All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Trump wins! How it happened and what's next

Starting point is 00:00:00 Well, let's let's just go around the horn who voted for Trump Let's all raise their hands for those who voted for Trump ready one two three go. I voted twice I voted in four swing states. They sent multiple ballots to my J Cal and friends. Your energy is so dope. Welcome welcome. I'm Tim Waltz. I'm Tim Waltz of the All. Cal impression. God, your energy is so dorky. Welcome, welcome. I'm Tim Walz. I'm Tim Walz of the All In Pod. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Knucklehead?

Starting point is 00:00:50 You're the knucklehead of the All In Pod. I'm a knucklehead. Did you just sashay into your seat? I am right here. Show us your jazz. Show us your jazz. By the way, that name, you just enjoy that name, Tim Walz, while you can,

Starting point is 00:01:02 because you're never gonna hear about that guy again. He's giving you more forgettable than Tim Kaine. They're going to be doing SNL skits on how forgettable he is. That SNL skit was next level. I agree. Okay, so today we are going to cover the biggest- Are you thinking the news? Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:01:22 We'll start out with a little housekeeping and then we'll get into it. So like and subscribe on YouTube, youtube.com slash at all in we're trying to hit a million subscribers. Don't forget the holiday party. All in.com slash events. It is Saturday, December 7th. NSF. We have a couple of great announcements for the holiday party, which I think we are spending way too much money on. Steve Aoki will be DJing. spending way too much money on Steve Aoki will be DJing. Nice. Andrea Botes will be there doing the opening DJ set and her sister, Alex, will be joining us as well. Andrea and Alex will also be playing the Botes sisters.

Starting point is 00:01:53 We're going to have a chess tournament during the party, which will be super fun. Sax, you can get in on that challenge. Alex Botes or David Sax to chess. Gary Richards, also known as Destructo. This is Alex's chance for a rematch. That's right. As I recall, I beat her last time. Yeah, and we will have a board on screen.

Starting point is 00:02:13 You totally told me to go f*** myself and wouldn't give me any help. I also blundered my queen and still won on time, which I will always hold dear in my heart. She needed more time. If we had given her more time, that was a really tough situation. She would have crushed all of us. 4v1, tough.

Starting point is 00:02:29 But it's going to be a great show. Other guests to be announced in the future. VIP is almost sold out. We're doing a special dinner after the live show. And then the party is going to be awesome. Casino games, food, drinks, DJs. This is just to have fun, guys. This is not meant to be the of like the summit type show.

Starting point is 00:02:47 We're gonna just have a great time. So we hope everyone will join us. And if you've got startups that wanna join, please come on by, buy some tickets. And it'll be fun. How much is this costing us? He says it costs like a million bucks. A million bucks for a party.

Starting point is 00:02:59 The odds are we're gonna lose money on this. The idea is to see if we can- Wait, how many tickets are we selling? Not enough, apparently. Not enough, yeah. What's the total attendance size? Sax, you just won the White House. I think you're fine, bro.

Starting point is 00:03:10 Anyone can do this math. How big is the theater? And what are we charging for the tickets? Well, it's not a theater. So there's like, the tickets are like 500 bucks, I think. I love you being the moderator and taking all the arrows. This is great.

Starting point is 00:03:24 That's not a theater, what is it. So I think we're moderating again. Well, it's the PFA. Remember where they used to have the Exploratorium? That building where they built for the World's Fair or whatever. So it's in there and it's all empty. So we're kind of taking that. We're building a stage inside.

Starting point is 00:03:36 We're gonna build all the set and everything. Yeah, it should be fun. Okay, so first of all- I won't be there, but it sounds great. Yeah. If you could take some pictures, Sax would love to see what it looks like. Unless it's Mar-a-Lago, Sax will not show up.

Starting point is 00:03:49 I wanna just congratulate. It's like, oh, we're spending a million dollars? I won't be there. Sax! Okay, sorry, keep going. I wanna congratulate someone really special without whom Trump would likely not have been elected president.

Starting point is 00:04:03 So your bravery, your ingenuity, your creativity, you led the way and you brought millions of people, the direct news, they couldn't get anywhere else. Jason, congrats. Yes. Thank you. By creating the all in pod, you've inadvertently architected a system that's helped return Trump to the

Starting point is 00:04:18 White House. And for that, many people are praising you today. Congrats, Jason. How does it feel to have finally accomplished your dream? Feels great. Yeah, absolutely. How does it feel to have finally accomplished your dream? Feels great, yeah, absolutely. Big shout out to J Cal to kick this off. I just see a tweet where somebody gave me a lot of credit

Starting point is 00:04:31 for moving the Overton window in Silicon Valley. And they said that Jason was indispensable as my foil. If I didn't have him to dunk on for four years with my political takes, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective. So thank you for that. No, absolutely not. Yeah, my pleasure.

Starting point is 00:04:45 I'm here for you. I am avid to your hostility. Your internal MSM debating partner. We need someone to represent the legacy media point of view. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so let's kick it off. Sax, you were at Mar-a-Lago on election night. I thought it'd just be great if you could tell us

Starting point is 00:05:02 a little bit about what the scene was like, how was it? And when did you guys kind of know that Trump had kind of the victory in the bag? Was it pre the polls coming in because you had pollster data early or, you know, tell us a little bit about the experience there and when it all kind of came together. Yeah, I went over there, I guess, around 7 30, I want to say Eastern time, Tucker invited me to come on his show. Tucker was doing a live stream from the library at Mar-a-Lago. I'd actually never been over there before. There was also a dinner going on in the ballroom, which was, I think, primarily for Mar-a-Lago members. There were some senators there, members of the campaign. Then there was another room set

Starting point is 00:05:40 up with a bunch of TVs for basically the staff to watch the results come in. When I first got there, people were just watching, trying to find out the early results. I would say that the whispers were positive, but people didn't fumbly know more than the rest of us. Everyone was waiting for the results to come in. I did get a chance to take a photo with the president. Actually, Elon came in separately around the same time

Starting point is 00:06:09 and we got a very memorable photograph here. When I shook the president's hand, I gotta tell you, he was cool as a cucumber. He did not seem nervous at all. Did he feel confident like he had it in the bag? Yeah, I think he was confident, but I don't think he was acting like he had it in the bag or anything like that.

Starting point is 00:06:24 They didn't know yet, but he was just super, super relaxed and calm and taking photos with everyone. He was in a good mood. You remember the moment when his hand touched yours? Take us to that moment. Just unpack it a little bit. I'm just saying that when I shook that. He gives that little shake to exert a little dominance. Did he give you the shake?

Starting point is 00:06:42 It was just a normal handshake. But my point is, I could detect no nervousness whatsoever on his part. And look, the rest of us were, we were nervous. We were wondering what was gonna happen. The whole country was nervous, yeah. And what were you guys doing? Just hanging out, having cocktails, having dinner,

Starting point is 00:06:59 just everyone was meandering, chilling? What's the scene like at Mar-a-Lago? There's a dinner in the ballroom. Actually, I saw Jared there. Jared was very nice to me. He asked me, do you want to sit down at the dinner? And I could have joined him, but then I decided to do the live stream with you guys,

Starting point is 00:07:13 and I pulled in Don Jr. And we did the live stream with Don Jr. Like I said- Are you officially a Mar-a-Lago member, by the way? No. For 500 Large? Oh my Lord, is that true? 500,000? Well, that's what Don Jr. told us. But look, there's a process to get in. I mean, I don't live in Palm Beach. I think that's the Palm Beach community is members of Mar-a-Lago. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:25 So I think that there were, you know, it wasn't a huge group of people at Mar-a-Lago and really all the supporters were convened at the Convention Center in Palm Beach. There were thousands of people there. I think originally they had talked about doing a election night party at Mar-a-Lago, but they didn't have a lot of people there. So I think that's the talked about doing an election night party at Mar-a-Lago, but it just got too big. So they moved it to the convention center. So I don't know, whatever it was that I dropped off the live stream with you guys, I then

Starting point is 00:07:57 moved to the convention center, got back on with Newt. And then we were kind of waiting at the convention center. We were all feeling good increasingly so throughout the night. I would say that when Pennsylvania finally got called then I think everyone knew that it was in the bag at that point and it was just a matter of time before the election got called for Trump and then you know at some point they kind of herded us downstairs into that large ballroom where Trump gave his victory speech with the rest of the campaign staff.

Starting point is 00:08:28 So the final tally it looks like is gonna be 312 electoral college votes for President Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris's 226. Just for context, in 2016, Trump won with 304 electoral votes and Biden won in 2020 with 306. So it's a pretty sweeping victory. He won all the supposed swing states this year, fairly resoundingly.

Starting point is 00:08:54 There's no real super close calls. There's some close calls, but pretty resounding victory. Chamath, what happened? Wow. It's a really good question. I think that there's many layers of the answer, but I think in its most basic calculation, I think that the bottom fell out of the Democratic Party. And if you look at why, there's a simple explanation and then there's the more nuanced explanation.

Starting point is 00:09:26 I think the simple explanation is like they just lost the script. I think that there was so many people that just got really tired of being spoken at and labeled misogynist, racist, fascist, transphobe, whatever it was. And there was just these litany of these judgmental labels that would come out instead of engaging on the topics at hand. So I think the Democratic Party played this game of trying to use identities, genders, races, as a bid to basically get people that they thought should always vote in their direction to continue to support them. And instead what happened was people just started to think for themselves and say, hold

Starting point is 00:10:16 on a second, I'm just a normal person that wants to be left alone. What matters to me? And I think what Donald Trump spoke to was a desire for folks to have economic prosperity, a safe neighborhood, a predictable educational curriculum where these kids could go to school, not being docrinated and come out the other side and just know some useful skills

Starting point is 00:10:38 so that they could get a good job and do better than they did. And all these basic truths ended up on the ballot. And so it was a bunch of perception versus just a bunch of hard realities. And I think Trump stayed focused and ultimately made sure that people understood that that's what he was focused on.

Starting point is 00:10:58 And I think the Democrats just went to this place of demagoguery and labels. And I think it was just a resounding defeat. And David, I just want you to like just to put a pin on how resounding it is. In California and New York, which I would say are the two most prolific bastions of elitist liberal thinking, Democrats won those states in some of the narrowest margins they've ever seen. I think in 2020, they won California by 29 points. It was barely half is what they won by this year. In New York, it shrunk to a 12-point margin. So what is this telling you? It's telling you that the Democrats

Starting point is 00:11:42 really need to retool and get back to first principles. It was a cataclysmic dismissal of wokeism, of cancel culture, of judgmentalism. It was a ringing endorsement of a meritocracy, of just plain, simple common sense, of talking with people and to people, being able to tolerate disagreements, remaining friends. All of those things were on the ballot. And it was just an absolute resounding victory for just normalcy. That's what I think we saw. We saw a return to normalcy.

Starting point is 00:12:22 Jason, do you think that that message got across more clearly in this election than ever before, as some have claimed, because of the power of alternative media for reaching the audience, rather than having everything pushed through reporters in traditional legacy media. In this case, many of the candidates, particularly on the Republican side, went direct to the audience through long form podcasts like ours, but also Joe Rogan and Lex and many others. And did that move the needle for a lot of people in a way that won this or was it the policies and the difference alone? Yeah. Well, clearly being on podcasts was a major part of Trump's strategy that people

Starting point is 00:13:03 are starting to report on right now. And, stepping back, I think the number one problem here is the candidate that the Democrats put up. And probably the close number two is inflation. And the economy, as we all know, it's the economy, stupid. If you were paying $2 for a cheeseburger, you're paying $2 for a cheeseburger, and you're paying $2 for a cheeseburger, and you're paying the economy as you know, we all know it's the economy stupid.

Starting point is 00:13:27 If you were paying $2 for a cheeseburger at McDonald's and now it's $4, that's what people are gonna remember. And the inflation that occurred over this last four years was huge and people cited that over and over and over again. So there's probably three buckets you could put this conversation into. There's the candidate, Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate. She was put in at the last minute and she was anointed and she didn't go through a proper primary.

Starting point is 00:13:56 I think that's probably number one in this entire thing. It was a terrible thing. You're saying you're saying number one is the candidate. I think number one's the candidate. Number two, I think, cause remember Trump was incredibly unpopular as well. And all credit to Trump for winning and running an incredible campaign.

Starting point is 00:14:11 I mean, just they crushed it. On podcasts with JD Vance turned out to be spectacular on podcasts and really delivered the message. And then number two is obviously inflation in the economy. And then I think number three is the bucket that Shamath started with, which is the country really, really does not like being told that they're racist or sexist, etc. cancel culture. And you put those three things together. One of the things that's coming out right

Starting point is 00:14:43 now is some of the ads and we'll play an ad here. I wanted you guys to see this. I think this ad sums up exactly how bad Kamala was. And we'll combine this ad with just some of the statistics that have come out of how many people have gone right. This is Charlamagne the God from the Breakfast Club for those who don't know, in a Donald Trump ad, what taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners? Surgery.

Starting point is 00:15:09 For prisoners. For prisoners. Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access. Hell no, I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to that. Kamala supports transgender sex changes in jail with our money. Kamala even supports letting biological men

Starting point is 00:15:24 compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they, them. We're not going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this.

Starting point is 00:15:40 We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with this. We're going to let you get away with, obviously it's going to be incredibly difficult. Plus she was in charge of the border, claimed she wasn't. Plus she was in charge of, you know, and Biden were in charge of the economy when inflation spiked. Terrible candidate combined with a bad track record,

Starting point is 00:15:57 combined with a flawless campaign from Trump, I think easy victory. And, you know, if we pull up this FT chart, Nick, that I sent you ahead of time, and I tweeted this, you know, Americans love winners and innovation, and they hate socialism and this woke nonsense. And if you look at how Trump support increased, look at this, Chamath, every single demographic, Black, Asian, Hispanic, 18 to 29, 30 to 34, female, white college men, except for two, 65 year old plus, very moderately, very modestly went left and white college women very modestly went left in terms of increasing support.

Starting point is 00:16:39 Otherwise a hard shift, right? Including some categories. So the biggest shift the biggest shift, right? Was in Hispanic and Asian population. Right. And these are people I think who you can, you can double click on young people, Hispanic and Asians. Asians believe in meritocracy, I think is what most people have read into that dramatic swing. And Hispanics are anti, more traditional family values. And that's probably what pushed that so far. But I want to just get your take on that chart, Shama, in relation to

Starting point is 00:17:11 your handicapping of the election, and then how much Kamala and how much the inflation played into it. I think that there are three ways to kind of identify and tell me if you guys think these are the wrong vectors. There's either the policies, the candidate, and the methods of the campaign. All of it. It's all three. Right. That's how I kind of break down what happened in the selection cycle. There's a big difference between the candidates as people. Some people cannot see past the fact that Kamala did not get any primary vote. Some people cannot see past the behavior of Donald Trump on Twitter,

Starting point is 00:17:49 and when he talks to people and how he has talked to people and perceived to be a bully, and the felony conviction. And some people cannot get past other factors of those two candidates. And then some people can get past it. I've been saying this since I'm doing the face, but I'll try it again. I've been saying this since I'm doing the face, but I'll try it again. I think that the mainstream media has been working hand in hand with the Democratic Party to propagate and move forward an agenda that tried to vilify Donald Trump. I did not know that when I initially encountered him in 2015 as a candidate. But what you're supposed to do as an adult is once you start to see a pattern of behavior,

Starting point is 00:18:36 you know, this is for the safety security of your family. This is about how you think about economically taking care of your family. Like you have to re underwrite decisions from first principles. You must be prepared to change your mind when you see important information. And I have said this till I blew in the face, but I'll say it again. If I think of all of the people in the political infrastructure of America that I have met and spent time with from Bill Clinton on, I remember sitting and having dinner with Barack Obama the day of Brexit and getting a note that he read.

Starting point is 00:19:09 And he said, oh my gosh. And says, wow, the UK just pulled out. I was sitting across from him that dinner. I've been with all of these people. The Democrats only come to me to ask me for money. The only politician that has ever called me just to have a conversation, just to say thank you and be kind,

Starting point is 00:19:34 the only one has been Donald Trump. Isn't that incredible? Of all of the people, every other person has only ever called and asked me for money. So what does that mean? I think what it means is that there has been Every other person has only ever called and asked me for money. So what does that mean? I think what it means is that there has been a concerted effort to perturb the way that you interpret who he is. Separately, there's been a concerted effort to prop up whoever is sitting against him in opposition.

Starting point is 00:20:04 to prop up whoever is sitting against him in opposition. And I think this is an opportunity to finally acknowledge that if you trust these traditional legacy sources of helping you to get to a decision, you're going to get tricked. There's that old saying, you know, fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice, shame on me, because I am now allowing this to happen. And I think that for a lot of Americans, that is what happened. I think it is really as simple as that.

Starting point is 00:20:34 I think they were able to see through the veneer of an attempt to malign and corner somebody. And on the other side, an attempt to basically play on vibes and feelings and emotions. And I don't think that America wants that. That is not what they want in running the country. They want somebody serious running the country, where you can have disagreements with them,

Starting point is 00:21:00 and you can still find an opportunity to work together with those people. I think it's that. Sex, do you do you think about how important the policy versus the individual versus the way they ran the campaign, the media and how they reach people as kind of three vectors? And if so, how would you kind of rank those three and importance and what changed people's votes and got them to vote differently than they did in the last election? Yeah, I think

Starting point is 00:21:28 it's a pretty good framework. I mean, you have the message, you have the messenger, and I guess you have the campaign at a tactical level. I think it's a little bit unfair to blame this entire defeat on Kamala Harris being a bad messenger or candidate. It's true, she's not the greatest candidate. She has a lot of problems. However, I don't think she was dealt a particularly strong hand. The fact of the matter is that we did have rampant inflation in this country that really hurt people in their pocketbooks every time they went to the grocery store. That resulted from the trillions of spending that was agreed to by virtually the entire Democratic Party. Remember, they not only did they pass trillions in spending, they wanted four and a half

Starting point is 00:22:11 trillion more for Build Back Better and the only reason that didn't happen is because Manchin and Sinema voted against it. Can you imagine how much worse inflation would have been? Manchin was driven into retirement and Sinema was basically kicked out of the party. She effectively told us that at the All In Summit. So this defeat is on the entire Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was in support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' agenda.

Starting point is 00:22:35 They were in support of the de facto open border policies. They were in support of the soft on crime, Soros, DA, decarceral policies. You can see that even in California, which is a deep blue state, there's a huge backlash. Huge. This sort of insane soft on crime agenda the Democrats have.

Starting point is 00:22:55 70% of California voted for Prop 36, which basically reversed the excesses of Prop 47, which a decade ago basically made shoplifting legal in California. You know who opposed Prop 36 despite its massive popularity? Gavin Newsom. Kamala Harris wouldn't say whether she supported it or not. So what you see is that even in blue states, the Democratic Party elites are completely out of touch with what people want.

Starting point is 00:23:22 And then finally, you've got foreign policy, where I think that the democratic agenda, basically wanting to engage in a proxy war with Vladimir Putin because he's the incarnation of all evil, that I think is blown up in the collective West face. That has been a disaster that was supported by the entire democratic party. So on issue after issue that I think mattered in this election, you cannot just put the blame on Kamala Harris. It's got to be on the Democratic party as a whole. And just to echo what Chema said about the cultural stuff, they've talked down to us, they've lectured us, they've insulted us, they've censored us, they've gaslit us. They've tried to cancel us. They tried to

Starting point is 00:24:02 cancel us. They tried to punish dissent with lawfare. They turned Elon into an enemy, which was the single worst own goal in history. Remember, this wasn't just Ben Joe Rogan. Don't forget to kick Joe Rogan out as well. Bernie supported Joe Rogan. But with Elon, it wasn't just disinviting him or never inviting him to the EV summit. It goes all the way back to Lorena Gonzalez's tweet, telling him to F off and leave the state of California. So look, the Democratic Party as a whole has to own this,

Starting point is 00:24:30 and they're not going to start winning elections again until they have an improvement in their agenda, not just their messenger. So, Sax, is this the nature of democracy that over time, when you have a two party system and one party veers too far to the left or one party veers too far to the right, people jump ship to the other party. And ultimately they pull the policies of the party that they left back to the middle.

Starting point is 00:24:58 And that's the way democracy is supposed to work and has worked historically. So is this the way it's supposed to go? And do we project that four years from now, the Democrats will need to be and need to adjust to the center and we'll see less of this extremism because of the way the voting turned out this election cycle? I think that's a very interesting question is whether the Democrats have the necessary introspection

Starting point is 00:25:20 to learn from this loss. I would say that one of them does. If you look at Matt Iglesias, who's someone I've sparred with on TwitterX, who is a Democrat partisan, he basically tweeted a list of principles that he thought the Democrat party needed to adopt. I read it and retweeted it, I said,

Starting point is 00:25:36 laughing my ass off, this is a list of Republican principles. It was all about, you know, opposing woke and being in favor of merit and innovation. Tolerance, freedom speech. I'm like, great, look, you know what? woke and being in favor of merit and innovation. Tolerance, freedom speech. I'm like, great, look, you know what? If the Democratic Party wants to adopt these principles, that's a wonderful thing for the country.

Starting point is 00:25:50 I hope that they do it, okay? But will they do it? I have my doubts. You look at this tweet by Ari Fleischer, where he talks about who the Democratic Party now is. Yeah, I think that this is a really important tweet because it sort of tells you, Sax, who's going to be left in the room.

Starting point is 00:26:07 Exactly. And if these are the only people left in the room, the last thing they're going to do is admit defeat. Right, exactly. So what you see is that the Democratic Party base is these very affluent, very overeducated, very non-religious types. And frankly, I wonder whether they're too out of touch to know they're out of touch. They're certainly very whiny and entitled.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And I just don't think they're going to cede control of the party without a fight. And frankly, they've disappeared so far up their own woke asses that I don't think they can find an electoral majority if they try. So if these people stay in control of the party, and these are the people who you're seeing having a mental breakdown on TikTok, they're posting all the videos, they're insulting the electorate, and let's face it, it's not just on TikTok, it's on the legacy media, it's on MSDNC, it's basically the legacy media who

Starting point is 00:27:00 are trying to diagnose a psychosis in the American electorate to explain why they were so wrong. If those people stay in control, I think that the Republicans could have an electoral majority as far as the eye can see. I completely agree with you, and I'll go even further, which is I think that the Democrats will lose one of California or New York in the next eight years.

Starting point is 00:27:23 If they don't attack, right? So that's the key question. They're not gonna attack. If you think that the intelligentsia, quote unquote, the Bill Gates, Reid Hoffmans of the world that funds Dustin Moskovitz, that funds the democratic apparatus at the highest level, if they can't change,

Starting point is 00:27:42 what are the odds that the state infrastructure or the local infrastructure changes? I think maybe on the margins, the local infrastructure can change more quickly and adeptly because it just costs a lot less money and it's much more concentrated. But I think the states are very laggard in that sense. And I think that they take the table scraps of what's left over. So if you have the Democrats lead, there is no chance that unless they change the planks at their platform, that the state legislatures in New York and California are going to change what they believe. Nick, pull up the link I just sent. So let me just underscore an important aspect for you guys on this, which is the amount that the Democrats spent in this campaign. And obviously they saw a significant negative return. They lost across the board, Senate majority, house majority, governorships, the White House, but they spent more. Here you

Starting point is 00:28:33 can see the difference between the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign spending. Harris campaign spent nearly $900 million, the Trump campaign, 350 million. If you look at the super PACs, the super PACs spent 1.4 billion on the Dem side, roughly 400 million, 450 million on the Republican side. And if you scroll down in some of these key Senate races, the Dems far out spent the Republicans and still lost the Ohio Senate race, Sherrod Brown, $58 million of spending, Bernie Moreno, 21 million, and Bernie Moreno had a resounding victory. John Tester, 84 million of spending,

Starting point is 00:29:09 Tim Sheehy, 22 million, Tim Sheehy won the election. So across the board, the spending was greater, the return was negative. Because money cannot overcome common sense. So my question again is, does this not necessitate attack to the center for the Democrats? They wanna see the party survive.

Starting point is 00:29:29 And if they're gonna continue to lose like this, they will not continue to maintain the same policy agenda that got them into this position in the first place. J Cal, do you think that the democratic party will need to attack to the center and that they're gonna start to adjust because of this? They started that process. They knew that going into this election and they started moving to the center. It they're going to start to adjust because of this. They started that process. They knew that going into this election and they started

Starting point is 00:29:47 moving to the center. It was laughable in some cases because you have like Kamala talking about providing sex changes for prisoners and you know, all of those receipts came out. So even as she started to try to get to the center, people didn't buy it. So of course they're going to, but what's very interesting about spend there and the genius of Trump is earned media. What's earned media? When you are trying to get hits in media, you will put them into two buckets, paid and earned. What you just showed was paid. paid is considered what you do if you can't earn media.

Starting point is 00:30:20 All in podcasts is an example of earned media. We do this every week, we earned our audience, we didn't pay anybody for this audience. And I think that was, you know, what Trump did. And Jay, importantly, someone comes on the show earns that. Correct. So that's the piece of this that I think is so important to you don't have to pay to go on show Rogan. But the candidate that the Democrats put out there was so bad that she could not even and I think Saxon's, you know, master at setting people up here. The Democrats put up a horrible, horrible candidate. And I know Saxon saying, Oh,

Starting point is 00:30:59 it's not common as fault. Kamala could not go on Joe Rogan because they knew that it would be so embarrassing and that she would get so embarrassed that it would lose her votes. His doom loop, you know, observation from, I don't know, eight weeks ago, you had that sex was exactly correct. The more she spoke, the more she started going down. She was leading Trump at one point on polymarket and some of these places. And she absolutely proved that she could not communicate well. And so and I just want to just circle back to the point about inflation. Here's the McDonald price increases that I was mentioning before. End of 2019, you could buy a McChicken for a buck 29. And in mid 2024, it was $3.89. The majority of Americans

Starting point is 00:31:47 wind up going to Taco Bell McDonald's every week. Some cases multiple times a week. You cannot discount exactly how profound this cost of eating food and buying groceries had on this election. It is the number one issue, I think, this election. We can talk in our bubble about it, but it was about inflation. This is what I mean by a return to normalcy. These are normal people problems. How much does it cost to put food on the table?

Starting point is 00:32:17 Exactly. How much does it cost to drive from point A to point B? I want to send my kid to a school where they go and they learn the ABCs and the 123s because they're gonna have to graduate and Compete with India and China. I don't want to worry about indoctrination and all this other stuff. Absolutely. Yeah So look I did predict the doom loop for Kamala Harris two months ago because she is just not good at Interviews or being off the cuff or being unscripted not good is, he's generous. Saxton Thomas was right about that. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:32:46 However, and I would say the biggest problem in her campaign is that she would neither defend the Biden Harris record nor say what she would do differently. The question you have to ask is why? And I think it's because she was in a really tough position that her own party put her in, which is they said, you can't criticize Joe Biden because he's the sitting president,

Starting point is 00:33:08 but at the same time, you can't defend him either because he's so unpopular. Well, what made him unpopular? Democratic party policies. They should have, frankly, looking back, they should have just let Joe Biden defend his own record. The old man must have been in the White House gnashing his teeth saying, please put me in the game. Let me defend my own record. He at least believed in it. The

Starting point is 00:33:32 Democrats wouldn't defend their own record because it was so bad. You have to put some blame for that, not just on Kamala, but on the entire party. That's my only point. Well, and, Sachs, it's so obvious that that technique they used to defeat Trump in 2020 after those chaotic four years was, hey, do you want normalcy? What technique is that? 15 million votes? What's that? I didn't hear the joke. I said what tactic was that? 15 million extra votes? Oh, please don't start with the conspiracy theories. Well, and so we're really going to say that this has to be a conspiracy theory now. Well, who's the chart from? Who's the chart from? What's the provenance of the chart?

Starting point is 00:34:15 Just so you know, the Y-axis starts at 50 million. So don't be, you know, like a little too crazy. Like they, they mailed out all the, they mailed out. Before we go down this rabbit hole, let me just finish my point. Then you guys can go to conspiracy corner and say the election was stolen. The point I'm making here is obviously Biden ran a very successful campaign against Trump based on vibes and based on his creating chaos in the country and most people's mind in this return to normalcy. So that did work for them previously. It just didn't work this time

Starting point is 00:34:44 because they had to defend their record on the border, they needed to defend their record on the economy and sex is exactly right. They didn't touch that. And how do you not talk about their own record and their record had some good bright spots to it, record low unemployment, record high stock market. And we tamed inflation and they could have had a really great discussion about inflation and just said, Hey, listen, both of the last two terms, there was a lot of spending. And so inflation manifested during the last four years. And hey, we tamed it. So here we are, we still have record low unemployment, we still have a record high stock market, and we tamed inflation, things are going to get better. But she couldn't even communicate that I can communicate that better than the presidential candidate.

Starting point is 00:35:27 Come on, she could have easily done that. Freiburg, let me just go back to your point about the money. It is true that the Democrats had roughly three times as much money as the Republicans did. The Democrats had something like a billion dollars for this campaign, the Republicans had 300 something. For the presidential campaign. For the presidential campaign, exactly the presidential campaign. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:35:49 The Republicans obviously still won in a landslide. That excludes that excludes the super PACs, which had additional funding that were going towards supporting the nominee. Fair enough. My point is just the Democrats had a massive advantage on the money side. They also, I think, had a massive advantage on what you would call the legacy media side. I mean, I don't know how you put a value, a dollar value on what the legacy media has done, not just in this election cycle, but for the last eight or nine years. They have basically called Donald Trump a Nazi,

Starting point is 00:36:16 a fascist, a traitor. Did it work or did it blow up in their faces? I'm about to get to that. A traitor. Yeah, and did it blow up in their faces? They called him an agent of Putin, they called him an insurrectionist. They called him a convicted felon. They called him a dictator. They've been yelling that at the top of their lungs now for at least four years. The country didn't believe it.

Starting point is 00:36:32 I would just say that the legacy media spell is broken. Their credibility has been destroyed. And I think that the repudiation of the legacy media is one of the most important results of this election. destroyed. And I think that the repudiation of the legacy media is one of the most important results of this election. It just shows that the Democrats had, I don't know how you value it, a trillion dollar propaganda machine on their side, and Trump was still able to win. And you have to, at the end of the day, say that that's a result not just of alternative media gaining steam and free speech on X. I think those

Starting point is 00:37:06 were absolutely necessary enablers. It's also the fact that Trump has a trillion dollar personality and is a tremendously gifted communicator and politician in his own unique way. Genius. But finally, you have to say that the issues are on Trump's side. Americans want the border to be sealed. They see that the spending and the bureaucracy in Washington are out of control. They do not want woke cancel culture anymore. They see America getting over involved in foreign wars. They want the spending to be brought back home where it benefits

Starting point is 00:37:38 them. These are the key points of the Trump agenda and at the end of the day, whatever you want to say about Trump, he ran a campaign based on issues. He talked about issues. What did Kamala Harris run her campaign on? On vibes, celebrity endorsements, name calling, debunked hoaxes. I just want to go around the horn real quick

Starting point is 00:38:01 and ask each of you guys once again, I'm going to ask you one more question after this. What mattered most? Was it the policy sacks as you're proclaiming is what a lot of people voted on? Was it the issues with the candidate, the individual, or was it the media or the campaign tactics? So those three, what mattered most do you think

Starting point is 00:38:16 in terms of moving votes? What moved the most votes? Listen, I don't think you can separate the man from the message or the messenger from the message. Okay. Listen, if you had a conventional Republican out there, I don't think that they could have overcome the trillion dollar propaganda machine. The two go hand in hand.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Of the legacy media. That being said, I think if Donald Trump had been campaigning with Mitt Romney's message or Mitch McConnell's message, I don't think he would have gone anywhere. I don't even think he would have been the Republican nominee. You have to say that Trump, since 2016, has tapped into something very deep in the American electorate. And, you know, this is something we can get into. But I think that if you look back now over the last 10 years,

Starting point is 00:38:58 it's clear that he's the transformational figure in American politics. It's not Barack Obama, with all due respect. J. Cal your turn. The's not Barack Obama, with all due respect. J. Kelly, your turn. The policies, the individual, or the campaign tactics? It's very clearly this had to do primarily with Kamala. It is the candidate and how she was selected.

Starting point is 00:39:18 Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you had the same track record. It's interesting for you to say that as a Dem, right? Because I think that may have chased a lot of people. I'm a moderate, I'm not a Dem, by the way. I voted Republican one third of the time. Maybe even a little bit more recently. But two thirds, you voted Dem, so you were open to that. And she, yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:34 I'm a left leaning moderate. I mean, I've been very clear about that. My record's been very clear about that. It is clear that it was her, because I will say, if you had put up Friedberg, and I think it's great that you're forcing us to pick one of the three, and it's a hard thing to do, but if you had picked Dean Phillips and Shapiro,

Starting point is 00:39:50 I think they would have beat Trump very easily. Because remember, Trump was phenomenally unpopular. And I think the big question that's gonna come out of this is how did Elon do getting young men, and how did Joe Rogan and podcasts like ours do at getting young men are now voting and they want to vote for something very different than white women or old people. And Jamath, what is your read on what mattered most? Do you have one of those?

Starting point is 00:40:16 I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. and they want to vote for something very different than white women or old people. And Chamath, what is your read on what mattered most? Do you have one of those three? How would you wait? If you had to rank them, I think the policies of the Democratic Party are fundamentally broken.

Starting point is 00:40:38 They've become the exact opposite of where they were even 20 years ago. So the Democrats used to be the protector of free speech. Now they are pro-censorship. The Republicans are free speech. The Democrats used to be all about anti-war. Now they are more likely to get mangled into all of these foreign misadventures

Starting point is 00:41:01 in partnership with the military industrial complex, whereas the Republicans have been a bulwark to war. And they embraced the Cheney's ultimate proof of that. Oh my gosh. I mean, that was the scariest and oddest turn of events. So I think that what happened is the policies, they just lost their way. Now the question is, was it purposeful or was it by accident? And I think that belies the bigger question, which is just the people in charge of the Democratic Party, I think to Sax's point, do they even have a sense of that

Starting point is 00:41:33 they have to change or are they just so now fundamentally out of touch and they just believe what they believe so ferociously, they're going to have to go through maybe three or four or five more elections of just getting totally trounced in order to learn the lesson. Okay. I'll, I'll, um, I'll wear my McLaughlin hat and say, Chamath, right answer. Now, my next, my next question back to you, Chamath is I've had a lot of conversations in the last few days, um, with good friends, with people I'm close with, with family and so on. Hold on, Freeberg, what do you think before you ask the next question? I think policy matter, but here's the stumbling block.

Starting point is 00:42:11 If you talk to anyone that did not vote for Trump and voted for Kamala Harris, that is, you know, kind of reasonable people or what, you know, I don't wanna kind of classify people, but people that you would normally have decent long form conversations with. And you start talking about specific policy issues with them. The conversation keeps coming back to trump the person.

Starting point is 00:42:35 In my experience, people can't see past a person who is a quote convicted felon as they claim, who is taking away women's rights, who is a bully, who is mean, a lot of this is influenced by his past behavior and things he said and the way he's said things and done things on Twitter. We can proclaim that there was a lot of misrepresentation about Trump in the legacy media, but there were a lot of tweets that Trump put out that were off-putting to a lot of people. So I want you, Chamath, to speak to the many individuals out there who are good people, who feel disenfranchised, who are not like the funny people you can make fun of

Starting point is 00:43:09 on Libs of TikTok or what have you, but just everyday normal people that said, I really don't trust the guy. I really don't believe that this is a good person. And I think that the policies make more sense. I agree with a lot of the policy issues, but frankly, the guy doesn't seem like the right guy for me. How do you kind of break through? Is that possible? And can you speak to that person to help them kind of see past the individual to the policies and have trust and faith that

Starting point is 00:43:34 this individual can actually shepherd this nation forward? There are so many very powerful examples powerful examples of how the media colluded with the Democratic Party to fundamentally lie about things that actually happened when it relates to Donald Trump. One of the most simple and powerful was the lie about Charlottesville. When I process Charlottesville, I'm probably one of those people, David, that you talk about. I was just so scared and angry, and I took at face value what the media said

Starting point is 00:44:20 that Donald Trump said. And then I was really angry at Donald Trump until I saw the footage and saw that it was just a complete lie. And that is just an incredible shirking of responsibility that the media has undertaken. The deviousness, the dishonesty, it's really bad. And that's where I said, I have to stop. As a grown up rational man, as the head of my family, I need to re-underwrite where I'm coming from.

Starting point is 00:44:57 Well, head of my family with Nat when she lets me be. But anyways. She's kind of the head of my family. That's what I'm saying. You can't go sit there around him. I can feel her. I can feel her name. You kind of the head of my family. I can feel her, I can feel her. You can be the head of the household. The bad thing is you have to listen to me.

Starting point is 00:45:10 I can feel that one line that you've come back to. Keep that line in Nick, I am the head of my family. Okay, anyways, guys, sorry. You can be the head of the family. Let's get back up. Let's get back up. Go back, go back, go back. But the thing is like, I started to

Starting point is 00:45:26 re underwrite and I do that every day in my day job. I'm running a company is 80 90 going well or not well. It depends on the conditions on the ground. When things are going well, I need to do more of those things. When things are not going well, I need to re underwrite. Is it something that I'm in control of? Is it something that I've missed? of? Is it something that I've missed? How do I change it? How do I get my team to be better? I

Starting point is 00:45:49 live it every day. In investing, it's the same thing. You know, there was periods where I was on top of the world and everything was working. Then there were waves where things were not working. But I still had to show up and do my job well. As it's turning out, in those darkest hours was when I probably have made some of my absolute best new investments. That would not have happened if I did not keep my feet on the ground and constantly re-underwrite and try to challenge my biases. There are

Starting point is 00:46:19 so many examples that have happened to Trump that when you actually unpack them, there was a concerted effort to lie. And that is why it's important for folks to be able to suspend that judgment. The second thing I would say is then you saw four years of the man in office. And if you actually separate the interpretation by the media, who frankly just hate him with what he actually did. You take a step back and you're like, man, these accomplishments were incredible. For example, let's look at what happened with the Abraham Accords. We have never been closer to substantial and sustained peace in the Middle East. In any era of government under any president,

Starting point is 00:47:06 then we were when Jared Kushner, on behalf of Donald Trump, negotiated those agreements. And look how far we have slipped since then. And all of that happened as a result of the incoming government wanting to undo what was so logically right in the first place. And part of that was to feed a media cycle. So again, I just go back to David, all of these normal people, and I know a lot of them as well. Speak to them. Yeah. You guys need to just take a step back and

Starting point is 00:47:40 take a beat and just think about something for a second. How do so many normal, high functioning, well intended people switch sides? How did that happen? Now, J Cal, let me ask you the flip side of the coin you have expressed publicly recently, even on a podcast yesterday with sacks in vigorous debate on the show many times, reservations about Trump and the character of Trump. Yeah. How do you feel, you obviously align with the policies that he's highlighted and indicated. You've said so. Absolutely, yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:15 Do you see past the person or do you still have a strong degree of reservation about the individual? And do you see that playing out in your cohort, friends, family, what have you, that there's strong reservation because of the character? Yeah. It's a great question. I think the thing we have to do now is come together as a country. He's the president. It's great that it was not a debatable election and we're not going to have riots at the Capitol and people beating up police officers. And now it's time to actually look at what Trump said.

Starting point is 00:48:46 And then we will grade him on what he actually gets done. And if he is able to hang out with the cohort of Elon and Chamath and Sachs and JD Vance, I feel a lot better about it. Now there's a lot of people speculating, he will turn on Chamath, he will turn on Sach Sax, he will turn on Elon and that relationship will end in the next year or two. That's what I'm looking at. Will Trump actually do the things he says he's going to do? And what did he say he was going to do? Well, he's not going to have a national abortion man.

Starting point is 00:49:20 He's not going to have, kick people out who get college degrees here. Remember he said on the show he's going to staple the green card to it. And, but then there's other, and he said he's not going to have kick people out who get college degrees here. Remember, he said on the show, he's going to staple the green card to it. And but then there's other and he said he's going to end the Ukraine, the war in Ukraine on day one. So let's make a list of all the things he promised. And like anybody else, let's judge him based on what he gets done. Now, some of the things he promised, like the mass deportation of 15 million people, I think a lot of people even on this podcast probably don't agree with. I don't think anybody here wants to see 15 million people who came here to have a better life and who are working hard

Starting point is 00:49:55 and who are productive members of our society literally get dragged out of here. The 500,000 that are criminals or million, sure. Nobody wants to see them get a free pass here. But, you know, there's going to be some of the items on his agenda that are going to be very uncomfortable to see executed. And some of them would be amazing and miracles if he comes in. And all of a sudden, Ukraine war is settled. Fantastic. If he starts dragging a million people every, If he starts dragging a million people every, you know, two or three months out of the country, that could be absolutely disastrous and incredibly hard to watch happen in America.

Starting point is 00:50:33 So we got to judge him based on his actions. That's great. Let's give him the support he needs. And I really hope, you know, the thing that gives me hope is the fact that Sachs, Chamath, Yulan and JD Vance are by his side. So I'm going to move on to the rest of the election, the other races. So the presidency we've talked about,

Starting point is 00:50:51 let's talk about the House and the Senate Sachs. In the House, there's 37 races that have yet to be called, but it looks like the Republicans need about 12 more to be called to have a majority, it seems very likely. I mean, according to Polymarket, it's 99% that the Republicans will have the majority in the House. The Republicans have control of the Senate, and Trump is in the White House. What are the top policy items that the Republicans will pursue with this degree of legislative and executive control? What's number one, two, three on the list? What's top priority and how are they kind of getting together to figure out what and how to execute those items in the, in the weeks and months after January 20th? Well, so first of all, I think the Senate majority matters a lot in terms of Trump getting the appointments that he wants, because if he was just at 51, let's call it, it would be quite hard. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski

Starting point is 00:51:52 tend to be very, very moderate Republicans and would oppose, I think, a lot of conservative appointments. Trump's already at 53 senators and there's two more that are still up for grabs and waiting to be counted. So you might get to 54 in the next week or so. It just means he's going to have a free range on appointments. I think that'd be really good for Bobby Kennedy. I think it might be harder to get Bobby Kennedy confirmed for a major cabinet post with 51,

Starting point is 00:52:21 with 53, 54. I think we'd get there. I think that's a really great thing for the country. There's other appointments in a similar vein that I think will be easier for Trump to get through. In terms of the rest of the agenda, Trump clearly does want to end the war in Ukraine. Is he going to be able to do it on day one? No. I don't think that's realistic because, frankly, the Ukrainians are not willing to make the concessions yet. They're not in a place where they're willing to make a deal. I still think that what Trump was saying during the campaign, if you look at it as an expression of his motivations

Starting point is 00:52:53 and where his sentiments are coming from, they were good sentiments. But if he can't solve it on day one because the Ukrainians don't want to make a deal, I can't really fault him for that. But I think he'll try. I think that on Doge, there's clearly a strong desire of many in the Republican Party and Elon and the people that Elon brought with him for major government reform. Much more efficiency, much less spending. I think that we have to get as much of that passed as possible in the first, certainly the first year. COREY SIEGEL There's a necessity for legislative action to get all the cuts in federal spending

Starting point is 00:53:28 that they're looking to cut. Is that right, Zach? So if Elon's objective is cut $2 trillion. There might be some things you can just do through executive orders, and they should do as much as they can. But I think you do need some congressional action as well. This is an area where it's just gonna be really hard

Starting point is 00:53:42 because spending is a bipartisan problem and it's going to be really hard to jam through the type of deep reform that we really should have at the federal level. But I think that now there's a shot because Trump does have majorities in the House and Senate that he can at least get something through. So at least we have a shot at getting something done there. Are we going to get two trillion in cuts like Elon wants? I would love that. I doubt you're gonna be able to pass that through Congress.

Starting point is 00:54:11 But do you start with that number and then work your way down to a number that you can get both parties to support? Maybe that's possible, hopefully. I would have started with three then. Both candidate tips. But I mean, that's just my tactic, but whatever. But I think reforming the bureaucracy

Starting point is 00:54:26 is just such a huge theme coming out of this election. And we just have to figure out how to get that done. It's got the mandate. We have the mandate. That's Trump's mandate. And the federal government is such a large sprawling. It is the largest organization on earth, except for maybe the CCP.

Starting point is 00:54:43 And in that sense, you really have to have leverage in leadership to be able to realize that degree of action at that scale. So the cabinet positions matter a lot to realize that agenda. Is that fair to say Chamath? And maybe we can talk a little bit about who are the folks in the orbit of Donald Trump

Starting point is 00:55:04 and the transition team that are being considered for different cabinet posts? And as an advisor, or let's call you a theoretical advisor to the transition team, what are the kind of key posts that matter to you? How would you kind of advise them who to look for that could really realize the outcome that the mandate is dictating.

Starting point is 00:55:29 Well, I have no influence on this process, so I'm just totally spitballing. But people who I think are. Who I think are excellent. I'm going to put Bobby Kennedy right at the top of the list. I think that Bobby has an opportunity to allow the transparency of information that will allow folks to keep doing what we've done or to change course in a way that right now I think is a little bit more difficult than it needs to be. I think Vivek Ramaswamy is indefatigable. I think he's a, you know, if you remember back to the Republican primaries, there was only one person that did not attack Donald Trump and it was Vivek.

Starting point is 00:56:09 I think he believed in what Donald Trump was doing and was willing to sort of embrace and extend this idea. So I think he'd be a really good proxy. I don't know what role that looks like, but I just think that he would be exceptional. Maybe amazing. There's some rumors that he's going to run for governor of Ohio, but he would be amazing in the federal government. Tulsi Gabbard. We got Tulsi in there.

Starting point is 00:56:30 Yeah. Yeah. I just, just to go through the list. I think Tulsi Gabbard is so awesome. For what role? What would you put her in? You know, I think that- The rumor is, is veteran affairs.

Starting point is 00:56:41 Yeah. Veterans affairs I think. But, you know, hopefully it's at least that. Yeah. That's a cabinet position, right? Yeah. You know, there's another race that's going on that's really below the surface, but is extremely important. And that is the new Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell says he's stepping aside. There's two major candidates. It's John Thune versus Mike Lee. Yeah. Well, it's John Thune versus Cornyn

Starting point is 00:57:02 from Texas. And Mike Lee has been sort of agitating. It's not clear that Mike Lee will throw his hat in the ring. If he did, I would be all in favor of it. If Mike Lee, who is from Utah, doesn't, we should really go with whoever he recommends. I really trust that Mike Lee will represent the MAGA agenda, whereas quite frankly, the other candidates will be a continuation of Mitch. And this is Trump's moment to weigh in on that. He's basking in the glow right now. He is in the winner's circle. He can get anything through the Republican caucus.

Starting point is 00:57:37 And I think that he could weigh in right now in the Senate majority race, and make sure the right person gets it. If you get a continuation of Mitch McConnell, you will not get real reform through the Senate. Look at what happened during Trump won. Mitch McConnell was one of Trump's biggest opponents. So there would be alternatives, but I think Trump would have to step in and act. There's some talk about Rick Scott from Florida being a candidate. I think he'd be very good if he's still in the race, or just go right over the top and go with a Mike Lee. This is your moment to basically put in a loyalist. And then the big cabinet positions that are left, I think defense

Starting point is 00:58:13 probably somebody like Rick Grinnell who's already worked for Trump and was the DNI right at the end I think. And then in Treasury it's, you know, I think. And then in Treasury, it's the, you know, I think people say it's between Scott Besant and John Paulson. I'm not so sure. I don't know. If I had governor, I think it's like probably Haskell. But then, you know, I saw like Kevin Warsh's name. You saw Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell this morning said he would not

Starting point is 00:58:38 step aside if asked to resign by Donald Trump. No, he's got two more years. So I don't think that's the. He's got until 26. He's got until mid-26. So, you know, I mean, the room, I don't want to say too much, but I think this is pretty much out there. I think we're not one state, not defense. I think that it's not to say he's going to get it. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:58:53 But that's been out there for a long time. I think that what a lot of people in let's call it the MAGA movement, the America first movement are going to be looking at very closely is do neocons the America First movement are going to be looking at very closely is do neocons worm their way into this administration? Look at what happened during Trump won. He ran in opposition to forever wars. I think it was a major part of his appeal. It's what allowed him to shatter the Bush dynasty. It's what I think really hurt Kamala in terms of having the Chinese embrace her. So it's a major part of his, I'd say, not just appeal, but also his legacy, that he will not continue forever wars.

Starting point is 00:59:29 But the problem is that the blob keeps infiltrating the Trump administration, or they did. They infiltrated Trump one by putting in John Bolton and Esper and all these guys who frankly betrayed Trump. So I think a lot of people are looking closely at will neocons be able to worm their way into this administration. And if they do, it's a very, it would be very, very sad.

Starting point is 00:59:51 I think the difference this time around, which is so incredible is that you're now seeing on X people asking all the neocons to be named and shamed and they're creating these lists so that they can't warm their way in. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen where have you espoused those views in the past? If so, the likelihood that somebody will raise an alarm bell now so that you can't get near this administration. I've never seen anything like that before actually. Yeah and you know what, here's the great danger is you look at the last few months,

Starting point is 01:00:25 okay, who was there for Trump? It was people like Elon. It was basically, you know, all of us who worked and look, I'm a very minor, minor figure, but I did my little part and there were a lot of other people on the ground doing their thing. But where is Elon today? Elon had to fly home for a Tesla board meeting. He's got real companies to run. And who all of a sudden shows up in Mar-a-Lago? The swan creatures. They were nowhere to be home for a Tesla board meeting. He's got real companies to run. And who all of a sudden shows up in Mar-a-Lago? The swan creatures. They were nowhere to be found for the last three months. Now the swan creatures come crawling out

Starting point is 01:00:51 and they're gonna be swarming Mar-a-Lago and trying to worm their way into the administration. And that's the issue is we gotta keep, you know, this is where I hope that all the MAGA influencers stay frosty and stay involved. We have to consolidate this victory and get reform type people in the administration, not just the usual type people from Washington. Would you serve if asked?

Starting point is 01:01:15 No, I mean, I've already said before, I'm the key man at craft. I can't do that. But, you know, look, I would do something part time, meaning if it wasn't a full time job, if I didn't have to leave my current job, if it was just serving on some advisory committee or something that was compatible with my current job, I would do that. That's a no-go-winner. I would love to do that. Absolutely. Not full-time because I'm running a company, but if there was the opportunity to help. Basically- Just put me on the Doge committee, Sachs, if you wouldn't mind. I just want to go line item by line item in one afternoon and I'm out of there. I'm just going to go in.

Starting point is 01:01:48 Elon did say this today, but he said the A team are running companies. We're all running companies. But if asked to serve, especially in a part-time capacity where you don't have to divest everything you own and you can actually just go and call bulls**t and actually just make sure good decisions get made. It would be an honor to serve in that capacity. I think everybody should have given a chance. I wanna say one thing just to build on- Oh, sorry. Yeah. And then I wanna ask you one more question, Chamath.

Starting point is 01:02:15 Go ahead. I do wanna give a shout out to Elon. And in one very specific way, you know, you've heard all these stories where he gets obsessed about something and then he focuses on it at the sake of everything else and strips it down and gets to first principles, rebuilds it back up and it works. And as far as I can tell, basically when he decided that this election was going to come down to Pennsylvania on one hand

Starting point is 01:02:49 and young men on the other, he just kept doing that one thing over and over and over again. Every time you turned on X, he was doing a rally. Crazy. He was speaking to the residents of Pennsylvania. And or- Yeah, he spent like two weeks there. Young, disaffected voters and getting them out.

Starting point is 01:03:13 And then his PAC built an infrastructure that rivaled the democratic infrastructure in terms of get out the vote and transportation. With a lot less money and only in a month or two. It is incredible. Well, and then the sweepstakes was also a really good idea. There was a lot of controversy around the sweepstakes idea. I don't know why that was so controversial because if you think about- That was the media trying to make an issue that was a nothing burger a burger. Yeah. And so I think this is where-

Starting point is 01:03:46 It was dismissed on its face because if any person spent eight seconds understanding the law, the judge dismissed it within an hour. So, you know, if we look at that million dollar sweepstakes to sign up for his PAC, if you think about how people normally get people to sign up, they're paying a dollar a click, probably $50 a click, whatever it is using giving money to ABC or giving money to Facebook. And he just said, Hey, I'll just do a sweepstakes sign up for this. And then I have you in the database. And then I can market it to you. There's no difference between giving away a million dollar sweepstakes

Starting point is 01:04:19 or buying a bunch of ads and paying by click. And for everybody to frame that as he's buying votes, when it was so clear he wasn't, I think that's the kind of media manipulation people are getting savvy to and does not work anymore. It was very clear. It was just a sweepstakes to sign up for his pack. It's no different than paying $10 a click to Facebook. When the legal infrastructure of America dismisses a case on its face within 60 minutes of it being heard, it means it is a farce. Yeah. I mean, look, I think what Elon showed is that a smart person can come in who basically,

Starting point is 01:04:53 like you said, can go into demon mode, has a startup or innovation mentality, is willing to spend money but wants to do it smartly, but is really hardcore, can come in and beat the supposed professionals of their own game. I think one of the big stories that's gonna come out, there's already some tea being spilled within democratic circles about Jen O'Malley-Dillon, who was the campaign manager that Kamala Harris inherited from Biden.

Starting point is 01:05:18 She had a billion dollars to spend. A billion dollars. The campaign still ended $20 million in debt. In debt. And this at least has been reported. Where'd the money go? So, well, I'll tell you, the money went to spend. A billion dollars. The campaign still ended $20 million in debt. In debt. And this at least has been reported. Where'd the money go? So, well, I'll tell you, the money went to expensive consultants.

Starting point is 01:05:31 They did overly elaborate staged events. They did these like fake concerts, celebrity cameos. Supposedly they paid Beyonce $10 million and they didn't even get a song out of it and that ended up pissing people off. She got paid? They were paying celebrities to Beyonce. I don't know if that's true.

Starting point is 01:05:44 I just read it in a tweet, so I can't say for sure, but that's what Iing people off. She got paid? They were paying celebrities to be on stage. I don't know if that's true. I just read it in a tweet. So I can't say for sure, but that's what I read. Yeah, is that meatball? It sounds suspect, but the point is they spent a lot of money on the consultants and the events. And Elon went after the Amish, you know?

Starting point is 01:06:00 That's like a lot smarter. The person on the Democratic side where I feel the most disappointment after all of this is Barack Obama. I think he, in the period when he was elected to me was just transcendent. And I thought that this is a person that really was immune to getting assimilated into the board. And I don't know why I thought that, but I did think that. And I was just so saddened to see the tone and the rhetoric from Barack

Starting point is 01:06:36 Obama during this last home stretch. It, I think was reputationally very damaging to him. And I think that offended you. It was less about it. it didn't offend me. It was just observing. Or disappointing. When the rhetoric was, you know, trying to propagate these lies,

Starting point is 01:06:53 the very fine people hoax, all of these things, I just thought he's so much smarter than this. The abortion ban. The abortion ban. He knows that these things are not true. Why is he saying objective lies? I don't really judge politicians for doing it in general, but I never considered him a politician. I sort of considered him here, just like this echelon above. And I was really disappointed that he chose to go down that

Starting point is 01:07:19 path. Yeah, well, I could definitely add to that. I mean, look, I think Obama's whole mystique was that he transcended politics and he tried to maintain that position of being above the fray and let the grubby business of politics be beneath him. And even during the whole coup against Biden, I mean, they say that Obama signed off. He was basically in favor of the switcheroo to Harris, but he was the last person to endorse it, right? He did not want to be seen as doing the dirty work that was left to Nancy Pelosi. But there's no question that the switcheroo, I think, was backed by Obama. And then he did everything he could to prop up Harris, including using the Very Fine People hoax, telling these lies. And I agree, Chamath. I think that he

Starting point is 01:08:01 has diminished himself. He's brought himself now down to the level of politics. Down to the level of an average politician. Right. I think probably you're disappointed because you had such a high benchmark for him. But we were just talking about Trump saying he would end the war on day one. He said that he's going to deport 15 million people.

Starting point is 01:08:20 And all these politicians lie. So I think my closing statement on all of this is y'all were a key part in putting Trump in, obviously. And if he starts behaving in the way he behaved during his first term, the darker things he did, I hope that y'all will call him on it and publicly call him on it and that he will steer towards, you know, his better angels.

Starting point is 01:08:44 And that's my hope for America. And my hope for all of you who helped put him in office and played a very significant role in getting him here. When he does something crazy, if he does try to drag 15 million people out of the country, is that okay with you, sex? Well, you said that he would start with a million people, 500,000 to a million who are clear criminals. He should do that. That's what JD said. We and we all agree on that. Yeah, JD said that the way you deport-

Starting point is 01:09:06 What about the other 14? He said that the way that you do deportations is the same way you eat an elephant. You do it one bite at a time. A sandwich. A sandwich. You eat a sandwich. So the way you eat an elephant

Starting point is 01:09:15 is you do it one bite at a time. Let's start with the biggest criminals, the biggest people who shouldn't be here. And then let's see what happens after that. And look, here's the thing- If he went after the other 14 million, would you be in support of that? We haven't gotten there yet. And look, if you want to 14 million, what would you, would you be in support of that?

Starting point is 01:09:26 We haven't gotten there yet. The point is you take the first bite of the sandwich, they talk about the second bite. But there was a line from the 2016 election about Trump that I think was attributed to Peter Thiel, which is very important, which is that Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally. Sometimes when he expresses a policy or a point of view, he sells it. So when he says, I'm going to end the Ukraine war on day one, does that mean he's literally going to do it on day

Starting point is 01:09:50 one? No, what it means is he's going to try really hard to end the Ukraine war. If he does it on day 365 of his presidency instead of day one, I'm not going to come out and say he lied and do what he said. No, I'm going to say he got the job done. He did what he said he was going to do. So I think it's very important to judge him in that way. When he says, I'm going to deport 15 million people, do I expect him to do all 15 million? Not necessarily, but if he closes the border, builds the wall, seals it so it's no longer a problem, and deports 500,000 to a million hardcore criminals

Starting point is 01:10:21 out of this country, I'm going to say that was a massive success. And you know what's gonna happen? The legacy media is gonna say, well, he lied because he didn't deport the other 14.2 million. Come on. Let's understand the difference between campaigning and governing.

Starting point is 01:10:35 I agree with all that. And I do think if he does try to do the 14 million, that's the thing I have concerns about. Got it. Okay, Freeberg, over to you. So let's talk about the cabinet positions. Chamath, a guy like RFK Jr. has never held an executive position before. You and others on this panel,

Starting point is 01:10:52 Sachs, J. Cal, and myself, we've all kind of managed large groups of people. We've all been in positions of being a CEO of a business. You talk a lot about bringing in the outsiders and the Trump campaign talks a lot about bringing in these outsiders. Sachs begrudgingly highlights the swamp creatures emerging to ask for those slots in those positions because they are lifelong politicians and bureaucrats. How do we have trust and faith or

Starting point is 01:11:14 do you think that that's the whole point is that you have folks that don't have the experience to run these organizations that don't have the insights on who actually works there on how they operate and them coming in is going gonna provide enough of a fresh perspective and f*** things up enough that that's exactly the point. And like talk a little bit about bringing in outsiders, but outsiders that can be effective in transforming these government agencies, not just blowing them up, or is the goal to blow them up?

Starting point is 01:11:40 No, again, I would just temper and tone down that rhetoric. Nobody's blowing up anything. But I think step one is going to be a level of transparency so that doing the obvious becomes obvious. And I think that if you look back over 40 or 50 years, what has happened is that secretaries and political appointments have gone from get the best person in the job because they know it to here's political payola, if you will. And I think the pendulum has swung to too far of an extreme. That's why the swamp people are able to maintain control because the person above them who's

Starting point is 01:12:17 appointed doesn't fundamentally know the inner workings of the organization. I suspect what you're going to see is a radical push to transparency. And I think that when you combine transparency, and Sachs called for this a version of the Twitter files for the government, I do think you're going to see that. But if you combine that push to transparency with a handful of topics, you know, by the way, we introduced a long time ago this idea of zero-based budgeting into the lexicon and language of these political candidates that they used all the way through to the finish line. I do believe the Republicans earnestly mean it. And so I think when you put these two things together, Freeberg, I think what you will have is all of this laid bare. And then I think it'll

Starting point is 01:13:01 start a debate on what to do. And I think the decisions about what to do will be so blindingly obvious. The low hanging fruit will save this country once we pluck it. Can I just say a word about, I think it's so important for Bobby Kennedy to be confirmed in whatever cabinet position that he's gonna get.

Starting point is 01:13:21 Number one, we look back at the campaign now and it seems obvious that Trump is going to win it. But at the time that Bobby Kennedy came on board, that was a major factor in shifting momentum towards Trump. So that's number one. Number two, we need to keep Bobby Kennedy's coalition as part of our movement. It's not just about what he did in this last election.

Starting point is 01:13:42 It's keeping all of those people, those young people and those former Democrats, onside and part of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement. And number three, he's genuinely gonna reform that huge part of the bureaucracy. And that's extremely important. We need outsiders to come in and shake things up. He's right about the regulatory capture.

Starting point is 01:14:01 He's right about the marriage of state power and corporate greed. Let's have someone go in there who's got fresh eyes but also understands how the bureaucracy works because he's litigated and shake things up. HOFFMAN If you look at what Bobby posted to Instagram, Nick, I don't know if you can find it, but it was pretty telling on this dimension of the first inning is going to be about absolute radical transparency and sharing with the American people everything that's been under the covers. By the way, it's not just on that dimension, right? We're going to see the Epstein files. We're going to see the Diddy lists. We're going to see

Starting point is 01:14:38 the JFK file. I know that these things are sort of fringe conspiracy theory type things for some people. But the point is from pillar to post, that first phase of this radical truth seeking transparency is an incredible disinfectant that you can build from. And he told the FDA, I think something to the effect of pack your bags and keep your records. Now let's, let's take the hyperbolic part of it out, but it's the keep your records part that should be valuable because we deserve to have answers. Now, when you think at the same time that you have inventions like AI that can crunch every single piece of data under the sun and tell you the absolute

Starting point is 01:15:17 truth, imagine when you put transparency and the government sharing incredible amounts of information with the compute power that the Googles and the Facebooks and the government sharing incredible amounts of information with the compute power that the Googles and the Facebooks and the open AIs of the world are creating. You'll know these answers to all of these questions. Vaccines, are they good or bad? When? How? Fluoride, is it good or bad?

Starting point is 01:15:38 When? How? All of these drugs that have been approved, why? All of these drugs that have not been approved, why? You're going to start to see some really interesting things. Has there been research on the impacts of food on physiology? Were they suppressed? Were they not suppressed?

Starting point is 01:15:51 So I think phase one is get it all out into the open. Totally. And what I said, just what what Shamath referred to is, yeah, I said we should do a Twitter files for the whole federal government. Just what I meant by that is remember before Elon bought Twitter, they told us for years that the idea that Twitter was shadow baiting conservatives and engaging in censorship was a conspiracy theory. Then Elon opened up the Twitter files and we saw that it was all true.

Starting point is 01:16:21 And moreover, that the government was engaged in censorship. They have been working hand in glove with the Trust and Safety Department. The FBI had logins. They could just go in themselves. I mean, it was crazy. The FBI had their own tool called teleport, which would allow them to transmit secret instructions

Starting point is 01:16:35 to the Trust and Safety team at Twitter, and they were censoring based on those instructions. That's completely unacceptable. Twitter management lied about it. The government lied about it. We only found out through the Twitter files. Let's do a Twitter files for the federal government. What do you think we're going to find out? What do you think we'd find out about COVID? What do you think really happened there? If Bobby Kennedy can do that? The lies they told us.

Starting point is 01:16:58 In completeness of the actual clinical validation studies, the authorizations and the waivers that were secured, how good or how brittle or how fragile was that data? By the way, I think what it'll also do, Freberg, is if it looks like this data is actually of extreme high quality, you know what that does? It reestablishes trust in that institution, which is also a win. So this whole thing is a win-win. Well, and let's not forget the FOIA leader. They were literally being taught how to route around Fauci's team, how to route around subpoenas and people looking for information. I mean, there's a lot to uncover here. I'm a hundred percent here for it. Yeah. So just to be clear, there's a law in the United States called the Freedom of Information Act.

Starting point is 01:17:46 The FOIA is kind of a common term. And it gives the power and authority to individual citizens and third party agencies to have a check and balance on the federal government that they can go in, they can request actual data, actual files, and it is all necessarily available to the public at any time except for classified information. Okay, well the federal government now

Starting point is 01:18:09 overclassifies everything. We have something like what, like a billion classified documents. They literally classify everything. So through the FOIA process, third party lawyers and nonprofits have made requests to federal agencies to get access to this sort of information. And I've done it.

Starting point is 01:18:24 I don't know if you guys have ever used FOIA powers for information from the federal government. I had to do FOIA requests 10 years ago to get weather data, or 15 years ago for my startup climate. It was the only way we were able to get access to a bunch of weather data was through FOIA requests. And then we were able to use that data in our services because it is public data, the taxpayers pay for it, so we had a right to it. Similarly, you can make FOIA requests of emails

Starting point is 01:18:46 and inter-agency communications and so on. But, Sachs, I think it seems, and J. Cal to your point about the FOIA lady, there may over time have been some degree of corruption of the FOIA process in all of these agencies, which has made it more difficult for individuals and third parties to have the appropriate checks and balances on the data in these agencies

Starting point is 01:19:06 because of the way they've kind of obfuscated access, slowed down the process. Sometimes it takes months for them to respond to you and it's become quite difficult. So the FOIA, the intention of the Freedom of Information Act may have been hindered by the bureaucracy. This will not be through FOIA. They make one other suggestion

Starting point is 01:19:20 is we need a massive declassification effort of the federal government. Maybe this is the way to actually implement the Twitter files strategy. The problem is we have a massive over-classification problem. Billions of documents have been classified at the federal government. Why? Because those bureaucracies know that they can do whatever they want and work in peace without having to disclose what they're really doing, if they just mark classified on a document, someone needs to go through that and start massively declassifying. If they do that, then there'll be a lot more documents available to

Starting point is 01:19:53 FOIA requests. So that right there would be a huge help. And then like you said, the FOIA process could be tightened up. It could be a lot faster. It could be a lot easier. And they should not be able to circumvent it by doing the kind of stuff that J. Cal referred to during COVID, where they were like deliberately misspelling words. So they wouldn't show up. Yeah, they were putting asterisks in, you know, Hacker speak in order to avoid this. And they were also told a bunch of people who are in three letter agencies, just by default, put this at the highest level of security, not to be disclassified, declassified. So they unnecessarily put everything in classified. And so now, every document,

Starting point is 01:20:33 every email is marked at the highest level of classification, which means there's no discerning it. And if you were to blame an FBI agent, if they told you, Hey, just put everything on classified so it doesn't get out, okay, that seems like a pretty good way to cover your ass. And that's got to change. Yeah. Well, a lot to come in the weeks ahead. I'm sure we will do more updates as the cabinet positions or the nominees get announced. Where do you sit, Freeberg? You're a man of science. I know you have some differences with RFK. Do you want to see him? I have very deep trepidation about RFK having oversight. I think the authority might be limited with respect to the legislative authority that's vested by the Congress, which is the one piece.

Starting point is 01:21:12 Look, as you guys know, there's a lot that RFK brings up that resonates with me. I'm not a black and white guy. So there are things that he says that make a lot of sense. There are things I've pointed out, particularly around microplastics in the environment, particularly around chemistry that we use in our food and our systems of food and production. And I believe very strongly that we have real issues that have, you know, compounding effects on our health. So let me not be be too flippant about that. I am not a all vaccines are always good all the time person. I think that every one of them needs to be studied on the merits and the risks.

Starting point is 01:21:45 I think fluoride is an interesting conversation to have. What are the merits? What are the risks? And why is it a federal, why is there a federal authority over fluoride and water? Which by the way, there isn't, it's all local municipalities get to decide. On a nuanced basis then, net net, where do you wind up, Freeberg? Net net, where do you wind up? I will say that there are a number of things that RFK have said that caused me a lot of

Starting point is 01:22:04 trouble that I'm very troubled by because I think that he has said things that are factually wrong and I want him to be open to debate and open to review of objective truth and that's it. And that's it. And as long as he's- So Net-Net, do you like him as a disinfectant, as a rabble rouser, as to shake up the system? Or Net-Net, do you think it's too risky to let him in? Generally, I think all these systems should be challenged, 100%.-net do you think it's too risky to let him in? Generally, I think all these systems should be challenged 100%. So net-net you wanna send him in.

Starting point is 01:22:29 You say you want him to be open to debate. I personally have never seen a candidate for office who's been more open to discourse, debate, interviews than Bobby Kennedy's done. Everything he's done on this show twice. I'm not classifying him otherwise. I'm not classifying him otherwise. You know who is not open to debate

Starting point is 01:22:44 and discourse and transparency is a bureaucracy. That's the problem. If you want government reform, you have to get into the bureaucracy. You need outsiders to come in. You need to make it transparent. You got to declassify.

Starting point is 01:22:58 That's what you got to do. One of the most important aspects of science, not the recently legacy media or jokingly definition of quote, of science, not the recently legacy media or jokingly definition of quote science. But science is meant to be a process of skepticism, interrogation, and the search for objective truth, which means that you should be constantly questioning whether you are right or wrong. And I do think that that is a necessary part of the process of science.

Starting point is 01:23:21 Science is not meant to be a dictatorial regime. And so I think that resetting the framework for how we operate some of the agencies and authorities that are supposed to be rooted in science to have the necessary process of skepticism, review and transparency into that, I think will reassert faith and reassert trust by the public in how these agencies are operating. And I hope that that happens. I really do, because I do think that there are very the public in how these agencies are operating. And I hope that that happens. I really do, because I do think that there are very good people in all these agencies

Starting point is 01:23:48 who do very good work. And there's a lot of very important advances that have come out of the United States of America and have gone through processes through the federal government that have actually done really great things for Americans and for humanity. And so I don't want us to dismiss things

Starting point is 01:24:01 as being whimsical bureaucracies that don't have any rooting in science But I do think that it's important to have this degree of skepticism and process and have transparency. So that's all well I'd like you to show me in the Constitution where the bureaucracy or the administrative state is a branch of the government I see in the Constitution that we are supposed to be ruled by an executive branch a Legislative branch and a judicial branch. I do not see, hold on, I do not see an administrative branch.

Starting point is 01:24:29 That has sprung into existence over the last several decades. And it rules us, there's roughly three million people who work for the federal government. Of those, the president basically appoints 3,000 and it takes forever to get them through. So we have roughly three million people who don't report to anyone. Yes.

Starting point is 01:24:47 Nominally, they're supposed to report to the executive branch, but the president can't fire him. We talked about on the previous show, if Elon had gone into Twitter and he hadn't been allowed to fire anyone, do you think he could have restored free speech to Twitter? Of course not. They just would have kept doing whatever they wanted to do. And that is the big problem in the federal government right now is we are ruled by a fourth branch of government that is not in the Constitution, that doesn't report to anybody, it is not subject to elections, we can't vote them out, and we can't fire them. And they have been in the forefront of trying to stop Trump and the larger reform movement that he represents. Ever

Starting point is 01:25:24 since Trump got elected in 2016, remember it was members of the administrative state, specifically the security state, who said don't worry, we're going to be the insurance policy against Trump. And they have done everything possible through the Russiagate hoax, through welfare, through the whole Steele dossier hoax, to basically try and stop Trump and the reform movement that he represents. And the big question of Trump's second term will be whether he can finally subdue this bureaucracy and bring it under democratic control, under the control of the executive branch as the American people want.

Starting point is 01:25:57 And as I think the constitution intended, right now we are run by an unelected branch of government that has to stop. And what Trump represents is not dictatorship, but democracy, the triumph of democracy over this bureaucracy. And a big important moment for this movement, this return to the fundamentals of what was vested in the Constitution, is the Chevron Doctrine case at the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Starting point is 01:26:26 It reversed the authority for agencies to create their own rules and regulations that they can then enforce on private enterprise. And if that case carries through and is allowed to be used to support the efforts to deregulate or to de-agency what you call kind of the bureaucracy, I think it enables a lot of the change that folks are looking for. Why should, for example, some commission be sprung out of, you know, some assembly being created,

Starting point is 01:26:55 and then that commission gets to create their own rules and their own regulations that effectively are law that prevent private citizens and enterprises from being able to operate and make decisions. And I think that was a very important moment for this movement was the Supreme Court case on the Chevron doctrine earlier this year. I don't know if you agree with me on this, but it seems like it's going to be. No, I totally agree.

Starting point is 01:27:13 I think that was an absolute precursor, which is it was insane. I mean, again, you had a Supreme Court ruling that effectively made the administrative state the highest law on the land, even though there's no constitutional basis for it. So yeah, repealing Chevron was definitely half of it. And I think the other half of it is gonna be whether- Lawmakers have to pass laws. You can't have individual commissions pass laws.

Starting point is 01:27:35 That's the whole point. We need bills passed by the Republican Congress that Trump can sign, but we also need, I think, cabinet level appointments who will start to subdue the bureaucracy, bring them under control, find out what they're doing. Just give us transparency around what they're doing. Twitter, follow this thing so then we can reform it. I think that we're going to look back on this era and I think it's going to last about 20 years or

Starting point is 01:27:59 so at least, which I call a return to originalism. We are returning to the founding principles of this startup called America. And I think it's incredible. I think Sax is right. There's this unbelievable living document that created this incredible experiment. We veered way far away from it. It's taken us a lot of courage to get back to that place where now you can actually let that guiding document govern a highly meritocratic country. So it's going to be a lot of hard work, but my gosh, it's just an incredible moment and opportunity. Everybody should just take a breath and remember that. I'd just like to do a quick survey of some of the local and state elections and get some reactions. I was going to try and talk a little bit about what's going on in San Francisco and California.

Starting point is 01:28:55 I'll just hit on it. Our friend, my friend Daniel Lurie was, it looks like he's going to be the mayor of San Francisco beating out the incumbent mayor London Breed. Daniel ran on a moderate platform and has an intention of fixing a lot of the operations and inefficiencies in the San Francisco government, which has seen a ballooning in budget. San Francisco has the highest budget per capita of any city in the United States. I think 50% higher than New York with a lower functioning kind of set of municipal services. And there's a lot of opportunity for improvement there.

Starting point is 01:29:29 This is the first time, really important stat, first time an outsider has been elected mayor in San Francisco since 1911. Every mayor elected since 1911 in San Francisco was an existing government employee or government civil servant. So just like what we saw in the federal elections, we are seeing an outsider being placed in mayoral office in San Francisco. I wished Lurie a hearty congratulations. Nick, can you show them the tweet? Your city has become a dangerous, dirty dumpster fire for bad ideas from libs. I hope you do the obvious and be on the side of cops, justice, clean streets and meritocracy. That's your message to the incoming player. Well, yeah. I mean, he is has been a major proponent.

Starting point is 01:30:11 You were going to run for mayor one once. Take out. I was lobbied. I was approached and I was given a lot of support, seven figures of support to go do it. It's a very hard job because the supervisors actually run the city and a lot of the supervisors like they got booted too, no? Yeah, a couple of them got booted. Dean Preston got booted. Dopey Dean and Aaron Pesky.

Starting point is 01:30:37 Dopey Dean. That was bad. So the board of supervisors has also shifted moderate. The mayor is now going to be a moderate outsider and there's a real opportunity to rebuild and reform San Francisco. It's a place that I've called home for 25 years. It's a place where I operate my business. And it feels like a lot of the citizens of what has historically been.

Starting point is 01:30:53 You don't have to. I'll zoom. Hold on. I still live there. And I do think that it was a big election in terms of improving things in San Francisco. So congrats to Daniel Lurie, he's a friend of mine as well. Go down to LA, another big race Daniel or he's a friend of mine as well. You go down to LA another big race. We booted

Starting point is 01:31:11 Gascon who was the source? Roon San Francisco and that failed his way up to LA was ruining LA and Nathan Hockman who's you know moderate? Beat him by something like 20 points and then then like I mentioned, we got Prop 36 passed in California by about 70%, which reversed some of the excesses of Prop 47, which was the proposition a decade ago that was passed by then Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and then Attorney General Kamala Harris to de facto legalized shoplifting.

Starting point is 01:31:44 So the people of California have had enough of these policies that frankly enable crime, enable homelessness, enable drug use, and they want a correction. Look, even woke and blue state liberals don't want their cars broken into. I mean, it's really- Shocking.

Starting point is 01:32:01 It's really simple. And the- I mean, the crazy thing in Los Angeles with Gascogne was a number of people who I know live there now know people in Santa Monica, in Brentwood, in Bel Air, where we lived for so many years, Saks, have home invasions have started again. I mean, that is like a real breaking point for people.

Starting point is 01:32:20 It's scary to have your home broken into by a gang. Right, and you know, one final point on this is that while the people of California resoundingly, again, over 70% supported Prop 36, there was one prominent figure who was opposed to it, which was Gavin Newsom. He said when he saw early polling, I don't know what state I'm living in. So, look, the state we're living in, Gavin, is the one that you created. You're the one who gave us these policies.

Starting point is 01:32:48 You're the one who gave us Prop 47. You're the one who gave us zero bail. You're the one who allowed the Democratic Party in California to be taken over by Soros DAs. You've never resisted these policies. Now you have a choice. You can see where the people are at. Over 70% of California wants a change.

Starting point is 01:33:04 I'd say on the rest of the country, if it's 70% California, 90% of the United States must, as opposed to these soft on crime policies. If you ever have aspirations to be anything more than governor of California, you better get on the right side of this issue. Sachs, David Sachs should be the governor of California. Let's do it.

Starting point is 01:33:27 I am 100% serious. It's the fifth largest economy in the world. Let's do it. This is marked today as the day that I have decided. Oh, the decider has decided. That I am going to convince David to be the governor of California. I know it is. Great campaign manager, press secretary for him.

Starting point is 01:33:43 Hype man. I will say, I'll make the point on this. David, I'm just going to say that David Sacks would be an incredible governor of CalPERS. I really- I'm not a candidate. I'm not a candidate. I understand. I understand blah, blah, blah. Let's start the rumor right now. He's lying. He said it to me privately. There's no rumor. I'm just telling you right now that within two years, I will have convinced him

Starting point is 01:34:01 to do it. It'll be the perfect time. Gavin Newsom has been terrible for this state. We have seen trillions of dollars of market cap exit the state in terms of corporations that have left. We have gone from record surpluses to record deficits. We have an education system that is failing millions of kids. What is going on here? We have taxes that are through the roof and When you spend more and more and more to get less and less and less and it takes more and more out of everybody's pocket What is the answer the answer is you have to fundamentally change everything that's happening from first principles Well, I will say one more point About I will call it balance in the force. When a party is captured and moves too far in one direction,

Starting point is 01:34:51 people leave the party and they vote for the other party. And then in order to attract people back to the party, they tack to the center. My big prediction over the next few years is you will see a more centrist Democratic Party as they try and-'ll take the other side and they try and attract their to Iraq. I'll take the other side I so one more topic before I just Sacramento see Saxon second Not gonna happen guys before we wrap there's one other topic that came up in every conversation I had with everyone about Trump that was a female, which was abortion. And it was, and

Starting point is 01:35:26 look, I don't want to rehash again that it was misrepresented what Trump's position is, but abortion has become a very sensitive topic. A woman's right to do what she wants to do with her body when she wants to do it is something that most women feel they are very deeply endowed with. And that should be an unalienable right, particularly in the United States of America, and that even sending this back to states and states voting on it creates a significant emotional response that drives folks to one party or the other.

Starting point is 01:35:54 In Florida, voters rejected an abortion extension to 24 weeks. Florida previously had a 15-week abortion ban, but the current six-week ban took effect in May. So the amendment that was being proposed on the ballot this week would have codified abortion procedures up to 24 weeks in the state constitution, but it needed 60% of the votes to pass, but it only got 57%. So it looks like a loss for pro-choice advocates. Saks, what is going to happen now that these abortion laws are being voted on, these amendments to state constitutions

Starting point is 01:36:28 are being voted on? How is this gonna reshape American politics? And how are the parties gonna shift in the years ahead, given how important and how sensitive this topic has become after the decision at the Supreme Court recently? Look, I think that what you're seeing in the last election that we just had is the beginning of the end of the salience of this issue.

Starting point is 01:36:50 I mean, abortion has been an issue that has deeply fragmented America for 50 years. I mean, the pro-choice versus pro-life movements have been a staple of American politics talking past each other. They were never able to get to any sort of compromise. With the repeal of Roe v. Wade, with the Dobbs decision, the issue has now been thrown back to the states and every state is working it out for themselves. And in

Starting point is 01:37:11 most states, what's happening is it's either the pro-choice totally wins or they compromise on some number of weeks. I think that in Florida, going for 24 weeks might have been a little bit too many. If they had tried to go back to 15, you know, they probably could have gotten there. They probably could have gotten from 57 to 60. But that's what the debate's going to be about now is just basically in red states, it's just going to be about agreeing on a certain number of weeks. Blue states are pretty much going to be pro-choice. And you can see that the federal level, no one wants to touch this anymore. Jake, how you raised the point during the election cycle during the campaign, that Dobbs would be crushing for Trump and that women were going to turn out in droves for

Starting point is 01:37:49 Harris on the base of this issue. That simply did not happen. If you look at voter turnout, Trump increased his share of the women's vote. He did lose college educated women. So that subset of call it more progressive. Yeah, sorry, college educated. But the older women too, I think came out, yeah. But if you look at women as a whole, he won more of their votes. So how did Trump inoculate himself on this issue? He made it really clear. He was not in favor of a national ban.

Starting point is 01:38:15 He said that he favored the exceptions and that it was now up to the states. He basically assured the country, the women of the country that, again, that abortion would not be banned and that was now a local issue. And I think the voters of the country, the women of the country, that again, that abortion would not be banned and that was now a local issue. And I think the voters of the country, including women, accepted that.

Starting point is 01:38:30 And it is now a state issue. So Maryland, Missouri. I think it's gone. Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Arizona, all voted to codify the right to abortion and remove abortion bans. On the other hand, Nebraska voted for a ban on abortions after the first trimester. And South Dakota voted against a right to abortion. So South

Starting point is 01:38:50 Dakota prohibits all abortions except when necessary to save the ones life. Listen, even in deep red states like Ohio, the pro-choice forces have won these referenda. It's just a handful of cases, like a very small number, where the pro-life have gotten their their way. Again, I think we're at the tail end of this being a salient issue in American politics. I think Trump has ended it as a federal issue and it's now going state by state. And in most of those states, the pro-choice forces are winning. I think this issue is over. And I think it's over because Republicans know not to

Starting point is 01:39:23 touch this. Jay Kal, you've said it's one of the most important issues of the day several times in the past. Yeah. Of course. You said women were going to vote in droves for Kamala because of the perception that Trump was trying to pass a federal abortion ban. I think a lot of them did, clearly, but not enough to swing the election and it's going to be a jubicated- And do you think it's going to be, to the question, is SACS right? Is this going to stop being an issue and it's now codified in state law? Or is this going to going to be. Do you think it's going to be, I mean, to the question is Saks right? Is this going to stop being an issue and it's now codified in state law and, or is this going to continue to

Starting point is 01:39:49 be a linchpin in American law? There will be states where women will not be able to get an abortion, sadly, and they will not be able to make that decision for themselves. That's my personal belief. They should be able to make the decision for themselves. I'd like to stay out of it. But Saks is largely right that if you don't, if I'm reading it correctly, think about it. If you're a state and you ban abortion, who's going to want to live there? You're going to have a lot of people leaving. And that's been an issue here in Texas. A lot of companies are having a hard time with not only getting women to move here to work at specific companies in Texas, but men are a well or not, are citing it as a concern. So it's going to make it really untenable for

Starting point is 01:40:26 an economy in the United States. You're saying men don't want to work for Tesla or SpaceX because of abortions? I have heard many stories about people not wanting to come work at companies in Texas because of this law. Yes. I have heard that from employers. I'm not talking about any of Elon's companies. I don't speak for him, obviously. But this has been an issue for companies in Texas. Okay. Guys, this has been a fantastic follow up to this week's election. I know some people are bitterly disappointed, frustrated, angry and sad about the future of America. And

Starting point is 01:40:58 others are deeply optimistic and excited. And I think at the end of the day, it's all going to be okay. It's going to be and I really do hope that everyone can kind of have constructive conversations about the future we'd all like to build together. Like we do here. And I really appreciate the friendship with you guys. I wanna say congratulations to Sachs and Chamath

Starting point is 01:41:17 for putting yourselves out there as early as you did in campaigning and promoting Donald Trump. I think you guys had a very influential role in moving people for the effort you made and the outcome, congratulations. and campaigning and promoting Donald Trump. I think you guys had a very influential role in moving people for the effort you made and the outcome, congratulations. More than, listen, I'll say what I said again. He's a good human being.

Starting point is 01:41:34 I would encourage you to get to know him. Yeah. Just that. Hold him accountable, boys. Take a beast, Torx. If he wants to invite me to Mar-a-Lago to have a veggie burger and fries, I'm there. I will hang out with Dan.

Starting point is 01:41:45 No veggie burgers, what are you talking about? Eat before you go, it's my best advice. Oh yeah, I forgot. Eat before you go. We're gonna ban veggie burgers. They ban fake meat in Florida. That's Bobby's, I already texted Bobby to ban anything with soy like the thing.

Starting point is 01:41:55 I know, I remember all of your- Carganine and xanthan gum, all that stuff is verboten. But don't worry, bears on the menu. Vegans better learn to find natural sources of protein because the unnatural sources. The free market Republicans have decided it's time to go in and ban the market for fake meat because my God, we can't introduce fake meat.

Starting point is 01:42:14 We have to tell you what to eat and what to do. Continues to dysregulate your physiology. Xantham gum. Stop using your moderator privileges to push your agenda, Freebird. Take care guys, I love you. I love you guys. Bye bye.

Starting point is 01:42:27 Love you guys. Bye bye. I'm the queen of Kinawan I'm going all in What your winners line? What your winners line? Besties are gone That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway Sex Oh man

Starting point is 01:42:57 Oh man My habitat sure will meet me at once 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 What? We need to get merch

Starting point is 01:43:15 I'm doing all in I'm doing all in

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Trump wins! How it happened and what's next

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