All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - ICE Raids, LA Riots, Strong Economic Data, Politicized Fed, Iran War with Tucker Carlson

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

**NOTE: This episode was recorded on Thursday, before the events in the Middle East. All-In will be back to cover this situation next week. (0:00) The Besties welcome Tucker Carlson! (4:25) ICE raids, LA riots, immigration debate (46:08) Strong macro data: inflation, tariff revenue, GDP, jobs (1:14:00) Big, Beautiful Bill update: State of the bill, Senate math, how Trump should handle dissent in Congress (1:29:15) War with Iran? Follow Tucker: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://x.com/opensourcezone/status/1932911958254366989 https://x.com/opensourcezone/status/1932632620140990635 https://x.com/opensourcezone/status/1932563726583882126 https://x.com/opensourcezone/status/1932633885822591032 https://x.com/opensourcezone/status/1932861766456738083 https://x.com/iapolls2022/status/1932476702644387955 https://x.com/iapolls2022/status/1933156707275874743 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/06/09/lapd_chief_we_are_overwhelmed_by_riots_no_limit_to_what_theyre_doing_to_our_officers.html https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB994028904620983237 https://nypost.com/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-migrants-sent-to-cape-cod-mass-calls-national-guard https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1931896196836081975 https://nypost.com/2023/08/19/biden-sells-border-wall-parts-to-thwart-gop-push-to-use-them https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/politics/fetterman-la-protests-anarchy.html https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tariff-revenue-may-2079077 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/11/heres-the-inflation-breakdown-for-may-2025-in-one-chart.html https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow https://x.com/eliant_capital/status/1932886788030541850 https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/climate/world-bank-nuclear-power-funding-ban.html https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/1932933894317162546 https://www.jointheresponsibleparty.com/p/coming-soon https://trumpcard.gov

Can I ask a question about the nicotine pouches? Yes. Does it melt in your mouth or do you have to spit it out later? You can spit it out, you can swallow it or you just savor it. I mean, you throw it in like you would a dip of tobacco. Okay. But you just let it sit there and then it suffuses your nervous system with life-giving nicotine. And it really does feel like the hand of God is massaging you.

But does it feel like the high of smoking a cigarette? It's simultaneously, if you can imagine the Zen paradox, higher alertness accompanied by deep relaxation. Wow. So you really are, no, no, it's a Zen experience. You're like cat-like in your readiness, but you're fully. And how long does it last? I always have one going sometimes if things are,

you know, if I need it, I'll put another one in. So I've got 18 milligrams of nicotine, but that gives me an unfair advantage. You're banging 18 milligrams? Woo, that's impressive. I don't like to because it, everybody else kind of recedes into the background and I become this kind of colossus

when I do that and I feel guilty about it. Hubris is inevitable at that point. So I usually keep it to one. I mean, I could use a new addiction. Oh yes. What's the gateway drug level? What would you prescribe? This sits between caffeine and cocaine.

We sell a three milligram, but you know, there's a transition like all great addictions. Like it's not instanti- you do vomit at first, but then your body acclimates. It's kind of like heroin in that way, you know, like when you get ozempic. You just, you got to power through, Hiawaska, you heat twice and then you're addicted. And then enlightenment. Love, Tucker. and then you're addicted. And then enlightenment. All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world after Tucker

Carlson's amazing podcast. That's right. Tucker is back here on the All In podcast with Chamath Paliyanapatiya, your chairman dictator and the czar, David Sachs, not from the White House. He's from the suite, but he's here back on the program looking great. Look at the collar. Brioni. I ordered three or four Brioni's after last week show Guys, I did I'm getting in the brony. Well, I have the all-in expense account now. What'd you call it? Brony Brioni He'll be paying for it over 72 months The layaway use a firm or Klarna Hey Yeah. Wait for that. Hey, Tucker, last time you were here, you famously, famously, gosh, it's been a year

of feedback on your last performance. Thank you for coming back. We got a lot of crazy feedback from the private equity housewives, but I got more feedback. I bet you did. They love me. Yeah, but you know what? You're in deep. You're in deep because I am here in LA and the Los Angeles

studio wives group is really, really pissed off at you because they feel that they're the problem. They feel they're a much bigger problem than private equity housewives. So Hollywood studio heads wives versus private equity wives. I know some of them and they're absolutely a bigger problem, but there are fewer of them. God, it's kind of hard to get critical mass. Yeah, exactly. They're a smaller threat.

They're kind of an elite unit. They're like Delta Force. They have less money too. They don't get as much in the divorce as these private equity wives. Got it. So they, they're coming in like a SWAT team. If you want to send them in to deal

with a very specific issue, great, but they're not going to cause as much bedlam globally as the private. They cause a lot of misery though. As one Mackenzie Bezos. Exactly. All right, listen, let's get a plug in here. All in summit fourth year. Tucker's coming this year, I hope 7th to 9th in Los Angeles the goal have the world's most important conversations yada yada yada blah blah blah apply for a ticket

all in dot com slash yada yada yada or all in dot com slash summit to apply for a ticket freeberg is out this week so Tucker is here and my lord what going on in the news let's start with Tucker is here and my Lord, what going on in the news? Let's start with the immigration protests slash riots slash ice actions in Los Angeles. I'm actually here. Last Friday, protests broke out after ICE raided Home Depot, a fashion wholesaler. In total, 44 people were arrested by ICE, 10 times as many, 400 and counting from the protests. They even ran into ICE, that is, ran into a strawberry field in Oxnard to just randomly pick people up, it seems.

At least a half dozen Waymos were vandalized and burned, 20 plus businesses looted, and Waymo narrowed their area, and it's spiked to 30 minute wait times. So that's a first world problem. Rioters throwing bricks, Molotov cocktails, shooting fireworks at war enforcement, completely unacceptable. Two men were charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at officers. Trump deployed the National Guard, 2001st, then 4000 apparently. And apparently there's a battalion of Marines here 700 of them. Karen Bass instituted a curfew downtown LA 8pm to 6am. And prosecutors federal prosecutors that is are

trying to identify hundreds of people. Newsom, Bass denounced the raids obviously, and they're blaming Trump for escalating the situation. Trump and members of the White House responded by calling out California's weak leadership. And now we have protests popping up everywhere else in New York, Chicago, Austin, DC, Tucker, you grew up in Southern California, I think you did. Yeah, LA and La Jolla. I mean, are these riots more or less than a Lakers championship? How concerning are they to you?

Who's to blame? Well, as measured by violence, they're less profound than what happened in 2020 after George Floyd died. They're way less dangerous than say the Watts riot or the Rodney King riots in LA, but they're much more profound. I mean, it really does. There's certainly a bigger

deal than anything that happened in Fort Sumter, for sure, which kicked off the bloodiest war in American history. The federal government has as a core duty, the right and responsibility to enforce immigration law and police the borders. That's what the government is. That's what the federal government is really. And so if you can test that, it is like a threat to disunion fundamentally. I mean, I think there's a lot at stake. And we reached this point because a series of paradoxically weak federal governments allowed sanctuary cities to continue literally for decades, each one its own form of insurrection against the central government. And maybe, maybe you don't believe that the federal government has a right to pass laws restricting immigration. It's not in charge

of the integrity of the borders. You know, that that's a kind of philosophical or constitutional case I guess you could make. But most people accept that those are federal duties. And once you accept that you can't allow states or municipalities to flout the law any more than you could allow central high school in Little Rock to keep black students out or whatever. I mean, certainly federal troops have been called in for much less. And I think the longer this continues, the greater the threat of disunion, the greater the threat of reaching a point where you can't drive from New York to LA. We take a lot for granted in the country and the main thing we take for granted, I think, is freedom of movement between states. But you could easily imagine that ending, like soon, in the same way that you can't

drive from, not because I've tried, from São Paulo to Rio and Brazil, pretty first world country, it's too dangerous to do that. You could easily see that happening here. So I think once the Trump administration commits to putting down the riots riots to enforcing federal law by force, it kind of can't back away from that. Like, you know, and that raises the question of who's funding these, etc., etc. And I think it's a really interesting question we should find out. I don't think the only arrest should be on the scene. I do think the drug cartels are involved flexing their authority in California.

They have a lot of control in California, as I'm sure you know, et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line question is, does the federal government have a right to enforce federal immigration law? Yes, and if states are out of compliance with that, it doesn't have any option but to force the issue. Tramatha, when you see this amount of paramilitary, literal military coming in, the dragging of, you know, handymen

from Home Depot, as opposed to the strategic way this started, which was, hey, we're going to go after the felons, we're going after the gang members, the really bad folks. And then this time, now it seems like, hey, we're just going to roll up to a farm, we're going to roll up to a Home Depot, just grab everybody. We'll figure it out later. If they're, you know, papers check out or not. Are you in favor of the, hey, all 20 million got to go? I'll call that the Steve Bannon position. Or are you into in the 5% of alien illegal aliens who are criminals, they need to go, but maybe a path to citizenship for the other 19 million?

I think the president was asked a version of that question today, Jason, and I think what he said is there are people that have worked, for example, on farms for 20 to 25 years, or they work in the leisure industry, and he said, we have to take a common sense approach to those people. Because if you do take those people, then it's creating a vacuum where these jobs could get filled by folks that are essentially criminals or other things. So,

I believe that that's a reasonable starting point. What I would say is, where do we go? There are seven and a half legal, not illegal, legal immigrants in the United States waiting for their adjustment of status. Those are doctors, those are lawyers, those are scientists, those are family members of existing American citizens. There's an entire body of people that I think we have to recognize that have been waiting in line. And their first act in America was a legal action to come in and contribute. And every time we start this conversation, we go to the plight of people whose fundamental first action was an illegal action without understanding that there has to be actually a more balanced

approach. So yes, I think the president is right. Common sense for the folks that have now been here for a very long time, but we have to prioritize the people that started by saying we're gonna wait in line properly and then there's people in the middle. I think that there needs to be a way to give those folks a chance to get their affairs in order, but they should be playing by the rules. And I think it's unfair to reward not playing by the rules. Okay. So some middle ground between the extreme, all 20 million got to go and the... One example that I saw online, Jason, was give folks a stipend and a year.

Yes. The stipend has been out there for a while, right? To get their affairs in order and then to go- Kaizen said that, right? Kaizen said that, exactly. And I think Kaizen's clip is actually the most, the most rational for the middle chunk. But I would really focus on these legal folks and say, what are we doing about those folks whose first action

was to raise their hand, stand in line and say, I want to contribute by the rules that America sets out. So reward them and then punish the illegal folks coming in. Adjudicate everybody else. Or adjudicate everybody else. Love it. Okay, Sax, we're going to play two clips here to level this up and we can kind of look at

this in a multi-decade way. Here's Reagan on immigration and then followed by Clinton. It is bold men and women yearning for freedom and opportunity who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over. They believe in the American dream and over and over, they make it come true for themselves, for their children and for others.

But their greatest contribution is more than economic because they understand in a special way how glorious it is to be an American. They renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest nation in the world, the last best hope of man on earth. All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record

number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. Okay, Sax, my question for you is, on a party basis, this seems to have flipped.

We talked about this before on the program. Republicans wanted immigration, NAFTA, legal, even maybe an open border where workers could go freely back and forth from Mexico, kind of like the EU. And Clinton wanted to deport folks so that Americans could have more jobs and that wages would go up. Now it seems to have flipped. Obviously, you're inside the administration, disclaimer, disclaimer, whatever you, however you want to just claim this, what's in the best interest of all Americans going forward, because we have an interesting wrinkle here, which I'm sure you've been thinking about as the AI czar, which is jobs are going away

in a lot of key facts, key areas where robotics and AI are coming in. So you have to contend with what the American people want and AI and job destruction or displacement that can be caused by it. So what are your thoughts generally and obviously you work in the administration so I want to give you that chance to explain personal versus administration. Well my reaction is that you're doing everything possible to avoid the fact that LA is on fire right now and law enforcement is being assaulted by rioters who look like an invading army.

They're riding under a foreign flag. Yeah, you're showing clips of Reagan and Clinton. What the hell does this have to do with the fact that there are riots in LA right now? Oh, I was trying to level- This is the issue at hand. Oh, I was trying to level up the conversation to talk about at hand. Oh, I was trying to level up the conversation to talk about the big picture of immigration,

but if we want to get down to law. No, you're changing the conversation. I think that I think. No, no, I'm trying to expand. The issue of. Hold on, hold on, hold on. If you're gonna accuse me personally of like having a scale here,

I'm happy to discuss law enforcement, January 6th or this one. I believe you should not beat up cops. I come from a family of cops. You know that. We've been friends for over 20 years. My family is cop. My family is firefighter.

We don't approve of throwing moral tough cocktails at cops, period, full stop. I am insulted if you even insinuate that. I didn't insinuate that, but we have not discussed the issue at hand, which is the fact that LA is burning right now. By the way, if you don't want to get deported, try not rioting under a foreign flag.

I mean, it's just a stupid way to advocate for your position if that's what it is. But that's the topic of the week right now. I don't know why you're trying to up-level this and talk about what Reagan thought 40 years ago. This is not relevant to what's happening in the news today. Now, you asked what is the quote unquote American position if there is one, I can give you some polling on that.

So first of all, voters approve of the ICE raids in Los Angeles by 55 to 37, that's plus 18. Voters support the administration's effort to deport illegal immigrants by 58, 37, that's plus 21. They approve of Trump deploying the National Guard by 20 points, 59.39. Only 36% say the administration's gone too far, while 55% say it's about right or too little, so plus 19. And even the liberal Quinnipiac poll found that Democrats' approval numbers at a new all-time low of minus 49 Whereas Trump is now up to plus six in morning consult and plus eight in Rasmussen

So I think the American people approve of what the administration is doing here and just a fact check One thing you said in the introduction you mentioned this fashion wholesaler that along with Home Depot You made it sound like these raids were just happening willy-nilly, like there's some big roundup where they were just busting into places and seeing who's illegal, checking people's papers. That's not what happened. This fashion wholesaler is a money laundering operation for the Mexican cartels. This is according to Tom Homan. And many employees there are involved in very serious crimes, gang and violence murder child rape and there were warrants

For their arrest so the way that this whole thing started is ice was serving criminal warrants That state and local authorities have no right to resist. That's how this started. It wasn't random roundups Okay, I was just there's reporting that Stephen Miller specifically said just he was disappointed with the number of people being roundup and deported. And he said, just go to a farm, just go to Home Depot. So that's not that's the reporting. OK, well, I've not been able to confirm that reporting. I don't personally don't believe it. I think that what Tom Homan said is that they were serving criminal warrants.

That's how this started. Okay. Now, I think that part of the reason why the Democrats are so unpopular here is they're basically perceived as excusing the lawlessness by saying that it's only happening because the Trump administration is daring to enforce the law. And so once again, they're siding with looters, arsonists, and violent criminals, just like in 2020. Who's siding with looters, arsonists, and violent criminals just like in 2020. And you see-

Who's siding with them? This is Democrats. Okay, because the Democrats, they said no violence. So that was many times Gavin Newsom said no violence, Karen Bass said no violence. They've been tweeting that constantly. They also, okay, great. They also are saying that this is all Trump's fault, that Trump started this. Bass and Newsom said that the National Guard wasn't needed because LAPD had everything under control.

But LAPD was at first told to stay out of the protests. And when the violence erupted and that forced them to step in, they were, according to their own chief of police, Jim McDonald, quickly overwhelmed. So this is McDonald. He said, quote, we are overwhelmed. Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial grade fireworks at our officers that can kill you. They'll take backpacks filled with cinder blocks

and hammers, break the blocks, and pass the piece around to throw it at officers and cars, even at other people. So according to their own chief of police, they needed the help from the National Guard. So that's the real issue here, is that Bass and Newsom had this policy of doing nothing and then engaging in denialism, pretending like there wasn't a problem. And then when the problem got too big to ignore, they pretend like it's Trump's fault for causing it.

Tucker, what's your thoughts on should the Trump administration have had such a show of force if the reports are true that they're randomly going to a Home Depot, if that is true, is that the right approach right now or is it a little too provocative and they should do this more strategically in your personal opinion? Well, considering that we have American troops in over 100 bases around the world in countries most Americans can't identify, it's a little weird to be shocked when on that rare occasion they're used to keep the second biggest city in the country from burning down It seems like a but the point of having a military is to keep

Foreigners from burning your cities and these are foreigners as David said they're foreign nationals Committing crimes beneath a foreign flag so that if there was ever a time to use the US military It's then and as noted earlier you can't allow the states to be flagrantly out of compliance with federal immigration law. And I have to say the core question for me as an American is really a fairness question. So the idea that, you know, people are breaking the law, but it's cool because they're doing essential services, like, well, you know, I pay a lot in taxes, maybe I pay 80% and that feels like enough to me. And hey man, do you really have a right to collect the last 20%?

I mean, isn't 80% enough? Like back off. I don't have the right to say that as an American citizen to an IRS agent. I went up in jail if I do that, or if I break any law, by the way. It's a rule of law, critically important. Well, no, but not only that, it's a double standard.

And I live in a place where a lot of the populations of SIFS on the on food banks and where there are very few jobs and it really is one of those places that NAFTA destroyed, whose economy NAFTA destroyed. And to see in the place where I live, immigrants get preference on housing, on jobs, which is actually true. And I know that liberals watch and be like, that's not really true. It is true, actually.

And I wonder, because the real number is not 20 million, it's closer to 50 million. I think that's true. Illegals in the United States, clearly they can't all be deported by ICE. But I also think if you have a system that hands out meaningful grants in effect, cell phones, travel vouchers, housing vouchers, free education, food stamps,

to people who are here legally or who are here legally as refugees, you are going to draw the world's poor. And I think it's fair to ask, do we want that? How do we benefit from that? And are we giving more to foreigners than we're giving to our own citizens? And the answer is yes.

And like, how dare you at a certain point? Like you get a revolution if you keep doing that. That's too much. It's too offensive. Got it. So I think we all agree. No violence on cops, shut the southern border and giving a crazy amount of- Jake, do you think the National Guard should never have been brought in? You like me to ask questions, don't you? Do you think the National Guard should be brought in?

Yes or no? If the local police can't handle what's going on, of course they should be brought in. Sure. I believe that during- Bass and Newsom are questioning that decision. You asked me the question. I course they should be brought in. Sure. I believe that. Bass and Newsom are questioning that decision. You asked me the question. I believe they should have been brought in for January 6 for BLM or for the LA riots if the local police can't contain them. 100% I believe the National Guard should have been brought in for January 6 when they were beating cops. I believe they should be brought in now if cops are being beaten. And I believe they should have been brought in during BLM when cops were being beaten. I am pro-cop. I come from a family of cops. So you can ask me the question.

So Newsom and Bass were out of line when they say that the National Guard should not have been brought in. I think, well, number one, I think they should call the National Guard if they can't control it. I'm not on the ground. But that's their criticism of Trump is that he called in the National Guard. You agree that that was necessary. It's obviously necessary. Just look at the ground. But that's their criticism of Trump is that he called in the National Guard. You agree that that was necessary. It's obviously necessary. Just look at the TV. The city's still on fire. The cops are completely overwhelmed.

By the way, I find it comical that when 50... Well, you're not letting me finish the sentence. Hold on. Let me finish this one point. Then you can speak. Yeah. Thank you. I find it comical that the Massachusetts governor called up the National Guard when DeSantis

sent... Remember when he sent the 50 migrants over to Martha's Vineyard? And they all freaked out and they literally called the National Guard in because 50 migrants all of a sudden had been flown into Martha's Vineyard. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Okay, but you can have thousands of- Was that to process them or because there was riots?

Well, that was when DeSantis was making a point about- Okay, but that was to process them. They weren't rioting on Martha's Vineyard. These were just- Nonetheless, the National Guard was brought in. And you can have thousands of people, though, rioting in LA, but somehow the National Guard shouldn't be brought in. We're in agreement. So you can try to force me to disagree with you, but I'm in agreement. Anytime the cops are overwhelmed, I think the National Guard should be brought in. Period. Full stop. So we're in agreement on that. What I'm trying to get to is Tucker, if you believe there's 50 million people, let's say the numbers 30

million, we split the difference between the two 35 million, whatever it is. My question for you, how many should be deported by ice at $20,000 a person, which is the estimate that you know, both sides seem to agree is what it's going to cost. Should we deport a million? Should we deport 10 million? And then how, Tucker Carlson, would you deport them? Well, I think the goal has to be full compliance with the law for everybody within our borders, citizen or foreign-born illegal refugee, green card holder. If you're in the United States, you obey our laws. And if you don't, we make a good faith effort

to enforce them despite how powerful the political blocks that you're going to be. So you're all 50 million. So, well, by definition or else, why wouldn't I apply that same standard to my taxes, right? So, but how do you do it? So no path to citizenship, yeah, let's get into that. Right, so well, that's a hostage situation.

It's like, we've got 50 million here already. We've lied about the number for 30 years now. Wow, it's 50 million or 35 million. We need them. Everyone gets a path to citizenship. You know, that's a kind of crime, actually. But the first step, and the phrase has been devalued, but self-deportation, if you have a system where people come to the United States to make their own way and take advantage of the freedoms offered and the economy, they're allowed to participate in the economy, then I think you could have a system where people really admire immigrants in the way that they did when I was growing up and that I still do in some ways.

I mean, some of my favorite people are immigrants and they all tell the same story, came here with nothing, built this great life, but you make everybody cynical and you sort of destroy the idea of the virtue of immigration when you hand people stuff and give them preference when they arrive. And we don't talk enough about what that actually looks like. We spend a lot more than 20 grand a person right now in subsidies to people who aren't even allowed to be here. Tucker's totally right. They also pay into social security too, right? To the tune of 100 billion years.

Oh, okay. No, no, that's just what was reported by our government. If we want to get conspiracy corner, that's not true. I think those are fake. I think those are fake numbers. Look, does anybody really believe that 50 million illegals is a net benefit to the US economy?

Are you serious? Have you been to our cities? No, of course not. It's not. I actually mean probably a large number of them are in that benefit because they're working in jobs that Americans don't want to take and we're at 4% unemployment. So who's going to take all those jobs if they get deported, Tucker? But weren't you just saying that we're on the cusp of a labor revolution where some

20% of American jobs are going away in two years? Well, that could be. Yeah. So that's the nuance in this discussion is five years ago, we might be actually dealing with labor disruption. Well, it's not just nuance. It's like a brick wall we're about to hit at high speed. And I don't understand having accustomed an entire generation of tens of millions of immigrants to government handouts, what the social fabric is going to look like when that stops. Yeah. Can I say something? Yeah, please.

I think Tucker's saying something really important, which I agree with. What should immigration be in a highly developed nation like the United States? And my perspective is you have to come and say, well, what is the goal? I think the goal should be to maintain supremacy. The United States is the most vibrant economy in the world. It's the most important military power in the world. It's the most important military power in the world. It's the most technically advanced entity in the world. If we do not focus on maintaining our supremacy, I don't think any American wants to go through the process of going from first to not first. And if you look back in history at all of the other countries that have

had to go through that transition, that is where revolutions and chaos happen. So we should avoid that. So where does immigration play a role? It needs to play a role, first and foremost, in technical, military, and economic supremacy. The problem, as Tucker says, is when you have five or six times the number of illegal immigrants as legal immigrants, all of a sudden the idea of using immigration as a cream-skimming technique to reinforce the most capable people in the world to come here goes away because you can't have that conversation. We have people languishing for 10, 15, 20 years on visas, okay, their kids age out, they all go back to India and

other places. Why? Because we can't focus on that conversation, Jason, because we're focused on how do we give amnesty to folks whose initial action was breaking the law. Absolutely correct. And this is where the whole immigration conversation devolves. We are missing the bigger picture. And you need to deal, one second, you need to deal with the illegal immigration thing in an extremely foundational way where you can defend the decision. You started illegally and you have to now go and conform to the law. Which is where I'm trying to steer this discussion. Number one, we all agree on closing the border.

It seems like there's a breaking consensus here. Tucker wants to eventually deport everybody. You want to do something in the middle like Trump. Sax, I'm not sure what your personal position is or if you want to give it. Do you feel we should try to have a path to deport as many of these 20, 30 million as possible? Or do you believe we should have a path

towards citizenship for them? What's your personal? Or do you believe we should have a path towards citizenship for them? What's your personal belief or do you want to knock it off? I remember when you asked that question to now Vice President JD Vance at All in Summit, and he said that you basically address that problem the same way that you eat a sandwich, which is one bite at a time. So that makes sense to me. If there's 20 million illegals, you start with the top million who are violent criminals and gang members, and you deport those.

And that is what ICE was doing. They were serving criminal warrants. And then after you successfully do that, then you see where you're at, and you can address the next bite of the sandwich. That makes sense to me. Now look, I think that we're not really addressing a really core part of the issue here,

which is for a couple of decades now, conservatives were demonized, and Tucker in particular, I think you were demonized, for warning about the policies that have created the mess that everyone can see on TV right now. And that mess is we have a large, unassimilated population of military-age males who are basically rioting right now under a foreign flag as if they were foreign invaders. We basically have a lot of separatist movement in the United States. That's what it looks like to me. And I remember when Tucker was warning about the policies that might create this on his show for years, you know virtually alone

Probably alone on Fox News, you know, you were called a racist. This was great replacement theory blah blah blah How can everyone not look at what's happening on TV right now and say Tucker was right? you know that was really dumb and look I say this as Someone from a family. I'm one of the people that Ronald Reagan was talking about, you know, my family and I came over here were immigrants. But we came over here to assimilate, you know, we believe in the melting pot. That's all good. You might get canceled for bringing the melting pot.

That's good. I mean, I think that was the classic American model. Melting pot is totally good. You speak the language. I'm just saying you can get canceled for even invoking it. That's what you're supposed to do. Like, why would anybody, I came here because I wanted to be American and everything that American men, if I was bigger, I would have played football.

You know, like there's all these things that I would have done to assimilate more and more. I believe in the culture of the United States. That's why people should come. Right. So we came here, we assimilated, you know, high skill immigrants, didn't have a lot, but had good education and willing to assimilate. That's very different than what you're seeing on TV right now. And again, if the people on TV just wanted to protest immigration policy in the way that you're talking about, I mean, you're describing it in this like very nice, genteel way, they would be peacefully protesting under an American flag saying we want to be here.

We're willing to contribute. I think the issue was- That's not what's happening. You can see that, right? I mean, they look like foreign invaders. I would say- By the way, this is like the dumbest PR that, if this debate is really about immigration,

this is like the dumbest way for them to present their side of the argument. Yeah, you can- Because who wants to keep in this country a large, unassimilated population that is proud to march, not just march, but actually protest and riot and burn and assault under the flag of another nation?

I would say dollars to doughnuts. That's an intolerable situation. The majority of the people who are doing the looting and rioting are not actually immigrants, because they have the ability to be deported. The people who are doing that are the bad actors that we saw during BLM, the bad actors that we saw, you know, in LA when the Lakers win. I've lived here for a decade and I am here right now. I can tell you it's contained and those 80 90% of those people are not the immigrants.

Immigrants are hiding right now for fear of being deported. But let's sort of talk about the path. But where do you guys want to go with it here? I mean, I can give you my opinion if you want. Tucker, I mean, like, I don't know. I mean, I want to speak for you. I mean, I do think that like Tucker should feel vindicated on this issue for speaking about it for so many years. You feel vindicated? I mean, I never doubted it. I grew up, I was born in California in 1969 and my family got there in 1850. I have some sense of what the state was like, certainly through my childhood, and it was idyllic and it's not. The rich areas are great, Bel Air is great, La Jolla is still great, I think. I mean, Mount Shasta is great, lots of great places in California. But fundamentally, the state is Islam.

It's a Latin American country and immigration did that. And I say that as someone who is pretty pro immigrant, actually, my best friend's an immigrant. I mean, I've always admired like immigrants. I'm hardly anti-immigrant or anti-immigration, but the way we did it destroyed the state. Immigration is what made California into Islam. And there's kind of no way around that. And so that's not an argument against all immigration. I'm not making that argument. I don't feel that way. But it's an argument against what we did in California. And rather

than learn from that, we're doing it in every other state. And I don't know why. And I think, you know, if the other side had a reasonable argument, they would proffer it. But instead, they call you names and try to turn you into some kind of thought criminal or whatever. I don't care, obviously, but it's a sort of measure of how little they have to say in response. They're not actually trying to make the country better. That's kind of the main thing. I have always thought immigrants are great because they didn't make the country better, right? I mean, I think that's demonstrable, but the people pushing our current policies don't have that as a goal.

This is a kind of punishment for something. And a lot of it's ethnic actually. It's a kind of attack on the people who were born here. I don't know where that hostility comes from. You can feel it though. And I think it's foolish to deny it. That is a motive. They're trying to hurt the people who live here.

And again, I live in a place currently where I see that happening and it drives foolish to deny it. That is a motive. They're trying to hurt the people who live here. And again, I live in a place currently where I see that happening and it drives me totally bonkers. And the last thing I'll say is, if you think the way we once did immigration was good and a lot of immigrants are awesome people, and I do think that, this is discrediting all immigration.

100%. And it's turning people into pretty radical immigration restrictionists who are like, look, I don't want any more immigrants. Yeah. You know, that's inevitable, but it's sad to see it. By the way, what you're saying is the most true

for immigrants, legal immigrants look at illegal immigration even more negatively than native born Americans. Which makes sense, right? I mean, they waited in line and other people didn't. You would be really upset if somebody cut the line. Jason, what do you think? Obviously, there's a lot of emotion around this issue. I think numbers help.

And I always look to see what is the consensus amongst the group here and amongst Americans. Everybody wants the border closed, Trump won on that. So, okay, we all agree the border should be closed. I think 80, 90 Trump won on that. So okay, we all agree the border should be closed. I think 80 90% consensus in that 80 90% Americans think we should deport violent criminals. Okay, we got consensus there. So then what's left is what do we do with high skilled recruiting, I like to use the word recruiting. And we had that discussion with President Trump here, he promised to put a green card on every degree. I agree

with him on that. I think we should be recruiting at least a million or 2 million amazing people per year, one to 2 million amazing people. We should match that to what the needs of the country are. If we need energy, if we need doctors, we should match that. Where we probably disagree is, I think, the Democrats and the Republicans share equally in this issue that was created that Tucker pointed out. Yes, there are 40 3050 who knows what the exact number is that's part of the problem. Here's a chart we made. This just shows you under each of the last, you know, 50 almost 50 years of presidents, how many people net immigrated to the country. And as you can see, you know, it's been pretty consistent, you know, around 3 million per and Clinton and Bush had a ton of immigration, both Bush's were paid for a lot of their donations came from corporates who wanted free migration.

There's no creative. Hold on. Let me finish my thought. There's an outlier here, Jason, though. Oh, well, yeah, Biden is the huge outlier. We all agree on that. Biden let it go YOLO. And I understand people have a lot of resentment for that and rightfully so. And if you bring in 10 million people, you're going to get a lot of bad guys. But you put this all together. My belief is that this is a country of immigrants and that this country does great when hardworking immigrants assimilate.

I think we should take this raw firepower when hardworking immigrants assimilate. I think we should take this raw firepower of these incredible immigrants who have been here for decades. If you've been here for 10 or 20 decades, pay a fine, pay some extra taxes and we give these people a path to citizenship and we recruit the top one to two million people. That's my belief. You do that before or after the people that have been waiting in line get a fishing? I think I would start before or after. I think you have to do it before because we created this. And I know that that's not something that people want to take ownership of. But America created

the situation. Bush created it, Reagan created Clinton. America, yes, the country that we live in, our government allowed millions of people here, and the Republicans did this specifically in order to get cheap labor. Okay. Let me ask you. Let me be very specific. So we are responsible for what we did with these people. Let's just say that you're an international... Not for the last eight years. Let's just say you're an international mathematics Olympiad winner. You get recruited to come to the United States on a student visa. You crush it. Let's say you go to

MIT and then you go and do a PhD at Caltech and then you get recruited on an OPT visa by Google and you're just crushing it. And you're saying that that person... Oh no, sorry. That's a more subtle question. That person we should recruit, as I said very clearly, recruit the top one to two million. They are currently waiting in line Jason. Yes. So let's just say saying yes, let them in. And yes, a path to who do you prioritize, you have one at the same time. No, no, you can't. Of course you can. We could have one group recruiting a million to 2 million highly skilled labor, highly skilled individuals of the type

you're describing while having a another group, we can do two things at the same time, Shamoff. Absolutely, you can. You're giving a false question here. Then we take the person who's been here for 20 years as a dishwasher, as a nanny, who has been an amazing citizen who has been paying into Social Security, give them a path, a compassionate path. And we as America and Americans should take ownership of the fact that we allowed this and the people who allowed it were Republicans and Democrats. We allowed these people to come in to work in our restaurants and fields, which is what

Trump said today. Trump is in agreement with me. That's not what he said. He said something. He said he wants to not have those people leave. It's just amazing to me that on this podcast during the Biden years, you were echoing this party line that the videos of, you know, mass migration, caravans streaming across the border, going through the holes in the wall, you said those were videos cherry picked by Fox News.

You echoed the party line that there was no problem. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. Oh, no, no, no. And all of a sudden you're saying it was a bipartisan problem. No, no, no. Fact check. I said we are, we don't know because we don't have the metrics and no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I've always been empirical about it and I've also been compassionate about it. The whole like both sides are to blame thing kind of ignores the fact that you had the Trump revolution in 2016. There is some truth to the idea that both parties neglected the problem. If you go back far enough, like, you know, Tucker will remember this when Bob Bartley

was the editor of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, they actually supported a constitutional amendment in favor of open borders. I mean, they really believed in this whole idea of free trade, open borders, free flow of capital and labor. Okay. But that was a long time ago. And with the rise of Trump in 2015, 2016, it became a different party. Trump got elected on building a wall.

And what happened? The Democrats fought him tooth and nail. They tied him up in litigation. He was able to build hundreds of miles of wall, but there were uncompleted parts of it. And when Biden came into office, there were large pieces of the wall that were still on the ground just waiting to be erected.

And Biden sold them off as scrap metal for two cents on the dollar. Do you remember this? And then Biden and the Democrats proceeded. I have been in favor of leave immigration and closing the border. So please don't frame it as I'm against that. Okay, just forget about you. You said Democrats and Republicans are at blame for this.

Not in the last eight years. No. Trump won on a wall. Biden is the outlier. Yeah. Biden opened up the border and Democrats supported him in that. And they thwarted every Republican attempt to close the border.

And they lost. For three years, hold on a second, for three years, they gaslit and pretended it wasn't a problem. Then when it became undeniable, they claimed that Biden didn't have the executive authority so they would need a new act of Congress. That was also total nonsense. As Trump said in the State of the Union, you didn't need a new law, you just need a new president. Look, if you want to go back 20 or 30 years, you can blame both parties. If you want to talk about the last eight years, there's only one party to blame. One party,

the Democrats. And that is why you look at the polling right now, Democrats, their party, all time low, it is, let's get the exact number negative 49 21% approve the Democrats 70% disapprove because they know that Democrats cause this problem. And Democrats are the ones denying they're the ones basically making excuses for the disorder and the chaos right now. You are Democrat, the only Democrat who's actually talking sense right now is the one with a head injury. Ironically, Fetterman is a lone

voice here. I want to pull up this quote. Don't make some noise. No, I mean, it's kind of funny. It's, oh, dude. No, I mean, it's amazing. No, I mean, it's kind of sad, but look, I'm agreeing with Fetterman. Fetterman says- With the cameo that he hit his head? I don't know what it is about Democrats. I don't know what it is about Democrats. It takes a head injury for them to talk sense. Okay. It's like a bullwar thing. Anyway, Fetterman said, my party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings and assaulting law enforcement. Yes. Are you talking about January 6th? I Unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations of immigration, but this is not that.

This is anarchy and true chaos. So kudos to Federman, but he's the only Democrat out there. He's a lone voice condemning the violence. And Tucker's our guest. I'm going to give Tucker the last word on this topic before we go on to the next one. And you are 100% correct. Biden, 10 million net immigrants and Trump 3 million, which sounds like a lot, but is actually the lowest in like 10

administrations, the lowest since Reagan. Tucker, you're our guest, wrap us up here. What should we think? I think that we should measure the health of a country at least in part by the condition of its cities, including the cleanliness of its cities. And by that measure, our country is collapsing. Our cities are a disaster and the richest part of the richest cities are fine and the rest of them are just absolutely awful.

And so I think that has gotta be just job one. If you wanna renew the United States, you have to make sure its population centers are clean, safe, orderly, but especially clean. There's something really important. And I know that the left just instinctively discounts that, but cleanliness is next to godliness and your city is a reflection of your self-respect, how you feel about your nation, your patriotism. And if you allow it to become like Paris or New York, covered in graffiti and filth and random people from other countries selling fruit on the street

and begging and having sex in ATM vestibules and just like the whole midtown Manhattan, central Paris experience, like that's a sign your civilization is going under. I think it's really, really important. And I do think, you know, that decay is not entirely caused by mass immigration, but mass immigration has made it much worse. And I do think, you know, that decay is not entirely caused by mass immigration, but mass immigration has made it much worse. And I just know that from walking around,

because I like to walk around cities. I think it's a national emergency and the riots are just the most florid expression of that. You know, burning car is something you can't ignore, but we do ignore the condition of Sixth Avenue at 49th Street. Like how can a self or the condition of 6th Avenue at 49th Street? Like how can a self or the condition of Penn Station or you know, of our airports, like how can we allow that? So if I were in charge, I mean, I would make, you go to Dubai or Doha or Moscow or some place that has a sense of itself. When we got so bad in Tokyo, remember two years ago

when we were talking about this exact issue, it just. Well, but it how creative it is. Tokyo is the most radicalizing experience for an American. Everyone who goes there is like, I can't even deal with this. I'm so angry that we've put up with what we're putting up with. I had to talk you up a ledge. You did. Let's not overthink it, I guess is what I'm saying.

It's not even about the Constitution. I like the city of Benjamin. It's about litter. Yeah. Tucker gets the last word on that. And now David Sachs gets to take his incredible victory lap. Economic data has been objectively pretty great the last two weeks. Tariff revenue

spiked 23 billion in May 2x from February. So there we go, we see the impact of a little bit of extra income. Inflation continues to come down and what we had 2.4% across the board, there's some pluses and minuses in there, we'll get into it later. GDP. Okay, this is the leading GDP prediction model from the Atlanta Fed could be as high as 3.8% again, this is a prediction for Q2 Q2 is obviously not over but this would be a pretty big jump over q1

Despite all this positive data the deficit remains the sticky issue some of our friends Might have some issue with this and been vocal about it in may the u.s. Had 371 billion in revenue With 687 billion in spend not good big high burn rate 316 billion dollar deficit we paid $90 billion in May, an interest on the debt, almost up to 100 billion a month. And if there's a nice Sanki chart, which we all like, we could double click on that if anybody finds something interesting in here, here's your deficit tracker. What I'll highlight here for you is those first two lines 2020 and 2021. You got to kind of give a mulligan there for the COVID years. And purple 2025, we are a bit ahead of the last couple of years where 13 are spending now. And obviously the debt

services are a big part of this 13% above 2024 20% above 2023 and 65% above 2022. The balance sheet of the United States is really bad right now. Sax, I'm going to start with you. This obviously has been an emotional issue. And oh, apology, Chamath, I just noticed I forgot to hit publish on last week's episode. But let's let that go. It won't happen again. Sax, what are your thoughts here? Well, I mean, you'll recall that back in early April, Jim Cramer predicted we'd see a black Monday in response to Trump's tariffs.

And that's all the proofs that we should have known that we were about to get a bunch of good economic news. You're a reverse's Cramer. And it wasn't just Jim Cramer. I mean, Larry Summers was on our pod with that big debate that we did, and he was predicting doom. And what we're seeing now is good economic news is breaking out all over. So Q2 GDP on track for 3.8%, according to the Atlanta Fed.

The May jobs report was above expected, plus 139,000. CPI, inflation down to 2.4%. So growth is back, inflation is low. And what you saw over the last few months was the elites in both parties, I'll give you that, they were scaremongering on tariffs and predicting doom and they've been proven to be out of touch with popular sentiment and reality. I mean, you don't want to spike the football too soon, but things look really good right now.

Yeah. And I mean, in fairness, when the Trump shock and awe with the tariffs, he came out pretty strongly, Zach, you will admit, and the market did tank massively for about 30 days. Tucker, what's your take on the economy today? Does debt, does it concern you? And I'm wondering what, because there seems to be a little bit of a rift inside of the Republican Party on the BBB, not build back better, but the big, beautiful bill. What's Tucker Carlson's take? I'm curious on out of control spending, the deficit, and this bill in relation to that. Well, I mean, I have the world's most predictable views.

I believe in physics. So an unpayable debt tanks your country at a certain point. That was pre-existing, it's accelerated as you noted. I don't know a single person who's got a any kind of plan to fix it. I think we're just gonna ride it into whatever the point of oblivion is. But I would just say on tariffs, you know, my, you've got the reverse Kramer. David was saying that's his measure of economic forecasting. For me, it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, whatever they're for is poison, generally speaking, and anything that drives them insane is a virtue.

And I just can't imagine a policy more perfectly designed to just make them like explode than Trump's tariff announcement. And I, and I have to say, I mean, I've been kind of pretty conventional Republican my entire life. I remember when I decided the Iraq War was a bad idea that felt like an outlaw, you know, idea. When did you get to that point? What led you to the point of breaking?

Well I went to Iraq in December of 2003 to see where a friend of mine had been killed. And so I was there right after the invasion and I just immediately recognized this is not we're not a good colonial power because we won't admit that we are. We won't admit that we have an empire, therefore we can't administer it in a rational way. Just the obvious stuff. But anyway, the point is the last remaining kind of unexamined orthodoxy in my head was free trade and I happened to be just by chance at the White House the day of that announcement. And I remember thinking, man, if this works, what a caper.

I don't know if it's going to work or not. What is the best case scenario in your mind of this tariff negotiation? Obviously there have been multiple rounds of it. I'm not going to use the term taco, but it does seem like we've shifted from shock and awe to maybe like, kind of bore. It's kind of boring. Like, and that does seem to be Trump's approach, right? He in negotiations, big bang, and then fall back to a reasonable position. So I think we're in the reasonable position phase. What does success look like? Yeah, I mean, God's willing, I hope, I pray that's what we're in the reasonable position phase. Yeah. What does success look like? I mean, God willing, I hope, I pray

that's what we're seeing on Iran right now. But you're absolutely right. I mean, that's sort of the nature of negotiations, of course. And there is nothing in writing with China, so far as I know. And it'll be reassuring, I think, when there is. But in general, we haven't seen what Jim Cramer and Larry Summers predicted.

And that itself is amazing. It's amazing. And it causes you, someone like me is sort of on the sidelines of the economic debate, but watching carefully, it does make you sort of wonder, like, what other absurd mid-century orthodoxies about economics have I internalized that just aren't true?

Right? Because that was the biggest of all. Tariffs are, they caused the Great Depression. We know that. And so what if like you can have a kind of mixed approach with some trade barriers that are tailored to your benefit and that sort of works in a longitudinal way. If that's true, holy smokes.

And it looks like it might be true. So I'm just- Well, it's been true for the other side, right? They have been doing that exact policy. Well, exactly, no, it's totally right. It's true for China and South Korea and Australia. Why wouldn't it been true for the other side, right? They have been doing that exact policy. Well, exactly. No, that's totally right. So if it's true for China and South Korea and Australia, why wouldn't it be true for us?

It seems like we're the sucker at the poker table. Well, I think you're right. I guess what I'm saying, I'm making a pretty pedestrian point, but I can't get past it, which is this is so far from what the Republican Party stood for 10 years ago, which was neoconservative foreign policy, free trade, open borders as you noted, maybe a little more than 10 years ago, but 15 years ago. This is the mirror image of it and it just blows my mind and it's such a better version. It's such a more reality-based, flexible, thoughtful version than we had before. Most Republicans in the Senate

are not even aware this is happening. They are the most recalcitrant people in the world, also the dumbest. So most of them don't accept any of this, but just as an observer, I'm thrilled to see it. All right, Chamath, your thoughts? Can I get, can I? Oh yeah, sure, you can go.

No, no, no, you go. I mean, I know you like to go right after Tucker. It's very engaging for you. Well, no, he got me can go on, Sacks. No, no, no, you go. I mean, I know you like to go right after Tucker. It's very engaging for you. Well, no, he got me thinking about these unexamined. This is his dream. When you're on, he cannot, in the group chat, he's so excited, Tucker, when you're coming on. Oh, come on!

It's 48 hours of Sacks being like, when is the pod coming? Is Tucker really coming? That's how I feel about David Sacks. Trust me, if you had a camera at my dinner table, you would hear something similar. Oh boy, here we go. Go ahead, Sacks.

It's great to have someone to the right of me on the podcast for once, you know? It's not an easy task. We invited Alex Jones and Steve Babb and they have been responding. Tucker got me thinking about these unexamined orthodoxies. And that is a good way of putting it. I mean, you know, because I studied economics in college and I learned that the Smoot-Hawley

tariff caused a great depression. And it's like, in hindsight, you're like, how can that even be true? Like a tariff is basically a tax rate on foreign goods. And you're saying that, you know, increasing taxes on foreign goods, all of a sudden cause a great depression. It doesn't make any sense when you actually like to think about it. Now what caused great depression? Well, I would say when thousands of banks went under and there's no FDIC and everyone

just got wiped out by that and it's a systemic risk. So like one bank failure leads to the next one. That's so obviously what caused the Great Depression is nobody had any money left. They all got wiped out when all the banks went under at the same time. Right? So- Well, and then how do we take something that happened in the twenties and thirties and apply it to a much more dynamic world like today? It doesn't make much sense.

Well, I think what happened is we had all these post-war, meaning post-World War II understandings that kind of got hardwired into the consciousness of our intellectuals. And if you think about the era right after World War II, the US was like the last great power standing. It was us and the Soviet Union, but they kind of had a different system. They were not part of the, let's say the free world. They're part of this communist block.

So in terms of the quote unquote free world, we were the only country that was relatively undamaged and we had this giant manufacturing base. And so, yeah, obviously that the fewer trade barriers existed across the world, the better it was for the United States because it was our goods and our factories that basically were able to sell all over the world. And so we proceeded to define a world order in which we just kicked down every single barrier to free trade because that's what benefited us. Now I don't know that that means that that situation always benefits us in all times

and all places. I mean the big issue we have right now is that you've got a rising China and they have become the skill producer in the world for all sorts of goods. They now have this giant industrial base that we seem to have exported to them. And again, it was, and we exported a lot of that because of this free trade ideology that got so entrenched in our thinking that we just stopped thinking about under what circumstances this might not continue to be good for us. And so we've ended up becoming dependent on them for all sorts of goods that we now realize are highly strategic. And we're trying to figure out, well, how do we onshore these things? Because it seems really dangerous now for us to be single threaded on, you know, potentially adversarial power for rare earths or rare earths, medicine, chips and pharmaceuticals and all these things.

But, you know, our intellectual class never seems to revisit any of its assumptions. They just kind of have these dogmas. Chamath building on Sachs's sort of codification of truths, heuristics, and not getting questioned, how much of it is we just codify, hey, trade good, you know, open borders, good, free trade, good, and how much of it's just incentives like I mean, rich people paying off politicians to have more free trade, independent of party seems to be what's happened over the last 10 20 years, it just made more sense to put workers and to send jobs to the lowest cost place to increase profits for American companies,

which let's face it, although it may have hollowed out our manufacturing and created this weakness in the four or five areas you point out every week that we need to reinforce quite eloquently, the real issue is we did that because we wanted to make money. We wanted to have the most highly profitable companies and we did succeed, but maybe we succeeded too much and our companies benefited more than the middle class. You got Josh Hawley out there saying, hey, we should go to $15 minimum wage federally from this. The wrong people won. In the early 2000s, I think that there was a war of ideas and that there was a group of people that advocated for this reckless form of free trade and this globalist view like every country is going to meld into one

mega monolith country organization that'll get governed out of New York by the United Nations and its slave organizations. And that worldview won, but it was the wrong worldview. And it didn't acknowledge that we have competing philosophies, competing priorities, competing ideals of what the future looks like. And I think that we need to go back and reset all of those things. If you just take where we are, if you can just put the Sankey diagram back up, there's a couple things that are really worth noting that people need to fundamentally understand. I said a couple weeks ago that I thought the GDP print was going to come in hot. I think everybody now is sort of where I am.

So let me give you the next thing that I think- Can I just ask you though, why is it hot? Do you have a thesis on why GDP spikes so much? Or potentially did, that's obviously a forecast. I don't know the puts and takes yet. And I think when we see the print, we have, I have a way of forecasting this stuff, which is a bunch of signals that my team and also many macro teams all around the world, the bond vigilantes to the hedge fund guys, they all feed it to me. And what I was noticing was that we were going to come in,

I said in the low threes. And I think, you know, if Atlanta Fed is right, I don't think they are, but I think it's going to be in the low to mid threes, it's going to be meaningfully greater than what people are expecting. So let me just give you my next prediction. My next prediction are two really important things. What this Sankey diagram looks at, which is a snapshot of the balance sheet and the health of the United States in May, misses, in my opinion, two very important things that have to change. The first, and this is a positive for the Trump administration and

the United States economy is we are run rating 300 to $400 billion above forecast in terms of our receipts, meaning the revenues that we will take in. And you get to that number by looking at the last three months of tariffs and forecasting forward, assuming a reasonable balance here. So back to Tucker's point, yeah, we all thought that this was like a boogeyman, that you weren't allowed to touch it, and that if you touch the stove, you were going to get burned. The mathematical reality is that this is actually going to work out much better for us than we anticipated. And it's going to be somewhere in the range of 300 to $400 billion of extra revenue per year. That's a huge win.

So why is that important? That then sets up this next cataclysmic thing that we're going to see over the next 60 days, which is what does Jerome Powell do? If Jerome Powell stays politicized, his incentive will be to keep interest rates where they are. If Jerome Powell looks at the conditions on the ground, especially when you start to see inflation stay in the low twos and approach 2.0, the real thing that he's going to be under tremendous pressure to justify is why are you not cutting? And just to give you a sense of how important that is, if we cut by 100 basis points, that's another $300 billion. Now in that case,

that's not money that we get in, but it's money we don't have to spend. So if you add these two things together, we are in the next 60 days, going to have to re-forecast the American balance sheet where this is, or we're actually going to be able to positively forecast an extra 600 billion, 300 billion of incremental revenue, and 300 billion of savings. Jason, if that happens, watch out. What does that mean? Watch out. It means that every single risk dollar is going to run to America. Every single one. Forget Japan, forget Europe. There is no place to put your money except the United States. So I think that we have to figure out how to get Jerome Powell on the side of America

versus on the side of what could happen politically. Because I think that there's probably a version in his head that says, my gosh, if I do this, it helps Trump. And if I don't do it, it hurts Trump. Practically that is true. But the reality is the conditions on the ground justify cutting. Okay. So you're predicting this 300 billion, two different ways in and out, 50 billion a month. It starts cutting this deficit pretty significantly.

Your claim, I just want to be clear here, is that Powell is playing politics, not working towards the dual mandate, which is very clear, controlled unemployment at the 2.0 rate and full employment. Your belief is that he's playing politics? Yes. I believe that these decisions are political. I think that the Federal Reserve has veered away from actually controlling the money supply in the best long-term interests of the United States and more towards what benefits the short term and this ties back to how I started this. What is Powell's motivation? Somewhere in the 2000s, Jason, we transitioned

away from having the strategic 20 year conversation about what's in the best interests of America. And instead, we started to have these unipolar globalist conversations. And the people that got into these centers of power, the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve, the central banks around the world, they all worked towards an agenda that is now being undone. I'll give you an example of where this is now being undone. Just today, the World Bank undid a rule around being able to fund nuclear energy. And you would have thought, well, hold on a second, the World Bank steps in to backstop all these developing countries when they're in the middle of all this nonsense, right?

And if you think about a country that's developing, what is the single biggest input to that country? Energy. And you think for the last 40 years of multi-trillion dollar bailouts, we never demanded abundant clean energy in the developing world? Of course not, because it was a political decision. Okay. Tucker, do you believe the Fed is playing politics here? It's kind of hard to believe if Powell was placed by Trump and Biden, there was consensus there and his mandate is to get to 2.0 and full employment.

He's kind of trending towards that. He's made a couple of cuts. The markets predict he is going to make a cut here's polymarket for September showing 80% chance of a cut. Let's take a look at that's changed since the last time. So in September, no okay, well, this has changed three, two. Alright, so here's your polymarket Fed decision in September, no change 53%, 25, bips 43, 50 bips, 3.8. So you put those two together, you're roughly at 47% chance of a cut, 53% chance of no cut. So 50, 50 coin toss. Do you think the Fed is playing politics? Do I think the Fed chairman who lives in Chevy Chase is a political actor? Are you serious?

What's his motivation then? What's his end game? Why does he not want to cut rates? Or why would he not want to cut rates? Does he want to stick it to Trump or something? Well, of course. I mean, he lives in a world in which there is no one who doesn't want to stick it to Trump.

I mean, I know the zip code that he lives in very, very well. I know the club he goes to. I know the world that. No, no, I would... I'm joking. Of course not. And I'm not mad at him. I'm just saying I know the world well. And of course, no one in that world wants to be seen helping Trump. And Trump has attacked him, by the way, in public. So I don't think it helps either. That's pretty, pretty...

I think the structure of the Fed governance is very weird. I think, I'm not exactly sure what the Fed is. I've asked this question to a lot of economists, including Larry Summers, never really gotten a straight answer. Like, how is it that this is beyond political control? I mean, I don't know, for democracy, shouldn't voters have some say in how this is administered? But they don't. I mean, there's no direct mechanism for voters to be heard in this the single most important institution the American economy how does that which is a crypto government organization it's you know administering US dollars I don't I just don't understand it I think it's very the idea that you're gonna depoliticize it by making its

leadership immune from the control of elected officials strikes me as the kind of like mid-century dumbness that got us NATO and a lot of other bad institutions. The exact opposite thing happened. The guys just don't get it. The exact opposite thing happened. Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

The exact opposite thing. Thank you. The paradox, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Sax, what would the motivation of the Fed be here? I've asked this two times, can't seem to get an answer. What's the motivation of the Fed?

Is it to stick it to Trump? Sorry, hold on, Jason. Jason, let me give you another data point. Okay. Now let's assume, let's just scenario play. Yes, please. What happens if Powell rips in a hundred basis point cut right now? I'll tell you. So one part which is mathematical is the interest on the debt goes down. We save 300 billion, but there's something else that happens, which is the Fed does control the front end of the curve,

meaning how do people borrow money for small amounts of time, from one day to about two years? If you make that cheaper, we know it's a test that's true as time, what happens is people borrow more money. That fuels more growth. That will end up in GDP. So what actually happens if you cut rates 100

basis points is not just the 300, but you can get this reflexive positivity in the economy. What that allows you to do is even if that causes a little bit more inflation, you're actually growing yourself out of this whole thing. So then you ask yourself, well, hold on a second, if the numerical justification is there to lower rates, and it has all of these other positive externalities for the United States economy, why don't I do it? The only answer is political. I wonder if his- Let me explain, Paul. Hold on, let me just teach you. Let me teach you. Okay, so we're at 2.6% on inflation. He wants to get it down to 2.

Feels like we're in striking distance. Maybe you could maybe give us a theory here, Sachs, of what would the political motivation be? I find it hard to believe that he's trying to sink Trump for some reason as opposed to maybe just being scared of inflation popping up above that 3x handle, which then triggers them to raise rates. So what's your theory here? If you're a pal, it's better to take the risk of being Paul Volcker than Arthur Burns. I mean, that's basically what it comes down to.

Unpack that for people who don't are. Well, because what happened is Arthur Burns led inflation slip the leash in the 1970s, and he's remembered as a horrible Fed chair. And then Paul Volcker came in and jacked up rates to like, I think close to 20% and caused a vicious recession in 1982. But by 1983, the economy had bounced back and inflation basically was under control. And then the rate cutting cycle started and that rate cutting cycle went for like 25 years and then Reagan got reelected in 1984.

So you know, you'd rather be a Volcker than a Burns if you're a Fed chair. Now you raised the question is Powell political? Yeah, of course he is. If you go back to was it 2021, so the first summer of Biden's presidency, we got that shock 5.1% inflation print in May of 2021, if my memory is correct. What did the Biden administration do? They sent Janet Yellen out to say it was transitory. And Powell got on board with the whole transitory narrative.

Exactly. And as a result of that, he did not raise rates for six months. And worse than that, they continued QE. I think they bought like 180 billion of bonds in that time period. And that's what allowed inflation to get so out of control. Now, why is it that Powell did that? Because he wanted to get reconfirmed. And yes, he was nominated by Trump originally, but Biden renominated him. And he basically wanted the reappointment by Biden. He wanted to get confirmed.

And then the month after he got confirmed, all of a sudden he shifted gears and started raising rates again once he was safely ensconced in his office. So he did the right thing in terms of raising rates in the face of inflation once he was free from those political incentives. But for six months, he was intensely political

and that cost the United States dearly. Dearly. Dearly. So now, if you're a pal, you've got PTSD from that whole experience, and you're gonna err on the side of not letting inflation come back. I think with inflation down to 2.4%,

I think it is time to cut rates, but he's fearful because again, his incentives are to be a Volcker, not a Burns. Yeah, and want to read a good book, Paul Volcker's keeping at it, great book about, has Reagan going to him and trying to get him to cut rates. So this is a reoccurring story just on. You know, if he had done the right thing

in the summer of 2021, we would never would have had that bubble at the end of 2021. Yeah. And that, that basically created a huge crash in 2022 and we could have avoided a good part of that if he had done the right thing, you know, like the Fed chair, it's not a hard job. Most of the time. I mean, these guys sit in their ivory tower and then once a quarter they come out and do this, you know, and basically testify and say a bunch of, you know, things that no one can understand. But like once in a while, you got to get the decision right. And he totally screwed it up

in that one time where he had to get it right. Yep. And I would say this could be one of those moments too, where I think he's being a little bit fearful. I think that there's a simpler explanation, quite honestly. Like if you look at Powell's history, he was nominated as a governor by Obama. Then Trump picked him out of the Fed to be chair, but then he was reappointed by Biden. If you look at the vice chair of the Fed, Phil Jefferson, he was appointed by Biden.

If you look at Michelle Bowman, who's the vice chair for supervision, she was appointed by Trump. Michael Barr, appointed by Biden. Lisa Cook, appointed by Biden. Adriana Kudrow, appointed by Biden. If you look at Michelle Bowman, who's the vice chair for supervision, she was appointed by Trump. Michael Barr, appointed by Biden. Lisa Cook, appointed by Biden. Adriana Kugler, appointed by Biden. Chris Waller, appointed by Trump. So I think the point is that there is a balance of power here, if you look at political affiliations that tend to favor a democratic view of the political landscape. And let's be honest, what benefits the Democrats more, a thriving economy and a shrinking deficit going into the midterms or the exact opposite?

The reason I'm bringing this up and I'm just harping on it is he's a Republican who Democrats have opposed. So I'm just trying to reconcile this grand conspiracy that he wants to sink Trump. I don't think it's a Republican. I think it's just a general decision. I think these guys move the dot plots and you can see it in the movement, okay? They're going away from reading the actual data and moving in concert with the data to giving themselves a window to let the data play itself out beyond a reasonable point. And my point is the beyond the reasonable point is the key part because we're talking about the data.

We're talking about the data. We're talking about the data. We're talking about the data. We're talking about the data. We're talking about the data. We're talking about the data to giving themselves a window to let the data play itself out beyond a reasonable point. And my point is the beyond the reasonable point is the key part because when you talk to the large, sophisticated pools of money, many of them are like, what is going on here? All right. Currently, the big, beautiful bill is in the Senate, passed the House by a one vote margin.

Trump said he wants the Senate to pass the bill by Independence Day, July 4th. Senate math, Republicans have a 53 to 47 majority, as you know, they can afford three no's on their side since Dems are united against the bill with 50 votes. J.D. Vance can break the tie, obviously. So it's easier if they can get to 51. Seven GOP senators are either no or maybe no. Three likely nos, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Rick Scott. Four maybe nos over the Medicaid cuts, Josh Hawley, Susan Collins,

Murkowski, Jim Justice. None of those senators have committed either way. And Republicans are now falling into three camps on BBB hard yes soft yes no until it's fixed fixed obviously Some friends of ours were a little upset about the BBB and We had a pretty chaotic week the last week and looks like the reconciliation is in your take on the last week and the reactions to the BBB and obviously you on and Trump's relationship Tucker coffin I the BBB and obviously, you want in Trump's relationship, Tucker Cawthon. I hate the whole thing. This is not how to legislate. You shouldn't have a bill this big. It's impossible to get your

mind around it. No one can read it. No one understands it. It favors professional staff over legislators. And it totally leaves the public out. It'll be a decade before anyone understands what it means. The lobbies love it. It's Washington at its ugliest. Not this specific bill though. It is an example of it, but just this is just not the way to do it. And it's not the way it has been done throughout American history.

I mean, there's no reason to aggregate it all together like this. It becomes totally unmanageable and totally undemocratic. So, you know, I mean, well, it's insane. It's totally insane. Do you, I mean, can you tell me what's in it? No. I mean, you know, like all of us know like 11 things we've read on Twitter or whatever, but like the truth is even the professional staff that wrote it couldn't,

if you had dinner with them over three hours Really give you a comprehensive sense of what's in it and remember when it passes and I think it likely will You know, it's it's the law That's by design in order to get it by design It's just well, I mean look it's it's, you know, it's just, it's just overload. You can't, I mean, every single part of this, this is the economy of the city that I've lived in my whole life. Every single part of this is there by design. It's been managed, it's been thought through, it's been written artfully. And by artfully, I mean, deceptively.

So you can't understand its purpose or its benefit and literally it is years before the ramifications become clear. And again, this is why we have committees, you know, committee masters a subject and then theoretically produces legislation that bears on that subject with, you know, knowledge and depth and hopefully wisdom. The Congress is not designed to pass legislation in this way. We've evolved to this. And I guess I would encourage the White House to try and blow that up. I think it'd be better for everybody if, you know, legislation was passed piecemeal, as it always has been. I think part of the problem is the leadership in the Congress, and nobody

wants to say it, is just embarrassing. It's just totally embarrassing. And I would say the conference isn't united either. I mean, this is part of the problem with Trump's agenda. It's the beauty of Trump's agenda, in my opinion, but it's, you know, it's so different from what your average 65-year-old Republican was raised believing. It's so different from what Fox News is telling you. It's the mirror image of what the Wall Street Journal editorial page is telling you. That there are just not that many members of the House or the Senate who are truly on board with Trump's message, even now. And of course, they kowtow to the man, but when it really comes down to it, they hate his stated agenda. And that's why-

And that stated agenda unpacked. What do they hate most? What they hate most is not even a close call. They hate his foreign policy views. They hate his foreign policy views. Because look, out of 535 members of the House and Senate, I would say 510 have given up on improving the United States through their jobs. Like they know they can't. It's like intractable. This is

their view. It's complex, it's boring, it's difficult, and it's super hard to solve. And the numbers in the House and Senate make it practically impossible to move the ball on whatever issue they care about or were elected on. And so they take all of that energy, and they apply it to making the rest of the world better fighting for democracy or you know know the the the grander the description? The the less accountability there is you know if we're just like fighting for Churchill against Hitler like it's always a win Because we don't know any of the details. It's a simpler. Yeah

It's a simpler cause for them to take on then looking at how exactly right and you would you like to see Trump do Tucker? What would Tucker Carlson advise if you were in the White House, which many people have requested that you do that if you were at the right hand of the father, what would you tell him to do? Understand the politician brain, which is reptilian by its nature, it responds only to pain, period, only to pain. So if you want a politician to do your bidding, it's a super simple conversation. Do what I ask or I will make sure you lose your job.

And by the way, Trump has the power to do that. Which is what Elon said on Twitter, just to put it out there. No, but it's true. And I do think if there's, you know, a number of criticisms of any living person, but one I would level at Trump is he is, he's nice. Like he likes to get along with people. He actually doesn't like to fight in person. That is true. He likes to get along with people. No one will believe that, but I've seen it a lot. And I think it's

tough for him to say, it's easy for him to, you know, go after a reptile like Mitch McConnell, like at a press conference, he'll make fun of cocaine Mitch or whatever. But to really go to McConnell and say, yeah, listen son, you know, this is gonna hurt in the following six ways unless you obey you little bitch, which is really what he ought to be saying. No, I mean it, I absolutely mean it. And be saying that to all of these guys. Tom Cotton, are you joking?

How does Tom Cotton ever say in anything? You know, and oh, you know, you're that chairman of the Intel Committee. I'm so impressed listen Tom Cotton You represent a state that likes me a lot more than you So if I find you undermining me yet again and Tom Cotton spends an awful lot of time undermining Trump like Tom Cotton hates Trump actually, of course But if I find you doing that I'm gonna take your Senate seat away seat away. And that's going to be really easy for me to do. And I really wish he would do that. It would only take one cycle to clear out, you know, to really get some discipline. Like the French in Algeria, you know, for the encouragement of the others.

The first guy goes out of the helicopter and then the second guy is super talkative. If you did that in the United States Senate, you would have a much more coherent party, I think. Okay. Like in about a cycle. A little more leadership, a little more stick than carrot. Who wants to go next? A lot of stick. A lot more stick. Okay. Here we go. Tucker says more stick. Sax, what you're feeling, obviously-

Are we still talking about the big, beautiful bill? What are we talking about? Yeah. Well, I mean, we're talking about it all. Everybody wants to hear about our takes on the kerfluffle between Yvonne and Trump, obviously, in relation to BBB. So let's just tackle it. Or you can pass on it. Yeah, let's, we got to put it out here. We're an hour into the episode. Let's just talk about it.

Let me speak to BBB for a second. So listen, if the question is whether I can defend a system that produces $2 trillion deficits every year, no whether I can defend a system that produces $2 trillion deficits every year, no, I can't. I can't even defend the Senate rules that require you to get 60 votes for some things and 50 votes for other things. I mean, it's all just seems kind of random

when you're an outsider. But those are the rules, is they've got these crazy bird rules. And once a year, you get to do this reconciliation bill where it only takes 50 votes instead of 60 votes to pass something, which means you can actually get something done without the Democrats, which is a rare opportunity. And you just have to basically come up with a nexus to a budgetary issue. And so that's what the BBB has done. And as a result of that conduit, I guess you could say,

it's a way for the president to ratify many of his most important campaign promises from the 2024 election. And so you've got the tax cut extension in here. You've got full funding of border security for four years. You've got no tax on tips. You've got drill baby drill. You've got the missile defense shield. So these are campaign promises that are important

to the president. It's kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to pass these things. I think that Republicans will be committing political suicide if they don't. I mean, the polling on this, I'll give you some numbers. So first of all, the bill itself is popular despite all the bashing of it. I think that- Popular with who? Well, this is a national poll by Signal, which actually has a bias in favor of Democrats by plus 2.1. So this is with the public who haven't read it? I know, believe it or not. So- What does that even mean? Is that support for a big, beautiful bill plus six, increased funding for border security plus 35.

That'll probably be even more now that what's going on in LA. Work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP plus 38. So despite the Democrats carping on that point, people really liked the idea of work requirements. And then permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts support plus 19. So these are very popular planks of the president's agenda.

It's the only chance we're going to have to pass this. Look, I said this three weeks ago on the pod last few episodes that I don't support the bill because it's perfect. I support it just pragmatically because it's better than the status quo. And my view is that we should take this now, we should get this done, and then come back for more later. And there should be a big fight over the budget at some point in the future, but this is not the right time to do it. We don't have the votes, we're not organized,

and it would compromise these other promises the president's made. And the time to really have that battle is at the beginning of the new fiscal year, which is October 1st. So we, at some point, do need to have a big fight over the budget. There does need to be resistance to the deficit. We can't continue in this current state forever, but I don't think that's the hill to die on right now.

Chamath, your thoughts on BBB and the kerfuffle, if you want to. Here's what I'll say. I was sad at the end of last week. One is my friend and the other is my president. And it seemed like a really profound friendship. And so I was bummed. Here's what I'll say this week, though, on much more positive note.

I saw Elon on Tuesday, and I got to spend a couple hours with him at Tesla. He let me audit a couple of meetings with him, actually. It's always fun. Yeah. Yeah, one was Dojo, and then right after that was the Optimus team. One thing I'll say is, I've said this before, but he attracts these incredible men and women to work for him.

They are inspiring, just sitting in a meeting and hearing it. What they're doing was amazing. And then second, to see Elon in action at scale in that way is like watching a maestro paint a masterpiece. It's really impressive. And then separately, I saw President Trump doing a couple of pressers, and he was in his zone of excellence. So it seems like they're gonna find some common ground here.

They are better together. And I'll just say, Elon, amazing, Tesla, incredible. And I would not be sleeping on this company is what I would say, Jason, what do you think? So we're not the main characters in this story, obviously. And when I saw what happened last week, obviously, this is one of my best friends for many decades. And given the popularity of this podcast, my decision was I don't want to insert myself into this, have my

quotes or my feelings about Trump about the bill get weaponized. And that's typically what happens when you have a friend who's the number one story in the world. And I'm not friends with Trump, but he is my president as well, by default. What benefit does it have to me to then speak about it and then have everybody weaponize it. So I know this is hard for the audience to reconcile. But sometimes it's better for me to just step back. That's why you don't see me commenting on Tesla or SpaceX publicly all the time, because people weaponize what I say against my friend. And I just

don't like that. And you know, it's happened in books, it's happens in news stories. So when Elon is doing something, and it's this intense, I like to just step back and maybe take a beat. That was my decision. That's why I didn't want to do a pod last week. Everybody else can speak for themselves. That's where I'm at. How do I feel about it? I think Trump is making a mistake with BBB. I think he should push back on it harder. I said that in a previous episode. And I think Elon's 100% correct about that.

I also think if either of these parties can't control spending, there needs to be like the North was that the Norquist you guys would know more about this, but Norquist pledge Tucker where you know, you agree to not increase taxes, I think we need something like that, where a reasonable party says, we should balance the budget, we have to control the deficit, there should be some pledge like that, that we force our elected officials on both sides of the aisle to take. And I'm going to start pursuing that myself personally, you can go to join the responsible party.com. And I'm just going to start an email newsletter and just talk about it. I think there needs to be a pledge that these politicians take to balance the budget and cut the deficit over some reasonable amount of time. But I wish them both the best. And

I'm glad that the two of them have reconciled because that's good for the country. We can't have these two giants at war, the greatest innovator in our country and a president who's got, you know, an agenda, which I agree with two thirds of I may not agree with how he's doing immigrating, but I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. And We can't have these two giants at war the greatest innovator in our country and a president who's got you know an agenda Which I agree with two-thirds of I may not agree with how he's doing immigration on the margins But I agree with everything else So I'm just rooting for the both of them because it's so important that for America that they get along great So in summary, you're not setting yourself, but you have a website

WWW. Ical.com. It accepts Apple pay. I'm not telling you to go to founder.university. It's $1 a month, but if you subscribe for a year, it's $6. You actually threw in a plug. I have an issue, I'm throwing a plug in. That was insane.

I don't care. Listen, also sign up, join theresponsibleparty.com. I'm going to start my own Norquist pledge, but also join Sachs. Insane. You're insane. I'd also like to plug Chamath's Substack. It's $1,000 a year to get his reports.

And you can, of course, buy David Sachs's tequilaallin.com. Bro, I've never plugged. Chucka, what plugs do you have? I've never plugged any of my shit. No plugs from Tucker. Tucker, what's in the merch store, Tucker? You've got to have something in the merch store.

Alp, America's greatest nicotine pouch. That's all I've got. Okay, here we go. Plugs essential. Fantastic. Breaking news here. Foreign policy looks like a major escalation with Iran. Could be happening, maybe.

On Wednesday it was reported some US personnel were being evacuated out of the Middle East. Partial evacuation of the Iraqi embassy. Okay. Oil prices move forward percent on the news. Later reported that Israel is prepared to launch an operation into Iran. US thinks Iran could retaliate on spaces in Iraq, which explains the evacuations. Trump was asked about the evacuation said the following, quote, they are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place. We'll see what happens. The classic Trump will see what happens. And then he added, they can being moved out because it could be a dangerous place. We'll see what happens. The classic Trump will see what happens. And then he added, they can't have a nuclear weapon. Very

simple. Okay. Polymarket odds are spiking on Israel action against Iran 50%. Oh boy. Tucker, the Is it up to us? Do we have the power? Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't think the Iranians want a nuclear weapon right now, judging by their actions. But could we prevent it is the question. And if so, how exactly, given that we just lost to Russia and the Houthis? I'm skeptical, but I'm amazed by how close we are to a military action against Iran. It's no defense of Iran. Of course, I'm not a Shiite for the record, but I think it comes with perils that people are not considering or willfully ignoring. And the main one is Iran is not Iraq or it's not Libya. It's not isolated. It's a central player in BRICS. 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China. It just

signed a defense agreement with Russia in January. So it's not, you know what I mean? It has backup, it has big allies that represent the majority of the world's population and the majority of the world's economy and landmass. So the potential for this to become something much, much bigger and unmanageable is real. It's there. Their conventional weapons are fearsome and could do great damage to our allies, to Israel and to American assets in that area and also to energy production in countries that we

rely on. So I think the downsides are really kind of overwhelming. I think a protracted, meaning anything over a day or two engagement with Iran would derail the Trump agenda and the presidency. And I think it could really sink this administration. So I pray this doesn't happen. By the way, I think the timetable is distorted. There is absolutely no reason. The president has said repeatedly, we will do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I think it's a completely reasonable goal. Nobody wants that. I certainly don't want that. And the Israelis don't want it, and the Gulf States don't want it. Nobody wants that. But it doesn't mean that it has to happen on Friday, actually. And there are other forces exerting pressure on the administration to get

this done quickly, even before Steve Wittkopf, God bless him, meets with his counterparts in Oman in a few days from now. So it's like, why in the world would you preempt a scheduled negotiation with airstrikes, which the United States would participate in? Do you think the US is driving this or Israel is driving this and we're just, you know, have information? Well, it's a combination of both. And by the way, Israel is a country with 9 million people in it. I mean, it's the Israeli government.

But there are also elements of the US government. The head of CENTCOM is in favor of this. There are a number of Republican senators who are in favor of this, who are lying. For example, here's one, I think, interesting point that's a statement of fact. There is no American intelligence, this is a statement of fact, that suggests no American intelligence, this is a statement of fact,

that suggests Iran is in the process of assembling a nuclear weapon or within months of doing so. There's none. And yet Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chairman of the Intel, Senate Intel Committee, is out there saying, you know, we know that they're doing so. Actually, you don't know that. That's not true. Whether he believes it or not, I can't, you know, I can't say, but that's, that's a lie. Our Intel does not say that. Period. So why lying because industrial military, industrial complex? Yeah, I mean, I think they're, they're a whole it's not, it's not as simple as Oh, BB wants it. I mean, I think this is a very complicated coalition of aligned interests. But whatever their motives, I don't even need to know their motives,

this is not a timetable that we need to adhere to. It's a completely artificial timetable. The president has done his best to resolve this diplomatically. That's clearly his stated preference. He said it a million times, and he's being bumrushed into making a very snap decision that could have bigger consequences than we're thinking through. So I'm very concerned about it. Shemaf, what's your thoughts here? Can Iran have a nuclear weapon

and should the United States participate in, if they do have one imminently, which is a big debate, obviously. Should we be involved in stopping them or should we be doing negotiations, soft power, et cetera? I think this is where I'm glad that it's President Trump in the seat. I think he's shown a consistent desire

to off ramp all of these conflicts. And if he and Witkoff can hopefully hold the line with Bibi and everybody else, I think we're way, way, way better off. But you see this like every time we're on the verge of victory, somebody in the military industrial complex invents some, you know, escalation of something so that we can just go to war. The answer always seems to be let's go to war or let's support a war or let's enable a war. And the bulwark to that has been the president. If we go to war, Tucker's right, this totally screws everything up.

I mean, you could see oil double, double. What happens to the economy of the world, of world GDP, of everything, of inflation? If you have oil at $100 a barrel, $112 a barrel, it's not good. So you have to wonder, like, why would people want this escalation? Who wants this escalation? And you see that it's deeply beneficial for America to avoid anything calamitous happening here. So I hope we find an off ramp and I hope that the president gets his way. One thing people should know about Iran is that there is a massive demographic switch happening here. You can see a chart.

Is this from your paid newsletter site? This is, yeah, this is from shamoff.substack.com, thousand dollars a year, $700 a chart. This is this from your paid newsletter site. This is Yeah, this is from chamath.substack.com $1,000 a year $700 a month you get to have lunch with him twice a year. Is this is this from choose your responsible party.org? No, this is from founder.university applications coming in for around the world. Here we go. Take, take your nicotine patch and come to founding university. I ran 2020. If you look at the number of millennials, Gen Xers, this is not a boomer country, and they're going to have a revolution when all those 30 year olds you see there that big fat middle, 30 and 40 year olds who are on VPNs right now, and reading and watching what's happening

in the West. You do not need to interfere with this country. You just need to let those 30 year olds become 40 and 50 year olds and take over the country. We need to negotiate heavily. The idea of going in there and creating a war with Iran is exactly probably what those older people want. Demographics are destiny. And this is an amazing actual Anthony Bourdain episode from Iran. And it was, he said it was his favorite episode, rest in amazing actual Anthony Bourdain episode from Iran and it was he said it was his favorite episode rest in peace Anthony Bourdain, but the demographics here are just gonna drive Ability as a moderator to cover so much ground

Thank you. Wow compliment. All right This is a hard turn to make Tucker but this week's all-in podcast is brought to you by the trump card Everybody go get a trump card and use the promo code promo code Jake Howe. And I just full disclosure get paid $500,000 every time you buy a Trump card. But the Trump card website is up. Use the promo code Jake how 10% off Tucker 12% off and sexy poo for 15% off. You know, 15,000 15,000. And you know what the genius of Trump is? Well, you are made a goal and added to zero.

You have consistently proven to your friends that you mispriced by an order of magnitude. Absolutely. Typically, too. Now I add a zero every time. All right, listen, thank you, Tucker, for coming on. What's the website to get our, uh, our, uh, our, uh, our, uh, our, uh, our, uh, our, uh, to your friends that you mispriced by an order of magnitude. Absolutely. Now I add a zero every time. All right, listen, thank you, Tucker, for coming on. What's the website to get our nicotine?

Alps. Alps. Alps what? I want the website. Alps.com. Alppouch.com. All right, Tucker, you got to get us in on this. We need Alppouch.com slash all in.

We need an all in branded one, okay? With the flavor of... What's the flavor, Cham Chamath we should do here? What's the flavor of the flavor? Can we do a burgundy? Money. Money. That's why I'm in.

But how do we get, how do we, how do we get promoing this? We need to get some, we need to get in on this. I would say like, it should taste like a 2001 Moceto. Can you do that? Can you get the team on a Moceto flavored for us? It's a, I'm going to send Tucker a bottle. I am sending this in right now. I'm going to start with burrata flavored and then go from there.

If you can make a coolette steak for me, a rare coolette steak would be great as a flavor. A wagyu. A wagyu would be great. Sax, what do you got for a flavor here? Just something minty maybe. A little minty. OK, minty fresh.

Because you want to get the breath going. This is dual purpose. White chugam when you can just go right to a pouch. There it goes. Clip that. can just go right to a pouch. There it goes. Clip that. I just texted the factory, and I said, we need specially branded Alp for All In.

Let's go. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. We're in BD mode. We're not kidding either. We're in BD mode here at All In. AllIn.com, come to the summit. Tucker, why don't you come to the summit in September?

What are you doing? Done. Done. Done. It'd be fun to have you there. As long as it's not, it's not, the end is, um, grouse season. So I can't, I'm not allowed to leave during grouse season cause I've got dogs, but, um, is it before the end of September?

September 8th and seven, eight, nine, I think it is. So yeah. Oh, LA. Grouse, grouse laver pouch. Those that's a little gamey, it's a little gamey for a nicotine pouch, but I'll think about it. Yeah. I think I would take it under and find some too gamey. All right, everybody.

We missed you, Sultan of signs. We'll break your chops, but we wish you were here. David Sachs, the czar. Miss you buddy. See you in LA, hopefully at the all end to kill a lunch later this month. Jamal Polihopatia. Great to see you.

Good luck with your health and for my guy, Tucker Carlson. Alppouch.com slash all in and get your promo codes going. This is the number one podcast in the world after the Tucker Carlson show. My last shout out, I would like to thank Robin Hood for sending me their gold card. You finally? Yeah. Saxon, I have had it for a hundred days. I shat on American Express because I think they're just trash.

And then they reached out to me and it was so ridiculous. For the black card? No, they didn't even offer me the black card. They said, here's a chance for you to apply for the black card. And I was like, this just proves my point. So insulting.

So insulting. They have no idea who anybody is. They're nagging you. They're nagging. Literally, this is the number one podcast in the world. Bro, I mean, I just think like if any of the four of us ran a credit card company and we decided that we were going to have a $10,000 a year credit card for big spenders, what you would do is actually run a query to find who are the biggest vendors that you already have

and upgrade them so that they're paying you 10,000 a year. Who wants to do the All In card with us? Email jason at allin.com. BD lines are open. We're going to monetize this brand. All right, everybody. Thanks again, Tucker. You're awesome. We appreciate you guys. You're the best. Thank you. You're the greatest. See you next time. Bye. Thanks, Tucker. Love you, besties. Bye, bye. Love you, Sies. Love you, Saks. Love you, Saks.

Bye, catch ya. I'm crazy with it. Love you, Eskie. The queen of kin. I'm going all in. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cause they're all just useless It's like this like sexual tension but they just need to release them out What? You're the big What? You're the big What? You're the big What? You're the big

We need to get merch The cheese are back I'm doing all in I'm doing all in