Thomas Laffont: Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!

The episode opens with banter about an off-the-record dinner to which three of the hosts were invited by people from another top podcast. During that dinner, the room went around naming favorite podcasts, and the panel reports, with obvious pleasure, that the answer kept coming back to the All-In podcast. One participant adds that a spouse refuses to believe this claim whenever it is repeated, and another jokes about turning down other shows' invitations to save a "world podcast premiere" for All-In, dismissing other outlets as "JV."

The formal introduction follows. The show is billed as "the number one business, finance, technology, science podcast in the world," a place that will "call balls and strikes" with "zero censorship." The intro is mixed with fashion shout-outs to Armani and Luisa Beckeria and with ribbing about David Friedberg, described as "the barista of bitterness today." The special guest is Thomas Lafont, introduced as cofounder of what the transcript renders as "Coto Management," with "a 50 Billy under management," and with seven earlier years at Creative Artists Agency, where he signed Chris Evans. The panel also notes that he was one of the highest-rated speakers at the All-In Summit.

The bitterness has a backstory, which the panel airs on air. Jason had complained all week in the group chat about influenza A and sent pictures of himself getting IVs. Judging there was "a 50% chance he misses the show," one participant asked Friedberg to prepare to moderate. Jason then woke up after a dose of Tamiflu and decided to moderate himself, learning of the backup plan only about an hour before recording. The panel treats this as a breach of etiquette toward Friedberg's preparation, and Jason pushes back with a boast.

I feel 80% of a normal J Cow, which is a 110% of any other moderator.

The segment closes with a jab at Andrew Ross Sorkin, rendered as "genuflecting at Davos," and a mock impression of Lex Fridman introducing the show before the hosts turn to Washington: "We tore DC apart."

The first substantive question is whether the guest-side perspective watched the events. One participant says they saw the livestream, got a debrief from Sacks the previous night, and drew a political conclusion from the executive orders in particular: a democracy of America's scale deciding in real time to change course is, in this view, why the country has been great "for, you know, 250 plus years."

Democracy is self correct.

The contrast drawn is that "dictatorships double down." The panel does not test or develop this claim. It is offered as a takeaway from watching, not as an argument backed by evidence.

Most of the segment is a photo walk-through. It starts with outfits: a green paisley jacket by tailor Luca Rubinacci that is hard to see on camera, and a Brioni tuxedo shirt that one participant calls the most popular shirt of the weekend while admitting "There's 200 versions of it." At the crypto ball, described as Sacks' event, one host wore a white tuxedo for the first night, and Sacks wore a crypto-themed tux compared to the opening of The Matrix. Several participants say they were shocked by the size of the crowd: "It was huge."

The photos identify people by name. They include Groq's president (rendered as "Sandeep Madra"), Cloud Kitchens cofounder Diego Berdakin, and an after-party poker game with Travis Kalanick (rendered as "Travis Kline"), described as "the founder of Uber next to the 3rd investor in Uber." There are also scenes at Peter Thiel's house and a dinner with Lex Fridman, Julius Genachowski ("former chairman of the FCC"), and Brad Gerstner.

Security dominates one anecdote. After that dinner, streets were barricaded and the temperature was "10 degrees Fahrenheit." After walking about half a mile, the group found "no way out of this downtown area." A companion named Vinny ran back to the restaurant, then reappeared and rode off on a scooter. The scene is compared to being "in a military zone."

The photo tour also covers incoming officials. At Zuckerberg's party, one host met Brendan Carr, "the incoming chairman of the FCC," in a picture said to be taken right after his confirmation. The same host met Jared Isaacman, "who is now gonna run NASA," identified as founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. Another participant adds that Isaacman did "The first civilian spacewalk."

Carr gets the most policy-relevant praise. One participant, who says they have hosted Carr on their own show, credits him with fighting for Starlink over "wasting 5, 10, $20,000 per home to install broadband," and with doing so under Biden, which the speaker characterizes with the words "crazy corruption and grift." This is a partisan characterization offered without supporting detail on the program.

Other encounters are personal. One is a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson and his wife, which came about because they had sat beside a participant's father-in-law at a G7 dinner in Italy. Another is with Bill Pulte, "nominated to run FHFA," which, as explained on air, "will be in control of the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." A participant describes Pulte as a co-investor with them in MrBeast.

Other moments from the tour: a host ordering "the $95 Dover Sole"; walking into the Capitol for the inauguration with Bobby Kennedy and a figure rendered as "Cali means," with the slogan "Make America healthy again"; a nominee rendered in the transcript as "Chelsea Gabbard," who attended the hosts' party and said she was "a huge fan of the pod"; a YouTube party with Sundar and Neil from YouTube, who "have been very good to us"; golfer Bryson DeChambeau; and the podcast crew at the Free Press party.

Asked for a big takeaway, one panelist argues that close coordination between private industry and the public sector existed in the past but became "unfashionable and uncool, particularly under democrats." What the weekend showed, in this account, was "a very broad based embrace of business people." The panelist attributes this to the president's understanding that America must be "firing on all cylinders" economically.

The evidence offered is who attended. The panelist cites CEOs and founders from Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon and Tesla at the inauguration, and international figures rendered as "Arnott" and Mukesh Ambani. The panelist also argues that the guest list showed no exclusions: the president did not leave out Zuckerberg "because of his past issues," and another participant adds Sam Altman as a notable name who was not excluded. The conclusion drawn is that America will "turn a totally new page" and will not "ostracize people" or "play favorites."

this is like team America kinda thing, and it was a projection of tremendous power to the rest of the world.

The panelist ends by endorsing the model outright: government should work "hand in hand with private industry to basically set the pace for the rest of the world." The argument rests on the optics of attendance. No one on the panel offers concrete policy outcomes or counterarguments about the risks of close business-government ties.

A second takeaway focuses on Scott Bessent, the new treasury secretary. Asked about a green energy race with China, Bessent reframed the question, according to the participant's account. The participant praises the reframing as "incredibly well" done.

we're not in a green energy race with China. We're in an energy race with China.

As relayed on the show, Bessent supported the point by noting that China is adding 100 coal plants and adding nuclear. Another participant adds a "137 gigawatt hydro facility," called "Unbelievable." These figures come from the panel's recollection and the participants' own remarks. They are not sourced further on air. The participant ties the exchange to the preceding point about "reframing the right issues" and predicts more of this framing "over the next coming year."

Asked for a takeaway from the inauguration, one participant first described being inspired by seeing the country's entrepreneurial engine and its government working together. The main observation, though, was a disappointment: the speaker came away believing the Doge cost-cutting effort will meet far more resistance than people expect.

I feel like Doge and cost cutting is gonna be a lot harder to realize than folks assume.

The reasoning was about incentives. According to the speaker, nearly everyone they met who works in government or is entering it expressed either disdain for Doge or concern that it conflicts with what politicians need to do to get reelected, which is to deliver more for their constituents. Cutting programs would amount to cutting their own jobs.

They're not gonna vote themselves out of a job, which is effectively what they would do if they cut programs.

The concrete example came from Brooke Rollins' confirmation hearing for agriculture secretary. The speaker said that Mitch O'Connell (as the name appears in the transcript) used his turn to point out that he had secured $60,000,000 in the last farm bill for an agriculture research lab at the University of Kentucky, that construction had not started after 4 years, and to ask what she would do about it. The speaker described a similar exchange with a senator from Minnesota without going into it, and said the hosts had discussed the same dynamic with Ted Cruz, whom the participants praised in passing.

In this account, every such conversation comes back to the same questions: what can be won for constituents, how to get more jobs and more money. Because that incentive is what gets people elected, the speaker did not expect it to change. They had hoped for a moment that prioritized cost cutting, deficit reduction and debt reduction, and instead saw "no stop in the train." The speaker called the takeaway "a little bit bitter," said they hoped to be wrong, and pointed to an upcoming Ray Dalio book that, they said, speaks directly to the spending challenge the United States now faces. They described the election as a reprieve that, for them, was "a little bit bittersweet."