Andrew Ross Sorkin
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, look, I think there's a fundamental question here about whether you think there's a problem with the status quo or not. Ken Griffin is one of the biggest winners in our economy under the current status quo, and I don't think he sees a big problem that needs to get fixed. But I think like we just talked about, I think there are some big problems.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, Freiburg just laid out the way in which trade with China is non-reciprocal. Like our companies cannot participate in their markets the same way that they can participate in ours. But it's worse than that. Like I talked about, these WTO rules gave China the opportunity to strategically annihilate our core industries that are critical in the supply chain.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And there's one other piece of this, which I think is really important, which is the race to the bottom. I mean, if you're an American company, And you are still producing in America and your competitor is able to go to China and undercut you. Obviously, you have to do the same thing because, I mean, those are just the rules of the game.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And so we've had this race to the bottom where if you're an American company operating under these rules, you have no choice. It's worse. But to export your manufacturing, your supply chains. So we've had these rules that, again, under the status quo, I would say they're not free trade. It's unfair trade. It has all these perverse consequences.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
It's bad for middle America and this manufacturing belt of the country. And it's created massive strategic dependencies on an American adversary.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
But this is what I think is so interesting, Andrew, is the way that Trump has already shifted the conversation. Because the truth of the matter is that before Liberation Day on April 2nd, which was three weeks ago, no one was talking about the unfair trade practices. No one was talking about the dependencies on rare earths. No one was talking about the race to the bottom.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And Trump has shifted the conversation. 100%. When Jared Kushner was on the show, he talked about how the Trumpian approach is controversy elevates message. And we said at the beginning that by having this Liberation Day, by planting this flag in the ground, Trump was creating... leverage to then have these negotiations, and he completely shifted the conversation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Now, where I will agree with you is that the administration has to stick the landing here, right? Besson, and it's not just Besson, also Lutnik, these are all smart, talented people. They do have to then negotiate these deals, and we have to basically stick the landing. But
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I think the fact that you're saying that you don't disagree with where Trump is trying to get to, but it's mostly just tactical, is a huge shift in the conversation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Yeah, I would just add to that that you hear this criticism of Trump a lot, which is that, OK, he's right on the issue or his instincts are correct, but there should be a nicer way of doing it. And I guess I would give that story more credence if the people making that criticism had actually been advocating for a change in the status quo prior to Trump. And they weren't.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, we had this bipartisan globalist consensus that pretty much all trade practices with China, no matter how unfair they got, was basically good for the United States. And no one was really doing anything about it. until President Trump made it this issue and made the unfair trade practices conspicuous.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
So if somebody else had been willing to take that on, then I maybe would give credence to this idea that there's some non-Trumpian way of doing this. But I just don't think that's the way our political system works. I think that the way our political system works is that you have to completely shift the conversation first to create a new consensus, and then you work out the deals.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And that process can be a little bit disruptive.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I don't know how long it's going to take. But look, I think one of the big lessons here over the past 25 years, is that you have security first. Security has to be worked out first, then you have trade. If you build your whole supply chain and all your trading relationships with countries that are fundamentally adversarial to your interests, and we can get into that part of the...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
the US-China relationship, but I think most people would say that we're in some version of a new Cold War with China. Obviously, you're going to have to revise your trade relationships because, again, we can't be dependent on an adversary for core components that then go into our military, for example. So security always has to come first, then you work out trade.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I think that India is fundamentally extremely aligned with us on security because they view their biggest potential threat and adversary as being China. And that is basically the way that the U.S. sees the world as well. And so I do think that the U.S.-India relationship is just very aligned.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I think, therefore, the investments that get made and the trade relationships that get forged will be very stable over the next couple of decades. Whereas if you make a big investment in a country that could be your adversary, you should expect that that relationship could get disrupted.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I just think the structural realities just make it a good place to invest because I just think that India and the US are going to be very aligned for a long time. Agreed. Again, their main security threat is China. And our main security threat is China. And that's just not going to change for probably the entire 21st century.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Smart. Smart. Look, India is a country that has two great powers in its neighborhood. China and Russia. It has a contested border with China. They've had border skirmishes. When you have a country that is much more powerful, that's actually a security threat to you, you then seek good relations, even possibly an alliance with the other great power in the neighborhood.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
That has been India's philosophy. They've had good relations with Russia for a long time, even going back to the Cold War. That is what makes sense for their security standpoint. By the way, the exact same thing is true of the United States. We just haven't realized the strategic reality. China is the peer competitor. I mean, Mearsheimer made this point at our all-in summit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
China is the peer competitor. It's the only country in the world that is a peer of the United States. It's the only country that's really capable of threatening our security. Russia is a distant number three in terms of the great power rankings. What you want to do if you're in a sort of heads-up competition where there's two superpowers is you want to make an alliance with that number three.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And what we've done is we've pushed Russia into the arms of China. What we ought to have been doing is the reverse Kissinger. We did this during the Cold War, by the way. We had the Soviet Union and we had China. And in that case, the Soviet Union was the big threat to American security. So what did we do? We had Nixon and Kissinger go to China and make a deal with Mao.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
China was just as communist as the Soviet Union. Mao had blood on his hands to a degree that is much greater than someone like Putin has. And yet we were willing to shake hands with him and make an alliance because that was real polity. And I think in a similar way, this is what our strategy should have been with Russia for the last two decades.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And instead, we've been foolishly pushing them into the arms of China.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Andrew, I mean, what do you think about this sort of what I would call balance of powers logic 101?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
No, the enemy's enemy is your friend or whatever it is.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Right? I think it's dangerous to look at foreign policy from a position of extreme moralism because ultimately the purpose of our foreign policy is to ensure American security. And we can't rectify every injustice in the world. And over the past 25 years, we've become hyper-interventionist.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
know in an attempt so we've claimed to do that right we keep saying that we we've gotten involved in all these places because we want to promote our values and spread democracy and by the way we did the opposite i mean you look at the forever wars the middle east we had interventions and occupations in iraq afghanistan libya syria how did all those things work out they did not promote our values or spread democracy so my point is just i don't think we should look at foreign policy from a position of extreme moralism
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I prefer to think of neither of those countries as quote-unquote evil, and I would prefer to think of them as countries which have their own interests. I think that with respect to China, the real issue is that it is a revisionist great power. It has made clear that it wants to basically annex Taiwan. It wants to turn the South China Sea into effectively a Chinese lake.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
It does not respect international waters. It has territorial disputes with Japan. And if we don't play a role in containing China, then China will revise the balance of power in East Asia in a major way. And I think that would have, I think, profound consequences for the United States.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
The United States is not going to be thrown off a roof by Russia. And that's the level at which we should think about these things. If you look at Russia's behavior, Russia actually is not a revisionist great power. What it wants is just security on its borders.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
The revisionist power actually in Europe over the past 25 years was the United States because we pushed NATO right up to Russia's borders. despite the promises that were made to Gorbachev in the 90s. So we're the ones who've revised the balance of power in a way that was profoundly threatening to the Russians.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I think it would be far better from the American standpoint to just work out a security architecture for Europe with Russia that gives the Russians the security they crave on the Western border and gives Europe the security it craves. And I think if we had had that mentality, as opposed to this highly moralistic mentality where we basically want to spread American-style democracy everywhere?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
You know, Ben Stiller was once referred to as the Jewish Tom Cruise, but he has not held up like Tom Cruise. I got to say that. He should have joined the Church of Scientology. Come on, man. Keep it up. You got to represent for us a little better.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Right, two trillion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And look, just to be clear, I mean, I thank my lucky stars that I'm an American and we do have the type of government we have here. And my parents emigrated to the United States in 1977 for political reasons because we have the type of government we have here. So look, I'm a strong believer in American-style democracy. The problem is our efforts to
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
promote it or impose that style of government through regime change operations simply has not worked. I mean, this should be one of the big learnings of American foreign policy over the past 30 years. All I'm suggesting is I think it's better to model it, right? It's better to- Yeah, so how do you model it?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I think you model it by being the shining city on the hill, by setting a good example, by focusing on our own country and making America the best it can be so that people all over the world look to us and say, oh, we want to do that. And I actually think that what I'm describing is an American soft power. If you go back to the 1980s, we had that soft power.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Okay, Zacks. Can I build on that? Please. There was a tweet two weeks ago when all this started by Nick Carter that I retweeted because I thought it was really interesting, which was, if you think a market sell-off delegitimizes Trump's presidency, you're going to give him unconditional credit when it rallies, right? Because those are the rules now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, the people of places like in Russia, they love buying American blue jeans and American music. And we had that soft power. We were inspiring to the world, but it all changed. I'd say starting in the 90s, but then really in the 2000s, when we started Going into these countries with our militaries and occupying all these countries, we soured them on America. We made them hate us.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And this is the problem with this hyper interventionism is what we should be doing is setting an example, not trying to occupy these countries. Let me read something to you.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, the reason why Rubio canceled that meeting is because the Americans put forward a peace proposal and Zelensky dismissed it out of hand. Before the Russians could do anything, Zelensky dismissed it. And recognizing Russian ownership of Crimea, if you will, should be the easiest point for Zelensky to concede. And he dismissed it out of hand. Now, why do I say that?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
The Russians annexed Crimea in 2014. So this was not something that happened in 2022. It happened over 10 years ago. And if you look at what the people of Crimea want, and there's been a lot of Western polling on this, there's been man on the street interviews by NBC, the people of Crimea by something like over 80% say they want to be part of Russia, they're ethnic Russians.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I'd say the final point on this is that Zelensky and Ukraine tried to get Crimea back in the summer of 2023 with the summer counteroffensive. Remember, the whole point of that summer counteroffensive was to sever the land bridge to Crimea, destroy the Kerch Bridge, isolate Crimea and essentially lay siege to it. This was the whole point of that. And they got nowhere with that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
They didn't even break through the first Suravikin line. So my point is that it's militarily impossible to retake Crimea. The people of Crimea don't want Ukraine to retake it. They want to be part of Russia. And yet Zelensky cannot give this up.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
The basic problem is that Zelensky doesn't want to make a deal. I mean, he has rebuffed the Americans on Crimea, which should be the easiest point to give on. He's been completely unrealistic about their prospects on the battlefield. He was insulting to the White House when he visited the White House in his T-shirt or whatever. He was dressed inappropriately and then got in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And that's exactly what's happened is that the market has rallied. Like you said, it's up 7% this week. But the media doesn't want to give Trump any credit for it. So it's kind of created this narrative of a Besson put. In other words, Besson is entirely responsible for it. Look, Scott is a very smart man. He understands markets. He understands the bond markets. And he is a reassuring voice.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, I mean, he was insulting to the president and especially the vice president. He murmured under his breath a curse word to the vice president. Remember that? Yeah. I mean, it was really quite something. And remember, he's biting the hand that feeds him. I mean, he has an obligation. I think, to be respectful to his patrons in a way that his patrons may not... His patrons.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
In a way that we may not to him. And he has demonstrated, I think, that he's unrealistic in every possible way. He's unrealistic about Ukrainian prospects on the battlefield, about retaking Crimea, and about who the hand is that feeds him. So my view on this is quite simple, which is if Zelensky won't see reality... Let him find new patrons. Let Starmer and McCrone support him. They say they will.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
They say they have the ability to do this. But they can't.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, they appear to. They can't enough. that this administration even has leverage over him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
No, I don't think so. I don't think there's any evidence that he wants Poland. I don't even think he wants the part of Ukraine that is chock full of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because you would have a massive insurgency there. He doesn't want a Gaza-type situation. And by the way, just another point on Crimea, where is the insurgency?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
If Crimea really wanted to go with Ukraine as opposed to Russia, why has there been no uprising there over the past 10 years? So in any event, my point is there's no evidence that Putin wants Poland. Poland's part of NATO. That would start World War III. I think Putin has shown that he's a calm, rational decision maker. And I don't think he wants World War III.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Now, the Russians have said what their terms are. They said it last year. They basically, in this root cause speech they gave in, I think, June of last year, and basically what it comes down to is they want Istanbul plus.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
There was a deal to end this war in the first month, the Istanbul deal, and it required Ukraine to basically sever its security relationship with the West and to recognize that it would not become part of NATO. And they had to give up Crimea, basically. That was the deal back then. What Russia has said is that's still the deal plus realities on the ground.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
So in other words, the Russians have lost, I don't know, 100,000 plus, hundreds of thousands of soldiers now taking this territory in the east. And obviously, they're not going to give it up. So I think that the Ukrainians could have had a better deal in the first month of the war. The Biden administration rejected that. Now there's a different deal. It's Istanbul plus.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I think that the American proposal is pretty close to that. So I think this administration recognizes...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
wisdom and just reality of that deal but the ukrainians aren't so look my view is simple if the ukrainians are unwilling to take the deal that's on the table and they want to find new backers with the europeans let them but why should we continue to support this okay let's pivot let's talk markets and let's specifically start a couple stocks because you disagree because i want to hear you disagree no i i i could but we're gonna we i think we're gonna run out of time okay
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
to those markets. And I think he's doing a great job. But I think part of what's going on with this best input narrative is that no one ever wants to give Trump or his administration as a whole credit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
So what they do on any particular week is valorize a particular member of the administration that they can then say, well, this is the person who's really responsible for this, not Trump, because I don't want to give Trump that credit.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Next week, they'll be tearing Scott down and there'll be some other member of the administration they'll be trying to valorize to basically prevent the administration as a whole from getting credit for doing something good. So again, I think Scott's doing a great job. I think he's doing a great job making these deals. And he's saying a lot of correct and reassuring things to the markets.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
But I think if the media is going to tear Trump down every time the market goes down, you have to give him credit when the market goes back up. And I think there's just a general reluctance to do that. Where do you land, Dave?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I think it's going to hold up. I mean, look, I just think that this investment in CapEx and the data center build outs is so strategic right now. I mean, I think that the hyperscalers, it's only good for their businesses, but I think they see it as so strategic to their survival that they just have to do it no matter what. In other words, I think they're totally inelastic on this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
But let me just go back to Google. Nick, can you throw up this chart? I mean, I think the problem that Google has with respect to ChatGPT is that Gemini is just not getting the usage and ChatGPT is just growing like crazy. If you look at how these models perform according to the benchmarks, Gemini is actually really good.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, Gemini has made substantial progress catching up to ChatGPT, but they have not caught up on the usage side. Now, to Jamal's point, you could just make Gemini the default interface in Google search. But that is true innovator's dilemma, because if you do that, you could be giving up more than half the search revenue. So I do think Google is in a really tough spot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And the longer they wait to make Gemini front and center, the worse this usage problem gets. I mean, what's basically happening right now is users are learning a new habit. I mean, they're learning to go to chat GPT to get their questions answered or just their searches answered in a completely different way.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I agree that the Google interface trying to incorporate Gemini into the 20 blue links or whatever is very kludgy. But I don't know how you fix that without just getting rid of the blue links. I mean, I guess you can do a hybrid experience, but it doesn't compare to ChatGPT, which is all in on the AI experience. So I think it's a real innovator's dilemma for them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Otherwise, you're right, it will lose. The Google homepage where they just have the search bar and you can basically submit your search or I feel lucky or whatever. Would you replace that with that search bar with an AI chatbot?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Would you, okay, Nick, can you put up this? Here's their homepage, right? This is the famous shot. I just checked it. This hasn't changed in 25 years or whatever.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, you could do some A-B tests. What if they replaced I'm Feeling Lucky, which is kind of antiquated now with AI? I mean, Gemini, basically.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
No, it isn't the novelty. I think it's just there as like a whimsical thing. I don't know if it drives revenue for them or not. If it takes the user off site, I don't see how it drives revenue for them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Dave, roughly three weeks ago, when we started talking about this, I think I made the point, Chamath made the point, that part of the art of the deal here, so to speak, is an opening salvo which is bold and some people would say maybe it's too extreme, but it's basically an opening bid to shift the conversation completely. And that would create tremendous leverage to get deals done.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
No, I don't think he's out of doge. He didn't say he was out of doge. It was just a matter of how much time he could allocate to each thing. I mean, look, I saw this before when I was part of the Twitter transition is that for the first three months or so, he was basically full-time at Twitter HQ learning the business down to the database level.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, every nook and cranny of that business he learned about. Once he felt like he had a mental model and he had the people in place that he trusted, he can move to more of a maintenance mode.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I think that's the only way he can manage five companies is that he has these intense bursts where he focuses on something, gets the right people and structure in place, feels like he understands it, and then he can delegate more. And I think that he has reached that point with Doge, but he was also clear that he's gonna keep doing it because if he doesn't, there's gonna be a huge backsliding
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
where all the corrupt interests will basically put back all this corrupt spending. So he's going to stay involved. But as an SGE, he's limited to 130 days a year anyway. And so it makes sense for him to kind of now ration his days a little more closely. But he's got the people in place. Remember, Doge... It wasn't just him. It was also the U.S.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Digital Service, which is basically the IT branch of the executive branch, which got put under Doge. So my sense is that Doge is going to continue. It's just that Elon is shifting to a mode where he can manage it one day a week or two days a week, as opposed to being there five days a week.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Why wouldn't we want to cut as much of this corruption as possible?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Why wouldn't they? Of course. And what we really need is for Congress to now embrace all of the corruption that Elon has found and eliminate it from the budget. Because at the end of the day, in order to capture the savings here, we do need those appropriations eliminated from the budget. And my biggest concern is not
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
something that that doge is going to do or not it's not up to doge to do that it's up to frankly these old bulls in congress who control the appropriations process are they going to basically backslide and just put the spending back in because it's easier to just do that to engage in this log rolling Or do we take advantage of this, I think, incredible sacrifice that Elon has made?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, look, this has cost him enormously. One of the reasons why Tesla is down is because you've had crazy leftists engaging in terrorism, firebombing Tesla dealerships. In any event, he's made this enormous sacrifice in order to expose the corruption. And look what we've learned.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
We've basically learned that this whole NGO thing is a giant scam where the people in government give enormous amounts of money to their friends. probably with the expectation that when they leave government, they're going to be next in line at the trough. And I think Elon's done an enormous service exposing this, but it's not entirely up to him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
In order for us to realize the benefit, we need Congress now to act on that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And isn't that exactly what's happened? Isn't that the way it's played out?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, he says they're at $160 billion right now. I think that's, by the way, that's an annual number as far as I understand it. So what I always hear with spending is they always multiply everything by 10 because they assume it's going to be 10 years. So if it is $160 billion a year, that would be $1.6 trillion over 10 years, probably more because the spending always grows.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And look, that's $160 billion that we weren't planning on saving before Elon got involved in the government. So if that's all it is, that would be great. I think there could be more. And it really comes down to whether Doge continues to be supported by the political process. And look, Elon can't, he can't force that, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, ultimately it's up to legislators to take advantage of the work that he did. And ultimately it's up to the people to put pressure on those legislators to embrace what he did. He's done an enormous amount, you know, but there's an old saying that you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
If the entrenched political interests at the end of the day aren't, if they're not gonna embrace the savings that Elon has found, I don't know what we can do about that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
It creates a tragedy of the commons. There's a collective action problem because like you said, each individual congressman or senator primarily wants to get stuff for their district or their state. for their special interests. And there's no one really looking out for the public interest, the overall common good.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And these appropriators are basically engaged in log rolling where they're willing to give their colleagues their pork if they get their pork. And this is why we have a $2 trillion deficit. It's a really hard thing to fix. I mean- It's really hard.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I think this has been something that I remember Bush 41 in his State of the Union called for a line item veto. This was like 30 years ago. And we still need that. Because I do think that if the president had more authority over this process, it'd be less of a tragedy of the commons.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Yeah, and unfortunately, Congress will never, I think, change its ways until they're forced to by some sort of crisis, which, Freeberg, I think is your point about eventually we'll be in a debt crisis, and then Congress will finally see the wisdom— And they'll finally appreciate what Elon did. You know, there's all these entrenched political interests complaining about Elon.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I mean, again, he undertook an enormous sacrifice to try and fix our fiscal situation, which is unsustainable before there's a crisis. One day there'll be a crisis. Everyone will see that he's right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
sitting in this week is our boy andrew ross sorkin journalist author extraordinaire andrew welcome to the show long time listener first time caller thank you for having me
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Rain Man, David Sack.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And it said, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wes. Queen of Kin.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
Well, look, first of all, I wanted to say that when I'm on this show and I'm not talking about AI or crypto, I'm just a civilian, right? So I'm not a spokesman for the administration on anything but the two issues that I work on. So I don't want to come across as someone who has special knowledge because I'm not part of the trade conversation. So I can't answer your question directly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
But what I would say is that with respect to the China relationship, I think what's happened over the past few weeks has been a very important stress test. And it's basically flagged some serious weaknesses or dependencies that have evolved in this relationship over the past few decades.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
I flagged this in a previous episode that we did with Larry Summers where I said that 25 years ago it was a huge mistake to walk China into the WTO. And I think that just to build on that thought, One of the problems with walking them into the WTO is that they got what's called developing nation status. So you can either be a developing nation or a developed nation in the framework of the WTO.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And maybe there was something legitimate to that in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping began his reforms, the average Chinese person was making $2 a day, by the year 2000, it was much more questionable. And it certainly makes no sense in the year 2025. And still to this day, China gets developing nation status. Now, what is the benefit to China of that? Well, they have a whole different set of rules.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
They're allowed to have tariffs. They're allowed to subsidize their industries. They have all sorts of different timetables for doing things. They're allowed to do things that the U.S. simply can't do. Now, how have they leveraged that? They have identified strategically certain industries that are choke points in the global supply chain, and they have taken them over.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And the best example of this is rare earths. So there was some good stories in the New York Times about this over the past couple of weeks, which I think were largely accurate. China identified this as a critical industry. And the rare earths, the ore itself is distributed all over the world. I mean, China has some advantages there, but they're not huge.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
It's the processing of the rare earths that's very expensive, very complicated. And they decide to dominate that industry. And they're responsible today for over 90% of the processing of rare earths. And then the next step in the supply chain is that those rare earths get cast into rare earth magnets. which are a critical component in pretty much every electric motor.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And so they're a critical component of the automotive industry, but not just cars, lots of different products. And I think China makes something like over 90% of the cast rare earth magnets. Well, by the way, this issue still has not been resolved. China has now cut off the United States. And so as part of this trade negotiation, we're going to have to resolve that issue.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
And I trust that it will be. I mean, what you've heard from the president and the treasury sector over the past week is that they're They've indicated a desire to engage in bilateral negotiations with China and to essentially deescalate this trade war. But I think it's been very useful, again, as a stress test to reveal our critical dependencies on China that we've exposed.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
We never should have let this happen. Just from a national security standpoint, We worshiped at the altar of this free trade god to the point where we became dependent on China for these critical components in our supply chain. I think that was a catastrophic mistake. And I think that it's exposed these dependencies we've created on a nation that is not our ally and that we can't count on them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
It's a country of concern. So I ultimately think that we're going to need to learn from this experience and very rapidly make some major corrections here.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Or is it both? I think he thinks it's a better way, it's a safer way, and maybe ultimately it's a more moral way. He's not a shortcut taker. He's a long-term investor. And he really did try to teach the American investor
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
not to think about owning a share of stock for a month or two or 10 days or a year, but to think, okay, if I buy it now, what's this business going to be like five years from now? What's it going to be like 10 years from now? And not your little share, but what's the whole company going to be worth? As if you really are an owner. You know, as an example of just how long-term a thinker he is,
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
What's called the Class A stock of Berkshire now trades, if you can believe this, at $800,000 a share. A share.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Every year, 40-something thousand people descend on Omaha, making a pilgrimage there. And these are people from all over the world, all walks of life.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And you might say to yourself, what is going on here? Because most companies try to keep their shares sometimes $10 a share, $20, $30, $40, $100 a share, maybe $200. And that's part of the thing. He's created this— stock at this price, which effectively means that if you are in it, you are in it.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
He is famous for wanting higher taxes on the wealthy, including himself. And he has said it over and over again that his secretary is taxed at a higher rate than he is, and it's not right. During the Obama years, there was actually a tax provision that was named after Warren Buffett to raise the taxes on capital gains.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
It did not go through. There's very few people in the business world who are screaming from the rooftops, tax me and tax me more. Warren Buffett actually was one of those people. And on philanthropy, he's pledged to give all of his money away.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And he's been very outspoken about it, actually created what's called the Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda Gates many years ago to really try to incentivize and, frankly, pressure billionaires to start giving away a lot more of their fortune. But he's now actually come out quite publicly lamenting the idea that he's actually made so much money.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
That he can't give it all away fast enough. And he's actually worried about who's going to give it away. Wow.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
You know, I don't want to suggest to you that Warren Buffett is perfect. He is not. And he oftentimes says as much. And there are things that he does and says that a critic from the outside could easily say feels like hypocrisy.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Well, look, he's long talked about taxes and how he would like to be taxed at a higher rate. Berkshire, the company, the way it's structured effectively is to avoid taxes. It's not illegal. It's not even that clever. But the way he's put it together, he's able to take those profits and rather than have the profits annually taxed, he's able to keep those profits inside the company.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
You know, he bought Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis. This was a firm that was widely critiqued at the time. Now, he would say it was a great value investment and he was doing it effectively to save or at least to help save the system, if you will, at the time. He extracted extraordinary fees for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders as a result.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And you get people from California and New York. You get people from China.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
but he effectively was investing in businesses that he has critiqued in many ways. So there are certain things that he's talked about, and I believe he genuinely believes them in the whole, but there have also been times where he has done or said something That has been contravened by his decisions.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
He has talked about a lot of important social issues in the country, but he was never an advocate, for example, of DEI. And I would ask him about that on the stage and say, your office is not particularly diverse.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
He would say that's almost too politically correct an idea to address, that he only wanted what he called the most talented people, and he was not interested in necessarily trying to find somebody who didn't look like him for that job for that reason.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
So let me – there's a big nuance in this actually with Warren Buffett, which is he is not a critic of capitalism, the concept. He is its champion. What he is a critic of is the ills of capitalism and the charlatans that are engaged in capitalism and those that are taking advantage of the weak in capitalism. That's the role that I think he's played as a quote-unquote conscience of capitalism.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I don't think he's here saying capitalism doesn't work or it's a problem or anything else. I think he'll tell you over and over again there's no better way to do it.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
You know, if you're asking me, did he fundamentally change policy, change regulations, for example, around business, the way businesses behave on any given day, it's very hard to point to a long list. But I do think it's very fair to say that he made investors, he made the public smarter. And ultimately, if he actually did that, at least on the margins, he made the system better.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
You get people bringing their kids so they can see it. You see business school students and you see grandparents. It is across the board.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I think Buffett ultimately made the world a little smarter about how the system really works. And I think by the public understanding how the system really works, understanding that his secretary is paying a higher tax rate, by understanding that the hedge funds are trying to extract fees from you,
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
By explaining that when you hear that there's an independent director on a board who's a professor, you might want to question how independent they really are because they probably need the money. I mean, there are these little things that he knows about, that he understands about the world of business.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And by educating the public about those things, you like to think that improves the system because there are fewer people to cheat.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I think I understand Buffett in this way, which is you're right. I don't think that there's a grand vision necessarily to influence the world in the kinds of ways that an Elon Musk may want to influence the world. I don't think there's an effort to want to impact politics necessarily the way some people with wealth do. And the money for him, I think, is a scorecard. I think that's all it is.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I think it's a contest of wits for him. And what he wants more than anything, I think, is actually to be this teacher about the system. Think of anything he wants to be a successful role model of how a business could work on a long-term basis.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
how capitalism can work when it's done in the best of faith.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
They literally sit for hours as Warren Buffett takes questions from the audience. There is no other corporate annual meeting in the world where this happens.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
They may be everything from how he invested.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Some little detail about a unit inside of Berkshire. Do you know and believe in Jesus Christ and have a personal relationship with him?
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And of course, he would never say when. But we all were waiting and waiting. And so this year, I got there on that Saturday morning and something felt different.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I'm getting a message that we have a five-minute warning. And the second he said that, I knew.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And I'm looking in the front section. All of a sudden, everybody's sort of looking at each other. And literally...
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
It's about time that his successor succeeds him and that he steps away at the end of the year.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I mean, people are tearing up and everybody starts to stand and clap. And the standing ovation could have gone on for I don't know how long.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And it really felt like the end of an era.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
He is, without question, the most successful investor in America. He has made more money and has a better track record than just about anybody. And just to put this in context, if you had invested $100 with this man in 1965 when Buffett bought control of Berkshire, that would be worth $2.8 million today.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
$100 to $2.8 million. And so many of the people in that room went on that ride with him or wished they could.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
That's the obvious reason that so many people look to Warren Buffett in this very unique and special way. But the truth is, I've been grappling with his role for a long time, and specifically on Saturday. Actually, after the news broke, I got a call from an editor who said, hey, would you think about writing about Buffett? Maybe you can try to capture this idea
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
that he is the avatar of American capitalism. And I sort of sat there thinking to myself, I don't know if that's totally right. I don't know if he is the avatar of capitalism as we know it today. Why not? Because in so many ways, he actually sits outside of it. He sits apart from the system that we know, the corporations that we know, the ideas around wealth that we know.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And in many ways, as I contemplated it, I think Warren Buffett really is today the conscience of capitalism. And let me just say, I don't mean to suggest for a moment that he doesn't believe in capitalism. He would tell you that he is a card-carrying capitalist, and I think he may even have a business card in his wallet that says that.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
What I mean is that he has a moral code and he has approached his business in a particular way that has engendered a unique level of trust, not just among his investors, but among the public, among policymakers in a way that is so very different from the way most people think about business today.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I'm going to be old and don't wear glasses.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
So the fascinating thing about Buffett is he comes out of school and decides to be what's called a value investor, which means he's looking for companies that are undervalued. And his initial approach is this idea that he's going to buy what he used to call cigar butts. This idea that he was going to buy cheap, almost failed companies that had one more puff in them. And...
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
He had a business partner named Charlie Munger who told him this is not the way. The way you're going to make real money long term is to buy good businesses, hold them, own them, and grow them.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Exactly. And that's what he did. And he did it remarkably. And over the years, he has assembled this collection of assets that he owns. Everything from Burlington Northern, the train company, to Fruit of the Loom, to Duracell, the battery company, to See's Candies. You know, he owns hundreds of these type of businesses.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And then on top of that, he owns stakes in some of the biggest iconic companies, Coca-Cola, American Express, and he is the largest owner of Apple. Wow. And this one-time textile business, Berkshire Hathaway, becomes one of the largest companies in the world. And not only that... one of the largest companies in the world with the biggest cash balance sheets in the world.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
So if Burlington Northern is super profitable, he can take the cash that's coming off of that, and maybe he decides, I want to invest even more money in See's Candies. And so he's constantly able to sort of move the profits from one business to another. And he would tell you that his greatest...
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Talent is what he would call capital allocation, this idea that he is better at moving money and identifying where the next big opportunity is than just about anybody else.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And the other thing is because his public thesis is that he's going to hold these businesses for a very long time, there are a lot of people who have been willing to sell him businesses at probably lower values than they would sell it to somebody else because they know that That he's genuinely trying to take care of these businesses, and he wants them to last as humanly possible.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And he will hold on to these businesses, even businesses that are struggling, far longer than just about anybody else. And it's that long-term thinking that makes him so admired, but also the way he approaches his life.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
It was a remarkable moment, really just the end of an era in the world of capitalism. But let me just take a full step back, if I could, to explain.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And, you know, you can write it off as sort of a folksy charm, but this is a guy who's worth something on the order now of $160-plus billion with a B, who is living in the same house that he bought in 1958 for $31,000. And up until just a couple of years ago, he would drive his own car to work. And he would go to McDonald's and go through the drive-thru like everybody else.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
And so in an era of billionaires and yachts and homes and cars and planes and this and that, Warren Buffett has never been that. You know, at one point he actually did buy a private plane. What did he name his plane?
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Exactly. And so it's that I think it's that ethos, that trust that's really allowed him to critique the system and to say things publicly aloud about the business world that often go unsaid and to identify where the charlatans really are in business. And that's really one of the things beyond being a great investor that's made him the conscious of capitalism.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Look, he's really highlighted and pointed the finger at what he thinks of as the ills of the system. So he has spoken critically of Wall Street and Wall Street banks and bankers and this idea, for example, that the advice that they're offering you is necessarily good advice.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
We're at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, which is really known as Woodstock for capitalists.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
You would never go to a barber and ask them whether you need a haircut because, of course, they're going to tell you you need a haircut, just like every banker is going to tell you, of course, you need to either go do this merger or buy this thing or do whatever.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
Sometimes bankers get it right. They get paid an enormous fortune, typically, for what they do. And I think that one of the things he's just tried to point out to people is that the bankers might not really always have your best interests at heart.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
I mean, these are the biggest investors in the world these days who've made the most money. And he would tell you, don't invest your money with a hedge fund. Why not? He would tell you that your returns long term will be better literally buying an index fund like the S&P 500. And he would say accurately that the S&P has outperformed most hedge funds after fees.
The Daily
What Warren Buffett Understood About Capitalism
So one of the things he also talks about is just how so many of these firms are all just trying to extract fees from the people who are giving them the money. And it's that kind of advice and that willingness to sort of talk about what the fine print really says is, that I think has ingratiated him with large swaths of the public.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
If you don't, and the pain of moving is high, you may try to play this out and see what happens.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Because from a negotiating position, and the president talks about this in his book, The Art of the Deal, this is what they describe as anchoring. It's called an anchoring technique. which is to say that you state your position and you hold your position. And the moment you break from that position, it becomes a lot harder. And so you're 100 percent right.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
The second that they start announcing that they are taking a pause or that they're willing to do a deal at a lesser number or whatever it is.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They've undermined their own case. The business community has a phrase that they've been using all weekend, which is what is the off ramp, which suggests that there is one and there might not be an off ramp.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Well, look, if you just look at how much money has been lost, we're talking about trillions of dollars with a T. But in percentage terms, you can look over just even the last week, we're down 10%. Peak to trough from the sort of heights of where we were near the election to now, you could argue we're over 20% off, maybe more, depending on how you do the math.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Poof. It's a tremendous amount of wealth poof in the sort of broader scheme of the universe. But to make it feel personal, let's just say you had a portfolio and you were a retiree and 20% of your wealth went poof overnight. And it went poof overnight because of a... man-made crisis.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
You know, most of the crises that I've come in to talk to you about, whether it's in 2008 or it's the pandemic or whatever, there's been something that has happened ostensibly beyond our one human's control. Right. This is a panic that has been brought on by a particular person with a particular decision around, in this case, tariffs.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Well, let's go through a couple of specific stocks and then let's talk about why it's impacting virtually every company in America and frankly the world.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
So the easiest example is to look at a company like Apple. Its stock has dropped, by the way, about 18% in the last five days alone. Wow. That is about $700 billion of value destruction, $700 billion wiped out. And you might say to yourself, why? Well, Apple's a company that manufactures a lot of its goods in a combination of places like China, increasingly in places like Vietnam and India.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
In fact, Apple moved a lot of its manufacturing out of China to places like Vietnam and India, in part because of pressures from the U.S. government over the last several years in the relationship between the U.S. and China. And one of the reasons they did that was because there was always a concern that perhaps there would be tariffs in the future or national security issues.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Mostly aimed at China. Mostly aimed at China. There was never an expectation that if you were manufacturing your iPhones in India or Vietnam... that all of a sudden you are going to have to pay every time you shipped those phones into the United States something on the order of a 50% plus tariff, which is what we're talking about here.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
That was my Apple phone, probably built in China, ringing, which would be tariffed if I bought a new one tomorrow. And so all of a sudden, if you're Apple, you are either going to have to do one of two things.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Either you're going to have to charge the American consumer ostensibly 50% more for the phone than you did before, or you're going to have to eat some of that cost, which is going to ultimately cut into your profit and therefore cut into all sorts of other things you do, which is to say, how are you going to think about hiring next year? What does your research and development budget look like?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Are you going to advertise as much as you did last year? And by the way, if the price point for the phone is higher, are there as many people who are going to buy it? And therefore, all of the economics of everything you do... Just went sideways. Just went sideways. And all of the interactions that you have with other businesses just went sideways.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And so the downstream effects, not just at Apple... but everywhere just cascade.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And it is falling. And why is it falling? Not because it does business in China. In fact, Meta does no business in China. But Meta is reliant on advertising. And there are going to be a lot of companies that are going to likely scale back how much they're going to spend on advertising at places like Meta. Meta's also in the business of building data centers all over the country.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They've already said they're gonna invest billions of dollars to build these data centers for new AI features. Well, those data centers just got a lot more expensive. So either they're gonna have to build less, which means they're gonna grow slower, or they're gonna have to build the same amount, but it's gonna cost them a lot more. And that's going to also eat into their profits.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And therefore, their stock is down because technically you would say to yourself, well, they're worth less now.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Across the board. And we're just talking about the most obvious examples. I'll give you less obvious examples. Please. So if you're a McDonald's or you're a Starbucks doing business, not just in China, but all over the world, there are now questions, demonstrable questions that they're asking themselves about whether consumers are going to buy their goods.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
They're going to come into the store with the same Really?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Even a McDonald's or Starbucks is starting to see the effects of it. Not just even the last week. It's actually been something that's been something they've been concerned about now for several months.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
These companies have been worried about what— Tariffs mean to the relationship that the United States has with the rest of the world. What does the the American dream halo effect that was over all of these American brands in places like China, in places like Europe? Well, that polish is coming off. Because citizenry in these places are saying, we're upset with these people.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
We may not want to go to a Starbucks. We may not want to go to a McDonald's. We want to support our own local company. In fact, I keep hearing actually that some of the big consumer brands are talking about future advertising plans that are much more local, meaning don't focus on it being an American brand. Hmm.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Whatever love people had for the sort of soft power of America and whatever they liked about and thought about our country and our businesses and our industry, there are more concerns about them than they used to be.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Now, it may right now be on the margins, but longer term, I think there are bigger questions about whether the toothpaste is now out of the tube, no matter what the tariffs ultimately turn out to be. And how do you get that toothpaste back in the tube if you can't?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
I think I talked to over two dozen CEOs over the weekend, and I would tell you that virtually all of them had tried to call the president, Howard Lutnick, Peter Navarro, or somebody else in the administration across the board. They have been rushing to try to get in his ear. But I don't think that CEOs are calling him saying, Mr. President, you have made a terrible, terrible error.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
That's what they think. They think it's a terrible, terrible error. I don't know of a CEO who does not think it is a terrible, terrible error. Some of them like to use the phrase unforced error. However, I think that the phone call is a little different. The phone call is, Mr. President, let me tell you what's going on with my company right now.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Let me tell you about all the problems that this is creating. Let me tell you about all of the employees I was hoping to hire and be able to put out a press release and say that you were responsible for it.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Help me help you. I think that is the way... The CEO community is trying to position themselves with this president because I think if you go straight at him, publicly or privately, the phone call ends quickly.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
But I want to stop you for a moment because he then put out tweets this morning. effectively apologizing for some of his earlier comments about Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
And I think that's indicative of what so many... senior executives are thinking about, which is, what can I say publicly, especially if I want to have access privately?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
The whole idea that if you had a lot of money, you were somehow protected, or that you would feel compelled and feel emboldened to stand up, so far has not been the case.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
There's no question that Elon Musk differs from the president on tariffs. But I think he, unlike so many of the other executives in America, feels like he has a special license to create some daylight on certain types of issues. And so I think in many ways, Elon Musk is just closer to the Scott Bessons of the world who say this is a
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
great way to negotiate with other countries to get their tariffs to go to zero.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
In this very moment, I would tell you the majority of business leaders is saying, you know what, I'm going to wait this out. I'm going to play chicken with the president. I'm going to see what happens with the stock market. If the stock market continues to go lower, it will likely put more pressure on the president and Congress and the Senate to somehow undo these tariffs.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
Maybe the courts get involved and say that the president doesn't have the powers to enact these tariffs to begin with. And if that's the case, why should I be investing in manufacturing in America if they're not going to be these tariffs in six months or even two years or three years or five years from now?
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
You use the word mess. In the business community, they call this uncertainty. Uncertainty is the enemy of business. It's the enemy of investment. Nobody invests into an uncertain market, into an uncertain situation. And so you as a CEO need to make a bet.
The Daily
How Trump Wiped Out $10 Trillion in Wealth in 3 Days
If you think that there are tariffs here and that's a politically popular position, even after a Trump administration, you might bring manufacturing back to the U.S. solely to avoid the tariffs.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I think the context for the vice president's argument is sort of twofold.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
One, there is a longstanding perspective in American conservatism that judges and Supreme Court justices are too quick to interfere in democratic politics to sort of impose their interpretations of the Constitution that are themselves quite debatable, rather than deferring to the executive and legislative branches, which do, in fact, represent public opinion more directly than the judiciary does.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Absolutely. And then the other backdrop to this is that over a long period of time, especially in Western Europe, you have had this really striking dynamic where public opinion is very skeptical and critical of mass immigration. And yet, in some cases, the judiciary, in some cases, the bureaucracy, in some cases, prime ministers and other leaders have found ways to basically ignore
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
public sentiment. And much of European politics has been defined by voters trying to vote against mass immigration, not getting the policy they want, and then moving towards further right and populist parties like Marine Le Pen's national rally in France, like the alternative for Deutschland in Germany. Vance is drawing on
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
the perspectives of European politics, this sense that the public has a desire and elites are always trying to thwart it. And judges throwing up roadblocks to the Trump administration doing deportations are part of that tradition. So there are two obvious ways that an administration frustrated by the pace of deportations could try and address those frustrations.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
One is to try and directly change the law that governs due process for illegal immigrants. Or you could look at judicial interpretations of that law that you think have been too favorable. to illegal immigrants and present test cases to the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court that is friendly to executive power, and try and get those interpretations changed.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I think the administration is doing some version of both of those things, but then they also have a third track that they're pursuing.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So the third option, this has obviously been the zone of maximal controversy, right? under Trump. The idea that you can claim some sort of wartime power that lets you deport illegal immigrants either without any due process at all or with a kind of extremely minimal due process.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And he very graciously suggested that maybe I would like to come to Rome, where he was leading the U.S. delegation to the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV, who is, of course, the first American pope. And he basically said, why don't you come to Rome and you can interview me there?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So it's sort of like the Trump administration is looking for a kind of wartime powers hack for this larger challenge of not having the legal infrastructure necessary for mass deportation. It's basically like we have this big challenge, but what if there was one neat trick that
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
in a law from the 1790s that would let us avoid having to go through all the trouble of passing new legislation or establishing new Supreme Court precedents. So I asked him about that.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And this is what I'm asking about. The legal authorities that you guys have tried to use have been – The particular one is the Alien Enemies Act, which is an extremely aggressive claim about wartime powers that, as far as I can tell, even under the most aggressive interpretation, is likely to apply only to an incredibly small number of migrants.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
The claim is not actually that 5 million migrants here illegally are in a state of war against the United States. Or is that the claim?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Right. Shouldn't this sort of barbaric medieval landscape that you're describing show up in violent crime statistics?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Yes, it was quite a thing, actually, to be able to attend the Inaugural Mass. The vice president then had a private audience with Pope Leo himself and then came directly from that to our interview.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Well, as you heard, he says communities along the southern border. I suspect he also has in mind claims about, say, gang activity in an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. There have been a number of anecdotal cases. But as I said to him, I think, you know, these are anecdotes. They're not statistical evidence. And as he's describing this case,
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
reaching back and repurposing old laws for the purpose of deportations, I ask him to talk about or think about some of the moral risks involved in that. Well, so what you're describing is, again, you and I both lived through the Bush presidency, right?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And there are elements of what you might call a kind of war on terror mentality that you're taking vis-a-vis the cartels or people associated with the cartels or people allegedly associated with gangs and cartels that seems to me similar to the approach taken to anyone associated with Islamic terrorism and so on in the aftermath of September 11th.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And again, you remember and I remember that in more than a few cases, right, this ended up with situations where the U.S. was taking people into custody and remanding them to black sites and so on, who turned out, unsurprisingly, not to be number one al-Qaeda terrorists, right?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And to the extent that it is possible, and it is somewhat difficult for the media to do this, but to the extent that it's possible for the media to examine this, the kind of figures and individuals that you guys have been trying to essentially remand to prison in El Salvador, right? Without, you know, extensive legal process.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
It just seems like this system is ripe for war on terror style abuses, where you are going to be sending people to prison in El Salvador that advertises itself as a terrible place and And one, some of those people are probably going to be innocent.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Two, some of them are going to be people who have committed a crime, who have some kind of gang affiliation, but who under normal American law, non-wartime law, would end up going to jail for six months or a year or something. And again, they're going to disappear potentially into a system for a decade or more or something like that.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
How are you? And we have set up shop inside the American embassy to the Vatican in, you know, a kind of ornate space and room. My goal is to actually give you more than an hour or so. Okay. We'll just go until this conversation becomes boring. Right. Until I say something really stupid. Until we hit the UFOs and then you'll beat a hasty retreat. Yeah.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And that just seems like you are creating a context where injustice is – even if your intentions are just to bring peace and order to communities along the border or anything else.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I don't think I have you. No, I'm not. All right. Let me be perfectly honest. I'm not interested in having you trapped. We're having a conversation in Rome as a journalist and a vice president, but also as two Catholics, right? I'm giving you shit, Ross. Trust me.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
After that pitch to your soul. And American law. And American law and basic principles.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And so here, as we're talking about moral risks, the vice president himself brings up the case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Right. And the vice president wants to go to that controversial, much discussed case. Right. Because in his mind, this is both an edge case that does raise some real moral and political questions, but also ultimately a case that vindicates the Trump administration's approach. And how does it, in his mind, vindicate the administration's approach?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
His argument is that in spite of the attempts by liberals and critics of the administration's policy to portray Garcia as a law-abiding, innocent victim, he is in fact exactly the kind of person who should be liable for deportation from the United States.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Yeah, I think the general administration view is that a lot of the criticisms that they get from critics Democratic politicians and liberal activists and so on are, if not in bad faith, at least just sort of non responsive to what they see as the actual problem that they're trying to solve, that the criticisms are basically intended to set up.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Well, the ultimate goal for the conversation is to get a frank assessment from the vice president of what the administration is actually trying to do on some of its most controversial policies, most notably immigration and trade, what the endgame is, what the actual metrics for success are, and so on. But the way into that discussion...
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
impossible roadblocks to establish standards of due process that would make it impossible for the Trump administration to deport anyone. Now, personally, I think it really is true that a lot of critics of the administration's policy basically don't want to deport anyone or anyone except a few of the absolute worst cases.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
But it's also true that Vance was not exactly being responsive to the question of whether the system itself is going to create abuses, including abuses that could fall upon American citizens, which seems like especially like a live issue, given that the president of the United States floated the idea of sending American criminals to an El Salvadoran prison as well.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So I asked him about this in that meeting. The other thing that the president of the United States said was that he hoped or aspired to a situation where he could potentially send American citizens to El Salvador's prison.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I think that you should be able to see, though, why in the context of sending illegal immigrants to an El Salvador in prison and claiming to be unable for diplomatic reasons to bring them back. The prospect of then saying, and we'd like to send U.S.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
citizens to that prison, would raise some concerns about how the administration uses the immigration powers that you think it should have under arguable wartime conditions. Again, right? Regardless of the particulars of a case, it just seems like you are setting up a machinery –
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
that people of good faith who are not hostile to your policies would reasonably regard as dangerous to particular people who are caught up in the system. That's all, right?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
starts with the place where we are and what's just happened the inauguration of a new pope and the fact that jd vance is like myself a convert to catholicism and there is this striking tension between where the vatican the catholic bishops the last pope probably the new pope tend to stand on immigration and trump administration policy
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I raised the war on terror parallel in our conversation for a reason. I think that it is a very common phenomenon for politicians with sincere religious convictions
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
to end up in a place where they feel like they have obligations to the safety of the country and its common good, as certainly the George W. Bush administration felt after 9-11, that leads them to set up systems that are designed to further a particular end and but that are exposed to abuses. This is not a novel story in American history. It's not a novel story in politics.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I think the vice president's response, he's arguing that while there may be similar risks right now, what critics and skeptics see as serious abuses aren't actually happening. And
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I do think that the Supreme Court has already imposed limits on the Trump administration's ability to do these kind of speedy to an El Salvadoran prison deportations that hopefully limits how much moral risk the administration's policy creates in the future. claims that there have been no abuses or no serious abuses would hold up. I think that's just not the way the world usually works.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So a couple times in this interview, you've said something to me to the effect of, you know, I know New York Times readers hate me or I know New York Times readers don't like me and so on. And I want you to explain what you're up to here. I'm a New York Times columnist, and this is a New York Times podcast.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And at various moments in the interview, the vice president commented on the fact that he expects that most New York Times readers and listeners are not likely to agree with him and so on. And on the one hand, that's a fair characterization, probably. On the other hand, I do think that there are people who read the New York Times, listen to the daily news.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Read, read my column and so on, who who did end up supporting the Trump Vance ticket in 2024 and many others who maybe didn't support it, but actually woke up the morning after the victory and said, you know what? I was glad in the end that they won. And I think that that constituency. is, in fact, incredibly important to the political success or lack thereof of the Trump administration.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
The ability to win over a segment of, let's say, upper middle class to elite America to get them to vote for a populist administration is a pretty big political feat, and it's one that the Trump administration should not wish to see lightly missed.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And I think in lots of different ways, the aggressiveness of what the Trump administration has done on immigration, on trade policy, on a host of smaller issues related to, you know, universities and doge cuts and so on. Trump administration has sort of freaked out and alienated people in that category, especially who voted for them last November.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So then generally, you're going to face the voters by proxy in the midterm. Sure. You may face the voters personally in some future, right? But to this constituency that was pro-Trump, again, maybe it's to its own surprise, but has found itself sort of shocked at various points in the first few months. What is your pitch to them right now?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
and generally the sort of populist attitude towards immigration in America and Europe.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
I think the vice president's answer reflects a sense that I've heard from other people associated with the Trump White House, which is you expect your first 100 days to be aggressive and sometimes chaotic and sometimes experimental. And you expect to generate a certain kind of backlash if you move fast and try and do big things.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And over time, you hope for or expect a kind of stabilization, a stabilization in policy where you've figured out How far you can go, what the limits imposed by the Supreme Court and public opinion are, or in the case of trade policy, what the limits imposed by the bond market and the stock market are, right? You figure out those limits and you sort of settle into a more stable governing style.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And voters who were freaked out by the first 100 days and for various reasons come back to you. And I should say that if you look at the polls right now, that Donald Trump has recovered some ground in the last few weeks as his trade policy has stabilized, as the Supreme Court has both granted him some victories and also imposed some limits.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
on his policies as he's sort of pivoted to a kind of diplomatic offensive overseas that remains to be seen what will come of it. But I think it could be popular, his quest for deals in the Middle East and so on.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So the Catholic Church does not have a formal dogmatic stance on here's how many immigrants a just society has to admit. And, you know, here's how many you're allowed to deport or anything like that. Right. But then in practice, if you look at the rhetoric of Catholic bishops, the positions taken by Pope Francis and so on.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So I think you can tell a story like the one the vice president ends with where the Trump administration at day 100 is much less popular than the Trump administration six months or two years from now. But I don't think that's at all guaranteed.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And I think obviously there are impulses, strong impulses within the Trump White House to sort of take a breather and then go back to pushing the envelope again. And so much about the future of this administration depends on.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
whether it's capable of sustaining a certain kind of stability and normalcy or whether any period of stabilization will always give way to some new wave of let's see how far we can go. Probably not Moscow, but Mr. Vice President, thank you so much. Good to see you, Ross. It's a pleasure. Thank you. well ross thank you very much you're very welcome michael i really appreciate it
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
The church leans, I think, pretty clearly in a more liberal direction on this issue and tends to be more critical of politicians who emphasize border security, more critical of politicians who emphasize deportations, and tends to stress pretty intensely the rights and dignity of migrants and their right to fair treatment. So even though there isn't, again, a sort of absolute position on this,
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
There is a running tension as immigration has become this flashpoint in the Western world between where conservative politicians are, where populist politicians are, and where a lot of leaders of the church tend to be.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
So that's where we started with the vice president's own Catholicism and then the always interesting and difficult relationship between American Catholic politicians and popes and the teachings of the church.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Michael, it is my pleasure and it is a privilege to be with you. And I have slept two nights back at home in the United States, so I am completely rested and ready.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Right. And we have a back and forth about this numbers specifically, but it is absolutely the case that an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants did enter the U.S. under the Biden administration that the Trump administration inherited. And it did run, I think, very explicitly on a promise to, you know,
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
deport a substantial number of those new arrivals and has, I think, can reasonably say it has a political mandate to do so. So the question is, how?
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
But the due process— Under a legislative—to be clear, this is based on legislation, like the judges who are making these decisions— are not inventing this standard. It is a legislative standard.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
Well, so like a number of people in journalism, I have known J.D. Vance, the vice president, since long before he became the vice president, all the way back to when he was just a humble bestselling author and occasional contributor to The New York Times opinion pages. Right.
The Daily
A Conversation With Vice President Vance
And through that connection, I convinced him to grant me an extended interview just before he became Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. And then a couple of months ago, I launched my own new interview podcast. And of course, I came back to him and said, hey, now I'm interviewing people all the time. Wouldn't you like to be interviewed again? Right.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
What do you think of that, actually, as a woman? Yeah. Who knows him and has also read these things and may know other people or know other things about that.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Thank you. I'm trying. I'm trying. And so...
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
You're at Barstool. You're at Barstool. And we should say, by the way, you had a partner originally. Yes. Sophie Franklin was your partner back in the day. And there was a riff, a break, which you can go read about. And there's a whole lot about that. Yeah. In retrospect, do you think that was the best thing that ever happened to you?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Do you find that very sad that you sort of started one way and went another way? What's the emotional piece of that? Because a lot of people, and I think we have a lot of business leaders here who have partners or start with partners, end up without partners. And I'm really just curious how you think about that emotionally.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
You go from Barstool, you go to Spotify, and then you go to Sirius.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
So tell us about what you're trying to build here.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Yeah. There's going to be some other stuff which I want to talk about in just a second. But I want to ask you this about building other stars effectively. Is the goal long term? to always have a show and to be the face and brand of this platform? Or, you know, you have Alex Earl now who is taking off in a huge way, right?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
She may become massively popular, which would be great, I would imagine, for the network. But how do you think about that long-term? Would you like to build five or 10 of those and then hang out and be the producer of those things?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
TV. TV. You had a show during the Olympics. Do you want to do more TV?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
This is Andrew Ross Sorkin with The New York Times, and you're listening to interviews from our annual Dealbook Summit live event, recorded on December 4th in New York City. There we are. There you are.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Um, okay. I have a final question for you and it's actually about, uh, us, the legacy media. Okay. Oh, um, I'm very curious. I'm going to ask you for advice. Okay. There's a lot of people who say they distrust the legacy media and they actually trust you over the legacy media. Yeah. And I'm very curious if you were advising us what you would tell us to do.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
That was an organic conversation, everybody. Alex Cooper. Thank you, Alex Cooper. Thank you so very much.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Dealbook Summit is a production of the New York Times. This episode was produced by Evan Roberts and edited by Sarah Kessler. Mixing by Kelly Piclo. Original music by Daniel Powell. The rest of the Dealbook events team includes Julie Zahn, Hilary Kuhn, Angela Austin, Haley Hess, Dana Prakowski, Matt Kaiser, and Yen-Wei Liu.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Nina Lassam, Ravi Mattu, Beth Weinstein, Kate Carrington, and Melissa Tripoli. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
It's a little bit of a different vibe. Just a little. It's just a little bit of a different vibe. Alex Cooper is here. And the reason we wanted to have her here today is that the media world is really shifting under our feet, who the public trusts, how they gather and get their information, who people are sharing their information with.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
The direction of travel seems to be moving towards podcasts, and the reigning queen is Alex Cooper. She's the host of Call Her Daddy. Her podcast is the number one podcast for women on Spotify with millions of listeners per episode. It's an unbelievable thing. She recently inked a deal for $125 million with SiriusXM. She also launched her own media company called Trending and the Unwell Network.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
She's building an empire. So we want to... Thank you for coming and welcome the head of the Daddy Gang.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Hello, everyone. So there's a lot to talk about here in terms of what's going on. I want to try to understand all this. You know, I went back and re-listened to your first episode ever.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Yeah. And now you're being called the Gen Z Barbara Walters. Yeah. So I'm trying to understand if you could just help us how this happened to you. I don't want to say it happened to you because I think you did this. But when you started with the first episode, what you thought was going to happen?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
When do you think you knew it worked?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
You worked with Dave. I did. And Barstool. Yeah. How important, I mean, Barstool has become a force in the influence in this country. What did you learn when you were at Barstool?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Did you ever worry, though, that, like, you had gone past the limit?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Well, so but that's a question that kept working. So I'm curious what you think of just what's happened in the culture, because the culture has gotten more coarse. It's gotten more crude. Yeah. People have been willing maybe and maybe the argument is that people have been willing to have conversations they weren't willing to have before.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
But there's also it's changed the tenor of the kind of conversations that people have. have? Is that good? Is that bad? What are we supposed to think of all of this?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
And then you became an interviewer. Yes. And one of the things I'm very curious about is you've done a lot of fascinating interviews. But you ask, I mean, I like to think that I ask some occasionally tough questions. You know, you ask like Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
And so... So what I thought was so interesting about this is Christina Aguilera, who you interviewed, said that, quote, you feel safe to her. Yeah. Do you feel safe? Do you think that when you interview people, you're a safe place? Because I've been listening to a lot of these episodes and I'm not so sure.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Yeah. But do you think of yourself as a this? No, no. Do you think of yourself as a journalist then in a way? Or do you think of yourself as an entertainer? Because the other reason I mentioned this is I think that there is this sort of interesting cross thing happening. And I don't know, to be honest, because I grew up as a traditional journalist, I can't tell if I think this is healthy or not.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Okay, so let's talk about that. You did just interview the vice president ahead of this last election. You had tried to avoid politics.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Or at least you said you were trying to avoid politics. And then what happened? Did they reach out to you? Did you reach out to them?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
And it was fun. What did you, I'm actually curious, what did you think of the interview itself?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
There's a little bit of controversy about that podcast because you didn't. Do you know about this? No, what? Because in D.C. This interview happened in D.C.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
It was like a random house. But apparently, you can tell me, they spent, the Harris campaign spent like $100,000. I did. You know about this?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
To build the studio. Yeah, that's not true. Not true. To make it look like it was the studio that you used in L.A.,
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Do you think she should have gone on Rogan?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Did you, have you ever gone on Rogan yourself? No. What do you think of what he does? Since you guys are basically head to head. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like he's your biggest competitor?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
We'll be right back. You have a big deal now at SiriusXM. Yes. And some people say that one of the reasons that SiriusXM wanted to get you is because that you could become the successor at some point to Howard Stern. What do you think of that?
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Um, so let's just go back for, for just a moment in terms of this, this empire that you're building. No, no, I want to, I want to go back to this.
The Daily
From DealBook: Alex Cooper on Building a Media Brand
Um, Just go back in time because one of the... So you're with Dave Portnoy. Yeah. And you're at Barstool. Yes. And I should ask, by the way, just because I think it's a fair question to ask. I'm sure he would hate the question, which is there's been lots of things that have been written about Dave Portnoy that are not flattering, would be the politest way to put it.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, I think Tim Cook is actually a great example of it. Through Trump's first term, Tim Cook clearly created a relationship with Trump and, as a result, stayed out of the crosshairs despite all of the back and forth with China and everything else. And so I think there is a view that he is persuadable. He is transactional.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And if you can create a relationship with him, at least you will have the opportunity. It's not clear that all these CEOs are going to succeed at whatever they're asking for, but they're getting a seat at the table. And from a practical perspective, that's all they can ask for today. Now, I think they also worry about what happens later. But I think the view is we'll worry when we have to worry.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But for now, we're going to try to befriend this person. Maggie?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I have so many thoughts, if you'd indulge me for a moment. Please. So it is very factual that during the first Trump term, Amazon was targeted by Trump in part because Trump was unhappy with Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
That's just an empirical situation, and they demonstrably were targeted by the president over and over and over again. Bezos also owns Blue Origin, which, by the way, is going to compete with SpaceX, has enormous billions of dollars in government contracts. And so Jeff Bezos – and he said this quite publicly – as an owner of the Post is quite conflicted.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
From a perception perspective, if optics are how you're considering this, he was very open that he believes that he's probably not the best owner in that context. He will tell you, he told me at the deal book summit that he believed he was making a principled decision about the decision not to endorse a candidate and also accepted that the timing of it was terrible. I don't know.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You're going to have to decide whether you want to believe him or not. On the Disney story, or I should say on the ABC story.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
So I think it's actually much more complicated than it's being portrayed by some.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
I think they're very different situations because the truth is that I think that as Disney and ABC looked at this case, they saw depositions that were going to have to be taken. That we're likely going to get into the public that might have had unattractive facts. The media is clearly under a lot of scrutiny.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And I think even if you thought that ABC would, quote unquote, win the case on the law, on the law, there was a potential that they would even lose the case in the public mind.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
That, plus if they actually lost the case and then were to try to appeal the case, they would have to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Now think about the Supreme Court for a second. 6-3, right, in terms of the politics of that court. You could potentially undermine what's called New York Times versus Sullivan. Famous First Amendment.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
1964, which granted effectively the press enormous, almost expansive. What's the word?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And so there's a question. Do you want to go through that entire process and potentially either lose in the public mind or lose in court and then potentially really lose on behalf of, frankly, all of journalism? Or do you want to settle? Got it. That would be the defensive description of why Disney or ABC did that.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
This is about the heights of power. This is demonstration of raw power. Now, it might be raw power in the context of a honeymoon, but he now has power, obviously, in the White House. He has power in the Senate. He has power in Congress. And he has power within the industry. And as a collection, walking into the inauguration, he clearly is feeling that sense of power.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Once he's in the job, it may get more challenging. It usually does.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
This, to me, is the beginning of the movie that we've all been waiting to see and wonder how the drama plays out, which is to say that we've all seen Elon Musk around the table with President-elect Trump.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But we haven't really known. In fact, I think a lot of people have been skeptical about just how much power he may or may not have. Well, he used it, and we saw it.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
He took to Twitter, or I should say X, and said this bill should not pass. Full stop. His partner in Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also took to Twitter and to TikTok. after having read 1,500-plus pages of the bill and said this bill should not pass.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Look at the list of CEOs who are either shelling out big money or meeting with Trump in person or both. We're talking about CEOs from TikTok, Google, Apple, Netflix.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Because of exactly how much it was larded up with stuff, specifically pointing out that Congress was effectively giving itself a pay raise for the first time in 14 years. There was what they call pork in this bill. And... Elon Musk said, no, Moss, we're not doing this. And Trump said, we're not doing this.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
So Rand Paul this morning suggests that Elon Musk should become the Speaker of the House. You laugh, but I think to some extent he was serious with that suggestion. By the way, you don't apparently have to be elected to that role, interestingly enough. So to the Elon Musk piece of it real quick.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, I do think this was the first demonstration of his quote unquote power in a true political sense in that for a very long time, he has made lots of proclamations on X, but has mostly been screaming into the wind. But now he clearly has the ear of the president elect. But more importantly, he's able to take that and the power of being able to galvanize the
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
this entire community behind him, I think changes the dynamic. And so I do think this is sort of that first demonstration. What that really means, I don't think we really know. But, you know, we've all talked about, you know, will he be able to do things? Is it just on the margins that be able to do things through executive actions and the like?
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Or is it through, you know, will he actually be able to persuade Congress to do things? Well, this is actually a persuasion, if you will, of Congress to do something. So I think this is sort of the first example that we're all watching and trying to understand.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
You know, Trump never publicly talked about true hardship in terms of what his policies would create. However, his new partner in crime, Elon Musk, actually did. Elon Musk took to X and said, if we follow through these policies, there will be a temporary hardship. Used the word hardship, interestingly. I paid attention to it. I don't know if most voters were paying attention to it.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But for a lot of the policies that we're all talking about, the president wanting to enact, it is almost impossible to believe that they can be enacted without actually some form of temporary hardship. Now, Elon Musk and President-elect Trump would suggest to you that there is temporary hardship now and it's a better world on the other side.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
But there's a real question about how politically palatable it is for the American public to go through, quote, temporary hardship.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
Well, look, most of corporate America going into this election, in truth, was not a supporter of President Trump. This was a book, you would call it, if you can't beat him, join him. And so you have many of the top 20 companies in America, CEO of Amazon, CEO of Google, Alphabet, Apple. The list is extensive. And all of them are going crazy. to Mar-a-Lago in truth to kiss the ring.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
They think of it as practical. They don't think of it as hypocritical. You know, back in 2016, I think a lot of CEOs didn't go down to Mar-a-Lago because they were skittish. They were skittish in part because their employees were skittish. They were skittish in part because I think the country broadly was truly skittish. That's not to suggest the country isn't broadly skittish today, but I think
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
They see Trump as somebody who likes the relationship. And it's almost in opposition to President Biden, who did not take the meeting. President Biden was not meeting with CEOs in America, didn't want to meet with CEOs in America, wanted to meet with union leaders in America, but not CEOs. And so they all see this as an opportunity.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
To effectively get in front of the president and hope not that they can persuade him of something today, but that as the debate over tariffs goes on, for example, that they will be able to make a call later.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And if you're Tim Cook at Apple and you're worried about tariffs in China where you manufacture a majority of your iPhones, you're hoping that you're going to be able to pick up the phone and call him in a couple of months and say, you know what? I have an idea about creating a carve out for, you know, a certain type of electronics product from a certain region in China.
The Daily
Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
And we can come up with an explanation for why that particular area won't have the same tariff as other parts of China.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn Kelly Details the Curious Case of Carlos Watson, and Shocking Downfall of the Disgraced Media Mogul | Ep. 969
Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money. and effectively took them off of a Zoom and then apparently started to impersonate with a fake email address as well, somebody from YouTube. What happened?
The Megyn Kelly Show
Megyn Kelly Details the Curious Case of Carlos Watson, and Shocking Downfall of the Disgraced Media Mogul | Ep. 969
Your co-founder had a phone call with Goldman Sachs as you were trying to raise money. and effectively took them off of a Zoom and then apparently started to impersonate with a fake email address as well, somebody from YouTube. What happened?