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DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias Podcast Episode Description
(0:00) The Besties welcome Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias
(1:54) Why Antonio is helping out and what it’s like working with DOGE
(4:56) DOGE’s latest findings: illegal immigration, social security, and more
(27:59) Was Biden’s open border policy a Dem strategy to expand their voter base?
(39:55) Tariffs: Liberation Day chaos, reactions, strategy
(55:26) Impact, consequences, and risks for the Trump Administration
(1:13:50) How the US can thrive in a high-tariff world
(1:31:33) Future US political landscape if the tariff strategy fails
(1:42:27) Chamath recaps his best-performing asset of 2025 + wrap
Follow Antonio:
https://x.com/AntonioGracias
Follow Ben:
https://x.com/benshapiro
Follow the besties:
https://x.com/chamath
https://x.com/Jason
https://x.com/DavidSacks
https://x.com/friedberg
Follow on X:
https://x.com/theallinpod
Follow on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod
Intro Music Credit:
https://rb.gy/tppkzl
https://x.com/yung_spielburg
Intro Video Credit:
https://x.com/TheZachEffect
Referenced in the show:
https://x.com/AntonioGracias/status/1906877800511893670
https://polymarket.com/event/magnificent-7-shrinks-below-30-of-sp-500-in-2025?tid=1743434648860
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1907553323387072774
https://x.com/enriqueabeyta/status/1907796286763409439
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1907622848149037509
https://x.com/litcapital/status/1907813630227173534
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/asml-euv-machine-lithography-chips-967954d0
https://www.hoover.org/publications/goodfellows
https://www.ft.com/content/bcb1d331-5d8e-4cac-811e-eac7d9448486
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DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias Podcast Episode Top Keywords
DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias Podcast Episode Summary
In this podcast episode, the hosts, including Chamath Palihapitiya and David Freeber, engage in a discussion with notable guest Ben Shapiro, who is recognized for his own successful podcast. The conversation covers a range of topics, with a significant focus on economic policies, particularly tariffs and executive power. A clip from Rand Paul is played to prompt discussion on these issues, with Shapiro providing his insights.
The episode also delves into the importance of data integrity, as highlighted by a speaker named Saloni, who addresses criticisms from prominent figures like hedge fund manager Jim Chanos. Saloni defends the data’s validity and counters claims of cherry-picking, emphasizing the need for accurate representation in economic discussions.
Recurring themes include the strategic use of tariffs in international trade negotiations, with references to Donald Trump’s longstanding advocacy for such measures. The hosts discuss the potential impacts of these policies and the importance of being prepared for their implementation, noting that Trump’s approach to tariffs was a “known known” that should not have caught stakeholders by surprise.
Actionable insights from the episode include the necessity for clear communication and strategic planning in economic policy-making. The hosts stress the importance of being proactive and informed about potential policy changes to avoid being caught off guard.
Overall, the episode underscores the complexity of economic policies and the need for thoughtful analysis and preparation in navigating these challenges. The discussion is enriched by the diverse perspectives of the hosts and guest, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the topics at hand.
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DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:00
So you know, everything is archived by the White House right now, so everything we say is recorded. David Freeburg is a Shmoop, stop. You’re being recorded.
Speaker: 1
00:08
Good. I I will hope this is discoverable. There at Ai House. I just want you to know that. Stupid. Also, he did not pay his taxes in 2016.
Speaker: 2
00:22
Don’t you you really want me to start
Speaker: 0
00:24
with you?
Speaker: 2
00:24
You want me to start? You want me to put the archives? Okay. Here, let me put the the archives for you. Pee my pet. It’s ai gonna pee my pet. I Ai, Ai, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world with me again today. Jamav Palihapitiya, your chairman dictator, David Freeber, our sultan of science, and two guests. Obviously, Ben Shapiro, very famous for having the number two podcast in the world.
Speaker: 2
01:13
How are you, Ben?
Speaker: 3
01:15
I’m I’m doing I’m doing great and just honored to be here, you know.
Speaker: 2
01:17
Yes. More work to do. You could exceed all in in the rankings. No. We we we always judge ourselves, Ben, on three things. In the rankings, when we look at how we’re doing, what we see is Ben Shapiro, prayer from the Ai, okay? The New Testament, I don’t think you’ve got it yet. You you have the Old Testament but you haven’t gotten the new you haven’t gotten the sequel.
Speaker: 2
01:41
And then number three, murder. Also with us from the White House. Yeah. Welcome to All In where we have a live feed into the White House today. My good friend, Antonio Gracias, is here.
Speaker: 2
01:54
He, is taking I guess you’re taking, would it be safe to say, a hiatus or you’re from Tyler to do a little tour of duty, in our government working on Doge. Is is that the way to say it?
Speaker: 4
02:05
I’m still doing my day job too, man. This is this is a this is a seven day a week, sixty days an hour a day job because I’ve I’m, I’m trying to do both. I’ve got some great partners that are covering it for me, and that ai firm has been tremendous in in, in allowing me to do this.
Speaker: 4
02:17
But, ai, I’m I’m still trying to do both.
Speaker: 0
02:20
Was it public prior to this week, Antonio, that you were doing this role? Did you announce it anywhere? Or was what did you
Speaker: 2
02:26
announce it?
Speaker: 4
02:26
Or no. The The New York Ai, they wrote a story about, me going to Sai, you know, which is sai New York Times style. Not not ai, but I was I had been there. Yeah. I was out in Maryland.
Speaker: 2
02:37
Forty percent correct? Yeah. Close ai.
Speaker: 4
02:39
Close enough for hand grenades.
Speaker: 2
02:40
Close enough. I’m sure they had no agenda.
Speaker: 1
02:42
Antonio, how does it how does it work? So when you volunteered, does is it that you and Elon and Steve just kind of figure out, let’s put a senior person at every part of the administration where there’s real opportunity. Why did you end up at SSA versus someplace else?
Speaker: 4
02:58
Interesting question, Jamont. And, ai the way, it’s great to see you guys, man. Thanks for having me on. I can use your last you’re you’re you’re, ai, you’re really making me laugh. We’re really proud of
Speaker: 0
03:04
you, man.
Speaker: 2
03:05
Thank you.
Speaker: 1
03:05
We’re proud of you.
Speaker: 2
03:05
Thank you. It’s good to see you.
Speaker: 4
03:06
Thank you.
Speaker: 2
03:08
Sai looks great, by the way.
Speaker: 4
03:09
Yeah. Oh, thank you. Thank you for
Speaker: 2
03:10
having me. When do you have to return it?
Speaker: 4
03:12
The rental is due at the end of the week. Okay. So yeah. No. What happened was I had actually volunteered to go to the VA because that’s sana of, as you guys know, close to my heart. And, Elon said to me, look. Great. You can do that next, but will you go to SSA first and and see what’s going on there because it’s, you know, the biggest internal employer we have and and see what you find in fraud, waste, and abuse.
Speaker: 4
03:33
And so, of course, I said, sure. I’ll do that. And I ended up out in Woodland, Maryland with the good people at the SSA, the Social Security Administration, and that that’s where I started. That’s how that’s how all this started for me.
Speaker: 1
03:43
And so do you, Antonio, go in there with a Doge engineer as your kind of sidekick per se, or you just go there solo and you show up and like, what like, what happens day one when you walk in into the place? Like, what do you do?
Speaker: 4
03:56
So I brought with me, two great professionals, you know, John and and Peyton from, from Valor. One of them an engineer, the other one, I’d say a finance ninja. Both these guys are ninjas. And there was already a team there actually that was working with some great engineers, and one senior person, Scott Coulter, who’s from actually worked at Lone Ai, started his own fun, and then had come here as a volunteer as well.
Speaker: 4
04:15
So they were already doing some work, actually, particularly on the on the enumeration part of the part of the system. So that is the system that you have numbers, the whole cleaning of the database, the numbers, they had already started that project when I got there.
Speaker: 2
04:28
And what is the mandate as given to you, you know, as part of DOD?
Speaker: 4
04:32
Fraud, waste, and abuse. I mean, exactly what, you know, what, what Bill Clinton talked about, what Barack Obama talked about, what all presidents, but maybe president Biden talked about, going back in time. It was go figure out how to save some money, man. The system’s going bankrupt. It’s sana be bankrupt 2037.
Speaker: 4
04:46
The country overall, as you guys know and talked about many times, is on its way toward bankruptcy when you do something. And go go figure out how we can save money. Go find the fraud. And that’s what we did. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
04:56
Let’s get to it. You, spoke at a ram, I think it was on Sunday, and you pulled up a chart. Here is that chart. Maybe you could explain to the American people here what this chart shows.
Speaker: 4
05:10
Yeah. So if if I might just step back and say I got it because I think it’s important. You know, we map the the way we work, you guys know we’re very operational, Saloni. I’ve worked with all you guys various times.
Speaker: 1
05:18
Yeah.
Speaker: 4
05:18
And what we do is we map the entire system from beginning to end. So we we map the system from enumeration, sai get your number, all the way to the end, went to the offices and saw how the ops offices operate. And in that process, one of our engineers, Peyton, who I mentioned, he found, the data.
Speaker: 4
05:34
So we’re looking at all the data enumeration, how it works, you know, what’s going on with the typical stuff you’d look at, and he found this data, called enumeration beyond entry. Right? So that is the that’s and, it it had this giant ramp to it. You can see their baseline was kind of, you know, three, four hundred thousand people all the way up to 2,100,000 people, And that just jumped out at us.
Speaker: 4
05:52
And we’re like, what’s that? And so we dug into it, and that’s how this started.
Speaker: 2
05:57
And so what that’s showing is Social Security numbers that were issued to non American citizens or noncitizens. Am I correct That that’s the number we’re looking at. So these are non citizens getting security numbers. And for people who don’t know, just like a little bit of background on the social security system, we do this.
Speaker: 2
06:16
This is not abnormal for us to give social security numbers. This is part of the process that the government does. The social security number was created in 1936 for citizens to track their earnings and in the ai, we started giving them to non citizens who were authorized to work in The US so that we could collect taxes from them.
Speaker: 2
06:36
And so if you are not a citizen and you’re a green card holder, which some people in this program Ram think have been, you have to have a social security number in order to work and you pay into social security and Medicare just like US citizens, and then eventually, I think you would qualify for those over some period of time.
Speaker: 1
06:52
You can also get a Social Security number if you’re a legal immigrant into The United States on a visa. So for example, when I first came to The United States Twenty Five Years ago on a TN visa, I was able to get my Social Security number because I had a valid visa to be in The United States.
Speaker: 2
07:09
Okay. Meh. So we have Social Security numbers being given to non citizens. That is not controversial, but there’s something controversial about this chart. Antonio, tell us what that is.
Speaker: 4
07:20
So I I think if you look at the chart, you’ll see there’s it starts at, like, called 300000 or so.
Speaker: 2
07:24
This is during the COVID period. Meh.
Speaker: 4
07:27
Coming right out of it. So we but twenty one is coming right out of COVID, right? So if you go back even a couple years, nineteen, you’ll see that, it’s about four hundred thousand. Yeah, that exactly two fifty right there. So, what happened was this program was designed for something we’re talking about, you know, people that got visas. This is at numeration beyond entry, so it’s after you’re in.
Speaker: 4
07:47
There are some people in here that have h one b screen cards, etcetera, and the way we thought about this was that’s the baseline number. That’s the three to four hundred thousand a year you sai, and that should be happening. That’s, ai know, there are ram for Afghans, for example, the translators that came in after the war, right, the people who brought it, and they would be in these kinds of programs.
Speaker: 4
08:04
And so the baseline number and and by the program goes back this particular program goes back all the way to ’17, and it had a legitimate use, which was the kind of people we were talking about. People that we sana let in, like the care program I got I’ll make an example, which is the Afghans, they would be in this number.
Speaker: 4
08:18
And so what’s what jumped out at us wasn’t that this is here because it has legitimate use, It’s that it’s the growth. Why did it grow this fast and what happened? And that that’s what we dug into.
Speaker: 2
08:28
Have you figured that out yet? Is it because of, like, a COVID overhang? The the one criticism I did see of the chart that I wanted to bring up with you is, hey. People wanna see the ten years, twenty years before this. What would we see if we were to look backwards a little bit? And do you have some theories? And is the COVID overhang theory valid?
Speaker: 2
08:44
Or is this just Biden opened the border as we sai, you know, especially, like, in maybe it was that third year of his term, the the 2023 year, and this is the overhang of the 2023 surge? What are your theories?
Speaker: 4
08:55
Well, the answer is no. I can’t really know because the ram really started it it started in 2017, so they probably worked on it before that, right, a few things sai few years to put these into place. They worked at it by guesses, you know, back during the Obama administration. It actually became active in ’17.
Speaker: 4
09:10
You see a few numbers in ’18, and it starts to get a little bigger in ’19 and ’20. Right? So that that’s how we get this baseline number of 1920. That’s where we’re using that data here. So you you there isn’t I can’t go back twenty years.
Speaker: 4
09:21
It doesn’t exist. And then when we dug into it, what we found was the vast majority of the growth, was related to asylum programs and parolees. Ai had people that came in on on NTAs, this notice to appear, into the country, either at the border, at the airports, mostly at the border.
Speaker: 4
09:37
And then we dug further into the Excuse me. If we dug further into it, we found that there were this is about 5,400,000 people total. There were about 1,200,000 people that the status is marked as unknown, and about 1,200,000 people that were marked as general parole. And they should have markings of, you know, what the program is they’re under. Because if you if you claim asylum, you’re supposed to claim, like, a real fear.
Speaker: 4
09:59
I’m gonna be tortured by my country. You know, something bad is gonna happen, so Ai can’t go home. What we find here is that a legitimate program was, in the word I’ll use, abused. It the the the requirements were super opened so that, more people come through. And the example I’ll give you, you know, I have here actually the form.
Speaker: 4
10:18
There’s the form used to be, going back in time, a four page form that the officer had to fill out in the field, and the person that was claiming ai Sai sana to actually prove that they were had a really credible fear of being, you know, murdered, tortured by their government, that someone gathered them.
Speaker: 4
10:30
That’s that’s what SAWN’s for. It turned into a form, which I can’t give you, but I’m gonna show you here. You can if you zoom in on it. It has four questions. That’s it. And the four questions are super leading. I’ll just read the, you know, the like, one of the important ones here. Right?
Speaker: 4
10:44
So do you have any reason for concern about being returned to your home country or being removed from The United States? I mean, could that be more leading? Ai. What they did is they opened so they just opened the aperture on these programs dramatically, so they allowed people that were illegals at the border to come in legally.
Speaker: 4
11:02
And as we’ve dug further into it, we found this took us so you you ai know meh, Matt. Ai, I’m a very methodical, lean business process mapper, and we went all the way to the border, literally to Brownsville and Laredo to ask what happened. We couldn’t find the data on what these unknown categories were.
Speaker: 4
11:20
And it turns out that when the folks at the border, who were great ai the way, they really tried hard, and they suffered a lot in this. This is a human tragedy Sai haven’t talked about. They were giving people at times notices to appear. This is the the NTA. And what that allows you to do is come in the country, and then you’re you’re scheduled a court date, which is ai six years out.
Speaker: 4
11:43
So now you’re in the country with some quasi legal status. You’re waiting for your court date. And while you’re waiting for your court date, which could be six six years out is the average, by the way. It could be longer than that. You’re waiting for your court date. They, you could fill out an asylum application. So without even an interview, just an application ai filing a form.
Speaker: 4
11:59
Once the application’s in, you can, file another form, seven six five, to get work authorization. Once you get that, you get a seven six six, which is the authorization, and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail. No interview at all. That that’s that’s the that is the majority of the growth you’ve seen these numbers.
Speaker: 0
12:19
Is there any ID verification along the way, Antonio? Like, do we know that there are no duplications happening by validating that one individual is getting one Social Security number at any point in this process?
Speaker: 4
12:31
So it’s a great question. No. The answer is there’s no real ID verification. So you can you know, one of the things we found ai we looked at this was the the people that that some people showed IDs, some people didn’t. And one of the things
Speaker: 2
12:43
that meh really IDs, Antonio, from their home country. This would be a Venezuelan driver’s license or something?
Speaker: 4
12:48
Yeah. I mean, it could be a passport, a driver’s license, but here’s what really sort of tipped us off and disturbed us. When we looked at the the birth certificate data that was presented at the border, the number one birth date was 01/01, and it was four times more likely to be born on 01/01 than any other, day of the year.
Speaker: 4
13:04
Now we all know this is
Speaker: 2
13:05
a joke. So they just hit enter on that part of the form. Yeah. Where were they heading
Speaker: 4
13:08
external things? They also could come with nothing.
Speaker: 2
13:09
Do we take biometrics of people at the border? Do we take, like, an iris scan, fingerprints, and all that stuff?
Speaker: 4
13:14
This is one of the issues. I mean, we do have photos of of people. We found that 23% of the records looked at did not have fingerprints. And look, the the folks at the border were overwhelmed, and we’re not sure why this happened. I will tell you guys just to understand when I went down there.
Speaker: 4
13:30
Both border patrol and border protection told me they had the highest suicide rates of all time during the surge. Okay. Over seventy over seventy of these agents committed suicide in this period. It’s truly tragic because they knew what was going on.
Speaker: 3
13:44
Given the fact that that all this has happened, is the Trump administration going to try to claim the Social Security numbers back, invalidate them? What will be the proper action, or is it too late or they’re already sort of in the system and now you can’t do anything about it?
Speaker: 4
14:00
So, Ben, it’s a great question. Right? And the the the the first question was, what are they doing? I mean, you know, like, where are these people? Where are they? How are they? And we’ve gone through a whole process of mapping this. So we mapped it through to the benefit programs.
Speaker: 4
14:12
We found, in the benefit programs that every benefit program looked at was being accessed by these people. You know, one point three million of them are on Medicaid right now, today. And ai the way, it’s just ramping. It’s just starting, just to figure you a point. And then out of curiosity, I woke up at night, like two in the morning. I I couldn’t sleep. My mind was right on this.
Speaker: 4
14:30
I sent the engineers a note saying, hey, guys. Let’s look at the the public voter rolls, who we find in some front in some friendly states. And we looked at the voter rolls, and we found that thousands of them were registered to vote in a handful of states. And then we went further with those friendly states and found that the many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us.
Speaker: 4
14:45
If I hadn’t seen it in my own eyes, I wouldn’t believed it. And so now the question we’re asking ourselves is what do we do? We’ve referred some to prosecution that’s ongoing right now. You know, we’re thinking through how to do it, and the reality is they have various kinds of status, and it’s a very detailed analysis.
Speaker: 4
15:00
Legally, they’re working through right now about how to deal with it.
Speaker: 2
15:03
So thousands of those people registered to vote Yes. In the election.
Speaker: 4
15:09
Would use a federal crime, by the way.
Speaker: 2
15:10
Well, yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is, like, the Heritage Foundation has a very good project, you know, it’s obviously right leaning, where they’re studying all cases of fraud. I looked at it before we’re here. There’s only been 24 cases since 02/2003 of somebody who’s a noncitizen trying to vote.
Speaker: 2
15:25
Now those are people caught, so this would be incredibly dramatic if it was even a thousand people.
Speaker: 4
15:31
Oh, no. Jason, it’s more than a thousand. I’ve I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the data ai, and it’s more than a thousand in just a couple of states. I mean, it is shockingly bryden. And this is the tip of the iceberg, guys. It’s the tip of the iceberg. This doesn’t include these 7,800,000 people that ICE has that have come in illegally and over here and all the people that came illegally we don’t over here.
Speaker: 4
15:49
I mean, this is not a political issue. I wanna be really clear about this.
Speaker: 1
15:52
Yeah. Antonio This is about America. Let’s just take one step back because I just want you to repeat this. So because I think it’s important and we may have just run over it a little too quickly. When you get a Social Security number, what you’re saying is there’s all of these important downstream consequences.
Speaker: 1
16:10
One of the downstream consequences is you could show up, register to vote, and that’s an illegitimate action that’s breaking federal law. That’s one. But the second is that without knowing who this person is, they can start to absorb resources that could have otherwise gone to an American.
Speaker: 1
16:30
I guess that’s, like, a fundamental part of this.
Speaker: 4
16:33
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker: 2
16:35
And so how do you how
Speaker: 1
16:36
do you quantify that? Can you just maybe explain it a little bit more about all of the different ways in which you think now, you know, The United States ends up leaking services to these folks.
Speaker: 2
16:47
And also they could be contributing too. Right? They could be paying taxes into the system. Sai I guess there’s both of those possibilities and both of those have fingerprints to meh. So yeah. Good question.
Speaker: 4
16:57
You know, I look. We need to figure this out. This is a a very it it’s massively complex. You could see the map I have on the whiteboard in our office. It’s huge. And we’re we’re figuring it out right now, but let me just tell you this. On every benefit program we looked at, and this is just a handful of states, we found people on all the benefit ram. And we found them on unemployment.
Speaker: 4
17:14
We found them on Medicaid. So adjacent to your point, people on Medicaid ai unemployment, they’re not contributing. They’re taking out their mooching. Right? Tyler are criminals. I mean, look.
Speaker: 4
17:23
We sent this data list to the national targeting center. They and I I don’t wanna get too far into the data, but I can tell you they found hard hits in the targeting center, of very bad people, criminals and people on terrorist watch list that are in this group. And sai, yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s a problem. We gotta figure out how to deal with it.
Speaker: 4
17:39
And the, of course, there are people that are also you know, have jobs and paying in the system. That’s, you know, that’s that’s also true. All these things are bryden. And we’re trying to sort the data and figure out how to actually deal with it now.
Speaker: 1
17:52
Saloni, one of the things about the data that you triggered, which because the data is is so important, frankly, is a lot of people started to try to find a way to nitpick and say, Antonio, you’re cherry picking, or Antonio, this is not really representative. And you had some pretty big names. Right? People that have credibility. Jim Chanos probably being one of the more prolific people, a very well known hedge fund manager.
Speaker: 1
18:21
But I think you tried to articulate why their objections didn’t make any sense. I think it’s important to maybe give you a few moments here to identify what they said and maybe debunk it.
Speaker: 4
18:37
Sai the the chart that they’re using, and you can see this Sai ai sitting on x about this. It was apples to oranges. You can you can see it here. They took a chart that included all enumerations, not the EBE program, the enumeration value entry ram, all enumerations and compared to our chart.
Speaker: 4
18:53
They put the
Speaker: 1
18:54
So just to be clear, this would have included somebody like me coming in on a TN visa or somebody on an Meh one visa.
Speaker: 4
19:02
Yeah. I mean, the so those people would be in our data too, but just enumerated beyond entry. The data on the left, of 2020 with the big bars, that includes people in the offices. That includes people who got they got, Social Security numbers because they went to a consulate ai, like you probably did, ai ahead of time before they came in, you know, those kinds of people.
Speaker: 2
19:19
So we need a stacked bar chart sai there’s some fun with numbers going on.
Speaker: 0
19:22
Can you flip back again? So your number for ’24 was how much? 2,100,000.0.
Speaker: 2
19:28
Yep. Yep.
Speaker: 4
19:30
And what they did is took they took our data. So this was you know, look. I don’t wanna impute negative motives. They just maybe were confused. They took our data, and they they added the total data. Right? This is just subsection. This is Meh, and I’m just gonna use acronyms. It’s okay, guys.
Speaker: 4
19:46
This is EB only. Enumeration beyond entry, which is a program, as I said, started in 2017, and then it kinda ramped up into ’19. They took our data, and then they added the total data before that. Right? That is apples to oranges. That’s why it doesn’t work.
Speaker: 4
20:02
And I I went through a whole analysis of this on x, and, you know, the person the first person that posted the chart actually deleted it and sent me a post saying, hey. I ai know, I’m deleting it because I get it. You’re bryden. And apologized and asked me some questions. I I don’t wanna get into you know, you guys know, but I don’t post sai lot on x. I don’t wanna get into basic people. It’s not worth it.
Speaker: 0
20:20
There was
Speaker: 4
20:20
The data speaks for itself.
Speaker: 0
20:21
There’s it basically it basically became like a Rorschach test where people that did not wanna believe the points you were making latched on to that chart that was shown even though it was disproven, and that became the narrative for a good chunk of the Internet and a good chunk of for media responses.
Speaker: 4
20:37
I mean, look, you guys know me. You know me for a long time. This is not political, man. This is this is Tell us about your
Speaker: 0
20:42
political background again. We haven’t talked about this on the show, Antonio, but I think it’s worth letting everyone hear about your background a little bit just so folks understand where you’re coming from.
Speaker: 4
20:51
Yeah. I was a Democrat for twenty years. I mean, I I I, you know, I knocked on doors for Hillary Clinton in Iowa. I was, you know, ram Illinois. And, look, I’ve got lots of good friends who are Democrats. And when I explained the statement to them, they’re as shocked as I am.
Speaker: 4
21:04
I don’t believe this
Speaker: 2
21:04
is sai stock. Ram an under you were a Democrat is an understatement. You were a major donor and majorly involved with the Democratic party. Meh. Ben, you you tend to call balls and strikes on the program. What are your thoughts on immigration generally and how it should work here in The US and how maybe we can resolve this and get to, and Antonio, I want your answer to that question as well, Maybe some reconciliation here between the moderates, MAGA, original, you know, classic GOP, Democrats, and and the woke lunatics.
Speaker: 2
21:36
Like, is there any way out of this? And and maybe perhaps what we’re seeing here with somebody like Antonio, who’s a lifelong Democrat who now is, you know, helping the government, maybe there’s some way with data and logic we can get through this?
Speaker: 3
21:50
I mean, I I think that what Antonio is doing here is is so important specifically for that because it it seems to me there’s actually been a fairly wide consensus among the American population for a very long time what to do about immigration, particularly the southern border, which is number one, just stop the illegal immigration at the southern border. After Biden blew that out, a lot of Democrats turned to president Trump specifically because of that issue, and that has been the signal success of the Trump administration among all the other successes.
Speaker: 3
22:14
The the numbers at the border have just plummeted to almost zero. I mean, the lowest numbers in recorded history, and that is an unmitigated success. And then I think everybody knows that we have to sort of figure out who gets to stay and who gets to go, who’s already in the country, and what Antonio is doing by being able to discern who is here and is a net draw on the resources of the American people versus maybe who is a net taxpayer, who’s actually contributing, who’s a criminal.
Speaker: 3
22:35
Right? There there there’s always been this bizarre supposition in in the in the political realm that there’s no way on a one to one level to figure out who is who. You have to treat everybody as a class. Either everybody stays, everybody goes. And the reality is that even the way the Trump administration is doing this by first targeting, say, criminal illegal aliens for for removal and then maybe moving on to people who are net drawn resources, who came in falsely under claims of asylum and now are receiving Medicaid or disability.
Speaker: 3
22:58
This Ai made the argument for for, I think, my entire career actually on this that that we should be treating immigrants, illegal immigrants who are in the country, the same way we would treat people who are trying to get into the country, which is to say, are you going to benefit The United States or you’re not gonna benefit The United States?
Speaker: 3
23:11
And the counterargument was always, well, how exactly are you going to determine who is who? And the answer I always give was, well, the IRS does it with our tax returns literally every single year, so why should we not be able to do that? And so the kind of work Saloni is doing showing you actually can do that by tracking the Social Security numbers of people who came in illegally.
Speaker: 3
23:28
Because the truth, the the number of unknown getaways is actually really, really compared to this, it’s a it’s a small number. Most of the people who are coming across the border, at least during the Biden term, I went down to the border last year and and visited a a Native American reservation.
Speaker: 3
23:42
It’s right along the border where where the border patrol basically was not. And and they said that what was happening is people were arriving at the border. They were doing exactly what Antonio was talking about. They would literally say, I fear to go back to my home country. They’d be processed.
Speaker: 3
23:53
They’d be meh into the country with a with a a future date to come back, and that was all happening within seventy two hours. So being able to track those people and find out who who who should be in, who shouldn’t be, that that’s that’s huge. And I think that’s the consensus.
Speaker: 2
24:07
So, should we are you in the camp? We should deport everybody, this sort of Stephen Miller Tyler deport 20,000,000 people, Meh, or are you in the, hey. Let’s get rid of the criminals and, you know, that will get us to where we need to be?
Speaker: 3
24:19
Well, Ai don’t think it’s just the criminals. I mean, I think you also need to go after the folks who are are here to take advantage of the welfare benefits, for example, who
Speaker: 0
24:26
are just to
Speaker: 3
24:26
draw on the system. But I don’t think that the number is 20,000,000. I don’t think president Trump actually thinks the number is is 20,000,000. I don’t think anybody realistically thinks the number is 20,000,000.
Speaker: 2
24:35
Got it. Okay. But they they said it over and over again. All 20,000,000 are going and it’s Right.
Speaker: 3
24:39
But they they say a lot. It’s a political it’s a meh. It’s a political campaign, and people say that sort of stuff all the time.
Speaker: 2
24:44
Antonio, let’s talk maybe about reconciliation here. You speak your life as a Democrat, and now you’ve spent, I don’t know, six months as a Republican here and helping this administration. How do we get the country to sort of get back together here and and maybe reconcile on this issue?
Speaker: 2
25:00
Because it seems like an unnecessary to Ben’s point, I I think the number is 80% of people believe the border should be just shah period full stop and everything should be legal. And I don’t know the other 20 if they’re just don’t know how to take a survey. Ai never met anybody who said there should be an open border vatsal at the southern border.
Speaker: 2
25:17
So what are your thoughts on, given your inside knowledge, and I would describe you as a Clinton Democrat, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, correct me if I’m wrong there, what are your thoughts on reconciliation here? Because you really do care about that. Your parents, both immigrants, My besties here, three of the four people who host this ram. Immigrants.
Speaker: 2
25:38
This is an immigrant country built by immigrants for immigrants, has always been. So how do we reconcile this issue and put it behind us?
Speaker: 4
25:47
And, Jason, I have asked myself this question, and I I think we gotta follow the truth. And that’s that’s the point. Follow the truth. And the truth is in the data. And as as Ben said, the numbers don’t lie. Right? And so people are productive. We gotta find a way to vatsal them to be productive and stay. People that are are taking the system should not be allowed to stay.
Speaker: 4
26:03
And, you know, I think we I don’t wanna get into the policy at all because it’s above my pay grade. I mean, the route is for me, my remit is, as as Ben said, it’s criminals, terrorists, and then people booting off the system. And then, you know, a political question needs to be answered about what happens to the rest of those people. I I don’t I don’t know.
Speaker: 4
26:18
I don’t and it’s not my remit.
Speaker: 2
26:19
Free burn.
Speaker: 4
26:20
I will I will say this. Yeah. I think that all my friends who are still Democrats that I have been able to explain this data to, they all say the same thing you guys are saying. Man, this is a problem. We ai figure this out, and let me tell you why. The bigger problem, the biggest problem here, I mean, it’s it’s it definitely is is taking off the system.
Speaker: 4
26:36
But you gotta realize we gave 13 to $15,000,000,000 a year to the human traffickers. That’s what this system did. And the money magnet that attracted these people here, it wasn’t like it was some crisis that you know, ai crisis. The money magnet attracted these people, and many of them died on the way up. I mean, think about what that’s like.
Speaker: 4
26:54
Think about the
Speaker: 2
26:54
human rights. Human suffering, a human rights tragedy. You have people who are getting sold into slavery and being abused at the border. At a at a minimum, every American should be against that.
Speaker: 4
27:05
Everyone is. Every American is. Look, man, this turned my stomach. When I went to the board and I heard these stories, turned my stomach, man. Is we are America. Okay? We protect people like this. We don’t give incentives to people to pay traffickers. If you pay 20,000 I heard 20,000 to $500 just across the border, $20,000.
Speaker: 4
27:22
I mean, where does someone who’s coming from Central America or Africa get $20 to pay the pay the traffickers that are walking them across the border? It’s not free to walk up Mexico. Okay? It’s controlled by the cartels. What happens? I mean, they gotta pay that back. How do they pay it back?
Speaker: 4
27:35
They’re basically deadured servants. This is terrible. This isn’t what we do in this country. Right? This country is about freedom, and we are here to protect it.
Speaker: 4
27:42
We protect it around the world, ai it in our home country, and I don’t think any American that I know, none of Democrats, Republicans, or anyone, thinks this is good. It’s not good. It’s bad for America, and it’s evil behavior. We shouldn’t send it. We shouldn’t we shouldn’t give people a reason to do it.
Speaker: 4
27:55
We should find legal ways to come in the country. And I think that’s how we come together.
Speaker: 0
27:59
Do you believe that there is a Democratic party motive to increase voter base for the Democrats behind all of this as has been proclaimed by some?
Speaker: 4
28:09
Look. As I go through the data and I see it’s all about the data. Okay, David? And I know you you you you you love the data. When you Ai just in a handful of states, meh, I’m talking about four states, We looked at the voter rolls. We found these people, thousands of them on the voter rolls, and we found, many of those people had voted. Right?
Speaker: 4
28:26
In one state in particular, well over a thousand voted. Yeah. I think this was a, a move to import voters.
Speaker: 0
28:32
But really importantly, I just wanna make sure because when when I talk to politicians from the Democratic party about this, they say there’s speak of human rights doing the right thing for people in need that is motivating some of this behavior. Is that a lie and they actually have a different motive?
Speaker: 0
28:52
Or do some in the party think that way, but there are real kind of ai of call it a small group of highly influential folks at the top of the Democratic party that ai that this is gonna grow the voter base, and they’re they’re kinda motivating this. What do you think is the construction of what sounds to some to be a conspiracy, and how much of this is really, like, widely understood?
Speaker: 4
29:15
Look, Meh, here’s I’ll tell you what I have seen. I’ll tell you the actual information. If you look at Social Security Administration, we set all their faults to ai max open, no ID requirements. Right? You meh a Social Security number, before we got here, by walking in an office, answering, you know, with with with a meh record and a school ID that had your name and your date the date of birth on it.
Speaker: 4
29:37
That’s it. Okay? We opened up we set the defaults to open on Social Security. We set the defaults to open on pay, paying people out, and and we set the collections defaults basically to zero. So that’s how the system looks.
Speaker: 4
29:50
That’s I’m just reporting reporting the facts. Do I think that the the average person who’s a Democrat in the in in Illinois or, you know, the guys I knew echo Chicago, they know this? They don’t know this. They don’t know this. So were there people at the top of the system that did this? Yeah. People created this policy.
Speaker: 4
30:07
The former administrators of these of these agencies created these policies. I’ve seen them. I’ve read them myself. I’ve gone to the data myself. They’ve seen them.
Speaker: 4
30:14
Now this isn’t everybody. If you’re the average person out there who’s a Democrat and you see what I’ve seen, you I believe, you will you’ll conclude what I concluded, which is this isn’t right. These policies are wrong. They’re evil. They’re wrong. We gave an incentive for people to get trafficked. That’s terrible. I just don’t I just don’t think people know.
Speaker: 4
30:32
The reason I’m even willing to do all you ai guys know me. I’m pretty private. I come into your podcast because we’re buddies. But, like, man, the reason I’m talking about this is is not political. It’s because it’s a human rights issue, and the human rights issue is being confused.
Speaker: 4
30:43
It’s not it’s we are incenting people to pay traffickers to come to America. We are doing this. Right? We gotta find better ways to do that, and I just I don’t believe any American the 80% of the people Jason’s talking about that would say close the border, that’s the 80% of people coming here on this issue with this meh.
Speaker: 4
30:59
We gotta take care of people.
Speaker: 1
31:00
Antonio, can you talk about what the next big push of effort from you and your team will be? Is there
Speaker: 2
31:07
Good question.
Speaker: 1
31:07
Some next chart? I’m not trying to be reductive, but is there something that you can demonstrate that is going to be equivalently as powerful as this first chart, which then helps us start to move these gears towards doing the logical and right thing?
Speaker: 4
31:23
I think the right thing is to figure out who’s who. Right? Who are the criminals? Who are the terrorists? Yeah. Number one. And number two, who’s mooching off the system? And then number three, the people that are working that Jason’s talking about, you know, what we do with them.
Speaker: 4
31:37
That’s the right answer.
Speaker: 1
31:38
I would add a fourth because I think that there’s probably no more electric issue than this idea of voting ai. And I think it has become so brazenly partisan that everybody has suspended logic.
Speaker: 2
31:56
If it turns out
Speaker: 5
31:56
I agree
Speaker: 4
31:57
with that.
Speaker: 1
31:57
Yeah. If it turns out that there was a manipulated effort in 2020 and there is even a threat of legitimacy to Trump’s claims, you would never be able to see the light of day because so many Americans just turned the turn off. Right? And that’s because of the rhetoric that they’ve been fed.
Speaker: 1
32:13
This is a really important thing that I would just offer to you is that if it is true that these people illegally voted, I think it’s a thunderclap. And I think it opens wide the aperture on voting illegality and voting reform. And I think that irrespective of who you are, you should wanna make sure that people who are not allowed to vote are not voting, just to put it simply.
Speaker: 2
32:40
Yeah. Wow. What an incredible ai.
Speaker: 4
32:42
It’s it’s amazing. I can’t I I can’t, I can’t get an airplane in America without ID, but I can go vote in some states without ID. I think that’s crazy. I think that’s totally crazy.
Speaker: 0
32:52
That is crazy.
Speaker: 2
32:52
And we’re down to, like Ben, you know the numbers. 15 states now are the ones that don’t have voter ID. So this is becoming, like, a very obvious issue in the loop off for us to close. I think the best next thing for you to do is actually publish this list of people who voted, get it to the Heritage Foundation and put sunlight on it.
Speaker: 2
33:07
The truth shall make you free and sunlight is the best disinfectant because I think the whole issue is absurd because if you look at the votes in the swing states, it would take a hundred thousand, it would take tens of thousands, and it’s illegal. I I’ve spoken to the person at the Heritage Foundation who does this. They found, like, 2,400 cases over forty or fifty years.
Speaker: 2
33:29
The number of people voting illegally is minuscule. In order to swing even but one state, you would need a coordinated effort. Can I
Speaker: 1
33:36
say something wrong?
Speaker: 2
33:37
Hold on. Let me finish. You would need a coordinated effort. I’m just giving you data, Chama. No. I’m saying to you. There are tens of thousands of votes that would need to be manipulated in each of these markets. It’s impossible.
Speaker: 1
33:48
Here well, there’s the keyword. Here’s what I would ask you to consider.
Speaker: 2
33:53
Sure. Ram arya read it.
Speaker: 1
33:54
Results are only as good as your prompts. Your results are only as good as your prompts.
Speaker: 2
34:01
Say it in plain English. What do you mean?
Speaker: 1
34:04
I suspect that if you put three or four of the smartest data scientists in the world, they would get to a very different answer than the answer that has been arrived to. I don’t know whether that’ll validate or invalidate the claim. Yeah. But the quality of the people that are able to interrogate this data is directly correlated to the output that is created.
Speaker: 2
34:25
Well, listen, we all want the data clean. Ben, maybe I’ll let you kind of answer the question from your perspective. Do you think there is any chance that a swing state could be swung by, you know, this strategy? And in addition to that, Trump is a populist. All these people and his biggest gains were with people from South America, Mexicans, etcetera, in this last election. So and non college educated.
Speaker: 2
34:49
So if you were gonna plot this incredible strategy, it seems like the Democratic strategy of importing a bunch of voters is the stupidest possible strategy because the Republican party has won those people.
Speaker: 3
35:00
Well, I don’t think that it would be a great short term strategy because of the the problems that you mentioned in terms of the the size of the voting gaps even in close swing states. Although, obviously, you have outlier cases like Florida in February where the entire state is being decided by hundreds of votes, and there you actually could see a state actually shift on that basis.
Speaker: 3
35:16
It’s a rarity, but it does happen and and in some cases ai a presidential election. When when you’re talking, however, about the long term play, I I think the question that needs to be asked is if you are importing a bunch of people who are more dependent than average on the American government, for example, or who are not interested in assimilating to free market values, for example, or free speech values, or or who come in, and then many of these people are gonna get meh, many of these people are gonna have kids, they’re gonna marry American citizens, they’re gonna have children who are American, and then they sai.
Speaker: 3
35:44
Now you’re talking about actually generating a change in the voting population, and that isn’t a right wing point. That’s a point that was made by Roy Teixeira all the way back in 02/2004 when he was a Democrat, and he was making the case, essentially, that there was a demographic wave that was going to shift the electorate in The United States in the direction of Democrats permanently.
Speaker: 3
35:59
Now the point that you’re making is that even as a long term strategy, that might be a bad play because it may be that these populations shift over time. That doesn’t mean that that’s not the intent in the moment. Meaning Right.
Speaker: 2
36:09
Ai they’re wrong. Ai.
Speaker: 3
36:10
They could have gotten it wrong. Right. Exactly.
Speaker: 2
36:12
A very bad strategic decision. Antonio, I think we have to drop you off here. Any closing comments you wanna make? And I just wanna thank you. I know you’ve got other things you could be doing in your life, but just on behalf of the American people who I speak for here on the program, we wanna thank you, all Americans, for your service to this country.
Speaker: 2
36:30
And I know that you are balls and strikes, and you’re gonna let the data speak. So I just wanna thank you,
Speaker: 4
36:36
for your actions. I Ai I I will close this on this conversation, which is go look at California. Go look at California. Okay. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, came to California. Ronald Reagan signed amnesty and, you know, some forty years later, it is now a solidly blue state.
Speaker: 4
36:52
And I think, some of us sana this ram, I know you, Jason, are a refugee from California because of that, because of some of those policies. And I wanna be I want you to be careful about this because it is it is actually the tip of the iceberg, man. We are we have a very small sample of data
Speaker: 2
37:08
in
Speaker: 4
37:08
a couple of states. It’s the tip of the iceberg. And so I don’t know where the unintended consequences will be long term, but I can tell you what’s already happened in Meh. Where an amnesty program actually turned a very large state, you know, from one one party to another. And I wanna leave you guys with this thought.
Speaker: 4
37:23
This is not political. I’m not doing it. There’s no political motivation in my mind. This is about America. It’s about securing the American democracy, and we will shine light onto the data when we can. We prefer these people to prosecution, and we’re gonna keep looking.
Speaker: 4
37:38
We’ll keep going, and the data will lead us, and the truth will lead us. And it’ll eventually come out in the sunlight. You’re right. But we’re gonna follow the truth. That’s our primary motive. That that is the that is our operating parameter and what we’re gonna do.
Speaker: 1
37:52
Right on.
Speaker: 2
37:52
Alright. Thank you, Saloni. Gracias. And continue to Ai, Sassen. To talk to you in thirty, sixty days when you have your next findings.
Speaker: 4
37:59
Thanks, guys. Hey, guys.
Speaker: 2
38:00
You’re a
Speaker: 0
38:01
you’re a refugee from California too, aren’t you?
Speaker: 3
38:03
Yes. Yeah. We took off in 02/2020. During during COVID, we we took off. My company took off. We we all got the hell out. I I was born in California, so I spent thirty, thirty six years there before before I moved. And, yeah, they they certainly did a good job of wrecking that state.
Speaker: 2
38:17
I mean, I did the same thing. You went to oh, I don’t know if you’re talking about where you oh, you’re talking about
Speaker: 3
38:22
I’m in Florida. Yeah. My ai in Tennessee. I’m in Florida.
Speaker: 2
38:24
Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I mean, it’s just you can’t raise kids in California, and you just think about the crime and taxes and what you’re getting for your dollar. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I don’t
Speaker: 1
38:34
White House is off the Zoom, boys. Now we can start to work.
Speaker: 0
38:37
Okay. Now Open it up.
Speaker: 2
38:38
Okay. Oh, we can open it up now. The amateur.
Speaker: 1
38:40
For you.
Speaker: 0
38:41
Alright. Okay.
Speaker: 1
38:43
What do you guys think about what you just saw?
Speaker: 2
38:46
Ben, I’ll let you go first as our guest.
Speaker: 3
38:47
Sai I I wish the entire Trump administration were rolled out as well as Antonio just rolled that out is is what I would say.
Speaker: 1
38:52
Totally.
Speaker: 3
38:53
You know, I think that that is high levels of competence and expertise and a meticulous message that that is data first and difficult for anybody to deny. I think that success of the Trump administration, the success that they’ve had are taking the 80 side of eighty twenty issues.
Speaker: 3
39:07
And I think that the success of president Trump in 2024 was that he oddly became the normie candidate. He was the guy who was a return to normalcy candidacy in in the face of of Biden and bizarreness of of hairness of Harris. And, you know, I think that as we see many of Trump’s policies rolled out, the ones that are rolled out the way that Antonio is rolling it out are incredibly well received by the American population because they’re seeing serious people doing serious work that needs to be done.
Speaker: 3
39:31
And the ones that are not rolled out that way, I think are gonna be a little more unpopular with the American people. And that that’s ai I want president Trump to succeed in a lot of these agenda items, and I I don’t want his his good agenda items getting essentially railroaded and and run over by by the by the bad rolled out of other agenda items.
Speaker: 2
39:47
So you think thoughtful is good, and well thought out, constructed, and communicated? What what, when you talk about this being done right, what do you think is being done wrong? It could be done better, I guess, would be a a a generous way of saying it. What what could they communicate better?
Speaker: 3
40:02
I mean, and not to jump into the the pile of rakes that is the the tariff plan. But Ai I think that the I think that the way that the tariff plan was rolled out is about as bad a rollout as you could do. You know, the reason I say that is not just because of my disagreements on the actual policy. I’ll either be right or I’ll be wrong on that.
Speaker: 3
40:18
But the way that it was rolled out with with very with with essentially kind of a surprise meh. Mhmm.
Speaker: 4
40:23
I
Speaker: 3
40:23
Ai don’t mind a surprise announcement if what is then rolled out is not replete with with sort of contradictory justifications, you know, statistics that that are labeled one thing but really are not that thing. And and so it just it opens itself up to all sorts of critiques from every possible side of the eye.
Speaker: 3
40:40
If you wanna make the argument, make the full make the full scale well thought argument, and then we can argue over whether it’s true or not. But there’s there’s four or five different claims that are being simultaneously made about the tariffs. One, they’re gonna raise revenue. Two, they’re gonna reshore.
Speaker: 3
40:53
Three, that you are going to somehow rejigger the world trading system. Ai some of these are mutually exclusive. If you’re gonna if you’re going to reshore, you’re not gonna raise as much revenue, for example. Right? Those two things are mutually exclusive, and they’re both being trotted out at the same exact time.
Speaker: 3
41:07
If you’re gonna put out a giant chart that the president holds up that shows tariff rates plus unspecified, you know, variable, then what I’d like to know is what the actual tariff rate is as opposed to what the calculation seems to be, which was the trade deficit with a country divided into the imports to that country.
Speaker: 3
41:26
That that that has nothing to do with the tariff rate. I mean, just technically speaking, it has literally nothing to do with the tariff rate. And so what that means is now you’re boxed in logically If president Trump wants to do a reciprocal tariff reduction, for example, how do you do that?
Speaker: 3
41:39
Because he actually has used a a statistic for the tariffs that have nothing to do with the tariff rate and are actually just trade deficits. So the only way to actually rectify that statistic is to have Madagascar buy a bunch of American product, for example, in order to get their their, quote, unquote, tariff rate down.
Speaker: 3
41:53
That that sort of stuff seems badly calibrated even if you like the policy, for example.
Speaker: 2
41:58
Alright. Yeah. Sai let’s see.
Speaker: 0
41:59
Unless unless ram a poker point of view, they spent many months declaring they’re gonna do tariffs. And everyone thought they were bluffing and said everyone said there’s no way you’re gonna do tariffs. It’s like someone in poker is ai, I’m gonna play every hand I get. I’m gonna be crazy. You don’t believe them.
Speaker: 0
42:13
And they actually have to do it in order to get the negotiating leverage that they need to be able to negotiate trade deals ultimately. And they have to look a little crazy maybe. I mean, that that
Speaker: 2
42:23
So you’re is that your position, Froebel, in the four d chess? Or
Speaker: 0
42:26
I’m trying to rationalize one kind of rational reason for why a lot of smart people would end up putting that board up, that poster board up. Where to your point, Ben, they said that these are kind of the the tariffs that are being levied upon our country when in fact, it is simply the math of imports minus exports divided by imports.
Speaker: 0
42:45
That’s what the number was. And and and it was and it was maxed out at that number or 10%. And that’s what they did. So they did that basically as a way, in my opinion, it looks ai, and I’m just trying to take a read on this, that, they’re using this as a way to anchor for negotiations going forward to make the case we are declaratively, crazily off the frigging ship, going to do whatever the heck we wanna do here in this administration.
Speaker: 0
43:10
Now everyone takes them seriously. Now everyone shows up to the negotiating table, and now they can actually negotiate and then announce a series of win after win after win and say, we got this set of countries to capitulate today. This is the deal we worked out. It’s a totally unique deal. This set of deals we worked out today. This set of deals we worked out today.
Speaker: 0
43:28
And basically getting all the trade representatives to the table by making the case that they’re actually willing to go all the way to the wall on stuff. So I that’s the only way I can kind of rationalize this rollout then. That’s what it feels like to me. For months, they’ve been very declarative.
Speaker: 0
43:41
We are going to do tariffs. Besson said it to us on our interview. Lutnick said it to us on our interview, and no one took them seriously.
Speaker: 3
43:49
I did. I did, by the way. I Ai will say that I took them totally seriously sai meh. So ai I call my financial ai after the State of the Union address and told them to, rejigger my my stock and bond ratio in my portfolio because I figured that something like this was going to happen.
Speaker: 2
44:02
I think
Speaker: 0
44:02
You went heavy treasuries.
Speaker: 3
44:03
Yes. I I I I went light stocks. I’ll say that. And and the and the reason for that is because, again, I think that the the thing about president Trump is that you he he may not, you know, be serious in every single thing that he says, but he is very clear that when he says a thing over and over and over, there is no hidden motivation.
Speaker: 3
44:22
And this is the part that I always have trouble with with sort of the the 40 chess reads on president Trump. There’s almost never a hidden motivation. He pretty much just says the thing that he thinks. Right? It’s one of the things that makes him so popular and authentic is that there isn’t a 40 chess game being played.
Speaker: 3
44:35
If he if he says that he wants a thing to happen, it’s because he actually wants the thing to happen. Now thing about president Trump is he’s also a realist. So if a bunch of bad headlines hit him, he may then change his mind and decide that he wants to drive a truck directly through the center of the tariffs because the prices are going up too much on, for example, semiconductors.
Speaker: 3
44:50
So one of the big exemptions from these tariffs is in fact in the area of semiconductors. Again, there you see a sort of couple of different justifications that are that are mutually exclusive that are fighting each other. One of them is the idea we need to reshore semiconductor production because it’s a national security asset, and the other is it’s we we need to raise revenue on semiconductors.
Speaker: 3
45:08
So he exempted them, which kind of, you know, kind of bollocks us up the logic. And I I think that the the there there arya couple of tells that that isn’t what’s it may listen. I think it may end up being the thing you’re saying. I think the most likely result of these tariffs is that within the next few weeks, the headlines are not good.
Speaker: 3
45:23
President Trump starts driving trucks through the center of the tariffs, and then he starts getting wins from various parties outside that allow him to find an off ramp on some of these tariffs. Now a company in in Belgium says they’re going to build a factory in The United States. He has them to the White House. They have a big ceremony.
Speaker: 3
45:39
And then he says, and as a result of this, we’re now lowering the tariffs. And sort of the same way he did with with Columbia when he said not the university, the the country. When he said he was gonna hit them with tariffs unless you accept these these illegal immigrants, and and then they did. So that very well might be the offer.
Speaker: 3
45:51
I don’t think that’s what’s going on right now. I think what’s going on right now is the strategy that Lutnick has repeatedly expressed, which is that they actually kinda like the tariffs. They actually think that this is good economic policy and that between 1880 and 1910 was an amazing time in American history.
Speaker: 3
46:05
And and so they they
Speaker: 2
46:06
Do you agree?
Speaker: 3
46:08
Ai I think that that is a bad read on economic history because there are a lot of confounds there that are being, ignored. Among those confounds would be the fact that
Speaker: 0
46:18
Industrial revolution?
Speaker: 3
46:19
Yes. So a few. Just just to name a few. In the industrial revolution, extraordinary high levels of immigration, by the way, during that period. So you had an incredibly cheap labor base that was actually coming in into The United States at that ai. Massive expansion
Speaker: 0
46:31
No income tax.
Speaker: 3
46:32
Population. No income tax. So free foreign capital. A newly discovered continent. Right? Like like, ai, truly, like, many, many confounds. Right? And by the way, less international trade generally. So tariffs aren’t gonna have the same sort of impact on global supply chains as they would now where every product that you buy has gone through 10 different countries in 10 different ways.
Speaker: 3
46:50
And so so Ai no. I don’t I don’t think that that is a comp, but that doesn’t mean that that Lutnick doesn’t think that it’s a comp, for example. And and I think that the when when it comes to, you know, the rollout, again, a methodical rollout yeah. I I I totally get the crazy man theory, and I think that sometimes president Trump does that. I’m hoping that that’s what he’s doing.
Speaker: 3
47:08
But a good example of an off ramp he could have taken if that’s the thing he’s trying to do. So yesterday, in anticipation of this, Israel, which had very, very low tariffs on United States goods anyway, announced they’d removed all tariffs on American goods. Right? There were no tariffs on American goods anymore.
Speaker: 3
47:22
And the administration, that afternoon, listed their tariff rate at 33% and then hit them with a 17% tariff
Speaker: 0
47:29
for a % tariff. Went and just used them
Speaker: 2
47:32
as an example of a great partner.
Speaker: 3
47:34
Exactly. Exactly. I think
Speaker: 0
47:35
that Didn’t didn’t Canada do the same? Didn’t Canada drop tariffs, like, the the morning of
Speaker: 2
47:39
They were on CNBC sana they sai, we’re totally willing to go to zero. And then the anchors correctly on CNBC were like, well then why haven’t you done that already? To Ben’s point, Israel did do that. And but I think your theory, Ben, is like absolutely correct. If you make this analogy to what he did with overturning Roe v Wade, it is the same exact thing.
Speaker: 2
47:58
He told us over and over again, I’m gonna put two, maybe three people on the Supreme Court. I’m gonna overturn it. And then afterwards, he kinda wiped his hands through it and was like, listen. It’s up to you guys. I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker: 2
48:09
He will tell you what he’s gonna do. He told you he was gonna do these tariffs. He’s done them. And I do think there’s something embedded in what you said, Ben, which is Ai think he likes everybody to come to Mar A Lago or to come to the White House, and he loves doing deals.
Speaker: 2
48:23
He’s addicted to it. He wrote a book, The Art of the Deal. He loves people coming to him, hanging out. And, Sharmak, maybe you could give us your perspective. Crazy man theory, crazy grandpa, or this is a negotiating tactic, everybody has to come through him or Lutnick believes it as he said very clearly, I’m gonna add a trillion dollars in taxes here.
Speaker: 2
48:45
What do you think is going on here? Because if, when I went through all the top people on the Internet, all our group of friends, who are deeply in finance, I can’t find anybody deeply in finance who’s not in the administration who thinks this is well executed or a good idea.
Speaker: 2
48:59
What’s your thought?
Speaker: 1
49:00
Let me start by saying a couple things. To use the Donald Rumsfeld quote, I do agree with Ben tremendously that this was a known known. We mentioned this last episode. Donald Trump has been speaking about tariffs for forty plus years. Yep. So this is not a new thing. And I think that he tried this in Trump one, but to your guys’ point, it didn’t really go well because he didn’t have the team around him that had his back.
Speaker: 1
49:29
And so it was inevitable that he would have tried it in trunk two. He said it, and he’s been able to do it. So if you weren’t planning for it, whoever was vested in this outcome, you really needed to be focused on this. It was a known known, and so there was a little dereliction of duty if you were caught off guard, I think. That’s one.
Speaker: 1
49:49
The second is and I we’ve said this all year since January 1 on this pod. We started it even with the with that poly market bet that I made, which is the Trump administration does not care about the stock market. And ai the way, this the trade actually closed out. So congrats to all these people that won $650,000 on Poly Market.
Speaker: 2
50:12
And let me just explain. Poly Market put a betting market suggested by Chamath Palihompatiya. They are partners of ours. Magnificent Seven shrinks below 30% of S and P five hundred in 2025.
Speaker: 1
50:24
This was free money. This was like the stock market giving up free money. But why did this happen? This happened because it was very clear to me early on that the rhetoric had shifted to sai, we care about MAGA. We care about people that have working class and middle class jobs. None of those folks are deeply invested in the asset economy the way maybe some of us are.
Speaker: 1
50:49
And so it was directionally clear. And ai the way, Scott Besson, what a cold ass quote yesterday. The equity market sell off is a Meh seven problem, not a MAGA problem. So there again, putting all of this into the realm of this is a known known. So I think it’s pretty clear. One, Trump has had a forty year view on tariffs. They’re gonna go through with this and they’re gonna see it through.
Speaker: 1
51:15
I don’t think you’re gonna see this grand capitulation. Two, they are okay with the volatility in the equity markets. And then three, which is the other thing that we’ve been talking about a lot is where does this move our practical financing costs? What is this? Right?
Speaker: 1
51:30
We’ve talked about this. We have $6,000,000,000,000 we need to finance in the next nine months. So the singular goal, in my opinion, of the White House has been move the tenure as aggressively and as quickly as possible. And look what they’ve done. As of yesterday, it’s unbelievable what’s happened in the tenure. You know, you arya kissing 4%. And we talked about this.
Speaker: 1
51:53
If it had gone in the other direction, guys, 30 or 40 basis points, and it touched 5%, you’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of extra money that would not have been found that would’ve had to be printed. Right? And now this is hundreds of billions of dollars that we will save.
Speaker: 2
52:10
So If we cut rates, if the meh cuts rates, that’s all predicated on them. No, no,
Speaker: 1
52:15
no, this doesn’t matter anymore. No, this is, this is The fed cut
Speaker: 2
52:18
rates have control of the back end
Speaker: 0
52:20
of the curve. On the treasury the treasury arya, the government sells treasuries. Governments will ai auction
Speaker: 1
52:25
ten years and the auctions will clear at around 4%. That is an enormous ai, as an American, what we should all be thinking is ai because the long end of the curve is giving us a respite in a storm and we should be incredibly thankful.
Speaker: 2
52:49
Because What I’m referring to, Chamath, is you said yesterday, Jerome Powell, you’re on the clock. So maybe you could explain what you meant by that.
Speaker: 1
52:56
Okay. So this is that’s a different part of the curve.
Speaker: 2
52:58
I understand it’s a different thing, but I’m just trying to put the two things together because those are the two things we’re saying this action
Speaker: 0
53:04
took. Okay.
Speaker: 1
53:06
Sai let’s play the ball where it lies.
Speaker: 3
53:08
Okay.
Speaker: 1
53:09
The Wall Street Smart money thought this was a $250,000,000,000 event. They were wrong. This is part of why the stock market has reacted so violently today. This is a $750,000,000,000 to trillion dollar event. Okay? This is a big moment in the market. So what does it create? It creates the risk of a recession.
Speaker: 1
53:28
How do you minimize that risk? That is all about how easy it is for the average person to be able to borrow money. Where is that dictated? That is more dictated by the Meh and how they price the front end of the curve. So what we need to have happen now is while Scott is out financing $6,000,000,000,000 on the back end, we now need to get Jerome Powell to cut the front end.
Speaker: 1
53:53
And if you do it aggressively enough, you can introduce liquidity in a moment where small and medium sized businesses can go and get financed to weather the storm.
Speaker: 0
54:04
Ai, I wanna add on to your point. Just so you guys know, there’s roughly 12 to $16,000,000,000,000 of private corporate debt in America. So this is debt held by small businesses, medium businesses, partnerships that have on average, call it a 15% operating margin. So they’re gonna be under pressure if there is some recessionary risk to make sure they have access to capital.
Speaker: 0
54:30
And if you remember the interview that Besson gave to us a couple weeks ago, he was very clear that one of his mandates is to enable the releveraging of the financial system. Meaning, he wants to give banks the ability to issue more debt, to introduce more capital and more liquidity into the markets by taking away some of the regulatory restrictions that have made it more difficult for the banks to issue credit to business owners and to individuals.
Speaker: 0
54:57
So if they are successful in their deregulatory efforts, it will introduce more liquidity into the market coupled with deregulatory work that they’re making in the other parts of the administration as this is their declaration, not mine. Their intention is to make sure that that capital flows into building businesses, building new businesses, underwriting new jobs, creating more employment.
Speaker: 0
55:19
That’s the theory that that they’re trying to execute. Obviously, it’s part of this three legged stool, but if it doesn’t all work, the stool falls over.
Speaker: 2
55:26
Okay. Chamath, give us an example here. Ai trying to get you to paint the entire picture here because Yeah.
Speaker: 1
55:31
Thank you, James.
Speaker: 2
55:31
The tariff cudgel is not making sense for some folks.
Speaker: 1
55:35
All good news. Yes.
Speaker: 0
55:36
Right?
Speaker: 1
55:36
So let’s let’s paint the let’s so I’ll give a very specific example. A friend of ours runs a hundred plus year company. I’m just gonna say it in generic terms so that I don’t betray his confidence. Sure. No problem. And this is a business that’s been built over a hundred years, owned by an American family, an incredible family, and they make products that we all know and love.
Speaker: 1
55:59
And what did this action do? So in their example, they’re in a very difficult position because they have, as David said, a very tight operating margin because they have to compete ferociously against China. And they’ve done everything possible to maintain their capabilities in America, hire American workers in the heartland, but still compete against China. It’s tough.
Speaker: 1
56:24
And this action today swings them from profitability to a potential yearly loss in a meaningful order of magnitude, like hundreds of millions of dollars. Sai, Jason, that’s the other side of this tariff coin. So we have to find a way of finding those examples. And as Ben said, excluding them somehow or giving them reprieve because that wasn’t the intention I think of what Trump was trying to do yesterday.
Speaker: 1
56:50
That’s an example of a company that should be winning and should continue to win and fight the good fight against China and try to continue to employ thousands of Meh. But this thing, because they had some capacity in some other countries, not China by the way Got it. Blows the thing up and so now you have to fix those things.
Speaker: 2
57:09
Alright. Ben, let me get you involved here. I’m gonna play you a quick clip from Rand Paul, and I wanna get your feedback on executive power and then on tariffs themselves. And if it’s a good idea or a bad idea, play the clip.
Speaker: 5
57:23
What’s the rationale for getting behind this? Well, one, we should not live under emergency rule. The constitution said taxes are raised by Congress. Most specifically, taxes originate in the house and come to the senate, so I’m against emergency rule. We are richer because of trade with Canada, and so is Canada.
Speaker: 5
57:41
Whenever you trade with somebody, when an individual buys somebody else’s product, it’s mutually beneficial or you wouldn’t buy it. If the trade is voluntary, it’s always beneficial. There is no Canada versus The US. The consumer wins when the price is the lowest price. Tariffs raise ai, and they’re a bad idea for the economy.
Speaker: 2
58:00
Ben, your thoughts on the two issues. Is trade good for consumers? This is what, you know, Sai I think is on top of everybody’s mind that Yeah. The the whole Trump presidency, and he won in large part due to inflation and Biden economics and that he was gonna reduce inflation and I think a lot of people believe inflation’s about to come roaring back.
Speaker: 2
58:21
Your thoughts on the two issues?
Speaker: 3
58:22
Well, I mean, obviously, on a macroeconomic level, I totally agree with senator Paul. When it comes to the powers of the presidency, I think that it’s pretty extraordinary that we should be able to use the trade deficit as a national emergency sufficient to put down what effectively amounts to a $700,000,000,000 tax increase on the American people if you’re talking about them paying the price of of the tariffs on on the other end.
Speaker: 3
58:43
Congress, you know, I think that if things get bad enough there there are a bunch of, you know, streams obviously here that cross. One of the big things here is that congress is up for reelect in a year and a half. And if the Republicans lose congress in a year and a half, then whatever tricks president Trump is is trying to pull in terms of being able to rejigger the rate at which we are paying back our our national debt, all that stuff goes by the wayside because if Democrats win congress, pretty much everything comes to a crashing halt.
Speaker: 3
59:07
And there are a lot of Republicans who are in swing districts or in, say, r plus five, r plus 10 districts who are suddenly gonna feel feel pretty vulnerable, a recession takes everybody with it. And it takes secretary Bessens. It takes the president. It takes JD Vance. It takes everybody with it.
Speaker: 3
59:21
Recessions tend to crush the president who is in power at the time regardless of what their long term plan is. When they say short term pain for for long term gain, again, I think that that there are a few factors here that I would like to see played out. For example, if there is an inflationary effect to the tariffs in terms of in terms of price, does that mean that Jerome Powell is going to eject additional liquidity into the markets by by decreasing interest rates?
Speaker: 3
59:43
It’s hard to see how. I mean, he’s holding the interest rates steady right now without decreasing the interest rates despite president Trump basically blasting him publicly since before he was even the president formally. He’s not just the president’s elect that time. So, again, it’s hard for me to see how all of this squares into what looks like a a really well calibrated policy.
Speaker: 3
01:00:03
And and then beyond that, in the long term, tricks that we play with regard to the rate of interest, paying back our national debt, are not gonna be sufficient to pay back our national debt unless we have robust economic growth. And so a lot has to be bet on the robust economic growth out out earning, essentially, the the levels of debt that we are are currently racking up.
Speaker: 3
01:00:23
And while I love what DOGE is doing, the systemic drivers of our national debt are not actually being touched at this point by Doge. I mean, it’s it’s the it’s the means tested welfare programs that are really the systemic long term drivers of our national debt.
Speaker: 2
01:00:33
And military, I think, would be number two. Yeah.
Speaker: 3
01:00:35
Military. Military as a percentage of of the of the GDP or as a percentage of the budget has been relatively stable and in some cases decreasing since since the end of the Iraq war. True. But that but that that when when it comes to the means tested welfare programs, those continue to grow as a percentage of the budget and over time are increasingly unfunded.
Speaker: 2
01:00:53
Yeah. As our population ages and the population grows, Freeberg putting aside executive power in the midterms, which, yeah, that that would change everything. What are your thoughts on just inflation and tariffs and the chance that this comes back and explodes in ram administration’s lap?
Speaker: 2
01:01:10
Well, I think there
Speaker: 0
01:01:12
are three consequences, not necessarily related to inflation, that are just worth spending time on. One of which I don’t think gets talked about enough. The first is just the challenge of tariffs in general, and I shared this clip with you guys over the group chat yesterday from Ronald Reagan talking
Speaker: 2
01:01:28
Oh, it’s so funny. I have it chewed up. I actually edited it. Let’s do that. Let’s play this clip and get your reaction.
Speaker: 6
01:01:32
And today, many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation passed back in that period called the Smoot Hawley tariff greatly deepened the depression and prevented economic recovery. You see, at first when someone sai, let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs, and sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time.
Speaker: 6
01:01:59
What eventually occurs is first homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then ai all this is going on, something even worse occurs. People stop ai. Then the worst happens.
Speaker: 6
01:02:21
Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. The memory of all this occurring back in the thirties made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity.
Speaker: 0
01:02:38
So let me just say three things that I think are gonna be important consequences, one of which doesn’t get talked about much at all. The first is the important point about the decline in competitiveness that arises when you use protectionist tactics ai import tariffs. So, ultimately, in order to be competitive in the market, you need to have a free market to test how good you are relative to your competitors.
Speaker: 0
01:02:59
And if you use tariffs or other taxes or other government intervening systems to distort the natural forces of markets, meaning there’s a buyer and a seller, there may be multiple sellers, and ultimately the buyer will choose the best seller, then you’re creating a disincentive for American enterprise to be more competitive.
Speaker: 0
01:03:20
We lost manufacturing because we weren’t competitive in manufacturing. Putting a tariff on other manufacturing countries does not make Americans more competitive. It basically gives American businesses a crutch. Get an assembly,
Speaker: 2
01:03:33
David. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:03:33
So let’s talk about manufacturing. So if I’m using a traditional assembly line with low efficiency systems, I’m gonna be more expensive to make a device than a Chinese factory that’s built with a lot of automation, high efficiency systems, etcetera. And so if I’m saying, well, to buy the Chinese product, you gotta pay twice as much because there’s a tariff now.
Speaker: 0
01:03:51
The American company does not have an incentive to invest in automating or building better technology or adopting new technology to make themselves competitive in the marketplace. So that’s the challenge with tariffs long term is that they distort economic consequences that arise in a traditional free market system.
Speaker: 0
01:04:10
The second consequence Sai think is important is under this guise and in the near term, the effect of some of these tariffs is gonna be the loss of revenue for a significant chunk of the American businesses. In particular, I’ll use one example. People may not remember this because it wasn’t that big of a thing, but between 2016 and 2020 during the last Trump administration, there was a continued kind of tariff and trade escalation between Trump and China.
Speaker: 0
01:04:33
And during that time, China stopped buying American ag exports, and China is the biggest buyer of American agricultural products. As a result, the Trump administration had to issue two support payment checks to farmers that totaled $28,000,000,000 in 2018 and 2019. Just because of that Ai stepping out of the buying market, American farmers represent a large amount of the voting block for the Republican party.
Speaker: 0
01:05:01
And so my I think that the second consequence is gonna be that there is gonna need to be financial support, which means increased government spending if we intend to keep the tariffs in place and the global market stops buying American exports. That’s the second consequence.
Speaker: 0
01:05:14
The third consequence, which is the one I am most worried about, which I think about a lot, is China had the state council meeting a couple days ago. And in that state council meeting, they announced a series of measures and a series of steps that they would be willing to take on IP infringement in the case of retaliatory tariff escalation in a trade war.
Speaker: 0
01:05:38
What that means is that China may step up and say, you know what? We are disregarding all of the IP rights held by IP rights holders around the world, and they could steal IP more openly, more brazenly. And because they have a lower cost of manufacturing, they have a larger manufacturing base, a lower cost of power, they could basically take the only thing that much of American enterprise relies on, which is our IP rights, and say we’re just gonna well, people might say, oh, they already do that.
Speaker: 0
01:06:04
They already do that. They do it to an extent. But imagine if China just made copies of Microsoft Word and started selling it around the world for $5.
Speaker: 2
01:06:12
Yeah. I mean, they did that internally for some period of ai, then they started to respect it internally, but they’ve never done a great point ai shipping Disney films overseas. That’s right.
Speaker: 0
01:06:21
Sana so now imagine if they started taking all of American manufacturing drawings, blueprints, designs, and they have all this manufacturing capacity and they sold everything at 10¢ on the dollar to all of the global markets that The US is now cutting trade ties with because of the the tariff escalation. And China sai, we don’t care about your IP rights anymore. We don’t care because you’ve cut us off.
Speaker: 0
01:06:40
The rest of the world needs someone that will sell to them. I will also say China, One thing that’s not talked about, which I’ll add in, seems to have developed three nanometer semiconductor manufacturing technology, which is gonna go into production in q three of twenty twenty five and will end up being in full production in 2026.
Speaker: 0
01:06:56
This will move the base from Taiwan potentially into China. They are developing lithography systems. They are developing advanced semiconductor manufacturing systems, and they will effectively have everything from energy to the minerals to the manufacturing capacity to support and service all and the software now, all of technology.
Speaker: 0
01:07:14
And so we are in a really disadvantaged position if China does choose in this moment to disregard the IP rights of American businesses.
Speaker: 2
01:07:20
So they
Speaker: 0
01:07:21
have the they have the
Speaker: 2
01:07:22
ability to to swing back at us. Chamath, do you sana to, wrap us up here? And yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:07:27
I’ll take the other side of all of this. Yeah. I’ll start with, again, there’s no point prognosticating when they’re just telling you what they intend to do. Nick, you wanna play the clip?
Speaker: 7
01:07:40
I could see in the next few years that we are going to have to have some kind of a grand vatsal economic reordering. It was something on the equivalent of a new Bretton Woods or if you sana go back, ai a a treat something back to the speak agreements or the Treaty of Versailles.
Speaker: 1
01:07:59
I mean, what what is that? Just a kind of, like, refresher. What are we talking about? We’re talking about commercial relations between, at the time, 44 countries. Right? This is a big statement. I don’t think that these kinds of things are said casually at a Manhattan Institute cocktail hour.
Speaker: 1
01:08:17
And I think that people understand if you’re kind of like steeped in the history of it, how important these kinds of statements are. So I think I take this similarly to how I take Trump’s rhetoric on tariffs, and I’m spending some time trying to now understand how are the scenarios that could play out.
Speaker: 1
01:08:37
Because I think David is right if you assume the status quo, meaning what are the risks. But what they’re saying is we’re gonna question this. We’re actually gonna go here and just totally rewrite that. If that happens as part of this, all bets are off in my opinion. I don’t think any of us know with any certainty what a new economic framework would look like.
Speaker: 1
01:09:00
And if Scott is basically prepping himself to say, hey, put me in coach, I’m ready. I would take that seriously.
Speaker: 2
01:09:10
Ben, what should be let’s talk about onshoring and bringing these jobs, bringing these factories back to America. It seems to me a bit crazy that we’re sana make fast fashion and people’s Coachella wear and their anchor, you know, USB C cables here. Pharmaceuticals, sure, we need that. For strategic purposes, we obviously need the military and chips.
Speaker: 2
01:09:33
But outside of that, is there some rationale here when we have the lowest unemployment of our lifetime and everybody wants to come here, you know, to immigrate to this country, to doing these tariffs and trying to create jobs here that we don’t necessarily need. We have too much employment right now in the market and not enough bodies to fill all the open job wrecks where you’re ai.
Speaker: 2
01:09:57
Well, I
Speaker: 3
01:09:57
mean, I think one of the things that’s really fascinating is the the kind of difference in messaging that you hear between the treasury secretary, Howard Lutnick, and and the commerce secretary and the president. I mean, they’re they’re all messaging kind of different things.
Speaker: 3
01:10:07
Ai think secretary Bessent is making the strongest case for for what’s being done with this sort of long term, what’s what does reordering look ai? And and even there, I’m I’m still lacking clarity on what a reordered world trade relationship actually what is the end of the rainbow there?
Speaker: 3
01:10:21
What does that actually look like when all is said and done so that I can kinda grasp exactly what that what he wants that to look like? Well, I think that, you know, secretary of Ai seems to actually just like tariffs, and president Trump seems to have a picture in his head when it comes to factories that that we’re going to, you know, revitalize the steel mills, that we’re going to be we we’re going to be doing the kinds of jobs that we did back in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker: 3
01:10:41
There’s sort of a nostalgia that that that president Trump has in sort of his own mind about these sorts of jobs that, by the way, nobody in modern life actually wants to work at. If if you were to work at a Ford factory in 1953 in a non air conditioned factory riveting for a living, you would actually be quite unhappy, and and you should be very happy that actually there are machines that do that now.
Speaker: 3
01:10:58
And and you hear this kind of talk sometimes bandied about, not just with regard to offshoring, but with regards to technology and machines. I mean, I Sai I’ve talked to I remember a few years back in 2018, I talked to Tucker Carlson on my program, and he literally said that he would outlaw self driving cars because it would it would get rid of white trucker jobs, you know, blue collar trucker jobs in in Ohio and Michigan.
Speaker: 3
01:11:18
And when I said, well, that sounds kind of Luddite, he said, well, the Luddites had a point, and and, you know, then suggested that on the basis of safety, he would ban it. And I I remember asking him, but those dry those self driving cars will presumably be more safe than than humans driving sound. Safer. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker: 3
01:11:33
And and what he actually said was, well, you know, I you asked me on what grounds I would ban it, not not whether that was true or not. But Yeah. No. I I think that that that is Ai think I think this is the danger that particularly tech runs when we’re talking about these sorts of things is is to believe that the the animus for trade relationships around the world or the the anticompetitive nature of many of the the activities that are being taken are relegated solely to sort of the foreign sphere.
Speaker: 3
01:11:59
I think that you could easily see that turn on, quote, unquote, job loss that is caused by AI or job loss that is caused by technological gain. And the truth is that if you’re talking about job loss in the manufacturing sector in The United States, the vast majority of job loss in the manufacturing sector is not due to offshoring.
Speaker: 3
01:12:13
It’s due to technological advancements. Manufacturing productivity in The United States has actually dramatically risen since the since the nineteen eighties.
Speaker: 1
01:12:20
Okay. So let’s play conspiracy theorists for a second because okay. You’re right, Ben. Like, you want that clarity. I want that clarity. Freeburg wants it. JKEL, everybody wants it. But if this moment, if it’s a catalyst to your point where everybody is forced into the room and Trump leads a a grand bargain across the 50 or 60 most important trading partners in the world, what does that look like?
Speaker: 1
01:12:43
Like, it’s it’s almost ai, okay, we’re reestablishing something that’s akin to the United Nations and what the United Nations was meant to be post World War II, but that institution has totally failed. So this new thing exists purely on economic lines and cooperation. I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:13:01
Meh I I struggle actually to your point to kind of imagine what are the outcomes, but there’s so many unbelievable outcomes in that scenario if they were able to get the top 50 commercial mercantile countries together in a room and sai, let’s hammer something up.
Speaker: 3
01:13:15
I mean, I totally agree with that. I think one of my questions, however, is the if you take a look at at some of the the examples that that Scott is using there when he talks about the Bretton Woods agreement, or if you’re gonna talk about, you know, what what Nixon ai in debasing the dollar, Versailles.
Speaker: 3
01:13:27
If you’re talking I mean, Versailles at least would be a better example in the sense that you didn’t have a a global hegemon ai the time. Right. If you’re talking about the Bretton Woods system, literally, the rest of the world effectively did not exist in the post World War two era.
Speaker: 3
01:13:38
So what is everybody gonna bet on? They have to bet on the American dollar. There’s no other choice. By the time that Nixon decides to go off the gold standard, essentially, he has to rely on the organization of the petrodollar in order to make sure that people don’t dissociate from The United States.
Speaker: 3
01:13:50
What is the thing that’s going to draw people to The United States as opposed to looking to a comp rising competitor like a China?
Speaker: 1
01:13:56
That’s a great question. So what is that thing? What do you think that ai a great question? What
Speaker: 2
01:14:00
is that? To mind. Yeah. I mean
Speaker: 3
01:14:02
AI is the only possibility, which is why I think the AI regime inside the Trump administration is so deeply important. I also think this is why I’m warning about, you know, the possibility that these sort of anti free market forces that are that are related to tariffs aren’t just related to tariffs in some quarters.
Speaker: 3
01:14:15
This is where populism can kind of run out of control and start to actually turn against some of its tech masters in some of these cases. And so one one of the things that I’m very concerned about is if I was talking with Danielle Smith, who’s the premier of Alberta, the other day, and she was talking about the fact that Canada like, she’s she’s very conservative.
Speaker: 3
01:14:31
Alberta tends to be a more conservative area of Canada. And she was talking about how if Mark Carney were to become prime minister of Canada instead of Pierre Poliyev, that he actually is eager for the tariff war because it allows him to reorient toward China and away from The United States.
Speaker: 3
01:14:45
And and there are countries that absolutely would love to do that. I mean, there there there’s a case to be made that the EU would love an easy off ramp with Russia and China and use this as an excuse as as a way of reorienting back toward Russian oil, for example, and then Chinese markets because that Chinese market is lower.
Speaker: 2
01:15:00
Inputs. Right? I mean, you have lower input costs, which makes it ai better for citizens, and citizens like cheap things. They like cheap oil in their cars, and they like cheap cars. They’ll be bringing BYD cars into Europe.
Speaker: 3
01:15:12
And and the thing that I’m worried about is when when I look at the forget about Europe and forget about Canada for a second. The the the tariffs that that ai of shocked me, when I looked at that list were all the tariffs on the Southeast Asian countries. Right? All of those countries where where where production has been shifting out of China to places like, for example, Vietnam or Cambodia.
Speaker: 3
01:15:29
The the production has been shifting to those places specifically because companies know To
Speaker: 2
01:15:33
go after China.
Speaker: 3
01:15:33
The United States. Yeah. Because The United States is is going after China. Well, now why exactly would you manufacture in Vietnam when Vietnam is gonna be with a 46% tariff rate on the basis that we have a 90
Speaker: 1
01:15:44
It’s more than that, Ben. It’s like they’ve made those investments over the last five or six years. And so you have tens and hundreds of
Speaker: 2
01:15:51
Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:15:51
You know, millions of dollars, billions of dollars of sunk costs. Now what do you do in that moment?
Speaker: 2
01:15:55
These were actually specifically ai, Ben, to be a diversification strategy. Japan was paying their companies to build factories outside of China. And Apple was doing India, Vietnam to build AirPods and laptops and even the iPhone being made outside of China. That diversification strategy Jay
Speaker: 1
01:16:13
Cal, did you because
Speaker: 0
01:16:14
Did you watch the
Speaker: 1
01:16:15
did you watch the presser yesterday? The the worst part for me, I only had one moment where I was like, oh gosh. He stopped on Sri Lanka, and he goes Uh-oh. Sai Lanka.
Speaker: 2
01:16:26
Good old Sri Lanka. Eighty Eight amazing Sri Lankan, but Sri Sana, Very tough on us. Not very I was like, sir, I’m very accepting. Go ahead, Ben. You can do yours. You can do your dueling vouch Sri
Speaker: 3
01:16:37
Lanka. Just
Speaker: 1
01:16:38
you can do a great Trump.
Speaker: 2
01:16:40
Okay? And that’s the reason why Ben Shapiro’s podcast number two to All In Now because of the Ben Shapiro Trump impersonation. Ben Shapiro, great American. Have you been to the White House?
Speaker: 3
01:16:52
I I have actually. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
01:16:53
You have been invited in this? Or are you still can Ai or a never Trumper? It was a nasty never Trumper now. He’s ram Trump. I I exactly.
Speaker: 3
01:17:05
I Ai had that the the the same exact trajectory as JD Vance, except I didn’t end up vice president of The United States. But, you know, the I think that, you know, that again, we’ll want when we talk about the rollout, the the fact that, for example, the meme online right now and I know we all kind of live in the moral that the meme is the president, JD Vance, lecturing a penguin, because on that chart
Speaker: 2
01:17:22
is the Heard Islands. Have you even apologized for eating all that mackerel?
Speaker: 0
01:17:28
No. No. Wait. What are
Speaker: 1
01:17:29
you guys talking about?
Speaker: 2
01:17:30
Oh, I love There’s an island
Speaker: 0
01:17:32
ai got a 10% tariff, but there’s nothing on the island except penguins.
Speaker: 2
01:17:36
Yeah. It’s a nature’s name.
Speaker: 3
01:17:38
This is where I start
Speaker: 2
01:17:39
to yeah. This. Come on. Come on, Nen. Have you even apologized? K?
Speaker: 3
01:17:45
You got no cards.
Speaker: 2
01:17:46
There are
Speaker: 3
01:17:46
no cards. This penguin has no cards.
Speaker: 1
01:17:49
It’s just
Speaker: 2
01:17:49
you have no cards to play. Okay? Stop. Stop. You’ve got a great tuxedo. At least you showed up in a jux. Okay? Good stuff. Oh my god. By the way, I think
Speaker: 1
01:18:02
that Ben’s framing of this thank you for that because that was really helpful to me. You’re right. Like, if if we try to reconvene a new Bretton Woods, we have to have an anchor asset. So it’s a really great question, what is that anchor asset? It has to be AI. But then, you know, underneath that AI thing, we have these two very complicated problems. One is a meaningful energy problem.
Speaker: 1
01:18:24
I’ve been talking about this now incessantly. We don’t have enough electrons. We just don’t. And then the second is what Friedberg mentioned before, which is that we have a very delicate technological supply chain to make the underlying silicon we need for these things. Neither are trivial. These are not things that can be easily solved.
Speaker: 0
01:18:44
Yeah. The AI supply chain is electricity. We’re going from one terawatt to two. China’s going from three to eight over the same time period, just to be clear. So they’re accelerating. The second is rare earth materials that we don’t mine for. We’ve outsourced mining. And Doug Burgum told me an interesting stat.
Speaker: 0
01:19:03
He’s our secretary of the interior. He said, we only graduate 200 people a year in The United States with degrees in mining.
Speaker: 2
01:19:10
Oh,
Speaker: 0
01:19:10
gosh. Because beginning in the ai, when globalization took off, we basically stopped mining in this country and moved everything to all the places because we had this nimbyism. We didn’t wanna have mining in our backyard. The third, obviously, is the manufacturing of semiconductors, which we don’t do. The components to do the manufacturing.
Speaker: 0
01:19:27
So there’s a company called ASML, which everyone that works in tech knows about. They have these advanced lithography systems to make the semiconductors. They don’t sell to Ai. So now China’s got their own homegrown lithography systems. The worst
Speaker: 2
01:19:40
And we don’t
Speaker: 0
01:19:41
Yeah. The worst We don’t make any of that in house. So we don’t we don’t ai. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have the materials, and we don’t make lithography, and we don’t have any fabs.
Speaker: 1
01:19:48
I said this before, but one of the biggest national security threats that we created out of nowhere was when the Wall Street Journal was allowed to do a detailed article on ASML. And one of the craziest and scariest stats is that there’s a person, literally one person that can operate these machines that are trained by ASML and then forward deployed.
Speaker: 1
01:20:10
And there was a woman that was profiled. And I thought this is a national security risk. You should not be helping who this woman is.
Speaker: 2
01:20:18
She’s gonna be kidnapped. Brianna
Speaker: 0
01:20:21
Hall. At the end of the day, what The US has is the weights. We’ve got 70,000,000,000 parameters, and we call that an AI model. That 70,000,000,000 parameters, if someone gets a copy of it, they’ve got an AI model. So how much of an advantage do we really have?
Speaker: 3
01:20:35
And and the other thing that we had was
Speaker: 0
01:20:36
Well, China’s got the whole supply chain, and now they’re making their own models.
Speaker: 4
01:20:40
And the
Speaker: 3
01:20:40
thing that we had was our trade relationships with all the places that had all of these things that we actually needed. Right?
Speaker: 2
01:20:45
This is And it was one of the reasons high functioning.
Speaker: 3
01:20:47
Yes. It was it was quite high functioning. And and then and then beyond that, you also have the problem of what happens if there’s just less demand for for dollars on the world stage. I mean, the the exit of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency is gonna have some pretty nasty spillover effects, and and it’s gonna require the government to start sucking in more dollars from the American population in order to pay off all of these these debts that we’re racking up.
Speaker: 3
01:21:09
So, I mean, all these things tend like, you could see a world where we magic our way out of this. But This
Speaker: 2
01:21:13
is what
Speaker: 0
01:21:14
I’ve been saying to JCal. D dollarization is what ends up happening.
Speaker: 3
01:21:16
I mean, I
Speaker: 2
01:21:17
think that’s right. What the stablecoins, I think, is set up to counter. People are now saying, hey, we’re gonna have there’s two stablecoin acts that are going around here. One of them doesn’t require, like, know your customer anti money laundering terrorism stuff, which is, you know, Tether’s, according to many reports, bread and butter.
Speaker: 2
01:21:35
And then the other one is to domesticate all this business, give it to Circle, give it to Stripe, give it to American companies and force them to buy a certain percentage of treasuries and allow them to give interest, which the stable coin bills are now debating if they should give that.
Speaker: 2
01:21:53
So I don’t know if you guys are watching that, but that would be So there’s an analog. Keep a buyer for, you know, our currency. There’s
Speaker: 1
01:22:00
an analog to this that I think is important. Like when you look at the debt to GDP of Japan, One of the critical questions is how can you have a functioning economy at 250, two hundred and 60 percent debt to GDP? Ai? And we’re at sort of ai hundred and teens, right? One twenty something, whatever.
Speaker: 1
01:22:18
And one of the critical advantages that they have is that they export a lot of incredible goods abroad, but they have an incredibly deep domestic pool of buyers for their own Japanese bonds. And so there’s this permanent bid that exists because the net buyer can be a Japanese person on the arya, and they’re always there.
Speaker: 1
01:22:39
And it’s not necessarily a person, it’s an insurance company, it’s a pension fund, etcetera. The thing that US dollar stablecoins does is it starts to replicate one of those advantages, which again, if you think about having a release valve for The US economy, and if we needed to, all of a sudden ram to 200% debt to GDP, the real question is where’s the incremental net buyer of the US bond?
Speaker: 1
01:23:05
And it could be the person that has to back the stablecoin, which would then say the people in charge of the crypto strategy, meh won’t name names.
Speaker: 2
01:23:14
No. If anybody knows anybody
Speaker: 1
01:23:16
That legislation needs to be incredibly permissive because to your guys’ point, we would want the bid to US treasuries to exist and to be as ferocious as possible. Right?
Speaker: 2
01:23:26
Yeah. But I don’t think you should give let Tether do it until they do an attestation until they do a proper audit and they stop doing money laundering and terrorism and all the crazy stuff. No.
Speaker: 1
01:23:34
I’m not going all the way there. Allegedly. But what Circle does is Sai think quite structured and,
Speaker: 2
01:23:38
you know, well, we need That’s I mean, I think that’s Circle’s USDC. That’s their pitch. And I think the Trump family now just launched, their own stablecoin this week. So you’re gonna see 10 stablecoins. That is a great way to, you know, create competition. And, let’s ai let’s not let’s
Speaker: 0
01:23:55
really it’s it’s it’s the right question that this administration has a responsibility to articulate. What is it that makes America the linchpin of the global economy, of the western democracy, of the world is we enter this new era with this rising power in China, and I’m not sure that there’s clarity today
Speaker: 1
01:24:18
in that. What do you think it is?
Speaker: 2
01:24:20
Oh, I Ai tell you
Speaker: 0
01:24:21
what you
Speaker: 1
01:24:21
think. Both of you guys, what do
Speaker: 0
01:24:23
you guys think? Yeah.
Speaker: 2
01:24:23
But Sai mean, it’s pretty clear what it is. The reason we keep winning and the reason China keeps stumbling is because we have rabid entrepreneurship and an investment and a crazy investment infrastructure. The fact that we will bet on entrepreneurs and allow them to become billionaires or allow them to flame out and start again tomorrow, that entrepreneurial spirit of America is what needs to be preserved.
Speaker: 2
01:24:43
That’s what created SpaceX. That’s what created Circle. We just talked about Stripe. We need the American exceptionalism and it has to be backed by recruiting AKA immigration of brilliant people ai Sachs, like Freeburg, like Chamath, who were not born in this country. You can’t do it just based on Ben Shapiro and Jay Cal.
Speaker: 2
01:25:03
You need to be looking around the world for the smartest people and then plugging them into the entrepreneurial system here. That’s the magic. That’s the golden piece of America.
Speaker: 1
01:25:12
David, what
Speaker: 0
01:25:12
do you think it is?
Speaker: 1
01:25:13
That’s a very good I mean, I think that’s credible.
Speaker: 0
01:25:15
I honestly don’t know if I can be dismissive of Ai. Like J. Cal says they keep stumbling and blah blah blah. I I think that’s absolutely wrong. There’s a very good interview. What are those ai’ names from the Brookings Institution that do that podcast? Meh, you might know these guys, the three guys.
Speaker: 3
01:25:32
Midas Touch? Is that who you’re talking about? Or is vatsal different podcast? I’m not sure.
Speaker: 2
01:25:36
It’s not in the top 100 rankings. Better. Ai don’t know. Yeah. It’s not in the top one.
Speaker: 0
01:25:40
They talked about Ai, and they talked about actually the rise in China where they 30 x GDP per capita and call it thirty years because they allowed entrepreneurs to
Speaker: 2
01:25:49
have that. Goodfellas?
Speaker: 0
01:25:50
Goodfellas sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. The goodfellas. That’s right. The Stanford one. Goodfellas. Yeah. I think that was it. Yes. Pretty good pod. Good talk on a Goodtalk on No.
Speaker: 1
01:25:59
No. No. It’s Waldorf and Stattler, Sai think that’s what it is.
Speaker: 2
01:26:01
Waldorf and Stattler. Those are the quiver instruments are Goodfellas. That’s Mcmaster, Niall Ferguson, and Nick, find
Speaker: 1
01:26:09
a picture of Waldorf and Ai for free, Brook, to jog this.
Speaker: 2
01:26:12
They’re so great. They’re so great.
Speaker: 0
01:26:13
Sai anyway, they made the point that because China allowed the entrepreneurism of the individuals to let the market run free. And they have this throttle. When they let the people run free, they let entrepreneurism thrive. And then sometimes they pull the throttle back, Jay Cal.
Speaker: 0
01:26:30
And, you know, they just did
Speaker: 2
01:26:31
that and they crashed the whole thing.
Speaker: 0
01:26:33
Now they’ve pushed it forward again. And that’s what drives the growth and the improvement in productivity and this extraordinary abundance in energy, in mining, and now in manufacturing. And it’s, I think, gonna lead to a great era of prosperity for China. It’s pretty clear with or without the conflict with The US.
Speaker: 0
01:26:50
They’ve dramatically improved the conditions in that country over the last thirty years in a really profound historic way. So I I don’t I I’m not gonna be dismissive and say that they’re stumbling.
Speaker: 2
01:26:59
Let’s give it to Ben, and then I’ll tell you why I’m dismissing that.
Speaker: 3
01:27:01
So so first of all, I think that China does face some serious, real serious structural problems ranging from demographics to debt. And and I also think that yeah. And I I also think that if you take a look at sort of the history of economic fascism, which is what they’re attempting to do, which is sort of cap you know, using capitalist methodologies in order to prop up a a very tyrannical government that will
Speaker: 0
01:27:21
In a centrally planned way.
Speaker: 3
01:27:22
Yeah. Exactly. And and sai for a short period of time, that seems like that will work, and then and then the problem is you can find yourself in a blind alley fairly quickly. And right now, AI is not a blind alley, but we also don’t know exactly which way AI is gonna develop in the most profitable way.
Speaker: 3
01:27:35
I mean, the amount of money that’s been poured into AI has not yet been justified by the amount of of Completely. Net on the on return on the vatsal investment, obviously. And so if you don’t this is this is the benefit of the American market arya that you have everybody chasing everything all the time, and one of those things is gonna hit.
Speaker: 3
01:27:51
The the benefit of the Chinese market is you have everyone chasing one thing all the time. If that’s the thing that actually hits, they’ll do amazing, but it’s possible that they completely miss it. But the problem is, I think, and this is where you get back to the political in The United States and the and the necessity of avoiding a recession, is that, to me, the scariest thing that that is happening in inside the Trump administration is not something that’s bad.
Speaker: 3
01:28:11
When president Trump was inaugurated, there was one picture that spoke of the that that that kind of summed up the inauguration. Was president Trump there with Tim Cook and with the and with, and with Zuck and with Elon and with all the billionaires behind him, all the all the tech bros right behind him.
Speaker: 3
01:28:24
If there is a recession, what comes next is not going to be salutary to innovation, to investment, to technology, to anything remotely like that. And so the idea of short term pain, it better be really, really short term. The American people do not have patience for this. And if the and if if if it goes sideways, then what you’re gonna get is a populist revolt on the left and a populist revolt on the right that is going to take down everybody who is even remotely connected with this idea of free market capitalism.
Speaker: 3
01:28:50
And so I I think that one of the dangers in in sort of attempting to manipulate the economy this way is that we’re saying, okay. We’re gonna we’re gonna try these kind of methodologies of government control in which we rejigger the world economy in this way and that way, and then we’ll magic our way out of it with with stable coin and AI.
Speaker: 3
01:29:06
Maybe. Or maybe the best way to do this would actually be to allow the thing to thrive that has always thrived in America, which is lower the regulations, let people innovate, let people fail, let people succeed, get the hell out of the way, and, yes, actually do the things that you need to do in cutting government debt by doing the hard things.
Speaker: 3
01:29:22
And and the only way you’re gonna be able to do all those things is through continued success, not paying to get to some long term gain.
Speaker: 2
01:29:28
It’s gotta be entrepreneurship, and there are some subfactors of it. In order to have a vibrant entrepreneurial community, you need to have immigration. That’s why I asked Trump on this thing on this ram, can we get green cards? Can we get people who have degrees here, especially coming out of Stanford to stay in the country? He sai, yes. He’d staple them on the degrees. Great.
Speaker: 2
01:29:46
The next thing is getting Sana Khan out and ending the ram of Lina Khan. We need meh and a because when you have m and a, the companies get bigger. The fact that YouTube and Android and AdSense were purchased by Google made it into the massive success it is on a global basis today and the fact that Meta was able to buy things.
Speaker: 2
01:30:06
She may not like it when these companies get too powerful, but what Jack Ma what happened to Jack Ma is the reason, Freeburg, that I don’t believe a dictator will ever compete with our country if we stay entrepreneurial and not socialist. Socialism is a cul de sac as you’re saying, Bryden, and it might work for a short period of ai, but then someone like Xi Jinping is gonna do what dictators do, which is implode.
Speaker: 2
01:30:30
He saw Jack Ma get popular. He sent them to get reeducated and do some painting and he took up oil painting. He got rid of every educational company and pull up the chart of Chinese investment, Nick, if you have it. Boom, it just got smashed. And this is what dictators do. They do what Putin did. He invades Ukraine. His economy goes off the rails and this is what Xi Jinping do. Ai will implode.
Speaker: 1
01:30:53
Let me give you a step ladder to get off your soapbox so I can ask Ben a question. Ben, when you said that in a recession
Speaker: 0
01:31:00
Definitely not. That’s exactly right. How
Speaker: 2
01:31:03
come when I have a passion or something, you guys just have to give me a hard time? When you go on your passionate rant, I’m gonna work 2,000,008 ball. What do you do? You just shake it and
Speaker: 1
01:31:13
some stupid statement afterwards comes out. No.
Speaker: 2
01:31:16
It’s like, oh, this is the worst thing ever. Look at this. Ben agrees with me. Ben agrees American exceptionalism, M and A. Ben and I, that’s it. I’m leaving the problem. I’m leaving the world and Ben and I are doing all in 2.9.
Speaker: 0
01:31:24
Let me rant against dictators a minute or ram ai. Go ahead, Ben. No.
Speaker: 2
01:31:28
So Ben Okay. You should just go rant about the Trump administration and get your cabinet position. Go ahead.
Speaker: 1
01:31:33
Ben, when you talk about in a recession, they go after tech companies. What can you just explain that more? Just explain that. I’m not sure I understood that totally.
Speaker: 3
01:31:41
Okay. So so there there there’s a recession. And president Ram, just the way that people tend to think of politics is is not on a granular level. They tend to see it on sort of a pixelated level because most people don’t engage with politics on a granular level. They see a Seurat painting, and they don’t see all the dots. They just see Sunday in the Park with George. Right?
Speaker: 3
01:31:56
And so when it comes to a recession, the image that’s going to come to mind for the Trump administration is that this is an administration that is extremely friendly to business, particularly when it comes to tech. And so whoever is standing next to president Trump, if there if there is a serious recession, gets nuked gets caught in the fallout.
Speaker: 3
01:32:12
And if that happens, then you will see a resurgent left led by a Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, not a sort of technocratic, Obamasque, you know, Ezra Klein, abundance liberalism wing. You’re you’re gonna get a a resurgent Bernie is Bernie ism on the left that basically sai, these rich people screwed you in order to get ahead.
Speaker: 3
01:32:31
You can feel it because you’re feeling the recession. They’re still rich. You’re still poor. And and so what you really need is a complete rejiggering of the American economy along the lines of fairness. And you’re you’re gonna see something similar happen on the right, by the way.
Speaker: 3
01:32:42
So, my friend, Matt Cottonetti, who, is the the former editor of the the Washington free beacon, I believe. He he has a great point about presidential elections. He makes the point that candidates don’t become president unless they run against their own party. That that it is in order to actually capture the imagination of the American people, you almost always have to run inside your own party against your own party.
Speaker: 3
01:33:02
So you saw this most obviously with president Trump, but this is clearly true with Barack Obama. It it was true to a certain extent, with, with George w Bush even, who ran a compassionate conservative campaign against these sort of hard hearted Gingrich Dole Republicans. Ai.
Speaker: 3
01:33:15
I think it’s It’s Clint Clint Clinton for sure did this. So I I think it’s a great point because then you have to start thinking, okay. Look at the we’re turning to the right side of the aisle now. Let’s say that you have a politician on the right side of the aisle. What does he run against in the because Trump has obviously taken command tremendous command of the Republican base sana the Republican party. What is there to run against?
Speaker: 3
01:33:31
Well, if there’s an economic downturn, do you think that they’re gonna run against Trump being not capitalist enough, or do they think they’re gonna run against Trump being too capitalist, too friendly? Right. Exactly. And that’s
Speaker: 2
01:33:41
how you get a
Speaker: 3
01:33:41
populist uprising on the right, and what you end up with is a horseshoe theory politics where both parties
Speaker: 2
01:33:46
are in favor
Speaker: 0
01:33:46
of Lina Khan.
Speaker: 3
01:33:47
Ai? But but both parties arya in favor of Lina Khan. And by the way, this is not a rarity. I mean And socialist. I I think I think Sai think that the vice president is is an amazingly brilliant guy. He has also expressed kind of public support for Lina Khan from time to time. Right? And that’s inside the Republican party.
Speaker: 3
01:34:00
And on the left, obviously, there’s tremendous support for Lena Khan. So if what we’re saying here is one of the things we need is not Lena Khan, we should be very careful not to step on the rake, and and then the thing that hits you in the face is Lena Khan.
Speaker: 2
01:34:11
Right. Yeah. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:34:12
And that’s ai I said my contrarian bet for this year was this rise in, socialist policy and the response to some of the actions the administration might take.
Speaker: 2
01:34:21
But I mean, how ai we avoid making the bottom half of society feel included in all this wealth generation, etcetera? Ai, what what is the plan here? Is it universal health care? Is it lowering their taxes? I mean, the administration says no taxes for people under a hundred 50 k.
Speaker: 2
01:34:39
We have to give something to the working man and woman of this country, the people who feel that they can’t get rich, who can’t get to the middle class. Does anybody here have a suggestion for that?
Speaker: 3
01:34:49
I mean, I do I actually do have a suggestion, and it’s actually shockingly easy. President Trump has a has a visceral connection to blue collar workers in this country. Yes. Clearly, has a visceral connection. He should stop preaching that blue collar workers are getting screwed and start preaching that they’re succeeding because it’s actually true.
Speaker: 2
01:35:05
The truth.
Speaker: 3
01:35:05
Okay. Yes. Yes. I mean, I think that the the the fib that politicians always make bank on is the idea that, for example, the middle class in America is completely dissolved. That is not statistically true. The middle class has turned into the upper middle class. Okay? And and, actually, all Americans I I I sai this on my show all the time.
Speaker: 3
01:35:21
People have this, again, this sort of rosy eyed view of the nineteen fifties, which, again, was a historical outlier because the rest of the world didn’t exist. It sai been destroyed. But they also have this bizarre idea that that you arya better off to be 30 years old in 1980 than you are to be 30 years old in 2025.
Speaker: 3
01:35:35
All I can say is in 1980, the only dude with the cell phone was Gordon Gekko and it was a shoe box, and he was holding it to his head. Okay? The reality is that everything in your life is better in 2025 on a material economic level than it was Yes. In 1980. And the the lie that politicians tell in order to gain power is they say, you’re you’re getting screwed. Somebody is screwing you. I can unscrew the screwing.
Speaker: 3
01:35:56
And and so there’s there’s this constant sort of race to the bottom in terms of this rhetoric. And what you end up with is, in the end, what can I promise you that that I can then blame somebody else for not having fulfilled the promise? President Trump, I think, could avoid that because of this unique connection that he has with blue collar people where he could say, listen.
Speaker: 3
01:36:12
We’re all on the same side here. Right? What we’re doing here is innovation. I thought that the most important line that I heard from president Trump during his his victory speech the night that he won was he when he said to Ai, and it was kind of a throwaway line, when he said we love our geniuses.
Speaker: 3
01:36:25
Right? He said we love our geniuses. And I
Speaker: 2
01:36:27
thought, yes. That’s the thing we need. Celebrate our genius. Celebrate success. Yes. Celebrate entrepreneurship. And this could
Speaker: 3
01:36:31
and this could be you. And and not only and we’re gonna have hiring ram. You know, as Marc Andreessen has talked to, we need to have hiring programs that are that are specifically designed to find the best people, not just abroad, but also in The United States who might be under serviced in in rural areas of the country or in blue collar areas of the country.
Speaker: 3
01:36:46
Find the next JD Vance. Find the next guy who really needs, you know, that that hand up. Like, all those things can be done. A rising tide will lift all ships, but this is the problem with the short term pain plan. Americans have a long memory.
Speaker: 3
01:36:58
And when it comes to politics, it I think this happened with the Biden administration. People their relationship with politicians is sort of like a married couple. And and good married couples, you know, they they kinda talk through the the minor problems that they’re having in their meh, and then and then things, you know, continue to maintain and grow and get better.
Speaker: 3
01:37:14
Bad married couples, what happens is that they sort of ignore the the ai of minor annoyances for years at a ai, and then something bad happens and the bottom just goes right out. And this is the thing that I’m afraid of for the Trump administration. Everybody’s willing to ignore the things that are kinda mildly annoying, like penguins at the White House or whatever, up until the point where there’s a serious recession.
Speaker: 3
01:37:31
At that point, everybody kind of looks around and goes, why are we even doing this? I think that’s exactly what happened with Biden with the Afghanistan withdrawal, for example. Making a misstep is the is the is why I’m being critical of the tariffs. It’s not because I want Trump to lose. It’s because I want Trump to win.
Speaker: 3
01:37:44
Right? I think he’s doing too many important things ai the stuff that Antonio is doing. There are too many important things happening to to take to roll the dice on a strategy that isn’t even being articulated. If you’re going to make the case for a long term gain, I need to know what the long term gain is so I can make the case to the American public as to why they should endure the short term pain.
Speaker: 3
01:38:02
You know you’re having surgery because after the surgery, you’re gonna feel better. But if I say you’re having surgery, it’s gonna be some short term pain. You say, okay. How am I gonna feel after the surgery? You say, well, I don’t know. You know, maybe. Could maybe who knows? What the why am I having this surgery?
Speaker: 2
01:38:15
We have so many job openings. We have the lowest unemployment of our lifetime. As you said, consumers today can get and live an incredible lifestyle that the rich didn’t have in 1980. The car you can buy today can drive itself for $20.30, 40 k. You can buy a used Tesla and have this car that’s better than any car made in the last fifty years. So you gotta keep it positive.
Speaker: 2
01:38:35
And then think about generation tool belt. You’ve got all these, you know, plumbing jobs, electrician jobs, construction jobs that pay massively hourly wages that are available for people today. We have too many job openings today, and and you never hear Trump say that. To your point, it’s always this Ai. True.
Speaker: 2
01:38:52
Everything’s a disaster, and I’ll save you when in fact you don’t need saving. Go ahead, Freeburn.
Speaker: 0
01:38:56
I’ll answer Timoff’s earlier question about what America can anchor to to attract the rest of the world. And I think it’s what’s been the American story from the beginning, which is ambition. We ai the West. We launched the industrial revolution. We went to space. We landed on the moon. We had the Manhattan Project. We unleashed the information technology revolution with the development of the transistor.
Speaker: 0
01:39:26
The ambition is what’s been kind of consumed by China. In the last twenty years, they’ve built 30,000 miles of high speed rail. In the next fifteen years, they’re gonna add more electricity production capacity than The United States times two has today. There’s nothing short of ambition coming out of China, and it’s what we’re lacking.
Speaker: 0
01:39:51
All of our political gambits, all of our debates are all centered around what we’re trying to fix that went wrong in the past, what we did wrong, and what we gotta do to make it right. And we don’t talk at all about the ambition of where we can lead the world to next. Ai the only one that’s doing that.
Speaker: 0
01:40:08
And I think that’s where we need to ai of have a bit of a important pivot on the global stage if we wanna be able to kind of attract partners and also to have Americans think outside of this speak. Where are we headed? And I just I I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if you guys agree, but I just feel like that’s one of the key things that we’ve kind of lost track of.
Speaker: 1
01:40:25
NERC put out a a study just like this is very tactical, but it’s part and parcel of what you and Jason are talking about. Do you guys know that about twenty five percent of all of our utility workers in America became eligible for retirement between 2017 and 2022?
Speaker: 2
01:40:43
I did not.
Speaker: 1
01:40:43
No. So most of the people, 56% of all utility workers now, have less than a decade of experience. You know what that’s resulted in? In 2021, the average US customer of of an electric utility experienced seven and a half hours of service interruptions, and it’s just
Speaker: 2
01:41:00
growing. I think the average plumber’s age is 50. We can’t get people to become plumbers.
Speaker: 1
01:41:07
NERC says that 19 states now in The United States can face rolling blackouts during normal peak conditions if these issues aren’t addressed. And ai the way, this is that’s a human capital problem. But if you multiply that by ten and twenty and thirty times, there was a different tweet.
Speaker: 1
01:41:21
I don’t know, Nick, if you could find it, that talked about an organization trying to find people to help build nuclear submarines.
Speaker: 2
01:41:27
Did you guys see this quote?
Speaker: 1
01:41:29
Where they needed a hundred thousand people to build nuclear subs in The United States, and they could barely find, like, a few hundred?
Speaker: 2
01:41:38
Yeah. We we need to get better at this stuff. I mean, the good news is is we’re we’re gonna have robots to do this. Ben, you know, if I run for president, I’m one of the few people here on the pod who can. My position’s gonna be build three new cities with 5,000,000 homes in each because, you know, starter homes. Families can’t buy starter homes. You ever consider running for office?
Speaker: 2
01:41:58
And if you did, what would be your platform?
Speaker: 3
01:42:00
I mean, it’d be pretty horrifying to run for office. It seems like a terrible job, and I think the Of course. Age to run for president is now in your seventies, so I have, like, three decades to consider it. But, you know, if if I were gonna run, I I would be running on the basic idea that in this country, the only thing that you are promised is is the adventure.
Speaker: 3
01:42:18
And and I’m not gonna make you promises that I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m not gonna make you promises that I can’t keep about how I’m gonna fix your life because the truth is I really can’t. All I can do is help get the obstacles out of the way so you can fix your life and you can make your life sai, and I can help break the institutions that have a stranglehold on on your future.
Speaker: 3
01:42:36
And and there, when you’re talking about electricians and plumbers, the truth is that we have set up an enormous con game that is our higher education system, particularly in the liberal arts Ridiculous. Subsidized by the taxpayer when most jobs that that we’re talking about right here do not require a college degree.
Speaker: 3
01:42:50
And there are so many things that that the Trump administration should be doing and is doing that, again, that are great, that they could break the stranglehold on some of these things that allow for more opportunity. But I think the thing that people really you know, the the thing that I would say that I I really think that maybe no other politician would say, and I can say because I’m not a politician, is your future is in America, your future is in your hands.
Speaker: 3
01:43:10
It is not in somebody else’s hands. It is your responsibility. It is your responsibility to go out and strive. It is your responsibility to go and succeed. We want you to be able to to try again if you fail, but we want you to go and we want you to try ai individualism.
Speaker: 3
01:43:25
And and also and also the, you know, the the the kind of case that would that that was being made a little bit earlier about Ai, that that basically Ai is saying that it can do things. The one of the things that that drives me up a wall is when politicians say Ai created x jobs or or we created x jobs, you didn’t create a job.
Speaker: 3
01:43:42
Okay? The government does not create jobs. The government can take money from people and then give it to other people, but it is only entrepreneurs who can create jobs. And so the the way that you fight China off is not by the power of a centralized government directing people in a particular direction.
Speaker: 3
01:43:56
The way that you fight off China is by unleashing the collective knowledge, wisdom, and ambition of the American people on an individual level to go out and do all of these unbelievable things. And that that would be the promise that I’d make to the American people is I’ll get everybody the hell out of your way so you can succeed.
Speaker: 3
01:44:09
That that would be the only thing I would I would promise.
Speaker: 2
01:44:11
Guys, we got, breaking news here. And it turns out the more reciprocal tariffs have dropped. Look at this. Complaining about the docket. JCal has put a 500% reciprocal tariff on that. Tariff on that. Purchasing dogs from a breeder is now a % tariff. Friedberg. That’s pretty, that’s pretty stiff.
Speaker: 2
01:44:31
And Chamath has put one on Laura Sana slippers. Yeah. Too many people have them. 200% tariff. And, oh, looks like Ben Shapiro got in on it.
Speaker: 2
01:44:39
Having Candace Owens on your podcast is now at 200%. Ben, what are you doing here? I ai, this-
Speaker: 3
01:44:45
Unkind guys, unkind.
Speaker: 0
01:44:47
Wait, what’s the proper lucky one?
Speaker: 2
01:44:48
Can you,
Speaker: 0
01:44:49
can you rebalance
Speaker: 2
01:44:49
one more lucky? I
Speaker: 3
01:44:50
have put a
Speaker: 2
01:44:50
thousand, this is the biggest one that you just dropped, % tariff. I’m working with Jcow. Four.
Speaker: 1
01:44:58
Chamath Palihapitiya. Oh, you’re chairman dictator. Sai, I have to Do you wanna hear about this?
Speaker: 2
01:45:02
Oh, would you like to do a little memory lane? We got so much show here. I’m trying to get this out, but okay.
Speaker: 0
01:45:05
Oh, I’ve ai I’ve created a poly market on GDP. Oh. Annualized GDP growth in q three of this year being below five per negative 5%. Negative 5%?
Speaker: 2
01:45:16
Yeah. That’s brutal.
Speaker: 0
01:45:18
Check it out on the Ai Market. What’s the probability of that happening? Make your bets.
Speaker: 2
01:45:23
Oh, make your bets with our partner, Poly Market. Chamath, do you do you wanna do victory lap? We’re gonna wrap here. What do you wanna do?
Speaker: 1
01:45:30
Well, I actually think it’s fun because we’re gonna kick off a a different Poly Market around this because I think it’s interesting. So the thing that we haven’t talked about is with all of the tariffs, with all of the financing questions, with all of the recession questions, short term rates, long term rates, the one thing that we haven’t sufficiently talked about,
Speaker: 2
01:45:51
it’s
Speaker: 1
01:45:51
not really in the press, but it needs to be talked about is there is a tremendous amount of corporate debt that supports these businesses today. And you would say, well, if long term rates go down, there’s no real risk. But the tariff picture actually impacts revenues. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:46:11
And the problem with that is that there’s a lot of companies that have debt covenants tied to revenue and EBITDA. And so this is what I spoke about at the January, which is the one risk that is uncontrollable is what happens to corporate debt. And could we see a wave of defaults and a wave of action?
Speaker: 1
01:46:34
Nick, you may wanna just play the clip and we can talk about what we can do about this. This is my pick for the best investment idea.
Speaker: 2
01:46:43
Ai, here we go. What do you got Jamal?
Speaker: 1
01:46:44
So let me preface this by saying that this is a pick that 92 times out of a hundred goes to absolute zero and six out of the remaining eight times you make 10 extra money and then the final two times you make anywhere between 100 to 1,000 extra money. This is a loser trade but I would be long CDS. So what am I buying? I am buying insurance. I’m buying insurance using credit default swaps.
Speaker: 1
01:47:15
I’m buying what’s called protection that there is no default event in 2025. I would like a little bit of an insurance policy in 2025 so that the men and the women that we have voted in have the chance to do their work in peace. I think that there is a small chance of some volatility next year. I hope it doesn’t happen.
Speaker: 1
01:47:38
I hope that this trade loses money, but if it hits, it will be the best performing asset of 2025. And I just wanna be clear, this is not something I think will happen. It’s not something I want to happen. But I do think that if you look back in terms of just the tonnage of dollars you can make and the massive risk asymmetry that it presents to you, when you look at the concentration of the S and P, when you look at just the total gross amount of debt that we have, when you look at rates spiking, all of these things sai having a little insurance may not be a bad thing.
Speaker: 1
01:48:07
It has hit. Nick, you can show the CDS graph. So this thing for every billion dollars of risk you would’ve put on every billion dollars that you put on would’ve cost you about a million dollars and that million dollars would’ve made you about $7,000,000 in about three months.
Speaker: 2
01:48:25
Did you put it on?
Speaker: 1
01:48:26
I’m not gonna comment on my my trades, Jason. Oh, okay. But we talked we talked about it off air already.
Speaker: 2
01:48:32
But if you did put it on, does that mean you’re taking us all to Italy this summer? No. What’s happening here? Are you getting a boat for us to record from the Berlin yacht?
Speaker: 1
01:48:40
No. But there may be some boats for sale if this trade keeps going this way.
Speaker: 2
01:48:44
Cool. Why
Speaker: 1
01:48:45
is this important? The CDS actually represents the structural risk in The United States private economy, in the corporate economy. And so, Nick, if you just put it back on. So when you see these spreads blowing out, this is actually a very important warning sign. And this is actually a thing that I think Scott understands well, Howard understands well. I think they’ll translate this to the president.
Speaker: 1
01:49:06
If I have an opportunity to explain it, I will, but this is a really important market to pay attention to. This is what was the canary in the coal mine for the great financial crisis. This was the stuff that showed us that there was a big default event happening in the mortgage side of the market, but then that spilled over to the broader economy.
Speaker: 1
01:49:28
And so the tariff picture and the recession picture will get played out in this chart and I think it’s something that folks can and should probably pay tremendous attention to because I think now that this trade is in the money, the question is, I don’t think we want this to happen.
Speaker: 1
01:49:45
That one sigma, two sigma event where all of a sudden this trade returns a thousand x is really bad.
Speaker: 2
01:49:52
Well, you know, let’s keep our eye on the markets. And, as of the taping here, we’re down about 5% across the boards. And,
Speaker: 1
01:50:00
you’re Excellent. You should come back.
Speaker: 2
01:50:03
Yeah. Well done, Ben. You fit right in really good.
Speaker: 0
01:50:05
Ai in Florida, are you? We’re doing an event in Miami at the end of
Speaker: 2
01:50:08
the month. That’s fun. Okay. Go around.
Speaker: 3
01:50:09
You should be yeah. That’d be fun. Let’s do it.
Speaker: 2
01:50:11
If you wanna come
Speaker: 0
01:50:12
to Miami and hang out, we’ve got, like, this nightclub. We’re doing a stage. We’ve got the, track ai at Formula One.
Speaker: 2
01:50:17
We should be Ben’s got a Ben’s got a table at eleven. It’s got his name on it. Ben Shapiro’s table. We’re going to live. We’re going to live. We’re going
Speaker: 1
01:50:23
to live. Stop. Okay.
Speaker: 0
01:50:24
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Speaker: 2
01:50:25
I don’t know who comes Ai don’t know which strip club is sponsoring all of them this trip, but we’ll figure it out.
Speaker: 0
01:50:30
That was awesome, Ben. Thanks for doing that.
Speaker: 3
01:50:32
Thanks, guys. That was blast.
Speaker: 0
01:50:34
Well, JCal, take us out. Take us out.
Speaker: 2
01:50:35
And this is my favorite with Ben. Ben’s like, and you know, there are security issues in Ukraine, and you have security issues as well. That’s why you should use Lifeline. Now you are the master of a fucking segue. I have never I thought I was good. Ben Shapiro is like, and, of course, we have the tariffs, and that’s going down. But But you know what won’t go down?
Speaker: 2
01:50:55
If you buy gold, buy your gold bullion @goldbullion.org, you are great at this. Is it true? A hundred million in revenue for Daily Wire. Is that true, nine figures?
Speaker: 3
01:51:05
Yeah. Actually, last year was 02/02/2020.
Speaker: 2
01:51:08
Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:51:08
02/20.
Speaker: 2
01:51:09
What’s going on? I saw some headline, you’re going bankrupt.
Speaker: 0
01:51:11
How do
Speaker: 2
01:51:11
you go bankrupt with February Yeah. We’re we’re we’re
Speaker: 3
01:51:13
we’re not going bankrupt. Yeah. Now then they they
Speaker: 2
01:51:15
start restructuring Actually, Ben,
Speaker: 1
01:51:17
now that you saw what’s happening with Newsmax, I mean, any thoughts to maybe braising
Speaker: 3
01:51:21
some capital? It it, yeah. I mean, it it has it has let’s just put it. It has crossed our minds. Yes. For sure.
Speaker: 2
01:51:28
You’re making 50 times the revenue of, Truth Social. Congratulations. But
Speaker: 1
01:51:33
actually, Ben, what do you think when you see the this Newsmax thing trade like this? I mean, it’s
Speaker: 2
01:51:38
incredible. Yeah. Ai mean What is
Speaker: 1
01:51:39
it saying, do you think?
Speaker: 3
01:51:39
I mean, I I think it’s saying a couple of things. I mean, one one is saying, obviously, look. I I think the PE ratios on on the Newsmax trade are are, you know, ridiculous in the in the sense that it’s gonna revert back to something closer to normalcy. I think that the the it was supposed to trade at $10, and it came out of 14.
Speaker: 3
01:51:54
It was broke to, like, 240, so it’s more like GameStop than anything else. There’s a lot of retail traders who are fans of Newsmax who bought the stock, and then it it left. And I think it was today back down in the forties, something like that. It’ll end up being, you know, vatsal market cap will probably be somewhere when it when it lands in, like, the 2 to 3 bill range, somewhere 3 to 4 bill, something like that.
Speaker: 3
01:52:14
I I think what it says is that, you know, the the stock market in in the short term is a voting machine, and in the long term, it is a weighing machine.
Speaker: 4
01:52:21
And I
Speaker: 3
01:52:21
think that, you know, when when you when you look at at stocks that have name brand recognition, then you’re gonna get a lot of voting in the early going. And then it’s a question of whether you can keep that up so it turns into weighing.
Speaker: 1
01:52:31
Right. Fair enough.
Speaker: 2
01:52:32
39,000,000 in, quarterly revenue. So they’re at a hundred 50, hundred 60 million dollars a year. And their valuation right now I don’t have the market cap here, but what did it peak out at? 3 or 4,000,000,000 or something?
Speaker: 3
01:52:45
Oh, no. When it went in peaked, it peaked above 20 bill.
Speaker: 4
01:52:47
Yeah.
Speaker: 3
01:52:48
The market cap. What? Yeah.
Speaker: 2
01:52:49
Went to $170
Speaker: 1
01:52:50
or $200?
Speaker: 3
01:52:51
2 hundred and 40 bucks. 2 hundred and 40 5 bucks yesterday. Yeah. Or two or two days ago. It’s just, you know,
Speaker: 2
01:52:56
getting stuck. So something weird going on there. Okay. Alright. Well, the, All In and, Daily Wire merger and IPO coming soon. The ticker symbol is all daily in wire. All in Daily in wire. The merger is complete, and we’ll see you all next time.
Speaker: 1
01:53:14
Love you, folks.
Speaker: 2
01:53:15
All in Fox News. Love you guys. Well
Speaker: 0
01:53:16
done, guys.
Speaker: 2
01:53:18
We’ll let your winners
Speaker: 3
01:53:19
ride. Rain meh David Sacks.
Speaker: 5
01:53:26
And I said We open sourced it to the fans, and they’ve just gone crazy with it.
Speaker: 4
01:53:30
Love you,
Speaker: 2
01:53:30
West High. Queen of quinoa. Besties are
Speaker: 3
01:53:39
gone. I’m
Speaker: 1
01:53:41
just finding out a dog taking
Speaker: 5
01:53:49
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just useless. It’s like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.
Speaker: 2
01:53:57
Wet your feet. Your feet? Where did
Speaker: 3
01:54:03
you get mercy’s arm back ai?
