The Ben Mulroney Show - Kevin O'Leary joins Ben Mulroney to talk about his convo with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago and buying TikTok

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Kevin O'Leary joins Ben Mulroney to talk about speaking with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago and buying TikTok Guest: Kevin O’Leary, Chairman of O’Leary Ventures, Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. Kevin O'Leary is having, I mean, he's been having more than a moment ever since he exploded onto the scene

on a Dragon's Den into Shark Tank, an incredible career as an investor. But because of this moment that we are experiencing between Canada and the United States, he is ideally positioned to introduce and explain Canada to Americans. He's been going on to Fox Business, he's been going to CNBC, and he's been explaining the nuance of Canada to Americans who may not necessarily know everything they need to know about Canada as Donald Trump is about to enter the White House for the second time. But one of the people that he is doing some introducing to and offering up a Canadian primer to is the president himself. And Kevin tweeted just recently, I had two topics that I want to talk to Trump about because he went to Mar-a-Lago. Number one

was integrating Canada towards a North American union with greater strength. Most Canadians would like to look at that opportunity without giving up their sovereignty. And he goes on he says, the other agenda item that is important to me is tick tock I have joined with Frank McCourt to buy tick tock and he goes on. And those are the two topics that we're going to talk with Kevin about right now. Mr. Wonderful. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much, man.

Okay, I got to talk about this economic union with the United States. What? What's going on? You go down there and you introduce this idea to Donald Trump and what does he say? Well this conversation I was having on a Saturday night, last Saturday night, so 48 hours ago, we didn't know Trudeau was going to basically quit or whatever you want to call it, resign. But what I asked him first was I said, you know, these people you're meeting with, including Trudeau and Jolie, whoever else went down there from the Liberal cabinet, you're wasting your time. These guys are going to get eradicated soon in an election.

So why not just, you know, this is a request. It's just one guy talking to another saying saying why not cut Canada some slack let it have an election so a new leader emerges that has the same mandate you do four years and so instead of negotiating with these guys are gonna get whacked let's get somebody that can actually get into a substantive discussion about the opportunities and what did he say to that? I'd like to think it didn't fall on deaf ear. He understood that Trudeau, I don't think he even likes him. Okay. I'm just with my personal opinion. So he's glad he's gone.

But at the same time, will he stop the pressure? I just don't know. I think he understands that it'd be better off to wait. That's my own personal take. And because I said most Canadians only see opportunity here. We understand the unique situation we have where you're a largest trading partner, where you know, $185 billion just in US dollars of energy just out of Alberta every year. We're 60% of your flow in North America. Plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. And what he was interested in is saying, well, you know, if we get some deal worked out, we can wipe out all tariffs. And you should wipe out your stupid tariffs too, like milk subsidies and wheat subsidies, you know, between Quebec and Vermont, you know, and can't do milk,

you can't take BC wine, Ontario, all this crap we're doing to each other would have to be considered. Inter-provincial trade barriers are an impediment to growth in Canada without a doubt. Hey, Kevin, let me ask you a question because here from my vantage point here, it seems that Pierre Poliev, who he is, what he stands for. Yes, there's a lot of content that Canadians consume about him, but more and more I'm seeing stories about him on CNN, on Fox, on Fox Business,

and of course the Jordan Peterson interview that's gone around the world. Most of the people who watched it aren't even Canadian. Has that filtered its way to the president? Is he more aware of who may be sitting across the table from him say six months from now? Yeah, he is. And also what more importantly, or at least as importantly are his cabinet. They understand and starting to

focus on Pierre because he's the next guy probably with majority mandate. And that's important. And so I understand Piers myopic focus now, the race just started a few hours ago. He's got to get elected and repair the incredible damage that has been done to the country. And so, how much time he's gonna worry about the US, I would say would be not a lot until he gets through this election,

because that's what he has to do successfully. It would be way better for him to end up with a majority mandate for his first term because nothing more powerful than a prime minister with a majority mandate. And that would be a great negotiating position to signal to any country when it comes to trade. Yeah, I'm the guy I have majority mandate, I can cut deals. Let's pivot to tick tock. Where are you in that your attempt to purchase the social media behemoth? I've been working on this deal for two years. I don't know if

you're aware of that. And it's all it's right now. It's all boiling down to the hearing on Friday. So the reason we put this press release out and formed this syndicate is that we want the justices to understand the excuse the company's using is saying nobody will buy it because we're not permitted by the Chinese supreme leader to sell the algorithm. And we want the justices to know that falls on deaf ears because we are willing to purchase it without the algorithm in our syndicate. So Frank McCord and I have formed this syndicate. We are working both sides of the aisles. That's

why I went to Mar-a-Lago. He did the same with Biden. Both, you know, the Department of Justice on both sides, because here's the crazy thing. It's Biden's deal until 1205 on the 20th. So we need Biden to say, okay, there is a legitimate buyer. This syndicate, the O'Leary McCourt syndicate has written an LOI that abides by the order of Congress, which we did. We spent a fortune building that out and the lawyers we had to hire to do this.

And that LOI will be public. As soon as Biden tells us there is a buyer, I'm going to waive, I'm going to give the company 90 days, which he has the purview to do in the order. This is Biden's purview before midday on the 20th. But the minute it's 12.05, we got to work for Trump. Isn't the algorithm though, the secret sauce that makes tick tock tick tock. I mean, if you buy it without, without the algorithm, isn't that like

buying a supercar without the engine? Yeah, the algorithm is what is stealing American information and giving it to the Chinese just detailed an hour ago, in a study that showed you can't get any bad news on China on TikTok. It's all filtered out. It's spyware. And there's no way on earth we can fork the code and get through the order. I've been talking to Rubio about this and all the lawmakers. They said not a single line of Chinese code. We will not let you operate it. So we've got to figure out a way. And we know how to do it. And we're going to go a different step. We're going to say, wait, wait, wait, wait, why don't you have your own decision on your data? Do I want to share my data or not? If

you share your data, and I'll give you an example, I'm a watch collector. I want everybody on TikTok and I have 1.4 million followers to know I collect watches because I want ads about watches. I want information about watches. I want to be shown watches. So and also in our version of that, in the O'Leary McCourt version, you can get you can monetize it for yourself, get a piece of the action. If an advertiser wants to advertise you, we'll give you a piece. So that I think is far more attractive, but we're not going to stop on the borders of the US.S. Once we clear the DOJ, we're going to go to India and talk to Modi and say, look, we're clean. There's no Chinese spyware in this. And we're under the order of the DOJ. Why don't we light up India again? You've got 200 million

users here and Switzerland and France and England. So at Canada, we're going to shut it. Yeah. Well, big ambitions, big ambitions from a man with bold vision. I really thank you. You opened my eyes to, I thought your conversation with Trump was one thing. Turns out, I think it was probably more helpful than I had originally anticipated. So I hope you'll join us again on The Ben Mulroney Show real soon. Take care, my friend. Bye-bye.