Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What did you think of Elon's first lawsuit, and then he dropped it, and then he refiled? Where do you think he's coming from?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But why do you think he would have dropped it and then refiled? Where do you think that comes from? Is there new information, do you think?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Before we move to politics, I just wanted to actually ask you about inflection. So is it still running? Yeah. And so what basically happened, there was like some transfer payment from Microsoft and a couple of the people like, and then it seems like whatever that deal was, a little bit seems to have been copied by Google when they did this character AI thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So just trying to get a sense from you, are these deals to structurally avoid FTC scrutiny in terms of the building blocks of it? Or how did you think about it? And what is the pattern and the trend on these things?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'm sorry, Pi is the inflection AI product.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reid, were you surprised that then the first target where there was like some successful antitrust pushback was against Google versus Apple? And then second, do you think that there's a chance, like a meaningful chance that the government tries to break Google up? Or do you think it looks something maybe more similar to what happened to Microsoft?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, exactly. Reid, I have a question. A few weeks ago, you said something to the effect very publicly that you had had a one hour or multi hour lunch with Biden. And he just seemed like super on his game. And then he was kind of dumped. Was that just a moment in time where he was really great with you?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Or how do you reconcile that with Pelosi and all of these other folks and what happened to Biden?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Do you think that they should have run an open primary after that? And would Kamala have won an open primary?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Do you want to address that, Reid? Because I think there was a rumor that you were funding some of these lawsuits to keep him off the ballot or whatever. Have you spent any money to try to impact RFK one way or the other?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reid, I have a question for you. It's more of a statement, actually. Maybe I'd just love to get your reaction. One of the most divisive issues that we have right now is people's position on October 7th, Israel, Palestine. There is a sense that there's a growing kind of like virulent strain of anti-Semitism in America. A lot of people point to the extreme left as where that's really gestating.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There was thoughts that Josh Shapiro would have been an exceptional candidate, but one of the large reasons why he was not really meaningfully considered was his religion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I just want you to comment on the broad issue and whether you see it in the Democratic Party, whether you see it in the Republican Party, whether you see it at all, just give us a sense of where we stand culturally on this issue.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think I'm going to try to keep my hair long. Let's see what happens.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'll tell you why. I think that both the Republicans and the Democrats have realized that there's actually very little difference on a lot of the major things that they actually talk about. So what they're both being forced to do is realize that because the centrality of a bunch of the things they say are the same, they each have to go to their flanks to get the N plus one vote.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And so Kamala goes to the left and spouts all this stuff that seems Marxist or socialist or communist because she has to get those people to vote for her. Ultimately, I think what ends up happening is most of the stuff in the middle has a decent chance of happening. The stuff at the fringes, I think they get put up, sacks almost as like a sacrificial lamb.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A good example, I think, is like all of this stuff that's happening with the student loan reform. A half a trillion dollar plan, it gets shot down by the Supreme Court. This new plan, another hundred billion dollars. not even being heard yet by the Supreme Court. So I think they know this. I mean, it's not like the Biden administration is dumb. The Trump administration is not dumb either.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
but I do have some mineral oil.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Let me just move to one thing. So, Reid, I think this has been an amazingly robust conversation. And I think you, as always, as long as I've known you now for 20 years, have been really intellectually honest. I want to ask you a favor, which is, can you stay for 10 extra minutes and talk with us to Bobby Kennedy?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And the reason I want you to do that is I think that there is a bunch of misinformation. I asked you about these things. I think it's important to hear maybe from Bobby and just for him to know what you said, because I do think it's important to hear it from the horse's mouth. Can you just give us like five, 10 minutes so that we can do that? Because I think it would be an important thing to do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So when is that? No, just right now. Yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So, Jason, I, you know, I'm not actually, I haven't actually terminated my campaign yet. I suspended it. We've taken ourselves, or we're trying to take ourselves off the ballot in about 11 states. So we'll remain on the ballot in 39 states. And all red, all blue states will be on the ballot
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
in the states where we felt we were going to hurt President Trump with a polling show that we're getting off there, mainly the battleground states. Ironically now, the same people who've been trying to get me off the ballot for a year or since October, are now fighting to keep me on the ballot in those states. So that's one of the sort of ironies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You know, it became clear about two months ago when it became clear that I was not gonna be allowed on the debating stage. And I pretty much had a shutout in the mainstream media. The mainstream media, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, in 16 or 17 months, I had only two live interviews. Ross Perot, during his 10-month campaign, had 34 interviews.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then, you know, all of them were very, very much aligned with the Democratic National Committee. And so when they did mention my name, which was pretty often, it was accompanied by a lot of defamations and pejoratives and slander. mischaracterizations, et cetera. I never really had a chance to reach those audiences. The audiences that I was reaching, I was dominating in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I was beating all the candidates on independence, which is now the largest demographic. I was beating them among young people, so your audience was supporting me. The audiences that were listening to long-form interviews, I was dominating.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But in the older audiences, which is a critical baby boomers, people who really should have been for me because they are people who, from my generation, who remember the Kennedy administration, they were part of Camelot. They also, I was very, very popular with them for many years when I was the environmental champion alone.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I should have had good inroads, but I was never able to communicate with them. Because they watch, they get their news from the mainstream media. And if you're living in that information ecosystem, you're going to have a very, very low opinion of me. I mean, if I was getting my information from those networks, I wouldn't vote for myself.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And President Trump reached out to me through this guy, Cali Mains, who's a food advocate, a safe food advocate, about three hours after the shooting in Butler. I got a call from him. And he asked me if I was still interested in the, specifically in the VP slot. And I said, no, which I would not have taken the vice president slot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And he said, would I talk to, be willing to talk to the administration, to President Trump, rather. And at first I said, no. And I talked with some of my family members, including my kids. And I then sent Kelly Means a note saying, you know, I'm interested in talking. And I got a call almost immediately from President Trump. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we met the next day in Minneapolis. And then we met again more recently. We had continuing talks with him. And we met again more recently for a very, very intensive and long meeting at Mar-a-Lago with some of his family members. And during those meetings, during the first meeting,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We talked about the idea of having a unity ticket where I would remain on the ballot, where we would ally ourselves on certain critical issues, but we would be able to continue to criticize each other on the issues that we did not align on. And President Trump was very happy with that arrangement.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And the issues, the critical issues on which we agreed, and I was really stunned to see the level of his commitment to those issues was one. And there are three issues that really got me into the presidential campaign. One was ending the war in Ukraine. The second issue is ending the censorship issue.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And the third issue, and most important to me, was addressing the childhood chronic disease epidemic and these connected issues about soil health and the corruption in our regulatory agencies by USDA and FDA, NIH, CDC, and HHS, which have become sock puppets. for the big pharmaceutical, big ag, big food processing industries that they're supposed to be regulating.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He was very, very much aligned on those issues and it gave us essentially a beachhead in which to construct this, an alliance.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bobby, let me ask you a question. I just want to go back a little bit because I just want to make sure I heard it properly. When Cali called you Was it to be the VP on the Trump ticket? And did you, was that asked and did you consider it? And why did you say no to that but then said yes to this?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, I had no interest in being a vice president. If you're a vice president, it's a, you know, I grew up in politics and vice president is the worst job in Washington. You have no budget. You have no staff except what, your budget actually all comes through the White House. If you do something that offends the president, he can literally, you know, he can take away your plane.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Every day I've showered since I've gotten back.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He can take away your staff. And the only thing you really have is the Naval Observatory, which is the official residence of the vice president. And he can essentially put you under house arrest. And, you know, I have very strong views on issues. And I, you know, I felt like if I took that job, I'd be on house arrest probably on day three. So, you know, I was never interested in that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Sorry, Bobby, keep going.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, it was a very hard-wrenched decision. But, you know, my whole kind of journey was over the past 17 months was just kind of a series of very, very difficult transitions, you know, away from the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was... My family is one of the central pillars of the Democratic Party.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My family has been in the Democratic Party since 1848, since my great-grandparents came over. My great-grandfather, Honey Fitz, was the first Irish Catholic mayor of Boston. His contemporary, Patrick Joseph Kennedy, was a state senator and political boss in Massachusetts. My grandfather, Joseph Kennedy, was FDR's treasurer. He was the first head of the SEC.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He was the ambassador to the Court of St. James, deeply, deeply immersed in Democratic Party politics. All of my uncles, Joe Kennedy, who was a delegate to the 1940 convention, who spoke there, a featured speaker, and then was killed in World War II. My uncle John Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic president of the United States.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My other uncle, Ted Kennedy, who was one of the longest, I think the second or third longest serving member of the United States Senate, his name on more bills than any other senator in United States history. And then, of course, my father, who was attorney general and A sort of walk away from that party was, you know, I guess it was very, very difficult for me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I was actually the last person in my campaign to understand the necessity of that. The Democratic Party was not going to allow me to compete fairly. They had rigged the system against us in ways that were really quite extraordinary. They had just walked away from democracy. They were canceling primaries. They had
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
They had chosen their candidate and it was going to be President Biden and I was really a nuisance to them. And so my voice was not allowed out there. And so that was difficult. And then leaving, you know, I declared independence in October. And joining Trump, President Trump, I burned a lot of bridges. I burned my boats, let me put it that way.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, you know, I do want to say that I feel like I didn't really leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me and left the ruins of the infrastructure that I think my uncle and father had, that had made them Democrats. If you went down a list of all of the priorities that Robert Kennedy, that John Kennedy had, I would check every box. They were anti-war, they were anti-censorship.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
They were against the corporate control of our country. This corrupt merger of state and corporate power that now has emerged as a dominant governing model in our country. The Democratic Party has changed demographically. When I grew up in a Democratic Party that was the party of the working class in our country, that was a party of Small businesses, that was the party of the poor.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In the last election, President Biden got roughly half of the country voting for him, but that half controlled 70% of GDP. And President Trump got about half the country voting for him, and that half represents about 30% of GDP. So we've had this inversion where the Democratic Party has become the party of wealth, of elites, and I would say very insular elites.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And the Republican Party is now the party of the poor, the working class. And it's been, you know, for me to watch that, I've been on the front lines. of watching it. And, you know, the values that held the Democratic Party together are no longer there. It's held together by a sense of tribalism and a great, great sense of what I would say orchestrated fear of Donald Trump.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You don't have the sea to use as a natural, you know, disinfectant and deodorant.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
It's the only value that really dominates any discussion If I talk about censorship to a Democrat, they'll say, yes, but Donald Trump is going to become a dictator. If you talk about children's health, they'll say, never mind that. Donald Trump is the only thing we can worry about. If you talk about the history of the Democratic Party's opposition to war, they'll say, forget all that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The only thing we can focus on is Donald Trump. That's a very, very dismaying and, I would say, dangerous form of orchestrated tribalism. And one of the other features of the Democratic Party is this need to control, this mistrust of the plebiscite, mistrust of the demos. You know, demos is a Greek word for people, and the Democratic Party doesn't trust the people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That's why they have to get rid of elections. That's why they had to get me off the ballot. Oh, my God. I did something everybody said, all the pundits said could never be done. So I got on the ballot in every state. I got a million people that signed their signatures petitioning me on the ballot. And the Democratic Party's strategy, rather than to use the $3 billion it had,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
amplify a message and inspire people and talk about a vision and the virtues of its candidates. Instead, use that money to try to get me off the ballot, to get Cornell OS, to get Jill Stein, to use the courts, to use the enforcement agencies, including the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI. to try to rig the election.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it ultimately comes down to this mistrust of the people, which we're seeing now all over. We're seeing the kind of two big forces emerge. One is a populist force and the other is a force of control, of ironclad control. We saw Europe has already fallen. You saw the arrest of Pavel Durov last week, which was extraordinary.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The arrest of the guy who founded Telegram because he was hosting political dissent. And, you know, the European Commission is already openly censoring content. So they did not need to arrest him. They can take off whatever they want. They went through the trouble of actually, and probably with U.S. encouragement, you know, catching him when he happened to land for a refueling stop in France.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
France has this extraordinary tradition of free speech that, you know, began with the French Revolution. And then again in the 1880s, they passed all these incredible laws. their commitment to free speech is as robust as that in the United States. And yet now, you know, and two weeks before that, you had this crazy European commissioner, Thierry Breton,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
saying that ordering, ordering Elon Musk to not interview Donald Trump, a former president of the United States, the nominee of one of the two major political parties, and the world is not allowed to hear his point of view. It's extraordinary. That is what's coming to this country, and you can already, and a Democratic Party,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is that the party of control, and it's the party of not trusting the people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Let's, Bobby, let's talk about something then. Let's assume that this election goes in the direction of now your preferred direction, which is Donald Trump wins. What role would you play? And what is your agenda? What is it that you want to accomplish? And explain, make America healthy again in that context, maybe.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I mean, it's the three issues ending censorship, and that's pretty easy to do. You can do it with a series of executive orders ending the Ukraine war, which is complex, but I think can be done very, very quickly. And then, you know, the food issue. Now, it's food, it's medicines, it's corruption in the regulatory agencies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But would you be a secretary in that administration? Would you be a special advisor?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There is no, you know, there is no deal in terms of me getting a particular post. Oh, there's just an understanding that there would be some kind of co-governance. And The Trump people have already demonstrated their good faith by inviting me to be on the transition team as one of the co-chairs.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And they've done something really wonderful, which is to bring Tulsi Gabbard in, who shares a lot of my views on this issue as the other co-chair. And I think that's a signal that they're sending that they are sincere about this. I'm making a commitment to these issues.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I mean, the big problem is you can't really trust the government to tell you the truth. The agencies are all compromised. They all have very, very bad conflicts. Almost all the people, for example, on the on the food recommendation committees at FDA are people who are part of the food industry. And the same is true on the pharmaceutical side.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The people who are making decisions about what's good for you are actually people who are making huge amounts of profit on those recommendations. And so you can't really trust that the recommendations are are in your best interest. And what we know is that there is no more profitable, there's no bigger profit center or industry in this country than a sick child.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And a sick child is a lifetime customer, a lifetime consumer of very, very expensive products. And you have this alliance between a food industry and a pharmaceutical industry. to keep our children sick, get them addicted. In the 70s and 80s, the tobacco industry was under attack, and the two biggest tobacco companies went out and bought all the big food companies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, and Kraft. You had Philip Morris buy Kraft. And they took a lot of the scientists from the tobacco industry who are experts on making products addictive, and they put them to work on making food addictive, on making ultra-processed food. So adding ingredients that make food, that destroy the satiability of food so that food doesn't fill you up, so you're always craving more food.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And those products, many of them are products, you know, we have almost a thousand chemicals in our foods that are banned in Europe and banned in other countries. And those products are products that have been introduced by chemists. That did not exist before and the body does not handle them well. And, you know, we're seeing this explosion in chronic disease.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When my uncle was president, 6% of Americans had chronic disease. You know what the budget was for chronic disease when my uncle was president? Zero. There wasn't any drugs for it. There was no expenditures on chronic disease. Today, it's $4.3 trillion. It's five times our military budget.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And the people who are making money are the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, which actually you would think insurance companies would want people to be, well, they actually make more money if they're sick. The hospital is the medical cartel. The people we trust to make advice to us about our health are actually compromised. And that's the difficult part.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You've got to unravel that corporate capture.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Exfoliant also.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think what Bobby says rings true in the way that I live my life and I just see it demonstrated on my own body. You're right, Jason. My wife's Italian. She runs an Italian company. She works Italian and American hours for 10 months out of the year. And for those 10 weeks, we go there and we flip schedule. But when I'm there, I'm consuming Italian produce that isn't packed in plastic.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I go to a local fruit store. I go to the local fish vendor. And my body changes. And I know that because the people that see me when I get back, they always comment, oh, did you lose weight? Oh, do you look thinner or this or that? And what's interesting is I actually do a body composition before I leave and after. I've done this for seven years now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And I can tell you that my weight doesn't change that much, but my body composition is completely different. And I don't know what it is except the things that I'm putting in my body that's different. And so I see it and I'm running an A-B test every day.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The fish is outrageous. But there are ways to eat at a materially lower price than there is here. And the access to the ultra-processed food is different there. You can't get the stuff. And when you do find that stuff, it doesn't have the same glycemic and metabolic load on your body.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, and this goes to David's point that we need to have cheap food and that that is kind of an outcome that is an admirable or virtuous outcome. The problem is that food isn't cheap. It's cheap on the shelf, but it imposes costs on the rest of us that were the externalities that we're paying elsewhere. So when I was a kid,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A typical pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime. Over a 40- or 50-year career, one case. It was essentially non-existent disease. Today, one out of every three children who walks through his office door is diabetic or pre-diabetic. When I was a kid, the autism rates were between 1 and 1,500. to 1 in 10,000 Americans.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And that is still true in my generation, 70-year-old men. In my kids' generation, according to CDC, it's 1 out of every 34 kids. Some states, like California, it's 1 out of every 22. 77% of Americans are now, or 74% of adults are obese. Half our kids, obesity... When, you know, 100 years ago, if you were obese, you could get a job in the circus. It was so unusual.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So we're now, and who's making a profit now? Ozempic. Ozempic's not going to. You can, obesity is absolutely, and diabetes are absolutely treatable by good food. That's the cause. Now, Ozempic is a good profit center for pharma. There's a bill now which has been paid for by the company that makes it, which is the biggest company in Europe, Novo Nordisk.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In Denmark, where that company is, they do not recommend it. The treatment of diabetes, the standard of care, is diet and exercise. But that company's entire value is based upon the projections of what it's going to sell in the United States. And that company is pouring tens of millions of dollars into lobbying to pass this bill that will make Medicare pay for it for every American who's obese.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That could be 74% of people are now eligible. I think it's $1,500 a week. The cost of that will be $3 trillion a year. If you took $3 trillion a year, a tiny fraction of that, you could buy organic food, three meals a day for every human being in the United States. So wouldn't that be a better expenditure of our money?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And, you know, what I would say is the food producers, it's not a conspiracy, it's just... people following perverse incentives. And there are conspiracies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I mean, when I sued Monsanto, we got emails that showed that the head of the pesticide division, Jess Rowland, for a decade at EPA was secretly working for Monsanto the entire time, sabotaging studies, creating false science to hide the carcinogenic nature of Roundup. So there are those kind of instances throughout the federal government, but mainly it's just perverse incentives.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Almost close to 100% of our agricultural subsidies go to processed food. I mean, go to commodity agriculture, which is the feedstock for processed food.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
oh and then if you look at mostly mostly for mostly for me if the industry controls through lobbying and through you know all these other mechanisms for corporate capture controls the expenditures in the food stamp program so seventy percent of the food stamp program goes for processed food ten percent goes for sugar drinks like coca-cola which are just diabetes machines.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So why are we poisoning poor kids in this country? The school lunch program, the same thing, almost 80%, I think 77% of food, the lunch program is terrible foods that are actually poisoning our children. And don't we care enough about our kids to say, we want to care about them, we want to make sure that they're not sick, They are the most precious things in our country.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Shouldn't that be the focus? And whatever we're doing to make them so sick, When I was a kid, 6% of American kids had chronic disease. Today, 60%. Is that not an alarm? Is that not something that we should all be concerned about?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bobby, can you comment on when people talk about revamping the food supply, one of the things that sometimes is not allowed to be said is that focusing on organic food and produce can exclude certain communities. And so there's like this DEI filter that preferring that is almost racist in some way. Like, can you just comment on that whole vein of thinking and your thought on that?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think feeding people poisonous food is racist. By the way, the NAACP gets huge amounts of money every year from the food industry. It may be one of the biggest. I think Coca-Cola is the biggest supporter of NAACP. A lot of the NGOs that are supposed to be
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Concern about the disproportionate impact on minority communities of federal policies have actually been bought off and bought into the process. And, you know, a lot of times those are the voices you hear saying this is racist. What's really racist is poisoning black Americans because these are communities that are food deserts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The school lunch program, oftentimes in those communities, the biggest access that they have to food, and we're giving them poison food. Many of these communities have no grocery stores. They definitely don't have Whole Foods. They don't have access to those kinds of foods. Shouldn't we have national policies that... then make sure our people are healthy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And, you know, they use, of course, market dynamics, but also supports. We're giving billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies for farmers to addict farmers to growing commodity agriculture, which is bad food. It's low in nutrients. It's high in chemicals. It's high in pesticides. And, you know, we need to change these perverse incentives so that and feed America.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You know, how can anybody argue with this? How can anybody say that we should not have healthy children, that we should be giving people food that is hurting them? It's just it doesn't make any sense.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, let me react to the last thing you said about President Trump. I think if President Trump wins, that people are gonna see a very different President Trump than they did during the first term. I think he's changed as a person, and I've known him for 30 years. I've sued him, I've litigated against him, and had a friendship with him even when I was litigating against him.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and by the way, successfully against him. But I think he is, he's focused on his legacy. He said many interesting things to me about what he did wrong the last time and about how He had no idea he was going to win. He had no idea how to govern. And people descended on him the day that he got elected and said, you got to appoint this guy, appoint this guy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And he said, I appointed a lot of people I shouldn't have appointed. I know who they are now. He also said something interesting to me. He said, the Democrats, one of the big sort of fulcrums of their terror of Trump is that He's going to implement this Heritage Foundation, you know, blueprint, which is called Project 2025.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And he brought this issue up to me and he said, you know, they're always telling me I'm for Project 2025. I never read Project 2025 until they started accusing me of it. He said, that was written by a right-wing asshole, is what he said. He said, there are left-wing assholes, and there are right-wing assholes, and it was a right-wing asshole who wrote that thing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And then he started going through it. So, you know, I think there's a lot. And I think he's interested in his legacy now. He wants to leave behind... some accomplishments. And he wants to make our country better. And I think he's, you know, he's listening to a wider range of voices and he's preparing to govern right now.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And, you know, I'm going to be on the transition committee picking the people who are going to govern Tulsi's gonna be, there's gonna be a wide diversity of stakeholders, but he's listening to more than just that kind of narrow right-wing band that people are terrified of.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Can I respond to the other part of David's question? Sure. I think, to me, the most troubling thing about what's happening now, you've had two Democratic candidates who've not been able to give unscripted interviews, which is extraordinary.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My father and uncle were so proud of the United States, our capacity to engage in debate, to defend who we were in the world, to defend a vision of our country, to articulate it to the rest of the world, to be the leaders of the free world. and have a command of the facts and of knowledge and to be eloquent. And how can you be a leader in the world?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What does the rest of the world think of us right now? I mean, what could they possibly think? We have two Democratic Party candidates who are not able to explain themselves in an interview. Bill Maris said the other day something really, I think, poignant, which is if you want the job of handling the nuclear code, you've got to do an interview first.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And how can you go 30, 39 days without talking to the press, without being able to defend your record, to explain who you are to the American people? And if you talk to Democrats about this, And you can get past the anger and past the vitriol and this kind of wall of tribal resistance to any new knowledge coming in or any contrary facts.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What they'll say is, well, we're not really voting for Kamala. We're voting for the apparatus. And you ask the next question. Yeah. Has that apparatus served you? Has the open border served you? Has the $35 trillion debt served you? Has the endless wars served you? Has the destruction of the American middle class? Highest inflation rate in a generation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Has any of that actually, you know, has that apparatus produced something for the United States that you're so proud of that you want to blindly vote without knowing who you're voting for?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
In conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I walked here, but I had it totally unbuttoned and I thought this is completely inappropriate for Menlo Park in August. So I buttoned two buttons.