Lex Friedman
Appearances
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Friedman podcast. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Ground News for a non-partisan news aggregator, Encored for unifying your machine learning stack, 8Sleeve for naps, NetSuite for business, and Shopify for e-commerce.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
How do you think you'll do in the debate coming up? It's in a few days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Anyway, all that said, it's obvious that this is a thing that can be solved with a tech solution and that's exactly what Ground News is. Every story they provide, it comes with a breakdown of political bias and reliability of sources. And it offers multiple perspectives. It's just a really, really nice website.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So maybe let's talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelensky. Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions that are already captured?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of, let's say, friendship, the carrot or the stick? Friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Oh, and a cool feature, the blind spot feed shows discrepancies in media coverage on the left and the right. So go to groundnews.com slash lex to get 40% off the Ground News Vantage plan, giving you access to all of their features. That's ground, G-R-O-U-N-D, news.com slash lex. This episode is also brought to you by Encord, a new sponsor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If we can go back to China on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So you have a plan of what to say to Putin when you take office?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Tough topic, but important. You said lost by a whisker. I'm an independent. I have a lot of friends who are independent, many of whom like your policies, like the fact that you're a dealmaker. Like the fact that you can end wars, but they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff, fake election scheme.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What can you say to those independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
It's a platform that provides data-focused AI tooling for data annotation, curation, and management, and for model evaluation, and a bunch of other stuff, basically the whole machine learning stack. But what they do really well is focus on the data side of machine learning, which does not often enough get the love it deserves. Many of the things they do go under the flag of active learning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it's media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What do you think that was, the carrot or the stick in that case in Afghanistan? The stick, definitely the stick. So the threat of military force.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
This is a topic that's always been fascinating to me. But they just, they pull off the whole thing really well. I just have to celebrate them for doing a great job, just on the interface. Getting the annotation interface easy and natural and efficient is amazing. Like days after SAM2, the Meta Segment Anything Model 2 was released, they integrated it into their tooling.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection to Project 2025. Nothing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
You posted recently about marijuana and that you're okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I'm not a drug guy, but I recently did ayahuasca. And there's a lot of people that speak to sort of the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms, perhaps. Now, I know you don't, you stay away from all of that stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it's great and it's interesting that you're thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs, which don't just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So you can run this real-time object segmentation model inside their tool. And this works on both images and videos. And so it provides you an initial segmentation that you can then adjust. On top of that, they provide instructions on how you can fine-tune the Segment Anything model such that it can perform better based on the annotations that you provide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things about RFK Jr., I think, you've said some not so nice things about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
The Joe Rogan post is an example. I'd love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the posts on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative? Are you just speaking your mind? And are there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What are you doing usually when you're composing a truth? Are you chilling back on a couch? Couches, beds. Okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
The country seems more divided than ever. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
They also have a bunch of other data management kind of features. For example, indexing. You can unify multimodal data from local and from cloud into one platform, and you can do all kinds of stuff, like visualize it, you can search it, you can do granular curation. I mean, it's just amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you're talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for... A multitude of reasons. Go to alexfreeman.com slash contact. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
The fact that these folks put together the whole machine learning stack into one place, I just, I don't know, fills me with joy. So thank you to them. And if you're a person or company that is using machine learning, go try out Encore to curate, annotate, and manage your AI data at Encore.com slash Lex. That's Encore.com slash Lex.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Well, politicians and the media can play those games. And you're right. Your name gets a lot of views. You're probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves or of that persuasion, progressives, liberals, and so on?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
There's a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn't think that Kamala is a communist. Well, she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist. That's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
She's advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let's say. But there's a lot of people that kind of know the way government works, and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep as pod for Ultra. The night before I had a conversation with Donald Trump, I didn't sleep in my eight sleep. I wasn't home. And so I didn't sleep too well. I was going in my head through all the possible trajectories that conversation could go. But primarily there was a temperature issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Whenever we use terms like communism for her, and I don't know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Whenever there's a lot of fighting, fire with fire, it's too easy to forget that there's a middle of America that is moderate and kind of sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Like I said, there's a lot of people that like your policies, that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars, and they don't see the impending destruction of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you will have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
because the bed wasn't cold, like it would be with Eight Sleep. I just can't understand how amazing it is to have a cold bed with a warm blanket. It's an escape from the turmoil of the world, this temporary respite from the chaos, from the suffering that is life. And I wonder why it is that the world I saw on ayahuasca is not the world I've ever seen in my dreams.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
A lot of people are very interested in footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos and there's been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots. So a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
There's a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein, releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So if you're able to, you'll be... Yeah, I'd certainly take a look at it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
That's great to hear. What gives you strength when you're getting attacked? You're one of the most attacked people in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there and thank you for talking today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Where was it that I was able to go with the help of this rocket ship that I couldn't go while taking a nap? What is the human mind capable of? That's what psychedelics make me think. What are the limits of my mind, the limits of my visualization capability, the limits of my cognition capability, the limits of my consciousness? I wonder.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, as I've started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments and answer a few questions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfriedman.com.ama or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfriedman.com. Contact. I usually do this in a t-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I'll keep my suit and tie on. So first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I've been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say thank you. I'm truly grateful for the support and the love I've gotten along the way. It's been, I would say, the most unlikely journey, and on most days, I barely feel like I know what I'm doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can't speak generally to how I approach these. But here, it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history and I admire the historian perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
As an example, I admire William Shire, the author of many books on Hitler, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized a little too much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I think those same folks criticized Dan Carlin and his hardcore history podcast. I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree. So in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there's a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
The outrage mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
It's not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It's not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at, but let's say it's a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
This is hard, really hard, with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy, and in some cases, super nervous, because, well, they've been screwed over so many times with clickbait gotcha journalism. So to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard. And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
And I've been thinking a lot about why. I don't think it's just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details. Because I think it's in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every time, as I said. I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary, and on the right, J.D. Vance, Vivek, George W., and so on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
And on the topic of politics, let me say as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America. I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth. And I'm grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well. I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I probably should do a better job of that. But I've been doing most of this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research, prep, recording, and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome, with a voice in my head constantly pointing out when I'm doing a shitty job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Anyway, go to hatesleep.com slash Lex and use code Lex to get 350 bucks off the Pod 4 Ultra. This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. It's the machine within the machine of capitalism. It helps you manage all the disparate components of a company, financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and so on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Plus, a few folks graciously remind me on the internet the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice. All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company, or maybe starting my own. All these options make me truly happy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But like I said, on most days, I barely know what I'm doing, so who knows what the future holds. Most importantly, I'm forever grateful for all of you, for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of a life I've been on. I love you all. Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest. So, basic facts. Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It's not on by default, and most people don't use the end-to-end encryption, but some do. Pavel was arrested in France
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
on a long list of charges related to quote-unquote criminal activity carried out on the Telegram platform and for quote-unquote providing unlicensed cryptology services. I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users. For example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree that terrorism is bad. But here's the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
As the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are. But there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian inclined governments, tend to propagandize and just call whoever's in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But to me, at this time, it seems to obviously be a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they can have censorship power against the opposition. I think generally, government should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms. And I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built is just nuts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram, and on people working at every social media company, and also people thinking of launching a new social media company. Same is the case of X being banned in Brazil. It's, I think, a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading quote-unquote misinformation. Elon and X denied the request. Then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil, and in response to that, X pulled the representatives out of Brazil, obviously, to protect them. And now X, having no representatives in Brazil, apparently violates the law.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Based on this, de Moraes banned X in Brazil. Once again, it's an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication. I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world, and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But as Benjamin Franklin said, those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. So it's a trade-off. But I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty. Okay, next up, I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I'll condense it as follows. Hello, Lex.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I'm a programmer and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills. let me first say that I relate to your fear. It's scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion. And if not for this podcast, it would probably, at least in part, be my profession.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I speak to it at the end of this episode in the AMA, all the amazing possibilities I have in my life to build, to create. And one of them is indeed running a company. Every time I talk about NetSuite, I'm pulled back into this thought, if for a brief moment. Sometimes I feel like it is not me that decides where my life goes, but some kind of winds of fortune.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I get an uncomfortable feeling every time Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time, just writes a lot of excellent, approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of Stack Overflow exceeds the skill of many programmers, many individual programmers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But in many ways, it still does not. But I think eventually, more and more, the task, the profession of programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I'm at least doing, is to ride the wave of the ever-improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
What I'm doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. So for me currently, I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor and before that it was Emacs to VS Code switch. So Cursor is this editor that's based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the code generation really nicely into the editing process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So it makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. So what I would advise and what I'm trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its code generation capabilities. I personally try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So using my understanding of programming to edit the code that's generated by the LLM versus sort of writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill. I think this applies to many other careers too. Don't compete with AI for your job. Learn to use the AI to do that job better.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But yes, it is scary on some deep sort of human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we'll be okay. All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently, he graduated with a bachelor's degree and he's thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree. So he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he's done with his PhD. So it's a big investment. But he said in his heart, he feels like he's a scientist. I think that's the most important part of his message, of your message.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
By the way, I'll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes. Now onto the question. So thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees. And I took a while, just as you're doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I did a lot of non-standard things that weren't any good for some hypothetical career I'm supposed to have. I trained and competed in judo and jiu-jitsu for my entire 20s. Got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren't at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes. Many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn't directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring. So, like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Throughout that, people around me, and even people who love me, wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money, and so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety, And I still am filled with anxiety to this day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
More and more I'm starting to realize that I'm less the guy who plans and more the guy who follows his instinct. But anyway, it does seem that if I get a chance to follow down this path, It will be a difficult but fulfilling one. And if you are walking down that path, join over 37,000 companies that have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
But I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got the things you're passionate about. As you said, very importantly, in your heart, you know you're a scientist. So that's it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
get to a good grad school, find a good advisor, and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you're chasing dreams and goals with absolute, unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also, try your best to be a good person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
This might be a good place to read the words, If, by Roger Kipling, that I often return to when I feel lost and I'm looking for guidance on how to be a better man. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies or being hated don't give way to hating and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master if you can think and not make thoughts your aim if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they're gone and so hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them, hold on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much, if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Take advantage of NetSuite's flexible financing plan at netsuite.com slash lex. That's netsuite.com slash lex. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. I, even I, am selling shirts on lexfreeman.com slash store. I've been wearing this shirt that says birds aren't real.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
If you're not aware, it's a conspiracy theory. that birds aren't real, like the name of the conspiracy theory suggests, and that, in fact, the birds we see in the sky are drones used by the government to engage in mass surveillance of a citizenry. I have actually two birds aren't real shirts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
This episode is brought to you by one of my favorite websites, Ground News, a nonpartisan news aggregator I use to compare media coverage from across the political spectrum. The point is to see every side of the story, especially political stories, and come to your own conclusion. We've been talking about it on this podcast, on many podcasts. just how biased specific media sources are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
In one of them, it says birds aren't real in really big letters, and I wear it around town, and I get to start conversations with some interesting people. I think the shirts you wear create opportunities for discovering interesting people. So think of it that way. Merch as gateway for conversation. And if you want to sell gateways of conversations or other kinds of products, you can.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash lex. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash lex to take your business to the next level today. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
They're getting smaller. Right? I mean, people do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
All right. Okay. You said that you love winning. And you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business, in TV, in politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
You've been close with a lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali. You have people like Michael Jordan who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
Like most problems in the world, this can be explained by incentives. The funding is drying out for news organizations, so they more and more rely on clickbait journalism, and clickbait journalism requires extreme polarization.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
You've been successful in business. You've been successful in politics. What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
So just like in the Soviet Union when everyone knew the official sources was propaganda, you have to arrive at the truth by getting a lot of sources and integrating them yourself and understanding where exactly the truth lies because it often lies in the nuance, in the details, in the middle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#442 – Donald Trump Interview
One of the great things about people from the business world is they're often great dealmakers. And you're a great dealmaker. And you've talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelensky would accept. What do you think that deal looks like?