JD Vance
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And by the way, just not to wade back into January 6th territory, like what is a bigger threat to American democracy? Is it that we had a big fight about some of the
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
some of the certification in January the 6th, and of course you had some rioters at the Capitol, or is it that, for example, the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't obey the President of the United States on troop redeployments in Syria, which actually happened during Trump's administration?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Like, if we're going to talk about threats to democracy, we need the government to be responsive to the American people's elected president. If you don't have that, you don't have a real democracy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well. At a high level, certainly, I'm one of the co-chairs of the transition team. There are a few others of us who are working on it. You just sort of think about, I mean, look, the way the founders set up our government, whether you like it or not, there are certain things, especially when it comes to budget and appropriations, you just have to go through Congress, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You fundamentally have to. Now, I do think that Congress is willing to work with us at least the first couple of years of an administration. You can largely get the budgetary and appropriations things that you need. But there's a lot that you can do through EO. And by the way, in a lot of ways, I think the enlargement of the president at the expense of Congress is a bad thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But fundamentally, there is a lot that happens in our government purely through executive orders, through EOs. And yes, we're thinking very deliberately about all the things that you could do through EOs on day one.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
or in the early parts of the administration, and again, not to make this too partisan, but one of the ways that Biden and Harris opened up the American southern border was through executive orders, right? It was an executive order that submitted deportations, an executive order that ended the Remain in Mexico policy. So you can screw up a lot through EOs.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You can also fix a lot through EOs, which is certainly something that we're focused on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And now I find myself agreeing with everything the Democrats said in 2008. Right. Total coincidence.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah, I mean, look, one way to think about it is that we traded Dick Cheney for Bobby Kennedy, and that's an upgrade I'll take every single day. Look, I mean, one way of understanding is you have to ask yourself who has benefited and who has harmed from the last 30 years of the bipartisan consensus in this country, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
So you want to talk about a manufacturing policy that I think promoted the offshoring of millions of good American manufacturing jobs and in the process, by the way, made us less self-reliant as a country. That really benefited people like Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris and their donors. It didn't benefit the people that I serve in the state of Ohio, okay?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you ask yourself, who actually went off and fought these ridiculous wars? It was very often working and middle-class kids in communities like mine it wasn't the family of our current leadership class by and large, though, of course, there are exceptions. And you go through each of these issues, and what you find is increasingly Republicans are the party of working and middle-class people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You know, Bobby Kennedy has talked about this a lot, and I think he puts it better than I ever could, but that, you know, you go back even 30 years ago, and approximately 80% of the counties that represent, sorry, 80% of the wealth in American counties went in places that voted Republican and about 20% of the wealth went to places that voted Democrat.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Now it's 70% of the wealth goes for Democrats and about 30% of the wealth goes for Republicans. And you saw this in a big way. I mean, just one illustration is I believe that in 2012, Wall Street, which I think Wall Street fundamentally has been the main beneficiary of globalization of a lot of the policies that I pushed back against and criticized over the last 30 years.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Wall Street went three to one for Romney over Obama in 2012. I believe they went four to one for Trump for Clinton over Trump in 2016, and then like nine to one for Biden over Trump in 2020. So there was a massive shift in who makes up these parties. Wealthy people direct their money to Democrats as well.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Increasingly, wealthy people direct their money to Democrats, working and middle-class people direct their money to Republicans.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Again, because I think their policies have benefited, look, the Uniparty, the Kamala Harris's and Dick Cheney's, their parties have benefited a certain group of people. Those people are increasingly Democrats. Donald Trump has been pushing back against that consensus in his party, in his policies, I think benefit the majority of the country.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
So increasingly, I think the working middle class heart of the country is going for Republicans. Like another spin on this, because I know we're, you know, focused on tech in this conference is big tech has become increasingly pro-Democrat, little tech has become increasingly pro-Republican, right? So if you're an upstart, if you're in crypto, if you're
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you're like a small AI company, I think you're much more likely to be pro-Republican. If you're a monopolist in big tech, I mean, look at Facebook, Google, how they're putting their resources. It's much, much more pro-Democrat. So there are a lot of different spins on it. But fundamentally, I think the people who've benefited from the American decline are becoming Democrats.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
The people who have suffered from it and are pushing back against it are Republicans.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah, so this is obviously very complicated. Jason, you probably understand this better than I do. But as somebody, by the way, who's defended Lena Kahn against some of her critics from the right, I think what Lena Kahn fundamentally gets correct is that big tech really is a threat. It's a threat to free speech. It's increasingly oligarchic. It controls too much of what we're allowed to say.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And also, it controls a lot of the ways in which capital gets invested in these various ecosystems. But But where I think Lena Kahn goes wrong is that you're exactly right. You need the singles and doubles. You need sometimes a medium-sized company to buy a smaller company for $300 million. That liquidates founders. That gives the venture fund some money to go back into the system.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think that... I don't know her super well, but my basic read on Lena is that she is so anti-monopoly as sort of a baseline bias, and that becomes anti-merger and acquisition as a baseline bias, that Google buying YouTube is a much, much different thing from a $2 billion market cap healthcare company buying a $500 million market cap healthcare company.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think that we have to sort of draw a very big distinction between little tech and big tech. And look, I'm going to keep on making that argument both in public and private to Lena, and hopefully she comes around to our view a little bit, because I do think some of her ideas on big tech are right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, I think the reason why it's so difficult right now, and I mean, look, generally, I agree that, okay, we're going to let some immigrants in. We want them to be high talent, high quality people. You don't want to let a large number of illegal aliens in. Obviously, that's President Trump's view.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But I think that the reason why it's so broken down right now is because you have 25 million illegal aliens in this country. And you can't fix what I would call the minor or sort of less important immigration question that until you fix the real problem. And part of that goes back, by the way, to the way in which the system got broken in the first place.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
So Ronald Reagan, of course, great governor of California, a great president, but Reagan did in 1986 a massive amnesty program where in some ways he was trying to do exactly what you're talking about. Fix the problem of people who are already here, make sure that our immigration system is more pro-skill, but also close down the border.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And what happened is we got all the amnesty, but we didn't get the closing down of the borders. And so in order to do anything, I think, meaningful on immigration policy, meaning legal immigration policy, you've got to close down the border and establish some basic order.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And to go back to first principles here, I think that people who are generally, I mean, look, this is, I'm sure, a very diverse crowd. And I'm sure there are a lot of immigrants in this crowd, legal immigrants, hopefully. I'm married to the daughter. I'm married to the daughter of legal immigrants to this country. And I, of course, love not just my wife, but the whole extended family.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I do think they've brought a lot to this country. But here's the thing. When you allow 25 million people into this country, it breaks down the entire social compact, right? So think about this. Okay, you're down on your luck. You lost your job. You get unemployment insurance. You're really down on your luck. You need food assistance from the federal government.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I believe, as a conservative, that part of being in the same American family, whether your family's been here for a generation or 10 generations— is that we support people who are down on the luck. We don't want a cradle to grave welfare state, but we want to support people. We don't want kids who are dying because of starvation, because of no fault of their own.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
We want to promote some basic fairness, and we want to help people out when times get tough. But you can't do that if you extend that generosity to tens of millions of people who can't even be here in the first place. And I think that what Kamala Harris has done at the border, it's not just bad economically. It's not just bad for public safety.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
She has eroded the very foundation of the social contract in this country. And we talk about division in our politics, and Kamala has this ridiculous slogan, we're not going back. The reason why politics is so divided is because she has turned American citizens against one another while she's placed the interests of illegal aliens above American citizens.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You want to turn the page and get back to common American citizenship? Stop putting illegal aliens to the front of the line of American citizens.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah, I mean, empathy is different than guilt. It's all of these things, right? I mean, so let me tell you a brief story. And this goes back to my changing my mind on Donald Trump. I was probably, it's probably 2017, 2018. I was at a business conference and I happened to be seated next to one of the largest hotel chain CEOs in America. And my wife was there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And we talk about this as the monopoly story because the guy is just going off. Maybe he'd had too much to drink. He's going off about how Donald Trump's immigration policies had forced him to raise the wages of his workers. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting fact. Like, explain more about this, sir. Please, I want to understand. And he said, well, because we can hire a lot of immigrants.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And frankly, we can hire a lot of illegal immigrants under the table. And we can't do that because there are fewer illegal immigrants. So we have to pay our American citizen workers more money. And I'm like, oh, shit, that sounds pretty good, actually. Isn't that like what we want is for people to be earning higher wages for doing a good job? So there's definitely an economic piece of it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But I also think, I mean, look, this is chilled out a little bit, partially because we're in election year. If Kamala Harris won, I think it would come back with a vengeance. But I think
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
about all these like ridiculous land acknowledgements right where people say well you know I want to acknowledge that this belong to like this tribe before I was here and if you genuinely think that you have to acknowledge a Native American tribe from 300 years ago then one attitude that comes along with this is why can I control at all who comes into the country right I have no right there's this basic I think this is the empathy it's the guilt it's sort of all these things I
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I have no right to say who comes into my community. And I think, again, it's deranged. But I think that's part of it. I think the economic piece of it is part of it. It's certainly a vote argument. I mean, Democrats will say this. Of course, Republicans are accused of racism. for just repeating what Democrats have said.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
When somebody like Chuck Schumer says, well, you know, we're going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we're going to have all these new immigrants and all the old Americans, well, they're going to vote for Republicans, but we're going to replace them with a bunch of new people who vote for Democrats. It's like, that's pretty sick.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But again, if you call it out, you're somehow a racist, even though Chuck Schumer is himself calling it out as if it were a good thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, Jason, it's... I like it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You did say that. I think Jason should be on the left and David should be on my right. He's been pulling me to the right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I'm on the left right now, but I could go right. Okay, yeah, I guess it depends on perspective. It's my perspective here. It's good debate prep, right? But, you know, Jason, if the VC thing doesn't work out, you'd make a great panelist at CNN. Oh! By the way, I love this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I genuinely think this is what a person who wants to be your vice president should actually do is answer some tough questions. I do give you credit for that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Tell me about dragging millions of people out of the country. Here's why I find this question a little off and I will answer it, but it's like somebody who comes to me and I'm like eating my lunch and they say, look, that sandwich is 10 times the size of your mouth. How are you possibly going to eat that whole sandwich?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And it's like, well, I'm going to take a first bite and then I'm going to take a second bite. And I want to take a third bite. And eventually the problem is going to be, look, you start out with a million people who are what we call criminal migrants, people who have committed violent crimes in some form or another. Get them out of our country.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yes, handcuff those people and force them out of the country. But you also do other things simultaneously. First of all, you stop the bleeding, right? You undo Kamala Harris's policies that opened the southern border in the first place. I've got a piece of legislation in the United States Senate that we've got a lot of colleagues who have signed up for it, which would tax remittances, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, you know, first of all, thanks all for having me. I've been a big fan of the pod for a while. I think my first appearance, so it's good to be with you. You know, the only thing I'll say to that, David, is I do think there is a deep connection between the poverty that I saw growing up and the fact that our entire economy is just less innovative than we pretend that it is.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Because we know a lot of people are earning money and then sending it back to Central America or wherever they came from. If you end that practice, then you have a lot of people who go back willingly. I think you ought to make it harder for people to hire illegal labor as opposed to American citizens. You tick through these things.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I do think that, you know, that's the sandwich approach to this is you try to take it one step at a time. But the most important thing And I think the deportations focus, again, it is important because we're eventually, we are going to deport people. But the most important thing is to stop the bleeding.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You've got to stop the millions of people flowing across the southern border every single year. It happened because of Kamala Harris's policies. It's going to stop when Donald Trump is president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah, so, well, part of the reason it's happening is that— Right, it's not Hondurans necessarily. No, no, that's right. It's Iranians. It's Iranians. It's people from all over Asia, Africa, Europe. I mean, look, if you look at this, that is the open door, right? So if you want to come to this country, that is the open door. And God knows why some of them want to be here.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I mean, given what's going on in the Middle East, I do worry about military-age males from Iran coming into this country through the American southern border. But, you know, I actually asked a border patrol agent about this on one of my visits. And, you know, great guy was actually kind of heartbroken because he signed up to protect his country. And he's a relatively recent immigrant.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I could tell that by his accent. Guy's like very nervous. And very heartbroken about the fact that he can't do his job. And he told me this story and I feel like an idiot in hindsight because he's like, we have a guy who came in here. I asked the guy like, why do you think this guy's Iranian? And he said, well, because he came through and he said that he was Mexican.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I was like, well, couldn't he have been Mexican? And he said, well, he didn't speak Spanish. It's like, oh, that's a tell. You know, guy comes from Mexico, illegal alien, doesn't speak Spanish. That's probably a pretty significant tell. But it's happening because this is what Kamala Harris has done. She's created this massive gap in our national security and people are taking advantage of it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
It's really not that surprising.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And, you know, I know, you know, Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen and other folks have talked about this, but if you look at the real innovation in the American economy, it's been in the world of software.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, so there's a lot there. And let me try to sort of take a few pieces of it because I know we're relatively short on time. So number one is the energy piece of it's very important. Part of the way that you reshore American manufacturing is that you open up American energy. It matters for crypto. It matters for AI.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You've got to open up American energy or you're never going to have, whether it's the next generation of manufactured goods or the past generations, you've got to open up American energy. energy. Okay. That's number one. Number two is, look, I don't want to go to war with China. I think it would be hugely destructive, but I do think that we have to reshore more American manufacturing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And one of the weird things about China, if you think about past eras of developing nations, right? So go back to like when the UK was the most advanced economy in the world and America was a developing nation. Well, one of the things that happened is that capital was flowing from the UK into the United States, from the developed into the developing nation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
What's really weird about China is that it's like Americans borrow money from Chinese peasants, to then buy the things the Chinese peasants are making for us, right? So it's not just the goods flow that's jacked up, it's the capital flows that are jacked up.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you look at where the economy has been most stagnant, it's been in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy, which is where 90% of the people that I represent in the Senate and 80% of the people that I hope to represent as their vice president actually make their living, run their business, and go to work every single day.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I really think that the next, you know, Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States, and this is something we're going to have to figure out, is that you need to balance both the capital and the goods flows, okay?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I'm not saying we're going to have absolutely no trade with China, but right now the relationship is fundamentally that the Chinese have figured out they can create a massively powerful producerist society while America becomes a weaker, weaker consumerist society.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
That is the broken nature of the relationship, and I think rebalancing is the right way to think about it, but we have got to do it, and I think we're way, way behind the airport.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah, I mean, I really do think that we have to recognize that we have massively over-regulated the real world, right? Over-regulated transportation, over-regulated energy, over-regulated home construction.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I don't know how easy it is to get another 300 bps of growth, but I think you could get a lot more growth, whether it's 300 or 150, just by massively reducing the amount of regulatory burden in the real economy. And again, I'm an optimist. I'm fundamentally an optimist on both crypto... blockchain, Web3 stuff, but also on AI.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
One of the real conceits of the 30 years of globalization that I think was really, really deranged and hindsight very wrong, Bob Lighthizer, who is Trump's trade representative, talks a lot about this, is we had this conceit that we could separate the manufacture of things from the design of things, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
So if you get an iPhone right now and you get it out of the box, you will see that it says designed in Cupertino, California. Of course, the implication is that it's manufactured in Shenzhen or wherever they're manufacturing iPhones these days. The idea that the iPhone is designed in Cupertino is increasingly no longer even true.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
It's something that we lie to ourselves about because the people who are doing all the manufacturing of the hardware of the iPhone are getting much better at design and innovation. And part of the reason why I care so much about this manufacturing thing is whether it's antibiotics, for example. Why hasn't America invented an antibiotic in 30 years?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think that when I think about tech, one of the things I'd like us to do is broaden the aperture a little bit and think about innovation not just in software, but innovation in transportation and logistics and innovation in
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
It probably has something to do with the manufacture of antibiotics is done almost entirely in very low cost manufacturing areas. You can go through a whole host of goods like this, but if you want to build a high tech, high dynamic growth economy, you have to have some native manufacturing and some self-reliance. And so these two things are very related.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think it's a big part of getting back to four or 5% growth is accepting that, yes, we're going to have trade, but we can't let everybody make all of our stuff.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And energy and the whole suite of things, because unless our economy is actually technologically innovative, then the stagnant economy is fundamentally like the worst thing. And I think a lot of actually America's pathologies right now stem from the fact that we feel like we live in a very zero-sum country, because in some ways we do. Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, and by the way, available wherever books are sold.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Do you have an affiliate? 529 account for the kids. Can I just, just two things. First of all, Jason, I appreciate what you said, but I also just want to defend my running mate here because I think that Again, the media doesn't often tell you the truth about Donald Trump. Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I've ever met in public life.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
That's actually real. He thinks about how this stuff affects the real economy and real Americans. So if you're on the fence, whether you like what I said or dislike what I said, I just encourage you, listen to what he actually says, because I think that you'll become a believer that he can make the country great again, as he promises. But separate from that, I just want to say
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
This is such an important conversation and you guys hold and host important conversations every single day. We should do more of it as a country, but I'm glad to participate today. God bless everyone. Thank you.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
When the economy is growing four or five, six percent a year, then Democrats can kind of get what they want. Republicans can kind of get what they want. And it all makes sense. If the economy is growing between zero and one percent a year, then I think it makes the whole society and our political system much, much more insane.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think that's kind of a subtext of what's been going on in this country for the last 30 years.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah. So first of all, when Biden was running against Trump, one of the things the media tried to do is to say, well, you know, you have these two guys who are a little bit older than average and both of them clearly aren't fully with it. And I would hear the media talk about Biden like this and then talk about Trump like this.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And it's like, guys, Donald Trump remembers exactly what I said about him nine and a half years ago to the minute, to the day, to the exact line. Like, trust me, his memory is 100% there, even if it would be more in my interest if it wasn't. And, you know, what changed for me, I mean, two things.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
One, Chamath, you just sort of hit on this, is a lot of the things the press said about Donald Trump and says about Donald Trump are just straight-up fabrications. And so if you think the press is, like, biased, that's one thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But if you think the press is fundamentally trying to tell you the truth, even if it's in a biased way, and then you realize that, like, Donald Trump never called white supremacists very fine people after Charlottesville.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
a total fabrication of the american media it's like okay what other things am i hearing about donald trump that are actually not true right the second thing is you know we talked about this a little bit last night but look if you go back to the date of my or the year of my birth which is 1984 there's this chart that's really interesting and it tracks corporate profits the
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
the wages of workers and the size of government. And for pretty much my entire life, the wages of workers were stagnant, corporate profits were going up, and the size of government was going up. And there was a four year period where the wages of workers outpaced the size of government corporate profits. It's the four years that Donald Trump was president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And I think that we have to like give some credit where it's due, the policies actually work.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And if you go into the presidency saying, I don't think Donald Trump's going to be a good president, and then lo and behold, he's the best president at least in a generation, it's like, okay, time to change my mind, admit to myself, but also to all the people who listen to me, I was wrong about Donald Trump. He was a hell of a good president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Of course, I'm running as his running mate, because I think he'll do it again.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
You know, I think the president, one thing I'll say about him is, again, the media perception of Donald Trump is that he's like this deeply... a grieved guy who holds really terrible grudges. The actual reality of Donald Trump is that, yeah, he remembers what you said about him because it's like part of the inputs that he takes as he tries to evaluate a human being.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But most importantly, he's asking like, what can you do now? How can you help the country now? How can you help me as I try to help the country now? And I think for whatever complicated set of factors, he decided that I was the guy who could help him the most. But no, I mean, it is interesting that,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
The perception of him as this guy who holds grudges, he selected a guy who was very much a critic of his back in 2015 as his running mate. Clearly something doesn't make sense. And I think that what doesn't make sense is this idea that Trump is more motivated by grievance than he is by the public interest. He's actually much more motivated by the public interest. That's the truth.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, I think it's, let me take issue with the premise a little bit, Jason, because I don't think the argument was Mike Pence could overturn the election results. I think the argument was that Mike Pence could have done more, whether you agree or disagree, Mike Pence could have done more to sort of surface some of the problems in the 2020 election. Would you have not certified the election?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, I think that what I would have done, I mean, look, I happen to think that there were issues back in 2020, particularly in Pennsylvania. Even some of the courts that refused to throw out certified ballots did say that there were ballots that were cast in an illegal way. They just refused to actually decertify the election results in Pennsylvania.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Do I think that we could have had a much more rational conversation about how to ensure that only legal ballots are cast? Yes. And do I think that Mike Pence could have played a better role? Yes. But again, the two premises that I take issue on is, one, Pence was not asked to overturn the election. He couldn't have. But two, the reason— He was asked to not certify it. Sure.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Again, I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we have in these important states.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors. That's what I would have done. Again, I've said that publicly many times. But again, Jason, the important part is we would have had a big debate.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And it doesn't necessarily mean the results would have been any different, but we at least would have had the debate in Pennsylvania and Georgia about how to better have a rational election system where legal ballots are cast. And again, I, you know, look, I have no personal problem with Mike Pence. I've never really talked to him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
But I think that the idea that the reason Mike Pence isn't on board with Donald Trump is over the election of 2020. That's the other thing I want to take issue with, Jason, because I think in reality that if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia, Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And fundamentally, the reason the old guard of the Republican Party hates Donald Trump, it's not because of January the 6th, 2021, whatever your views on it. It's because Donald Trump doesn't think that we should start stupid wars in foreign countries. And that's why they all hate him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I want to hear David, especially if he gets me out of answering tough questions.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Let's talk about January 6th for the next 45 minutes. I'm sure it's the most important thing going on in the country right now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
For those of you who are really bad at context clues, I'm JD Vance. I'm running for vice president.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
So I agree with you. And let me just say, let me say two things and I'll try to answer briefly because I know there are a lot of topics that we can get through. So number one is one of the things that our government should do, obviously, I think it should be doing less than it currently does, but what it does, I want it to do well.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And most importantly, I want the critical social welfare functions of our government to go to the people who actually deserve to be here. So as a United States Senator, I have asked multiple staff members, I've asked officials in various government departments to
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you take the give or take 25 million illegal aliens that are here in this country right now, how much money do we spend on illegal aliens every single year in this country? And I've gotten estimates that range between $100 billion a year to $600 billion a year. And where does that money come from?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Well, it comes from healthcare benefits, even though illegal aliens aren't entitled to Section 8 housing. Their children are entitled to Section 8 housing. There's also a lot of Social Security fraud, a lot of Medicare fraud. So one thing that we could save a lot of money on
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
is actually focusing our national interest on American citizens, people who deserve to be here, we'd save a lot of money that way. That'd be a huge and transformative thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you call it a $1.7 trillion deficit, right, again, it's between $100 billion to $600 billion, depending on how you cut the numbers. Now, the other thing about that, just to answer your question about efficiency, is I think the government procurement process, especially in military equipment, is really broken.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
That's right. She's at like the tar pits or whatever. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We brought our three kids out here. So she wanted to take and see some fossil stuff.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
If you go back to Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex, I mean, I was a seed investor in Anduril. I imagine you guys have some Anduril people here today. We had Palmer Luckey here two years ago. Great company.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
Yeah. You know, one of the things that that company, as I haven't talked to the guys about the details of the business in the last few years, but one of the things that they founded the company on was the idea that the procurement process was broken. And that is definitely true in the, you know, We do way too much cost plus procurement and way too little actual spurring of innovation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
And what it ends up meaning is that our equipment isn't as good as it should be, and we end up spending a lot more money than we should be. I actually do think you could cut the American defense budget and make our country stronger, but you would have to make the procurement process much more efficient. Now, that's a big thing to tackle, but that's what we're in this business doing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I don't know that you have to pass legislation, but you really, as a president and vice president, you have to be willing to take on some very powerful defense contractors. And that's something that I know President Trump and I very much want to do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
I want to do all of the good things and none of the bad things. That's my goal as vice president. So the ribbon cuttings of the new federal... I mean, obviously joking, but the reality is that I want to be a second set of eyes and ears for the president's agenda. Right.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
One of the things that was true, and he will tell you this the first time he was he was president United States, is there were people in government. There were people in his own administration that he was a newcomer to politics. He didn't fully trust everybody who was around him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024
We want to build a team who's actually aligned on the agenda because agree or disagree with Donald Trump on a specific policy issue, assuming the American people make him the next president. And I think that they will. that is the next president and his policy determinations should dictate the executive administration of government. If they don't, we don't have a real democracy.