All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

(0:00) Opening statements on the Hamas terror attacks in Israel (3:49) Contextualizing the attacks and the fallout so far (19:52) Trump administration's wins, Kushner's competence, path to a two-state solution (28:51) Letter from Harvard student organizations: understanding the reaction and fallout (46:53) The Biden Admin's next steps, electing excellence in leadership Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg 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://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1711544829828862144 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1711501410712654162 https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1711156580828295246 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1712170815637061914 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_MeKSnyAo https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711421307227607255 https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2023/war-in-the-middle-east https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1711761982469107955 https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1711788747086233661 https://twitter.com/MohiniTangri/status/1711987537533612322 https://www.amazon.com/Inconvenient-Minority-Admissions-American-Excellence/dp/1635767563 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/us/politics/russia-sanctions-missile-production.html https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/us/politics/iran-israel-gaza-hamas-us-intelligence.html

All right, everybody, welcome to episode 149 of the all in podcast with me again, David Sacks and Jamal Polly Hoppatiya, David Freiber could have make it this week. We're going to carry on without him. And it's a difficult week. So just a quick opening statement from me about this episode, like all of you were devastated by the terrorist attacks that occurred in Israel on Saturday. And I just want to start the discussion here with two important housekeeping notes. First, this is obviously a very dynamic situation, and we're dealing with the fog of war quite literally. So we're going to do our best to make

sense of what's happening, but things will change between when we tape this episode on Thursday, and you choose to listen to it in our likelihood at some point over the weekend. A second, there are going to be some folks out there who claim quite correctly that we are not the experts on this topic, and thus we shouldn't chime in with our opinions. On the other side, the all-in community has told me explicitly they want to hear us discuss what happened, and they want a sense of normalcy. As one loyal listener explained to me last night at a dinner, the fact that the four of you can debate hard topics, listen to each other. And in the end, have a deeper understanding of the world gives me hope every

week. That's why I listen. So we'll do what we do here every week. We'll have the hard discussion. We'll listen to each other deeply, hopefully. And we'll try to understand the world in each other just a little bit more. And that's worth it. At least to me and apparently many of you. So with those

two quick disclaimers, gentlemen, anything you want to say upfront before I recap where we are five days into this senseless brutality. I think that was a pretty good intro, Jason. I mean, you're right. We're taping on Thursday, late morning, pacific time. By the time this drops, it'll be Friday. And so a lot could have happened. Also, it's true that the Middle East in general, and this topic in particular, is hugely complicated. We will be accused of not being experts, but at the same time, the audience seems to appreciate our opinions as consumers of information who are trying to make sense of the world. So that's all we can really do. Right. in conversations, I think,

or how we make progress, any thoughts before we get started here, and I'll recap what's occurred, to not have any opening thoughts before we get into the details here. On behalf of somebody who worked in Israel, had a lot of friends there, spent a lot of time there, it's really just a terrible devastating situation.

I've really tried to stay off of social media just because it's allowed me to kind of think a little bit more logically. It's fast and furious right now, I think on X. And It's fast and furious right now, I think, on X. And it's just a lot of people trying to make sure that their version of the truth is amplified over every other version of the truth, which I think is like a, is the point in the cycle where you just have to almost unplug from the matrix a little bit. And find a few places that seem to be just telling things in an even-handed way, which I also find on X, and then just kind of reconstruct what happened, why it happened, what do we do from here? I don't know.

I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of the peripheral issues, but the core issue is just stunned that this happened. I don't even know how this is possible to this happen. Like Jamoth, I'm not trying to get too weighed in too deeply into the tweets, but... I did notice you, by the way, I have stopped tweeting. You've done a couple of retweets, but you pause this week a lot of your tweeting. Yeah, I mean, I think that process is important time to listen and learn and process what's going on. Right. This is not a great time to be and learn and process what's going on. Right. This is not a great time to be having hot takes.

I have posted a few things. First of all, Jason, you've made the analogy to 9-11 being in New York right now. I think that is the comparison that's been made is that this is Israel's 9-11. I think that's a justifiable comparison in two respects. One is this was a terrorist attack. It was an atrocity. This was a massacre of civilians, even if you're somebody who believes in the Palestinian cause, you should be able to recognize that these were war crimes. The videos are coming out, the stories

are coming out. In particular, the rounding up and slaughter of 260 attendees at a music festival was really beyond the pale. They're clearing some of these farming villages and so forth and finding the bodies, the families basically killed. Anyway, we don't need to repeat all the details here, but this was, I think, an attack on civilians that is reminiscent of 9-11 and has affected

the Israeli people in a similar way. I think the other analogy to 9-11 that's worth discussing is the reaction to this. So what Israel is going to do and what the reaction is by US political figures. You heard people like Nikki Haley basically saying to Netanyahu finish them, it wasn't exactly clear whether she was just talking about Hamas or the whole Gaza strip or maybe Iran. Then if there was any ambiguity about that, you just had Lindsey Graham come out and say level the place, meaning referring to all of Gaza. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm very concerned that one of the purposes here of the terrorists was to provoke an overreaction like the US engaged in after 9-11.

Remember, we were viciously attacked, we were wounded, we then lashed out and plunged into two decades of wars in the Middle East. What was the result of that? We lost thousands of lives our own soldiers. We spent trillions of our treasure millions of people on the other side died Yeah, and we at the end of the day We only changed the geopolitical map of the Middle East in ways that were ultimately unfavorable for us Iran became a more powerful country

the region became destabilized and Iran became a more powerful country the region became destabilized and We squandered the sympathy that the United States had and it's moral position that we had after 9-11 in the eyes of much of the world So the US I think fell for the trap that I think been long laid which was to provoke us into an overreaction I think that is one of the goals of terrorists. It's to create such an outrage, such a provocation that they will bait the other side into an overreaction. I'm quite concerned that could happen here. I think that our U.S. leaders should be, as friends of Israel, should be counseling a cool-headed response. I think, praying for war with Iran or suggesting that the entire Gaza St strip should be leveled would be doing exactly the wrong thing.

It would ignite the Arab street. And to your point, perhaps that was the goal here. And we're trying to figure out what is the goal of this attack that was planned for years. And perhaps that was the goal is to try to take all the hard for it piece and progress that has been made in that process over the last couple of years, Abraham Accords and stability, and then just really create a full scale escalation. I think that's right. I mean, look, I think Israel is within its rights to dismantle and destroy Hamas.

Hamas is an organization that in its charter has said they're committed to the destruction of Israel. They've now committed this atrocity. Again, it was if they had just limited their attack on uniformed Israeli officers and military, I think that would be one thing, but they went much further than that. The vast majority of the casualties here are civilians who were murdered in atrocious ways. So I think there are terrorist organizations in Israel as well within its rights to destroy them. However, the question is how you do that. Yeah. Like a lot of terrorist organizations, Hamas can kind of melt away into the population of Gaza. They've apparently have these elaborate tunnel networks. They've got bunkers. So it's not clear that you can destroy them from the sky through bombing.

Those kinds of bombs would lead to a lot of civilian casualties, which will inflame the situation and turn a world opinion against Israel at the same time. If they go in with ground forces, that seems like a really tough situation as well because Hamas is waiting for them and they will have to fight a guerrilla war in a very tightly packed dense urban area where Hamas likely has anti-tank weapons, weapons that we've seen that have been so effective against armored vehicles in Ukraine. Again, if the fighting gets too hot, they can disappear into these tunnel networks, there's going to be IEDs everywhere.

It's going to be a very, very tough fight for the Israelis. So I think they're in an incredibly tough spot. I'm not quite sure what the right reaction is for them, but I do think that if the reaction is this, let's call it the Lindsey Graham level, the place reaction, I think that could set off a much wider regional war or even a world war. And that is not something that's ultimately going to help Israel. And I hope that our leaders are wise enough to be counseling against that. I get the sense that they're not going to go that hard.

And if you look at the American response to 9-11, you know, going into Afghanistan and dismantling Al-Qaeda, a noble mission, and we didn't have any more terrorist attacks on America. We're very, we've for what are most terrorist attacks. There were attempts, actually. And our intelligence was very strong over the last couple of decades, and we haven't had another one of those, but you're right, going into Iraq, and then, you know, what was the last decade about being in Afghanistan? We went into Iraq, we went into Syria, we stayed in Afghanistan for 20 years. It should have been a quick surgical strike to take out Al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts

and then we should have gotten out. And even that is incredibly difficult as a mission. And as you're pointing out here, you know, Hamas can just fade away into the Gaza Strip and into Palestine and, you know, Hamascan just fade away into the Gaza Strip and into Palestine. And, you know, who knows? Chimab, I guess where we're at right now is trying to make sense of why this happened and what the next couple of weeks might look like, right? And so your thoughts? I think Israel has every right to defend itself and they should eradicate Hamas. This is not like we woke up and found out that they were a terrorist organization yesterday or on Sunday. We've known this for years. They've been

labeled as such people have been monitoring their money flows for years. We know where they were funded. But the thing to keep in mind is that those 30,000 Hamas terrorists have also been keeping 2.2 Palestinians hostage for the last 20 years. And of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, half are kids. And so David's right, the thing to keep in mind is as barbaric as what happened to these realies were, Israel, in its actions, could cause tremendous civilian casualties, which will just further inflame the ability to find a long-term peace in the Middle East. That's really tragic, and that's probably part of Hamas' kind of sadistic calculus, which

is they probably expected this kind of a reaction, and they probably don't care at the end of the day. So it's important to separate Palestinians from Hamas, but I understand, and I know where Israel is coming from because we have faced the same reaction after 9-11. face the same reaction after 9-11. The question that I have is, Israel is the most sophisticated military and intelligence organization in the world. And the reason is because when everybody talks about priorities, Israel only really has one priority, which is to safeguard the Israeli people. priority, which is to safeguard these really people. Yeah, survive. And they've been essentially in a conflict zone with this sort of damacles since the founding

of Israel. So there are three organizations that really have to figure out what happened here, right? There's Mossad, which is the foreign intelligence service of Israel. There's Shinbet, which is the domestic security apparatus. And there's a man, which is the military intelligence group. And it's like, how did this happen? Because this should have been priority one, two, three, and four, right? And it has always been for them. Other countries, the safeguarding of their people is not necessarily always number one, right? And then things happen and then you reprioritize.

In many ways, that's what happened in 9-11. I guess it's some level in America. I mean, we had all the signal before that. And when we did the 9-11 commission and we found out they were going to flight school here, you know, and it was pretty clear that it was an intelligence failure for American people. Those are the two big thoughts that I have, which is there's just going to be so many

civilian casualties. What will that do to actually, I think that that has a huge negative impact on the long term chance of peace because then radicals will use that information to further or to attempt to radicalize the next generation of Palestinians or other Arabs or whatever. And so I worry that the progress that was made in the Abraham accords all the normalization goes off the rails. And that's tragic because most of these people, the overwhelming majority of all people everywhere, they just want peace. They just want to live a peace and love.

Peace and prosperity. of all people everywhere, they just want peace. They just want to live a peace and love, safety, care their family, raise their kids. So that's really tragic. But then the other part of my mind is like, how could this have fallen through the cracks and why were the most sophisticated intelligence organizations caught flat footed here? Yeah. It is going to be a lot of information that will come out over time in lessons. And by the way, the reason why that second piece is important is not to point the finger at anybody, but it's to deescalate because of what Saks had earlier, which is that when people who can articulately gird for war are given the bully pulpit and you see American politicians now are given the bully pulpit. And you see American politicians now braying and gurting for war, I don't think they fully

recognize the consequences of that. They're not doing a full accounting of what America has lived through in the last quarter century. And now to induce other countries to try to do the same, I think it's so dangerous. And so if we can understand where these cracks are, at least we can de-escalate those specific individuals' attempts to escalate. And if we don't do that, we're going to find ourselves in a really complicated war. And I don't think anybody wants that.

Nobody wins. Nobody wins, yeah. I mean, at this point, really, the returning of the hostages seems to be the most important, you know, high order mission that has to occur after that, clearly dismantling Hamas and this terror apparatus. But, you know, having started to spend some time, you know, in the region and talking to people over there. And again, I'm no expert, but I have been talking to people who've been working on this. I've got people who've been working on trying to create peace in the region for their entire

lives. And this is definitely a setback, but I'm an optimist and I actually think that in some ways, this is going to create a climate where people are going to really fight to try to resolve the situation, or at least contain the situation, two-state solution, the Abraham Accords. I think this is going to renew people's commitment to peace in the region. And I know many, many of the countries over there are really aghast at what happened, and they've been working really hard to try to normalize relations.

They're in great peace and prosperity and commerce and between the different countries in the region. So this is just heartbreaking for the loss of human life and how that occurred. And then it's also heartbreaking for the peace process and all this progress that's been made recently. And so I think it's, you know, there's no silver lining here, but I do think this will

maybe the good people of the world will recommit to trying to resolve this issue and create peace in the region. That's my hope. I know it's simplistic and again, no expert, but that's my hope. I've been spending time over there and learning a lot more about the region these these are multi-generational Issues that are going to take generations to figure out and it's it's two steps forward one step back obviously But men for the politicians and the The people negotiating this piece and they work so tirelessly on this For their whole lives You know keep at it. I mean, that's all we can do, right?

I mean, Jason, I think disrupting the process that was happening towards normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states, specifically the Gulf monarchy's, I think was one of the objectives here. Yeah. So, I mean, Israel's contention for a long time is they wanted to negotiate peace, they wanted to negotiate, but they don't have a partner to negotiate with. Whether you believe that or not, that was their position. With the Abraham Accords, we saw that they started to be able to negotiate, again, normalization with three Gulf-Europe states without involving the Palestinians.

It looked like that issue was being put to one side and that they were kind of going around it. And the idea of being, look, if you won't negotiate with us, then we'll figure out a way to move forward without you. The big news that, you know, it's been going on in the last few months is that supposedly Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to working out some sort of normalization.

And I think that process has been put on hold until I think this has been dealt with. And so I think one of the takeaways here is the idea that you're going to be able to get to Middle East peace without resolving this Palestinian question. I think this is basically a return to the reality that that issue is simply going to have to be dealt with. I don't think we're going to get to a larger deal in the Middle East. We're not going to resolve all these problems until

this long-festering problem of the treatment of the Palestinians is dealt with. I think you're right that the two-state solution is the only possible solution that makes sense. I mean, what's the alternative? A one state solution means that either it's run by the Israelis, but presiding over hostile Palestinian minority that may eventually one day be the majority and you're forced into some sort of apartheid state.

Or the Palestinians are running that one party state and it means that the Jews have been pushed into the sea. So neither one of those solutions looks very good. So that leaves you with a two-state solution. However hard, however impossible it seems to negotiate that. It's the only option. Yeah, it's the only option. And it's the only option. Yeah, it's the only option.

And it's a real opportunity. I think my hope is that instead of pushing Saudi away, this actually pulls Saudi closer and says, OK, this is a chance to really normalize the global perception of the Middle East. Because if there can be a way for Israel and Saudi to build a bridge here, I have a lot of hope that there can be a lot of stability.

And a lot of the good work, I mean, again, like, man, as a Democrat who has been left homeless, who has now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation despite the messenger of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight. These Abraham Accords, the Accords with Israel and the GCC, the almost accord between Israel and Saudi,

to really be able to like find a long lasting peace Is just a real example for the world and And those guys still a lot of really good work and it's it's a miracle actually when you when you look at it What they did you know despite the fact listen I'm no fan of Trump and I am too homeless But this is where it's up. Can I say But if you want to objectively look at what they did, you have to work. It was great work.

You have to. And in fact, this is a moment where you have to start to reunderwrite like, is your, not you Jason, but I'm just saying collectively, is one's Trump deranged been syndrome causing more damage than anything that Trump could have actually done? And I think the answer is yes, because it's now causing us to not see that good work and then embrace and extend it.

So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that's what's so frustrating for me. The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. A structural piece in the Middle East, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message.

When are we going to stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who was saying things and actually listen to them word for word. I'll give you an example. I started to tweet three links a day over the past three days. And the only reason I did that was I thought things were so hyper contentious and hyperpartisan that I just wanted to show a few sides right and one day I found a couple links to of which one was from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL who I thought had a very powerful message and one was from Mike Flynn and His message was also actually pretty powerful if you just read it. And if you took the names off, all the content was so valuable, both points of view, but

the minute it goes into the world, people immediately judge and they killed the message because of the messenger. And this is exactly a moment where you have an opportunity to just stop doing that because the stakes are so high. It's infuriating, actually, quite honestly. It's infuriating to see quite honestly. It's infuriating to see it. We had this last week on the show when we were talking about reducing spending. The MacGates is not the perfect messenger, but his message was the message we've been talking about,

which is, hey, we have to control spending. So I can understand people not liking MacGates, those gates, there's a lot of things to not like about. I don't understand people not liking Trump and get over it. Well, and then you know, it's bizarre that His son-in-law went to do all this work But yet he did it and it had success that's another example if you're weird if you listen to the son-in-law to do it But I listen to the last three podcasts, you know, it's not weird because at the end if you listen to this podcast The most important thing that is resoundingly obvious about Jared Kushner is that he is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent.

And why did we have to spend years being fed all of these stupid lies? Because one can judge for oneself. But Jared Kushner is thoughtful. He's smart. And I thought to myself, I was fed all these lies for years about how this guy was like, moping around in the shadows and this and that, and it was all not true. Well, when I say it's non-traditional, if you sent, you know, any presidents, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, whatever child to go to the Middle East on its surface, this seems insane. But in fact, they did good work.

And so it's not traditional, it's not what you would expect. He's thoughtful and competent. That's what I thought after. I, that's what I got out of it as well, is that he's thoughtful and competent, you know. Yeah, he brought some fresh ideas. Just so the audience is clear, what we're talking about as he just did an interview with Lex Friedman and the first hour was on what's happening with Israel and Hamas. Must watch, I think. I thought it was excellent, too. Excellent, excellent. It was excellent.

He did, just in terms of having fresh eyes, he did things like focus groups. He's like focus, what does what does the Arab street think about various topics and he actually did focus groups in various countries to find out. So I mean, I think cushion made a number of really interesting points showing how difficult it's going to be to get to a two-state solution. But first, you have to set up what does the Palestinian side say and what they say is, look, Gaza is effectively an open-air prison. You've got over two million people packed into this very tight area. There's something like 50% unemployment.

It's impoverished. The conditions are deplorable, and they don't have their own state. They don't have rights. It's been like this for a long time. That's sort of the basic pro-Pelicinian argument. Christians response to that was, well, yeah, but Israel left in 2006. It left Hamas and control., gave them the keys effectively. The reason why there's such high unemployment is because Hamas is corrupt and doesn't enforce

property rights, and they scare away all the investment. Nobody wants to invest there. And Israel did give work permits so people could leave Gaza to go to work and look what happened. I mean, when they try to open up the walls, you have a massacre. So, these are the points that he made. Look, I think both sides of this have legitimate arguments and points to make. I think that the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza is deplorable and you have to feel

for the civilians who live there. Of course, but then you know the Israelis have a right to live without fear. The fear that their securities and jeopardy and that this territory can be the launching pad for terrorist attacks on their soil. So it's going to be an extremely difficult thing I think to to reconcile this, but you know Kishner made a couple other interesting points. He, listen, the Gaza part of this is not that hard because the boundaries, the territory lines are not in dispute. There's no religious areas that are in dispute. For example, you don't have the status of the Temple Mount or, you know, Easter Ruslim. And there's an economic plan to revitalize Gaza's

strip. So you really just need a negotiating partner for the Israelis to figure that out. And of course, now the problem is, who do you negotiate with? I mean, Homuses is a terrorist organization that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. So it's really a tragic situation you look at and you're like, this should be easy to work out, but it's not. It's a relatively small area. It's a relatively small number of people. It's it's two million people. We should be able to figure out the rest of the free world how to at

least have a path towards this and the first step is getting rid of Hamas right? Like there's no choice, but they have to go. I don't really know if that's feasible Jason. I mean, look, if we have to try. If there was a button that Israel could push to eliminate every member of Hamas, yeah, sure, they'd be within the rights to push that. The problem is that Hamas is now deeply integrated. Yeah. Embedded in a civilian population over over 2 million

that's densely packed. How do you root them out? It's going to take decades. It's going to take decades. And they're basically supported by that population as far as we can tell. Yeah. It's going to take decades. It's going to take decades. And they're basically supported by that population as far as we can tell. Yeah. It's going to be.

And again, if you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries you'll turn it against Israel. So again, it's a really tough situation, but I think that the US should only affirm its support for Israel. It should only denounce the atrocity that happened on 10, 7. But I think it needs to reiterate, the Biden administration does its support for a two-state solution.

I think that the US has to be on record that what's in everybody's long-term interest, including Israel, is ultimately a two-state solution. And the Palestinians are eventually going to have to have their own state. There's simply no way around that. Right. Yeah. And the free world, I think, is in the process of getting engaged and making this happen, because it's in everybody's interest. This can't keep going on. And so, hopefully, this, again, I don't wanna say silver lining, but I hope that this, the good that comes out of this is that the world focuses on resolving this conflict

or containing it. We're really surprised that all Jason by the amount of people that seem to be almost justifying. Fat-wish, talking to me. I mean, the fact that people could make any kind of equivalence between terrorist activity and the level of brutality, I can't even describe it because it'll trigger my

PTSD, which I had after 9-11, and it still affects me. I'm sitting here not far from ground zero. And, you know, for people, you know, educated people on college campuses or just otherwise to blame the Israelis for the murder of children, for people being and then justifying rape and torture and kidnapping. I mean, there is no justification and there is no equivalency. There is no equivalency here and this is one of the big problems and you know these dopey kids on Harvard's campus or whatever they have never Expired evil stuff suffering Cornell we can we can literally just dismiss these idiots because these are kids who have never Facing I don't I don't think you can I think one of the things that was shocking to me was the level of

Basically either subtle or late and anti-semitism. Unconscious, yeah subtle, whatever. That it unlocked. And I was also shocked that just Saksa's uses word before, but it's true, but our leading educational institutions have really become woke medrasas. They are inculcating kids with just some virulent poison. I think the reaction is always to go after to support the underdog, I think, in this group of people. Whatever they perceive it. That is an idiotic simplification that the smartest schools in the world, educating the smartest kids in the world, should be capable of seeing past. That's how they

think. It can't be that. It's not my feeling. I can't think that. It's think that it can't be that's in my feeling I can't get there. There's it's half anti-Semitism It's half they just think who's the underdog. I'm taking that side Yeah, I did get that simple is in the work mindset. Yeah Well, look, I think it was discussing and disturbing to see these organizations and these elite institutions being unable to denounce Hamas's terrorist attack in the atrocity that took place, or turning out in the streets to celebrate what happened. And we saw a lot of that too.

Look, even if you support the Palestinian cause, even if you believe that they've been mistreated, even if you think that their land has been occupied, they deserve their own state. Even if you believe that war against the state of Israel is justified on that basis, these were still war crimes. These were beyond the pale of war. Again, Hamas did not just attack some military installations on the border and kill soldiers or capture soldiers. The vast majority of the people who were killed were civilians. And there was no conceivable military purpose.

And for example, paragliding into a music festival, a festival for peace by the way. And then rounding up and slaughtering the concert goers, there was no conceivable military justification for going into these k butts as a farming communities. You know, families, not just arranged, it's arranged. So it's arranged. It's terrorism. And the fact that they can't frame it as terrorism is insane. But think about what happened. Okay. I just want to frame the order of events. Okay.

10, 7 happens. And I think within 36 hours or less, let's take Harvard as an example. Okay, the pinnacle of the woke madrasas, they had all these student organizations immediately come out trying to justify this thing without any information, right? Because in the first 36 hours, obviously not nearly as much information was available as to exactly what happened, then it's been available now as an example. I should read the statement just so people have clarity here.

Please. Join statement by Harvard, Palestine, solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine. We, the undersigned student organizations, hold Israeli, the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. Today's events did not occur in a vacuum. The last two decades, millions of Palestinians and Gaza have been forced to live in an

open air prison. Israeli officials promised to, quote, open the gates of hell and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians and Gaza have no shelters or for refuge and nowhere to escape in the coming days. Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel's violence. This is deranged in social path.

My point is you have like 15 or 20 of these student organizations of all ilks, okay? So it's not just pro-Palestinian groups. It was like the Harvard Seaks Association, okay? Like Seaks in South Asia are the most peace loving people in the world. They're not pro-war of any kind whatsoever or pro-terrorism. So all these people write this thing which blames Israel.

Okay. Then the school is totally silent. The school doesn't say anything. They neither completely disavow that statement nor do they come out with a more reasonable statement. All these X faculty and X individuals Larry Summers sort of leading, say, this is outrageous, have an opinion. They come out with something that's

milk toast in the middle of the road. Then they get soundly rejected by everybody yet again. Then the administration comes out and gives a cleaned up version that tries to allay everybody's anger because that the first statement I think basically essentially pissed off everybody on both sides. Then a bunch of alums who've already graduated or who've given money say these student organizations are outrageous. We will not hire anybody who's part of this because their views are

so immoral that we would never want these people Part of our organization and so here it is They're like men just sorry people have yes Bill Akman said I have been asked by a number of CEOs If Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning so Responsibly for a mossus heinous axe to Israel So as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members. In other words, you must own your words, which is so important. Okay, so then what happens is individual students actually have to come out or part of these associations that were signatories to the first release had to disavow the statement and said, actually, I'm just an

Indian student at Harvard Law School. There's a Nick, maybe you can find this tweet of this like Indian woman from Colorado or Indian heritage. And she's like, you just get auto recruited into these organizations when you join Harvard. So I'm like, well, wait a minute. This is a place that's supposed to be for like modern free speech, progressive thinking. And instead what happens is based on your skin color, you get auto drafted into some association. Then you auto sign any press release written by some person that you don't even see or approve. What is going on at these places?

And these are the places that parents and kids are tripping over themselves, trying to get into. Kids will kill themselves if they don't get into. And these are the worst institutions in America because back to Jason, what we talked about earlier, which is we need people who can think from first principles. Those kids are not it and those institutions are not making them. And so if we want to have a point in time where when things like this happen, we can really figure out what happened in the past that was right and what can we do in the future?

It's not this and it's not this kind of thinking. And if you're going to a school, Harvard, Cornell, UPEN, Stanford that are spitting out these kids, I think it's a real shame. You're spot on. I mean, how sacks could there be any question about the difference between military terrorists, you know, with machine guns, gunning down people dancing peacefully at a music festival at sunrise, and then make some equivalency there. And you cannot actually ascertain for yourself that is a terrorist act. If you can't from very basically opening your eyes and seeing what occurred and you know thank god in some ways for for X not being censored because you can actually see these things and I know it's very difficult for people to watch I don't

have any judgment on people who don't want to watch it but I think when the world sees these videos and you're gonna write this letter, you should very quickly be able to discern military, terrorist fighters from hippie kids dancing at a music festival. It's plain as day, there's nothing to confuse you here. This is the most easy test. You have to be brainwashed to see something other than that. These schools are woke medrasses. Yeah, so a couple of points on that.

So if you look at their statement, I think it's appropriate and fine to express concern about the people, the civilians living in Gaza and what the Israeli response might entail. I think it is fine and good to do that both for humanitarian reasons and for self-interested reasons if you're a supporter of Israel because this could all spiral out of control. However, these people completely lit their credibility on fire from the first paragraph by saying that Israel was entirely responsible for what happened and not having one word of condemnation for the atrocities that had just been committed. They cannot even see the war crimes that have occurred.

They don't even mention Hamas. They don't even mention the actual people that perpetrated the crime. Right. So the question is so deranged. What is it about their ideology that blinds them So do I need a what what is it about their ideology that blinds them to this atrocious massacre and And I think it is this I do think it has to do with this this woke mindset the the woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism in which People are divided up into oppressor and oppressed groups. So in Marx's original teaching, you had the proletariat in the bourgeoisie, basically the oppressor, and the oppressor. This kind of went through this cultural identity filter with woe, where again, people are divided up into identity groups. And so you've got men versus women, white versus black and brown. You've got straight versus gay, and so on down the line.

you've got straight versus gay and so on down the line. And the idea is that there's a power structure. And if you are in one of these groups and you are by definition oppressed and if you're in one of the oppressor groups then by definition you are guilty in a collective way. You're suffering from collective fault. The people who are oppressed are the righteous ones. Right. But I think that what you see is that when you divide up the world this way, first

of all, this is not a very accurate way of looking at the world. I mean, there are lots of minority groups in the United States that have done great. So for example, there's a book written recently about Asian Americans, the United States, called the inconvenient minority. Why is it inconvenient? Because Asian Americans have done spectacularly well. They get into elite colleges and institutions at higher rates than the whites do, which is why the primary group that's discriminated against by affirmative action before it was overturned by this report. But the reason why the author called them the inconvenient minority is because their success in America refutes a lot of this sort of simplistic woke delineation between if you're a minority group, you're oppressed, and if you're in this white group, you're the oppressor. I think Jews have fallen into a

similar type of categorization, which is they're an inconvenient minority. They've been historically very successful in America, despite there being existence of anti-Semitism. And I think that the woke ideology has reacted to this by saying, no, you know, Jews are not really an ethnic group. They're just whites. And so that's been the response, right? It is, well, let's put them in the oppressor group.

So we don't need to explain away their success. One of the problems with that is that you have to ignore the existence of anti-Semitism. And so they do, they just pretend like it doesn't exist. So here you have a situation where all of these things are in play. They've already predefined the Palestinians as being an oppressed people and look, and I think in many ways they are, but they are not incorrect. But they've defined it in racial terms, really.

Right. And they've defined the Israelis and Jews, really, more generally, as being part of an oppressor group. And so everything fits into that larger narrative. And so when members of one of these woke oppressed groups commits an injustice, they just can't see it. I mean their version of social justice is always defined in terms of collective guilt and if you're a member of an oppressed group by definition, you're not capable of committing an injustice because you don't have the power. Do you guys think that Bill Ackman was out of line by saying, I don't want to hire kids

from these organizations and these schools? Because it's just like these kids and these schools will bring, basically, I think what he's implicitly saying is distraction and it will lower the probability that I achieve by corporate goals. So these are not good workers. Based on your comment about thinking from first principles and being able to assess the situation,

I think that's probably what happens at a hedge fund. You have to place bets and you have to be able to think from first principles and be intellectually rigorous. This is the most intellectually lazy approach. I'm just going to sign a piece of paper without even thinking. So no, I don't think is that a line. I think it's an important lesson for people.

This is not freedom of speech. I was owning your words. You must own your words in position. And it's important that young people learn this now. You have to own your words, whether it's on social media or signing some stupid petition that you didn't read. And there's a lot of backtracking going on right now, by the way. I can't believe that if I got into Harvard, I would get auto-drafted into the Brown Men's Association just because of the color of my skin. That's going to be in the factory. I've ever heard of a group.

I mean, let's put out the double standard here that these elite Harvard students want to be exempt from their, their words, their statements. They don't want to be canceled for that. However, you know that when some hapless schmuck basically posts some tweet or posted a tweet 10 years ago that gets resurfaced, they're the first ones clamoring for their cancellation. Right. Yeah, they would like for their firing. They would like amnesty for their idiotic opinions. Yeah. Well, it's good. Good for the goose here is good for the gander. If they're going to create a cancel culture where people get canceled for their decade

old tweets and so forth, then they should be prepared to live by that standard. Now, look, personally, I would have some degree of forgiveness for a college student being part of an organization that puts out a statement. They're claiming they didn't know, okay, but then why didn't you resign? Look, I don't think there's a good excuse for this other than youthful stupidity. So I wouldn't cancel them forever, but look, I do think that it's fine for inappropriate for someone like Bill Akman, say, I don't want to hire you people. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just be careful for you to add the word youthful because I think it's as get out of jail of free card.

It's definitely stupidity. The question is, is the cake baked? And if the cake is baked, then there's a big argument to never hiring these people. I mean, look, I would just say, your frontal lobes are still developing into your 25 years old. So I would give college kids a bit of a pass

if they do stupid stuff. You're there to learn, you're there to make mistakes. That's not what I'm saying. This is a huge mistake. You're saying the bake's fully baked, you mean like their opinions and who they are? But all of the thing is you learn a lot from actions, drink too much. Don't drink.

Don't exercise enough. You get a little sluggish, maybe a little overweight. I get all of that. I'm not convinced that when you have this fundamentally specific way of thinking that you can unwind that so easily, Jason. So I'm not convinced that okay, sure that this mind virus gets fixed because you all of a sudden need a job. I actually think like maybe it's the struggle of realizing that

there are deep consequences to this vein of thinking that this oppressed versus oppressor or the other way that it was framed in our group chat is that wokeism and the embracement of socialism is basically running away from excellence. It's this idea that everybody has to be the same. What communism says, we all are the same. Nobody is special. We're all going to work together, do the same things. We're all going to dress in the same ways.

It's the collective we. There aren't going to be exceptional outliers. But the problem is that's not how the world works. And so the other part of why these woke madrasas are so terrible is that it teaches, I think, to work away from excellence. And instead of striving for excellence to strive to be part of a collective, and I think that that is fundamentally corrosive to America. It's corrosive to what God is you. It's corrosive to all the great countries in the world. And so then again, it's like, why would you hire kids who fundamentally don't want to be excellent, who are afraid that if they were excellent, they would be guilty of

something. That's ultimately the question. Why would any of these kids go to such an elite school to basically be taught that it's wrong to excel? All right, well, let's say I think perhaps a good And then as a result, not think for yourself, and then as a result, sign something like this, which is just stupid. We'll continue to discuss this topic, I guess, in the weeks ahead. Again, hopefully this conversation was productive for the community, the all in community. I understand that, you know, people might have very strong feelings about, you know, us discussing it, but we're here to discuss difficult topics. One other aspect to this, I think we should talk about,

which is the United States is larger geopolitical situation right now. I mean, things seem very tenuous. I didn't have that with Palmer Lucky actually. Oh, front of the pot, front of the pot. Tell him I said, oh, my invite got lost. Yeah, we actually had a nice debate slash discussion on Ukraine, but the thing that I think we agree with is that the U.S. better bring more innovation

at the military industrial complex and figure out like procurement because our coal cost plus system right now is so broken. There's an article recently in the New York Times where it said that the cost of the United States of producing an artillery shell is $6,000. For Russia, it's $600. So in other words, it costs the US 10 times what it costs Russia to produce an artillery shell even though Russia is considered to be this super corrupt, kleptocracy, where everyone steals everything. And yet our procurement system is 10 times more efficient than theirs. We don't have competition and all the politicians are captured, correct?

We have this cost-plus accounting system where every year the price goes up. We have an opportunity to explain that, yeah. So in every other part of technology, price goes down over time, right? You can produce more of something for less. We've seen this with Tesla, we've seen it with PCs, we've seen it with television sets, whatever it is. The price goes down over time.

The servers. Yeah, or if the price goes up, it's because you've developed some family and you've capable some new version, you know. Yeah, more powerful chips. Yes, totally. Exactly. Faster speed.

But you know, we're still making the same artillery shells, the same stinger missiles, the same javelins and so forth. I don't think the capabilities have changed that much, but the price goes up every year because it's cost plus. And so. Explain cost plus that people might be hearing that for the first time. Most companies sell something and then they have a profit margin. The way that government procurement works is the profit margin is controlled.

They're only allowed to market up a certain amount above their cost. But the thing that's happened in the defense industry is there's been huge consolidation over the past couple of decades where now you've got to handful of defense companies and it's an oligopoly. And many of these key arguments are single source, so there's only one producer and they just keep raising the price every year. Now one of the kind of crazy things about this is, and Palmer made this point is, it's not like anyone's getting rich because it costs plus. It's not like the money is basically making these companies

in order to lower the price. If you lower the price and you're at 10%, and you got your $6,000 down to 4,000, 10% of 4,000 is a lot less than 10% of 6,000. What's happening is not very... Proversive incentive. Google like margins. What's happening is that these companies keep building

their bureaucracies bigger and bigger. So they hire lots of staff. They make a lot of campaign contributions. They fund think tanks. And so their cost structure is keeps getting more and more bloated. Right. They're incentivized to do that. The more they charge, the more they make. Right.

Now, why am I bringing this up? Well, we're in a situation now where Israel might be on the precipice of, well, they declared war against Gaza and this thing could spiral out of control and become a regional war. They may be asking for weapons soon. They may be asking for weapons. We've already donated some, however, earlier this year, we used to have an ammunition stockpile in Israel, the United States did. It belonged to us, but it was there potentially in case

of a problem in the region. And that artillery stockpile was basically taken and given to Ukraine. And remember, we ran out of the key type of ammunition in the Ukraine war, which is 155 millimeter artillery shells. That's why we gave them cluster bombs. So the US is already dangerously low on ammunition, and that's before we get potentially another war or another front in this larger global configuration that's happening. Another country's war. And to be clear, we're not at war,

but we have been asked to donate weapons to Ukraine and we've been asked to donate weapons. I think Israel has asked for weapons. I don't know if they formally asked, but we are obviously going to find it. I think there's a bill making its way through right now that's going to give some aid to military assistance to Israel. By the way, we have. Israel also is a major builder of weapons too. I mean, their drone technology is incredibly refined and they sell weapons to Russia. Oh, yes. technology is incredibly refined and they sell weapons to Russia. Oh, yes.

Israel is nowhere near the Ukraine situation. Ukraine is 100 percent dependent on the United States for its military and for its economy. Israel has a vibrant military and economy without the United States. But the United States does make long-term security guarantees to Israel not to fight its wars. There's no mutual defense treaty. However, we do agree to provide them with weapons in the event of a war. So we do have obligations, like longstanding obligations to them. This is an ally we have for 75 years.

However, our stockpiles are dangerously depleted now because of the Ukraine war. And on top of that, our procurement system is hopelessly broken. So in a world of rising multi-pilarity, where there are other great powers now in the system, where there are going to be more and more global threats, I don't think we have a chance of maintaining our global position and supporting our allies unless we fix this. I mean, making artillery shells at 10 times more than what it cost Russia. That's ridiculous. It's Silicon Valley.

We have now the funding of military startups and there's a whole new class of warfare, supersonic drones. Cointra is the only advantage we have. It's the only advantage we have. That's happened, right? I mean, this is one of the great things. I mean, I understand Palmer. It's not a huge fan of questions. And if it's not just the only advantage we have, it's the only advantage we have. And it happens, right? I mean, this is one of the great things. I mean, I understand Palmer, it's not a huge fan of mine, but I'm a huge fan of the work he's doing

and other entrepreneurs are doing to make new weapons to keep us competitive because you could be sure China's making them. And so I think it's absolutely fantastic. I thought it was always very weird that Google, speaking of work, Madrasas, like Google, we were for Google employees were refusing to provide services, like even basic cloud hosting

services to the military. That, to benefit from democracy and living in America, while then not supporting the military, just seemed like the ultimate luxury belief to use Rob's term from the all-enzyme chmothia or thoughts? What does it take, guys, to, for this fever to break, for all of these people to realize that that level of corruption is not sustainable,

that these ways of thinking are not sustainable, that it's not a path to peace and prosperity, that we actually want excellence in society. We want people to be outliers. We want the whole of humanity to move forward, and that's not going to happen when we move necessarily as one blob, but a few people need to sort of clear the brush and lead the way and the rest of us will come in and fill it in behind them. I think the vague is the manifestation of it.

I'll be totally honest. I think the reason he is going up in the polls and the reason People are drawn to him is because he's smart and he's exceptional and He represents one of the great things about America is that there's people who want to win and they're smart and actually Represent excellence, right? He represents those. I think that's why people are drawn to him and I think people are tired of And in a different way, they're complex. They're kind And I think people are tired of, and in a way, they're in a natural complex, they're tired of corruption,

they're tired of geriatric, 80 year old politicians. We need young, successful people to take leadership positions. And by the way, I really agree with what you're saying. I think that there's like, excellence can show itself in different forms. I think why Obama was so profound, and Joe Rogan said this was,

he was such a statesman, he was the best of us, but he demonstrated excellence in being composed and measured and thoughtful and strategic. He was just so excellent. The Clinton as well. Clinton as well. Clinton was incredibly steeped in policy. He was excellent. He was intellectually

a massive outlier. Obama is an intellectual outlier. Vivek is an intellectual outlier. Let's get these people to change and run our system of government. Please, I think we're soaking in it. Yeah, we need smarter and more capable people. I mean, you look at Biden, and he gave that speech in support of Israel. I mean, a lot of the words were right, but he was like slurring his way through it. It certainly did not inspire, not confidence. It was his best speech, and it was concerning the fact that he's clearly incognitive decline. You can see it in his ability to or it.

And, you know, it was his best speech. And it was also troubling for me as somebody who voted for him to watch him slur his words or just not, it was clear he wasn't all there. And you know, like, geez, what are we showing to the world if this is the guy who's running the country? And if we reelect him, now we're saying, Hey, we want to have an 84 year old running the country who's not all there and is in cognitive decline. Let the guy retire. Let him spend time with his grandkids. I think it's more people who are willing to vote for not for what they want, but to prevent something else. I think that that's of course.

That's what's so tragic about how we're thinking as a country right now. Yeah, and just to dish it out equally, I mean, I saw Trump give a recent speech where look, he's nowhere near the cognitive decline of Biden. I think he's still compessmentous, but he's not as sharp as he used to be either. I mean, listen, I think America's basic situation, and this has really been reaffirmed over the past week is that we're no longer in unipolarity anymore.

We're no longer the sole superpower. Yeah, not for some time. China has now a superpower. They're probably the low cost manufacturer of the world. So when we talk about being able to make things like armaments and artillery shells and weapons, they have the ability to reproduce us. That is very scary. There are other great powers in the system now. Russia has proven over the last five months through his victory and discounted offensive that it is a power to be reckoned with. We cannot disregard their concerns anymore. And

not only does America need, I think, top flight leaders, like intellectually, who are at the top of their game, but we also need new thinking. We need to be able to sidestep challenges and conflicts as opposed to walking into every single trap, the way that Lindsey Graham wants us to. Again, I'll go back on the Ukraine war.

I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion off the table. And whether you believe that or not, it was criminal not to try. If it was a 5% chance, it was worth trying. So, you're not in our situation. We're already mired in the Ukraine Proxy War. Now Israel's on the brink. We need smarter people at smart thinking in Washington.

We are no longer the only superpower. We're gonna have a really tough time in a multipolar world. If we do not look for ways to de-escalate conflict when we can. Or putting a psych conflict, why are we not building deep ties with as many countries as possible,

deep cultural ties, deep economic ties, deep diplomatic ties? Every economic ties, deep diplomatic ties, every time we are in dialogue with a country and we're building a relationship with that country, that means free people of the world are winning. And every time we isolate a country, that does not go well for us. You're right, we're saying, actually half the world, that's another big part of this problem. Yeah.

And so, you know, the normalization of relationships and the deepening of relationships, that is the high order bit. And you need somebody in office who can do that. And, you know, if you look at how the, you know, the hawks and the GOP or the hawks in the Democratic Party think, they think that we have to be at war with everybody. They think we have to isolate everybody. You know, the fact that Trump went and that famous moment where he walked over in the DMZ in North Korea and was talking to Kim Jong-un.

That moment, you see on Kim Jong-un's face, we can put it in here. He is so happy to be recognized. Now listen, I understand. He has a shock on his face. Like, I can't believe this is happening. The same way he did when Dennis Rodman came over. No, it's like a fan meeting Taylor Swift.

If you look at those videos and you compare it to this, it's the same. And culture is our export. And I know the same about Jason is soft. Simplistic. It can't all be hard power because other countries have it too now. So we have to work on our soft power, but you're not going to enhance American soft power with all this Beligerent rhetoric. Really, this omnidirectional belligerence that's coming out of Washington.

And this is why I think the smart thing for Blinken to do or the Biden administration is, yes, you reaffirm that you stand with Israel in the face of this and speakable atrocity at the same time. And you don't have to do this right now because it is a little bit tough to do it right now. But that's a hundred hostage. You have to reaffirm your support for the two-state solution. Absolutely. I think the United States is always supported. And by the way, I think Tony's done a really good job.

But again, at the end of the day, Tony works for President Biden. And it's like, Biden hasn't been nearly as definitive as he could have been. And Tony's had to clean it up. So one example of this is like in the Wall Street Journal, they immediately on Sunday, that was where we went to blaming Iran, right? And then both the Israeli military intelligence and American intelligence, they had to do an entire press circuit to try to disarm this in a way that was not seen in a long time. And you have to ask yourself, why was that even happening?

And it's like, well, whatever special interests wanted to get that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was able to do it. But it has dangerous implications. And then what you need is a really strong leader that can step up and say, this is false, this is not happening. This is what we need. You needed an Obama in that situation. And I think, this is false, this is not happening, this is what we need. You needed an Obama in that situation. And I think that this is sort of... For Clinton, yeah. Or Clinton, Reagan.

And I think that this is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves, okay, who is the most dynamic, excellent candidate that can give us this? And be open-minded and not make this line about Republican versus Democrat right now because the world is getting super complicated. We need someone hyper-hyper excellent and intellectually competent. Well, I will say this for Trump is that he's the only president in recent memory who didn't give us something new wars. Best quality. he's the only president recent memory who didn't give us any new wars best quality yeah i think he has a i have a lot of despite despite all of his issues i think he has a unique

ability to project strength to the american public while not being one of these super hawks he's actually i say relatively dumbish he he actually walked through his secret plan he's he said i can't remember word this clip but he said whenever he met with these folks, he basically left a 10% chance that he would nuke him. That's what he said. And it turned out that that 10% was just enough for everybody to stay in life. It was just enough for me. I think the US already has enough deterrence. I think we've maxed out on deterrence.

I think the thing that was smart about Trump was that he was willing to do business. Yes. He was willing to negotiate and he didn't feel the need to make these moral condemnations all the time. He was willing to meet with Kim Jong-un. He was willing to meet with Putin and Seashing Ping and he avoided criticizing them personally. He didn't call them dictators. He talked about how smart they are. It's the art of the deal, right? I mean, at the end of the day, he's looking to do business. And we need a little bit more of that. And I think this is why Jared Kushner was successful is he went in there with the mindset

of a businessman. How do we find something that's beneficial to both sides? Totally right. I think that when Trump was elected, I was told that it was the end of the world, and that's what I thought. And I'd already underwritten him as an F, okay? And then four years into the presidency, he was probably like a C in my mind. And then as I get a little bit of distance away, I realized, no, hold on a second. This guy was like a BB plus, like he was pretty good. realized no hold on a second. This guy was like a BB plus like he was pretty good. And unfortunately, the few things that if he if he could have just pushed through would have really saved America,

the biggest one being these hundred year bonds, it would have kept America from getting to the press, the fiscal ruin. And we'd be in a highly different situation. And I'm not sure we could have ever given him credit for it. But the further and further I get away from him and the less emotional I am, he did a pretty good job. He was a pretty good president. Don't forget that he tried to overturn the old one and still, the old one. I voted for Hillary Clinton.

I voted for Joe Biden, but this is the honest assessment. The guy did for the things that he was supposed to do, a good job. And for where every other president found a way to frankly make our situation a little bit worse, specifically around wars, he did not do that. And that is a huge accomplishment that I think needs to be acknowledged. And he would have ripped up the Constitution and taken the presidency and stolen it.

So just give that a mind as well. Less we get him. That's why he's not an A. He's a B. B. Plus. Okay. Jason, you have to admit, if it weren't for the black swan of COVID, he would have been reelected in a landslide landslide. It's quite possible he would have been reelected. Yeah. I mean, I and also, yeah, by the way, I mean, this rate, the way things are going in this country right now,

both economically and internationally, he's going to waltzent the White House, he's going to spend all of his time in the next year and in the court houses battling all of these lawsuits, the law fair against him. He's not going to be able to campaign and it won't even matter because people are going to be so done with this. And nobody wants him as president again. So I think that's that nobody wants that everybody wants new choices. Sorry, everybody. If you do not want to hear us talk about complex issues in the world, you can unsubscribe from the pod.

We're going to be here every week having hard discussions, listening to each other and learning together. You don't have to agree with any one of us, but we are very happy to have the difficult conversations and learn every week here. one of us, but we are very happy to have the difficult conversations and learn every week here. And yeah, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends of those impacted by this heinous terrorist attack. And I don't know if anybody has any other closing remarks here, but obviously we're

heartbroken. And we hope that peace prevails and that the hostages are released as quickly as possible. Well said. All right, everybody, this is episode 149 of the All in Podcast. Next week we'll talk about all the different topics, but for this week, we're gonna let it sit where it is right now.

See you next time, bye bye. but for this week, we're gonna let it sit where it is right now. See you next time, bye-bye.