总统候选人小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪对话四人组

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Sachs, you ready? You got your quick time going? David Sacks (00:00:02): Oh, yeah. Let me do that real quick. Jason Calacanis (00:00:04): And just a quick note, Saks. Mister Kennedy doesn't have earpieces in. So he we just have to be careful of the crosstalk. We're talking over each other. I'll direct questions to each person and then follow ups. You can obviously just use your judgment and went yourself, but be be gentle on the insertion there because we don't want that came out wrong. Just be be gentle when you interrupt. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:00:24): God. Here's your cold open. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:27): Yeah. At least if you did it incorrectly, it'll be quick. Jason Calacanis (00:00:30): Okay. Here we go. In 3, too long. Speaker 5 (00:00:34): The let your winter ride. Rainman, David Saffens. And it said open source it to the fans and make discoveries. Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): Alright, everybody. Welcome to the all in podcast. As many of you know, this podcast has gotten quite popular over the last 2 years, typically in the top 10 or 20 each week. and we talk about politics. We've got a big following in DC. Speaker 5 (00:01:02): And -- Why are you calling me David Friedberg (00:01:04): self absorbed, Chabat? Let me Speaker 5 (00:01:05): listen to how your David Friedberg (00:01:06): cohost opens a show. Jason Calacanis (00:01:07): Calm down, everybody. David Friedberg (00:01:08): It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:01:09): Go ahead. And as part of that, our ongoing discussions about politics and presidential candidates has resonated in particular communities. And today, we are lucky enough to have one of the top presidential hopefuls in the 2024 election joining us, Robert Kennedy Junior. And we will be inviting all presidential candidates to come on to the all in podcast and have candid discussions that are unfiltered the way the audience would expect them We're gonna play with different formats, but we decided for this first one. We've got a series of topics we'd like to cover, and we're gonna treat it like any other all in podcast. With that, I'll have David Saxx, who has is the most conservative of our panel, who has been also the most enthusiastic, I think, of everybody here and one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Robert Kennedy, Junior's pursuit of the presidency of the United States. So with that, Dave, would you like to introduce our guest? David Sacks (00:02:09): Yeah. Let me give Bobby a proper introduction here. So Robert Francis Kennedy Junior is entering the political arena as a candidate for the first time at the age of sixty nine, but his no exaggeration to say that he was destined for the mission he is now pursuing. He is the nephew of president John F Kennedy and the son of attorney general and senator Robert F Kennedy. When Bobby was fourteen, his dad was running for president on a platform of civil rights, civil liberties, lifting Americans out of poverty and opposing the Vietnam war, He had just won the California primary when he was tragically assassinated. RFK Junior graduated from Harvard and the University of Virginia law school and became an environmental lawyer who aggressively litigated against corporate polluters and government agencies that were failing to regulate them. He has always put the health and safety of the American people at the forefront of his activism And this has made him controversial at times as he has questioned the safety of some pharmaceutical products and also criticized COVID restrictions during the pandemic for this The mainstream media has tried to paint him as a quote conspiracy theorist. But given that so many conspiracy theories about COVID have been vindicated, tablet magazine wrote, quote, at this point, the fact that Robert F Kennedy is the country's leading conspiracy theorist alone qualifies him to be president. But the biggest reason why I think his candidacy is so interesting and relevant is that it harkens back to a Democratic party that believed in peace instead of war free speech and civil liberties that have censorship, building up the middle class instead of the donor class, and opposing corporate greed, especially in the military industrial complex. which is a message you just don't hear much anymore coming from the Democratic side of the aisle. David Sacks (00:03:41): So with that, Bobby Kennedy, welcome to the program. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:03:44): Thank you so much for having me. Jason Calacanis (00:03:46): So maybe we could start with foreign policy. Something we've discussed here, specifically the Ukraine and Russia's invasion of Ukraine and our support of that war. Sachs, would you like to tee up a a question? for Mister Kennen. David Sacks (00:04:00): I think Bobby's tweets on the subject show that he has a really deep understanding of it. He's been saying a lot of things that I've been saying since the beginning of the war, which it it not just the fact that we're risking War 3 over, you know, getting involved in a in a country that isn't a a treaty ally in the United States. It's never been a vital interest in the United States. But I think your critique goes deeper because you actually understand the causes of how this war started. So maybe, you know, Bobby, you could speak to that. How how did we end up in this proxy war with with Russia from from your standpoint? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:04:38): Well, you know, for first of all, I would let me start by saying this. I supported the humanitarian aid to the to the Ukraine, which is what we were told initially was the was the mission, although I had I was suspicious of it. And, you know, my son, as as I've mentioned, action went over, left law school, did not tell us where he was going and went over and joined the foreign legion. and fought in the Kharkiv offensive with a special forces group. He served as a machine gunner. He was in engagements with the Russians. And but he feels the same way essentially that I did it at this. is no under a humanitarian mission. And at all the decisions the United States have made has made since in since the start has been about have been about prolonging the war about maximizing the the violence of the war and being absolutely intransigence against the many opportunities to actually set up the war. if he and and that my understanding of the war is that not that Zelensky is pushing this war as hard as he can. But that the Neocon's in the White House want this war. They want it. regime change with the Russians. They want to exhaust. the Russian armies. This is what this defense secretary Lloyd Austin said in Jason Calacanis (00:06:10): 2022, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:06:11): our objective is to exhaust and degrade Russian forces so they cannot fight anywhere else in the world. And president Biden acknowledged that one of his objectives in the wars regime changed in Russia removing Vladimir Putin. Well, if those are the objectives, that is the opposite of a humanitarian mission. That is a mission to maximize casualties to prolong the war. It's essentially a war of attrition, and that's what we're seeing. And the brunt of this is being paid by the flower of Ukrainian youth There have been over 300,000. This is something that the US government and the Ukrainian government have worked hard to hide the number of casualties, which has been catastrophic. isn't the most violent conflict since World War 2 that's taken place probably anywhere in the world. And the casualties are enormous. all over Jason Calacanis (00:07:03): 300,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:07:04): Ukrainian debt. The Russians are killing Ukrainian depending on who you believe at a ratio of 5 to Jason Calacanis (00:07:11): 1 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:07:12): to 8 to 1, which is the 7 to 1 in the and the recently recently leaked whistleblower leaked pentagon documents. And the the Russians cannot lose this war. We're being told they're losing. They cannot afford to lose this war. This is existential for them, Speaker 5 (00:07:32): and they Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:07:32): have been building up their forces. They have a tend to want artillery advantage on us, and this is an artillery war. It's simply and we do not have the ability to replace what we've lost up there. This is a war that is proceeding in a very cataclysmic trajectory. And the the the answer to your question about how we got in this war goes back, you know, a long way, but I would say that the real story starts in Jason Calacanis (00:08:03): 2014. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:08:05): when the US government and particularly the neocons in the White House and elsewhere participated and supported the overthrow violent overthrow a coup d'etat against the democratically elected government of the Ukraine. and put in a very, very anti Russian government is prompted Russian so that believe that that the US navy was now gonna be invited into the black sea to have a port at Crimea. It prompted the Russians to preemptively invade Crimea. At the same time, the the government that went came into the Ukraine began enacting a series of laws that turned the Russian populations of the Dunbas region into 2nd class They they they they illegalized essentially their culture, their language, and they began ultimately killing them. They killed 14,000 them. And it was as it prompted a civil war in the country. And the Russian response, which is illegal. I have no sympathy or or towards Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is a gangster, and and he's a thug. But his his response in the dumb laws was not irrational. Jason Calacanis (00:09:34): So I guess the question becomes, if you were elected president, would you stop sending armaments to Ukraine. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:09:42): I would immediately I I have a cease fire and I would settle the war. And I think it can be a saddle. I don't even know. I mean, Listen, the best settlement for this war was outlined in the Minska gorge in 2014. The Minska gorge, which all the European our country is agreed upon was when they when the Russians said and the Russian people in us voted to leave Russia and Russia did not want them. Russia said no. Let's develop and accord an agreement which would make Dunbas a an autonomous region within the Ukraine, which would agree to not put missile systems in Ukraine NATO missile systems We should agree that Ukraine would not join NATO. Jason Calacanis (00:10:32): If Zelensky says no, I wanna keep fighting, would you stop sending US weapons. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:10:36): I would settle this. I would settle this war. The Ukraine cannot fight without US support. Jason Calacanis (00:10:43): So then at some point, you would tell Zelensky if I'm reading into what you're saying correctly. Hey. Settle it David Friedberg (00:10:49): or I'm out. Yeah. Yeah. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:10:50): I I would settle the war. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:52): Yeah. Do you think that we somehow allowed Zelensky to believe that we would allow him into NATO? Meaning, do you think that US foreign policy somehow almost induced this thing to happen. I just wanna try to understand the boundaries. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:11:12): We have been doing integrative military exercises with the Ukrainian military. So we were actively integrating them into NATO forces. There was no question. that, you know, the the one thing that Putin said from the outset, this is a red line. You know, when my uncle was president, One of the things that he's had he's had a couple of things. He said, number 1, the principal job of president of the United States is to keep the nation out of war. and he succeeded doing that during his term in office. He he sent 16,000 military advisors to Vietnam who were not con were not authorized to participate in comment. That didn't mean that some of them didn't. They were not authorized, but, in fact, That was fewer federal troops than he sent to get James Meredith into the University of Mississippi. So he sent fewer to Vietnam, and 2 weeks before he died. He signed a national security order ordering all of those troops home by 1965 with the first Jason Calacanis (00:12:16): 1000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:12:17): to come home that month in November, and he died 2 weeks later. So and then, of course, Johnson came in and remanded the war and sent 250,000 troops over there, which is what all of my uncles military advisers wanted him to do. Yeah. And he stood up to them. One of the other things my uncle said and, you know, the anniversary of his speech at American University, which is an extraordinary speech, probably one of the best in American history. Jeff's actions called called the most important speech in American history. It was a speech to the American people, and it was it's an extraordinary speech because if you read it, it's asking them to put their their themselves into the shoes of the Russians and understand that the Russians bore the brunt of World War 2. they lost 1 out of every 13 Russians died in that war. A third of their country was occupied and leveled to the ground. It's like he said, is as if the entire East Coast of the United States to Chicago was put into rubble. And he described this in detail for the American people to say, you know, we're all people. We're all on an arc, and we need to we need to understand each other's motives, and not just vilify each other. And what we're seeing now is this formulaic vilification, this narrative that we saw as Saddam Hussein with you know, Putin with every little war that we wanna get into, those guys are pure evil. We're pure good, and we're gonna go rescue, you know, damsel and distressed. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:55): Just on that, could you contrast and compare just maybe the last 3 or 4 presidents on this very narrow dimension of that of JFK's promise of what president should be doing, Bush Obama, Trump, and now Biden. How do you see the things that these guys have gotten right and or very wrong here on that dimension, just on that dimension. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:14:16): You know, I've been friends with Joe Biden for many, many years. Joe Biden is, you know, he's a go to war guy. He've he was one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq or he's been support of every war that's come along, and that you know, I think that's one of the reasons that, you know, some of those that that portion of the Democratic Party, which is a very, very powerful kind of king pickers, was very happy with him getting an off is that he never says no to a war. I think Trump you know, I liked a lot of what Trump's had about foreign policy about disentangling us from this knee jerk reaction of, you know, of constant wars and that the cost that that imposes on our country. What it's doing, it's hollowing out our middle class. But then Trump did a lot of things, including walking away from the you know, from The intermediate nuclear missile treaty, which is was another provocation for Russia because that treaty, you know, we're we're putting these intermediate missile systems all along the Russian border, Romania, and Poland, and, you know, and in in Ukraine. And and that those missiles can hit cuba I mean, can can hit Moscow? In a in a few minutes, so there was a very destabilizing system. We all signed it, and he walked away from it. And now I don't think that was a I think that was another provocation. We should be de escalating these provocations though. You know, the why it didn't NATO This is what George Kennen said after after, you know, the the the Soviet Union collapsed. Why do we even have NATO anymore? Why do we have it? Why do we have it unless we're gonna involve the Russians in it? Why don't we do a martial plan for Russia? We won the war. They are the losers. They admit they're the losers, but they wanna join the European community. Let's make that easy for them. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:16:21): Let's not continue to treat them as if they're the enemy because that is a self fulfilling prophecy. And that, unfortunately, is what we did. Jason Calacanis (00:16:31): Let's pivot then. You wanna contain and you would force everybody to the table to a resolution, if I'm understanding correctly. You weren't explicit in terms of would you remove support, but I think we can infer from it. You would have a point at which you would stop sending armaments to Ukraine? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:16:47): We have tremendous moral pressure and economic pressure and everything else on Ukraine. David Sacks (00:16:53): How about this, Jason, I mean, would you be willing to take NATO expansion off the table if it helps resolve this conflict? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:16:59): Yeah. Every Because Biden David Sacks (00:17:01): won't Lobiden won't. Right? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:17:02): No. No. It's it's -- Absolutely. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:17:04): Why are we trying to expand? We gave our word and we would not expand NATO 1 inch to the east. And now we've gone into 13 countries. You know, it's a it is a provocation. Jason Calacanis (00:17:17): Let's talk about Taiwan. So we gotta stay out of wars. If Xi Jinping decides Taiwan is strategic, and he invades Taiwan. What would your response be if you were elected president? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:17:30): Well, my response would be to deescalate that conflict. There's essentially a war party in Washington that is is encouraging that conflict. a drumming of that constantly. What I would do is I would I would deescalate it. I would stop looking at it as a threat right now, and and I and allow the Chinese and the Taiwanese to come to their own solution about what kind of relationship they have. And I think that that that if we stop our provocations toward the Chinese that that would naturally de escalate. Jason Calacanis (00:18:11): And if China decided it's strategic and we're going in anyway, would you, if you were president, defend I won? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:18:18): That's a question that I would not answer. Jason Calacanis (00:18:22): I'm curious. Why not? Why don't presidential candidates just answer that question? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:18:26): Because you're committing the country do a war in the future, and that would be probably the bloodiest war ever fought. And it's not something that strategically, it's not good strategy to predict your your intentions. You wanna leave room for negotiation. You wanna leave room for all kinds of movements, and you wanna have a debate with the American people and with Congress. Jason Calacanis (00:18:52): Biden's been clear that he would defend it. Right? So that that's an it's an interesting insight right there. Friedberg, do you wanna talk maybe a little bit about the economy and the spending that we're seeing? David Friedberg (00:19:02): Yeah. So, Robert, I think my biggest question I've reference this on the show a number of times is this extraordinary concern I have about the fiscal deficit and the debt level of the US, running deficits north of a $1,000,000,000 a year 33,000,000,000,000 in total debt. Some people use the debt to GDP metric, which, you know, at this point, is approaching or has exceeded a Jason Calacanis (00:19:29): 130%. David Friedberg (00:19:31): and fifty two nations that have reached that level of debt to GDP, only one of them has not had to restructure their currency or restructure their debt payments. Obviously, with the debt ceiling approaching and some fiscal conservatives using this moment as a point to try and generate leverage. I guess my biggest question for the country now and going forward is, you know, do we actually have the ability to pursue all of these interests on a social, a geopolitical, a security agenda, and and do so without having either a balanced budget or a plan that says, here are the boundaries and here are the boundary conditions. Because in the last couple of years, and particularly, in the last 5 years, we've seen almost like a bipartisan, unmitigated spending spree that, you know, is largely driven to, you know, to to do what the electorate wants, which is to give people stuff and giving people stuff costs money and that money has to be paid back at some point. I guess, how do you think about the importance of this? And how do you think about the boundary conditions that you would, you know, look to articulate and impose as you, you know, think about this role with respect to the the deficit spending and the debt levels for this country. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:20:57): In terms of a boundary, I I you know, I would love to hear arguments about that, but I you know, I we as you say, I think the debt is now Jason Calacanis (00:21:07): 32,000,000,000,000. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:21:09): The GDP our GDPs are Jason Calacanis (00:21:11): 25,000,000,000,000,000. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:21:13): So that is and that's just a really alarming ratio. I if you look at why, you know, the the primary cause are our military expenditures. We're spending Jason Calacanis (00:21:24): 8 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:21:24): this year, I think. Jason Calacanis (00:21:27): $88,400,000,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:21:30): on the military budget this year But if you throw in the homeland security and all that surveillance and security expenditures at home, it's 1.1,000,000,000,000 a year. that's 1,100,000,000,000 a year that is attributable to to essentially to our our, you know, warmongery. And I don't think we can afford to be policemen of the world anymore. We have 800 bases around the world. We need to start rebuilding our middle class at home. We need to be responsible with our debt, and we need my grandfather always said, we should make America too expensive to conquer. We should make Fortress America. We should arm America to the teeth at home so that no. So we're too expensive to conquer, and then we should concentrate on building up our economic power and a robust middle class. as what's gonna make America strong. And instead of projecting military strength abroad, we ought to be projecting our economic strength and a marketplace of ideas and economic power. I I you know, right now, we're borrowing Jason Calacanis (00:22:40): 6 $6,000,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:22:43): a day mainly from the Chinese and Japanese just to serve the interests on that debt. That's not a healthy thing for America to be, and gotta figure out, you know, a way to impose fiscal discipline. But I can't tell you exactly what my boundaries would be that's something I need to think about. David Friedberg (00:23:00): But how do you how do you think about that? Like, I think nond of discretionary spending You know, defense is is about 800,000,000,000. Non defense is about 900,000,000,000. And then, obviously, there's Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, In order to get the budget balanced, you think cutting defense would be kind of the 1st priority and you could kinda get there through, you know, that approach. But I I there still seems to be a big gap to me on you know, given how much we're spending. on how do we actually get there? Are we ultimately gonna have to kind of change retirement benefits, restructure Medicare, Medicaid, Or are we gonna raise taxes? Or are we gonna do all three to get to this point? Otherwise, we have this obviously kind of never ending death spiral that that's that's gonna cause a massive crisis. whether it's not this year or maybe it's in 5 years or 10 years. Right now, it's projected social security will go bankrupt in Jason Calacanis (00:23:57): 2035, 2034. David Friedberg (00:23:59): around that range. So this is coming up fast. What are we gonna be cutting besides defense? And or are we gonna be raising taxes to 70%, do you think? to kind of bridge this whole. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:24:09): I can't answer that question any better than I already have. You know, I think with their there is there are targets for opportunity in the in the homeland security. I think once we stop fighting these wars all over the world, there's a lot less need for us to have a surveillance aid at home. So the real cost in the military is 1,100,000,000,000 a year, not just the 800,000,000,000,000 that shows up on the book. And I think those are targets for opportunity. And I I can't you know, I have to know I need to study more as the issue about how to how to get back into a balanced budget. I you know, one of the things I'd say just herbs me is that I don't think we should be playing chicken in congress about raising the debt ceiling because I I don't think should mess around with the full faith and credit of the United States, particularly at this point in time. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:05): One of the things that's happened in the world, Bobby, you said There's been a couple of countries. France is probably the best example that had to raise the retirement age. And irrespective of the view that one has on whether that was right or wrong The practical reality of doing it is just that when these initial social safety nets were passed, the average life expectancy of folks was 10, 15 years less than what they are today. And presumably as we keep inventing technologies, folks are going to live to 80, 90, a 100 years on average which may seem implausible but is likely if you look at the trend. I'm just curious how you think about the state of our social safety net. And what has to change? What would you keep the same? And what has to be totally reimagined for what the world will look like in 30 or 40 years? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:26:03): I would say it's a red line for me to touch Social Security. or Medicaid or medic Medicare, I think we need to take care of people, particularly people who have spent their whole life like hanging into a system. with a promise at the end and and have worked hard and and saved and done what they're supposed to do. I don't think they you know, it's right to pull the rug out from under them. But again, I this is an issue that I need to spend more time looking at and studying. Maybe the next time I come back here, I'll have a better answer for you guys. David Friedberg (00:26:41): I think this is my concern is Sorry. But, Robert, the the the comment you just made is the same comment I hear from both sides of the aisle that we can't touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, because it would be so unpopular we wouldn't get elected. And that's ultimately kind of what a democracy like ours may lead to is that folks vote and elect representatives that are gonna create these systems that benefit them But in aggregate, we may not be able to support those benefits over time and at scale. And we may be facing that moment sooner than any of us want to. And I think it's one of the more pressing issues and concerns not just for the United States, but for the global economy. that if the US doesn't resolve this massive hole talking about Social Security, for example, going bankrupt in the next 12 years as one acute example of that problem set, you know, we may not be able to turn it around. And, I mean, do you think that politics is set up to solve these structural economic problems that the US is now facing? Because so much politics ends up leading towards what additional benefits can I provide to my the folks that kept me elected. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:27:55): Here's the thing. is we spent $8,000,000,000,000 in the war in Iraq, Jason Calacanis (00:28:02): $8,000,000,000,000, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:28:03): and we got nothing for it. David Friedberg (00:28:05): Yeah. That's pretty nuts. That's nuts. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:28:07): In fact, we got worse than nothing. We killed more Iraqis than Saudi Musa, and we killed 1,000,000 Iraqis probably We created ISIS. We turned Iraq into Speaker 5 (00:28:16): a proxy for Iran, which is exactly what we've been not trying Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:28:16): to do for 40 years. And we drove 2,000,000 refugees with the Iraq war in its aftermath Syria and Yemen and, you know, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 2,000,000 refugees in Europe. destabilize democracy in Europe. Then we go ahead. So $8,000,000,000,000 there, we spent $16,000,000,000,000 on the pandemic. on the lockdown. And, again, got nothing in return. So that's $24,000,000,000,000. And now we're doing bank bailouts every, you know, couple of months. the Silicon Valley bag, the Fed said that it was printing $300,000,000,000 for that. made up for all of the, you know, deflationary steps that the Biden administration had previously taken. You go to you know, you go to a an American who's been working their whole life. has been promised at the end of the life that they're gonna get a few bucks every month. And, you know, I have a friend who I brought to my speech with me who's who during the same month that we committed another $750,000,000 during March. 7 we spent Jason Calacanis (00:29:33): $750,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:29:35): after the Ukraine. We we got 15,000,000 Americans from Medicare. My friend got a call from I from the from the government on his cell phone, a recorded call saying that your food stamps have just been cut by 90%. It went from $283 a month to $25 a month So you try to feed yourself on $25 a month. There are 30,000,000 Americans who are starving right now. and that to me is unacceptable. And it's hard to go to people like that, people who have been honest, who have played by the rules, who have done everything that they were supposed to do with the promise that they would be taken care of, that their health care would been taken care of an older age. you go to those people and say, okay. Now we're gonna cut your food Speaker 5 (00:30:28): stamps and try to feed yourself Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:30:28): on $25 a month. try and feed yourself for $25 a week. We're telling them that. And then Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:40): and then spending 800,000,000,000 to make a plane. Speaker 5 (00:30:43): How are David Sacks (00:30:43): you gonna cut the federal budget when you're sending over a 100,000,000,000 to Ukraine? There's you can't you have no moral authority to do it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:30:48): I wanna finish that by saying, you know, you're like tinkering in the engine room when the ship is sinking. You know? Because like, you know, the the or or switching spectators on the Titanic. Yeah. Let's deal with the real problem. Let's figure out how to make this nation, a nation that is really focused on taking care of our people inside rather than saying, okay. Well, in order to pay for the Ukraine war, We gotta screw every American on Social Security And Medicare. We've had by the way, the inflation that we've created from you know, from from just printing money is making my friend Keith's food twice expensive. So the the cause of stables in this country has raised by 76% in 2 years. And now they're cutting his food stamps and bailing out the same month, $300,000,000. This is Silicon Valley bag. We we got it. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. and having this kind of conversation, how do we screw the poor to make sure that we can, you know, we can milk them while we're doing all of this great it's like this country is acting like the alcoholic who is behind on his mortgage. and who takes the milk money and goes into the bar and buys rounds for strangers. You know, that's what you're dealing with. Jason Calacanis (00:32:10): That's a pretty good analogy. shots, everybody. David Sacks (00:32:14): So let me let me ask a follow-up question on this debt ceiling fight, which is which is a game of chicken. And the the country's economy might go off a cliff in the next month because Republicans Democrats can agree. So Biden's position is I want a clean debt ceiling increase, no terms on it. The house Republicans have passed a debt ceiling increase, but it contains things like a Jason Calacanis (00:32:40): 1% David Sacks (00:32:41): cap on spending growth, it claws back unspent COVID 19 relief funds and it would halt Biden's student debt forgiveness plan. So, Robert, I guess a question to you would be, would you negotiate? Like, what would your posture to house Republicans be? Would you be willing to negotiate? Because Biden is basically saying I will not negotiate at all. So negotiate or not negotiate? I guess that's my question to you. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:33:06): You you you have to negotiate. I'm not sure if he's posturing, you know, or what. They have to negotiate. they have to, you know, they have to work out something that's good for our country. And that you know? And and you're gonna both sides. You're gonna have to give up something. we have to, you know, we have to put our country first, and it's it's insane to play this game of chicken with a you know, with this doing the steaks or so. Jason Calacanis (00:33:31): I spend a lot of talk, Robert, about the deep state, the FBI, DOJ, CIA, your family, obviously having dealt with 2 tragic assassination to father and your uncle. Has done with this firsthand in terms of just having the CIA information about these assassinations released. I'm curious your position on some of the most radical proposals, people have this election cycle of dismantling the FBI CIA, DOJ, DOJ, aka, the deep state? Do you believe there's a deep state? And how would you as president deal with this intelligence operation we have. And and then also personally, what are your personal feelings on it? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:34:19): Well, on on the you know, I have you know, I've I have a pretty clear idea about how I would handle the intelligence agencies. And in fact, my father was thinking very deeply about that at the time. My father who believed his his, you know, first reaction when his brother was killed was that the CIA had killed him. And in fact, the first three calls he made on that day. And, you know, I was home at the time. And John McComb, the CIA was right Across the street from my house. And so John McComb was the CIA director. You would come to our house and swim every day after work during the spring and summertime. And my father called the CIA desk and talked to a desk officer and said, did your people do this? That was his first call. And he called Harry Ruiz. who is a Cuban who was one of the Cubans who had remained friendly with my family. My you know, while we were surrounded by Cubans growing up, because of who were bay of pigs refugees, my father had got them freed after a year in, you know, in the Castro is present. And and my father and mother spent a lot of time finding houses for them, schools integrating them to US military, finding jobs. And so we were all raised very, very closely with the Cuban community, but gradually, they turned away from my family. But this one Cuban who had been been been an engineer had fought with Castro and then turned against him when he came became communist with very close friends with my father. The second call that he made was to Harry Ruiz, and he said, did you know, our people, meaning that CIA people do this. And and that was and so My father was thinking very very, very carefully about how to handle this. He he had been know, he had been essentially managing the CIA since he came into office, and he recognized that the and know, as I I talked about on my speech and I think David on this show mentioned is that during the day of pigs invasion, My uncle realized that he had been lied to by by Charles Bell and Alan Dulles and Richard Bitts, all the heads of the as well as his joint chiefs. And he came out in the middle of the invasion when it turned against them, and he realized these these men were being killed on the beach, and he said, oh, I wanna take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:37:00): So he recognized the function of the intelligence agencies had devolved and that they were they had become captive of the military industrial complex and the military contractors, and their their function was essentially to provide our nation with a constant pipeline of new wars to feed the military industrial complex and the growth of the surveillance state. And my father, when he ran for president, Pete Hamel, who was one of his favorite newsmen asked him on the bus during 2 weeks before he died, asked him what he what he was gonna do about the CIA, and he said, what we need to do is to we we need to remove the espionage division espionage branch from the plans division. The plans division in CIA is essentially the dirty tricks provision. That's the the division, the action, brief division. They do the assassinations. They fix elections. They do paramilitary operations, black ops, torture, black sites, all of that stuff. the espionage division, and CIA was originally set up by Cuba by Truman as an espionage agency. Espionage means information gathering and analysis. It's not violence. It's about information acquisition. And, unfortunately, the the the the the clandestine action division was wagging the espionage dog. Oh, that function the espionage division was to to provide new actions, things to do or the client assigned division and then covering up their mistakes. So there was never any accountability. And what my father understood is that the espionage division should not be working for the for the Chamath science services they should be overseeing them and particularly doing accountability. Uh-oh. You know, what if the CIA looks the way that the CIA looks at the war in Iraq is it was a success because we accomplished our mission of deposing Saddam Hussein. But and, you know, the CIA was George Tennant who lied to president Bush and said it's a slam dunk. So they got us to go in there weapons of action. Jason Calacanis (00:39:28): So as president, would you rethink it? And then just as a final question that's follow final follow to that. Do you believe they murdered or were involved in the murder of your uncle? What what have you come to personally? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:39:41): The CIA. Yes. They were definitely involved in and, you know, and the 60 year cover up. They're still not releasing the, you know, the papers that legally they have to release. But I don't think there's any doubt if you look at this huge, you know, mountain, monumental mountain of evidence and confessions and, you know, many people who have confessed to their involvement, and, you know, we understand the if you look I mean, for anybody who has doubts about that, I would recommend a book by Jim Douglas called The Unspeakable because I think he's done a better job than anybody else at kind of assembling and distilling all of the millions and millions of documents that have been released over the past 50 years. And these things these revelations are released incrementally, and so nobody really takes notice of when you put them all together, the story is very clear. Jason Calacanis (00:40:38): So you you would definitely rethink the CIA, the FBI, DOJ, you know, the whole intelligence At a minimum, I think -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:45): Yeah. -- what you're saying as well as maybe you would also release the documents that maybe would at least provide some more transparency. I just wanted to build on that because you had a very provocative tweet Part of what you're talking about is accountability, and we need data and transparency to have that. There are people that have whistle blown. There are people that have leaked. And I think it's fair to say that they've all been treated by the security apparatus in largely the exact same way. But you tweeted recently about your desire to see some of those folks forgiven and pardoned Do you wanna just take a few minutes just to talk about some of those folks that you think has allowed us to actually see the truth if we wanna see it and why you think that? And you think should be done Speaker 5 (00:41:31): with folks like that? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:41:32): I mean, Julian Assange is an example. Julian Assange is a newspaper publisher. He published leak documents. You know, why are we I mean, I if I was any newspaper, the publisher in this country, I would be worried about that. Then now he can go to jail for life because he published leaked documents of great import to the American people of things that should not have been the secret that we should have known about. The revelations that affect our civil rights affect our foreign policy affect things that we have it right to know about. And, you know, it's it's really it it's strange that there's any support for his imprisonment. I'm on the press, and I think the press is beginning to figure this out finally. the most controversial of those figures is Edwin Snowden. But Edwin Snowden released documents that showed us that we were all being spied upon. And that's important for Americans to know. And in fact, it was so important that Congress passed laws based upon his revelations to protect the American people. So why are we punishing the whistleblower rather than punish the people who were, you know, who were illegally spying on us. That's what we should be doing. We shouldn't be jailing dissenters in our country. We shouldn't be jailing whistle blowers. We should be jailing the people who break the law. Jason Calacanis (00:42:59): To keep this bipartisan, do you believe the deep state is acting to subvert the Trump presidency and that they are framing him on these 3 or 4 inditements that they are working on, some that have dropped some that haven't. Do you believe there's a deep state compare conspiracy against Trump? because you might be facing him. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:43:21): I don't use the word deep state. I mean, I, you know, I you know, I've described how of these bureaucracy's function, and it it's not that it's not so much a a group of people that kinda deep split state implies that there's a group of people and kind of, you know, black coats in a smoky room are pulling strings, but the the corruption is systemic. The these are You know, they've all of these agencies are captive agencies. The CIA is ultimately working for for industry, like the oil industry, the coal industry, and the military contractors. And that they've always had that ties the very beginning. You know? Alan Dulles who had worked for Selwyn Cromwell and ended up doing Cudet Taz on behalf of his former clients like Texaco And United Fruit, Texaco and BP, and and Iran in my Jason Calacanis (00:44:15): 1953. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:44:17): his former client, United Fruit, when when Jacob Arbens and Guatemala tried to nationalize United Fruit, you know, the CIA under dollars went overthrew the government to protect the interests of his former clients. So there's always been these ties the industry and the ties now and particularly the oil industry and the ties to to the military industrial contractors really drive CIA action and CIA intelligence. And we have to, you know, you have to stop And and this is systemic in all these agencies. I mean, USDA is run by Cargill Smithfield. I'm on Boe Pilgrim, John Tyson, EPA is right. When we sued EPA, we got discovery documents that showed that the head of the pesticide division, Jess Rowland, had been secretly working for Monsanto for a decade. And, you know, sending memos back and forth with Monsanto directing them. You need to kill this study. You need to kill that study. And this, unfortunately, is not the exception. It is the rule. Most of the people who work for those agencies are good citizens. They're good Americans. They're honest. and their patriots, that the people who tend to rise in those agencies and occupy these very, very powerful keep position from decades or years like Anthony Fauci, 50 years are people who are in the tank with industry. And what we need to do is unravel that across the government, and that's really what people say. That's the deep state. That really is what it's a systemic corruption within our agencies. That is that's driven by agency capture. Speaker 5 (00:46:04): Can we actually just talk about the coronavirus, maybe pandemic for a second. And I just want to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:09): tie in 2 concepts. Sometimes, again, there's a lot of mainstream misinformation about it There is a lot that came out about you particularly as it relates to vaccines. I just want Speaker 5 (00:46:21): to give you an opportunity to set the record straight Just Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:24): on what you think happened, COVID, all that corruption, your thought on vaccines, Speaker 5 (00:46:28): the efficacy of our programs, how we should change what we keep the same. just maybe a chance to clear the air so that we can get some of the gobbledygook on the Internet set straight. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:46:39): I mean, it's hard to you know, I wrote a a 250,000 paid book about it, and I've written a couple of books and so it's hard to summarize. you know, what went wrong in in a in a second, but it's but, essentially, we had instead of a Public health response to a public health crisis, we had a militarized and monetized response. That was the inverse of what of everything that you would wanna do if you actually wanted to protect public health. Yeah. We've known you know, if you look at WHO protocols or CDC protocols, the EU, the NHS, and Britain. All those they all had protocols for how to manage the pandemic. They all sat unanimously You do not use lockdowns, mass lockdowns. You quarantine the sick. You protect the vulnerable, but you keep society moving because the consequences of not of shutting down society will be cataclysmic beyond anything that the disease is gonna impose. Everybody knew that. And so, you know, we had these these agencies that that had drilled for years years this alternative, you know, militarized response. And instead of, you know, doing what you wanna do, which is to get early treatment to people to have I mean, you know, we we live in the age of the Internet. We should have had a a grid that connects at all 15,000,000 frontline doctors every country around the world and figured out what are you doing that works in your country, you know, and try and then dispilling that information and processing and then getting it to other doctors. Well, we knew what was working. We knew ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were working. We knew that since 2004. because NIH did this study that said hydroxychloroquine obliterates coronavirus. We knew what would work at that time. And what was the response? they the response was they could not allow early treatment to occur. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:48:41): Why? Because there's a little known federal law. that says if there is a drug that is shown effective against the target disease, it is ill it a drug that is approved for any purpose. It is illegal to issue a a emergency use authorization for a vaccine. So if they had admitted that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin worked against coronavirus, it would have destroyed their whole $100,000,000,000 vaccine you know, enterprise. So they had to kill early treatments, and they went after stuff that they knew were they this was the 1st respiratory virus in history where people would go to the hospital, and they would test positive for coronavirus and be symptomatic. They're sick. Hey. That's why they went to the hospital. And the hospital would say to them, there is no treatment Go home till your lips turn blue and you can't breathe and come back, and we will give you two things that are gonna kill you. Remdesivir and hydroxide and and ventilation. So People still look at in this country, at anti Fauci is a era. And we were doing things a couple of miles from May in Malibu there were police pulling surfers out of the surf and giving them $1000 tickets and telling them to go home. And I'm out of this shine where where coronavirus doesn't spread and lock him in their home where it does. And every time they send some one of these people home from the hospital sick, It was a super spreader of that. Oh, you look at our record of coronavirus, and this is when nobody can explain who is, you know, defending Fauci etcetera. We had the highest body count in the world by far from coronavirus. Like, our we have 4.2 percent of the world's population. We had 16% of the COVID deaths. How does anybody explain that? And you go to nations that didn't do what we told them. Nigeria Nigeria is the highest malaria burden in the world, so it everybody everybody gets hydroxychloroquine once a week. They call it Sunday, Sunday. Everybody in the country takes it on Sunday. They had the highest river blindness burden. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:50:58): So half the country's on ivermectin. Nigeria never had an epidemic. It had a death rate in Nigeria of 14 people per million population. Our death rate, 3000 per million population. Blacks in our countries were dying at 3.6 times the rate of whites. Why were American blacks signed at Nigerian Black Swarrant? And and then you go to Haiti. Haiti had a a And by the way, Nigeria had 1.3% vaccination rate. 80 at 1.4% vaccination rate. And they had a death rate of 15 per poll per million population. These these in the countries that Tony Fauci and Bill Gates said We gotta get them vaccinated. We gotta do whatever you can because they're gonna get totally wiped out because they're poverty. And guess what? They never had a pandemic across Africa that was a 10% vaccination rate. And guess what? They had a death rate of about Jason Calacanis (00:51:54): 340. some people think that the death rate here was overstated because of incentives to do that. Do you believe that as well? Yes. So maybe part of that death rate is it was over and said it. But you believe looking back on this, that Fauci as well as the pharma companies, Bill Gates, investments in those areas, that led us down a path for, call it, the medical industrial, the farm industrial complex. You believe the farm industrial complex dictated our response to coronavirus and then Freightberg, I'll let you jump in. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:52:28): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:52:28): But do you believe that. That that's the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:52:31): I I don't have any question. I believe this was a you know, it was as I said, it was a military response. I mean, look at who was running the look at who was running the coronavirus response. Wouldn't you think it would be HHS? well, when they when Warp Speed had to present its declassified its organizational charts, to show to the FDA committee called WERPAK, when they demanded it. And Workspeed went in and showed them the organizational chart charts the the the the agency running Warp Speed and pandemic response was not HHS It was NSA, the national security agency. April Haynes is the director of National Intelligence. So she was running Operation Workspeed. And who was manufacturing? It wasn't Pfizer Moderna. It was a 140 military contractors. who, you know, who had lines ready. And you say, you know and and, you know, all of this clamped down on on civil rights that we saw, the the censorship the closing the churches, the, you know, the the closing of the right to assemble the banning of jury trials against Pharmaceutical companies. They crushed the 7th amendment, the 1st amendment. They closed down Jason Calacanis (00:53:55): 3,300,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:53:57): businesses with no due process, no just compensation. They they obliterated the 4th amendment right to, you know, to against warrantless searches and seizures. with all these intrusive you know, you you you have to show your medical records to go and get out of your house or to get into a public building. Friedberg, what what Jason Calacanis (00:54:17): is correct here? do you believe in what is incorrect about Roberts with Robert saying, if anything? Speaker 5 (00:54:21): Well, look. David Friedberg (00:54:21): I mean, there's obviously a lot of things I could say. By the way, I I was on the executive team in Santo for a couple years. So, you know, I one one thing I will say is I sat on the at the table facing the EPA and the US and certainly didn't feel like a very cozy relationship in at least what I saw in the few years I was there, it was it did feel like a very kind of independent regulatory and challenging, frankly, regulatory process that Monsanto had to manage and deal with and go through in in releasing new product. you know, I I don't think that this notion that there were kind of embedded parties that did our whims and wishes really placed through at least from my experience sitting there. And I'm not a long time Monsanto executive. I built a software company, sold it to Monsanto and sat on the exec team for a few years after the acquisition. But I guess the the the more kind of I think bigger framing question for you, Robert, is really around vaccines in general. I think your your commentary around the the COVID response and, you know, the influencing forces there, didn't start with COVID. Right? I mean, you you've you've been a a kind of, you know, outspoken voice on VAC scenes in general for some time. Is that a fair statement? because I think that that's part of the media narrative around your history and legacy is that you have been kind of outspoken on vaccines and the you know, the the risks and the and the effects that you that you consider to be kind of I I don't know if it's implied or explicit with respect to the use and and wide adoption of vaccines over time. And you could share a little bit about your broader perspective in the years leading up to COVID and how that then kind of informed your point of view specifically on COVID? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:56:01): Oh, you know, my objective is not to vaccines. I'm not anti facts. I've I'm fully vaccinated. My kids were fully vaccinated. made. I wish at this point that I had not done that because I know enough about them now, but my principal objective is that vaccines in the the childhood vaccines are immune from prelicensing safety testing. Of the 72 when I got as a kid, I got 3 vaccines. My children got 72 doses of 16 vaccines. And the vaccines are the one medical product that does not have to go through placebo controlled trials where you test that expose versus an expose population prior to licensor. And that there's a number of historical reasons for that that come out of the kind of military beginnings. The these vaccines were regarded as as national security defense against biological attacks on our country, so they wanted to make sure if the Russians attacked us with anthrax, or some other biological agent, they could quickly formulate and deploy vaccine at 200,000,000 Americans with no regulatory impediments. So they they call them biologics from medicines and exempted biologics from pre licensed safety trauma. I've litigated on the issue. Now one of them has ever and tell you is tested, realizes her against. So nobody knows what the but, you know, you can say that the vaccine is effective against the target disease, but you can't say that it's not causing worse problems. Now I'll I'll just summarize this story. In the the vaccine schedule exploded in Jason Calacanis (00:57:41): 1986, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:57:43): The vaccine industry succeeded in getting Ronald Reagan to sign a law, and my uncle was also, you know, a group that was pressured by Wyatt, which was losing $20 in downstream liabilities on every vaccine it made because of lawsuits. for every dollar that it made. And they and and prop they went to Reagan and said, we're gonna get out of the vaccine business. and you're gonna be left without a vaccine supply unless you give us full immunity from liability and Reagan, you know, reluctantly sign that. And so today, no matter how negligent the company, no matter how grievous your injury, no matter how reckless or conduct, you cannot sue them. that caused it gold rush because now you've got a product that there's no downstream liability. You're immune from that. there's no upstream safety testing, so that's a $250,000,000 saving, and there's no marketing or advertising cost. So because The federal government's gonna mandate this product to 76,000,000 American children whether they like it or not. And there's no better in the world, and so there was a golden origin. Instead of 3 vaccines, we quickly ended up with 72, and now we're going to, you know, toward 80 right now. and there's no ended site. And a lot of those vaccines were unnecessary. They're not even for casual disease cause disease. Here's what happened. In night beginning in Jason Calacanis (00:59:07): 1989, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:59:09): We experienced a chronic disease epidemic in this country, and it's unlike anything in in the history. We went from having 6% of Americans affected by chronic disease to 54% by 2006. And what do I mean by chronic disease? I mean neurological disease that I never saw when I was a kid. ADD ADHD, speech delay language like ticks or syndrome, ASD, autism, narcolepsy, all of these suddenly appeared. Autism rates went from 1 in 10000 to 1 in Jason Calacanis (00:59:42): 34. 1989 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (00:59:45): was the year this began. Allergic is the peanut allergy suddenly appeared. food allergies, eczema, suddenly appeared, anaphylaxis and asthma, you know, which had been around but it exploded. And then autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes. I never knew it I had 11 siblings about 70 cousins. I never knew anybody with any of these diseases. And son, why do I find my kids of allergies? So so then if you look at the manufacturer's inserts, for those 72 vaccines, there's 420 diseases that have been associated with the vaccines that are listed. including every one of those diseases that went epidemic in Jason Calacanis (01:00:37): 1989. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:00:39): And this is the country, which the most heavily sated, and this was happening here unlike any other country in the world. And so we have this, you know, this and And, you know, it's good for the pharma. This pharma now makes 60,000,000,000 on the vaccines. When I was a kid, they were making Jason Calacanis (01:00:55): 250,000,000. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:00:56): Now they make 60,000,000,000 a year plus 100,000,000 from COVID vaccine. Jason Calacanis (01:01:01): Friedberg, do you believe that these vaccines are over prescribed and are part of the rise in ADHD and and all this litany of diseases. I'm just asking Friedberg, who's our resident scientist here. Do you do you believe this? you know, explicitly as a scientist? I'm curious. David Friedberg (01:01:20): I don't think there's direct evidence supporting that relation I think that there's a lot of environmental factors that have been driving changes in you know, the rate of problems with autoimmunity, it relates to our food product. It's our food system. It relates to environmental chemistry like Robert has talked about generally. I think there's a lot of environmental conditioning that's caused this rise in in in problems in human health. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:01:48): Can I interrupt for a second? Because I I don't think it's solely the vaccines. Our children today are swimming around in a toxic zoo. But there's a timeline. And, actually, I I talked to colleges that I've used in many of my laws, and it's probably the most famous in the country, Phil Landergan. looked at the timeline of of the explosion of all these chronic diseases. And he said, there's only a finite number of things that have caused it. You know, one is glyphosate. Things that what became ubiquitous against it. In every demographic, beginning and around Jason Calacanis (01:02:23): 1993. 19 89. 1 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:02:27): of them is glyphosate near Nick until 8 pence besides PFOAs, cell phones, ultrasound. He made the whole list. And so it's a finite number. And the question is and vaccines are are part of that. And, you know, it is suspicious because the vaccines list all of these as side effects. Now I've I've put together books. You know, one of my books on this subject on connecting these. has 1400 references and 400 studies digested. So the the science out there is pretty clear. But we you get this NIH refused to study these things because it knows that whatever wherever they follow the doc it's gonna end up with a big shock. And so they simply have to stop studying them, and they've turned themselves into an incubator from pharmaceutical products, and they don't do this kind of basic research. I wanna just give you guys one example. The most common vaccine in the world is called the DTP vaccine, diphtheria tetanus and pertusses. We gave it in this country and beginning around 79. It was killing or causing severe brain injury and one out of every 300 kids who got it. UCLA study funded by NIH that found it, so they got rid of it. That's what caused all the lawsuits that eventually precipitated the passage of the vaccine. We stopped it here. They stopped in Europe but Bill Gates and WHO are still giving it to a Jason Calacanis (01:03:55): 161 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:03:56): million African children every year is the most popular vaccine on earth. Bill Gates says publicly, it saved 30 million lives. He went to the Danish government and said, we've saved 30 million lives. Will you support this program? in 2017, the Danish said show me the study that shows that it saved all those lives. He couldn't do it. So they went down and they conducted at the study, you know, West Africa with the Danes operate all these health clinics, and they looked at 30 years of data. And as it turned out in a nation called Kenny Bissau, Half the kids of that country at the age 2 months had received the vaccine and have had not. It was a perfect natural experiment. and they looked at 30 years of data. And what they found was that the kids who received the vaccine were not dying of diphtheria tetanus and pertusses. But girls who received the vaccine were dying at ten times the rate of unvaccinated girls, and they were dying of anything ever anybody ever associated with the vaccine. They were dying of of Bill Hartsia, malaria, anemia, minor cuts and scrapes and mainly pulmonary respiratory diseases and and pneumonia. and what the researchers concluded. And this was a a study funded by the Danish government and Novo Nordisk, which is a vaccine company, and the scientists were all pro vaccine. What they said is this vaccine is killing more people than the disease ever were. Nobody knew it because nobody associated the people who were dying because they were dying all these different things. with only the unvaccinated kids. So the vaccine had saved them from different area of tetanus and pertusses, but it had ruined their immune system. so that they could not defend themselves against other diseases. And that's the danger of not having placebo controlled trials prior to introducing the product, particularly when you command data product for healthy people. Jason Calacanis (01:05:54): Let's with our remaining time here, move on to energy. You end the environment. You've got an incredible track record. I remember growing up in New York, the amazing work you did. for the watershed project, and I'll let you expand upon that in a moment. But the only confounding thing I I found in your position. And I'm curious if it's changed or not, is that you spend decades trying to close the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in a time when clearly nuclear power has gotten safer and is clearly, I think we're the world believes and certainly everybody who's on this panel believes Nuclear is a key point in the transition to renewable. So what is your actual position? Explain it to us. as basically as you can on nuclear power, and do you regret, or have you rethought your position on Indian Point? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:06:47): No. I mean, and the important is the leaking tritium into the, you know, odds every every day. Oh, I don't see how you can say it's safe. And, you know, they they still haven't figured out what to do with the ways they're now storing it. You know? It's it's 18 miles from Midtown Manhattan. If a you know, they the the shock where they were stalling The fuel rods had the structural integrity of a Kmart. A terrorist attack against it would you know, with basically render New York in have uninhabited for, you know, the next 5000 years or so so to have to to put to put something that risk is so close to, you know, 10 million people doesn't make any sense. Now nuclear power, I'm all for it if they can ever make it safe or if they ever make it economical. And it's not me saying it's not safe. It's the insurance industry. They can't get an insurance policy. If they can't get an insurance policy and I would say, I don't want it. The nuclear American nuclear I mean, you go look at what Fukushima, they're poisoning the Pacific every day. with huge amounts of really deadly radiation, and they and out, their only solution to it is to suck the water out of the groundwater and stored in these big big tanks. And if you just go on the Internet and look at a picture of the Fukushima water tanks and they go on to the rising There's no end to it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:18): Robert, can I just make a point? The thing with nuclear that's worth separating is it's not the fundamental technology there that broken in either example that you use, but it's the profit motive that caused both the industrial engineering of both plants to be subpar. Because Fukushima, for example, was engineered not to the seismic levels that you really needed. Or elevation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:08:42): Yeah. Even conceding all that. here's what I would say is that, you know, in our country, there there's not the Nuclear is regarded as so dangerous that they can't get insurance. So the industry had to go to Congress in a sleazy legislative maneuver. in the middle of the night and get the Price Anderson Act passed so that they're so that to shift their accident burden onto the American pot So if their plant goes up, I am I and I was just ten miles from that plant, then I'm gonna have to pay for it. So I don't think that's free market capital as well. I believe in free markets. And I can tell you this, there is no public utility on the face of the earth that will build one of those plants without massive public subsidies. Not one. Nobody will ever do it. And then they have to store the waste for the next 30 1000 years, which is five times the length of recorded human history. And if you tell me how that you know, if they had to amortize that rate up front. There's no way anybody do it. Number number 2 or 3 or 4 or whatever I've gotten to. it caused out between Jason Calacanis (01:09:55): $916,000,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:09:58): to build a nuclear power plant just the construction cost. And then you gotta get the technicians, and then you gotta get, you know, the waste disposal, the regular outages, and all of this. There's no way that it could compete in a free market. I believe in free market capitalism. I am a radical free marketeer. I believe that our energy system should reflect the marketplace. And the right now, you can build a solar plant for a $1,000,000,000 a gigawatt. You can build a wind plant for Jason Calacanis (01:10:29): $1,200,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:10:31): a gigawatt. A coal plant will cost you about 3 and a half 1000000000 a gigawatt, and then you have to pay for the fuel by cutting down the mountains of West Virginia, poisoning twenty two thousand miles of streams burning, you know, putting mercury that gets into every freshwater fish in America sterilizing the lakes of the Appalachians. If they had to internalize that cause, coal, which says is that, you know, it's or nuke, which says it's too too cheap to meter. It turns out it's the most expensive way to boil a pot of water that's ever been I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:05): just trying to make the point that if you look at the levelized cost of energy now, what you're saying is exactly why solar and wind are winning. It's just so much cleaner, it makes so much more sense. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:11:14): There's no fuel cost. And if the impediment is distribution is that we don't have a grid system that can actively, you know, orchestrate a variable power, and that's what we Jason Calacanis (01:11:26): -- David Friedberg (01:11:26): Let me let me provide a counter that maybe it's not about distribution, but it's about scaling production capacity. So, you know, if you look over nearly any historical timescale since we've had industrial energy production on earth, For every 1% increase in GDP per capita, you see a roughly 1.2% increase in energy consumption per capita. And so if you forecast out by the end of the century, the GDP per capita estimates in the US and around the world we need to increase global energy production by roughly, you know, anywhere from 5 to 10 x. And you know, the current system of pouring carbon out of the ground and burning it up and pulling heat energy out of it doesn't scale, doesn't make sense, obviously, put aside the carbon effect problem. And there appears to be, you know, a reasonable chance of a pretty serious material shortage for renewable sources by the middle of next decade. So what do you think is the right answer to long range energy security? And what sort of technology should we be embracing? And do you think that they scale fast enough to kind of allow us to have our economy grow in the way that it needs to to support the the the population demands over the next century. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:12:34): I mean, I'm agnostic about the energy source, and I think you need a you know, you have to be eclectic about it, and a lot of them are or, you know, make sense locally, but we we I mean, we have enough energy we have enough wind energy in North Dakota. North Dakota is a windiest place on Earth outside of the Arctic. In North Dakota, Montana and Texas, we have enough wind energy to produce 5 times the amount of our entire grid. The the problem is the North Dakota wind farmer cannot get his product to market because it dissipates in a you know, we have an antict an antictated grid system that simply will not efficiently move electrons across country, and we need a DC grid system that, you know, is off ramps in the big cities, etcetera, that can do that. In North Dakota, if you have an acre of farmland, it's worth about 300 bucks. If you put a wind turbine on it, it's worth about 32100 bucks. So every farmer in North Dakota, wants to put wind turbines in their cornfields. And the problem is they cannot get that energy to market. That is the only choke point. And if we and the same is true, you know, in in and, you know, we have great solar power in this country. we we have, you know, we have an abundance of of renewable energy in this country and the power the problem is the incumbents were were were were operating on rules, under rules that were written by the incumbents. to reward the dirtiest filthiest, most poisonous, most toxic fields from hell rather than cleat cheap, clean, wholesome fields from heaven, and we ought to reverse that. and and make it make them all competitive. Jason Calacanis (01:14:27): Seems like technology and economics have reversed that in in a way. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:14:31): Yeah. One last question on this. So as president, would you port initiatives that could advance and allow approval of safe nuclear fission Production systems to be built here in the US? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:14:45): Well, I I will like like I say, I support Nuke. and new technologies of nuke that are safe, you know, where they but but as long as they can compete in a marketplace, You show me. And by by the way, I think we should be doing science even when there's no, you know, economic end to us, so we should be looking at this stuff. I would not promote new if it's not competitive in the marketplace. And it's you know? And and that means, you know, cleaning up your mess after yourself, which, you know, is a lesson we were all supposed to have learned in kindergarten. They have to show us what they're gonna do with the ways, how they're gonna internalize their cost rather than what they're doing now, which is to externalize their cause and internalize their profits. Jason Calacanis (01:15:28): Okay. We have covered a lot of territory And I hate to get to controversial ones like culture wars, but it's gonna come up in the presidential election. personally don't think this is what's important in the presidential election. I think the fiscal stuff, the energy stuff, the the the wars and political stuff we've discussed today are much more important. But I'm curious your take on the issues around Disney, DeSantis, trans, And this cohort of issues which have become an obsession, it seems, between certain members or certain political parties or both parties, the media And certainly, it's taken over a lot of discussions amongst the generation on social media. What's your take on all this? And when you get caught up in these debates and the presidential debates about trans athletes as but one example. Do you think a trans woman who was a biological male should be able to be put in a female prison? Do you think they should be able to play on a female basketball team and change with a bunch of fifteen year old girls in a high school locker room. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:16:36): I've already at 1st month, when I say this, I think that people I believe in bodily autonomy and that people's choices about what they wanna do with their body should be respected, and people should not be ashamed. I do not believe at at somebody who was born a biological man, should be able to compete later on in life, whatever choice they made on a woman's team. I mean, I have a a niece who is playing off all at at BC. She has worked. She has devoted her entire life to getting that scholarship. and it's bet it's consumed her. And I've watched, you know, during my lifetime, women's sports from essentially nonexistent too too equitable mainly with men's sports, and I think that's important. And I don't think that, you know, women should lose ground in in any way. So I would you know, I've said on I I don't believe that that's the right thing, but I think everybody should be respected. Jason Calacanis (01:17:46): Let me ask a question then about parents who are struggling with this issue. At what age Should a doctor be allowed to perform gender reassignment surgery on a individual. You believe adults. So at what age should you be able to have gender surgery? because this is gonna come up multiple times in this debate. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:18:11): I think odds ought to have that choice. I don't think a child should have that choice. except with, you know, certainly not without apparent parental permission. And I really don't you know, I know that the the real I you know, it's a and let's start by saying this. This is a difficult edge. and it's an issue that we should not be judging people on, and we should not be hating people about. We should much be trying to solve people problems and give people as much leeway as possible to and as much respect, it had to as much leeway to exercise their choices and much respect to those choices we possibly can. Within that framework, I don't believe that it's a that a child without their parent will permit should be allowed to choose that kind of surgery because Jason Calacanis (01:19:04): -- What if their parents agree to? Should a fifteen year old be able to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:19:08): I that that's a very difficult question. And I and I don't feel like I'm equipped to answer, and I'm not gonna You know, I interfere. Jason Calacanis (01:19:17): Yeah. I think this panel agrees with this. It's a very difficult issue, and, you know, people should be Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:22): yeah. What do you think about things like critical race theory. And maybe we can just use that as a way to just talk about the state of US education in general are we preparing our children for the task at hand? And what is the task at hand maybe? in your eyes, and how does it need to change if at all? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:19:42): You know, I think critical raise theory as much as I understand it. is, you know, though listen. We should not be hiding from people. We should be honest people about the history in this country of genocide of race and and those things. So the oh, you know, we need to be honest about that with each other, not to shame people, not to make people people feel bad not to make people feel guilty. But to understand the the milestones that we never wanna go near again and to move forward with those things. I you know, internal I I don't really understand the battle over critical race there in in schools, but, you know, to the extent if somebody would say that this has to, that that theme has to dominate all historical teaching, I would be against that. I think it's very, very important. You know, America Our country has has done wonderful things in the world. We have a history of idealism. We have a history of moral authority and leadership, and we have a history of doing bad things too. that I think for children, for the sake of our national unity, for the sake of, you know, for we need to instill children. with a sense of optimism and hope and love and also a love of history. I mean, I grew up learning history and learning, you know, kind of the heroic aspect of history, which I now understand are not the only parts of history, but it's really important for children to have have role models to look up to and have an optimistic view of our country and to have understand what the shared values are and by values. I mean, aspirational values. You know, the things that our country is supposed to stand for when we are at our past -- For Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:32): for example, Albert, in the in San Francisco, we canceled advanced placement classes because it made people feel bad. Do you think that was a good decision -- No. Jason Calacanis (01:21:43): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:43): in the name of equity? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:21:44): No. We should be inspiring our children towards excellence, and we should be able to, as adults, give them measures of what we we mean by excellence. And, you know, that inspires kids and inspires the best out of them. And, you know, we need to we need to have those kind of metrics, so that doesn't make any sense to me. Speaker 5 (01:22:04): But then what's your view on, for example, just educational diversity in charter schools and your just position on the teachers' unions? Yeah. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:22:13): I mean, my view is that we ought to be putting huge resources in public schools. and making them the best tools in the world. And I think if we you know, right now, we're making stealth bombers for a Jason Calacanis (01:22:27): $1,000,000,000 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:22:28): that cannot fly in the rain. And I think if we just cut production of a couple of those, we can make all our schools the best schools world. Jason Calacanis (01:22:37): Do they need competition? Do you believe in vouchers? And and parents getting to choose which school they go to because it does seem like there's not a lot of competition and that these teachers' unions have a strangle hold on these schools. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:22:50): I have to look at that issue more. I mean, my inclination is that we should be putting resources into making our public schools, the best schools in the world. Jason Calacanis (01:22:58): But you said you believed in free markets. With regard to energy, why not free markets in regard to education? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:23:05): It it's it has an appeal. I I need to look. Jason Calacanis (01:23:08): Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. David Sacks (01:23:09): Let's talk about censorship. Let's talk about the media. One of the things that happened during the COVID pandemic is that a lot of people grew suspicious of the mainstream media even more suspicious than they already had been. It seemed like the media was curing water on certain issues. It was almost impossible for the media to take seriously the idea that the virus might have come from the Wuhan lab. For example, people who put forward that, I think, reasonable explanation were called conspiracy theorists. The media didn't wanna look into why, for exam just as an example, Fauci lifted Obama's moratorium on gain of function research, couldn't get the media to really cover whether, you know, masking toddlers in schools, did anything positive. And then, you know, when we found out that the mRNA shots didn't prevent COVID the way they said, they never even really asked the CEOs of Pfizer and these other companies, when did you know this? When did you know that the vaccines didn't do what you said they're gonna do. I remember at Davos, you had a rebel news. It was this gorilla media out outfit that it costed Burla, the the CEO of Pfizer out in the street. And they were just asking him questions that the media is supposed to ask like, you know, when did you know? What what did you know and when did you know it with respect to whether the the vaccines prevented the spread? And you couldn't get the New York Times or any of the mainstream alleys to cover this at all. So it felt to this gorilla media outfit So any event, that's a long wind up. But, you know, Robert, what what's your take on the media? Why why can't we get what seems to be on this media coverage How does this fit into your theory of regulatory capture? Who are they sort of carrying water for and and why? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:24:57): You know, I in Jason Calacanis (01:25:00): 2015, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:25:03): I wrote a book on Simon aerosol, and it was Jason Calacanis (01:25:05): 8 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:25:05): a documentary that came out at that time called trace amounts. It was a really good documentary on the the mercury based preservative that was in a lot of vaccines at that time, and it's been removed from most except for the flu vaccine now. But I took that. I had a very close relationship with Roger Ailes, who is the founder of Fox News, I had this weird relationship just because when I was nineteen years old, I spent 3 months in a tent with him in East Africa. And we you know, he would like When when he started Fox Windows, he became like Darth Vader to me, and we were an anesthetic on every issue, but we always he's a was a very funny guy and very clever, but and he was also very loyal to his friends, and he would make all of the hosts of Fox News when me on. So I was the only environmentalist who's going on Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto. It said it regularly, like, weekly. and he made them do that. But I went to him with this with this this movie and showed it to him, and he found it compelling, and he had a relative who he believed was vaccine injured, a very, very close relative. And he bought he believed what was going on and what what the time commentary, you know, the thrust of the documentary was. And he said, I cannot let you talk about this on Fox News. I'm sorry. It's the first time you ever saw me this. And he said, if I let you if any of my hosts let you on to talk about this, I would have to fire them. And he said, And if I didn't farm, I'd get a call from Rupert within 10 minutes. And he said to me at that time, that 70% of the revenues for his non network news prime time. were pharmaceutical ads. And that that he said of 22 ad spaces that we sell on the network news, on the evening news, 17 of those are pharmaceutical. We cannot afford to to offend our biggest our our biggest funder, his advertisers. And, you know, I had this interesting experience with Jake Tapper where when I worked on my Rolling Stone article, deadly immunity, which was about this secret meeting that took place in Simpson with Georgia by CDC and all of vaccine companies, FDA, etcetera, where they decided to hide the autism effect from the American people, and we I got the transcripts from published in Rolling Stone. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:27:45): And and Jake Tapper worked for 21 days with me on a on a doc on a exclusive story. And he was gonna add simultaneously with with Rowling's on publishing it. And Tapper the night before it went on, he called me in total distress, and he said it's been pulled by corporate the whole thing is gone. He said never in my career has corporate killed one of my stories, and I'm really angry. And then I called him back the next day. He's never spoken to me again. But, you know, there are consequences for these newscasters who depart from the orthodoxy. And they know it. You know? If you look at Anderson Cooper, he's got a now probably a $13,000,000 a year salary. But if you actually do the math, probably around 10,000,000 of that comes from Pfizer, which sponsors his show. So, you know, that's he's working for them. He's not working for us. and, you know, they know who they're working for. Jason Calacanis (01:28:47): Exclusive stuff. And I can't disagree with you as having been a public my whole career. There is -- David Sacks (01:28:55): Why why even why even have pharmaceutical ads on TV? I mean, only doctors can prescribe them Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:29:00): Yeah. It was illegal prior to Jason Calacanis (01:29:04): 1997. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:29:04): So there's only 2 nations in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on TV. 1 is New Zealand and the others, the United States. We both have, you know, these huge pharmaceutical sales. So we take three to four times the amount of pharmaceutical drugs as a European takes. And we have the fur worst health results. We're 79th in terms of, you know, health impacts, you know, health outcomes among all nations. And so You know? And, also, pharmaceutical drugs are 3rd biggest killer of Americans after cancer and heart attacks. So it is not helping when when they when FDA changed that rule, the AMA was against it. Like, all the medical institutions said, you can't do this. It is gonna Roy Health in America. And but, you know, they did it. And the problem is that these are that the pharmaceutical companies now no not not only con you know, I have this platform for podcasting their product, but they also control content on the -- May I ask you David Friedberg (01:30:06): a question? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:07): far as I can tell, I think the left just to be blunt hates you more than the right. And so do you wanna just comment on your ability to get the mainstream media to pay attention, particularly folks on the and give Speaker 5 (01:30:24): you the air time so that you can get your message up. David Friedberg (01:30:27): And how much the party matters in this process for you? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:30:29): I don't know that they're gonna I mean, it was kind of traumatic what happened this week to them. Not to me because I'm used to it that ABC, you know, one of their a a person who describes herself as the journalist journalist and gave me a long talk when I got to ABC, that when I got to the green room that she was not somebody who'd ever sensor or cut and they're not working a cherry pick, I said to her, I don't I'm very uncomfortable doing a taped interview with you. I know what you guys do when I tape an interview. You cut it up, you cherry pick it, you dice it, and you do and you then you play things out of context. And she said you won't do see that from me, I'm a journalist journalist. I don't take orders from anybody. I do it. And then She asked me, she says, you know, in the interview, I didn't wanna talk about vaccines. I'm not going around the country talking about vaccines. if you see my speeches, I'm I don't mention vaccines. I but if somebody asks me about vaccines, I'm gonna tell the truth. I'm not looking to talk about I don't know. I know a lot about them. but I'm not leading with that because I I'm interested in a lot of other issues. Oh, she says everything you've said about vaccines. About vaccines, autism has been debunked. And, you know, vaccines, it's clear do not cause autism. What do you have to say by that? And the then I said, what by who? And then I went into a long diatribe where I cited the cases, the dates, publications and the studies of that show that, yeah, obviously, it caused autism, and she cut out that whole section. And then and then so she had her question, which stayed at the industry talking point, And then she brackets the the the news report on me with something at the beginning says, you know, he's known to be a chronic liar and a disinformation spreader. And in the end, she said we had to remove things he said because they were false. the whole thing was so weird that she has gotten criticism even from the left because, you know, I mean, what is a news cast her supposed to do? Are they supposed to ipulate public information? Is their job to protect Americans from dangerous thoughts? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:32:53): Are they audiences? Do they have such contempt to their audiences? at the event that the audiences can't make up their own minds, and what is their whole vision about the traditional role of the American media as the audience of free speech in the first amendment in this country. Jason Calacanis (01:33:09): You can be sure our commitment to you is to not take out one sentence of anything you said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:33:13): There's some stuff I'd like you to take Jason Calacanis (01:33:18): I mean, I also found that a crazy decision for them to make. If you're if they actually believe that what you're saying about vaccines, which they put on the table, is incorrect or what you said about autism or COVID is incorrect, they should be trained enough to rebut it and have a thoughtful debate about you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:33:38): I'll be even more blunt in public shit. My my short takeaway about you, Robert, is that you are this odd person, which is born and raised by the establishment, but raising a lot of very uncomfortable questions about the establishment. I think that that's very complicated for people to deal with and I don't think that folks will be very supportive of you in the mainstream. And I think the reason is because it'll cause them to question all these systems that they put a lot of trust into that they work within. And so I I'm not even sure whether they're trying to play Gotcha journalism about vaccines or which is a much bigger thing which is here is a guy that I do think it's very similar to Trump that says, He came out of the house and told us what was happening in the house and it actually turned out that was happening. The Dave Chappell quote from Saturday Night Live. I think you're a very different person than him. But that comment is very much the same. I think people are attracted to the truth and the confirmatory evidence about when they think that there's frankly corruption. And when it's laid bare in plain English, I think it's validating for those on the outside because we're like we knew it. And then for folks on the inside they're like we need to bury it. And I think that that's what you're going to be up against this entire election cycle. So whether it's us, whether it's Rogen, folks that'll give you the chance for you to just lay your case out for millions of people who can smartly and intelligently make up their decision. I think that's what it comes down to. So I really just wanna say thank you for giving us so much time and just being Speaker 5 (01:35:11): as honest as you were and transparent as you were. Jason Calacanis (01:35:13): Saks closing thoughts here with David Sacks (01:35:16): Mister Kennedy. -- that. I mean, I think I think that's a a great reference Chamath to to the Chappelle quote. I think that the ABC News interview was really telling because I think it's one thing if they had edited the interview for time and just cut certain things. But they didn't do that. They cut out your side of the conversation and then declared you guilty of misinformation, but not letting the audience hear what it is that you said. They simply declared you guilty of it. And I think In that case, I think this is an example of how dissenting views are labeled as misinformation as really a suppression tactic. you know, they they can't prove that it was misinformation. They didn't give you the chance to to say your your side of it. And I think this is a tactic now of the elite to declare certain inconvenient truths or viewpoints out of bounds. They don't want them being considered. And I think what's very interesting about your campaign is you are gonna force, I think, elites in, you know, various kinds foreign policy elites Jason Calacanis (01:36:24): Henderson Cooper -- David Sacks (01:36:25): Political elites. -- media elites. Financial Jason Calacanis (01:36:27): -- David Sacks (01:36:27): To consider views -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:36:29): -- David Sacks (01:36:29): that I you know, whether you agree with them or not, I think you've made them at a very r particular way. And I know enough about certain of your views like with respect to the origins of the Ukraine war to say, yeah, I I agree with that. I believe that's true. So I don't think they can dismiss you. Jason Calacanis (01:36:44): Today's conspiracy theories, Saks, as we've talked about, are tomorrow's pollitzers. Today's conspiracy theories are tomorrow's pollitzers. Go ahead, Jamath. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:36:52): I really think that this is what's gonna be scary as if your as its election kinda rolls forward, the contrast and compare on the Democratic side is gonna be very troublesome to the establishment. And I just encourage you to just just keep sticking to it and telling people what you think. Jason Calacanis (01:37:09): Freeburg any final thoughts as we wrap. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:37:11): Can I say one last thing in my defense? And I I wanna because it's such a great platform. what I've always said to be you know, if I'm if I'm promoting misinformation, which I'm constantly accused of, Show me what it is. Identify. Don't just say I'm an inform misinformation promoter. Show me the piece that you don't agree with or that you know, I I made a false statement. I would say that I have not promoted any misinformation if if Unless misinformation is just a euphemism for anything that departs from government or orthodoxies. Every pose I have probably the most robust fact checking operation in North America because I know these attacks are coming. So we have 300 and over 320, MD physicians, PhD scientists, on my advisory board who see everything that goes out. And everything that I posted on Instagram was cited her source for it to a government bay database or peer reviewed publication. I don't want anything. And, by the way, that doesn't mean I won't make a mistake at some point. But guess what? If I made a mistake, people would point it out. And you know what I would do? I'd change it Jason Calacanis (01:38:24): and apologize. -- opinion in the face of new facts? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:38:27): Exactly. I show me fact. That's the only thing that'll change my opinion. Show me facts, and I will change it so fast. But, you know, you need to show me facts. David Sacks (01:38:38): So just on on the competition between you and Biden for this nomination, I wanna say that the Kennedy family has been involved in public life for for decades. and many entities has served in public life. And I honestly don't remember one time with any Kennedy who served in public life, where they've been accused of receiving money from a foreign government, not once. And we're now up to 12 Bidens, I think, who've received a payment, you know, from foreign governments, potentially in this larger a 100 buying scandal. Do you have a point of view on that? I mean, The fact that it appears that Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family receive payments from foreign governments is that? How do you interpret that? Is that something that you think is fair game in this campaign to talk about? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:39:27): I, you know, I don't know enough about it, David, to be able render judgment on it. I I don't know the intricacies of those relationships. I I think the optics are are unfortunate. But, you know, I would leave it. I think it is fair game for people who are looking into it to to criticize and question it. I don't know enough. I'm not in the position to be able to do that. Jason Calacanis (01:39:52): Alright. On that I would just like to say, I grew up in a Catholic household, Irish Catholic in Brooklyn on the wall in my grandmother and grandfather's Dining room were three people, Bobby Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. It's been an honor to have you on the program, and thank you for giving us 2 hours a vibrant debate. We wish you well. And we'd like to have you on again. And perhaps if this platform allows -- September. -- for debates, and they will not host you on the debates. we will here on the all in podcast. I'll let you go. And the on behalf of all the besties, thank you for giving us 2 hours and deeply engaging on these topics. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:40:34): Fantastic. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Jason Calacanis (01:40:37): Alright. This, I think, went spectaculary well. Let's go around the horn here and get immediate reactions. Friedberg, I wanna start with you because I think you on the science issues maybe held back a little bit and let him speak? David Friedberg (01:40:51): Yeah. We didn't have much of a dialogue with him, I'd say. We we we all kind of had a few opening statements, but let him kinda speak his mind. I I don't know. We'll see how the episode plays with listeners. It was really him having a platform to speak his mind for the past, you know, 2 hours. And, you know, it's interesting. I mean, obviously, he's a candidate that's challenging the the current sitting president for his own party's nomination. So, you know, really kind of, you know, interesting moment to participate in and you know, but we did kind of give him the platform to kinda speak his mind. I think my observation is this guy, Robert clearly has a very deep rooted anti establishment energy and that plays through in many of his points of view anti establishment kind of energy, I think, manifests as both conspiracy theories where, you know, as people have kind of classified some of his claims, which typically, you know, involves looking at, call it, correlation or circumstance, but not necessarily having the causality or the tie to demonstrate or or have proof of of point or or evidence of point, And I think that that's really where he trips me up on a couple of points personally. Jason Calacanis (01:42:09): Which ones would you say the points that trip you out most? Where were you like David Friedberg (01:42:13): I think the general statement that there are kind of, you know, embedded interests in government is a good general statement. Then can you start to try and tie together different kind of correlations or circumstances and say that's evidence? It's not really it it doesn't resonate crew with me as someone who who likes to kind of see empirical truth kind of be demonstrated. I think some of these points around, we know that PFOAs, one, you know, one of these products one of these chemistries he talked about that's in the environment. They are very damaging to the environment. They are very damaging the human health. And there are others that he makes claims around that don't have that same level of evidence, but they all get kinda bucketed together that all this stuff is bad, that all nuclear is bad, because there, you know, is a a facility that was built in the 19 fifties 19 sixties that had some degree of bad engineering And what some might argue isn't necessarily a major hazardous radioactive leak but has above kind of standards of radiation leak. And, therefore, all nuclear is is threatening are the sorts of things that kinda trick me up with him. Jason Calacanis (01:43:13): That one came up a little bit. Yeah. As well. The nuclear issue. David Friedberg (01:43:18): The thing that matters to me, this is all just bullshit talking, rambling about social issues, and, you know, like, what the fuck are we gonna do with education and wars? None of it fucking matters. If we cannot solve the debt and budget crisis problem in this country, we are running into the ground, the United States. I totally disagree with you. I know you do. And and I think the US is in a Titanic attack. Jason Calacanis (01:43:41): -- that then. You you're a key issue. David Friedberg (01:43:43): So for me, this is the thing that I told you guys I'm focused on with every candidate is how much do you think about the prioritization of the fiscal the federal budget? How do you think about the debt level? how do you think about the boundary conditions? And it's clear that that's not really a concrete part of his platform. Nor does it, by the way, for any other candidate that I've seen so far, I agree with Speaker 5 (01:44:02): you, though. David Friedberg (01:44:03): That that that's kinda where I sit. Jason Calacanis (01:44:04): And it's very unpopular. Chamath, let's have your response here too. Generally, it's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:08): good to have your opinion. I just think that your opinion is an opinion. and you present it as this canonical fact, and that's what I have an issue with. I just think that's intellectually not accurate. So I respect the fact that you think that that's an issue. But I think there's a lot of smart people that would say that's not the issue that you think it is and there are other issues. Jason Calacanis (01:44:27): Where did you find yourself Tremoth in this process? agreeing with him or disagreeing with him? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:44:33): All political candidates at some point have a fork in the road. which is that they're going to be a truth teller of their own truth or they're going to be conformist to talking points to try to offend the least amount of people. Okay. And the first path is much riskier but it actually has much larger discontinuous outcomes i. e. Trump. The other path is a good antidote to the first path. When the first path is what's in power and you saw Biden take that path. So for me, I don't agree with some of the things that he said. In fact, there are things like nuclear, which I just think he's wrong about. Jason Calacanis (01:45:20): Sure. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:45:22): But what do I appreciate is that there is a version of his truth that is researched and reason from his own lived experience as well as history and facts. And then he's also willing to say, I just don't know enough about it. So let me rethink it and then come back to you. I thought the comment about you know school choice was an example. Right? And I I think that that's healthy. So on balance, I would rather have candidates in that first bucket, which are truth tellers that have the potential to cause disagreement versus the placaters who say nothing. And this is where I do agree with Friedberg whatever the issues are that may be important. The point is placating doesn't work anymore. and you need some kind of confrontation on hard topics for there to be any progress now. And so I prefer those kinds of people that are able to draw a hard line. Jason Calacanis (01:46:22): Agitators, non conformance. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:46:25): And I personally I've always been and I have been very anti establishment. The idea of tearing down all these institutions of power gives me glee. I find it gleeful. Sachs, Jason Calacanis (01:46:37): when we look at this this incredible, you know, almost 2 hour conversation we had here. I I think we did hold him enforce them on certain issues more than you would normally get in an interview without being sensational. We didn't lead with vaccines. We didn't lead with Culture Wars, we we talked about really important issues. Where did you find yourself in most agreement with him? And where did you find yourself in least agreement with him? David Sacks (01:47:00): Well, wanna make sure we see the forest for the trees here because I think you can disagree with this or that tree. You can get lost down the rabbit hole of some of these very technical scientific debates. But here's the forest is you've got this scion of wealth and privilege who comes from the most prominent, famous Democratic family. And he was set in his life to go become an environmental lawyer who go fight against big corporate environmental polluters. And somewhere along the way, he realized it wasn't just big corporations who was the problem. It was a the agencies, the government agencies that were supposed to be regulating them, and he realized that there was a revolving door going on between industry and these agencies. And so he ended up litigating not just against big companies but against government agencies. I think that's a really interesting place for a candidate to come from. And what you heard him say or what what I took away from it is that he has a very sophisticated critique of regulatory capture. And it goes beyond just the environmental area. It goes also to big pharma. and it goes to the military industrial complex. When he's talking about all these unnecessary wars that the United States has gotten into, And who can doubt that after we spent 20 years Jason Calacanis (01:48:14): $8,000,000,000,000 David Sacks (01:48:16): bogged down in forever wars in the Middle East? Who can doubt that the military district complex has played a malign role in our foreign policy. And we've got, you know, all these generals when they retire from the Pentagon, go right onto the boards of these defense contractors. So there's enough right about his critique that I think you can't dismiss You can't just say this guy's a conspiracy theorist or a nut. He's saying too many things that I know to be true. And there's a lot of other areas where I don't know what the truth is. but he is making, I'd say, sensible arguments. He's presenting data, and he's asking you to challenge him on the data. So in any event, I think he's got this very interesting critique of regulatory capture. What he's basically saying is that we have a ruling elite in this country that is managing the country for its own benefit, and that is screwing the middle class. And that critique actually is very similar to what Trump and DeSantis and people on the right are saying, The only difference is that I think people on the right are blaming ideology. They're saying that the ruling elite is following this woke ideology what Kennedy is saying that is at the ruling Chamath Palihapitiya (01:49:21): Calacanis David Sacks (01:49:22): is following the money. But you know what? Think of both be right. I think these critiques are very compatible. So look. You might disagree with this or that part of it, but I think that this overall critique, the forest, you know, forget about the trees. I think this forest could find purchase with the electorate because I think people just feel like there's something true about this. David Friedberg (01:49:43): What I will say is this is exactly how Trump got affected. And there was a great piece. I think it was in the Atlantic when he was running the first time around that talked a lot about the psychology of his appeal. that he comes from wealth. He comes from the system, but he is the anti system system product that he came out of this machine of wealth this machine of industry, this machine of influence, and he said, this entire system needs to be torn down. And if by the way, the psychology that they highlighted And and it speaks to Trump, not necessarily to Robert. But what they highlighted was if you look historically at the rise of authoritarian regimes, coming out of democracies. It's typically the folks that are coming from an influence of from a point of influence and from the point of privilege and power, and they then decided they wanted to tear down the system that produced them. And you trust the bully that comes out of the machine versus the outsider who doesn't really know the machine and doesn't really have access. And that's partially why I think maybe he has a shot at being the anti Biden alternative more so perhaps in this go around than Trump is. David Sacks (01:50:50): Look. He he's not a bully, and he's he's not gonna tear everything down. Yeah. Listen, I and I've heard him on other interviews. And what he said is we need a peaceful revolution. We need to reorganize these government agencies. So he's not saying, David Friedberg (01:51:02): like, more -- That's why he does win over Trump. Right? Maybe he becomes the less extreme. He's not the bully, but he's like, I know how to dismantle and and, you know, his ideal skill set ups Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:11): quite they're incredible. Free speech, supporting the rule of law, burgeoning the middle class, I mean, these are not things that are really controversial in the end. David Friedberg (01:51:21): They're good morals. Right? They're good morals. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:23): He's very morally grounded, dude. David Friedberg (01:51:25): I think my my concern is just the framework for how you kind of rationalize and and make decisions if you're allowing kind of influence innuendo and correlation be kind of the driving force instead of having you know, make sure you just at least gather and and sort the empirical evidence to make those decisions. That's the reason doing? David Sacks (01:51:45): He just reached a different conclusion than you. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:51:47): Yeah. He's just exactly. because he's saying that the other conclusion is just the orthodox conclusion, which is nothing to see here. David Friedberg (01:51:53): I by the way, I'm not an orthodox guy, and I'm not, like, following Jason Calacanis (01:51:56): orthodoxy. So -- Folks have said you're pushing RFK Because you think he's a weaker candidate against the the Republicans, your response. David Sacks (01:52:08): No. I don't necessarily think he'd be a for all the reasons we're talking about, I think he'd be preferable to to Biden in a lot of people's views. So so look, for me, this is like partisan, I just think he's really interesting. I think he is a breath of fresh air. I think there are many aspects of his critique of our system and the corruption of our ruling class that hit home, I think regulatory capture is a huge issue. I think a lot of these agencies do need to be reorganized. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:52:33): Well, it is the invisible hand that we don't know how to quantify well in all these other discussions that we have. he does put his finger on this really ugly uncomfortable truth which is there's a cloistered set of insiders for which there's a revolving door between power and money. And it's going to be very awkward for a small number of people to hear that message as he gets more attention which is probably why the media industrial complex will not you know will do his best to prevent that message from getting out? Jason Calacanis (01:53:03): The media is gonna block this guy at every angle because when David Sacks (01:53:08): you said -- Podcast could play a huge role. Just like in 2016 social media broke through and played a huge role, Jason Calacanis (01:53:13): Yeah. David Sacks (01:53:13): I think in 2024, I think that podcasts could break through. Jason Calacanis (01:53:16): Podcasts will decide the answer. David Sacks (01:53:18): The way that unorthodox candidates get their It could Speaker 5 (01:53:21): be the way interesting. Jason Calacanis (01:53:21): candidates get their message out because if after 2 hours of this you don't wanna learn more about him or you're not gonna consider him more fully, I think it's impossible because he's so well spoken. As you said, he's got a moral compass. He's got a track record. And he offers a fatigue. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:53:36): What he isn't saying is he's not just throwing bombs. And there may be things that you can debate with him about his interpretation of what he looks at, you know, and that's very fair criticism, I think. But his critique is well reasoned. And so you have to unpack the nuances of it to understand why he got to it and also to try to prove him wrong. That is very powerful because it's not just him randomly screaming about how things aren't working. Jason Calacanis (01:54:05): No. He and and I'll the moments I thought were very important here, and especially for the listeners who are listening who are making important decisions and wanna maybe change the political system, There were multiple times on the issue of trans surgery, and I'm gonna be very nuanced here, with the permission of the parents, he said, I need to do more research on it. On Friedberg challenging him about -- David Friedberg (01:54:25): Spending. Jason Calacanis (01:54:26): -- spending. He said, I need to I need to give that some more thought. But broadly speaking, you know, I think we can take money out of the military budget and $1,000,000,000 planes that don't fly in the rain. there were many moments where he he conceded. I I need to give that some more thought. I need to be thoughtful about that. That's not something that you typically hear, but in a platform like this, with, you know, the nuance that we've created on this platform having discussions, and the audience also being nuanced and having depth, we know the fans of this podcast are in a lot of positions of power. I'm sure a 100% or very high percentage of the people who listen to this podcast actually vote. and are very influential within their own circles, I think this kind of platform where you have a very deep discussion, and somebody could say, You know what? I need to go deeper on that and think about it. When I asked him about weapons in Taiwan, and then I said, hey. Why wouldn't you give an answer that you defend Taiwan? Biden gave it. I don't wanna check my car. You wouldn't wanna do that. That's a really good answer. David Sacks (01:55:21): By the way, the official the official policy of the United States towards Taiwan strategic ambiguity, which means we don't say whether we'll defend it. It depends on the circumstances. And and Biden when he he's now said multiple times that he would defend it and his own staff walked back because they said we're not changing strategic ambiguity. So yeah. I mean, the policy he said in that case actually is the United States policy. David Friedberg (01:55:43): So let me ask you guys a question if he won the Democratic nomination, and he's up against Trump who do you vote for? Jason Calacanis (01:55:51): Obviously. That is RFK. Yeah. Of course, on Earth K. And I think Saks would have a hard time. He wouldn't say who he's voted for previously. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:55:58): I think Saks would vote or -- Saks David Friedberg (01:55:59): is not gonna say it. Are you are you gonna say it or not? Jason Calacanis (01:56:02): Sachs doesn't like to say. He's just Machiavellian. David Sacks (01:56:04): I'm reserving Desmond on the general until I know who both candidates are. Jason Calacanis (01:56:07): Okay. He won't even Saks won't even tell us who who we voted for. David Sacks (01:56:10): I would love for RFK Junior to be on the ballot and have that choice for sure. And and it's possible I would it's possible I would vote for him. depends who the other person is. Jason Calacanis (01:56:20): Really? because you wouldn't even tell us who you voted for or if you voted in the last election. Speaker 5 (01:56:24): Well, David Sacks (01:56:24): that's my right, Jason. I don't have to tell you. Jason Calacanis (01:56:26): I just think it's it's intellectually dishonest since you talk about politics so much that yeah. I do. I think you should tell us who you voted. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (01:56:32): Let's talk about issues. David Sacks (01:56:34): I talk about issues. Now I decide to balance those issues because every candidate is a complex mix of issues. That's ultimately my decision. Yeah. But for somebody who inject politics David Friedberg (01:56:44): in everything Jason Calacanis (01:56:45): to not just say it. -- David Sacks (01:56:46): it. I'm not the one injecting. David Friedberg (01:56:48): So to follow-up on the question I asked, I would love to see Donald Trump come on the show and give him an opportunity to have a conversation and see if folks can have a different point of view coming out of that as well as Joe Biden, and maybe some of the other candidates running for the Republican nomination. Speaker 5 (01:57:05): And then I wanna see if David Friedberg (01:57:05): the the points of focus for us can, you know, maybe match up with 1 or more of these candidates. So for Jason Calacanis (01:57:17): Nikki Halle, we'll come on. Right, Whitney? Yeah. So Nikki Halle is in, and then Trump will do it. and then Biden will not -- -- David Friedberg (01:57:25): trouble to it. Jason Calacanis (01:57:26): I think Trump would do it because he somebody would I mean, he had he did something with Bart's doing. David Friedberg (01:57:30): Right? Jason, do you wanna do you want me to do the announcement meant on the the summit? Oh, please. Okay. So we are confirmed and signed on our venue. And so we are confirmed for all in summit 2023, in Los Angeles September 10th through 12th. Jason Calacanis (01:57:52): Secure the bag, baby. Let's go. David Friedberg (01:57:54): We'll put out the and I think it's gonna be really exciting because we'll have an opportunity to at this point in the year, we have a lot of time to put together a really high quality agenda for conversations we each wanna have with really amazing people. So I'm excited about that. We've kinda started to put together some ideas on what we wanna talk about, who we want to invite to have those conversations with us, put out some invites. Jason Calacanis (01:58:17): So very good job, by the way. And you'll be leading your lead this is your AI summit. So I'm I'm handing everything off to you. I'm I'm helping with the parties basically, but you're driving. Congratulations. Your team is exceptional. I just wanna let the audience know. David Friedberg (01:58:29): And we're doing we're doing it together. And -- Yeah. But I mean, I'm Jason Calacanis (01:58:32): I'm I'm stepping back and letting you drive. I I consider this like your -- David Friedberg (01:58:36): I care very deeply about content, and I wanna you know, make sure they can get Speaker 5 (01:58:39): a chance David Friedberg (01:58:39): to have yeah. And the experience and have a chance to have the conversations we wanna have with the folks we wanna talk with. So -- It Jason Calacanis (01:58:45): nothing can be better than you building on top of the first one, and then we keep going from there, trim off and sacks if they wanna build on it from there. There'll be 3 this is what everybody wants to know as tickets. There's gonna be 3 ticket tiers. There'll still be a VIP one for 75100 that gets you into the dinner. David Friedberg (01:58:58): sorry. Yeah. That that's an that's an important point. The VIP experience this year, we got some feedback on the last go around that we needed to make sure there was a degree of differentiation So the VIP experience will include special VIP dinners, early access to the theater, gift bags, special sections during the parties. So, hopefully, it elevates the experience a bit for folks that are able to pay the higher ticket fee, which actually helps support the program. No bottle service. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:59:22): And -- I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:59:23): bottle service, you can bring your card. Speaker 5 (01:59:25): But hopefully, as a David Friedberg (01:59:25): as a way to kinda support the overall program and keep the cost down for everyone else, and then it's a $1500 general admission pass, which includes access to the parties, and then we'll still have the scholarship classes here. Jason Calacanis (01:59:35): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:59:35): a funny story? Yeah. When I joined the ownership group that bought the Warriors, I heard a rumor which was that when we were competing it was us versus Ellison to buy the warriors. and Alison had an idea. I don't know if this is true or not. This is what I had heard. That he had a he had an idea for a new stadium. And he's like, he wanted to make it an ultra VIP stadium. And so there's only five thousand seats. And there were 4, like, Singapore Airlines first class seats. Oh, okay. So you go to the stadium to But it'd David Friedberg (02:00:07): be like everybody would be like up close and Jason Calacanis (02:00:09): you could touch. And outside, they also had a 1000 guillotines. So you could just yeah. I mean, it's hard enough for a family to go see -- I don't know if that's Speaker 5 (02:00:17): true or Chamath Palihapitiya (02:00:17): not, but I I thought it was a very fun installment. I Jason Calacanis (02:00:19): think it's David Friedberg (02:00:19): crazy expensive now. It's like -- Crazy. Jason Calacanis (02:00:22): 100 David Friedberg (02:00:22): of dollars for nosebleat seats. Jason Calacanis (02:00:24): for the dictator Tremof Palihapitiya for David Sachs who set up this episode. And Friedberg, the Sultan of Science. We hope you enjoy this. It's the first of many to come. We will still be doing regular dockets. We might have to go to 2 episodes a week on weeks like this. Who knows? But give us your feedback. Share the show, and we'll see you all at the all in summer. Speaker 5 (02:00:48): to let your winners ride. Rainman, David, Saturday. And it said, open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy lately. like, what airliners ride. Besty's our car. Go to 13th. That is why they ungodly You should all just get a room have one big huge order because they're all just useless. It's like it's like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. What? You're the b p Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (02:01:28): What? Your feet. What? Jason Calacanis (02:01:32): Where did you get Murphy's artifact? I'm doing all.