Trudeau invokes emergency powers, Bitcoin vs. government, Tiger Global's new strategy & more

The episode opens with the hosts ribbing Sacks through an extended basketball metaphor, comparing him to a ball-hogging "iso player" like Carmelo Anthony and joking about who passes versus who shoots. One host makes a plea to actually have a dialogue this week, asking real questions of each other rather than each delivering a monologue and moving on.

The banter continues with each host claiming a basketball alter ego, from Shaq and Kobe to Derek Fisher, Bob Cousy and Gary Payton, before the show's intro music plays and the host introduces the usual cast with their running nicknames. This is comic setup, not substance.

The moderator sets up the main story: Justin Trudeau invoked an emergency order to freeze bank accounts linked to the Canadian trucker protests. On Monday Trudeau invoked a law requiring Canadian financial institutions to examine customer records and act against people involved with or aiding the protests. The host reads Trudeau's tweet calling the blockades and occupations not peaceful protest but a threat to jobs and communities that cannot continue.

He adds that a right-leaning Canadian outlet, The Counter Signal, reported 34 crypto wallets were also targeted, that the law grants extraordinary powers such as banning public assembly in certain places, and that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association planned a court challenge. He notes Sacks had written a piece on financial deplatforming for Bari Weiss's Common Sense about a year earlier, and gives Sacks 90 seconds.

Sacks says that last summer he wrote for Bari Weiss's Substack that financial deplatforming would be the next wave of online censorship, and now it has happened. What he could not have predicted, he says, is that it would occur in mild-mannered Canada and be directed by the government itself rather than a consortium of private actors.

He argues Trudeau went beyond using the act to arrest truckers and break up the protest: banks, financial institutions and even crypto wallets were directed to freeze the accounts not only of truckers but of anyone who contributed $25 or more through two crowdfunding sites. He says thousands of ordinary Canadians who did nothing more than donate to an anti-government protest now risk financial ruin with frozen accounts. This is his characterization.

Sacks questions what end justifies these means, noting Omicron was on its way out and that at the same time Ford, who runs Ontario, was saying COVID mandates would be over. He asks why Trudeau is doing this at the end of COVID. A host calls time at 15 seconds.

A host challenges Sacks with an analogy: if people were donating online to the criminals Sacks has railed against in San Francisco, would it be appropriate for the government to block those donations to criminal activity? Sacks replies that the implication is that the truckers are funding something comparable, which they are not, calling it a largely peaceful protest that is merely very annoying.

The host presses that the truckers are breaking the law by blocking streets, distinguishing that from a permitted, lawful protest. Sacks grants it is civil disobedience, not a permitted protest, but insists it is peaceful because there has been no violence. The host counters that they are still breaking the law.

Another host poses a hypothetical to Sacks and Friedberg: if truckers shut down the Bay Bridge, the 280 and the 101, blocking family members, businesses and emergency vehicles, would he want the trucks towed? Sacks answers that the Ambassador Bridge, the vital US-Canada commerce chokepoint, had already been cleared by Monday when Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, and that Trudeau then invoked the financial measures on Tuesday.

Pushed again on whether he would support towing if roads and bridges are blocked, Sacks says yes, if they are breaking the law by shutting all three lanes rather than one. The exchange establishes that Sacks accepts enforcement against lawbreaking while objecting to the emergency financial measures.

A host zooms out to compare protests: BLM protests that damaged private property and burned cars, the Capitol protest that involved trespassing into federal buildings, and now protests blocking vital trade routes and emergency access. His view is that anyone breaking the law should be stopped, anyone wanting peaceful protest should make their point, and if the law is the law there should be a universal standard, including stopping money that aids lawbreaking.

Chamath interjects that the host is conflating important things. Aiding and abetting criminals is already illegal, with RICO statutes available to pursue those who support criminal behavior financially, and a whole body of federal, state and local law to handle protests. The real question, he says, is why invoke emergency powers at the tail end of a pandemic against what was effectively nonviolent protest.

As a Canadian, Chamath gives the history: the Emergencies Act and its predecessor had been invoked three times before, for World War I, World War II and the FLQ crisis, a domestic terrorist organization in Quebec fighting for a separate homeland. Those were the prior instances of a sitting prime minister using such sweeping powers, done because the normal body of law, the constitution and the charter of rights had been exhausted.

Chamath argues this case is none of those: annoying, commerce-stopping, nonviolent protest is not on the order of the world wars or the FLQ crisis, so he asks why invoke what he calls a get-out-of-jail-free card with no checks and balances. He frames the key question as whether the normal governing law was exhausted, and if not, why this example is acceptable, invoking counterfactuals: if Trump had done this during BLM, or Biden now, the others would be up in arms.

Sacks adds that the Emergencies Act Trudeau invoked requires something like espionage against the country or serious violence or its threat, conditions he says were simply not met. On top of that, he objects to going after people who contributed as little as $25 to truckers who are not making money and living under harsh conditions.

He argues freezing the accounts of small working-class donors creates a chilling effect, in effect a caste of untouchables no one will want to associate, transact with or donate to, since dealing with designated people could get your own bank account frozen.

A host predicts it will backfire and blow up in Trudeau's face, calling it the worst decision-making by a major political leader in a long time, going after a group in the waning days of a pandemic for no clear point. He then asks Chamath why the police did not simply break up the protests, so that invoking the emergency was unnecessary.

Chamath says the police did in some cases and did not in others, with likely sympathizers among them as well as detractors, which he calls the nature of a protest. A host double-checks whether he means some police were sympathetic to the protest.

Chamath argues the clear pattern is that Trudeau first called the protesters racists and misogynists, then said they held unacceptable views, and then, like a totalitarian dictator, invoked the emergency measures to do what he wanted. In Chamath's telling, Trudeau painted himself into a political corner and then gave himself absolute power for a period.

The real question, Chamath says, is why this should be allowed in a democratic country against people who, as far as he can tell, committed no violence, and where the normal body of law was not yet exhausted, since the protesters emptied the Ambassador Bridge the moment they were asked. The hosts riff that this is simply what Canadians do when asked politely.