(0:00) The Besties intro Mark Cuban: Voting record, working with Ross Perot's campaign in 1992 (5:43) The history of Cuban's love/hate relationship with Trump (19:08) Trump's performance as President: what he got right and wrong (40:46) Party nominations: Kamala vs. Trump (49:18) Biden's performance as President: what he got right and wrong (55:45) Should Kamala share blame for Biden's failures? (1:07:01) International conflict, national debt, crypto regulation (1:21:33) General sense of Kamala Harris, why she's been avoiding adversarial interviews, why Sacks supports Trump (1:31:47) Selling a majority of his Mavericks stake, changing business landscape of the NBA, what he's working on at Cost Plus Drugs (1:44:50) Thoughts on AI, what's next for him (1:51:37) Relationship with Elon, re-evaluating the Twitter deal, OpenAI's new fundraise Follow Mark: https://x.com/mcuban Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/wait-are-windowless-bedrooms-going-to-be-a-thing https://washingtonreporter.news/editorial/scoop-kamala-harris-likely-to-nominate-gary-gensler-as-treasury-secretary-if-elected-senate-sources
All right, everybody, welcome to the number one podcast in the world. Here we are on the All In podcast. We have a fifth bestie with us today. Joining David Freiberg, Chamath Paihapatiya, David Sachs, and myself is the one and the only Mark Cuban. How you doing, buddy?
What's up, guys? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Of course, of course. Good to have you here. Thank you. I've been practicing my virtue signaling, so I'm ready.
You're ready to go. All right. Let's go. I think we're going to have twice the virtue signaling as normal in this episode.
Stop it. Double the virtue signal. I promise you I don't virtue signal. I'll say f*** you to anybody.
You have gotten very vocal about politics during this cycle. And you seem to be, I don't know if it's official, you know, speaking on behalf of the Kamala ticket. So why are you this active? What is the reason that you've decided to get this active during this election?
Because I'm proud to be an American. Okay. That's exactly why. I mean, you know, we all make choices and think what's best for the country and show our patriotism in different ways. And, you know, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent through and through. Oh, my God. Like J. Cal. He's an independent, too.
Why is it that all the Democrats are afraid to call themselves Democrats?
Well, look, I've said this many, many times. If it wasn't Donald Trump running, if it was a non-MAGA candidate, particularly if it was Joe Biden still, I'd vote Republican. I've voted Republican before. If it was a non-MAGA candidate versus Kamala Harris, it would be, you know, let's look at the policies. Let's look at the character of the people involved and let's make a decision.
It's just Donald Trump is not a Republican. Republicans are Donald Trump. You know, the Republican Party is now the family business for Donald Trump. And to me, I just think Kamala Harris is a better choice for the country. Thank you.
On a percentage basis, how often have you voted just a level set, Democrat versus Republican, would you say, out of 10 elections?
Presidential, probably. I voted for George W. twice. Then I voted for Obama twice. And then I voted for Clinton and Biden. But before that, I voted for Ross Perot Jr. My first vote was for a guy named something, John Anderson. So, I mean, I literally worked on Ross Perot Jr. 's campaign way back when.
Tell us about that. That's fascinating. He got 19% of the vote as an independent candidate.
Yeah, I was living out in LA and this was 92. And this is when computers were relatively new. I sold my company and I was taking acting classes and just living by Manhattan Beach and just loving life. And, you know, being from Texas, I knew people there and they were like, look, we need somebody who understands PCs and computers and software. Can you help us? And I was like, definitely.
I mean, I wasn't to the point where I was involved in his decisions, but I actually had met him. My first company was a company called Micro Solutions, where we did systems integrations, local and wide area network. I wrote software for single and multi-user app, wide area network apps. And we literally helped Perot Systems get into local and wide area networking.
And so, one of my favorite stories from back then is, I'm terrified, I'm a 26 year old kid, I'm in Dallas. I'm going into pro systems. I get to meet Ross Perot Sr., the man, right? And I'm walking through and he's got the original, the model for the, no, he had the original Magna Carta, one of like the 13 Magna Cartas. And he had the original model for the Iwo Jima statue, right?
With the flag up and everything. And I'm just terrified. I'm going to trip and just wipe out American history. And I walk up to him and I said, hi, Mr. Cuban, I'm Ross Perot Sr.
I mean, I reversed that.
Yeah, you know, I was so nervous. And he like made fun of it and, you know, got to be friends and did a lot of business, helped those guys a lot. I made them a lot of money. They made me a lot of money.
Did you have any more interactions with them when you were on the campaign? Did you get a sense of? No, did not.
No, I was just a little plebe, just trying to do little plebe stuff in L.A.
I didn't know that you took acting classes. That's interesting. Did you want to be an actor before a businessman or what? Oh, no, no, no.
This was after I sold Micro Solutions. I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines, moved to LA, got a place right on Manhattan Beach, right on the beach, get two flight attendants as roommates. And I was just loving life. And I was like, how else can I meet women? I'm going to take acting classes. And it was like one of the best things I've...
One of the best things I've ever done because, you know, being a business guy, it's always right brain, right brain, right brain. And acting is like, don't think, just be, don't think, just be, just let it go. So it was a totally different experience. And that's why you see me do all these cameos and stuff.
Because I like to do it because it's the one place where you just have to completely let go and it's a completely different approach to life. So, you know, little backstory.
Yeah, you got a good character arc on Entourage. I think that was probably the best one.
Seven episodes plus the movie.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was pretty memorable. So, Sax, lead us off here. I don't know if you've been following Mark Cuban on social media at all or if you guys interact.
I can't resist asking. So, is your acting as a surrogate for Kamala? Is that acting too?
No, absolutely not. Hey-o! Wow.
We may go live. We may go live. We go live. No, no, no. Obviously, I truly believe in it. And look, it's always relative. It's always relative to the other candidate. And so, obviously, as you guys know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump. I gave him a shot eight years ago. It didn't work out.
Okay, wait, wait. Can we get into this? Sure. Because you obviously have like a love-hate relationship with Trump going back 20-something years. Yeah. Let's just go through the timeline here. First of all, I don't hate the guy at all.
If he was running for president and we all got together and just shot the shit like we are now, he's a blast. He's fun to talk to. He's got charisma. He's got personality. He's easy to like. I mean... He's used to schmoozing. He's one of the world's best schmoozers. And so he's easy to get along with. It's not personal. But that doesn't mean you guys f*** with each other.
It doesn't mean you can't, as different things happen over time, you can't go back and forth. And he did the same thing. So the whole history of it was... Back right when we went public at Broadcast.com – no, right after we announced the sale in 2000 – was it 2000? Yeah, after we announced the sale in January 2000, he threw a Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago. And one of my buddies –
who knew him, invited me. And I was like, cool, I'll go. Mar-a-Lago, hadn't seen it, Donald Trump, maybe I'll meet him. And so, you know, you guys have seen Mar-a-Lago in a beautiful pool, beautiful view. There's a brand up there. And he had like a bunch of Hooters and what's the suntan lotion that always had girls, whatever. Oh, Tropicana? Tropicana? No, no.
Sun tropics. One of those, right?
And so they were all dressed in orange and they were walking around and it was just like a big deal. And it was funny as hell. And so not that that's a bad thing. It was actually kind of entertaining. And, um, So he comes up to me, and I'm with the VP of Visa, my buddy, and Jerry Yang, I think it was. Maybe it wasn't Jerry. Co-founder of Yahoo. Yeah, co-founder of Yahoo.
And he was like, hey, guys, nice to meet you. And I'm like, hey, I'm Mark Donald, da-da-da. And he just, you know, not to be mean, just in a flipping way, he was like, hey, someday you'll be able to sit up there with the rich people pointing to the veranda and walked away. And I'm like, okay, fine, you know, whatever.
And so then not long after that, through my friend, he got back in touch with me. And, you know, this is the early days of the Internet, early 2000s and still, I guess, still 2000. And I get an invitation to go to his office in Trump Towers. And I'm like, this is cool, of course. And, you know, he wants to talk to me about business. And I'm like, you know what, Donald, I'll help you all I can.
You know, he's getting DonaldTrump.com and he wants to sell tchotchkes and merchandise. I guess some things never change. And so, you know, so I'm in there trying to tell him about what you can and can't sell online and what works. And that was all fine and good. Medivanka, it was all really cool. But the one thing that left with me, if you've ever been or seen pictures of his office,
Every inch of his office is covered with pictures of him. Every single inch of the office.
It's like meeting celebrities, right? Stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah. Or whatever covers he was on and just whatever, right? And I just remember walking through there and afterwards... It was a nice meeting and we had some follow-up calls and everything, but it never went anywhere in terms of the online stuff.
But I just remember thinking to myself, if I ever become visible or famous to that level, don't let me get so caught up in just having pictures of myself. And I'd had conversations with my buddies about it, just like you guys would. And so then in 2004, I got a chance to do a show called The Benefactor. ABC called me and said-
Let's show this. We have this. This was got tweeted.
So, so, so you did oppo research sex. You got oppo research.
This is all online. This is all on, on X. People try to fuck with me on Twitter. They throw this up. So anyway, so when I got the gig, um, he was like, congratulations, good luck and everything. I was like, thank you. And whatever. And then when I got canceled, he sent me that letter basically saying you suck. And so, um,
Well, he was dancing on the grave of your show. So you're saying you didn't have beef with him before that letter just came out? No, it was not a beef.
Yeah, it was not a beef, but it was just like... That's what it was. And so it was just like, okay, whatever.
Okay. But then when he ran in 2016, you were supportive. Can we show that? Let's show the 2016 clip. There's more in between.
There's a lot more in between. Okay. So that's 2004. 2007, Eric reaches out to me and goes, hey, there's no hard feelings with my dad or anything. And I'm like, no, I don't care. He goes, we're working with these Russian MMA fighters, this guy named Fedor Emelianenko, who was like one of the best ever at that point in time, and Josh Barrett.
And kind of the irony of all this is we were competing with Dana, Dana White, and the UFC in some respects because a lot of fighters felt like they weren't getting paid enough. There was no health care. There was no nothing, right? And so I had a TV network.
We had started the first all-high-definition TV network called HDNet back in 2000, back when TVs cost $20,000 and everybody thought we were idiots. But slowly but surely, it was taking off. And so they came to me and said, we're partnering with these guys who are putting on this MMA fight with Fedor and Josh Barrett and some other folks, and we'd like to broadcast it on HDNet.
Because we had a show called This Week in MMA. So we were promoting. We had fights that we were already putting on every Friday night. So it actually was a good fit. So you'll see pictures of me sitting with him. And actually, I couldn't find it. I was so pissed because I was going to with him some more.
What he said during the time we were sitting at that podium was everything Mark Cuban touches turns to gold. And so I was like, that would have been so great to have out there. And so, and anyway, so we're friends again.
And so it's 2007 and we're friends and nothing happens between then until whenever he started going crazy on Twitter and all the Obama stuff and everything and the birth certificate and the birth stuff. So he's on Twitter and He started with me. I say that. So let me just preface this by saying I golfed once in my life in 1989 and I hated it so bad.
I was throwing clubs because I'm one of those really super competitive guys. I'm like, never again. But I went and worked. I auctioned off myself to be a caddy at a golf tournament that he also was at. But he starts tweeting that I saw Mark Cuban and he swings like your girl and this and that. His swing is like your girl. Like, nobody saw me swing because I don't golf.
And so I started back with him. And so we went back and forth on Twitter for years, for years. And then he comes down the escalator in 2015. And I'm like, all right, this guy's got no chance to win. But I think it's great because I don't like traditional politicians. I'm not, you know, there's nothing about me that thinks that the way we do politics or the way the government is run is a good thing.
Not at all. I mean, I... My heart is libertarian, but I realize you can't... Libertarians are not problem solvers. They're ideologues. You know, like you look at Rand Paul, everything's only one way. He doesn't try to solve problems. So anyways, I digress. So he comes down there. I'm like, that's cool, right? He doesn't have a chance to win. But I'm like, he's the best thing ever. You know how...
I forget where I was, but I was like, he's the best thing that ever happened to politics. He's not a politician. He's not going to be a Stepford candidate. I may not agree with his positions, but just the fact that he's not a politician is a good thing. And so from there, he called me and we talked a lot.
probably 10 to 15 times on the phone he would call me you know and he tweeted one time mark cuban was trying to come i never had a number there was no way for me to call him right he would you know and you know the way he emails he refuses to send an email because he doesn't want any proof of anything he's done right and so you know he would write it up like you had one of those pictures so bring up the one on the cnn where he says what happened so right there
CNN, nasty. What happened? See what he does there. His email, he writes on a piece of paper and then someone scans it and sends it as an image via email.
And so what happens... Just so the audience can understand. So the email is from you to him saying, tell the boss, I said, congrats on his sweep. And then his assistant printed it out and then wrote back to you.
This is one of many emails that we went back and forth on.
But just as a weird point, he literally prints out his emails, writes on them, has them scanned in and sent as an image to you. Mark, wow, so are you on CNN.
Nasty. How did he send this to you? He emailed this to you or what?
He emailed it in image file.
He doesn't use email. I mean, the guy is a different generation.
No, his assistant emailed it back. Right. So he writes on the piece, system prints it out. He reads it. He writes on it. She scans it. She scans it, sends the image to me. Now the big question there, you can't just let that slide. Why do you think he does that?
Is this a different generation? No. At least that's my interpretation.
No, absolutely not. Nope. I'm with Mark. He don't want paper trails or anything.
Because he's doing so much shady stuff, man. I think you're reaching there. Obviously, there's a paper trail. If he writes on a piece of paper, hold on. If I write right now on a post-it note, scan an email to you, there's a paper trail.
No, no, you can't search for it, and it's not his. You know, yes, to your point, I'm just telling you, he won't send emails at all.
His assistant created an electronic record. What's the difference? You have to ask him on that, but he said it out loud. I think it's a generational thing. This is my interpretation. I think it's a generational thing.
So he has said it out loud, David. He has literally said it out loud that he doesn't want a paper trail. But anyway, so let's go back. So now we're talking back and forth, and we're having legit conversations. I remember asking him, you know, you realize as president, you're going to have to make decisions where people can die. And he really wouldn't respond. Yeah, I get it. I get it.
I'm like, Donald, you don't have a ground game. What are you going to do? How are you going to get through this? Yeah, I got the evangelicals doing all that. I'm not worried about it. I'm like, Donald, you know, and I would bring up things about, there was this one thing where the FBI used this device to break into an iPhone. And there was a big thing about, you know, privacy.
And I tried to engage him on a conversation on it. And it's just like, I don't know, you know, just didn't want to talk about that at all. And that would happen multiple times where I would try to engage in conversations about some type of policy. And they're just it never got anywhere. And there was never a conversation.
And I said to him, I'm saying there's another email where I said, Donald, at some point, you have to learn these things. You literally have to learn these things in order to be president. And he didn't respond to that. And that's when I went on CNN. And I said, basically, look, I like the guy, but. He's not learning. He doesn't make any effort to learn anything.
And I think that carries on to this day because you can't look at things he says and say, that's really an in-depth response or that's a nuanced response. And so that's what I said on CNN. And that led to the image that you guys posted. So that was the falling out. That was the falling out, yeah. Or maybe... But it wasn't a complete fallout.
Just to finish this up.
If you want me to continue, so it's not a complete falling out because after that, he gets elected. I send him a congratulatory message and I say congrats. You know, if I can ever help, I'm happy to. And so... When they were starting to look at replacing the ACA, I was starting to get into health care and being excited about health care.
And so they invited me to the White House and I spoke to Jared. I spoke to this woman named Brooke Rollins, I think her name is. And I spoke to a whole group of people. I went to CMS and I spoke to the head of the agency. I spoke to the head of CMS, all talking about this thing I created called the 10 plan, which is a means tested ability to support. Anyways.
um and so they brought me back in and then when the pandemic hit i sent him some ideas on you know backstopping um bank accounts and credit card accounts so everybody doesn't just default and he had minutiae call me and then when they had with the pandemic he connected with peter navarro and i worked with him and actually found a company here in it actually outside of fort worth that
I put together with them and I helped that company increase their output. And Peter Navarro worked with them closely and we really made a dent in all the PPE issues. And he invited me to the White House. And then I went to the White House one time, went into the Oval Office and there's pictures of me talking. And again, I tried to explain the healthcare stuff.
he just wasn't having any type of in-depth conversation. He wanted to tell me about how much money he saved on, um, on, from Boeing, you know, how many billions and this and that. And then it was a short conversation. And then I was leaving and he goes, look, are you still on that show? And he goes, I'm like, yeah, shark tank. He goes, yeah, that's Barron's favorite show.
And then as I'm leaving further, he goes, wait a minute, I really liked that suit. So, you know, and, and, you know, he's called me since, um, since he left the White House, but later in his tenure at the White House, and invited me to dinner. I mean, and so it's not like we left as foes, and it's not like I don't like him. I just don't think he's the best person to be president.
I don't think he was a good person.
Let's just stress that. How would you think about the four years that he was president? In hindsight, what would you say was done well? What would you say was done poorly? Just those two things.
I think the way he dealt with the zeitgeist isn't the right word, just the vibe of the country was really, really, really bad. I think the hate that he conveyed, I think the fact that what he tweeted negatively, you know, so companies didn't know what was coming next. You know, he tweeted negatively about me. He tweeted negatively about other people. I thought that was a real bad thing.
When the BLM protests happened and turned into riots, When they went into Minnesota, he was like, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Who the fuck says that as a president? And so we had more people die during riots during his term than Biden by a long shot. And I think he misrepresented where he stood in terms of being anti-war. If you go back to 2019 and look at the war in Yemen,
there were hundreds, at least 100,000 people plus died. And there was a bipartisan resolution to say, we're not selling any more to the Saudis. We're not selling any more weapons to the Saudis. And a bipartisan resolution, including Mark Meadows and Rand Paul and others,
said, you know, passed it, and it went to his desk, and he said, we're still going to sell these munitions and these weapons to Saudi Arabia, even though these people continue to die. So when we talk about, you know, it's not all that much different than Ukraine in some respects, only Saudi Arabia got the Glengarry leads, and Ukraine got our old stuff, and we replaced it.
And so when he comes out now and says, look, You know, I'm against all wars. There were no wars. That's bullshit, right? The mainstream media.
Hold on. Okay, so there's two things there. So just on the 2020 riots, I don't know how you blame Trump for the BLM riots of summer of 2020.
I didn't blame him for the riots. What I said was how he dealt with it.
I get you don't like the mean tweets. It's not about mean tweets.
No, don't diminish it, David. Don't diminish it as just mean tweets. People pay attention to what happens.
And when you have people whose lives are at stake— I think it's far worse to actually have riots going on in the streets. That's what needed to be controlled. How many people— Hold on. He wanted to send in the National Guard to Minnesota. It was actually Waltz who rejected the National Guard.
He had no problem.
And there were plenty of ties between Democratic activists and the BLM organizers of those riots. Time magazine did a story on that.
I'm not saying he's at fault that the riots happened.
But I can't believe they're using the riots throughout the summer of 2020 as an argument against Trump when it was the left.
No, I think what he's saying is the leadership that he shows is of low moral character. Did he do anything right, Mark?
Well, I'm not done with the wrong stuff. But wait, there's more.
Let's go back to the foreign policy for a second. Trump is correct that he did not start any new wars during his presidency. You agree with that, right?
Um...
That no new war started or he didn't start any? He didn't start any. He was like the first president in 20 years not to start a new war.
Well, he inherited some for sure.
He inherited Syria and Afghanistan and he wanted to get out and the generals didn't let him.
And there wasn't really a war that happened in Turkey. And then when we got shut down, he didn't know there wasn't really a war. I'll agree with that.
That's his argument is that he did not start any new wars. Has Biden started any wars? Well, I would argue that Biden provoked the proxy war in Ukraine, yes. I mean, you can disagree whether he provoked or not, but there's no question the U.S. has been deeply involved in a war with Russia in Ukraine.
And what I'm saying is the corollary of that, the analogy to that is what happened in Yemen.
and that we had a chance to get out of yemen and reduce the deaths in yemen much like they're talking about getting us out of the out of ukraine now and we had the opportunity to stop selling um weapons but he looked the best i could tell he looked at that as a sales opportunity to sell to mbs all these weapons and he thought that was a positive so
A lot of people died and we're still in there today. So it's not he had a chance to get us out and he did not. So I'm not arguing that he's perfect and Biden's perfect and it's tit for tat. It just is what it is. I'm just saying state making this statement of fact, you know, and that's it.
Yeah. OK, well, look, we did we did support we did support the Saudis in their war with with with Yemen.
So let me give you the one last thing and then we'll keep going. So then I'll go to some positives. So the next thing you can actually trace that Yemen war. I can't say you actually I'm a little bit of hyperbole, but I can trace that from that Yemen war to the start of inflation. And here's how I explain that.
And so in Yemen, he did a deal for his boy in Saudi Arabia and sent them all the weapons in 2019. Fast forward one year and you're in May, April, let's say of 2020. And you're looking at the price of gas, the lowest it's ever been, the price of oil just collapsing. At one point, people were paying you to take their oil. And so there was an opportunity.
He made a decision because there was a situation that came up. The oil companies came in and said, this price of oil being so low is killing us, right? We're losing a lot of money. We anticipate losing more because with the pandemic now starting, demand is dropping like a rock. And that was coming from the oil companies. And so what he did, he said, OK, MBS owes me a favor over in Saudi Arabia.
That's the connection. And Putin's my boy. I'm going to go to them and ask them to reduce production. Now, what happens to the price of gas when the largest producers of oil and energy decrease their production? The price starts going up and up and up.
And so you can track the increase in the price of gas and how that impacted the price of goods the entire time that the production from the 10% reduction until they increase it like 300,000 barrels a day for two years. What is your argument here?
You're saying that somehow Trump caused the inflation?
Yes. And I'm explaining to you, I'm getting the mainstream media.
First of all, by the way, the war in Yemen started on March 26, 2015, according to ChatGPT, which is under Obama. So that started under Obama.
That's fine. But he had a chance. He was asked to end it by Congress. He was that he we were sending he was selling six hundred sixty billion dollars. I don't know the number. I can't remember exactly in weapons to Saudi Arabia.
And he there was a record of the fact that we had nine percent inflation in twenty twenty two. So two years after Trump was office in the world, is Trump responsible for that and not Biden?
I'm so glad you asked that because the mainstream media never talks about this stuff. And so she had a little dig there. So Trump goes in and says, we're going to cut the production by 10%. Demand is still relatively low. But in April, May, June, as people start venturing outside their house and to the end of 2020, the end of this term, there's an increase in demand. But the increase in demand
The increase in production doesn't match the increase in demand. They limited as part of this deal that Trump put together between Russia and Saudi Arabia, and that led to other people in OPEC Plus participating. They only increased the production of oil by 300,000 barrels a day, which didn't keep up with the amount of demand that was happening. That started increasing the price of gas.
That price of gas continued to increase for the two years this program was in place. This program wasn't like, let's just cut it for 60 days and go back at it. It wasn't, let's just do this for 90 days. Let's just do this during the Trump administration. No, no, no, no, no. This deal went before they got, it took two years before they got back to pre-pandemic levels of production.
And so listen to what Trump says about drill, baby, drill. Why does he say drill, baby, drill will lead to lower costs? Because oil and energy costs are part of everything. And you know what matches up perfectly? What matches up perfectly is that 9.1% in 2022 and the day that that agreement ended. where MBS and Russia limited production, that agreement ended like this.
If you did your little Venn diagram that like, and increased production, decreased production, bam.
So that is the answer to your question. So just to summarize what you the argument that you don't like about him is you got to know him, like many people do. You worked with him on projects. And like Pence, Barr, Mateus, Tillerson, Bill Barr, and Mike Cohen, and the Mooch, Omarosa, you realized this person is out for themselves. They don't care about the people they work with. And you fell out of
friendship with him or whatever there's a long list of people who don't who work with him who think he's an idiot and don't like him now you're on that list yeah i mean i don't think he's i'm not saying that's my position i'm just summarizing it look i don't think he's in your position no i haven't worked with one of the greatest sales people ever he's one of the greatest you know um motivators in terms of crowd motivation ever
But can I? He's Roy Cohn Jr. He's Roy Cohn Jr. That is who he is. If you read books about Roy Cohn, everything Roy Cohn says to do, tracing back to the McCarthy hearings in 54, everything Roy Cohn says to do, that is exactly what Donald Trump does.
I just want to paint this thing and then I'd like to hear the glass half full version to the extent you have one. But basically, I just want to understand. So my understanding was in 2020, what happened was not that Saudi Arabia and Russia were cooperating to cut prices, but they got into a fight because it wasn't really Saudi, but it was OPEC, which includes us and OPEC Plus, which includes...
versus Russia, and we initiated against them, which they counteracted a price war.
They initiated against. So Saudi Arabia initiated against Russia.
So what I'm trying to understand is there's a war in Yemen. Right. We don't stop the armaments of Saudi. And I guess what you're saying is that then triggered An OPEC versus Russia?
No, what I'm saying is MBS, oh, Trump won. MBS owed Trump one. So MBS starts the price war with Russia one year later. And the oil companies come to Donald and say, look, we're getting destroyed. Demand is dropping. They've increased because of this price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Saudi Arabia decides to take it to Putin and increases their production significantly.
So in order to keep their revenues up, Russia's got to do the same thing. Meanwhile, all the demand is dropping because of the pandemic. And so Donald gets asked by the oil companies to go to MBS and to Putin and say, we need to stop this price war. We need to reduce production. And to his credit, if you think that's a positive, to Trump's credit, He did it.
And so by reducing production over a plan of two years, and you can go look at the production numbers, right? And when that stopped, by doing that, that increased the price of gas, the price of oil, the price of energy. And that was bad for American consumers who utilized gas, who paid for gas for their cars, really bad for them.
But he decided to work with his oil company buddies and protect them. You can say that's a good decision or bad decision. Maybe it's strategic. He really felt they could go out of business and he wasn't willing to give them money to help them. But the bottom line was that decision that matches up exactly to that 9.1% that David Sachs mentions.
It also matches up to, okay, does he fully support the oil companies over the price of gas? And will that influence what he will do as president again? So when he says, I'll just get out of Ukraine, Depends on who's making the money and where it is. When he says, I'm going to get people to drill, baby, drill. Well, we already learned a lesson.
Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. Okay, so this is very hard to... Hold on a second. This is very hard to fact check in real time because I've never heard this theory before. Hold on a second. We can have a theory on the pod. Let's have Freeberg get involved. Freeberg hasn't asked a question yet, so let me try to... The point is that... you know, this is like totally novel.
I don't even think I've heard you make this theory on X before.
I was waiting.
Okay. So here we go.
So you're dropping a whole, hold on a second.
Freeberg hasn't been able to get involved. Let's have Freeberg ask a question.
You're just going to let him basically cite this nonsense and I don't get to interrogate it a little bit.
It's not nonsense, David. Okay, I'll wait.
No, no, but I just wanted to include Freeberg in the discussion.
40 minutes in. Let me ask a question. Freeberg talks. Go chat GPT it. Go Google it. Go look it up however you want.
Okay, what about the fact that Biden's first day in office, he cancels the Keystone pipeline and a bunch of leases. He makes it harder to drill in the United States. So he reduces the ability for domestic producers to produce. You don't think that that would have an impact?
Yeah, but it wasn't on the price... It wasn't on the price of gas because the price of gas is a global phenomenon, right? The price of oil, rather, is a global phenomenon. We are the largest producer of energy in the world, but we're still only about 13%, I think it is. Don't quote me on that, but that's a range. And so the other 87% has more of an impact.
And even to that, there was still an unlimited amount of drilling available on public lands and leases available that weren't fully used. Now, that said, I think Biden did mistakes, did make mistakes.
Okay, guys, hold on. Let's just finish one thing before the other. I would just like an answer of what is the good and the bad of Donald Trump? And then what I was going to ask you is, what was the good and the bad of Biden? I just want those four answers.
Guys, just give me one second. Can I just ask... Make one comment. I've been here for like 40 minutes. Yeah, tried to get you in. I want to respond to the inflation point, Mark. I just shared two images. First was the U.S. crude oil production chart. And more than half of this oil is exported. So you can see the reduction in production, but the domestic oil production...
capacity remain high relative to our consumption. So US consumption, if oil was the biggest driver, it really would have affected the profits of the exporting companies, not necessarily the cost of energy domestically. I will, however, point out that the Federal Reserve's balance sheet swelled during COVID from $4 trillion to $8 trillion. And as we all know, there was significant
fiscal stimulus, meaning the federal government bought a ton of shit.
David, I didn't say it was the only cause. I didn't say it was the exclusive cause.
Well, I would argue that flooding the world with dollars, which is what the Federal Reserve did because they bought up all the bonds as the federal government started to issue money in lots of different ways, caused the supply of dollars to go up, which causes the cost of anything that's dollar-denominated to grow up.
And I think many economists would argue and make the case that the fiscal policy and the monetary policy of the federal government and the Federal Reserve is largely to account, and I'm not going to use the word blame, but to account for the inflation we saw in the cost of everything from energy to production to labor to assets and so on.
But they're not mutually exclusive.
They're not they're not but there was also significant as we can all acknowledge, massive in a dynamical system. Global supply chains are a dynamical system stuff is made in one place move to another place. When one thing breaks, or it slows down, it all breaks and we had a massive shortfall of goods around the world. And that was the biggest driver of the inflationary effect that we saw.
I agree 100%. But even if you go back to the first two charts you put up, it matches up with exactly what I said. Production went down, demand went up, and the net result was that price of gas went up. and price of gases and everything. Is it the only cost?
No good production went down in everything, not just energy, but everything and not because of energy, but because of a lot of other reasons.
Exactly.
And then and then we had a whiplash problem where we had over demand relative to the natural and none of the production systems could keep up with demand stimulus.
I agree 100% with you. All I'm saying, you can try to trace it back to maybe it's 1% of the price. Maybe it's 3% of the price.
Maybe whatever the percentage is, I'm not saying it's exclusive, but you can trace it back to the decision being made to support the energy companies and say, we are going to reduce production rather than just letting the market play out and saying, we'll let gas prices stay as low as they are based off of supply and demand. Now, do I agree with you that supply chain disruption, transitory?
Yes, of course. And fiscal and monetary policy.
Yes, for sure.
Stimulating the world economy by pouring a shit ton of money out that's never happened in history, right? For sure, 100%.
The question is in proportionality. Do you think Larry Summers was wrong when... Q1, the first quarter of the Biden-Harris administration, Larry Summers warned that if you pass another $2 trillion of COVID stimulus, like they were planning to do, that could set off inflation, that we were on the brink. He said that.
He did make that declaration against his own party, Mark. And he said, this is the wrong thing. As a Democrat, he said, this is the wrong thing to do. And they went forward with what they planned to do for various reasons. Some would argue political, some would argue that they thought it was the right thing to do. And the effect was precisely as Larry had predicted.
Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for that Inflation Explosion Act, otherwise known as the American Rescue Plan.
I agree with Freedberg 100%.
The cause of this massive 20% inflation we've had over Biden's four years is a secret deal between Trump and MBS and like Putin's in there somewhere. You can dismiss it all you want, David.
Just look at the data and look at the numbers and they match up. The Freedberg's point, the Freedberg's point, is that the only thing that caused inflation? Of course not. When you spend too much money, when you inflate the economy, when you have supply chain disruption, all those things contribute.
But we're also not having the conversation to say, okay, how much of the supply chain disruption contributed to inflation? Was it 3% of that 20%? Was it 5%? Was it 7%? Was it 1%? We don't know. It's impossible.
It's all fun for money. Hold on. The supply chain was constrained during COVID and it was healing. It was getting better. And then they pumped all the stimulus in and everyone got these semi-checks.
Just to levels. set with a piece of data. Let's leave the opinion. I'm just really curious. I just want the high level report card on the last two presidents.
What is the high level report card mark to put a cap on this just for the audience. Here is our national debt over the two presidencies, the two terms. And as you can see, with the taking out the bump for COVID, it's pretty much they're both wild spenders. I think we can all agree they both are spending too much money and we need to have more fiscal discipline. We all agree on that.
Now, to Chamath's point, it's steel, man. Anything you like about the Trump presidency? And then we'll go to Kamala.
I mean, I think there was good elements of the tax cut. I think he went too far, but I think they needed to come down from 35 percent. Whatever the corporate rate, 35 percent, I think, was corporate. That was too expensive. It made it difficult for us to compete globally. I thought 20 and I thought.
Bringing down cap gains, again, I forget exactly what they were, maybe 29%, I forget, was also smart. But I think he went too far. But you can argue that. There's no right answer on what that is going to be. It's a guess, right? You just put it out there and you hope what you plan and what you propose and what is implemented works. And you don't know until it does.
So I didn't have a problem with him trying that.
Yeah, 35 to 21. You got it exactly right. Yeah.
Yeah. You've acknowledged that Kamala's unrealized gains tax is a disaster.
Well, I'll acknowledge that it's not real and you're making it up, that you've never heard her say that.
I made it up?
Yeah, you made up her saying it.
It was in the last Biden-Harris budget. It was in the Harris platform at the DNC.
It was the Biden platform at the DMC. You have never heard her talk about it.
They did a search replace on his name and put her name in there.
But you're reaching, David, you're reaching, right? You've never heard her talk about it at all. She's been very specific that cap gains goes to 28%, that corporate tax- So Mark, what has Biden done well and what has he not done well?
And then the follow-up question is, if it were an open Democratic primary, would you have voted for Kamala Harris?
I don't know. But then again, if Donald Trump participated in the debates on the Republican primary and the Republican primary, would you have voted for Donald Trump?
You know, you're saying you're saying it's analogous. The Republicans have an open primary.
No, but they did.
DeSantis competed. But he didn't participate. Nikki Haley competed. They had an open primary. Hold on a second. Trump was 50 points ahead. Maybe he should have debated. I don't know. Maybe. No, I mean, look, I would have been in favor of him debating. But he was 50 points ahead and everybody had a chance to run.
The Democrats pretended that Joe Biden was just fine, that he was sharp as a tack, that he was the best version of Joe Biden. And when the primary came and you had outsiders like Bobby Kennedy try to compete, not only did Biden not debate, They basically used lawfare to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot.
They did not allow him a fair shot at the nomination, which is why he had to leave the party and run as an independent. Then we find out after the debate that actually Biden is not fine. He's actually appears to be in significant cognitive decline. So somehow Nancy Pelosi gets him out of there. And then Kamala Harris is anointed. She's never won a primary vote ever.
she in 2020 she ran and dropped out before the first primary and then this time around she never had to compete in the primary and somehow she's the candidate the question is i don't think well the question is how can you liken this to what the republicans did having an open and competitive primary so first of all the republicans did not have an open and competitive keyword competitive primary because if one of the candidates refuses to participate because they have a lead
Look what happened to Joe Biden. For all we know, Vivek would have destroyed Trump as much as Trump destroyed Joe Biden. Nikki Haley would have destroyed Trump as much as Donald Trump destroyed Joe Biden.
I was supporting DeSantis at that time, and it was definitely competitive.
And I think DeSantis would have crushed him too, right? They were allowed to compete.
Their names were on the ballot. I know. You're talking about a very-
Or Vivek would have beaten Trump in a debate?
No, I think when, if you look at... He would have beat them.
Okay.
Well, hold on. I'm saying it's unclear. I don't think you can just say that they would have won.
I mean, Trump... Thank you.
So that means it's not a truly competitive... When Trump was in a crowded Republican field and debated, he crushed everybody. So I just don't know what would have happened. That was 2016. But the point... That was 2016. This is just debate. This is just debate, okay? What about the point that the Democrats kept... other contenders off the ballot. They used lawfare.
And moreover, they lied about Biden's cognitive condition. And then they anointed Kamala Harris through a process that is opaque, and we still don't know what happened.
Okay, so here's my answer, right? First, going back to the problem, it wasn't a competitive primary if the contender doesn't participate. And yes, he did well against 15 other candidates in 2016, but I'd be willing to bet that he's also had cognitive decline. Everything he says and does is reflective of that. If Joe Biden had said the same thing, we would be having a lot of... We would...
we don't judge donald trump and his cognitive ability the way we did joe biden okay so we'll put that behind now let's go to joe biden do you think democrats lied about biden's condition let's just i'm going to tell you my personal experiences with joe biden right i didn't talk to him a lot twice during that period and i can tell you from the first time i saw him a year before the last time i saw him which was you know probably in march or april i forget
there was a decline. But the decline was in his sharpness, right? His quickness of response. If you sat down and you listened to him speak about something, which I did, he wasn't forceful. He looked like a walking corpse. He looked awful, right? But in terms of content, it was there. And so I understand why they positioned him the way they did. It's just to sell it was impossible.
So that's part one. So I don't think the decline is nearly what you're saying it is, but I do agree that- Why did they get rid of him?
Why did they get rid of him?
Okay, so now we're moving forward, right? His ability to respond in real time, you slow down. We all slow down, right? I'm 66 years old and I've slowed down versus where I was at 45. So you know at 81 and at 78, you are going to be slower. Joe Biden just was not as quick. That was a real problem.
He got destroyed in the debate by Trump because of that, not because he didn't know the materials and the content, but he just couldn't respond and think fast enough. So I think that's where the misunderstanding is. It's not that he had cognitive decline in the pure sense, it's that his ability to respond quickly was gone. And he looked like he had cognitive decline.
So now let's go forward to the Democratic National Convention. And right before that, where they replaced it. I was curious about just the mechanics of the whole thing. So being the curious person I am, I went and pulled up the bylaws and the rules of the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Convention. And they reset those every four years prior to them pulling out.
And it's very, very clear that the only mission and the only task, and it's pretty much the same in the Republicans. I look that there's two. The only mission is to win. You want to win the presidency. You want to have control of Congress. That's all they care about. And they give themselves every bit of flexibility to do whatever they damn well please to put themselves in that position.
They are a private organization. Are they the party then of democracy as they claim to be? Or are they the party of winning it all?
So now you're trying to play branding games, right? No, I'm just saying that their rhetoric is at odds with what they actually did.
Hold on a second. There were 14 million primary voters in the Democratic primary.
That's the mainstream media discussion of this, right? They said there's 14 million voters. I say Trump didn't debate at all. There was zero debates with Donald Trump.
There's an open primary, though. People got to vote for their candidate.
Yeah, but it's not an open primary because it's Donald Trump's family business. He controlled what happened. What? Yeah.
Listen, I mean, I was, again, I was supporting someone different during the primary. And the reason why DeSantis lost is he didn't get enough votes. Okay. The Republican primary voters wanted Donald Trump. That's why. Trump won the primary fair and square, whether he debated or not. He was up 50 points on everybody else. And I don't know. That is not what happened with Biden.
What happened with Biden is Biden won the Democratic primary. He got 14 million votes. And then they threw out that result and put in Kamala Harris because they didn't like his debate. We were in a fraternity. What's that?
Were you ever in a fraternity? Were you ever in a fraternity?
No. Okay.
In a fraternity, they get to vote on all kinds of shit. But at the end of the day, if the national organization says no, right, it doesn't matter who won the election.
Right. So you're saying the Democratic Party is a clique. I get it. I think we're talking democracy. That's my only point.
Let me regain control here.
Just to recap.
David, you're just talking branding. You can brand it however you want. No, the Democrats said they're the party of democracy.
I'm not a Democrat. The Democrats said.
I'm not a Democrat. I don't care what they do. I don't care. But you're supporting them. You're supporting them.
No, I'm supporting Kamala Harris. Hold on. Can you just acknowledge that their rhetoric is hypocritical?
I don't care what the rhetoric is. I don't pay attention. I don't pay attention to their rhetoric.
We're not going to get progress. I really want to hear what Mark thinks. Yes.
Here we go. Two things seem to be true at the same time. If I'm recapping your position here, Mark, one, you would have liked to seen Trump debate. Two, I think you would have loved to seen a speed run primary, perhaps maybe Kamala, you know, battled it out. I honestly didn't care.
I went once Donald Trump was the candidate. I wanted the best person to beat Donald Trump. That's what I cared about.
Let me go back to my question. So I'm just going to give you a succinct summary of Mark Cuban's position. His evaluation of the Trump presidency, the positives were tax cuts.
And warp speed and Operation Warp Speed.
The negatives were continuing the war in Yemen when they had a chance to, and then
And actually, the negative wasn't so much that. Sorry, Chamath. The negative wasn't so much he continued it. The negative is the hypocrisy in his approach.
Right, in the style. And the tone and style of how he governed. Can we do Biden? What are the things that Biden and Harris did well that have helped the country? And what are the things that they could have done better, did not do well?
So I'll start with the negatives first. So just so you know that there's a lot of them. One, the way they handled the border was horrific. There's no way to say it any differently. Now, I understand why they took the approach they did. Literally, if I were in a Central American country and my family was at risk of getting shotgunned because there's a drug war,
I'm doing everything I can, and I recognize that if I just set foot on American soil, I have a chance for asylum, and I get that. And I get why Biden and his administration might say, just for humanitarian reasons, we're going to increase the number of people that we allow to do that. I understand why he would do it. But at the same time, he opened the door too wide.
And he made it so that there were too many people that came through, and that created cascading problems. Now, to his credit, back in June, I think it was, he signed an executive order, which he now has made permanent, or as permanent as you can as president, that changed, that there's no longer the option to just set foot on American soil and be eligible for a hearing for asylum.
You can't do that any longer. And to her credit, she worked with the head of the Mexican government, and they have taken steps to reduce the flow of people to the border. And so now the number of encounters at the border is about the same as what it was right before the pandemic under the Trump administration. So while he was too long to do it, while he...
Handled it incorrectly overall and messaging was horrible. I think they got to the right place. But now we have a problem that he created where we have too many non-citizens, illegal aliens, however you want to call them, however you want to brand them. And we have to understand how to deal with them. I think that they have talked about, Kamala has talked about first, and even J.D.
Vance said this, first we're going to get rid of the criminals, which makes sense. But Donald Trump says, we're just going to deport everybody. Any illegal, we're just going to deport them. Now, Obama was the deporter-in-chief. He deported more people than Trump or Biden, over 3 million people, but he had a specific process in place that everybody could understand.