This Week in Startups - All-In E9: Trump has COVID, First debate reactions, Coinbase letter response & more

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Angel investor Jason Calacanis (Uber, Calm, Robinhood) interviews the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors and innovators. Get an insider’s look into venture capital, learn how to start and scale your own startup, and ride the cutting edge of technology in today's headlines and beyond.

Hey, everybody, hey everybody. Welcome to another all-in podcast. We just got the show notes, and I'm ripping them up because the president has the Rona. We knew this was a possibility. We had an incredible docket brewing, but as fate loves irony, we found out on Wednesday night, I believe, just in a brief timeline here, Wednesday night, Hope Hicks, his personal assistant, got the Rona. and then, of course, President Trump announced late last night that he, in fact, had the Rona and that his wife, Melania, also had the coronavirus.

So with us today to discuss all things tech, politics, and coronavirus, David Friedberg, David Sacks, and Besty, Chamoth Poly Hopatia are with us. I guess maybe we'll just drop it right to you, Friedberg. you are our science kid here in the class. What is, when we look at the president's physique, he's clinically obese, technically, I'm not saying that to be cruel, but he's a 74-year-old who's clinically obese and snorts Adderall. We don't know that. That's just a claim.

But seriously, what is the prognosis here? And then I understand he's now got a experimental treatment, was just a question. just announced an hour ago at the taping of this on Friday afternoon. And of course, we wish them all the greatest speedy recovery, et cetera. But let's get into the facts here. I think the overall mortality rate for someone of his age is in call it the 2 to 4% range, right? And for someone with, you know, he's not known to have diabetes or high blood pressure, but generally you can kind of say there's some risk factors, maybe associated. So a couple points. But the reality is the treatment that he got is one that's not available to the public and is effectively like creating these,

you know, taking these antibodies to the coronavirus and he got eight grams of this immunoglobulin therapy that is basically a bunch of antibodies that will eliminate the virus. And they're not widely available. They're not publicly available these treatments. But, you know, based on the early trials and the general experience with using synthetic and, you know, polyclonal antirements, bodies for infectious disease like this. It's pretty effective and he should kind of, you know, recover pretty quickly, I would imagine. So him dying would basically be a two-outer. Him getting this special treatment makes it a one-outer if we were talking about this in poker terms. Chamath, when you look at this turn of events and you saw the news, what was your first thought?

that it's now basically 100% guaranteed that we will have all of the most transparent data about coronavirus soon. So, for example, we've been in this position where we've been debating hydroxychloroquine, we've been debating all of these different regimens. And the reality is the president of the United States, if he doesn't get the absolute top-notch care. We're all in some ways fucked. So it's probably likely that he's going to get the thing that folks know to work. And then it'll be hard for everybody else to not want to ask for that. And then it's going to be even harder for everybody to then not get some version of it. And so I think probably we're going to de-escalate a little bit of mask stuff, of testing stuff,

of, you know, what the right course of care is. And, you know, frankly, I'll be honest with you. I hope, you know, I wouldn't vote for him, but I hope he's well. I don't want anything to happen to the guy. And I hope that he recovers and it, you know, he kicks it in the ass and that whatever he took to get better, everybody else can get it to. All right, Sacks, coming around the horn here, talking about the political ramifications of this. You were feeling that Trump was likely to lose. But we are with the October surprise. And I hate to make this handicapping of the election,

but this certainly is going to have some impact. So with your rain man mind, and when you go through this deck of cards here, what is your brain? How do you assess this as the rain man? Is this going to be a net positive for his election results? A negative neutral handicap this for us in your mind. You must be thinking through this.

this. And again, disclaimers, we all want him to get better. Nobody wishes him out. I'm sure some people do, but nobody wishes him out. I'm seeing a lot of glee, frankly, on, on Twitter. A lot of people saying, I told you so, or karma's a bitch or something like that. You know, sort of implying that Trump getting this was a moral failing, you know. And certainly a lot of people are kind of reveling in it. I think he was certainly careless. I mean, he was certainly careless. I mean, He didn't wear masks. He said he didn't like to wear a mask. So, I mean, he was careless.

Do you wear a mask inside your house? No, but if I was in walking around at a debate or something like that, and if I was on an airplane with 20 people, yeah, I would wear a mask, actually. I mean, you know, there were certainly a lot of precautions around the president. I mean, more than most people. I mean, any of us could get it from anybody, you know, if, you know, our wife happens to go out to meet a friend for lunch or something like that and then brings it back. So there's almost no amount of carefulness.

you can do to completely avoid this, unless you're willing to kind of lock yourself alone somewhere. So I just, you know, this idea that somehow getting COVID is a moral failing is what I would take issue with. It's not, it's not altogether unlike the crazy things that the religious right was saying in the 1980s, like, you know, about AIDS, like when, you know, Jerry Falwell said it was God's punishment or something like that, trying to imply that. They called it the gay plague. I mean, let's just call it what it is. They basically said...

Right, but they implied somehow that this was, you know, some sort of just comeuppance, you know, or something like that. Yeah, retribution from God for being gay. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, the virus doesn't know who it's infecting, obviously. It doesn't target sinners or whatever. And so I just think that, you know, all this sort of gleeful, sort of blaming that's going around is inappropriate. And I think it could really backfire if Trump rapidly gets better. I mean, if Trump is better in, say, a week and is hitting the campaign trail again,

you know, what previously will have appeared to be a moral failing, it could now be argue would be a moral strength since he, you know, overcame it so easily. And, you know, so I think that if he rapidly recovers from this and hits the campaign trail again, it's going to make him look strong. I think that if he has a hard time with the virus, if it's enervative, fading the way that I think it took out Boris Johnson. I mean, I've heard British commentators say that Boris Johnson's just not even the same, doesn't have the same level of energy even now than he did before the virus. Then I would think it could really hurt Trump in the last,

you know, couple of this campaign. Look, we, I think we all know people, I'm sure you guys do, I do, who have gone through this and they all say the same thing, which is this thing really sucks. Now, there are all these people that say, oh, it's like dancing on tulips or daffodils. I've never encountered a single person like that. I see that maybe on Twitter or a friend of a friend, but all of my friends who've gotten it, they have really struggled through it. Some of these people are older. Some of these people are younger.

Some of these people are healthy. Some of these people are not. And consistently, they say the same thing, which is that there's a couple of days where it literally feels like your chest is being pounded inside you. You can't move. You're just in pain. And then afterwards, the aftermath is you're at, you know, 50, 60, 70% of your lung capacity. Like, it does something to you.

For a couple of weeks. I mean, Doc Sands is a friend of ours and he was very public with his experience. He tried to avoid it as best he could. He got hit with it. He got hit hard. And he said he felt like he was going to die. It was the worst he's experienced. I have friends that still complained two, three, four months after the fact that they're

at 50, 60% of cardiovascular capacity. And, you know, these people that I, that I'm specifically thinking about were, really healthy going into coronavirus. And so I don't know. I just think it's something none of us want. I don't think you would want to wish this on anybody. Of course not, yeah. You know, especially, frankly,

the President of the United States as a role. And so I think folks just need to sort of like class up here and hope that we figure out that he, A, gets the best care and then B, we all know what it is and then C, that we can get access to it too. That's, that's, honestly, I think that's all we should be wishing. Jamat, do you see, did you see the letter they published on what he's getting? So they did the- Go ahead and read it.

Go ahead and read the free birth process. The doctor published, it was not too long ago, right, Jason? I saw it on your Twitter. It just happened like an hour ago. I tweeted it, yes. So he got eight grams of polyclonal antibodies. This is the regeneron formulation. So basically, they've isolated the antibodies that neutralized coronavirus that patients have

presented in their body. And then they use recombinant DNA technology to produce those antibodies synthetically. So it's a bunch of antibody proteins. And then they turn it into an injection, into a formula that they can put in your body. And you now have effectively neutralizing antibodies. So they gave him eight grams, which is a pretty high dose. And it gets, you know, it goes in intravenously. You can have sometimes an allergic reaction to that, but it seems like he was fine from that

because they didn't announce an allergic reaction. And then, you know, the antibodies are now in his bloodstream and they bind to the virus. So any virus that's floating around immediately gets wiped out. It gets eliminated from the body. So theoretically, this is the way we should treat all infectious disease. That's my point. And I do think that, by the way, and I've written about this, I think that is the future of infectious disease is we're all going to get a polyclonal cocktail every year.

Instead of getting a flu shot, you get a bunch of antibodies to all the new stuff that's emerging and it wipes everything out. I think about this. David, just think about this. There was so much raging debate that got politicized between the left, between the right, between different folks of people who believed in different things around what the right course of care was, there was no single source of truth. I'll just say this again. When you treat the president of the United States and he gets better, that is canonical single source of truth.

I'm sorry, but there can be no debate after that that the smartest people with the access to all of the research. I mean, let's be clear, you don't think a call went out last night before they deployed the nuclear warhead stuff to all of the R&D labs and all the big pharma companies and said, what do you got? And the answer came back at the top of the ticket, was this regeneron cocktail? Yeah, they had, they definitely had made that call before to prep for this, but yeah, totally great. Now, um, when you say, it highlights what the future of infectious disease treatment is and should be, which is that all of us should be getting a booster shot every year of synthetically produced antibodies that will counteract any new infectious disease floating around in the world. And

we're getting to the point in the next 10, 15 years that that should be reality for everyone. Well, I think it highlights that, but it also highlights that in the absence of the most powerful man in the world getting the sickness, that we're all going to basically bitch and point fingers about what the right solution is. And so it can't be the case that the next time there's a crazy illness that's floating around in society. We need to go and target, you know, five or six of the leaders of the G8 plus the Pope, plus this, plus that, Beyonce, heaven forbid. You know what I mean? Like, this is crazy.

Yeah. This can't be how we find single source of truth. Yeah. Well, I think politically speaking, I think there's a lot of upside here for Trump if he does get better in a week. I mean, if these polyclonal antibodies work, then, and he emerges from the White House, you know, if there's a fiddle in a week, he's going to say the cure is here. You know, I was right. We didn't need a vaccine. The cure is here.

It's over. And all the I told you so's might flip around. How far off would that be from the truth, David? Well, if the polychlorid antibodies work, I mean, it then is just a matter of scaling them. Can it be scale, Freiburg? Is this easily scalable? Yes. But by the by the, I'll just point out, the challenge with this is a lot of people north of 15% will have.

Because antibodies, remember, they're a protein. And if your cells didn't make that protein, they look like a foreign protein when they show up in your body. And so very often when you get a foreign antibody treatment like this, you will have have some sort of allergic reaction because your body will react and attack that protein. And so it's not as simple as just saying, hey, we should just scale this up and give it to everyone because the clinical trials that are going on with it are to figure out what percentage of people, what's the right way to treat people, what's the right way to protect them from anaphylactic shock, all that sort of stuff that comes along with this sort of thing.

So it's not that simple. But Freberg, you would admit that many of those questions, the answer, the answers to many of those questions must have been well in hand because there's just zero way. Oh, Regenelon's been running these trials since March. Exactly. Yeah, 100%. That's right. I can tell you for sure.

When Trump got this treatment, I guarantee they gave him Benadryl and they gave him a steroid shot and they probably gave him a little bit of cortisol or they had it on the side. Because that's kind of like the standard sort of regimen you would use when you get this sort of synthesized or convalescent plasma type treatment. And, you know, he comes out of this thing on the other end and he's fine. but that treatment regimen is required. So you sit down in an ID booth and you get a fucking IV and you get shots to go along with it. So it's not as simple as just chipping it out to everyone's home and giving them that treatment, you know. And only, am I correct that only 300 or so people have gotten this to date? Is that correct with the trial?

I don't know the answer to that. I know that convalescent plasma, which is call it the poor man's version of this treatment, which is instead of synthesizing the antibodies, you're taking the actual antibodies from other people that have had COVID and recovered, you're isolating those antibodies and you're injecting them in other people's bodies. So that is what convalescent plasma is. It is effectively a soup of all the antibodies from recovered patients. Polyclonal antibodies is the synthesized version of those isolated antibodies where we use fermentation systems and bioengineered cells to make those antibodies. Then we isolate them and we use them as a product. Is there any chance that the president

would make a bad decision here because he would get to dictate. his treatment as a powerful person, like Steve Jobs did tragically. I saw a doctor saying this is one of the problems with powerful people, is that they actually can, you know, make a bad decision because doctors will let them have too much of a saying. Is that possible in this situation, you think? I think the answer is no, because they didn't put out a letter saying he got bleach and UV light in his face, so he's fine.

So he didn't go with his own treatment protocol. And also, yeah, go ahead, Chimap. No, I was just going to say, and also. You know, it eliminated all of the other less nonsensical, but equally sort of question mark treatments. And so, you know, I think they went right to the answer, which would only have been really possible if the best docs basically said, this is what we're doing. And I think David mentioned this earlier, that it had been decided well in advance. I think that's a good insight, yeah. There's a protocol that was written down months ago, vetted and revetted probably every week or every month as they got more data.

and so the minute it happened, there was nothing to talk about. And I suspect that that is probably what happened because there is no way you'd want to be, you know, it's kind of like being a pilot. Like you follow a systematic set of rules to deal with the overwhelming majority of boundary conditions. And this seemed like a pretty obvious boundary condition. You would have wanted to have a protocol for well in advance. So, okay. So I want to just do one handicapping here.

Sacks, I'll have you take this one off the bat because this was the chatter on Twitter, Number one, the first two, I think, are just crazy conspiracy there is he got it on purpose, or he's lying. Put those aside for a second. You can answer them if you want to. But the third one is, hey, what happens if he's incapacitated and cannot run or, God forbid, he died? And so if he's on a ventilator, if he cannot leave the hospital, he's an ICU. It's not even a question. It's not even a question. The 25th Amendment deals with that. Yeah. Yeah. So it goes to Pence. And if Pence cannot do it for whatever a reason, but he's, I think he's already interested negative. I was actually going to refer to the election, though. What happens to the election if in the next three, four weeks, he's in ICU? What happens then?

Oh, that I don't know. Well, that's what I was trying to go back. I mean, I would assume it's up to the party to make a change to its ballot if they wanted to. But I think if he's in the ICU, he stays on the ballot. So we would literally have an election with him on a ventilator or him. I mean, if he was unconscious, could he, could people still go vote for him? I think this is a possibility. I think these are very low probability outcomes. I think the most likely outcome here is that because he's got the best care, he's, you know, I'd say it's probably like at least 50% that this is over for him in about a week. And it redounds to his political advantage. I think there's probably a 40% chance that, you know, he's got more like a three or four week case, which I think would hurt him because he just wouldn't be able to campaign. And then there's maybe like a five or 10% chance of something. I wonder if he's got, even if he recovers in a week, the odds are pretty high that he'll have, you know, a long tail of fatigue, right? And so if he doesn't change his, if he changes his strategy and just does things remotely and whatnot, doesn't do rallies anymore, you know, and he doesn't really come out and say he's fatigued, but there's this behavioral change. Does that change things, do you think? I think he needs to be able to campaign and hold these rallies. I think that's an essential part of his, election strategy, but also it's always been his way of, you know, going over the heads of the media that hates him and talking directly to people and rallying his base and field testing

his ideas. There was that period when during lockdowns when he just stopped doing rallies for several months and it really felt like he was adrift. So, yeah, I think if he can't do rallies, I think, you know, that could easily swing the election a couple of points and cause him to lose. I think Saksie Poo is 100% right. I was in Indiana last week and there were a bunch of folks in the neighborhood where I was staying and I was walking my dog and they were walking their dogs. We were all kind of walking side by side and they all were ramping up to go to a Trump rally. They were super excited about this moment to go hear what he has to say.

They sounded like they were kind of in this undecided camp, but they wanted to go to the rally to hear what he had to say and kind of experience that Trump moment. it was a real kind of ground level, I think, proof point for your statement around like, you know, people really need to feel. Because that's a big part of his kind of MO, is that ground level experience. And I think it was one of the reasons why his, no one saw his election coming in 2016 is if you turned on the TV and just listened to the commentators. I mean, aside from maybe Fox, it seemed like everyone just hated him. But if you attended the rallies, you would see that he was reaching a lot of people, tens of thousands of people at each event.

And he was flying around doing three events a day, tremendously energetic. So, yeah, I think it would hurt him a lot. But look, if he's back on the stump a week from now, you're probably going to see all sorts of people on the right saying, you know, I told you so and God healed him. And, you know, he must be the chosen one or, you know, who knows? We could be seeing a weekend at Bernie's moment here in the next year. He got a wet, you got dark. Prop, prop him up.

Even if he's just tired, they'll prop him up on a big stick and hold him up in front of the crowds and then put him back in the airplane and fly him back home. I think we'll know if he's too tired because, you know, he gets up there and he talks for like an hour and a half. An hour and a half. He's done two or three. Yeah, it's like, an hour and a half is short for him. Yeah.

So. Is it possible we could be talking about Trump having less energy than Biden in a debate, which I think is a good segue here? Are there going to be two more president? Debates and what was our take on the absolutely embarrassing shit show that we saw on Tuesday night, which was supposed to be the topic today that we're going to lead off, which was the debate, which seems unimportant now. It feels like a year ago.

How do you expect us to comment on something that happened so long ago? It was 72 hours ago. I mean, come on, people. Oh, my God. It feels like years. 2020 is so exhausting. I think I've aged 30 years in one year. It's like three decades.

That debate, that debate was just a dumpster fire. You know, the way that I thought about it was... Wrong. Yeah. Not true. I mean, imagine the... No, no, I agree. It was a disaster for Trump.

It was a disaster for Trump. Go ahead, Sacks. Explain, because he's your boy. Are you now not going to vote for him after that performance? Just a clarify for the audience. I'm not pro-Trump. I'm just anti... I'm anti-histia.

I always support the side that seems least hysteria. least hysterical to me at any given time. Did you vote for Trump last election? Yes or no? Or would you be comfortable even saying that? I think you'd be surprised if I told you who I voted for. Really? But, okay, so on to the debate. I think both Biden and Trump both had a trap to avoid.

I think Biden's trap was appearing senile. I think Trump's trap was appearing unhinged. I would say that Biden avoided his trap and Trump did not. By constantly attacking Biden, interrupting him, it was counterproductive. I mean, what you want to do with Biden is let the man talk. He's a gaff machine. You know, let him talk, let him say things that will get him in trouble. Instead, by constantly interrupting him, Trump kind of let him off the hook. And so it's, now look, I mean, both of their bases, you know, it's like a sporting event. They're just going to root for the side. They already came to, you know, to support. But I don't think Trump helped himself with the few percent of independents who are still out there, you know, looking to make a decision. I think you're totally right. It was, um, It was really surprising because if he had just left him to his own devices, you would have let it play out. But I thought Biden, to be honest, there were some moments. He was fabulous.

So I thought he was excellent on race. I thought he was incredible in the moment that he basically stood up to Trump about his son Hunter. And he looks in the camera and he basically says, look, I love my son. My son's had troubles. And I support. I mean, amazing. And so like in those moments, it's so hard to not see. see that guy as presidential. And I don't, meaning like it's easy for Democrats or people that are

voting for him like me, but I think if you were a Republican, you got to look at that guy and say, man, that is a decent dude. Yeah. I thought he had some, he helped himself a lot. He did in certain key moments. He did fabulously well. And in other moments where there were traps, he actually got billed up because Trump kept interrupting. And Joe was smart enough to stop talking so that it amplified the sense that Trump was interrupting him. Trump to me seemed pathetic and scared. That was my, like, he's scared of losing. He felt like a bully who had been, like, laughed at by the whole class. Like, nobody takes him seriously.

Like, the moderator. What's his name? Chris Wallace. Chris Wallace. The moderator was kind of like, what are you doing, sir, please? I think Chris Wallace, I mean, I know people are critical of him. But Chris Wallace is like, sir, please, just trying to appeal to, like, basic decency and Trump just not getting it made Trump look so bad.

It just, I think, confirmed with people say, demographic he has to win his white women in a lot of these swing states. I mean, I don't think women want to vote. I'm not going to speak for a woman here, but my understanding is women don't like guys like that who interrupt constantly and who are belligerent and badgering. And they kind of like a great dad who defended to your point, Chimov, you know, his son and said, hey, listen, my son's got problems. My other son died. His war hero. I really think, I really think. And we talked about this a little bit before, but the surface area in terms of policy, between the Republicans and the Democrats now are virtually non-existent.

So look, if you unpack foreign policy, they both hate Russia, they both hate China, they both need India, and the Middle East is irrelevant because we're moving to a carbon-neutral alternative energy world. They also don't need Russia as an example. So all of this stuff that used to matter before, in so much of the foreign policy that dictate how Americans would fight wars, spend money, you know, incite democracy, protect certain leaders. It's all out the window and they both think about it the same way because the surface area is so similar. That's number one. What about the economy? Because it does seem that they're

pretty similar too. So number two, economically they're so similar because they both want to spend trillions of dollars just under a different label. You know, one is sort of under a Green New Deal and the other is called an infrastructure bill or whatever it is. And then number three, they will both have the same federal reserve that is tied to the hip of Treasury who is already committed to be trillions of dollars a year in Hock backing up all the debt that basically exists. And so if you put all these things together, it's a popularity contest. And this is why I think Joe Biden has an advantage because in a popularity contest where

you're just picking the figure that you would either have a beer with or feel the most comfortable with, there's an element of this, which is like it's just a decent. human being, it's easier for Biden to get that across than it is for Trump. And when Trump behaves that way, it just violates some simple rules of decency. Like, in the debate against Hillary Clinton, he didn't act this way. And he was more, it was like watching like a show. Like you were kind of like tuning in to see what the theatrics would be. Or in the debates in the primaries in 2016 against the Republicans, it was theatrical.

Here, it was just, it was just kind of not, it was pretty sad. In that way, sacks, you think the Democrats put up the right candidate because if you did put up Elizabeth Warren, if you did put up a Bernie Sanders, or God forbid both of them at the same time, it would be a very stark contrast. You would have the socialist ticket that wants to, you know, ban the billionaires and stop capitalism and kneecap it and spend a bunch of money on redistribution of wealth. And here, Biden doesn't, he's never said redistribution. or wealth. He's never said ban the billionaires. He's pro-capitalism. It feels like a safer bet to

the majority of Americans. Did the Democrats actually do a good job putting Biden up there? I think so. I think he is the most, now that we know he's not senile, I mean, I think there was some real question about that going into the debate. I think he proved in that debate that he's not, and, you know, he's always kind of had the decency card that Jamal talks about. Now that we know he's not senile, I think he is the Democrats' most electable candidate because he is more centrist than certainly in Elizabeth Warren or some of the other candidates that you mentioned. Elizabeth Warren would have moved the election to be about substance. And in many ways, strategically, no, but think about this. If you basically converge on roughly the same strategy

with different labels, you make the election one of style. And there are a lot of lot of people who really want decency back in the presidency more so than they want anything else because they already come into the election with a level of skepticism that policy, A, won't change that fast and B, to the extent it changes, doesn't affect them. And so, you know, for years, we've been electing people we like. And this is probably the most extreme test of that idea. I think, I mean, like, if you think about that debate, you could probably simplify it down into the audience being part of three camps. They either know who they're voting for Trump,

they know who they're voting for Biden. And then some folks who are kind of maybe, they're changeable. And for the folks that are changeable, there's a diversity of objectives, right? There are some folks who care about the decency, some folks who care about policy. But at the end of the day, I think,

you go into this debate with an expectation of Trump and an expectation of Biden. And I would say that Trump was flat to down relative to expectation, and Biden was flat to up. And so that's where I would kind of give the ticker to- Jim, Jen, sorry, I don't want to interrupt, but I just want to read you this headline. President Trump will be admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday for a few days.

Yeah, I read that. Well, hold on a second. That is groundbreaking. Well, his doctor said it's because they're out of an abundance of caution, they just want to have him in a place where he can be treated if and as he needs it. that may you buy that a cover store. I think that, look, if you're getting... I don't buy that. I think he's in trouble.

I agree, Jason. That's, it is very strange. When you get a treatment, when you get a treatment like he got today, you know, eight grams of immunoglobulin therapy like that, it sucks. I've had this treatment. I've had immunoglobulin therapy before. And you get knocked out. You're on all these steroids.

You're on all this anti-allergy stuff. You are a mess for a day or two. and you know, you want to get like IVs and stuff that give you all sorts of stuff to go with it. I got to imagine that after getting that therapy, he's going to need to be in some degree of care. And I would imagine it's probably better to just do that around doctors and with all the equipment than try and, you know, kind of bring everything into the White House. So I don't read it as negatively. Well, I mean, do you think it could be like an anaphylactic, you know, shock? He might be. You might be having some reaction. Yeah. Totally.

Like I said, a large percentage of people that get these antibody therapies have some sort of allergic response. It's all the way from anaphylactic to, hey, I'm having my throat's closing. Hey, I feel I'm getting flushed. I'm getting a fever. There's all sorts of ways that this can kind of present. The world is changing so fast that we can't even complete a podcast without it being obsolete. Can I say one other thing? What did you guys think about the fact this is a little morbid so we can choose not to talk about it?

but the stock market basically did nothing today on the news that the most important person in the free world, theoretically. I think you just answer your own question, Chimoth. I can chime in on this one. I don't think that people perceive that Trump is good or bad for the economy either way and that the economy is separated now from politics because they think Biden or Trump are going to have the same policies, which you said before. They have the same policies.

So why does it matter? If Trump were to tragically die, it would. it would not make a difference in the American economy. It's not going to affect people buying iPhones. It might shake people psychologically, but I don't think in a massive way because he's almost out of office. So I think it's all baked in. That's why the market did do.

And what do you think, I want to disagree slightly with the idea this election doesn't matter. I think it will matter a lot if the Democrats win the Senate as well as the presidency, because then they will have one party control and they can pass much legislation as they want. And I think a lot of things will get signed. And I think the Biden presidency could be very consequential, at least for two years, while all this legislation has passed, even if he's not out in front saying very much. I mean, the significance will be in the pen to sign the legislation.

If the Republicans hold on to the Senate, but Biden wins the presidency, I agree with you that it's not going to be a tremendously consequential election because we'll have gridlock and divide a government again. And so I think a lot hinges on whether Biden wins with or without the Senate. I don't disagree with you. The only thing that I will say is that I think that Biden will drag the country, especially if it's a up and down Democratic ticket back to the 80s and 90s, more to the sort of the George Baker School of diplomacy and governance. And I think that if I don't know him to know this, but I think that if he really were to have a legacy,

I would suspect that part of, again, because he's mentioned that, you know, why did he run? He said the pivotal moment was like Charlottesville and Trump's reaction to Charlottesville. I think Biden is really moored by this concept of decency. And I think that if he were there and he thought to himself, I'm going to be here for four years because that's the right responsible thing to do, but no more.

I don't think that you're going to see a bunch of crazy legislation pass. I think Biden's going to say, guys, this is what I expect to do. By the way, did you, and I think I would bet on that because of what he said at the beginning of the debate. He's like, I am the Democratic Party. I don't know if you guys remember that. I do. I do remember that. That was incredible.

That was so powerful. That was a very Darth Sidious emperor move when he said, I am the republic. He was, I think he was trying to basically say like firewall the far left or the far left, the socialist left and say that rhetoric is. not what I was elected on. I was elected on my platform. I am the party. This is what I believe and everybody else will have to tow the line. And by the way,

in the end, that's not such a bad thing. Yeah. It's a man. I agree. I think that that was a really important moment for him is for him to say, look, I'm in charge here because the Republicans have been making the argument that he's a Trojan horse for all these like far left elements.

AOC. And so it was very important for him to come forward and say, no, I'm I'm the one leading this ticket. Now, that being said, and I think it would be a great thing for the country if Biden brought the Democratic Party back to more of a, you know, Bill Clinton to, you know, Obama-type centrism or, you know, center-leftism, I guess you could say, as opposed to this sort of like crazy, you know, woke Marxism or Maoism, whatever you want to call it. But I'm very skeptical that he will because I think Biden has always positioned himself

throughout his career as being at the center of the Democratic Party. And I think he moves as the Democratic Party moves. I agree he's not going to be all the way to the left of the Democratic Party, but those left elements will drag his sort of center further to the left and we'll end up with sort of a compromise. And I think at the end of the day, if the Democrats win Congress, he'll sign whatever they pass. I'm not so sure.

I really, I'm not so sure. The White House is not that far away. It looks like it's a 30-minute drive from Walter Reed. Sending a helicopter? Is that normal? Because he drove there last time. Would that be indicative of this as an emergency-type situation sending Marine 1 as opposed to just driving there for 20 minutes?

I think they'd be a lot of liability if he had an actual medical emergency and they were just like, yeah, we're going to send him for a few days out of an above. abundance of caution. The fact that they said out of an abundance of caution, I think if there is an emergency, you can't get away with saying that. Oh, you can. For sure, they would lie. I don't know. It'll come out later, right? You're saying the Trump administration is above lying about situations. If he's unconscious, they got to swear Penceon. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why you've got to be careful of this, right? I'm not saying it's not even unconsciousness. green one like, I'm just thinking out here, is sending a helicopter for a 20 minute ride

than a motorcade like seems a little intense? I mean, I would take a helicopter to the 7-Eleven if I had a helicopter. Fair enough. You're taking a helicopter down to the poker game. Now, that is something I would say. Okay. Let's, this is, I think, a good jumping off point to an interesting discussion that blew up on Twitter earlier this week, which is we can't keep up with all the.

the politics, the rhetoric, the vitriol, and this polarization. So, uh, Coinbase co-founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong wrote a letter saying, hey, listen, if you, uh, want to talk about politics, that's fine, not at my company anymore. We're going to have a no politics rule, no debating this stuff. And we're going to be ultra, ultra focus, focused, I'm sorry, at work. Um, and you can check your politics at the door. When you read this, sacks, you've come out in support of Brian Armstrong. What was your take on his position about leave your politics at the door when you get to work? To listen to the rest of the podcast, search for All In with Chumath, Jason, Sax, and Friedberg available across all major podcasting platforms.