Trump assassination attempt, Secret Service failure, Inside the RNC, VC liquidity problem

0.229 - 8.152 Freeberg

All right, Chamath, apparently the Rain Man, David Sachs, is now the architect. I think he's been working behind the scenes, according to a bunch of the news stories.

8.472 - 9.453 Shamath Palihapitiya

I like Puppet Master.

9.753 - 11.234 Freeberg

The Puppet Master? Okay, well, let's cut.

11.274 - 12.574 Shamath Palihapitiya

We should call Sachs Geppetto.

12.994 - 28.841 Freeberg

Let's cut. We're going live now to the RNC in Milwaukee and live coverage. Sith Lord, David Sachs, are you there? Oh, there he is. It's Palpatine. Tell us about your new empire. Consider Palpatine.

29.481 - 37.45 David Sacks

Everything has proceeded as I have foreseen. We'll let your winners ride.

38.01 - 39.271 Jason Calacanis

Rain Man, David Sack.

39.752 - 47.1 Chamath Palihapitiya

And instead, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

47.18 - 48.201 Jason Calacanis

Queen of Kinwada.

50.481 - 55.247 Freeberg

obviously facts. Trump makes his own decisions. You're getting a little bit too much credit, I think.

55.267 - 74.129 David Sacks

Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, I'm mocking, I'm satirizing the New York Times and Business Insider and all these publications that are giving me all this credit. Listen, the president obviously makes the decision. He solicits feedback from lots of people. I was probably one of a thousand people, or at least hundreds of people who offer my opinion. Obviously, I'm a big fan of J.D.

74.209 - 77.712 David Sacks

Vance, but I think it's just giving me way too much credit.

77.752 - 87.448 Freeberg

In all seriousness, Saks, you're there, and obviously... you know, President Trump. How is he doing? How's he feeling in the wake of this absolute tragedy?

87.648 - 94.331 David Sacks

I think he's doing well. He was in great spirits, I think. But let's, maybe we just should get into the assassination attempt. That's really the thing to talk about here.

94.391 - 119.268 Freeberg

All right, everybody, welcome back to episode 188 of the All In podcast. We have a full docket to get through today. We are here on July 18th on the taping of this, and it is five days after an assassination attempt on the former president of the United States and the likely 47th president of the United States, obviously President Trump. We're going to start with what we know.

119.348 - 143.03 Freeberg

It's five days later. We're a bit in the fog of war as it is. And there are all the breaking news caveats that you can put on this. But I want to recap what we know now about this assassination attempt and get everybody's feedback on it. Last Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds with an AR-15 at the former president. One bullet,

143.61 - 164.494 Freeberg

nicked Trump's right ear. This was confirmed by the president on Truth Social. And a Trump supporter, tragically, in the crowd, Corey Comparatore, was killed while protecting his family from gunfire. Two others were critically injured. Crooks was killed by the Secret Service's counter-sniper team 26 seconds after he fired the first shot. He didn't have a criminal record.

164.714 - 191.416 Freeberg

He was not known to the FBI or Secret Service. He was a registered Republican, but also donated $15 to a progressive PAC. And the motive is not known, so we'll just wait for that. There were some leaks from a Senate briefing. I don't know if you gentlemen have heard those that just came out. And it was reported that Crooks wrote on July 13th on Steam. That's a gaming platform.

191.756 - 217.536 Freeberg

July 13th will be my premiere watch as it unfolds. He had a second phone. He had a detonation device in his pocket. There were bomb or some sort of explosive device in his car. We'll get details of that, I'm sure. And now we are in the phase of how the hell did this happen? Here's a picture of the rooftop. The closest rooftop was not secured, and it was 130 yards away.

218.056 - 242.49 Freeberg

The head of the Secret Service said they didn't put anybody on the rooftop because of its sloped surface. Obviously, this is being mocked on social media and questioned by journalists and anybody with any IQ points. The most disturbing part of all of this, aside from somebody wanting to murder the president, is the timeline. So ABC News is reporting on the following timeline, gentlemen.

243.511 - 270.057 Freeberg

5.10 p.m., Crooks was first identified as a POI, person of interest, 5.30. He's spotted with a range finder, 5.52. He's spotted on a roof by the Secret Service. 6.02, Trump takes the stage. 6.12 p.m., he fires his first shot. We'll get into some clips and everything, but let me just stop here and get everybody's reaction to this tragedy. Shamath, your thoughts.

270.797 - 295.013 Shamath Palihapitiya

It's absolute insanity. I actually just, I had just woken up because I was flying back to the United States for a board meeting. And so as I was boarding and on the way, I was just on my way to the airport reading it, mostly from our group chat. And I couldn't believe it, to be totally honest with you. I thought this is not possible in this day and age.

299.158 - 319.74 Shamath Palihapitiya

Part of why I thought it was not possible was because I had elevated in my mind who the Secret Service were and that the job they did or that they're supposed to be doing is just so sacrosanct to the well-functioning of America that you only have the absolute best people doing that job.

321.041 - 345.73 Shamath Palihapitiya

And that job is to protect these handful of individuals in America, most importantly being the president of the United States, who are just critical to the functioning of the most important country in the world. And when you see the level of negligence and incompetence, my mind started racing. How is it even possible?

348.999 - 372.281 Shamath Palihapitiya

I guess the only thing that I can come up with is that we need to figure out where incompetence ended and negligence began in all of this, because I think that's what's going to be the most critical. And we need to figure out the totality of what happened You know, if there were other people that supported this guy trying to do this.

372.501 - 376.684 Shamath Palihapitiya

And then the second I'll just say is Trump is an absolute legend. What a boss.

377.045 - 388.594 Freeberg

Okay. Freeberg, where were you when the news broke? And what are your general thoughts here five days after this occurred? We'll get into political ramifications and everything else, but just on the event that occurred and your takeaways from it.

389.114 - 413.884 David Sacks

I was with a group of people drinking beer outside. We were on our fourth beer. And I thought it was a joke. I think the first thing I thought after I saw the video and saw that he was okay and that his ear was bleeding was, that's it, it's over. Trump's won. It was probably one of the most iconic, patriotic visuals I think any of us have seen. And here's the image Nick's pulling up. What a photo.

414.264 - 435.439 David Sacks

This is the AP photographer. And I think it's really, it was so striking. You see this photo, which... which didn't come out right away. But some of the imagery that came out right away with him pumping his fist was like, OK, that's it. Trump's won. It's over. Second thing I thought was this could trigger a lot of violent counter reactions if Trump doesn't lead well here.

435.479 - 448.349 David Sacks

And I think he prevented that in his statements and from the other side. Third thing I thought is it doesn't matter if Biden drops out now because it's over. Biden could stay in. He could leave. This just feels like a lot of momentum.

449.622 - 461.477 David Sacks

And then the fourth thing I thought was this, to Chamath's point, I think we've all been around Secret Service people in our lives and in our careers and in meetings and interactions we've had. It really was amazing that the Secret Service let this happen. And if you see...

463.464 - 479.515 David Sacks

You know, all the data and the stuff that's coming out now about how the Secret Service managed this, it seems pretty scary that this was so botched. Certainly now the dust has settled five days later, and it seems like they're back into the conversation about let's remove Biden and figure out who can run against Trump.

479.875 - 482.537 David Sacks

Although there is conflicting polling data, which I know we're going to get to.

482.557 - 506.87 Freeberg

Let's get Sachs' reaction. Sachs, where were you when this occurred? and your thoughts on the event itself. And obviously, there's tons of conspiracy theories going around right now. Obviously, there is some negligence that occurred here. I don't think there's any doubt about that. There's a DEI angle. There's a ton of angles here. But where were you when you saw this happen?

507.41 - 508.491 Freeberg

And what was your immediate thought?

509.09 - 525.643 David Sacks

Yeah, well, let me answer your first question first. I think this was one of those events where you'll always remember where you were. And I was just working in my office in Los Angeles. I was going to fly to the Republican Convention in Milwaukee a few hours later. And so someone texted me, the president's been shot, Trump had been shot. And my heart sank.

525.663 - 548.423 David Sacks

I immediately went online to see the video. And I think I saw in almost real time him go down. And then when he stood back up and faced the crowd and told the Secret Service, wait, wait, He didn't want to just let them kind of drag him away. He turned to face the crowd and exposed his face. Who knows if there'd been another shooter? Who knows if that shooter was really down?

548.904 - 552.227 David Sacks

But in that moment, he wanted to let the crowd know that he was fine.

552.307 - 572.707 Freeberg

We were one inch away from the president of the United States having his head shot You know, he's got grandkids, he's got a wife, he's got kids, he's got friends. How do you feel about the individual? His head was almost shot on television in front of thousands, hundreds, maybe thousands of people on live television. And the gravity of this, I think, is very significant.

572.847 - 580.852 Freeberg

And I think we've in this media saturated environment, we've processed it too quick, which is why on the docket I wanted to slow down here and just take in what happened.

581.052 - 588.681 David Sacks

You know, one other very important detail for me is that, you know, my father-in-law was actually at that rally in Butler, at Butler Farm.

589.141 - 589.401 Jason Calacanis

Really?

589.682 - 599.613 David Sacks

Yeah, he was there and he saw everything that happened. And when we saw there was a shooting there, we were trying to get a hold of him and the cell reception had been shut down and we couldn't get a hold of him for a couple hours. And obviously we found out later that he was fine.

600.828 - 623.003 David Sacks

But what he described is that when the shots rang out, the president went down, there was really a feeling of bedlam and pandemonium in the crowd. The crowd was afraid that the president had been shot. And so when he stood back up and faced the crowd and then said, fight, fight, fight, it created this huge sense of relief. It was like palpable that he was fine.

623.683 - 640.073 David Sacks

And then the part that I don't think has been well reported is that the crowd started chanting USA, USA, USA. Yeah. So they responded with this unity. It's been well reported that, you know, that Trump said fight, fight, fight. But I don't think it's been well reported that the crowd started cheering USA, USA, USA.

640.573 - 666.595 David Sacks

So I think that the crowd turned from fear to unity and strength and patriotism, reflecting what they saw from the president. Yeah, it's well said. This is one of these things that's unbelievable. And the whole world, I think, has just seen how iconic it is. I saw there's a video online even, and I think kids in Uganda were actually reenacting the assassination attempt. That's how iconic it was.

666.915 - 680.702 David Sacks

Trump's like a global legend for that. And again, there's just no way to fake what he did in that moment, right? Where, again, he... I mean, the bullet missing him was either luck or hand of God or destiny, whatever you want to call it.

680.722 - 701.337 David Sacks

But him telling the Secret Service to stop, to face the crowd, to basically show that he was unharmed and that he was determined and he was defiant in the face of an assassin's bullet, that's courage that nobody can fake. And I've seen people online talk about how soldiers under fire, they've described how when they've been under fire, obviously they hit the deck, they don't

702.077 - 718.225 David Sacks

Stand back up, you know, even soldiers don't do that. His composure is incredible. Yeah, he just rose to the occasion in just such an incredible way that I think it's inspired the whole country and the whole world. There's just no way, again, to fake something like that, even though some people...

718.945 - 733.656 David Sacks

Like Reid Hoffman's political hack was actually claiming that it was all staged, which is just unbelievably ridiculous. But yeah, so I think the rest of the rest of the world knows that he just showed unbelievable courage in that moment and rose to the occasion and I think made the entire country proud.

734.177 - 753.264 Freeberg

It certainly was an amount of bravery and a bold response. I do think this the next phase of this is sort of figuring out what happened with the Secret Service as brave as it was for him to stand up. That was a crazy thing to do. I can't believe the Secret Service allowed him to get back up because there could have been a second shooter.

753.564 - 774.47 Freeberg

And although we heard radio chatter that the shooter was down, I mean, how did you know in a situation like this what's actually happening? They could have gotten a second shot off on the president. Maybe they don't miss by an inch that time and then they hit it. So we got a lot of questions that need to be answered here. Thank God he's OK. And I think I guess now it's time to talk about rhetoric.

775.49 - 797.805 Freeberg

And I think that's actually, from my perspective, you know, the next thing that has to happen here in terms of leadership, when something this tragic happens, you know, everybody's looking at the other side's rhetoric here, whether it's putting Trump on a magazine cover as Hitler, or they're saying you got to fight like hell, or the Oath Keepers and all this January 6th nonsense and beating up cops.

798.425 - 817.281 Freeberg

I think we have to put both of these things aside. And the leadership, Trump and Biden, should be saying right now that, And leadership does start at the top. This rhetoric is not to be done anymore. People have to tone things down. You could be passionate about politics, but using violent language, there are sick people in the world.

817.341 - 834.7 Freeberg

And this kid, I think it will ultimately turn out like all the other assassins we've seen or these celebrity killings that occur, John Lennon, et cetera. It's usually a mentally ill person. Likely what happened here, we don't know yet. You know, they interpret violent language differently than a normal person.

834.74 - 851.292 Freeberg

So we could say fight like hell or target or, you know, you got to fight for your country, whatever it is. And we would take it a certain way. Sick people take it a different way. And they need to put out a joint statement and just say, anybody on our teams who uses violent rhetoric is no longer on our teams and they haven't done that.

851.332 - 854.313 Freeberg

So I think there's like more work to be done here in terms of leadership.

854.733 - 873.799 Shamath Palihapitiya

I think it's more precise than that. I think it's way more precise than this. I don't think that this is like years of Donald Trump using violent rhetoric. I think this is years of mis... No, I don't. You cannot both sides this. I think this is years... Of course you can. I just gave you examples of it. I think what it is is that we have gone through years and years of...

874.98 - 893.244 Shamath Palihapitiya

literally the words that the former president has said being perverted and misconstrued and chopped up into soundbites that advance a mainstream media's agenda to try to vilify a person. And I think that that's an important thing to take a step back.

893.704 - 916.924 Shamath Palihapitiya

I think we have to understand that the mainstream media has really gone out of their way to amplify violent rhetoric and to actually associate violent rhetoric with as a tolerable reaction. And I think that that is the thing that we need to now completely get rid of in our society.

917.643 - 944.57 Shamath Palihapitiya

I saw so many reactions to the former and probably future president of the United States getting shot, which was along the lines of basically hoping that that person hadn't missed and or justifying that violence on Donald Trump was somehow justified. That's insane. Now, that person could only have gotten that idea because the media fed them that language and that idea.

946.089 - 972.034 Shamath Palihapitiya

And I think that that's extremely scary because I don't think you actually see Republicans necessarily saying that about Joe Biden. They may think that Joe Biden is feeble and mentally incompetent, but nobody's calling for the death of Joe Biden. So I think that that's a very scary place where you have one group of people who are being fed this extremely toxic narrative.

972.074 - 986.083 Shamath Palihapitiya

And I think that that part of what you're saying, Jason, I agree with. But I really disagree with the other part, which is, and this is someone, again, as someone who was a former Democrat, I can observe this and be relatively rational here. I don't see that from the other side.

986.679 - 1006.494 Freeberg

Okay. Well, the media is reflecting what is said by both candidates and both sides, and they both use very targeted language. I'll put a couple of links in the show notes of both sides doing this, and you can make your own decision as the audience. But I do think leadership would be both of them saying, stop this violent language. And both sides do it.

1006.814 - 1008.155 David Sacks

That's pretty clear. I'd like to address that too.

1008.175 - 1008.975 Freeberg

Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

1009.276 - 1028.849 David Sacks

Just days before the shooting, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman had an exchange at Allen & Company that was publicly reported in which Peter said that Reid had turned Trump into a martyr by funding lawfare. And Reid responded, I wish I had turned him into an actual martyr. That's wishing for someone's death.

1029.795 - 1051.127 David Sacks

When the news of the assassination attempt came online, I don't think it was Jack Black himself, but a member of his band said, that's too bad, the shot missed. There are other people on the Democrat side who expressed similar sentiments. They were disappointed that the assassination attempt had failed. Now, I don't think those people are mainstream political leaders.

1051.227 - 1056.15 Freeberg

Yeah, that's just the distinction I wanted to make here. There's no political leader who said that.

1056.17 - 1077.024 David Sacks

I'm not going to try and hang that around Joe Biden. However, Biden himself, days before the shooting, said that it was time to put Trump in the bullseye. That's what he said. And his defense for that rhetoric was, well, I didn't say crosshairs. Well, I think bullseye means the same thing. Now, even that, I'm willing to basically... forgive because I don't think Biden meant it in a literal sense.

1077.184 - 1098.888 David Sacks

I think he was speaking rhetorically about, say, campaign ads, things like that. I wouldn't necessarily say that was violent rhetoric, okay? I'm not going to try and pin that on President Biden. But the thing I do think was unacceptable by President Biden and the Democrats is the level of demonization and the level of vitriol that they have pursued against President Trump.

1099.568 - 1122.864 David Sacks

not as a one-off statement, but as a campaign strategy. Again, they have said over and over again, this man is Hitler, this man is a fascist, this man is a threat to democracy. If he wins, it is the end of democracy. They have repeatedly gone there and repeatedly used, they've tried to Hitlerize him. Now, if you're saying that this man is Hitler, where else is there to go rhetorically?

1123.264 - 1136.02 David Sacks

That's the worst thing you could ever say about somebody. And quite frankly, If he is Hitler, why would you be offering him thoughts and prayers after he gets shot? I mean, wouldn't it be a good thing to shoot Hitler?

1136.98 - 1156.985 David Sacks

And so I do think that if we think about the contribution of political rhetoric to what could have happened here, I'm not going to try and blame anybody for these one-off poor choices of language that could be interpreted as violent. What I will blame them for is taking the demonization up to 11, taking the vitriol up to 11, because that could...

1158.237 - 1177.95 David Sacks

poison the mind of someone who's already mentally disturbed and say, okay, well, wait a second. If he is Hitler, why wouldn't I be Colonel Van Stauffenberg for assassinating him? Wouldn't I be a hero for trying to eliminate this man? And that's the thing that I think is really unacceptable. And I do think the Democrats should be blamed for that because, again, they made it a campaign strategy.

1178.23 - 1197.306 David Sacks

Their entire argument against Donald Trump is not about issues. It's about this man being Hitler. And I think it's ridiculous. It's inflated. It's hyperbole, to be sure. And I think that we don't know yet about the mind of this shooter, this crooks. But if anything contributed to the shooting, it was that.

1197.746 - 1206.529 Freeberg

J.D. Vance. referred to him as Hitler as well. Other people inside the Republican Party have referred to him as Hitler and a threat to democracy. So there's plenty of blame to go around to correct sex.

1206.729 - 1226.083 David Sacks

That happened over eight years ago as like part of a text message exchange. It wasn't a public rhetoric as a campaign strategy. I'm talking about a systematic strategy that gets amplified. Look at the cover of the New Republic. They literally turned Donald Trump's face into the face of mashup of him and Adolf Hitler.

1226.564 - 1247.337 David Sacks

And it's been amplified and repeated over and over and over again on MSNBC, on CNN, on all these liberal channels, okay? This is coordinated political rhetoric as a campaign strategy. It's not a one-off. I'm not going to blame anybody for a one-off that could be misinterpreted. But when you do this as a systematic, campaign strategy.

1247.357 - 1257.559 David Sacks

And in fact, you base your entire campaign around the idea this man is a threat to democracy and a fascist. This is the language they used. Like I said, there's nowhere else to go after that. Where else do you go?

1257.739 - 1275.019 Freeberg

Threat democracy, I think, is a valid criticism of Trump calling him Hitler. Yeah, probably insightful. So yeah, I think reasonable people can parse this. And it is something that has occurred on both sides. It's well documented, and both parties can do better.

1275.459 - 1296.18 Shamath Palihapitiya

I think like one thing that when the investigation happens into what happened here, and we really figure out what happened in the Secret Service, how many examples do we need of institutions where we put in our trust, just like letting us down? and they just seem to be piling up and it's independent of administration.

1297.041 - 1306.874 Shamath Palihapitiya

And at some point, I think we have to like really check ourselves and say, what has happened here? Like, how do we objectively measure the quality of the people that are supposed to be working in these organizations?

1307.435 - 1327.55 Freeberg

And how do we make sure that they are actually competent in doing their job? This is the key point, Chamath, is the outcome. How do we judge people? Outcomes. And if you look at the outcome, how the Secret Service director hasn't resigned now. I mean, I know she's had a storied career and she's probably a good person who's done plenty of great things in her career. I don't know the details of it.

1328.07 - 1345.735 Freeberg

But if the outcome of what you've done results in something this tragic and that could have been avoided, the proper thing is ownership and resignation or the people who run this organization or they answer to being fired. And so this absolute acceptance of mediocrity is something that has to change.

1345.995 - 1367.672 Shamath Palihapitiya

Is it an acceptance of mediocrity or is it that they just got completely distracted on things that are not germane to doing your job. So if it was, we need... a diverse Secret Service, or we need to have inclusion, all of those things have nothing to do in my mind about protecting somebody.

1367.732 - 1381.841 Shamath Palihapitiya

There are characteristics, and I suspect that there are women that embody these characteristics as much as men that embody these characteristics, but why isn't there a psychographic way of determining who the best people are that have the protective instinct to protect the most important people that run our country?

1382.341 - 1397.902 Freeberg

There's a very simple test here. The job of the Secret Service is to jump in front of a bullet as we witnessed. In order to jump in front of a bullet, you have to be bigger than the target, right? You have to be. So a six foot two woman who's four feet wide, just as qualified as a man who's six foot two, four feet wide for that job description.

1397.942 - 1399.885 Freeberg

You have to be brave enough to jump in front of a bullet.

1400.245 - 1410.394 Shamath Palihapitiya

I don't know if you guys saw, but there was like a thing where, and I feel bad for this woman who's being derided as being totally incompetent, the one in the field, but there was a David Attenborough voiceover.

1410.735 - 1416.4 Freeberg

Of her trying to put her gun back in the holster, yeah. I mean, apparently, I think Eric Trump said she's incredible.

1416.42 - 1419.282 David Sacks

Or have you seen the DEI another day memes? Yeah.

1419.422 - 1420.863 Freeberg

Yeah. This is just sad.

1420.883 - 1422.744 David Sacks

I mean, look, it's a very unfortunate video.

1422.764 - 1426.465 Freeberg

Didn't Eric Trump say that she's like the best person ever? I think he was trying to support her.

1426.605 - 1434.088 David Sacks

She may have just had a bad moment. Who knows? I mean, it did look pretty bad that she was having trouble holstering her weapon. I mean, you know, not that I'm a gun expert.

1434.128 - 1436.129 Freeberg

A lot of adrenaline running at that moment in time.

1436.169 - 1452.21 David Sacks

But I mean, look, it's what's known as an outside the waistband holster, which is the easiest type of holster to use because you don't have to tuck it into your pants or anything like that. And I got to say, it does look pretty bad that she was having so much trouble just trying to holster her weapon.

1452.27 - 1472.932 David Sacks

But look, I think this is only one of a number of questions that I think have been legitimately raised about the Secret Service performance. And we need... a full investigation to figure out what happened. And let me just run off a list of questions that I would like to see answered. So number one is how did they fail to cover that roof?

1473.072 - 1490.304 David Sacks

It was the most obvious shooting spot in that entire Butler Farm area, and it was not properly covered. And then the Secret Service releases this statement that they didn't cover it because it was a sloped roof. which is the most ridiculous cover story ever because they did have snipers on another roof that was more sloped.

1490.684 - 1494.586 Freeberg

And that's like five times more sloped. Right, right. So that sounds like a lie, right?

1495.506 - 1506.371 David Sacks

So once you put out that cover story, which is basically a lie, you only make the situation worse and it only makes the question even more poignant of how do you feel to cover that roof? Okay, that's number one.

1506.391 - 1513.801 Shamath Palihapitiya

Did you see the picture of Secret Service on top of the White House roof, which is extremely sloped, even more sloped than the... I mean, it's just ridiculous.

1513.841 - 1524.105 David Sacks

And the secret service director, Cheadle, said that on ABC. Okay. So right there, she should be fired because she's lying to us at a moment where she should be cooperating and doing a full investigation. Okay.

1524.445 - 1531.347 Freeberg

And isn't it true that they were inside the structure? Well, in fairness, it was air conditioned inside the building and outside it was probably not the same.

1531.727 - 1547.441 David Sacks

Okay, but that's just question number one, okay? Question number two is, like you said, he was a person of interest an hour before the shooting and no one went to go resolve that situation. Moreover, they see him with a range finder, okay? What the hell do you use a range finder for?

1547.501 - 1564.672 David Sacks

I mean, he's scoping out the target with a range finder and they let the president go out there, okay, while they still have a person of interest out there. This guy has a range finder, he has a ladder, he has a backpack. And he was never intercepted. He was never stopped, even though they had identified him. And they let the president go out there.

1564.992 - 1578.896 David Sacks

So clearly there was a huge failure of communication between the Secret Service and the Trump campaign. How did that happen? How was there no agent stationed at the fence such that they had to ram it with an SUV for the Secret Service to get through? I don't know if you guys knew about that part of it. OK.

1578.976 - 1580.178 Shamath Palihapitiya

No, no, say that again.

1580.198 - 1591.013 David Sacks

There was no agent stationed at the fence. So in order to get there, they rammed the fence with an SUV so the Secret Service could quickly get through. Oh my gosh. That's insane.

1591.334 - 1612.794 Freeberg

And what harm would have come from just... taking a half hour and have Trump have a cup of coffee and then go make sure that this person is not dangerous. I'm just thinking judgment-wise. Listen, I understand they're in the field. I understand if they were concerned, maybe that's one of our snipers on the roof. Maybe there was a moment, a 30-second moment.

1613.394 - 1615.116 Freeberg

I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but

1632.789 - 1632.768

100%.

1632.849 - 1652.181 David Sacks

That sniper must have identified crooks as a potential target and had him lined up, which is how he's able to take him out very quickly. But what was the chain of command there in terms of him seeking authorization? Hey, who is this person? Why wasn't everything stopped while they go to figure out what this person is doing on the roof there? Okay. And then once...

1653.181 - 1670.332 David Sacks

Once the shots rang out and Trump gets shot, why did it take him so long to get him in the car, to get the convoy off to a hospital? There was a long delay in terms of getting him out of there. So they clearly weren't prepared for that. The whole thing, it just reeks of incompetence.

1670.677 - 1687.652 Freeberg

Yeah, and they don't have a great track record of being honest about what's going on. You remember, not to bring up January 6th again, but they deleted all their text from January 6th. They circle the wagons. They do not want people criticizing them. I doubt we're even going to get that audio. I wonder if that audio is going to come out.

1688.052 - 1709.089 David Sacks

But they don't have the right in a democracy to basically investigate themselves and say, oh, we're good. No, that's not how it works. The people of this country need accountability. The once and likely future president came within millimeters, centimeters of being assassinated. And this whole country could have been plunged into a whole different type of situation.

1709.51 - 1733.166 David Sacks

We need answers to these questions. And this Director Cheadle is obviously in the way. and putting out nonsense, putting out spin at a time when we need a proper investigation. That needs to happen immediately. Cheadle should resign. We need to have agents, okay? Secret Service agents need to be offered up to testify on Capitol Hill with no fear of reprisal from the Biden administration, okay?

1733.366 - 1742.912 Shamath Palihapitiya

And all the information needs to be made available. The first person that needs to speak in a congressional hearing is the sniper himself.

1743.032 - 1746.275 David Sacks

Did you guys see there was coverage yesterday that showed there's actually two snipers?

1746.855 - 1747.436 Shamath Palihapitiya

Yeah, there's two.

1747.916 - 1768.254 David Sacks

Yeah. Well, no, sorry. There's two sets of snipers. There's four snipers. The one set of snipers that you see the video of where he does that, there's a tree blocking their ability to see crooks. The other set of snipers are the ones that apparently took the fatal shot and they had a line of sight, but they're not on camera. So you don't actually see what's going on with them. That's the current...

1769.338 - 1782.5 David Sacks

reporting I've seen on it. So I don't want to like jump to conclusions given that there's now seeming to be- There's no excuse here because let me just say- If they saw the guy on the roof and they let the president on the stage, someone effed up. That doesn't seem appropriate.

1782.52 - 1784.941 Freeberg

Why not have a delay? Like not the end of the world.

1785.241 - 1790.422 David Sacks

If we can put that bird's eye view of Butler Farm on the screen, I don't know, Nick, if you have that.

1790.562 - 1794.822 David Sacks

Nick, pull it up where it shows the line of sight with the tree as well so you can see it all. Yeah, there it is.

1794.862 - 1814.571 David Sacks

But look at the shooter's position and look at Trump's position, okay? Yeah. And I've seen broader bird's eye views of Butler Farm. Without knowing anything about marksmanship, it's just obvious that that roof is the most – if you could set yourself up anywhere as a sniper to assassinate the president, it's the number one most obvious location.

1814.991 - 1831.142 David Sacks

Furthermore, let me just say that when Chamath and I hosted that dinner for President Trump – We worked with the Secret Service, you know, advance team and they were excellent. They were really great. And I saw just a little bit of their process and they went through the house. They mapped out the entire house, the entire property.

1831.502 - 1851.736 David Sacks

Then they asked, well, where's the president gonna be sitting at dinner? They wanted to know who's to his right, who's to his left. They looked at the window coverage of that room and they said, okay, whose house is that? That neighbor's house. And they went to go check it out. Every single movement by the president was mapped out Every angle on the president was basically mapped out and explored.

1851.756 - 1856.377 David Sacks

What happened here then? That's the crazy part. It was actually amazing to watch. I thought they did a great job.

1856.677 - 1857.238 Shamath Palihapitiya

It was really amazing.

1857.318 - 1865.921 David Sacks

And so this is why, how could this ever have happened where the most obvious shooting angle on the president was not properly covered? It just makes no sense.

1866.001 - 1884.349 Freeberg

You could put two blues up there. Just two beat officers on there would have solved the whole problem. If you don't have enough Secret Service agents. I was at a Clinton conference. benefit one time, and I got detained by the Secret Service and went into secondary screening. The reason given, I had two cell phones on me. They thought it was peculiar that I had two cell phones.

1884.429 - 1897.556 Freeberg

They kept me for 15, 20 minutes in a side room, and they literally took my phone apart in front of me, took all the batteries out, went through every bag. They frisked me. I mean, wanded me, like three guys around me. They take this incredibly seriously.

1897.576 - 1908.304 David Sacks

Yeah. Normally, they're very thorough, and they're very serious. I mean, look, even at the dinner that we hosted, they wanted to know what kind of steak knives we were using. Yeah. Like, literally, they wanted to make sure that that was safe.

1908.444 - 1922.877 David Sacks

And this is why they were so interested in knowing who was to the president's right and to his left, because they want to think through every possible angle of attack on the president. There was some breakdown here. And in this case, something very strange happened.

1923.097 - 1941.796 Freeberg

And of course... as I was just sort of alluding to early, if this person looked like a SWAT member, which apparently he did, fatigues, you know, range finder, all that stuff, I'm guessing that maybe those snipers from the Secret Service thought those were friendlies. That's the only possible explanation of why they paused.

1941.956 - 1947.758 David Sacks

Yeah, but he wasn't dressed that way. He wasn't wearing a costume or he wasn't impersonating.

1947.778 - 1963.308 Freeberg

I thought he had fatigues, but even still, a person laying there... The photo I saw, he was wearing a t-shirt. The great fear you have as a police officer is shooting another police officer. So I think that- Dude, he was not in a uniform. From whatever number of feet away, maybe. That's what they thought.

1964.229 - 1993.08 Shamath Palihapitiya

Are you telling me in 2024 that when you show up at an event to protect a VVVIP, like the President of the United States, that SWAT and other people aren't given some kind of little pin that has an NFC chip or something where everybody knows who everybody is so that it's very clear very quickly when somebody in a position... of risk is not on the home team?

1994.301 - 1996.423 Freeberg

They do have ways of doing that, right?

1996.443 - 2009.097 Shamath Palihapitiya

There is a, when you're undercover... Like, are you telling me, for example, like, President Trump's pin or Barack Obama's pin or Joe Biden's pin doesn't actually have something in it? I would be shocked if the answer is, it's just a pin.

2009.497 - 2026.988 Freeberg

Well, this is a report that they're investigating that the delay in shooting the sniper might have been that they thought it was friendly. So this theory is out there now and it's part of the investigation. It is a potential one. You know, I can tell you that that would be the nightmare scenario for the Secret Service is to shoot the local cop.

2027.668 - 2034.81 Shamath Palihapitiya

Honestly, guys, I hate to be the one to say this, but we've just, our institutions are incompetent. There's a lot of incompetency.

2034.83 - 2043.592 David Sacks

Absolutely. It's just like the Afghanistan withdrawal. Remember that? No heads rolled. There was no proper investigation of why so many people died unnecessarily in that Afghanistan withdrawal.

2043.652 - 2050.014 Freeberg

Nobody's fired for anything anymore. It's just ridiculous. And there's no resigning, obviously. Nobody resigns. Nobody gets fired.

2050.674 - 2059.276 Shamath Palihapitiya

Why would anybody, so if this was a company, this would be a failing company. Why would you not strip it down from top to bottom and rebuild it?

2059.517 - 2080.485 David Sacks

Well, exactly. And I tweeted this counterfactual, which is imagine if Elon had bought Twitter, but he wasn't allowed to fire anybody. Do you think he would have been able to restore free speech? Do you think he'd be able to restore innovation? No. If you're running an institution, you have to be able to fire people when they don't perform. But we have lost that ability of our federal government.

2081.607 - 2087.699 David Sacks

So there's something that's very, very broken here. When people fail, they have to be held accountable or you don't get good performance.

2088.376 - 2107.56 David Sacks

Right. When institutions fail, there needs to be a question on why are we funding those institutions? Nobody gets fired. Why would you give more money to a failing company? You'd never do it. This is the comment I put in the letter that I sent to that senior Democrat back in October. I don't see any accountability with respect to the programs that you pass bills to fund.

2107.94 - 2124.244 David Sacks

You pass bills to fund these programs, you stand up new institutions, and then there is never a retrospective postmortem or review on the performance of those institutions or the objective of those programs. And yet we keep funding them and asking for more money. And eventually you end up with a decaying empire like we've seen in history.

2124.625 - 2136.269 David Sacks

We need to have a series of actions that drive accountability in federal programs and then a review on the intention of those programs and make sure that they still hold. And then we can move forward with new programs.

2136.629 - 2141.251 Shamath Palihapitiya

Sachs is really right. Like you cannot have the Secret Service investigate themselves on this one. Of course not.

2141.391 - 2146.973 Freeberg

And they deleted all their text message and did a major cover up the last time around. So you cannot trust them to investigate themselves. No.

2147.253 - 2152.937 David Sacks

Did you see all those senators chasing him up the stairs yesterday? You see that? I did see that. It didn't say which senators it was.

2152.957 - 2155.078 Freeberg

I don't know if that was confirmed. It was.

2155.098 - 2161.883 David Sacks

Or should Blackburn. What happened? So a bunch of the senators confronted the head of the Secret Service. Cheadle is her name, right?

2162.143 - 2162.343 Shamath Palihapitiya

Yeah.

2162.783 - 2171.83 David Sacks

And they confronted her. And there's someone videoed the whole thing on their iPhone of them saying, we need answers. Why did you let this happen? Here's a video. Nick can show it. Here, just watch it.

2171.87 - 2179.945 Chamath Palihapitiya

This was a assassination attempt. You owe the people answers. You owe President Trump answers.

2182.503 - 2183.223 Shamath Palihapitiya

My gosh.

2183.583 - 2202.068 David Sacks

That's a bad video because what it does not show is the start and the end. At the start, they were all standing around her having a conversation. And then they started to press her. And she said, now's not the time. This isn't the forum. Then she took off. They followed her. And then she went into the Secret Service secure room upstairs and blocked all the senators from coming into the room.

2202.328 - 2213.031 David Sacks

Her Secret Service staff blocked them. So all the guards said, no, you can't come in. So they all got blocked out. So the senators were pushing her for some feedback, for conversation, for dialogue, and she wouldn't engage. Yeah.

2213.051 - 2221.153 David Sacks

Oh my gosh. I've seen enough. Resign now. Get out of the way so a proper investigation can be done. Total, total, total. Absolutely.

2221.293 - 2230.155 Freeberg

Okay. Let's talk about the RNC. A friend of ours gave a talk and the VP was selected. You did a great job, Bestie.

2230.933 - 2231.273 David Sacks

Thank you.

2231.574 - 2243.187 Freeberg

What was it like to get on that stage? And I have a bunch of questions about- Yeah, what was it like? It seemed like people are not sitting in chairs, right? They're just mulling about. Tell us what the vibes are.

2243.207 - 2250.034 David Sacks

Give us the behind the scenes. Yeah. And what was it like getting prepped and doing all the kind of prep work? Do you have to review your speech? Tell us all the details.

2250.054 - 2266.856 David Sacks

Yeah. Well, let's see. I mean, I started working on this about, I don't know, a week before the convention. And they sent me some ideas for remarks. And then I completely rewrote it with my research assistant slash writer, and then sent it to them. And there was some back and forth. But by and large, they let me do what I wanted to do.

2267.057 - 2267.737 Shamath Palihapitiya

Do they give you a time?

2269.78 - 2286.17 David Sacks

The one thing that was kind of set was the time and they correlated the time with a number of words. So they said you've got six minutes, which is 600 words. And so that's what we work towards. And then the big thing I had to learn was just how to use the teleprompter.

2286.691 - 2310.084 David Sacks

So they had these rooms set up where there were teleprompters and I could do some training on how to read a speech using a teleprompter. What is that like? It's just a matter of knowing where to look and trying to stay natural, but also using the prompter as a mnemonic device. And does the prompter stop when you stop or how does that work?

2310.224 - 2318.448 David Sacks

There is actually somebody in the room who is physically advancing the words as you're speaking. And so there's someone who's actually working the prompter and they will go out.

2318.468 - 2321.93 Freeberg

So if you get a big applause, they'll pause it for you and you don't have to try to keep up.

2322.39 - 2345.344 David Sacks

Exactly, exactly. So that was probably the biggest thing to learn. And then the other thing about it is that you're speaking to a huge convention hall. And so you feel like you really want to project in order to kind of reach people. But at the same time, you're really speaking on TV. As you guys know, you'll come across as being kind of insane if you start like yelling into a TV set.

2345.765 - 2357.815 David Sacks

So finding the right balance between speaking to people in the auditorium and speaking to people watching from home That's kind of tricky. And I'm reasonably happy with it. And the most important thing is I got to say the substance of what I said.

2358.135 - 2371.91 David Sacks

Not universally popular, right? I mean, you basically called for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and to stop funding Ukraine's defense against Russia. And that's not a popular opinion in the Republican Party. Is that right?

2372.33 - 2384.013 David Sacks

Well, I went further than that. I said that this was not an unprovoked war. It was a provoked war. I said the Biden administration provoked the war with talk of NATO expansion. You can disagree with that if you want. I think there's plenty of evidence for it. That's what I believe.

2384.233 - 2400.217 David Sacks

I feel like you went out on a limb more than most other speakers who kind of had a lot of good laudatory comments and, you know, promoted Trump. Yeah, you could have pandered. Yeah, you actually went out with a strongly held opinion that is, you know, fairly contrarian, right?

2401.055 - 2416.982 David Sacks

Well, I think that most of the people in the Republican Party, including most people on the floor, actually agreed with me. I think it took them a second to process what I had said. And so, you know, what I saw when I was up there is I said that, you know, Biden provoked, yes, provoked the war.

2417.682 - 2434.712 David Sacks

And I think it was such a shocking statement to a lot of people because we've heard the whole unprovoked invasion narrative so many times that there were like murmurs and then people got it and they started applauding. I never actually intended it to even be an applause line. I just thought it was an important thing to state the truth as I see it on the record at the Republican convention.

2435.472 - 2451.622 David Sacks

And that line did actually get applause. Now, a bunch of Ukraine stans were predictably outraged by what I said, and they were trying to claim online that somehow I'd been booed or something like that. There were absolutely no boos. There were actually people applauding. And then as I got deeper and deeper into the speech, people applauded it more and more.

2452.122 - 2475.395 David Sacks

It was very much a speech that attacked the forever wars. It attacked the warmongers and complimented President Trump for keeping us out of wars. And complimented him for being strong, but also having the savviness and the ability to negotiate with our adversaries to keep us out of wars. And I think that's now a position that's very popular within the Republican Party, but it's a process.

2475.495 - 2476.055 David Sacks

It's evolving.

2476.415 - 2496.046 Freeberg

This is a perfect segue because there are reports that friend of the pod, Tucker Carlson, had a big impact on talking to Trump about his selection of J.D. Vance and said, don't pick a neocon. That'll get you assassinated. That was one report. That was advice that came before the assassination attempt, obviously. So conspiracy theorists are kind of losing their minds over this.

2496.086 - 2507.084 Freeberg

But let's talk about the selection of J.D. Vance, because that is a big surprise, I think, in many quarters. Tell us about J.D. Vance. You're friends, yeah?

2507.284 - 2512.489 David Sacks

I mean, I'm friends with him and I very much supported his selection for VP.

2512.709 - 2514.47 Freeberg

Why is he the best pick in your mind?

2514.691 - 2538.247 David Sacks

Well, there's a couple of things. So J.D. Vance represents a couple of very interesting characteristics. On the one hand, he's from this poor region of Appalachia. that really represents the forgotten man or the forgotten cities and towns in America. You could call it the MAGA heartland. And so MAGA really likes him. At the same time, he's worked in tech. He was a venture capitalist.

2538.547 - 2556.707 David Sacks

He understands the future and he's popular in tech. So it's very unusual to get somebody who has MAGA plus tech on their side together. So that's one almost contradiction you could say that JD represents. Here's another one. J.D. Vance was in high school when the Twin Towers came down.

2557.568 - 2579.654 David Sacks

And then we invaded Iraq, and he was gung-ho to serve and to go exact retribution and justice on America's enemies. And he enlisted in the Marine Corps, and he went off to serve in the Iraq War. Subsequently, he realized that we had all been lied to about the Iraq War and that it was a gigantic mistake. And moreover, the forever wars were a huge mistake.

2580.174 - 2598.653 David Sacks

And to me, this is something that I really appreciate about him. And this is a quality that I really want at President Trump's side, which is he's an American patriot. He had the courage to serve, to go serve in America's wars. But he has the wisdom and the judgment to want to avoid those wars when we don't need to fight them.

2599.153 - 2613.876 David Sacks

And there's way too many of, like you said, Jason, these neocons, these warmongers in the party who've never, ever acknowledged their mistake in the Iraq war and all the forever wars. And they seem on virtually a daily basis to want to plunge us into the next forever war.

2614.456 - 2626.822 David Sacks

So this is, I think, a quality that's of paramount importance to have in our commander in chief and in the person who would be next in line to be commander in chief. All right. For these reasons, I very much support J.D.

2626.902 - 2645.381 Freeberg

All right. So let me get some feedback from the rest of the panel. I'll just give you a couple of bullet points about him. For those of you who don't know J.D. Vance, yeah, he worked at Peter Thiel's Mythical Capital and Steve Case's Revolution. And so he worked for a Republican and a Democrat in Steve Case. Started his own firm called Naria Capital.

2646.381 - 2666.608 Freeberg

And he went to Ohio State, graduated Yale, was actually classmates with Pivake. We talked about that. He's only 39 years old. So he's half the age of Trump. As you mentioned, combat correspondent for six months in Iraq in 2005, 39 years old. And Teal backed him with, I think, the largest Senate race donation in history, 15 million. And so this is quite a...

2667.728 - 2681.26 Freeberg

Ascension Chamath from a venture capitalist to potentially vice president and obviously potentially president. He's in the second spot. So were you a proponent of the J.D. Vance as well?

2681.28 - 2681.74 Jason Calacanis

He's superb.

2682.581 - 2684.583 Freeberg

The press says you lobby Trump as well.

2684.643 - 2714.119 Shamath Palihapitiya

Is that true? He's superb. I cannot say enough good things about this guy. He's superb. Why is he superb? He is a He's a bit of an enigma, I think, as Zach said, because his views are so unique. And he comes from a background that is very similar to mine. So I have tremendous loyalty for the path that he had to navigate to get out, just to get out.

2714.939 - 2729.922 Shamath Palihapitiya

And I think that I really care for people like that. And then he's done really good things with the resources that he's been given and the relationships that he's built. And I really respect that too.

2730.242 - 2741.223 Freeberg

He's great. We all read Hillbilly, Elegy. I don't know if we talked about it on this pod years ago, but you and I certainly talked about it a bunch, Shamath. And... You know, he came from nothing.

2741.703 - 2742.443 Shamath Palihapitiya

Less than nothing.

2742.624 - 2761.452 Freeberg

Less than nothing. Addicts in his family. Less than nothing. And he talks a lot in his book, I don't know if you remember this, about social capital and the fact that he didn't understand, the name of his firm is Social Capital, people don't know the reference, that he just didn't have the social capital to even understand that a lawyer went to law school. Yeah. And, you know, he is an enigma.

2761.812 - 2768.917 Freeberg

His positions don't align with Trump's in every case, but they have quickly become aligned with Trump's. He's an incredible pick now.

2769.377 - 2790.071 David Sacks

Yeah. I thought he was an incredible pick before his speech last night, and he even exceeded my expectations in that speech. I just thought it was truly an incredible speech. First of all, the introduction by his wife, Usha, was really... incredible. I thought she did a fantastic job. And then he got up there and I had a friend text me who's not really that into politics.

2790.111 - 2811.741 David Sacks

He's just like, this guy seems so normal. He's happy. He's normal. He seems competent. There was one commentator, I think on one of the cable shows who I think meant this as an insult, but it actually was positive. He said that when you're at a fast food restaurant or something and need to ask for the manager, J.D. Vance is the person you hope is the manager. He comes out. He's friendly.

2812.021 - 2829.396 David Sacks

He's competent. He's reasonable. He knows how to get stuff done. I'm not sure if that was meant as an insult or a compliment. It's meant as an insult. Yeah, I can tell you that's meant as an insult. Yeah, but I think it's a compliment, right? And he's just so normal. He's going to be very hard to demonize. Obviously, they're trying to do it on cable news. They're somehow trying to portray him as

2830.37 - 2833.393 David Sacks

an extremist or a racist, even though he has a mixed race family.

2833.754 - 2843.184 Freeberg

The tent of the Republican Party at this RNC, Sacks, is the most wide open tent I've ever seen in politics. They had Amber Rose and people were criticizing Amber Rose.

2843.204 - 2846.327 David Sacks

She was excellent. She was excellent. She was fantastic. I thought she was excellent.

2846.347 - 2848.89 Freeberg

And she knocked the ball out of the park and she's pro-choice.

2848.91 - 2850.572 Shamath Palihapitiya

She looked absolutely radiant.

2850.592 - 2850.932 David Sacks

She's a feminist.

2850.972 - 2852.414 Shamath Palihapitiya

She was beautiful and she crushed it.

2852.814 - 2874.695 David Sacks

I thought her speech was effective. I thought it was authentic. And it described her red-pilling, basically. It described her evolution and her journey from someone who believed the media's lies about Trump, thinking that he was a racist, to actually meeting the man herself, realizing that the way they had portrayed him was basically a slander, and how she became friends with President Trump.

2874.715 - 2890.787 David Sacks

I thought it was an incredibly effective speech. But look... There was very few people who didn't like it. There was this one post by Matt Walsh online, and he was roundly denounced for what he said. I mean, he kind of engaged in this pearl clutching that they had allowed Amber Rose to speak because of her background.

2890.907 - 2891.828 Shamath Palihapitiya

Value judging.

2891.868 - 2906.998 David Sacks

And it's like, who's Matt Walsh to judge? It felt like a part of the Republican Party that's on its way out. You know, this pearl clutching social conservatism. In any event, it was really an opportunity, I think, for people to disavow his criticism and support her.

2907.898 - 2923.103 Freeberg

Yeah, and that was my point here is what, you know, they've done a really great job of. And Vivek did a wonderful job in his talk. I want to give him a shout out of just saying, hey, listen, everybody can be part of this party. I think there's a lot of notes the Democrats could take from what they saw at the Republican National Convention.

2923.123 - 2931.826 Freeberg

These are people who would have been at the DNC, but, you know, one election cycle ago. But because of this purity test, you can't even, you know, win with them.

2932.566 - 2953.384 Shamath Palihapitiya

Let's take the obvious. We're trending into a direction right now where based on Donald Trump's pick for the vice president and some of the other surrogates like Vivek, if Donald Trump were to win, what you're going to see is a very youthful cabinet of a lot of 30-somethings and 40-somethings.

2954.025 - 2961.931 Shamath Palihapitiya

And I think that that's a really important thing to consider versus a bunch of 60-, 70-, and 80-year-old career politicians. Correct.

2962.031 - 2974.86 David Sacks

Absolutely. Youth and vigor. And again, this new direction. A lot of people were commenting about J.D. 's speech that large parts of it could have been given by Bernie Sanders. It's this populist message that

2975.16 - 2980.807 Freeberg

Well, let me ask you that, yes, Sax. He's had a position of breaking up big tech.

2981.995 - 3010.334 David Sacks

and being pro-union how do you reconcile all that and and this new republican party yeah address those two because that seems to be a big discussion two discussion topics yeah i think that it's definitely a new emergent republican party where this is i think this is donald trump's republican party this is the maga wing the america first wing of the republican party we're moving from a party of basically the chamber of commerce you know business round table

3010.774 - 3025.564 David Sacks

a bunch of oligarchic fat cats to being a populist party that actually represents the people. And I think it's a very- And unions. And they had the Teamsters up there, yeah. And I think it's a very welcome change. And the part of JD's speech that I like the best is when he described

3026.144 - 3043.135 David Sacks

that, hey, I went off and many other people went off to fight in these forever wars, risking our lives or giving our lives. We come back to our home communities, and what do we find? We find them hollowed out. The jobs have all been exported. The factories have shut down. And instead, the town has been poisoned by fentanyl.

3043.656 - 3064.351 David Sacks

That is a message that you have not heard in the Republican Party, except for Donald Trump and that new part of the party. And I think that Donald Trump choosing J.D. Vance was so important to cement this new vision of the Republican Party. It was a legacy pick because it means that this America First MAGA message is going to continue into the future, many years into the future.

3065.071 - 3089.454 David Sacks

And let me just tell you, as I listened to that speech, I hearkened back to another speech at a public convention I heard 32 years ago. I'm sorry to say I'm old enough to actually remember these things. And I remember Pat Buchanan's speech in 1992. And After Pat described the factory workers who lost their jobs, I just want to read you what he said, and I want you to think about what J.D. said.

3090.731 - 3109.056 David Sacks

So what Buchanan said was, my friends, these people are our people. They don't read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart. They are our people, and we need to reconnect with them.

3109.456 - 3131.845 David Sacks

We need to let them know we know how bad they're hurting. They don't expect miracles of us, but they need to know we care. And I think that for too long, Republican leaders ignored that advice. They didn't connect with everyday Americans. They were foolishly willing to cut programs like Social Security or Medicare, saying that we had to cut the deficit while at the same time funding forever wars.

3132.822 - 3154.813 David Sacks

So totally not credible. And the party was basically led by warmongers like Dick Cheney or Mitch McConnell or soulless bean counters like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. And I think Vance really broke with all of that. And I think he represents the future of the party. He trashed the Iraq war. He promised no more foreign interventions.

3155.093 - 3180.886 David Sacks

He railed against policies that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of workers. And I think it's no wonder that the neocons lobbied so hard against his selection. But I think those days are over. And I think that, just let me just say at this end with this, that I think that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance represent a conservatism of the heart. that we haven't seen before.

3181.106 - 3182.687 David Sacks

And I think this is the future of the Republican Party.

3182.847 - 3187.329 Freeberg

Freeberg, does J.D. Vance being selected tip your vote towards Trump?

3187.849 - 3197.654 David Sacks

Vance, take it. I think he's going to do well for Trump. I think if he... Who are his other options? Nikki Haley...

3199.238 - 3206.803 Freeberg

I mean, they were pressured for him to go after a lot of the neocons, right? Sacks and get the never-Trumper contingent. Wasn't that like a lot of the pressure?

3207.164 - 3213.788 Shamath Palihapitiya

Absolutely. I mean, I think there was Doug Burgum, who was... That was your favorite, no?

3214.389 - 3238.018 David Sacks

Not my favorite. I met him. Seemed like a really thoughtful guy. He's done an incredible job managing the state of North Dakota, but he's got some... social policy issues that I think are going to rub people the wrong way. And I think to Sax's point, he's more in the camp of supporting Ukraine, which it seems like some part of the party are starting to come around and say no.

3238.118 - 3240.02 David Sacks

So it seems like he wasn't a great fit ultimately.

3240.66 - 3250.487 David Sacks

Yeah. By the way, I met Doug Burgum the other night and he's a very nice man who I think could play a very important role. Very nice guy who I think can play a major, major role in the party.

3250.507 - 3252.849 David Sacks

Incredible business. Sold it to Microsoft.

3253.169 - 3270.259 David Sacks

Yeah, there's nobody who understands, I think, energy better and all the regulations that have gotten in the way of making America energy independent and tapping our vast energy reserves. So I found him very, very impressive on that. But at the end of the day, you know, it's just not the kind of pick that J.D. is.

3270.499 - 3281.085 Freeberg

I remain a moderate, undecided voter. I love J.D. Vance. I think it's an inspired choice. I know, Sax, where you're voting. I'll take some guesses on you, Chamath. But Freeberg, where are you standing right now?

3282.25 - 3310.635 David Sacks

I'm very happy that RFK Jr. was not selected as the VP to be on the ticket. I think RFK would have been a challenging partner for Trump and it would have led to a lot of disagreements. And I think that RFK has some policy perspectives that I don't agree with, particularly as it relates to health, energy, agriculture. And so there are some disagreements I have with respect to his view of the world.

3312.185 - 3334.454 David Sacks

I will say JD seems like a pragmatist. He seems highly intelligent. He seems highly competent. And I know that he has not been in a governing position before, right? So this is really critical to note. This is a training job for him in a large way. He's been a senator and he's been an investor and he's been an individual contributor as an investor.

3335.054 - 3344.313 David Sacks

He's built his own firm, but it's not a scaled firm. So this is going to be a really interesting kind of process to watch unfold.

3344.333 - 3366.606 David Sacks

But I think from a policy and a strategy perspective, he can have a really positive impact on the direction of the things that we talked about earlier, which is accountability and government programs, having a clear set of objectives, making sure that we focus on those objectives and don't spend time and resources on things that are fluff and perhaps aren't really meeting the objectives.

3367.286 - 3386.842 David Sacks

And I think that he'll have, the thing I do have concern about, I think that the nationalist agenda, the nationalism and the isolationism agenda is counter to global trade, which can be deeply inflationary. And that is one concern I do have, which is the ability for the US to export and import

3387.623 - 3407.524 David Sacks

with other trade partners around the world, I think it's critical for us to continue to grow our economy and keep inflation down. So if we take policy action that limits our ability to import because we impose tariffs on other countries' goods and services, it can be inflationary, makes things more expensive for Americans, everyday Americans to buy.

3408.044 - 3425.368 David Sacks

When everyday Americans go into Walmart and they buy products, a lot of those products are shipped from China. So if there's a tariff on those products and the price of those products now goes up by 30, 40%, that can be a real burden. That drives inflation. That's the point about the nationalism on manufacturing and inputs.

3425.588 - 3434.93 Shamath Palihapitiya

So Freeberg, you're pretty convinced at this point that a reciprocal trade agreement would cause... inflation, hyperinflation?

3435.431 - 3452.283 David Sacks

No, no. I think that the idea, the general statement, which I don't think is necessarily how this is being executed. I just want to make sure that we're all cognizant of the point that if you introduce tariffs on imports, it will drive prices up. Now, that may be the right thing to do from a policy perspective.

3452.324 - 3469.536 David Sacks

As we heard from President Trump when we interviewed him, his belief is that this is an important security stake, that we use it to drive reciprocity and we use it to hold China in check. And so that may be a more important strategic priority over the increase in the price of certain goods.

3469.897 - 3491.992 David Sacks

The problem that will arise, and this happened during the last Trump administration, if China then responds with tariffs on the export of US agricultural products, so our biggest buyer of agricultural products today is China, and then China put tariffs on our export or they stopped buying, from the US and they started buying from Brazil instead. The farmers are hurt.

3492.412 - 3498.237 David Sacks

And when the farmers are hurt, the Trump administration had to spend money to support farmers, tens of billions of dollars.

3498.597 - 3499.558 Freeberg

Yeah, they subsidized it.

3500.421 - 3519.638 David Sacks

They subsidized, they paid farmers in a way. And so the federal government then has to step in to meet the gap that arises from what will end up becoming an escalating tariff problem or an escalating purchasing problem. So global trade allows the economy to grow, gives everyone a market, you can start to trade, but there's also these security issues.

3519.999 - 3532.408 David Sacks

I do think it's important that we onshore a lot of manufacturing. I think it's important But there's going to be a period of pain. There's going to be an investment needed. And it's not going to be simple and easy. And we may face quite a bit of inflation on the path to doing that.

3532.448 - 3537.052 Freeberg

Can you give us an update here at the end of the show, Freeberg on scholarships and what people have been asking for the Olin Summit?

3538.373 - 3560.827 David Sacks

So this week we are opening up scholarship applications. You can go to summit.allinpodcast.co. And we have a very, very, very limited number of scholarship tickets that we hold for the summit like we did the last two years. The applications are open now. Please get your application in right away because we expect it will be completely overbooked almost immediately.

3561.227 - 3578.715 David Sacks

And some of those scholarships are going to be sponsored by Athletic Brewing Company. So thank you to Athletic Brewing Company for paying for a lot of our scholarship recipients to go to the All In Summit this year. Really exciting programming coming together. We have more details to share in the next couple of weeks. And we do have one more last block of GA tickets that we're going to release.

3579.655 - 3586.378 David Sacks

Get your application in on the website, summit.allinpodcast.co for a GA ticket for the last block. Thank you.

3586.738 - 3610.564 Freeberg

All right, let's just do one quick business story here since we spent the bulk of the episode talking about politics and current events. Exits creeping back. Sequoia is doing a secondary sale of their Stripe investment, one of the greatest investments of the last decade. And Google is in talks to acquire Wiz. And this is absolutely amazing news for Sequoia.

3611.204 - 3634.039 Freeberg

the industry, which has been suffering from a lack of distributions. As you can see in this chart, Chamath, after 2021, exit values just plummeted. And there are some signs of life now. Let's start with Sequoia buying back some Stripe shares from its own LPs. Sequoia Capital has invested $517 million in Stripe. That's currently worth about $10 billion.

3635 - 3659.477 Freeberg

20X, Michael Moritz, led the seed in Series A. Sequoia offered to buy back $860 million in Stripe shares from LPs in its legacy funds. Those are the funds between 2009 and 2012. Sequoia is using capital from their newer funds, like its Evergreen Fund that was formed in 2021, the Heritage Fund, that's their wealth management team, to give the legacy funds some liquidity. It's not normal.

3660.56 - 3677.522 Freeberg

that a company stayed private this long. It is the exception to the rule, but it has happened. It actually happened with Uber to a certain extent. So legacy fund LPs have the choice, Sachs, to hold, sell some, or sell all of their Stripe shares. Here's the quote from the note.

3678.323 - 3698.91 Freeberg

Sequoia personnel and associated persons will not be offered the option to sell Stripe shares previously received as carried interest distributions from the legacy funds. And they are offering $27.50 a share, which is pretty generous, $70 billion valuation. As you may know, Stripe has hit as high as $100 billion in market cap in the private markets.

3699.891 - 3723.131 Freeberg

So this will be a, from the seed, which was a $20 million post, $3,500x for those LPs. And for the Series A, it is a $100 million post, which is 700x. For those people who don't know, I think it was Sam Altman who actually did that investment as a Sequoia Scout in the same fund that I did the Uber investment. So still the number one and two investments there.

3723.491 - 3730.713 Freeberg

Your thoughts, Jamath, on this unique opportunity and device to sell early shares from the same venture fund?

3731.013 - 3758.101 Shamath Palihapitiya

I have two thoughts. The first is that it's interesting to see that they mark the valuation up to 70 billion. That's a good sign for Stripe. But the second thing is I was a little kind of puzzled by this whole thing. It's a very complicated thing when you're buying old stakes into a new fund and crossing funds. It's sort of like actually one of those things that are supposed to be verboten.

3758.962 - 3781.609 Shamath Palihapitiya

And when you're trying to build a good fund with great governance, this is actually at the top of the list of the things that you're never supposed to do, which is to provide liquidity to to a group of LPS via another fund that you control. But I think this actually shows what may be going on behind the scenes. So I don't want to be conspiratorial or anything. But

3783.456 - 3793.124 Shamath Palihapitiya

it would be a great way for the GPs to get liquid to meet their capital calls here without having to pay capital gains tax. And that makes a lot of sense for the GPs themselves.

3793.244 - 3802.551 Freeberg

And so I suspect that that probably- Well, they did say that the GPs aren't going to get to liquidate anything. So they did put that note in there. So they've anticipated that.

3802.571 - 3816.894 Shamath Palihapitiya

Right, so you can provide, you can provide, no, meaning, but what that means is you can provide liquidity. You don't get to pull the money out. That's fine. But then now you can use it to fund capital calls. But I don't like it. I don't like these kinds of things where one fund is basically scratching the back of another fund.

3817.014 - 3835.385 Shamath Palihapitiya

It always tends to be the case that this stuff on the surface looks a little smelly and can be a little unseemly. And this is why you're not supposed to do it. You're supposed to go and get some other random fund to buy these things. And I think it's generally a much cleaner thing to do.

3836.265 - 3854.359 Freeberg

And the hygiene of it is clearly what we see SACs in that documentation, giving people choices. You can make your own choice. We're not taking carry. We're not selling our shares, and we're only selling 10%. So they did go to extreme measures, I guess, to outline that. But your thoughts on this type of sale?

3854.779 - 3862.624 Freeberg

It happens in private equity all the time, I understand, but we don't see it in venture all that often. What are your thoughts on this, providing liquidity to the 14-year-old funds?

3863.125 - 3878.835 David Sacks

Well, first of all, there's a kid rock concert going on behind me. Sorry if that's distracting for you. No, no. It's going to be lit. That's all I can say. If he's introducing President Trump, it's going to be pretty baller tonight. We're taping on Thursday, obviously. This episode will probably come out tomorrow. But

3879.662 - 3900.199 David Sacks

In any event, with respect to the Sequoia thing, look, I think there's this overarching issue of the fact that VC funds are classically designed to be 10-year funds. The money is called over time, usually over the first few years. It's invested. And then you don't get liquidity. I mean, it's not like a mutual fund where you can take your money out.

3900.259 - 3916.187 David Sacks

You get liquidity if and when the fund gets liquidity. And these funds are meant to be long-term illiquid vehicles. So like I said, 10 years. And typically, you can get two one-year extensions to the funds. So then the question is, what do you do at year 12 if you still got positions in those funds?

3916.747 - 3941.005 David Sacks

Well, I think a pretty good solution is what I think Sequoia is doing here and what I've heard other people do, which is if you have a security that's not public yet but is semi-liquid because it's a very late-stage private company, then what you can do is spin those shares into an SPV or to some other vehicle. And you let new investors come in and buy those shares at some price.

3941.105 - 3958.116 David Sacks

And then you give the option to your old investors. Do you want to sell or do you want to roll into the new vehicle? So nobody is forced to give up their ownership position. But if they want to get liquidity and there's sufficient demand on the buy side, that you can get them that liquidity, it's a really elegant solution.

3958.517 - 3980.254 David Sacks

I can't say I know exactly all the details of what Sequoia is doing because they've got this two-tier fund structure that makes it a little different. But I have seen in other cases, people have distributed shares into an SPV, and then new buyers come in, participate, and then the old investors get to decide whether they roll or sell. So it's a... pretty good way of handling this.

3980.314 - 3984.839 Freeberg

And the valuation, just to, sorry, I didn't clarify, this valuation is based on the last 409A.

3984.919 - 4005.095 David Sacks

So that's the one thing about Sequoia that's a little different is remember, it's their kind of like global mega fund that's buying the shares as opposed to an SPV. Normally what would happen in terms of figuring out the price is you'd want to use some sort of validated secondary price, but obviously it'd have to be a market clearing price where new money wants to come in at that price.

4005.796 - 4023.809 David Sacks

And this is a little bit different because it's their preexisting fund that's buying at that price. And so how do you sanity check the valuation? And I guess- I would just want to make sure that that valuation is the secondary. Yeah, it's like the secondary clearing price.

4023.829 - 4047.672 Freeberg

That's what it's trading at in secondary markets, and that's what the 409A is. So I guess that would be the hygiene there. But it's certainly unique and I guess great for those LPs. That's a word for it. Well, I mean, we had a similar thing happen with Uber, where they did the secondary and, you know, they had Masayoshi-san come in and do an IPO, essentially. That's entirely different.

4047.913 - 4063.963 Freeberg

Yeah, you had new money coming in, to your point. Yeah. Here is the second story related to DPI and VCs getting to cash out. Google is in advanced stocks to acquire Wiz for $23 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's an Israeli-American cybersecurity startup that was founded only in 2020.

4065.024 - 4087.086 Freeberg

Backed by Sequoia Index, Insight, Andreessen, and others, one of the fastest growing startups ever, reaching $500 million in ARR in 4.5 years. Google would be paying 46x forward revenue. They think they'll have a billion in ARR sometime next year. And what are our thoughts on this in terms of M&A?

4087.647 - 4100.103 Shamath Palihapitiya

You saw it on this AT&T hack of Snowflake. But cloud security is a really big deal. The more cloud services you have, the more difficult it is to lock these things down.

4100.343 - 4119.375 Shamath Palihapitiya

And so whether it's Google or Amazon, they have a, or Azure, they each have a really big problem on their hands, which is that if all these customers are convinced to move these workloads into the cloud, but then you can't secure it and you get hacked, that ends the business. So Wiz is an incredible testament to, I guess, engineering prowess.

4119.475 - 4141.803 Shamath Palihapitiya

I don't exactly know, to be honest with you, the quality of the product. Obviously, I don't interact with those kinds of products every day, but the fact that they're willing to pay such a premium means, A, the product is good, but more importantly, B, in the absence of cloud security, these cloud vendors are going to be constrained in how fast they can grow. So what an incredible market.

4142.864 - 4144.206 Shamath Palihapitiya

What an incredible, incredible market.

4144.571 - 4170.943 Freeberg

I have to say these two things have really helped the climate in the LP community. This past week, a lot of chatter about IPOs that are getting filed and that we could be ending the drought and people were feeling very, very pessimistic about venture as a category. And I think these two things have changed a lot of people's feelings on that. So Good work there.

4171.443 - 4193.623 Freeberg

And I think it also signals maybe some regime change expectations, Sax. Yeah, Lena Kahn maybe getting booted when this regime change occurs next year, and then maybe more M&A would occur. What's Trump's and J.D. Vance's position in your mind on M&A and Lena Kahn, Sax, if you had to interpret it?

4194.076 - 4211.247 David Sacks

Well, something that's very interesting is that J.D. Vance has been relatively positive towards Lena Kahn. He's one of Lena Kahn's few Republican fans. And the reason for that is because Lena Kahn, for all of her faults, and we've described them here, has been willing to take on big tech.

4211.568 - 4232.818 David Sacks

The fact of the matter is that the top handful of tech companies, the Microsofts, the Googles, Amazon, these are big tech monopolies. There's just no way around that fact. And they do need to be closely watched and supervised and regulated with respect to their market power. And I do think they use their market power in inappropriate ways, as we've discussed on this podcast.

4233.438 - 4252.403 David Sacks

I sometimes think that Lena Kahn, in her approach, has been a little bit more of a cleaver when she needed to use a scalpel. I don't think that she should stop some of these what I would call R&D acquisitions from taking place where there's no accretion of market share, but rather starts being bought because they contribute a useful piece of technology.

4252.443 - 4270.393 David Sacks

I don't think you want to shut down that part of the market. Lord knows we don't have enough exits as it is, like we were just talking about. So I think it would be great if we kind of massage Lena Kahn's approach a little bit, but I think that it is a good thing that she's not willing to just roll over and let the big tech companies do whatever they want.

4270.813 - 4280.63 David Sacks

And I think JD Vance appreciates that about her. So look, I don't think that Lena Kahn's going to be running that agency in a second Trump administration.

4280.79 - 4297.169 Freeberg

But I think there's going to be a problem with Republicans. So sex is the freedom of speech issue and Republicans being banned on the social platforms, including it up to Trump. I mean, if that issue wasn't there, I think you would probably see maybe a different approach. Yeah.

4297.574 - 4315.963 David Sacks

Well, I think it's a huge issue because the fact of the matter is you've got these tech monopolies who are using their monopolistic market power to put their thumb on the scale of our political discourse in favor of one side versus the other. So obviously, if you're on that side of the aisle, you're going to be up in arms about that. You're not going to be happy about that.

4316.463 - 4336.753 David Sacks

And I do think that given their market power, they have an obligation not to distort our democracy by artificially suppressing one side of the debate. So I think that, yes, Republicans should be up in arms about that and they should be resisting censorship. And J.D. Vance specifically mentioned censorship in his speech.

4337.293 - 4348.996 Freeberg

That seems to be his main issue. I think we'll see under Trump a lot more mid-market M&A if I were to, you know, let's call it under $100 billion. $100 billion acquisition would be fine with me, under $100 billion.

4349.196 - 4364.101 David Sacks

Well, I really like the part of his speech where he said that in a healthy democracy, we debate ideas, and that's good. We even have debates in the Republican Party, and that's good. The last thing we want to do is censor the marketplace of ideas. Gosh, I mean, are we going to hear anything like that from the Democrats when they do their convention?

4364.121 - 4386.057 Freeberg

Well, in breaking news, as we wrap up this program, the hot swap summer will continue. Apparently, Biden is predicted to resign this weekend. We'll see if it happens. Speed run primary. Nostradamus is predicting it happens. Nostracanus. Nostracanus. Nostracanus will keep his position. The hot swap is coming.

4386.077 - 4404.273 David Sacks

Well, Jake, at this point, I think you were right about Biden stepping aside. I thought he was out of the woods. He did that press conference, that NATO press conference, where he did make that one mistake, that senior moment where he actually- That Trump was his VP? Yeah. Oops. But that was the kind of thing where he got his name mixed up.

4404.313 - 4422.805 David Sacks

But otherwise, he sort of seems to be finding his footing in terms of talking about policy. And the brush fire- was sort of put out, right? But then, for some unknown reason, he goes on and does that Lester Holt interview. I don't know why they were still letting him do interviews. He should only be reading from a teleprompter.

4423.325 - 4430.407 David Sacks

And he mixes up, he forgets the name of his Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and he just refers to him as the black man. The B-H-A-M.

4431.707 - 4455.763 Freeberg

was a bet interview so he did the lesser hold interview which was not good and then he did the bet interview well the money's dried up right your mouth so once the money goes it's over well yeah and he he also did a horrible one with 360 with speedy speedy mormon and that was a train wreck there was a couple moments there that are just total gaffes they say say pelosi and uh schumer told him it's over and i guess that means and katzenberg

4456.343 - 4480.382 David Sacks

you're righteous and when the big money is gone and they make the call you know yeah it's done it's done isn't that amazing what we've learned about the democratic party you know like the the coup de grace was basically katzenberg going in there say yeah i can't raise any money for you and then boom he's out i am shocked that any political party would be swayed in any way by political donations enjoy the uh enjoy the rnc sacks

4481.633 - 4495.86 Freeberg

I love you guys. I got to go to dinner. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. For the chairman dictator, the architect, David Sacks, and your sultan of science who ducked out a little bit early, I am the world's greatest moderator. We'll see you next time, by the way.

4498.121 - 4498.621

Bye-bye.

4498.641 - 4500.122 Chamath Palihapitiya

We'll let your winners ride.

4501.763 - 4503.003 Jason Calacanis

Rain man, David Sacks.

4503.784 - 4540.687 Chamath Palihapitiya

And it said, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S. I squeeze. We need to get merch.