THE ED MYLETT SHOW - A Fight for America Part 2: The Biden Campaign w/ Andrew Yang

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

The debate continues! PART 2: A Fight for America is NOW STREAMING! Whether you are a democrat, republican, independent, or none of the above, you have a right to be INFORMED and a responsibility to make your voice heard!   Last week I sat down one-on-one with Donald Trump Jr. and had an intense and spirited conversation about the Trump campaign and the future of America if Trump were to win the 2020 election. THIS WEEK I'm sitting down with former presidential candidate, lawyer, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang to get his perspective on the future of American under the Biden/Harris campaign. I SAID IT BEFORE AND I'LL SAY IT AGAIN... I'M NOT POLITICAL. I HAVE NO AGENDA. MY JOB IN BOTH INTERVIEWS IS TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS! I ASK DIFFICULT QUESTIONS ABOUT BIDEN (and his track record) AND LAST WEEK I DID DO THE SAME W TRUMP! This interview or the last one may be difficult to watch/listen to if you already have strong opinions about these things but, REMEMBER THIS... We cannot GROW as individuals if we are unwilling to do things that make us uncomfortable, push our boundaries, and expand our thought processes. Living life in your bubble breeds division, lack of compassion, and hate. The truth becomes a one-sided conversation. And therefore, it's no truth at all! I encourage you to watch BOTH interviews. Take advantage of this UNFILTERED information and use it so YOU can be fully equipped to VOTE based on the FACTS and make the BEST decision not just for you, but for your family and for the United States. From Joe Biden's cognitive state, the economy, and tax reform to the debate on immigration and the handling of COVID, this interview gets REAL, remains HONEST, and DELIVERS the facts. Oh and a detailed and DEEP conversation about Andrew's proposal for “Guaranteed Minimum Income” for all Americans. (This part is going to get everybody in the country talking and thinking about it whether they are on the left or the right)

This is the Edmmerlidge Show. Hey everybody, welcome back to Max Out. And before we get into the show, I just wanted to remind you that this is the second part of a two-part series I've done on the election. On really the different perspectives too, between the more conservative or Republican approach to governing and the more liberal progressive approach, the Democrat approach.

And so this week my guest is Andrew Yang. I tried to have both sides on back-to-back weeks to give a balanced approach. I think I asked difficult questions, but fair questions in their respectful dialogue. And obviously I'm not a gotcha show, so I'm not trying to catch people in something. But at the same time I wanted to get you as much information as I can. I created the max out program to help you max out your life.

And I'm hoping that if you just get a little bit of an insight, a little bit more information, perhaps it confirms what you already believe, or perhaps you learned something new. But that's why I did this show this week. I hope you receive it in the spirit that I intended it and enjoy the program. All right. Welcome back to max out everybody. I am so excited today. This is part two of a two-part series, sort of on the direction of the country.

And last week we had Donald Trump Jr. on and today I'm really excited. This is one of the bright minds in all of politics and entrepreneurship as well. And the other thing I really like about this man is, which is unique in politics, is I think he just has, he transfers a good spirit to people. His information is transferred in a way that, I don't know, it doesn't feel like the normal political

environment all the time with a bunch of negativity and a bunch of hate in there. I love the way you deliver your message. And we'll let the audience today decide whether or not they actually love the actual message. But my guest today is a former Democrat candidate for president, entrepreneur, former attorney, recovering attorney, Andrew Yang. Andrew, welcome to max out. It's great to be. Thanks for having me, Ed. I'm glad that you think I delivered the message positively. That makes me so happy. You do.

And that's refreshing in politics. And I'm a fan for more and more of that. And so speaking of delivering message, let's get into this stuff. So this isn't a got you show, but I'm going to ask you some stuff that I think people want to know. And so we'll move in, we'll sort of weave

in and out of the election, some of your views, your proposals, that you'd like to see the Democrat Party, institute a little bit more of. But let's just start with the basic question, because I asked Don this, I said, hey, Don, first question, why would the country be better? Because I think winning is mental and it's environmental.

And the country itself is an environment, and the leader of that country helps create the environment. And so why in your mind would Biden Harris and the Democrat Party create a better environment for people to max out their lives than four more years of the Trump administration? We're in a deep dark hole right now that has been brought about by this pandemic.

And to me, it's crystal clear that Joe and Kamala will be better suited to try to use the government's resources to help us be put in position to succeed, really, to help dig out of this hole. And right now, the direction the country is heading in 72% of Americans think that right now is the worst time we've ever lived. And you have to ask yourself, is current leadership going to lead us in a different better direction or in a similar direction to where we're heading right now? To me, we need to head in a different direction.

We need new leadership. Now, to me, we need to head in a different direction. We need new leadership. You don't just stay on a course that's not leading you towards where you want to be. You have to change course. You need to switch captains. And in this case, Joe and Kamala are the team that it's just going to point us in a better direction and turn the page. How do you figure, how do you look at Joe Biden as a new leader though?

So 47 years, this guy's been there, you know, and I, I have a hard time when I even ask people to support him, can you name me like five really significant accomplishments or big differences he's made? So how do you, and I asked this with all due respect because there is a guy in there now, but the guy we were placing him with spend and DC for 47 years. How's that a new leader in your mind? Well, first let me say that I ran for president And so there was a a point where I Believed I could be that leader But then the voters decided the voters decided on Joe large, large part because I think Erkins were comfortable with what Joe would do as president.

And if you look at his time in office, he helped lead the bailout of auto manufacturers during the great recession, which ended up preserving millions of jobs over time. And one of the things I said on TV the other week was he can bring the entire center, and I would say the entire country in a direction because he makes it the new reasonable.

Joe Biden's been a fairly reasonable political figure in public life for a long time. But the situation where he and right now is is so new to us where you've lost at least 11 million jobs that we know about probably more, that the government's going to need to do things that we've not seen it do historically. And our government right now is not very effective at getting stuff done. And so someone like Joe actually is ideally suited to help forge

middle way that people on both sides of the aisle will be able to find elements that they like. And that's why I think Joe actually has the capacity to be exactly who the country needs right now because I'm an entrepreneur, but we have a multi-trillion dollar hold. It's been blessed in the economy. And we've had a very, very imperfect, stimulus recovery act back in gosh, March at this point. We're waiting for another version, but because of the dysfunction of Washington, we're not getting one.

So this is not a business as usual situation. This is a, we're going to need our government to do some things that we've not seen to do in years, a generation. And to get our government to do different things in this environment, you need someone that people have a degree of trust and faith in and has built up institutional credibility over time. And I think that Joe is that president. Joe's going to be that leader. You, by the way, we won't stay on Joe the whole time. We're going to go to Trump and we're going to go to your ID

as which is really where I want to get to. But I want to stay on Joe just for a second. I want to ask you a candid question because I did say 47 years. You know, I listen to you and some of the people on the right. And I think, boy, there's these bright young minds Out there and yet we when I we got to the final group and by the way Experiences important to wisdom is important temperament is important But I remember thinking when you are on the debate stage and then you had Donald Trump on the other side

It's like wow we ended up basically with the people getting the most traction, all of them in their 70s. Donald Trump is in his 70s, Joe Biden's older than he is, Bernie Sanders is not a young man, Elizabeth Warren is not a young woman. I thought, where are the young ideas, especially in a progressive party like yours, it surprised me. And you know the criticism.

So I wanna ask you directly and then we'll get into some of your ideas as well. But there's a lot of people that think that Joe Biden isn't even the same Joe Biden from five or ten years ago. They sense a cognitive Issue there some of the stuff with the teleprompters lately and the not knowing what city he's stayed He's in once in a while you sat you were on the debate stage with both he and Kamala You're one of the few people on earth who were in his proximity under pressure where he had to answer questions. Some of those weren't well and some of those didn't go so well,

what is your take on his cognitive function? And I asked that with respect, but that is an issue on people's minds, as you know. And I talked to him before the fact, after the fact, I've been around him dozens of times. I've had informal half an hour long conversations because we're both waiting to go on stage. You don't get there 30 seconds ahead of time.

You get there 30 minutes ahead of time. Right. So you're there. And Joe's strong before the fact, he's strong during the fact, he's strong after the fact. Like some of those debates are not easy. You're on state for a couple of hours. The TV lights are shining on. You've got the makeup on and the rest of it. And he has never evinced like to me any sign of

fatigue or where is actually very impressive. So I've been around him in myriad circumstances. And to me, it's actually a mistake for his opponent, Trump to rely upon this narrative because Joe just keeps demonstrating that he's strong and capable in different settings. He's going to do it again on the debate stage in a little while. Trying to sell a caricature of your opponent to me is not a recipe for a success. You should actually be trying to build your own following based upon a track record of things that you've done. So this isn't you, this is the Trump campaign.

I would interject, I would say both candidates are making that mistake. Both are spending most of their time building caricatures about the other one. And I say that to you with respect. I take you at your word that you've seen him function at a high level. And I actually, whether I agree with that or not, I do agree with you that it's a political mistake because you're setting the bar so low. The expectations are so low that if it even just comes out of this thing decent,

I mean, his DNC speech was okay, I thought, but because the bar was so low, he got rave reviews because it was just pretty functional. So I agree with you from a tactical standpoint, I don't know that my observations from a distance are consistent with yours, but I appreciate your perspective because you've been closer to it than me.

Let's talk about some of those more progressive ideas. And one of years is one that I've spent so much time really contemplating. And so your proposal is interesting to me because I'm not a big redistribution guy. I don't like that. And I think there's this misnomer, I don't mean to dictate here, but there's this misnomer that I get free college or I get free health care. You know, you know, the government doesn't have any money. Someone else is paying for your college.

Someone else is paying for your health care. And I think this is a concept most people don't understand. The government has no money. Government takes money from taxpayers and then redistributes it. And there could be a fair argument of how much of that money should be taken and should be redistributed and to what purposes. And you have an idea that does redistribute money, which is his freedom dividend, universal basic income. I'm going to let you describe

it. But before everybody slaps it off, I had Stephen Moore on my show who was one of Trump's chief economic advisors, he nominated him to the Fed, and he said, I'm open to this idea. I'd like other social programs to go away, but I actually am intrigued by the idea. Milton Friedman, very conservative economist, proposed a negative income tax for people in lower income brackets, which is essentially what you're describing here. So would you tell people what your idea is, please? My freedom dividend is a universal basic income, and I was campaigning on $1,000 a month for every American adult. And to your point, this is not my idea.

This was something that Thomas Paine proposed to the founding of the country for all citizens. Martin Luther King was for it. Milton Friedman was for a version of it. Richard Nixon came this close to passing it into law. Nixon, you know, obviously, isn't exactly anyone's idea of a bleeding heart liberal. And then it, and then it, and then it went dormant for a little while and I believe that I helped to revive interest in it.

But it was an idea that's been with us for decades. And to me, this pandemic has unfortunately brought to the foreground the need for just getting people resources in a time when I thought we were going to be automating away millions of jobs. It turns out that now a lot of those jobs have been shut down because of the pandemic. But the two trends are hand in hand because 50% of companies say they're investing more in automation because it's not advisable to have lots of people in a lot of different environments. You don't want them together. So you have Tyson replacing meat packing workers with robots.

You have grocery stores getting aisle cleaning robots and Google just came out with AI that's going to replace call center workers and there are more than two million call center workers in the United States. So to me, a version of universal basic income was inevitable based upon technological advances. And to your point, this is in a left or right idea, this is a forward idea. This is something that people have been forecasting for a while, and it's just that our politicians in DC don't understand how transformative technology is in many industries and many occupations. How are you going to pay for it? Well the way I recommended paying for it is by adopting a value-added tax, which is something that virtually every other developed economy is already done. And one reason why the value added taxes is so positive is that you have companies

like Amazon right now paying zero in taxes. And if you're conservative, you still don't like the idea of a truck company paying zero in taxes, like that, that doesn't strike anyone as like the optimal or efficient way to go. So if you have something like a value-added tax, then the Amazon's the world, the Netflix of the world can't get their way out of things. They can't just hide all their money in Ireland, which is what they're doing right now. They're saying, oh, like all the profits went to our international division. It's coincidentally going through like the tax aid. So if we had a means of harnessing

the incredible value creation that's going on in certain segments of our economy, particularly the technology giants that are now unfathomably wealthy and productive, then could start paying for money in Americans, hands around the country, particularly because that money just goes right back in the economy over and over again in the form of car repairs, grocery bills, daycare expenses, little league signets, and on and on.

But the first thing to step you. I mean, interrupt you, but you're going to hit the tech companies for it. And one thing everybody should know on this too is that you're proposing everybody get the check. And in your mind, that means now it's not a socialist side-pride program because everybody, including a guy making a million dollars a year, at least under your original proposal,

would still be getting that money, correct? Yeah, and it's not socialism. It's capitalism, or income doesn't start at zero. We didn't get into my background, but I'm an entrepreneur of run companies, I've started businesses. And everything worked better when people have money to spend everything works better when someone can actually participate in the economy You don't want an economy where you have a handful of

Very wealthy people at the top and then nobody and then like this massive lower class Like the economy functions better businesses function better entrepreneurship functions better If you have a middle class, I can actually spend money in immunity. So I'm gonna give you some hard questions about because I'm intrigued by the idea. So the first question I think I have is I worry that, well, by the way, most people that support it on the right, if we're giving context,

are in support of it in lieu of other social programs. Meaning, you're gonna get away with what, your welfare is going away. Food stamps are going away, what your welfare is going away. Food stamps are going away and this will be a replacement. You are not proposing that, correct? You're proposing this in addition to current existing social programs. I am proposing, like, I don't make anyone worse off version, but I campaigned on the fact

that if you were getting cash and cash like benefits from certain programs, they would be, and you chose the freedom dividend, then your current benefits would not apply. Got it. And when I talk to people who are on existing programs, and I campaigned for presidents or I met a lot of Americans, different circumstances, they hated the fact that if they got a part-time job and did better, then they were penalized for it. Uh, yeah. So to me, if you have, I don't think anyone likes that.

Like no one on the left should like that. No one on the right. I'm sure likes the fact that you're actually disincentivizing people from, uh, going out, doing better from the cells, working more like it was, I remember this. Viddly, it was a single mom in Iowa, uh, who said to in Iowa who said to me, she was like, look, I want to work, but if I work, then my benefits go down, so I'm not working, but this is not the way it should work. And I was like, yeah, you're right.

So the way I was campaigning at was that you get this cash, it's unconditional, and then if you work part time, you get that too. And if you are on programs right now that overlap with this then this would be in lieu of it. You got it. Okay, so that's interesting. So you're on my concern about it. So everybody that's listening into this one point, I actually think this is one of the best discussions you could ever hear about how the left and the right might be able to come together. And my concern is you use the word incentive. And I think a capitalist society is based on incentive.

You know that one of the concerns about this is that when you start giving people free money, everybody free money, that they're incentive is to not work. And that the other concern is, and I'll let you address both of them, slippery slope, starts at a thousand. Once you start giving away candy, you know, how the world works, right? There's a little bit more and a little bit more. And then the person who runs after you goes, it's 3000. It's 4000.

Then it's not just the tech company's paying. Then it's taxpayers at a certain rate, at a certain place, and eventually you're into a redistribution economy that's out in the open, doesn't this strip incentive and two, won't it encourage massive immigration demand on the country to get here, to get your $3,000 a month? So, I've been an entrepreneur for a couple of decades now, and I think that most everyone, if you put money into their hands, they're going to do what you expect them to do. They're going to spend it.

And if you have programs right now that literally, look, you're going to get less for your family if you work more, then that's a distance out of the work. But if you put money into someone's hands and say, this is your money, it's yours. You do what you want. You're American, you're a citizen. We're not going to monitor a police it or you fill out paperwork for it or any of this stuff. Like they do in Alaska, Alaska, they get petroleum over a year. No questions asked unconditional. And then if you go out and do anything under the sun, work part time, volunteer, start a business, you get that too. Like that to me is not a disincentive for people to work. And as a numbers guy, when you put money into people's hands, you have not seen a reduction in work hours, except in two groups. New moms who spend more time with their kids, and teenagers who spend more time

actually finishing high school and not working. I don't think anyone's that mad at either of those groups not working as much. Work levels among other groups the same. So to me, this is a much more powerful incentive to work in better yourself than our current programs, which are like, look, if you're doing terribly, we'll give you some money and if you do better than you get less. Like that to me is the worst of all world. Now, I'll just say to you, because again, I'm open to the idea, there's some anecdotal evidence that contradicts that,

though, you know, you and I know a lot of entrepreneurs and during the CARES Act, there were, you know, and we all probably know somebody that's told us this, too, there are people, and I wanna talk about how we fix it, but there are people at the bottom end of the income range saying, I'm not going back to work, I'm doing okay right now, and that there were, I had contractor friends of mine tell me, hey, I can't get subs to show up to the project

because they're doing better if they stay home and take this CARES Act money. So there's been some evidence even recently that that may not be true. Well, Ed, that's actually evidence for what I'm saying because the CARES Act benefits are talking about were tied to not working. They were saying, look, if you have unemployment benefits,

we're gonna rev them up. If all those people were gonna get that money anyway, and then if they showed up to the job, they get paid more, then you probably would have had different conversations. But right now, that actually shows how broken our systems currently are, where we will give you this money,

but only if you don't work. Like if you do work, then you don't get the money. Like that is something that we should all not be thrilled about. But right now, that's the way our benefits system works. And because it was an emergency, we just plowed it through state unemployment offices, which to me was not the right approach. You know, like to me,

we should have just gone unconditional, been like, look, here's cash relief, like great news. And then you wouldn't have had those kinds of interactions because it wasn't based on the unemployment system. I want to talk a little bit about the overall economy. And this is now sort of a Biden Trump-type thing, but you know, you'll head the conversation. I, if I were running, and I'm not,

I would be running on, there is a wage disparity in this country between the rich and the poor. Oftentimes, I feel like the Democrats party solution to that is let's tax these rich people who aren't paying their fair share. And which by the way, statistically is not true that rich people don't pay their fair share. But having said that, my argument would be,

let's raise wages. Now, Trump will say, hey, we've had significant wage gross the last couple of years. But clearly in this country, there was a time in the country where in the 50s or 60s, a single income family could have a job and support a family and own a home and get a decent education and live a good life. Now, that's very, very difficult. The bottom and middle bottom wages are not high enough to sustain a quality of life, even if they are employed to some of your points.

So I want to ask you about this idea, though, of redistribution of money and taxes, because let's just be honest, a lot of people on the conservative side, one of their main concerns is if Biden gets in there, there's going to be more and more taxes and he says it's just on the top, but it ends up going lower. And I just want to give you some stats and I'll let you respond to what you think about this. This idea that Bernie says that the rich need to pay their fair share. I've heard Joe Biden say this too. And I know they know that that's not true. I know that he knows what the stats are. Here's the statistics.

45% of people pay no income tax. Nothing. So we're running a country right now. And by the way, that's because they don't make enough money And we need to fix that problem But 45% pay no income tax the top 1% of taxpayers earned 21% of all the income and paid 39% of the taxes So I'm not arguing for the top 1% what I'm just suggesting is this idea that everyone's they need to pay their fair share at least If income tax they make 20% they pay nearly 40% of all the revenue. So under Biden, he's proposing a 39.6% top rate. I live in California. So right now, I'm at, say, 13 on state. And you could be whatever state you're in. There's a proposal now to raise that to nearly 17. So let's just use round numbers.

Someone in the top bracket now pays somewhere around 50% state and federal a little bit more, say 53, 54%. So they keep 45 to 47% of their income. How much more does the Democrat party want to take from people that want to build wealth, want to become successful? Can they not keep 45% of their income or are we only supposed to keep 30? Like, what is this fair share number that everybody supposedly thinks is fair? I would think 50% of all the money you make going back to taxes is more of an affair share. But it seems as if that's not enough

for the Democrat party, how would you respond to that? I ran a private company in York City for a a number of years and it was an LLC. My effective tax rate was also 50% or so. I remember going to my account and being like, shouldn't like, like, is this really the way opera? I thought that, you know, like, there were ways around this sort of thing. Like, no, that's pretty much like the way it goes if you're like a shareholder of a private company.

And it was a high tax area. So I lived that aspect. And to me, the biggest inequities that we have right now. First, I will say that over the course of our country's history, our tax rate is right now on capital gains particular, like are lower than they've historically been. But the main argument I would make is that right now there are certain entities that are profiting

to the tune of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, and that's where our attention should be paid. Our data, your data, my data, generating in the aggregate over $200 billion a year in value for a handful of firms, and no one seeing a dime. And we're all looking around. To me, it's generally a loser, a look around and being like, hey, your fault, my fault, you're not paying your share. Do I think that tax rates could stand to be more progressive,

particularly on capital gains? Yes, I do. Like, do I think that private equity giant saying, like, hey, you know, like, nothing to see here, this is all, like, this is really good, this is all, like, you know, like, I'm against that kind of game playing. But I'm more against the fact that we have a handful of firms that are generating unprecedented levels of wealth and laughing all the way to the bank. You know, you have literally

trillion dollar companies, richest companies in the history of the world that are paying zero or next to nothing, in taxes while the rest of us yell and scream about how we're going to help, and we're seeing zero or next to nothing in taxes while the rest of us yelling scream about how we're going to help, you know, like help the country through this pandemic. Our data worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. That to me is where we should start. One joke I told Ed is like,

I don't care about the town dentist, you know, I care about Mazzot. It's like as a numbers guy, like there's that old joke, it's like, why did you have the bank? Because like that's where the money is. It's like, as a numbers guy, like there's that old joke, it's like, why did you rob the bank? Because that's where the money is. It's like, where's the money going now? You know, it's up to the cloud. And it's just going to get more extreme over time where you have one of the hypotheticals, but it's not even hypothetical anymore. Let's say, so Google, the other day announced that they have AI that's going to do the work of call center workers.

They said, you know, Google call center. That sounds great. I would love that if I was running a company. They're over 2 million Americans, a worker call center right now. So what happens to them? And then you have to ask yourself this, let's say you have 3 million truck drivers in this country, which you do have. And then let's say I invent AI that can drive trucks,

which they're working on. How much is the AI company going to pay in taxes? And then how much do the three million truckers pay in taxes? I guarantee you those three million truckers pay, pay a much higher percentage other taxes, that AI company will. So these are some of the 21st century issues that we have to be actually getting our arms around and tackling as a country and as a tax system.

Because our tax system right now is at a date, it's an agronistic, and the smartest firms are just running rings around us. Yeah, by the way, this is the type of discourse that everybody in the country should be having about these issues. Like, reasonable discourse, because you are right about the truck driver versus the actual rate for some of these big tech companies,

which in some cases pay nothing on billions of billions of dollars. And so you do make a good point about that. I asked you a question about immigration earlier, and we didn't get to go close the loop on. Yeah. I don't understand how a party that is for low-way journalists. So, and by the way, I live in California. One of the things I can't stand is when immigrants are demonized

and even people that I know that fled to this country just to be able to feed their families. I don't love hearing that their criminals rapist and murderers all the time. It's something that I just feel like is just an inarticulate untrue thing to say and hurtful because I live in an economy where we would probably not have been able to function from our groceries to our food to our homes without that part of the economy. And so we've been complicit in allowing people to come here and work that way.

Having said all that, that doesn't mean you can't now be firm on immigration policy so that it does not suppress the wages for the bottom part of the country. And so the Democrat party's kind of odd to me where they say we're really for the little guy, yet we sort of look away completely at all of the illegal immigration that's taking place. We actually kind of encourage it.

And that doesn't somehow suppress these wages that we're all complaining about that are so low that then causes you to have to have a guaranteed income to these people. So I'm just wondering, why can't there be a grand bargain where we say, hey, maybe there's gonna be this guaranteed sort of income, but we's going to be this guaranteed sort of income But we are going to be clear about who comes in and out of this country not because they're rapists and criminals But because it's important from national security and because it's important

From a from an economic system standpoint. Why can't both of those things coexist? My proposal was that we have this freedom dividend, this guaranteed basic income for US citizens to your point. And then we have to try to get our facts straight in our arms around the fact that there are these for 12 million people who are here and undocumented. And we need to have a rational approach that, like you said, does not demonize for. I'm the son of immigrants myself.

So I'm of the opinion that immigrants start a lot of businesses. Do a lot of great things in technology. My father generated 69 US patents. Wow. And I used to joke with him. I was like, how much you get paid for these patents? I was like 15 when I figured out what my dad did for a living. And I was like, how much you get paid for these pants? I was like 15 when I figured out what my dad did for a living and I was like, how much you get paid? And then he was like, I paid like $300 or so per patent. And then I was like, it doesn't sound like very much.

And then he said, well, I also get paid a salary to how's food feed and clothes you and your brother. But it's all like, oh, I understand how it works. But I feel like that was a great deal for IBM, it was a great deal for the US, and it was a great deal for me and my family, because we got to come of age here, and this country's been great to us. So to me, all these problems are intertwined.

And I was reading about how there was a grand bargain on the table in about a principled approach to immigration that died. And it died because of politics. One of the things that's holding us back right now is that there are better politics around leaving the problem unsolved, than insolving them in many of these,

in many of these circumstances, and that's what's killing us. Could I be one of the heck and you not get something done? And it's like, actually, I'm better served by leaving it undone and keeping people angry. Well, I have to tell you,

you're probably not going to like this, but that's where you and Donald Trump literally almost verbatim said the same thing. He said, it's much easier to campaign on a problem than it is to solve it because once you solve it, you can't run against it. And so very similar approach. By the way, I want to say one thing too,

just for the sense of everybody understanding my viewpoints too. I'm not by the way suggesting that people, there are not situations where people have come here illegally and had horrific crimes take place. That has happened. And I'm not a fan of sanctuary cities. What I'm suggesting is that's not the majority of people. And we've got to find a solution to this. There are 12 million

people here. We're not sending everybody back. And so how do we come to a solution? How do we incentivize though proper immigration? Because your parents came here legally. So let's move off of immigration a little bit and move over to COVID because you brought that up. Because again, I like universal basic income. You know, I will just say to you that prior to COVID, we had very low unemployment. And I know you're forecasting the departure of these jobs, but we weren't in that situation prior to COVID. And we haven't lost those jobs necessarily yet

because of automation. We've lost them because of the shutdown. And I hear the Democrat Party be very critical. In fact, I think it's the number one thing hurting Trump in the polls right now. More than maybe anything. The social justice issues will get to an amendment, but COVID has been. What the heck would Biden have done differently? In other words, if what Trump screwed up was so bad, what would Joe Biden specifically have done, or the Democrat Party have done differently than Donald Trump did.

Well, we just got a major, major data point in that direction and where the post office had this plan to send everyone masks, like everyone in the country get a whole pack of reusable masks back in the spring, back when this was first unfolding. And apparently we did not do that because people thought it would be bad politics. It would be like, oh, this is going to alarm people. It's going to make people, I can guarantee you if Joe Biden were president and the post office was like, hey, we've got this plan ready to go. Send everyone massed. Joe would have been like, yeah, let's do it. So there are concrete things that we could have on, um, bird differently. And we have to be honest, like we're right now, essentially a developing country in our approach

to this pandemic. Other countries have been much, much better than we have been. We've had this strange, hodgepodge approach, essentially leaving it to states to say, hey, when your numbers get past a certain point, I mean, you're in California. You've been bearing the brunt of this in a very serious way.

So, would there have been massive problems regardless of the party in power, almost only? Could we have improved upon this administration's performance and a number of concrete ways that have made a difference? Yeah, definitely, You can see that. And in many ways, Trump has been trying to disavow any responsibility, being like, hey, you know, states figured out, and I've talked to folks back during the PPE efforts, where the states and cities and hospitals were like competing against each other for PPE.

And then occasionally the feds would come in and then buy some PPE. Like, not to give to one of the regions, but to stockpile. And so you literally had, look, I'm all for like competition and scrappiness and entrepreneurship, but not when you're trying to procure PPE during a pandemic. Like that is not the situation when you're like, hey, everyone just fight it out.

You know, it's like, that's the time when you have a national plan, you look down and say, okay, what are the hot spots? Where are the places we need to get this the fastest? Like where are the most pressing needs? Here's a priority list, but we did not have that in the slightest because this administration's not wired away.

Yeah, I would give you the masking, if that's a true story, because I just read that last night too. I haven't confirmed it But I've read it. You know, I will say the other though and I get the mask thing but beyond that I remember Joe Biden criticizing I believe initially when Trump shut down travel from China My god, what if he would not have done that? I mean, what if it would have went three or four more weeks, right? I think there should be some credit given to him at least for that decision And so people from both parties

it seems to me didn't really get it. There wasn't preparation, even the former administration, there weren't enough ventilators prepared, even under Obama had this happened. So it's just, it's an interesting thing at least for me, you know, to see politicized. Well, and one of the things that I'd suggest that is, to me, should transcend party linesins is many of us have lost faith in our government because we've just seen it fail in many many respects and it's it's getting to be an increasingly tough argument for either party to be like put us in charge and that things will work right no it's their fault You know like the fact is a lot of these failures have been going on for years and have crossed party lines. You know, like it, like I think this administration has been a disaster and it's handling a pandemic. And I genuinely believe

that a different team have done better. But you can look back in the Obama years and, you know, the terrible rollout healthcare.gov and say, well, it's not like government is saying they're like, hummed under like a previous administration. Like the frustration, many of us feel is just that government should work better. And we're having increasingly unproductive arguments because it's not working for anyone. It's not working for us. And then like, it's almost like, well, if I happen, if you happen to be in power when it wasn't working,

then I can lay this at your footstep. But your point, I think, is a very legitimate one, which is like, look, do we really believe that having a different team in place, all of a sudden, makes our government perform at the level we get to? The answer is no. And the number that I'm going to put out

because I'm a numbers guy, and this is a number that has blown my mind and stuck with me for days. Congressional approval rating right now, nationwide is something like 21%. The re-election rate of members of Congress over the last number of decades is 94%. So imagine having a company run like that, like you would never,

you know, it's like, if things are starting to go wrong, you'd be like, okay, like, well, like, you know, we should introduce some accountability and some, like, some performance, like, improvements here. And that's one reason why I was happy to come on your shows because in, like, you know,

I'm an entrepreneur and a builder and like a high performer and I push myself. No, that's one of the themes of this podcast is like how to perform at a higher level. If you have a nationwide approval rating of 21%, and you're still getting real liked at a 94% rating, is that actually an adusement for you to perform better? That's the same.

Like what's happening now is that there are these structural impediments where it's almost impossible to topple an incumbent over 80% are in safe seats. Like you have these primaries where all I've to, and this is actually one reason why they can't get much done is that they are better off not asking legislation and then being able to say, well, like I stood for my principles and not getting primaried by someone in their party, then reaching across the island saying, look, let's compromise. Because if they compromise,

then they're more likely to get challenged. So as someone who likes to figure out what the incentives are and what the structures are, you can improve, like, we have to just face facts and say, look, this government is not actually designed to perform at a high level, regardless of the party and power. And that's what we have to change.

I think I figured out why you didn't get elected, by the way. You're way too smart and reasonable to work within these extremes. It's a lot of the things that say, I want to talk to you a little bit about social issues right now. It's frustrating for me when I did the show, brother, last week with Don Jr. the amount of, I mean, very, very strong opinions left and right. It makes it very difficult even to get a sentence out, even today. 45 things I've said already are going to get just destroyed, right? I'm trying to be reasonable, but you look at what's going

on in the world and there's these peaceful protesters that we're taking reasonable, but you look at what's going on in the world and there's these peaceful protesters that were taking place. But there's also riots. There's been a lot of property damage done. One of the things with Joe and Kamala that's frustrated me is why can't you be very supportive of peaceful protests, but at the same time come out very strong in support of protecting these businesses that are being destroyed, protecting property that's being destroyed, and condemning it in the strongest terms. Not like, okay, I condemned it, I said it, but we kind of know where I'm really headed here. I feel like that's a, if people are right now in the middle looking at it, safety, law and order is what Trump calls it, right?

That's a big issue for people right now and they don't hear the sort of backing of law and order from that ticket that I think most people think is just even reasonable. Do you agree with that or do you think that they've come out real strong in support of law and order? Well, I think you have to look at law and order along three different lines.

So number one is you have police officers doing things that they shouldn't be doing. And so that's, that's, I issue number one. Issue number two is you have people destroying property that they should not be doing. And then issue number three is you have vigilantism and responses to either number one or number two. And so you have to look at it and say, none of these things is acceptable and we have to try and iron out of them. I believe that Joe and Kamala have been on ambiguous saying,

you know, riots are wrong, property destruction is wrong, go home, let's protest in a way that's peaceful and will help us towards a positive resolution. But you have to look at each of these three and you can't just pick and choose one of the three and say, hey, law and order, but I don't care about police officers doing wrong, I don't care about vigilantes, I just care about property destruction. You know, you have to say that all of these, like, all of them are wrong. You know, like police officers should not be abusing their position in a way that we all see in front of us, you know, and in some cases, you know, the lethal consequences. People should not be writing and torching things or, you know, like, destroying businesses

that people spent a lifetime building it up. And people should not be engaging in vigilantism that, you know, in some cases also is like resulted in tragic loss of life. I feel like most every American listening to this agrees with me on all of these counts, where it's like each of these three things is a problem and you'd have tried to tackle each of them in turn. The issues that we've had is very, very, like you said, and very, very emotionally charged and fraught

and polarized discussions around it, where people think that one of these three things is more somewhat acceptable to the others. And we have to be clear that none of these things can be accepted. Like we have to say, it's wrong on every front. I totally agree with you. I just wish I saw more of that. I'd like to see the president come out a little bit more epithetically towards the social injustice that clearly takes place in this country to this day. And then I would like to see Joe and Kyle. I'm sorry if I don't know this.

Like, are you a parent? I am, two children. Yeah, me too. So I talked to Jacob Blake's father after he saw his son in a bittle, and like talking to a father who just like seen his, his paralyzed son, like, I mean, like, that this is the kind of thing, like as a parent,

you're like, you know, no parent should ever have that kind of experience. So like, I agree with you that there's, it's like, just as, as a human being, like, seeing what's going on in this country, we have to to be able to be better than this But also be able to relate to what different families are going through. I think sometimes it's really difficult because You know, it's interesting this to stuff. I didn't think we would talk about but I'm glad that we are it's hard for You know for me. I've not had to warn my son

You know about how to interact it never not had to warn my son, you know, about how to interact. It never occurred to me that if you get pulled over, you know, these are things that, you know, black people in our country have had to warn their children about and worry about. And I just, it's wrong. It breaks my heart. We need to do something about that, right?

And it's something I'm so passionate about. I've come out very strongly about it. It's just you speak of children to everyone that's in this country, just imagine worrying about that. And even if you and your mind think, well, maybe they've in because of their experience, they worry about it more than you know, you may think they need to. This is their day-to-day experience. Then the other side of the coin is that Blake, who I've defended by the way, This is their day-to-day experience. Then the other side of the coin is that Blake, who I've defended by the way with my interview with Don Jr.,

at the same time, there's people that are like, hey, let's be honest, let's understand this. The police were called on this guy. He was accused of rape. There's that other side of it that we lose sight. It's almost like because of Blake's background that somehow the impact on some people is lost on them about the man with shots seven times in the back, right?

And all these nuances make it so noisy and so difficult. Maybe this was a guy that needed to be arrested. Maybe this is a guy that needs to be in jail. Maybe he was doing some horrible things. And maybe he shouldn't have been shot seven times in the back also at the same time. Why that can't be discussed without both sides being mad at you

is beyond my belief that we live in a time like that today. You know what, a significant portion of it Ed, and I know you're active on social media. I am too, it's an element of running for president. A feature of social media is that negative and divisive sentiments and ideas just spread much more powerfully and quickly. Like if I say something positive,

you know, just disappear, but if I say something negative, it'll get shared. Apparently, six times more frequently. And so if you have that set of incentives, again, I'm an incentives guy. Like if you have incentives to be more aggressive or antagonistic, then that's the direction that unfortunately the medium rewards. And you and I are old enough to remember a time before social media. And social media has a lot of tremendous features to it. But it also has this terrible feature where it turns us against each other. And the technology company's profit at higher levels, the more animated we get, unfortunately. Like if we all just sang kumbai on and got along and

like, you know, they'd make less money. Not to say that it's 100% deliberative in that way, but their algorithm is in that way. Why do you think the media doesn't give conservatives a fair shake? Maybe you don't agree with that. But I mean, I look at the media, set Fox News aside. My gosh, like I get that the president's dialogue creates this sort of antagonistic environment, you could certainly argue that. But I don't feel like we have an independent media anymore. And that scares me.

You know, the social media aspect that you've described is I think a ripple effect of traditional media as well. The traditional media is so polarized, it creates human beings that are polarized that then have their own version of that media that we use on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and these other places. Do you agree that the media has a very left slant and do you think that's

a good thing? Well, I think the media is very polarized and polarizing. I think that they have found that their ratings and advertisers are awarded for messaging that caters to a particular audience. So you identify your audience and then you put out news that we reinforces that point of view. And it's not a positive thing for any of us. It sets us up for then being angry at each other on social media and then social media makes that exponentially worse in various ways. It's a major problem and it's gonna be hard to put the genie back in the bottle, but I'm determined that we have to, particularly Ed, because we are at a cusp

of having deep big videos where people think you and I are having this conversation, like maybe we're not, maybe it's just, like a video with audio, like synthetic creation that AI has enabled. Now, we're getting to a point now where individuals with laptops are going to do things that were previously only available to special effects studios, Hollywood studios. And an expert I talked to said that up to 90% of videos online could eventually be synthetic. And so like what happens when you can't even believe what you're seeing?

And so and we've been set up for this. Like we've been set up right now to be distrustful and mistrustful. You talk about the media and this is one thing that I'm digging into because I think it's so important. Nationwide about 40% of Americans now trust the media. It's like 41%. That's been declining steadily for years. Among Republicans and people on the right, it's 20%.

Among Democrats, it's 60%. So you have like a much higher trust in the national media, and then you have media organizations that then put out messages that reinforce certain sentiments and impressions. And so that's the way we're getting polarized right now. And podcasts like this one are in some ways and added because you have independent voices and it's the human conversation. You can have a one-on- one dialogue like this. And one of the things I learned running for president, is that people behave very, very differently. If you were talking to them in person or one on one, then if it's like an another,

that other social media post. So there's something very humanizing and organic and reasonable about podcasts, which can help dispel some of the polarization. But in that context also, you have to be realistic. That social media is almost certainly a negative for us in terms of mental health and our ability to come to common ground and solutions, particularly in an era when we might not even be able to believe what we're seeing or hearing. Gosh, brother, I had to tell you because it's someone who's, you know, a pretty prominent

on social media. It isn't good for your mental health most of the time. And we've got this vicious cycle in the country today where, you know, you're, if you're a liberal, you're watching MSNBC or probably CNN, which is very liberal now. And if you're conservative, you watch Fox, you're being fed what you already believe. And then because of the way these algorithms work, that's the same thing coming to our phones. And so one of the only safe places, the frustrating part about that, if you're watching YouTube, all the comments below that are not positive, right? It's amazing how polarized we've become, but my biggest

concern is, and I want to go one more thing on the election than ask you at entrepreneurship question, because you've been great with your time, is I have a concern, and it's a fear of mine that we're not going to know potentially who won this election on election night. I think there's a potential for that. Not because I think Trump's going to contest or Biden's going to contest necessarily. We just might not know, yeah.

We may not know because of mail-in voting, and my understanding, Andrew, maybe they're working on it, but some of the very significant states don't even begin to read their mail-in ballots until polls close and so I think everyone listening to this should just know this there is a decent chance we won't know that night and I'm worried as charged up as the media gets everybody that we could have rioting on either side that could be quite significant and you do hear the murmurs and rumors of civil discourse, civil unrest and maybe civil war in the worst case scenario.

And I almost feel like someone like you and I need to be at least preparing people for the fact that it's completely reasonable and possible. We may not know the winner election night, true. True. We should prepare people for that. One of the things I'm suggesting to people is instead of thinking of it as election day, you should think of it as election month. And I mean that both before and after the fact, because for a lot of people, you can vote early, you can apply for a mail-in ballot, like the entire process can take place ahead of time. And then we might be in for a multi-week wait as Count Mail-in ballots in various swing states

that the media organizations will not be able to call on election night. And we should not be afraid of that reality, because it's a feature of where we right now, where a lot of people are going to be mailing in votes, and those votes take some time to count the way that we're currently counting them. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,'ve lived, you know, examples of this through the primary where Iowa just couldn't count the votes for a while and like, there are various things where there's all this attention that's going into these elections.

But if you look at the organizations and the people involved with actually tabulating votes, it's not always like the folks that you'd want to be in charge of a very time-sensitive, very high-impact process. So, hunker down, I agree with you Ed. We should prepare people. We might be moving for a little while.

Yeah, agreed. I've enjoyed today, Andrew. I wanna ask you a final question. It relates not to politics, finally, which is entrepreneurship. You're the son of immigrants. You've become tremendously successful. You took some huge risks leaving the law profession to go become an entrepreneur.

A couple of your first businesses weren't successful. Yep. And you become this success. And I mean, imagine this, guys, your parents are Taiwanese immigrants, is that correct? Yeah, they came here as students in the 60s, they met at UC Berkeley. They come back. I imagine that you guys,

and now we know why you're liberal, they met at Berkeley. But they, as parents meet, and they have this boy who grows up to become, what they hope would be an attorney, becomes an entrepreneur, I'm sure that freaked them out a little bit. And then he becomes this very, very successful entrepreneur. And that young man many years later,

as a young man, is sitting on a debate stage, running for the president of the United States. It's a truly remarkable story. And it's inspiring what you've become. And I like the difference you make in the world, man. I wouldn't agree on everything, but I really enjoy your company, I've enjoyed the conversation.

There's a lot of people that listen to my show that have a dream as well. And they may be stuck in a career right now that kind of, they were told to be in or the world told them they should be in. And they've got this feeling in their heart that calling that you had, that they wanna make a dream come true in their life.

And they're wondering what they can. They're down. COVID hasn't been good to most people, right? There's this so- Yeah, it's a conscious issue. It's been devastating. What advice would you give to somebody out there? Listen to this, lastly, he's got a dream.

They've got some anxiety. They're big on Trump, let's say. They're worried his heck Biden's getting in there. Or they don't like Trump. And they're just praying he gets out. And they've got all these things running through their head, they've still got that dream. What would your advice be? Well, thank you for framing my story in that way. Certainly, I consider myself an entrepreneur first and foremost and even running for president. It was the same kind of calculation

ed where I looked up and I said, so I consider myself a problem solver. And the problems I saw were getting bigger and bigger, and I did not believe that our political class was going to respond to them. And so I said, well, if this is the biggest problem I can see, and I'm supposed to be this entrepreneur, like, let me see what I can do to solve that. And then you look and say, well, it would involve running for president. What are the rules for that? You have to be 35 or older. You have to be born in this country. And I was like, check and check. Those are only rules. Okay. Like, you know, we can do this. And when I first started my run, there were not many people that thought it was a smart thing to do

or that it was going to be actually effective in generating energy around these solutions. But thanks to a lot of people who got behind me and believed in me, and eventually we raised $40 million and got hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country excited about a different approach. And people now regard my campaign as a success. But like Ed said, my first companies did not succeed. You know, my parents were very, very concerned about me. And my advice to you, if you're struggling right now first, you would have to be odd not to be struggling right now. We are all struggling

right now. I mean, it's a parent, I'm a parent. So you like, you wake up and like, you know, your kids are bouncing off the walls and like, like, it's, it's a tough time. So number one is to just be looking out for yourself, where whatever it is that you find rejuvenating or recharging, just make sure and do it. And that could be nature, could be exercise, I can sense that Ed's fitness not. So like I recommended reading a book, very, very positive and helpful and studies have shown that. It's also great for your development. Social media, not very good, screens and not very good.

So number one is to do the things that you know make you stronger because you guys have to take care of yourself, job one. Number two is to reach out to folks and make sure that you're able to feel valued and we all can do something that's going to move the needle for someone in this time. Even if it's something that's straightforward is just reaching out and facetiming like someone you haven't talked to in a little while. Just try and stay connected to folks because that will actually make you stronger too. You know, helping other people actually helps you is the principle that right now it's hard to see that every day, but it's true.

You help other people, you get stronger from it. And the third thing is to try and put yourself in position to accomplish your goals, even if that goal got pushed back a little bit. One reason I ran for president is because a rule in life I have is you have to give yourself a chance to win, or you have to give yourself a chance to solve the problem. So whatever vision you have for yourself, just give yourself a chance to win. And it could be that that vision gets pushed back a little bit because the circumstances were in. But there's no reason why you're not going to be able to vision gets pushed back a little bit because the circumstances were in. But there's no reason why you're not going to be able to get there, maybe over a slightly

longer time period. I've been there, I've been through ups and downs, failures and successes. And so much of it is around you're being true to what you see for yourself. And then other people will actually see that you're convicted, that your, that nothing's going to actually keep you from pursuing your goal. And over time, they'll end up supporting you. That was true for my presidential run.

It'll be true for other people as well. So good, brother. I must tell you, I enjoyed today. I enjoyed my time with Don Jr as well. I have a feeling you and I are gonna be friends. I really do. I hope my time with Don Jr. as well. I'm feeling unagent to be friends. I really do. I hope so, Ed. You seem like a great guy.

And I just love entrepreneurs that like, you know, running a private company was like the greatest experience I had. I still miss it, honestly, you know, like, like, like, the elements of it. And to me, politics ought to be about enabling more people to accomplish their dreams and goals and ambitions, like that should be the entire ballgame. I agree.

It's to create that environment. And guys, this is what political discussion can be like in this day and age, where there's respectful, somewhat disagreement and some consensus on things. And that's how you move the conversation for it. You know what you did, Andrew, more than anything by running for offices. You've improved the conversation. You stimulated other ideas, you've improved the dialogue,

you've improved the tone, and I'm grateful that you exist in the world, brother. So thank you for today, everybody. I said, everybody follow Andrew on social media. And if you're not following me, I run the max out two-minute drill every day on Instagram. I make a post every day at 730 Pacific time, guys, every day, money through Friday. Have your notifications on. When I post, if you comment, you're in a drawing every day. A drawing can be coached by me, meet my guests, my book, get max out gear, some people fly on the

jet with me once in a while, come see people speak. It's pretty wonderful experience I pick somebody every single day if you miss the first two minutes Just make a comment on every post I make all week at any time 10 30 at night Doesn't matter make a comment and if you reply to people's comments it increases your chances as well Because I want to engage I want to connect with you and I want to bring you the best people in the world I want to improve your life by getting you to think things that you weren't thinking before and hopefully Andrew and I Accomplished that for you today. So God bless you all and max out.

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