All-In PodcastTrump wins! How it happened and what's next
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,037 words- 0:00 – 4:55
Bestie intros!
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, let's, uh, let's just go around the horn. Who voted for Trump? Let's all raise their hands for those who voted for Trump. Ready? One, two, three, go.
- DSDavid Sacks
I voted twice.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
I voted twice.
- JCJason Calacanis
Me too. For me, it was so easy. How many swing states did you vote in? (laughs) I voted in four swing states. (laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
They sent multiple ballots to my house, I filled in all of them.
- JCJason Calacanis
Nick, cut this shit out. Okay, let's start. (instrumental music plays)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
We'll let your winners ride. Rain man, David Sax. And I said, we open sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you Bessie. Queen of Quinoa.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hey everybody, welcome back (laughs) to my J. Cal impression. God, your energy is so dorky. Welcome, welcome. I'm Tim Waltz. I'm Tim Waltz of the All-In Pod. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.
- DSDavid Sacks
Knucklehead. You're the knucklehead of the All-In Pod.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) I'm a knucklehead. Did you just sashay into the, your seat? (laughs) Yeah. I am, right here. J. Cal. Show us your jazz. Show us your jazz hands.
- DSDavid Sacks
By the way, that name, you just enjoy that name, Tim Waltz, while you can, 'cause you're never gonna hear about that guy again. He's gonna be more forgettable than Tim Kaine. They're gonna be doing SNL skits on how-
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh God, did you see that Sat Net Live bit?
- DSDavid Sacks
They're gonna be doing SNL skits on how forgettable he is.
- JCJason Calacanis
That, that SNL skit was next level. I agree. Okay, so today, we are gonna cover the biggest- Anything in the news? Yeah, right. Um, we'll start out with a little housekeeping, and then we'll get into it. So, like and subscribe on YouTube, youtube.com/@allin. We're trying to hit a million subscribers. Don't forget the holiday party, allin.com/events. It is Saturday, December 7th in SF. We have a couple of great announcements for the holiday party, which I think we are spending way too much money on. Steve Aoki will be DJing. Nice.
- DSDavid Sacks
What?
- JCJason Calacanis
Uh, uh, Andrea Botez will be there doing the opening DJ set, and her sister, Alex, will be joining us as well. Andrea and Alex- Botez sisters? ... will also be playing. The Botez sisters. We're gonna have a chess tournament during the party, which will be super fun. Sax, you can get in on that. Challenge, um, Alex Botez or David Sax to chess. Gary Richards, also known as Destructo, he's sort of the hardest person on the planet.
- DSDavid Sacks
This is our chance for a rematch.
- JCJason Calacanis
That's right.
- DSDavid Sacks
As I recall, I, I beat her last time.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, and we will have the board on screen. As I also recall, you totally told me to go (beep) myself and wouldn't give me anything. (laughs) I also blundered my queen and still won on time, which I will always hold dear in my heart. But that was-
- DSDavid Sacks
She needed more time. If she, if we had given her more time, that, that was a really tough situation.
- JCJason Calacanis
She would've crushed all of us.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
She would've crushed all of us.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
4v1, tough, yeah. But it's gonna be a great show. Other guests to be announced in the future. VIP is almost sold out, and we're doing, um, like a special dinner after the live show. And then the party's gonna be awesome. Casino games, food, drinks, DJs. This is just to have fun, guys. This is not meant to be kind of like The Summit type show. We're gonna just have a great time. So, we hope everyone will join us. And if you've got startups that wanna join, uh, please come on by, buy some tickets. Uh, and, uh, it'll be fun.
- DSDavid Sacks
How much is this costing us?
- JCJason Calacanis
A million bucks.
- DSDavid Sacks
You said it's gonna cost us... A million bucks?
- 4:55 – 8:28
Sacks recaps election night at Mar-a-Lago
- JCJason Calacanis
Absolutely. Okay, so let's kick it off. Sax, you were at Mar-a-Lago on election night. I thought it'd just be great if you could tell us a little bit about what the scene was like, how was it, and when did you guys kind of know that Trump had kind of the victory in the bag? Was it pre, uh, the polls coming in 'cause you had pollster data early? Or, you know, tell us a little bit about the experience there, and when it all kind of came together.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, I went over there, I guess, around 7:30, I wanna say, Eastern Time. Tucker invited me to come on his show. Tucker was doing a livestream from the library at Mar-a-Lago. I'd actually never been over there before. There was also a, a dinner going on in the ballroom, which was pr- I think primarily for Mar-a-Lago members, and, you know, there were some senators there, members of the campaign. And then there was another room set up with a bunch of TVs for basically the, the staff to watch the results come in. When I first got there, people were kind of just watching, trying to find out the early results. I would say that the, the whispers were positive, but people didn't fundamentally know more than the rest of us. You know, everyone was kind of waiting for the results to come in. I did get a chance to take a photo with the president.Actually, Elon came in separately around the same time and we got a very memorable photograph here. When I shook the President's hand, I gotta tell you, he was cool as a cucumber. He did not-
- JCJason Calacanis
Wow.
- DSDavid Sacks
... seem nervous at all.
- JCJason Calacanis
Did he feel confident, like he had it in the bag?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. I think he was confident, but I don't think he was acting like he had it in the bag or anything like that. They didn't know yet. But he was just super, super relaxed and calm and, um, taking photos with everyone. He was in a good mood.
- JCJason Calacanis
So, you remember the moment when his hand touched yours. Take us to that moment.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Just unpack it a little bit.
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm just saying though, when I sh- sh-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hand to man. Did he give you the shake? He gives that little shake to exert a little dominance. Did he give you the shake?
- DSDavid Sacks
It was just a normal handshake.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sure.
- DSDavid Sacks
But my point is, like, I could detect no nervousness whatsoever-
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
... on his part. And look, the rest of us were, we were w- like, nervous. I mean, we were wondering what was gonna happen.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The whole country was nervous. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
And what were you guys doing? Just hanging out having cocktails, having dinner? Just everyone was meandering, chilling? What's the scene l- what's the scene like at Mar-a-Lago?
- DSDavid Sacks
There's a dinner in the ballroom. Actually, I saw Jared there. Jared was very nice to me. He, he asked me, "Do you wanna sit down at the, at the dinner?" And I, I could have joined him but then I decided to do the, the live stream with you guys and I pulled in Don Junior and we did the livestream-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That was great.
- DSDavid Sacks
... with, with Don Junior. Like I said, it was-
- JCJason Calacanis
Are you officially a Mar-a-Lago member, by the way?
- DSDavid Sacks
No.
- JCJason Calacanis
For 500 large?
- DSDavid Sacks
No.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, my Lord. Is that true? 500,000?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, that's what Don Junior told us. But look-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
... there's a process to get in. I mean, I don't, I don't live in Palm Beach. I think that the Palm Beach community is members of Mar-a-Lago.
- 8:28 – 25:55
Analyzing the results: how Trump won, why Kamala and the Democratic Party lost
- DSDavid Sacks
- JCJason Calacanis
So, the final tally it looks like is gonna be 312 electoral college votes for, uh, President Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris' 226. Just for context, in 2016, Trump won with 304 electoral votes and Biden won in 2020 with 306. So, it's a pretty sweeping victory. He won all the supposed swing states this year, uh, fairly resoundingly. There's, there's no real super close calls. There's some close calls but, but pretty resounding victory. Chamath, what happened?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Wow. It's a, it's a really good question. I think that there's many layers of the answer. But I think in its most basic calculation, I think that the bottom fell out of the Democratic Party. And if you look at why, there's a simple explanation and then there's the more nuanced explanation. I think the simple explanation is like, they just lost the script. I think that there was so many people that just got really tired of being spoken at, and labeled. Misogynist, racist, fascist, transphobe, whatever it was. And there was just these litany of these judgmental labels that would come out instead of engaging on the topics at hand. So, I think the Democratic Party played this game of trying to use identities, genders, races as a bid to basically get people that they thought should always vote in their direction to continue to support them, and instead what happened was people just started to think for themselves and say, "Hold on a second. I'm just a normal person that wants to be left alone. What matters to me?" And I think what Donald Trump spoke to was a desire for folks to have economic prosperity, a safe neighborhood, a predictable educational curriculum where these kids could go to school, not be indoctrinated and come out the other side and just know some useful skills so that they could get a good job and do better than they did. And all these basic truths ended up on the ballot. And so, it was a bunch of perception versus just a bunch of hard realities and I think Trump stayed focused and ultimately made sure that people understood that that's what he was focused on, and I think the Democrats just went to this place of demagoguery and labels, and I think it was just a resounding defeat. And David, I just want you to, like, just to put a pin in how resounding it is. In California and New York, which I would say are the two most prolific bastions of elitist liberal thinking, Democrats won those states in some of the narrowest margins they've ever seen. I think in 2020 they won California by 29 points. It was barely half is what they won by this year. In New York it shrunk to a 12 point margin. So, what is this telling you? It's telling you that the Democrats really need to re-tool and get back to first principles. It was a cataclysmic dismissal of wokeism, of cancel culture, of judgmentalism. It was a ringing endorsement of a meritocracy, of just plain simple common sense, of talking with people and to people, being able to tolerate disagreements, remaining friends.All of those things were on the ballot. And it, it was just an absolute resounding victory for just normalcy. That's what I think we saw. We saw a return to normalcy.
- JCJason Calacanis
Jason, do you think that that message got across more clearly in this election than ever before, as some have claimed, because of the power of alternative media for reaching the audience? Rather than having everything pushed through reporters and traditional legacy media, in this case, many of the candidates, particularly on the Republican side, went direct to the audience through long-form podcasts like ours, but also Joe Rogan, and Lex, and many others. And did that move the needle for a lot of people in a way that won this? Or was it the policies and the difference alone?
Yeah, I... Well, clearly, being on podcasts was a major part of Trump's strategy that people are starting to report on right now. And, you know, in media, you go where the audience is and I think the Democrats just didn't get that. Now, stepping back, I think the number one problem (laughs) here is the candidate that the Democrats put up, and probably the close number two is inflation. And, you know, the economy as, you know, we all know it's the economy, stupid. I- if you were paying $2 for a cheeseburger at McDonald's and now it's $4, that's what people are gonna remember. And the inflation that occurred over this last four years was huge, and people cited that over and over and over again. So, there's probably three buckets you could put this conversation into. There's the candidate. Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate. She was put in at the last minute, and she was anointed, and she didn't go through a proper primary. I think that's probably number one (laughs) in this entire thing. It was a terrible candidate.
So, you're saying, you're saying number one is the candidate? Kamala Harris?
I think number one's the candidate. Uh, number two, I think, because remember, Trump was incredibly unpopular as well. And all credit to Trump for winning and running an incredible campaign. I mean, just they, they crushed it. Um, podcasts with J.D. Vance turned out to be spectacular on podcasts and really delivered the message. And, um, you know, and then number two is obviously inflation and the economy. And then I think number three is the bucket that Chamath started with, which is the country really, really does not like being told that they're racist or sexist, et cetera, cancel culture, and you put those three things together. One of the things that's coming out right now is some of the ads, and we'll play an ad here. I wanted you guys to see this. I think this ad sums up exactly how bad Kamala was, and we'll combine this ad with just some of the statistics that have come out of how many people have gone right. This is Charlamagne Tha God from The Breakfast Club, for those who don't know, in a Donald Trump ad.
- NANarrator
Supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.
- DSDavid Sacks
Surgery, um-
- JCJason Calacanis
For prisoners.
- DSDavid Sacks
For prisoners. Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.
- NANarrator
Hell no, I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to that. I, Kamala, supports transgender sex changes in jail with our money. Kamala even supports letting biological men compete against our girls in their sports. Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.
I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
- JCJason Calacanis
And so, how does Kamala come back from this with Black voters, with male voters, with people who are tired of having this agenda shoved down their throat? Obviously, it's gonna be incredibly difficult. Plus, she was in charge of the border, claimed she wasn't. Plus, she was in charge of, uh, you know, and Biden were in charge of the economy when inflation spiked. Terrible candidate combined with a bad track record, combined with a flawless campaign from Trump. I think easy victory. And, you know, if we pull up this, uh, FT chart, Nick, that I sent you ahead of time, and, uh, I tweeted this. You know, (laughs) Americans love winners and innovation, and they hate socialism and this woke nonsense. And if you look at how Trump's support increased, look at this, Chamath, every single demographic, Black, Asian, Hispanic, 18 to 29, 30 to 34-
Except two.
... female, white college women-
Except two.
... except for two, 65-year-old plus, very moderately, very modestly went left, and white college women, very modestly went left in terms of increasing support. So-
But otherwise, a hard shift right, including in some categories-
E- everybody went right. Yes.
So, so, so the biggest, the biggest shift right was in Hispanic and Asian populations-
Right. And these are groups-
... where, yeah.
... of people, I think, who you, you can, you can double click on young people-
So-
... Hispanic-
Yeah.
... and Asians. Asians believe in meritocracy, I think is what most people have read into that dramatic swing. And Hispanics are anti- a- a more traditional family values, and that's probably what pushed that so far right.
So, I, so I think-
But I wanted to just get your take on that chart, Chamath, in relation to your handicapping of the election, and then how much Kamala and how much the inflation played into it.
- 25:55 – 37:59
The failing Democratic coalition, campaign spend disparity, Trump's advantage in earned media
- DSDavid Sacks
doubts. You look at this tweet by Ari Fleischer, where he talks about who the Democratic Party now is.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, I think that this is a really important tweet because it sort of tells you, Sacks, who's going to be left in the room.
- DSDavid Sacks
Exactly.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And if, if these are the only people left in the room, the last thing they're going to do is admit defeat.
- DSDavid Sacks
Right, exactly. So what you see is that the Democratic Party base i- is these very affluent, very over-educated, very non-religious types. And frankly, I wonder whether they're too out of touch to know they're out of touch. They're certainly very whiny and entitled, and I just don't think they're going to cede control of the party without a fight, and frankly, they've disappeared so far up their own woke asses that I don't think they can find an electoral majority if they try. So if these people stay in control of the party and these are the people who you're seeing having a mental breakdown on TikTok, they're posting all the videos, they're insulting the electorate, and let's face it, it's not just on TikTok, it's on the legacy media, it's on MSDNC. It's basically the, the legacy media who are trying to diagnose a psychosis in the American electorate to explain why they were so wrong. If those people stay in control, I think that the Republicans could have an electoral majority as far as the eye can see.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I completely agree with you, and I'll go even further, which is, I think that the Democrats will lose one of California or New York in the next eight years. I do think it's gonna happen.
- JCJason Calacanis
If they don't tack. Right, that, so that's the key question. Is that-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They're not gonna attack. If you think that the intelligentsia, quote unquote, the Bill Gates, Reid Hoffmans of the world that funds Dustin Moskovitz, that funds the Democratic apparatus at the highest level, if they can't change, what are the odds that the state infrastructure or the local infrastructure changes? I think maybe on the margins, the local infrastructure can change more quickly and adeptly because it just costs a lot less money and it's much more concentrated. But I think the states are very laggard in that sense, and I think that they take the table scraps of what's left over. So if, if you have-
- JCJason Calacanis
Let me, let me, let me co-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... if you have the Democrats lead, there is no chance that un- unless they change the planks of their platform, that the state legislatures in New York and California are going to change what they believe.
- JCJason Calacanis
Nick, pull up the, the link I just sent. So let me just underscore an important aspect for you guys on this, which is the amount that the Democrats spent in this campaign, and obviously they saw a significant negative return. They lost across the board, Senate majority, House majority, governorships, the White House, but they spent more. Here you can see the difference between the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign spending. Harris campaign spent nearly $900 million, the Trump campaign 350 million. If you look at the super PACs, the super PACs spent 1.4 billion on the Dem side roughly, 400 million, 450 million on the Republican side, and if you scroll down, in some of these key Senate races, the Dems far outspent the Republicans and still lost. The Ohio Senate race, Sherrod Brown, $58 million of spending, Bernie Moreno, 21 million, and Bernie Moreno had a resounding victory. Jon Tester, 84 million of spending, Tim Sheehy, 22 million. T- Tim Sheehy won the, uh, the election. So across the board, the spending was greater, the return was negative.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Because money cannot overcome common sense.
- JCJason Calacanis
So my question again is, does this not necessitate a tack to the center for the Democrats? They want to see the party survive, and if they're going to continue to lose like this, they will not continue to maintain the same policy agenda that got them into this position in the first place. J-Cal, do you think that the Democratic Party will need to tack to the center-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh, well-
- JCJason Calacanis
... and that they're going to start to adjust because of this?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
They, they started that process. They knew that going into this election, and they started moving to the center. It was laughable in some cases (laughs) because you have, like, Kamala talking about providing sex changes for prisoners, and, you know, all of those receipts came out. So even as she started to try to get to the center, people didn't buy it. So of course they're going to. But what's very interesting about spend there and the genius of Trump is earned media. What's earned media? When you are trying to get hits in media, you would put them into two buckets, paid and earned. What you just showed was paid. Paid is considered what you do if you can't earn media. All-In Podcast is an example of earned media. We do this every week. We earned our audience. We didn't pay anybody for this audience.
- JCJason Calacanis
... and I think that was, you know, what Trump did, uh, and JD actually-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, import- importantly, someone, someone...
- JCJason Calacanis
... brilliantly.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... that comes on this show earns that, uh, media rep. Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
Correct. And so that's the piece of this that I think is so important. You don't have to pay to go on Joe Rogan. But the candidate that the Democrats put out there was so bad that she could not even, and I think Sax is, you know, (laughs) master at setting people up here. The, the Democrats put up a horrible, horrible candidate. And I know Sax is saying, "Oh, it's not Kamala's fault." Kamala could not go on Joe Rogan because they knew that it would be so embarrassing and that she would get so embarrassed that it would lose her votes. His doom loop, uh, you know, observation from, I don't know, eight weeks ago you had that, Sax? Was exactly correct. The more she spoke, the more she started going down. She was leading Trump at one point on polymarket and some of these places and she absolutely proved that she could not communicate well. And so... A- and I just wanna just circle back to the point about inflation. Here's the McDonald price increases that I w- was mentioning before. End of 2019, (laughs) you could buy a McChicken for a buck 29 and in mid-2024, it was $3.89. The majority of Americans wind up going to Taco Bell, McDonald's every week. Some cases, multiple times a week. You cannot discount exactly how profound this cost of eating food and buying groceries had on this election. It is the number one issue, I think, this election. We can talk in our bubble about it-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No, no, no. This is what I mean.
- JCJason Calacanis
... but it was about inflation.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
This is what I mean by a return to normalcy. These are normal people problems. How much does it cost to put food on the table?
- JCJason Calacanis
Exactly.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
How much does it cost to drive from point A to point B? I wanna send my kid to a school where they go and they learn the ABCs and the 123s because they're gonna have to graduate-
- JCJason Calacanis
100%.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... and compete with India and China. I don't wanna worry about indoctrination and all this other stuff.
- JCJason Calacanis
Absolutely. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
So look, I, I did predict the doom loop for Kamala Harris two months ago because she is just not good at interviews or being off the cuff or being unscripted.
- 37:59 – 50:44
What mattered most: Policy, Candidate, or Campaign?
- DSDavid Sacks
- JCJason Calacanis
I just wanna go around the horn real quick and ask each of you guys once again, I'm gonna ask you one more question after this, what mattered most? Was it the policy, Sachs, as you're proclaiming is what a lot of people voted on? Was it the issues with the candidate, the individual? Or was it the media or the, the campaign tactics? Of those three, wha- what mattered most, do you think, in terms of moving votes? What moved the most votes?
- DSDavid Sacks
Listen, I don't think you can separate the man from the message or the messenger from the message.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
Listen, if you had a conventional Republican out there, I don't think that they could have overcome the trillion-dollar propaganda machine-
- JCJason Calacanis
The two go hand-in-hand.
- DSDavid Sacks
... of the leg- of the legacy media.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
That being said, I think if Donald Trump had been campaigning with Mitt Romney's message or Mitch McConnell's message, I don't think he would have gotten anywhere. I don't even think he would have been the Republican nominee. You have to say that Trump, since 2016, has tapped into something very deep in the American electorate and, you know, this is something we can get into, but I think that if you look back now over the last 10 years, it's clear that he's the transformational figure in American politics. It's not Barack Obama-
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
... with all due respect.
- JCJason Calacanis
S- Jay Kalish, your turn. The policies?
Oh. Yeah.
The individual or the campaign tactics?
It's very clearly this had to do, you know, primarily with Kamala. It is the candidate and-
You're going with the candidate?
... how she was selected. Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you had the same track record-
As it... Well, it's interesting, it's interesting for you to say that as a Dem, right? Because I think that may have changed a lot of people.
I'm a moderate, I'm not a Dem, by the way. By the way-
Moderate, but, but people have-
... I've, I've, I voted Republican one-third of the time.
Right, okay.
Maybe even a little bit more recently, so-
But two-thirds, two-thirds you voted Dem so you were open to that and she, you know, yeah.
I'm a left-leaning moderate.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I've been very clear about that, my record's been very clear about that. It is clear that it was her because I will say, if you had put up Friedberg, and I think it's great that you're forcing us to pick one of three, and it's a hard thing to do, but if you had picked Dean Phillips and Shapiro, I think they would have beat Trump very easily. Or, because remember, Trump was phenomenally unpopular. And I think the big question that's gonna come out of this is how did Elon do getting young men, and how did Joe Rogan and podcasts like ours do at getting young men to come out and vote? That's something we haven't talked about yet and I feel like that could be the one thing that comes out of this election over the coming years that we look at that'll be the sustainable change-
Okay.
... is that young men are now voting and they wanna vote for something very different than white women or old people.
And Chamath, what is your read on what mattered most? Do you have one? Of those three, how would you weight? What, what was the most-
- 50:44 – 1:10:42
GOP will likely win House and Senate, potential cabinet positions, avoiding neocons
- JCJason Calacanis
his side.
So, I am gonna move on t- to the rest of the election, the other races. So, so the presidency we've talked about. Let's talk about the House and the Senate, Sachs. In the House, there s- 37 races that have yet to be called, but it looks like the Republicans need about 12 more to be called to have a majority. It seems very likely, I mean acco- according to Polymarket it's 99% that the Republicans will have the majority in the House. The Republicans have control of the Senate, and Trump is in the White House. What are the top policy items that the Republicans will pursue with this degree of legislative and executive control? What's number one, two, three on the list? What's top priority, and how are they kind of getting together to figure out what and how to execute those items i- in the, in the weeks and months after, uh, January 20th?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, so first of all, I think the Senate majority matters a lot in terms of Trump getting the appointments that he wants, because if he was just at 51, let's call it, it would be quite hard. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski tend to be very, very moderate, uh, Republicans and would oppose, I think, a lot of conservative appointments. Trump's already at 53 senators and there's two more that are still up for grabs and waiting to be counted, so he might get to 54 in the next week or so. It just means he's gonna have a freer range on appointments. I think that'd be really good for, for, uh, Bobby Kennedy. I think it might be harder to get Bobby Kennedy confirmed for a major cabinet post with 51. With 53, 54, I think we get there. I think that's a really great thing for the country. There's other appointments in a similar vein that I think will be easier for, for Trump to get through. In terms of the rest of the agenda, I mean, Trump clearly does wanna end the war in Ukraine. Is he gonna be able to do it on day one? No. I mean, I don't think that's realistic because frankly, the Ukrainians are not willing to make the concessions yet. They're not in a place where they're willing to make a deal. I still think that what Trump was saying during the campaign, if you look at it as expression of his motivations and where his sentiments are coming from, they were good sentiments. But if he can't solve it on day one because Ukrainians don't wanna make a deal, I can't really fault him for that, but I think he'll try. I think that on DOGE, there's clearly a strong desire of many in the Republican Party and Elon and the people that Elon brought with him for major government reform. Much more efficiency, much less spending. I think that we have to get as much of that passed as possible in the first, certainly in the first year.
- JCJason Calacanis
There's a necessity for legislative action to get all the cuts in, uh, federal spending that they're looking to cut. Is that right, Sachs? So, if, if Elon's objective is cut $2 trillion-
- DSDavid Sacks
Maybe not all of it. There, there, there might be some things you can just do through executive orders, and they should do as much as they can. But I think you do need some Congressional action as well. This is an area where it's just gonna be really hard because spending is a bipartisan problem and it's gonna be really hard to jam through the type of deep reform that we really should have at the federal level. But, I think that now there's a shot because Trump does have majorities in the House and Senate, that he can at least get something through. So, at least we have a shot at getting something done there. Are we gonna get two trillion in cuts like Elon wants? I would love that. I doubt you're gonna be able to pass that through Congress. But, do start with that number and then work your way down to a number that you can get both parties to support? Maybe that's possible, hopefully.
- JCJason Calacanis
I would have started, I would have started with three then.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Went down to two, but, I mean, that's just my-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... that's just my tactic, but whatever.
- DSDavid Sacks
But I think reforming the bureaucracy is just such a huge theme coming out of this election, and we just have to figure out how to get that done and-
- JCJason Calacanis
He's got the mandate.
- DSDavid Sacks
We have the mandate. That's Trump's mandate.
- JCJason Calacanis
And the f- the federal government is such a large, sprawling ... It is the largest organization on Earth except for maybe the CCP. And in that sense, you really have to have leverage in leadership to be able to realize that degree of action at that scale, so the Cabinet positions matter a lot.... to realize that agenda. Is that- is that fair to say, Chamath? And, uh, you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about who are the- the folks in the orbit of Donald Trump and the transition team that are being considered for different Cabinet posts and, you know, as an advisor or as a, let's call you a theoretical advisor, uh, to the transition team, what are the kind of key posts that matter to you? How would you kind of advise them who to look for that could really realize the outcome that the mandate is dictating?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, I- I have no influence on this process so I'm just totally spit-balling but-
- JCJason Calacanis
Right.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... people who I think are, who I think are excellent, I'm gonna put Bobby Kennedy right at the top of the list. I think that Bobby has an opportunity to allow the transparency of information that will allow folks to keep doing what we've done or to change course in a way that right now I think is a little bit more difficult than it needs to be. I think Vivek Ramaswamy is indefatigable. I think he's a ... You know, if you remember back to the Republican primaries, there's only one person that did not attack Donald Trump and it was Vivek. I think he, um, believed in what Donald Trump was doing and was willing to, sort of, embrace and extend this idea. So I think he'd be a really good proxy. I don't know what role that looks like but I just think that he would be exceptional.
- DSDavid Sacks
He'd be amazing. There are some rumors that he's going to run for Governor of Ohio but he'd be amazing in the federal government. Tulsi Gabbard. We gotta get Tulsi-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Tulsi Gabbard.
- DSDavid Sacks
... in there.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah. Yeah. I just- just to go through the list, I think Tulsi Gabbard is so awesome.
- JCJason Calacanis
For what role?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
She-
- JCJason Calacanis
What would you put her in?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
You know, I think that-
- DSDavid Sacks
The rumor is, is Veteran Affairs.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah. Veterans Affairs, I think-
- DSDavid Sacks
But, uh, but, you know, hopefully it's at least that.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
That's a Cabinet position, right?
- 1:10:42 – 1:28:47
Cabinet positions, shaking up the unelected bureaucratic branch
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
over to you.
- JCJason Calacanis
So let's talk about the cabinet positions. Chamath, a guy like RFK Jr. has never held an executive position before. You and others on this panel, Sax, J-Cal, myself, we've all kind of managed large groups of people. We've all been in positions of being a CEO of a business. W- you talk a lot about bringing in the outsiders and the Trump campaign talks a lot about bringing these outsiders. Sax begrudgingly highlights the swamp creatures emerging to ask for those slots and those positions because they are lifelong politicians and bureaucrats. How do we have trust and faith, or do you think that that's the whole point is that you have folks that don't have the experience to run these organizations, that don't have the insights on who actually works there, on how they operate, and them coming in is gonna provide enough of a fresh perspective and (censored) things up enough that that's exactly the point? And like talk a little bit about bringing in outsiders, but outsiders that can be effective in transforming these government agencies, not just blowing them up. Or is the goal to blow them up?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No. Again, I would- I would just temper and tone down that rhetoric.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
There's not- nobody's blowing up anything. But I think step one is going to be a level of transparency so that doing the obvious becomes obvious. And I think that if you look back over 40 or 50 years, what has happened is that secretaries and political appointments have gone from get the best person in the job because they know it to here's political payola, if you will. And I think the pendulum has swung to too far of an extreme. That's why the swamp people are able to maintain control, because the person above them who's appointed doesn't fundamentally know the inner workings of the organization. I suspect what you're going to see is a radical push to transparency, and I think that when you combine transparency, and Sax called for this, a version of the Twitter files for the government, I do think you're gonna see that. But if you combine that push to transparency with a handful of topics, you know, by the way, we introduced a long time ago this idea of zero-based budgeting into the lexicon and language of these political candidates that they used all the way through to the finish line. I do believe the Republicans earnestly mean it. And so I think when you put these two things together, Freidberg, I think what you will have is all of this laid bare, and then I think it'll start a debate on what to do.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I think the- the decisions about what to do will be so blindingly obvious. The low-hanging fruit will save this country once we pluck it.
- DSDavid Sacks
Can I- can I just say a word about ... I- I think it's so important for Bobby Kennedy to be confirmed in whatever cabinet position that he's gonna get. Number one, you know, we look back at the campaign now and it seems obvious that Trump was gonna win it. But at the time that Bobby Kennedy came on board, that was a major factor in shifting momentum towards Trump. So, that's number one. Number two, we need to keep Bobby Kennedy's coalition as part of our movement. It's not just about what he did in this last election. It's keeping all of those people, those young people and those former Democrats on side, and part of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement. And number three, he's genuinely gonna reform that huge part of the bureaucracy, and that's extremely important. We need outsiders to come in and shake things up. He's right about the regulatory capture, he's right about the marriage of state power and corporate greed. Let's have someone go in there who's got fresh eyes but also understands how the bureaucracy works 'cause he's litigated, and shake things up.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
If you look at what Bobby posted to Instagram ... Nick, I don't know if you can find it, but it was pretty telling on this dimension of, the first inning is going to be about absolute radical transparency and sharing with the American people everything that's been- that's been under the covers. By the way, it's not just on that dimension, right? We're gonna see the Epstein files, we're gonna see the Diddy lists, we're gonna see the JFK file. I know that these things are sort of fringe conspiracy theory type things for some people, but the point is, from pillar to post, that first phase of this radical truth-seeking transparency is an incredible disinfectant that you can build from. And he told the FD, I think something to the effect of, "Pack your bags and keep your records." Now, let's- let's take the hyperbolic part of it out, but it's the keep your records part that should be valuable because we deserve to have answers. Now, when you think at the same time that you have inventions like AI that can crunch every single piece of data under the sun and tell you the absolute truth, imagine when you put transparency and the government sharing incredible amounts of information with the compute power that the Googles and the Facebooks and the- and the OpenAIs of the world are creating, you'll know these answers to all of these questions. Vaccines, are they good or bad? When? How? Fluoride, is it good or bad? When? How? All of these drugs that have been approved, why? All of these drugs that have not been approved, why? You're gonna start to see some really interesting things. Has there been research on the impacts of food on physiology? Were they suppressed? Were they not suppressed? So, I think phase one is get it all out into the open.
- DSDavid Sacks
Totally. And- and what I- what I said, just what- what Chamath referred to, is yeah, I said we should do a- a Twitter files for the whole federal government. 'Cause what I meant by that is remember, before Elon bought Twitter they told us for years that the idea that Twitter was shadow-banning conservatives and engaging in censorship was a conspiracy theory. Then Elon opened up the Twitter files and we saw that it was all true. And moreover, that the government was engaged in censorship. They had been working hand-in-glove with the Trust and Safety Department.
Episode duration: 1:43:27
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