60 Minutes - MLB Owner and Philanthropist David Rubenstein | The Takeout with Major Garrett

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett sits down with David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss how sports brings people together, how sports betting has affected treatment of athletes, his thoughts on a second Trump term and whether he believes an economic recession is on the horizon.  For more conversations like these, follow The Takeout with Major Garrett wherever you get your podcasts.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, 60 Minutes podcast listeners. It's Major Garrett, CBS News, Chief Washington correspondent and host of The Takeout with Major Garrett, which airs weeknights on our streaming news network, CBS News 24-7. Today, I am thrilled to share a special presentation of The Takeout here on the 60 Minutes podcast feed, featuring my extended interview with businessman and philanthropist David Rubinstein. Last weekend, I sat down with Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity fund, the Carlisle Group, and Principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles for a wide-ranging conversation. To hear more interviews like this, follow and listen to The Takeout with Major Garrett wherever you get your podcasts. When you're with Annex Platinum,

you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca slash yamex. Pumpkin is here at Starbucks, and we're making it just the way you like. Handcrafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce

and rich espresso, sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. David, it's always great to see you. I want to talk to you about sports in America and cohesion in America, because it strikes me that sports is one of the few places anymore where we can all get along, regardless of our political attitudes. Well, we can all agree that sports is really probably more popular than they've ever been

in terms of people watch more sports, live stream more sports, attend more sports events, better on more sports events than ever before. And it's one of the few things that people all agree on that sports is a good thing. Now, people have different team rivals and so forth. But I've been amazed at how the value of teams have gone up, the value of TV rights have gone up, and we've never seen anything quite like this. Now, you are not overly sentimental. I am not overly sentimental.

And we don't want to get gauzy and pretend that we can think of sports as the way to solve all of America's problems. But it does seem to me to be a convening place that could have. some value in restoring a sense of civic connectedness? There's no doubt that people feel if you're connected to sports, you're connected to the American people. So what do politicians often do? They go to sporting events. You'll see presidents of the United States, many of them go to football games. They'll go to a tennis match today, perhaps. And I think presidents and senior government officials feel if you get connected to a sports event and a sports team, it doesn't hurt your popularity.

And so politicians want to be popular. Going to a sporting event connects you with the American people. And I've come across some recent polling data that indicates that people who follow sports are more civically engaged, they're more politically engaged, they vote more often. They're just more connected to the fundamentals of what America and its experiment is all about. Well, as an owner of a team, maybe we should require more people to attend sports and sporting events because it make them a better citizen. Maybe that's a good idea.

I hadn't thought of that before, but that's a good idea. I'm going to work on that. Okay. How emotionally involved do you get in to the night-to-night successes and travails of the Baltimore Orioles? And has it been a surprise to you, your emotional reaction? Yeah, I'm not the most emotional person in the world, people would probably say. And so I didn't, before I bought the Orioles with some partners, I would watch this box scores and say, okay, this team loss, this team won, the person did pretty well. Now I watch it obsessively to see how we're doing, and I do get upset when we're losing, when I really am happy when we win.

I guess maybe it makes me live longer because I'm happier when we win, and happiness is a elusive thing in life. But I am very engaged with the team in terms of how they perform and so forth. As we talk now, we just came off an historic win last night, where the Orioles were with one out to go, they were going to lose a no-hitter. one of our young players hit a home run with two outs in the ninth, and then we scored three more runs and a walk-off win, and in the history of baseball, they never happened before.

We were foiled a no-hitter and then came back to win in a walk-off win. So it's really high, and I'm still recovering from the excitement of it. It was great. It is an elixir, isn't it? Things like that? When you get older, you get more jaded about life, and you kind of say, what is it that can make me feel better that isn't going to make me unhealthy?

I mean, alcohol makes some people happy, but it doesn't make me happy. I don't drink. Drugs can make some people happy, but I don't take drugs. So what can I do that's going to make me happy and not get me in trouble? And watching a sporting event, hoping they're going to win,

is one of the best things to do. So as you get older, and I am now just turned 76, when you turn 55, it's my theory, that you've lived more than you're going to live and you begin to worry about what I call longevity, and you want to live longer. And so there are many ways you can live longer,

but one of the things is to have something that you really care about. And when you care about a sports team and it does well, you might live longer. So I'm going to get more and more people to kind of say, come to sporting events, come to the Orioles events, and maybe you'll live longer if we do well. And as the saying goes, faith is free. Correct. So if you're going to be faithful in something and the upside of a sporting event, it's not a bad place to start. Sporting events, it's interesting. What kind of events do people enjoy the most? I have thought over the years, when you go to a wedding, a lot of people saying, this marriage isn't going to wake it.

You know, you hear that all the time. This marriage is not going to make it. The buttering in the back queues, right? You know, nobody's happy going to funerals, right? But people love commencements, because everybody is thinking at a commencement, this is great people graduating and so forth. But people love sporting events, too. When you go to a sporting event, you're hoping your team is going to win,

and you're going to see some great athletic performances. And when you do, you get excited about it. And so I'm amazed at how many people come to me and say, Mr. Rubinstein, thank you for buying the team, but you should know I've been a season ticket holder for 45 years. Forty-five years, I mean, I can't believe it, but they are. And some people have shown up in the owner's box. They've owned, had season tickets for 50 years. So some people are obsessed with sports, and they seem to be happy. And so I'm trying to, you know, produce more happiness. Happiness is the most elusive thing in life, for sure. Thomas Jefferson talked about it

in the Declaration Independence, but never actually defined what happiness is. And happiness varies from people to people about what makes them happy. But clearly sporting events make people happy, particularly when their team does well. Did you experience or have you experienced sticker shock as an owner of this ball club? Well, when the Orioles came to Baltimore in 1954, the purchase price was 2.2 million, 2.2 million, and they had a hard time raising it. It was later sold to Edward Bennett Williams for about, I think it was $12 million. His estate sold it for around $75 million. My predecessor owner paid about $155 million 30 years ago, and so $155 million or 30 years ago became $1.7 billion. But $1.7 billion, some people said to me, you got a bargain.

And some of the owners said, you didn't pay enough. You should have paid a higher price because we want the team values to be higher. But look at this, what's happened now in sports. The L.A. Lakers were recently valued by somebody that bought them at $10 billion valuation. The Boston Celtics were recently valued at $6 billion. valuation. Somebody bought a stake in, or was about to buy a stake in the New York Giants football team at roughly a $10 billion valuation. Somebody bought a stake in the Miami Dolphins football team at roughly a $10 billion valuation. Staggering amounts of money. So yes, the increase in value is reflected in the

fact that people love sports, particularly baseball and basketball and football. And the TV rights have been so valuable and that people are paying attention to these sports such that people think it's worthwhile to pay $10 billion valuation for a basketball team. But do you find yourself hesitating when you see the price of a free agent or something and know the unpredictability of money allocated, money guaranteed, and lack of clarity about what's actually going to happen? Well, it's different than the private equity world in which I've lived. You know, people do well in a year.

You give them a bonus and you see how they're going to do the next year. Next year to year. Right. But here, because of the way baseball is set up and other sports, you know, there's a lot. as well, you have longer-term contracts, and we just entered into a longer-term arrangement with a young man who's just turned 21, I believe it is, and he gave him a long-term contract. He's going to be here for quite some time, and the price seemed high to me for a person at the time who had only played four Major League Baseball games. But he did a great job. He had a walk-off

home run the other night, and we're very happy with the arrangement, and we hope we can do other things like that as well. You mentioned a moment ago betting is part of the popularity of sport. Do you have any anxiety about where betting and sports is ultimately going to land? I don't know. When I was a young boy in high school, I bet on a sporting event and I lost. I was told I couldn't lose and I lost, and I swore I would never bet again in my life, and I never have. I don't gamble, never bet at all. But there's no doubt that other people have a real affinity for betting. And so people think they're going to win and everybody goes to Las Vegas thinks they're going to win. Usually they don't. But I think betting is a complicated subject, not just

because you bet on who's going to win or who's going to lose. But people are betting on whether a pitch is going to be a strike, whether it's going to be a curveball, what the score is. And they're betting on so many little picky you and things that it's hard to really police those things. So it's a challenge for sure. And I've read stories about harassment of players derived entirely from disappointment, if not bitterness, over betting. I have read that. And obviously we recognize that many people have been caught betting who are players, and they've been penalized for that. But people who are not players who are betting, they're often doing some things that aren't appropriate. On social media and things like that, you know, barking at them, getting into their direct

message feeds, and hassling them in deeply personal ways. And this is something the players say is a new dimension to their lives. It's unfortunate because players should be playing to the best of their abilities and shouldn't be trying to shade things or do certain things are going to help betters. I don't have an answer for it. It's been going on for quite some time. I'm not going to solve that problem. But I hope somebody can deal with how we can make certain that the games are as honest as possible. Is baseball healthy?

Baseball is healthy. We have more than 70 million people a year going to Major League Baseball games, which is a lot of people. Baseball could always have more people going. Sure, we're happy to have more people come. Baseball is healthy. People love baseball, but it has changed a bit. When I was a boy, young African-American athletes would want to go into baseball. Now they tend to go more into football and basketball.

So the Major League percentage of African-American players is now relatively small compared to what it used to be. Although the major leagues are working on that in a lot of different ways. And they are trying to do that. We are now doing the best we can to get more people from urban areas to come to the stadiums. Because, you know, if you come, maybe you'll induce your children and want to be baseball players and so forth. So we've got to work on that. But baseball is pretty healthy. Remember, you've got 30 teams.

and 30 teams are really doing pretty well in attendance. We get a lot of people coming to the games, not as many as, let's say, an NFL game, because there are fewer NFL games, for sure. But I think baseball is pretty healthy, but can always be better. It can always be better. And we have a very good commissioner working on making it better, and the owners are determined to make it a better sport. You recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of Cal Ripkin breaking Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak.

At the time, many people thanked Cal Ripkin for saving. baseball. Part of that was performance-enhancing drugs, but also part of it was labor strife. Looking forward, how do you perceive the potential dangers of labor strife? You never can predict where the situation is going to go. We have a contract with the Players Association, such that through the end of the 26th season, we have a contract. And so generally the way baseball works is you don't tend to negotiate until the contract is up. Maybe there'll be some discussions before. I don't know. I'm not involved in that part of baseball. I'm too junior and owner to be involved in it. But the commissioner and a lot of the owners that are on the executive

committee and on the Labor Committee are spending more time on it than I am. I'm on the junior committees. So I do think that baseball is something the American people really want to see and they want to see it played. And I think American people and the owners and the players want to continue baseball and not have any interruptions. I'm hopeful that will happen. Last time we talked, David, President Trump was about to be inaugurated. And you were relatively sanguine about how the second iteration of President Trump's presidency would go. Are you still sanguine? Well, he's different than he was the first term. The first term, he had never been in office before. He had a lot of people who had been in government

before around him. He wanted people who knew more about government than he did. He didn't know much at that time. He's now been president for four years before. Now he's in his second term. And he's bringing different kinds of people, people who feels more comfortable with. So the second term is different than the first term, for sure, in many ways. Different bad, different good? I won't categorize it or say it pejoratively or positively. I would say it's different. It's different because he's much more self-assured, much more confident of his judgment, and he knows what he wants to do as opposed to the first time around. I think he was feeling his way. He did some good things in the first term, some things I wouldn't agree with necessarily. In the second term, he knows what he wants to

do, and he's proceeding to do it. And some people like it, some people don't. How would you assess where the economy is right now? The economy? The economy is something where it's a $30 trillion economy, $30 trillion annual economy. So it's hard to say where a $30 trillion economy is going to go. Things move it relatively slowly. But I'd say right now, I don't see a recession imminently in front of us. We haven't had a recession for a while. Normally you have recessions every seven years. We really haven't had one. We had a technical recession during COVID, but not a real recession.

So I think the economy is always due for a recession when you're going this long without one, but I don't see one on the horizon. Right now, while the jobs numbers are softer, softer than everybody would like, I think inflation is not as bad as it was a couple years ago. It's coming down. Still could be a little bit better. But generally, I think the American technology world is so strong. We dominate the world in technology, and that's fueling the economy

and fueling the global economy. too, and as artificial intelligence becomes more and more powerful, I think it's going to really help fuel American growth even more. There's a push and pull on that, though, with technology and particularly artificial intelligence. I've read analysis of companies that are projecting much higher growth and profitability, but almost zero increase in personnel because of productivity gains they are going to assume from AI. So that makes them wealthier, but it doesn't create more jobs. There's a push and pull there. When the Industrial Revolution came along in the late 1800s, people said jobs are going to be taken away and people are going to lose their jobs. And yes, there was transition.

But anytime something comes along that's new, some people are displaced, unfortunately, and some people get new jobs. And so people may get different jobs. Right now we have a relatively low unemployment rate, relatively low, a little bit more than 4%, which is not that bad relative to the economy of our size. and we now have more people, you know, more job openings than we have people to fill these jobs. So I think the economy is going to go through a transition. AI will ultimately do what people probably think it will do, which is to change the job mix a bit. But ultimately, you're going to have people train for AI kind of jobs.

And ultimately, over a period of time, I suspect it will be good for the economy. So when the naysayers say this is a fundamental shift, it's not like the Industrial Revolution, it's not like any other technology before because it's all encompassing and because it takes so many human tasks out, you say, it's going to be all right? Well, as one person once said, I think it was Lord Templeton,

the most dangerous words the English language are, this time is different. And so to say this time is different is really dangerous, because I don't think it's that different than other things we've had that have changed the economy. Remember, when the Internet came along,

people said, oh, people are going to lose their jobs now. We won't have the needs for certain things that we had before. The Internet has fueled a lot of jobs. Remember, we didn't have, let's take Uber. Uber is possible because of the Internet, and that's created a lot of jobs. And so I think it's too difficult for humans to say what's going to happen five years, 10 years down the road in the economy as a general rule of thumb.

Given where we are today, I'd much rather have our AI position than the AI positions of other countries. Other countries, I think, are really envious of what we've done in AI so far. And we're really at the beginning of the first inning, really, I would say, in AI. We just don't really know yet how it's going to work. But I'd be happy to have the valuations of some of the AI companies in my portfolio because they have done quite well. And I think they're going to continue to do well. You and are a gentleman of a certain age. Well, you're younger than me, so you're being polite.

Just by a smidge, just by a smidge. We remember when ATMs came in, and there was a tremendous set of conversations going on about ATMs eliminating bank jobs. What happened is, yes, tellers did fewer things, but then banks. provided more services because that transaction was now electronic, and more people got hired. That's just one small example of what I think you're driving at. Yes, look, when ATMs came along, people said we're not going to need branch banks anymore. We have plenty of branch banks.

Now people are saying ATMs are dated because everything is done electronically. You don't need to get cash at all. So a lot of my friends say to me, why do I actually show up with cash from time of time? You can just put everything on an electronic device, and I'm too old-fashioned how to do that. So I still go to the bank machine to get some cash. Me too. I'm amazed how many people don't get any cash and they don't use cash at all. David, I get on planes with paper tickets, so just so you know how rooted in my ways I am.

You mean they have something other than paper tickets? I don't know. Word Association, tariffs. Tariffs are something that's been around since the beginning of our country. Normally you have tariffs when you're trying to protect your economy. In our case, our economy is in pretty good shape. But the dilemma we now have is that because the big, beautiful bill was struck, in a certain way, it assumes there's going to be a lot of tariff revenue coming in over the next 10 years. I think the latest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office are somewhere

between $3 and $4 trillion are going to come in over the next 10 years. So if you were to eliminate the tariffs, and we don't have this revenue, we're going to have much bigger budget deficit deficits. So we've locked ourselves into a position we probably need the tariffs because the budget revenue is necessary. We have a big budget deficit problem, as you know, in this country, and we have now about $36, $37 trillion of total indebtedness, and that's a big problem. And the Supreme Court's going to have to decide about the legality of these tariffs because they are imposed under authorities that no previous president has claimed under a 1970s emergency economic law. If the Supreme Court says, wait a minute, you've exceeded your authority and Congress is the one, and the Constitution is very clear about this, if there are going to be tariffs, they need to go through Congress, Trump could suffer a defeat and all this could be turned upside down. Well, I think what happened was they used the 1977 emergency emergency.

tariff legislation to justify it, but there is other legislation that could have been used and may well be used, and so they may use that other legislation, which does give the president more rights than that 77 legislation. The Supreme Court is a court that doesn't try to make bold decisions and say, we're going to solve all problems in the world when a case comes to us. They try to look at the narrow way that they can decide this case, and they might decide it on narrow grounds. I just don't know.

It's going to take a while before it's resolved. But I don't think that the tariffs are likely to be completely eliminated because there's other legislation that could pass. And the current Congress, which is controlled by the president largely, could pass legislation that might give him the authority he might want anyway. So I'm not sure that this case is going to resolve all these tariff issues. Kennedy Center. What's going on there? I served as the chairman of it for 14 years. I was very proud to be chairman of it. And we had some great events there at the time and some of the most exciting events I've ever been to. in terms of the entertainment world,

we're at the Kennedy Center, the Kennedy Center honors. President Trump decided he wanted to be the chairman. He's now the chairman of it. So I'm not involved any longer in it, and so I've been focusing on other things. So I wish the Kennedy Center the best. I think it's a great organization,

and I hope people who go to the Kennedy Center are pleased with the performances there, but I'm just not involved any longer in it. By inference, the president has said that the building is dilapidated and the entertainment selections had become overtly woke. Do you want to address either one of those? because they reflect on your chairmanship.

Well, I'm proud of what I did as chairman. I gave the Kennedy Center more than $100 million of my own money to try to build certain things there and help programs and so forth. So I'm proud of what I did when I was chairman of the Kennedy Center and I'm not going to respond to comments that say that Kennedy Center is not as good as I thought it was. You know, everybody who's a chair of an organization thinks they do a good job. I thought I did a good job, but maybe other people can judge

and that I didn't do a good job. But I was happy with the job we had, and we had it through Republican and Democratic presidents, and I'm just, you know, we'll leave it there. You think deeply and write frequently about the arc of America's history, its story, its ambitions, its faults. David, I don't need to tell you. There is a pretty intense conversation going on right now about what is the strength of our institutions, what is the direction of our country, are things that we've once valued and assumed were permanent or falling apart before our very eyes. How would you assess that? On any given time in history, people are always saying the world is falling apart. This happens lots of times.

I would say today of the United States is in reasonably good shape. We are the envy of the world in many areas, not every area. I think many of our universities are the best in the world. I think our technology companies are the best in the world. I think right now American young people, I think increasingly are well-educated and I think are ambitious and building new companies. So I wouldn't say the countries in any peril. I would say you can always do better and certain things I would change if I was President of the United States, but I'm not going to be President of the United States.

I'm too young. I'm only 76 years old. You need to be older. Certainly it appears that way. And you don't feel that our institutions are under any greater threat that they have been in the past? Well, some institutions have some challenges for sure. But I think it's too early to say that the institutions are going to be falling apart. We have a great resilience in this country. And while there are challenges from time at time, I think that the resilience of the country and the American people will help these institutions get through the challenges that they have at this time.

Remember, we've seen this kind of thing before. Many times, institutions are challenged. They survive. They come back stronger. And I think many of the institutions we're now seeing as being somewhat challenged will come back stronger after a while. And as you know, those who love President Trump say,

look, he won, and he is a unique figure in American politics because that's what the country wants. It wants something shaken up and it wants these institutions, if not toppled, certainly viewed with a more skeptical eye. Look, the President of the United States won two presidential elections.

And I didn't think he would win the first time he ran because he had no government experience, but he won, my surprise. I was surprised that he won this time, but he did. And I think elections have consequences and we are dealing with the fact that he's now in charge of the federal government. And I think he's doing things that many people like and many people don't like.

And I'm not really able to really comment on all the things he's doing. But generally, I would say he's fulfilling the mandate he thinks he has. He is a unique figure in our history, is he not? He's unique because no president had ever served before not having had government experience, for sure. And he's now doing things that many presidents didn't do, but maybe other presidents wanted to do. Time will tell whether it's going to work out or not. Clearly there's some challenges. Clearly, there's some tensions in Washington.

and I don't think I have the ability to resolve those kind of things. I do try to bring members of Congress together from time by time at dinners and so forth in a kind of bipartisan, nonpartisan way. But I don't have the ability to solve all these problems. And there's a good reason why I haven't run for anything because I'm not skilled in that area. Back to baseball real quick. Is there any sport you love more than baseball? Well, baseball is my favorite sport.

I was a baseball player when I was a little boy. It was a little league. I wasn't that great at it. but I was an all-star, but it was only, I think everybody was an all-star and think everybody got a trophy. I tried out for my junior varsity high school team, and after I thought I did a pretty good job, the coach came to me and said, you know, I really like you a lot. I'd like you to be the manager of the team.

I said, well, the manager, geez, I don't know. I'm not really ready to be a manager, but I didn't realize the manager was the person who takes care of the equipment and so forth. So I said, let me talk to my parents. I don't know if they really want me to be the manager. And my parents explained to me what being the manager was. Equipment manager, basically. Yes, that's what I was.

So I decided not to do that. I wish I had been taller. I wish I'd been stronger. You know, I would have been a better athlete, but, you know, life worked out okay for me. What are the parallels between failure in sports and failure in business? Well, failure in sports, if you're an athlete, you know, you're going to have a relatively short career. As an owner, you can continue being an owner and not be that successful and not be that profitable, and your fans won't be that happy. But you can still make money.

You can still make money in sports in many different ways. Not all teams make money if they don't do well. In business, there are many different ways to judge your success in business and so forth. It's more challenging in the sports because you don't, in business, you can put more money into things and you put more money that you'll probably do better, not always. In sports, it's not always the case that the team that puts in the most money will always win. In some cases, teams that have smaller amounts of money or come from small, or cities still win. Right now, as we talk, the team with the best record in Major League Baseball

is Milwaukee Brewers. And they're doing the smallest markets, small markets, right, payrolls. Yes. So it doesn't always happen that whoever puts in the biggest payroll is going to win. So it's a very complicated thing. And people who are like me who are in the business world are used to solving problems, putting money into thinking into business things and make the things better if you put more money in, realize when you get to baseball, it's beyond your control a bit. I can't get, you know, 26 players to do exactly what I want them to do. It's just a different thing, and it's just a way to experience life. It's different than what I've been before.

It's enjoyable, but it has its challenges, for sure. You are one of the most aggressive advocates for private equity. You believe in private equity. There are some Americans who look at private equity and say they're just stripped-down artists that come in, ravage a company, sell it off, do great for stockholders or shareholders or purchasers and do a private equity institution, but leave things in worse condition after they arrive. I want to give you an opportunity to extol the virtues of private equity. Well, private equity was started many decades ago. In the early days of private equity, I think some people

over-leveraged companies. Remember, in the early days of buyouts, companies were levered 99 to 1. And if it wasn't 991, it was 95-to-5. So these things were highly levered, and some of those deals didn't work out. Today, the private equity world is completely different. It's a completely different world. It has the same name, but completely different. For example, today, an average equity component of a buyout deal might be 50%. The chance of the fault is much, much reduced. Today, the private equity firms have enormous amounts of chief operating officers who work in the private equity firm to help the companies we invest in. So it's not just a matter of selling off assets, stripping down assets, which was done 30, 40 years ago. Today, we're really adding

value. So it's much different than it was many years ago. And also, when you think, think about it, more companies go bankrupt every year in the United States that have no affiliation with private equity. The companies that go bankrupt, there tend to be companies that have lots of other problems, but they had no private equity connections. Private equity firms are in pretty good shape, and actually what happens is private equity, we represent a lot of endowments, college endowments, and university endowments, and pension funds, and we represent their best interests, and we make money for them, and when we get good returns, they do better because their pensioners are going to benefit from it.

So it's not exactly we're putting money only in our pocket. We put money in our pocket only after the investors get a fair amount of return on their investments that they've made with us. David, is there any doubt in your mind that we'll have a midterm election next year and that after this term is over, President Trump will not seek a third term? We've, since the Constitution has started, we've really started in 1788. We've had midterm elections every time. I'd be very surprised that we didn't have midterms elections.

There's no reason for me to believe we won't have midterm elections. I'm 100% certain that we will, and I see no evidence that we will not. And, you know, we have a tradition now of 200 plus years of midterm elections. Predicting what's going to happen is very difficult. Midterm elections often go against the incumbent president in power. When Barack Obama was president, he lost 62 seats his first midterm. I think Bill Clinton lost. 54 seats. The only president in recent time who's actually done well in a midterm was George W. Bush

because of 9-11, he picked up one seat. I think President Trump, in his first midterm, in his first term, I think he lost 41 seats. So generally, you can think the president power is going to lose some seats, but you don't know what's really going to happen. And of course, that's only talking about the House, I know about the Senate. In terms of the President Trump, he is now 79 years old. and, you know, at 79 years old, you know, I don't think he wants to be present again when he's in his 83, 84, 85 year period of time. So I'd be very surprised if he were, be interested in being president after that. Many times people who have power don't like to give it up, but sometimes they find people they think are their acolytes and are going to be able to

continue their policies, and he has a lot of people to pick from. So, no, I'd be very surprised if the president said he wanted to be present for another term. I was very surprised. How does he look to you? Well, I haven't seen him lately. I've seen him on television. I haven't seen him in person lately. He looks like somebody who, you know, is in his 70s.

And as I, as somebody in my 70s, you know, I increasingly every time I look in the mirror, I say, hey, where would that wrinkle come from? And I get extra gray hair. So everybody wants to be younger looking than they really are. I think he looks okay. I haven't seen him personally for a while. so but I think he's doing okay based on what I never

there's a conversation about having some sort of mental acuity test for people who run for politics especially after a certain age do we need that you know it should be a mental acuity test for people who want to get into politics why do you want to get in the politics you know how terrible this is and maybe they should have mental acuity tests for people want to be sports owners as well I don't know maybe they should do that too but I think it's too

complicated because a mental acuity tests are not as scientific as they might sound. And I think there are other ways you can judge whether a person has the ability to do it or not. And we do have the 25th Amendment, which is available. So I don't think it would really work. And I think whoever were tested wouldn't probably accept the results if they were unfavorable anyway. So I don't think we're likely to do that. I don't know of any country that really does that. Will you be attending the Kennedy Center Honors this year? Well, I haven't been invited to attend the Kennedy Center Honors this year. But I don't know. have scheduled because I, when I stepped down his chair, I took a couple overseas speaking

engagements around that time, so I probably won't be in the country. David Rubinstein, always a pleasure. My pleasure. Now streaming on Paramount Plus. In 2020, a lip-syncing nobody took over the internet. What's up, guys? For new joiners, it's your boy, Whitey. And also, your mom. I've been lusting after William Y, who's younger than my son. I feel like a lot of my fans needed to feel young again. Like, gain a spark back. I've probably given him any anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000. Thirst trap.

The fame, the fantasy, the fallout. Now streaming on Paramount Plus.