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

1. 0:00 – 7:57

   Bestie intros!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      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?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg0:17

      I left Monday. I flew to Singapore.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:21

      Hm.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg0:21

      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.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:30

      Okay.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg0:30

      I'm exhausted.

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:31

      So you are on a whirlwind tour.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg0:33

      I mean, I'm base- I'm flying around the world, literally flying around the world moving west. Man.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:41

      Right.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg0:42

       I'm tired.

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:42

       And this is all-

   12. DFDavid Friedberg0:43

       How do people do it?

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:44

       ... in service.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg0:45

       My gosh.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       It's... I mean, at our age, you feel it.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg0:47

       How do people do it?

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:48

       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?

   18. DFDavid Friedberg0:59

       Little selling, little closing, and then I'm speaking at the Oxford Union on Wednesday.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:04

       Okay. Okay. Well, that sounds fancy.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg1:07

       Bucket list. Check into bucket list.

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:09

       Ah. Okay. There you have it. And in his camo hat and in his election afterglow. Look at the glow.

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:18

       Afterglow. (laughs)

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:18

       He is in that afterglow. He is post-coitus. He are post-election.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:24

       Anybody got a cigarette? I need to-

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:26

       (laughs)

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:26

       I need to light up a cigarette. (laughs)

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:28

       Light up with his ex-

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:29

       (exhales) Yeah.

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:30

       That was a close one.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:31

       Yeah.
2. 7:57 – 21:56

   Election impact on Bitcoin, crypto, and fintech stocks

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya7:57

   2. JCJason Calacanis7:57

      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.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya8:48

      On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman.

   4. Look at this. Whoa. Seems juicy.

   5. I didn't know he was that unpopular.

   6. Fire him. Gotta fire him. Too bad for Gary.

   7. I didn't know he was that unpopular. Let me say it again.

   8. JCJason Calacanis9:19

      (laughs)

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya9:20

      On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler. Whoa.

   10. JCJason Calacanis9:26

       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?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya10:40

       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.

   12. JCJason Calacanis13:48

       Great. Chamath, your thoughts? Aside from Yum Yum?

   13. DFDavid Friedberg13:53

       I mean ...

   14. JCJason Calacanis13:54

       Yum Yum. You can say it. (laughs) It's y- it's yummy. It's gonna be a ... just say it. (laughs)

   15. DFDavid Friedberg14:00

       No, I mean, look, what did I say-

   16. JCJason Calacanis14:02

       (laughs)

   17. DFDavid Friedberg14:02

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

   18. JCJason Calacanis14:11

       Oh my Lord, I haven't seen you this happy in a while.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg14:14

       More generally. (laughs)

   20. JCJason Calacanis14:14

       (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?

   21. DFDavid Friedberg14:28

       Oh, you know, h- honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about all the Bitcoin I sold.

   22. JCJason Calacanis14:33

       Oof. Yeah, you, didn't you buy-

   23. DFDavid Friedberg14:36

       You know, I had Bitcoin, I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds-

   24. JCJason Calacanis14:39

       Yeah.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg14:39

       ... when I-

   26. JCJason Calacanis14:39

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg14:39

       ... 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.

   28. JCJason Calacanis14:58

       Mm-hmm.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg14:58

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

   30. JCJason Calacanis15:04

       I remember that, yeah.
3. 21:56 – 39:52

   M&A and IPOs: What to expect in 2025

   1. JCJason Calacanis21:56

      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?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg24:14

      I think it's gonna still be pretty sub-dued. So I don't-

   3. JCJason Calacanis24:18

      Subdued? Okay.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg24:18

      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-

   5. JCJason Calacanis26:00

      Yeah.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg26:00

      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-

   7. JCJason Calacanis26:21

      Yeah.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg26:21

      ... what is this IPO going to give you?

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya26:23

      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.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg26:32

       Or you could pay 23 times to own a totally risky asset.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya26:34

       Or it's 30 times, yeah. It's 30 times-

   12. DFDavid Friedberg26:37

       It's nuts.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya26:37

       ... t- to own the S&P 500 right now.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg26:39

       It's nuts.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya26:40

       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-

   16. DFDavid Friedberg27:37

       But hold, hold on, hold on a second. Can I ask you a question?

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:38

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg27:38

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

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:43

       (laughs) No. No, I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm talking, I guess we should split-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg27:47

       Okay, so what is... You're ta- then you're talking about-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:47

       We should-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg27:48

       ... industrial companies?

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:49

       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.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg27:57

       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.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya28:17

       That's true. Yeah.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg28:17

       The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly regulated.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya28:21

       Yeah.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg28:21

       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-

   29. JCJason Calacanis28:42

       Yeah.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg28:42

       ... 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-
4. 39:52 – 58:17

   Pharma advertising on cable tv: Should it be allowed? Is big pharma buying influence?

   1. DSDavid Sacks39:52

      remember.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg39:52

      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-

   3. DSDavid Sacks40:15

      Yeah, I saw it on X as well.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg40:15

      ... 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?

   5. DSDavid Sacks40:52

      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.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg42:18

      According to?

   7. DSDavid Sacks42:18

      So it... There's no way you can-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg42:19

      Who's that according to? Do you know?

   9. DSDavid Sacks42:21

      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.

   10. JCJason Calacanis42:43

       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-

   11. DSDavid Sacks43:02

       Oh, yeah. Well, there's a bunch of st-

   12. JCJason Calacanis43:04

       ... 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-

   13. DSDavid Sacks43:19

       Well, let me, let me go back to that.

   14. JCJason Calacanis43:19

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

   15. DSDavid Sacks43:26

       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-

   16. JCJason Calacanis43:40

       Wait, sorry. Since the election-

   17. DSDavid Sacks43:41

       Since the election.

   18. JCJason Calacanis43:42

       ... it's down 50%?

   19. DSDavid Sacks43:43

       Yeah. And what that-

   20. JCJason Calacanis43:44

       Oh, my God.

   21. DSDavid Sacks43:45

       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-

   22. JCJason Calacanis44:07

       No, they're cable. Yeah.

   23. DSDavid Sacks44:08

       ... 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?

   24. JCJason Calacanis44:55

       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.

   25. DSDavid Sacks45:18

       Well, I mean, look at-

   26. JCJason Calacanis45:19

       Aren't the, aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?

   27. DSDavid Sacks45:22

       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.

   28. JCJason Calacanis45:29

       Well, that's what they say, isn't it? "Ask your doctor about," right?

   29. DSDavid Sacks45:32

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

   30. JCJason Calacanis45:37

       Oh, okay. Explain that. Explain.
5. 58:17 – 1:05:51

   FBI raids Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's home

   1. JCJason Calacanis58:17

      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.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg59:48

      Well, they were much more accurate, they are much more accurate than Nate Silver.

   3. JCJason Calacanis59:51

      Totally accurate. Yeah. And let me, um-

   4. DFDavid Friedberg59:52

      So how manipulated can it be if they got everything right?

   5. JCJason Calacanis59:55

      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-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:20

      Well, sorry, did they raid the offices too or just his house?

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:00:22

      Just his house, according to the information we have right now.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:26

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

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:00:29

      Yes.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:29

       By the way, shout-out to- No. But like, like, if you're breaking the law, why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they-

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:00:36

       All that TBD.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:37

       ... go to the offices?

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:00:37

       Yeah, it's a great, great speculation.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:39

       It's very strange.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:00:39

       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-

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:00:53

       No, no, what I'm saying is, Jason, you are-

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:00:53

       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?

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:01:11

       Okay. I think there's three-

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:01:12

       Do you think it's political or not, I guess, is the question.

   20. DSDavid Sacks1:01:13

       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-

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:01:32

       Alleged.

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:01:32

       ... speculation. Yeah, it's just speculation about what could be going on.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:01:34

       Everything's alleged and speculation.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:01:36

       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.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:01:41

       New phone. Who dis? (laughs)

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:01:42

       Where- Yeah, "New phone. Who dis?" Nick, you should show that on the s-

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:01:45

       I mean-

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:01:45

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

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:01:50

       I think that means this is a- that means that this is probably not a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:01:54

       Well, who- who knows? But-
6. 1:05:51 – 1:18:07

   Trump's transition picks: Strategy, highest upside/downside, and more

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:05:51

      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.

   2. DSDavid Sacks1:06:01

      Who's your favorite, Jacob?

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:06:04

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

   4. DSDavid Sacks1:06:10

      That's a great question. Chamath?

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:06:11

      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.

   6. DSDavid Sacks1:06:18

      You're covering Jason Hazy, one that you- you love?

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:06:20

      The one I- Yeah, there is one actually I love, but let's- I'll save that for now.

   8. DSDavid Sacks1:06:23

      Who's that? No, no, who's that? I'm curious, actually. I'm genuinely curious.

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:06:26

      Vivek and Elon doing Doge-

   10. DSDavid Sacks1:06:29

       Okay.

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:06:29

       ... is my absolute favorite, yes.

   12. DSDavid Sacks1:06:30

       Anything else that-

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:06:32

       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-

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:07:02

       Okay.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:07:02

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

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:07:07

       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-

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:08:15

       Okay.

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:08:16

       ... within the party.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:08:16

       So, that's the collective view. That's an interesting-

   20. DSDavid Sacks1:08:18

       Yes, exactly.

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:08:19

       ... way of... Let's go point by point through the most controversial ones. Matt Gaetz is obviously the most controversial-

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:08:24

       They're all, they're all young, though.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:08:25

       ... as attorney.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:08:25

       That's what's incredible, no?

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:08:25

       They are all young. That's another trend, yeah. And he has, uh, been put up as-

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:08:29

       Which is great.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:08:29

       ... 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?

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:08:39

       I think that Matt Gaetz would be a breath of fresh air at, at DOJ. I mean, look. Here's the-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:08:44

       Why is that?

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:08:45

       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-

Episode duration: 1:23:22