Trump's Big Week: Middle East Trip, China Deal, Pharma EO, "Big, Beautiful Bill" with Ben Shapiro

The episode opens by naming its guest, Ben Shapiro, and laying out the agenda: Trump's trip to the Middle East, the executive order on pharma benefits, a ban on mock meat in Montana, and a critique of the tax bill backed by Republicans. The intro says Friedberg is "really upset" and "drops a dyspraxion on the tax bill," which signals that the tax bill gets a critical take later in the episode.

Before the main topics, the hosts joke about Daily Mail stories that never seem to end and about the site's "right rail" of extra links. One participant calls the outlet "the methamphetamine of clicks," and another says that going to the right rail makes you "a true degenerate." One speaker then recalls a Daily Mail paparazzi photo taken while Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were visiting in Florida. The headline described them as "Jared Ivanka, unnamed driver and small boy," because the speaker and the speaker's son were sitting in the front of the golf cart.

After a plug for the All In Summit in Los Angeles, which the show says is in its fourth year, the hosts say the guest has a hard stop in an hour and forty minutes. They then hold a mock-formal segment: a host who introduces himself as Jason Kalakanis reads a "formal apology" to poker player Phil Hellmuth over jokes from a previous episode about his relationship with actor Timothée Chalamet.

The statement parodies a corrections notice. It describes the earlier remarks as "a flagrant misrepresentation of the facts," says that Hellmuth "is acquainted with many celebrities," and lists names including Matt Damon, Steve Martin, Charles Barkley, Bill Clinton, Khloe Kardashian, Mr. Beast, Tiger Woods, Drake and Jay Z. The tone then shifts to sincerity. One host calls Phil a best friend of long standing and acknowledges that the ribbing "really hurt his feelings." Others apologize for specific jokes, including calling him a "panda eating eating bamboo," and credit him with bringing important relationships to the group.

The conversation turns to the World Series of Poker. One speaker says Hellmuth is not playing the main event and criticizes how the WSOP sets up its tournaments. The speaker then announces that the group will host an event during F1 in Las Vegas in late November, where they will launch their own poker tournaments and "ridiculous cash games."

When the guest is asked about gambling, they joke about having an addiction and say they have never rolled dice. A host then invites them to the Vegas event on November 22, citing a craps superstition about a "virgin shooter." The host claims to have seen it pay off "20 times" and tells a story about a father-in-law who "touched the dice, broke the casino" on a trip the host took with the kids while the host's wife was pregnant. Another host teases the inviter about leaving a pregnant wife at home.

The main discussion begins with a summary of the trip. According to the host's account, Trump secured a large Saudi investment, stated as "Six Hundred Billion," including "A Hundred And Forty Billion for a defense partnership," and MBS said he wants to raise it to a trillion. CEOs on the trip included Elon Musk, Uber's Dara, Amazon's Andy Jassy, Alex Karp and Jensen, as well as David Sacks, whom the show calls its "fourth bestie."

The summary also lists a $200 billion deal with Qatar, which includes $96 billion for Boeing to send "a 60 planes" with an option of 50 more, and the lifting of sanctions on Syria, which the host calls "little controversial." In a speech at a Saudi-US investment forum in Riyadh, Trump is described as rejecting "twenty years of American interventions and forever wars" and praising a "new generation of leaders," including MBS. The host frames the question as whether this was "the best version" of Trump and says he seemed comfortable with leaders in this region.

The first response agrees that Trump plainly likes MBS, the emir of Qatar and the leadership in the UAE. It contrasts this with the Obama and Biden approach. In this account, Biden would "say the word democracy," distance himself from Saudi Arabia, criticize MBS, and pursue a deal with Iran at the same time, which angered the Saudis. Trump, by contrast, is described as being in "deal making mode," with an approach summed up by the phrase from his speech:

commerce above chaos.

The speaker sees strategic advantages, chiefly drawing Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar away from China through deeper business ties. They single out Qatar for caution, saying it has "divided priorities" on terrorism. They present Qatar's own defense, that keeping relations with terrorist groups lets the West talk to them when needed, and then list the figures behind their doubts: $2 billion given to Hamas over several years, $6.3 billion in funding to American universities from a country with 2.6 million citizens (smaller than Connecticut), and lobbying spending of "something like two thirds" of what China spends.

The speaker still calls the inflow of dollars and the AI cooperation David Sacks has worked on "really, really good." Their warning is that the US should attach its own conditions, because Qatar clearly attaches conditions on its side. They apply the same logic to Syria. Lifting sanctions may be defensible, and Turkey's Erdogan would welcome it, but the speaker describes Syria's leader, al-Jolani (rendered in the transcript as "al Jahlani"), as having moved through al-Qaeda, ISIS and "HDS" and as working "for the Turks." Any relief, they argue, should depend on him actually removing terrorists from his country.

Asked directly whether Qatar's ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are acceptable, the speaker says the US has more leverage if it demands those ties be cut. They cite Qatar paying about $8 billion to host a US airbase while restricting how the US can use it, and note that the base used to be in Saudi Arabia. Their counterfactual is that after October 7, the Biden administration should have told Qatar the base would go unless all hostages were released and Hamas leaders went into exile, which, the speaker argues, could have avoided the war. They point to the release of an American hostage during Trump's trip, arranged at Qatar's behest, as proof of Qatar's close relationship with Hamas.

The speaker says they are much more enthusiastic about Trump's ties to Saudi Arabia and the UAE than about his ties to Qatar. They note that in 2017 Saudi Arabia and the UAE nearly went to war with Qatar, and that Trump sided with Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the time. They sum up their position this way:

Let let let's just say trust but verify, I think, would be a much better strategy than just trust.

The host turns to the business side. They mention the controversy over a "$400,000,000" plane offered to Trump and say they are unsure how relevant it is or whether he accepted it personally. They also argue that Saudi Arabia has changed more on human rights in the last three or four years than in the previous twenty or so, citing reforms such as women's visible role in business, a point the host attributes to David Sacks.

The reply starts with what the speaker calls cleanup. Their company, rendered in the transcript as "Grok," announced an AI inference deal of almost $2 billion ("1.7, I think") to build large data centers in Saudi Arabia. The speaker says it is the only inference company in the world with a US export license to do this, and describes it as a company they and founder-CEO Jonathan Ross started ten years ago. Other announcements they list: Boeing (a figure stated here as "a hundred and $60,000,000,000," which differs from the $96 billion given earlier), Saudi approval of Starlink for maritime and aircraft use, and robotaxis coming to Saudi Arabia.

On the plane, the speaker says it is a gift handled between the US Department of Defense and Qatar's defense ministry. If it is transferred, it would be scanned and refitted to military-grade specifications for whoever is president at the time. The speaker argues Qatar has given planes to the leaders of Iraq, Turkey and, "I believe," Yemen, which casts the gift as a regional custom of respect and relationship-building rather than graft. They conclude that it should not be overjudged: "I don't think it's a particularly big deal." This defense rests on the speaker's account of precedent and of the DOD process. The discussion offers no other evidence for it.

The same speaker then makes the larger argument. America has been the global hegemon since World War II but "took our eye off the ball." Over twenty years, and especially the last seventeen, China eroded US influence through Belt and Road, using its balance sheet to invest in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The speaker estimates China invested about $200 billion in Saudi Arabia and Qatar over fifteen years, which gave it both hard and soft power.