E38: Bestie brawl, Robinhood's $70M fine & S-1, Delta variant, next gen candidates & more

1. 0:00 – 20:58

   Jason & Sacks hash out their Twitter beef

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:00

      Is, is J-Cal here? I can't see him.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg0:03

      (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:04

      (laughs)

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:05

      Maybe I've been blocked. I don't know. I can't-

   5. DFDavid Friedberg0:07

      I'm getting static on the line. (laughs)

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:08

      (laughs)

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:08

      I can't hear anything. I can't hear anything.

   8. DSDavid Sacks0:10

      Why do the two fat guys have to ruin everything? I mean, get your shit together you two.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:14

      I'm not, I'm not fat anymore.

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:14

       We have something good going.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg0:15

       Don't start. Don't save it for the show.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:17

       I lost ... The show started, Friedberg. You've lost control already.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg0:19

       Oh, shit. (laughs)

   14. DSDavid Sacks0:19

       No, no, no. Here we go. Here we go. You guys ready?

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:21

       Five-

   16. DSDavid Sacks0:21

       I'm not fat anymore. (laughs)

   17. DFDavid Friedberg0:22

       ... in three, two-

   18. NANarrator0:25

       Going all in. Let your winners ride.

   19. DSDavid Sacks0:29

       Rain Man, David Sacks.

   20. NANarrator0:32

       I'm going all in. And I said-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:34

       We open-sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

   22. NANarrator0:37

       Love you, bestie.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg0:38

       Quincy, queen of quinoa.

   24. NANarrator0:39

       I'm going all in. If you'd like to skip the bestie Twitter drama and get right into the episode, jump to 20:48.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg0:49

       Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody.

   26. DSDavid Sacks0:51

       (laughs)

   27. DFDavid Friedberg0:51

       We've got a great show for you today. What a treat this is gonna be here at the All In podcast-

   28. DSDavid Sacks0:57

       (laughs)

   29. DFDavid Friedberg0:57

       ... where we cover everything, technology, business, market, politics, science-

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:00

       (laughs)
2. 20:58 – 35:29

   Robinhood $70M FINRA fine signals & S-1 news, plus how GPs think about IPO distributions

   1. DSDavid Sacks20:58

      Big news for Besties this week. Robinhood, um, has filed their S-1 and paid a FINRA fine, $70 million for outages and misleading cup- uh, customers, multiple days of outages back in March 2020 we talked about here, uh, and poor communications around options trading risks. Robinhood's S-1 highlighted some extraordinary, uh, growth during that period, as we discussed on the pod. 18 million funded accounts, and they're on a $2 billion run rate, $522 million in revenue in the first quarter, up 4X, and, uh, monthly active users have more than doubled, 8.6 million accounts to 17.7 million, uh, just for- in the last year. Revenue was up 300%. Any thoughts on Robinhood's S-1? Obviously, I'm an interested party.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya21:52

      It's the largest fine ever, I think, of this type, but on the other hand-

   3. DSDavid Sacks21:56

      FINRA's largest fine, yeah.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya21:57

      Yeah, so it should be a black eye for the company. But the reality is that they're happy to pay the fine and just, uh, move on so they don't have this issue hanging over their heads anymore. And now they're going to be able to IPO at like a 50, 60, $70 billion valuation. And so for them, it's just sort of cost of doing business. I think there's something a little bit off about that, but, um, that's kind of how it works.

   5. DSDavid Sacks22:17

      Freiberg, anything?

   6. I mean, congrats to you, J-Cal. It looks like you're gonna do really well with this deal, huh?

   7. It will return roughly... This one deal will do three or four times the value of the first fund, the launch fund one, which was $11 million worth.

   8. So did you invest in the seed round or the A, or what round did you invest in of this?

   9. I think it was the seed round, um...

   10. And so what's your multiple going to be on a $50 billion market cap? Do you know?

   11. Uh, it would be 500X.

   12. Amazing.

   13. JCJason Calacanis22:48

       Amazing. Congrats, big boy.

   14. DSDavid Sacks22:50

       Yeah, it's a-

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya22:51

       Congrats, J-Cal, and I'm- I'm happy to see that your success is fi-

   16. JCJason Calacanis22:53

       I'm really happy for you. Thanks.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya22:55

       Your success is finally catching up to your ego, and so I think-

   18. DSDavid Sacks22:58

       (laughs) Oh, God. Here we go.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya22:58

       I think too soon? (laughs)

   20. DSDavid Sacks23:00

       That's it. You've blocked again. You told me to get the shoe shine box.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya23:01

       Too soon? (laughs) Too soon?

   22. JCJason Calacanis23:04

       Your net worth is catching up to your waist size.

   23. DSDavid Sacks23:07

       (laughs)

   24. JCJason Calacanis23:07

       Congrats.

   25. DSDavid Sacks23:08

       Oh, God. Um, well, actually, between this and the composition, uh, I'm, uh, you know, listen, it's- there's a long way to go before we distribute it, obviously, but that first fund I did, which came after the Scouts fu- my Sequoia Scouts portfolio-

   26. JCJason Calacanis23:21

       My only advice to you, Jason, is-

   27. DSDavid Sacks23:22

       Yeah.

   28. JCJason Calacanis23:22

       ... talk- talk to a few seasoned GPs like Gurley, Fred Wilson, and figure out the right distribution strategy. One of the biggest things that I see these folks do is early stage venture investors thinking that they're public market investors, trying to time the market, trying to figure out how to do distributions, and it never works.

   29. DSDavid Sacks23:39

       Which means, do you hold the shares for another year or two-

   30. JCJason Calacanis23:43

       I would distribute them-
3. 35:29 – 57:25

   Delta variant: reason for concern or fear porn?

   1. JCJason Calacanis35:29

   2. (laughs)

   3. DSDavid Sacks35:29

      Can we move on to the Delta variant because I'm supposed to be hysterically afraid of getting COVID now because I've been vaccinated. People keep talking about there's this Delta variant, it's spreading. And then I'm hearing one set of information which is, "If you're vaccinated, it's not an issue." And then, uh, other folks are going on TV saying, "This is gonna be like, we're gonna have to put masks back on in California." I can't find any data about how many actual cases there are, but according to the US CDC, 46% of the total US population has been vaccinated now. Uh, and New York, New Jersey, California, all well above 50%. Some people are in the 60% of adults, 70% of adults. Florida still trailing. But I can't... And people are saying this is gonna become the dominant variant. Friedberg, how should we look at the Delta variant if you're vaccinated? And then how should we look at it in terms of are we gonna go through mandatory masks again, which people are starting to signal already in certain, uh, coastal cities?

   4. JCJason Calacanis36:29

      Yeah. So Trevor Bedford's a great guy to follow on this. Uh, he's a epidemiologist, virologist, who, um-

   5. DSDavid Sacks36:35

      On Twitter?

   6. JCJason Calacanis36:36

      ... aggregates... On Twitter, yeah. Uh, TRVrb is his, uh, Twitter handle. And so he's aggregated a bunch of good data. So there was a, a paper published two days ago out of the UK where they were trying to estimate the, um-... uh, you know, the reproduction rate of, uh, the Delta variant, um, and it looks like it's about 1.3. That means for every person that gets infected with the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, 1.3-

   7. DSDavid Sacks37:01

      That's the R naught you're talking about?

   8. JCJason Calacanis37:02

      That's, that's, yeah, some people call it R naught, yeah. And so, um, it turns out that, you know, that number is higher than what we saw with the original SARS-CoV-2, which I think was probably closer to 1.1 or so. And so, um, you know, what that means is this variant is much more infectious, right? It could spread through the air, the, the proteins could last in oxygen much longer and not degrade, all these different reasons why it might be kind of more infectious. Um, and there are some cases of people that have been vaccinated, but this is not the predominance of what we're seeing, um, that have tested positive for having this Delta variant, but are having mild to moderate symptoms. There aren't, at this point, a lot of people ... there's not a lot of data to indicate that this is actually kind of like a lethal risk or fatal risk to people that have been vaccinated. In case ... in fact, that seems to be, uh, not true. And one way that that data is kind of demonstrated right now is, there was another analysis that was done where they showed what is the reproduction rate of this variant based on what percentage of the population has been vaccinated by state. And they show that, you know, for a state that's had maybe 30% of its population vaccinated, the R naught is closer to 1.35. When 60% of the state is vaccinated, the R naught is just at one. And so there's this, you know, um, uncor- you know, uh, negatively correlated kind of relationship between how many people have been vaccinated and how much this variant is transmitting. And that makes intuitive sense, right? Like, if people are vaccinated, they're not gonna get infected. The virus isn't gonna hop from person to person to person. Now, when you do the analysis of what percentage of the US population is unvaccinated, um, and how reproductive this virus is, a lot of epidemiologists are saying that the models indicate that we could see up to 10% of the US population now get hit with this variant. And what we don't know is what percentage of people actually had, you know, SARS-CoV-2 in the first runaround last year, um, but we are seeing this, uh, this variant pop up. Now, the, the fa- the fatality rate doesn't appear to be much higher than what we saw with SARS-CoV-2 the first time around, and, um, and so there's no indication to say like, "Hey, this is gonna be much more lethal." So when you combine those factors, it seems like at this point, you know, the, the, the death rates in the US are remaining flat, uh, and stable, while we are gonna see and may expect to see a continuing upsurge, surge up, in terms of number of cases. Are we gonna require masks? This goes back to kind of my previous point about I think we've kind of normalized ourselves to masks and shutdowns and lockdowns and all the stuff that we did last year, thinking that it had an effect. A recent paper showed that lockdowns had no effect on the reproduction rate in the United States, because at the end of the day, what ... if a government says "lockdown" or a government says "put masks on," people still have a tendency to do whatever the hell they want to do. At, at least in the United States, that is the case. That is not the case, likely, in Asian countries where we did see an effect of, of lockdowns and masks. Um, but in the United States, these, uh, these restrictions, uh, obviously had adverse economic effects, but didn't seem to have a strong epidemiological effect, um, based on a, a, a recent paper that I will share, uh, uh, in, in this thing. So, so what are we gonna do? I don't know. I feel like we've normalized masks, we've normalized lockdowns, we've normalized these responses, but SARS-CoV-2 is gonna be here forever, and it is gonna cycle through variants, and that's the concern right now.

   9. Let me, let me make a prediction. I think that what, at the end of this thing, what I think I have come to the conclusion of is there was a lot of unknowns that got perverted into hysteria and mania by a handful of organizations to basically, uh, sequester power. And what we realized is that these people were incompetent, and they didn't know what they were doing, because you ended up in the same place with all of these different distributions of actions. And so now, I think when you have this other variant, I think there's a growing sensation by a lot of people, not just Americans, that the CDC, the WHO, whoever it is, is probably at best guessing and at worst making it up. And the ultimate result is they're ... it's, it's almost as if they like being drunk with power. And so I think the last part of what you said, Friedberg, is what I really agree with, which is that this is not going to be tolerated anymore. And the reason is because they are also politicizing science, and what they're doing is when they don't know, they're making poor guesses in the name of science, which is just as bad. So, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen with the Delta variant, maybe a lot, maybe a little, but as far as I can tell, I think people are tired of uninformed impacts to their lives, and they're not gonna put up with it anymore.

   10. DSDavid Sacks41:42

       Sacks, chance this California goes back to lockdowns or some sort of mask mandates?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya41:47

       Uh, well, well, they are. They're, they're imposing mask mandates indoors in places like LA, and you have the teachers unions. The, the National Education Union is now putting down all these conditions on going back to school in the fall. So, I think you could be in a situation where we do not have ... they will call it school reopening, but we will not have five-day-a-week in-person learning. And the schools, the public schools that have it, are gonna have all sorts of insane restrictions and conditions, like making kids who really aren't at risk for COVID, even, even the Delta variant, they're gonna force 'em to wear masks. They're gonna, um, enforce this ridiculous social distancing. They're talking about making the kids who aren't vaccinated sit at a separate table like the outcasts. I mean, it's insane what they're talking about doing. So-

   12. DSDavid Sacks42:35

       Wait, why is that insane, David? Not to interrupt you, but I- I'm just curious. I want you to unpack that.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya42:40

       Because ... So, so look, I, I, I'm, I'm pro-vaccine. You know, I think adults should get vaccinated. I don't think my kids need to get vaccinated. Um, I don't think that is a wise policy to, to force kids to get vaccinated. They're at very low risk for getting the virus. They're very low risk for transmitting the virus if they get it, and even if they get it, they're at almost no risk.... for it being harmful or, you know, to cause serious illness or death. And so, to impose all these restrictions on kids, it's like we're living in a time warp. You know, back to last summer when we didn't know as much about the virus, I mean, to Tamas' point, they're imposing all these restrictions which are just un- unscientific, and it really seems like the real point is to create excuses for the teachers not to have to go back to work. And you know, you know a school system is borked when the truancy is on the part of the teachers, not the students. The students wanna go back. The teachers wanna be truant. It's like they wanna be on permanent vacation forever. It is a really broken system.

   14. JCJason Calacanis43:42

       Uh, by the way, uh, let- let me just highlight, um, you know, to support, uh, the concern that I think people like Sa- like, uh, people that Sax is kind of speaking to might be having. Um, a research letter was published in the Journal, um, of the American medalis- Me- Medical Association two days ago. Uh, lead researcher was a guy named Harold Walsh, and this paper is going viral amongst kind of the, um, you know, the- the- the scientific and medical community right now. And what these guys did is they measured the carbon dioxide content of children's lungs, um, from wearing masks. And so, they were trying to identify, like, is this a risk to children to actually be wearing masks, uh, health-wise? And the results are pretty scary. Uh, it turns out that, you know, um, in- in- in air, in- in ambient air, .07% by volume is carbon dioxide. When a normal... Uh, and then they measured kids, you know, uh, randomized control, double-blind, you know. Here's the... Or not double-blind, but randomized control. There's kids that have masks and kids that don't. The kids that don't have masks, their carbon dioxide when they exhale is about .28%. When you have to wear a surgical mask, your carbon dioxide increases to 1.3%. Um, and, uh, you know, when they looked at this in a more detailed way, it turns out that it could be as high as 3.8%. And so this starts to reach a medical level that is concerning for doctors, that having these kids wear masks for hours a day could actually be having an adverse health effect because it is increasing the carbon dioxide content of their blood because, you know, their- their lungs aren't strong enough to breathe all this carbon dioxide out. It builds up in their body. And so there is a now, a counterpoint that is being made by scientists and doctors that maybe the benefit of the safety we might get from kids wearing masks and spreading the virus is, um, outweighed, uh, by the, uh, um, the- the cost to their health as a result of wearing these masks. And to ask kids to wear masks for eight hours a day or five hours a day for nine months a year, um, we're just now waking up to the fact that there may actually be consequences to this, and I'm not making a strong case here

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:47

       It's- it's like-

   16. JCJason Calacanis45:47

       ... whatever, I'm just saying.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya45:47

       ... it's like- it's like- it's like child abuse. So we sent our five-year-old- (laughs) ... to a summer camp in LA, okay? And the camp is outside, and all the- the adults are vaccinated, okay? But they're making the kids wear masks, and it's no fun, you know, and they can't play sports the way they need to. And we just said, "To hell with this," and we took them out. Now, what I don't understand is why people aren't laying this at the feet of Gavin Newsom. This is 100% his order. You know, all he has to do is say, "Listen, we don't need these rules anymore. It's kids, it's outside, and all the adults are vaccinated. What is the point of this?" And, you know, and I think w- we have this recall election now that's been scheduled for mid-September. You know, right now it looks like Newsom's gonna cruise to- to- to- to winning. But if we had a candidate in California who could say, "Listen, we need five-day-a-week in s- you know, in-person schooling in the fall, no exceptions. All the teachers need to go back to work, or they're gonna need to be looking for new jobs. We're not gonna c- kowtow and give in to all these unnecessary, unscientific restrictions, okay, because Newsom will not make that guarantee." I think they could- they could basically steal this thing. We don't have anyone standing up saying that. And I think the closer we get to the start of school, if we don't have that kind of five-day-a-week instruction, I think parents are gonna be up in arms about this. I think they will be, and I think what we're gonna prove is none of these folks really know what they're talking about, and so they will make it up. And someone will have some shred of evidence about something on either side of any topic, and all it'll do is obfuscate and confuse, and the end of it will be somebody imposing something onto you that will have a negative impact on your life.

   18. JCJason Calacanis47:33

       But for their benefit. In the teachers' case-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya47:36

       For their benefit.

   20. JCJason Calacanis47:36

       ... it's for their benefit. Like, I don't want to go back-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya47:38

       For their benefit.

   22. JCJason Calacanis47:38

       There's... I mean, listen, I won't say all teachers don't wanna go back to school. I know a lot of teachers want to go back to school and teach kids and take the masks off because it's insufferable.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya47:45

       No, you- I think you can say-

   24. JCJason Calacanis47:46

       But there is a contingent-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya47:46

       ... I think you can say the union and separated from teachers. Yes.

   26. JCJason Calacanis47:49

       Exactly. Yeah, I- I don't think it's all teachers. It's some percentage of teachers, but I think we're, uh, going to move... David Friedberg, correct me if I'm wrong here, we're gonna move to a two-class system here. If you're vaccinated, you get one set of rules. And if you're not vaccinated, you get another. And this is where, David, I think kids who are over the age of 11 or 12 who do get vaccinated, they shouldn't have to wear a mask at school, but then-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:10

       Well, sorry, can I just say something? This is what the insanity of this thing is. It's like, okay, we're gonna throw around, again, we're probably gonna use the word equity, uh, when we make these new rules. But then fine, why don't you just create a school that has everybody in it who is vaccinated?

   28. JCJason Calacanis48:27

       Most vaccinated

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:27

       I- I don't-

   30. JCJason Calacanis48:28

       ... want that.
4. 57:25 – 1:06:11

   Trump not taking credit for Project Lightspeed, Trump CFO indicted, will Dems prosecuting Trump backfire & help him gain steam for 2024?

   1. DSDavid Sacks57:25

   2. JCJason Calacanis57:25

      (laughs)

   3. DSDavid Sacks57:25

      I mean, it- it is very weird that Trump spent massive amounts of money on the vaccine and now doesn't want to take credit for Project Lightspeed by telling everybody to get it.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:38

      I- I- I-

   5. JCJason Calacanis57:38

      I think he's got a lot of other issues-

   6. DSDavid Sacks57:40

      What is your-

   7. JCJason Calacanis57:40

      I think he's got a lot of other issues on the plate to deal with, including-

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:43

      (laughs)

   9. JCJason Calacanis57:43

      ... an indictment that just landed yesterday. So maybe, you know, maybe he just doesn't know what to focus on because he, he sees his, uh, his budding empire unraveling before him.

   10. Did you see the report that said that Trump was extremely thrilled by the fact that his CFO was indicted? For two reasons. One is it kind of, um, indicates that they didn't have enough to go after him, and two is it's gonna make Joe Biden look bad and his administration look bad, uh, because it looks like they're being kind of prosecuted and persecuted now. But that, he- he views this as a positive and it, and it, and it- and he's thinking about it as a way to kind of stage a 2024 run.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:19

       Well, I didn't, I didn't see that particular story, but I do think that what-

   12. JCJason Calacanis58:23

       It was from Maggie, Maggie Haberman tweeted it. Yeah.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:24

       Okay, okay. Well, what- what the charges show, I think, is that they got nothing on Trump directly. Um, the- the- I mean, th- this turned out to be a big nothing burger after years of investigation, just like the whole Russia thing. And so it-

   14. DSDavid Sacks58:38

       Hold on. 15 felony-

   15. JCJason Calacanis58:40

       So, so hold on-

   16. DSDavid Sacks58:40

       15 felony counts? Is it nothing?

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:40

       Uh, hold on. Hold on. Is that not-

   18. JCJason Calacanis58:43

       Hold on. Let Zach finish his point.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:44

       Trump was not... Let me finish. Trump, Trump was not named. They didn't get close to Trump. All they got was they're trying to charge, uh, Wesselheim, who's a CFO, with basically receiving certain perks as compensation.

   20. JCJason Calacanis58:55

       T&E. It was T&E violations.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:57

       And not reporting-

   22. JCJason Calacanis58:57

       It was crazy.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:57

       Yeah. This is penny ante stuff. It does look like persecution rather than prosecution. And what they're trying to do is they're going after this guy Wesselheim to squeeze him to try and roll over on Trump. Well, good luck with that. That's about as likely to happen as, uh, Putin releasing the pee tapes. Not gonna happen. Sorry, JCal. Trump is getting away scot-free.

   24. DSDavid Sacks59:17

       The one thing I would say, I think, that I disagree with, respectfully-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya59:21

       (laughs)

   26. DSDavid Sacks59:21

       ... is, um, this is, uh, a 15-year, uh, tax avoidance scheme that included more than T&E, included people getting their tuition paid for for free and free apartments. So the equivalent-

   27. JCJason Calacanis59:33

       Now, but Jason-

   28. DSDavid Sacks59:33

       ... would be... And then, hold on. They then knowingly did this and changed the books knowingly, so they caught them going into their accounting and changing to hide it. And so the cover-up worsened the crime. They, this is an explicit way to not pay their taxes. This would be if all of us took our personal residences and our kids' private school tuition-

   29. JCJason Calacanis59:52

       I, I know.

   30. DSDavid Sacks59:52

       ... and didn't pay taxes on it. It's, it's significant.
5. 1:06:11 – 1:11:17

   Future of Republican & Democratic parties

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:06:11

      Neither of these two guys are our long-term solution. It's time to let it all go, right? It's like we had four years of just chaos. We now get to have four years to catch our breath. It's time to find the late 40s to mid-50s centrist normal people again, and we have three years to do it.

   2. Who do you think that is, uh, on the Republican side? And Chamath, who do you think it is on the Democrat side who's going to run for the next election cycle? Because just this morning, by the way, an article came out that, um, highlighted that several insiders in the White House are completely, like, up in arms about how, uh, chaotic, uh, Kamala Harris's office is, which is basically a way of starting to shoot her down, right? So if you think about the- the motivation here, someone in the White House is starting to shoot Kamala Harris down, which means they're starting to weaken her a little bit in terms of whether she could actually be a good replacement for the next term. I don't know if that's truly the motivation, but that's typically what these sorts of stories indicate. So if not her, if not her, who on the Democrat side and, you know, if not Trump, who on the Republican side in the next election cycle? Because those folks are going to start to pop their head up, right?

   3. ... the... Well, I mean, I think the, I think the person who has enough credibility to take a shot, it's not clear that she will, but if she did, she would be really serious and she could actually get people to be relatively normal, is Nikki Haley, on the right.

   4. DSDavid Sacks1:07:41

      But Ron DeSantis is gonna be the right's candidate, correct, Sas?

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:07:44

      And she's kind of normal.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:07:45

      DeSantis is definitely the early front runner. Um, e- there was a straw poll in which he was the first Republican to actually run ahead of Trump, uh, in a straw poll for, what, four or five years? And, uh, so yeah, it looks like, um... He... Now, he's running for reelection in Florida in 2022, so that's on his plate, uh, but I think it looks like he's going to sweep to victory. He made the right decisions on lockdowns. This is the central feather in his cap, that before any other governor really, he looked at the data, saw that, to Freeberg's point, lockdowns don't make a difference. He went back to normal. The state benefited. You look at per capita COVID deaths in Florida, it's middle of the pack, um, and which is actually a really good result given how many old people they have. So, he did a phenomenal job, I think, setting COVID policy in Florida, and he did it in the face of a hostile media that was just tearing him limb from limb. And so he's showed that he not only can find the right policy, but that he's got the spine to stand up for it. And I think as a result of that, yeah, he has galvanized early the Republican base. If he wins reelection in 2022 by a, by a strong margin, I think he does become the putative front runner for 2024. Very similar in a way, I think, to the way that, that George W. Bush, uh, you know, he, he basically won reelection in Texas two years before he ran for president, and on the heels of that victory, he was able to make the case, "Look, I just got reelected. I'm very popular in a huge state of the country. You know, I should be the front runner." I think DeSantis is in a similar position, in terms of-

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:09:25

      What do you think about Nikki Haley, Sas?

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:28

      I think Nikki Haley is sort of popular with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, but she does not bring together both the, the sort of the establishment wing with the populist wing. And what DeSantis has able- been able to do is get the business Republicans and the establishment Republicans to get behind him, as well as the populist Trump base loves him. And that's, that's the, um, that's the combo you gotta have, I think, to, to win the Republican nomination. And so Nikki Haley, I think, you know, everybody who sort of reads elite media is gonna overindex on her. But if you go to the, the straw polls and the rallies, she's not, just not gonna perform in those polls. There's a very interesting article in Politico, though, over the past week about how DeSantis is being very careful not to do anything to upset Trump, and I think he understands that-

   9. DSDavid Sacks1:10:19

      Is he the VP candidate, with Trump, you think?

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:23

       Well, that, that, that pre-assumes a lot of things happening. I mean, look, we, we don't know what's gonna happen. I think that, you know, the, the, the number one way to resurrect Trump is what Chamath said, is to keep poking that bear, to fill him with the, the, the rage to, to sort of counterpu- punch and come back. I think it would be better, however, for a new generation of leaders to... Look, we, we have, we're being run by a gerontocracy right now. So I mean, just Biden is 78, Pelosi is 80, Schumer is 77, McConnell is 80, and Trump is 75. And that's today, okay? (laughs) In 2024, all those people are gonna be in their 80s or just about to turn 80.

   11. DSDavid Sacks1:11:02

       Who, who will even be alive, I mean?

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:11:05

       Feinstein will be 91 or 92.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:07

       It's time to have a new generation-

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:11:09

       What a joke.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:09

       ... in both parties. Why are we being run by this gerontocracy?

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:11:12

       What a joke.

   17. DSDavid Sacks1:11:13

       Do we wanna move on to the drought and impending, uh, death,

6. 1:11:17 – 1:19:42

   FTC takes a hit in Facebook case dismissal & Amazon requesting Lina Khan's recusal, does Facebook have the best case against being a monopoly?

   1. DSDavid Sacks1:11:17

      and-

   2. JCJason Calacanis1:11:17

      Or the Facebook FTC dismissal?

   3. Oh, that was incredible. And also, uh, the, uh, FTC got two gut punches in a row, uh, and then, you know, Amazon fr- writes this petition to recuse Lina Khan.

   4. DSDavid Sacks1:11:31

      It's like, that's why she was hired. (laughs)

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:11:32

      (laughs)

   6. JCJason Calacanis1:11:33

      Incredible.

   7. DSDavid Sacks1:11:33

      She was hired because she's an expert on Amazon. (laughs)

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:11:36

      The, the Amazon, the Amazon letter was actually extremely well written and basically said, "I know that she's in charge, uh, of basically finding fairness, and fairness seems to be that we will get legislated, but we believe that sh- it's unfair to us, so please take her out of the mix." I just think it was fantastic. I mean, it's incredible. It's like, "Isn't this the point of having her in the job?"

   9. DSDavid Sacks1:11:56

      It's like, "We've hired a new prosecutor who specializes in organized crime, and the Gambino crime family has petitioned to have them-" (laughs)

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:12:03

       Exactly, recused.

   11. DSDavid Sacks1:12:04

       ... yep-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:05

       Recused.

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:12:05

       ... recused.

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:12:05

       ... from doing any organized-

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:07

       Yeah.

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:12:08

       ... crime.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:08

       Right. Their, their argument is that she should be recused because she published, um, articles-

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:12:12

       She's biased.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:12:12

       ... on how Ama- yeah, that Amazon should be broken up, and they're saying she's already prejudged the situation. There's no way this is gonna (laughs) fly. There's no way she's gonna get recused. But I think what they're trying to do is put an argument on appeal, so that if Lina Khan does break them up somehow, they can then go appeal to the Supreme Court or wherever. And, and this is basically reserving an argument they can make later.

Episode duration: 1:26:09