Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in conversation with the Besties

00:00Sachsy, can you can you come outside your window and and I'm gonna start waiting and you see me? You wanna see me?

00:05Zach, have 2 of your butlers hold you up on their shoulders.

00:09I hope this is being taped and part of the show because this is great.

00:12David, you're wearing blue shorts. Right?

00:15Yeah.

00:16Yeah. I saw you. Did you see me?

00:17Not in see you. Where are you?

00:19When you look out on the first house, the pink house, look at this house. Do you see the

00:23I heard you. I couldn't see you, though.

00:25Yeah. Y'all in, like, a loom check?

00:29You're the pink house?

00:31Look. I'm right

00:31below me. Or above me.

00:33No. I'm like, to your right. If you're looking out, I'm at your right. Your first house on the right.

00:38Oh, there. Oh, I see you swimming.

00:43I see you. I see you.

00:44Guys, we're like twelve year olds.

00:46Come over afterwards. We'll have a question.

00:47Okay. Alright. I'm come I'm gonna come over afterwards.

00:50Vivac has a hard stop. We should go.

01:00And I said We open source it to the fans and they've discovered

01:08Alright. Vivek Ramaswami is finally on the program. He's an entrepreneur. He graduated Harvard. Yeah.

01:13All that kind of stuff. He was an entrepreneur. Then a capital allocator. I think broad strokes, everybody knows he's a conservative return re running as a republican. He's anti woke.

01:23He's pro life. Anti affirmative action, pro free speech, and he wants federal government term limits. And, his fans are lunatics. They've been asking for him to be on the all in podcast every day. I've gotten about 300 emails from your fans.

01:39Welcome to the program.

01:41They sound like your fans, actually, because I hear it all the time. It's like blaming me for why I have not been on this program. And so you guys, this has been like, some sort of idealized experience for me. I'm looking forward to it.

01:51Okay. Great. So what we try to do here is have a real conversation, try to get these candidates off their talking points. So this isn't meet the press. Obviously, we want to talk to you like a human being.

02:02So the extent that, you know, as a politician now, you can talk like a human being. The audience, I mean, we're gonna appreciate it. Meet David Sachs, Shamak Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, Alright, Vivek. Why don't you explain maybe your background as a capital allocator and as an entrepreneur and then why you chose to run for president at this time?

02:19Yeah. Sure. I mean, my my parents like many people you probably also know who've had similar success stories. They came to this country with almost no money. I went on to actually found successful companies.

02:32And so I started my career as a biotech investor I worked at a hedge fund in New York when I graduated in 2007. I thought I was gonna be a scientist and studied molecular biology. Ended up enjoying my time as an internship. It had a hedge fund a lot more than that. So I did that for 7 years.

02:503 of those years, I spent law school at the same time then when I finished law school, I had, you know, I think felt like my learning curve had flattened from being a pure capital allocator. So I stepped down and founded a new kind of biotech company that I could actually, you guys might be more interested in than in it than most, my political audiences, but the basic premise was give scientists skin in the game in the projects they actually work on. So if you're a GSK or advisor or whatever Merck, you discover a drug or you develop it, you don't have personal upside in the individual drug that you develop. You do have various forms of asymmetric downside. And so people don't take risks unless they're the same risks that the other pharma companies are taking because If you take the same risk and fail, but everybody else is failing in a therapeutic category at the same time, you're safe.

03:41But if you take a risk that other people aren't willing to take and you fail, Then you experience budget cuts, maybe job security risks, social embarrassment, which is a big factor in big pharma as well. Which in turn created an opportunity that I took advantage of, which was that there were systematically categories of drugs that went undeveloped even after Big Farm ahead for a long time, spent a lot of money developing those drugs up to a certain point. So I built a business called Royvent, basically in licensed some of those drugs in their early stages of development phase 1 or phase 2. Often for pennies on the dollar, relative to what had gone into them. Often, we would have scientists or drug developers who are passionate about that very project inside the companies who would come with those drugs because they wanted to develop them, but the big pharma company said that they weren't in that area anymore.

04:34And we built a pipeline of such drugs. The whole plan was some of them would work. Some of them wouldn't. The successes would make up for the failures. And it's now a $10,000,000,000 public company, and it returned unlike many private companies, you know, returned a $1,000,000,000 plus to shareholders before going public.

04:51And, you know, is is doing continues to do well to this day. I led the company as CEO for 7 years, 5 of the drugs I worked on or FDA approved today. The one I'm probably most proud of is is a drug that fits your biologic that is lifesaving therapy and kids. Another one's an approved drug for prostate cancer, but that was my world is the point. Very different world.

05:14Maybe more similar to your guys' world now than the world I'm in now. Something funny happened in 2020, which was that in my own company, there were demands that I make a statement on behalf of Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd. It was tragic death in May of 2020. By June, there were demands that I start making statements on behalf of BLM. And it was a funny time because only starting that February, I had ventured into actually exercising my voice as a citizen while being a CEO at my own peril criticizing what was then the still new shiny object of stakeholder Calacanis.

05:52So I published this piece of the Wall Street Journal. It generated some waves that February, few months later in May, this George Floyd controversy comes up And the long story short, I can go into it if you guys are interested, but over the next 6 months, a series of escalating events led me to face a choice the following January of, you know, there's 3 advisors to my company that stepped down after I wrote a rather, I didn't intend it to be, but a rather controversial piece in the Wall Street Journal at the time.

06:20What was the premise

06:21of the piece? Yeah. The premise of the piece was that It actually was controversial on numerous counts, but the basic premise was it was the first legal argument anybody had made that if the government is pressuring a private actor to do something that the government couldn't do directly, that that was still state action. Now the subtext is this was in the wake of January 6th. Where there was widespread systematic censorship of, you know, political speech in this country, at least.

06:46I believe there was. And so at the time I made that argument, it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory on the No. That's not happening. It was also dismissed as a legal theory. You know, this roob who can happen to go to law school for god his 1st year where The first amendment only applies to state actors, you know, now fast forward 3 years, two and a half years, We now know those facts were far worse than even I envisioned at the time.

07:11And, actually, the legal argument that I made is now popularized by Clarence Thomas and others that are finding its way into our jurisprudence. But, anyway, 3 advisors to the company found it so offensive that I would make this argument in public that within 48 hours of that piece, they resigned, that that was definitely a post Jan 6 mood and reaction that I had to then make a choice. Right? Cause now this is having potentially an adverse impact on the company. I could either Alright.

07:37Call it a year where I experimented with expressing myself and, you know, wearing my legal academic hat and call that a day and continue with biotech. Or legitimately, if I didn't wanna have an adverse impact on my company, I could step down and really speak freely. I chose to I chose to step down, not in small part because the company was doing great. You know, I had a successor lined up, so there was a fortunate set up circumstances and happened to be the right time. I had just had my first son.

08:04My son, Kartik, was born in February of 2020, he was about to turn a year old. We were the transitional phase of our life. COVID, you know, we were we had a year away from the office. My wife filling her fellowship. There was just a lot going on in her life that it felt like this was a moment for a life transition to focus on You know, there are a lot of people, talented people developing medicines.

08:26Maybe some of them more talented than me. You know, rovin's a successful company.

08:30Did you feel like you were being bullied into making a statement about black lives matter by your own employees? And do you what's your thought generally speaking on companies being politically active and companies having a political voice because it has come up in our industry over and over again. You might know Brian Armstrong from Coinbase said, hey, We're here to do crypto. Nothing else. Please don't talk about anything political.

08:51So what are your thoughts generally

08:52on that? You you wrote a whole book on this. Right? I mean, I wrote a book.

08:55Yes. It's

08:55so big. It's it's a lot about the distinction between what the intention is, in optimizing for shareholders versus the personal interests of the executives and those in charge expressing their personal points of view through the the corporation. And I think you had you had some points of view on where that should all go. But was that in part motivating for you to run for public office and why president instead of running for a senate seat or congressional seat or something else?

09:23Yeah. So I've it turns out I've written I wrote 3 books in the last 2 years and 2 of them are about this topic. Yep. The first one is Wokink, which was for a general audience, and then there was a second one called Capitalist punishment, which was specifically about the ESG strand of this in capital markets. And just for people who are aware, my general view is that companies should focus on making products and services for people who need them without apologizing for it.

09:46And, yes, that's how you maximize profit for shareholders by having a worthy mission and sticking to it without taking on social missions that are best carried out by institutions outside of corporate America.

09:57I I so much believe this that even before I ran

10:00for president. This actually does answer your question, Dave, is I actually thought the way I was gonna have impact based on this. I enjoy being an author, but I'm not by nature, just an academic. I like to do things. I I started a company called Strive.

10:13It's an asset management firm. That directly competes against the likes of BlackRock And State Street And Vanguard. That's what I thought my next leap was going to be. Scribe's first fund launched last August. And less than a year in it, it's close to a $1,000,000,000 and under management.

10:30I think it took JP Morgan 2 years to get to a 1,000,000,000 when they got into the ETF business. That was what my journey was gonna be is within corporate America restore the unapologetic pursuit of excellence over distracting and dilutive political environmental and social agendas. But the thing that struck me, I think, late last year, and last December, last year, we had our second son, got a new company off the ground. You all know what that entails. You know, was very much an all in experience doing that.

11:00December, we had some time to take a step back. And, you know, my wife and I, we Gotta take a moment to ask yourself, why are you doing what you're doing? It's not a conversation you often have or take time to do, but, you know, the question of the why And and it reminded me back of that experience I had at Roven. You asked me, did I feel bullied? I didn't actually feel bullied.

11:22It I think could imagine someone in my shoes feeling that way, but I didn't feel like it was somebody cornering me to do something I didn't wanna do. Others have had that experience. That wasn't quite how it felt for me. Felt like there's a group of people who followed me on this mission who look up to me who were disappointed in me, actually. And I think that was much harder than feeling like I was being bullied was to have a group of people who followed me on this worthy mission of developing medicines that pharma companies weren't that felt proud of that mission that now felt disappointed in me.

11:53And that was much harder to deal with than the bullying, but that also opened my eyes to the fact that I'm here stridently fighting against BlackRock and, you know, the ESG industrial complex, which is a little bit of a deflection from the essence of what I actually think is going on at the real root cause, especially amongst young people in the country. What is that? Which is that they and this is what I saw in my employees in the experience I went through. So that was formative for me. These are good people.

12:18These are earnest people. Many of whom came. It's in in many ways, it's my fault because the pitch that we made in recruiting, we recruited from Harvard and MIT and everywhere else, big pharma companies didn't recruit out of undergrad. We did. Part of my pitch was, hey.

12:30You wanna go, you know, to a quant hedge fund and turn that pile of cash into bigger pile of cash, or do you wanna actually make medicines that impact people's lives and do well that way. So that was part of you and my pitch going in. So we select for a certain kind of person, and then they come back and say they're disappointed me for not adopting unrelated social agendas, what dawned on me is that young people in this country, I'm a millennial. You guys are young. We're hungry for a cause.

12:56Right? We're so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity. And yet we're starving for that at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void And we can there's a lot of things that could fill that blank. I talked about it today at this constitution camp here in New Hampshire, faith, patriotism, hard work, family, But I think there's there's some truth to what Brian Armstrong told his employees, a corporation with a worthy mission can help fill that void too. And I think that's one of the roles that CEOs who feel like they're being bullied, might miss is you you don't have people who are bullying you.

13:32You have people who are lost, who are looking to you for direction and purpose.

13:37You're saying it quickly, but I think that family and religion are very, very big drivers of them.

13:42Oh, huge. Yeah. I'm just saying it quickly because I talk about that all the time. But, but I think the family and faith is I mean, these are foundational building blocks.

13:51They're foundational.

13:52I think that when you look statistically at, like, the decay in the number of young people who are religious or the decay in the number of young people who actually have, you know, 2 parent families. All of this speaks to the fact that the social norms that gave people purpose have actually gone, but they haven't been replaced with anything else. And I think that's the vacuum that you're seeing that many of these young people fall into. And so they're looking for something to your point. And, the problem with that is not the causes themselves, but the fact that they're short lived, and then what's left over is the need for more and more and more.

14:29And that escalation, I think, is very dangerous if you think about where, you know, society goes to from here.

14:34Yeah. I agree with you on that. And that and that's why I I have been characterized and Jason introduced me that way too as anti woke. I don't actually think of my I don't I don't like that label because it's it's not inaccurate. I don't like it because it's false.

14:50I think it misses the point where I think the way we actually combat fill in your favorite blank. It awokeism, climateism, covidism, fentanyl usage, anxiety, depression, loss of self confidence. These things are symptom. Of a deeper void of purpose and meaning. And so I don't think you helped the matter much by and I've done some of this.

15:12I will admit this, right? So I'm not blaming other people.

15:15Well, I mean, but but the book the book, I don't have

15:17you read the book, Jason or not? I haven't

15:18yet, but I will.

15:19Okay. The book is, It was it was titled and written before the word weapon woke took on its current political valence. Yeah. I will say that, actually.

15:28Okay.

15:29Many people didn't know what the word woke was at the time I titled. It was

15:31fairly revelatory when you came out and used that word in your in your title. It was like, let me reveal to you a little bit about what this thing that I'm calling woke is turning into, which is a more broader kind of social psychological issue that we're all grappling with. Right. How it's now leached its way into politics. It's leached its way into nonprofits.

15:52It's leached its way. Into corporate America, into for profits, into the military, into government, etcetera. Obviously, since that was published, it has now become this hot term that has different meaning for different people, and it can be pretty exciting in terms of how people react. I appreciate

16:11you saying that, Dave.

16:11Yep.

16:12I appreciate you saying that, Dave, because my my net prescription is actually we dilute not just wokism. I mean, that's just part of the story. We dilute secular religions, the rise of secular religions. Right. And and I don't call them even religions because the religion is withstood the test of time.

16:27A cult has not but the rise of modern secular cults, we dilute them to irrelevance by filling that void with an alternative vision. And so you know, if one political camp might offer race and gender and sexuality and climate as a prescription for the void, I think where conservatives fall badly short is by simply being anti those things. Without actually offering an alternative vision of our own. And I am aiming certainly to do that in this campaign. If you're gonna replace family,

16:59gender, and these kind of things, what would be your, you know, qualities or things to focus on?

17:08So so let's do, like, a little face off, right, individual who we're talking about race gender sexuality climate. I pair them up against individual Chamath nation god. Okay? And I think that there's a substantive vision here. I think America happened to have been founded on the latter vision former.

17:25So if I'm running for US president, I think that that already tilts the scales in favor of this vision because it so happens as a historical matter, America was grounded on you know, some people will contest this, but I think on that vision rather than the genetic and climate based one. But I think that that's something where the Republican Party and conservatives have fallen short, and that's part of what, to your question, Jason, pulled me into this, is I saw the emergence of what was likely to be a biographical brawl between two guys who are the, you know, front runners or whatever. You know, that's not productive. But I think more importantly than a biographical brawl, even the question about who we are, I think the Republican party and the conservative movement Was in many ways defining itself in opposition to that alternative vision of identity where what I want to do, what I'm striving to do, and I hope we're doing. Is actually offering an affirmative vision of our own that go to the heart of what it means to be an American and You know, I don't think that national identity alone is gonna fill that vacuum fully, but I think it makes a pretty good darn stride for And I think those roles for pastors and others, that's beyond my pay grade.

18:29And so I'm not I'm not reporting to do that in this campaign. I speak to it, but that's that's gonna be the role of people in a higher calling than being US president, but I think the next US president can play a meaningful role in filling that vacuum at least when it comes to national identity. So that's really what this campaign is about. It's not it's not anti woke. It is unapologetically nationalist in a certain sense of that word.

18:53Nationalist incentive embracing those ideals that sent this nation into motion that still unite us across those genetically inherited attributes that we've otherwise celebrated over the last 10 years in

19:05this country. Safe to say you believe in American Exceptionalism, and that's that's your platform for running.

19:10Is absolutely my platform. The exceptionalism of the ideals that set this country into motion. Absolutely.

19:15So, Vivek, let me ask a question around where we are in the cycle of the American experiment where we have obviously allowed the throttle to be full forward. And as a result, we've seen extraordinary progress emerge from the entrepreneurial talents and the drive of the people of this country. For the past 250 years, and it's really extraordinary in a transformed human civilization. We now find ourselves particularly over the past 50 years as this problem has gotten worse with increasing disparity between the haves and the have nots. Or those who believe they they have not, which is nearly everyone.

19:55Everyone now has some point of view that they have not got something, and they see other people that do have something that they do not And this inequality and this perception of inequality, both with respect to absolute amounts of capital, income, earnings, and these perception issues have now driven a populist movement in this country that we have seen historically many times in the past different countries that ultimately turn into either socialist nations or fascist nations. You know, in all cases, some sort of autocratic regime seems to have emerged because of this populist movement that we're now seeing not just in the US, but across the west. Do you feel like we're at that moment in the US? And one of the manifestations of that, I'll say, is government spending. Because everyone demands more from their government and the government steps up and the elected officials that they elect step up and spend more, and it layers and it layers and layers.

20:49And we now have a $33,000,000,000,000 debt load, and we have a $1,500,000,000,000 annual deficit. And by many projections, Social Security will be bankrupt in anywhere from 10 to 15 years, 10 to 20 years, whatever numbers you wanna use. The CPO assumes we're gonna have unsustainable spiraling debt. What is your point of view on where we are in the cycle, how it's manifesting today, and how we're gonna deal with the fiscal issues that arise from these movements?

21:15Yeah. So I think where we are in that in the cycle, I don't take that as a passive law of physics. I think that who runs this country and leads this country can make an actual difference in the actual underlying course of that so called cycle, which is part of what pulls me to this. So I'm a little bit unconventional on, that my views on the debt load and the entitlement spending in this country and our first step in our way out of it. I I don't think we're in a place of having remotely enough consensus or trust, and I think trust is probably the more important word than consensus.

21:50To begin just snip snip make cuts to what people feel like they were entitled to and promised, especially in a moment where we're beginning with deep distrust. That will take what you call those populist flames and throw kerosene on it. I do I I'm more optimistic about this, and I think this is quite realistic, actually. Is that the next leap forward is we can grow our way out of I'm not gonna say all, but most of our actual fiscal pending fiscal calamity. Right.

22:18This year, I mean, I think, like, right now, last 6 months, we're talking less than 1.5% annualized GDP growth. What we're averaging right now. For most of our national history, we actually grown at over 4 plus percent GDP growth. Certainly, if you go back to the pre gold standard period, And even after going off the gold standard, we had a relatively stable US dollar. And I am one of these weird guys who believes that the Fed should have a single mandate of dollar stability without playing the Phillips curve game.

22:45But, anyway, put that sidetrack to one side. We've grown at 3, 4% GDP growth for most of our national history, even relatively recent national history. And I don't think it's a complicated path to get back there. I think things we need to do unlock American energy. There's you know, we talk about secular religions.

23:03I view the climate cult as one of those secular religions.

23:05What's your health? What would your specific energy plan be?

23:09Completely completely, unlock the permitting process that they've used as a backdoor mechanism to shut down American energy production. Drilling fracking, burning coal. Coal should not be a four letter word, embracing nuclear energy. Later tonight, like, after we're having this conversation, this evening, I'm gonna Saint Ansel College laying out my detail. It's gonna be like a giant poster laying out the anatomy of how I will shut down the nuclear regulatory commission.

23:34Which has been a fundamentally hostile administrative agency to the existence of nuclear power in this country actually even to the detriment of actually making sure that we are getting our nuclear energy from gen 2 rather than gen 3 or gen 4 reactors, but that'll be for tonight. It's an all of the above approach of unshackling ourselves to produce energy here in the United States. To point about you know, David made a good point earlier about the addiction of paying people more from the federal government that becomes the status quo if that's your voter base. That's not even good in many cases for the people we're giving that money to. I think we should stop paying people to stay at home when actually the top obstacle for many businesses to grow, you guys will know this well, is filling vacant job openings.

24:21And so that is an obstacle to GDP growth is paying people more to stay at home than many of them earn to go back to work.

24:28Do you think that the IRA was good legislation?

24:33I I don't have, it's not like it's not like my the horse that I'm gonna, you know, ride, ride in terms of, like, the main. I'm gonna pin everything on it, but but I mostly don't think it was it was great legislation. What what, like, where are you coming from on that? Because I we might have different reasons

24:49as well. If you think about what the IRA does for energy, and, frankly, if you just roll up the BIL at the chips in IRA. I'm just curious your thoughts on whether government incentives are moving in that direction. That you actually support, or you still think it's it's missing something?

25:07Well, so one of the things that I actually focus on, and I think it's really important is what can the US president actually do? Right? I mean, president trump's I don't know if people remember this. His main promise policy promise was actually repeal and replace Obamacare, which never happened because it required going through Congress. So I'm actually focused on elements that I can deliver on without asking congress either for permission or forgiveness.

25:33And so that's when I answered Jason because I go straight to at least let's focus on actually the administrative state, which on my reading of the constitution reports in to the single duly elected president. So when I talk about the permitting process of the Department of Interior, or shutting down the nuclear regulatory commission. I believe in, you know, we could go I'm going into details on it tonight. I have the legal authority to do that as the US president. Think the legislation is gonna be much more complicated, and I don't believe that I can be in a position to promise what we would do legislatively to any of that.

26:04You mentioned, getting people to take all these jobs that that are available. Do you wanna talk about immigration per second and what you think about that?

26:13Yeah. Merit based immigration. Maybe

26:14before you go

26:14right to immigration, would would you are you saying you would cut entitlements like unemployment or shorten the unemployment period to force people to go back to work? Is that and

26:24tie them to work requirements. Absolutely. Yeah.

26:26Would you have specific for that? Like, a certain number of months or you

26:30know, a pretty good a pretty good I mean, I do, but I think that's, again, I'm very clear about what I will do through executive authority. Needs to go through legislation. I mean, that's all a negotiation, but I think a good principle is 1996 or in 19 nineties. Work fair under Clinton was actually far more aggressive than the work environment that were put into this supposed Republican led debt deal where, like, what did they say? It was if you're age eighteen to fifty five, and you are able-bodied and childless, then you have to work at least 20 hours a week in order to receive more than 3 months out of 3 years' worth of welfare.

27:12Right? Now Joe Biden as a US senator voted for actually much more stringent work fair requirements in the nineties. So, you know, yes, I have ideas on specifics, but I'm not gonna make a promise on exactly what that specific will look like, but a guiding principle is it has to be at least as aggressive as what we adopted.

27:28I mean, to your point, during Clinton, we had 69, almost 70% participation, and we're at 60 exact now, I think. So It's obvious that we have to, trim that. But to Tremont's next point, you know, we have 10,000,000 job openings. We're not letting anybody in. How would you look at immigration?

27:44Obviously, we have people coming in the southern border illegally. And then we have H1B visas. And now Canada is saying, Hey, we'll steal all those H1B's. We'll take them. How do you look at immigration to Chamath question?

27:56Merit based immigration. I mean, one of the things that Canada does have, and I'm not a fan of America and maintaining Canada or anything like this in in most respects, but they do have a point based system. Right? They have a point based system. And so I think the point based system should work differently in the US.

28:11But I do favor merit based immigration. I'm a little bit of a departure from what I think is the Republican consensus here. You know, people I respect Tom Cotton and others have proposed bills with a hard cap on the number of immigrants, I think it's a mistake. I think that the cap should declare itself based on how many people meet the meritocratic criteria.

28:31Or rather than 2 different qualities than for what what would be your top criteria in this point based system. 2 criteria.

28:36Skills that match up to job openings in the United States. But secondarily, and this one's important to me, I would move the civics portion of becoming a citizen to the front end of even being granted a visa to enter this country. And I think that addresses and accommodates an important part of the concern that many people who are pro immigration cap actually favor is I think there are legitimate concerns about the dilution, the loss of a national identity. But a lot of that is conflated with 1st the cycle of illegal immigration. I'm a hard liner on this.

29:10I favor putting the US military on the southern border said I would use it on the northern border. I believe that that we are on strong constitutional and legal authority to do it. I do not think building the wall was enough. There are cartel finance tunnels underneath that wall that vehicles literally run through today. So in some ways, I'm going further than trump in this direction, but simultaneously, debutocratize speed up the process for merit based immigration, but part of merit includes not just skills.

29:40But also civic commitments to the country. And I'm you know, I used the word nationalist before. I know that scares some people. I mean it in a positive way. I think every high school student in this country should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant has to pass order to become a citizen of this country.

29:59I also would favor bringing that on the front end, and it selects for the kind of people who know something about the country when they enter. I think is a good thing as well.

30:06Should assimilate and they should love this country in order to come into the country? Yes.

30:11I do. I think I think you should wanna come here to be an American.

30:13Yeah. I think that's good. I think I need you to get agreement around the the horn here. Saks, you've heard, Vivek's position so far. You obviously are passionate about The GOP.

30:24What what do you agree with and what don't you agree with so far?

30:26Well, there's a lot of

30:27stuff to agree with there. And we're talking about American Exceptionalism. One thing I wanna talk about there is that I agree that America is exceptional, and we're most exceptional when we're trying to set an example for other nations where we're trying to be the shining city on a hill as Reagan put it. But lately and really, I mean, over the last couple of decades, what you've seen is that what American Exceptional means to a lot of people in Washington is that we run all over the world and impose our ideology and our values on all these different countries. We began this great crusade to try and spread democracy in the Middle East.

31:05We tried to turn Countries like Afghanistan and Iraq into the Madisonian democracies, where you'd now are very, very involved in Ukraine, basically trying to detach that country from the Russian sphere of influence and turning it into a member of our military and economic alliance. So it does seem like American Exceptionalism has taken on this sort of harder, more militarized edge, where would you draw the line? I mean, like, what makes sense to you?

31:37I think I I basically agree with everything you just said. I think as a side note on the geopolitics of it, I I do think Ukraine is on track to become potentially the next Vietnam or the next Iraq think you have said similar things. I also think there's something else going on with Ukraine that's fueling this, which relates to the deeper identity crisis in our country that I described earlier, I think Ukraine has become a new religion, right, in the in the country. And it's substitute for purpose and meaning just like climate ideology or locism is. And and, you know, and there's the flag.

32:08It's like a cruel way.

32:09I mean, you have people, like, waving these. Oh, absolutely.

32:12Yeah. You go to Washington, DC, at least I did in June. I was there for one of the Sunday shows. Well, my wife and I are going for a walk. We saw more trans flags and Ukraine flags than we did flags on a short walk that we took through Washington, DC, our nation's capital.

32:26So I'm not I'm not whining about this or being histrionic about it. I just think getting to the essence of what's going on, I think that's a different element of Ukraine that's different from even what we saw with the Anama or Iraq. I don't think American Exceptionalism is foisting our values on to anyone. I think American Exceptionalism is about demonstrating through our example how America flourishes and is strong when we live by our own ideals. And I think the best way we give hope to the free world is by being that shining city on a hill, not going somewhere else and talking about it with tanks behind us while actually suffering here at home.

33:01If you you roamed the streets of Kensington, as I did a few weeks ago, you know, you don't have to go to you don't have to go to Baghdad to see the 3rd world. And so Mhmm. That I think is is, I think, a big loss of where we are today in the country.

33:17When you're president Putin invade Ukraine, you would sit back, not give any armaments, and let him roll in.

33:23Here's what I would do. I would actually be proactive in doing a deal, and I've been very clear about the deal I would do. Trump said he would do a deal in 24 hours and said what it was. I I believe there's a deal to be done, but I also believe it's important to be clear about what the contours of that deal would be. I would freeze the current line.

33:42Let's take the status quo right now. It it so I can answer your question or I could answer starting from the present. If you don't I We could do both. I mean, the

33:49obvious, yeah, the obvious is maybe put NATO, take NATO off the table and avoid the holding, but now we're We're playing alternative history, so maybe it's better to

33:58talk about what's happening now. Right? Cause I don't think that we would've if I was president, I don't think we would've gotten to the point of those things rolling in, Angela Merkel made some disastrous comments. Putin made a hard demand. We would have said hard no to Ukraine joining NATO, and that would have been that there would have rolling it.

34:12And Putin may have still invaded. We don't know.

34:16I I

34:17don't I don't think so, but we can't, you know, those are counterfactuals that we Exactly. You know? Yeah. We're not gonna have one side or the other being able to to to prove that. Right?

34:25So let's talk about the president. Right now, let's say I'm US president. I would freeze the current lines of control. We have a precedent for doing this, the Korean war, Korean war style armistice. That does give Putin most of the Donbas region.

34:41That's beyond the pale of what many are willing to accept in either party, but I think any deal someone has to win. Everyone has to win something out of the deal. I would further then give that assurance that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, but there's a requirement in return. The biggest requirement is that Russia has to exit its military partnership with China. There's a 2001 treaty.

35:05It's called the treaty of good neighborliness and cooperation. Military cooperation between the two countries that Xi Jinping and Putin ratcheted it up to the so called strategic no limits partnership in 2022. That is why China is now coming, by the way, to Russia's aid. I personally believe we are absolutely sending Putin into Xi Jinping's arms in a way that's a mistake. I would also require that Putin remove his nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad that we take any Russian military presence in the US and the western hemisphere off the table, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, think there's a deal that Putin would do if we paired it with reopening economic relations with Russia, which I would do.

35:45Because I think Putin does not and I can give you some evidence for this, but think Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little brother. And so I think that this is actually an opportunity, and I have to confess I am a guy who sees our foreign policy prism through the prism of believing that China is the top long run threat that we face. And so most of my foreign policy views and national security views, even on topics that are apparently unrelated to China, I still see it through that prism, but this one isn't a far leap because China is literally in a military treaty with Russia and coming to their I would use the Ukraine war and and end to the Ukraine war as a way to bifurcate the Russia China relationship and and divide basically dissolve that relationship. And then, actually, that's our best way and most effective step towards deterring Xi Jinping from going after Taiwan. Because right now Xi Jinping, you know, I think that there's a mistaken consensus view that the way he thinks about it is, oh, reason by analogy rather than by actual analyzing of a situation, say, oh, well, he got that piece of land.

36:48Maybe I can go get this island. I don't think he reasons by analogy. I think he reasons by the cards he has in terms of hard power. So his bet is that The US won't wanna go to war with 2 different allied nuclear superpowers at the same time. But if Russia is no longer in his camp, then Xi Jinping's gonna have to think twice about going after Taiwan.

37:09So then I guess it's part

37:10of my broader Taiwan.

37:11It's a obvious follow-up question there is you wouldn't defend Ukraine. Would you have America can the allies defend Taiwan if it was invaded?

37:19I would at least until the US has achieved semiconductor independence.

37:23So you would defend the press. Yeah.

37:25Because we depend on them for our modern way of life in a way that we don't on Ukraine. And and then the latter part of this is it sounds a little crass to some people, but I believe in being honest, I actually think that, yeah, I'll kinda get to the I'll get to this point in a second, but to answer your question, Yes. Until we've achieved semiconductor independence. I believe we can achieve semiconductor independence. Yeah.

37:46So it's not your belief is not Hey, these are 2 democracies. They both deserve equal defense from the United States, Ukraine, and Taiwan. It's Ukraine doesn't have semiconductors. We don't have a strategic need to defend them and Taiwan. So it's a lot more of a pragmatic cutthroat approach to foreign policy.

38:03It is. I I I, of course, you know, resist the characterization of cutthroat a little bit. I I go back to the principle that David mentioned of what American Exceptionalism is, to me, is that when America is strong and is flourishing and Americans are flourishing within America, we set the example for the free world of what is possible. And so my view is that, yes, at least until tie until we're semiconductor self sufficient. And I think things work out here where I think we can get there.

38:33So in 5 years, we're we've got our semiconductors up and running. You'll let China roll into Taiwan. No big deal for you.

38:40I will say that I definitely evaluate that very differently than I do for a lot of things to be a different function.

38:48Fracture.

38:48But I but I but

38:49Your thoughts on that is important. Friedberg?

38:51Yeah. Let me just ask. So Vivek, I mean, I think that your point is is a really important one, which is that when we're happy at home, we can not to look for conflict abroad That's almost a universal proof that's emerged from history. Human civilization has shown that, you know, when when the people in a democracy in particular are happy at home, and certainly autocracies are quite different. Alexander, the great, and Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, he could go through history.

39:25But, like, when you have a dem a true democracy, you don't vote to go and you don't support the idea. Of conflict abroad if you're happy at home. But the counter is true, which is when you're unhappy at home, you tend to look for conflict abroad. And By some assessments, Ray Dahlio had this great book about this, the changing world order. I don't know if you if you read it But, you know, he makes this point about the internal strife leads to external conflict, which is why it felt like we were gonna go that way with Ukraine Russia coming out of 21.

39:56So I wonder, are we happy at home?

39:59Mhmm. We're not

40:00and I wanna ask I wanna ask another question tied to this. Why is Donald Trump leading in the polls? Because I think that the 2 go hand in hand. There is something that he represents, and there's something about his voice that I think echoes the sentiment of this populist unhappiness inside of this country today that manifests in a bunch of ways, one of which is the interest in and support for external conflict. But I don't know if you're up for kind of thinking about tackling the two questions together, but I'd love your your your take on that.

40:30Yeah. Great question.

40:31I think you're Absolutely right. I mean, you're extending a theme of where I talk about sort of domestic cultural annoyances as a symptom of a deeper vacuum in our national soul, I think that actually our projection and focus abroad is a lot easier of a deflection away from the harder step of taking a long hard look in the mirror and asking ourselves about the health of our own nation today. And so I think it's a deep question I think we're not healthy as a nation today. I think we suffer from deep seated psychic in security, psychological insecurities. I think the economic stagnation, the fact that real wage growth isn't up for the bottom 99% of the country.

41:11Now a lot of that I put at the feet of the Federal Reserve there are a lot of other complex factors behind it, but a lot of this feeds into what you call populism. I don't Excuse me.

41:22I don't

41:22I don't I don't like the term, by the way. Just to be clear, I think that it's

41:25It's just imprecise. Yeah.

41:27It's a it's a rapper that tries to catch too many things, and it doesn't any of them enough. So, yeah. Yeah.

41:31You think what you're calling populism is actually a failure of our elites. Isn't that what's going on? We saw during COVID. That all the health authorities did a horrible job, the CDC, and the NIH. It turns out they were funding in a function research, which may caused COVID, in the first place.

41:49They were doing experiments on bat viruses.

41:51Almost certainly did cause.

41:52Yeah. Exactly. So You know, we keep finding out that the elites are supposed to be running the country and running these institutions are doing an absolutely horrible job. That's what the reaction is against. Then people come along and label up populism and say it's gonna lead to fascism.

42:06It's like, come on. That is a way of protecting the people in power from accountability for the horrible job they're doing.

42:13It's a well said.

42:14Absolutely. And and the use of the word populism is almost stacking that debate in favor of saying that those grievances aren't legitimate. And so I think why is Donald Trump pulling at number 1 in the polls? Because people know the truth. I think those grievances are absolutely legitimate.

42:33Now I think the mood of the country has changed a little including the mood of the hard conservative base has changed since 2015. I think

42:40there is now I think there is now

42:41a sense that what are we actually going to do about it. Are we are we gonna go the direction of a national divorce? I mean, divorce is one of these things that speaks itself into existence. Maybe applies at the same at the level of a nation. Right?

42:56That's on the table. It's in the it's in the ether. I don't think most people, including in our hardcore America first base. I'm part of that base. I don't think want a national divorce.

43:08And so I think that the moment now calls for this, why I'm in this race, this is actually why at this point, I couldn't have told you this in March, but at this point, I'm convinced we're actually gonna be successful in this. This is what the unique fusion we're gonna require. Is not somebody showing up saying hope Kumbaya. Let's move forward. Compromise hold hands and declare it's morning again in America.

43:30No. That ain't gonna work. But I think it requires recognizing the legitimacy of those grievances, not as lip service. I I believe, for the same reason Saks just mentioned, many of those grievances are legitimate. They're grounded in truth, but to say, as I often say to the left, hardship, is not the same thing as victimhood, and we're not gonna choose victimhood.

43:52We're going to choose recognition of truth as our best path to heal over whatever's happened and then to move forward. That's why I've come out and been very vocal about the fact that I would pardon Trump of each of the two indictments that had already been brought in if the JC indictment is brought against him, I would do the same thing. I think that we have to be able to recognize the truth of our past grievances of our fellow Americans and actually

44:16not just pay lip service to it, but feel

44:16into it and acknowledge the reality of them.

44:23I think that's then the table stakes of this meeting a demand that many in our grassroots conservative base have. I'm one of them. And desire to also move forward as one nation. And I think both of those elements are gonna be required. They don't go together.

44:37I think there are people in the Republican primary who offer each of those on their own.

44:42Yeah. I think whoever steps will gonna have

44:45to offer both.

44:46This morning, there was a An opinion piece. I'm assuming you read it by Rich Lowry, chief of the National Review, published on political, get ready for the Vivek Ramaswami moment in which I would say he's fairly fuserv, about the campaign you're running. Right? I mean, would you agree like,

45:04effusive, you said? Yeah. So there

45:06was a Oh, really?

45:06Yeah. Some really. Did you read the piece? I mean, I thought there was some related.

45:09He said abusive. Oh, really interesting.

45:12He loves you.

45:13Yeah. He said Oh,

45:14he doesn't love me.

45:14Actually No. He doesn't love

45:15you, but he said some I think he said some complimentary things about your about your campaign, about your character. But said there's no way you're gonna win and win for president?

45:23Well, you went from under 1%. I think now the latest policy has you above 5%, and we're in the very early innings here. Right?

45:30I think there's one that just came. I mean, yeah, there's some that have, you know, bounced a little higher than that, but,

45:34yeah, you're a little higher for

45:35the 1st debate.

45:35The thing that it makes done, let me just state this in observer and then you can react to it is that you have kind of inserted yourself in the debate on every issue, you know, every day as it comes I mean, you're kind of living off the land as a candidate, not out there with just kind of attritional stump speech, but you're finding a way to insert yourself into the debate every day on social media. I see it. Right? I mean, you post a tweet that will hit the nerve of whatever the issue is going viral that day, which means that you'll go viral. And so for months, I've been seeing your tweets go super viral.

46:12And so it's not surprising to me that your cancer is starting to, you know, catch on in that way. What's remarkable to me is that other candidates can't do it. I mean, when you first started doing it, I was kinda like, okay, this is obvious and easy. Of course, this is what you would do. But other candidates have not really done that for whatever reason.

46:30So, I mean, am I

46:32How are you I

46:32can give you my perspective. I can give you my perspective on that because if we use it when

46:36it is when you accuse us of creating a banking crisis, but other than that,

46:40that's great.

46:41Yeah. I I do wanna close the loop on that one. You can either do it on air or off.

46:45No. Do it right now. Let's go.

46:47Do it right now. Yeah. Yeah.

46:48You know, so on on for the other candidates not doing it, it's it's anyway, that's less is fine. It would be maybe they'll do I mean, I think I think it's it's not running it through a filter, right, because because I think the traditional political thing is and here's what's gonna happen to a consequence, I'm gonna eat the consequence of this. Right? Everything comes at a cost. There's no free lunch.

47:04I'm gonna say something in real time, that reflects my honest instincts. That's my whole strategy. Right? People can tell the difference, but then I'm gonna change my mind on 1 out of a 100 things. Okay?

47:16And that's just gonna happen. Right? And and as ever you open to that and eat my words and, you know, I'm gonna do it at some point. And and that's the trade off we're making. Is that I'm not running it through the filters.

47:26I'm I'm not making up what I believe. I'm telling you actually to the contrary what I truly believe. But if I'm doing it really that rapidly in response to what's happening, I think people appreciate that, but I'm gonna eat my words at some point, and that's In response to

47:39new information,

47:39you may respond to new information, or sometimes even in response to reflection. Right?

47:44So that's a gap, basically. Because it's less filter. What you're saying.

47:47You might make a gap. Do you wanna close the loop on this other thing?

47:50Yeah. Do you think Jason caused

47:51a banking crisis by using all caps law 20 tweet Yes or no?

47:55I do not really. Really?

47:57I can't even tweet on a Saturday night call. The bet goes a bank run?

48:02I did not say I I I did not I I never said that either, but we did go at it pretty hard. I think, actually, I I think there's a chance we might still disagree, Dave, but I think that I'm talking to Saks here, but yep. So so I've actually talked to a lot of friends who were in the position of running companies that had some amount of and and and we talked through this, like, the the specifics of the situation, and then it dawned on me. Where and it might it's not it's not necessarily we're gonna agree at the end of this, but there's a chance that we might actually. Which is this.

48:37So in the lead up to this before that Friday, I was already against any governmental intervention here. Let this play out. Why? Because, like, let's put aside all the histrionics. Do the math on it.

48:50And I'm reme there's a little hazy now, right, so on the facts, but I think it's approximately right. And you correct me if you have up to date facts on this, but I think it's approximately right. If everybody had run, and gotten their money out. I think it would have been, like, 94¢ on the dollar that everybody would have walked out with. Right?

49:08And so what happened on Friday is, and this is the part where I wanna potentially build a bridge here, the part that what happened on Friday was that Friday was the government at the FDIC or otherwise, froze.

49:22It was good for your regulator on that Friday morning. Yeah.

49:24Yeah. The Friday morning. Do you much closer to know, in the details, but the California regulator froze the ability to take out deposits. So I am more sympathetic to the point that once the government gotten involved because that really is then like, you know, kind of like an oh crap moment where your CEO of a company or a CFO and you wanna get your money out and then you can't. Now it's panic.

49:45Right? Right. And so I think that there's a version of the world where the version of the world I wanted. And I was talking about this before you and I were talking directly to each other, I just think this should have stayed out of it. 94¢ on the dollar, not bad, which is why the public didn't actually end up directly using taxpayer funds was because the bank was healthy in its own right.

50:03That's what it that's the worst result the bank run would have produced there, which actually should have been heartening in terms of confidence. Let let

50:09let let me give you an insight that maybe you weren't as close to as the rest of us were, which is on all the boards that all of us sit on, all of the boards were discussing independent of this show and the conversations and the media. We need to move all of our money out of all of the bags that aren't one of the top 3 and move all of our money into those top 3. So the point of

50:29Which is

50:29a shame. Top four

50:31steps. Yeah.

50:31That's the point of view that we all saw was that there was a mad rush in corporate America and startup land in small business land. This isn't even VC land. This is like everything from the nonprofits that we sit on the board of to the you know, laundromat to the dry cleaner to every business.

50:48I got you.

50:49I got you.

50:49Money in a small bank was saying, I gotta move my money into a big bank now. And that's where the whole banking system is put at risk, and that is why we all universally felt that it was important to highlight that the federal government needs to step in and reassure and rebuild confidence in the small banks in this country. Not that the only and that the only way to do that was to say your deposits are safe. And that was it. And that that was the point because the panic that was going on in small business land in America which, as you know, employs half of the people in this country, was at risk.

51:21And that those people, those small businesses were fearful, and they were looking to rush to the big banks, and that would have craetered the small banks around the country. So so

51:29and I think it's a it's a difference in vantage point, right, because you have discussion about populism and everything else. Yeah. I don't think they did sacks cause the background any more than I'm causing populist waves in this country. Again, it was

51:41with cat flock. But, yeah, go ahead.

51:43I know. But but I think I think the reality is

51:45Fuel literally have tweeted that I calls the banker. It's insane. But

51:48There's a there's a technical there's a technical point I'll make, and then we'll get to the deeper point. The technical point to close loop is I think Dave I find your position more reasonable given that it's after Friday when the California regulators came in and locked in. But in my version of the world, I would have just said, stay the heck out, government of any kind, 94¢ on the dollar, there's a 6% haircut. And and we've discovered the market actually works, and we avoid playing favoritism in the first place, and I say this as somebody who, and this is where you understand my vantage point, have been a long time opponent of the creation of the notion of SIBs, systemically important banks in the first place as an opponent to the bailouts of 2008 as somebody who's running for US president not to lead incremental reforms, but a sort of revolution in the kind of restoration and the integrity of both capitalism and democracy that I think is actually the best antidote to. Would you try to deconstruct

52:43the sims?

52:45Well, I mean, get given the status quo of where we are, I think that I would have to offer a credible enough base to make sure that people know that if there's a system so called previously known as a systemically important bank that fails, that the public's still not gonna be there for them, but in a way that a row allows for enough of a enough of an unburdened banking sector that we have resilience in terms of exactly who can actually fill that void and I think that there is a discursive impact on. I don't think it has to be and this is where it may may disagree a little bit, and there's a small scale disagreement. I don't think it has to be a state of the world where we just assume consumers are dumb and don't take decision on account. Consumers are in part dumb because we treat them as dumb. Right?

53:25And so the these it's like a Heisenberg effect. Right? You can't you know, you you you assume you're following what it's and what I mean is you you you know, basic principle in physics, you can't, you know, observe the spin and not affect the spin of the electron at the same time. I think the same thing applies to a relationship between the government and its people. And so I think part of the reason that people I think I feel the same way about the FDA, by the way.

53:48I think people would be far more scrutinizing of the medicines they took if it didn't come with the crowding out effect of that individual level of self responsibility and due diligence that the government wasn't doing, but now we live in the worst of all worlds where we have neither. The government's neither actually protecting nor actually providing the individual responsibility.

54:09I just wanted to hear, you know, you make a statement, you collect data, 1 and a 100, you say you'll change your mind. I just wanna understand with all the data, the past, the present, and probably who knows? Every every incremental day when we see something new, what is the full 360 degree view that Vivek Ramasamy has of Donald Trump.

54:30Full 360 degree view. Got it. Yeah. Actually haven't had a space to articulate this yet. So I I think this I think is useful.

54:38So my view is that He was a successful president measured by reviving the economy, a successful president, period. How why do I say that? Reviving the economy, growing the American economy, I think that recognizing and speaking to and partially addressing concerns that had been historically unaddressed by both both major political parties. We did not enter a major war We were on the brink of major conflict with North Korea on the precipice in other parts of the world. Isis was a thing.

55:11It is you know, by it exists, but it's by and large, not the same threat that it was after his presidency as it was when he took over. These are major accomplishments. Right? I think the immigration crisis, I I think, is far worse today, precisely because Biden's in office and not Trump. So I believe he was a successful president.

55:30That's view number 1. View number 2. He has an effect on people. About 30% of this country that I think becomes psychiatricsally ill when he is the US president.

55:44I I I

55:44think it's just a Right? Agreeing with things that they otherwise wouldn't have agreed with because That's that 30% number

55:50applies on our pod too.

55:511 and 4. Well, I think that and and it's just it's just the reality is people lose their ability to process information. People lose the ability to think independently. It's like a demonic possession that happens in this country of about as best I can tell about 30% of the country. And I think that's not good for the country.

56:11And and we can debate who's to blame for that or whatever, but I'm just stating an an observation that I feel pretty strongly about. And so I think most of Trump's policies were good. Do I have some policy disagreement of course, I do. It would be weird if any two people agreed on a 100% of things. I would reenter the CPTP.

56:27He exited the TPP. I think his exit of the TPP gives us a stronger negotiating position with Malaysia and Japan to, you know, fix some of the micro things that we might have wanted. China's not in the TPP. That's part of the path actually declare economic independence from China. If it comes to that, we could go into a lot of different details.

56:43I would have rescinded the affirmative action executive order that Lyndon signed that I Trump's people why they didn't. They said it was a political hill. They didn't wanna die on. I'd shut down the department of education. We can go on, but but broadly, He was a successful president with whom I mostly agree on his broad policy vision and especially his handling of foreign policy.

57:00Get wrong and what and was the election stolen?

57:04Yeah. So so, I mean, I gave you, like, small examples of what he got wrong, but I think the real care the real thing that he got wrong I'm not sure that getting wrong is the even framing. It's just a fact that 30% of this country became psychically ill, and you're the leader of this country. You're leading an And so you can decide whose fault that is, but I believe leaders are ultimately judged by their results. And for whatever reason, even when I'm saying the same things that Trump often did as a matter of policy or foreign policy or domestic economic policy.

57:37And maybe it's because people don't don't yet know me broadly, but I don't think that's it actually. I don't think I'm having that effect on people. And I think that that's why I'm in this race to carry forward unapologetic George Washington America first policies and to do so more successfully, but also in a way that unites the country around that vision more so than Donald Trump ever did or could in the second term was the election stolen. Here's the sense in which I think the election was stolen in a data driven way. I've not seen any data to suggest that the ballot fraud or anything like that would have been sufficient to overturn the ballot count of the ballots.

58:17I've not seen any evidence to that effect. What I do see is hard evidence that people in this country would have elected a different president. Who's that? I like, who's who's who's that?

58:33This is Tali. This is child number 5.

58:36Number 5.

58:37She is cute. Yeah. But number 1 in her heart.

58:39You couldn't get saved. That's nice.

58:42Alright. So could you

58:43That's your name, I

58:44would say.

58:44Tolly. Tolly. Tolly. Hey. I have I'm I'm away from my son's east last last few days.

58:49So I've I've I've, you know, I'm happy for you. Hopefully, we'll be with our little guys soon. You know, what what I was saying is let me get to the punch line. The sense in which the election was stolen was the Hunter Biden laptop story and the systematic suppression of information. I think that there is no doubt.

59:06It's no doubt. I think that the evidence strongly suggest that Trump would have been elected and not Biden had we actually, a voter base that had access to that information. And I think that that is something that we ought to learn from, and I think that it does cast a lot of doubt and frustration on the legitimacy of the

59:26Let me double click on that. You seem to have said on other programs. I've heard you at least a half dozen times talk about, deep state deep state conspiracy trying to frame Donald Trump. Federal indictment of the 37 criminal charges for the stolen documents refusing to give them back. You got the New York case 34 more felony accounts.

59:48We're about to have another one drop on January 6th. You got the Georgia where he tried to get people to get 10,000 more votes. You got the New York case where CFO is going to jail. You got them guilty of sexual, assault. And then you got Latita James is suing the Trump organization.

60:06Of these 7 are all 7, a deep state conspiracy?

60:10I think it's it's a collective anaphylactic immune response to an antigen that challenged the system. I guess for the witness.

60:19So in case that you do anything wrong? You're you think all 7 of these cases, he's scot free. It's just

60:23that he was gonna

60:24be really clear about something. I'm running for US president in this race against Donald Trump because I'm the best position to lead this nation forward. K. Did you think you

60:32gave any of these 7?

60:34I would have made would have made very different judgments than he did, but I think criminalizing bad judgments, especially when done so against political opponents in the midst of a presidential election. Is an awful judgment for a US president and the Department of Justice underneath him to make.

60:50You think about the the the department of justice and the person you put in charge of it, they're all conspiring and that he didn't do anything wrong.

60:58Well, there's, like, a lot in that statement. Right? Sure. Does he did he do things that I think are reprehensible that I wouldn't have done? Yeah.

61:06I think so. I mean, a lot of acts as they exist. Absolutely. Do do I think that Biden and a lot of other politicians who have come have done things that I would have done and actually think we're wrong decisions. Absolutely.

61:19But do I think that conflating a bad judgment with a breakage of law is a risk to our future. I think it is.

61:27Do you think he sent those people to I mean, you wanna just make sure it was on January 6th?

61:32I don't think he did.

61:33No. No. So when he told me to march down there and when he told the Proud Boys to stand by and stand back, you don't think that he was inciting them.

61:41Let me just say I'm not here to defend the Donald Trump's behavior. I'm running for US president. I think we just Yeah.

61:48But I

61:48think your opinion on it, man.

61:49I also think, yeah, but my opinion on this Yes. I wanna be very clear about the the hat that I'm wearing. I would not have done what he did, but he was very clear. I mean, you look at the transcripts, you run this by as I have. 1st Amendment scholars just to check my I mean, inciting violence is not protected speech by the 1st Amendment.

62:05There's no sense in which when he tells people to peacefully make their way to the Capitol, that does not meet any Supreme Court test for what constitutes inciting violence in this country. I think that let's just take the let's take the New York example. I mean, some of the stuff the details actually now Let's take the

62:19let's take the oath keeper's 1 because that founding Well, I want road. Hold

62:23on. Should should

62:24should Let me get this 1. Let me

62:25get this

62:251 first. Hold on. Let me get my first. Bothkeepers, Friedberg, Stuart Rhodes, got 18 years. Do you think that the justice department did that?

62:31Because they're trying to frame Trump, and you'd and Trump told the oath keepers to stand by and to stand back. Do you think he insulted the oath keep with yes or no?

62:40Based on the facts that I have seen, I've seen no evidence of that. You're delusional. Okay. Yeah.

62:45I've seen delusional. Told them

62:47to stand by. Okay. So so I'm all there's also an indictment that hasn't been brought. So I've offered my opinion

62:54on

62:55the first two indictments that have been brought against

62:56him.

62:57Right? I read them. I read all forty nine pages in the last one. I'm responsive to facts.

63:01Yeah.

63:02On the first two indictments, I think they're absolutely politically based in that. And I can go through the if you're interested, we can go into the specific stuff.

63:11I mean,

63:11It might be boring to

63:12get your work. Yeah.

63:13You know, on New York. Right? I mean, I'll just give you a light on each. Right? Okay.

63:17In New York, let's take a fact that it's a state offense that was upcharge to a felony and outside the statute of limitations only by tying it to an alleged federal crime. And what was that federal crime? Failing to report a hush money payment to a porn star as a campaign contribution. There would be a stronger case for using and paying hush money and using campaign funds to do it, then that was a federal campaign finance law violation. Then not actually counting it.

63:46So so many counts. That's a politicized prosecution against anybody else they wouldn't have brought it. Documents case. A 49 page indictment read it twice that does not once mention the presidential records act the most relevant statute that talks about what the basis is for president to keep documents or not, and instead charges him according to, I think, one of the most un American laws in US history. Passed during World War 1 to silence World War 1 dissenters, including Eugene V Debs, who Eugene V Debs, who was actually put in prison over this, I have long argued that that was a statute that should have long been over should have been rescinded that's now being used to charge a crime rather than even more precise crimes.

64:26So I tend to be very responsive, maybe to the point of frustration of being technical on these things, but I believe facts and law actually matter. I think that if Trump was the best guy for the job, I wouldn't be running in this race. If Ronald Reagan, we're alive and well today. I would not be running in this race.

64:42Got it. So you're not a fan. I wanna just go back to the

64:46Oh, wait. Wait. I have a question. I have a question about these trump scandals. Do you think that Which

64:51one of the 7?

64:52Well, I think do do you think Trump should be indicted for Donald Trump junior being paid 83 dollars a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company despite having no energy expertise.

65:03Oh, wait. That's Hunter.

65:04And his personal life being in crisis because he's a drug addict. Him getting that job 3 months after his father approved a and back to coup against the Ukrainian government. Do you think that Donald Trump junior should be investigated for that.

65:20And and David, is this is this also after, that Donald Trump then sends $200,000,000,000 of US payer money to that very country after he's elected an office. I think that's the strongest of the scandals I've heard so far.

65:33So you believe Biden is a great person.

65:37Buy them. Sorry.

65:37Well, it's just for on grifters. What do you think of Jared Kushner getting taking down 2,000,000,000 from the Saudis after he walked out of the White House?

65:46I I don't have that's not a matter that I have views on.

65:50Oh, so you don't

65:51have views on that, but you got plenty of views on

65:53oh, my gosh.

65:53Because he's not in government.

65:55He's not in government. Okay. Let's move on past Trump because you

65:58and this is a great example of why I'm in this race. Yeah. I'm telling you this. Is there something about the existence of Donald Trump?

66:04Exactly. Can't get away from criminal man that

66:06deflects our ability.

66:09Yeah. Criminal behavior. And trying to say very forward

66:12the agenda of this country, much of which was Trump's own agenda.

66:15So Vivek, in order

66:16to in

66:16order to win this candidacy. And the reason I brought up the political, publication this morning, obviously, there there was a bit of tongue in cheek on the effusiveness, but the the the key point being made was you have no chance of winning. And that you shouldn't be in the race at all. Now look. I I I'd like to I think that was

66:34the thesis of the piece.

66:35That's where coming from. Right? It's coming from the establishment voice. And I think we'd like to hear just a little bit around your political strategy What is your intention around building bridges and ties to the Republican establishment to support your candidacy here? Or does the or does the Republican establishment largely sit on the sidelines right now and wait to see who emerges with this popular movement and and who's out there.

67:03You're obviously running an incredible campaign on the road, very active, very vocal. And as everyone says, probably by far, the most articulate and most thoughtful and most intelligent of the candidates in the race today. But lacking experience, lacking connections, not part of the establishment. And as a result, cast in this negative light consistently by the, by by these sorts of writers. So what what is your strategy to win this race given the, is it not important as Trump showed in the last election cycle to have those Republican establishment ties, or are you gonna be building bridges?

67:37And then my follow-up question is if you don't win, what are you gonna do?

67:40So Yeah. So Let me, let me address the first. It's basically in the camp that I don't think it's the voters that ultimately matter, not the people who have appointed themselves in the reigning establishment or it's not even the establishment anymore. It's an outdated establishment that I don't think actually is gonna influence meaningfully the result of this election except for one respect, which is money, which I'll get back to. So so so the area where we're punching above our weight Right?

68:07Depates haven't even happened yet. And at least in the last week, I'm 3rd in most of the national polls. This is well ahead of even where we planned to be Right? We planned it to be in 3rd by November, December, ahead of the Iowa caucuses, ahead of New Hampshire, over perform expectations in both of those. Use the momentum, but then win the race.

68:25That was broadly the strategy with the debate stage as the play as the way where I would steadily work my way into that. I think we're just now on a different curve where you know, we might be in 2nd place by then and by a smaller margin than people expected. I think the debate stage is critical. The campaign strategy is actually combine the initial investment that because I've lived the American dream I was able to make, but to combine that with a true grassroots uplift. We've got close to 70,000, maybe more.

68:51I have to check the exact numbers, unique donors already. They have former, you know, vice presidents or other candidates that are you know, well on their way and struggling by some measures to get to 40,000, which is the threshold for the 1st debate. So our strategy is very much a grassroots strategy. I've done more campaign events than anybody in the Republican field. And so this is our strategy is very grassroots driven.

69:14So I'm punching above my weight in terms of events, unique donations, polling, the one area where I'm punching below weight is large scale donations. So we are not raising mass numbers of large check external funds yet into the campaign my super packs or I don't have it. I mean, whatever. They're independent expenditures. I don't there there's an entity that exists out there that's been affiliated with me has based on public reports tiny amounts of money compared to those that are supporting an all in for candidates from Tim Scott to Ron DeSantis.

69:50And that's also a reality. Right? And I think that that comes with competitive advantages and disadvantages. They're two sides of the same coin. I think I am at liberty.

69:59Total liberty. I feel totally unconstrained to pursue the strategy that David mentioned earlier, which is that I'm reacting in real time. To what I believe.

70:07Have you been surprised by the lack of clarity maybe, of the DeSantis campaign in really creating a pathway through trump. And if you are surprised

70:22Not surprised.

70:23What do you think he's doing wrong? If you had to critique it.

70:26Yeah. I'm not surprised because, you know, I know him, and I think he's a good executer. Right? I think he has been a I disagree with some other people on this. I think it's been quite an effective governor.

70:38I think that when you're talking about and Scott Walker, in the last cycle was quite an effective governor. And for the same reasons that people believed Scott Walker was gonna be the runaway nominee last time around. I think that people naturally gravitate. People think they want somebody who has done something as an effective executor. But when it comes to the US presidency, I think it's a unique role where what matters is actually having a vision for where we are going.

71:03Right? And so I'm not I don't without saying things that are interpreted as being mean about somebody else or not. I know all of these people have known them for a long time. I've shared stages with them over the course of my woke ink book tour, a nation of victim's book tour. I'm not surprised with how things are going in this race.

71:22You

71:22know, I I said we expected to be where we are in November. We're here in July. I'm not surprised that we're doing well. I understand how audiences across this country responded to my message in Wilking. I'm not surprised if they're continuing to respond well to Trump.

71:34I think there's nothing surprising about where we are in this race, right, now.

71:37And so you're not surprised because because DeSantis is a competent administrator, but that is a great job as governor, but not the bill of goods for the president? I

71:51I'm really in a point in this race from Well, I mean, look, I'm doing this, but to be honest with you, I there's a lot of truth to what you said. Yeah.

71:57Don't you

71:58think part of it, though, is that Trump has singled out DeSantis as the one candidate who he's gonna beat the hell out of. I mean I

72:05don't think so, David, actually. I'll tell you why. It's it's it's reasonable.

72:09He has not attacked you. Trump's actually said good things about you.

72:12Yeah. He's not attacked anybody else in this race sector. Yeah. Exactly. Have you

72:16spent time with Trump?

72:17I know all these guys. I know

72:18all of you spent time with him. When's the last time you talked to him?

72:21Not a serious amount of time. I've spent more time with DeSantis than I have with Trump. With Trump? Once. Yeah.

72:27When this is long before I was running for president. But, we had dinner. We had a small chat and

72:32tried to build bridges with you. We've thrown in so that state.

72:36I mean, most of us, when we intersect each other, we're speaking at the same forums, the NRA, the family leader thing that Tucker did backstage. We have interactions with all the other candidates, and I'd like to think I'm friendly with everybody. You know, I don't know how you know, I haven't talked to Ron recently, but I've talked to him more before. But I think the reality is, you know, so, Dave, what you said is is definitely true. And I'm not this to be a political analyst.

72:58Right? I'm in this to state what my beliefs are, say who I am, and people can vote for me or not. But I actually do think I I I don't think that Trump's commentary on the other candidates is having so much of an effect. I think voters, many people who are maybe initially behind the Xanus. I know many of them were people who are part of that traditional establishment.

73:16They didn't want that most of them didn't want it to have nothing to do with Trump, but decided that was the best thing. So I don't think that Trump's attacks are gonna persuade them one way or another. I think it comes down to the study of what happened in 2016. Right? Scott Walker, great governor, really respect the guy.

73:30And I like what he's doing in his post elected office life as well. But everybody has a role to play in reviving this country. And I think we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves how are we gonna make our unique contribution. I think it's gonna require governors who are effective implementers of a vision that makes their states thrive. I think governor Sanchez has done a really good job of that.

73:54I think Christy Nome has done a really good job of that. I think there are people who hopefully will continue to have an impact on our culture outside of government altogether. There's a really important role for that, Jason. I think that's my answer to your other question, which I forgot

74:08to answer,

74:09which that's what I

74:09would do.

74:10To two things that you mentioned just in passing, but I just want you to clarify your thoughts on the One is you said you would abolish the Department of Education. And I thought, I'd never heard anybody say that, really. So could you just expand on that, what you mean. And then the second, I'd love for you to talk about some of these Supreme Court decisions that have come in the last little while, specifically the abortion debate, the affirmative action debate, the rights of businesses to not service people that whose ideology they disagree with. And then sorry.

74:45The 3rd point is maybe use that last part as a jumping off point. I'd love for you to understand your position on LGBTQ, the role of the trans movement, what's happening in schools, those are the 3 kind of big chunky areas that that I think are worth talking about if you if you can just give a few minutes. Yeah.

75:03There's a lot there. I have so so so let me if I skip over something bring me back. So department of education, I think the federal government is not as a factual matter directly involved in education. I think it is a, therefore, a deadweight waste for money to cycle from the taxpayers to the federal department of education to then disperse those funds inefficiently as they do. Tilting the scales to 4 year college degrees over choices that people might have otherwise made that are better choices for them, vocational training, 1 year, 2 year programs.

75:34Using it as a cudgel, and this relates to the ladder issue you asked about, to tell local schools they don't get that money unless they're adopting what I'd certainly view as toxic racial and gender ideology based agendas. They use the money as a cudgel to do it. So I've said that that department that spends about $80,000,000,000 of taxpayer money. I'll shut it down tonight in New Hampshire. I'm laying out the anatomy of exactly how we'll shut it down.

75:58And then return that money to the states, to the people, put it in parents' pockets. Very specifically, you have to be a state that has a school choice program in order to receive that Department of Education shut down dividend. I think that if you're in such a state, I would also believe that those states need to write their teachers union, teachers contracts, in a way that stop teachers from joining teachers' units, which I think have been a destructive force on our public schools. If you're unionizing against the public, Think about who you're unionizing against, the very kids you're supposed to represent. Now we have transparency.

76:30We have choice. If you teach it in the classroom, put it online, And then there's an interesting fact in this country where I think you guys will appreciate how bizarre this fact really is. There's not only, like, a failed positive correlation. There is a negative correlation, an inverse correlation, between how much money per student a public school spends and the actual outcomes that that school achieves for its students. So in my version of school choice, my preferred version, it would not just be that parents get to get these vouchers and educational savings accounts to send their kids to some other school.

77:09That's part of the story. It's a first step. But I think any parent who moves to a school that spends less per student, which we know based on the data, is actually all of SQL a better performing school as it relates to achievement, should be able to take half the delta with them. So at 6 Chicago or Pennsylvania, spending 35, $40,000 per student, fifteen miles away of a school spending 15 to $20,000 per student. I think they should be able to take half the difference.

77:35That 10 to $15,000, half that difference of the 20,000, say $10,000 they take with them. You run the math on normal investment returns. You're talking about a quarter $1,000,000 plus graduation gift when that kid graduates from 12th grade. So you tell me which is a better use of money. It's not even close.

77:53And I think the head of the state

77:54is yes. It's a great idea. That's a great idea.

77:59Is that something that was out there quite a few times.

78:01He was actually another guy's an arbitrager who's a friend, but who shares similar instincts. And, like, I'm like a, I'm a value or I believe in It's

78:08a great idea.

78:08The great incentive. It just makes us all

78:10the sense

78:11of the world. Yeah.

78:12Yeah. Okay.

78:13Let's move past education.

78:15Yeah. I wanna talk about the specific the gay and the trans issue. Two questions. 1, do you think it's normal to be gay? And there's you have any problem with people being gay?

78:24And then No.

78:25I do not have

78:25a problem.

78:25Spaces, etcetera. No problem. So then the second Yeah.

78:28Of course.

78:28Talking about trans, I heard you on meet the press, say about trans was a mental disorder, which Yeah. You know, it wasn't the DSM 4, I guess, or whatever the latest one was. Just a couple of years ago. And now change. So maybe explain why you think differently about those 2 things.

78:451, you think it's fine to be gay, but you think it's a mental disorder in all likelihood if people want to transition?

78:52Yeah. So, you know, I wanna only leave you with a good sense of where I'm at on on these issues. Right? So I think it's at least curious that when you take the lgbtqia plus value set and and and vision for what the movement stands for. It does require you to adopt simultaneously conflicting beliefs at once.

79:16Priton, the gay rights movement was predicated on the idea, which I'm quite sympathetic to, that the sex of the person that you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born. But now with the t component of that same movement that now says your own gender is completely fluid over the course of your own life. And I think if we're not gonna observe the tension between these two observations, I think that we're purposefully having our heads stuck in the sand. I think what's happening in many cases is somebody who claims to be trans is really just gay. And Part of what we're saying is it's not okay to be gay.

79:45So to answer your first question, part of what the trans movement is effectively telling people is that it's not okay to be gay. You know, who else says that Iran? Actually, Iran is a nation that if you are gay, they had forced you to undergo gender conversion surgery. It's not that different than what's baked into the ideological premise of much of the trans movement. Here.

80:02And so I I just want you to come from the back. There's a lot of people in the GOP will offer surface level stuff here. I mean, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Gender dysphoria is what I've said is a mental health disorder. I've been very precise.

80:17Let's take the intersex case out of it. Klein Felter Syndrome. Jacobs Syndrome. Right? Kline Feltzer is Xxy.

80:24Jacob Syndrome is X y y. These are ultra rare. They exist. They're real. For the purpose of our discussion, though it's under the broad trans umbrella, I'm gonna take that out of it because that's not a mental health disorder.

80:37That's a genetic reality. But now let's go back to the conflicting supposition. There's no gay gene yet the sex of the person you're attracted to, we accept for civil rights purposes as heart, rider the day you're born. Yet there are X And Y chromosomes and yet your own biological sex slash gender is now completely fluid over the course of your life. There's attention there.

80:58And I think that tension is best explained by the way we've treated it for most of our national history, for most of our medical history. All the way through actually, I think the DSM 5, not just the 4 as a mental health condition. And I think the compassionate thing to do is not to affirm, especially when it's a kid, to affirm a kid's computer. I think the compassionate thing to do is to recognize that there's some other psychological struggle manifesting itself in this form. And it is cruel to affirm that kid's confusion.

81:27I I met 2 young boys. So we

81:29did surgery or hormone therapy.

81:32Hormone therapy. Exactly.

81:33I mean, you would limit

81:34that to when you're an adult adult eighteen years old.

81:36Yes.

81:37And you would you're in New Hampshire, literally, like, where I am right now.

81:40Yeah.

81:41Who are in their twenties that badly regret undergoing double mastectomy is one of them underwent a hysterectomy. Both of them underwent

81:49So

81:49even if the parents and doctors agreed with it, you would say they can't make that decision for the child?

81:54Just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of eighteen in most it it what we say is a a decision that you are likely to regret many, in many cases, at least, likely to regret later in life we let you make that decision as an adult. And I do believe we live in a free society. As an adult, you're free to identify how you want a free to wear what you want, But kids aren't the same as adults and even among adults, there's a difference between living your life freely and expecting that everybody else changes their linguistic and traditional understandings in sports and traditional understandings in locker rooms and traditional understandings and language. That's a difference. And so I don't believe in a tyranny of the majority, but I don't believe in a tyranny of the minority

82:43Do you think this topic is over indexed on right now and is a really important topic for its presidency, or do you think this is like some sort of culture wars thing that this actually isn't that important to the national discussion, should be held privately by currents.

82:55I appreciate you asking that Jason's I think I feel this way about a lot of the topics, right, from

83:01if I were to ask a video, we'll put a video on that. I think, like, why is this the most important topic? Yeah.

83:06This is this is interesting. Because it's a symptom is interesting only to the extent that it is a symptom of the deeper void, of the deeper vacuum, And I think the mental health epidemic is not limited to gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, drug usage, fentanyl, suicide, these let's have the conversation more holistically. These are symptoms of the deeper void. And all I care about is running through these topics with somebody holding the line of defense by stopping us to get to a discussion about that void, say, no. This is exactly what that kid is, and you're wrong to think about it as a mental health disorder.

83:41I think it's unproductive because it stops us from getting you the truth.

83:44Over the years, it's been the case that young people tend to orient to being counter cultural or anti establishment. Generally speaking, it's part of the psychological seasoning of a human to be against the parents, against the system, and ultimately to create independence for oneself. And that's typically counter to what what came before it. And it has manifested in every generation with this point of view that there is some psychological torment that has taken over the young people that is causing them to act out from beat nicks, to hippies, to punks, to goth, to emo, and every generation had some cultural representation, is your point of view that gendered dysphoria is the current manifestation of that pattern of behavior that we've seen over the generations?

84:35That's not exactly my view. My view is that it's not limited to young people. I think there's something unique going on in America right now. It's true of all of us. There's some sense, some of this comes from self reflection, but I think it's it's true for most of us.

84:53That we're hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves, yet we cannot even answer what it needs to be an American or what it needs to believe in god or what god is. And we have come up with new false idol that substitute for that. So you wanna talk about generational history? I mean, you know, Moses by the time he comes down from the mountain top, you got the golden calf. Israelites are lost in the desert.

85:18They say they wanna go back and be ruled by the pharaoh. Yeah. I think the the historical trend I'm talking about is a slightly different one and maybe has a longer arc to it. Than the one you're talking about. But I but at my, diagnosis is not specific to young people.

85:31It's specific to where we are in a national history. When, like, a bunch of blind bats in a cave, right, has a bat figure out where it is. It sends out echo location signals, sonar signals, that come back and say, this is where I am. I think we human beings are wired to do the same thing, and and the pillars, the walls, fixed points of truth, from family to faith, to patriotism, to hard work, to individual pride, the things that used to ground us when those things disappear We're now sending out these signals and then nothing's coming back. And so we're making up new pillars instead.

86:05And maybe one of them is a trans flag, and maybe one of them is a Ukraine flag. And maybe one of them is a climate cult, and maybe one of them is a racial intersectional hierarchy, and maybe one of them is fentanyl. But I think that that's I I I do have a deep point of agreement with you and Jason that I think we sometimes get too hung up both sides. Maybe even Republicans a lot so right now. On the symptoms without getting to a deeper discussion of the deeper cancer, the deeper void that we need to fill.

86:36And that's what I'm interested

86:37Chamath brought up the Roe V Wade, issue. I was wondering what do you think is the most productive path forward for the country in terms of of reasonable right to choose versus right to life argument because you personally feel that abortion should be banned. Am I correct?

86:56I am personally pro life. You're pro life.

86:58So you don't believe

86:59in your life.

86:59To be able to get an abortion under any circumstances, or do you have rape inside of you

87:03as someone as someone who's running for US president responding to the question about the Supreme Court case. Yeah. Is that Roe versus Wade was correct to be overturned on constitutional grounds.

87:11Okay. Fine.

87:12It was It was made up for

87:13sure. Argument. How do your person?

87:14It is, but but it leads also to the path for moving forward, which is that I think the federal government should stay out of it. And so there's a discussion amongst Republicans, I think I'm the only Republican candidate in this field who has come out and said that I would not support a federal abortion ban of any kind. On principled ground because to me, I am grounded in constitutional principles, and I think there's no legal basis for the federal government to legislate here. The 10th Amendment says that part of the American experiments, we have diversity across states. And I think this is a state's issue.

87:48Now at the level of the states, I'm personally a believer that onboard life is live. I think that the pro life movement needs to we need to walk the walk. When it comes to being pro life, what do I mean? I'm pro contraception. I'm pro adoption.

88:04I'm pro childcare. I'm pro more sexual responsibility for men, for god's sake, we live in an era of genetic tests. We can actually put more responsibility on men. This doesn't have to be and should not be a men's versus women's rights issue. And nobody on our side is really talking about these issues.

88:19I I do because I don't think this has to be as divisive as we made it out to be. But I can almost prove to you that more people in this country share my instincts than are willing to admit it. There's a case. You know, Clarence Thomas brought it up of Pregnant woman walking down the street. She's assaulted.

88:37The unborn child dies as a result. I haven't met, and I have many liberal friends. Most most of my friends grown up have been, you know, have different political persuasions than I have now. I haven't been a single one of my liberal friends or otherwise who says that that criminal does not deserve liability for that death. And so I I just think more

88:59of the states. If one state wants to ban it, they can ban it if another state wants to have a 24 week rule. They could have a 24 week rule. That's that's you.

89:08Unlike other Republican candidates, I will not be signing a federal abortion ban on constitutional disputes. I don't mean open to persuasion if some legal scholar convinces me that the US constitution gives the federal government the authority to sign that in the law, so be it, but I have not been so convinced. And I think many other principled constitutionalists haven't been convinced even though the other Republican field has all best in every other candidate in this race has said they would sign 1.

89:31What is your thought on just the the gross tonnage of dollars that we spend on the military? And defense and espionage and, you know, internal, external security. And then when it goes bump up against civil liberties, just give us your kind of framing on how you think about those sets of issues around national level security, but where and personal personal privacy.

89:55I'm a I I for more of my life than not identified as a libertarian than a conservative, and I still have all of those libertarian instincts in my core. It's just that I care about more issues than libertarians care about because libertarians was all about the relationship between the state and the individual, and I actually do care about culture and the fabric of the society outside of government too. It's a long way of saying I'm deeply skeptical of the national security establishment. I was deeply skeptical of the Iraq war at the time I think I am today in retrospect. I was deeply skeptical that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay should have been denied constitutional due process rights when that's exactly what enshrines the justice system that we otherwise believe in.

90:36I would pardon Julian Assad I would pardon Edward Snowden. I've committed to a long list of pardons of people who have taken steps to exposed corruption that we otherwise would not have seen in this country. And I think part of the reason why is there's a weird corporate analogy here. We're talking about companies and finding their purpose in Coinbase. I think there's a version of that going on in the US military.

91:00I think the US military has lost its sense of purpose, actually. And so my view is the purpose of the US military is to secure Americans on American soil to make sure that we, when necessary win wars and more importantly, deter wars. And I think part of what you see in the loss of, you know, people complain about wokeness and the military, etcetera, these are against symptoms of a deeper loss of purpose of an institution, not that much different than a company. But my view is I'm not in the same way with the immigration debate. I'm I I don't engage in this what's the cap, you know, higher or lower?

91:33It's the wrong debate merit purpose. What are we achieving? I feel the same way about the military. It's not a higher lower discussion. It's a what are we doing discussion?

91:41And I think there is a legitimate case for the US to have and continue to have the strongest military in the world. But I think that deputizing that military to fight wars that are really deflection tactics often for our own ailments at home. I think it has been a mistake. We're at risk of making those same mistakes again right now, most permanently in Ukraine, unless we learn from those past mistakes.

92:05I wanna ask you about the division within the Republican party on this, specifically Ukraine. So at turning point, which you just spoke at, and I think you did very well in the straw poll there, you had Tucker interviewing

92:16Mike Pence asking him why should we prioritize

92:16Ukraine over our own cities that are increasingly broken down. You've got homeless people living on the streets. You've got this price of drug addiction. You've got ramp in crime. You've got schools that are terrible.

92:34And yet Ukraine seems to be this fixation of the unit party in Washington, and and Pence gave this totally dunderheaded answer or something like that's not my concern. Wench I guess his apologized said afterwards that, well, no, he was talking about something else. He wasn't saying that American cities weren't his concern. Which even if you grant that was the case means that he wasn't really paying attention to Tucker's question. But then you also had Tim Scott say something.

93:05It was definitely better phrase than what Pence said, but basically said that he thought it was a good idea for us to be giving all this money to Ukraine because degrading Russia's military was a good deal for the United States, you know, by which degrade, I assume, means killing Russian boys. I knew you've heard Lindsey Graham say this sort of thing. Then I had this Republican pollster named Patrick Ruffini, who I didn't really know before, but he's apparently Republican Polster. He's slaava Ukrainian as bio. I'm not quite sure what's motivating that, but he tweeted it at me saying that Ukraine is like number 17 on a list of GOP voter priorities despite efforts by the likes of Carlson and Sachs to make it a thing.

93:50Notice how it almost never gets brought on the trail unless Tucker is there. My response to him was to post a quote from Mitch McConnell saying that Ukraine is the number one priority of the GOP. And I'm like, you're making my point for me. I know that it's number 17 in the eyes of voters in our party in terms of what they think we should be focused on. But it's number 1 in the minds of

94:15Mitch McConnell and Pence

94:15and Scott and Nikki Haley, and, you know, Lindsey Graham, these people are obsessed with this idea. So I guess, you know, a, what is your reaction to that? B, How are we gonna change this? I mean, it just seems like there's something fundamentally broken in our party when

94:34the base understands that we should not be focused on Ukraine focused

94:38on our own borders, our own cities, as opposed to some faraway lands, borders, and cities. And then also in that same turning point poll, 95% of the attendees at that conference were opposed to US involvement in Ukraine. It was the single highest number for anything they pulled on. I think Trump got like an 85% approval. Opposition to Ukraine got 95%.

95:04So clearly there is a fundamental divide between what the establishment or elite of the party thinks and what the base thinks

95:11Yep.

95:11What is your explanation for that and how does that ever get solved?

95:15I mean, how are we gonna fix it? I'm gonna give you a faster answer, David. It has to do with why we're doing what we're doing. I wanna be elected the next president. I think I will be, and I think reflecting the will of the people in the way this country is governed is part of how our system is actually supposed to work both in the primary and in the general election.

95:34And so, you know, I know we're sitting in different seats, but I sitting in the seat that I am now precisely because I think somebody needs to actually step up and fix it when most of the Republican party has lock stock and barrel for all their their criticisms of Biden, on the most important foreign policy matter of right now, have lock stock and barrel adopted what is effectively, the Biden position, which is mysterious, and it's interesting. Now I think that it has become a a sort of a a fixation not because these candidates I think have arrived at this viewpoint independently through reasoning their way to it but just understanding that that's what they are supposed to say in the tradition of a party that was historically based on projecting hard power through deterring the USSR, not recognizing the fact that people sometimes seem to forget this fact. The USSR doesn't exist anymore. And NATO, which was created to contain the USSR has now expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did before which is itself a symptom of a Republican party that still sometimes

96:43reading it's like a knee jerk. It's like a knee jerk. It's like a knee jerk militarism.

96:46It's like it's it's a muscle memory.

96:48What about the influence of the military industrial complex? Do you think somehow, like, it's related to donors? Like, what do you mean? Yeah.

96:53So I'm I'm I'm a I'm very open minded to and and I'm getting the signal that so we we're going to this event where we're meeting with parents of kids who who have died as a consequence of fentanyl, and I don't want to keep them waiting longer than, than we need to. But If you guys are down to do this again, there's been a lot

97:16of fun.

97:16No. It's been great. We can give you 90 minutes. It's fantastic.

97:19We can

97:19really just answer David's last. What what was your last question?

97:22Wait. No. No. I have a better question. Just to add last question.

97:25Number 1, are you vaccinated against COVID? Number 2, what do you think of Fauci? And what could we have done differently? I mean, you're a man of science. So I'm just curious what you think about the whole thing.

97:37Great question. So I am vaccinated against COVID. Had I had the facts that I do now as a young, thankfully, healthy male, I would not have actually chosen to get vaccinated. I think that Anthony Fauci betrays science by substituting the scientific method, which depends on free speech and open debate and inquiry with authority, which is actually fundamentally anti scientific at its core. And I think one of our main lessons to have learned from the pandemic, and I hope we do learn it in the future is that it is precisely in times of emergency that free speech becomes most important.

98:14I think if we had been able to debate in the open, the merits of lockdowns for children, we would not have locked down our schools. Think we had been able to debate the open what the origin of the pandemic was. Aladdin Wuhan appears to be the overwhelming. It's it's the truth. I mean, we we we know that that's exactly the most likely to correct explanation.

98:32It's in the name.

98:33It it really is, but but but it was a name you couldn't have said at at the at the end. You couldn't call it. You couldn't name the unspeakable city for which the virus originated. So I think one of the top lessons is free speech and open debate, the path. The truth runs through that.

98:45Science depends on the free exchange of ideas. That's who we are, and the beauty is our country is founded on that very principle. It's in the first amendment for a reason.

98:54In fact, we'll we'll let

98:55you get to

98:56your event, but I just wanna say thank you for being incredibly dynamic and open and honest. It's really great to have guys like you

99:07to talk to. It's

99:08I appreciate it, guys. If if you

99:09guys wanna do it again, I had a lot of fun too.

99:11So we just wanna add.

99:12I just gotta rock

99:13them off.

99:13Thanks for not being like, political politician speak and being so honest and taking on every single topic we asked you about. Every single topic.

99:21That's really

99:21standard. I think you did a great job.

99:23I appreciate it, guys. Appreciate you. Take care, guys.

99:25Thanks, Vivek.

99:26We didn't talk about this. Did you guys mention where you are, or is that off well, that's

99:31Based on the number of buttons here, I can tell you I'm in,

99:34I can't I can't do this

99:36myself because, you know, could I ever tell you the story about 2 years ago when I was in Italy and the stalkers.

99:42You fucking told everybody you were there. You oh, I didn't. Everybody were all there.

99:46I was

99:47at Chamount's beach club, I took a picture of the ocean.

99:50It was ridiculous.

99:51I took a picture of the ocean, and in the corner of one of the towels was the logo of Chamount's beach club, And some guys found that logo on the towel, did a Google image reverse shirt search, found the beach club that Chamount's part of and then showed up at the beach club, well, I was drinking $150 bottles of Persecco on Chamount's account to pitch me their start up. So I don't wanna say exactly where I am, but I'm in Italy. Where are you guys?

100:18Me and Saks are at shouting distance from each other. We're about to see each other after this.

100:21I never tell you guys a story about last summer when I was in Italy. Chamath and I were walking down the streets of Milan.

100:29Yeah. Did

100:29you ever tell story? No.

100:30No. He didn't tell the story. Okay.

100:32This was, like, the last time that Jake Hall and Friedberg were having a major feud, and it looked like the pod was maybe about to break up. So, I mean, for real.

100:40Breakup number 1?

100:41Yeah. This is breakup number 1. We're maybe breaking more 2 or 3. I don't know. And you guys are definitely feuding.

100:47So we're walking down the street and all of a sudden somebody stops us and he this is like a fan from, I don't know, like,

100:55Are you a Tremaka from the audience? Australia.

100:57Australia. He was he was Australian.

100:59He's from Australia. Remember this. He's Australian. He was from Australia visiting Milan.

101:03Hi, Mike. Are you Tremaka?

101:04And he's us in the street and takes a photo and the whole thing. And as we're walking away, Shamas says we better make this thing work because I like being famous You guys better not screw this up because I like being famous.

101:24Or being right. Who knows who knows? Hey. For people who didn't get the joke last week, I love Friedberg. I'm trying to develop a deep meaningful relationship with Free Hello, Frebert.

101:33What do we think of Vivek? Let's get back to the, you know, brass tax here. Rf K versus Vivek. We've now had 2 of the top 5 candidates and Chris Christie has agreed to come on. The mooch put me in touch.

101:43I have to be honest with you, RFK and Key are more similar than they are different. On a lot of topics, You know, the contours, I think, are are different on a few very specific ones, obviously. But It's like these outsider candidates, I think, have like a

102:00they're just a they're a

102:01breath of fresh air because I think and Vivek said it right. The he and RfK. They have nothing to lose so they just tell you what they think. They don't have to memorize anything because what they think is what they think. And so you just consistently get this stream of consciousness And the more and more I hear from these kinds of candidates, the more and more they make sense and juxtaposed against the establishment candidates, it's very stark.

102:25Would you consider

102:26Trump, Saks, you know, as being the sort of precursor to these 2 nontraditional candidates? So now we have 3 nontraditional candidates in the mix Trump, Vivek, and RFK, and they all are shoot from the hip. Here's what I honestly think. And maybe more moderate and pragmatic in terms of their positions?

102:45Well, sure. I mean, Trump ran for office for president without having ever run for office before. And so, yeah,

102:52it's democrat.

102:53He's a democrat who ran as a Republican too, I mean.

102:55And he moved the Republican party in a bunch of ways that were totally new. Trump's lasting impact, I think, is gonna be on the Republican party. I mean, he moved the Republican party from an open borders, completely free trade, sort of party

103:11War mongering.

103:12War mongering knee jerk

103:13militarism, neocon,

103:13to being anti

103:13war, wanting

103:14to have strong borders, being at least skeptical at trade, at least with China, if not other countries. And I think he hasn't wanted to mess with entitlements. He understands that's a 3rd rail and very much against like the Paul Ryan wanting to touch those at least in a non bipartisan way. I think that for the Republicans to take on those issues by themselves, I think he understands as suicidal.

103:40Who's votes when you start taking on entitlements?

103:43And I think that what Trump also did, which is really interesting, is that it cascaded a wave of self reflection in a lot of other western countries. So Italy's more right. As a result, the UK went right. Spain looks like it's about to tip right. The Dutch actually just lost their election because of national border issues.

104:02Or, you know, that they dissolve their government. So

104:06there's like a real clear nationalism Would you say?

104:10It's more of the nationalist inflection as opposed to the globalist. I mean

104:15That's right.

104:15The Overton window, I think, changed quite a bit with Trump in the mix. Because now you actually had this much more America 1st nationalist orientation as the alternative to this sort of globalist whether it's neoliberalism or neo conservatism, those two things have more in common with each other than they do with this more nationalist populist approach.

104:36Right.

104:37Friedberg, what did

104:38you think?

104:38What was your take? I mean, RFK obviously concerns you a bit because of the I don't wanna use the conspiracy word, but let's just call it maybe, you know, he's open minded to he's open minded to different theories. So where do you stand on RFK in relation to Vivek today? Creeper?

104:56Obviously, I I think he's crafted his narrative in a way that can be broadly appealing. And as as I mentioned in our tech stream, I think, also appeals to the Trump base in a way. It's a very smart campaign. I think that the the strategy, the the positioning, everything feels like it's hitting the mood of the moment. And, you know,

105:19I I I would argue, like, you could

105:23probably call any election cycle, any campaign, 1 of 2 things. It's a promise of what can I do for you? Or how can I go and destroy the system that did bad for you? And from r f k. And by the way, the higher the magnitude of that statement, the more appealing the candidate is, I think Vivek is doing a great job.

105:47Hitting a a reasonably high magnitude on the, you know, the system has failed us. We need to go and fix these problems kind of moment And and it and it it's it's really good, but it's I think it's really good for, call it, the audience that's engaged in the intellectual debate around it. Not necessarily. For Vivek? At this point, I need to spend a little more time with DeSantis, to be honest and understand where where he sits I I obviously have deep concerns about Biden.

106:17What would your concerns on Biden be his cognitive issues or the out of control spending.

106:22I I don't think he's running the country, and I think that those who are there's absolutely no accountability and discipline in what's going on with as I mentioned. Vivek did not appeal to me in resolving that concern either, by the way. He thinks we're gonna grow our way out of it, which is part of the premise of modern monetary theory, which I think it's a flood.

106:41So you still don't have a candidate in terms of controlling spending. Yeah.

106:45Yeah. Look, I I think the problem with Vivek is he's not gonna be appealing to the masses because he's so smart and so articulate that it doesn't have the the the trump basics. The trump basics are insult the bad guy. Call yourself the best thing in the world. Make jokes.

107:03And, you know, might be over that. I think people might be over it. I don't know. Well, a good chunk of things. Are people over it?

107:10The bullying, the name calling, the the bombastic trump nature. Do you think people are over it? You think that's gonna burn people out this election cycle?

107:18Well, not if you look at the polls, they're

107:21not on the Republican party.

107:22I think in in the general, they might. I mean, look, I think right now, it looks like we're on track to have a Biden trump rematch. And right now, Biden probably looks like he's gonna win barring a recession happening or the Ukrainian side collapsing in in the war. Or the January 6th indictment.

107:40I mean, I mean, that indictment dropping sounds pretty, you know, like another bombshell. So think there's any chances you

107:46can catch up with them?

107:47No. No. No. No.

107:49Okay. So what's your favorite moment, you know, from this discussion? Was was there was there a stand out moment for Sachs. We thought

107:55Sorry. I wanna hear someone answer the question. Chamath, would you vote for him? Are you still in RF case camp? Are you kind of still open minded about everything?

108:04I wasn't sure what his campaign was about, and and I come away pretty meaningfully intrigued about what he had to say. I think that there are some fundamental issues that Rf k has me on that I wanted Vivek to own, and he he flirted with them, but he didn't quite own them.

108:27Such as.

108:29I think that the just like the deconstruction of the military industrial complex was is so definitive you know, f k. And it was it was almost quite there with Vivek, but not quite there. So I wish you would I wish you would own that. I think that the deconstruction of the Department of Education I need to think more about, but some of his ideas are frankly more compelling the pro life pro choice thing, I think, is very complicated. And I think you can go to this place of saying, let the states choose, but I I'm just not sure whether that's the right ultimate solution.

109:05Mhmm.

109:06And, you know, proposing some federal legislation

109:09would you wanna end up on that? You would wanna end up like Europe, like a certain number of weeks federally and then maybe some local laws around abortion and right to choose?

109:16I think that There is just, like, you you have to fundamentally if if you believe in personal Friedberg think having an arbitrary definition of what a person is and then what that freedom means to me is already the slippery slope. And so I have a real issue with that, but I also agree with him about the actual decay of American society. You know, the lack of religious institutions and the lack of Chamath. And purpose. Those two things above all others, I think, are tearing this country apart.

109:49Because people substitute something for it was his point. Right?

109:53It's leaving people incredibly empty. And so I just think that you have to have some of these fundamental protections.

110:00Sex, what were your favorite moments during this or or or moments where you think he stood out or he shine, moments where you maybe have some fundamental disagreement.

110:08Well, okay. There's a few issues. Let me, respond to. So in terms of the vague versus RK Junior, I think we're Kennedy really shines is like Shamasa, when he talks about the military industrial complex, and I would say more generally RFK has this critique about regulatory capture, which he describes as the marriage of state power and corporate greed. And included in that is what's happened to the FDA, a big pharma, and and the whole government's response on COVID.

110:39And then he wraps in censorship as being the way that this

110:45RF case thoughts are very

110:46This marriage of corporate greed and state power the way it defends itself that and that's unacceptable. So I think, like, on those issues, I don't think anybody speaks as deeply as RFK Junior. Now when it comes to the list, if if you were to, like, list out all the issues and where Vivek is and where I am, it's a pretty close match. I mean, I'm not align with him completely on every issue, but I think it would be pretty close. And I do really appreciate where he's coming from on Ukraine.

111:14He's not afraid to just come right out and say the truth, which is this is not an important enough American interest to be spending 100 of 1,000,000,000 a year on. I wish we had more time

111:24What an amazing moment to

111:25actually delve into that. And particularly, I wanted him to explain what was happening in the party because there is a divide within the party. Between these, like, oxygenarian and sort of more establishment Republicans like McConnell, like Scott, like Pence,

111:39The war machine.

111:40The war machine. And then people like him

111:43And trump.

111:43And and you put trump in this category too who are resisting that. So I would have liked to hear more about that.

111:49Did you think of the moment where I kinda pinned him? And I said, would you you so you wouldn't defend Ukraine, but you would defend Taiwan. And he said, yes. For the next 5 years I would defend Taiwan because of the semiconductor. Sure.

112:01I mean, that I've never heard a candidate say something that pragmatic.

112:05Here's my interpretation. Well,

112:06I described it as cutthroat.

112:08Well, it is pragmatic. What he's basically saying is that America right now is dependent on these chips, these very sophisticated high-tech chips. Somebody conduct your chips. And and not just like the low end ones, the high end chips

112:19that are

112:19made in Taiwan. And that is a vital American interest. And until we alleviate ourselves or wean ourselves off, dependency by making them ourselves or securing some other supply, then we need Taiwan. And so, therefore, we cannot allow it to fall into Chinese hands. I'm saying a lot more than he did, but it's kind of an an argument like saying chips is the new oil.

112:36And as long as this is a critical input into our economy, we have to secure our supply. I can understand

112:46that. Being Bush never said, we're going to the Middle East for oil. He said we're going there for democracy. So that's what I thought was, like, the very candid

112:53moment there, Zach. Yeah. But what what always happens

112:53is that when America has a vital interest, you

112:59always cloak it in liberal rhetoric about rights and freedom and democracy and that kind of thing.

113:05But what's frequently

113:05driving the decision is

113:05American interests

113:09underneath. He's being explicit about it. What he's basically saying is as long as America's got this depent yeah. As long as America's got this dependency, and we need Taiwan, we better defend it and protect it from falling into Chinese hands. But once we don't have that interest, then we don't.

113:25I can understand that position.

113:26It

113:26was wild. I mean, refreshing for me. I thought it actually was a highlight of the discussion.

113:31There's a couple of other things he touched on. So we talked about the other candidates I think he's being not

113:38disingenuous, but maybe a little bit

113:38unfair to DeSantis.

113:38I think there's

113:38no question that DeSantis alone has been singled out by trump and not just trump, but trump surrogates to be relentlessly bashed on. And this happens on social media. It happens in speeches and talks, all this kind of stuff. So they are going after DeSantis, and then that has an effect.

113:58For a reason, he's number 2. Right.

114:00And Trump clearly has pegged him as the biggest threat, and that's why they're targeting him. So that does have an impact. The advantage that someone like Vivek has in a way is that he doesn't have a record as an elected official And so he can just go out there and speak freely on these issues. And like I described on the show with him, he goes out there and inserts himself in the conversation. When it

114:24He mixes

114:24it up.

114:25Issue is going viral, he jumps in. And I think it's it's very important that he's doing it quickly because if you're a candidate and you wait till the next day,

114:34then and then the

114:35new cycle moves on, you missed it. Right?

114:37So if you can

114:39He's timing it perfectly, so he hits the sweet spot. There's only one way to do it, which is not to have surrogates, not to have a process. Like, because we know this with our portfolio

114:49companies. Yeah.

114:50Well,

114:50it's the same thing with our portfolio companies. Right? They run it through, like, all these PR people and, like, a PR agent see, and it gets reviewed. And by the time by the time it goes through his 10th draft is too late. It doesn't go viral.

115:02So he's running a social media campaign, and it's very effective. Now I think that DeSantis is running a different kind of campaign. DeSantis actually has a record. I think it's a fantastically success full record as being the most successful governor in the country running the most successful state in the country. So he's out there with this idea that, listen, let's make America, Florida.

115:24Yes. So that's what he's campaigning on. And so he is going out there with kind of a predetermined agenda and a brainstorm stump speech, a playbook. And it's different than someone like Vivek who's letting the issues come to him, And then he's responding as the issues come up.

115:41In other words, Vivek is

115:43Vivek is living off the land. And and that is All

115:45of that is free media for him.

115:47It's free. It's earned media. And Trump did the same thing in 2016. Right? Every day, he would figure out, like, what are the issues today?

115:55And he'd go, I'm speaking about them. And you know, you go all the way back to Pat Buchanan working for Richard Nixon back in, I think this is a seventy 2 election or something like that where every morning Buchanan and there's other speech writers that open the newspaper and find an issue or 2, and they would go to Nixon and say, here's your talking point. You know? And so they would find an issue that back in those days was going viral and have the candidate speak to it. So they were nimble.

116:22And I think that's what they were doing. And if you wanna go viral in the social media era, that's what you have to do. You have to lean into the issues that people are talking about that day. And and this is the thing is that I think Vivek knows how to do that. Trump clearly knows how to do it.

116:36RFP knows how to do it.

116:38RFK definitely knows how to do it.

116:40RFK

116:40is a good party every day.

116:42They're trending topic native, and that's the difference. Yes. Friedberg, did you have highlight or a great moment or 2 from Vivek, things that made you go, I really appreciate this person or candidate during the discussion.

116:53What I appreciated was that we didn't see him, like, fall down on any topics. And I I think that his ability to go through the full discourse with us for however long we went 90 minutes or

117:08something. Yeah.

117:09Hour 40 says a lot, you know, RFK junior did the same, but again, it's a stark juxtaposition from what I've had seen Biden do in terms of interview formats. He he's at a his interviews are edited. They're short. And, to

117:23be able yeah.

117:24To be able to have this breadth also have the data and be able to pull it from the top of his head and not have speaking notes, we gave him no questions ahead of time. There was no agenda.

117:31Of course not.

117:32And I I think it's great to see a candidate who can engage in that level of discourse, which was important and impressive for me. I just hope it's broadly appealing this, by the way, I just wanna repeat something I've said many times in the past. There are two things I hate about politics. Besides the relationship to a growing government. The first is that people pick politics as a career And I think that that's ridiculous.

117:59I think people in the democracy should have a private life, and then they should rotate into being civil servants and go and serve

118:07in public office. Fathers intended.

118:09That's right. And so they were, you know, had they had their jobs and their businesses and everything, and they would rotate in, and then they would out a government. The fact that people can be a politician for 30 years is ridiculous, and I think it leads to all of the disincentives that have driven to a large government What I appreciate about Vivek and RfK Junior is that they come at this from and even Trump, they come at this from private life. And, they take their turn in government and and rotate out. But that's why I I did not get him to answer the question around what would he do besides being president if it didn't work out and what's he gonna do next?

118:42The second thing I I don't like about politics.

118:43By the way, just on that point, there's a lot of speculation about that within Republican circles. This is something I could we just didn't have time to get

118:51Let me just finish it. Yeah.

118:52Let me just finish it and then we'll talk about it. So sorry. Yeah. Let let's come back to it, but the second thing is just money in politics, and I hate that you can raise money and get votes. Just the general concept that you buy ad space and that you get people to change their vote, I think is the most No.

119:07I love that. Yeah. I think it's so fucked up. But what I like about what we just did is we actually had a conversation with the candidate and people can just listen to the conversation. That's the old town square that Saks talks about that doesn't exist anymore because everything is chopped up and then sold as media bytes on paid screens.

119:25Whereas what we just did is a free conversation with a guy that anyone can tune in and listen to and learn about him. And that's what I found most compelling is is we had a real conversation instead of watching a thirty second ad bite.

119:35What's the rumor, Saksipoo?

119:37Yes. So sorry. Go ahead, Saks.

119:38The knock on the vague is that he's basically a trump surrogate. And, I mean, trump has said good things about him. Trump likes him to be out there clearly. I mean, Trump has all but said that. So the idea is that Vivek is out there.

119:51And initially, he's doing this less now, but early on, he was just launching Broadside after Broadside on DeSantis. And so the idea is that he's out there as a trump surrogate, attacking the people Trump wants him to attack on the whole saying good things about Trump. And that he'll be rewarded for that somehow.

120:08A cabinet position or vice president.

120:10Position. People even now saying VP because he's doing so well, or maybe he gets an endorsement for a senate run or something like that. So if we had more time, I would ask them about this, like, service idea, but I'm sure you would have said no, but

120:23That's why I asked. And specifically, how much time have you spent with Trump? And when's the last time you talked

120:27to him?

120:27And he was honest about that. I've only spent, like, I had dinner with him before I was even a candidate.

120:31So I'm

120:31wondering if there's some clandestine agreement with them through some back channel for him to

120:37do that

120:37if he's doing

120:37it on

120:38his own accord.

120:39I think well, clearly his answer would be no. I'm not a surrogate on my own candidate, and he probably is. I mean, so my guess on it is that you can go out there and act like a surrogate knowing that Trump's gonna like it, and then you'll be rewarded. You don't need to have an explicit deal to understand that that would work out for you in that way. Corresponds to Friedberg point.

121:00So, yeah, Frebert, you said you don't like the money aspect of politics, and you don't like the sort of careerist aspect of of politics I think what we're seeing with candidates like Vivek or RFP Junior or Trump is candidates who are bucking those 2 trends. I mean, clearly, these are not lifelong politicians. They have maybe had a lifelong interest in politics, but they're not like lifelong office holders or tenants for office. And then on the money side, what they're all showing is something that we all know from our portfolio companies, which is that earned media is so much more valuable than paid

121:35media. Totally.

121:36Paid media costs a fortune, and it doesn't really work. No one really wants to look at advertising. They block it out. So you spend a lot of money on advertising and it never really gets you much compared to earned media, which is you figure out a way to insert yourself in the news cycle by appealing to people on issues that are being talked about, you figure out how to kinda hit your wagon to, like you said, Jason, a trending topic. And that's what all three of these candidates have done, and it works so well.

122:01And I think that sort of the career politicians who are proceeding in this very kind of playbook way, which is We're gonna go out. We're gonna raise the most money from donors. Then we're gonna buy the most TV time. And when we're gonna be on message, I mean, we're only gonna talk about the things we wanna talk about. The problem is that doesn't work anymore because earned media is so much more valuable than paid media.

122:22Well, look, I hope that's a trend, and I hope it flushes the money out of the system. And that candidates win based on the merit of the conversation that they have in earned media instead of buying more ad space on paid media and that it changes the game. And I hope that the law's changed too. And I also hope that the law's changed with respect to career politicians and term limits and all that sort of stuff because this whole career system and money in this thing is what's driving so

122:45much. It's one

122:45of the contributors to inflation and government spending and government accountability and all the nonsense that goes on. And I I would love to see a change.

122:52I think the earned media is so valuable now that I think candidates who try to stay on their message on their agenda, it's gonna cost too much money. It's basically an unsustainable path. I would urge all the Republican candidates including DeSantis just to get out there. By the way, DeSantis is a tremendously smart man. I mean, he went to Yeah.

123:12Where is he? He's not on all in.

123:14He's a lawyer.

123:15Where is he? Yeah.

123:16To be fair, I haven't asked him yet. But Why? Yeah.

123:19What's going

123:20on? Chris Christie's coming on.

123:21I'm asking him to do something. We had little difficulties. Remember that didn't go over too well?

123:26Just for the record, the mooch who loves fact that a unit of time has been named after him from usags.

123:34Oh, yeah.

123:34Any 11 day period is known as a mooch. And so

123:37if you have an 11 day hey.

123:39It's a Mucci. It's a Mucci. Yeah.

123:41He wants to hear

123:42about that.

123:43But he, he literally introduced me to governor Chris Christie over text. So I'm in touch with Chris Christie is coming on the pod. So that's 3 of the top 6 or 5 in terms of polling.

123:53I'll ask the Santa to come on.

123:54We'll never get Biden because he'll fall asleep don't think Biden can do 45 minutes without a cap.

123:59Don't insult the guy that might show up. Let's see if we can get him. It I think he may, you know, he may He could get Biden? I don't know. Let's let's not I can ask.

124:08Yeah. I can ask.

124:09I mean, let's try and get Biden. I mean, it would be great

124:11if I have an

124:11hour with him and he can have a real conversation with us. I'd be thrilled be really interesting.

124:17Well, Bion just did Friedberg Sakaria. It was an interview that was pretty much localized to talking about foreign policy in Ukraine.

124:25He and he also did that other woman on MSNBC. They're all canned. He gets the questions ahead of

124:31time. Yeah.

124:31And then they edit it for him. So he gets post production, which, you know, then you could shape the thing however you want and shame on the media for doing that, honestly, to the left media, You're not helping the democracy here in the United States by, you know, putting the fix in for Biden. If he can't do the interview, if he can't handle an hour, at least, Then could he be the president? I mean, let's be honest here.

124:53Well, they'll get the ratings.

124:55Just in terms of debrief, was there anything we want to say about the the whole banking crisis? I appreciate that he tried to find common ground with us.

125:03Yeah. I agree. I nearly made a joke, but

125:05you were

125:05now gonna do a fundraiser for him after that.

125:08No. I mean, listen. He said it himself, I'm gonna respond to everything one out of a hundred times. I may change my position based on new information, which by the way, we do here every week. Every week, we all listen to each other.

125:20We have vibrant debate, and sometimes we change our positions. You know? Like, I think that's what any reasonable person does. Go ahead, sir.

125:26Yeah. I mean, look, I don't think we were that far apart from him on this whole banking crisis. I mean, I think we all agree that there should be no bailout for the shareholders and the bond holders of these banks that are poorly managed and go under. And I think that Vivek did endorse a proposal, which we I think Jason and I had both come up with, which was to have a higher level of FDIC insurance

125:52No problem.

125:52Business banking. I think it was, like, 10,000,000 or something like that.

125:55And and you just include that in the cost of the insurance.

125:59Yeah. Exactly. It's just paid by the premiums of these banks for banking and occurrence. And Vivek had this point about, you know, if Roku is stupid enough to keep 500,000,000 in a checking account and the bank goes under, maybe they should lose it. It's like, okay.

126:10My goal is not save Roku if they're stupid enough to manage somebody that horrible.

126:14To save the local school.

126:16Really, the only difference is that and I think Friedberg, you hit the nail on the head. Is when you have a bank run underway, you have to stop it before the panic can spread.

126:25Contagion is real.

126:27The Contagion was absolutely real. And I don't think people outside Lincoln Valley could understand that because they weren't in those Friday morning emergency phone calls and board meetings that were happening. So We know it was it it had barely moved so far beyond SVB. At that point, we had founders moving their money out of 1st Republic and all these other

126:47Thursday and Friday.

126:47On Thursday and Friedberg, and they want it to go to the top 4 banks. And if it wasn't a sub, it wasn't good enough.

126:52If it wasn't called Silicon Valley Bank, would have been a totally different thing. And if it hadn't been us raising the alarm, let's be self aware. People hate Silicon Valley tech. There's this contingent of people who hate Silicon Valley tech and rich people And they were just gleeful. You know, there's 20% of the sort of far left communist, socialist, you know, idiots who mids Elizabeth Warrens, whoever's who are just like, oh, great.

127:16Silicon Valley is getting kicked in the nuts. They were thrilled to see

127:19it. Right.

127:20That was that was Short and Freud. Right? We gotta wrap Hey.

127:23Pull up these pictures real quick. This is your 5 second science corner. Look. These are photos taken on Mars yesterday. How cool

127:28is this? That's all I had to say. Those that's exactly, the chances of taking a photo on Mars are 3,721,200,000,000 tons. If you can see,

127:37this looks just like this. I'm taking on those are from Uranus

127:40Yeah. Those are from Mars yesterday.

127:42Very similar to the photos I took on my images last night. I took my iPhone 14 and I squatted down and took I took some wild berries into a mirror, and I said, oh, look at what's going on down there. These these boulders are very similar to the tingle berries.

127:571 What

127:57are you talking about? My balls and a tink? I'm not it's my tink.

128:01If you look at those 2 vothers, this is similar to my huge balls.

128:06You guys can't put the film.

128:10I love you guys. Don't you cool

128:12that there's these cameras on Mars.

128:13It is incredible.

128:15Yes. I think it's incredible.

128:16And how cool are those photos?

128:18I feel like we should have

128:192 soaks this week since there were so many good topics for us to talk about, but let's talk about any of

128:24the the topics. But, yeah, that was good, good meeting with

128:26you guys.

128:27Let me guys, hey, if you guys are, around, you know, and

128:31anyone want to get a class of wine and some pasta,

128:34some wine later, maybe next week or something. Who knows? Maybe we all get together in person. Have a glass of wine. I see you soon.

128:40I love you guys. For the architect himself, the dictator, the sultan of science, Obviously, after today's performance, I am still the world's greatest moderator. This has been another episode of The all in podcast, we're still together. The band is still together producing hot tracks. We'll see you next week, coming at you, 2 for Tuesday, tears fears.

129:07Everybody wants to rule the world including Vivek. Next time, Chuh, Chris Christie, coming at you 100 of Z Boart and zoo. We'll see you tomorrow.

129:15You guys.

129:15Bye bye.

129:16I love

129:16you guys, please.

129:18We'll let your winter ride.

129:21Rainman, David Sacker.

129:26We open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

129:35On airliners line. Besty's our car. It's my dog's

129:42you.

129:50Have one big huge, George, because they're always useless. It's like it's like sexual tension, but they just need to release that mountain.

129:59What? Where are your feet?

130:01What? Where did you get murky's armor?