Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the All In Podcast. With us again today, yawning from Milan, your favorite, the chairman dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya. You look a little tired, my friend. How you doing over there, buddy?

David Friedberg 0:17 I left Monday. I flew to Singapore.

Jason Calacanis 0:21 Hm.

David Friedberg 0:21 I was on the ground for two days, and I flew here. I'm here for two days, and then I go to London for five days.

Jason Calacanis 0:30 Okay.

David Friedberg 0:30 I'm exhausted.

Jason Calacanis 0:31 So you are on a whirlwind tour.

David Friedberg 0:33 I mean, I'm base- I'm flying around the world, literally flying around the world moving west. Man.

Jason Calacanis 0:41 Right.

David Friedberg 0:42 I'm tired.

Jason Calacanis 0:42 And this is all-

David Friedberg 0:43 How do people do it?

Jason Calacanis 0:44 ... in service.

David Friedberg 0:45 My gosh.

Jason Calacanis 0:45 It's... I mean, at our age, you feel it.

David Friedberg 0:47 How do people do it?

Jason Calacanis 0:48 It hits differently when you, when you pass 40. And I'm assuming this is 80/90 business? You're out there selling? You selling? You're selling grok? You're selling 80/90? You're out there doing BD?

David Friedberg 0:59 Little selling, little closing, and then I'm speaking at the Oxford Union on Wednesday.

Jason Calacanis 1:04 Okay. Okay. Well, that sounds fancy.

David Friedberg 1:07 Bucket list. Check into bucket list.

Jason Calacanis 1:09 Ah. Okay. There you have it. And in his camo hat and in his election afterglow. Look at the glow.

David Sacks 1:18 Afterglow. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:18 He is in that afterglow. He is post-coitus. He are post-election.

David Sacks 1:24 Anybody got a cigarette? I need to-

Jason Calacanis 1:26 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:26 I need to light up a cigarette. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:28 Light up with his ex-

David Sacks 1:29 (exhales) Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:30 That was a close one.

David Sacks 1:31 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:31 I didn't think I was gonna make it, but you did. You did like 26.

David Sacks 1:33 Do you like my camo hat, J-CAL?

Jason Calacanis 1:35 What does it say?

David Sacks 1:35 This is, this is a hat... Well, it says Trump 2027.

Jason Calacanis 1:38 Oh. Oh, more fun. What does it say?

David Sacks 1:39 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:39 "You're hunting libs." Oh.

David Sacks 1:41 Now, remember, remember when, uh, Tim Walz rolled out the camo hat?

Jason Calacanis 1:45 Ah, yes. Yes.

David Sacks 1:45 And you said it was gonna win the election for Harris-Walz?

Jason Calacanis 1:47 It might. It might.

David Sacks 1:48 'Cause...

Jason Calacanis 1:48 I thought that he might have a shot, yes. Yeah, I was wrong about that one. "Be Bowie, Bowie quiet."

David Sacks 1:53 We got all the camo guys. They voted for us.

Jason Calacanis 1:55 Yeah, hunting wibbawls. Nobody's gonna get this, uh, impersonation, but it's very good. It looks good on you.

David Friedberg 2:01 Was that, was the Elmer Fudd?

David Sacks 2:03 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:03 That's Elmer Fudd. "Be Bowie, Bowie quiet. We're hunting wibbawls."

David Friedberg 2:07 That sounds like Mike Tyson.

Jason Calacanis 2:09 Well, "I'm gonna mess up that, Jake Paul."

David Sacks 2:13 How about I wear a different Trump hat every week for the next four years?

David Friedberg 2:16 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:17 Absolutely fantastic. It's... I mean, the ratings on this show-

David Sacks 2:19 There's so many good ones.

Jason Calacanis 2:21 I mean, all I care about at this point, I'm getting savaged, i- i- in any way possible.

David Friedberg 2:26 You're fine. You're fine.

Jason Calacanis 2:26 All I care about is ratings now. Let's go.

David Friedberg 2:28 You're fine.

Jason Calacanis 2:29 MAGA, get in the comments. Let's get these ratings up. And with us, of course, the CEO of Ohalo, Ohalo, David Freiberg. How you doing there, little buddy?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:42 Thanks, thanks for having me again, J-Cal. Thank you.

Jason Calacanis 2:44 All right.

David Sacks 2:44 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:44 It's great to be here.

Jason Calacanis 2:45 Well, it's good to have you. It's good to be here, yeah. How you doing?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:48 I'm chilling, man. You know, just...

David Sacks 2:50 Nice of the executive producer to have you on the show.

Jason Calacanis 2:53 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:53 Yeah, I appreciate the invitation, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 2:53 I've been executive producing here. Uh, well, it's, uh... You know, always, I am always thinking about your best interest. I was hearing a little... I, I heard you on a phone call before. You said you had a perfect body. What was that in reference to? Did you get a scan?

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:05 My wife makes me go... Yeah, she makes me go to the dermatologist where they... She examines your whole nude body to look for moles. So this morning, I went in early to the dermatologist. She examined it. She said, "Perfect." I said-

David Friedberg 3:18 Does she have to wear sunglasses 'cause you're just so white? Like, it just, like, it's blindingly white.

Jason Calacanis 3:23 (laughs)

David Friedberg 3:23 Just... Poor woman. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:24 Does she get hazard pay?

David Friedberg 3:25 The poor... That poor dermatologist. My God.

Jason Calacanis 3:28 (laughs)

David Friedberg 3:28 Actually, no, wait, no.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:28 On her way out, she's like, she's like, "Thank you for the experience," and she walks out.

Jason Calacanis 3:31 But this is why we need to, uh, in all seriousness, this is why... Sacks, we have to legalize psychedelics. This poor woman has PTSD after that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:39 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:39 We need to get her some-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:41 "Get out of here. Get out of here."

Jason Calacanis 3:42 All right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:42 It was a wonderful examination. She was thrilled.

Jason Calacanis 3:44 I'm in.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:45 All right.

Jason Calacanis 3:45 Okay. And, uh, of course, I'm Jason Calacanis. And, uh, you know, there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, Sacks. I don't know if you know this, but, uh, comedy might still be legal here on the All In Podcast.

David Friedberg 3:57 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:57 But there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, a lot of debate, a- a lot of energy, dare I say, around-

David Friedberg 4:01 Oh, my God. Here we go.

Jason Calacanis 4:01 ... around-

David Friedberg 4:02 Are we gonna break the rules today finally?

Jason Calacanis 4:04 Uh, I don't know. We'll see.

David Friedberg 4:05 Oh, my God.

Jason Calacanis 4:05 Anything's possible. People get a little sensitive sometimes with the comedy.

David Friedberg 4:09 Do I, do I have to put my pronouns back in my Zoom chat? Or has this already been-

Jason Calacanis 4:11 (laughs) You put your Zoom pronouns back in. Chamath Palihapitiya, douche bag.

David Friedberg 4:16 Oh, my God.

Jason Calacanis 4:16 Uh, here we go. D- you, you might not know this, but a lot of appointments are being made. Sacks, did you know this? Are you aware that the appointments are being made?

David Sacks 4:24 I'm aware. Yeah, it's happening.

Jason Calacanis 4:26 You have see- you've seen the flow of them. Well, I got a dump. I'm not gonna say who sent these to me, but I actually got the next five or six announcement that Trump's gonna make. I'm not gonna say who gave it to me. Was it Jared Kushner?

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:39 Oh, my God.

Jason Calacanis 4:39 Um...

David Friedberg 4:39 This is gonna... This bit has the potential to be so good.

Jason Calacanis 4:43 (laughs)

David Friedberg 4:44 I'm so tired, but you've got me awake. I'm ready.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:46 Okay. I'm awake too. I'm ready.

Jason Calacanis 4:48 Well, here's our first one. Here's our first one.

David Friedberg 4:49 Oh, my God.

Jason Calacanis 4:49 This is a very interesting one.

David Friedberg 4:51 I hope this is good.

Jason Calacanis 4:51 Yeah, here it is.

David Sacks 4:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:52 This is a statement from Donald J. Trump. "It is my great honor to announce that Hunter Biden of Delaware will head a new department, the Bureau of Founder Mode Procurement, Founder Mode Procurement."

David Sacks 5:03 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:03 You notice Sacks dropped off. He doesn't want to, uh, have a reaction shot here. Uh, next one up, this is interesting.

David Sacks 5:09 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:09 Tony Hinchcliffe, I don't know if you know him. He has been appointed into a new role. He's the ambassador to Puerto Rico.

David Sacks 5:15 (laughs)

David Friedberg 5:16 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:17 Chamath, he's, he's, uh...

David Friedberg 5:18 That's a good one.

Jason Calacanis 5:19 Chamath, actually, uh, your wish has come true. You are now... Your sole duty is to ensure all executive branch knitwear is on point, the sweater inspector general. Everybody's gonna have perfect knitwear.

David Friedberg 5:32 Knitwear.

David Sacks 5:32 Uh-huh.

Jason Calacanis 5:33 Absolutely, knitwear. And, uh, I am, uh-

David Friedberg 5:34 By the way, just so you know, that's a, that's a Loro Piana cashmere sweater in that picture.

Jason Calacanis 5:38 Apparently, apparently. I'm actually decided I would flip. I've gone full MAGA. Here I am.

David Sacks 5:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 5:44 I have been appointed as chief virtue signaler.

David Friedberg 5:47 (laughs) That, I like.

Jason Calacanis 5:48 So...

David Friedberg 5:48 That, I like.

Jason Calacanis 5:49 Every time we do the All In Podcast...

David Sacks 5:51 You're gonna be, uh, you're gonna be...

David Friedberg 5:52 (laughs)

David Sacks 5:52 Uh, you're gonna have stiff competition from Mark Cuban for that, for that post.

Jason Calacanis 5:55 I know. I beat him out. I beat him out.

David Sacks 5:56 Oh, you beat out Cuban? Okay.

Jason Calacanis 5:56 Well, I beat Anthony... Yeah, yeah, I went down two more on Anthony.

David Sacks 5:58 Well, he deleted... He deleted all of his pro-Kamala tweets. Have you done the same?

Jason Calacanis 6:03 Oh.... uh, no. No, I haven't yet.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:05 You're gonna have to work on that if you wanna-

Jason Calacanis 6:05 But that's gonna be part of the uh, it's gonna be a part of the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:07 ... if you wanna get this job.

Jason Calacanis 6:08 Look at the lusty eyes- Absolutely. ... in this picture.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:10 (laughs)

6:10 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 6:10 I know. It's pretty great. That's me after losing- I mean, it really, it really, you, you have, there, you have not found a virtue.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:15 There it is.

Jason Calacanis 6:15 You didn't wanna just burrow yourself even deeper. (laughs) No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Hey, Friedberg, you've been appointed.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:22 Oh, what do I know?

Jason Calacanis 6:22 Here we go. Uh, as Bobby Kennedy's whipping boy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:25 Oh, boy.

Jason Calacanis 6:25 You will be officially his little bitch.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:28 Oh, boy.

Jason Calacanis 6:28 Uh, anything, any innovation you come up with is officially blocked. And here he is, my great honor to announce David Sacks is now the Chief Retribution Officer.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:40 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 6:40 Congratulations. Well done.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:41 (laughs)

6:42 Retribution must be had, J-CAL.

Jason Calacanis 6:45 (laughs) Payback is a bitch.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:47 There are a lot of people who are out of line, just a little bit, a little bit, they deserve to get smacked down a little bit, just on-

Jason Calacanis 6:52 Paul Graham's gonna get his shoe shine box?

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:54 (laughs)

6:54 ... just on X, a little bit.

6:56 Oh.

6:56 Just a little bit. Let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 7:01 Rain Man David Sacks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:05 And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

David Friedberg 7:09 Love you, Westside.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:10 Queen of Quinoa.

Jason Calacanis 7:14 There's been a, a lot of talk about a holiday party, Friedberg. You wanna give us an update on the holiday party?

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:19 Quick plug on the party. So the party is coming up in three weeks, the All-In Holiday Spectacular. Steve Aoki, Andrea Botez-

Jason Calacanis 7:27 To, to get.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:27 ... Gary Richards, AKA Destructo, are gonna be DJing. Several of the sections-

Jason Calacanis 7:32 And me, I'm doing a secret DJ set. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:36 I may. It's actually a good idea. We will have-

Jason Calacanis 7:38 I may drop the beat.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:39 We will have chess challenges with Alex Botez.

Jason Calacanis 7:42 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:42 Uh, several sections are sold out. VIP is sold out. Uh, Draymond's joining us, Draymond Green from-

Jason Calacanis 7:48 Oh, hey, Draymond.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:48 ... the Warriors. He's gonna come and do a little bit with us on stage, should be great.

Jason Calacanis 7:52 He's great.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:53 So, should be great. Get your tickets at allin.com/ events.

Jason Calacanis 7:57 All right. Let's get into it everybody. I just wanna start with a l- a little bit of, uh, finance here. Bitcoin and finance stocks way up since the Trump win, which was now 10 days ago. Uh, Bitcoin peaked at 92,000. Unbelievable. It's dropped down to 89, but it, obviously that's an all-time high. And, as we all know, we talked about it on the show, Trump heavily, heavily courted the crypto industry during his campaign, in addition to the Bitcoin news. Since early August, Affirm, Robinhood, PayPal, Coinbase, all up double or 50%. It's an extraordinary run. In July, Trump headlined a Bitcoin conference. He laid out his plans. Number one, he was gonna fire SEC chairman, Gary Gensler. Here's the clip.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:48 On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman.

9:01 Look at this. Whoa. Seems juicy.

9:04 I didn't know he was that unpopular.

9:08 Fire him. Gotta fire him. Too bad for Gary.

9:15 I didn't know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again.

Jason Calacanis 9:19 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:20 On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler. Whoa.

Jason Calacanis 9:26 There it is. Okay, enough of that. Technically, president can't fire the SEC chair, but he can appoint a new one when Gary's term ends in 2026. Or Gary could resign when Trump takes office. That happens, uh, sometimes. And, uh, folks are speculating Gensler has already made that decision to step down. He, uh, put out a press release with a quote in it that a number of people took note of, where he said, "It's been a great honor to serve with them," the people who work at the SEC, "doing the people's work in ensuring our capital markets remain the best in the world." Trump also said the federal government will never sell, never ever sell its Bitcoin holdings, uh, which they own through criminal assets, as you know. And number three, he said he would create a Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council, where Trump said, quote, "The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry." And he also advocated that all future Bitcoins would be minted in America. I don't know that he gets to make that choice but, uh, there you have it. Friedberg, any thoughts here on the crypto market and this incredible ball run here we've seen in the last, you know, 10 days and then before that couple of months?

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:40 Yeah, I mean, I think like you said, it's not limited to crypto. Crypto is one market of several that have been significantly affected by the outlook based on Trump's election. Uh, I think that Trump's election has a couple of key features that are changing market dynamics. One is folks kind of view some of his policies to be obviously stimulatory with lower tax rates and more deregulation. This is, you know, theoretically gonna drive up investment and economic growth. The deregulatory nature on its own benefits markets that have been encumbered by regulatory oversight and regulatory challenges like crypto, finance, and fintech. So those types of businesses are, are clearly gonna benefit or expected to benefit significantly by being able to launch products more quickly and have features and ways that they can generate revenue that they might be challenged to do under the current regulatory schemas. And then, uh, there's also this element of kind of things being inflationary, the, the feature of tariffs. If we don't get spending cut fast enough, there's an effect on markets. So, you know, we're still seeing 10-year Treasury sit at about four and a half percent, up from three and a half percent, which is where we were right around the rate cut beginning in September. And remember, since those rate cuts began in September, we've cut 75 basis points and, uh, and, and we're still seeing the kind of 10-year Treasury hold high which is, in, kind of implies that there's expected to be persistent inflation. In fact-... the October inflation number accelerated again, so it's back up, not going down. It's, I think it went up to 2.6%, up from 2.3% the month prior. These general kind of effects that are predicted from the Trump policy plans is having an effect in different markets. Obviously, in equities, we're seeing more kind of risk-seeking, risk-taking. And then in the bond markets, because of the 4.5% Treasury yield, there's a really interesting dynamic un- and I, I kinda sent this, this link out, uh, yesterday. But if you look at the spread on yields between US Treasuries, which have historically been kind of considered and talked about and are deemed the, the risk-free rate, and the yield that corporates have to pay to borrow money, we haven't seen a spread this low in 26 years. So it's a 17-year low for the spread between the yield that companies that issue junk bonds have to pay from Treasuries, and it's a 26-year low for credit grade bonds. So this means the market is either more risk-seeking, meaning they're looking for more yield and they're going into corporates because they feel like there is a higher probability that these companies are gonna be successful in the future, they're not gonna have higher default rates, et cetera, so the market is becoming much more risk-seeking. Or the alternative is that parts of the market are reassessing the risk-free nature of Treasuries themselves. If spending doesn't get under control, the Treasury market appetite is decreasing, so there's this kind of spread that's shrunk in the last couple of months. So we're seeing capital flooding into the markets for risk-seeking assets, and this is obviously affecting crypto, equities, and, and bond markets all across the board. And we'll talk a little bit about IPO and M&A later.

Jason Calacanis 13:48 Great. Chamath, your thoughts? Aside from Yum Yum?

David Friedberg 13:53 I mean ...

Jason Calacanis 13:54 Yum Yum. You can say it. (laughs) It's y- it's yummy. It's gonna be a ... just say it. (laughs)

David Friedberg 14:00 No, I mean, look, what did I say-

Jason Calacanis 14:02 (laughs)

David Friedberg 14:02 ... at the beginning of the year is gonna be the biggest risk asset winning trade? Yeah, it's great. Bitcoin's great.

Jason Calacanis 14:11 Oh my Lord, I haven't seen you this happy in a while.

David Friedberg 14:14 More generally. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 14:14 (laughs) What made you more ha- happy, getting to Milan and spending time with your white truffle dealer or watching Bitcoin break 90K? Which one was more exciting for you personally?

David Friedberg 14:28 Oh, you know, h- honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about all the Bitcoin I sold.

Jason Calacanis 14:33 Oof. Yeah, you, didn't you buy-

David Friedberg 14:36 You know, I had Bitcoin, I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds-

Jason Calacanis 14:39 Yeah.

David Friedberg 14:39 ... when I-

Jason Calacanis 14:39 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 14:39 ... managed outside capital. You know, that's a, I don't know, a $3 or $4 billion mistake and growing now because my partners at the time capitulated and I wanted to be a good team member and redistributed and it was profitable. But obviously, I shouldn't have sold it.

Jason Calacanis 14:58 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 14:58 Would've made them a lot more money. And then I think about, like, I bought some land in Lake Tahoe.

Jason Calacanis 15:04 I remember that, yeah.

David Friedberg 15:06 It was in The Wall Street Journal. I'm sure you can find it, but-

Jason Calacanis 15:09 Yeah.

David Friedberg 15:09 How much is that worth now? Probably couple hundred million dollars, maybe more.

Jason Calacanis 15:14 Rough trade, rough trade. But you, you do have Bitcoin holdings so you've done okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:17 Chamath, can I, can I ask you a question? Why do you say sold Bitcoin as opposed to converted Bitcoin into dollars? Like, when you think about Bitcoin just as a, as a participant, do you think about Bitcoin as a dollar-denominated asset, that you go and buy Bitcoin and then you're eventually gonna sell it, turn it back into dollars and use the dollars? Or are you like, what do you think about the purist kind of idea that Bitcoin should be the de facto currency and store value in the future and the dollar doesn't matter, and we shouldn't necessarily be talking about the, the value of Bitcoin in dollar-denominated terms as something I'm gonna eventually turn it back into?

David Friedberg 15:51 It hasn't happened yet.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:52 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 15:52 And so until it happens, I think you have to view it as, like, a, a very good gold proxy. But it's a largely dollar-denominated asset.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:08 Now, why do you see it going the other way? Like, so a lot of folks thought that as a safe haven, it should do well when there's a negative economic outlook, but it has traded the last couple of years kind of the opposite.

David Friedberg 16:20 No, it's totally correlated. No, it's tota- it's a totally correlated asset. I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:23 Yeah.

David Friedberg 16:24 ... there will be a point, and it's probably in our lifetime, where it is an independent asset and a non-speculative store of value. There will be that day, but that day is not now, and I think it's very important to see the conditions on the field as they are versus what you wish it to be. And, and the reason is that it allows you to risk manage more appropriately, because if you don't see it, then when something happens to the dollar complex, good or bad, or when something happens to rates, good or bad, or when something stimulative happens, good or bad, you're not gonna react properly if you're in the business of managing it as a risk asset. So if you're in the set it and forget it bucket, and there are some people, I think it's great. None of these conversations matter. But like most people, you're probably going to be motivated to do something, and I think if you're motivated to do something or you have FOMO that stimulates you to do something, whatever the psychology is that leads you to action, it's probably important to just view things as they really are versus how you wish them to be, and so I think the purists may eventually be right, I think they will be right at some point in my lifetime, but they're not right now. And that's why-

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:47 Yeah.

David Friedberg 17:47 ... these things are correlated. Uh, and you should act appropriately.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:50 If the market goes up?

David Friedberg 17:51 The other, the other thing I'll say just broadly about the market is I think that there is a tremendous amount of optimism about the economy, and I think that's why you see risk spreads get crushed.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:59 Definitely. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 18:00 Yeah.

David Friedberg 18:02 And I think that as long as we see the kind of prognostications that the Trump administration is putting out...

Jason Calacanis 18:10 I think people are going to be mostly bullish. I think the way that this trade turns around is when something actually breaks in terms of the inflation picture or in terms of the deficit picture. And if those things look like going into 2025, that President Trump's actions are not gonna be able to course correct it, then I think you're gonna see people go massively risk-off, which I think will n- not be great for markets, obviously.

18:40 Right.

18:40 But right now, we're not in that point.

18:42 And you don't think the 10-year reflects that already at 4.5%? I mean, that's showing some degree of inflation and concern about the deficit, right?

18:52 Oh, yeah. Uh, uh-

18:52 It's like... Yeah.

18:53 ... I think, I think the 10-year could be at 7%.

18:57 Yeah.

18:59 What does 4.5% mean? I mean-

19:01 Yeah.

19:01 ... if you're, if you're gonna run 8% of GDP-level deficits for the next four or five or six years-

19:09 Yeah.

19:09 ... you're gonna have the 10-year at 7 to 8%. That's just mathematical.

19:15 Right. Sax, your thoughts on, uh, crypto before we get into IPOs and M&A, if any?

David Sacks 19:22 Yeah, just on crypto. The House Republicans already passed a framework for crypto regulation earlier this year. It actually got 71 Democrats to, to join it. It was called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21. And it would classify digital assets, like crypto, as commodities regulated by the CFTC if the blockchain they run on is, is, quote, "functional and decentralized." That's the key requirement. If their blockchain is functional but not decentralized, then they would be considered securities and fall under the purview of the SEC. I think the, the crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they're a commodity and they want commodities to be gover- governed like all other commodities by the CFTC. So, that's what the Republican bill would do. I think with the Republicans now winning the Senate, the prospects for that bill to get enacted are now greatly improved, especially because Sherrod Brown, who used to run the Banking Committee, just lost to Bernie Moreno. This was a, a seat in Ohio. Elizabeth Warren is still gonna object to this legislation, but she's just gonna have way less influence and, like you said, it's not clear that Gary Gensler's gonna be sticking around very long at the SEC. So, look, the bottom line here is that I think that we are close to having clearer rules of the road codified by Congress, which is what the crypto industry's been asking for, and the days of Gensler terrorizing crypto companies by issuing Wells notices without clarifying what the rules are that he's in- prosecuting, those days are about to be over. So I think this is why the crypto markets are rallying.

Jason Calacanis 21:03 And so, to your point, if it's centralized or partially centralized, you're gonna be a security. If you're decentralized, anybody can join the network, no one person controls the network, and I guess most people would consider that Bitcoin versus, say, Ripple, which is partially decentralized but largely centralized, and that's gonna be, I guess, the new rules of the road. In addition to that, there are new rules that are being enforced that hopefully Trump supports.

David Sacks 21:31 Assuming FIT21 passes, right? This bill's called-

Jason Calacanis 21:33 Yeah.

David Sacks 21:33 ... FIT21. But I think much, much higher likelihood that it or something like it now can get through the Congress.

Jason Calacanis 21:39 That makes sense, yeah. And then there's also legislation that's already been enacted that's... There's multiple ways, multiple paths, but accredited investors... There's gonna be a path to becoming an accredited investor with a test. So, that is something that is also on the docket. We'll see if it

Jason Calacanis 21:56 happens. Let's talk about IPOs and M&A, yum yum, boys. Just to level-set here with the audience, here's the number of IPOs per year and, as you can see, the last three years have been some of the lowest since 2008 and 2009, the Great Recession, for those of you who are old enough to remember it. And if you look at VC, the number of distributions have been absolutely on the floor for the past three years. In fact, if you look at the distributions from 2022 through 2024, those three years combined, it's been around 200 billion, which is less than 2019 in total. And, uh, with this year projected to be about 100 billion in distributions, that's about 14% of the peak ZIRP era, when in 2021 we had $710 billion in distribution. So here... So, the back room buzz is that Donnie from Queens is going to make M&A great again. Couple of reasons there, Sax. The wrath of Lina Khan is coming to an end, Mag Seven sitting on massive amounts of cash and that cash is growing as people have laid people off and they're focused on getting fit. Obviously we all know the Fed did another quarter point cut last week, although some people maybe don't know that because it seems to have gotten lost in the election news. And psychologically I think everybody's feeling very optimistic, so maybe these IPOs are back on the menu. Chamath, I don't know if you saw it, but Klarna just filed for their IPO. That's a Swedish fintech company, they were kind of the pioneers in buy now, pay later. What are the other IPOs we could see file in 2025? Databricks, Stripe, Wiz, Canva, Plaid, Rippling, and Airtable. There's a long shot that people haven't been buzzing about, I don't have any inside information, but people have been speculating SpaceX could IPO Starlink, their Starlink unit. And if you wanna get really crazy, Chamath, maybe, there's a long shot that Sam Altman jumps the fence and decides he's gonna take OpenAI public during this window that people expect to be opening. What do you think, Chamath? What's gonna happen here in terms of M&A and IPOs in 2025?

David Friedberg 24:14 I think it's gonna still be pretty sub-dued. So I don't-

Jason Calacanis 24:18 Subdued? Okay.

David Friedberg 24:18 I don't, I don't think that you're gonna see these crazy M&A deals that I think everybody is expecting. I also don't anticipate a lot of these big companies going public, at least in the first half of the year. And the only reason I say that is I just think that, like, this year and the first half of next year, what's the difference? The IPO market is what the IPO market is, and if the tenure is back to, you know, four and a half, five percent, that's not a compelling strategy for some SaaS company or some internet business that didn't take an opportunity to go public when rates were at zero. So if you just look mathematically at what the actual fair value of these companies should be, I don't know, it's not like such a great IPO market. Then on the M&A side, if all you're doing is waiting for Lina Khan to not be there, to me, I think that that betrays what M&A is supposed to be, which is you're supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first principles where things are very accretive. And very accretive things should not hang by a thread on the emotional regulation or dysregulation of the FTC commissioner. So I kind of think that you would have seen some of this stuff already as well if, if the industrial logic was so high. And again, when rates are non-trivially high, I just think that it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off, like, a really big M&A event. Nor is it a really easy thing to pull off to pull off a huge IPO when-

Jason Calacanis 26:00 Yeah.

David Friedberg 26:00 But again, there's a reason why Warren Buffett has $325 billion sitting in T-bills, making four and a half percent a year. He owns more T-bills than the United States government. He's making about $15 billion a year in interest. When you can do that with absolutely no risk, again, relative to stocks at least-

Jason Calacanis 26:21 Yeah.

David Friedberg 26:21 ... what is this IPO going to give you?

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:23 Chamath's right, like the, the tenure is at four and a half percent, you're basically paying 20 times cash flow to own a risk-free bond, a US Treasury bond.

David Friedberg 26:32 Or you could pay 23 times to own a totally risky asset.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:34 Or it's 30 times, yeah. It's 30 times-

David Friedberg 26:37 It's nuts.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:37 ... t- to own the S&P 500 right now.

David Friedberg 26:39 It's nuts.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:40 So, yeah, it's... But, but there is a lot of risk-seeking shifting happening, Chamath, right? So, I mean, we talked about, like, some of the crypto stuff, some of the fintech stuff, deregulation, that the PE might seem high today, but if you forecast out ten years for some of these businesses in a deregulated, detaxed environment, or reduced tax, reduced regulation environment, that the earnings should accelerate in a way that outpaces the, the multiple you're getting today, right? So, I mean, this is part of why some of the fintech companies are ripping right now, why some of the finance companies are ripping right now. If under Trump and the Republican control of the House and Senate, laws don't pass and regulations get reduced, theoretically, earnings are gonna rip, and you should pay a higher multiple today because we're actually buying these things at eight to ten times earnings five years from now. So there seems to be some risk appetite there. But I do agree with Chamath on the M&A point. If you think about what's gone on over the last couple of years-

David Friedberg 27:37 But hold, hold on, hold on a second. Can I ask you a question?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:38 Yeah, yeah.

David Friedberg 27:38 Do you think that regulation is the reason why these SaaS companies have never made a dollar of profit?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:43 (laughs) No. No, I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm talking, I guess we should split-

David Friedberg 27:47 Okay, so what is... You're ta- then you're talking about-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:47 We should-

David Friedberg 27:48 ... industrial companies?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:49 No, the fintech market, right? So we were talking about fintech and some of these assets earlier, some of these equities that have been ripping.

David Friedberg 27:57 But that's a very, it's a very narrow part of the economy, right? Like, if you look at broad, like on a broad base basis, the tens and tens of trillions of dollars of market cap that exist, I do agree with you that deregulation benefits a bunch of those companies, but it benefits sort of the non-tech businesses more than the tech businesses.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:17 That's true. Yeah.

David Friedberg 28:17 The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly regulated.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:21 Yeah.

David Friedberg 28:21 I would think that it benefits pharma businesses, it benefits ag businesses, it benefits real estate companies, it benefits a whol- a whole swath of the economy. But we've started to see that re-rating, and maybe we'll see a lot more. So maybe, Jason, the more nuanced answer to your question is the kind of M&A that I think you want to see, that, I mean, let's face it, that we all wanna see here 'cause we all have a-

Jason Calacanis 28:42 Yeah.

David Friedberg 28:42 ... a vested interest, which is really specifically tech M&A, I don't think that any of this deregulation particularly accelerates that. But, and maybe a more nuanced take on this would be that these other, more regulated parts of the economy could do well and catch up to some of the earnings potential or the forward pricing of the tech businesses. But again, now you get into this weird trade where you can f- buy steady cash flowing businesses that can grow in valuation as fast as a, as a fast-growing but money-losing tech business-

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:17 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 29:17 ... but then you trade both of those two things off and it has effectively the same yield as a tenure. What do you do?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:25 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 29:25 Yeah, I, you know, I, I think there's a lot of backed up inventory, where venture capitalists' boards and founders, people who control and make these decisions o- on M&A, if they would sell the company to a larger company, I think there's a lot of exhaustion in the market. And that will drive the capitulation on valuation we're talking about, Chamath-

David Friedberg 29:46 What do you, what do you think the valuations will be? Yeah, exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:47 Yeah, why would they, why would the larger company pay for it? Why would they buy?

Jason Calacanis 29:48 I mean, there'll be, there'll be haircuts, but I'm watching it right now.

David Friedberg 29:51 I mean, do you think Warren Buffett's gonna take 325 billion of cash and put it in

Jason Calacanis 29:54 No, no, but I do, but I do think-

David Friedberg 29:56 He won't even buy his own stock. So what do you think he's gonna pay-

Jason Calacanis 29:58 I, I, I think he-

David Friedberg 29:58 ... in terms of a multiple?

Jason Calacanis 29:59 ... I think it'll be more like Salesforce or Microsoft or Google or Amazon getting off the sidelines because they've looked at it and said, "You know what? The juice ain't worth the squeeze. We might as well put our efforts and our capital into buying big hardware and building new products and services." But if they think, "Hey, I got a chance of pulling this through. I'm sitting on all this cash."... what if I hit another YouTube and Instagram, you know, really great acquisitions that were transformative for those two companies? Meta would not be where it is right now. Facebook, you know that well, Chamath, if they hadn't gotten Instagram and certainly, you know, Friedberg, as an alumni of Google, if they didn't get YouTube, it would be a completely different picture for that company right now. I think there's a lot of those type of acquisitions-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:39 I just, I just think you have to-

Jason Calacanis 30:39 Hold on. I think there's a lot of those acquisitions that have been sitting there waiting and I'm watching the secondary markets. To your question, what's the discount gonna be? The discount was, last year, I kid you not, 70, 80, 90% off the last round for SaaS companies and this year it's 20 or 30. I'm seeing this when I'm getting offers to buy our shares in some private SaaS companies, some private fintech companies. And then I also think if you're a CEO and you watch Robinhood, Uber, Reddit, DoorDash, and Instacart, those five have actually, after getting a, a little bit of an ass kicking when they first went out, they have all rebounded massively. And for the people who held onto their Reddit shares, Robinhood shares, Uber shares, they have been rewarded massively, massively for having faith in, you know, through this storm. So, I think those two things, the capitulation of all these boards and founders are gonna say, "You know what? Let's take the haircut. Let's go public and let's tell our story and, and see if we can make it work as a public company." And then the people who feel one step weaker than that, I think they wanna cash their chips in. They've been in some of these investments, Chamath, it's year 11, 12, 13, 14 for some of these private companies. There is capitulation on those boards. People are exhausted. So that, that, I just, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna take the other side of the argument on this one.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:59 I'll kind of play along. So I think, and, and I'll disagree a little bit for a couple different reasons. These big tech companies, the ones that have had, you know, media businesses or... 'Cause remember, there's tech that's tech, right? NVIDIA does not have a media business, but there's been a conversation over the last couple of years where we need to break up big tech has been kind of part of the conversation with the Dems, and now the Republicans are coming in and they're saying the same thing, "We gotta break up big tech." So there, I think are a few of these companies, Google being one of 'em, that are very much handicapped right now with respect to what kind of M&A they can do without dealing with the regulatory sledgehammer coming down on 'em. So I don't think that those guys are buyers, J-Cal. I don't think that Google's in a place right now where they can go out and make a bunch of acquisitions. They're gonna do everything they can to avoid the regulatory sledgehammer that's coming their way. First it was coming from the Dems, now it's coming from the new administration. There's a bunch of other companies, uh, you know, that don't really fit that bill. Like Microsoft probably doesn't fit that bill. NVIDIA, Adobe, maybe they'll make some acquisitions, but I don't think it's as simple as, "Well, we'll sell at a low price, we'll buy at a low price." I'm just not sure they really need to do that right now. I completely agree with you. I completely agree. Yeah. I, I think that these big tech companies will need to pay a pound of flesh for the deplatforming and the censorship that they did.

Jason Calacanis 33:21 Hm. Well, look, it is a perfect time if we're gonna go to the p- political angle to bring you in, Sax. What are the vibes? My perception is Trump likes to win and Trump wants to see the economy soar. That is his platform. He's a business guy. I think he wants to see fluidity. I know JD has been, uh, not a fan of, like, the Googles, et cetera. So w- w- maybe you could help us navigate this. Who's right here? What's the possibility of M&A becoming more vibrant in a Trump, uh, administration?

David Sacks 33:51 Well, there's no question that in general, President Trump wants to have the most vibrant economy we can have. And I think to that end, you're gonna see the end of this era of deceleration, of regulatory capture and lawfare. I think all those things are, are over. I think that equities that have been straining or, or tamped down under the weight of these abuses, you see them ripping now. For example, Tesla, it's gone from roughly 250 to 320 a share just s- since the election. And you could call that the lawfare discount. I mean, that basically is the discount on Tesla stock because the market was pricing in the risk of retaliation if the Republicans lost, there's a widespread belief that the Democrats would go after Elon and his companies. So you can actually measure the lawfare discount based on Tesla stock.

Jason Calacanis 34:43 And some part regulation, right? 'Cause there's a lot of regulations around self-driving, rocket ship launches, all those things he's involved in, there's a lot of regulation there too, right?

David Sacks 34:50 Yeah, there was this crazy thing where they, they made... some regulator made him put a headset on a seal. Did you see this? To test the effect on seals of loud noises.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:59 The sonic boom.

David Sacks 35:00 The sonic booms.

Jason Calacanis 35:01 Yeah, sonic booms. Yeah.

David Sacks 35:01 This poor seal. Do you see this poor seal had, like, a headset on?

Jason Calacanis 35:04 (laughs) No, honestly. I don't ni... Don't do that to Friedberg. You, you-

David Sacks 35:07 Put the...

Jason Calacanis 35:07 Don't... No. Don't put it on screen.

David Sacks 35:09 Put the photo up.

Jason Calacanis 35:09 Put it in post. I don't want Friedberg-

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:11 Don't put it on the screen. Don't put it on the screen.

Jason Calacanis 35:12 Friedberg is gonna...

David Sacks 35:13 Anyway, so they subjected this poor seal to exactly the thing that they were worried would harm seals. In any event, the, the seal seemed totally fine. It didn't-

Jason Calacanis 35:22 They tortured seals to make a point.

David Sacks 35:24 It didn't freak out at all.

Jason Calacanis 35:24 I got it. Yeah.

David Sacks 35:25 Anyway, it's really crazy. So yeah, look-

Jason Calacanis 35:27 It's, it is crazy.

David Sacks 35:27 This crazy un-

Jason Calacanis 35:28 But what about this, JD? Help us navigate... I know JD is the VP and then you have Trump is the CEO. Chamath pointed out me- there's a little on the GOP anger or resentment residual because of the, you know, banning of Trump from YouTube and, and some of these other platforms. Do you think that makes its way into M&A or not?

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:49 I guess, Sax, like, let me be specific to J-Cal's question. Not all tech companies are the same in that point of view.

Jason Calacanis 35:55 Correct. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:56 And so, like, tech M&A generally is a thing, but specifically the companies that have had social media platforms may be kind of in a different lens from a regulatory perspective. Is that fair?

David Sacks 36:11 Yeah. I mean, look, I think that not everything Lina Khan did was bad. In fact, she definitely has some fans among the populist Republicans and-

David Friedberg 36:21 Yeah.

David Sacks 36:21 You know, some of them who have spoken out on her behalf in various areas have been, JD Vance, Matt Gaetz as well. She did do some good things. Specifically, she was willing to take on the big tech companies. I mean, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google. Frankly, they just had a free ride for the last couple of decades where they were allowed to do anything, and she came in and said, "There's a new sheriff in town," and she was actually willing to apply pressure on them to not engage in anti-competitive tactics. So I think she deserves credit for that. I think she did change the conversation. I think that we've talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as targeted and surgical an approach was used-

David Friedberg 37:02 Yeah.

David Sacks 37:02 ... and as a result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M&A, and so it hurt the, you know, the small tech environment. And so I think that we need to fix that part of it, but I hope that whoever replaces Lina Khan will continue to apply pressure to big tech because they are monopolies and they will abuse their power if they're allowed to.

David Friedberg 37:21 Sacks-

David Sacks 37:21 And they need to be controlled.

David Friedberg 37:23 Sacks, if you had to handicap the probability of a lawsuit or some kind of attempt to dismantle Google and Facebook, would those be the two companies at the top of your list? And how would you handicap them?

David Sacks 37:45 So my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that company. There's the search business, the advertising business, and YouTube. I think they should be busted up. What are the odds that that happens? It's hard to say, but what are the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated? I'd say high. I'd say Facebook or Meta less so. I don't see the compelling need to, to bust them up but quite frankly, I think the issue that Meta is gonna face is just, there were a lot of abuses in terms of censoring the free speech rights of Americans. Now, I don't think that was all the company's idea. I think a lot of pressure was put on the company by the Biden administration. I think they wanted to do the right thing and just didn't show enough backbone. I think Elon showed-

David Friedberg 38:38 But Zuckerberg's been clear that he regrets it.

David Sacks 38:41 He regrets it. Yeah. So I think it's-

David Friedberg 38:41 And he's bent the knee now. He's like, "Listen, I, I, I'm not gonna do it again." Yeah.

David Sacks 38:45 He published a letter... Yeah. He published a letter, and maybe it was done to some degree to inoculate himself against the results of this election, but I'd say to his credit, it wasn't clear at all who was gonna win the election when he put out that letter, and he basically said that he regretted the fact that Meta had gone along with the censorship request by the Biden administration, and he specifically referred to that whole Hunter Biden story that got censored in 2020 that was election interference. It was a completely true story by the New York Post that got censored by big tech at the request of these 51 former intelligence officials who were lying through their teeth, claiming it was Russian dis- disinformation. So he clearly regrets going along with that. In any event, I think there are better ways of handling the speech issue on social networks than busting up Facebook. But I, I, I do think, though, that Congress should investigate or continue investigating what went wrong there and what exactly is the involvement of the intelligence community and the deep state in the censorship requests that we saw exposed by the Twitter files,

David Sacks 39:52 remember.

David Friedberg 39:52 Can I bring up something maybe tangential and you can react to this? Just speaking of kind of, like, censorship and then just the, the media complex that we have. I saw today that Trump filed, like, a $10 or $15 billion lawsuit against the broadcast networks. May- maybe this is old news, but I, may- and maybe I just saw the news now, but- I saw a headline go by on X. I don't, I don't-

David Sacks 40:15 Yeah, I saw it on X as well.

David Friedberg 40:15 ... know what it is. Uh, yeah. Didn't make the cut. Yeah. And then, and then separately, with Bobby Kennedy's nomination to HHS, one of the things that he has said that he wants to put an end to is the advertising that pharma does on these broadcast stations. If you put these two things together where you deprive these folks of their largest revenue source and at the same time, they have to sort of, like, answer for censorship or manipulating content, it... Does- do you think that that changes the landscape of how all these companies behave in the future? Or how do you think that that plays out?

David Sacks 40:52 Yeah. I mean, absolutely. So all right, let's take each one of those. So on the, the broadcasters, and we've talked about this before, the big broadcast networks and their affiliates receive free spectrum licenses from the FCC, and they get some of the most valuable spectrum there is through those licenses in exchange for certain requirements that their broadcasts are in the public interest. Namely, they have to follow a fairness doctrine, which is supposed to mean that you give equal time to both candidates. Well, in the final weeks of this campaign, we saw some really egregious abuses. NBC brought on Kamala Harris, but not Donald Trump for a very favorable segment on Saturday Night Live the week before the election. Separately, you saw 60 Minutes deceptively edit an interview with Kamala Harris where they actually took one of her answers from one question and put it as the answer to another question. I mean, really deceptive. So you have a couple of examples with both CBS and NBC which were violating the equal time requirement, were, were clearly working on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign, and when you look at the coverage itself, this election was the most unequal in terms of favorable coverage. It was something like a 60 point difference. So something like Kamala, Kamala Harris received 80 something percent favorable coverage and Trump received something like 85% negative coverage.

David Friedberg 42:18 According to?

David Sacks 42:18 So it... There's no way you can-

David Friedberg 42:19 Who's that according to? Do you know?

David Sacks 42:21 Yeah, there's, um, it's a report by-... Brent Bizzell's, uh, media watchdog group. It's been around forever, and it's been recording this stuff in every election for the last 30 years. In any event, I think that there's a very strong argument that the broadcasters have not been fair, that's a violation of their license requirements, and we should be reevaluating their spectrum, especially because it's not the highest, best use of that spectrum anyway.

Jason Calacanis 42:43 You know, the great irony of this though, Sax (laughs) , is that they have already been demolished. I don't know if you saw, but a bunch of the anchors at CNN are not renewing because their advertising is so far off that... Like, Chris Wallace I think was making eight million a year or nine million a year, and he just said, "I'm gonna go do podcasts" 'cause they, I think they low-balled his offer. And if they lose-

David Sacks 43:02 Oh, yeah. Well, there's a bunch of st-

Jason Calacanis 43:04 ... all that advertising from pharma, which I think in some of these networks is a third or a half, and that's all networks, that's from Fox to CNN and every... MSNBC, everybody combined. If they lose advertising from pharma, it's over. Like, these- those-

David Sacks 43:19 Well, let me, let me go back to that.

Jason Calacanis 43:19 ... news networks are gonna lose half their revenue overnight. That would be a, that would be a death blow, Chamath, to your question.

David Sacks 43:26 Yeah. Well, let me, let me get back to that. So, so just on CNN and MSNBC, you're absolutely right that they're announcing a bunch of layoffs. Their ratings are destroyed. I think they're down. MSNBC ratings are down, like, 50% since the election. What that tells me is that their own audience, that they're-

Jason Calacanis 43:40 Wait, sorry. Since the election-

David Sacks 43:41 Since the election.

Jason Calacanis 43:42 ... it's down 50%?

David Sacks 43:43 Yeah. And what that-

Jason Calacanis 43:44 Oh, my God.

David Sacks 43:45 What that tells me is that their captive viewer base who's been tuning in for years to all of this TDS have, has now realized that they were deceived by MSNBC, and they've lost credibility even with their most fervent supporters. So, there's no question that CNN, MSNBC, they're hurting. Now, J-Cal, just to make one small modification, they do not receive... They do not have spectrum licenses from the FCC, right? Because-

Jason Calacanis 44:07 No, they're cable. Yeah.

David Sacks 44:08 ... they're a cable network. So, they're in kind of a different bucket. They don't have to, uh, abide by the fairness doctrine that CBS and NBC do, right? But they have different problems. And to your point about pharma, there's absolutely no reason to be allowing pharma advertisements on these, uh, TV networks. The fact of the matter is, the people who are viewing those networks can't buy... You can't buy pharmaceuticals without a prescription, right? It's up to doctors to write you the prescription. And this is why most countries, most Western countries prohibit pharma advertising on the networks. And I think Bobby Kennedy has a very strong argument that it would serve the public interest not to allow this. We don't allow advertisements for tobacco, right?

Jason Calacanis 44:55 So, I guess the thing that doesn't make sense to me, Sax, is you're so such a First Amendment absolutist and free speech ab- absolutist, isn't it... And I'm not saying that's my opinion, but, uh, you know, my, my challenge to you would be, is tell me about freedom of speech (laughs) and expression in relation to being able to do advertising for these products.

David Sacks 45:18 Well, I mean, look at-

Jason Calacanis 45:19 Aren't the, aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?

David Sacks 45:22 The point of the advertising is n- I think is not, at the end of the day, to influence consumers, because consumers can't buy pharmaceuticals. They have to go to their doctor.

Jason Calacanis 45:29 Well, that's what they say, isn't it? "Ask your doctor about," right?

David Sacks 45:32 The purpose of the advertising is to buy favorable coverage. That's the point. And there are many examples-

Jason Calacanis 45:37 Oh, okay. Explain that. Explain.

David Sacks 45:39 Well, there are many examples of people who've worked in these networks saying that they had a story that was negative about pharma companies, and that story got spiked because the pharma companies are the biggest advertisers. In fact, I think it was... There was a story about Fox News and... Who, who, um, who was the guy-

Jason Calacanis 45:58 I think-

David Sacks 45:58 ... Roger Ailes?

Jason Calacanis 45:59 Well, there's been a number of stories. I know what you're talking about. There's been stories about Anderson Cooper. Who's the, the, the guy who does international coverage on the weekends? GPS is the name of his show. I'm drawing a... I can't remember right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:13 Fareed Zakaria.

Jason Calacanis 46:14 Thank you. Fareed Zakaria, yes. Um, I think a bunch of those shows were, like, literally brought to you by Pfizer (laughs) , brought to you by these things, and so those shows potentially would just go away, and then there were, there was reporting on the number of times they would report on those companies, and it showed they didn't. So, what, what do you think, Freeberg of should pharma companies be allowed to advertise to consumers to ask their doctors to ask them about Viagra? What's your take? He's thinking, for those of you at home listening. He's, he's giving it deep thought.

David Sacks 46:51 While he's thinking, J-Cal, let me just say that I-

Jason Calacanis 46:52 Yeah, please go for it (laughs) .

David Sacks 46:53 ... I think, I think there is, there is a free speech issue there that, that has to be weighed, okay? So, I don't wanna be totally dismissive of that. However, I think that the Viagra example is, uh, is on the, like, far end of the spectrum of a drug that by, you know, by advertising it, you could actually get consumers to request it from their doctor. I don't think most drugs are like that, and I think my contention would be that the real reason they're paying all this massive advertising is not to influence consumers but to influence the coverage that they get. And there is something very corrupt about that. And I think that Bobby Kennedy has a really strong point, that if you were to remove that incentive that many people inside the industry have admitted exists, then you would get much fairer coverage of these pharma companies, and we would actually get to be a healthier country because you wouldn't allow them to basically manipulate the public debate. So, I... That, that's the argument.

Jason Calacanis 47:50 Freeberg, you wanna chime in on it or no?

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:52 I, I, I mean, I feel like there's some market correction that takes place here, which we're already seeing, which is the consumers are moving away. We just talked about moving away from cable news, moving away from legacy media. They don't trust it. The trust is at an all-time low. I don't know if it's necessarily the government's job to determine who advertises what, where, how, and why. I don't like the government having that sort of degree of authority, generally speaking, because it can then lead into the government having overreach and oversight to control entities that maybe are competitive with the government in different ways. I do believe that the, the beef with big tech-... is a result of big tech's influence over the population, where big government wants to have that degree of influence over the population, and so it's actually a battle between government and private entities over who can influence the population and who has the ability to control the narrative. And I think that the general concept that the government should be determining who advertises where, what, how and why is not a great one, and I don't think that consumers are dumb. I think that consumers are showing their proclivity for independent media and independent news sources because they don't trust the influence that's been kind of i- imparted upon these other channels and these other sources, and they're moving away from it. So I don't know if it's as much kind of a regulatory question and Big Pharma needs to be affected. I, I think that the market to, to some degree does its job. I don't think that consumers are dumb. I will also just kind of counter one of Sax's points. I, I think that there are drugs, like multiple sclerosis is a good example. There was a drug introduced a couple years ago called Ocrevus, and it was a new therapy for, for multiple sclerosis that is extremely effective, and it's a, it's a really, a big step change in, in biological therapies. And a lot of people that were on MS and have had MS for decades take kind of old-school mol- old-school drugs that maybe aren't that effective, so to create awareness... And they're not regularly seeing their doctors. They may not go in and see their doctor every year like they're supposed to, so the, the pharma companies are creating awareness that there's this new modality and this new product that could help them to get them to go into the doctor's office. I, I, you know... So I, I don't wanna say that these are all, like, evil, you know, trying to control and influence. Like, there are good drugs that come to market. They are beneficial to people, and people don't know about them. How else are they supposed to get that word out if they're not able to advertise? So I don't think that it's all, like, negative and all malicious, you know, kind of behavior and manipulation of media. People... We all g- have the resources, we all have the capacity, and we are all likely very frequently going to doctors. Most people don't. (laughs) And so most people that have chronic disease or have health issues, there, there has to be a mechanism for, you know, making them aware of new options, new alternatives, new products that are coming to market. So I'm not super, like, putting my foot down saying pharma companies shouldn't be able to advertise, shouldn't be able to buy media out there and, and put ads up and tell people about stuff that they've discovered or that they've invented, that's been regulated, that's been tested, that's been approved, and that works and can help save lives. I think they should have the freedom and ability to do that, so I think there's a, there's a bit of a nuance here to how this gets handled, is my point.

David Sacks 51:03 Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I'm not saying that there's no benefit at all to letting pharma companies advertise some products. I think the question you have to ask is, why is so much money going from pharma to these news outlets? Because most of the products, you know, that you generally can't buy them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:23 I'll tell you the reason. The reason is that the pharma companies make so much money off of government-funded insurance programs. L- let me just state that again. If we only had private insurance or if consumers had to pay for their drugs and their therapies themselves, the cost of drugs would go way down. The reason the cost of drugs has gone way up is because so much of the government insurance programs don't negotiate drug prices, and there are all these middlemen and all these people that sit in between that have been regulated through regulatory capture into the system that has allowed an incredible inflation in the cost of drug prices. Therefore, there is a lot of money to kind of continue the capture of the system. I don't think that it is right, and I think that the free market generally, or having a less regulatory captured market, will allow an appropriate kind of pricing of therapies, an appropriate kind of adjustment in the market, which doesn't exist today. So, so much money to kind of keep the market the way it is needs to kinda keep flowing. That's my sense of this. It's, it's... I don't think it's about bad drugs need to kind of stay in play as much as it is this market's been allowed to inflate, and the cost of healthcare and the cost of drugs has inflated in a way that's simply untenable, and it doesn't make sense, and I think that it's because of regulatory capture, and I think that that needs to change, and I'm hopeful that, that, that it does.

David Sacks 52:39 That's the second reason, then, to get the, this pharma money out of advertising, 'cause you're basically explaining it as like a self-licking ice cream cone.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:46 Yeah.

David Sacks 52:46 But again, there's another reason as well, I think, that explains the sheer magnitude, which is it's influence buying, it's influence peddling.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:54 Yeah, it's a... To your point, Sax, that was, that was what I was about to bring up. You know, there... It's very subtle. You're not gonna have somebody at NBC or CNN or Fox come down and tell Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper, "Hey, you can't cover this story," but there is a bunch of self-censorship that occurs, I believe, where people just don't select certain stories to be on the docket, and they just shape the coverage, so they might not say something positive or negative about Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson, whoever it is. They, they'll just avoid that story, uh, because these anchors are getting paid or have been previously paid 10, 10 million, 25 million a year. Do you think they're going to, like, really go hard at Pfizer or somebody like that? No. They're just not going to. I've been inside the machine. They just avoid those stories. Okay, let's keep going through the docket here. I think it was a pretty good conversation. And I, and I... By the way, I just wanted to say to the Trump administration, if you want the economy to rip, let M&A rip, but my one ca- caveat is there's a really simple way to do this. If you're under a trillion-dollar valuation, let those companies buy and sell each other, because then we could go from a Mag 7 to a Mag 70. That's where I think actually it makes the most sense. If you actually are concerned about the consolidation of power in the top seven, let them sit out acquiring more great companies. Jason, you, you- And let the people under that, who are the mid-market cap companies, let them do the buying and selling, 'cause then you might have a Mag 8, 9, and 10 show up. That's not talking my book. It would be better for me, Friedberg, to let the Mag 7 participate, 'cause they can pay higher prices. They're not price-sensitive. But I do think the mid-market companies buying and selling would make a healthier environment for competition.So you think it... Sorry, you think it creates more competition which will, that will benefit-

Jason Calacanis 54:45 Hundred percent.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:46 ... consumers and grow the economy?

Jason Calacanis 54:47 Well, look at it this way. If somebody wants to buy, let's say Waymo gets spun out, somebody wants to buy it. If Amazon can't buy it, and Tesla can't buy it, and Amazon can't buy it, but they could merge with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, you know, all those mid, Airbnb. If those companies could consolidate, can you imagine what would happen if A- Amazon couldn't buy those companies, but you could see Waymo spinout and then partner with DoorDash and partner with Airbnb and you had that as one company? Now you got a $400 billion company that is nipping on the heels, that is aggressively competing with Amazon. That's what you want in the market is more competition for the Mag Seven. You don't want the Magnificent Seven to run away with it. And we could create the eighth, ninth, and tenth. So just imagine that, Friedberg, if there was a- a- another trillion-dollar company. Like I, actually I think Tesla just became a trillion-dollar company again. So now that they're up in those ranks, great. L- l- uh, don't let Tesla, don't let Amazon, et cetera, NVIDIA buy more companies. Let those, that mergers and acquisitions and that strength happen under the trillion-dollar mark. What, what do you think of that general concept, Friedberg?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:56 Uh, yeah, I generally think competition is good. I generally think free market should be allowed to operate. And I've shared my point of view. I think bigger is gonna drive more innovation than lots of little. So...

Jason Calacanis 56:06 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:07 Again, Waymo wouldn't exist if not for Google plowing billions and billions.

Jason Calacanis 56:10 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:10 And I don't know about you guys, I took Waymo around the city yesterday. Pretty sick. Like it is-

Jason Calacanis 56:15 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:15 ... legit. So, yeah.

David Friedberg 56:16 I don't go to the city.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:17 Yeah. Uh, it's pretty legit. And, um, I- I think that-

David Friedberg 56:21 'Cause it's a toxic cesspool.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:24 And by the way, I will say my other comment is I think San Francisco has gotten 10X better now that I've been working downtown the last week or two. Um...

Jason Calacanis 56:32 10X is a big number.

David Friedberg 56:33 10X better from a toxic cesspool just means-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:35 Yeah.

David Friedberg 56:35 ... it's a cesspool.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:36 I think part of the fa- part of the reason is all of Walgreens is gone (laughs) . There's no, there's no Walgreens left so there's nothing-

Jason Calacanis 56:41 You can't buy deodorant.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:42 There's nothing-

Jason Calacanis 56:42 Problem solved (laughs) .

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:43 There's nowhere to do crime anymore.

David Friedberg 56:45 You can't buy toiletries and tampons-

Jason Calacanis 56:46 A drug store that doesn't exist.

David Friedberg 56:47 ... in San Francisco. How do you do that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:49 You got to ask Jason. Jason, how do you-

David Friedberg 56:51 Amazon.

Jason Calacanis 56:51 What is it?

David Friedberg 56:52 Get an Amazon package delivered.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:54 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 56:54 Yeah, I don't (laughs) . Hey, man, I'm in Texas. You could do whatever you want here.

David Friedberg 56:58 Let me say, I-

Jason Calacanis 56:59 There's n-

David Friedberg 56:59 ... I-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:59 Jason gets his supplies airdropped in once a month.

Jason Calacanis 57:02 What are you talking about?

David Friedberg 57:03 I'm bullish on the San Francisco turnaround because I think-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:06 I am too.

Jason Calacanis 57:06 Yeah.

David Friedberg 57:06 ... Daniel Lurie getting elected mayor was huge. And this doesn't get-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:10 Sheesh.

David Friedberg 57:10 ... really as much attention, but it's very important.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:12 The board shifted.

David Friedberg 57:13 The radicals got voted off the Board of Supervisors-

Jason Calacanis 57:16 The supes.

David Friedberg 57:16 ... so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:17 The Board of Supervisors are less progressive. Daniel's in the mayoral office. It is, and, and I think-

Jason Calacanis 57:22 Good progress, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:22 ... I think the city is already, like, turning around. I've been super blown away the last couple of weeks I've been downtown. I'm like, "Why am I not working downtown every day?" It's actually really nice. It feels like San Francisco 20 years ago.

Jason Calacanis 57:33 Let's see if it's safe, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:34 I'm pretty bullish. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 57:35 I mean, safety is the number one thing. If, if they can stomp the overdosing-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:37 And this budget needs to get put under control. San Francisco spends one and a half X per cu- capita of what New York City spends. And that's something that Daniel and his team have kind of said they're gonna address, sort of like their own doge.

Jason Calacanis 57:49 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:49 And there's a team going in there to address this. So I'm really bullish on what's gonna happen with the city. It's just such a great place.

Jason Calacanis 57:55 It's, it seems like the power resides in the supervisors, and they seem to have flipped two or three of the really lunatic ones. Right, Sax? They got rid of Dopey Dean Preston.

David Friedberg 58:04 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 58:04 Who's the other guy?

David Friedberg 58:05 Peskin.

Jason Calacanis 58:06 Peskin, he was an idiot. And they, those guys are done, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:10 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 58:10 ... that's progress.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:11 Do you wanna talk about the Trump, uh, candidates, J-CAL?

Jason Calacanis 58:15 Yeah, let's get to that in a second. But before we

Jason Calacanis 58:17 get to that, FBI raided the home of Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland. He was on the election night stream. He was raided on Wednesday, November 13th, eight days after the election. They say Polymarket is, Bloomberg says Polymarket is being investigated for allegedly accepting trades from US based users. Here's the backstory. In 2022, Polymarket paid 1.4 million to settle a case with the CFTC for offering option contracts without proper designation. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also ordered the company to prevent US traders from making bets. They recently said, Polymarket that is, that they had taken additional measures to block Americans from trading. At the same time, Kalshi and Robinhood were able to offer presidential prediction markets because Kalshi, it seems like they won their lawsuit against the CFTC last month. So that allowed some betting markets to happen. But Polymarket is still banned from the US because of that settlement in 2022. Here's the Polymarket claim. They claim the raid was obviously political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election. And Shane posted on X, "It's discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents." Bunch of conspiracy theories flying around. Peter Thiel and Founder Fund have made an investment into the company, and Nate Silver as an advisor. I guess I'll just point out two things.

David Friedberg 59:48 Well, they were much more accurate, they are much more accurate than Nate Silver.

Jason Calacanis 59:51 Totally accurate. Yeah. And let me, um-

David Friedberg 59:52 So how manipulated can it be if they got everything right?

Jason Calacanis 59:55 Yeah. I mean, it, that's, uh, literally the point I was about to make. And, um, I'll just end with this and then give it to you, Sax, for red meat. Americans are not allowed to participate in a lot of different markets. And these kind of actions have been taken many, many, many times, as we all know. Poker, crypto, real estate, and prediction markets have all had actions like this taken against them. And they typically are a speeding ticket-

David Friedberg 1:00:20 Well, sorry, did they raid the offices too or just his house?

Jason Calacanis 1:00:22 Just his house, according to the information we have right now.

David Friedberg 1:00:26 They- ... busted into his house at 6:00 AM and they took his phone.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:29 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:00:29 By the way, shout-out to- No. But like, like, if you're breaking the law, why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:36 All that TBD.

David Friedberg 1:00:37 ... go to the offices?

Jason Calacanis 1:00:37 Yeah, it's a great, great speculation.

David Friedberg 1:00:39 It's very strange.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:39 And important to note, this action came after the election is resolved. So it's obvious the FBI knew.... that doing this beforehand would be seen as political, and doing it after, I guess, they made the decision-

David Sacks 1:00:53 No, no, what I'm saying is, Jason, you are-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:53 No, no, I know what you're saying. I'm adding something else, which is, they obviously knew this would be political, Sacks, and so they did it after. They knew if they did it before, that would be looked like, you know, really bad, that the prediction mark, that's predicting Trump- a Trump win was raided. So, they did it after. What- what do you think, Sacks? What's going on here?

David Sacks 1:01:11 Okay. I think there's three-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:12 Do you think it's political or not, I guess, is the question.

David Sacks 1:01:13 We don't- we don't know what was driving this. It's certainly an extreme action to bust into someone's home at 6:00 AM with the FBI and take- take your phone. So, it's very curious. I think there's three theories that I've heard that I think could explain this, and I wanna just be very clear that there's no proof on any of this. It's just-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:32 Alleged.

David Sacks 1:01:32 ... speculation. Yeah, it's just speculation about what could be going on.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:34 Everything's alleged and speculation.

David Sacks 1:01:36 Yeah. But by the way, just before I get into it, I think Shane Copeland had one of the funniest tweets we've ever seen.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:41 New phone. Who dis? (laughs)

David Sacks 1:01:42 Where- Yeah, "New phone. Who dis?" Nick, you should show that on the s-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:45 I mean-

David Sacks 1:01:45 I mean, that was, like, ballsy. The FBI busts in your house, takes your phone, and that's the first thing you tweet.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:50 I think that means this is a- that means that this is probably not a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead.

David Sacks 1:01:54 Well, who- who knows? But-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:55 Yeah. Or he's confident is, like, what I would say. Yeah.

David Sacks 1:01:58 Yeah. Okay. So, theory number one is that what the feds are looking for is whether any domestic whales were illegally wagering on the election outcome because theoretically, the money is all supposed to be offshore because domestic wagering on the election was illegal. However, a court ruled just days before the election that domestic wagering was legal. So, that's- so theory number one doesn't really make a lot of sense because the FBI would be enforcing a- a rule or a law that the courts had just overruled just days before the election. So- but that's theory number one. Theory number two, and this theory was raised by Fortune Magazine, is that the s- that Polymarket was rife with what's called wash trading, which is a form of market man- manipulation where shares are bought and sold, often simultaneously and repeatedly by the same people, to create a false impression of volume and activity. Of liquidity, yeah. This is illegal in the US, and it does occur in crypto markets. So, they could have been going after that, but again, it does seem like a very extreme thing to bust into his house. Why don't you just ask Shane for the records during business hours?

Jason Calacanis 1:03:07 And what authority- what authority would the US government have if it's all offshore, in that context?

David Sacks 1:03:12 I don't know. I'm just laying out-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:13 It's a US-based company.

David Sacks 1:03:13 I'm laying out possible theories, but-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:15 Thanks.

David Sacks 1:03:15 ... Fortune Magazine did- did raise that theory. But again, if that's what your claim is, just subpoena Polymarket during business hours. I don't know why you need to raid th- the guy's home. Or raid the office. Right. That's where the files are. Right. And now, let me- let me lay out theory number three, okay? Oh, boy. Which is gonna be a little bit more controversial.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:34 Tinfoil hat time.

David Sacks 1:03:35 Here we go. But, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:36 Get the tinfoil. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:03:37 If- if somebody was manipulating these sites, okay, then on whose behalf were they doing it? And what you'd have to say is that they were doing it on behalf of the Kamala campaign because in the last few days of the election, there was a weird blip where Polymarket and- and Kalshi especially, Kalshi even more than Polymarket, all of a sudden flipped to Kamala. And you could see this particularly in Pennsylvania, where all of a sudden there was a big flip at the end away from Trump towards Kamala that turned out to be totally fake, and Trump won Pennsylvania pretty- pretty handily. And so you gotta wonder, "Well, wait a second. Was a Kamala supporter maybe trying to push the narrative that there was a last-minute surge to Kamala?" Because that's what the action seemed to imply. And remember that at the same time this was happening, there was a big- there was, like, a media push to create a narrative by her supporters in the media that there was a late break for Harris-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:39 Yes.

David Sacks 1:04:39 ... by Independence. And so, you have to kind of wonder, was somebody trying to push the prediction markets at the last minute to feed a media narrative that they were trying to create? Look, I have no evidence for this whatsoever, but the- the action in the betting markets and the narrative they were trying to create in the media do line up. So, if somebody was gonna investigate election manipulation, this is what they should look into.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:02 Chamath, you have any thoughts here?

David Sacks 1:05:05 No. Zero thoughts.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:07 I mean-

David Sacks 1:05:07 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:07 You know, my thoughts on it are I- I don't see him ever doing anything risky or illegal, so it makes no sense to me. I'm guessing that somebody made him aware, pure speculation, of something in the system and that probably was on his phone, and they probably wanted to get that, and it's probably, like, a speeding ticket, ticky-tacky thing. And you just have the law still working its way through the system because they, Sacks, were under an order to not take US, but Kalshi had gotten the mar- the- the law changed with their successful lawsuit, or they had defended their- their case. So, I would say it's all allegedly, folks, and so wait for more information is always a good idea.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:52 All right. Trump is building his team, and, uh, it's a long list. We've got, I guess, dozens of names right now. So, let's start with the four.

David Sacks 1:06:01 Who's your favorite, Jacob?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:04 Well, my opinion probably doesn't matter all that much, but let me go with the four that, uh, are creating the most buzz.

David Sacks 1:06:10 That's a great question. Chamath?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:11 Let- let's create the f- let's go with the four that are having the most buzz, and then I'll let you each tell me what you think of those candidates.

David Sacks 1:06:18 You're covering Jason Hazy, one that you- you love?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:20 The one I- Yeah, there is one actually I love, but let's- I'll save that for now.

David Sacks 1:06:23 Who's that? No, no, who's that? I'm curious, actually. I'm genuinely curious.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:26 Vivek and Elon doing Doge-

David Sacks 1:06:29 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:29 ... is my absolute favorite, yes.

David Sacks 1:06:30 Anything else that-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:32 I am fascinated by Bobby Kennedy going in and trying to make the country healthier, and the country is the most sick country, I think, of, uh, all of the Western countries. And I think our food system has massive problems, so I'm very excited to see what he does-... inside of the Health and Human Services Department. I think it's a little bit controversial obviously, but I don't see how it could be any worse than what we currently have. How do you-

David Sacks 1:07:02 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:02 ... feel about that? Who's your favorite? I guess we can just go with people's favorites, if you want to go that way.

David Sacks 1:07:07 The way I interpret his cabinet picks is that he's creating a coalition, so I view it more as, like, a package deal, J-Cal. I'm not gonna pick out one or two, although I do have my favorites. The person who I think very astutely understands what Trump is trying to do is Charlie Kirk, who's a major influencer on the Republican side. And he says that, that what MAHA, which is Make America Healthy Again, they get RFK, Bobby Kennedy at HHS, obviously. The Libertarians get Tulsi at DNI. I would add to that that they also get Elon and Vivek at DOJ. The base, the populous base, gets Matt Gaetz, they get Hegseth at DOD, they get Homan. And then the peace through projecting strength crowd, which is kind of a nice name for Neocon, gets Rubio as Secretary of State and Stefanik at the UN. So, I think that Trump is basically trying to have his cabinet reflect the diversity of views within the Republican Party. He's not decisively choosing one side over another. What this means is that during his presidency, he's gonna get all the views and all the options-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:15 Okay.

David Sacks 1:08:16 ... within the party.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:16 So, that's the collective view. That's an interesting-

David Sacks 1:08:18 Yes, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:19 ... way of... Let's go point by point through the most controversial ones. Matt Gaetz is obviously the most controversial-

David Sacks 1:08:24 They're all, they're all young, though.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:25 ... as attorney.

David Sacks 1:08:25 That's what's incredible, no?

Jason Calacanis 1:08:25 They are all young. That's another trend, yeah. And he has, uh, been put up as-

David Sacks 1:08:29 Which is great.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:29 ... attorney general. He has to be confirmed by the Senate, obviously. He's the House rep from Florida. Sax, how qualified is he for this job, on a scale of one to ten?

David Sacks 1:08:39 I think that Matt Gaetz would be a breath of fresh air at, at DOJ. I mean, look. Here's the-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:44 Why is that?

David Sacks 1:08:45 The DOJ has been involved for the last eight or nine years in a completely fabricated effort to portray Donald Trump as an agent of the Russians. It started with the Steele dossier. They then opened an investigation based on that phony piece of opposition research funded by the Hillary campaign. They lied to the FISA court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign. They then worked with the various intelligence services and with, uh, the media to create this, like, hoax that went on for years and years. There's been no accountability for that. Furthermore, in the 2020 election, you also had that effort to essentially cover up the Hunter Biden hard drive that the FBI and DOJ were sitting on that for roughly a year. They created this... a phony story that it was Russian disinformation when it turned out to be completely authentic. So listen-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:38 So, you think there's a lot to clean up there? How qualified is he-

David Sacks 1:09:41 Look, there's no question-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09:41 ... on a scale of one to ten?

David Sacks 1:09:42 What the president, what the president ran on was that the DOJ needed to be de-weaponized, that it had been turned into a partisan political apparatus for the Democrats. I don't think anyone can argue with that at this point. I think the American people clearly bought into that argument. Now, in order to clean it up, you're gonna have to bring in a total outsider who's willing to break some eggs and shake things up. Is Matt Gaetz the only person who could do that? No, there, there are other people who could do it, but Matt Gaetz is definitely qualified for that role. He was one of the most outspoken critics in Congress of this weaponization of the FBI. He was never fooled by the Russiagate hoax. Most of the establishment was.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:22 Any concerns?

David Sacks 1:10:23 And anybody, anybody who bought into the Russiagate hoax is not qualified to run the DOJ at this point.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:28 Okay. Any concerns?

David Sacks 1:10:30 Well, there's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations that have been made against him, obviously.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:34 Okay. We'll put it beside that. Any other concerns about him?

David Sacks 1:10:37 Excuse me?

Jason Calacanis 1:10:39 A- aside from the, the, the investigations and whatever and the smears, any-

David Sacks 1:10:42 Well, there's a bunch of unproven-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:44 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:10:45 ... smears and accusations been made against him. And my own view on that is that if there was really something there, I think Merrick Garland's DOJ would have acted on it two or three years ago. So, I personally discount all these smears without there being any evidence whatsoever, and I think it's very predictable that what we're seeing with both Matt Gaetz and with Tulsi is that the worst accusations get made without any evidence in the media when the blob or the establishment wants to stop a true populous reformer from cleaning up their backyard.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:17 Friburg, your thoughts on Matt Gaetz? I mean, that seems to be the most controversial one. Any concerns? You think he's the most suited guy for the job?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:25 I, I don't wanna comment on Matt Gaetz, but I'd like to talk about...

Jason Calacanis 1:11:28 Why not?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:30 'Cause I'd like to talk about a broader point of view on it.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:33 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:11:35 So, I think there's this kind of thing that happens in biology called evolution, and a lot of people think evolution is this continuous process, but it's not. Evolution is this process by which there is some significant growth for a period of time, and then there is an extinction event or an external force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called punctuated equilibrium. So, the whole kind of system resets, and then the healthier, stronger species survive and they grow and they persist. And if you look at the first chart, Nick, that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction events, large amounts of biomass over the past half billion years get wiped out when these extinction events occur. And then evolution occurs because the species that can survive the extinction event persists in the environment and they grow, and that's how evolution kind of actually takes place, is there's an external force that changes what survives and what doesn't. It's kind of a testing force. If you look at federal spending, and this is a crazy link, but here's federal spending over the last couple of decades, and I would argue that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the operating models, many of the behaviors can kind of be viewed as...... a specie or species within this ecosystem that have, kind of, grown a lot over the last few decades. And I think what Trump's mandate was by the people, and people don't want to hear this and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be kind of the extinction event. And whatever agencies, whatever operating processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems exist within the federal government that can withstand the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive and they can come out the other end, there is certainly some degree of strength and resilience and hardiness. This is not about right or wrong. This is about br-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:38 You say they deserve to exist if they can survive?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:40 I'm saying this is gonna bring in, this is gonna bring in the most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen. And the intention with Trump isn't to find some person to keep running things the way they have been run in the past. His mandate, from the people who elected him, based on the message he put out there, is to do the opposite, which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible, and whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be hardier and, theoretically, will be, you know, more resilient. And I think that that's the event that's underway. Now, the people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's candidacies are the Democrats. They were saying Trump is gonna put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office and he's gonna make them the cabinet and they're gon- and they're... and now they're able to, kind of, clap their hands and say, "We told you so, we told you so." And I'm not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the systems. And test the systems with the most challenging oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in charge of each of these agencies. So I- I'm not saying it's right or wrong one way or the other. But I'm making an observation that this is gonna be kind of an extinction level event, that Trump's decisions on who he's putting in place, I think, are gonna drive an outcome on the other end that's gonna make the government look very different. And I, you know, I'm not gonna sit around and say, "This person's good, this person's bad," 'cause I don't think the point is to find someone that's "qualified" to do the job. The intention is actually quite different, and the outcome may actually be positive for America if you fast-forward a couple of years in some cases. And there's some cases where things could get really messed up and people could suffer and jobs will be lost and all sorts of bad things will happen. But we cannot continue the way we have been-

Jason Calacanis 1:15:26 So in this metaphor-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15:27 ... with respect to federal spending, with respect to federal spending, bureaucracy and inefficiency in the federal government. And so something has to happen, and if this is the path by which this gets resolved, in the limited window that's in front of this, this particular administration, which is probably two years, maybe four, maybe this is what has to happen.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:44 Chamath, where do you stand on Friedberg's interesting metaphor here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction level event? I saw you nodding. Do you think this is, uh, an interesting-

David Friedberg 1:15:59 It's a great take.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:59 ... framing?

David Friedberg 1:16:00 Great take. I have nothing to add to Friedberg's take.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:03 Got it. Who's your favorite?

David Friedberg 1:16:04 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:05 You asked me the question, I answered. Who's your favorite?

David Friedberg 1:16:08 Well, I think, let's take Elan and Vivek off the table because-

Jason Calacanis 1:16:11 That's an obvious one that we've all-

David Friedberg 1:16:12 ... they're friends, so that's-

Jason Calacanis 1:16:13 ... been behind since the beginning, yeah. And we all, and we all support the idea. Who's not against more efficiency? I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's s- the easiest one to say you love.

David Friedberg 1:16:22 I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:26 Okay.

David Friedberg 1:16:26 I think the second-highest beta pick is Matt Gaetz in the ʾ90s.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:31 Explain highest beta pick in this context, please for the audience.

David Friedberg 1:16:33 I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there is the potential for an enormously positive two or three sigma outcome, but there's also the chance that it can really not work.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:47 Hmm. That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy (laughs) , 'cause he's gonna shake it up.

David Friedberg 1:16:52 Right. Peter Thiel just did this podcast with Bari Weiss and-

Jason Calacanis 1:16:55 It was fantastic, by the way. Highly recommend.

David Friedberg 1:16:58 Highly recommend and-

Jason Calacanis 1:16:58 He's awesome, yeah.

David Friedberg 1:16:59 ... the... One of the great things he said is that, he was talking about science, but I think the example works here as well, which is that we didn't have enough skepticism and we had too much dogma. He was talking about, sort of, like, the, the death of science. And I think that that idea applies here as well, which is that the