特朗普遇刺未遂、特勤局失职、共和党全国代表大会内幕、风投流动性困境

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, Chamath, apparently, the Rainman David Sachs is now the architect. I think he's been working behind the scenes, according to a bunch of the news stories. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:08): Like a puppet master. Jason Calacanis (00:00:09): The puppet master? Okay. Well, let's cut you off. Let's cut. We're going live now to the RNC in Milwaukee and live coverage. Sith Lord, David Sacks. Are you there? Oh, he's here. It's vaulting. Tell us about your new empire. Consider a public team. David Sacks (00:00:29): Everything has proceeded as I have foreseen. When it was live. Jason Calacanis (00:00:37): Rainman David Sacks. David Sacks (00:00:43): Open source it to the fans and they've discovered recently. Jason Calacanis (00:00:46): Love you, Betsy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:47): We, the kids are going all in. Jason Calacanis (00:00:50): Obviously, thanks. Trump makes his own decisions. You're getting a little bit too much credit, I think. David Sacks (00:00:55): Yeah. Absolutely. No. I mean, I'm, I'm mocking them. Using The New York Times and Business Insider and all these publications that are giving me all this credit. Listen. The president obviously makes the decision. He solicits feedback from lots of people. I was probably one of a thousand people or at least hundreds of people who offer my opinion. Obviously, I'm a big fan of J.D. Vance, but I think it's just giving me way too much credit. Jason Calacanis (00:01:17): In all seriousness, Sacks, you're there. And, obviously, you know, President Trump, how is he doing? How's he feeling in the wake of this absolute tragedy? David Sacks (00:01:27): I think he's doing well. He was in great spirits, I think, but let's maybe we should get into the assassination attempt. That's really the thing to talk about here. Jason Calacanis (00:01:34): Alright, everybody. Welcome back to episode 188 of the All-In Podcast. We have a full docket to get through today. We are here on July 18th on the taping of this, and it is five days after an assassination attempt on the former president of the United States and the likely 47th president of the United States, obviously President Trump. We're gonna start with what we know. It's five days later. We're a bit in the fog of war as it is, and there are all the breaking news caveats that you can put on this, but I wanna recap what we know now about this assassination attempt and get everybody's feedback on it. Last Saturday, at a rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds with an AR-15 at the former president. One bullet nicked Trump's right ear. This was confirmed by the president on Truth Social. And, a Trump supporter tragically in the crowd, Corey Comparatory, was killed while protecting his family from gunfire. Two others were critically injured. Crooks was killed by the Secret Service's counter-sniper team 26 seconds after he fired the first shot. He didn't have a criminal record. He was not known to the FBI or Secret Service. He was a registered Republican, but also donated $15 to a progressive PAC. And the motive is not known, so we'll just wait for that. There were some leaks from a Senate briefing. I don't know if you gentlemen have heard those that just came out, and it was reported that Crooks wrote on July 13 on Steam. That's a gaming platform. "July 13 will be my premiere. Watch as it unfolds." He had a second phone. He had a detonation device in his pocket or a bomb or some sort of explosive device in his car. More details about that, I'm sure. And now we are in the phase of how the hell did this happen? Here's a picture of the rooftop. The closest rooftop was not secured, and it was 130 yards away. The head of the Secret Service said they didn't put anybody on the rooftop because of its sloped surface. Obviously, this is being mocked on social media and questioned by journalists and anybody with any IQ points. The most disturbing part of all of this aside from somebody wanting to murder the president is the timeline. So ABC News is reporting the following timeline, gentlemen. Jason Calacanis (00:04:03): 5:10 p.m. Crooks was first identified as a POI, person of interest. 5:30, he is spotted with a rangefinder. 5:52, he's spotted on a roof by the Secret Service. 6:02, Trump takes the stage. 6:12 p.m., he fires his first shot. We'll get into some clips and everything, but let me just stop here and get everybody's reaction to this tragedy. Chamath, the floor is yours. It's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:31): absolute insanity. I actually just I had just spoken up. Because I was flying back to the United States for a board meeting. And so as I was boarding and on the way, I was just on my way to the airport reading it mostly from our group chat, and I was I couldn't I couldn't believe it, to be totally honest with you. I thought this made I thought this was this is not possible in this day and age. And part of why I thought it was not possible was because I had elevated in my mind who the Secret Service were. And that the job they did or that they're supposed to be doing is just so sacrosanct to the well functioning of America that you only have the absolute best people doing that job. And that job is to protect these handful of individuals in America, most importantly, being the president of the United States, who are just critical to the functioning of the most important country in the world. And when you see the level of negligence and incompetence, you know, my mind started racing. How is it even possible? And I guess the only thing that I can come up with is that we need to figure out where incompetence ended and negligence began in all of this because I think that's what's going to be the most critical. And we need to figure out the totality of what happened and, you know, if there were other people that supported this guy trying to do this. And then the second I'll just say is, Trump is an absolute legend. What a boss? Jason Calacanis (00:06:17): Okay. Friedberg, where were you when the news broke and what are your general thoughts here five days after this occurred? We'll get into political ramifications and everything else, but just on the event that occurred and your takeaways from David Friedberg (00:06:28): I was with a group of people drinking beer outside. We were on our fourth beer, and we thought it was a joke. I think the first thing I thought after I saw the video and saw that he was okay and that his ear was bleeding was that's it. It's over. Trump's won. It was probably one of the most iconic, patriotic visuals I think any of us have seen. And here's the image Nick's pulling up. What a photo. This is the AP photographer, and I think it's really, it was so striking. You see this photo, which didn't come out right away, but some of the imagery that came out right away with him pumping his fist was like, okay. That's it. Trump's won. It's over. Second thing I thought was this could trigger a lot of violent counter reactions. If Trump doesn't lead well here, and I think he prevented that in his statements. And from the other side. Third thing I thought is it doesn't matter if Biden drops out now because it's over. Biden could stay in. He could leave. This just feels like a lot of momentum. And then the fourth thing I thought was this, to Chamath's point, I think we've all been around Secret Service people in our lives and in our careers and in meetings and interactions, we've had it really was amazing that the Secret Service let this happen. And if you see all the data and the stuff that's coming out now about how the Secret Service managed this, it seems pretty scary that this was so botched. Certainly, now the dust is settled five days later, and it seems like they're back into the conversation about let's remove Biden and figure out who can run against Trump. Although there is conflicting polling data, which I know we're gonna get to. Jason Calacanis (00:08:02): What's Sacks's reaction? Sacks, where were you when this occurred? And your thoughts on, you know, the event itself. And, obviously, there's tons of conspiracies in the areas going around right now. Obviously, there is some negligence that occurred here. I don't think there's any doubt about that. There's a DEI angle. There's a ton of angles here, but where were you when you saw this happen? And what was your immediate thought? David Sacks (00:08:28): Yeah. Let me answer your first question first. I think this was one of those events where you'll always remember where you were, and I was just working in my office in Los Angeles. I was gonna fly to the Republican convention in Milwaukee a few hours later. And so someone texted me. The president's been shot, Trump had been shot, and my heart sank immediately went online to see the video. And I think I saw in almost real time, him go down. And then when he stood back up and faced the crowd and told the Secret Service, wait, wait, he didn't wanna just let them kind of drag him away. He turned to face the crowd and exposed his face. Who knows if there'd been another shooter? Who knows if that shooter was really down? But in that moment, he wanted to let the crowd know that he was fine. Jason Calacanis (00:09:12): We were one inch away from the president of the United States having his head shot. You know, he's got grandkids. He's got a wife. He's got kids. He's got friends. How do you feel about the individual? His head was almost shot on television in front of hundreds, maybe thousands of people on live television. Yeah. And the gravity of this, I think, is very significant. And I think we've, in this media-saturated environment, processed it too quickly, which is why on the docket, I wanted to slow down here and just take in what happened. David Sacks (00:09:40): You know, one of the very important details for me is that, you know, my father-in-law was actually at that rally in Butler at Butler Farm. Really? Yeah. He was there, and he saw everything that happened. And when we saw there was a shooting there, we were trying to get a hold of him, and the cell reception had been shut down, and we couldn't get a hold of him for a couple of hours. And, obviously, found out later that he was fine. But what he described is that when the shots rang out, the president went down, there was really a feeling of bedlam and pandemonium in the crowd. The crowd was afraid that the president had been shot. And so when he stood back up, and faced the crowd and then, you know, said fight fight fight. It created this huge sense of relief. It was, like, palpable that he was fine. And then the part that I don't think has been well reported is that the crowd started chanting USA USA USA. Yeah. So they responded with this unity. It's been well reported that, you know, that Trump was said fight fight fight, but I don't think it's been well reported that the crowd started chanting USA USA USA. So I think that the crowd turned from fear to unity and strength and patriotism, reflecting what they saw from the president. Jason Calacanis (00:10:52): Yeah. It's well said. Yeah. This is David Sacks (00:10:53): one of these things that's unbelievable and the whole world, I think, has just seen how iconic it is. I saw there's a video online even in, I think, kids in Uganda were actually reenacting the assassination attempt. Yeah. That's how iconic it was. Trump's like a global legend for that. And again, there's just no way to fake what he did in that moment, right, where, again, he—I mean, the bullet missing him was either luck or, you know, a hand of God or destiny, whatever you wanna call it, but him telling the Secret Service to stop to face the crowd to basically show that he was unharmed and that he was determined and he was defiant in the face of an assassin's bullet. That's courage that nobody can fake. And I've seen people online talk about how soldiers under fire. They've described how when they've been under fire. Obviously, they hit the deck. They don't stand back up. You know? Even soldiers don't do that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:45): His composure is incredible. David Sacks (00:11:46): Yeah. He just rose to the occasion in such an incredible way that I think it's inspired the whole country and the whole world. There's just no way again, to fake something like that, even though some people like Reid Hoffman's political hack was actually claiming that it was all staged, which is just unbelievably ridiculous. But Jason Calacanis (00:12:05): Yeah. So But I think David Sacks (00:12:06): the rest of the world knows that he just showed unbelievable courage in that moment and rose to the occasion, and I think made the entire country proud. Jason Calacanis (00:12:14): It certainly was an amount of bravery and a bold response. I do think the next phase of this is sort of figuring out what happened with the Secret Service. As brave as it was for him to stand up, that was a crazy thing to do. I can't believe the Secret Service allowed him to get back up because there could have been a second shooter. And although we heard radio chatter that the shooter was down, I mean, how did you know in a situation like this? What's actually happening? But they could have gotten a second shot off on the president. Maybe they don't miss by an inch that time and then they hit it. So we got a lot of questions that need to be answered here. Thank God he's okay. And I think I guess now it's time to talk about rhetoric. And I think that's actually, from my perspective, the next thing that has to happen here in terms of leadership when something this tragic happens. You know, everybody's looking at the other side's rhetoric here, whether it's putting Trump on a magazine cover as Hitler, or they're saying you gotta fight like hell or the Oath Keepers and all this January 6 nonsense and beating up cops. I think we have to put both of these things aside, and the leadership Trump and Biden should be saying right now that leadership does start at the top. This rhetoric is not to be done anymore. People have to tone things down. You could be passionate about politics, but using violent language, there are sick people in the world. And this kid, I think it will ultimately turn out all the other assassins we've seen or these celebrity killings that occurred on Lennox that are it's usually a mentally ill person. Likely what happened here. We don't know yet. You know, they interpret violent language differently than a normal person. So we could say fight like hell or target or you know, you gotta fight for your country, whatever it is, and you would take it a certain way. The sick people take it a different way, and they need to put out a joint statement and just say, anybody on our teams who uses violent rhetoric is no longer on our teams, and they haven't done that. So I think there's, like, more work to be done here in terms of leadership. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:14): I think it's more precise than that. I think it's way more precise than this. I don't think that this is like years of Donald Trump using violent rhetoric. I think this is years of mis no. I don't you cannot both sizes. I think this is years. Jason Calacanis (00:14:28): Of course, Gunnar. Just give you examples of it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:30): I think what it is is that we have gone through years, years of literally the words that the former president has said being perverted and misconstrued and chopped up into soundbites that advance a mainstream media's agenda to try to vilify a person. And I think that that's an important thing to take a step back. I think we have to understand that the mainstream media has really gone out of their way to amplify violent rhetoric and to actually associate violent rhetoric with as a tolerable reaction. And I think that that is the thing that we need to now completely get rid of in our society. I saw so many reactions to the former and probably future president of the United States getting shot, which was along the lines of basically hoping that that person hadn't missed and or justifying that violence on Donald Trump was somehow justified. That's insane. Now that person could only have gotten that idea because the media fed them that language and that idea. And I think that that's extremely scary because I don't think you actually see Republicans necessarily saying that about Joe Biden. They may think that Joe Biden is feeble and mentally incompetent, but nobody's calling for the death of Joe Biden. So I think that that's a very scary place where you have one group of people who are being fed this extremely toxic narrative. And I think that that part of what you're saying, Jason, and I agree with. But I really disagree with the other part, which is, and this is someone again, as, as someone who was a former Democrat, I can observe this and be relatively rational here. I didn't see that from the other side. Jason Calacanis (00:16:26): Okay. Well, you know, the media is reflecting what is said by both candidates and both sides, and they both use very targeted language. I'll put a couple of links in the show notes of both sides doing this. And you can make your own decision as the audience, but I do think leadership would be both of them saying, stop this violent language, and both sides do it. David Sacks (00:16:46): I'd like to address that too. Jason Calacanis (00:16:48): Sure. Go ahead. David Sacks (00:16:49): Just days before the shooting, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman had an exchange at Allen & Company that was publicly reported in which Peter said that Reid had turned Trump into a murderer by funding lawfare, and Reid responded, I wish I had turned him into an actual murderer. Okay? That's wishing for someone's death. When the news of the assassination attempt came online, I don't think it was Jack Black himself, but a member of his band said that it's too bad. The shot missed. There are other people on the Democrat side who expressed similar sentiments. They were disappointed that the assassination attempt had failed. Now I don't think those people are mainstream political leaders. So yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:17:31): That's just the distinction I wanted to make here. Like, there's no political leader who said that. I'm not David Sacks (00:17:36): gonna try to hang that around Joe Biden. However, Biden himself, days before the shooting, said that it was time to put Trump in the bull's-eye. That's what he said. And his defense for that rhetoric was, well, I didn't say crosshairs. Well, I think bull's-eye means the same thing. Now even that, I'm willing to basically forgive because I don't think Biden meant it in a literal sense. I think he was speaking rhetorically about state campaign ads, things like that. I would initially say that was violent rhetoric. Okay? I'm not gonna try and pin that on President Biden, but the thing I do think was unacceptable by President Biden and the Democrats is the level of demonization and the level of vitriol that they have pursued against President Trump. Not as a one-off statement, but as a campaign strategy. Again, they have said over and over again, this man is Hitler, this man is a fascist, this man is a threat to democracy. If he wins, it is the end of democracy. They have repeatedly gone there and repeatedly used—they've tried to Hitlerize him. Now if you're saying that this man is Hitler, where else is there to go, rhetorically? That's the worst thing you could ever say about somebody. And quite frankly, if he is Hitler, why would you be offering him thoughts and prayers after he gets shot? I mean, wouldn't it be a good thing to shoot Hitler? And so I do think that, you know, if we think about the contribution of political rhetoric to what could have happened here, I'm not gonna try and blame anybody for these one-off poor choices of language that could be interpreted as violent. What I will blame them for is taking the demonization up to 11, taking the vitriol up to 11, because that could poison the mind of someone who's already mentally disturbed and say, okay. Well, wait a second. If he is Hitler, why wouldn't I be Colonel von Stauffenberg? For assassinating him, wouldn't I be a hero for trying to eliminate this man? And that's the thing that I think is really unacceptable. And I do think the Democrats should be blamed for that because, again, they made it a campaign strategy. David Sacks (00:19:38): Their entire argument against Donald Trump is not about issues. It's about this man being Hitler, and I think it's ridiculous. It's inflated. It's hyperbole to be sure. And I think that we don't know yet about the mind of this shooter, this Brooks, but if anything contributed to the shooting, it was that. Jason Calacanis (00:19:57): J.D. Vance referred to him as Hitler as well. Other people inside the Republican Party have referred to him as Hitler and a threat to democracy. So there's plenty of blame to go around. Correct, Sacks? David Sacks (00:20:06): That happened over eight years ago as, like, part of a text message exchange. It wasn't a public rhetoric as a campaign strategy. I'm talking about a systematic strategy that gets amplified. Look at the cover of The New Republic. They literally turned Donald Trump's face into the face of a mash-up of him and Adolf Hitler. And it's been amplified and repeated over and over and over again on MSNBC. On CNN, on all these liberal channels. Okay? This is coordinated political rhetoric as a campaign strategy. It's not a one-off. I'm not gonna blame anybody for a one-off that could be misinterpreted. But when you do this as a systematic campaign strategy and, in fact, you base your entire campaign around the idea this man is a threat to democracy and a fascist. This is the language they used. Like I said, there's nowhere else to go after that. Where else do you go? Jason Calacanis (00:20:57): Threat threat democracy, I think, is a valid criticism of Trump calling Hitler. Yeah. Probably insightful. So, you know, I think I think reasonable people can parse this. And it is something that has a card on both sides. It's well documented. And both parties can do better. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:15): I think, like, one thing that when the investigation happens into what happened here and we really figure out what happened in the Secret Service. How many examples do we need of institutions where we put in our trust just like letting us down? And they just seem to be piling up, and it's independent of administration. And at some point, I think we have to, like, really check ourselves and say, what has happened here? Like, how do we objectively measure the quality of the people that are supposed to be working in these organizations and how do we make sure that they are actually competent in doing their job? Jason Calacanis (00:21:50): This is the key point, Chamath, is, the outcome. You know, how do we judge people outcomes. And if you look at the outcome, how the Secret Service director hasn't resigned now. I mean, I know she's had a storied career and she's probably a good person who's done plenty of great things in her career. I don't know the details of it. But if the outcome of what you've done results in something this tragic and that could have been avoided, the proper thing is ownership and resignation and or the people who run this organization or the answer to being fired. And so this absolute acceptance of mediocrity is something that has to change. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:25): Is it an acceptance of mediocrity, or is it that they just got completely distracted on things that are not germane to doing your job? So, you know, if it was, we need a diverse Secret Service, or we need to have inclusion. All of those things have nothing to do in my mind about protecting somebody. There are characteristics, and I suspect that there are women that embody these characteristics as much as men that embody these characteristics, but why isn't there a psychographic way of determining who the best people are that have the protective instinct to protect the most important people that run our country. Jason Calacanis (00:23:02): There's a very simple test here. The job of the Secret Service is to jump in front of a bullet as we witnessed. In order to jump and fire the bullet, you have to be bigger than the target. Right? You have to be so a six-foot-two woman who's 4 feet wide just as qualified as a man who's 6 or 24 feet wide for that job description. You have to be brave enough to jump in front of a bullet. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:20): I don't know if you guys saw, but there was a thing where, and I feel bad for this woman who's being derided as being totally incompetent, the one in the field, but there was a David Attenborough voiceover Jason Calacanis (00:23:30): of her trying to put her gun back in the holster. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:32): I mean, my gosh. I mean, apparently, Jason Calacanis (00:23:34): I think Eric Trump said she's incredible. David Sacks (00:23:36): The DEI another day memes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:39): Yeah. This is just David Sacks (00:23:40): I mean, look, it's a very unfortunate video. Jason Calacanis (00:23:43): Say that she's, like, the best person ever. I think he was trying to support her. She may David Sacks (00:23:46): have just had a bad moment. Who knows? I mean, it did look pretty bad that she was having trouble holstering her weapon. I mean, you know, not that I'm a gun expert. Jason Calacanis (00:23:54): Right? In running at that moment Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:55): in time. David Sacks (00:23:56): But, I mean, look, it's what's known as an outside-the-waistband holster, which is the easiest type of holster to use because you don't have to tuck it into your pants or anything like that. And I, you know, I gotta say it does look pretty bad that she was having so much trouble just trying to holster her weapon. But, look, I think this is only one of a number of questions that I think have been legitimately raised about the Secret Service performance. And we need a full investigation to figure out what happened. And let me just, you know, let me just run off a list of questions that I would like to see answered. So, number one, is how do they fail to cover that roof? It was the most obvious shooting spot in that entire Butler Farm area, and it was not properly covered. And then the Secret Service releases the statement that they didn't cover it because it was a sloped roof, which is the most ridiculous cover story ever because they did have snipers on another roof that was more sloped and they're slowing around Jason Calacanis (00:24:51): The bottom. Times more sloped. Right. So that sounds like a lie. Right. David Sacks (00:24:55): So once you put out that cover story, which is basically a lie, you only make the situation worse, and it only makes the question even more poignant of do you fail to cover that roof? Okay. David Friedberg (00:25:05): Well, Sam, do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:06): you see the picture of Secret Service on top of the White House roof, which is extremely sloped, even more sloped than the I mean, it's just ridiculous. David Sacks (00:25:13): And the Secret Service director, Cheadle, said that on ABC. Okay. So right there, she should be fired because she's lying to us at a moment where she should be cooperating and doing a full investigation. Okay. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:24): So isn't it true that they were inside the the the Well, it's fair Jason Calacanis (00:25:28): to say it was air-conditioned inside the building and outside it was broadcast. David Sacks (00:25:31): But that's just question number one. Okay? Question number two is, like you said, he was a person of interest an hour before the shooting and no one went to go resolve that situation. Moreover, they see him with a rangefinder. Okay. What the hell do you use a rangefinder for? I mean, he's scoping out the target with a rangefinder, and they let the president go out there, okay, while they still have a person of interest out there. This guy has a rangefinder. He has a ladder. He has a backpack, and he was never intercepted. He was never stopped even though they had identified him, and they let the president go out there. So clearly there was a huge failure of communication between the Secret Service and the Trump campaign. How did that happen? How was there no agent stationed at the fence such that they had to ram it with an SUV for the Secret Service to get through. I don't know if you guys knew about that part of it. Okay. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:19): No. Say that. Say that again. David Sacks (00:26:20): There was no agent stationed at the fence. Okay? So in order to get there, they ram the fence with an SUV so the Secret Service quickly get through. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:29): Oh my gosh. David Sacks (00:26:29): K. That's insane. Jason Calacanis (00:26:31): And what harm would have come from just taking a half hour and have Trump have a cup of coffee and then go make sure that this person is not there? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:40): Like, exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:26:41): I'm just thinking judgment-wise. Listen, I understand they're in the field. I understand they have—I understand if, like, they were concerned. Maybe that's one of our snipers on the roof. Like, maybe there was a moment, like, a 30-second moment. Like, I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but it's hard to. David Sacks (00:26:56): The Secret Service sniper who did an incredible job taking out the shooter in one shot. Okay? He had that person lined up. So, again, you know, why didn't they release the audio? There must be an audio recording of all the chatter on their earpieces, their communication. 100%. That sniper must have identified, you know, Crooks as a potential target and had him lined up, which is how he's able to take him out very quickly. But what was the chain of command there in terms of him seeking authorization? Hey. Who is this person? Why wasn't everything stopped while they go to figure out what this person is doing on the roof there? Okay. And then once the shots rang out and Trump gets shot, why did it take them so long to get him in the car to get the convoy off to the hospital? There was a long delay, which was just getting him out of there. So they clearly weren't prepared for that. The whole thing, it just, you know, reeks of incompetence. Jason Calacanis (00:27:50): Yeah. And they don't have a great track record of being honest about what's going on. They don't you remember not to bring up January 6 again, but they deleted all their texts from January 6. Like, they do not they circle the wagons. They do not want people criticizing. I doubt we're even gonna get that audio. I wonder if that audio is gonna come out. David Sacks (00:28:08): But they don't have the right in a democracy to basically investigate themselves and say, oh, we're good. No. That's not how it works. The people of this country need accountability. I mean, the once and likely future president came within millimeters, centimeters, of being assassinated and this whole country could have been plunged into a whole different type of situation. We need answers to these questions, and this director, Cheatle, is obviously in the way and putting out nonsense, putting out spin at a time when we need a proper investigation. That needs to happen immediately. Cheatle should resign. We need to have agents. Okay. Secret Service agents need to be offered up to testify on Capitol Hill with no fear of reprisal from the Biden administration. Okay? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:53): And all the information needs David Sacks (00:28:54): to be made available. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:56): The first person that needs the first person that needs to to that needs to speak in a congressional hearing is the sniper himself. David Friedberg (00:29:02): Did you guys see there was coverage yesterday that showed there's actually two snipers? And that Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:06): occurs too. David Friedberg (00:29:07): Yeah. Well, no, sorry. There's two sets of snipers. There's four snipers. The one set of snipers that you see the video of where he does that, there's a tree blocking their ability to see crooks, the other set of snipers are the ones that apparently took the fatal shot, and they had a line of sight, but they're not on camera. You don't actually see what's going on with them. That's the current reporting I've seen on it. So I don't wanna, like, jump to conclusions given that there's now David Sacks (00:29:34): there's no excuse here because let me just say, if Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:37): they put you David Friedberg (00:29:37): on the roof and they let the president on the stage, someone effed up. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:41): That doesn't seem much really. David Friedberg (00:29:42): Why not? Jason Calacanis (00:29:42): Have a delay? Like, not the end of the world. David Sacks (00:29:45): If we can put that bird's-eye view of Butler Farm on the screen, I don't know, Nick, if you have that. David Friedberg (00:29:50): Nick, pull it up where it shows the line of sight with the tree as well. So you can see it all. Yeah. David Sacks (00:29:54): There it is. Right. But look at the shooter's position and look at Trump's position. Okay. And I've seen broader bird's-eye views of Butler Farm. Without knowing anything about marksmanship, it's just obvious that that roof is the most if you could set yourself up anywhere as a sniper, Jason Calacanis (00:30:11): Yeah. David Sacks (00:30:11): So the president, it's not one most obvious location. Furthermore, let me just say that, when Chamath and I hosted that dinner for President Trump, we worked with the Secret Service, you know, advanced team, and they were excellent. They were really great. And I saw just a little bit of their process. And they went through the house. They mapped out the entire house, the entire property. Then they asked, well, where is the president gonna be sitting at dinner? They wanted to know who's to his right, who's to his left, they looked at the window coverage of that room. And they said, okay. Whose house is that? That neighbor's house, and they went to go check it out. Every single movement by the president was mapped out. Every angle on the president was basically mapped out and explored. Jason Calacanis (00:30:51): What happened here then? Like, that's the crazy part. David Sacks (00:30:53): It was actually amazing to watch that. I thought they did a great job. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:56): It was really amazing. David Sacks (00:30:57): This is why how could this ever have happened where the most obvious shooting angle on the president was not properly covered. It just makes no sense. Jason Calacanis (00:31:05): You can put two blues up there. Just two beat officers on there would have solved the whole problem. If you don't have enough Secret Service agents, I was at a Clinton benefit one time, and I got detained by the Secret Service and went into secondary screening. The reason given, I had two cell phones on me. They thought it was peculiar that I had two cell phones. They kept me for 15, 20 minutes in a side room, and they literally took my phone apart in front of me, took all the batteries out, went through every bag. They frisked me. I mean, wanted me, like, three guys around me. They take this incredibly seriously. David Sacks (00:31:37): Yeah. Normally, they're very thorough and they're very serious. I mean, look, even at the dinner that we hosted, they want you to know what kind of we were using. You know? They Yeah. Like, literally, they wanted to make sure that that was safe. And this is why they were so interested in knowing who is to the president's right and to his left because they wanna think through every possible angle of attack on the president. Jason Calacanis (00:31:58): There is some breakdown here. And David Sacks (00:31:59): in this case, something very strange happened. Jason Calacanis (00:32:03): And, of course, as I was just sort of alluding to earlier, if this person looked like a SWAT member, which apparently he did fatigues, you know, range finder, all that stuff, I'm guessing that maybe those snipers from the Secret Service thought those were friendlies. That's the only possible explanation of why they paused. David Sacks (00:32:21): Yeah. But he wasn't dressed that way. He wasn't he wasn't wearing, he wasn't wearing a costume or he wasn't impersonating, Jason Calacanis (00:32:28): but even No. No. No. No. There's one. Laying there. David Sacks (00:32:30): The photo I saw is like a Jason Calacanis (00:32:33): The great fear you have as a police officer is shooting another police officer. So I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:37): think that David Sacks (00:32:38): duty was not in that uniform. Jason Calacanis (00:32:40): From whatever number of feet away, David Friedberg (00:32:41): can I ask a technical Jason Calacanis (00:32:42): question? Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:44): Are you telling me in 2024 that when you show up at an event to protect a VVVIP, like the president of the United States, that SWAT and other people aren't given some kind of like little pin that has an NFC chip or something where everybody knows who everybody is so that it's very clear, very quickly, when somebody in a position of risk is not on the home team? Jason Calacanis (00:33:14): They do have ways of doing that. Right? There is a when you're under Like, are you telling me, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:18): for example, like President Trump's pin or Barack Obama's pin or Joe Biden's pin? Doesn't actually have something in it. I'm, I believe, be shocked if the answer is it's just a pin. Jason Calacanis (00:33:29): Well, this is what they're reporting that they're investigating that the delay in shooting the, the sniper might have been that they thought it was friendly. So this theory is out there now, and it's part of the investigation. It is a potential one. You know, I can tell you that that would be the nightmare scenario for the Secret Service is to shoot the local cop. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:47): Honestly, guys, I hate to be the one to say this, but we've just our institutions are incompetent. Jason Calacanis (00:33:53): There's a lot of competence. David Sacks (00:33:54): Absolutely. It's just like in Afghanistan. Role. Remember that? No heads rolled. There was no proper investigation of why so many people died unnecessarily in that Afghanistan withdrawal. Jason Calacanis (00:34:03): Nobody's fired for anything anymore. It's just ridiculous. Like and and there's no resigning, obviously. Nobody resigns. Nobody gets fired. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:10): Why would anybody? So if this was a company, this would be a failing company. Why would you not strip it down from top to bottom and rebuild it? David Sacks (00:34:19): Well, exactly. And I tweeted this counterfactual, which is imagine if Elon had bought Twitter but he wasn't allowed to fire anybody. Do you think he would have been able to restore free speech? Do you think he'd be able to restore innovation? No. If you're running an institution, you have to be able to fire people when they don't perform. But we have lost that ability in our federal government. So there's something that's very, very broken here. When people fail, they have to be held accountable or you don't get good performance. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:48): Right. David Friedberg (00:34:48): When institutions fail, there needs to be a question on why are we funding those institutions? Jason Calacanis (00:34:53): Nobody gets fired. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:54): Why would you give more money to a failing company? You'd never do it. This is David Friedberg (00:34:58): the comment I put in the letter that I sent to that senior Democrat back in October. I don't see any accountability with respect to the programs that you pass bills to fund. You pass bills to fund these programs. You stand up new institutions, and then there is never a retrospective post-mortem or review on the performance of those institutions or the objective of those programs. And yet we keep funding them and asking for more money. And eventually you end up with a decaying empire, like we've seen in history. We need to have a series of actions that drive accountability in federal programs and then a review on the intention of those programs and make sure that they still hold. And then we can move forward with new programs. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:36): Sacks is really right. Like, you cannot have the Secret Service investigate themselves on this one. Jason Calacanis (00:35:40): Of course not. And they deleted all text messages and did a major cover-up the last time around. So you cannot trust them to investigate themselves. No. David Friedberg (00:35:47): Did you see all those senators chasing them up the stairs yesterday? You see that? Jason Calacanis (00:35:50): I did see that. It didn't say which senators it was. I don't know if that was confirmed. It was. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:35:55): Blackburn. What happened? So a bunch of the senators confronted the head of the Secret Service, Cheetle's her name. Right? Yeah. And they confronted her and there's a, someone videoed the whole thing on their iPhone. Of them saying we need answers. Why did you let this happen? Here's the video. Nick can show it. Here, just watch it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:15): A person called Answer. You are a president Trump. Hi, gosh. David Friedberg (00:36:23): That's a bad video because what it does not show is the start and the end. At the start, they were all standing around her, having a conversation, and then they started to press her. And she said, now it's the time that says in the forum, then she took off, they followed her, and then she went into the Secret Service secure room upstairs, and blocked all the senators from coming into the room. Her Secret Service staff blocked them. So all the, the guards said, no, you can't come in. So they all got blocked out. So the senators were pushing her for some feedback for conversations for dialogue, and she wouldn't engage. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:52): Yeah. Oh my gosh. David Sacks (00:36:53): I've seen enough resign now. Get out of the way. So a proper investigation can be done. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:59): Total. Total. Totally. Jason Calacanis (00:37:01): Okay. Let's talk about the RNC. A friend of ours gave a talk and the VP was selected. You did a great job, bestie. David Sacks (00:37:10): Thank you. Jason Calacanis (00:37:11): What was it like to get on that stage? And I have a bunch of questions about it. Yeah. Because it seemed like people are not sitting in chairs, right? They're just mulling about. David Friedberg (00:37:22): Tell us what happened behind the scenes. Yeah. And what was it like getting prepped and doing all the kind of prep work? Jason Calacanis (00:37:28): Do you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:28): have to review your speech? Like, tell us all the details? David Sacks (00:37:30): Well, let's see. I mean, I started working on this about, I don't know, a week before the convention. And they sent me some ideas for remarks, and then I completely rewrote it with my research assistant/writer and then sent it to them, and there was some back and forth. But by and large, they let me do what I wanted to do. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:47): Do they give you a time? David Friedberg (00:37:49): Like, they're like The David Sacks (00:37:49): one thing that was kind of set was the time, and they correlated the time with a number of words. So they said you got six minutes, which is 600 words. And so that's what we worked towards. And then the big thing I had to learn was just how to use the teleprompter. So they had these rooms set up where there were teleprompters, and I could do some training on how to, you know, read a speech using a teleprompter. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:16): What is that like? David Sacks (00:38:19): It's just a matter of knowing where to look and trying to stay natural, but also using the prompter as a mnemonic device. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:26): And does the prompter stop when you stop, or how does that work? David Sacks (00:38:30): There was actually somebody in the room who was physically advancing the words as you're speaking. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:34): Okay. And David Sacks (00:38:35): so there's someone who's actually working the prompter and Jason Calacanis (00:38:37): they go out. Big applause, they'll pause it for you and you don't have to try to keep up. David Sacks (00:38:42): Exactly. Exactly. So that was probably the biggest thing to learn. And then the other thing about it is that you're speaking to a huge convention hall. And so you feel like you really wanna project in order to kinda reach people, but at the same time, you're really speaking on TV. And as you guys know, you'll come across as being kind of insane if you start, like, yelling into a TV set. So finding the right balance between speaking to people in the auditorium and speaking to people watching from home, that's kinda tricky, and I'm reasonably happy with it. And the most important thing is I got to say the substance of what I said. David Friedberg (00:39:18): Not universally popular. Right? I mean, you basically called for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and to stop funding Ukraine's defense against Russia. And that's not a popular opinion in the Republican Party. Is that right? David Sacks (00:39:32): Well, I went further than that. I said that this was not an unprovoked war. It was a provoked war. I said the Biden administration provoked the war with talk of NATO expansion. You can disagree with that if you want. I think there's plenty of evidence for it. That's what I believe. David Friedberg (00:39:44): I feel like you went out on a limb more than most other speakers who kind of had a lot of good laudatory comments and, you know, promoted Trump. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:39:52): You could have panned it. David Friedberg (00:39:54): Yeah. You actually went out with a strongly held opinion that is, you know, fairly contrarian. Right? David Sacks (00:40:00): Well, I think that most of the people in the Republican Party and including most people on the floor actually agreed with me. I think it took them a second to process what I had said. And so, you know, what I saw when I was up there is I said that, you know, Biden provoked, yes, provoked the war. And I think it was such a shocking statement to a lot of people because we've heard the whole unprovoked invasion narrative so many times. That there were, like, murmurs and then people got it and they started applauding. I never actually intended it to even be an applause line. I just thought it was an important thing to state the truth as I see it on the record at the public convention. And that line did actually get applause. Now a bunch of Ukraine stans were predictably outraged by what I said, and they were trying to claim online that somehow I'd been booed or something like that. There were absolutely no boos. There were actually people applauding. And then, you know, as I got deeper and deeper into the speech, people applauded it more and more. It was very much a speech that attacked the forever wars and attacked the warmongers and complimented President Trump for keeping us out of wars and complimented him for being strong, but also having the savviness and the ability to negotiate with our adversaries to keep us out of wars. And I think that's now a position that's very popular within the Republican Party, but it's, process. It's evolving. Jason Calacanis (00:41:16): This is a perfect segue because there are reports that friend of the pod Tucker Carlson had a big impact on talking to Trump about his selection of J.D. Vance and said, don't pick a neocon. That'll get you assassinated. There was one report. That was advice that came before the assassination attempt, obviously. So conspiracy theorists are kinda losing their minds over this. But let's talk about the selection of J.D. Vance because that is a big surprise, I think, in many quarters. Tell us about J.D. Vance, your friend. Yeah. David Sacks (00:41:47): I mean, I'm friends with him, and I very much supported his selection for VP. Jason Calacanis (00:41:52): Why is he the best pick, in your mind? David Sacks (00:41:54): Well, there's a couple of things. So J.D. Vance represents a couple of very interesting characteristics. On the one hand, he's from this poor region of Appalachia that really represents the forgotten man or the forgotten cities and towns in America. You could call it the MAGA heartland. And so MAGA really likes him. At the same time, he's worked in tech. He was a venture capitalist. He understands the future and he's popular in tech. So it's very unusual to get somebody who has MAGA plus tech on their side together. So that's one almost contradiction you could say that J.D. represents. Here's another one. J.D. Vance was in high school when the Twin Towers came down. And then we invaded Iraq, and he was gung ho to serve and to go exact retribution and justice on America's enemies. And he enlisted in the Marine Corps, and he went off to serve in the Iraq War. Subsequently, he realized that we had all been lied to about the Iraq war and that it was a gigantic mistake. And moreover, the Forever Wars were a huge mistake. And to me, this is something that I really appreciate about him, and this is a quality that I really want at President Trump's side, which is he's an American patriot. He had the courage to serve in America's wars, but he has the wisdom and the judgment to want to avoid those wars when we don't need to fight them. And there's way too many of, like you said, Jason, these neocons, these warmongers in the party who've never ever acknowledged their mistake in the Iraq war and all the Forever Wars, and they seem on virtually a daily basis to wanna plunge us into the next Forever War. So this is, I think, a quality that's of paramount importance to have in our commander in chief and in the person who would be next in line to be commander in chief. So for these reasons, I very much support JD. Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:43:47): So let me get some feedback from the rest of the panel. I'll just give you a couple of bullet points about him. For those of you who don't know JD Vance, yeah, he worked at Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital and Steve Case's Revolution. And so he worked for a Republican and a Democrat, you know, in Steve Case, started his own firm called Narya Capital, and he went to Ohio State. Graduated Yale, was actually classmates with Vivek. He talked about that. He's only thirty-nine years old, so he's half the age of Trump. As you mentioned, combat correspondent for six months in Iraq in 2005, thirty-nine years old, and Thiel backed him with, I think, the largest Senate race donation in history, $15 And so this is quite an ascension from a venture capitalist to potentially vice president and obviously potentially president. He's in the second spot. So were you a proponent of J.D. Vance as well? He's superb. The press says you lobby Trump as well. Is that true? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:45): He's superb. I cannot say enough good things about this guy. He's superb. Why is he superb? He is a bit of an enigma, I think, as Sacks said, because his views are so unique, and he comes from a background that is very similar to mine. So I have tremendous loyalty for the path that he had to navigate to get out, just to get out. And I think that that, you know, I really care for people like that. And then he's done really good things with the resources that he's been given and the relationships that he's built. And I really respect that too. Jason Calacanis (00:45:30): We all had Hillbilly Elegy. I don't know if we talked about it on this pod years ago, but you and I certainly talked about it a bunch of times. And, you know, he came from nothing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:41): Less than nothing. Jason Calacanis (00:45:42): Less than nothing. Addicts and spending. And he talks a lot in his book. I don't know if you remember this about social capital and the fact that he didn't understand. The name of the firm is Social Capital for people doing the reference, that just didn't have the social capital to even understand that a lawyer went to law school. And, you know, he is an enigma; his positions don't align with Trump's in every case, but they have quickly become aligned with Trump's. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:07): He's an incredible pick. David Sacks (00:46:09): Yeah. Yeah. I thought he was an incredible pick before his speech last night, and he even exceeded my expectations in that speech. I just thought it was truly an incredible speech. First of all, the introduction by his wife, Usha, was really, you know, incredible. I thought she did a fantastic job. And then he got up there and right? A friend texts me. He's not really that into politics. He's just like, this guy seems so normal. He's happy. He's normal. He seems competent. There was one commentator, I think on one of the cable shows. So I think meant this as an insult, but it actually was positive. He said that when you're at, like, a fast food restaurant or something and need to ask for the manager, J.D. Vance is the person you hope is the manager. You know, he comes out. He's friendly. He's competent. He's reasonable. He knows how to get stuff done. I'm not sure if that was meant as an insult. Yeah. But I think it's a compliment. Right? And he's just so normal. He's gonna be very hard to demonize. Obviously, they're trying to do it on cable news. They're somehow trying to portray him as an extremist or a racist even though he has a mixed-race family. Jason Calacanis (00:47:13): The tent of the Republican Party at this RNC, Sacks, is the most wide-open tent I've ever seen in politics. They had Kimberly Guilfoyle, and people were criticizing Kimberly Guilfoyle. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:23): She was excellent. David Friedberg (00:47:24): She was excellent. David Sacks (00:47:24): She was fantastic. I thought her Jason Calacanis (00:47:25): She knocked the ball out of the park and she's David Friedberg (00:47:28): she looked Jason Calacanis (00:47:29): for choice. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:29): Absolutely. Raised beautifully. And she crushed it. David Sacks (00:47:32): I thought Kimberly was effective. I thought it was authentic, and it described her red-pilling, basically. It described her evolution and her journey from someone who believed the media's lies about Trump, thinking that he was a racist, to actually meeting the man herself and realizing that the way they had portrayed him was basically a slander. And how she became friends with President Trump. I thought it was an incredibly effective speech. But, look, there are very few people who didn't like it. There was this one post by, you know, Matt Walsh online, and he was roundly denounced for what he said. I mean, he kind of engaged in this pearl-clutching that they had allowed Kimberly Guilfoyle to speak because they're about David Friedberg (00:48:10): to be on that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:11): Value judging. And it's like, Jason Calacanis (00:48:12): who's not forced to judge? David Sacks (00:48:13): It felt like a break. It felt like part of the Republican Party that's on its way out, you know, this pearl-clutching social conservatism. David Friedberg (00:48:20): Yeah. Yeah. David Sacks (00:48:21): In any event, it was really an opportunity, I think, for people to disavow his criticism and support her. Jason Calacanis (00:48:27): Yeah. And that and she's my point here is what, you know, they've done a really great job of, and Vivek did a wonderful job in his talk. I want to give him a shout out of just saying, Hey, listen, everybody can be part of this party. I think there's a lot of notes that Democrats could take from what they saw at the Republican National Convention. These are people who would have been at the DNC, but, you know, one election cycle ago, but because of this purity test, you can't even, you know, win with them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:52): Let's state the obvious. We're trending into a direction right now where, based on Donald Trump's pick for the vice president, and some of the other surrogates like Vivek, if Donald Trump were to win, what you're going to see is a very youthful cabinet of a lot of 30-somethings, 40-somethings. And I think that that's a really important thing to consider versus a bunch of 60-, 70-, and 80-year-old career politicians. David Sacks (00:49:21): Correct. Absolutely. Youth and vigor. And, again, this new direction, you know, a lot of people were commenting about JD's speech that large parts of it could have been given by Bernie Sanders or, you know, it was this populist message that Jason Calacanis (00:49:35): Well, let me ask you that. Yes, Sacks. He's had a position of breaking up big tech and being pro-union. How do you reconcile all that in this new Republican party? Yeah. Address those two because that seems to be a big discussion. 2022 discussion topic. David Sacks (00:49:52): I think that it's definitely a new emergent Republican Party where this is, I think, this is Donald Trump's Republican Party. This is the MAGA wing, the America First wing of the Republican Party. We're moving from a party of basically the Chamber of Commerce, you know, Business Roundtable, a bunch of oligarchic fat cats to being a populist party that actually represents the people. And I think it's a very, I think, and they had the Teamsters up there. Yeah. And I think it's a very welcome change. And the part of J.D.'s speech that I like the best is when he described, that, hey. I went off and many other people went off to fight in these forever wars, risking our lives or giving our lives. We come back to our home communities. And what do we find? We find them hollowed out. The jobs have all been exported. The factories have shut down, and instead, the town has been poisoned by fentanyl. That is a message that you have not heard in the Republican Party except for Donald Trump and that new part of the party. And I think that Donald Trump choosing J.D. Vance was so important to cement this new vision of the Republican Party. It was a legacy pick because it means that this America First MAGA message is gonna continue into the future, many years into the future. And let me just tell you, as I listen to that speech, I harken back to another speech at our public convention I heard thirty-two years ago. I'm sorry to say I'm old enough to actually remember these things. And I remember Pat Buchanan's speech in 1992. And after he, Pat, described the factory workers who lost their jobs, I just wanna read you what he said, and I want you to think about what J.D. said. So what Buchanan said was my friends, these people are our people. They don't read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart. They are our people, and we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know how bad they're hurting. David Sacks (00:51:52): They don't expect miracles of us, but they need to know we care. And I think that for too long, Republican leaders ignored that advice. They didn't connect with everyday Americans. They were foolishly willing to cut programs like Social Security or Medicare, saying that we had to cut the deficit while at the same time funding forever wars. So they're totally not credible. And the party was basically led by warmongers like Dick Cheney or Mitch McConnell, or soulless bean counters like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. And I think Vance really broke with all of that. And I think he represents the future of the party. He trashed the Iraq War. He promised no more foreign interventions. He railed against policies that benefit multinational corporations at the expense of workers. And I think it's no wonder that the neocons lobbied so hard against his selection. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:52:47): But David Sacks (00:52:47): I think framework? Jason Calacanis (00:52:48): Let's get you wrong. David Sacks (00:52:49): I think those days are over, and I think that just for me to say this and end with this, that I think that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance represent a conservatism of the heart that we haven't seen before, and I think this is the future of the Jason Calacanis (00:53:02): Friedberg, does J.D. Vance being selected tip your vote towards a Trump-Vance ticket? David Friedberg (00:53:08): I think he's gonna do well for Trump. I didn't give you what what were the who were his other options? Jason Calacanis (00:53:16): Nikki Haley. I mean, there was pressure for him to go after a lot of the neocons. Right? Sacks, and get the Never Trumper contingent. Wasn't that level under the pressure? David Sacks (00:53:27): Absolutely. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:27): I mean, I think there was there was Doug Burgum. Who was that? That was your favorite. No, Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:53:34): Not my favorite. I met him. He seemed like a really thoughtful guy who's done an incredible job managing the state of North Dakota, but he's got some social policy issues that I think are gonna rub people the wrong way. And I think to Sacks's point, he's more in the camp of supporting Ukraine, which it seems like some part of the party are starting to come around and say no. So it seems like he wasn't a great fit, ultimately. David Sacks (00:54:00): Yeah. By the way, I'm I've I met Doug Burgum the other night, and he's a very nice man who I think could play a very cool very nice guy who I think can play a major major role in the party. David Friedberg (00:54:10): Incredible business, sold it to Microsoft. David Sacks (00:54:13): Yeah. There's nobody who understands, I think, energy better and all the regulations that have gotten in the way of making America energy independent and tapping our vast energy reserves. So I found him very, very impressive on that. But at the end of the day, you know, it's it's just not the the kind of pick that J.D. is. Jason Calacanis (00:54:30): I remain a moderate undecided voter. I love JD Vance. I think it's an inspired choice. I know, Sacks, where you're voting. I'll take some guesses on you, Chamath. But Friedberg, where do you stand right now? David Friedberg (00:54:42): I'm very happy that RFK Jr. was not selected as the VP. Jason Calacanis (00:54:46): Why? David Friedberg (00:54:47): To be on the ticket. I think RFK would have been a challenging partner for Trump, and it would have led to a lot of disagreements. And I think that RFK has some policy perspectives that I don't agree with, particularly as it relates to health, energy, and agriculture. And so there are some disagreements I have with respect to his view of the world. I will say JD seems like a pragmatist. He seems highly intelligent. He seems highly competent, and I know that he has not been in a governing position before. Right? So this is really critical to note. This is a training job for him in a large way. He's been a senator. And he's been an investor. And he's been an individual contributor as an investor. He's built his own firm, but it's not a scaled firm. So this is gonna be a really interesting kind of process to watch unfold, but I think from a policy and a strategy perspective, he can have a really positive impact on the direction of the things that we talked about earlier, which is accountability in government programs, having a clear set of objectives, making sure that we focus on those objectives and don't spend time and resources on things that are fluff and perhaps aren't really meeting the objectives. And I think that he'll have the thing I do have concern about, I think that the nationalist agenda, the nationalism and the isolationism agenda is counter to global trade, which can be deeply inflationary, and that is one concern I do have, which is the ability for the US to export and import with other trade partners around the world. I think it's critical for us to continue to grow our economy and keep inflation down. So if we take policy action that limits our ability to import because we impose tariffs on other countries' goods and services, it can be inflationary, makes things more expensive for everyday Americans to buy. When everyday Americans go into Walmart and they buy products, a lot of those products are shipped from China. So if there's a tariff on those products and the price of those products now goes up by 30 or 40 percent, that can be a real burden. That drives inflation. David Friedberg (00:57:01): That's the point about the nationalism on manufacturing and inputs. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:05): So, Friedberg, you're pretty convinced at this point that a reciprocal trade agreement would cause inflation, hyperinflation. No. No. I think David Friedberg (00:57:16): I think that the idea that the general statement, which I don't think is necessarily how this is being executed. I just want to make sure that we're all cognizant of the point that if you introduce tariffs on imports, it will drive prices up. Now that may be the right thing to do from a policy perspective. As we heard from President Trump, when we interviewed him, his belief is that this is an important security state that we use it to drive reciprocity, and we use it to hold China in check. And so that may be a more important strategic priority over the increase in the price of certain goods. The problem that will arise, and this is what happened during the last Trump administration. If China then responds with tariffs on the export of U.S. agricultural products, so our biggest buyer of agricultural products today is China. And then China put tariffs on our export, or they stopped buying from the U.S., and they started buying from Brazil instead. The farmers are hurt. And when the farmers are hurt, the Trump administration had to spend money to support farmers, tens of billions of dollars. They subsidize, they pay farmers in a way. And so the federal government then has to step in to meet the gap that arises from what will end up becoming an escalating tariff problem or an escalating purchasing problem. So global trade allows the economy to grow, gives everyone a market. You can start to trade, but there's also these security issues. I do think it's important that we onshore a lot of manufacturing. I think it's important but there's going to be a period of pain. There's going to be an investment needed, and it's not going to be simple and easy, and we may face quite a bit of inflation on the path to doing that. Jason Calacanis (00:58:52): Give us an update. Here at the end of the show, Friedberg, scholarships, and that we've been asking for your own summit. David Friedberg (00:58:58): So this week, we are opening up scholarship applications. You can go to summit.allinpodcast.co. And, we have a very, very, very limited number of scholarship tickets that we hold for the summit like we did the last two years. The applications are open now. Please get your application in right away because we expect it will be completely overbooked almost immediately. And some of those scholarships are gonna be sponsored by Athletic Brewing Company. So thank you to Athletic Brewing Company for paying for a lot of our scholarship recipients to go to the All-In Summit this year. Really exciting programming coming together. We have more details to share in the next couple and we do, we do have one more last block of GA tickets that we're gonna release. Get your application in on the website summit.allinpodcast.co for a GA ticket, for the last block. Thank you. Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:59:46): Let's just do one quick business story here since we spent the bulk of the episode talking about politics and current events, exits creeping back. Sequoia is doing a secondary sale of their Stripe investment, one of the greatest investments of the last decade, and Google is in talks to acquire Waze, and this is absolutely amazing news for the industry, which has been suffering from a lack of distributions. As you can see in this chart, Chamath, after 2021, exit values just plummeted, and there are some signs of life now. Let's start with Sequoia buying back some Stripe shares from its own LPs. Sequoia Capital has invested $517 million in Stripe. That's currently worth about $10 billion. 20x, Michael Moritz, led the seed and Series A. Sequoia offered to buy back $860 million in Stripe shares from LPs and its legacy funds. Those are the funds between 2009 and 2012. Sequoia is using capital from their newer funds, like its Evergreen Fund that was formed in 2021, and the Heritage Fund, that's their wealth management team, to give the legacy funds some liquidity. It's not normal that a company stays private this long. It is the exception to the rule, but it has happened. It actually happened with Uber to a certain extent. So legacy fund LPs have the choice, Sacks, to hold, sell some, or sell all of their Stripe shares. Here's the quote from the note. Sequoia personnel and associated persons will not be offered to sell Stripe shares previously received as carried interest distributions from the legacy funds, and they are offering $27.50 a share, which is pretty generous, $70,000,000,000 valuation. As you may know, Stripe has hit as high as $100,000,000,000 in market cap in the private markets. So this will be a from the seed, which was a $20,000,000 post, a 35100x for those LPs. And for the series A, it is a $100,000,000 post, which is 700x. For those people who don't know, I think it was Sam Altman who actually did that investment as a Sequoia account in the same fund that I did the Uber investment. So still the No. 1 and 2 investments there. Jason Calacanis (01:02:03): You're the rest room off on this unique opportunity and device to sell early shares from the same venture fund. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:10): I have two thoughts. The first is that it's interesting to see that they mark the valuation up to $70,000,000,000. So that's a good sign for Stripe. But the second thing is I was a little kind of puzzled by this whole thing. It's a very complicated thing. When you're buying old stakes into a new fund and processing funds, it's sort of like actually one of those things that are supposed to be verboten. And when you're trying to build a good fund with great governance, this is actually at the top of the list of the things that you're never supposed to do, which is to provide liquidity to a group of LPs via another fund that you control, but I think this actually shows what may be going on behind the scenes. So I don't wanna be conspiratorial or anything, but it would be a great way for the GPs to get liquid to meet their capital calls here without having to pay capital gains tax. And that makes a lot of sense for the GPs themselves. And so I suspect that that probably Jason Calacanis (01:03:15): Well, they did say that the GPs aren't gonna get to liquidate anything. So they did put that note in there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:23): You can provide, you know, the meaning, but what that means is you can provide liquidity. You don't get to pull the money out. That's fine, but then now you can use it to fund capital calls. But I don't like it. I don't like these kinds of things where one fund is basically scratching the back of another fund. It always tends to be the case that this stuff on the surface looks a little smelly and can be a little unseemly, and this is why you're not supposed to do it. You're supposed to go and get some other random fund to buy these things, and I think it's generally a much cleaner thing to do. Jason Calacanis (01:03:56): And the hygiene of it is clearly what we see, Sacks, in that documentation, giving people choices. You can make your own choice. We're not taking carry. We're not selling our shares, and we're only selling 10%. So they did go to extreme measures, I guess, to outline that. But your thoughts on this type of sale? It happens in private equity all the time, I understand, but we don't see it in venture all that often. What are your thoughts on this providing liquidity to the fourteen-year-old funds? David Sacks (01:04:23): Well, first of all, there's a Kid Rock concert going on behind me. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (01:04:26): That's distracting for you. David Sacks (01:04:27): No. No. It's gonna be lit. That's all I can say. He's introducing President Trump. It's gonna be pretty baller tonight. We're taping on Thursday, obviously, this episode will probably come out tomorrow. But in any event, with respect to this Sequoia thing, look, I think there's this overarching issue of the fact that VC funds are classically designed to be ten-year funds. The money is called over time, usually over the first few years, it's invested. And then you don't get liquidity. I mean, it's not like a mutual fund where you can take your money out. You get liquidity if and when the fund gets liquidity. And these funds are meant to be long-term illiquid vehicles. So like I said, 10 years, and typically, you can get two one-year extensions to the funds. So then the question is what do you do at year 12 if you still got positions in those funds? Well, I think a pretty good solution is what I think Sequoia is doing here and what I've heard other people do, which is if you have a security that's not public yet, but is semi-liquid because it's a very late-stage private company, then what you can do is spin those shares into an SPV or just some other vehicle. And you let new investors come in and buy those shares at some price. And then you give the option to your old investors. Do you want to sell, or do you wanna roll into the new vehicle? So nobody is forced to give up their ownership position, but if they wanna get liquidity, and there's sufficient demand on the buy side that you can get them that liquidity. It's a really elegant solution. I can't say I know exactly all the details of what Sequoia is doing because they've got this two-tier fund structure that makes it a little different. But I have seen in other cases, people have distributed shares into an SPV, and then new buyers can come in, participate, and then the old investors get to decide whether they roll or sell. So it's a pretty good way of handling an evaluation. Jason Calacanis (01:06:21): Just to, sorry to clarify. This valuation is based on the last 409A. So David Sacks (01:06:25): That's the one thing about Sequoia that's a little different is remember they're kind of like a global mega fund that's buying the shares as opposed to an SPV. Normally, what would happen in terms of figuring out the price is you'd wanna use some sort of validated secondary price, but, obviously, it'd have to be a market-clearing price where new money wants to come in at that price. And this is a little bit different because it's their preexisting fund that's buying at that price. And so how do you sanity check the valuation? And I guess I would just wanna make sure that Yeah. I guess the answer is the secondary. Yeah. It's like the secondary. That's what Jason Calacanis (01:07:04): it's trading at in secondary markets, and that's what the 409A is. So I guess that would be the hygiene there, but it's certainly unique and, I guess, great for those. That's a word for us. Well, I mean, we had a similar thing happen with Uber where they did the secondary. And, you know, they had Masayoshi Son come in and do an IPO, essentially. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:26): That's entirely different. Jason Calacanis (01:07:27): Yeah. We had a you had new money coming in to your point. So here is the second story related to DPI and VCs getting cash out. Google's in advanced talks to acquire Wiz for $23 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. It's an Israeli-American cybersecurity startup that was founded only in 2020. Backed by Sequoia, Index, Insight, and Jason, and others. One of the fastest-growing startups ever, reaching $500 million in ARR in 4.5 years. Google would be paying 46x forward revenue. They think they'll have $1 billion in ARR sometime next year. And, what are our thoughts? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:05): You saw it on Jason Calacanis (01:08:05): this in terms of M&A. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:07): You saw it on this AT&T hack of Snowflake. But cloud security is a really big deal. The more cloud services you have, the more difficult it is to lock these things down. And so whether it's Google or Amazon, or Azure, they each have a really big problem on their hands, which is that if all these customers are convinced to move these workloads into the cloud, but then you can't secure it and you get hacked, that ends the business. So Wiz is an incredible testament to, I guess, engineering prowess. I don't exactly know, to be honest with you, the quality of the product. Obviously, I don't interact with those kinds of products every day, but the fact that they're willing to pay such a premium means, a, the product is good, but more importantly, b, in the absence of cloud security, these cloud vendors are going to be constrained in how fast they can grow. So what an incredible market! What an incredible, incredible market! Jason Calacanis (01:09:04): I have to say these two things have really helped the climb in the LP community, this past week, a lot of chatter about IPOs that are getting filed and that we could be ending the drought and people were feeling very, very pessimistic about venture as a category, and I think these two things have changed a lot of people's feelings on that. So good work there. And I think it also signals maybe some regime change expectation, Sacks. Yeah. Lina Khan may be getting booted when this regime change occurs. And, next year, and then maybe more M&A would occur. What's Trump's and J.D. Vance's position in your mind on M&A? And Lina Khan, Sacks, if you had to interpret it. David Sacks (01:09:53): Well, something that's very interesting is that J.D. Vance has been relatively positive towards Lina Khan. He's Jason Calacanis (01:10:00): Yeah. That's the weird thing. David Sacks (01:10:01): One of Lina Khan's few Republican fans. And the reason for that is because Lina Khan for all of her faults, and we've described them here, has been willing to take on big tech. The fact of the matter is that the top handful of tech companies, the Microsofts, the Googles, Amazon, these are big tech monopolies. There's just no way around that fact, and they do need to be closely watched and supervised and regulated with respect to their market power. And I do think they use their market power in inappropriate ways as we've discussed on this podcast. I sometimes think that Lina Khan in her approach has been a little bit more of a cleaver when she needs to use a scalpel. I don't think that she should stop some of these, what I would call, R&D acquisitions from taking place where there's no accretion of market share, but rather startups being bought because they contribute a useful piece of technology. I don't think you want to shut down that part of the market. Lord knows we don't have enough exits as it is like we were just talking about. So I think, you know, it would be great if we could kind of massage Lina Khan's approach a little bit, but I think that it is a good thing that she's not willing to just roll over and let the big tech companies do whatever they want. And I think J.D. Vance appreciates that about her. So, look, I don't think that Lina Khan's gonna be running that agency in a second Trump administration, but I think this should be about Jason Calacanis (01:11:22): problem with for Republicans. So Sacks is the freedom of speech issue and Republicans being banned on the social platforms. Absolutely. Up to Trump. I mean, if that issue wasn't there, I think you'd probably see maybe a different approach. Yeah. David Sacks (01:11:37): Well, I think it's a huge issue because the fact of the matter is you've got these tech monopolies who are using their monopolistic market power to put their thumb on the scale of our political discourse in favor of one side versus the other. So, obviously, if you're on that side of the aisle, you're gonna be up in arms about that. You're not gonna be happy about that. And I do think that given their market power, they have an obligation not to distort our democracy by artificially suppressing one side of the debate. Yeah. So I think that, yes, Republicans should be up in arms about that, and they should be resisting censorship. And J.D. Vance specifically mentioned censorship in his speech. Jason Calacanis (01:12:17): That seems to be his main issue. I think we'll see under Trump a lot more mid-market M&A if I were to, you know, let's call it under $100 billion. A $100 billion acquisition would be fine with me under 100. David Sacks (01:12:29): Well, I really liked the part of his speech where he said that in a healthy democracy, we debate ideas, and that's good. We even have debates in the Republican party, and that's good. The last thing you wanna do is censor the marketplace for ideas. Gosh. I mean, are we gonna hear anything like that from the Democrats when they do their convention? Jason Calacanis (01:12:44): Well, in breaking news, as we wrap up this program, the hot swap summer will continue apparently. Biden is predicted to resign this weekend. We'll see if it happens. Speedrun Primary. Nostra-Dumbass is predicting it happens. I was trying to get. No. Sure. Kamala will keep her position. The hot swap is coming. Well, David Sacks (01:13:06): Jake, at this point, I think you were right about Biden stepping aside. I thought he was out of the woods. He did that press conference, that NATO press conference where he did make that one mistake, that senior moment, where Jason Calacanis (01:13:19): you actually Yeah. Oops. So that David Sacks (01:13:22): was the kind of thing where he got his name mixed up, but yeah. Otherwise, he sort of seems to be finding his footing in terms of talking about policy, and the brush fire was sort of put out. Right? But then for some unknown reason, he goes on and does that Lester Holt interview. I don't know why they were still letting him do interviews. He should only be reading from a teleprompter. And he mixes up. He forgets the name of his secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and he just refers to him as the Black man. Jason Calacanis (01:13:50): I mean, the BET AM. David Sacks (01:13:51): That was a BET interview. So he did the Lester Holt interview, which was not good. And then he did the BET interview, which is a disaster. Jason Calacanis (01:13:57): Right. Chamath. So once the money goes, it's over. David Friedberg (01:14:00): Well, yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:00): And he he also did a a horrible one with 360 with Speedy Speedy Morman. And that was a train wreck. There were a couple moments there that are just total gaffes. And they Jason Calacanis (01:14:09): say they say Pelosi and Schumer told him it's over. And I guess that means Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:16): you're righteous. And when the big money is gone and they make the call, you know? Yeah. It's done. Jason Calacanis (01:14:21): It's done. David Sacks (01:14:22): Isn't that amazing what we've learned about the Democratic Party? You know? Like, the coup de grace was basically Katzenberg going in there. So, yeah, I can't raise any money for you. And then, boom. He's out. Jason Calacanis (01:14:33): I'm shocked that any political party would be swayed in any way by political donations. Enjoy the enjoy the RNC side. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:41): Love you guys. I gotta go there. Jason Calacanis (01:14:42): Love you guys. Talk to you soon. For the chairman dictator, the architect, David Sacks, and yourself in the science team. I've got a little bit early. I am. The world's greatest moderator. We'll see you next time at our Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:55): lovely days. David Sacks (01:14:58): To let your winners ride. Jason Calacanis (01:15:01): Rainman, David Sacks. David Sacks (01:15:05): And it said open-source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy. Uh-huh. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:22): You have one big huge, George, because they're all just useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, and they just need to release them out. David Sacks (01:15:39): What? Your feet? Jason Calacanis (01:15:42): Where did you get Murphy's