Hot Swap growing, donors revolt, President Kamala? SCOTUS breakdown: Immunity, Chevron, Censorship

Jason Calacanis 0:00 All right, everybody. Welcome back. It's Hot Swap Summer here at the All-In Podcast, episode 186 of the world's number one podcast. Calling in from the home office in Italy, Chamath Palihapitiya. How are you doing, sir?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:18 Great. How are you?

Jason Calacanis 0:19 You look so relaxed. Look at you. Look at you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:22 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:22 Look at you.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:24 It's only been two days, but it's only been two days that I'm working. I mean, I'm not that relaxed yet, but this place does put you in the right mood, I gotta say.

Jason Calacanis 0:30 All right. Sacks, I'm sure that it's been an uneventful (laughs) week for you. How are you doing in the great state of California from our headquarters at the All-In Tower in San Francisco? How's the All-In Tower doing?

David Sacks 0:43 Why are you doxxing me? What's going on here?

Jason Calacanis 0:46 (laughs) 'Cause you live in San Francisco. Everybody knows that.

David Sacks 0:49 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:49 All you have to do is look for the protests. Follow the protests-

David Sacks 0:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:52 ... and you'll find Sacks. Also with us, of course, from the Ohalo Headquarters...

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:57 Is that Backdraft, Freeburg?

David Friedberg 0:58 The house is on fire.

Jason Calacanis 1:00 The house is on fire. By house, you're referring to America.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02 Which house? Which house? America-

David Friedberg 1:03 Yeah, which one of Europe? Which one?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04 ... or the Democrats' or Biden's house? What, what-

David Friedberg 1:06 There's a political party. There, I mean, you can interpret it as you wish.

Jason Calacanis 1:10 Oh, okay. There you go.

David Friedberg 1:11 You can interpret it as you wish.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11 Your butt, is your butt on fire?

David Friedberg 1:12 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12 Did you have some, uh, Indian food?

Jason Calacanis 1:15 Did you hit the taco truck? What happened? (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:17 There's a heatwave in the West right now.

Jason Calacanis 1:20 He stopped at the taco truck.

David Friedberg 1:22 The West is on fire.

Jason Calacanis 1:23 The West is on fire. Okay, okay, Dr. Doom. If you want to come to the All-In Summit, now in year three, we've got a ton of programming updates, but the tickets are gonna sell out. We just released another hundred tickets.

Sriram Krishnan 1:38 Jason, I'm sorry. You have a fly, like, attacking your head right now.

David Sacks 1:41 You look like Mike Pence.

Jason Calacanis 1:43 Jesus. Is it a Mike Pence moment?

David Sacks 1:44 It's a Mike Pence fly.

Jason Calacanis 1:46 It's a Mike Pence fly. Yeah.

David Sacks 1:47 It is a Pence moment.

Jason Calacanis 1:49 God.

Sriram Krishnan 1:49 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:49 Or it could be, like, a, a Biden moment circling the deck.

David Sacks 1:53 (laughs)

Narrator 1:53 Don't stop me.

David Sacks 1:53 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:53 Oh, God. That's too dark.

David Sacks 1:55 That's pretty dark.

Jason Calacanis 1:56 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:56 That is pretty dark.

Narrator 1:57 Don't stop me.

Jason Calacanis 1:57 Okay. Three, two...

Narrator 1:59 I'm going all in. We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sacks. I'm going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

David Friedberg 2:11 Love you, besties.

Narrator 2:12 Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 2:15 For folks who are interested in meeting the other lunatics who listen to this pod, if you have no money and no budget, you can come to one of the 50 meetups that are currently happening around the world next week on Thursday, July 11th. Go to allinpodcast.co/meetups. Allinpodcast.co/meetups. You can host or you can join them. It's for $0.00. Now, if you're doing well, you got a little extra cheddar, and you wanna get together at the All-In Summit, that's in September. We held back 400 tickets according to Freeburg, who is running the summit now. He's released 100 this week, so get your applications in. And if you are trying to score a ticket or a speaking gay... gig, just don't email me. Email Freeburg. Freeburg, any updates on the content? People wanna know what's on the, on the docket.

David Friedberg 3:05 We're definitely gonna be talking about the changing landscape of American politics. So, we are gonna have some representation there, uh-

Jason Calacanis 3:11 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 3:12 ... to, to have that conversation. We're gonna be talking about the, the future of media. We're gonna be doing some really cool technology deep dives in areas like robotics, age reversal, EVTALS, and, uh, talking a lot about AI meets enterprise software. So, we have a number of, you know, the leading enterprise software CEOs joining us for conversations on that front. So, it's shaping up to be really amazing programming. Like Jason said, we're... we held back 400 tickets from the initial batch, and we're gonna release 100 this week. So put an application in. We're trying to be selective, and it's gonna be amazing. Uh, the parties are gonna be awesome.

Jason Calacanis 3:48 All right. And-

David Friedberg 3:48 So, really excited how it's coming together. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 3:50 You're doing some, uh, bird of a feather dinners, I understand this year. Some new concept. Can you explain that to me?

David Friedberg 3:55 The first night of the summit, we're... we've rented out a bunch of great restaurants around town in LA, and we're putting people together for dinner at all-

Jason Calacanis 4:03 Oh.

David Friedberg 4:03 ... these different restaurants. And then the parties are nights two and three, which are gonna be, you know, beautiful events.

Jason Calacanis 4:08 Everybody-

David Friedberg 4:09 Gonna be great.

Jason Calacanis 4:10 Everybody comes to the parties, but that first night, you go-

David Friedberg 4:11 Everyone comes to the dinners, everything. Yeah, it's gonna be great. So, so, we're trying to create more space for people to meet each other.

Jason Calacanis 4:16 Yeah.

David Friedberg 4:16 I know that's been a big thing in the past in the meetups and at the summit is people love meeting other folks in the community. So, it's gonna be-

Jason Calacanis 4:22 Yeah, smaller groups. So, the dinners will be 200 people or something like that, you can expect-

David Friedberg 4:25 Couple hundred depending on the location, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 4:27 Yeah, and then the bigger-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:28 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 4:28 ... parties will be, uh, everybody, 1800 people. So, where do people apply for this?

David Friedberg 4:32 It's at summit.allinpodcast.co.

Jason Calacanis 4:35 Okay, there you go, folks. And, uh, you can come to the free events or you can come there. All right, just, uh, usually, we... when we do the docket, I, I pursue a mullet docket. I do the business first and the party in the back. But man, we gotta start with Washington.

David Sacks 4:47 I've never supported the mullet strategy.

Jason Calacanis 4:50 I know that. I know that. You've been anti-mullet from the beginning. You want this to be-

David Sacks 4:53 Hanwha's right.

Jason Calacanis 4:53 ... a political show.

David Sacks 4:54 No, no, no, no, no. I never said-

Jason Calacanis 4:55 It depends on the week.

David Sacks 4:56 ... it had to be a political show. Exactly.

Jason Calacanis 4:57 It depends on the week.

David Sacks 4:57 I always said we start with the biggest, most topical issues first. And it could be business, or it could be politics.

Jason Calacanis 5:03 Correct.

David Sacks 5:03 You were discriminating against the politics. You were insisting that it be-

Jason Calacanis 5:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 5:07 ... a business issue even if the business issue wasn't relevant, topical, or interesting.

Jason Calacanis 5:11 Here we go. (laughs) No, I was not. I think you're talking about Freeburg. Freeburg was the one.

David Sacks 5:16 That's true.

Jason Calacanis 5:16 Politi- politics is killing the pod.

David Sacks 5:16 It mostly came from Freeburg. Who was right? Who brought the ratings of this pod to a whole new level?

Jason Calacanis 5:22 Yeah, Freeburg.

David Sacks 5:23 Me, that's who.

Jason Calacanis 5:23 Who brought the MAGA lunatics? That's it.

David Sacks 5:24 Who built this thing? Me, that's who.

Jason Calacanis 5:25 Who built this? Me.

David Sacks 5:27 (laughs)

David Friedberg 5:27 Vlad from Robin Hood. He is the guy who did it.

Jason Calacanis 5:29 Vlad from Robin Hood.

David Friedberg 5:30 SBF.

Jason Calacanis 5:30 Shout out to Vlad.

David Friedberg 5:31 SBF did it.

David Sacks 5:32 By the way, I mean, the, the ratings of this pod hit some sort of new stratospheric level, not just with President Trump interview, but last week.

Jason Calacanis 5:41 Whatever. I mean, the point is last week was, I think, the most crazy week in the history of politics, and it's only going to get crazier.

Jason Calacanis 5:51 So, let's start off with Hot Swap Summer. You heard it here first, or maybe not. Hot Swap Summer continues. You know, previously, historically, if you wanted to understand who's winning an election, you'd look at the polls. Not perfect, obviously. Some of these polls still call landlines, yada yada.But then people built models, obviously, 538, all this kind of stuff. But it seems that this year and this, uh, election cycle, people are really focused on prediction markets, mm, aka betting markets and, uh, th- well, we're looking at them in real time and obviously people have skin in the game. So, you can... I'm interested in the panel's take on the sharps on these platforms and if you think that they're more accurate than, say, some of these polls or the aggregators of polls. But Kamala Harris is now the favorite to be (laughs) the Democratic nominee, according to one of them. So just let that soak in. (laughs) In the last 24 hours, VP Harris's chances of being the Democratic nominee have gone from 18% to 50%, at the same time President Biden has dropped from 66% to 28%. There are a bunch of long shots, moonshots in there, Newsom, Michelle Obama, Gretchen Whitmer all in the 8 to 12%, but they were low single digits prior to last week's debate. As you can see in the chart, Biden and Harris were about even this morning. Uh, the taping of this is Wednesday, July 3rd. But the New York Times reported that Biden told an ally he's considering dropping out. So, we should note the White House, the White House spokesman said this is absolutely false. But this is the, uh, money chart from, I think, Polymarket, and we keep updating this document in real time while we're taping. Chances of Biden dropping out are now at 77%. That's up from 60% this morning, 40% after the debate.

David Friedberg 7:41 You know, if he talks to us after we record the show-

Jason Calacanis 7:44 We have to do this.

David Friedberg 7:44 ... before we publish, it's gonna be a whole-

David Sacks 7:46 Well, I don't, I don't think he's going to do that because he is scheduled to do a sit-down interview with, uh-

David Friedberg 7:52 Oh, right, yeah.

David Sacks 7:52 ... George Stephanopoulos. I think they're recording it on Friday.

David Friedberg 7:55 Right.

David Sacks 7:56 Which is two days from-

Jason Calacanis 7:57 Maybe he doesn't care. Oh, is that what you're saying?

David Friedberg 7:58 Which is two-

David Sacks 7:58 No, no, no, no, hold on, hold on.

David Friedberg 8:00 Yeah.

David Sacks 8:00 He's gonna do an interview with Stephanopoulos on Friday, and then Stephanopoulos is showing it in two parts on Saturday and Sunday. So it's gonna be edited. So we don't know what they're gonna edit in or edit out. Uh, at this point though, the media is in such a feeding frenzy that I don't think that ABC is gonna cover for Biden. So I suspect it'll probably be a pretty fair representation of the actual recorded interview. In any event, that's coming out this weekend. I think the Biden presidency basically hinges on this interview. If Biden can show that he's sharp and he's responsive and not senile. And presumably he's going to sit down and do this at the best hours of the day, right? They can't make that excuse anymore.

Jason Calacanis 8:40 So is that before nap time or after nap time?

David Sacks 8:42 Right, exactly. So I'm sure he can do this at a time when he has the good stuff. I think if he knocks it out of the park, maybe he can quell all of this speculation. But if not, if it goes poorly, then I think he's done.

Jason Calacanis 8:55 So this is the last chance again, it's like, this is like the third last chance.

David Sacks 8:59 I think so. Yeah, because th- think about it. I mean, the accusation is that he's senile. That's not a hard thing to disprove if you're not actually senile.

Jason Calacanis 9:08 Right.

David Sacks 9:08 You just need to go in there.

Jason Calacanis 9:10 (laughs)

David Sacks 9:10 Right? It's a pretty low bar, right?

Jason Calacanis 9:13 Not senile.

David Sacks 9:14 So... Yeah. So he just needs to go in there and talk-

Jason Calacanis 9:16 Has the balls.

David Sacks 9:17 ... for whatever it is, an hour, and he's not going to be fed a hard, hardball questions.

Jason Calacanis 9:21 No.

David Sacks 9:21 Probably gonna be pretty softball questions. He just has to prove that he's not senile. If he can do that, it'll calm things down.

Jason Calacanis 9:28 I- Stephanopoulos generally does a, a good job. He's not a sycophant. I think he, he considers himself a, a legit journalist and will, will actually-

David Friedberg 9:35 Well, this is-

David Sacks 9:36 No, that's not true.

Jason Calacanis 9:37 He'll throw, he'll throw some fastballs, I think. I think he's gonna throw a couple fastballs.

David Friedberg 9:39 Well, this is his Woodward and Bernstein moment. I mean, like if, if Stephanopoulos wants to go into the Hall of Fame, this is his opportunity. If he-

Jason Calacanis 9:45 Absolutely.

David Friedberg 9:46 ... if he throws the high heater to Biden and basically is the one that delivers the coup de grace, then his name will be in history alongside Biden for that reason.

Jason Calacanis 9:57 But think about it. That's the correct analysis.

David Friedberg 9:58 Think about the strategy. If, if you're the, if you're the Democratic Party leaders and you are evaluating who to choose to replace Biden, the first thing you do is you have to double down on Biden. Because if you were neutral to negative on Biden or passive, it's immediately interpreted as he's being swapped out, and then you don't have time to pick the right candidate. In order to have the time to pick the right candidate, you have to first double down on Biden, be really declarative that he's our candidate, put him on media, put him on talk shows while you were figuring out who's going to replace him and what the strategy is to get that person to win. So there's a, there's a chance that what's actually going on is a little bit more of a structured strategy around find the right candidate, set up the right program to get them elected, figure out how we're gonna move the $120 million that we raised for Biden over to whoever this new candidate is, which is gonna be- You can't. You can only- Right. ... you can only move it to, uh, Harris. You cannot move it, you cannot move the entire- Right. ... entirety of that budget with anybody else. So there's a whole... I mean, so, so you've got, you've got to put together a real plan. You can't just do the hot swap. You've got to have a plan for the hot swap, which means in the meantime, you've got to buy time. And the best way-

Jason Calacanis 11:05 I'll tell you the plan.

David Friedberg 11:06 ... to buy time is throw Biden forward and be like, "Hey, look, this guy's gonna go do media."

Jason Calacanis 11:08 Yeah, so you're-

David Friedberg 11:09 "He's still our guy."

Jason Calacanis 11:10 You're correct that they're buying time, obviously, while they try to figure this out. And the powers that be, which powers that be? The Biden camp, which is not the political machine, it's his literal family, Hunter, Jill, et cetera. Um, what they're actually doing, uh, and this will be the next Nostrocanus prediction that will come true, is they're going to do a-

David Sacks 11:30 Nostrocanus. (laughs)

David Friedberg 11:33 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 11:33 (laughs) I didn't have time to get like a whole-

David Friedberg 11:36 All I, all I, all I heard was, "Lick my anus."

Jason Calacanis 11:38 (laughs)

David Sacks 11:39 (laughs)

David Friedberg 11:39 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 11:39 It's N-I-S, not N-U-S. Uh, so Nostrocanus prediction coming in here hot.

David Sacks 11:44 (laughs)

David Friedberg 11:44 Oh.

Jason Calacanis 11:44 Here's what will happen, Freeburg. They are going to do, uh-

David Friedberg 11:49 All caps locks. All caps locks.

Jason Calacanis 11:49 All caps locks alert, must credit Nostrocanus. They're gonna do a Democratic primary speed run. Here's what's gonna happen. They're gonna do five debates in 10 weeks, and then whoever wins, wins. Kamala... He's gonna resign. Kamala becomes president. Kamala gets to, um-

Narrator 12:06 ... run-

Jason Calacanis 12:06 Doesn't show strength.

Narrator 12:08 ... for the speed run. She gets to speed run like everybody else. Dean Phillips gets to come in, everybody speed runs it, the, they take over the media, the media will go crazy over the summer, massive ratings, boom, and we have, uh, a winner come in and they demolish Trump.

David Sacks 12:24 That's not gonna happen.

Narrator 12:25 Yeah, you said he's not gonna get hot swapped as well.

David Sacks 12:27 Another strict candidate has gone off the rails.

Narrator 12:29 You said he wouldn't get hot swapped, so you have no creden-

Jason Calacanis 12:32 Well, it hasn't happened yet.

Narrator 12:33 But, J-Kel, if you run a debate, it shows, it shows weakness.

David Friedberg 12:36 You said DeSantis was gonna win.

Narrator 12:36 The party, the party needs to select a leader and they need to say-

David Sacks 12:40 Wrong.

Narrator 12:40 ... "This is our candidate."

David Sacks 12:41 No.

Narrator 12:41 Because if they, if they do this, it's too diffuse.

David Sacks 12:43 No.

Narrator 12:43 It weakens whoever ends up winning-

Jason Calacanis 12:45 It strengthens the-

Narrator 12:45 ... because whoever ends up winning is not 100%.

Jason Calacanis 12:47 It strengthens the party, it strengthens the party because they say, "Listen, he decided to resign. We wanted to do the most democratic thing possible." What's the most democratic thing possible? We put all our candidates out there and you, the people, choose. Chamath, tell him I'm right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:01 I, I think this is one of the dumbest predictions you've made.

David Friedberg 13:04 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:04 And you've made-

Jason Calacanis 13:05 All right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:05 ... you made some real doozies in your day.

David Friedberg 13:06 The hot swap's gonna happen still, you didn't call it.

David Sacks 13:09 The problem with your hot swap theory has always been that not only would Biden step down, but that magically they would choose the best candidate. We would get a Jeff Bezos, we would get a Jamie Dimon. Is that somehow, we would get someone who represented all of Trump's policies without being Trump, but you would get some magical moderate to emerge in the Democratic Party. That's not gonna happen, okay?

David Friedberg 13:29 Okay.

David Sacks 13:30 Thanks to your incessant demands-

David Friedberg 13:32 (laughs)

David Sacks 13:32 ... for the hot swap-

David Friedberg 13:33 (laughs)

David Sacks 13:34 Okay, you and many others, and this feeding frenzy-

David Friedberg 13:36 So, I caused it? I love it.

David Sacks 13:37 Th- yeah. You, in part, along with many others, have caused this feeding frenzy.

David Friedberg 13:40 (laughs)

David Sacks 13:42 We are gonna get President Kamala Harris. She's the only alternative. You can see this in the prediction markets.

David Friedberg 13:47 Yeah.

David Sacks 13:47 Just a few days ago, it was sort of evenly divided between there was her, there was Gavin Newsom, there was Gretchen Whitmer. Now it's just her. Why does that happen? Because they realize they can't sidestep Kamala Harris without offending a major constituency in the Democratic Party. Equally important, maybe even more important, they would lose roughly a billion dollars of contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign if neither Biden nor Harris is running at the top of the ticket. They'd have to refund all of that money back to the donors who contributed it. There's no way they're gonna start over from zero in terms of fundraising. So, they've realized that if Joe steps aside, there is only one feasible candidate for them, which is Kamala Harris.

David Friedberg 14:28 Sax, let me ask you a question. If Jamie Dimon declared that he's gonna... he, he would be happy to take on the candidacy for the Democratic Party, he would call his friend Warren Buffett, he would call his friend Jeff Bezos, he would call up his own personal banker and say, "We've got half a billion, let's go and let's have a run at this." There are certain folks that are outside of the typical political spectrum that might actually have a shot at doing the extraordinary here and stepping up and doing exactly what Trump and others that support Trump don't want to see happen, which is a candidate that can actually challenge Trump on the merits of their experience, on their values, on their capabilities as leaders, as executives, and on their past performance. And I think that someone like that might be the strategist's, kind of, move to say, "This is the one thing we can do that can defeat Trump," because we all know from the polling that Harris doesn't stand a shot.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:28 We tried that four years ago and you're missing the history, which is Mike Bloomberg tried that exact same thing and there was one word that was said to Mike Bloomberg-

David Friedberg 15:36 Billionaire.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:36 ... and his candidacy imploded, and it was the word billionaire. So, the idea that you're gonna get some other billionaire that all of a sudden is less hated, I mean, Mike Bloomberg has done so, so much good, quite honestly. And so, if he can't, kind of, escape the scarlet letter of that, of the B-word-

David Friedberg 15:52 But Bloomberg-

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:52 ... I don't know how anybody else is going to do it.

David Friedberg 15:53 But Bloomberg r- but here's why. Bloomberg ran against other Democrats. This is a person that is running against another billionaire, which is Trump. And so if you have two people who are now on equal footing and it is the Trump versus-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:05 How does he get-

David Friedberg 16:05 ... the non-Trump billionaire-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:06 How does, how does this person get to the Democratic quarter, quarter primary?

David Friedberg 16:08 ... a lot of people in this country, I suspect-

Jason Calacanis 16:09 Let him cook.

David Friedberg 16:10 ... it's, that's-

Jason Calacanis 16:10 Go for it, right?

David Friedberg 16:11 ... that's the, that's-

David Sacks 16:11 You're operating, you're operating under the charming delusion that the Democratic Party cares about democracy. This is basically a party that's run by political insiders that hates billionaires and people like this. People like Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon, they pay the Democrats protection money. Okay? That's how Democrats see them. "We're gonna go shake them down to get money from them. They're not gonna hand over the reins of the party-

David Friedberg 16:36 I don't disagree.

David Sacks 16:37 ... to some, to some outsider like that."

David Friedberg 16:38 I don't disagree, but let me ask you a question, because this is what Trump-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:40 The Republicans did.

David Friedberg 16:40 This is, this is what Trump did, right?

David Sacks 16:41 Republicans did it. Yes, but Trump ran in the primary.

Narrator 16:44 Trump came in and he, he, he rewrote the rules of the party by running. You're right.

David Sacks 16:46 No. He shut-

David Friedberg 16:47 But, but-

David Sacks 16:47 No, hold on. He ran and shattered the party, the established power structure. Remember, it was, it was the Bush family's party when Trump first ran. Jeb was supposed to be the nominee, right?

David Friedberg 16:58 Yeah.

David Sacks 16:58 He was supposed to-

David Friedberg 16:59 Right.

David Sacks 16:59 ... inherit the mantle from W the way that W inherited from his father. And Trump came in there and appealed directly to Republican primary voters and called the forever wars a mistake and said he was gonna build the wall and said that he's gonna reset things with China, issues that were latent in the Republican Party. And he took over the Republican Party the way you're supposed to, through democracy, through voting. That opportunity is gone here because the rep- Democratic primaries happened last year and the Biden team ensured that he would basically win the primaries handily. So, they control all the delegates. Remember that.

David Friedberg 17:33 Totally.

David Sacks 17:34 They control the delegates. They're not gonna release them to a Jamie Dimon or some other billionaire-

David Friedberg 17:39 Well, let me ask you a question, Sax.

David Sacks 17:39 ... who wants to shake up the party.

David Friedberg 17:41 Let me a- let me ask you a question. So if they, if they end up facing the terminal nature of this, which is, "If we don't put someone in that can win-

Jason Calacanis 17:49 We lose.

David Friedberg 17:49 ... we are not going to win."

Jason Calacanis 17:50 Yeah.

David Friedberg 17:51 It is over.

David Sacks 17:52 Why do you think that Kamala can't win? That's their thinking right now, is that she stands a better shot than Biden.

David Friedberg 17:57 Well, let's assume, let's assume that they take a read of the polls, they take a read of the nation, they actually do a real look at the c- the circumstances on the ground, which is that she is not gonna win.If they looked at that and they said, "You know what? We need to win," and some sense comes into the head of the leaders of the Democratic Party, and they say, "Who can win?" And a person like Jamie Dimon polls that he can win, there is a chance, I think, that maybe they say, "This is how we're gonna get back to the White House."

David Sacks 18:24 They're never gonna hand the reins of, of the party to a total outsider. Th- the Democratic Party is the ultimate insider party, and they're gonna pick an insider. It's insiders picking insiders. And I think they've realized over the past week, in particular, that they cannot sidestep around Kamala Harris, both because it would be a slap in the face to her constituency and-

David Friedberg 18:43 Right.

David Sacks 18:43 ... the money issue.

David Friedberg 18:44 Right.

David Sacks 18:44 So it's Kamala or bust for them. It's either Kamala or Biden.

David Friedberg 18:47 I think it's a really good, it's a really good point. What we'll see is just how rational (laughs) the Democratic Party leadership is.

David Sacks 18:53 Yeah.

David Friedberg 18:53 Are they going to continue to play based on insider first principles, or will they actually take a first principles point of view on how do we win the election? And I think it will be very revealing about how the leaders of the Democratic Party think based on the decision they make.

Jason Calacanis 19:10 And their donors, for example.

David Friedberg 19:11 Well, I don't know if that's true because I actually think that there's a ri-

Jason Calacanis 19:13 'Cause the donors are fleeing the ship, right?

David Friedberg 19:15 Yeah. There's a rift between the donor class and the Democratic Party leadership.

Jason Calacanis 19:19 Correct. And I think the donor class doesn't wanna lose.

David Friedberg 19:22 And by the way, Sachs, what you're saying is probably right, but I think it could actually end up being a signal that there might be a change in how the, who the donors end up supporting the next go-around, um, for, uh, to realize this, a leadership change in the Democratic Party.

David Sacks 19:36 Look, what, what the prediction markets are showing is that it's not gonna be a free-for-all. It's either gonna be Harris or Biden. I mean, that's what the prediction markets are showing, and I think that's fundamentally right. Uh, but look, I, I think there's real danger here to the, to the country in this, because what a lot of people are saying, and I guess it makes sense, is that if Biden's not fit to run again, how is he fit to serve out the rest of his term as president?

Jason Calacanis 19:58 He's not fit to serve out his term. He's gotta resign.

David Sacks 20:01 Okay. So if he resigns, and that's probably the thing that helps Harris the most, right? Because now she gets sworn in as commander-in-chief. She's the president of the United States. There's, like, a major-

Jason Calacanis 20:11 First female president. Yeah. It's a big deal.

David Sacks 20:12 It's a major glow up for her, and it-

Jason Calacanis 20:14 Yeah.

David Sacks 20:14 ... imbues her with all of this gravitas and credibility that she's now the president of the United States. They can send her to G7 meetings and deal with other world leaders. They've got four months to basically take this candidate who everyone thought wasn't ready... Remember, a year ago during the primaries when Biden ran again, one of the reasons why is because everyone said that Kamala is not ready. You know, every interview she does is basically a cackle or a word salad. In any event-

David Friedberg 20:40 (laughs)

David Sacks 20:42 ... no one thought she was ready. Now, they have, like, basically made her seem much more significant by giving her the presidency. But my point is this. We're in the middle of a war. We're in the middle of a war with Russia. Just, uh, a week or two ago-

Jason Calacanis 20:58 We are?

David Sacks 20:59 ... Russia-

Jason Calacanis 20:59 We're in the, we're in the war? Or we're providing weapons?

David Sacks 21:02 Both. Uh, a week or two ago, American cluster bombs were used to kill Russian civilians sunbathing on the beach in Crimea. Okay. Our weapons are targeting, killing Russian civilians. The Russians, in response to that, said, "We are no longer in a state of peace with the United States." They did not say, "We're in a state of war," but they said, "We're no longer in a state of peace." And the Russians have indicated that they may escalate horizontally by giving advanced weapons to our enemies. For example, they've talked about giving cruise missiles to the Houthis. Okay? So all of this is happening right now in real time on the world stage, and you're gonna remove Biden, who, look, I don't like Biden's policies, and I don't think he's compos mentis for more than a few hours a day. But I would still rather have Biden as commander-in-chief for the next six months-

Jason Calacanis 21:55 Yes.

David Sacks 21:55 ... than take the risk of putting Harris in there, who's inexperienced, who's a lightweight, and who might wanna prove how tough she is.

Jason Calacanis 22:03 Let's get Chamath in for the final word here. Chamath, your thoughts on what's gonna happen? Make your prediction between now and September. What, what do you think's the, the, the mid-game here before we get to the end game?

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:14 I honestly don't know, but I think that we're in a precarious place where things are gonna get worse. Biden actually approved private contractors now going into Ukraine and starting to fight. Americans will be on the battlefield as of, I think this was just a, a few days ago. If you remember the movie Wag The Dog, I think that it starts to create all these weird scenarios where people will wanna create major distractions to try to keep the evidence and the attention away from this core issue that after the debate everybody is focused on. And I think the reality is that if you were accused, if any of you were accused of being mentally incapacitated, what you would probably do is go on every single talk show, go on every single news show, go on every single podcast-

Jason Calacanis 23:05 Press conference.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:06 You would just do so much public-facing work so as to completely dispel this idea so that you could firmly say it was a cold. Although now this week it's jet lag. It was, it was jet lag, whatever-

Jason Calacanis 23:20 Debate prep, the time of day.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:22 Whatever it was, you'd be able to just completely take the wind out of the sails. I think we're still getting only a controlled dribble of information and access to the president of the United States. So he's gonna be on Stephanopoulos. He's going to show up for a NATO meeting. And so you're only seeing dribs and drabs of somebody who now a lot of people think is not in a position not just to run, but let alone run the country.

Jason Calacanis 23:48 You said last week Democratic Party will have a meaningful reset. Still, still thinking that, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:54 The issue that the Democrats will have to face is the person that they probably want to run is someone different than Kamala Harris. And the problem that they're gonna have to confront is there's a part of it which is fundraising. And I do think that David's right. There was an article in the FT where one of the op-ed writers said they're in this sort of identity politics trap in sorts because-... they will have to run her no matter what. And even if somebody did show up with the financial wherewithal, and I think Freeburg actually brings up a really interesting thought experiment. If there was somebody that could take the Democratic mantle who could completely self-fund their campaign, but he happened to be just a white man, what would the Democrats do relative to Kamala Harris? And I think that they would be in knots around what to do.

Jason Calacanis 24:40 Because of the identity politics issue?

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:42 I think they have made it an, an important issue, this idea of inclusiveness as they've defined it.

David Sacks 24:47 Got it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:48 So it sets up for, I think, a very complicated summer.

David Sacks 24:51 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:52 The other thing you have to keep in mind is how the electoral college works and how the ballot system works is that you don't have infinite time. You have to get all of this wrapped up and cinched up by the middle of August at the latest, and so we're very much on, like, a four or six-week shot clock. And I don't think the Democrats are doing what they need to do in order to completely take the wind out of the sails of this narrative that Biden is not prepared or capable. And the only way that you can do that is by having him appear 24 by 7 in real time in front of hundreds of millions of people as often as possible.

Jason Calacanis 25:29 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:29 And they're just not doing that.

Jason Calacanis 25:29 And so since they're not doing it, they have ample time to do it. He's... Yeah, he's, he's obviously probably done.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:34 And by the way, the other, the other problem that it creates is that you're starting to see some of these fissures inside of the team. There is a really charged article from Axios that dropped, which basically said that there are three people that have cordoned off access to the president. It named-

Jason Calacanis 25:49 Yeah, that was weird.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:50 ... Joe Biden and Thomas Heene and some other person. And my initial thought when I read this was, other than Joe Biden, who's a recognizable person, I had no idea who these other two people were. And I thought, "That's really precise for somebody like that who has inside access to all of these sort of insiders to put that article out." So I think you're starting to see the sort of leaks and the fissures.

David Sacks 26:12 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:13 And then that's sort of this next phase that will make things a little bit ugly and contorted as well.

Jason Calacanis 26:16 Let me ask one question here 'cause we got, we gotta move on to the Supreme Court stuff. Sax,

Jason Calacanis 26:22 two-part question. One, is there a chance that he has had a diagnosis already and they're covering that up? And two, if they covered up something like that, what is the ramification of it? Because it's clear to everybody he's in cognitive decline. It's clear it's been a couple of years of cognitive decline.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:41 No, no, no, th- that was asked of KJP in a press conference yesterday.

Jason Calacanis 26:45 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:45 And she was very explicit. No. And the reason-

Jason Calacanis 26:47 No, that she doesn't know.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:49 ... she can say-

Jason Calacanis 26:49 She doesn't know.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:50 No, no, no. The, th- the, the answer was much more explicit. "Has he been diagnosed?" And she said no. And the reason she said no is because that is very credible for her to say because he hasn't taken the test.

Jason Calacanis 27:00 Okay, so that's your theory.

David Sacks 27:01 Look, it was obvious now for months, if not years, that there's been a huge coverup of his cognitive decline and the media has participated in this. Anyone who raised that question was treated as being a partisan or a liar. And just for a good example of this, I know you described George Stephanopoulos as a straight shooter, but when Nikki Haley was on his show-

Jason Calacanis 27:22 Yeah, so I'm guessing.

David Sacks 27:22 ... a few months ago, and I'm not a fan of Nikki Haley at all, but she started making this point and Stephanopoulos basically wouldn't let her finish. I mean, basically shouted her down. So the media was actively suppressing the story. You take Morning Joe, uh, Scarsborough, he was saying that this version of Biden is the best he's ever been.

Jason Calacanis 27:39 Yeah.

David Sacks 27:39 And we've been hearing all of that kind of stuff for months. They were describing true videos showing Biden being out of it. They were describing those as being fakes, clean fakes. They invented this new term for perfectly real videos that basically would reflect his condition. So the media has been engaged in a gigantic coverup of this and as a result, the country is in really bad shape because we have to go through the next six months either with a senile president who has limited cognition or we could end up with a new president who is untested, inexperienced and, based on every interview she's given in the last four years, appears to be completely clueless at a moment in time where I think we have the most dangerous foreign policy situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Jason Calacanis 28:25 Okay, so you think it's gonna be-

David Sacks 28:27 So this is a... Hold on. This is a really horrible situation and... Hold on. It's, it's... The media bears a lo- lot of the responsibility and what should have happened, okay, what should have happened is we should have had a re- robust Democratic primary a year ago-

Jason Calacanis 28:39 Sure, yeah. We all called for that, yeah.

David Sacks 28:41 ... based on concerns about Biden's cognitive abilities reported by an honest media. We never had that.

Jason Calacanis 28:46 Yeah, so, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:47 Did you guys see this clip, by the way? There's a clip on Twitter where somebody put together a clip on X, six minutes of 100 sort of spokespeople and proxies and they all had the same thing to say about President Biden, which is he is sharp as a tack.

David Sacks 29:03 Sharp as a tack. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:04 And it was all ver- Sharp as a tack.

Jason Calacanis 29:06 (laughs) Which end of a tack, the round part?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:07 What was so funny to me is I thought to myself, "If I asked 100 people on the street, 'What do you think of Elon Musk?' You'd have 100 different statements." There'd be a general theme, but n- you would not have even 50 people repeat the exact same words.

Jason Calacanis 29:22 Yeah, they're talking points, obviously.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:23 And so you have this funny situation where 100 different people were basically saying the exact same talking points. So it's not even a point of view, it was just something that they were told to say by somebody else.

Jason Calacanis 29:34 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:34 And back to your point-

Jason Calacanis 29:35 Both, both sides can be like that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:36 ... Sax, is the real issue, which is that you don't really have an honest media here and so there is no check and balance on power right now.

David Sacks 29:42 Imagine if this feeding frenzy happened a year ago.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:45 Well, the contrast and compare I want to make is everybody has a point of view about Donald Trump and I was thinking about this. The reason why everybody has a point of view about Donald Trump is everything that has happened in his life is completely transparently documented. There really is nothing hidden at this point. And so you have a point of view because you've been given all of the stuff, right? And there's endless amounts of new stuff that come out about the old stuff and so you know. And that's what's so interesting, you have the ability to come to your own decision and it's not packaged through these filters.

Jason Calacanis 30:20 ... yet with President Biden, I think it's so constrained and controlled. And I think you have to understand and appreciate that cognitive decline, let's assume that he isn't for the sake of the United States, but if he is in it, it only gets worse from here and it compounds and compounds and compounds. That is what happens. And so, not only do you have to wonder what the n- the next five months are like, what does it look like in 18 and 24 and 36 months? That is a really important issue here.

David Sacks 30:49 Clearly, Biden can't serve a second term.

Jason Calacanis 30:50 No.

David Sacks 30:50 But the question is, what- what do we do now? And I gotta say, it's amazing to me that the Democrats are not considering the one option that is kinda obvious, which is, you let the man run the most dignified campaign he can. He's the candidate you chose, and-

Jason Calacanis 31:08 Oh, satire Sax is back.

David Sacks 31:09 ... you lose.

Jason Calacanis 31:09 Here he is.

David Sacks 31:09 No, this is not-

Jason Calacanis 31:10 Satire Sax.

David Sacks 31:11 This is not satire. This is not satire, Sax. The real problem here is the Democrats refuse to lose. They want to cling to power however they can. They refuse to let democracy just work.

Jason Calacanis 31:21 Democracy working would be to do the speed round. I have a question. What would you do with the money? Would you just not spend it then and just save it?

David Sacks 31:28 Well, this is really interesting. So there is an analog. Okay, in 1996, Bob Dole was the Republican candidate for president and quite frankly, he was too old, he was seen as a relic, Clinton was fairly popular, and it was pretty obvious that he was just a loser and he was going to lose. Did the Republicans engage in shenanigans to try and fix the situation? No. They just accepted the inevitable that Dole was going to lose, and what they did is they pulled financing from his campaign, at least in the final month, and they redistributed it to House and Senate candidates. And actually, they did better in the House and Senate. They held on to the House and Senate. I think they lost a few seats, but way less than they were expecting to. And they kind of ran on a campaign that, you know, you can't trust Slick Willie, so keep us on, split the ticket, and keep us on as a check against him. And it actually worked fairly well. It was the best the Republicans could do. But frankly, they let Bob Dole run a dignified campaign. My advice to the Democrats would be, do- don't have Biden resign, doing a shakeup right now.

Jason Calacanis 32:30 There you have it, Democrats, listen to Sax. There's your political counsel.

David Sacks 32:33 No, if you're-

Jason Calacanis 32:33 (laughs) If you're a Democratic politician, listen to Sax.

David Sacks 32:34 If you do, if you do a shakeup right now, when you put an untested, unexperienced, clueless president in there who's going to want to show how tough she is and bring in her own team-

Jason Calacanis 32:42 No, no, nobody wants Kamala.

David Sacks 32:43 ... in the middle of this dangerous situation, let Biden run a dignified campaign and lose.

Jason Calacanis 32:48 My advice to the Democrats is to embrace an outsider, give the people what they want, freedom of choice, freedom to elect a leader, and bring someone in that falls outside of the traditional t- political spectrum that does not want to hold public office because it's not their career. They can bring money to the table, they can bring credibility to the table, and they can win votes and compete effectively against Trump. If your goal is to retain the White House, Kamala or Joseph Biden- Give us two names. Jamie-

David Sacks 33:19 Who?

Jason Calacanis 33:19 Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon.

David Sacks 33:21 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 33:21 Bob Iger. Give us a second name.

David Sacks 33:23 Bob Iger, yeah. It's a great one. He, he floated-

Jason Calacanis 33:25 Jamie Dimon and Bob Iger.

David Sacks 33:26 You know what you're doing right now?

Jason Calacanis 33:27 Howard Schultz is another great one, yeah.

David Sacks 33:28 It's called wishcasting. You're doing wishcasting.

Jason Calacanis 33:31 Sax, I'm not speaking about realism. I'm speaking, I'm speaking about what it would take to win. Yes. If they actually want to have a shot at winning.

David Sacks 33:37 Great idea, Freeburg.

Jason Calacanis 33:37 Someone that could win a popular vote, someone that could actually win votes away from Trump, because you can't introduce someone like Whitmer or Moore this late in the season when no one in the United States knows who the heck this person is. Yeah. But when you have someone with credibility, with economic and business success, with executive authority, with capital and connections into the Democratic Party, but isn't part of the political machine, that you and many others in the Democratic Party are now starting to hate- Let's go. ... you have an opportunity to actually win. Yes! That's what it's about. And if they were smart and they got their (censored) together, they would say, "You know what? It's time for a change," just like the Republicans had to do when Trump stepped into the party. Bingo! Use the Republican playbook. Brilliant, Freeburg. Brilliant.

David Sacks 34:15 Okay, well, you guys better have a magic lamp with a genie in it, because that's the only way this is gonna happen.

Jason Calacanis 34:20 Well, listen, it's... (laughs)

David Sacks 34:21 I'm just trying to keep the show fresh. Okay, let's go.

Jason Calacanis 34:23 Okay, here we go. Next topic, here we go.

David Sacks 34:25 (laughs) We're gonna have three wishes to my genie.

Jason Calacanis 34:26 Freeburg gets the final word. Here we go.

David Sacks 34:28 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 34:28 I'm giving Freeburg the final word. He had the best take, I'm giving Freeburg the, the, uh, final word. All right.

David Sacks 34:33 Oh, you're pulling your, your McNeal era...

Jason Calacanis 34:35 Absolutely.

David Sacks 34:36 Yeah. Okay.

Jason Calacanis 34:37 Here we go. There were seven

Jason Calacanis 34:38 rulings and a bunch of SCOTUS activity over the last week. But these are really important consequential decisions. We are going to talk about three of them. And I'm going to try to get through these quickly. Obviously, you could talk about these for hours, and people will be, you know, doing case studies on them for a long time. But let me try to do this quickly so we can get everybody's take on them. The first one I want to talk about is NetChoice. This is the content moderation cases that you may have heard of. There were two very controversial laws passed in Florida and Texas in 2021 in the wake of January 6th. The Florida law, if you weren't aware of it, and, and I don't suspect most people are, would cover platforms with over 100 million monthly active users or 100 million in annual revenue. In other words, they're targeting X, YouTube, Facebook, Meta, those kind of sites. And they would require those platforms to notify users if their posts are removed or altered. And the platforms would have to make general disclosures about their operations and policies. And the Texas law was very similar for platforms over 50 million monthly active users. And it would require them to notify users whose posts were removed and provide an explanation of why, all that kind of stuff. Both of these laws were challenged in court in 2021. Just to give you an idea, like, why I think the conservatives were upset about this, obviously Trump being suspended indefinitely on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, or the labeling of content like we've seen on our own channel on YouTube. NetChoice is a tech industry group, includes Facebook and YouTube and the parent companies of those. And they sued to block these two laws. Justice Kagan, a liberal, wrote the unanimous decision. Obviously, no dissensions here, and the majority held the editorial judgment and the curation of other people's speech is a unique expressive product of its own, which entitles it to First Amendment.... protection. So just to give you an example, if you wanted to create a social network where you can't be anonymous, like LinkedIn, you can do that. If you want to do something like Twitter X and have anonymous accounts, you can do that as well. If you want to create a social network with adult content, you can do it. Or, like Zuck is doing on Threads interestingly, they are downplaying political content. Obviously, other platforms amplify political content. So let me, um... and so the, the end of all this in terms of how the court handled it is, uh, they offered some guidance and sent the cases back to the lower courts to clarify a bunch of stuff, just to keep this brief. Chamath, what are your thoughts on this? Obviously, some of the ideas here, like letting users know why they were banned or why content was taken down, I, I think the overwhelming majority of users would like to have that. But is this the government's role?

Narrator 37:15 I'm not enough of a legal scholar to know the details of this case, except to say that when the entire court goes in one direction, it's probably because this never should have been brought to the court in the first place, and they're giving a very clear message. It wasn't even ideologically strained to figure out what the right answer should be. So.

Jason Calacanis 37:36 Sacks, obviously, your chosen party was the one who brought this. You have concerns about the platforms doing this. But do you have equal concerns about the government then, I guess, being the ones who have to enforce these? Is this a good ruling?

David Sacks 37:51 Well, I think that with respect to the Texas and Florida laws, I think their heart was in the right place. They were motivated by the right things, which was to reduce censorship on the social media platforms, specifically censorship of conservatives, which is to say their, their citizens. But those laws probably were overly broad and they infringed on the free speech of corporations, because I guess corporations get free speech too. And basically, what the ruling says is that content moderation receives the f- same First Amendment protections as any other kind of speech. So the decisions of what content you're going to keep up or take down on your own property is itself a speech decision, and the government has to respect that. So that's what the ruling here was saying. I think it's not a bad decision. I wish the Supreme Court, however, had coupled this with a better decision in the Missouri versus Biden case, which they, they basically said that the plaintiffs lack standing to pursue. So they didn't necessarily give a dispositive ruling in that case, but they threw it, they threw it out. And-

Jason Calacanis 38:55 Yeah.

David Sacks 38:56 ... and basically what that case was about was the Biden administration was engaged in attempts to influence or pressure social media companies to take down speech as a practice known as jawboning. And I wish they had coupled this decision with a better decision in, in Missouri versus Biden saying the government's not allowed to coerce social networks to take down speech either, and they refused to do that. So I wouldn't say these are, like, the greatest set of decisions with regard to free speech that the court's ever done. I hope that they will come back in the future once they find a plaintiff with the right standing to address that issue.

Jason Calacanis 39:34 Yeah, that's a key issue. Friedberg, your thoughts? If any?

David Friedberg 39:36 Yeah. So I've said for a long time, we've obviously had conversations about Twitter and shadow banning and some of the other activities on what are typically called social media platforms. At the end of the day, these are all, as I've shared in the past, my belief is they're all content companies. They have a choice as executives and as editors of those companies to decide how to editorialize the content on their platforms. They can choose to create content with writers that they pay on staff like a newspaper might. They can choose to create content with actors and directors that they pay to create novel video series for them, like HBO might. Or they can choose to make content creation available to third parties that don't get paid, like users. And at the end of the day, what they choose to do with that content and how they choose to display that content is up to them as an editorial platform that is ultimately creating content for other consumers. I don't view that user-generated content platforms are a right of the consumers to have access to share their thoughts. They have the internet to do that, and they have many other places that they can go to to create blogs, to create websites, to do whatever else they want to do to express themselves. But to have a technological platform that lets them submit content that then the editors get to decide how and where they show that content, I think they should understand because it's in the terms and conditions when you sign up. So I don't believe in social media platforms as utilities, and I don't think that the government should have any role in deciding what is or isn't on those platforms. This goes both ways. I think that the company should decide what kind of platforms they want to have, whether they want to have free speech that allows inappropriate content or content that might be offensive, or whether they want to have a highly moderated platform to make it more broadly available or appealing to users. It's entirely up to them, and I really do appreciate the ruling because I think that the government should have less of a role in intervening and deciding how media companies create content and how they editorialize that content.

Jason Calacanis 41:29 Yeah. So I think that's well said, and I, I was in the same sort of camp as you, Friedberg, which is there's like a battle of snowflakes here. Like, the liberals obviously were canceling people on these platforms, and now, like, the MAGA folks want to come in and have the government regulate it. If you want to compete here, just create a new product or service in the market. You're on the board of Rumble, Sacks, like, they're doing really well. And if you squeeze too tight and your platform doesn't work, it's the marketplace should, you know, figure out who the winners are. And, you know, it, it's, it's not a situation where you want the government getting in there, because then they're going to go to a newspaper, and there's so much precedent here. I, you know, I actually read some of the, of these rulings, which is really interesting. They, they're written phenomenally well. I will put in the show notes the actual links to the PDFs of these decisions. They're well worth reading. And in this case, they brought up a bunch of the previous law. It's fascinating, like people wanted to force a newspaper to allow, you know, one candidate to reply and give him space. They were like, "No, you can't do that. It's their newspaper, they decide what they publish." Another person wanted to...... have a corporate newsletter be forced to give information about the other side, so you just don't get to do that.

David Friedberg 42:40 I'll just say one more thing. Wha- what else is striking is just how insular and protectionist Texas and Florida are being. And it's not just with this law, it's also with the lab-grown meat or cultivated meat laws that they've passed, and other states are passing similar laws, which is limiting innovation in the state and limiting freedom to operate in the state in order to protect interests of individuals and corporations that already exist within that state. So, it's really important to note, this isn't a good or a bad thing, but those states are operating in a way, the lawmakers of those states are operating in a way that's trying to protect the interests of the individuals and businesses in the state over the freedoms that might... and the liberties that might otherwise be available. And I think we often talk about these states being more free, but these laws and the cultivated meat ban laws, in my opinion, indicate that these states are actually on the contrary. They're much more, kind of, protectionist.

Jason Calacanis 43:27 What does your take on that, Stacks?

David Sacks 43:28 To Friedberg's point, I mean, I think this, this, um, ruling might have been necessary from a constitutional standpoint because corporations do have free speech rights. Uh, but again, I would say that I think that the laws of Texas and Florida were coming from a good place, which is they were trying to protect the rights of their citizens to engage in free speech. I think it's just unfortunate that in this case, it's a zero-sum game and, as a result, those laws were, were invalidated. I think that makes sense, but I still think we have a problem.

Jason Calacanis 43:55 I agree with you, the platforms have too much power. What- what is your proposed solution? You obviously don't want to have the government in there, like, running a newsroom or running Twitter/X 'cause you yourself were saying, "Hey, the government's too involved in X and these platforms and doing this jawboning." So obviously, having them more involved is bad, right? You're against them being involved.

David Sacks 44:15 Yeah, I think it's really tricky to figure out how to solve this.

Jason Calacanis 44:18 Got it.

David Sacks 44:18 I think, for one thing, you don't want the government jawboning these sites to take down content.

Jason Calacanis 44:23 Right.

David Sacks 44:23 That clearly should be a free speech violation. I'm just disappointed the Court didn't get to that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:27 I think we're totally missing the bigger picture. There's, like, a lot of fearmongering that I think has happened with respect to the Supreme Court and that it's all of a sudden become some super ideological, super rigid, super activist place and I think it's, in fact, much of the opposite, and the data supports that. And so I think it's important for people to know that what's actually happening is that many of these decisions are very much split along non-ideological lines and I think that that's an important thing. So I just, like, I'm pulling this up and I just wanna read some of these things to you. US versus Rahimi, which is a federal law that prohibits people subjected to domestic violence restraining orders from having a firearm, that was an eight-to-one decision where all but Thomas supported that. Makes a lot of sense, you would think. Racial gerrymandering, that was more ideological, where it was a conservative bloc versus Sotomayor, Brown, and Kagan. Trump v. Anderson, which is Trump getting back on the Colorado ballot, nine-oh. FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which was access to the abortion pill, nine-zero maintaining access. Moyle versus US, which is whether Idaho's strict abortion law conflicts with the federal law, non-ideological where it was Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and Ketanji Brown Jackson who dissented. So it goes on and on, and I think what's so interesting about all of this is that I had thought that this was not like what it was. What I thought what had happened is Trump struck the Supreme Court, all of a sudden we are ripping all these laws apart, this longstanding sort of doctrine of what has passed, but yet I think what's actually happening is people are pretty thoughtfully pushing the responsibility to the states and I think that the court's decisions are relatively unpredictable in the sense that it's not just a conservative bloc versus a liberal bloc. I think that's the real story. And when you-

Jason Calacanis 46:33 Oh...

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:33 ... unpack a bunch of these decisions in that context, that's what's so interesting to me is, like, these are pretty nuanced decisions that get at the heart of a lot of key important issues happening across non-ideological lines. The Jan6 one, Ketanji Brown Jackson was the Biden appointee that basically supported this thing that may throw out 200-plus convictions for Jan6, and Amy Coney Barrett was on the other side. This is an unpredictable Supreme Court. I think they think for themselves, they seem to be independent, and I think they are coming to their own conclusions. That's the only thing to take away from the distribution of the votes. That should make people feel a little bit

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:06 better.

Jason Calacanis 47:06 So, I think this next ruling is the most important one and I think it'll be the most important one that we've seen with this new court that has three of the nine justices placed by Trump, to your point, Chamath, and this one is seismic. The Loper versus Raimondo decision overturned Chevron. Okay, so this one takes a little explaining. The Court overruled a landmark 1984 decision in the Chevron case from 40 years ago. For context, the original ruling created the Chevron doctrine where the government and federal courts generally defer to the stances of federal agencies unless Congress has written specific laws on an issue. The 1984 ruling upheld the EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act. It's very influential. This has been cited by federal courts over 18,000 times in 40 years. It was overruled in another six-to-three decision where the justices voted along party lines, Chamath. Basically, this shifts power back to federal judges and courts instead of administrative agencies staffed by experts, academics, all that kind of stuff. In the majority opinion, Roberts, a conservative obviously, said the Chevron doctrine violates the Administrative Procedures Act, a federal law that directs the courts to review actions taken by federal agencies. He also pointed out that the courts are regularly expected to deal with technical questions so this should not be considered beyond their ability or scope. Kagan, a liberal, wrote a critical dissent. She said the agency staffed with scientists and experts are more likely to have the expertise to make these decisions rather than the judges. She also pointed out that the system had been functioning for 40 years and this ruling will create a massive, quote, "jolt to the legal system." Chamath, get in there.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:42 Do you remember when President Biden tried to pass the-... budget two years ago and he was one vote short. And Joe Manchin ended up putting it over the top, but he negotiated what was a redo of a bunch of regulation, and he was promised that there would be this regulatory overhaul that happened, and that was sort of why he had decided to vote for that budget bill. It ended up not happening. So the reason why I think he saw that, and he discussed this, is that there are so many businesses that now suffer from the regulations of these agencies because when the agency enacted that regulation, it was just a different time and place and there was no clean way to go back to an independent body and say, "I understand what your intention was in 1985 when you wrote that regulation, but in 2024 things have changed. Can we reconsider?" And basically what the courts have done now will allow companies who believe that regulations are either overwrought or misguided for today's market landscape, bring it to an independent judiciary and have them decide. And I think that that's a very reasonable check and balance, and I think that's- that makes a lot of sense. Folks can pass laws, and if folks believe that those laws do you undue harm, now you have a mechanism to go and actually explain your case to somebody independent who can then make a judgment. I think that that's a good check and balance.

Jason Calacanis 50:16 Friburg, I know this was the one you most wanted to talk about. Uh, what's your take on this end of the age of experts and throwing things back to the court? What will be the practical ramifications of this?

David Friedberg 50:28 Well, I don't know how much experience you guys have had dealing with federal regulators-

Jason Calacanis 50:33 You have a lot more than I think all of us.

David Friedberg 50:35 ... in reg- in- in agencies.

Jason Calacanis 50:35 Yeah.

David Friedberg 50:36 And I've ... Yeah. I've worked in a l- across a number of federal agencies in- in businesses I've been involved in, and I can tell you it is, uh, as I'm sure you would expect, there's a lot of bureaucratic morass (laughs) in- in these agencies. And if you think about it, it's because the agencies are effectively, under the Chevron Doctrine, vested unlimited authority to create rules and regulations that they then determine are meant to represent the laws that were passed by Congress, but v- more often than not, those rules and regulations begin to bleed outside of the lines of the intention of the laws when they were passed. And this is because those agencies, by creating new rules and regulations, and this isn't- this isn't some like, you know, I have a subversive reason for doing this, but these agencies have an incentive for creating more rules and regulations because they then get to go back to Congress and ask for more budget and hire more people and grow the importance and the scale of their agency. This is the natural kind of organic growth that arises in any living system, and any organization of individuals is also a living system and has the same incentive.

Jason Calacanis 51:49 Yes.

David Friedberg 51:49 It wants to have more resources. It wants to get bigger, it wants to do more stuff, it wants to be more important. And the Chevron Doctrine has allowed agencies to operate independent and outside of the lines that were defined in the laws that were passed that th- that then invested them this authority that then they can go and say, "I want more budget, I wanna get bigger." And I'm optimistic that this ruling will limit the agency's authorities and limit their ability to create more bureaucratic overhead, more headcount, more individuals that need to now go and administer the rules and regulations that they themselves create, and so I'm actually very optimistic and hopeful about this, uh, this change. Now, the downside, the negative to this is that there are a number of really important regulatory roles that agencies have come to play that never got passed as bills, like environmental protection rules, and there's a negative consequence that will arise to some degree with respect to health of the environment, health of people, et cetera, but I think net net, Congress needs to do its job. It needs to go back to session and it needs to sit down and it needs to pass laws that really clearly define what is and what isn't going to be legal going forward, and then the agencies operate strictly within those bounds, so-

Jason Calacanis 53:04 So to recap, it could get a little messy, but it's a better, healthier system because this system has become super bloated over 40 years. That was my take on it as well. Sachs, what's your take on this? This feels like a- a huge win to me. What do you think?

David Sacks 53:19 Yeah. Well, I agree with that, and I agree with what Friburg said. Look, when- when this decision, the Chevron decision came down in 1984, at the height of the Reagan revolution, conservatives actually liked it. They- they praised it-

Jason Calacanis 53:30 Yeah.

David Sacks 53:30 ... because we were coming off a period of an activist court, you know, the- the Warren Court, and they thought-

Jason Calacanis 53:36 Right.

David Sacks 53:37 ... that shifting power from the courts to the agencies would actually be a good move. Well, it turns out it completely backfired. Um, the Chevron, when it came out, was not a widely noticed decision. Since then, it's been cited 18,000 times by federal courts. It's turned out to be enormously important and influential. And the reason for all those citations is it's the courts deferring to the rulemaking of an agency. You know, what Chevron basically says is, as long as the agency's interpretation is reasonable, or you could say not unreasonable, then the agency can basically promulgate the rule. And what this has led to is an orgy of rulemaking by all these federal agencies.

Jason Calacanis 54:14 (laughs)

David Sacks 54:14 And so most of our laws now effectively are being made by unelected bureaucrats who are part of this three-letter alphabet soup of government agencies. It's not the Congress, it's not the court, it's not the president. It's this fourth branch of government that's not in the Constitution, which is the administrative state. And so the administrate- administrative state has become incredibly powerful as a result of Chevron Doctrine, and now I think by reversing it, you actually give a chance for the restoration of democracy. Basically, the agencies are not empowered...... to essentially make whatever rules they want as long as they superficially appear reasonable. They actually have to show that their rules are within a statute, that they, that they were directed by Congress to effectively engage in the rule-making. So, this is a step in the right direction for sure. But again, the real problem here is reigning in this unelected administrative state.

Jason Calacanis 55:06 Yeah. Chamath, any final thoughts here as we move onto the next one?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:11 It seems like the Supreme Court is doing a great job.

David Sacks 55:14 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 55:14 I agree.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:15 All nine of them.

Jason Calacanis 55:16 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:16 I mean, they really, they really seem to be doing a tremendous job. I give them a lot of credit.

David Friedberg 55:23 I feel like I've become a conservative. Maybe I'm a conservative now, Sax. I don't know. I, I may have to sit down and confess to you because I read a number of these decisions and I was like, "I agree, I agree." (laughs) And this is supposed to be a conservative court, so I'm not sure. Maybe I am, uh ...

David Sacks 55:36 Well, it's actually, it's, it's actually, it's not, it's not a-

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:37 It's an originalist court. It's not a conservative court. This is what I'm saying, like these are-

David Friedberg 55:41 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:41 ... words that are planted by people that want you to believe their version of the lie.

David Friedberg 55:46 Great point, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:47 So, there are a lot of originalists on the court and what the originalist doctrine says, and Sax you can correct me, is, "I read the Constitution with faith and fidelity and I just see what it's, what it says." Not, "I interpret it," not, "I fill in the words." I just, what it says is what we're allowed. And I think that there's some, there's a really good version of America in that view of the world.

David Sacks 56:10 Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not even necessarily an originalist or conservative court. It's a three, three, three court, meaning there's three conservatives, there's three liberals, and there's three justices in the middle. You have this middle block led by the Chief Justice Roberts with Kavanaugh and Barrett, and then you've got the conservatives with Gorsuch and Thomas and Alito. And sometimes the middle block goes with the liberals, sometimes it goes with the conservatives. Again, it's more of a, like a triangle. And as we know, the triangle is the best shape for equipoise, right, because it creates balance. And I think what we have right now is a balanced court and I think on the whole, they've done a good job. And I think it's kind of sad that in reaction to some of these decisions, you've got powerful lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren who are explicitly calling for packing the court. They're actually saying, you know, "Put a bunch of justices on here to ruin this equipoise that we have." I think that's really sad. I think the, the court right now is one of the last highly functional institutions in American public life and for elected leaders to be calling for its destruction is just sad.

Jason Calacanis 57:11 Well, I, you know, I think what, here, and here's, uh, an image from Axios showing, you know, six Republican nominated and three Democrat nominated. I think to give the counterargument, you know, Roe V. Wade, um, being overturned was something the majority of the country didn't want. These three people were added for that explicit purpose by Trump. People have trauma, uh, pain over that reasonably, I think. And then the truth is though if they are, you know, just one standard deviation here as you can see in this Axios chart, which is based on some data-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:46 I don't, I don't trust this chart. I think this, this chart is worthless, Jason. I think you go and look at the actual articles-

Jason Calacanis 57:50 Well, let me explain to you what it is. Let me-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:52 No, but I'm saying, look at the actual articles.

Jason Calacanis 57:53 No, no. You, you don't even know what it is.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:55 Yeah, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 57:55 If you look at it, this is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:56 Yeah. It's, it's, my point is this is meaningless. A child could have drawn this. It means nothing.

Jason Calacanis 57:59 No, no. A child didn't draw it, Chamath. This was the Martin Quinn-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:03 How do you know? Who, who, who is Martin Quinn-

Jason Calacanis 58:03 Because I'm reading, because I'm reading the source, because I'm reading the source of the data. This is based on something called the Martin Quinn Score, an analysis by political scientists Andrew Martin and Kevin Quinn. Now notice the Martin Quinn Score places judges on an idea elec- ideological spectrum. A lower score indicates a more liberal justice, where a higher score indicates a more conservative justice. And then they went through all of their decisions and they placed them here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:25 So you're saying a subjective classifier, a subjective classifier was created by these two random people and you now regurgitating this score like it means something?

David Sacks 58:34 I don't know if they were random.

Jason Calacanis 58:34 No, I think it's an interesting way, it's an interesting chart to discuss to understand a little bit of their meanings.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:40 What I would encourage anybody to do is to look at the actual substance of the decisions and the votes. And what you will see is that people are not as easily predictable as that chart would show, and I think that's what's important.

Jason Calacanis 58:54 Uh, okay. Um, I think (laughs) that chart supports exactly what you just said, Sax, right? Yeah?

David Sacks 59:04 I mean, not exactly. I mean, again, I view it as a three, three, three court. A lot of other people have written about that and they've got their own diagrams and charts to show that. Look, I think it's a court, like I said, in equipoise. I don't think it's partisan. I think it's, it's being reasonably fair. I don't agree with every single ruling. Like I said, I would have liked to have seen a different result in Biden V. Missouri. However, I think on the whole they're doing a good job and it really should be a scandal that you've got powerful lawmakers explicitly calling for the court to be packed. I mean, that would be a disaster, right, because you have nine justices, which is a good number. You try to increase that to 13, then the next time the Republicans have control they're gonna increase it to 15 or 21 or whatever, and pretty soon we're gonna have 100 justices on the court. You'll ruin it. You know, really, nine justices should be a constitutional requirement. We should just fix it at nine and not mess with that. So, it's just scandalous to me that you've got politicians who are reacting to reasonable decisions by saying that we need to pack the court.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:03 Okay. Quick hit here, this is an important story for you, Chamath. SCOTUS also agreed to hear a case on the limits of online porn in its next term, which starts in October.

David Friedberg 1:00:11 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:00:11 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:00:11 And the law in question is passed by-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:14 Will it, will it impact incognito mode? 'Cause if it does that... (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:00:20 You're in trouble.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:21 Is this, uh, just ... I think there's a r-

David Friedberg 1:00:24 Oh, my gosh.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:25 Uh, did you flee to Italy or are you ... (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:27 Could you imagine if they banned incognito mode?

David Friedberg 1:00:30 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:00:30 I think you might wanna do a deep dive into how incognito incognito mode is. You may wanna get a VPN.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:37 I, I, I, I'm pretty sure Texas is gonna ban incognito mode (laughs) in the first place.

David Friedberg 1:00:40 Yeah, exactly. Texas, Texas and Florida.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:43 I think a couple of these sites, because of the threat ...

Jason Calacanis 1:00:47 ... of, you know, the s- these laws of age gating, they've just decided to wholesale leave certain states by IP address. Therefore, the sale of VPNs in Texas went up because when you went to certain porn sites it said, "Hey, because of Texas is proposing these laws, we're not going to allow you to visit this website."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:06 Nick, do the NBC thing. (instrumental music plays) The more you know. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:01:09 The more you know. (laughs) Okay, SCOTUS agreed to hear a case on the limits of online porn in its next term, which starts in October. The law in question was passed by a Texas legislature in 2023, it requires porn sites to verify the age of their users and restrict access for minors. That seems reasonable. Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans upheld the law, sending it to the Supreme Court. If upheld, users would have to submit personal info (laughs) that verifies they're over 18 to watch porn. The law is opposed by the ACLU and the Free Speech Coalition, which is a trade group representing adult entertainers and companies. They argue it places an undue burden on adults wishing to access constitutionally protected free expression.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:46 Oh, speaking of porn and its related businesses-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:51 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:51 ... the Rick's Cabaret Recession Index is back on. Did you guys see this?

Jason Calacanis 1:01:56 Oh. No.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:56 It was published on Twitter. So Rick's Cabaret is a collection of public strip clubs.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:00 And it includes yours. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:02 And, and, and what's interesting about the Rick's Cabaret stock price is that it has presaged the last two recessions and whenever the stock dives-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:10 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:11 ... people, people have said it, it actually predicts an upcoming recession and the stock just, you know, puked up, like, 25 or 30% in the last week.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:20 Oh, boy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:21 There it is.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:21 There it is.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:22 There it is.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:22 So people do not have the cheddar to go to the cabaret and go splashy cash. Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:29 (laughs) Cabaret.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:31 Cabaret.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:31 It's called, it's called Rick's Cabaret, but the Strip Club Index says Recession is, is on the offing.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:36 I prefer cabaret.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:37 Mm.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:38 It's just, it's more charming. All right, so, uh, Supreme Court-

David Sacks 1:02:42 Jake, I'm surprised you're not discussing the immunity case. That's the one that all the pundits have been hyperventilating about.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:46 Oh, we'll get to it, we'll get to it. I, I made it, I made it last.

David Friedberg 1:02:48 I'll, uh, counter the Rick's Cabaret Recession Indicator as valid anymore based on the theory of our good friend on the group chat, who I think has done a very good job highlighting that the strip club industry has been decimated by OnlyFans. As a result, Rick's Cabaret is more likely down because of OnlyFans and the lack of-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:09 Hmm.

David Friedberg 1:03:10 ... shall we say, employee base available to work in these establishments because they make more money working online at OnlyFans now. That was a theory post, posited by one of our good friends.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:21 But you gotta think that that showed up in the data at least a year or two years ago now because how long has OnlyFans been around? A long time I'm guessing, like three, four years.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:29 Mm-hmm. Well, but I think it peaked during COVID because, you know, you couldn't go to a cabaret.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:33 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:33 If you wanted to take in a cabaret show and have a, you know, a bottle-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:38 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:38 ... of champagne at a cabaret show, you couldn't do it. So your... The thesis of our friend is the top flight only fans-

David Friedberg 1:03:45 The thesis of our friend is that OnlyFans... Yeah, OnlyFans took all the entertainers out of the strip club industry because they make more money online.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:52 Cabaret, cabaret industry.

David Friedberg 1:03:54 Uh, the cabaret industry, I'm sorry. Please edit that, Nick. And as a result, the, uh, quality of the product at the cabaret business has declined and as a result, revenue has declined and it took a little bit of time to earn that in, so-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:06 So the virtual cabaret industry-

David Friedberg 1:04:08 That's our friend's theory, we give him a big shout-out. We will-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:10 Yeah, shout-out to beep.

David Friedberg 1:04:11 We'll call it, we'll call it the beep theory, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:14 The beep theory. So the, the elite cabaret artists can make more money on OnlyFans but go there and then they, that leaves the less refined artistes for the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:26 Nick, we should cut this whole segment. This is- (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:04:27 ... in, the real person.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:28 Why? It's so good.

David Friedberg 1:04:30 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:30 So pure.

David Friedberg 1:04:31 I'm trying to navigate this and not get labeled.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:34 Sacks, where are you on this? What's your opinion?

David Friedberg 1:04:36 Sacks, no. Sacks is gonna wave no.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:39 Who do you, Sacks-

David Sacks 1:04:39 Not checked out. Sorry, I checked out.

David Friedberg 1:04:39 No, he's trying to get into cabinet position.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:41 So, uh, anyway, so far 16 red states have passed or agreed to pass age gating laws for porn.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:46 Jake L's got the Dunder Mifflin index of whatever random things don't- (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:04:50 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:50 Wait, I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. You guys started laughing too quickly. Say it again. Cut out.

David Friedberg 1:04:54 You have the Dunder Mifflin score of XYZ red state nonsense.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:01 Dunder Mifflin. (laughs) Dunder Mifflin.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:02 So...

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:04 (laughs) Quick, Jake, check the Dunder Mifflin score. What does it say? (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:05:11 I don't understand the Dunder Mifflin score.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:13 Oh, man.

David Friedberg 1:05:13 Didn't you ever watch The Office?

Jason Calacanis 1:05:15 Oh, is that from the- I don't watch The Office.

David Friedberg 1:05:16 Hey, hey, on The Office.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:16 Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

David Friedberg 1:05:17 Oh, my God, Jake L., what is wrong with you?

Jason Calacanis 1:05:19 Yeah, I never got into it and I never, never got into it, but yeah.

David Friedberg 1:05:22 You would love The Office. You gotta watch The Office. I've probably watched it, like, four times. It's so good.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:23 That's the paper company where they work? Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:25 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:26 Apparently we've

Jason Calacanis 1:05:27 had a huge victory for Trump in the immunity case. Trump sued in this case based on Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump for alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in January 6th. If you don't remember that case, since there's so many cases against Trump, this was, uh, based on Trump pressuring Mike Pence to not certify the election, his phone call to get the 11,780 votes that were missing in Georgia or Giuliani and the Wack Pack trying to fake electorates to overturn the election. Trump argued that he should be immune from prosecution for acts committed while he was president. SCOTUS ruled 6-3 along party lines that former presidents can't face prosecution for actions that related to core powers of their offet, office and-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:18 Official, official, official. That was the term they used.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:20 Well, no, um, core powers of their office and that all official acts receive at least the broad presumption of immunity. Here's the quote, "Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity for criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts." There is no immunity for unofficial acts that would be outside the duty of the presidents. Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that decision... That the decision doesn't necessarily mean presidents are above the law...In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that under the new ruling, criminal law can't be applied to presidents even if they misuse their office for personal gain. She wrote that if the president orders the Navy SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, he is now insulated from criminal prosecution. Another quote, "The president is now a king above the law." She closed with this line, "With fear for our democracy, I dissent." Notably this breaks the tradition of closing with, "I respectfully dissent." So Trump's attempts to overturn the election results case now hinges on whether Trump's conduct was private or related to his official duty. For example, the lower courts now have to determine when Trump pressured Pence to not certify the election if that was an official business of being president or not, or when he called Georgia and said, "Hey, can you find me 11,000 votes?" was that official duty or was it outside his duty? President Trump has already cited the immunity ruling in requesting a New York judge throw out his conviction in the hush money case. Sentencing for that was pushed back from July 11th to September because of this ruling. Sachs, there's your run at having-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:09 What do you think, Jacob? Well, Jacob, what do you think? This is- I'm really curious what you think.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:14 I- I mean, I- I read the ori- the- I'm- I'm halfway through the- the original PDF and I do think the president needs immunity, obviously, for conducting business. And then I do think if they step outside the lines, they should not have immunity, and then the devil will be in the details here and that's what courts and juries exist to do. So when-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:38 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:38 ... he told Mike Pence to not certify the election, he's obviously not doing that as part of his duty as president. When he called Georgia to get the 11,000 votes, he was not doing that. That's why he had outside counsel there. That's why he hired Giuliani and the WAC PAC.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:53 What do you think- what do you think of Sotomayor's hypothetical of using SEAL Team Six to kill a political rival?

Jason Calacanis 1:08:59 Well, I- that was-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:00 Do you think that that's- you think that he would be immune from prose- anybody would be immune from prosecution for that?

Jason Calacanis 1:09:05 No. That seemed a little bit hysterical. And actually, that came up in the discussions. I actually listened to the audio version of this when they were doing the- the Q&A basically. Um, and- and I think you listened to it too, Friedberg. We had talked about it. So yeah, I- I think the devil will be in the details here in how they execute it. Obviously, you need to have immunity if you're going to, I don't know, take actions, you know, to assassinate Osama bin Laden, right? Or- or whatever it is. But, you know, it's- it is a- a bit concerning, this concept of being able to shield the president when he asks, I don't know, the attorney general to do something illegal. So these are the details that are gonna need to be worked out here. And obviously, it's a split decision, so the Supreme Court themselves can't agree on this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:50 I think that there's just so much we don't know about what it takes to be the president of the United States. The example that I gave you guys in the group chat is like, look at the whole Iran-Contra affair. How complicated was that? Can any of us really understand what all of the interplay was when Ronald Reagan decides to work around a weapons embargo, sell weapons to Iran, take money, funnel it and fund the Sandinistas? In the middle of all of that, there was a huge cocaine trade that was kind of enabled or supported. I mean, who- h- how do we know? I think there's just a lot of latitude that you give to the one person that you elect to be president, and so maybe it's just a good reminder for all of us that we are electing one person. We cannot be electing five or six people. We're not electing a shadow cabinet. We're electing one person, and this is just a reminder of how much power that one person has.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:44 Sachs, do you have thoughts?

David Sacks 1:10:46 I think this was an easy decision. All the majority did was codify explicitly what has long been presumed, that presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts that they undertake in the exercise of their constitutional authority and the duties of their office. It was established decades ago that presidents enjoy broad immunity from civil lawsuits. And so it's already been the case that presidents can't be sued civilly. Well, criminal liability is even harder to prove. So if you have the broad immunity from civil, you should have broad immunity from criminal as well. And the Supreme Court, I think, had never ruled on criminal immunity because they never had to. No former president's ever been subjected to the type of lawfare that's been deployed against Trump, who also happens to be the political opponent of the current president. So I think it's a shame that the Supreme Court has had to rule on this. Did they get every detail right? I don't know. I don't know what it means for the future. However, I know the reason they're doing it, which is we've had this unprecedented lawfare against Trump and that's why they've been forced to do this. So ultimately, I think this is the right decision. No, it does not authorize drone strikes against the president's political enemies. That's insane. It does not make the president above the law or a king. And I think that Roberts in his ruling said that the key things, he said that the dissent's position in the end boils down to ignoring the Constitution's separation of powers and the court's precedent, and instead fearmongers on the base of extreme hypotheticals. And then he says that the dissents overlook the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next. I think that's really the key line here is that you're posing all these insane hypotheticals instead of recognizing the practical reality that if you don't give presidents immunity, then the next president's gonna prosecute the old president and future presidents will be hamstrung in doing this very important job that's already difficult enough. So I think that this was just a- a necessary decision. There was no way around it. And the president already has civil immunity, you gotta give him criminal immunity too.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:05 Freeberg, your thoughts. I guess the, the steel man on the other side would be, you know, Trump doing things like calling Georgia and asking to find votes, or pressuring the president, the vice president to overturn the election (laughs) results after 60 failed legal cases, you know, is what's concerning the other side. So, do you have a take on it?

David Friedberg 1:13:25 I think that the distinction between acting in their executive capacity as President of the United States, versus their personal capacity as an individual candidate or an individual that could benefit through some other means, is a really good distinction. I think how the courts ultimately adjudicate that distinction is what's still ahead. But I do think that the clarity of that distinction is critical. Uh, it seems like the right thing. How this is gonna play out with respect to election interference, does interfering in the election constitute one's role as an executive overseeing the federal election process, or does it constitute one's personal benefits that may arise if one is individually elected, is the key determinant that the lower court will likely have to make. Maybe that gets kicked back up again in the future, if there's a disagreement over the decision that the court does make with regards to that distinction.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:23 Where do you stand on that, Sachs? You, in previous episodes, have said you didn't