2022 Bestie Awards Live from Twitter HQ

The episode is the end-of-2022 awards show, where the hosts hand out prizes for winners, losers and other categories. It opens with holiday greetings and talk of a week spent together, including dinners at a Lake Tahoe trip. One speaker jokes that a dinner vote has made Sacks director of the All In Summit, and Sacks says his first act is to veto it.

The chatter that follows is light: one speaker credits Jay Cal with pre-booking an eight-person table for several nights running, and the others tease him about it. Someone says they paid for the nachos and that Chamath brought $6000 worth of wine. These are the hosts' jokes and asides, not claims the episode backs up.

Sacks is teased for working over the holiday from the Twitter HQ, with jabs at its expensive office design and an in-house coffee shop called The Perch. The host then clarifies that this is the awards show, not the predictions show, which comes the following week, and cues the music for the first, political, category.

The hosts first replay what they predicted a year earlier. Two of them had named Ron DeSantis, and a short squabble follows over who said it first. The host moderating calls those predictions good.

Friedberg had predicted Putin would be a winner in 2022, which the host says fell flat. Friedberg explains that he expected Putin to gain influence, whether viewed positively or negatively, and notes he is at the center of the saga now. Chamath's prediction had been Xi Jinping.

Sacks, asked first, picks DeSantis, saying the "red wave" fizzled elsewhere but crashed over Florida. He cites a win by about 20 points, four new GOP House seats matching the GOP majority, polls showing him ahead of Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination, fundraising records and Florida as the fastest growing state. These are his figures, offered without sources in the episode.

Chamath picks Xi Jinping, arguing that no one else holds comparable power: complete authoritarian control over roughly 1.2 billion people, 20% of world GDP and a large share of world debt, including US dollar debt. Friedberg's surprise pick is Zelensky, whom he credits with becoming a global hero by framing Putin as the common enemy of the West and of democracy, citing his White House visit and address to Congress.

One speaker says it is hard to go against DeSantis but doubts he can beat Trump in the primaries. Another asks what DeSantis actually won, since he was re-elected to an office he already held. The reply is that his 2018 margin was under 1% and this one was almost 20%, and that he is now the front-runner for the 2024 nomination.

A speaker raises the risk that he is peaking too soon and says that in the last 7 or 8 nomination cycles the early popularity leader did not win. Another counters that if the contest narrows to DeSantis versus Trump, he has a better shot than against a crowded field, and speculates that Trump might not run if he fears losing. All of this is the hosts' reading of the polls, not established fact.

Zelensky's pick is then challenged: the speaker lists damage in Ukraine, including two thirds of Kyiv without power, 80% without water, 30% of power stations destroyed, about 8,000,000 displaced and over 100,000 killed, all as the speaker's own figures. Friedberg replies that he is not praising Zelensky's leadership, only the political goodwill he has accumulated. The exchange ends with a quip that in war nobody wins, though it beats being taken over by Putin.

The hosts recall last year's predictions for biggest political loser: the progressive left (Chamath), Nancy Pelosi (Sacks), US influence globally (Friedberg), and the extremes of both Biden and Trump (the moderator). Chamath, going first, repeats his progressive left pick.

He argues that the progressive left failed as much as the MAGA right, that quasi-socialist politics was soundly refuted even in staunchly Democratic places, and that this marginalizes them, which he calls healthy. Another speaker adds Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as names barely heard this year.

Chamath's pick outside the United States is the European Union. He argues that its green, ESG and "woke" liberal policies shaped national security and energy decisions that it had to reverse in order to stay alive, which he calls a fragile political construct. That is his opinion, not something the episode tests.

Sacks notes he got Pelosi right last year because she lost the gavel. His loser pick is a "blunder": on January 27th, he says, Blinken stated that NATO's door is open and must remain open, which in his telling closed off a diplomatic off-ramp and could have helped avoid the war. This is his view of events, offered without supporting evidence.

Friedberg calls it a tie between Jerome Powell and Liz Cruss, who held office for only 45 days as prime minister of the United Kingdom, with policies he says caused chaos. He says Powell became politicized, criticized from both sides: first for failing to raise rates soon enough, then for how fast he is raising them.

The moderator picks the GOP, saying the red wave turned into a trickle, that Trump is back and may well win the primary, and that Republicans were hurt on Roe v Wade and marriage equality, with women and LGBT voters having long memories. He jokes that Sacks has no rebuttal and moves to the next category.

One speaker says women were the real political losers of 2022 because fundamental rights were "stripped away from 50% of the population", and that the Court could have left the issue alone. A second speaker answers that sending the question to the states is not the whole story, since even red states such as Kentucky and Kansas rejected the later push to outlaw abortion.

The first speaker takes that as evidence that the Supreme Court is out of touch and opened a "can of worms" in 50 states, calling the whole episode a political gambit rather than a societal wish. The host closes by repeating that women and the LGBT community have long memories and that moderates will not forget how the GOP treated them. These are the speakers' opinions, not findings.

Because predictions were not made last year for this category, the host just recaps the earlier answers: Kamala Harris being sidelined, Joe Manchin, Glenn Youngkin winning, and the January 6th crowd getting into the Capitol. Sacks goes first.

Sacks admits he got this one wrong. He says he expected voters to focus on fundamentals, with three quarters of the country seeing the wrong track and a recession, yet Republicans gained only nine House seats and lost one in the Senate. He points to candidate quality and the "election denial" narrative and hopes the party talks about the future. Friedberg also picks the failure of the red wave, saying consensus expected a flip given inflation and public disdain for the COVID response.

Chamath names the "absolute toothlessness" of MAGA and Donald Trump, saying that being near Trump was like a scarlet letter and that he sidelines candidates into a fringe following. This is his assessment.

The host's own top surprise is that Trump remains viable despite the documents matter, his cases, the tax issues and January 6th. He is unsure DeSantis could beat Trump in a debate and calls this frightening for himself and for Sacks.

One speaker replies that Trump is viable mainly in the minds of "MAGA dead enders", the mainstream media and the Biden administration, all of whom, he says, want to keep him in the news. He calls it a codependent relationship, which the host dismisses by saying the Republican Party should take ownership of Trump and tell him he has no business running. These are conflicting opinions with no evidence offered.