All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E138: Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in conversation with the Besties

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

(0:00) Bestie intros! (1:08) Vivek's background, corporate political / ESG distractions, why he's running for president (19:16) Energy policy, unemployment work requirements, immigration (30:24) Foreign policy: How to handle Ukraine/Russia and Taiwan/China (44:46) Media strategy, Silicon Valley Bank's implosion (54:09) Thoughts on Trump (1:06:16) Campaign strategy, establishment appeal (1:14:10) Social issues: Abolishing the DOE, abortion, trans rights (1:29:31) Defense budget, Military Industrial Complex, GOP division over Ukraine (1:39:27) Bestie update! (1:41:33) Post-interview debrief Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow Vivek Ramaswamy: https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/20/vivek-ramaswamy-pete-buttigieg-00107193 https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national/ https://twitter.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1680204156953407488 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1680205700738211840 https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1680665098765975558

Saxi, can you, can you come outside your window and, and I'm going to start waving and you see me, you want to see me? Sax, have two of your butlers hold you up on their shoulders. I hope this is being taped and part of the show because this is great. David, you're wearing blue shorts, right? Yeah. Yeah, I saw you. Did you see me?

Not in C, where are you? When you look out on the first house, the pink house. Look at this house. You see that? I heard you. I couldn't see you, though. Yeah. You see that? I heard you. I couldn't see you though. Yeah. You only like a lunatic. You're the pink house. Look, I'm like, you see me? Yeah. No, I'm like, do you're right. If you're looking out, I'm at your right. Your first house on the right.

Oh, there. Oh, I see you. Yeah. Yeah. I see you. I see you. I see you. Guys like 12 year olds come over afterwards. We'll have a question. Okay. All right. I'm gonna come over afterwards. They think it's a hard stop. We should go And I said we open sources to the fans and they've just got crazy. I love you. That's nice. Queen of the kid. I'm going to leave. All right. Vivek Ramaswamy is finally on the program. He's an entrepreneur.

He graduated Harvard. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. He was an entrepreneur. Then a capital allocator. I think broad strokes. Everybody knows he's a conservative. We're running as a Republican.

He's anti-woke. He's pro-life, anti-affirmative action, pro-free speech, and he wants federal government term limits. And his fans are lunatics. They've been asking for him to be on the All-in podcast every day. I've gotten about 300 emails from your fans.

Welcome to the program. They sound like your fans, actually, because I hear it all the time. It's like blaming me for why I have not been on this program. They sound like your fans, actually, because I hear it all the time. It's like blaming me for why I have not been on this program. And so you guys, this has been like some sort of idealized experience for me. I'm looking forward to it. Okay. Great. So what we try to do here is have a real conversation, try to get these candidates off their talking points. So this isn't meet the press obviously. I want to talk to you like a human being. So the extent that, you know, as a politician, now you can talk like a human being, the audience extent that, you know, as a politician now, you can talk like a human being.

The audience and we would appreciate it. Meet David Sachs, Tremoth Paihapatia, and David Friedberg. All right, Vivek, why don't you explain maybe your background as a capital allocator and as an entrepreneur and then why you chose to run for president at this time? Yeah, sure. I mean, my parents, like many people, you probably also know who have had similar success stories. They came to this country with almost no money. I went on to actually found successful companies.

And so I started my career as a biotech investor. I worked at a hedge fund in New York when I graduated in 2007. I thought I was gonna be a scientist and I studied molecular biology. Ended up enjoying my time as an internship. It had a hedge fund a lot more than that. So I did that for seven years.

Three of those years I spent law school at the same time, but then when I finished law school, I had, you know, I think felt like my learning curve had flattened from being a pure capital allocator. So I stepped down and founded a new kind of biotech company that I could actually, you guys might be more interested in it than most my political audiences, but the basic premise was give scientists skin in the game in the projects they actually work on

So if you're a GSK or advisor or whatever murk You discover a drug or you develop it. You don't have personal upside in the You discover a drug or you develop it. You don't have personal upside in the individual drug that you develop. You do have various forms of asymmetric downside and So people don't take risks unless they're the same risks that the other pharma companies are taking because If you take the same risk and fail that everybody else is failing in a therapeutic category at the same time you're safe But if you take a risk that other people aren't willing to take and you fail you're safe. But if you take a risk that other people aren't willing to take and you fail, then you experience budget cuts, maybe job security risks, social embarrassment, which is a big factor in big pharma as well, which in turn created an opportunity that I took

advantage of, which was that there were systematically categories of drugs that went undeveloped. Even after big pharma had for a long time spent a lot of money developing those drugs up to a certain point. So I built a business called Reuven. Basically, in licensed some of those drugs in their early stages of development, Phase 1 or Phase 2, often for pennies on the dollar, relative to what had gone into them. Often we would have scientists or drug developers who were passionate about that very project inside the companies who would come with those drugs because they wanted to develop them, but the big pharma companies said that they weren't in that area anymore.

And we built a pipeline of such drugs. The whole plan was some of them would work, some of them wouldn't. The successes would make up for the failures. And it's now a $10 billion public company. And it returned, unlike many private companies, you know, returned a billion dollars plus to shareholders before going public. And you know, is doing, continues to do well to this day.

I led the company as CEO for seven years. Five of the drugs I worked on are FDA approved today. The one I'm probably most proud of is a drug that's actually biologic that is life-saving therapy in kids. Another one's an approved drug for prostate cancer, but that was my world. It is the point. Very different world. Maybe more similar to your guys' world now than the world I'm in now. Something funny happened in 2020, which was that in my own company there were

demands that I make a statement on behalf of Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd. It was tragic death in May of 2020. By June, there were demands that I start making statements on behalf of BLM. And it was a funny time because only starting that February, I had ventured into actually exercising my voice as a citizen while being a CEO at my own peril, criticizing what was then the still new shiny object of stakeholder capitalism. So I published this piece in the Wall Street Journal and generated some waves that February, a few months later in May, this George Floyd controversy comes up. And the long story

short, I can go into it if you guys are interested, but over the next six months, a series of escalating events led me to face a choice the following January of, you know, there's three advisors to my company that stepped down after I wrote a rather, I didn't intend it to be, but a rather controversial piece in the Wall Street Journal at the time. What was the premise of the piece? The premise of the piece was that it actually was controversial on numerous counts, but the basic premise was it was the first legal argument anybody had made that if the government is pressuring a private actor to do something that the government couldn't do directly,

that that was still state action. Now the subtext is this was in the wake of January 6th, where there was widespread systematic censorship of political speech in this country, 6th, when there was widespread systematic censorship of political speech in this country, at least I believe there was. And so at the time I made that argument, it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory on the facts. No, that's not happening. It was also dismissed as a legal theory.

You know, this rub who can happen to go to law school for God is first year, where the first amendment only applies to state actors. You know, now, fast forward three years, two and a half years, we now know those facts were far worse than even I envisioned at the time. And actually, the legal argument that I made is now popularized by Clarence Thomas and others that are finding its way into our jurisprudence.

But anyway, three advisors to the company found it so offensive that I would make this argument in public that within 48 hours of that piece they resigned. That was definitely a post Jan 6th mood and reaction that I had to then make a choice, right? Because now this is having potentially an adverse impact on the company. I could either, all right, call it a year where I experimented with expressing myself and, you know, wearing my legal academic hat and call that a day and continue with biotech or Legitimately if I didn't want to have an adverse impact on my company I could step down and really speak freely I choose to I chose to step down not in small part because the company was doing great

You know, I had a successor lined up so there was a fortunate set of circumstances and happened to be the right time I just had my first son. My son Carthick was born in February of 2020. He was about to turn a year old. We were the transitional face of our life. COVID, you know, we were, we had a year away from the office. My wife was filling her fellowship. There was just a lot going on in our life that it felt like this was a moment for a life transition to focus on, there are a lot of people, talented people developing medicines, maybe some of them more talented than me, you know, Rovin's a successful company.

Did you feel like you were being bullied into making a statement about Black Moms matter by your own employees and what your thought generally speaking on companies being politically active and companies having a political voice because it has come up in our industry over and over again, you might know Brian Armstrong from Coinbase said, hey, we're here to do crypto, nothing else. Please don't talk about anything political. So where are your thoughts, General?

You wrote a whole book on this, right? I mean, I wrote a whole book. Yes, I wrote your book. And it's a lot about the distinction between what the intention is in optimizing for shareholders versus the personal interests of the executives in those in charge expressing their personal points of view through the corporation. And I think you have some points of view on where that should all go. But was that in part motivating for you to run for public office and why president instead of running for a Senate seat or congressional seat or something else? Yeah.

So I've, I've written, I wrote three books in the last two years and two of them are about this topic. The first one is Woking, which was for a general audience, and then there was a second one called Capitalist Punishment, which was specifically about the ESG strand of this and capital markets. And just for people to aware, my general view is that companies should focus on making products and services for people who need them without apologizing for it, and yes, that's how you maximize profit for shareholders by having a worthy mission and sticking to it

without taking on social missions that are best carried out by institutions outside of corporate America. I so much believe this that even before I ran for president, this actually does answer your question, Dave. I actually thought the way I was going to have impact based on this. I enjoy being an author, but I'm not by nature just an academic. I like to do things. I started a company called strive. It's an asset management firm that directly competes against the likes of BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard. That's what I thought my next leap was going to be. Stripes first fund launched last August, and less than a year in it, it's close to a billion dollars in assets and management. I think it took JP Morgan two years to get to a billion when they got into the ETF business. That was what my journey was going to be, is within corporate America, restore the unapologetic

pursuit of excellence over distracting and dilutive political environmental and social agendas. But the thing that struck me, I think late last year and last December, last year we had our second son got a new company off the ground. You all know what that entails. You know, it was very much an all-in experience doing that. December, we had some time to take a step back and you know, my wife and I, we, gonna take a moment to ask yourself, why are you doing what you're doing?

It's not a conversation you often have or take time to do, but the question of the why. And it reminded me back of that experience I had at Roy, but you asked me, did I feel bullied? I didn't actually feel bullied. I think I could imagine someone in my shoes feeling that way, but I didn't feel like it was somebody cornering me to do something I didn't want to do. Others have had that experience.

That wasn't quite how it felt from me. I felt like there's a group of people who followed me on this mission, who looked up to me, who were disappointed in me, actually. I think that was much harder than feeling like I was being bullied was to have a group of people who followed me on this worthy mission of developing medicines that pharma companies weren't that felt proud of that mission that now felt disappointed in me. And that was much harder to deal with than the bullying, but that also opened my eyes to the fact that I'm here stridently fighting against BlackRock and the ESG Industrial Complex,

which is a little bit of a deflection from the essence of what I actually think is going on at the real root cause, especially amongst young people in the country. What is that? And this is what I saw in my employees in the experience I went through, so that was formative for me. These are good people. These are earnest people, many of whom came, it's in in many ways, is my fault. Because the pitch that we made in recruiting, we recruited from Harvard and MIT and everywhere else. Big pharma companies didn't recruit out of undergrad. We did. Part of my pitch was, hey, you want to go to a quant hedge fund and turn that pile of cash into bigger pile of cash? Or do you want to actually make medicines that impact people's lives and do well that way?

So that was part of you and my pitch going in. So we select for a certain kind of person and then they come back and say they're disappointed me for not adopting unrelated social agendas. What dawn on me is that young people in this country, I'm a millennial, you guys are young. We're hungry for a cause, right? We're so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity. And yet we're starving for that at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void and

We can there's a lot of things that could fill that blank. I talked about it today at this constitution camp here in New Hampshire Faith patriotism hard work family But I think there's there's something truth to a bright Armstrong to his employees a corporation With a worthy mission can help fill that void too. And I think that's one of the roles that CEOs who feel like they're being bullied might miss. You don't have people who are bullying you. You have people who are lost who are looking to you for direction and purpose. You're saying it quickly, but I think that family and religion are very, very big drivers of them.

Oh, huge. Yeah. I'm just saying it quickly because I talk about that all the time. But I think the family and faith is, I mean, these are foundational building blocks. They're foundational. I think that when you look statistically at like the decay in the number of young people who are religious

or the decay in the number of young people who actually have two parent families, all of this speaks to the fact that the social norms that gay people purpose have actually gone, but they haven't been replaced with anything else. And I think that's the vacuum that you're seeing, that many of these young people fall into. And so they're looking for something to your point.

And the problem with that is not the causes themselves, but the fact that they're short-lived, and then what's left over is the need for more and more and more and more and that escalation I think is very dangerous if you think about where you know society goes to from here. Yeah, I agree with you on that and that's why I have been characterized and Jason introduced me that way too as anti-woag. I don't actually think of my I don't like that label because it's, it's not inaccurate. I don't like it because it's false. I think it misses the point where I think the way we actually combat, fill in your favorite blank, it wokeism, climatism, COVIDism, fentanyl usage, anxiety, depression, loss of self-confidence, these things are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning.

And so I don't think you help them out or much by, and I've done some of this, I will admit this, right? So I'm not blaming other people. Well, I mean, but the book, I don't, have you read the book, Jason or not? I haven't yet, but I will. Okay. The book is, it was titled and written before the word weapon woke took on its current political balance. Yeah, I will say that, actually. Okay.

Many people didn't know what the word woke was at the time I titled it as well. It was fairly revelatory when you came out and used that word in your title. It was like, let me reveal to you a little bit about what this thing that I'm calling woke is turning into, which is a more broader kind of social psychological issue that we're all grappling with, right? How it's now leached its way into politics, it's leached its way into nonprofits, it's leached its way into corporate America, into for-profits, into the military, into government, et cetera.

Obviously, since that was published, it has now become this hot term that has different meaning for different people and it can be pretty inciting in terms of how people react to it. I appreciate you saying that Dave. I appreciate you saying that Dave because My net prescription is actually we dilute not just wokeism. I mean, that's just part of the story We dilute secular religions the rise of secular religions, right? And I don't call them even religions because the religion is with stood the test of time a cult has not but the rise of secular religions, and I don't call them even religions because religion is withstood the test of time, a cult has not, but the rise of modern secular cults, we dilute them to irrelevance by filling that void with an alternative vision. And so, you know, if one political camp might offer race and gender and sexuality and climate

as a prescription for the void. I think where conservatives fall badly short is by simply being anti those things without actually offering an alternative vision of our own. And I am aiming certainly to do that in the scapegoat and the individual families and gender and these kind of things. What would be your qualities or things to focus on? So let's do like a little face off, right? Individually talking about race, gender, sexuality, climate.

I pair them up against individual family nation, God. Okay. And I think that there's a substantive vision here. I think America happened to have been founded on the latter vision, not the former. So if I'm running for US president, I think that that's a substantive vision here. I think America happened to have been founded on the latter vision, not the former. So if I'm running for US President, I think that that already tilts the scales in favor of this vision, because it so happens as a historical matter, America was grounded on, and some people will contest this, but I think on that vision rather than the genetic and

climate-based one. But I think that that's something where the Republican Party and Conservatives have fallen short. And that's part of what, do your question Jason, pulled me into this. Is I saw the emergence of what was likely to be a biographical brawl between two guys who are the front runners or whatever. That's not productive, but I think more importantly than a biographical brawl, even the question about who we are.

I think the Republican Party and the conservative movement was in many ways defining itself in opposition to that alternative vision of identity where what I want to do what I'm striving to do and I hope we're doing is actually offering an affirmative vision of our own that go to the heart of what it means to be an American and You know, I don't think that national identity alone is going to fill that vacuum fully But I think it makes a pretty good darn stride forward. And I think those roles for pastors and others, that's beyond my pay grade. And so I'm not, I'm not purporting to do that in this campaign.

I speak to it, but that's, that's going to be the role of people in a higher calling than being US president. But I think the next US president can play a meaningful role in filling that vacuum, at least when it comes to national identity. And so that's really what this campaign is about. It's not anti-woke. It is unapologetically nationalist in a certain sense of that word. Nationalists in sense of embracing those ideals that set this nation into motion that

still unite us across those genetically inherited attributes that we've otherwise celebrated over the last 10 years in the country. I'd say to say you believe in American exceptionalism and that's your platform for rental. That is my platform. That is absolutely my platform. The exceptionalism of the ideals that set this country into motion.

Absolutely. So Vivek, let me ask a question around where we are in the cycle of the American experiment. Where we have obviously allowed the throttle to be full-forward and as a result we've seen extraordinary progress emerge from the entrepreneurial talents and the drive of the people of this country for the past 250 years and it's really extraordinary in a transformed human civilization. We now find ourselves particularly over the past 50 years as this problem has gotten

worse, with increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots, or those who believe they have not, which is nearly everyone. Everyone now has some point of view that they have not got something, and they see other people that do have something that they do not. And this inequality and this perception of inequality both with respect to absolute amounts of capital, income, earnings, and these perception issues, have now driven a populist movement in this country that we have seen historically, many times in the past, different countries that ultimately turn into either socialist nations or fascist nations. In all cases, some sort of autocratic regime seems to have emerged because of this populist movement that we're now seeing not just in the

U.S. but across the West. Do you feel like we're at that moment in the U.S. and one of the manifestations of that I'll say is government spending because everyone demands more from their government and the government steps up and the elected officials that they elect Step up and spend more and it layers and it layers and layers and layers and we now have a $33 trillion debt load and We have a one and a half trillion dollar annual deficit and by many projections social security will be bankrupt in anywhere from 10 to 15 years 10 to 20 years whatever numbers you want to use the cbo seems we're gonna have unsustainable spiraling debt

what is your point of view on where we are in the cycle how it's manifesting today and how we're going to deal with the fiscal issues that arise from these movements yes so i think where we are in that in the cycle i don't take that as a passive law of physics i think that who runs this country and leads this country can make an actual difference in the actual underlying course of that so-called cycle, which is part of what

pulls me into this. So I'm a little bit unconventional on, uh, my views on the get load and the entitlement spending in this country and our first step in our way out of it. I don't think we're at a place of having remotely enough consensus or trust. And I think trust is probably the more important word than consensus. To begin just SNP SNP make cuts to what people feel like they were entitled to and promised, especially in a moment where we're beginning with deep distrust. That will take what you call those populist flames and throw kerosene on it. I do, I'm more optimistic about this and I think this is quite realistic actually, is

that the next leap forward is we can grow our way out of, I'm not going to say all, but most of our actual fiscal, calam pending fiscal calamity. This year I mean, I think like right now, last six months, we're talking less than 1.5% annualized GDP growth, what we're averaging right now. For most of our national history, we actually grown it over 4% percent GDP growth. Certainly if you go back to the pretty gold standard period, and even after going off the gold standard, we had a relatively stable US dollar. And I am one of these weird guys who believes that the Fed should have a single mandate

of dollar stability without playing the Phillips curve game. But anyway, put that side track to one side. single-mandate of dollar stability without playing the Phillips curve game. But anyway, put that side track to one side. We've grown at 3, 4% GDP growth for most of our national history, even relatively recent national history. And I don't think it's a complicated path to get back there. I think things we need to do, unlock American energy. We talk about secular religions.

I view the climate cult as one of those secular religions. Drill, what was your specific energy plan? What? Completely, completely, um, unlock the permitting process that they've used as a backdoor mechanism to shut down American energy production. Drilling, fracking, burning coal, coal should not be a four-letter word, embracing nuclear energy. Later tonight, like after we're having this conversation this evening, I'm going to be

at St. Anselm College laying out my detail. It's going to be like a giant poster laying out the anatomy of how I will shut down the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has been a fundamentally hostile administrative agency to the existence of nuclear power in this country, actually even to the detriment of actually making sure that we are getting our nuclear energy from Gen 2 rather than Gen 3 or Gen 4 reactors, but that will be for tonight. It's an all of the above approach of unshackling ourselves to produce energy here in the United States. To point about, you know, David made a good point earlier about the addiction of paying

people more from the federal government, that becomes the status quo if that's your voter base. That's not even good in many cases for the people who are giving that money too. I think we should stop paying people to stay at home when actually the top obstacle for many businesses to grow, you guys will know this well, is filling vacant job openings. And so that is an obstacle to GDP growth, is paying people more to stay at home than many of them earn to go back to work. Do you think that the IRA was good legislation? I don't have, it's not like it's not like my the horse that I'm going to ride in terms of like the main, I'm going to pin everything on it, but I mostly don't think it was great legislation.

What, where are you coming from on that? Because we might have different reasons to say that. If you think about what the IRA does for energy, and frankly, if you just roll up the BIL chips and IRA, I'm just curious to your thoughts on whether government incentives are moving in that direction that you actually support, or you still think it's missing something.

Well, so one of the things that I actually focus on and I think is really important is what can the US President actually do? President Trump's, I don't know if people remember this, his main policy promise was actually repeal and replace Obamacare, which never happened because it required going through Congress. So I'm actually focused on elements that I can deliver on without asking Congress either for permission or forgiveness. And so that's all I answered to Jason was I go straight to at least let's focus on actually the administrative state which on my reading of the Constitution reports in to the single duly elected president. So when I talk about the permitting process of the Department of Interior or shutting down

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I believe in, you know, we could go, I'm going to details on it tonight. I have the legal authority to do that as the U.S. president. I think the legislation is going to be much more complicated and I don't believe that I can be in a position to promise what we would do legislatively to any of that. You mentioned getting people to take all these jobs that are available. Do you want to talk about immigration for a second and what you think about that? Yeah, merit-based immigration.

Maybe for you to go right. Or right to immigration. Are you saying you would cut entitlements like unemployment or shortening the unemployment period to force people to go back to work? And what I'm reading into it? And tie them to work requirements, absolutely. Would you have specific for that? Like a certain number of months or, you know,

a pretty good, a pretty good, I mean, I do, but I think that's again, I'm very clear about what I will do through executive authority. What needs to go through legislation, I mean, that's all a negotiation, but I think a good principle is 1996, or in the 1990s, work fair under Clinton was actually far more aggressive than the work environment work requirements That were put into this supposed Republican led debt deal where like what did they say?

It was if you're a 18 to 55 and you are able-bodied and childless and you are able-bodied and childless, then you have to work at least 20 hours a week in order to receive more than three months out of three years worth of welfare, right? Joe Biden, as a US senator, voted for actually much more stringent work fair requirements in the 90s. So, yes, I have ideas on specifics, but I'm not going to make a promise on exactly what that specific look like, but a guiding principle is it has to be at least as aggressive as what we had to have to do with the bipartisan It's nice. I mean, during Clinton, we had 69 almost 70% participation and we're at 60 now I think so it's obvious that we have to trim that but to Trimots next point, you know

We have 10 million job openings. We're not letting anybody in. How would you look at immigration? Obviously, we have people coming in the southern border illegally, and then we have H1B visas. And now Canada is saying, hey, we'll steal all those H1Bs. We'll take them. So how do you look at immigration to Chimac's question? Merit-based immigration. I mean, one of the things that Canada does have, and I'm not a fan of America, I'm meditating Canada or anything like this in most respects, but they do have a point-based system, right? They have a point-based system. And so I think the point-based system should work differently in the US, but I do favor merit-based immigration.

I'm a little bit of a departure from what I think is the Republican consensus here. People I respect, Tom Cotton and others have proposed bills with a hard cap on the number of immigrants. I think it's a mistake. I think that the cap should declare itself based on how many people meet the meritocratic criteria. We're on a little different qualities then for what would be the top criteria in this point based system.

Two criteria. Skills that match up to job openings in the United States, but secondarily, and this one's important to me, I would move the civics portion of becoming a citizen to the front end of even being granted a visa to enter this country. And I think that addresses and accommodates an important part of the concern that many people who are pro-immigration cap actually favor is I think there are legitimate concerns about the dilution, the loss of a national identity. But a lot of that is conflated with, first, the cycle of illegal immigration.

I'm a hardliner on this. I favor putting the US military on the southern border. I've said I would use it on the northern border. I believe that we are on strong constitutional and legal authority to do it. I do not think building the wall was enough. There are cartel financed tunnels underneath that wall that vehicles literally run through today. So in some ways I'm going further than Trump in this direction.

But simultaneous lane, deburacritize, speed up the process for merit-based immigration, but part of merit includes not just skills, but also civic commitments to the country. And I'm, you know, I used the word nationalist before, I know that scares some people, I mean it in a positive way. I think every high school student in this country should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to pass

in order to become a citizen of this country. I also would favor bringing that on the front end and it selects for the kind of people who know something about the country when they enter. Which I think is a good thing. People should assimilate and they should love this country in order to come into the country. Yes, I do.

I think you should want to come here to be an American. Yeah. I think I'm going to get agreement around the horn here. Sax, you've heard the Vex position so far. You obviously are passionate about the GOP. What do you agree with and what don't you agree with so far? Well, there's a lot of stuff to agree with there. We're talking about American exceptionalism. One thing I want to talk about there is that I agree that America is exceptional and we're most exceptional when we're trying to set an

example for other nations, where we're trying to be the shining city on a hill as Reagan put it. But lately, and really, I mean over the last couple of decades, what you've seen is that what American exceptionalism means to a lot of people in Washington is that we run all over the world and impose our ideology and our values on all these different countries. We began this great crusade to try and spread democracy in Middle East. We tried to turn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq into Madisonian democracies, where you now are very, very involved in Ukraine, basically trying

to detach that country from the Russian sphere of influence and turning it into a member of our military and economic alliance. So it does seem like American exceptionalism has taken on this sort of harder or more militarized edge. Where would you draw the line? I mean, like what makes sense to you? I think I basically agree with everything you just said.

I think as a side note on the geopolitics of it, I do think Ukraine is on track to become potentially the next Vietnam or the next Iraq. I think you have said similar things. I also think there's something else going on with Ukraine that's fueling this, which relates to the deeper identity crisis in our country that I described earlier. I think Ukraine has become a new religion, right, in the country. And it's substitute for purpose and meaning, just like climate ideology or wokeism is. And there's the flag. It's like a cremated. I mean, you have people like waving these. Absolutely.

You go to Washington, DC, at least I did in June. I was there for one of the Sunday shows, my wife and I are going for a walk. We saw more trans flags and Ukraine flags than we did American flags on a short walk that we took through Washington, DC, our nation's capital. So I'm not, I'm not whining about this or being histrionic about it. I just think getting to the essence of what's going on. I think

that's a different element of Ukraine that's different from even what we saw with the Anama Iraq. I don't think American exceptionalism is voicing our values on to anyone. I think American exceptionalism is about demonstrating through our example how America flourishes and is strong when we live by our own ideals. And I think the best way we give hope to the free world is by being that shining city on a hill, not going somewhere else and talking about it

with tanks behind us while actually suffering here at home if you roam the streets of Kensington as I did a few weeks ago, you don't have to go to Baghdad to see the third world. And so that I think is a big loss of where we are today in the country. When you're president, Putin invades Ukraine, you would sit back, not give any armaments and let them roll in. Here's what I would do.

I would actually be proactive in doing a deal. And I've been very clear about the deal I would do. Trump has said he would do a deal in 24 hours, he didn't say what it was. I believe there is a deal to be done, but I also believe it's important to be clear about what the contours of that deal would be. I would freeze the current line. Let's take the status quo right now. So I can answer your question or I can answer starting from the present. If you don't, I could start the press. The obvious is maybe take NATO off the table

and avoid the whole thing, but now we're playing. That's what I was saying. Yeah, we're playing out of history. So maybe it's better to talk about what's happening now in the present, right? Because I don't think that we would have, if I was president, I don't think we would have gotten to the point of those things rolling in.

Angela Merkel made some disastrous comments, Putin made a hard demand. We would have said hard-nought to Ukraine joining NATO, and that would have been that there would have been no tanks rolling in. Let's talk about the press. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President.

Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Let's talk about the President. Exactly. You know, we're not going to have one side or the other being able to prove that, right? So let's talk about the President. Right now, let's say I'm US President, I would freeze the current lines of control. We have a precedent for doing this, the Korean War, Korean War style armistice.

That does give Putin most of the Donbass region. That's beyond the pale of what many are willing to accept in either party, but I think any deal, someone has to win, everyone has to win, something out of the deal. I would further then give that assurance that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. But there's a requirement in return, the biggest requirement is that Russia has to exit its military partnership with China. There's a 2001 treaty. It's called the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Cooperation, military cooperation

between the two countries, that Xi Jinping and Putin ratcheted it up to the so-called strategic no-limits partnership in 2022. That is why China is now coming, by the way, to Russia's aid. I personally believe we are absolutely sending Putin into Xi Jinping's arms in a way that's a mistake. I would also require the Putin remove his nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad that we take a Russian military presence in the western hemisphere off the table, then as well

a Cuba, Nicaragua. I think this is a deal that Putin would do if we paired it with reopening economic relations with Russia, which I would do. Because I think Putin does not, and I can give you some evidence for this, but I think Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little brother. And so I think that this is actually an opportunity, and I have to confess I am a guy who sees our foreign policy prism through the prism of believing that China is the top long run threat that we face. And so most of my foreign policy views and

national security views, even on topics that are apparently unrelated to China, I still see it through that prism. But this one isn't a far leap because China is literally in a military treaty with Russia and coming to their aid. I would use the Ukraine war and end to the Ukraine war as a way to bifurgate the russia china relationship and divide basically dissolve that relationship. And then actually that's our best way and most effective step towards deterring sheshin ping from going after ty one. Because right now sheshin ping, you know I think that there's a mistaken consensus view

that the way he thinks about it is oh, reasoned by analogy rather than by actual analyzing of a situation say Oh well he got that piece of land and maybe I can go get this island. I don't think he reasons by analogy. I think he reasons by The cards he has in terms of hard power. So his bet is that The US won't want to go to war with two different allied nuclear superpowers at the same time But if Russia is no longer in his camp, then Xi Jinping is gonna have to think twice about going after Taiwan.

So then I guess part of my broader Taiwan the terms of Spanish. The other question there is, you wouldn't defend Ukraine. Would you have America and the allies defend Taiwan if it was invaded? I would at least until the US has achieved semi-conductor independence.

So you would defend Taiwan? And Taiwan think, yeah. And defense, I think. Because we depend on them for our modern way of life in a way that we don't on Ukraine. And then the latter part of this is, it sounds a little crass to some people, but I believe in being honest. I actually think that, yeah, I'll get to this point in a second,

but to answer your question, yes, until we've achieved semiconductor independence. God, I believe we can achieve semiconductor independence. So it's not, your belief is not, hey, these are two democracies. They both deserve equal defense from the United States, Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine doesn't have semiconductors. We don't have a strategic need to defend them in Taiwan. So it's a lot more of a pragmatic cutthroat approach to foreign policy.

It is. I, of course, you know, resist the characterization of cutthroat a little bit. I go back to the principle of the David mentioned of what American exceptionalism is. To me, is that when America is strong and is flourishing and Americans are flourishing within America, we set the example for the free world of what is possible. And so my view is that, yes, at least until until we're semiconductor self-sufficient. And I think things work out here where I think we can get there. So in five years, we've got our semiconductor's up and running. You'll let China roll into Taiwan, no big deal for you.

I will say that I definitely evaluate that very differently than I do. That's super candid. Sacrificate. But I thought some of that is important. Freeber? Yeah, let me just ask. So Vivek, I mean, I think that your point is a really important one, which is that when we're happy at home, we tend not to look for conflict abroad.

That's almost a universal truth that's emerged from history. Human civilization has shown that, you know, when the people in the democracy in particular are happy at home, and certainly autocracies are quite different. Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, I think you go through history. But like when you have a true democracy, you don't vote to go and you don't support the idea

of conflict abroad if you're happy at home. But the counter is true, which is when you're unhappy at home, you tend to look for conflict abroad. And by some assessments, Ray Dalio had this great book about this, the changing world order. I don't know if you read it, but you know, he makes this point about the internal strife leads to external conflict, which is why it felt like we were going to go that way with Ukraine, Russia coming out of 21. So I wonder, are we happy at home?

We're not. And I want to ask another question tied to this. Why is Donald Trump leading in the polls? Because I think that the two go hand in hand. There is something that he represents and there's something about his voice that I think echoes the sentiment of this populist unhappiness inside of this country today that manifests in a bunch of ways, one of which is the interest in and support for external conflict.

But I don't know if you're up for kind of thinking about tackling the two questions manifest in a bunch of ways, one of which is the interest in and support for external conflict. But I don't know if you're up for kind of thinking about tackling the two questions together, but I love your take on that. Great question. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you're extending a theme of where I talk about sort of domestic cultural annoyances as a symptom of a deeper vacuum in our national soul. I think that actually our projection and focus abroad is a lot easier of a deflection away from the harder step of taking a long hard look in the mirror and asking ourselves about the health

of our own nation today. And so I think it's a deep question. I think we're not healthy as a nation today. I think we suffer from deep-seated psychic insecurity, psychological insecurities. I think the economic stagnation, the fact that real wage growth isn't up for the bottom 99% of the country. Now a lot of that I put at the feet of the federal reserve.

There are a lot of other complex factors behind it, but a lot of this feeds into what you call populism. I don't, excuse me, I don't like the term either. By the way, just to be clear. I think that it's just in precise I don't know if the rubber that tries to catch too many things and it doesn't catch any of them enough So yeah, yeah, you're calling Populism is actually a failure of our elites Isn't that what's going on? We saw during COVID that all the health authorities did a horrible job the CDC

And the NIA to turns out they were funding a function research, which may have caused COVID in the first place. They were doing experiments on bad viruses. Almost certainly did cause. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we keep finding out that the elites are supposed to be running the country and running these institutions are doing an absolutely horrible job. That's what the reaction is against.

Then people come along and label a populism and say it's going to lead to fascism. It's like, come on, that is a way of protecting the people in power from accountability for the horrible job they're doing. It's what I'll say. Absolutely. In the use of the word populism is almost stacking that debate in favor of saying that those grievances aren't legitimate. And so I think why is Donald Trump pulling a number one in the polls? Because people know the truth. I think those grievances are absolutely legitimate. Now I think the mood of the country has changed a little bit, including the mood of the

hard conservative base has changed since 2015. I think there is now a sense that what are we actually going to do about it? Are we going to go the direction of a national divorce? Maybe. Their divorce is one of these things that speaks itself into existence. Maybe applies at the same level of a nation, right? That's on the table. It's in the ether. I don't think most people, including in our hardcore America first base, I'm part of that base, I don't think want a national divorce. And so I think that the moment now calls for this while I'm in this race, this is actually

why at this point, I couldn't have told you this in March, but at this point, I'm convinced we're actually going to be successful in this. This is what the unique fusion we're going to require is not somebody showing up saying hope, kumbaya, let's move forward, compromise, hold hands and declare it's morning again in America. No, that ain't going to work. But I think it requires recognizing the legitimacy

of those grievances, not as lip service. I believe, for the same reason, sex is mentioned. Many of those grievances are legitimate. They're grounded in truth, but to say sad as I often say to the lab, hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. And we're not going to choose victimhood. We're going to choose recognition of truth as our best pal to heal over whatever's happened and then to move forward.

That's why I've come out and been very vocal about the fact that I would pardon Trump of each of the two indictments that have already been brought. And if the J6 indictment is brought against him, I would do the same thing. I think that we have to be able to recognize the truth of our past grievances of our fellow Americans and actually not just pay lip service to it, but feel into it and acknowledge the reality of them. I think that's then the table stakes of thens meeting a demand that many in our grassroots conservative base have. I'm one of them. A desire to also move forward is one nation. And I think both of those elements are going to be required. They don't go together. I think there are people in the Republican primary who offer each of those on their own. Yeah. Vivek, this is whoever's successful,

gonna have to offer both. This morning, there was an opinion piece, I'm assuming you read it by Rich Lowry, Chief of the National Review, published on Politico, Get Ready for the Vivek Ramaswamy moment in which, I would say he's fairly a few serves about the campaign you're running, right? I mean, would you agree?

Like, if you serve yourself? Yeah, so there was some really, yeah, so I'm really, did you read, right? I mean, would you agree like, if you said, you said, yeah, so there was a really, yeah, so I'm really, did you read the piece? I mean, I thought there was some really abusive, a really, a few, a few, he loves you. Yeah. No, he doesn't love me actually. He doesn't love you, but he said, I think he said some complimentary things about your campaign, about your character, but said, there's no way you're going to win and win for president.

Well, you went from under 1%, I think now the latest policy has you above 5% and we're in the very early endings here, right? I think there's one that just came. I mean, yeah, there's something that, you know, bounced a little higher than that, but you're a little higher before the first debate. The thing that we've axed on, let me just state this as a observer and then you can react to it, is that you have kind of inserted yourself in the debate on every issue, you know, every day as it comes up. I mean, you're kind of living off the land as a candidate, not out there

with just kind of a traditional stump speech, but you're finding a way to insert yourself into the debate every day on social media. I see it, right? I mean, you post a tweet that will hit the nerve of whatever the issue is going viral that day, which means that you'll go viral. And so for months, I've been seeing your tweets go super viral. And so it's not surprising to me that your candidacy is starting to, you know, catch on in that way. What's remarkable to me is that other candidates can't do it. I mean, when you first started doing it, I was kind of like, okay, this is obvious and easy. Of course, this is what you would do,

but other candidates have not really done that for whatever reason. So, I mean, am I... Corrective for C. I mean, my perspective. Yeah. I'll give you my perspective on that, because if we use it all the way,

it's when you accuse us of creating a banking crisis, but other than that, it's either. Can I actually... Yeah, I do want to close the loop on that one. I either do it on air or off. No, let's go. Do it right now. You know, for the other candidates, it's, anyway, that's less interesting.

It's fine. Maybe they'll do it. I think it's not running it through a filter, right? Because I think the traditional political thing is, and here's what's going to happen to me as a consequence. I'm going to eat the consequence of this, right? Everything comes at a cost. There's no free lunch. I'm going to say something in real time that

reflects my honest instincts. That's my whole strategy, right? People can tell the difference. But then I'm going to change my mind on one out of a hundred things, okay? And that's just going to happen, right? And it's going to be open to that and eat my words. And you know, I'm going to do it at some point. And that's the trade-off we're making is that I'm not running it through the filters. I'm not making up what I believe, I'm gonna do it at some point. And that's the trade-off we're making, is that I'm not running it through the filters. I'm not making up what I believe. I'm telling you actually to the contrary, what I truly believe.

But if I'm doing it really that rapidly in response to what's happening, I think people appreciate that, but I'm gonna eat my words at some point. And that's okay. In response to new information, you're in response to new information, or sometimes even in response to reflection, right?

So that's gonna get out. So basically, because it's less filtered, that's what you're saying. your information, or sometimes even in response to reflection, right? So that's gonna get gaffed, basically, because it's less filtered, is what you're saying. You might make a gap. Do you want to close the loop on this other thing? Yeah, do you think Jason caused a banking crisis by using all caps, slots when he tweeted? Yes or no? I did not.

I can't. I let me tweet on a Saturday night call the bank run. I did not say, I never said that either, but we did go at it pretty hard. I think actually, I think there's a chance, we might still disagree, Dave, but I think that I'm talking to Zach here, but.

Yeah. So, I actually talked to a lot of friends who were in the position of running companies that had some amount of, and we talked through like the specific situation, and then it dawned on me Where and it might it's not it's not necessarily we're gonna agree at the end of this, but there's a chance that we might actually Which is this so In the lead up to this before that Friday I was already against

Any governmental intervention here. Let this play out. Why? Because let's put aside all the histrionics, do the math on it. And I remember there's a little hazy now, right? So on the facts, but I think it's approximately right. You correct me if you have up to date facts on this, but I think it's approximately right. If everybody had run and gotten their money out, I think it would have been like 94 cents on the dollar

that everybody would have walked out with. Right? And so what happened on Friday is in this part where I want to potentially build a bridge here, the part that what happened on Friday was that Friday was the government, I see it or otherwise, froze. The ability of not Friday morning, yeah. Yeah, the Friday morning, you were much closer to this, you know, in the details, but the California regulator froze the ability regulator. I'm not spreading more than you. Yeah, the Friday morning.

You're much closer to this in the details, but the California regulator froze the ability to take out deposits. So I am more sympathetic to the point that once the government's gotten involved, because that really is then like, you know, kind of like an aircraft moment where you're CEO of a company or a CFO and you want to get your money and then you can't now it's panic, right? Right. And so I Think that there's a version of the world where the version of the world I wanted I was talking about this before you and I were talking directly to each other

I just think this should have stayed out of it 94 cents on the dollar not bad Which is why the public didn't actually end up directly using taxpayer funds was because the bank was healthy in its own right That's what that's the worst result a bank run would have produced there, which actually should have been heartening. But if I could let me give you an insight that maybe you weren't as close to the rest of us work, which is on all the boards that all of us sit on, all of the boards were discussing independent of this show and the conversations and the media. We need to move all of our money out of all of the banks that aren't one of the top three and move all of our money into this top three. So the point of the shame to the system, the top four.

That's the point of view that we all saw was that there was a mad rush in corporate America and startup land in small business land. This isn't even the sea land. This is like everything from the nonprofits that we sit on the board of to the laundromat to the dry cleaner to every business. I have so much money in a small bank was saying, I got to move my money into a big bank now. And that's where the whole banking system is put at risk.

And that is why we all universally felt that it was important to highlight that the federal government needs to step in and reassure and rebuild confidence in the small banks in this country. Just the deposits. Not the only. And the only way to do that was to say your deposits are safe. And that was it. And that was the point because the panic that was going on in small business land in

America, which as you know, employees half of the people in this country, was at risk. And that those people, those small businesses were fearful and they were looking to rush to the big banks and that would have cratered the small banks around the country. So, and I think it's a difference in vantage point, right? If you have discussion about populism and everything else. I don't think Dave Sax caused the bank run anymore than I'm causing populist waves in this country. Again, it was Jason with his cat's lock, but yeah, go ahead.

But I think the reality is, people literally have tweeted that I call the bank rates insane, but there's a technical point I'll make, and then we'll get to the deeper part. The technical point to close loop is, I think Dave, I find your position more reasonable, given that it's after Friday, when the California regulators came in and locked in.

But in my version of the world, I would have just said, stay the heck out, government of any kind, $94 cents on the dollar, there's a 6% haircut, and we discover the market actually works, and we avoid playing favoritism in the first place. And I say this as somebody who, and this is where you understand my vantage point, have been a long time opponent of the creation of the notion of SIDS, a systemically important banks in the first place, as an opponent to the bailouts of 2008, as somebody who's running for US President not to lead incremental reforms, but a sort of revolution in the kind of restoration in the integrity of both capitalism and democracy that I think is actually

the best antidote to what we're called. Would you try to deconstruct the SIDS? Well, I mean, give the status quo where we are. I think that I would have to offer a credible enough basis to make sure that people know that if there's a system, so-called previously known as a systemically important bank that fails, that the public still not going to be there for them, but in a way that a route allows for enough of an unburdened banking sector that we have resilience in terms of exactly who can actually fill that void. And I think that there is a discursive impact on, I don't think it has to be,

and this is where we may disagree a little bit, and this is a small scale disagreement, I don't think it has to be a state of the world where we just assume consumers are dumb and don't take the decision account. Consumers are in part dumb because we treat them as dumb, right? And so it's like a Heisenberg effect, right?

You're following what I mean is you know, basic principle and physics, you can't you know, observe the spin and not affect the spin of the electron at the same time. I think the same thing applies to a relationship between the government and its people. And so I think part of the reason that people, I think I feel the same way about the FDA, by the way. I think people would be far more scrutinizing of the medicines they took if it didn't come with the crowding out effect of that individual level of self-responsibility and due diligence that the government wasn't doing.

But now we live in the worst of all worlds where we have neither. The government's neither actually protecting nor actually providing the space for individual responsibility. I just wanted to hear, you know, you make a statement, you collect data, one in a hundred, you say you'll change your mind. I just want to understand with all the data, the past, the present, and probably who knows, every incremental day we see something new, what is the full 360 degree view that Vivek Ramaswami has of Donald Trump? Full 360 degree view. Got it. Yeah. I actually haven't had a space to articulate this yet. So I think this is useful. So my view is that he was a successful president, measured by reviving the economy. Section of a president, period.

How, why do I say that? Reviving the economy, growing the American economy, I think that recognizing and speaking to and partially addressing concerns that had been historically unaddressed by both major political parties, we did not enter a major war. We were on the brink of major conflict with North Korea, on the precipice and other parts of the world. ISIS was a thing. It is, you know, by, it exists, but it's by large not the same threat that it was after his presidency, it was when he took over. These are major accomplishments, right? I think the immigration crisis, I think,

is far worse today today precisely because Biden's in office and not Trump. So I believe he was a successful president. That's view number one. View number two, he has an effect on people, about 30% of this country that I think becomes psychiatrically ill when he is the U.S. president. I think he's just a fact, right? Agreeing with things that they otherwise wouldn't have agreed with because

that's a 30% number applies on our pot too. One and four. I think it's just a reality is people lose their ability to process information, people lose the ability to think independently. It's like a demonic possession that happens in this country of about as best I can tell about 30% of the country. And I think that's not good for the country. And we can debate who's to blame for that or whatever, but I'm just stating it in observation

that I feel pretty strongly about. And so I think most of Trump's policies were good. Do I have some policy disagreements with them? Of course, I do. It would be weird if any two people agreed on 100% of things. I would re-enter the CPTPP. He exited the TPP. I think his exit of the TPP gives us a stronger negotiating position with Malaysia and

Japan to fix some of the micro things that we might have wanted. China is not in the TPP. That's part of the path to actually declare economic independence from China. If it comes to that, we could go into a lot of different details. I would have rescinded the affirmative action executive order, the Lyndon sign that I asked Trump's people why they didn't. They said it was a political hill. They didn't want to die on.

I'd shut down the Department of Education. We can go on, but broadly, he was a successful president with whom I mostly agree on his broad policy vision, and especially his handling of foreign policy. What did he get wrong and what and was the election stolen? Yeah. So I mean, I gave you like small examples of what he got He got wrong and was the election stolen. Yeah. So I mean, I gave you like small examples of what he got wrong, but I think the real thing that he got wrong, I'm not sure that getting wrong is even framing. It's just a fact that 30% of this country became psychographically ill and you're the leader

of this country, you're leading a nation. And so you can decide whose fault that is, but I believe leaders are ultimately judged by their results. And for whatever reason, even when I'm saying the same things that Trump often did as a matter of policy or foreign policy, or domestic economic policy, and maybe it's because people don't, don't know me broadly, but I don't think that's it actually.

I don't think I'm having that effect on people. And I think that that's why I'm in this race, to carry forward unapologetic George Washington America first policies and to do so more successfully, but also in a way that unites the country around that vision more so than Donald Trump ever did or could in the second term. Was the election stolen? Here's the sense in which I think the election was stolen in a data-driven way. I've not seen any data to suggest that the ballot fraud

or anything like that would have been sufficient to overturn the ballot count of the ballots. I've not seen any evidence to that effect. What I do see is hard evidence that people in this country would have elected a different president. Who's that? I like who's that? This is Tali.

This is child number five. Number five. She is cute. But number one in our hearts. You can get saved. That's nice. All right. So what's your name?

That's your name? I was saying. Tolly, tolly, tolly. Tolly, hey, I'm away from my son's these past few days. So I'm happy for you. Hopefully we'll be with our little guys soon. What I was saying is, let me get to the punchline. The sense in which the election was stolen

was the Hunter Biden laptop story and the systematic suppression of information. I think that there is no doubt. I think that the evidence strongly suggests that Trump would have been elected and not Biden had, we actually, a voter base that had access to that information. And I think that that is something that we ought to learn from. And I think that it does cast a lot of doubt and frustration on the legitimacy of

the election. Let me double click on that. You seem to have said on other programs, I've heard you at least a half dozen times talk about deep state conspiracy trying to frame Donald Trump, federal indictment of the 37 criminal charges for the stolen documents refusing to give them back. You got the New York case, 34 more felony counts. We're about to have another one drop on January 6th. You got the Georgia where he tried to get people to get 10,000 more votes. You got the New York case where CFOs go into jail. You got a guilty of sexual assault. And then you got the T to James is

suing the Trump organization of these seven are all seven, a deep state conspiracy. I think it's it's a collective anaphylactic immune response to an antigen that challenged the system. I guess. So what it is. And then you do anything wrong. You think all seven of these cases, he's got free. And just I want to be really clear about something. I'm running for US president in this race against Donald Trump because I'm the best position to lead this nation forward. I think he's guilty of any of these seven. I would have made, I would have made very different judgments than he did, but I think criminalizing bad judgments, especially when done so against political opponents in

the midst of a presidential election is an awful judgment for a US president and the Department of Justice underneath him to make. So you do not have a party judge. You think that the Department of Justice and the person he put in charge of it, they're all conspiring and that he didn't do anything wrong. Well, there's like a lot in that statement, right? Sure. Does he do things that I think are reprehensible that I wouldn't have done? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, as the law acts, as they exist, absolutely. Do I think the Biden and a lot of other politicians who have come have done things that I would have done differently and actually think were wrong decisions? Absolutely. But do I think that conflating a bad judgment with a breakage of law is a risk to our future.

I think it is. Do you think he said those people to- I mean, you want to just go on the January 6th? I don't think he did. No. So we need to roll back into March down there. And when he told the proud boys to stand by and stand back, you don't think that he was inciting them.

Let me just say, I'm not here to defend a Donald Trump's behavior. I'm running for US president. I think we need to speak to you. But I think you're opinion on it matters to me. Yeah, but my opinion on this matters. Yes, I want to be very clear about the hat that I'm wearing. I would not have done what he did.

But he was very clear. I mean, you look at the transcripts. You run this by as I have. First Amendment scholars just to check my, I mean, inciting violence is not protected speech by the First Amendment. There's no sense in which, when he tells people to peacefully make their way

to the Capitol, that does not meet any Supreme Court test for what constitutes inciting violence in this country. I think that let's just take the New York example. I mean, some of the stuff that details actually, let's take the Oathkeeper's one because that found in the storm roads. Hold on. Let me get this one first. Hold on, let me get my first. Oathkeeper's Founder, Sueers one because that found you. Hold on. Hold on.

Let me get this one. Hold on. Let me get my first. Oath keepers founder, Stuart Rhodes, got 18 years. Do you think that the Justice Department did that? Because they're trying to frame Trump and Trump told the oath keepers to stand by and to stand back? Do you think he inside of the oath keepers, just for now?

Based on the facts that I have seen, I've seen no evidence of that. You're delusional. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've seen it. I have seen I've seen no evidence of that your delusional Okay, yeah, I've seen it's time to hold them just and buy Okay, so I'm also there's also an indictment that hasn't been brought so I've offered my opinion on the first two indictments that have been brought against him Right, I read them I read all 49 pages in the last one. I'm responsive to facts. Yeah on the first two indictments I think they're absolutely politically based in... And I can go through the... If you're interested, we can go into the specifics of it.

That's fine. I'll take you at your word. You know, on New York, right? I mean, I'll just give you a line on each, right? Okay. In New York, let's take a fact that it's a state offense that was upcharged to a felony and outside the statute of limitations, only by tying it to an alleged federal crime and what was that federal crime, failing to

report a hush money payment to a porn star as a campaign contribution. There would be a stronger case for using and paying hush money and using campaign funds to do it, that that was a federal campaign financial violation than not actually counting it. So so many counts that's a politicized prosecution against anybody else they wouldn't have brought it. Documents case, a 49 page indictment read it twice that does not once mention the Presidential Records Act, the most relevant statute that talks about what the basis is

for a president to keep documents or not, and instead charges him according to, I think one of the most un-American laws in US history passed during World War I to silence World War I dissenters, including Eugene V. Debs, who was actually put in prison, over this, I have long argued that that was a statute that should have long been, should have been rescinded, that's now being used to charge a crime rather than eat more precise. So I tend to be very responsive, maybe to the point of frustration of being technical on these things, but I believe facts and law actually matter. I think that if Trump was the best guy for the job, I wouldn't be running in this race. If Ronald Reagan were alive and well today, I would not be running in this

race. God, so you're not a fan of this race. I want to just go back to the... I have a question about these Trump scandals. Do you think that... Which one of the seven? Well, I think do you think Trump should be indicted for Donald Trump Jr. being paid $83,000 a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company despite having no energy expertise?

Oh, wait, that's Hunter. And his personal life being in crisis because he is a drug addict, him getting that job three months after his father approved a and back to coup against the Ukrainian government. Do you think that Donald Trump Jr. should be investigated for that? And David, is this is this also after that Donald Trump then sends $200 billion of US taxpayer money to that very country after he's elected an office? I think that's the strongest of the scandals I've heard so far. So you believe Biden is a great guy?

Oh, I don't know. I'm a hunter by it. Sorry. Well, it's just wrong. Rifters. What do you think of Jared Kushner getting taking down two billion from the Saudis after he walked out of the White House. I don't have, that's not a matter that I have views on.

Oh, he don't have views on that, but you got plenty of views on Trump. I got to. He's not in government. He's not in government. Okay, let's move on, Path Trump. Because this is a great example of why I'm in this race. I'm telling you this, is there something about the existence of Donald Trump? Exactly. Can't get away from criminal men that deflects our ability to behavior and trying to

see how he's forward the agenda of this country, much of which was Trump's own agenda. Vivek, in order to win this candidacy, and the reason I brought up the political publication this morning, obviously there was a bit of tongue-in-cheek on the offusiveness, but the key point being made was you have no chance of winning, and that you shouldn't be in the race at all. Now look, I'd like to... I think that was the thesis of the piece. That's fair. What's interesting is where it's coming from, right? It's coming from the establishment voice. And I think we'd like to hear just a little bit around your political strategy. What is your intention around building bridges and establishment voice. And I think we'd like to hear just a little bit around your political

strategy. What is your intention around building bridges and ties to the Republican establishment to support your candidacy here? Or does the Republican establishment largely sit on the sidelines right now and wait to see who emerges with this popular movement and who's out there? You're obviously running an incredible campaign on the road, very active, very vocal. And as everyone says, probably by far, the most articulate and most thoughtful and most intelligent of the candidates in the race today.

But lacking experience, lacking connections, not part of the establishment. And as a result, cast in this negative light consistently by these sorts of writers. So what is your strategy to win this race, given the, is it not important as Trump showed in the last election cycle to have those Republican establishment ties, or are you going to be building bridges?

And then my follow up question is if you don't win, what are you going to do? So yeah, so let me, let me address the first. It's basically in the camp that I don't think it's the voters that ultimately matter, not the people who have appointed themselves in the raining establishment. It's not even the establishment anymore. It's an outdated establishment that I don't think actually is going to influence meaningfully the result of this election, except for one respect, which is money, which I'll get back to. So the area where we're punching above our weight, right, debates haven't even happened yet. At least in the last week, I'm third in most of the national polls. This is well ahead of even where we planned to be, right?

We planned to be in third by November, December, ahead of the Iowa caucuses, I had a New Hampshire over-perform expectations in both of those, use the momentum to then win the race. That was broadly the strategy with the debate stage as the way where I would steadily work my way into that. I think we're just now on a different curve where we might be in second place by then and by a smaller margin than people expected. I think the debate stage is critical. The campaign strategy is actually to combine the initial investment that,

because I've lived the American dream I was able to make, but to combine that with a true grassroots uplift. We've got close to 70,000, maybe more, I have to check the exact numbers, unique donors already. The former vice presidents or other candidates that are well on their way and struggling by some measures to get to 40,000, which is a threshold for the first debate. So our strategy is very much a grassroots strategy. I've done more campaign events than anybody in the Republican field. And so this is our strategy is very grassroots driven. So I'm punching above my weight

in terms of events, unique donations, polling. The one area where I'm punching below weight is The one area where I'm punching below weight is large scale donations. So we are not raising mass numbers of large check external funds yet into the campaign. My super PACs or I don't even know what they're independent expenditures. There's an entity that exists out there that's been affiliated with me has based on public reports that tiny amounts of money compared to those that are supporting and all in for candidates from Tim Scott to Ron D'Sanis. And that's also a reality, right? I think that that comes with competitive advantages

and disadvantages and their two sides of the same coin. I think I am at liberty. Total liberty, I feel totally unconstrained to pursue the strategy that David mentioned earlier, which is that I'm reacting in real time To what I believe have you been surprised by The lack of clarity maybe of the DeSantis campaign in really creating a Pathway through Trump and if you are surprised what do you think he's doing wrong if you have to critique it?

Yeah, I'm not surprised because you know, I know him and I think he's a good executor, right? I think he has been oh I disagree with some other people on this. I think he's been quite an effective governor I think that when you're talking about and Scott Walker in the last cycle was quite an effective governor And for the same reasons that people believed Scott Walker was going to be the runaway nominee last time around, I think that people naturally gravitate. People think they want somebody who has done something as an effective executor. But when it comes to the US presidency, I think it's a unique role where what matters is actually having a vision for where we are going.

And so I'm not with I don't without saying things that are interpreted as being mean about somebody else or not, I know all of these people have known them for a long time. I've shared stages with them over the course of my woking book tour and nation of victims book tour. I'm not surprised with how things are going in this race. You know, as are we expected to be where we are in November, we're here in July, I'm not surprised that we're doing well. I understand how audiences across this country responded to my message in Wilking. I'm not surprised that they're continued

to respond well to Trump. I've just nothing surprising about where we are in this race right now. And so you're not surprised because DeSantis is a competent administrator, but that is a great job as governor, but not the bill of goods for the president. I'm really at a point in this race from, I want to say, I'm doing this as a part of it. But to be honest with you, I think there's a lot of truth to what you said.

Yeah. Don't you think part of it though, is that Trump has singled out the scientists as the one candidate who he's going to beat the hell out of. I mean, I don't think so, David. Actually, I'll tell you why. He has not attacked you. Trump's actually said good things about you. Yeah, he has not attacked anybody else in this race.

Yeah, exactly. Have you spent time with Trump? I know all these guys. I know. Have you spent time with Trump? Was the last time you talked to him? Not a serious amount of time. I've spent more time with the Sanis than I have with Trump.

Have you spent more time with Trump? I once, I have with Trump. Have you spent more than an hour with Trump? I once, yeah, when there's a long before I was running for president, but we had dinner. We had a multiple, every time we had a lot of people who had reached out and tried to build bridges with you. We've turned this over to a factory state. I mean, most of us will be intersecting each other, we're speaking at the same forums, the NRA, the family leader, thing that Tucker did backstage. We have interactions with all the other candidates. And I like to think I'm friendly with everybody. I don't know how, I haven't talked to Ron recently,

but I've talked to him more before. But I think the reality is, so Dave, what you said is definitely true. And I'm not in this to be a political analyst, right? I'm in this to state what my beliefs are, say who I am and people can vote for me or not. But I actually do think, I don't think that Trump's commentary on the other candidates is

having so much of an effect. I think voters, many people who were maybe initially behind the sandists, I know many of them are people who are part of that traditional establishment. They didn't want, most of them didn't want to have nothing to do with Trump. But decided that was the next best thing. So I don't think that Trump's attacks are gonna persuade them one way or another. I think comes down to the study of what happened in 2016. Right, Scott Walker, great governor,

really respected guy. And I like what he's doing in his post-elected office life as well. But everybody has a role to play in reviving this country. And I think we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves how are we gonna make our unique contribution. And I think it's going to require governors who are effective implementers of a vision that makes their states thrive. I think governor says it's done a really good job of that. I think Christian Ome has done a really good job of that. I think there are people who hopefully will

continue to have an impact on our culture outside of government altogether. There's a really important role for that, Jason. I think that's my answer to your other question, which I forgot to answer, which that's what I'm going to do. And I go back to two things that you mentioned just in passing, but I just want you to clarify your thoughts on them. One, as you said, you would abolish the Department of Education. And I thought I'd never heard anybody say that really.

So could you just expand on that? What you mean? And then the second I'd love for you to talk about some of these Supreme Court decisions that have come in the last of the wild, specifically the abortion debate, the affirmative action debate, the rights of businesses to not serve as people whose ideology they disagree with. And then sorry, the third point is maybe use that last part as a jumping off point.

I'd love for you to understand your position on LGBTQ, the role of the trans movement, what's happening in schools. Those are the three kind of big chunky areas that I think are worth talking about. If you can just give a few minutes. Yeah, there's a lot there. Yeah. So, let me, if I skip over something, bring me back. So, Department of Education. I think the federal government is not as a factual matter directly involved in education.

I think it is a, therefore, a deadweight waste for money to cycle from the taxpayers to the federal Department of Education to then disversverse those funds inefficiently as they do, tilting the scales to four year college degrees over choices that people might have otherwise made that are better choices for them, vocational training, one year or two year programs. Using it as a cudgel, and this relates to the latter issue you asked about,

to tell local schools they don't get that money unless they're adopting. What I certainly view as toxic racial and gender ideology based agendas, they use the money as a cudgel to do it. So I've said that that department that spends about $80 billion of taxpayer money, I'll shut it down. Tonight in New Hampshire, I'm laying out the anatomy of exactly how we'll shut it down.

And then return that money to the states to the people put it in parents pockets. Very specifically, you have to be a state that has a school choice program in order to receive that Department of Education shut down dividend. I think that if you're at such a state, I would also believe that those states need to write their teachers union, teachers contracts in a way that stop teachers from joining teachers unions, which I think have been a destructive force on our public schools. If you're unionizing against the public, think about who you're unionizing against, the very kids you're supposed to represent.

Now we have transparency, we have choice. If you teach it in the classroom, put it online. And then there's an interesting fact in this country where I think you guys will appreciate how bizarre this fact really is. There's not only like a failed positive correlation. There is a negative correlation, an inverse correlation between how much money per student a public school spends and the actual outcomes that that school achieves for its students. So in my version of school choice, my preferred version, it would not just be that parents get to get these vouchers and educational savings accounts to send their kids to some

other school. That's part of the story. It's the first step. But I think any parent who moves to a school that spends less per student, which we know based on the data, is actually all a sequel, a better performing school as it relates to achievement, should be able to take half the delta with them. So to take Chicago or Pennsylvania spending $35,000 per student, 15 miles away of a school spending

$15,000 to $20,000 per student, I think they should be able to take half the difference, that $10,000 to $15,000, half that difference of the $20,000 to $10,000, they take with them. You run the math on normal investment returns. You're talking about a quarter million dollar plus graduation gift when that kid graduates from 12th grade So you tell me which is a better use of money. It's not even close and I think the head of the state is That's a great

Great you come up with that idea or did is that phenomenon? There is actually another guy's an arbitrage or who's a friend but who shares similar instincts. And like I'm like a value investor, I believe in a great incentive which makes sense in the world. Yeah. Okay, let's move past education. Yeah, I want to talk about the specific of the game, the trans issue.

Two questions. Do you think it's normal to be gay? And you have any problem with people being gay? And then no, I don't know about it. Space is accepted. No problem. So then the second, of course, talking about trends, I heard you on Meet the Press say

about trends was a mental disorder, which you know, it was in the DSM for, I guess, or whatever the latest one was, just come to a couple of years ago and now it's changed. So maybe explain why you think differently about those two things. One, you think it's fine to be gay, but you think it's a mental disorder in all likelihood if people want to transit. Yeah, so, you know, I want to leave you with a good sense of where I'm at on these issues, right? So I think it's at least curious that we take the LGBTQIA plus Take it's at least curious that we take the LGBTQIA plus value set and vision for what the movement stands for. It does require you to adopt simultaneously conflicting beliefs at once, right?

The gay rights movement was predicated on the idea, which I'm quite sympathetic to, that the sex of the person that you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born. But now with the T component of that same movement that now says your own gender is completely fluid over the course of your own life. And I think if we're not going to observe the tension between these two observations, I think that we're purposefully having our heads stuck in the sand. I think what's happening in many cases is somebody who claims to be trans is really just gay. And part of what we're saying is it's not okay to be gay.

So to answer your first question, part of what the trans movement is effectively telling people is that it's not okay to be gay. You know who else says that, Iran. Actually, Iran is a nation that if you are gay, they force you to undergo gender conversion surgery. It's not that different than what's baked into the ideological premise of much of the trans movement here. And so I just want you to come for the fact there's a lot of people in the G.O.P.

who will offer surface level stuff. You know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Gender dysphoria is what I've said is a mental health disorder. I've been very precise. Let's take the intersex case out of it. Client Feltor Syndrome. Jacob's syndrome, right? Client Feltor is XXY.

Jacob's syndrome is XYY. These are ultra rare. They exist. They are real. For the purpose of our discussion, though it's under the broad trans umbrella, I'm going to take that out of it because that's not a mental health disorder. That's a genetic reality. But now let's go back to the conflicting supposition. There's no gay gene yet. The sex of the person you're attracted to, we accept for civil rights purposes as heart riot and the day you're born. Yet there are x and y chromosomes, and yet your own biological sex slash gender is now completely fluid over the course of your life.

There's a tension there. And I think that tension is best explained by the way we've treated it for most of our national history, for most of our medical history, all the way through actually I think the DSM-5, not just the four, as a mental health condition. And I think the compassionate thing to do is not to affirm, especially when it's a kid, to affirm a kid's confusion. I think the compassionate thing to do is to recognize that there's some other psychological struggle manifesting itself in this form. And it is cruel to affirm that kid's some other psychological struggle manifesting itself in this form.

And it is cool to affirm that kid's confusion. And by a firm, we surgery, or hormone therapy. Hormone therapy, exactly. I mean, you would say, you would imagine when you're an adult, 18 years old. Yes. And you would back to when I'm here in New Hampshire,

literally, like where I am right now, who are in their 20s that badly regret undergoing double mastectomy is one of them underwent a hysterectomy, both of them underwent puberty block. So even if the parents and doctors are buried with it, you would say they can't make that decision for the child. Just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of 18 in most, what we say is a decision that you are likely to regret many, in many cases at least, likely to regret

later in life, we let you make that decision as an adult. And I do believe we live in a free society. As an adult, you're free to identify how you want, a free to where what you want, but kids aren't the same as adults. And even among adults, there's a difference between living your life freely and expecting that everybody else changes their linguistic and traditional understandings in sports and traditional understandings in locker rooms and traditional understandings in language. That's a difference. And so I don't believe in a tyranny of the majority, but I don't believe in a tyranny of the minority either. Do you think this topic is over indexed on right now

and is a really important topic with presidency, or do you think this is like some sort of culture wars thing that this actually isn't that important to the national discussion should be held privately. I appreciate you asking that. Jason is, I think I feel this way about a lot of the topics, right? From the actual racial woke position on that.

I think like why is this the most important topic? Yeah. This is interesting because it's a symptom. It's interesting only to the extent that it is a symptom of the deeper void, of the deeper vacuum. And I think the mental health epidemic is not limited to gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, drug usage, fentanyl, suicide. Let's have the conversation more holistically, these are symptoms of the deeper void. And all I care about is running through these topics without somebody holding the line of defense by stopping us to get to a discussion about that void,

to say, no, this is exactly what that kid is, and you're wrong to think about as a mental health disorder. I think that's unproductive, because it stops us from getting the truth. Over the years, it's been the case that young people tend to orient to being countercultural or anti-establishment, generally speaking, it's part of the psychological seasoning of a human to be against the parents against the system and ultimately to create independence for oneself. And that's typically ultimately to create independence for oneself.

And that's typically counter to what came before it. And it has manifested in every generation with this point of view that there is some psychological torment that has taken over the young people that is causing them to act out from beatniks, to hippies, to punks, to goth, to emo, and every generation had some cultural representation. Is your point of view that gender dysphoria is the current manifestation of that pattern of behavior that we've seen over the generations? That's not exactly my view. My view is that it's not limited to young people.

I think there's something unique going on in America right now. It's true of all of us. In some sense, some of this comes from self reflection, but I think it's, it's true for most of us that we're hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves, yet we cannot even answer what it means to be an American or what it means to believe in God or what God is. And we have come up with new false idols that substitute for that. So you want to talk about generational history.

I mean, you know, Moses by the time he comes down from the mountain top, you got the golden calf Israelites are lost in the desert. They say they want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh. Yeah, I think the historical trend I'm talking about is a slightly different one and maybe has a longer arc to it than the one You're talking about but I but at my Diagnosis is not specific to young people. It's specific to where we are in a national history When like a bunch of blind bats in a cave, right?

How's a bat figure out where it is? It sends out echolocation signals So-n-our signals that come back and say this is where I am I Think we human beings are wired to do the same thing. And the pillars, the walls, the fixed points of truth from family to faith, to patriotism, to hard work, to individual pride, the things that used to ground us when those things disappear, we're now sending out these signals and then nothing's coming back. And so we're making up new pillars instead and Maybe one of them is a trans flag and maybe one of them is a Ukraine flag and maybe one of them is a climate cult And maybe one of them is a racial intersectional hierarchy and maybe one of them is fentanyl, but I think that that's

I do have a deep Point of agreement with you and Jason that I think we sometimes get too hung up, both sides, maybe Republicans, a lot so right now, on the symptoms without getting to a deeper discussion of the deeper cancer, the deeper void that we need to fill. And that's what I'm interested in. Shem off brought up the Roe v Wade issue. I'm wondering what do you think is the most productive path forward for the country in terms of a reasonable right to choose versus right to life argument? Because

you personally feel that abortion should be banned on my correct? I am personally pro-life. You're pro-life. So you don't really believe in a life. You'll be able to get an abortion under any circumstances or do you have rape and rape? I do. As someone who's running for US president responding to the question about the Supreme Court case is that Roe vs Wade was correct to be overturned on constitutional grounds. Okay, fine. It was made up just for argument.

How do you personally? But it leads also to the path for moving forward, which is that I think the federal government should stay out of it. And so there's a discussion amongst Republicans. I think I'm the only Republican candidate in this field who has come out and said that I would not support a federal abortion ban of any time. Unprincipled ground, because to me, I am grounded in constitutional principles. And I think there's no legal basis for the federal government to legislate here.

The 10th Amendment says that part of the American experiments we have diversity across states. And I think this is a state issue. Now, at the level of the states, I'm personally a believer that unborn life is life. I think that the pro-life movement needs to, we need to walk the walk when it comes to being pro-life, what do I mean? I'm pro-controsception. I'm pro-adoption. I'm pro-life, what do I mean? I'm pro-controspection. I'm pro-adoption. I'm pro-child care.

I'm pro-more sexual responsibility for men. For God's sake, we live in an era of genetic tests. We can actually put more responsibility on men. This doesn't have to be. And should not be a men's versus women's rights issue. And nobody on our side is really talking about these issues. I do because I don't think this has to be as divisive as we've made it out to be.

But I can almost prove to you that more people in this country share my instincts than are willing to admit it. There's a case, you know, Clarence Thomas brought it up of pregnant woman walking down the street. She's assaulted. The unborn child dies as a result. I haven't met and I have many liberal friends. Most of my friends growing up have been,

you know, have different political persuasions than I have now. I haven't met a single one of my liberal friends or otherwise who says that that criminal does not deserve liability for that death. And so I just think more of a sheer to the state. So if one state wants to ban it,

they can ban it if another state wants to have a 24-week rule, they could have a 24-week rule. That's you want to have a solution. I like other Republican candidates. I will not be signing a federal abortion ban on constitutional rights. I'm hoping to persuasion. And I'm hoping to persuasion. If some legal scholar convinces me that the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government the authority to sign that into law, so be it.

But I have not been so convinced. And I think many other principled constitutionalists haven't been convinced, even though the other Republican field has all best and I barely can't understand this racist that they would sign one. What is your thought on just the gross tonnage of dollars that we spend on the military and defense and espionage and, you know, internal, external security, and then when those bump up against civil liberties, just give us your kind of framing on how you think about those sets of issues around national level security

but where and personal privacy. Tom, I, for more of my life than not, I identified as a libertarian than a conservative. And I still have all of those libertarian instincts in my core. It's just that I care about more issues than libertarians care about because libertarianism is all about the relationship between the state and the individual and I actually do care about culture and the fabric of the society outside of government too.

It's a long way of saying I'm deeply skeptical of the national security establishment. I was deeply skeptical of the Iraq War at the time. I think I am today in retrospect. I was deeply skeptical that prisoners in Gu at the time. I think I am today in retrospect. I was deeply skeptical that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay should have been denied constitutional due process rights when that's exactly what enshrines the justice system that we otherwise believe in. I would pardon Julian Assange. I would pardon Edward Snowden.

I've committed to a long list of partings of people who have taken steps to expose corruption that we otherwise would not have seen in this country. And I think part of the reason why there's a weird corporate analogy here, we're talking about companies and finding their purpose and coin base. I think there's a version of that going on in the US military. I think the US military has lost its sense of purpose actually. And so my view is the purpose of the US military is to secure Americans on American soil, to make sure that we, when necessary, win wars and more importantly deter wars.

And I think part of what you see in the loss of, you know, people complain about wokeness in the military, et cetera, these are against symptoms of a deeper loss of purpose of an institution, not that much different than a company. But my view is, I'm not in the same way with the immigration debate. I don't engage in this. What's the cap? You know, higher or lower? It's the wrong debate.

Merit, purpose, what are we achieving? I feel the same way about the military. It's not a higher, lower discussion. It's a what are we doing discussion? And I think there is a legitimate case for the U.S. to have and continue to have the strongest military in the world. But I think that deputizing that military to fight wars that are really deflection tactics often for our own ailments at home, I think has been a mistake.

And we're at risk of making those same mistakes again, right now, most pertinently in Ukraine, unless we learn from those passing stakes. I want to ask you about the division within the Republican Party on this specifically Ukraine. So at turning point which you just spoke at and I think you did very well in the straw poll there you had Tucker interviewing Mike Pence asking why should we prioritize Ukraine over our own cities that are increasingly broken down. You've got homeless people living on the streets. You've got this price of drug addiction.

You've got rampant crime. You've got schools that are terrible. And yet, Ukraine seems to be this fixation of the unaparty in Washington and Pence gave this totally dunderhead and answer something like that's not my concern. Which I guess his apologists said afterwards that well no he was talking about something else. He wasn't saying that American cities weren't his concern. Which even if you grant that was the case means that he wasn't really paying attention to Tucker's question. But then you also had Tim Scott say something, it was definitely better phrase than what Pence said but basically said that he thought it was a good idea for us to be giving all

this money to Ukraine because degrading Russia's military was a good deal for the United States, you know by which degrade I assume means killing Russian boys. I knew for Lindsey Graham say this sort of thing. Then I had this Republican polster named Patrick Rafini, who I didn't really know before, but he's apparently Republican polster. He's got Slava, Ukrainian, his bio. I'm not quite sure what's motivating that,

but he tweeted at me saying that Ukraine is the like number 17 on the list of GOP voter priorities despite efforts by the likes of Carlson and Saks to make it a thing. Notice how it almost never gets brought on the trail unless Tucker is there. My response to him was to post a quote from Mitch McConnell saying that Ukraine is the number one priority of the GOP. And I'm like, you're making my point for me. I know that it's number 17 in the eyes of voters in our party in terms of what they think we should be focused on. But it's number one in the minds of Mitch McConnell and Pence and Scott and Nikki Haley

and Lindsey Graham. These people are obsessed with this idea. So I guess, what is your reaction to that? How are we going to change this? I mean, it just seems like there's something fundamentally broken in our party when the base understands that we should not be focused on Ukraine, focused on our own borders, our own cities, as opposed to some far away lands, borders, and cities. And then also in that same turning point poll, 95% of the attendees of that conference were opposed to US involvement

in Ukraine. It was the single highest number for anything they pulled on. I think Trump got like an 85% approval opposition to Ukraine got percent. So clearly there is a fundamental divide between what the establishment or elite of the party thinks and what the base thinks. What is your explanation for that and how does that ever get solved? I mean, how are we going to fix it? I'm going to give you a facile answer, David. It has to do with why we're doing what we're doing. I want to be elected the next president. I think I will be and I think reflecting the will of the people in the way this country is governed is part of how our system is actually supposed to work, both in the primary

and in the general election. And so, you know, I know we're sitting in different seats, but I'm sitting in the seat that I am now precisely because I think somebody needs to actually step up and fix it when most of the Republican party has lock-stock and barrel for all their criticisms of Biden on the most important foreign policy matter of right now have lock-stock and barrel adopted what is effectively the Biden position which is mysterious and it's interesting. Now I think that it has become a sort of a fixation not because these candidates I think that it has become a sort of a fixation, not because these candidates I think have arrived at this viewpoint independently through reasoning their way to it, but just understanding that that's what they are supposed to say in the tradition of a party that was historically based on projecting hard power through deterring the USSR, not recognizing the fact that people sometimes seem to forget this fact.

The USSR doesn't exist anymore. And NATO, which is created to contain the USSR, has now expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did before, which is itself a symptom of a Republican party that still sometimes brings it to the nice nature. It's like a nature militarism's a nature of militarism. It's a muscle memory. Yeah. What about the influence of the military industrial complex?

Do you think somehow, like it's related to donors, like what do you mean? Yeah, so I'm a, I'm very open-minded to, and I'm getting the signal that, so we're going to this event where we're meeting with parents of kids who have died as a consequence of fentanyl and I don't want to keep them waiting longer than we need to. But if you guys are down to do this again, there's been a lot of fun. It's been great. You gave us 90 minutes. It's fantastic. We can let me just answer David's last. What was your last question? Wait, no, I have a better question just that last question. Number one, are you vaccinated against COVID?

Number two, what do you think of Fauci? And what could we have done differently? I mean, you're a man of science, so I just curious what you think about the whole thing. Great question. So I am vaccinated against COVID. Had I had the facts that I do now as a young, thankfully, healthy male, I would not have actually chosen to get vaccinated. I think that Anthony Fauci betrays science by substituting the scientific method, which depends on free speech and open debate and inquiry

with authority, which is actually fundamentally anti-scientific at its core. And I think one of our main lessons to have learned from the pandemic And I hope we do learn it in the future is that it is precisely in times of emergency that free speech becomes most important I think if we had been able to debate in the open the merits of lockdowns for children We would not have locked down our schools I think we had been able to debate the open what the origin of the pandemic was locked down our schools. I think we had been able to debate the open with the origin of the pandemic was.

A lab in Wuhan appears to be the overwhelming, it's the truth. I mean, we know that that's exactly the most likely to be correct explanation. It's in the name. It really is. But everybody who's a name, you couldn't have said. At that time, you couldn't call it,

you couldn't name the unspeakable city for which the virus originated. So I think one of the top lessons is free speech and open debate, the path and truth runs through that. Science depends on the free exchange of ideas. That's who we are and the beauty is our country is founded on that very principle. It's in the first amendment for a reason. The fact that we'll let you get to your event, but I just want to say thank you for being incredibly dynamic and open and honest It's really great to have

Guys like you to talk to it's I appreciate it guys if you guys want to know to get I had a lot of fun too I just want to add I just got a rock thanks for not being like political politician speak and being so honest and taking on every single topic We asked you a single topic. Yeah, I'm very candid. I think you did a great. I appreciate it guys Appreciate you take your guess. Thanks for the. We didn't talk about this. Did you guys mention where you are or is that off? Well, based on the number of buttons here, I can tell you I'm in, I can't, I can't talk to myself because you know, did I ever tell you the story about two years ago when

I was in Italy and the stalkers? You fucking told everybody you were there. You told me. Oh, I didn't. Everybody were. I was in Italy and the stalkers, you fucking told everybody you were there. You told me. Oh, I didn't. Everybody were on it. I was at Chimatz Beach Club. I took up to my brother. You took up to my brother.

It was ridiculous. I took a picture of the ocean. And in the corner of one of the towels was the logo of Chimatz Beach Club. And some guys found that logo on the towel, did a Google image reverse shirt I've searched, found the beach club that Chimatz part of shirt, I searched, found the beach club that Jamal is part of, and then showed up at the beach club while I was drinking $150 bottles of per seco on Jamal's account to pitch me their startup. So I don't want to say exactly where I am, but I'm in Italy, where are you guys? I mean, it's actually a shouting distance

from each other. We're about to see each other after this. I'll tell you guys the story about the last summer when I was in Italy. Jamal and I were walking down the streets of Milan. Yeah. Never tell the story? No. No, no. No, no, no. Okay, this was like the last time that J. Cal and Freiber were having a major feud, and

it looked like the pod was maybe about to break up. So I mean, for real. Break up number one. Yeah, this is break up number one. We're maybe breaking up two or three. I don't know. But You guys are definitely feuding so we're walking down the street all of a sudden somebody stops us and he This is like a fan from I don't know like

Are you from the Australia? Australia. He was he was Australian. It's from Australia. You remember this. He was from Australia visiting Milan Hi, Mike. Are you a chimoff? And he stops us in the street and takes a photo and the whole thing. And as we're walking away, Chimoff says, we better make this thing work because I like being famous.

You can't go back to being not famous. You guys better not screw this up because I like being famous. There's a delicate balance, fake or fake right, faith or being right. Who knows who knows. For people who didn't get the joke last week, I love Freeberg.

I'm trying to develop a deep, meaningful relationship with Freeberg. I love Freeberg. What do we think of Vivek? Let's get back to the, you know, brass tax here. RFK versus Vivek, we've now had two of the top five candidates. And Chris Christie has agreed to come on. The mooch put me in touch.

I have to be honest with you, RFK and he are more similar than they are different on a lot of topics You know the contours I think are different on a few very specific ones obviously but It's like these outside recanted. It's I think have like a they're just a they're a breath of fresh air because I think and Vivek said it right. The he and RFK, they have nothing to lose so they just tell you what they think. They don't have to memorize anything because what they think is what they think. And so you just consistently get the stream of consciousness. And the more and more I hear from these kinds of candidates, the more and more they make sense and juxtaposed against the establishment candidates, it's very stark. Would you consider Trump sacks as being the precursor to these two nontraditional candidates?

So now we have three nontraditional candidates in the mix, Trump, Vivek, and RFK, and they all are shoot from the hip. Here's what I honestly think. And maybe more moderate and pragmatic in terms of their positions. Well, sure. I mean, Trump ran for office for president without having ever run for office before. And so, yeah, as a Democrat, he's a Democrat who ran as a Republican too. I mean, and he moved the Republican party in a bunch of ways that were totally new.

Trump's lasting impact, I think, is going to be on the Republican party. I mean, he moved the Republican party from an open borders, completely free trade, sort of party. War mongering, Neocon. War mongering, knee jerk militarism, Neocon, to being anti-war, wanting to have strong borders, being at least skeptical of trade, at least with China, if not other countries. And I think he hasn't wanted to mess with entitlements. He understands us a third rail and very much against the Paul Ryan wanting to touch those at least in a non-bipartisan way.

I think that for the Republicans to take on those issues by themselves, I think he understands us suicidal. You lose votes when you start taking on entitlements. And I think that what Trump also did, which is really interesting, is that it cascaded a wave of self-reflection in a lot of other Western countries. So Italy is more right as a result. The UK went right. Spain looks like it's about to tip right.

The Dutch actually just lost their election because of national border issues, or they dissolve their government. So there's like a real clear nationalism, would you say? It's more of the nationalist inflection as opposed to the globalist. I mean, that's right. The Overton window, I think, changed quite a bit

with Trump and the mix, because now you actually had this much more America first nationalist orientation as the alternative to this sort of globalist, whether it's neoliberalism or neo-conservatism, those two things have more in common with each other than they do with this more nationalist populist approach. Right. Freeber, what did you think?

What was your take? I mean, RFK obviously concerns you a bit because of the, I don't want to use the conspiracy word, but let's just call it maybe, you know, his open mind to, his open mind to different theories. So where do you stand on RFK in relation to the vector today, Priber? Obviously, I think he's crafted his narrative in a way that can be broadly appealing. And as I mentioned in our texturing, I think also appeals to the Trump base. In a way, it's a very smart campaign. I think that the strategy, the positioning, everything feels like it's hitting the mood of the moment.

And I would argue, you could probably call any election cycle any campaign one of two things. It's a promise of what can I do for you? Or how can I go and destroy the system that did bad for you? And from RFK and by the way, the higher the magnitude of that statement, the more appealing the candidate is. I think Vivek is doing a great job hitting a reasonably high magnitude on the, you know, the system has failed us. We need to go and fix these problems kind of moment. And it's really good, but I think it's really good for

call it the audience that's engaged in the intellectual debate around it. Not necessarily. Would you vote for Vivek? At this point, I need to spend a little more time with the Santos, to be honest, and understand where he sits. I obviously have deep concerns about Biden. What would your concerns on Biden be, his cognitive issues, or the out of control spending? I don't think he's running the country, and I think that those who are, there's absolutely

no accountability and discipline in what's going on with respect to spending, as I mentioned. The vect did not appeal to me in resolving that concern either, by the way. He thinks we're going to grow our way out of it, which is part of the premise of modern monetary theory, which I think is a flaw. So you still don't have a candidate in terms of controlling spending. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think the problem with Vivek is he's not going to be appealing to the masses because he's so smart and so articulate that it doesn't have the Trump basics. The Trump

basics are insult the bad guy, call yourself the best thing in the world, make jokes. I think people might be over that.. And people might be over that. I think people might be over it. I don't know. What do you think, Sass? Are people over it? The bullying, the name calling, the bombastic Trump nature.

Do you think people are over it? You think that's gonna burn people out this election cycle? Well, not if you look at the polls, they're not on the Republican party. I think in the general, they might, I mean, look, I think right now it looks like we're on track to have a Biden-Trump rematch.

And right now Biden probably looks like he's going to win. Barring a recession happening or the Ukrainian side collapsing in the war. But the January 6th indictment. I mean, that indictment dropping sounds pretty, you know, like another bombshell. So do you think there's any chances? No, no, no, no. Okay. So what's your favorite moment, you know, from this discussion, was there a standout moment

for you, Sacks, we thought, sorry, I want to your channel to ask a question. Tomah, would you vote for him? Or you stole an RFK's camp, or or are you still open minded about everything? I wasn't sure what his campaign was about. And I come away pretty meaningfully intrigued about what he had to say. I think that there are some fundamental issues that RFK has me on that I wanted Vivek to own and he flirted with, but he didn't quite own them. Such as, I think that just like the deconstruction of the military industrial complex was so

definitive in our FK and it was almost quite there with the fact, but not quite there. So I wish he would, I wish he would own that. I think that the deconstruction of the Department of Education, I need to think more about, but some of his ideas are frankly more compelling. The pro-life pro-choice thing, I think, is very complicated, and I think you can go to this place of saying let the states choose,

but I'm just not sure whether that's the right ultimate solution. And proposing some federal legislation. But would you want to end up on that? You would want to end up like you're up like a certain number of weeks federally and then maybe some local laws around abortion and right to choose? I think that there is just like, you have to fund them if you believe in personal freedom. I think having an arbitrary definition of what a person is You have to fund them if you believe in personal freedom.

I think having an arbitrary definition of what a person is and then what that freedom means to me is already the slippery slope. And so I have a real issue with that, but I also agree with him about the actual decay of American society, you know, the lack of religious institutions and the lack of family and purpose. Those two things above all others, I think, are tearing this country apart.

Because people substitute something for it with this point, right? It's leaving people incredibly empty. And so I just think that you have to have some of these fundamental protections. Sachs, what were your favorite moments during this, or moments where you think he stood out or he shined at moments where you maybe have some fundamental disagreement? Well, okay, there's a few issues. Let me Respond to so in terms of the vague versus RFK junior

I think where Kennedy really shines is like Jamal said when he talks about the military industrial complex and I would say more generally industrial complex. And I would say more generally, RFK has this critique about regulatory capture, which he describes as the marriage of state power and corporate greed. And included in that is what's happened to the FDA, a big pharma, and the whole government's response on COVID. And then he wraps in censorship as being the way that this RFK thoughts are very marriage of corporate greed and state power. The way it defends itself that and that's unacceptable. So I think like on those issues, I don't think anybody speaks as deeply as RFK junior. Now, when it comes to the list, if you're to like list out all the issues and where Vivek is and where I am. It's a pretty close match.

I mean, I'm not aligned with him completely on every issue, but I think it would be pretty close. And I do really appreciate where he's coming from on Ukraine. He's not afraid to just come right out and say the truth, which is this is not an important enough American interest to be spending hundreds of billions a year on. I wish we had more time. What an amazing moment. to actually delve into that. And particularly, I wanted him to explain what was happening in the party because there is a divide within the party between these like oxygen

area and sort of more establishment Republicans like McConnell, like Scott, like pens, the war machine, the war machine. And then people like him and Trump. And you put Trump in this category too, who are resisting that. So I would have then people like him and Trump. And then you put Trump in this category to or resisting that. So I would have liked to hear more about that. What do you think of the moment where I kind of pinned him and I said, would you, so you wouldn't defend Ukraine, but you would defend Taiwan? And he said, yes, for the next five years, I would defend Taiwan because of the semiconductor.

I mean, that I've never heard a candidate say something that pragmatic. Here's my interpretation. I just cut the semiconductor. I mean, I've never heard a candidate say something that fragmatic. Here's my interpretation of that. It is. Well, it is pragmatic. What he's basically saying is that America right now is dependent on these chips, these very sophisticated high-tech chips, some of you conductive chips, and not just like the low end ones, the high end chips that are made in Taiwan. And that is a vital American interest and until we alleviate ourselves or we ourselves off that dependency by making them ourselves We're securing some other supply Then we need Taiwan and so therefore we cannot allow it to fall into Chinese dance

I'm saying a lot more than he did, but it's kind of an argument like saying Chipses the new oil and as long as this is a critical input into our economy We have to secure our supply. I can understand that. The difference being Bush never said, we're going to the Middle East for oil. He said we're going there for democracy. So that's what I thought was like

the very candid moment there, Zach. Yeah, but what always happens is that when America has a vital interest, you always cloak it in liberal rhetoric about rights and freedom and democracy and that kind of thing. But what's frequently driving the decision is American interests underneath. He's being explicit about it.

What he's basically saying is as long as America's got this, yeah, as long as America's got this dependency and we need Taiwan, we better defend it and protect it from falling into Chinese hands. But once we don't have that interest, then we don't. I can understand that position. That was wild. It was wild. Refreshing for me, I thought actually

it was a highlight of the discussion. There's a couple of things he touched on. So we talked about the other candidates. I think he's being not disingenuous, but maybe a little bit unfair to the scientists. I think there's no question that DeSantis alone has been singled out by Trump and not just Trump, but Trump surrogates to be relentlessly bashed on. And this happens

on social media, it happens on speeches and talks and all this kind of stuff. So they are going after the Santas and that has an effect. For a reason, he's number two. Right. And Trump clearly has pegged him as the biggest threat and that's why they're targeting him. So that does have an impact. The advantage that someone like Vivek has in a way is that he doesn't have a record as an elected official. And so he can just go out there and speak freely on these issues.

And like I described on the show with him, he goes out there and inserts himself in the conversation. When it makes his issue is going viral, he jumps in and I think it's very important that he's doing it so quickly because if you're a candidate and you wait till the next day, then the new cycle moves on, you missed it, right? So he's timing the way he's timing it perfectly. So he hits the sweet spot. There's only one way to do it, which is not to have surrogates, not to have a process,

like, because, you know, we know this with our portfolio companies. Overthinking it, yeah. Well, it's the same thing with our portfolio companies, right? They run it through like all these PR people and like a PR agency and it gets reviewed. By the time, by the time it goes through his 10th draft, it's too late.

It doesn't go viral. So he's running a social media campaign and it's very effective. Now I think that DeSantis is running a different kind of campaign. DeSantis actually has a record. I think it's a fantastically successful record as being the most successful governor in the country,

running the most successful state in the country. So he's out there with this idea that, listen, let's make America Florida. Yes. So that's what he's make America Florida. Yes. So that's what he's campaigning on. And so he is going out there with kind of a pre-determined agenda and a pre-determined stump speech, a playbook. And it's different than someone like Vivek

who's letting the issues come to him. And then he's responding as the issues come up. And that's the way Vivek is living off the land. And that is- All of that. But Vegas living off the land. And that is. All of that is free media for him. It's free media. And Trump did the same thing in 2016, right?

Every day he would figure out like what are the issues today? And he'd go on and speak about them. And you know, you go all the way back to Pat Buchanan working for Richard Nixon back in, I think this is 72 election, something like that, where every morning you can and there's a couple of the speech writers that open the newspaper and find an issue or two. And they would go to Nixon and say here's your talking points you know and so they would find an issue that back in those days was going viral and have the candidate speak to it. So they were nimble and I think that's what they were doing and if you want to to go viral in the social media era, that's what you have to do. You have to lean into the issues that people are talking about that day. And and this is the thing is that I think Vivek knows how to do that. Trump clearly knows how to do it. RFK knows how to do it. RFK definitely

knows how to do it. RFK knows social media every day. They're trending topic natives and that's the difference. Freeberg, did you have a highlight or a great moment or two from the vac? Things that made you go, huh, I really appreciate this person or candidate during the discussion. What I appreciated was that we didn't see him like fall down on any topics and I think that his ability to go through the full discourse with us for however long we went 90 minutes. 40, yeah. hour 40 says a lot, you know, RFK Jr. did the same. But again, it's a stark juxtaposition

from what I have seen Biden do in terms of interview formats. He has had his interviews are edited. They're short and to be able. Save the nation. Yeah, to be able to have this breadth, but also have the and to be able to be able to be able to have this breadth, but also have the data and be able to pull it from the top of its head and not have speaking notes. We gave him no questions ahead of time. There's no agenda. Of course not. And I think it's great to see a candidate who can engage in that level of discourse, which was important and impressive for me. I just hope it's broadly appealing. And this,

by the way, I just want to repeat something I've said many times in the past. There are two things I hate about politics, besides the relationship to a growing government. The first is that people pick politics as a career. And I think that that's ridiculous. I think people in a democracy should have a private life and then they should rotate into being civil servants and go and serve in public office. in a democracy should have a private life and then they should rotate into being Civil servants and go and serve public office. How the founders interpret that's right And so they were you know had they had their jobs and their businesses and everything and they would rotate in and then they would rotate out a government The fact that people can be a politician for 30 years is ridiculous

And I think it leads to all of the disincentives that have driven to a large government. What I appreciate about Vivek and RFK Jr. is that they come at this from, and even Trump, they come at this from private life and they take their turn in government and rotate out. And that's why I did not get him to answer the question around what would he do besides being president if it didn't work out and what's he going to do next. The second thing I don't like about Paul. By the way, just on that point, there's a lot of speculation about that within Republican circles.

This is something I could, we just enough time to get into. Let me just finish it. Let me just finish it and then we'll talk about it. So, sorry, yeah, let's come back to it. But the second thing is just money in politics. And I hate that you can raise money and get votes. Just the general concept that you buy ad space

and that you get people to change their vote, I think is the most fun. Yeah, I think it's so fucked up. But what I like about what we just did is we actually had a conversation with the candidate and people can just listen to the conversation. That's the old town square that SACS talks about that doesn't exist anymore because everything is chopped up and then sold as media bites on paid streams whereas what we just did is a free conversation with a guy that anyone can tune in and listen to and learn about him and that's what I found most compelling is we had a real conversation instead of

watching a 30 second ad bite what's the rumor saxapoe? Yes, sorry go ahead sax. The knock on Vivek is that he's basically a Trump surrogate and I mean Trump has said good things about him. Trump likes him to be out there clearly. And I mean, Trump has said good things about him. Trump likes him to be out there clearly. I mean, Trump has all but said that. So the idea is that Vivek is out there, and initially he's doing this less now, but early on, he was just launching

after broadside on DeSantis. And so the idea is that he's out there as a Trump surrogate, attacking the people, Trump wants him to attack on the whole saying good things about Trump. And that he'll be rewarded for that somehow. A cabinet position or vice president. A cabinet position. People even now saying VP because he's doing so well or maybe he gets an endorsement for

a Senate run or something like that. So if we had more time, I would ask him about this like surrogate idea, but I'm sure he would have said no, but. That's why I asked him specifically how how much time have you spent with Trump, and when's the last time you talked to him? And he was honest about that. I've only spent like, I did it with him before I was even a candidate.

So I'm wondering if there's some clandestine agreement with them through some back channel for him to do that. I know, I think. I think, well, clearly his answer would be, no, I'm not a surrogate on my own candidate. And he probably is. I mean, so my guess on answer would be, no, I'm not a surrogate on my own candidate. And he probably is. I mean, so my guess on it is that you can go out there and act like a surrogate knowing that Trump's gonna like it,

and then you'll be rewarded. You don't need to have an explicit deal to understand that that would work out for you in that way. I just want to freeberg's point. So, you know, freeberg, you said, you don't like the money aspect of politics, and you don't like the sort of career aspect of politics. I think what we're seeing with candidates like Vivek or RFK Jr. or Trump is candidates

who are bucking those two trends. I mean, clearly these are not lifelong politicians. They have maybe had a lifelong interest in politics, but they're not like lifelong office holders or candidates for office. And then on the money side, what they're all like lifelong office holders or tenants for office. And then on the money side, what they're all showing is something that we all know from our portfolio companies, which is that earned media is so much more valuable than paid media. Totally. Payed media costs a fortune and it doesn't really work.

No one really wants to look at advertising. They block it out. So you spend a lot of money on advertising and it never really gets you much. Compared to earn media, which is you figure out a way to insert yourself in the news cycle by appealing to people on issues that are being talked about. You figure out how to kind of hit your wagon

to, like you said, Jason, a trending topic. And that's what all three of these candidates have done. And it works so well. And I think that sort of the career politicians who are proceeding in this very kind of playbook way, which is we're going to go out, we're going to raise the most money from donors, then we're going to buy the most TV time, and we're going to be on message. I mean, we're only going to talk about the things we want to talk about. The problem is that

doesn't work anymore because earned media is so much more valuable than paid media. Well, look, I hope that's a trend and I hope it flushes the money out of the system and that candidates win based on the merit of the conversation that they have in earned media instead of buying more ads based on paid media and that it changes the game. And I hope that the laws change too. And I also hope that the laws change with respect to career politicians and term limits and all that sort of stuff because this whole career system and money in this thing is what's driving so much.

It's one of the contributors to inflation and government spending and government accountability and all the nonsense that goes on. And I would love to see a change. I think the earned media is so valuable now that I think candidates who try to stay on their message on their agenda, it's gonna cost too much money.

It's basically an unsustainable path. I would urge all the Republican candidates, including DeSantis, just to get out there. By the way, DeSantis is a tremendously smart man. I mean, he went to Harvard. He's a lawyer. Where is he? Yeah. To be fair, I haven't asked him yet, but why? Yeah, I was going on. Chris Christie's coming on. I'm asking to do something, we had technical difficulties. Remember that? It didn't go very well. Just for the record, the mooch, who loves the fact that a unit of time

has been named after him from Usag's. Oh yeah. Any 11 day period is known as a mooch. So if you have a little laugh at the head. That's a moochie. That's a moochie. It's a moochie. Yeah, once he loved that.

But he literally Introduced me to Governor Chris Christie over text. So I'm in touch with Chris Christie's coming on the pod So that's three of the top six or five in terms of polling. Oh, I'll ask to say it just to come on We'll never get Biden because he'll fall asleep. I don't think Biden can do 45 minutes without a nap He's a salty guy that might show up. Let's see if we can get him. I think he may, you know, he may get Biden. I don't know. Let's let's not. I can't ask. Yeah. I mean, let's try and get Biden. I mean, we'd be great. We can get up an hour with him and he can have a real conversation with us. I'd be thrilled, be really interesting. Well, Biden just did Fried's, Zakaria. It was an interview. That was pretty much localized

to talking about for policy in Ukraine. And he also did that other woman on MSNBC. They're all canned. He gets the questions ahead of time. And then they edit it for him. So he gets post-production, which, you know, then you could shape the thing however you want and shame on the media for doing that honestly to the left media. You're not helping the democracy here in the United States by putting the fix

in for Biden. If he can't do the interview, if he can't handle an hour at least, and can he be the president? I mean, let's be honest here. Well, they'll get the ratings. Just in terms of debrief, was there anything we want to say about the whole banking crisis? I appreciate that. He tried to find common ground with us. Yeah, I agree.

I nearly made a joke that you were now going to do a fundraiser for him after that. No, I mean, listen, he said it himself, I'm going to respond to everything one out of a hundred times. I may change my position based on new information, which by the way, we do here every week, every week. We all listen to each other. We have vibrant debate. And sometimes we change our positions, you know, like I think that's what any reasonable person does, go ahead and say. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think we were that far apart from him on this whole banking crisis.

I mean, I think we all agree that there should be no bailout for the shareholders and the bondholders of these banks that are poorly managed and go under. And I think that Vivek did endorse a proposal which we, I think Jason United both come up with, which was to have a higher level of FDIC insurance for business banking. I think it was like 10 million or something like that. And you just include that in the cost of the insurance.

Yeah, exactly. It's just paid by the premiums of these banks for banking insurance. And Vivek had this point about, you know, if Roku is stupid enough to keep 500 million in a checking account, and the bank goes under, maybe they should lose it. It's like, okay, my goal is not to save Roku if they're stupid enough to manage the money that poorly. No, it's to save the local school. Really, the only difference is that, and I think Freeberg, you hit the nail in the head, is when you have a bank run underway, you have to stop it before the panic can spread.

Contagion is real. The contagion was absolutely real. And I don't think people outside Silicon Valley could understand that because they weren't in those Friday morning emergency phone calls and board meetings that were happening. So we know it had already moved so far beyond SVB. At that point, we had founders moving their money out of first republic

and all these other banks. On Thursday and Friday. On Thursday and Friday. And they wanted to go to the top four banks and if it wasn't a Sib, it wasn't good enough. If it wasn't called Silicon Valley bank, this would have been a totally different thing. And if it hadn't been us raising the loan,

let's be self-aware. People hate Silicon Valley tech. There's this contingent of people, wait, Silicon Valley tech and rich people. And they were just gleeful. You know, there's 20%ent of people, wait, Silicon Valley tech and rich people, and they were just gleeful. There's 20% of the sort of far left communist, socialist idiots who mids, Elizabeth Warrens, whoever's who are just like, oh great,

Silicon Valley's getting kicked in the nuts, they were thrilled to see it. That was short and frayed. All right, we got to wrap. Hey, pull up these pictures real quick. This is your five second science corner. Look These are photos taken on Mars yesterday. How cool is this? That's all I had to say. Those that's exactly the chances of taking a photo on Mars are three billion seven hundred twenty one two. If you can see this looks just like the sun. Those are from Uranus. Yeah, those are from Mars. Very similar to the photos I took on my e-nus last night.

I took my iPhone 14 and I squatted down and took pictures of these single-bears. I sat down into a mirror and I said, look, what's going on down there? These, these boulders are very similar to the Dingo berries. What are these? I hate my balls and a taint. If you look at those two boulders, this is similar to my huge balls.

You guys can't put the bell. Love you guys. Don't you think that's cool that there's these cameras on Mars? It is incredible. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I think I'm incredible. And how cool are those photos? I feel like we should have two episodes this week.

Since there were so many good topics for us to talk about. But let's talk about the topics. didn't talk about any of the topics, but yeah, that was a good meeting with you there. Love you guys. Love you guys. Hey, if you guys are around, you know, and you want to get to get to one and some pasta. You can go some wine later, maybe next week or something.

Who knows? Maybe we all get together in person, have a glass of wine. I see you soon. I love you guys. I love you guys. I love you, bestie, ciao. Ciao. Ciao.

For the architect himself, the dictator, the Sultan of science, obviously after today's performance, I am still the world's greatest moderator. This has been another episode of The All in Podcast. We're still together. The band is still together producing hot tracks. We'll see you next week. A cup of etch, a two for Tuesday, tears for fears. Everybody wants to rule the world, including Vivek.

Next time, Chris Christie, Comet Etch, a 100 Z-Mortem Zoo. We'll see you tomorrow. Love you guys. Bye-bye. Love you, guys. We'll let your winners ride. Bring man David Sack and Sack. I'm going to win. And it said we open source it to the beach. Rainman David Sack. I'm going to the beach.

And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. What? What? What? What? What? What?

What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? I don't think that's my dog taking a wish. You're driving away. Sit next. Wait at all. Oh, man.

My ham is the actual meat. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug. George, because they're all just like this sexual tension that we just need to release that house. What, you're the beef. What, you're the beer of beef. Beef. What?

We need to get mercy. I'm going, darling. What? Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy. We need to get mercy.