All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - In conversation with Mark Cuban
Episode Date: October 3, 2024(0:00) The Besties intro Mark Cuban: Voting record, working with Ross Perot's campaign in 1992 (5:43) The history of Cuban's love/hate relationship with Trump (19:08) Trump's performance as President:... what he got right and wrong (40:46) Party nominations: Kamala vs. Trump (49:18) Biden's performance as President: what he got right and wrong (55:45) Should Kamala share blame for Biden's failures? (1:07:01) International conflict, national debt, crypto regulation (1:21:33) General sense of Kamala Harris, why she's been avoiding adversarial interviews, why Sacks supports Trump (1:31:47) Selling a majority of his Mavericks stake, changing business landscape of the NBA, what he's working on at Cost Plus Drugs (1:44:50) Thoughts on AI, what's next for him (1:51:37) Relationship with Elon, re-evaluating the Twitter deal, OpenAI's new fundraise Follow Mark: https://x.com/mcuban 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://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/wait-are-windowless-bedrooms-going-to-be-a-thing https://washingtonreporter.news/editorial/scoop-kamala-harris-likely-to-nominate-gary-gensler-as-treasury-secretary-if-elected-senate-sources
Transcript
Discussion (0)
All right, everybody, welcome to the number one podcast in the world. Here we are on the all in
podcast, we have a fifth bestie with us today. Joining David Freber, Chamath Pai, Hopatia David
Sachs and myself is the one and the only Mark Cuban. How you doing, buddy? What's up, guys?
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Of course, of course. Thank you. I've been practicing
my virtue signaling. so I'm ready
Twice the virtue signaling is normal
I don't virtue signal it's official, you know, speaking on behalf of the Kamala
ticket.
So why?
Why are you this active?
What is the reason that you've decided to get this active
during this election?
Because I'm proud to be an American. That's exactly why I
mean, you know, we all make choices and think what's best
for the country and show our patriotism in different ways.
And, you know, I'm not a democrat. I'm not a Republican.
I'm an independent through and through.
Oh my God.
Like J Cal.
He's an independent too.
Do we go and all the Democrats are afraid to call themselves Democrats.
Well, look, I've said this many, many times.
If, if it wasn't Donald Trump running, it was a non-MAGA candidate, particularly
if it was Joe Biden still I'd vote Republican.
I've voted Republican before.
If it was a non-MAGA candidate versus Kamala Harris, it would be, you know, let's look at the policies, let's look at
the character of the people involved and let's make a decision. It's just Donald Trump is not
a Republican. Republicans are Donald Trump. You know, the Republican party is now the family
business for Donald Trump. And to me, I just think Kamala Harris is a better choice for the country.
On a percentage basis, how often have you voted just a level set
Democrat versus Republican, would you say out of 10
elections?
Presidential probably, I voted for George W twice, then I voted
for Obama twice. And then I voted for Clinton and Biden. But
before that, I voted for Ross Perot Jr. My first vote was for a guy named something, John
Anderson. So I mean, I literally worked on Ross Perot Jr.'s
campaign way back when.
Tell us about that. That's fascinating. He got 19% of the
vote as an independent candidate.
Yeah, I was living out in LA. And this was 92. And this is when
computers were relatively new. I sold my company and I was living out in LA and this was 92 and this is when computers were relatively new.
I sold my company and I was taking acting classes and just living by Manhattan Beach
and just loving life.
And you know, being from Texas, I knew people there and they were like, look, we need somebody
who understands PCs and computers and software.
Can you help us?
And I was like, definitely.
I mean, I wasn't to the point where I was involved in his decisions, but I actually
hadn't met him.
My first company was a company called Microsolutions, where we did systems integrations,
local and wide area network. I wrote software for single and multi-user app wide area network apps.
And we literally helped Perot Systems get into local and wide area networking.
And so, one of my favorite stories from back then is,
I'm terrified, I'm a 26 year old kid, I'm in Dallas,
I'm going into Perot systems,
I get to meet Ross Perot senior, the man, right?
And I'm walking through and he's got the original,
the model for the, no, he had the original Magna Carta,
one of like the 13 Magna Cartas,
and he had the original model for the Iwo Jima statue, right, with the flag
up and everything.
And I'm just terrified.
I'm going to trip and just wipe out American history.
And I walk up to him and I said, Hi, Mr. Cuban.
I'm Ross Perot.
I mean, I'll reverse that.
Yeah, you know, I was so nervous.
And he like, made fun of it. And you know, got to be friends and did a lot of business, helped those guys a lot.
I made them a lot of money. They made me a lot of money.
Did you have any more interactions with them when you were on the campaign? Did you get a sense of-
No, did not. No, I was just a little plebe, just trying to do little plebe stuff in LA.
I didn't know that you took acting classes. That's interesting. Did you want to be an actor
or before a businessman or what was the-
Oh, no, no, no. This was after I sold Micro Solutions. I bought a lifetime pass on American I didn't know that you took acting classes. That's interesting. Did you want to be an actor or before a businessman or what?
Oh, no, no, no.
This was after I sold Micro Solutions.
I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines, moved to LA,
got a place right on Manhattan Beach, right on the beach,
get two flight attendants as roommates.
And I was just loving life.
And I was like, how else can I meet women?
I'm going to take acting classes.
And it was like one of the best things I've ever done because being things I've ever done because, you know, being a business guy, it's always right brain, right brain, right
brain. And acting is like, don't think just be don't think just be just let it go. So it was a
totally different experience. And that's why you see me do all these cameos and stuff. Because I
like to do it because it's the one place where you just have to completely let go and it's a
completely different approach to life. So, you know, little backstory.
Yeah, you got a good character arc on Entourage. I think that was probably the best one.
Seven episodes plus the movie. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was pretty memorable. So, Sax, lead us off here. I don't know if
you've been following Mark Cuban on social media at all or if you guys interact.
I can't resist asking. So, is your acting as a surrogate for Kamala? Is that acting too?
No, absolutely not.
Hey-o!
Wow. We may go live. We may go live, we go hi.
No, no, no. Obviously, I truly believe in it. And look, it's always relative. It's always
relative to the other candidate. And so obviously, as you guys know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump.
I gave him a shot eight years ago, didn't work out.
Okay, wait, wait, can we get into this?
Because you obviously have like a love-hate relationship
with Trump going back 20-something years.
So let's just go through the timeline here.
I'm just very curious about this.
First of all, I don't hate the guy at all.
If he was running for president and we all got together
and just shot the like we are now,
he's a blast, he's fun to talk to.
He's got charisma, he's got personality,
he's easy to like, I mean, he's used to schmoozing,
he's one of the world's best schmoozers.
And so he's easy to get along with, it's not personal.
But that doesn't mean like you guys with each other,
it doesn't mean you can't, as different things happen over time, you can't go back
and forth.
And you know, he did the same thing.
So the whole history of it was back right when we went public at broadcast.com.
No right after we announced the sale in 2000.
Mr. 2000.
Yeah, after we announced the sale and January 2000, he threw a Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago. And one of
my buddies who knew him invited me. And I was like, cool, I'll
go Mar-a-Lago. I hadn't seen it. Donald Trump, maybe I'll meet
him. And so, you know, you guys have seen Mar-a-Lago and a
beautiful pool, beautiful view. There's a verandah up there.
And he had like a bunch of hooters and what's the suntan lotion that always had girls,
whatever.
Oh, Tropicana?
Tropicana?
No.
But you-
Suntropic, Suntropic.
Suntropic.
One of those, right?
And so they were all dressed in orange and they were walking around and it was just like
a big deal.
And it was funny as hell.
And so not that that's a bad thing.
It was actually kind of entertaining.
And so he comes up to me and I'm with the VP of Visa, my buddy and Jerry Yang.
I think it was maybe it wasn't Jerry, but he goes, yeah, co-founder of Yahoo.
And he was like, Hey guys, nice to meet you. And I'm like, hey, I'm Mark,
Donald, da da da. And he just, you know, not to be mean, just in a flipping way, he was like, hey,
someday you'll be able to sit up there with the rich people pointing to the veranda and walked
away. And I'm like, okay, fine, you know, whatever. And so then, not long after that, through my
friend, he got back in touch with me.
And this is the early days of the internet, early 2000s, and still, I guess, still 2000.
And I get an invitation to go to his office in Trump Towers.
And I'm like, this is cool, of course.
And he wants to talk to me about business.
And I'm like, you know what, Donald, I'll help you all I can.
He's getting donaldtrump.com and he wants to sell tchotchkes and merchandise.
I guess some things never change.
And so, you know, so I'm in there trying to tell him about what you can and can't sell
online and what works.
And that was all fine and good, Medivanka.
It was all really cool.
But the one thing that left with me, if you've ever been or seen pictures of his office,
every inch of his office is covered with pictures of him.
Every single inch of the office.
What's it like meeting celebrities, right?
Stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Or whatever covers he was on and just whatever, right?
And I just remember walking through there and afterwards, it was a nice meeting and
we had some follow-up calls
and everything, but it never went anywhere
in terms of the online stuff.
But I just remember thinking to myself,
if I ever become visible or famous to that level,
don't let me get so caught up
in just having pictures of myself.
And I'd had conversations with my buddies about it,
just like you guys would.
And so then in 2004, I got a chance to do a
show called the benefactor. ABC called me and said, Okay, wait,
let's show this. We have this. This was got tweeted. So so so
this is after you did Oppo research sex, you got Oppo
research. This is on Twitter, everyone me on Twitter, they throw the stuff.
So anyway, so when I got the gig, um, he was like, congratulations,
good luck and everything.
And I was like, thank you and whatever.
And then when I got canceled, he sent me that letter,
basically saying you suck.
And so.
Well, he was, he was dancing on the grave of your show, but so you're saying
you didn't have beef with him before that letter just came out of the blue.
No, yeah, it was not a beef, but it was just like, that's what it
was. And so it was just like, okay, whatever. And, um, okay.
But then when he ran in 2016, you were supportive. Can we show that? Let's show the 2016 clip.
There's more in between. There's a lot more in between. Okay. Okay. So that's 2004, 2007.
Um, Eric reaches out to me and goes, Hey,
there's no hard feelings with my dad or anything. And I'm like, no, I don't care. He goes, we're
working with these Russian MMA fighters, this guy named Fedor Emelianenko, who was like
one of the best ever at that point in time and Josh Barrett. And kind of the irony of
all this is we were competing with Dana, Dana White and the UFC in some respects because a lot of fighters felt like they weren't getting paid enough.
There was no healthcare.
There was no nothing right.
And so I had a TV network.
We had started the first all high definition TV network called HD net back in 2000, back
when TVs cost $20,000 and everybody thought we were idiots, but slowly but surely it
was taking off.
And so they came to me and said, we like to put, we're partnering with these guys who are putting on this MMA fight
with Fedor and Josh Barrett and some other folks, and we'd like to broadcast it on HDNet
because we had a show called This Week in MMA, so we were promoting.
We had fights that we were already putting on every Friday night. So it actually was a good fit. So you'll see pictures of me sitting with them. And actually,
I couldn't find it. I was so pissed because I was going to f*** with him some more. What
he said in the end, during the time we were sitting at that podium was everything Mark
Cuban touches turns to gold. And so I was like, that would have been so great to have
out there. And so anyway, so we're friends again. And so it's 2007 and we're friends
and nothing happens between then
until whenever he started going crazy on Twitter
and all the Obama stuff and everything
and the birth certificate and the birth certificate stuff.
So he's on Twitter and he started with me.
I say that, so let me just preface this by saying, I golfed once in my life in 1989.
And I hated it so bad.
I was throwing clubs because I'm one of those really super competitive guys.
I'm like, never again.
But I went and worked, I auctioned off myself to be a caddy at a golf tournament that he
also was at.
But he starts tweeting that I saw Mark Cuban and he swings like a girl and this and that.
His swing is like a girl. Like nobody saw me swing because I don't golf. And so I started
to back with him. And so we went back and forth on Twitter for years, for years. And then he comes
down the escalator in 2015. And I'm like, all right, this guy's got no chance to win. But I
think it's great because I don't like traditional politicians. I'm not, all right, this guy's got no chance to win. But I think it's great because I don't like traditional politicians.
There's nothing about me that thinks that the way we do politics or the way the government
is run is a good thing.
Not at all.
I mean, my heart is libertarian, but I realize you can't, libertarians are not problem solvers
or ideologues.
Like you look at Rand Paul, everything's only one way.
He doesn't try to solve problems. So anyways, I digress. So he comes down the aisle. I'm like, that's cool,
right? He doesn't have a chance to win. But I'm like, he's the best thing ever. You know, you know,
how, you know, I forget where I was, but I was like, he's the best thing that ever happened to
politics. He's not a politician. He's not going to be a stepford candidate. I may not agree with his
positions, but you know, just the fact that he's not a politician is a good
thing.
And so from there, he called me and we talked a lot, probably 10 to 15 times on the phone.
He would call me and he tweeted one time, Mark Cuban was trying to come.
I never had his number.
There was no way for me to call him.
He would, and you know the way he emails, he refuses to send an email because he doesn't
want any proof
of anything that he's done, right?
And so, you know, he would write it up,
like you had one of those pictures.
So bring up the one on the CNN where he says, what happened?
So right there, CNN nasty, what happened?
See what he does there, his email,
he writes on a piece of paper,
and then someone scans it
and sends it as an image via email.
And so what happens-
Just so the audience can understand.
So the email is from you to him saying,
tell the boss I said, congrats on his sweep.
And then his assistant printed it out
and then wrote back to you and like-
This is one of many emails that we went back and forth on.
But just to be, just as a weird point,
he literally prints out his emails, writes on them, has them scanned in and sent as an image to you,
Mark, wow, so are you on CNN, nasty, what happened?
How did he send this to you? He emailed this to you or what?
He emailed it in image file.
He doesn't use email. I mean, the guy, you know,
it's a different generation.
No, his assistant emailed it back.
Right. So he writes on the piece, assistant prints it out,
he reads it, he writes on it, she scans it, she scans it,
sends the image to me.
Now the big question there, you can't just let that slide.
Why do you think he does that?
Is this a different generation?
At least that's my interpretation.
No, absolutely not.
Nope, I'm with Mark.
He don't want paper trails or anything.
Because he's doing so much shady stuff, man.
I think you're reaching there.
Obviously there's a paper trail.
If he writes, hold on, if he writes writes on a piece of paper, hold on.
If I write right now on a Post-it note, scan and email to you, there's a paper trail.
No, no, you can't search for it. And it's not his, you know.
Yes, to your point. He's just telling you he won't send emails at all.
He doesn't want to create an electronic record. What's the difference?
You have to ask him on that, but he said it out loud.
This is my interpretation.
I think it's a generational thing.
He has literally said it out loud that he doesn't want a paper trail.
But anyway, so let's go back.
So, so now we're talking back and forth and we're having legit conversations.
I remember asking him, you know, you realize as president, you're going to
have to make decisions where people can die and he really wouldn't respond.
Yeah, I get it. I get it. I'm like, Donald, you don't have a ground game. What are you going to
do? How are you going to get through this? Yeah, I got the evangelicals doing all that. I'm not
worried about it. I'm like, Donald, you know, and we would, I would bring up things about,
there was this one thing where the FBI used this device to break into an iPhone, and there was a big thing about privacy,
and I tried to engage him on a conversation on it.
And it's just like, I don't know,
just didn't want to talk about that at all.
And that would happen multiple times,
where I would try to engage in conversations
about some type of policy.
And it never got anywhere, and there was never a conversation. And I're just, it never got anywhere.
And there was never a conversation.
And I said to him, I'm saying, there's another email
where I said, Donald, at some point,
you have to learn these things.
You literally have to learn these things
in order to be president.
And he didn't respond to that.
And that's when I went on CNN and I said, basically,
look, I liked guy, but he's not learning.
He doesn't make any effort to learn anything.
And I think that can carries on till this day
because you can't look at things he says and say,
that's really an in-depth response.
So that's a nuanced response.
And so that's what I said on CNN.
And that led to the image that you guys posted.
So that was the falling out.
That was the falling out.
Or maybe.
But it wasn't a complete fall.
Just to finish this up.
If you want me to continue. So it's not a complete fallout. Just to finish this up.
If you want me to continue.
So it's not a complete falling out because after that he gets elected.
I sent him a congratulatory message and I say congrats.
If I can ever help, I'm happy to.
And so when they were starting to look at replacing the ACA, I was starting to get into
healthcare and being excited about healthcare.
And so they invited me to the White House
and I spoke to Jared, I spoke to this woman named
Brooke Rollins, I think her name is,
and I spoke to a whole group of people.
I went to CMS and I spoke to the head of the agency,
I spoke to the head of CMS, all talking about this thing
I created called the TEN Plan,
which is a means tested ability to support anyways.
And so they brought me back in and then when the pandemic hit, I sent
them some ideas on, you know, backstopping, um, bank accounts and credit card accounts.
So everybody doesn't just default and he had Manushkin called me.
And then when they had with the pandemic, he connected with Peter Navarro.
And I worked with him and actually found a company here in actually outside of Fort Worth that I put together with them. And I helped
that company increase their output. And Peter Navarro worked with them closely. And we really
made a dent in all the PPE issues. And he invited me to the White House. And then I
went to the White House one time, went into the Oval Office, and there's pictures of me
talking. And again, I tried to explain the healthcare stuff.
He just wasn't having any type of in-depth conversation.
He wanted to tell me about how much money he saved from Boeing, how many billions and
this and that.
And then it was a short conversation.
And then I was leaving.
He goes, look, are you still on that show?
And he goes, I'm like, yeah, Shark Tank.
He goes, yeah, that's Barron's favorite show.
And then as I'm leaving further, he goes, wait a minute,
I really liked that suit.
So, you know, and you know, he's called me since,
not since he left the White House,
but you know, later in his tenure at the White House
and invited me to dinner.
I mean, and so it's not like we left as foes
and it's not like I don't like him.
I just don't think he's the best person to be president. I don't think he was a good person.
Let's just stress that. How would you think about the four years that he was president?
In hindsight, what would you say was done well? What would you say was done poorly?
Just those two things.
I think the way he dealt with the, Zeitgeist isn't the right word, just the vibe of the
country was really, really, really bad.
I think the hate that he conveyed, I think the fact that what he tweeted negatively,
so companies didn't know what was coming next, he tweeted negatively about me, he tweeted
negatively about other people.
I thought that
was a real bad thing. When the BLM protests happened and turned into riots, when they went
into Minnesota, he was like, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Who the f*** says
that as a president? And so we had more people die during riots during his term, then Biden by a long shot.
And I think he misrepresented where he stood in terms of being anti-war.
If you go back to 2019 and look at the war in Yemen, there were at least 100,000 people
plus died.
And there was a bipartisan resolution to say, we're not selling any more to the Saudis.
We're not selling any more weapons to the Saudis.
And a bipartisan resolution, including Mark Meadows
and Rand Paul and others said, you know,
passed it and it went to his desk and he said,
we're still going to sell these munitions
and these weapons to Saudi Arabia,
even though these people continue to die.
So when we talk about, you know,
it's not all that much different
than Ukraine in some respects,
only Saudi Arabia got the Glengarry leads
and Ukraine got our old stuff and we replaced it.
And so when he comes out now and says,
look, I'm against all wars, there were no wars,
that's bulls**t, right?
The mainstream media.
And I know-
Well, okay, so there's two things there.
So just on the 2020 riots, I know. Okay, so there's two things there. So just just on the 2020 riots
I don't know how you blame Trump for the BLM riots of summer
For the riots what I said was how he dealt with it. Yeah, I get you don't like the mean tweets
I get I totally get me no don't diminish it David. Don't diminish it is just mean tweets
People pay attention what happens and when you are have people whose lives I think it's far worse to actually have riots
Going on in the streets. That's what needed to be controlled
How many people wanted to hold on he wanted to send in the National Guard to Minnesota was actually Walt's who rejected the National Guard
He had no problem and there were plenty of ties between on there were plenty of ties between
Democratic activists and the BLM organizers of those riots time magazine did one story on that
I'm not saying he's at fault that the riots happened
I just yeah
But I can't believe they're using the the riots throughout the summer of 2020 as an argument against Trump when it was the left
No, I think what he's saying is the leadership that he shows is of low moral character
Did he do anything right mark well, I'm not done with the wrong stuff, okay, but wait, there's more
Did he do anything right mark well, i'm not done with the wrong stuff. Okay, but wait, there's more right
Let's go back to the the foreign policy for a second
Trump is correct that he did not start any new wars during his presidency. You agree with that, right?
That no new war started or he didn't start any um, he didn't start any
He was like the first president in 20 years not to start a new war
Well, he inherited some for sure. He inherited Syria and Afghanistan and he wanted to get out and the generals didn't
let him.
And there wasn't really a war that happened in Turkey and then when we got shut down,
he didn't know there wasn't really a war.
I'll agree with that.
He did start a war.
That's his argument is that he did not start any new wars.
Has Biden started any?
Well, I would argue that Biden provoked
the proxy war in Ukraine.
Yes, I mean, you can disagree whether he provoked or not,
but there's no question the US has been deeply involved
in a war with Russia in Ukraine.
And what I'm saying is the corollary that the analogy
to that is what happened in Yemen
and that we had a chance to get out of Yemen
and reduce the deaths in Yemen,
much like they're talking about getting us
out of Yemen and reduce the deaths in Yemen, much like they're talking about getting us out of the Ukraine now. And we had the opportunity to stop selling weapons, but he looked, as best I could
tell, he looked at it as a sales opportunity to sell to MBS all these weapons. And he thought that
was a positive. So a lot of people died and we're still in there today. So he had a chance to get
us out and he did not. So I'm not arguing that he's perfect and Biden's perfect and it's tit for tat.
It just is what it is. I'm just saying, make state,
making this statement of fact, you know, and that's it. Yeah. Okay. Well, look,
we did, we did support, we did support the Saudis in their war with, with,
with Yemen. So wait, let me give you the one last thing and then we'll keep
going. So then I'll go to some positives. So the,
the next thing,
you can actually trace that Yemen war. I can't say you actually I'm a little bit hyperbole,
but I can trace that from that Yemen war to the start of inflation. And here's how I explain
that. And so in Yemen, he did a deal with for his boy in Saudi Arabia and sent them all the weapons in 2019. Fast forward
one year and you're in April, let's say of 2020. And you're looking at the price of gas,
the lowest it's ever been, the price of oil just collapsing. At one point, people were
paying you to take their oil and so there was an opportunity
He made a decision because there was a situation that came up the oil companies came in and said
This price of oil being so low is killing us, right?
We're losing a lot of money
We anticipate losing more because with the pandemic now starting demand is dropping like a rock
And so he then that was coming from the oil rock. And so he, and that was coming
from the oil companies. And so what he did, he said, okay, MBS owes me a favor over in
Saudi Arabia. That's the connection. And Putin's my boy. I'm going to go to them and ask them
to reduce production. Now, what happens to the price of gas when the largest producers of
largest producers of oil and energy decrease their production? The price
starts going up and up and up and so you can track the increase in the price of
gas and how that impacted the price of goods the entire time that the
production from the 10% reduction until they increase it like 300,000 barrels a day for two years.
What is your argument here? You're saying that somehow Trump caused the inflation?
Yes. And I'm explaining to you. Again, the mainstream media...
First of all, by the way, the war in Yemen started on March 26, 2015, according to the chat, GPT, which is under Obama.
No, I get that. I'm not saying-
So that started under Obama.
That's fine, but he had a chance. He was asked to end it by Congress. He was selling $660 billion,
I don't know the number, I can't remember exactly, in weapons to Saudi Arabia.
And he-
How did the fact that we had 9% inflation in 2022,
so two years after Trump was office,
I'm so glad you asked that David.
How in the world is Trump responsible for that
and not Biden Harris?
I'm so glad you asked that because the mainstream media
never talks about this stuff.
And so, she had a little dig there.
So Trump goes in and says,
we're gonna cut the production by 10%.
Demand is still relatively low, but in April, May, June,
as people start venturing outside their house
and to the end of 2020, the end of this term,
there's an increase in demand.
But the increase in demand, the increase in production
doesn't match the increase in demand.
They limited as part of this deal
that Trump put together between
Russia and Saudi Arabia and that led to other people in OPEC Plus participating.
They only increased the production of oil by 300,000 barrels a day, which didn't keep up with the amount of demand that was happening. That started increasing the price of gas.
That price of gas continued to increase for the two years this program was in place.
This program wasn't like, let's just cut it for 60 days and go back at it.
It wasn't, let's just do this for 90 days.
Let's just do this during the Trump administration.
No, no, no, no, no.
This deal went before they got, it took two years before they got back to pre pandemic
levels of production. And so listen to what Trump says about
drill baby drill. Why does he say drill baby drill will lead
to lower costs? Because oil and energy costs are part of
everything. And you know what matches up perfectly? What
matches up perfectly is that 9.1% in 2022.
And the day that that agreement ended where MBS and Russia limited production, that agreement ended
like this. If you did your little Venn diagram that like and increased production, decreased
production, bam. So that is the answer to your question.
So just to summarize what you,
the argument that you don't like about him is
you got to know him like many people do.
You worked with him on projects and like Pence,
Barr, Matias, Tillerson, Bill Barr,
and Mike Cohen and the Mooch, Omarosa,
you realized this person is out for themselves. They don't care about the people
they work with and you fell out of friendship with him or whatever. There's a long list of people who
work with him who think he's an idiot and don't like him now. You're on that list.
Yeah. I mean, I don't think he's an idiot. I'm not saying that's my position. I'm just summarizing it.
Look, I don't think he's in your position. No, I haven't worked with one of the greatest salespeople ever.
He's one of the greatest, you know, motivators in terms of crowd motivation, ever. But can I
just want to be very junior. He's one on one junior. That is who he is. If you read books
about Roy Cohen, everything Roy Cohen says to do tracing back to the McCarthy hearings in 54,
everything Roy Cohen says to do. That is the McCarthy hearings in 54. Everything Roy Cohen says to do. That is
exactly what Donald Trump does. I just want to paint this thing and then I'd like to hear
the glass half full version to the extent you have one. But basically, I just want to understand. So
my understanding was in 2020, what happened was not that Saudi Arabia and Russia were cooperating
to cut prices,
but they got into a fight because it wasn't really, it wasn't really Saudi,
but it was OPEC, which includes us.
Yeah. OPEC plus versus Russia.
And we initiated against them, which they counteracted a price war.
They know they get, they initiated against.
So Saudi Arabia initiated against Russia. But what, but what I'm, so what I'm trying to understand is there's a war in Yemen.
Right.
We don't stop the armaments of Saudi. And I guess what you're saying is that then triggered an OPEC.
No, no, what I'm saying is M I'm saying is, MBS owed Trump one.
MBS owed Trump one.
So MBS starts the price war with Russia one year later.
And the oil companies come to Donald and say, look, we're getting destroyed.
Demand is dropping.
They've increased because of this price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Saudi Arabia decides to take it to Putin and increases
their production significantly. So in order to keep their revenues up, Russia's got to do the
same thing. Meanwhile, all the demand is dropping because of the pandemic. And so Donald gets asked
by the oil companies to go to MBS and to Putin and say, we need to stop this price war.
We need to reduce production.
And to his credit, if you think that's a positive, to Trump's credit, he did it.
And so by reducing production over a plan of two years, and you can go look at the production
numbers, right?
When that's done, by doing that, that increased the price of gas, the price of oil,
the price of energy. And that was bad for American consumers who utilize gas, who paid for gas for
their cars, really bad for him. But he decided to work with his oil company buddies and protect them.
You can say that's a good decision or bad decision. Maybe it's strategic.
He really felt they could go out of business and he wasn't willing to give them money to
help them.
But the bottom line was that that matches up exactly to that 9.1% that David Sachs mentions.
It also matches up to, okay, does he fully support the oil companies over the price of gas and will that influence what he will do as?
President again, so when he says I'll just get out of Ukraine
Depends on who's making the money and where it is when he says I'm gonna get people to drill baby drill
Okay, well, we already learned a lesson
I'm going to get people to drill baby drill. OK.
Well, we already learned a lesson.
Wait, wait, wait.
So hold on a second.
Let's go.
Wait, wait, wait.
Sorry.
OK, so look, this is very hard to, hold on a second.
This is very hard to fact check in real time
because I've never heard this theory before.
I'll wait.
We can have a theory on the pod.
But let's have Freeberg get involved.
Freeberg hasn't asked a question yet.
So let me try to.
The point is that this is totally novel.
I don't even think I've heard you make this theory on X
before.
Because I was waiting.
OK, so here we go.
So you're dropping a whole second.
So Freeberg hasn't been able to get involved.
Let's have Freeberg ask a question.
You're just going to let him basically cite this nonsense
and I don't get to interrogate it a little bit.
It's not nonsense, David.
You can always.
No, no, but I just wanted to include
Freeberg in this discussion.
40 minutes in, he doesn't say anything.
Let me ask a question.
Let me ask a question.
Well, Freeberg talks.
Go chat GPT, go Google it, go look it up however you want.
Okay.
What about the fact that Biden's first day in office, he cancels the Keystone pipeline
and a bunch of leases.
He makes it harder to drill in the United States.
So he reduces the ability for domestic producers to produce.
You don't think that that would have an impact?
Yeah, but it wasn't on the price. It wasn't on the price of gas because the price of gas
is a global phenomenon, right? The price of oil, rather, is a global phenomenon. We are
the largest producer of energy in the world, but we're still only about 13%, I think it
is. Don't quote me on that, but that's a range. And so the other 87% has more of an impact. And even to that, there was still an unlimited amount
of drilling available on public lands
and leases available that weren't fully used.
Now that said, I think Biden did mistakes,
did make mistakes.
We stopped shipping.
Okay, guys, hold on.
Let's just finish one thing before the other.
I would just like an answer of,
what is the good and the bad of Donald Trump?
And then what I was gonna ask you is, what was the good and the bad of Biden? I just want those answers.
Guys, just give me one second. Can I just ask, make one comment? I've been here for like 40 minutes.
I want to respond to the inflation point, Mark. I just shared two images. First was the
US crude oil production chart. And more than half of this oil is exported.
So you can see the reduction in production, but the domestic oil production
capacity
remain high relative to our consumption. So US consumption, if oil was the biggest driver,
it really would have affected the profits of the exporting companies, not necessarily the cost of energy domestically.
I will, however, point out that the Federal balance sheet, the Federal Reserve's balance
sheet swelled during COVID from $4 trillion to $8 trillion.
And as we all know, there was significant fiscal stimulus, meaning the Federal government
bought a ton of shit.
I didn't say it was the only charge, David,
I didn't say it was the only cause.
I didn't say it was the exclusive cause.
Well, I would argue that flooding the world with dollars,
which is what the Federal Reserve did,
because they bought up all the bonds
as the federal government started to issue money
in lots of different ways,
caused the supply of dollars to go up,
which causes the cost of anything
that's dollar denominated to grow up.
And I think many economists would argue and make the case that the fiscal policy and the
monetary policy of the federal government and the federal reserve is largely to account
and I'm not going to use the word blame, but to account for the inflation we saw in the
cost of everything from energy to production, to labor, to assets and so on.
But they're not mutually exclusive.
They're not mutually exclusive.
They're not mutually exclusive.
They're not, but there was also significant,
as we can all acknowledge, massive in a dynamical system,
global supply chains are a dynamical system.
Stuff is made in one place, moved to another place.
When one thing breaks or it slows down, it all breaks.
And we had a massive shortfall in the ability
to move goods around the world. And that was the biggest driver of the inflationary effect that we saw
I agree 100%
But even if you go back to those the first two charts you put up it matches up with exactly what I said
Production went down demand went up and the net result was that price of gas went up and
Price of gases and everything is it the only part, but production went down in everything, not just energy, but
everything and not because of energy, but because of a lot of other reasons.
And then we had a whiplash problem where we had over demand
relative to the natural and none of the production systems could keep up with demand.
I agree 100% with you. All I'm saying, you can
trace it back to maybe it's 1% of the price. Maybe it's 3% of the price. Maybe whatever the percentage is, I'm not saying it's exclusive, but you can trace it back to the decision being made to support the energy companies and say we are going to reduce production rather than just letting the market play out and saying we'll let gas prices stay as low as they are
based off of supply and demand.
Now, do I agree with you that supply chain disruption,
transitory?
Yes, of course.
And fiscal and monetary policy.
Yes, for sure.
Like stimulating the world economy
by pouring a shit ton of money out
that's never happened in history, right?
For sure, 100%.
The question is, and proportionality.
Do you think Larry Summers was wrong
when in Q1, the first quarter
of the Biden-Harris administration,
Larry Summers warned that if you pass
another two trillion of COVID stimulus,
like they were planning to do,
that could set off inflation, that we were on the brink.
He said that.
He did make that declaration against his own party, Mark,
and he said, this is the wrong thing.
As a Democrat, he said, this is the wrong thing to do.
And they went forward with what they planned to do
for various reasons.
Some would argue political,
some would argue that they thought
it was the right thing to do.
And the effect was precisely as Larry had predicted.
Yeah.
Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote
for that Inflation Explosion Act,
otherwise known as the American rescue plan.
Here's the actually.
I agree with Freeburg.
The cause of this massive 20% inflation we've had
over Biden's four years is a secret deal
between Trump and MBS and like Putin's in there somewhere.
You can dismiss it all you want David.
Just look at the data and look at the numbers
and they match up.
And well, the Freeberg's point,
the Freeberg's point is that the only thing
that caused inflation?
Of course not.
When you spend too much money,
when you inflate the economy,
when you have supply chain disruption,
all those things contribute.
But we're also not having the conversation to say,
okay, how much of the supply chain disruption contributed to inflation?
Was it 3% of that 20%? Was it 5%? Was it 7%? Was it 1%? We don't know. It's impossible.
It's all fungible money.
Hold on. The supply chain was constrained during COVID and it was healing. It was getting better.
And then they pumped all the stimulus and everyone got these stimulus checks.
Just to level set with the pieces. Let me just level set with the pieces. Guys, it's Mark has an opinion.
Let's leave the opinion.
I'm just really curious.
I just want the high level report card
on the last two presidents.
What is the high level report card, Mark?
To put a cap on this, just for the audience,
here is our national debt over the two presidencies,
the two terms.
And as you can see, with the taking out the bump for COVID,
it's pretty much they're both wild spenders. I think we
can all agree, they both are spending too much money, and we
need to have more fiscal discipline. We all agree on
that. Now, to Chumot's point, it's steelman, anything you like
about the Trump presidency, and then we'll go to Kamal.
I mean, I think there was good elements of the tax cut. I think
you went too far. But I think they needed to come down from 35%.
Whatever the corporate rate, 35% I think was corporate.
That was too expensive.
It made it difficult for us to compete globally.
And I thought bringing down cap gains, again, I forget exactly what they were, maybe 29%.
I forget, was also smart. but I think he went too far.
But you can argue that there's no right answer on what that is going to be.
It's a guess, right?
You just put it out there and you hope what you plan and what you propose and what is
implemented works.
And you don't know until it does.
So I didn't have a problem with him trying that.
Yeah, 35 to 21.
You got it exactly right.
Yeah. You've acknowledged that Kamala's unrealized gains tax is
a disaster. Well, I'll acknowledge that it's not real
and you're making it up that you've never heard. I made it up.
Yeah, you made up her. It was in the Biden the last Biden Harris
budget. It was in the Harris platform at the DNC. It was the
Biden platform at the DMC. Well was the Biden platform at the DMC.
Well, they put her name on it.
You have never heard her talk about it.
They did a search of place on his name
and put her name in there.
But you're reaching, David, you're reaching.
You've never heard her talk about it at all.
She's been very specific that cap gains goes to 28%.
That corporate tax.
So Mark, what has Biden done well
and what has he not done well?
And then the follow-up question is, if it were an open Democratic primary, would you
have voted for Kamala Harris?
I don't know.
But then again, if Donald Trump participated in the debates on the Republican primary,
in the Republican primary, would you have voted for Donald Trump?
You know, they just all like the medical. You're saying it's analogous.
The Republicans had an open primary.
No, but they did.
DeSantis competed,
but they didn't participate.
Nikki Haley competed.
They had an open primary.
Trump was 50, hold on a second,
Trump was 50 points ahead.
Maybe he should have debated, I don't know.
Maybe.
Of course he should.
No, I mean, look, I would have been in favor of him debating,
but he was 50 points ahead,
and everybody had a chance to run.
Yeah, but they didn't really have a chance because they wouldn't debate.
Hold on, let me finish and then you can get your response.
The Democrats pretended that Joe Biden was just fine, that he was sharp as a tack, that
he was the best version of Joe Biden.
And when the primary came and you had outsiders like Bobby Kennedy try to compete, not only did Biden not debate,
they basically used lawfare to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot.
They did not allow him a fair shot at the nomination, which is why he had to leave the party and run as an independent.
Then we find out after the debate that actually Biden is not fine.
He actually appears to be a significant cognitive decline.
So somehow Nancy Pelosi gets him out of there.
And then Kamala Harris is anointed.
She's never won a primary vote ever.
In 2020, she ran and dropped out before the first primary.
And then this time around, she never
had to compete in the primary. And somehow she's anointed as ordinary candidate. The question is, I don't think, well,
the question is, how can you liken this to what the Republicans did having an open and competitive
primary? So first of all, the Republicans did not have an open and competitive keyword competitive
primary because if one of the candidates refuses to participate because they have a lead, look what happened to Joe Biden for all we know.
Vivek Vivek would have destroyed Trump as much as Trump destroyed
Joe Biden.
Nikki Haley would have destroyed Trump as much as Joe, um,
Donald Trump destroyed Joe Biden. I don't, I think that's,
I was supporting DeSantis at that time and it was definitely competitive.
DeSantis would have crushed him too, right? They were allowed to compete, their names were on the ballot.
I know.
You're talking about a very...
Sax, do you think DeSantis, Nikki Halley or Vivek would have beaten Trump in a debate?
No, I think when, if you look at...
He would have beat them.
Okay.
Well, hold on.
I'm saying it's unclear.
I don't think you can just say that they would have won.
I mean, Trump...
Thank you.
So that means it's not a truly competitive...
Hold on a second. you can just say that they would have won. I mean, Trump. So that means it's not a truly competitive. When Trump was in a crowded Republican field and debated, he crushed everybody. So I just don't
know what would have happened. That was 2016. This is just debate. Okay. What about the point
that the Democrats kept other contenders off the ballot, they used lawfare, and moreover, they lied
about Biden's cognitive condition, and moreover they lied about
Biden's cognitive condition and then they anointed Kamala Harris through a
process that is opaque and we still don't know what happened. Okay, so here's
my answer. Right, first going back to Republican, it wasn't a competitive primary
if the contender doesn't participate and yes he did well against 15 other
candidates in 2016, but I'd be willing to bet that he's also had cognitive decline.
Everything he says and does is reflective of that.
If Joe Biden had said the same thing, we would be having a lot of quite, we would, we don't
judge Donald Trump and his cognitive ability the way we did Joe Biden.
Okay.
So we'll put that behind.
Now let's go to Joe Biden.
I can tell you Democrats lied about Biden's condition.
Let's just pay attention.
I'm going to tell you my personal experiences with Joe Biden. I can tell you Democrats lied about Biden's condition. Let's just pay attention. I'm going to tell you my personal experiences with Joe Biden. I didn't talk to him a lot twice
during that period. And I can tell you from the first time I saw him, a year before the last time
I saw him, which was probably in March or April, I forget, there was a decline. But the decline was
in his sharpness, his quickness of response. If you sat down
and you listened to him speak about something, which I did, he wasn't forceful. He wasn't,
you know, he looked like a walking corpse. He looked awful, right? But in terms of content,
it was there. And so I understand why they positioned him the way they did. It's just to
sell it was impossible. So that's part one. So
I don't think the decline is nearly what you're saying it is, but I do agree that-
Why did they get rid of him? Why did they get rid of him?
Okay, so now we're moving forward, right? His ability to respond in real time, you slow down.
We all slow down, right? I'm 66 years old and I've slowed down versus where I was at 45.
and I've slowed down versus where I was at 45. So you know at 81 and at 78, you were going to be slower.
Joe Biden just was not as quick.
That was a real problem.
He got destroyed in the debate by Trump because of that.
Not because he didn't know the materials and the content,
but he just couldn't respond and think fast enough.
So I think that's where the misunderstanding is.
It's not that he had cognitive decline in the purest sense.
It's that his ability to respond quickly was gone.
And he looked like he had cognitive decline.
So now let's go forward to the Democratic National Convention, and right before that,
where they replaced it.
I was curious about just the mechanics of the whole thing. So being the curious person I am, I went and pulled
up the bylaws and the rules of the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Convention.
And they reset those every four years prior to them pulling out. And it's very, very clear that
the only mission and the only task, and it's pretty much the same in the Republicans. I look at theirs
too. The only mission is to win. You want to win the presidency. You want to have
control of Congress. That's all they care about. And they give themselves every bit
of flexibility to do whatever they damn well please to put themselves in that position.
They are a private organization.
Okay. So are they the party then of democracy as they claim to be?
Or are they the party of winning at all costs?
So now you're trying to play branding games, right?
Is Starbucks really?
No, I'm just saying that their rhetoric is at odds with what
they actually did.
Hold on a second.
There were 14 million primary voters
in the Democratic primary.
That's the mainstream media discussion of this, right?
They said there's 14 million voters.
I say Trump didn't debate at all. There was zero debates with Donald Trump. Which one was more-
There's an open primary though. People got to vote for their candidate.
Yeah, but it's not an open primary because it's Donald Trump's family business. He controlled
what happened in the-
What?
Yeah, look-
Listen, I mean, I was, again, I was supporting someone different during the primary and the
reason why DeSantis lost is he didn't get enough votes, okay. And if you would have missed an opportunity. Trump won the primary fair and square, whether
he debated or not, he was up 50 points on everybody else. And I bet, and I don't know.
That is not what happened with Biden. What happened with Biden is Biden, let me finish.
Biden won the Democratic primary, he got 14 million votes. And then they threw out that result and
put in Kamala Harris because they didn't like his debate performance. Were you ever in a fraternity? What's that? Were
you ever in a fraternity? Were you ever in a fraternity? No. Okay. In a fraternity, they get
to vote on all kinds of s***. But at the end of the day, if the chapter, the national organization
says no, right? Doesn't matter who won the election. Right. So you're saying the Democratic
Party is a clique. I get it. It's just think we're talking about. So let me get let me regain control here. Just to just to read just to recap
David you're talking branding you can brand it however you want. No, the Democrats said they're the party of democracy the Democrats
I'm not a Democrat. I don't care what they do. I don't care. You're supporting them. You're supporting them
So I'm supporting combo hair. You can all it's hold on, can you just acknowledge that their rhetoric is hypocritical?
I don't care what the rhetoric is, I don't pay attention.
I don't pay attention to their rhetoric.
We're not going to get progress.
I really want to hear what Mark thinks.
Yes.
Okay, move forward, move forward.
Two things seem to be true at the same time, if I'm recapping your position here.
Mark, one, you would have liked to see Trump debate.
Two, I think you would have loved to see Trump debate. Two, I think you would have loved to see
a speed run primary, perhaps maybe Kamala, you know, battled it out.
I honestly didn't care. Once Donald Trump was the candidate, I wanted the best person to beat
Donald Trump. That's what I cared about. Let me go back to my question. So I'm just
going to give you a succinct summary of Mark Cuban's position. His evaluation of the Trump
presidency, the positives were tax cuts. And warp speed and operation warp speed. you a succinct summary of Mark Cuban's position, his evaluation of the Trump presidency. The
positives were tax cuts.
And warp speed and operation warp speed.
The negatives were continuing the war in Yemen when they had a chance to. And then this...
And actually, the negative wasn't so much that. Sorry, Tramont. The negative wasn't
so much he continued it. The negative is the hypocrisy in his approach.
Okay. Right. in the style.
Okay, now, can we just do about-
And the tone and style of how he governed.
Can we do Biden?
What are the things that Biden and Harris did well
that have helped the country?
And what are the things that they could have done better,
did not do well?
So I'll start with the negatives first.
So just so you know that there's a lot of them.
One, the way they handled the border was horrific.
There's no way to say it any differently. Now, I understand why they took the approach they handled the border was horrific. There's no way to say it any differently.
Now, I understand why they took the approach they did.
Literally, if I were in a Central American country
and my family was at risk of getting shotgun
because there's a drug war, I'm doing everything I can.
And I recognize that if I just set foot on American soil, I have a
chance for asylum and I get that. And I get why Biden and his administration might say,
just for humanitarian reasons, we're going to increase the number of people that we allow
to do that. I understand why he would do it. But at the same time, he opened the door too
wide and he made it so that there were too many people that came through and that created cascading problems. Now to his credit down
back in June I think it was he signed an executive order which he now has
made permanent or as permanent as you can as president that changed that
there's no longer the option to just set foot on American soil and be eligible
for a hearing for asylum. You can't do that any
longer. And to her credit, she worked with the head of the Mexican government, and they have taken
steps to reduce the flow of people to the border. And so now the number of encounters at the border
is about the same as what it was right before the pandemic under the Trump administration.
So while he was too long to do it, while he handled it incorrectly overall and the messaging
was horrible, I think they got to the right place. But now we have a problem that he created
where we have too many non-citizens, illegal aliens, however you want to call them, however you want to brand them,
and we have to understand how to deal with them. I think that they have talked about,
communists talked about first, and even JD Vance said this, first we're going to get rid of the
criminals, which makes sense. But Donald Trump says, we're just going to deport everybody.
Any illegal, we're just going to deport them. Now, Obama was the deporter in chief.
He deported more people than Trump or Biden,
over 3 million people,
but he had a specific process in place
that everybody could understand.
And I think with Trump,
remember that Orion Gonzalez kid,
the six-year-old kid in Miami?
Elion Gonzalez, right?
Where all of a sudden you had these cops with, you know,
riot gear on and machine, you know, an AR-15s or whatever they use, pointing them at a six-year-old
kid cowering in the closet. If Donald Trump does that, and that's not contrary to how
he approaches things, we could have another series of riots and protests that go really, really bad. And so while I
think Biden handled things completely wrong at the beginning, I think with Harris, and
she's saying she'll support the immigration bill that was bipartisan, et cetera, et cetera,
you guys know that, I think she has a more common sense approach to dealing with deportations
and getting people through the asylum system. And the asylum, that bill, I think said that it would reduce the amount of time to
adjudicate asylum to 90 days, which means that there's a chance to get control of this before
it turns into a riot. Okay. So that was border was bad. Anything else bad or should we shift to the
good? I think the spending was bad. I think that we overspent. I think we
went through a period where, and I'm not trying to make excuses for him. I just think, you know,
you guys mentioned this before, he did overspend. And I think the infrastructure bill was good.
I think the broadband bill was good. And everybody says we spent $42 billion on broadband and got
nothing. We should have gone to Starlink. But the reality is the money went to the states and they could buy Starlink from Elon all they want. So that's just kind of
the mainstream media, poo-pooing something they shouldn't poo-poo. But the EV stuff, the EV
chargers, that's a clusterf**k, you know, and there's no way around that. And so I think that was bad.
So pork barrel spending, basically unaccountable spending.
Yeah, no, I think, you know, what they did in healthcare, um, you know, you can take
Lena con and say what she's doing for the mergers, you know, Albertsons and Kroger's
I think is too much.
I think, you know, and I even told her this, I sat on a panel sitting right
next to her and I said, the most important thing from a technological perspective
in this country today is that we win AI that is going to find everything
militarily
for us and economically for us. And that when you try to break up companies like Google and Facebook,
you diminish our ability to compete globally with AI. And she told me now that she didn't
impact her at all, that she understands that and she's heard that before. I think their approach
to that is wrong. I think that what she's done with the FTC against pharmacy benefit managers has been
good, right?
Pharmacy benefit managers are ripping off more companies and increasing the cost of
medications more than anything else that's happening in healthcare.
And she's called them on the carpet with a recent report and just sued them.
I think that's good. I think in terms of other negatives, like Kamala Harris, now, I think the
filibuster, I think that's a mistake to try to get rid of the
filibuster, because then somebody else gets rid of it
for something else. And it's just cascading problems. On
spending, we talked about I think he spent too much.
And what have they done? Well,
I think he changed the tone of the country.
I think that was really, really important.
No one woke up, you know, David calls it mean tweets,
but not waking up concerned about mean tweets is important.
Not waking up concerned about there being some random
tariff on your company that you didn't expect,
not waking up being accused of doing something.
I think those were all huge positives.
I think supporting workers, I think, you know, just having just a sensibility of, okay, we're not in
the middle of everything. There just wasn't this uncertainty like every single day that every
business woke up with with Trump. Just removing that was the biggest positive
of all. So let's look forward now to a Kamala Harris candidacy for president. Of the things,
so we know the Donald Trump crack record because he gets the credit for the things he got right,
and he has to take ownership of the things. But how it's been defined, I'll use the Yemen
example again, I'll use the price example on oil again.
We have Trump-nesia, right?
We presume that what he did in terms of the economy and everything and no wars, everything
was just rosy under Donald Trump.
And I think that's another thing that's negative.
I'll be honest, I've never heard this specific theory.
I'll take the time to look and figure it out for myself.
And I'll let you, but what I'm curious about is that track record is there.
Now how much of the, and do you think it's important for us to give credit for the good
things to Kamala and responsibility for the bad things to Kamala in that so that you have
an equivalent AB comparison?
Do you think about it that way or not?
No, I don't.
And I'll tell you why.
I'm assuming all you guys have had a boss at one point or another.
Yes?
Yeah.
And do you all agree with everything that that boss did all the time?
No.
No.
No, but you had to do what the boss told you to do.
Yeah.
And that's common as done.
But I like to take credit for when the boss tells me I'm owning something and then I do
it. Well, but at the same time, you get credit for doing it, but it doesn't matter. If it turns out
to be wrong, it's still the boss that's on the hook for it. What about the border, Mark? Because
you made a comment about the border and she was declared the border czar. Yeah, but again, that's
branding. I mean, we play branding games with politics all the time. If you look at what her specific responsibility was, I alluded to it earlier, her job was
to go to Central America and talk to the heads of the countries there and try to reduce the
reasons why people were leaving their countries to go to the United States.
Why do you think they open the border so much?
I'm wondering, Mark, there is a conspiracy theory or theory. You can you can pick
how you want to frame it, that this is to increase the number of democratic voters. At the same time,
we hear that a lot of the folks coming in who are the working class that the Republican Party is now
the populist party. So those votes would go to the Republicans. So you know, I've heard this argument
from both sides. What is there's another theory and economic theory mark, which is that it increases
the base of workers and we're at our lowest unemployment rate in history and inflation is raging.
So by bringing in low cost workers that you're able to get to work at a lower wage rate,
you actually have a deflationary effect and a stimulatory effect because then they end
up being spenders as well.
Yeah, and I get the logic there.
I don't think they're, I think maybe they might have thought of that earlier,
and that's why they let too many people in.
But I think they realize now that they screwed up.
And that shouldn't be an executive authority, right?
I mean, that should be like a legislative congressional
authority that makes that decision
and that determination on whether to change immigration
policy.
Do you think that the executive branch should
be able to unilaterally determine
who comes into the country without following laws?
No, I prefer that the congress does it
Unfortunately, that's just not what worked. Look at the sec with gary gansley the guy's a moron and but you know
Here we go
Actually, yeah, so that's the area we can agree on but before we get to that so so your claim on board
We finally found ground truth
But before we get to that, so your claim on board, we finally found ground truth. Here we go. No, we can agree on that.
And Lena Conn.
We'll get to that. But before we do that, I just want to finish up on border here.
So your claim is that Kamala Harris really wanted to seal the border, but she was prevented.
No, that's not what I said at all.
David, you're really good at trying to position things so you have you know, you have talking points to go out with
I'm just you said that this is a case of a VP who was thwarted by her boss
Signaling David
Okay, so the truth is she was on board with Joe Biden's agenda
I don't know she's doing what she was told.
Which one is it?
There's no, you're creating false choices, David.
You're creating false.
So David, if you do the job your boss told you to do, does that do you make a declaration
before you do it?
If I agree or disagree, how do you know she disagreed with Joe Biden about these policies?
Because I see what she's doing now.
Well, she changed the policy, right?
She has a different policy.
No, it's an election year conversion.
She realizes what a disaster it's been.
So when Trump does it, it's brilliant.
No, let me give you the proof.
OK, her own words.
OK, so she flipped her position.
She called Trump's border wall un-American and medieval
and mocked it.
And this is before she became Biden's vice president.
And right around the same time.
Hold on, when she was in the Senate and Trump was trying to build the wall, remember Democrats
tried to thwart that, they subjected him to years of litigation to prevent him from building that
wall and she multiple times was on record saying the wall was un-American, medieval, mocked and so
forth. She also compared ICE to the KKK. She said that images of border patrol agents evoke slavery. Okay. This is her rhetoric. I don't think Joe Biden made her say that she suggested that we
abolish ice and start from scratch.
Okay.
And now she wants to talk about how tough she is on the border.
This is ridiculous.
Maybe she talked to JD Vance back then and was taking his positions.
People change their mind for whatever reason.
People learn your positioning as, okay.
So for, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, Maybe she talked to JD Vance back then and was taking his positions. People change their mind for whatever reason.
People learn your positioning as-
Okay.
So for, so hold on.
So, so throughout her whole time in the Senate, she was arguing against the border wall.
Okay.
In the strongest possible language, she then becomes border czar, or you could call it
point person for the Biden administration.
And for three years, they gaslit us that the border was not a problem,
that it was not an open festering wound.
Like the videos were constantly coming out.
I remember on the show we talked about it.
And I was told when I raised the issue of the border,
that was a conspiracy theory,
that Fox News was just cherry picking videos.
Remember that, Jason?
In any event-
Yeah, well people were actually,
it was interesting to bring that up
because people were sharing videos
and playing them on Fox that were from like 10 years ago.
So there was a lot of misinformation.
Democrats, the whole Democratic Party.
You know the thing about caravans, David, all those caravans never made it to the border.
How many caravans did we hear about that were coming?
Something like over 10 million migrants have entered the country during the Biden-Harris
administration.
The first thing they did, hold on a second.
When Biden, when Biden, no.
First of all, we don't know.
No, no, we do know.
Those 10 million are just the border encounters.
Those are the recorded crossings
that they led into the country.
The number we don't know is whether,
how many more were not recorded.
No, encounters are not just-
That could be 20 or 30 million.
Well, you can look up on encounters.
Why did this happen?
I'll tell you why.
When Joe Biden took office,
he repealed all of Trump's executive orders.
No, he did not. What is it, Section 42? 90 of them. Title 42 stuck around until the end of 23.
And in addition, they got rid of Trump's remain in Mexico policy, and they changed the meaning of asylum
so that anyone who went to the border and said that they were suffering economic hardship,
which is basically the whole world, okay, could now qualify for asylum.
And they were giving, they were given like a ticket to appear in court one day, like
three years, five years, and they were ushered into the country.
And then there were like nonprofits working with the Biden administration to put them
on buses and planes.
David, I agree that they screwed up on the border.
I agree they screwed up on the border.
I'm not arguing with you on that.
This is more than a screw up.
No, fine.
They screwed up.
But now we are back where Trump was.
The common liars defended it.
Yeah, but she changed, just like JD Vance.
JD Vance called him Hitler.
JD Vance in 2020 and after diminished Donald Trump.
No, that was in private communications in 2016, and JD Vance explained, including last
night, why he changed his mind about that.
Right, and that's fine.
So he talked to people.
So did she, representing the state of the people.
This was her position like six months ago and now all of a sudden she's the nominee. So she's going by the bus.
You're, you're trying, you're virtue signaling like a mother f*****, right? You're trying to put, you're trying to brand anything.
You tried to brand anything that you disagree with, that you think is a negative and just put it on her,
which is politics 101, right? But you're not looking at what she's actually doing.
What she's actually doing. She was the point person for the administration. Okay, look, when
what you say, it doesn't matter if she was, if she wasn't charged as, and she said, you know what,
what you want her to do is like JD Vance said about abortion, right? I talked to somebody and
you know, they proved it. Great. That
was a smart move by him. Would it be smart for her to say I was wrong? Now I've learned
more and I've picked up more information. Now it's actually a good question for you,
Sax. If JD Vance can lobby and want a national abortion ban and then change his mind as the
number two for Trump, can Kamala change her mind when she is no longer running for, you
know, the number two seat is Biden?
Well, I think I think JD explained why he changed his mind about that.
He said that there was a referendum in Ohio and his side lost.
So he can change his mind.
Can Kamala and you have the grace for Kamala to change her mind or not?
He's taking a learning from that.
Kamala Harris has never explained why she changed her mind or not? Hold on a second, he's taking a learning from that. Kamala Harris has never explained why she changed her mind.
No, it's not that she changed her mind.
In fact, in media, hold on a second,
when will the media even ask her this question?
She doesn't submit for interviews
and certainly the debate moderators,
like on ABC, never asked her a question.
Mark, if she's gonna change her mind,
if she's gonna have this election year conversion,
why doesn't the media ask her, what is the basis of this?
When did you change your mind?
Was it five minutes ago?
Why then did you support Biden throughout your entire last three and a half years?
Why don't they ask her these questions?
If you were part of the Biden administration,
why do you volunteer to be the border czar if you disagree with Joe Biden about these policies?
When exactly did you change your mind?
Those are the questions that she should be answering.
Why won't she answer?
Those are the questions that you want.
Why won't she submit to an adversary? No, those are the questions that you want so that. Why won't she answer? Those are the questions that you want. Why won't she submit to an advertiser or whatever?
Those are the questions that you want so that you think you can put her on the defensive
and get and have usable information.
I think that's what the country wants to know.
No, look, you want to know, but let me just tell you what's important.
Put yourself, put yourself in the shoes.
Let's just call this a business, right?
And the business of this business is getting votes and winning
this election. And you came in and the product that you originally had, New Coke, failed,
right? Biden's New Coke in this example. And you come in and you say, I'm bringing it back.
This is the new New Coke. And we're going to test to see if that's working. Well, when
you brought in Kamala Harris, she had no favorable ratings
whatsoever. She was behind in all polling right where Joe Biden was. And now she's either
even or ahead or a little bit behind in every single poll. And why do I bring it up? Because
it means what she's doing is working.
I think we actually agree. I think we actually have found a point to agree on, which is I
think Kamala Harris is just saying whatever it takes to get elected.
No, that's what I'm saying.
You can say the same thing about JD Vance.
I think her true belief, hold on, she stated her true belief years ago and throughout the
Biden administration, which is she never believed the border was a problem.
She thought the border wall, Trump's wall was un-American and medieval, and she thought
that ICE needed to be abolished.
I think that was her true belief.
Now, if it's not her true belief, I would like her to explain when she changed her belief
and why the same way that JD Vance did.
And I think the American people are entitled to know that.
And I think if the media was doing its job, they'd be asking her those questions.
She's never been asked that.
Stephanie Ruhl, in her latest interview, did not ask that.
And the debate moderators do not ask that.
Let's just go outside of America for one second, because Mark, you're Jewish, you're of Jewish
heritage.
I would really like your opinion on what's happening outside of America.
There was some crazy pictures over the last few weeks coming out from the Middle East.
There's still all this complicating stuff with China.
Where do you stand on all of these things? Where do you stand on the Mearsheimer
Sachs, Jeffrey Sachs kind of school of logic that there's a military industrial accomplice that
tends to just push us towards these war zones and these forever wars? Where do you just stand on
those issues? And how do you think about that? I mean, honestly, I don't have enough information
to give you a call qualified response. I'mIsrael to the core because I'm Jewish. I'm anti-Hamas to the core.
I think they're terrorists. They are terrorists. I want to see Israel succeed. I want to see Israel
succeed. I want to see the United States support them and help them in that. But you know, when Israel
was going into Gaza, I thought it was too blunt an instrument.
But when they went after his bala, I thought they did the
exact right way. And so you know, I'm, I'm always only going
to respond to what I see.
You have a nuanced opinion of this. Yeah.
And Ukraine?
Yeah. Ukraine, I don't want to see American blood spilled. And
as long as there's a NATO, and I agree there should be a NATO,
I'd rather see us spend money
than put soldiers in harm's way.
And so-
Does the Harris campaign agree on that point?
Or do they have a point of view?
I haven't had that conversation.
I haven't had that conversation with them.
I don't know.
Let me ask you just a point on arithmetic,
which I think is the most important arithmetic
we should all be talking about.
Today is the first,
yesterday was the first day of the federal fiscal year, right? And here's a little image for us to
all look at together as a group, an image that everyone should wake up every morning in the
United States and look at the first thing they do instead of looking at Twitter, they should look at
the image that I'm sharing on the screen right now, which is federal debt in the United States.
I thought this was going to be a screen of you taking a bath. This is just-
On the first day, on the first day of the new fiscal year, federal debt jumped by $204 billion
in one day. Federal debt now stands at $35.7 trillion. And the biggest challenge we have in
the year ahead is that 10 trillion of the outstanding debt comes up for
refinance. It's going to refinance at around 4%. So we're going to be adding another $300 billion
in new interest expense next fiscal year, plus the Biden administration has proposed a $7.2 trillion
budget for next year, which will inevitably lead to another $2 trillion of deficit spending,
which means that by the end of 2025, we could be staring at $40 trillion of federal debt.
And if you do the math on that at 4% interest, it's 1.6 trillion a year of interest expense
a year, just on interest expense on the outstanding debt, which effectively begins to eclipse the
entire federal budget very quickly and gives us no ability to begins to eclipse the entire federal budget
very quickly and gives us no ability to maneuver to meet the needs of all the policy demands
that are being described and shaped in all of these elections and all of these debates
and all the bullsh** that's going on is really not fundable.
What does the Harris campaign say about the situation with respect to deficit spending
and debt. And I don't know how high you can raise taxes and not cut
spending to even make a dent in the challenge ahead without driving.
A massive recession.
What is what do you think, like the Harris versus the Trump campaign's
kind of intentions are as we look at this abyss that we're now kind of jumping?
I can't speak for them.
I can only tell you the conversations I've had and what they've said to me,
whether or not they take these directions is completely up to them.
And I don't know, but I've said the exact same thing.
They know that the, um, the deficit's a problem.
It won't be a budget, a Biden budget.
There's no Biden administration to happen.
They've already come, you know, just the tax rates are completely different than the Biden budget proposals where there's no, you know, unrealized capital gains, etc. They went to 28 and
28%. So it's not going to be what was proposed by Biden. There's a limit on tax basically, right?
Like that, that, that people will vote for. There's only, there's a point of diminishing returns
and raising taxes and they realize it, right? So when we talked about unrealized capital gains,
and I gave them a thousand
reasons why not, they're like, we already know this.
Um, yada yada.
Now to David's point, why don't they just come out and say it?
Because the 1% of high information voters don't know the difference of
unrealized capital gains or not.
And don't care.
The 99% want to hear about the things that they're talking about.
So that's why people like me can go out there and talk about it.
But to your point and the bigger point,
David, that they've realized that there's only a couple ways
to reduce the deficit. One, you get inflation under control, and
that reduces interest rates, and that's going to work in our
favor. And I think that's happening now if it's $1.6
trillion, then you know, if interest rates go below 4%,
that saves a lot of money and probably the most you can say,
they realize efficiency is an important element. In her last speech in Pittsburgh, she talked
about how long it took. It only took one year to build the Empire State Building. That is
crazy. There's too much friction in the government to be able to do building the right way. They're
going to reduce friction. I've had conversations with them about AI as a service and being able to optimize integrating
artificial intelligence into all these processes
so that they don't have to keep on hiring people.
I don't think their mindset, again,
I'm speaking for myself and my perspective
of my conversations with them.
I don't think their mindset is to just go out there
and just cut a ton of people,
but I do think the mindset is,
how can we implement technology to become more efficient
so that we can provide more value
to the citizens of this country at less cost?
I think that's important to them.
I think you're gonna see a lot of reduction.
I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.
She knows that technology is the ultimate driver of success.
And if she supports new technologies, and you heard that again in Pittsburgh, she wants,
she mentioned blockchain, but more importantly, she mentioned AI and how AI is key to us being a dominant military,
having our military be dominant and to have our economy grow.
Because the other way to get results isn't just a slash and burden like Vivek wants to do, but to grow the economy and that there
truly are ways to grow the economy without just more spending.
But do you support Elon Musk going in?
If you're saying shed regulatory burden, shed inefficiency, improve productivity, don't
we need an Elon Musk style model that, you know, Trump has talked about with Elon, send someone in
and let's go fix the inefficiency across all
of the administrative efforts run by the federal government.
One, first of all, when you just cut,
when you do a Vivek type,
just cut the Department of Education, right?
Whatever it is, we don't know what Elon would actually do.
Well, I think that triggers a recession
because then you got a lot of people unemployed, right?
Yeah, exactly, right? Yeah, exactly right.
And there's contracts.
And so that means the United States of America
is violating all these contracts
with small businesses and medium sized businesses.
And maybe Elon put Doge in the treasury,
who knows, and that's how we make it all up.
But you can't just crap and slash and burn,
to your point, Dave.
I mean, it just won't work.
And so what you can do though,
is introduce technology. We have yet to have a president that fully understands technology.
I'm not here to tell you that Kamala Harris is a geek. She's not. But she understands the impact,
and she has a lot of people who truly are geeks around her. And she truly believes that
implementing technology is a way to improve efficiency.
But the whole idea is you can't take the libertarian approach. That's ideologic. You have to take
a problem solving approach. How do you look at any specific problem we're trying to solve?
How can you apply technology to that? I think you will get that from the Harris administration.
As a pastor, Donald just talking about the AI
and how much energy it consumes.
Mark, you said of all the roles,
if there's a Harris administration,
you said you want to run the SECY.
That was bullshit.
I was just trolling Gary Gensler.
Yeah, I was just trolling Gary Gensler
because it's fun to do.
Okay, okay.
So do you think just, and particularly wise,
Gensler, has he done a particularly bad job?
Are you just trolling? Are you just trolling? Are you just trolling David? That's when you say you're trolling me now, right?
I can't keep up with the troll.
And I think I need to control the trolling.
I agree with Mark.
That's the trolling. That's the trolling.
No, so Mark, you are actually supporting.
Mark is actually supporting Trump.
He's just trolling sacks and coming on the show.
He's been going on for weeks.
I know he's not supporting Trump.
But I tell you, one Republican that, as I understand it,
you are supporting is John Deaton, who
is running against Elizabeth Warren in the Massachusetts
Senate race.
So I'm curious about this, because I think this
is an area we could agree on.
You're not a fan of Elizabeth Warren at all.
I didn't know that.
That's pretty interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of Elizabeth Warren's.
I've talked to her about crypto.
I mean, I understand her position. Her basic position is, you know, bad nation states use crypto to fund their operations, the bad stuff. And she just wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater as opposed to using, you know, like I proposed a blacklist from OFAC that can be implemented in all kinds of I need to get into the details, right? But it just,
it wasn't going to happen. And so when John, not just being pro crypto, but you know, his background,
his character, I thought really was a positive. And so even before he got through his hat in his
ring, I was talking to him, supporting him, giving him feedback and helping him. So again,
I'm not a Democrat. I have no problem. And I think John Deaton will be better for the country, better for
the citizens of Massachusetts than Elizabeth Warren would be.
What would be common sense crypto regulation?
Obviously, you don't want people bilking people out of their money.
Yeah, of course.
So what would be a way to balance accredited investors versus the populace, non-sophisticated
investors if that's even a thing?
So I've got a company called-
And people running
amok.
Right.
So I've got a company called Lazy.com.
If you go to Lazy.com slash mCubin, you'll see all my NFTs.
All it is is a way to display your NFTs.
Harley makes any money, but I wanted to see if we could release a token.
So first thing I did was I had one of our people call the SEC and say, hey, what steps
do we have to take to release the token?
They went through this whole rigmarole about getting securities lawyers and this and that.
There's no way a company with a hundred thousand dollars in revenue is going to be able to afford to do that.
So then I said, okay, I'm going to go right to the sec.gov and see about reg A and see if I could just fill out the forms myself.
And, you know, just see what so you start filling in address, and then you get to the type of business,
and the only category is other.
Once you follow that other connection,
there's just no way to make it work.
You can't make it work.
I actually said that directly to Gary Gensler.
To answer your question,
you have to make it easy to follow the rules.
And you can't, and in terms of everything being a security, Gensler says everything applies to Howie, right? There's a Howie rule and everything, you know, but the reality is there's also a rule
that came after, ruling that came after, called Reeves, Reeves versus Ernst & Young, that had to
do with interest. And if you think about, if you guys ever shorted stocks or done stock loan where you
can make some money off a stock loan.
A borrow, yeah.
Yeah.
So you can make one of your shares of stocks available to the borrower and get paid a VIG,
right?
You might get 10% or 12%.
And so doing that is the exact same thing as loaning out Bitcoin for somebody else to
borrow.
They don't call that a security.
So I asked Gary Gensler if it's not a security to loan out a share of stock and why is it
a security to loan out a Bitcoin to somebody else?
They didn't have an answer.
And the point there is he has an approach that is regulation
through litigation. He's going to sue you first, ask questions later, and hope that
the result of that litigation becomes a rule that everybody else has to follow. I literally
said, what's that?
Well, I was going to say, wouldn't a more common sense approach here be to say if we
had an accreditation test, a sophisticated
investor test, we've talked about it here on the program.
Which you do. Yeah. Which there is.
Well, there's not one for the populace to take like a driver's license where they could
say, hey, I've taken this test. I understand diversity, diversification, et cetera.
If you're able to register with the securities and exchange commission for your company for
the release
of your token, then depending on how many people you're trying to sell it to, you would
only be able to do that with qualified investors.
But what happens is, Gary Gensler is making it so difficult to register.
And what he should be doing is saying, here's the bright line regulations.
If FTX wants to loan out all their Ethereum, you have to do what they did in
Japan. You have to have 95% collateral and 95% of anything needs to be put in cold storage. If he
had followed the same rules for crypto that Japan did, FTX would still be in business. Sam Bankman
Fried might still be in jail, but FTX, 3 Euros Capital, they'd still be in business because he did the wrong
thing.
Now I've literally talked to Kamala Harris at lunch about this specific topic of litigation
through litigation.
And as a lawyer, she got it immediately and she knows it's a problem and they know, and
she's even mentioned in one of her speeches that that's something that they're going to
deal with.
Can I get your reaction to this story from the Washington reporter? There was a story I don't know if it's Washington
Post, but no Washington reporters. So according to some
Senate sources, Kamala Harris was considering Gensler for
Treasury Secretary.
I would call that bullshit. Okay, what's the Washington
reporter?
I haven't asked her about any position at all. But what I was
told and look, talking to people who are like, always in the same room with her, the response to me about Gary Gensler was, have you heard anybody say anything positive?
That's ally.
And she has been enormously powerful during the Biden administration.
Have you heard her say a word?
Mark, Mark, boil it all up.
Like what's your general sense of her?
How should we all think about her?
So here's the way I look at Kamala, right?
She is open-minded.
She's smart.
She does the work.
She digs in and learns.
She's ethical.
She's honest. She does the work. She digs in and learns. She's ethical. She's honest. She cares. She wants to bring the country to the middle. She knows that when she was far left, that might have been great for the state of California,
but it doesn't solve the problems of the United States of America today. And that's why you've seen her go to the middle. And that is truly, I
know, David, you might not believe this, it is truly honest and through and through her.
When she gave give speeches now, she says, I'll take ideas from independence. I'll take
them from Republicans. I don't care. We have a lot of problems to solve in this country.
I would be shocked if if she wins, she talks to Elon Musk, if he long would talk to her.
She doesn't care where the interviews with
unfriendly or challenging folks. This seems to be like,
you know, a really valid criticism. We've had Trump here,
we've had GD Vance here. Yeah. I don't disagree. Look, it is not
what she why does she hide? Do you think? I don't think she's
hiding. There's two elements there. Right? One, I think she
understands the assignment was to win the election. And the
best way to reach the most number of people and get them
to change their mind is not the 1% of people who are high
information voters. It's all the people who are showing up at
rallies and screaming and yelling. Those are the people
who people whose mind she has changed so far. And that's how
she's caught up and who she wants to
change and that's where she's putting her focus and two and this is really honest um she has too
long a wind up in answering every single question and that makes the interviews difficult she wants
to inspire everybody with everything that she answers and tries to get people all excited about
what she's going to do and so she takes too long to get to that. If you cut out the windups,
her answers aren't so bad. Her answers are absolutely legit,
but that windup makes it seem like the whole word salad thing.
You don't think it's relevant that she was born to a middle-class family as
the answer to how she's going to solve inflation?
She's got to drop that. Yeah. But on the flip side, I mean, if you listen,
I literally, because I knew I said she's gotta drop that, yeah. But on the flip side, I mean, if you listen, I literally,
because I knew I'd be talking to you guys,
I listened to Donald Trump's speech in Milwaukee.
Did any of you guys listen to that?
Yes. I was there.
Okay, what was it? You were there, Sax?
I was there.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
not the RNC, not the RNC.
Two days ago. He's saying this week.
Oh, no, I was gonna say two days ago.
No, I thought you were talking about the RNC.
So, Kamala might have a long wind ago. No. I thought you were talking about the RNC.
So, Kamala might have a long windup.
Donald Trump has an eternal windup where all he does is get to his slogans and talking
points and then talks gibberish the rest of the time.
Let me fill you in on some of the gibberish.
You're talking about a rally?
He will speak extemporaneously for over an hour.
Yeah, but what he says shouldn't matter.
I'll take that any day over someone on a teleprompter for 19 minutes.
But, David, so what you're saying, it doesn't matter what he says? No,
I think it does matter. But I think that I've watched enough Trump rallies, including his
speech at the convention where I was there listening to understand what issues he stands
for. Okay, well, tell me what issues he stands for when he diminishes Jimmy Carter, who just
has his 100th birthday. Tell me what issues he's standing for he diminishes Jimmy Carter, who just has his 100th birthday.
Tell me what issues he stands for.
I've heard him say good things and bad things
about Jimmy Carter.
Okay, sorry, let's put that aside.
Everyone makes fun of Jimmy Carter.
Okay, so let's put that aside.
Let's just say it is what it is, even though it's aside.
We'll go that, put that under the character.
He started talking about apartments with no windows,
that builders under Kamala Harris are gonna start,
are being forced to build apartments with no windows. I haven't heard that bit yet
Yeah, oh I listened to this today and then he also said that I also know that people take a lot of what Trump says out
Of context to make it seem a lot worse
if you listen to you if you listen to what he says and you don't try to
You know shade it in the worst possible way a lot of what he says makes sense
I believe that if you if you want to know why I support Trump number one the border try to shade it in the worst possible way, a lot of what he says makes sense.
I believe that if you want to know why I support Trump, number one, the border, okay?
Unlike Kamala Harris's election year conversion, he has been very consistent ever since he
came down the escalator that we needed to have a wall and that really that was just
the first part of our border security.
We needed to have a border.
Democrats, not just Kamala, pretty much all the Democrats fought him on that for the last eight years to the point where I understand
I just said so the board is one thing what you get that?
Okay, so I think that he and only he has credibility in this election on that issue
Number two on the on the foreign wars. We talked about this
I mean, I don't think his record on foreign policy was perfect
But it is true that he did not start any new foreign wars
And and and the set no
The Ukraine war we could have invaded Ukraine I've argued on the show many times
He provoked it okay, he provoked Okay, so you're assigning whatever to Joe Biden.
At a minimum.
Hold on a second.
He forced Putin to invade Ukraine. Come on. Stop acting dumb.
You understand that we tried to
convert Ukraine into a giant NATO base.
That was, the Russians said
over and over again that that was a red line
to them. It was the brightest of all red lines.
But to blame it on Biden is a little crazy.
And Bill Burns, our current CIA director, said it best, it's the brightest of all red lines. But to blame it on Biden's a little crazy. And Bill Burns, our current CIA director, said it best, it's the brightest of all red lines
for the Russian elite, not just Putin. Okay. That has been a consistent Russian policy for over 20
years. And moreover, hold on a second, even if you don't believe, even if you disagree with me,
and you say that Biden didn't provoke it, we had the chance to end the war in its first month
with a deal at Istanbul. Okay. And the mainstream media denied it for a year. It was only an alternative media.
And then finally, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal wrote stories about it. It is the
truth. Victoria Nuland just admitted it. We could have agreed to a deal in the first month. The Biden
administration shot that down. That is why we have the war going in Ukraine. Okay. So let's just say
that is a fact. Remember, Zelensky has also got to agree with it. And that war has been incredibly
destructive. And by the way, if you care about Israel so let's just say that's a fact. Remember, Zelensky has also got to agree with it. And that war's been incredibly destructive.
And by the way, if you care about Israel,
hold on, Mark, if you care about Israel,
you should be really concerned about the fact
that the United States has significantly depleted
its stockpiles of weapons and artillery ammunition
in Ukraine on a war that is futile.
We sent them our old sh**, David.
We didn't give them anything new.
We sent them our old sh**.
Israel gets the Gary leads 155
155 millimeter artillery shells are hundred fifty five millimeter artillery shells. It's not about new or old. Okay, get the Glen Gary Lee
Israel gets the Glen Gary leads, right and then look and on top of that so linsky's always so much air defense
There's only so many Patriots to go around
All right
You agree that the linsky could have said yes to that deal?
The one in Istanbul?
Yeah.
He could only say yes to it if the U.S. supported it.
And instead, we encouraged him to fight.
We threw cold water on that deal.
We blocked it.
He still had to find a way.
We should have told Zelensky, you know what?
Just make that deal.
We don't need another war right now.
Okay?
This NATO thing's not happening anyway.
Okay?
Because we're not letting Zelensky into NATO.
Well, no, the guy from Norway,
the guy who just took over NATO says otherwise.
We're not gonna let in.
Zelensky was just here in the US last week
with his so-called victory plan.
You know what his victory plan was?
Let us into NATO immediately
so that you can fight our war for us. No, I, I get that with the Biden administration to its credit, rejected that.
Okay, I give Biden credit for that. The good news is Biden is not running in this election.
Whenever it's inconvenient, you want to pretend that Harris has nothing to do with this
administration. I'm giving you a reality when I've had people who worked for me and started went out and started their own
companies like Samantha and in Facebook, right? They're not
people have different opinions. The people who work for me do
what I say. Period. End of story. Maybe they do. Just
following orders basically the Nuremberg. Do you think Jay? Do
you think JD Vance is going to do anything contrary to Donald
Trump if he wins? There's an abundant record. I know what JD Vance stands for.
There was an abundant record of Kamala Harris as a Senator before
she even got the VP job.
She was rated the most liberal member of the Senate by GovTrack.
Well, why don't you answer Mark's question?
It is.
The question is, what does she really stand for?
What does she really believe?
No, he asked you about JD Vance.
You ignored his question.
Sorry.
What's your question?
I'm happy to answer it.
Would JD Vance ever go against Donald Trump?
No, obviously I understand that a VP cannot go against what the president wanted.
That's it, period.
Now we can cut half the episode out.
Now moving on.
Hold on a second.
That fact does not prove that Kamala Harris has a different policy than Joe Biden.
Whenever it's inconvenient for you to admit that Biden's policy sucks. No look at what she's doing, David. No, you're doing the exact thing you're saying that I'm doing.
You're trying to position her so that everything from the Biden administration, she has ownership of it.
And what I'm saying is just look at what she's doing. Look at what she's saying.
Here's the antithesis of the Trump Dearrangement Syndrome, right?
You tell whenever Donald Trump says something stupid, everybody explains it for him.
When Kamala Harris says something smart, everybody tries to explain why it's stupid and not true.
When did she say something smart?
I mean, seriously, what's the last thing she said that was smart?
Just curious.
Jason, you want to fact check the window list?
By the way, the window list, the window list thing, Mark, just
so you know, because Nick's shared it with us, it's an architectural digest article.
Apparently, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, proposed windowless bedrooms as a way to change
the building codes to incentivize more apartments being built to fix the housing crisis.
The problem with converting the plates in commercial-
See, this is what always happens. This is the gas lighting. They try to make Trump seem crazy. I think it's also the housing crisis converting the problem with converting the place in commercial
This is the gas lighting they try to make well, I mean he also I mean trump lies constantly
Let's be honest. You find out that there's a real basis to his then in some cases. He just lies anyway
Trump can't ever explain it himself
Why is it that the guy that you like can never come out and say hey, you know, this is crazy
This is the most ridiculous thing eric adam suggested
come out and said, Hey, you know, this is crazy. This is the most ridiculous thing Eric Adams suggested. Everybody else has got to do the research and explain what Trump really means
because he is losing it. He is cognitively incapable. You're the one who raised it as
some example. You raised it as an example of Trump. Okay. Do you think it's incognito client sex?
No, I think he's very sharp. We met him personally. So let's wrap, let's wrap the
politics section with just a final question because I have a question. Yeah, let's
leave politics mark. Very, very pointed question. Why did you
sell the maps at this moment? So I sold three quarters of them,
not the whole thing. I still want to 7.7% for a couple
reasons. One, when I first bought in in 2000, I was the tech
guy in the NBA. I was the media guy.
You know, broadcast.com just sold it.
HDNet just created the very first ever high definition television network.
I had every edge and every angle.
Now, fast forward 24 years later, in order to sustain growth,
to be able to compete with the new collective bargaining agreement,
you have to have other sources of revenue.
And so you see other teams and all sports for that matter,
talking about casinos, talking about creating,
doing real estate development, hotel, that's just not me.
I wasn't gonna put up $2 billion
to get an education on building.
Same.
So that was one, that's part one.
Part two is my kids are now
15, 18 and 21. And over the next 10 years, that's a lot of pressure on them to have to
take over the team or deal with the trust, you know, God forbid something happens to
me deal with the trust fund issues. And so by selling three quarters of it, I took all
that pressure off of them because you guys see the hate.
I mean, Jason can tell you all day long about Jimmy Dolan.
He's MIA right now and the Knicks are doing great.
Do you think valuations peak Mark?
I don't think they've peaked yet because for the reasons I just mentioned, if we're able
to build a Venetian type casino in Dallas with an American Airlines Center
in the middle of it, the valuation is $20 billion.
But I own 27% of that.
Well, and you bought it for under 300 and sold it 3.5.
Just not everybody's keeping the records.
I think Chamath, you bought it 300 and sold it 3 billion as well.
So congratulations, boys.
Actually, let me ask you a question about that.
When you did it, did you just do it for fun and it worked out to be a great
business or did you think it was going to be a great business?
No, I did it for fun.
So, you know, this is a great question, David.
Um, from 2000 to 2010, the actual valuations went down.
And in 2010, we were not even able to sell the New Orleans Hornets.
The league had to buy it.
Right.
That's right.
And it was right around then that the Sixers got purchased for 200,
for the same price I paid.
And the cap,
the NBA salary cap is a reflection of the total revenues of the NBA.
There were multiple years when the salary cap went down,
meaning our overall revenues went down,
which was great for me competitively because I would buy first round picks for $3 million.
I would buy players from other teams that couldn't afford to run their teams.
And that's why we went on this, you know, 15 year streak of never having a losing season
and winning 50 games in a row for, for, for 10 years in a row.
So, um, you know, it worked against me, worked for me competitively,
but that just shows you that things can change.
And so I did do-
What's that?
What's that?
So when cable and satellite and over the air
became very competitive and they started to grow
and subscriptions grew to 130 million people
or subscriptions, that's a lot of money.
And they had to compete for content
so that there would be less churn.
And I literally remember in 2001,
when we first signed our first cable deal,
NBC had the deal and they were going back to David Stern
saying, we need fewer games.
And I sat there in one of our board of governors meetings
and I'm like, look, TBS just signed a deal to pay a billion dollars per episode for repeats of Seinfeld. If you
do that on evaluation per hour, ours is fresher, our ratings are actually better. Don't think
of it as less product will lead to more demand. It's the exact opposite. We're so inexpensive,
we can charge more, and that led to the next TV deal, and that led to the explosion.
Mark, you have a lot of fingers and a lot of pots in other businesses. You have a really
important thing you're doing in drugs that you may want to talk about.
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Sma.
If you look at the next 10 years of your life, so you're 66 between now, 14 years, between
now and 80, 81, what's your goal?
What are you working on?
What are the things that you care about?
Where are you putting your capital?
What are you trying to do?
The number one's family, obviously, but beyond that is CosmosDrugs.com.
We're f***ing up the health industry like you wouldn't believe.
If you've seen-
Just explain it for the folks that don't understand it.
Sure.
Let's just say guys our age,
or you guys are close enough to my age,
we use a drug called Tadilafil,
for those of you who know what it is.
And you, it's generic Cialis.
Cialis.
Yeah, Cialis is great.
Cialis is great.
Viagra sucks.
Viagra sucks.
Cialis is great, but-
Wait, wait, hold on, we gotta double click on this.
We're so I've heard from Saks and Dupont.
So you've heard from Saks.
Right. Are you a Cialis or a Viagra guy, Sachs?
What's going on here?
At any rate.
Or both.
So you go-
Cialis just seems better value for money.
Wait, what are those?
What are those?
Never heard of them.
Sachs is like, what is that?
Never heard of them.
He's turning red, actually.
So if you go to costplusdrugs.com
and you put into Dillafil,
when it comes up, we show you
our actual cost.
And then we market up by 15%.
And if you buy it via mail order, then we add $5 for a pharmacy fee to review everything
and $5 for shipping and handling.
The net result of that is you guys have a general idea of what the price is now from
all the ads.
You can buy a 90 pack of to
Dilla Phil for about $9 and 90 cents plus shipping and
handling. So for less than the price of a bag of M&Ms, you
could put up a little cup or jar next to your bed of either
M&Ms.
What is the name of this website?
Be right back. $9 for 90 days. Right. We're like, let's go. Poor Chumup.
That seems free. It's an incredible deal. So, but you apply that to the 2500 drugs that
we have. And now all of a sudden, you see what's wrong with these things called pharmacy
benefit managers, and the problem of an industry that's opaque. And I'll give you another example.
There are drugs that are called specialty generics. And the only thing special about them, they're actually just pills, is that they were
traditionally more expensive. So there's a drug called imatinib, which is a chemotherapy drug.
If you just walk into a CVS as an example, a big, big pharmacy, and you're a cash payer or a high
deductible payer and you just needed it,
they'll charge you anywhere from $200 to $2,000. You have no idea what you're going to pay.
If you get it from Cost Plus Drugs, depending on the number and the strength, it might be $21 to $30.
There's another drug, Droxidopa. One of my buddies came to me and said,
I'm losing my insurance. The pharmacy wants to charge me $10,000 a quarter
for this medication called Droxodopa. All right, Landon, let me check. Initially it was $64 a month,
now it's in the $20 per month because as our cost goes down, we pass it on.
And that's just changed the industry because think about what happens when you get a prescription.
What's the pushback? But Mark, I mean, what is the pushback you get? Because that's
What's the pushback? But Mark, I mean, what is the pushback you get? Because that's, that's none count. It's counter to the trend, right? So is it just infinite growth or how does the industry
respond when you create that price differential? So it's the innovators dilemma. They can't just
give up all of this margin. They so most of the business of pharmacy benefit management, not most,
so a big chunk of the businesses comes from corporate, from corporations, right? And self-insured companies. And they go to
them and they put together the thing called the formulary, which is all the drugs, right?
That's available to them. And they say, we're going to price this so that we get rebates
and we'll pass on the rebates we get from the manufacturers to you. Now they say they're
going to pass on 100% of that rebate, they don't. They create all these subsidiaries and everything
that's skim 10% or whatever off the top,
but they know that they can continue working
with these companies because the core competency of a CEO
is not to know their healthcare costs.
And literally for any CEOs that are out there,
audit your PBM contract.
Audit it right now.
I promise you that that PBM is gonna tell you
you don't need to audit.
And then you can say, we wanna add cost plus drugs
to our pharmacy supply contract.
And they're gonna say, no, you're not allowed to do it.
Because they know our prices are so much lower
that it's disrupting their industry.
Are you doing this as like a for-profit business?
Are you losing money on this
and doing it just to help society? What's your plan here? Right now? I'm losing money. And most of that was because we
build a factory, the whole robotics driven factory that manufacturers on sterile injectables that
are in short supply. So now like with the hurricane, you know, we're using our robotics to switch over
to sterile water of all things and some other things so that we can manufacture it and get it to them at a reasonable price as opposed
to price galgene, which Kamala has talked often about.
Because there will be price galgene in pharmacy and we're here to be an alternative.
So to answer your question, I've spent a whole lot of money on these robotics and putting
this together, but our path is hockey stick, double,
triple hockey stick. And so we're taking business from them. And I think the traditional legacy
companies and the insurance- But did something happen to you or somebody around you that motivated
you to go after the PBMs or was just this clinical business analysis of like, this just doesn't make
sense and it can be done better? So both. What happened was I got an email from my partner, co-founder, Dr. Alex Oshmaensky.
And he wanted to create a compounding pharmacy in Denver that made drugs that were in short supply,
because there's always, for whatever reason, some generic drug that is on a shortage list.
And I'm like, you're thinking too small. And this was right around the time that the farmer bro was going to jail.
And I asked him, you know, how is it that this dude buys up a one year supply of Daraprim,
the drug he bought, and just jacks it up?
And how does that happen?
And he goes, it just happened.
I'm like, well, let me do some homework and dig in.
And the reason was obvious.
The industry was completely opaque.
The first line in every single pharmacy contract and healthcare contract for that matter is
you're not allowed to talk about it.
You are restricted from talking about this to anybody, anybody at all.
So we had a completely opaque market.
So we put together the website called CosplusDrugs.com, but really the smartest thing that we did,
and it was unintentional in terms of impact, we created a full price list. So you can
get our 2500 drugs, the actual price list, and we release it every week because we're on a roll now
where we've had since last a year ago, more than a year ago, every weekday we've lowered a price on
a drug. And so we just put that out. And what's happened as a result is now companies can just
get the price list and do comparisons to approximately what they're paying because their PBM won't tell them exactly what they're
paying.
I have one suggestion for you there, Mark. You can make this a nonprofit when you sell
them apps, you could donate money to this. Then like six, seven years later, you could
flip it into a for-profit and take it public. There's like a strategy here. This could work
out really well for you.
Exactly. Exactly the point. And you know, Sam Altman is an investor. No's like a strategy here. This could work out really well for you. Exactly the point.
And Sam Altman is an investor.
No, I'm just kidding.
And so we put out this price list
and all of a sudden Harvard Medical and Vanderbilt
and all these research institutes took our pricing
and compared it to what Medicare was paying
for the same drugs. And it was like, well, this is, this is what I was going to ask you, because CMS is now empowered to negotiate.
Yeah.
And this is sort of maybe ties together with the governmental efficiency and just do the obvious right thing.
But shouldn't they just work with you as an example?
And and why don't they?
They are. And it's just started.
They are right. So here's again,
I can't speak for her to say what she's going to do. But here
was the conversation I've had with her team, when it comes to
reducing out of pocket costs to deal with inflation, what I've
told them is one key area that in fact, most families at some
level, nobody dies healthy,
is the cost of healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
And by working, by requiring transparency in all contracts,
signed by anybody anywhere in terms of pricing,
you are gonna see the same impact on across the board pricing
of a decrease of 30, 40%.
And so all that is going to reduce out of pocket spending
for everybody, reduce government
spending for everybody and have a net positive impact. They see that.
And have you had that conversation with the Republicans as well? So that seems to make
sense for everybody.
I had a similar conversation, like as I mentioned to you in the White House when I went there
and it just didn't resonate.
Boys, any final questions for Mark here as we wrap up?
You're not going to ask me about Elon and why I trolled Elon and any of that good stuff?
Well, I want to know about, are you investing in AI technology?
Where are you investing in the stack?
How do you think about that?
Are you an active venture investor, Mark?
I mean, I know we've obviously done some stuff together, but I'm curious how you look at
stuff.
So now I've kind of slowed down.
I invested in Grok with Schmutz, right? Schmutz is like, yeah, let's go, right? And he like how you look at stuff. So now I've kind of slowed down. I invested in Grok, right, with Shamath, right? Shamath is
yeah, let's go, right? And he can tell you all the reasons.
I think we all have a piece of that now.
Okay, well good. So you guys know the whole story, right? And so I think that's great.
Picks and shovels, I think are important. I think the problem, and this happens with all
new technologies, is we're seeing the gold rush right now where everybody calls everything AI,
particularly with agents. And I think you can put all these vertical agents together to do all these different
things, but agents are just going to be a feature, not a product.
Because inherently in AI, as it advances and gets smarter, then it's going to be able to
create its own agents for its users and go forward from there.
So I've been really hesitant now because you're not going to invest
in the foundational models. I mean, through a fund, I have part of OpenAI and some others,
but that's just so expensive. You don't know who the winners are going to be. But yet,
everything that happens is going to be a derivative of them.
What's your business intuition tell you about that actually? So you have this crazy capital race between closed and open.
How do you think that plays out?
I think there are going to be tens of millions of models.
Everybody's going to have a model.
Your kids are going to have models.
Their little invisible friend is going to be a model that's in a teddy bear that they
grow up with.
So there's going to be an model that's in a, you know, a teddy bear that they grow up with. So there's going to be an unlimited number of models, but we don't know who the winners are going to be to host those
models. I have no idea. And if you go back over the history of technology, that's always the case.
Everybody, there's always a race to be the winner for the foundation, whether it was broadband,
whether it was networking, whether it was whatever it's streaming, and everybody battles it out. And so it's okay. And for
me now, I'm just like, let me just wait.
Let me just say there's a you think there's going to be or a
chance at job displacement? What do you think of like this
universal basic income cataclysm?
I think it's the exact opposite. Okay, explain. So I think that in order to train a model,
you need access to information.
And the internet ain't what it used to be
in terms of being a source of information.
And so IP is becoming more valuable.
You're not, I think everybody by this time
expected all the foundational models
to have all this healthcare information.
But if I'm Mayo Clinic,
I'm not giving Microsoft or Google or OpenAI my IP because that's what brands me.
So there's going to be a lot of money available there.
I think that there's got to be a way to figure that out.
First, how does IP work and how is it distributed?
And then how are we using it just in general?
We really don't know how we're going to implement it or use it or what the interface is going
to be and all that will be figured out by some kid somewhere.
So maybe just to wrap Mark, so these next 10 or 15 years, is it about doubling down
on these current things, making cost plus thing huge, like harvesting essentially,
or are you going to do new things
or is just the bar getting higher?
When I'm gone, I wanted to say, mother, he did it.
It was expensive when we were sick,
and ain't expensive no more.
And to me, that's the ultimate mission.
Now, it's fun to learn AI and build models
and do all that stuff, right? But when it's all said and done,
to me, that's where you want to mark that. Let me let me ask you
a final final question. That's great. We've, you've done a
reality show just retired from that cashed out of three
quarters of the Mavericks check did that helping people with
this cost plus
drugs and saving people money. It's a pretty noble mission
kind of adds up to you're going to run for president. No, there's
no no, why not? It would be a great thing to do. You've
checked off all the boxes. Why wouldn't you?
Too old now, right?
20 years younger than Trump and Biden.
Wikipedia is wrong. I changed. I'm a sock puppet in my spare
time. I changed. No puppet in my spare time.
I changed it.
No, four years from now, eight years from now. Would you even consider it?
No, it's not going to happen.
Or if you were going to consider it?
Yeah, right to our error, right?
How would you process making that decision?
My kids hated the idea. My wife hated the idea.
It's hard enough for them to have a normal life as it is.
And that just takes it to a whole other level.
Plus, you'd have to run as a Republican because Democrats hate billionaires like you.
No, actually they-
You saw it happen in Bloomberg, right? You saw it happen in Bloomberg.
Yeah, but that's a shame.
But $100 million made it to the first question of the first debate. Boom. Elizabeth Warren knocked
him out.
But let me just tell you this, and we don't have to talk more about politics. Parties don't exist
anymore. They don't. There's fundraising vehicles and they have procedures in place, but this is Donald Trump.
He took over the Republican Party.
They do what he says.
And Kamala Harris has learned from Donald Trump.
Give him credit.
She has learned what worked for him.
They're not stupid.
She has learned that she has got to be that personality that takes over and they have
got to do what she says.
You haven't heard a word from Bernie or Elizabeth Warren and that's not
Unintentional she is doing it her way now whether or not you agree what she's doing or her approach to win
Everybody can argue and that's what makes a market
But there are no political parties anymore and the idea of the the ideology of a party on the Democratic side
Is no more in place than on the Republican side. All right. So with that, with that, my Nick's got a shot this year. What do you think?
Yeah, I thought the trade was great. I think that was great. Yeah.
I think that's great. I mean, he's a little late on the defense, but he's,
but with KP, right? That's what they're doing. How do they match up with Boston?
And so KP and cat match up. And that's why you got a shot.
You're saying there's a chance my niggas might get there.
I'm saying you and Jim Carrey have a lot in common.
There's a chance. All right, everybody. This has been another amazing
episode. Thanks, guys. Come back anytime. Mark, we'll see you all
next time. Bye bye. Thanks. That was awesome. They'll give you
instructions and I'll upload and I'll see you again soon. Yeah,
you guys are awesome. Cheers.
And I don't mind arguing, David.
I love to argue this stuff, right?
I know.
I know.
Look, I give you credit.
You're fun to talk with and argue with and you obviously don't take it personally and
I appreciate that.
And yeah, I give you credit for having fun with it.
I know too many depressed billionaires.
So I give you a lot of credit.
I don't get that.
But you know what? If you were if you were poor, you a lot of credit. Yeah, I don't get that. But you know what, if you were, if you were when you were poor,
you're up when you're rich, right?
And it just doesn't change anything.
I was hoping you, we talked about Elon.
That's actually, well, we could still go there.
Where's Jake? We can still go there.
You can ask the question.
All right.
Two of my besties,
Oh, has 25 years, you and Elon,
is this a, you guys just goofing on
each other? You got an issue with Elon that's sincere? Or is
it just playful, fun trolling?
So two things. One, as an entrepreneur, Elon's like the
shit of the shit of the shit, right? Yeah, there's I'm a huge
fan. What he's been able to accomplish is insane. It's
incredible. I would never diminish anything he's done as an entrepreneur. As a Twitter
user, he's a troll. And I mean, he just trolls to troll to troll.
And every good troll deserves a foil, right? Somebody to troll
back. And it's just so easy and so much fun. Now, you know, I
get some of the underlying principles, I think, at least in
my mind, like when he talks about the First
Amendment principle that he's doing here of like, radically
changing Twitter from, like, it's pretty controlled to, hey,
anything goes, I think that's almost anything goes, I think
that's a fear of losing users. So I think that within the
conservative community, they are more joiners and heavier social media
users. Participants, yeah.
Yeah, participants. So they subscribe to more things, they listen to more podcasts,
they're more active. And I think he recognized that. And that was a fundamental underpinning
of why he kind of connected to them on the free speech thing.
Because he still has his limits, obviously. It's his platform and what he doesn't want doesn't get shown.
So I think that's why and I can't blame him. I wish he would call me. I'd help him on his revenue and all that.
And then I think on the immigration side, here's my theory. You guys can tell me if you agree or disagree. I don't
think he's anti immigration, like he says, you know, anti
illegal immigration, where anybody who's in the country
should be deported. I think, as an immigrant himself, and I'm
second generation, you guys are, you know, immigrants at some
level, we all are. But I think as an immigrant himself, he thinks that the number of illegal immigrants in this
country and the hate that's pushed towards them carries over to legal immigrants, including
himself.
And I think he believes that by diminishing the illegal or the non-citizens in this country
and asking for their removal,
it improves the standing of the legal immigrants, including himself.
And so that's kind of my theory on both of those things.
Interesting. Yeah. It's certainly a different place.
I don't think you need much of a theory to explain Elon's views because he's just so
transparent about what he believes. I truly believe that his core conviction and the reason he bought
Twitter X is because he wanted to unlock it as a free speech platform. Yeah I
don't think so. I don't know how much more money he can lose in pursuit of that goal.
But see here's why I disagree. You don't take other people's
money to do that. If he put up... Well I don it off, he knew he didn't know that he would get boycotted by all these
advertise, but he knew, he knew that I think he went in open eyes, carried the
sink in the door to run it with some improvements operationally, which he did
a great job of and to actually out a huge amount of the cost structure, which
he did.
Jason, I were there on the first day, the first day he took over, there was an organized
boycott of advertisers and they called him anti-Semitic, which is ridiculous before he
even had a chance to do one thing about that site.
So I've heard from a lot of those folks.
And it's not so much.
When you talk about free speech, free speech applies to advertisers as well.
They get to associate with whoever they want to, no matter what.
So, so there are repercussions.
Unless there's a collusive effort going on to sort of organize.
No, and I get that organization dissolved immediately.
So there weren't. But look, I get from my own self, right?
I don't understand why you won't give him credit for believing in free speech. That's clearly the
principle. I have no problem with free speech. Look, I've always said people like get rid of
the anti-Semitic people. You get anti-Semitic tropes. I get, you know, zillions of anti-Semitic
tropes, you know, in my, in my replies, just they're nonstop. I mean, I'm not white, you know,
my grandparents changed their name to from Chibisky to Cuban, not even intentionally.
And so it's always your real name is Chibisky White.
It's just the hate there is insane.
And my attitude has always been, I want to know who the morons are.
I have no problem with them still being allowed on the platform.
But the trade off is for advertisers.
They don't want to be associated with that.
There is no upside for being on Twitter right now or Exxon right now.
And you add to that the porn.
Kids 13 years old can go on that site and you can find any insane thing you want on
Exxon right now.
And that also is a problem for advertisers.
That's part of free speech, but you got to pay the bill when you're willing to accept
that. That's part of free speech, but you got to pay the bill when you're willing to accept that I don't think he realized just how deep users will go in order to use their free speech
And I think that really surprised him
and so that's why I don't think that he bought it specifically for free speech because I think
He's always one of the things I really admire. I don't know
I mean he said he said before he bought it that he was going to open it up as a free speech platform.
That's why, hold on. This is why the left immediately started
boycotting him before he even changed one policy. Jacob, help
me out. You were there.
Well, no, I know for a fact that this was a free speech mission
for him. I do think, you know, multiple things can be true.
Mark, you are correct that if you have spicy content,
advertisers don't want anything to do with it. And they have choices. And it's also one of the smaller platforms
that have choices that have more scale. So that makes it even
easier. And it's also true that they're boycotting him, and
specifically targeting, but all these things are happening at
the same time. And I think, you know, when you look at what he's
done there, we'll look at it historically, as this place that was very controlled
and clean and owned by the press and the elites became this
chaotic thing, but also ultimately the one place where
at scale, you cannot be canceled. And you know, if you
look at cancellation as a concept, the number one place
to get canceled was Twitter. You said something
even slightly off, man, they came down on you, they destroyed
you. And that now that we've gotten rid of cancel culture,
and people can say what they believe, and people can make
them. I don't know why it's necessary to find you think it's
not just finished the thought I do think that that will be
looked at as a beautiful thing that he gave to society as a
gift and it will be looked at as a really challenged business
because it was an ad business that lost its advertising base.
And Apple and Disney have choices.
I don't see the need here to look past
or to look for an ulterior motive in what Elon's doing.
Elon believes in free speech.
It's very clear.
He's run the platform that way.
And it's cost him money.
So what else could the motivation be except his principles?
But he was also addicted to it. I can tell you that as the person who got him
I know but that's not that's not why he's running
My calendar to that, you know, I'm better than I do I why we even having this debate who cares? I mean
Yeah, I mean as a free speech platform. Yeah, and that's fine.
Obviously, it's his choice that that's free speech by definition.
Actually, to me, this debate is kind of pointless, but let's talk about actually the issue.
There's a news story this week where open AI just raised was a six billion.
Yeah, 150,000,000 valuation.
They originally started that enterprise
with $50 million or so from Elon.
It was a nonprofit.
Then they became a for-profit.
Now there's a report saying that they're telling investors
in this round that they can't invest in any other AI
companies.
So they're acting like, I mean, they've
gone from nonprofit philanthropy to piranha for-profit company.
That's pretty sharp elbow.
Sam, yeah, it is sharp elbowed.
Sam said he wasn't going to take compensation.
Now he's getting compensation.
Yep.
10 billion.
I mean, what do you think about this?
I mean, look, it's their company.
They get to do what they want.
Period.
They're not under false pretenses.
I mean, if they-
But don't invest.
I mean, they just-
He didn't invest.
He gave him a donation.
No, let me, which leads to something.
I want to say very positive about Elon.
Put aside his genius in coming up
and running these companies.
The one thing I respect the most about Elon Musk,
and he does more than anybody I've ever seen,
and that is he goes all in.
He doesn't just, you know, he takes every cent he has and he believes in it and he goes
all motherf*****g in.
He never hedges his bet at all.
Till Twitter, right?
That's why I say, you know, he brought in investors, you know, he brought investors
to Tesla and everything, but initially he went all in himself.
You know, I think with Twitter, I think he was kind of surprised.
But going back to OpenAI, I don't, I wouldn't do business with people like that.
And there are people who just look for what they think is the next big thing.
And I certainly could have given him money, didn't give him money.
I said one of our funds that I'm in, did give him money originally, didn't give him money
another time.
To me, that's just wrong.
And that catches up to you.
When people f*** over investors and whatever, it always comes back.
Karma is a bitch in business too.
Now, Gemini with Google, I've done a lot of stuff with them.
Notebook is insanely good.
Gemini 1.5 is insanely good.
Meta as open source and what they're doing is getting better and better. There's no, you know,
there's nothing that says that open AI is going to win nothing at all. And so I don't feel bad
about what they're doing. And to me, it tells me they're more scared than anything by trying to
restrict what people are doing. Yep. That's a perspective. It says it's more a reflection
of Sam than anything else is what you're saying. Yep. Well, I mean, that's your perspective is it says it's more a reflection of Sam than anything else is right
You're is what you're saying. Yep. Well, I mean that would be reflected in the fact that so many people who are the co-founders have left
Yeah, that that's a really big red flag this thing is gonna change the world. Yeah, all the co-founders leave
I heard 40 of the 44 co-founders left. Yeah the original boys. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but that's
40 of the 44 co founders left.
Yeah, the original voice. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but that's, and then if you, well, I mean, if you also
think about this business Chamath and where it's headed,
sorry, there were like, there were 44 co founders.
Yeah, no, but I mean, if you, if you, we, we did a joke about
it last week. But if you just look at the, the competition set
that they're up against, they're losing 5 billion a year, they're making
three and a half, they put this thing at 150 billion, it's 40
times 50 times revenue, to fill in that valuation on a price to
sales basis, you know, it's kind of crazy.
Here's the one thing that I'll say. And I think Mark said this
in a different way, but I'll just I don't think you can
underestimate how
companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon will react when they feel
cornered. And I think in the last 20 or 25 years, what you've seen is those
companies, when their backs are against the wall, they use money, their sharp
elbowed, but the consistent thing is they've won.
And so the real question is, do people
look at the chart of the users?
Because typically what happens is
it's users what tilts these companies.
When something, some upstart, you
remember when Snapchat was about to explode?
Yeah.
There was a decision, we're going
to decapitate this company.
Facebook effectively did that.
They relegated it to the corner.
Zynga. Yep. Zynga. There's many examples. They cut their legs out. So the real question is, when they see that this company, Facebook effectively did that. They relegated it to the corner. Zynga.
Yep.
Zynga.
There's many examples.
So the real question is when they see that this app
is gonna be at three or 500 million mile
and they appear on some list where they're bigger than,
I don't know, pick your favorite app inside of Meta or Google.
Ever, yeah, ever, yeah.
Will they freak out?
And if they do freak out, what do they do?
Oh, I can tell you they're freaking right now.
Oh, yeah. It's an existential risk to them. And the crazy, I mean, look what Microsoft did.
They bought three mile island, the nuclear reactor, they bought it. Everybody is looking
for the angle and the crazy part is it's really good. There used to be Moore's law that everything
followed right. The price performance curve always went like this, you know,
and power goes up now, because you don't know, you don't know what you don't know
and what you need to do next. That's part of the challenge that Elon has with
Tesla in terms of full service driving, you don't know what you need to do next
to get there. Do you have a Tesla?
I do. And I do also I also have a Kia EV. I have a Tesla EV and I have a Kia EV.
Do you use the FSD? And if so, how is it?
I have, but I stopped using it just because it terrified me.
Because it doesn't know what adversarial things that doesn't know.
Cause you know, you know,
anything that's adversarial that something that's to train on something that's
seen and it's not smart enough to train on something it's seen, and
it's not smart enough to figure out what it hasn't seen and whether or not it's a risk.
And I've said this before, my four-year-old mini Australian Shepherd, I can put it in
a risky situation to cross the street and trust it'll get across the street no matter
what it is.
It doesn't have to be pre-trained.
You can't do that with
full service driving yet. And so until that gets to where it needs to be where adversarial issues
aren't an issue, I'm not going to fully trust it. I have the 12. I got to go. Mark, you've been
really fun to talk to. So good talking to you. This has been Overtime with the All In Podcast with Mark Cuban. We'll see you all next time. You got it guys.
Thanks so much.
Love you, boys.
Bye bye. I'm the queen of Ken Wives I'm going all in What, what, and when is why?
What, when is why?
Besties are gone
Go 13
That's my dog taking an English in your driveway
Tax
Oh man
My appetizer will meet me at the place
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy
Cause they're all just useless
It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow
What? You're the B
What? You're the B
B? That's gonna be a...
We need to get merch
I'm doing all in
I'm doing all in