is that when you have such capability

00:55:59.200 | and such precision,

00:56:01.000 | to go to the other end of the spectrum,

00:56:03.480 | you really have to be sure that you're right.

00:56:06.160 | And as Zach said, I think we're looking back,

00:56:08.720 | and it's clear that the support around the world,

00:56:11.600 | it just isn't there for that kind of mass casualty

00:56:14.960 | and that kind of like--

00:56:16.560 | - If Israel could actually destroy Hamas

00:56:18.600 | and achieve its military objective in Gaza,

00:56:20.960 | that'd be one thing.

00:56:21.920 | But I think we've seen that that's impossible.

00:56:24.920 | I mean, Hamas basically bleeds in with the population.

00:56:28.560 | It's indistinguishable.

00:56:30.280 | And the leadership is hidden deep underground,

00:56:32.720 | and the Israelis have not been able to root them out

00:56:35.760 | against the war, has not been found.

00:56:38.720 | And so you've destroyed Gaza,

00:56:40.360 | but you have not achieved your objective

00:56:41.640 | of eliminating Hamas.

00:56:43.120 | And in the process, you've deeply alienated

00:56:45.280 | most of the world, and you made the situation worse,

00:56:49.360 | basically.

00:56:50.200 | - It's like the Russians and the Americans

00:56:51.280 | trying to chase the Taliban in Afghanistan forever.

00:56:54.160 | This is not a group of individuals

00:56:56.920 | that once they're gone,

00:56:58.440 | everything is fixed.

00:56:59.400 | - Everything's just worse.

00:57:00.520 | I mean, you still have the same problem.

00:57:02.160 | In fact, now the entire Palestinian population

00:57:04.360 | is radicalized.

00:57:05.200 | In fact, the whole Arab and Muslim population

00:57:07.640 | in the Middle East is more radicalized against you

00:57:12.040 | than they were before.

00:57:13.120 | I mean, I know there was already

00:57:14.080 | a significant amount of hatred,

00:57:15.280 | but now it's worse.

00:57:16.640 | And you haven't fundamentally solved the underlying issue.

00:57:19.080 | I think the 9/11 analogy is apt.

00:57:21.560 | I mean, we went off after 9/11,

00:57:23.920 | half cocked into all these wars in the Middle East.

00:57:26.520 | I think that going into Afghanistan,

00:57:28.920 | I think you could, that was justified

00:57:30.600 | because they were harboring al-Qaeda.

00:57:33.080 | But then we went into Iraq

00:57:35.080 | because really members of the Bush administration

00:57:38.640 | had a pre-existing agenda,

00:57:39.960 | and then they lied us into it,

00:57:41.440 | saying that Saddam was connected somehow to 9/11.

00:57:45.360 | And we began a 20-year process

00:57:47.920 | of just plunging ourselves into all these wars.

00:57:50.840 | It only made everything worse.

00:57:52.960 | One of the reasons why Iran is in such a strong position

00:57:55.040 | today in the Middle East is because we took out Iraq.

00:57:57.600 | We basically created a power vacuum in the Middle East

00:58:00.320 | that they ended up filling.

00:58:01.680 | - I recently heard that after Israel struck the embassy

00:58:06.240 | in Damascus a few months ago, you may remember this,

00:58:10.360 | Iran launched a counterattack.

00:58:14.760 | And you remember there were all these like drones

00:58:16.520 | that they sent hundreds of them into Israel,

00:58:19.520 | but there was supposedly a forewarning

00:58:22.560 | that these drones were on the way,

00:58:24.000 | there was notice given, and it was like, this is it,

00:58:25.960 | this is our proportional response, and we're done.

00:58:28.960 | - That's right, that's right.

00:58:30.680 | - What I heard was that Netanyahu did not wanna stop.

00:58:35.640 | He wanted to escalate after that response from Iran.

00:58:38.760 | Now, that coupled with what's going on

00:58:43.120 | in the West Bank right now,

00:58:45.160 | where there is a restricted movement of Palestinians

00:58:48.680 | within the West Bank

00:58:50.040 | and continued development of Jewish settlements,

00:58:52.720 | I think really represents a major risk to the region,

00:58:56.120 | the Middle East region,

00:58:57.120 | that we could see an escalation beyond the response

00:59:02.120 | that may be mandated or necessary to secure the state

00:59:05.840 | that makes things much, much worse in the region

00:59:08.880 | and could isolate Israel even further

00:59:11.800 | and ultimately draw a lot of powers to that region

00:59:14.960 | to try and figure out what side are you on

00:59:17.680 | and how do we resolve this?

00:59:19.240 | And that could lead to something much bigger

00:59:21.160 | and much nastier.

00:59:22.360 | So I think while we all observe this and watch this,

00:59:24.920 | the behavior of the targeted attack in Hamas,

00:59:29.000 | for me, it's not the issue as much as indicating

00:59:31.880 | the capacity of this military and this intelligence

00:59:34.800 | that means that they probably feel highly emboldened

00:59:37.920 | to take whatever steps individuals feel are necessary

00:59:41.600 | to secure the state for the long run,

00:59:43.560 | which could mean an increased escalation in conflict.

00:59:46.880 | And that's, I think, a real kind of point of concern.

00:59:50.280 | And that's the one of the black swan events,

00:59:52.360 | I think, that's still outstanding right now.

00:59:54.240 | Because if that does happen, if there is, for example,

00:59:56.800 | an unraveling of the West Bank,

00:59:59.080 | you could see one of these sorts of events

01:00:02.320 | that everyone gets drawn like a magnet to the Middle East

01:00:05.960 | and you end up with a major global conflict

01:00:08.720 | that becomes a problem for markets,

01:00:10.520 | it becomes a problem for the world.

01:00:12.320 | And that could be the catalyzing event

01:00:14.120 | that I don't think any of us wanna see.

01:00:15.640 | - To use your logic from before,

01:00:18.600 | the thing that may plunge the world

01:00:21.480 | into having to have a point of view on this

01:00:24.120 | may actually be a political calculus

01:00:26.040 | that Netanyahu has to engage in,

01:00:27.720 | which is around keeping small factions

01:00:29.680 | of his coalition government in place,

01:00:31.520 | which may not actually represent the full view

01:00:33.400 | of the Israeli people.

01:00:34.320 | That's what's even more tragic.

01:00:35.560 | So it's not, obviously the Palestinians don't want it,

01:00:38.040 | but many Israelis may not want it either.

01:00:39.840 | And there may be no avenue if he wants to remain in power.

01:00:42.920 | And that's what's so scary.

01:00:44.400 | - Look, I think there's no question

01:00:45.600 | that we're on a path here

01:00:47.040 | where we could have a regional war in the Middle East.

01:00:49.760 | Remember that after Israel hit

01:00:53.880 | the Iranian general in Lebanon,

01:00:58.360 | the Iranians responded two weeks later

01:01:00.080 | with that massive drone and missile attack.

01:01:03.680 | Most of the missiles were intercepted by Iron Dome.

01:01:06.080 | And I think America participated in that as well.

01:01:09.240 | I think one or two of them got through.

01:01:11.720 | And then Israel launched kind of a weak missile attack

01:01:15.360 | on Iran, and that was kind of the final word on it.

01:01:17.640 | There were people in Netanyahu's cabinet,

01:01:20.360 | like Smotrych and Ben-Gavir,

01:01:21.880 | sort of the more hardline radical right-wingers,

01:01:26.040 | who I think publicly tweeted

01:01:27.240 | that they thought Israel's final word on it was weak.

01:01:31.040 | And they clearly wanted to do more.

01:01:32.880 | So I think the point is just that

01:01:34.520 | when we had this last exchange between Israel and Iran,

01:01:38.360 | it felt like it was on the verge

01:01:40.200 | of tipping over into a regional war.

01:01:41.960 | But I think partly due to the efforts of the United States,

01:01:45.560 | we were able to help tamp that down.

01:01:48.240 | I think now Iran's promising revenge

01:01:51.120 | for what just happened in Tehran,

01:01:53.720 | and this could set that escalatory spiral off again.

01:01:58.640 | - Totally.

01:01:59.480 | - If you were to place odds on this,

01:02:01.420 | I'd say it's at least 50/50 that things escalate

01:02:04.500 | into a regional war.

01:02:05.340 | - It's not as much of a black swat, yeah.

01:02:06.800 | And by the way, there's no such thing

01:02:07.840 | as a regional war in the Middle East,

01:02:09.480 | because every one of those countries

01:02:10.760 | has significant allies in Russia,

01:02:13.580 | in the United States, in China.

01:02:16.520 | What is Saudi Arabia gonna do?

01:02:18.560 | Jordan is gonna end up in a situation

01:02:20.880 | where they may end up having to defend

01:02:22.600 | the Palestinians in the West Bank,

01:02:24.480 | which puts them across the shooting fields

01:02:26.760 | from the Israelis.

01:02:28.160 | And the United States is an ally to both Israel and Jordan.

01:02:31.080 | What are we gonna end up doing?

01:02:32.680 | And that's why this whole situation

01:02:35.480 | is not just about a regional conflict,

01:02:37.560 | it actually draws the whole world back to the Middle East

01:02:39.720 | in a real kind of escalatory scenario.

01:02:42.440 | - This is why the counterfactual of what could have happened

01:02:45.440 | on October 8th is so important,

01:02:46.920 | because that would have been UAE, United States, Saudi.

01:02:51.920 | - Qatar was involved, wasn't it?

01:02:52.960 | - And Israel.

01:02:53.780 | No, just those four.

01:02:56.080 | And let's put Qatar in the mix as well.

01:02:59.200 | But my point is like, my gosh,

01:03:01.400 | it could have rewritten world history in such a profound way.

01:03:03.840 | It would have just taken some restraint and proportionality.

01:03:08.840 | - Turn the cheek the other way, kind of.

01:03:11.880 | - Yeah, it would require incredible forbearance

01:03:14.400 | on the part of a population that just been attacked.

01:03:18.240 | - Attacked and attacked and attacked.

01:03:19.080 | - With massive atrocities on civilians.

01:03:21.320 | - But not just this attack,

01:03:22.800 | like under attack for generations in a region

01:03:26.800 | that has been all about conflict and secularity

01:03:31.040 | and all of the kind of identity drivers

01:03:33.960 | that make this so deeply personal and rooted in history,

01:03:36.640 | not just in a moment or an event.

01:03:38.080 | - Look, when it happened to us on 9/11, we lashed out.

01:03:41.040 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:03:41.880 | - But the results were not good.

01:03:43.480 | - Yeah, well, look, let's move on.

01:03:44.760 | I'm not trying to judge anyone's behavior.

01:03:47.680 | I'm just trying to shine a light

01:03:49.120 | on the strength of Israel's capacity

01:03:51.840 | and what that may mean for their proclivity

01:03:54.400 | for escalatory behavior, which is really scary

01:03:57.120 | given that this is not just a regional issue,

01:03:58.840 | it becomes a global issue when it does happen.

01:04:01.480 | Sorry, go ahead.

01:04:02.440 | - I thought you were going somewhere else with it,

01:04:03.880 | which is I was just gonna say in any other simulation,

01:04:08.760 | the capability of the Mossad is fodder for incredible movies,

01:04:12.400 | like it's out of a movie.

01:04:13.640 | - Right, right.

01:04:15.440 | - You read these articles

01:04:16.260 | and they just don't seem like they're real.

01:04:18.360 | - Incredible, incredible.

01:04:19.200 | - It's like, what do you mean you smuggle the bomb

01:04:21.640 | into the safe house in Iran where all the VIP stay?

01:04:25.840 | - Two months ago, two months ago.

01:04:27.280 | - Two months ago, how does that happen?

01:04:29.280 | What does it mean that you actually develop--

01:04:30.600 | - An encetype.

01:04:31.880 | - Yeah, an encetype.

01:04:32.800 | What does it mean that you developed a virus

01:04:34.760 | that you were able to get into the actual working computers

01:04:38.800 | of the Iranian nuclear complex?

01:04:39.920 | - The control units, by the way, the control units.

01:04:42.000 | Yeah, the control boards of the equipment made by Siemens,

01:04:47.000 | of the equipment made by Siemens that was shipped to Iran.

01:04:49.080 | Yeah.

01:04:49.920 | - That's not like you tell that into something,

01:04:51.880 | you know what I mean?

01:04:52.720 | Like that means that there was a person physically there

01:04:55.320 | that then found a way to essentially

01:04:57.480 | get this firmware implanted.

01:04:59.600 | And it's like, this is insane.

01:05:00.420 | - No, you know what happened?

01:05:01.640 | I remember the story.

01:05:02.880 | They actually did not.

01:05:04.320 | What happened was they let the virus circulate in the world

01:05:08.580 | for years before someone randomly had it on a USB drive

01:05:12.880 | that didn't know they had it,

01:05:14.040 | randomly plugged it into a computer

01:05:15.960 | in the centrifuge facility.

01:05:17.480 | Then it infected, sent out a notice, I'm in here.

01:05:20.080 | And then after years, it was finally in there

01:05:22.160 | through the random movement of this virus

01:05:24.440 | that no one, isn't that incredible?

01:05:26.260 | Anyway. - That's incredible.

01:05:27.100 | - Yeah, well, let's wrap up with the Bill Ackman story.

01:05:30.640 | - Sorry, before you do that.

01:05:31.680 | - Yeah.

01:05:32.520 | - I hate to make this political,

01:05:33.340 | but I just have to observe.

01:05:34.320 | I mean, look at this situation in the world.

01:05:36.400 | I mean, the Middle East is on the verge of regional war.

01:05:38.880 | We could be in a war there.

01:05:40.840 | I should say there could be a regional war there

01:05:43.760 | by January 20th when the next president is sworn in.

01:05:46.920 | You've got the United States in a proxy war with Ukraine.

01:05:49.520 | You have major tensions with China in East Asia.

01:05:54.520 | I mean, is this really the time where you wanna put in place

01:05:57.720 | an inexperienced president whose policy positions are unclear,

01:06:00.560 | who's untested, was never even tested by a primary,

01:06:03.360 | who the media refuses to test now,

01:06:05.440 | who's basically a media construct?

01:06:08.640 | This seems to me like a really bad idea.

01:06:11.420 | - All right, so political pitch in from David Sacks.

01:06:14.880 | We don't have Jake out here to give the other side,

01:06:16.480 | but let's keep going.

01:06:17.520 | So Bill Ackman's withdrawn his plans to IPO Pershing Square.

01:06:21.120 | You know, Chamath, do you wanna just give us

01:06:23.480 | kind of the background on what he was trying to do?

01:06:25.840 | And obviously this was an attempted $25 billion raise

01:06:28.840 | as an IPO.

01:06:29.960 | He recently reduced the raise target to 2 billion.

01:06:32.800 | And when the order book came in,

01:06:34.560 | I believe at less than a billion,

01:06:36.160 | he scrapped the plans entirely and just announced yesterday

01:06:38.960 | that he's pulling the IPO.

01:06:40.560 | So can you just explain a little bit about what this IPO was

01:06:43.880 | and then we'll talk a little bit about

01:06:45.160 | why we think it fell apart.

01:06:46.880 | - I can only repeat what I read,

01:06:48.280 | but I'll try to kind of like translate it

01:06:50.160 | into non-Wall Street speak.

01:06:52.520 | So basically he has a company,

01:06:55.440 | but what that company does is it gets investors

01:06:58.480 | to give it/him money.

01:07:02.920 | And then they invest it in all kinds of things

01:07:05.000 | that they deem worthwhile.

01:07:06.080 | It could be bonds, it could be stocks,

01:07:08.400 | it could be currencies, it could be derivatives.

01:07:10.780 | They generate a return,

01:07:11.800 | and then they give those returns back to their investors.

01:07:14.800 | So that is a hedge fund.

01:07:16.720 | The Holy Grail has always been trying to figure out

01:07:19.520 | how can an organization that has--

01:07:22.360 | - Those funds are raised and distributed back, right?

01:07:24.160 | I mean, I think you should--

01:07:25.440 | - Exactly. - I don't want to mean

01:07:26.280 | to interrupt, but yeah, just go ahead and say that, yeah.

01:07:28.480 | - But the Holy Grail for someone who runs those businesses

01:07:31.240 | is when they realize, well, listen,

01:07:32.880 | I get paid a great profit share

01:07:34.800 | from those funds when I'm successful.

01:07:38.600 | I'm also allowed to take a 2% per year management fee,

01:07:42.480 | but I believe I'm building equity.

01:07:45.160 | And can I get somebody else to recognize the fact

01:07:47.720 | that I'm building equity?

01:07:48.600 | And that's no different than a startup, right?

01:07:51.360 | So, you know, Freeberg, you're building O'Halo.

01:07:54.480 | You believe that you're building

01:07:56.000 | all kinds of really interesting things rooted in science,

01:07:58.800 | and you want other people to judge the value of that

01:08:01.400 | as measured by your equity, right?

01:08:03.640 | Independent of your revenues and profits today,

01:08:06.600 | they want to project into the future.

01:08:08.640 | The problem is that hedge funds

01:08:10.120 | have not found a very elegant way to demonstrate

01:08:12.600 | that they have any equity value.

01:08:15.200 | And there's only been a few,

01:08:17.160 | and the formula has been the same.

01:08:18.760 | So companies like Blackstone, companies like KKR,

01:08:23.760 | companies like Apollo, what have they proven?

01:08:27.480 | They've proven that they can raise

01:08:31.440 | enormous amounts of money.

01:08:32.800 | So most of these organizations now

01:08:34.760 | are approaching a trillion dollars of capital raised.

01:08:38.240 | And they tell investors, well, look,

01:08:41.120 | don't worry about the returns anymore.

01:08:42.760 | Worry about the 2%, because that's like our revenue.

01:08:45.400 | And we're generating $20 billion a year of revenue

01:08:48.840 | that'll grow at some rateable proportion.

01:08:51.520 | We'll manage the teams, we'll compensate them well,

01:08:54.520 | but there'll be lots of profitability.

01:08:56.360 | And people have bought that story.

01:08:58.560 | So I think a lot of smaller organizations

01:09:01.160 | who aspire to be like a Blackstone or an Apollo

01:09:04.600 | have tried to get people to buy into this story.

01:09:07.200 | And I think what Bill Ackman was trying to do

01:09:11.120 | was some version of that, which is to say,

01:09:12.840 | I'm going to build an enterprise here.

01:09:15.160 | Pershing Square is going to be a standalone business.

01:09:17.760 | It's going to have enterprise value.

01:09:19.840 | And you're gonna measure that

01:09:21.520 | based on the assets that I manage.

01:09:23.320 | And it's going to be much greater than what I manage today.

01:09:26.360 | And I think he manages roughly 10 billion today,

01:09:29.240 | but he thought he was gonna raise another 25 in this IPO,

01:09:31.960 | and then in very short order, be at 50 billion.

01:09:34.640 | And so he got people to invest in that business

01:09:38.200 | on that premise.

01:09:39.040 | And I think folks put in around a billion dollars,

01:09:41.880 | and they valued that entity at 10 billion.

01:09:44.880 | And so he tried to go and raise his fund.

01:09:46.920 | He thought it was gonna be 25.

01:09:48.800 | And it turned out, I thought it was two,

01:09:50.920 | but Friedberg, you just said it's less than one.

01:09:52.720 | I didn't, I guess, or around one.

01:09:55.000 | I just heard that.

01:09:55.840 | I'm just hearing that from you for the first time.

01:09:57.960 | So I guess, what is the takeaway?

01:10:00.480 | Like, Samath, real quick.

01:10:01.640 | This was a closed-end fund he was trying to raise.

01:10:05.200 | No, but I think he's also said

01:10:06.680 | that Pershing Square eventually has a path to go public.

01:10:09.040 | That's how he sold the billion of equity at 10 billion

01:10:12.360 | in the master LP.

01:10:13.720 | - Yeah, but this IPO was just for a fund.

01:10:15.840 | It was just a- - No, no, I know.

01:10:17.240 | It was the IPO of the fund,

01:10:18.440 | and then they were planning afterwards, the IPO-

01:10:20.520 | - They were planning afterwards, yes, which he didn't do.

01:10:23.000 | - My only point was that the fund was,

01:10:25.160 | basically, it's launching a fund,

01:10:26.560 | and then the goal is not the fund itself.

01:10:28.680 | The goal is to buttress the underlying logic

01:10:31.720 | to take the whole thing public, the management.

01:10:33.480 | - Okay, okay.

01:10:34.600 | - And that's what I mean by taking a company public

01:10:36.880 | in finance is next to impossible.

01:10:39.080 | - Yeah.

01:10:39.920 | - So the whole point is like,

01:10:41.240 | what are these businesses in the business of doing?

01:10:43.440 | They're in the business of making bets.

01:10:45.720 | The problem is that those bets

01:10:48.600 | are short-term anomalous events.

01:10:51.000 | Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work.

01:10:53.520 | And the problem with that is that investors

01:10:56.400 | who are trying to underwrite 20 or 30 years of returns

01:11:00.120 | don't know how that's predictable over that period of time.

01:11:02.680 | Like for example, you're genetically engineering

01:11:05.720 | all kinds of produce that we are going to ingest.

01:11:09.080 | If that stuff works at scale,

01:11:10.960 | you will have built an enterprise

01:11:12.280 | that theoretically has the potential,

01:11:13.960 | unless it's disrupted by something else,

01:11:15.760 | to make revenue for 20 or 30 years.

01:11:17.760 | So people can underwrite that.

01:11:18.880 | Google makes a search engine.

01:11:20.200 | It's going to last for 20 or 30 years.

01:11:21.880 | Facebook makes a social network.

01:11:24.320 | It can last for 20 or 30 years.

01:11:26.520 | The business of making bets is typically something

01:11:29.840 | that can only be measured in days or weeks.

01:11:32.560 | Maybe months at best.

01:11:34.560 | And so I think what he ran into was that realization.

01:11:37.600 | It's very hard to get people

01:11:40.160 | to value an institution in this way.

01:11:43.280 | And so the thing did not work.

01:11:46.760 | He'll go back and he'll retool.

01:11:48.440 | The thing that I give Bill Ackman

01:11:49.640 | an enormous amount of credit for

01:11:50.960 | is he is one of the most resilient individuals

01:11:54.080 | I've ever seen in high finance,

01:11:56.640 | but generally as a business person.

01:11:58.440 | This guy has, he surfed some really big waves.

01:12:02.280 | He's landed some really good sets.

01:12:04.000 | He's also gotten crushed a few times

01:12:05.800 | and the guy just keeps coming back

01:12:07.320 | and he seems to be getting more and more refined

01:12:10.920 | and capable as a business person.

01:12:14.240 | So, you know, he'll probably figure out a way.

01:12:16.600 | This is not the first time he's publicly dealt

01:12:18.480 | with things that have not worked.

01:12:20.320 | But I think it just goes to show you that in finance,

01:12:24.840 | these entities that try to sell a piece

01:12:26.840 | of the "general partner" as a company,

01:12:30.480 | I just think that it's, frankly, that it doesn't work.

01:12:33.960 | And this is just, you know, an example,

01:12:37.960 | yet another example that there's not a lot

01:12:39.800 | of equity value in these businesses.

01:12:41.600 | - Sax, some reports indicate that investors pulled out

01:12:47.640 | of the Pershing Square IPO

01:12:49.800 | because of the current market conditions

01:12:53.400 | that a lot of market indices have stormed higher

01:12:58.000 | and that there is now less upside

01:13:00.800 | and it's not a great time to be entering the equity markets.

01:13:04.080 | Other reports indicate that investors lost interest

01:13:06.920 | in Ackman's fund because of his activity on X or Twitter.

01:13:11.920 | Have you, do you have a point of view?

01:13:13.720 | Do you think that folks pulled out,

01:13:15.080 | investors have pulled out?

01:13:16.040 | You're obviously a fund manager who is very active

01:13:19.480 | and opinionated on X or Twitter.

01:13:22.040 | Like, you know, do you think,

01:13:23.240 | has this affected your relationship with raising capital?

01:13:26.320 | If you're willing to talk about it

01:13:27.480 | or maybe just comment on the Ackman,

01:13:29.800 | you know, issue that he ran into, why did this fail?

01:13:32.360 | - I just don't know.

01:13:33.200 | I honestly haven't followed his IPO process at all.

01:13:37.640 | I would say that the market we have right now,

01:13:39.400 | it's not the best it's been, but it's also not the worst.

01:13:43.080 | So I'm always reluctant to blame macro conditions

01:13:47.240 | without having a more specific explanation.

01:13:49.640 | - Do you have a point of view on investors

01:13:51.720 | having an issue with Ackman because of his outspokenness

01:13:54.480 | on various social and political issues over?

01:13:57.680 | - I can't imagine, no, I can't imagine that.

01:13:59.920 | - I don't think so.

01:14:01.040 | Investors care about making money

01:14:02.720 | and Bill Ackman's a moneymaker.

01:14:04.120 | Like that's undeniable.

01:14:05.280 | The guy takes some losses,

01:14:07.760 | but his wins are way bigger than his losses.

01:14:09.680 | And he is a proven moneymaker.

01:14:12.160 | The problem is that I think the way in which

01:14:15.400 | he was trying to monetize the business

01:14:17.600 | is just a hard thing to do.

01:14:19.720 | You have to have an organization of hundreds

01:14:22.400 | approaching thousands of people that are raising

01:14:24.760 | all manner of funds.

01:14:26.600 | And those funds just deliver very consistent returns,

01:14:30.080 | not great, but they never lose money.

01:14:32.280 | And that's how you get towards a trillion dollars.

01:14:34.320 | And that's how you make it a company

01:14:35.680 | and not a great hedge fund.

01:14:38.040 | - Yeah, let me also just say,

01:14:39.920 | I think he's very thoughtful on Twitter.

01:14:42.040 | I've gotten into some disagreements with him on Twitter,

01:14:44.320 | other things I've agreed with,

01:14:45.720 | but overall I think he makes a strong case for himself.

01:14:48.760 | I haven't heard him say anything out of bounds on Twitter,

01:14:52.120 | whether you agree with it or not.

01:14:54.360 | So I can't imagine that that's a problem.

01:14:57.280 | - Some people would disagree.

01:14:58.320 | They think he's had a lot of comments on wokeism,

01:15:01.120 | as he would call it, and DEI topics, and Donald Trump.

01:15:05.120 | - Well, I agree with him on that.

01:15:05.960 | And I think the vast majority of the country

01:15:07.880 | agrees that woke has jumped the shark.

01:15:10.600 | - Yeah, but I think some people highlight.

01:15:13.280 | - If woke is so great,

01:15:14.440 | why is Kamala Harris trying to distance herself

01:15:16.960 | from every previous comment she's ever made

01:15:19.040 | about wokeism or DEI?

01:15:21.240 | The point is more about like what we talked about earlier,

01:15:23.320 | which is kind of having an authentic voice

01:15:25.120 | and speaking what you believe

01:15:26.640 | and speaking what your opinion is,

01:15:28.680 | versus remaining buttoned up

01:15:30.040 | and not speaking what you believe and toeing the line.

01:15:32.960 | - He's in the only industry

01:15:35.160 | where his performance is measurable every day in precision.

01:15:40.160 | So what I would say is,

01:15:42.680 | it's irrelevant what he says on Twitter,

01:15:45.040 | meaning the quality of his decisions

01:15:47.320 | are independent of what he says,

01:15:49.360 | because they're measurable

01:15:50.600 | and they are not something you can gain.

01:15:54.440 | And the reality is that over the last few years,

01:15:56.760 | particularly starting in COVID,

01:15:58.560 | he has gotten better and better

01:16:00.680 | and he's played a very good hand.

01:16:03.120 | I think he's an exceptional risk manager and he's timed it.

01:16:07.120 | And so the people that say that to you,

01:16:10.280 | to be very honest, they're somewhat,

01:16:12.520 | they're portraying their lack of financial sophistication.

01:16:15.080 | - Yeah, and actually, can I go further?

01:16:16.480 | And I actually think that Ackman's presence

01:16:19.040 | on TwitterX is a huge positive for him.

01:16:21.840 | It's an asset because he has a gigantic followership

01:16:25.480 | and he's able to speak directly to his audience

01:16:29.040 | in the way that we do.

01:16:30.960 | And I think the reason why people say these things

01:16:32.920 | is because they don't have a direct strategy.

01:16:35.560 | And so they want to basically bad mouth people who do.

01:16:37.640 | But again, if you don't go direct to your audience,

01:16:41.120 | then you have to go through the media

01:16:42.320 | and then they get to define you.

01:16:43.680 | - And it creates ambiguity.

01:16:45.440 | - Exactly.

01:16:46.280 | So I think the fact that he's got what,

01:16:48.040 | like a million plus followers and everything he puts out

01:16:51.960 | gets tens of thousands of likes, it's a huge positive.

01:16:55.240 | - Huge positive.

01:16:56.160 | And I think that the part of his business

01:16:58.160 | that he hasn't gone back to,

01:17:01.320 | which if he does in this chapter of his career

01:17:04.760 | with the following that he has,

01:17:06.480 | is the activism part.

01:17:10.520 | And I think there are two people

01:17:12.120 | who I think are incredible at this

01:17:15.240 | and where both the written and the spoken word,

01:17:18.720 | they have such a mastery of.

01:17:19.960 | Ackman is one, Dan Loeb is the other.

01:17:22.760 | And I think that in this world

01:17:24.880 | where you have the ability to go direct

01:17:27.240 | in a way that you've never had before

01:17:29.080 | is actually the realm of a different form of activism

01:17:34.080 | that I think could be extremely economically rewarding

01:17:40.280 | and valuable in society.

01:17:43.040 | All right, gentlemen, this has been a great episode

01:17:45.200 | of "The All In Pod".

01:17:46.040 | We missed our comedian in residence, Jason Calacanis.

01:17:50.320 | Nostrocanis, nostril, anus.

01:17:52.240 | We miss him.

01:17:53.120 | We wish him well, speedy recovery.

01:17:55.800 | This has been an episode without the usual humor

01:17:58.520 | and flamboyancy that we've all come to know and love.

01:18:01.440 | But I think it was great to chat this afternoon

01:18:04.920 | and we will see you all next week.

01:18:07.720 | Bye-bye.

01:18:08.560 | - Love you, boys.

01:18:09.400 | - Bye. - I gotcha.

01:18:10.240 | (upbeat music)

01:18:11.840 | ♪ We'll let your winners ride ♪

01:18:14.520 | ♪ Rain Man, David Sachs ♪

01:18:16.400 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

01:18:18.920 | ♪ And it said ♪

01:18:19.760 | ♪ We open sourced it to the fans ♪

01:18:21.080 | ♪ And they've just gone crazy with it ♪

01:18:22.960 | ♪ Love you, Eskimo ♪

01:18:23.800 | ♪ I'm the queen of quinoa ♪

01:18:25.120 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

01:18:26.120 | ♪ We'll let your winners ride ♪

01:18:27.960 | ♪ We'll let your winners ride ♪

01:18:30.160 | ♪ We'll let your winners ride ♪

01:18:31.800 | ♪ Besties are gone ♪

01:18:34.480 | - That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

01:18:36.520 | - It sucks.

01:18:37.360 | (laughing)

01:18:39.600 | - Oh, man.

01:18:40.440 | - My avatars will meet me at Blitz.

01:18:42.200 | - We should all just get a room

01:18:43.320 | and just have one big huge orgy

01:18:44.880 | 'cause they're all just useless.

01:18:46.120 | It's like this like sexual tension

01:18:47.600 | that we just need to release somehow.

01:18:50.240 | ♪ What about B ♪

01:18:52.080 | ♪ What about B ♪

01:18:52.920 | ♪ What about B ♪

01:18:53.840 | ♪ B ♪

01:18:54.680 | ♪ What about B ♪

01:18:55.520 | ♪ We need to get merch ♪

01:18:56.360 | ♪ Besties are gone ♪

01:18:57.200 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

01:19:02.200 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

01:19:07.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO

Chapters