Sexy Can you can you come outside your window and and I'm gonna start waving and you'll see me you want to see me Zach have two of your Butlers hold you up on their shoulders I hope this is being taped and part of the show because this is great David you're wearing blue
shorts right yeah yeah I saw you did you see me no I didn't see you where are you when you look out on the first house The Pink House look at this house you see this I heard you I couldn't see you though yeah no I'm like to your right if you're
looking out I'm at your right your first house on the right oh there oh I see you see anything yeah I see you I see you guys are like 12 year olds come over afterwards we'll have a glass okay all right I'm coming I'm gonna come over afterwards vivac has
a hard stop we should go [Music] let your winners [Music] we open source it to the fans [Music] all right the vague ramaswami is finally on the program he's an entrepreneur he graduated Harvard yeah all that kind of stuff he was an entrepreneur then a
capital allocator I think broadstrokes everybody knows he's a conservative running as a republican he's anti-woke he's pro-life anti-affirmative action pro-free speech and he wants Federal government term limits and uh his fans are lunatics they've been asking for him
to be on the all-in podcast every day I've gotten about 300 emails from your fans welcome to the program they sound like your fans actually because I hear it all the time it's like blaming me for why I have not been on this program and so you guys this has
been like some sort of idealized experience for me I'm looking forward to it okay great so what we try to do here is have a real conversation try to get these candidates off their talking points so this isn't Meet the Press obviously we want to talk to you like a
human being so the extent that you know as a politician now you can talk like a human being the audience and we would appreciate it meet David sacks tremontia and David Friedberg all right Vivek why don't you explain maybe your background as a capital allocator and as an
entrepreneur and then why you chose to run for president at this time yeah sure I mean my parents like many people you probably also know who've had similar success stories they came to this country with almost no money I went on to actually found successful
companies and so I started my career as a biotech investor I worked at a hedge fund in New York when I graduated in 2007. I thought I was going to be a scientist I studied molecular biology ended up enjoying my time as an internship at a hedge fund a lot more
than that so I did that for seven years three of those years I spent law school at the same time but then when I finished law school I had you know I think felt like my learning curve had flattened from being a pure capital allocator so I stepped down and founded a new kind
of Biotech company that I could actually you guys might be more interested in it than most of my political audiences but the basic premise was give scientists skin in the game in the projects they actually work on so if you're a GSK or
advisor or whatever Merc you discover a drug or you develop it you don't have personal upside in the individual drug that you develop you do have various forms of asymmetric downside and so people don't take risks unless they're the same risks that the
other Pharma companies are taking because if you take the same risk and fail but everybody else is failing in a therapeutic category at the same time you're safe but if you take a risk that other people aren't willing to take and you fail then you experience budget cuts maybe
job security risks social embarrassment which is a big factor in big Pharma as well which in turn created an opportunity that I took advantage of which was that there were systematically categories of drugs that went undeveloped even after
big Pharma had for a long time spent a lot of money developing those drugs up to a certain point so I built a business called royvin basically in licensed some of those drugs in their early stages of development phase one or phase two often for pennies on the dollar relative to
what had gone into them often we would have scientists or drug developers who were passionate about that very project inside the companies who would come with those drugs because they wanted to develop them but the big Pharma company said that they weren't in
that area anymore and we built a pipeline of such drugs the whole plan was some of them would work some of them wouldn't the successes would make up for the failures and it's now a 10 billion dollar public company and it returned unlike many private
companies uh you know return a billion dollars plus to shareholders before going public and uh you know is doing continues to do well to this day I led the company as CEO for seven years five of the drugs I worked on or FDA approved today what I'm probably most proud of is is a
drug that sexually biologic that is life-saving therapy in kids another one's an approved drug for prostate cancer but that was my world is the point very different world maybe more similar to your guys's world now than the world I'm in now
something funny happened in 2020 which was that in my own company there were demands that I make a statement on behalf of black lives matter after the George Floyd it was tragic death in May of 2020 by June there were demands that I start making statements on behalf of
BLM and it was a funny time because only starting that February I had ventured into actually exercising my voice as a citizen while being a CEO at my own Peril criticizing what was then the still new shiny object of stakeholder capitalism so I published this piece of
the Wall Street Journal it generated some waves that February a few months later in May this George Floyd controversy comes up and the long story short I can go into it if you guys are interested but over the next six months a series of escalating events led me to face a
choice the following January of you know there's three advisors to my company that stepped down after I wrote a rather I didn't intend it to be but a rather controversial piece in the Wall Street Journal at the time yeah the premise of the piece was that
it actually was controversial on numerous counts but the basic premise was it was the first legal argument anybody had made that if the government is pressuring a private actor to do something that the government couldn't do directly that that was still State
action now the subtext is this was in the wake of January 6th where there was widespread systematic censorship of you know political speech in this country at least I believe there was and so at the time I made that argument it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory
on the facts no that's not happening it was also dismissed as a legal Theory you know this rube who you know happened to go to law school forgot his first year where the First Amendment only applies to State actors you know now fast forward three years
two and a half years we now know those facts were far worse than even I envisioned at the time and actually the legal argument that I made is now popularized by Clarence Thomas and others that are finding its way into our jurisprudence but anyway three
advisors to the company found it so offensive that I would make this argument in public that within 48 Hours of that piece they resigned and that was definitely a post-gen 6 mood and reaction that I had to then make a choice right because now this is having
potentially an adverse impact on the company I could either all right call it a year where I experimented with expressing myself and you know wearing my legal academic hat and call that a day and continue with biotech or legitimately if I didn't want to have
an adverse impact on my company I could step down and really speak freely I choose to I chose to step down not in small part because the company was doing great you know I had a successor lined up so there was a fortunate set of circumstances that happened to be the
right time I just had my first son my son Karthik was born in February of 2020 he was about to turn a year old we were the transitional phase of our life covid you know we were we had a year away from the office my wife was filling her Fellowship there was just a
lot going on in her life that it felt like this was a moment for a life transition to focus on there's a lot of people talented people developing medicines maybe some of them more talented than me you know rovin's a successful company did you feel like you
were being bullied into making a statement about black lives matter by your own employees and do you what's your thought generally speaking on companies being politically active and companies having a political voice because it has come up in our industry
over and over again you might know Brian Armstrong from coinbase said hey we're here to do crypto nothing else please don't talk about anything political so what are your thoughts generally on that you wrote a whole book on this right I mean yes I read your book and it speaks
a lot about the distinction between what the intention is uh in optimizing for shareholders versus the personal interests of the executives and those in charge expressing their personal points of view through the corporation um and I think you had some points of
view on where that should all go but was that in part motivating for you to run for public office and why president instead of running for a senate seat or congressional seat or something else yeah so it turns out I've written I wrote three books in the last two years
and two of them are about this topic okay the first one is woke Inc which was for a general audience and then there was a second one called capitalist punishment which was specifically about the ESG strand of this in capital markets and just so people are aware my
general view is that companies should focus on making products and services for people who need them without apologizing for it and yes that's how you maximize profit for shareholders by having a worthy Mission and sticking to it without taking on social missions
that are best carried out by institutions outside of corporate America I so much believe this that even before I ran for president this actually does answer your question Davis I actually thought the way I was going to have impact based on this I enjoy
being an author but I'm not by Nature just an academic I like to do things I I started a company called strive it's an asset management firm that directly competes against the likes of BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard that's what I thought my next leap was going to
be strives first fund launched last August and less than a year in him it's close to a billion dollars in assets under management I think it took JP Morgan two years to get to a billion when they got into the ETF business that was what my journey was going to be is within
Corporate America restore the Unapologetic pursuit of Excellence over distracting and dilutive political environmental and social agendas but the thing that struck me I think late last year and last December last year we had our second son got a new
company off the ground you all know what that entails you know was very much an all-in experience doing that December we had some time to take a step back and you know my wife and I we kind of take a moment to ask yourself why are you doing what you're doing it's
not a conversation you often have or take time to do but yeah the question of the why and it reminded me back of that experience I had at William you asked me did I feel bullied didn't actually feel bullied I think I could imagine someone in my shoes
feeling that way but I didn't feel like it was somebody cornering me to do something I didn't want to do others have had that experience that wasn't quite how it felt for me felt like there's a group of people who followed me on this mission who look up
to me who were disappointed in me actually and I think that was much harder than feeling like I was being bullied was to have a group of people who followed me on this worthy mission of developing medicines that Pharma companies weren't that felt proud of that mission that now
felt disappointed in me and that was much harder to deal with than the bullying but that also opened my eyes to the fact that I'm here stridently fighting against BlackRock and you know the ESG industrial complex which is a little bit of a deflection
from the essence of what I actually think is going on at the real root cause especially amongst young people in the country what is that which is that they and this is what I saw in my employees in the experience I went through so that was formative for me these are good
people these are earnest people many of whom came it's it mainly is my fault because the pitch that we made in recruiting we recruited from Harvard and MIT and everywhere else big Pharma companies didn't recruit out of undergrad we did part of my pitch was
hey you want to go you know to a Quant hedge fund and turn that pile of cash into bigger pile of cash or do you want to actually make medicines that impact people's lives and do well that way so that was part of you in my pitch going in so we select for a certain kind of
person and then they come back and say they're disappointed me for not adopting unrelated social agendas what Donna me is that young people in this country I'm a millennial you guys are young we're hungry for a Cause right we're so hungry for
purpose and meaning and identity and yet we're starving for that at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void and we can there's a lot of things that can fill that blank I talked about it today at this constitution Camp here in New
Hampshire Faith patriotism hard work family but I think there's there's some truth to what Brian Armstrong told his employees a corporation with a worthy Mission can help fill that void too and I think that's one of the roles that CEOs who feel like they're being bullied
might miss is you you don't have people who are bullying you you have people who are lost who are looking to you for direction and purpose you're saying it quickly but I think that family and religion are very very big drivers oh huge yeah I'm just saying it quickly
because I talk about that all the time but um but I think the family and faith is I mean these are foundational building blocks they're foundations I think that when you look statistically at like the decay in the number of young people who
are religious or the decay in a number of young people who actually have you know two parent families all of this speaks to the fact that the social norms that gave people purpose have actually gone but they haven't been replaced with anything else and I think
that's the vacuum that you're seeing that many of these young people fall into and so they're looking for something to your point and um the problem with that is not the causes themselves but the fact that they're short-lived and then what's left
over is the need for more and more and more and that escalation I think is very dangerous if you think about where you know Society goes to from here yeah I agree with you on that and that's why I I have been characterized and Jason introduced me that way too is anti-woke
I don't actually think of my I don't I don't like that label because it's it's not inaccurate I don't like it because it's false I think it misses the point where I think the way we actually combat fill in your favorite blanket wokism climatism covetism
fentanyl usage anxiety depression loss of self-confidence these things are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning and so I don't think you help the matter much by and I've done some of this I will admit this right yeah other people well I mean but the book I don't
have you read the book Jason or not I haven't yet but I will okay the book is uh it was it was titled and written before the word weapon woke took on its current political violence yeah I will say that actually okay many people didn't know
what the word woke was at the time I titled it was fairly revelatory when you came out and used that word in your in your title it was like let me reveal to you a little bit about what this thing that I'm calling woke is turning into which is a more broader kind of
social psychological issue that we're all grappling with right how it's now leeched its way into politics it's leached its way into nonprofits it's leached its way into Corporate America into for-profits into the military into government Etc obviously since that was
published it has now become this hot term that has different meaning for different people and it can be pretty exciting in terms of how people react appreciate you saying that Dave yeah I appreciate you saying that Dave because my net prescription is
actually we dilute not just wokism I mean that's just part of the story We dilute secular religions the rise of secular religion right and I don't call them even religions because religion is withstood the test of time occult has not but the rise of modern secular cults
we dilute them to irrelevance by filling that void with an alternative vision and so you know if one political Camp might offer race and gender and sexuality and climate as a prescription for the void I think where conservatives fall badly short is by simply being anti those
things without actually offering an alternative vision of our own and I am aiming certainly to do that in this case and gender and these kind of things what would be your uh you know qualities or things to focus on so let's do like a little face off right
individual we're talking about race gender sexuality climate I pair them up against individual family Nation God okay and I think that there's a substantive Vision here I think America happened to have been founded on the latter Vision
not the former so if I'm running for U.S president I think that that already tilts the scales in favor of this Vision because it so happens as a historical matter America was grounded on you know some people will contest this but I think on that Vision rather than the
genetic and climate-based one but I think that that's something where the Republican party and conservatives have fallen short and that's part of what to your question Jason pulled me into this is I saw the emergence of what was likely to be a biographical brawl
between two guys who were the you know Front Runners or whatever you know that's not productive but I think more importantly than a biographical brawl even the question about Who We Are I think the Republican party and the conservative movement was in many ways
defining itself in opposition to that alternative vision of identity where what I want to do what I'm striving to do and I hope we're doing is actually offering an affirmative vision of our own that go to the heart of what it means to be an American and
you know I don't think that national identity alone is going to fill that vacuum fully but I think it makes a pretty good darn stride forward and I think those roles for pastors and others that's beyond my pay grade and so I'm not I'm not purporting to do that in
this campaign I speak to it but that's that's going to be the role of people in a higher calling than being U.S president but I think the next U.S president can play a meaningful role in filling that vacuum at least when it comes to national identity and so that's
really what this campaign is about it's not it's not anti-woke it is unapologetically nationalist in a certain sense of that word Nationalist and sense of embracing those ideals that set this nation into motion that still unite us across those genetically
inherited attributes that we've otherwise celebrated over the last 10 years safe to say you believe in American exceptionalism and that's that's your platform that is my platform the exceptionalism of the ideals that set this country into motion absolutely
so Vivek let me ask a question around where we are in the cycle of the American experiment where we have obviously allowed the throttle to be full forward and as a result we've seen extraordinary progress emerge from the entrepreneurial talents and the drive of the people of
this country for the past 250 years and it's really extraordinary in a transformed human civilization We Now find ourselves particularly over the past 50 years as this problem has gotten worse with increasing disparity between the Haves and the have-nots or
those who believe they they have not which is nearly everyone everyone now has some point of view that they have not got something and they see other people that do have something that they do not and this inequality and this perception of inequality both with respect to
Absolute amounts of capital income earnings and these perception issues have now driven a populist movement in this country that we have seen historically many times in the past different countries that ultimately turn into either socialist Nations
or fascist nations in all cases some sort of autocratic regime seems to have emerged because of this populist movement that we're now seeing not just in the US but across the West do you feel like we're at that moment in the U.S and one of the manifestations of
that I'll say is government spending because everyone demands more from their government than the government steps up and the elected officials that they elect step up and spend more and at layers and layers and layers and we now have a 33 trillion dollar debt load and
we have a one and a half trillion dollar annual deficit and by many projections Social Security will be bankrupt in anywhere from 10 to 15 years uh 10 to 20 years whatever numbers you want to use the CBO assumes we're going to have unsustainable spiraling debt what is
your point of view on where we are in the cycle how it's manifesting today and how we're going to deal with the fiscal issues that arise from these movements yeah so I think where we are in that in the cycle I don't take that as a passive law of physics I think that who runs
this country and leads this country can make an actual difference in the actual underlying course of that so-called cycle which is part of what pulls me into this so I'm a little bit unconventional on uh did my views on the debt load and the entitlement spending
in this country and our first step in our way out of it I I don't think we're at a place of having remotely enough consensus or trust and I think trust is probably the more important word than consensus to begin just snip snip make
cuts to what people feel like they were entitled to and promised especially in a moment where we're beginning with deep distrust that will take what you call those populist flames and throw kerosene on it okay I do I'm more optimistic about this and I think this is quite
realistic actually is that the next Leap Forward is we can grow our way out of I'm not going to say all but most of our actual fiscal calam pending fiscal Calamity right this year I mean I think like right now last six months we're
talking less than 1.5 percent annualized GDP growth what we're averaging right now for most of our national history we've actually grown it over four plus percent GDP growth certainly if you go back to the pre-gold standard period and even after going off the gold standard
we had a relatively stable US dollar and I am one of these weird guys who believes that the FED should have a single Mandate of dollar stability without playing the Phillips curve game but anyway put that side track to one side we've grown at three four percent
GDP growth for most of our national history even relatively recent National History and I don't think it's a complicated path to get back there I think things we need to do unlock American Energy there's you know we talk about secular religions I view
the climate cult as one of those secular religions what would your specific energy plan be completely completely um unlock the permitting process that they've used as a backdoor mechanism to shut down American energy production drilling fracking burning coal Coal
should not be a four-letter word embracing nuclear energy later tonight like after we're having this conversation this evening I'm going to be at St Anselm College laying out my detail it's going to be like a giant poster laying out the anatomy of how I
will shut down the nuclear Regulatory Commission which has been a fundamentally hostile administrative agency to the existence of nuclear power in this country actually even to the detriment of actually making sure that we are getting our nuclear energy from
Gen 2 rather than gen 3 or Gen 4 reactors but that'll be for tonight it's an all of the above approach of unshackling ourselves to produce energy here in the United States to your point about you know Dave made a good point earlier about the addiction of paying people more from
the federal government that becomes the status quo that's your voter base that's not even good in many cases for the people who are giving that money too I think we should stop paying people to stay at home when actually the top obstacle for many businesses to grow you guys will know
this well is feeling vacant job openings and so that is an obstacle to GDP growth is paying people more to stay at home than many of them earn to go back to work do you think that the IRA was good legislation I I don't have um it's not like it's not
like my the horse that I'm gonna you know uh ride right in terms of like the main I'm gonna pin everything on it but but I mostly don't think it was it was great legislation uh what like where are you coming from on that because I we
might have different reasons if you think about what the IRA does for energy and crank me if you just roll up the bil chips and Ira I'm just curious your thoughts on whether government incentives are moving in that direction that you actually support or you still
think it's it's missing something well so one of the things that I actually focus on and I think is really important is what can the U.S president actually do I mean president Trump's I don't know people remember this his main promise uh
policy promise was actually repeal and replace Obamacare which never happened because it required going through Congress so I'm actually focused on elements that I can deliver on without asking Congress either for permission or forgiveness and so that's when I
answered to Jason was I go straight to at least let's focus on actually the administrative state which on my reading of the Constitution reports in to the single duly elected president so when I talk about the permitting process of the Department of interior or shutting down
the nuclear Regulatory Commission I believe in you know we could go I'm going to details on it tonight I have the legal authority to do that as the U.S president I think the legislation is going to be much more complicated and I don't believe that I can be in a
position to promise what we would do legislatively to any of that you mentioned um getting people to take all these jobs that that are available um do you want to talk about immigration for a second and what you think about that yeah merit-based immigration before you
go right to immigration would would you are you saying you would cut entitlements like unemployment or shorten the unemployment period to force people to go back to work is that and tie them to work requirements absolutely yeah would you have a
specific for that like a certain number of months or you know yeah a pretty good a pretty good I mean I do but I think that's again I'm very clear about what I will do through executive Authority what needs to go through legislation I mean that's all a negotiation but I think a
good principle is 1996 or in the 1990s work Fair under Clinton was actually far more aggressive than the work environment work requirements that were put into this supposed republican-led debt deal where like what did they say it was if you're age 18 to 55 and you
are able-bodied and childless then you have to work at least 20 hours a week in order to receive more than three months out of three years worth of welfare right you know Joe Biden as a U.S senator voted for actually much more stringent
work Fair requirements in the 90s so you know yes I have ideas on specifics but I'm not going to make a promise on exactly what that specific will look like but a guiding principle is it has to be at least as aggressive as what we adopted I mean during Clinton we had 69
almost 70 participation and we're at 60. now I think so it's obvious that we have to uh trim that the next point you know we have 10 million job openings we're not letting anybody in how would you look at immigration obviously we have people coming in the southern border
illegally and then we have H-1B visas and now Canada is saying hey we'll steal all those h-1bs we'll take them so how do you look at immigration to chamat's question merit-based immigration I mean one of the things that Canada does have and I'm
not a fan of America mutating Canada or anything like this in in most respects but they do have a point-based system right they have a point-based system and so I think the point-based system should work differently in the U.S but I do favor merit-based immigration I'm a
little bit of a departure from what I think is the Republican consensus here you know people I respect Tom Cotton and others have proposed bills with a hard cap on the number of immigrants I think it's a mistake I think that the cap should declare itself based on how
many people meet the meritocratic criteria qualities then for what would be your top criteria in this point-based system two criteria skills that match up to job openings in the United States but secondarily and this one's important to me
I would move the Civics portion of becoming a citizen to the front end of even being granted a visa to enter this country and I think that addresses and accommodates an important part of the concern that many people who are pro-immigration cap actually favor is I
think there are legitimate concerns about the dilution the loss of a national identity but a lot of that is conflated with first the cycle of illegal immigration I'm a hardliner on this I favor putting the U.S military on the southern border I've said I would use it on the northern
border I believe that that we're on strong constitutional and legal authority to do it I do not think building the wall was enough there are cartel Finance tunnels underneath that wall that Vehicles literally run through today so in some ways I'm going further
than Trump in this direction but simultaneously de bureaucratized speed up the process for merit-based immigration but part of Merit includes not just skills but also Civic commitments to the country and I'm you know I use the word nationalist before I
know that scares some people I mean it in a positive way I think every high school student in this country should have to pass the same Civics test that an immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen of this country I also would favor bringing that on the
front end and it selects for the kind of people who know something about the country when they enter which I think is a good thing people should assimilate and they should love this country in order to come into the country yes I do I think I think you should want
to come here to be an American yeah I think I think you get agreement Around the Horn here sax you've heard uh vivec's position so far you obviously are passionate about the GOP what do you agree with and what don't you agree with so far well there's
a lot of stuff to agree with there we're talking about American exceptionalism one thing I want to talk about there is that I agree that America is exceptional and we're most exceptional when we're trying to set an example for other nations when we're trying to be The
Shining City on a Hill as Reagan put it but lately and really I mean over the last couple of decades what you've seen is that what the American exceptionalism means to a lot of people in Washington is that we run all over the world and
impose our ideology and our values on all these different countries we began this great crusade to try and spread democracy in the Middle East we tried to turn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq into madisonian democracies we now are very very involved in Ukraine basically
trying to detach that country from the Russian sphere of influence and turning it into a member of our military and economic Alliance so it does seem like American exceptionalism has taken on this sort of harder more militarized Edge where would
you draw the line I mean like what makes sense to you I think I basically agree with everything you just said I think as a side note on the geopolitics of it I do think Ukraine is on track to become potentially the next Vietnam or the next Iraq I think you
have said similar things I also think there's something else going on with Ukraine that's fueling this which relates to the deeper identity crisis in our country that I described earlier I think Ukraine has become a new religion right in the country and it's a substitute for
purpose and meaning just like climate ideology or wokism is and and you know there's the flag it's like a crusade I mean you have people like waving these oh absolutely yeah you go to Washington DC at least I did in June I was there for one of the Sunday shows where my
wife and I are going for a walk we saw more trans flags and Ukraine Flags than we did American flags on a short walk that we took through Washington DC our nation's capital so I'm not I'm not whining about this or being histrionic about it I just think getting to the
essence of what's going on I think that's a different element of Ukraine that's different from even what we saw with Vietnam or Iraq I don't think American exceptionalism is foisting our values on anyone I think American exceptionalism is about
demonstrating through our example how America flourishes and is strong when we live by our own ideals and I think the best way we give hope to the Free World Is by being that shining City on a Hill not going somewhere else and talking about it with tanks behind
us while actually suffering here at home if you roam the streets of Kensington as I did a few weeks ago you know you don't have to go to you don't have to go to Baghdad to see the third world and so that I think is is I think a big loss of where we are today in the country when
you're President Putin invades Ukraine you would sit back not give any armaments and let them roll in here's what I would do I would actually be proactive in doing a deal and I've been very clear about the deal I would do Trump has said he would do a deal in 24
hours he didn't say what it was I I believe there's a deal to be done but I also believe it's important to be clear about what the Contours of that deal would be I would freeze the current line let's take the status quo right now it so I
can answer your question or I can answer starting from the present if you don't we could do it I mean the obvious yeah the obvious is maybe put NATO take NATO off the table and avoid the whole thing but now we're yeah yeah we're playing history so maybe it's better to talk
about what's happening in the present right because I don't think that we would have if I was President I don't think we would have gotten to the point of those things rolling in Angela Merkel made some disastrous comments Putin made a hard demand we would have said hard no
to Ukraine joining NATO and that would have been that there would have been no tanks rolling and Putin made let's talk about if you took NATO off the table put may have still invaded we don't know I I don't think so but we can't you know
those are counter factuals that we exactly you know yeah we're not going to have one side or the other being able to to prove that right so let's talk about the present right now let's say I'm US president I would freeze the current lines of control we have a precedent for doing
this the Korean War Korean War style Armistice that does give Putin most of the donbass region that's beyond the pale of what many are willing to accept in either party but I think any deal someone has to win everyone has to win something out of the
deal I would further then give that assurance that NATO will not admit Ukraine to Nato but there's a requirement in return the biggest requirement is that Russia has to exit its military partnership with China there's a 2001 treaty it's called
the Treaty of good neighborliness and cooperation military cooperation between the two countries that Xi Jinping and Putin ratcheted up to the so-called strategic No Limits partnership in 2022. that is why China is now coming by the way to Russia's Aid I personally believe
we are absolutely sending Putin into XI jinping's arms in a way that's a mistake I would also require that Putin remove his nuclear weapons from kaliningrad that we take any Russian military presence in the U.S in the Western Hemisphere off the table Venezuela Cuba
Nicaragua I think this is a deal that Putin would do if we paired it with reopening economic relations with Russia which I would do because I think Putin does not and I can give you some evidence for this but I think Putin does not enjoy being XI jinping's little brother
and so I think that this is actually an opportunity and I have to confess I'm a guy who sees our foreign policy prism through the prism of believing that China is the top long-run threat that we face and so most of my foreign policy views and National Security views even
on topics that are apparently unrelated to China I still see it through that prism but this one isn't a far leap because China is literally in a military treaty with Russia and coming to their aid I would use the Ukraine war and an end to the Ukraine war as a way to
bifurcate the russia-china relationship and divide basically dissolve that relationship and then actually that's our best way and most effective step towards deterring Xi Jinping from going after Taiwan because right now Xi Jinping you know I
think that there's a mistaken consensus view that the way he thinks about it is oh Reason by analogy rather than by actual analyzing of a situation say oh well he got that piece of land maybe I can go get this island I don't think he Reasons by analogy I think he Reasons by
the cards he has in terms of hard power so his bet is that the U.S won't want to go to war with two different Allied nuclear superpowers at the same time but if Russia is no longer in his Camp then Xi Jinping is going to have to think twice about going after
Taiwan so then I guess part of my broader Taiwan expression there is you wouldn't defend Ukraine would you have America and the Allies defend Taiwan if it was invaded I would at least until the U.S has achieved semiconductor Independence
yeah because we depend on them for our modern way of life in a way that we don't on Ukraine and then the latter part of this is it sounds a little crass to some people but I believe in being honest I actually think that yeah I'll get to the I'll get to this
point in a second but to answer your question yes until we've achieved semiconductor Independence God I believe we can achieve semiconductor Independence yeah so it's not your belief is not hey these are two democracies they both deserve equal defense from the United States
Ukraine and Taiwan it's Ukraine doesn't have semiconductors we don't have a strategic need to defend them in Taiwan so it's a lot more of a pragmatic Cutthroat approach to foreign policy it is I I um of course um you know resist the characterization
of cutthroat a little bit I go back to the principle that David mentioned of what American exceptionalism is to me is that when America is strong and is flourishing and Americans are flourishing within America we set the example for the Free World of what is possible
and so my view is that yes at least until time until we're semiconductor self-sufficient and I think things work out here where I think we can get there we've got our semiconductors up and running you'll let China roll into Taiwan no big deal for you
I will say that I definitely evaluate that very differently than I do today your thoughts Free Bird yeah let me just ask so Vivek I mean I think that your point is is a really important one which is that when we're happy at home we tend not to look for conflict abroad
that's almost a universal truth that's emerged from history human civilization has shown that you know when the people in a democracy in particular are happy at home and certainly autocracies are quite different Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar
Augustus Caesar you go through history but like when you have a true democracy you don't vote to go and you don't support the idea of conflict abroad if you're happy at home but the counter is true which is when you're unhappy at home you tend to look for conflict
abroad and by some assessments Ray dalio had this great book about this the changing world order I don't know if you if you read it but you know he makes this point about the internal strife leads to external conflict which is why it felt like we
were going to go that way with Ukraine Russia coming out of 21. so I wonder are we happy at home we're not and I want to ask it I want to ask another question tied to this why is Donald Trump leading in the polls because I think that the two go hand in hand there is something that he
represents and there's something about his voice that I think Echoes the sentiment of this populist unhappiness inside of this country today that manifest in a bunch of ways one of which is the interest in and support for external conflict but I don't know if
you're up for kind of thinking about tackling the two questions together but I love your your take on that yeah great question I think you're absolutely right I mean you're extending a theme of where I talk about sort of domestic cultural annoyances as a
symptom of a deeper vacuum in our national soul I think that actually our projection and focus abroad is a lot easier of a deflection away from the harder step of taking a long hard look in the mirror and asking ourselves about the health of our own Nation today and
so I think that's a deep question I think we're not healthy as a nation today I think we suffer from deep-seated Psychic insecurity psychological insecurities I think the economic stagnation the fact that real wage growth isn't up for the bottom 99 of the
country now a lot of that I put at the feet of the Federal Reserve there are a lot of other complex factors behind it but a lot of this feeds into what you call populism I don't excuse me I don't I don't like this by the way just to be clear I think that
it's just imprecise it's a rapper that tries to catch too many things and it doesn't catch any of them enough so yeah yeah well you're calling populism is actually a failure of our Elites isn't that what's going on we saw during covid that all the health authorities did a
horrible job the CDC and the NIH it turns out they were funding function research which may have caused kovid in the first place they were doing experiments on bat viruses almost certainly did cause yeah exactly so you know we keep finding out that the
elites are supposed to be running the country and running these institutions they're doing an absolutely horrible job that's what the reaction is against then people come along and label up populism and say it's going to lead to Fascism it's like come on that is a way of
protecting the people in power from accountability for the horrible job they're doing it's well said absolutely and the use of the word populism is almost stacking that debate in favor of saying that those grievances aren't legitimate and so I think why is Donald
Trump polling at number one in the polls because people know the truth I think those grievances are absolutely legitimate now I think the mood of the country has changed a little bit including the mood of the hard conservative base has changed since
2015. I think there's now I think there is now a sense that what are we actually going to do about it are we are we going to go the direction of a national divorce I mean your divorce is one of these things that speaks itself into existence maybe
applies at the same at the level of a Nation right that's on the table it's in the it's in The Ether I don't think most people including in our hardcore America first base I'm part of that base I don't think want a national divorce and so I think that the moment now calls
for this is why I'm in this race this is actually why at this point I couldn't have told you this in March but at this point I'm convinced we're actually going to be successful in this this is what the unique Fusion we're going to require is not somebody showing
up saying hope Kumbaya let's move forward compromise hold hands and declare its morning again in America no that ain't gonna work but I think it requires recognizing the legitimacy of those grievances not as lip service I I believe for the same reasons mentioned
many of those grievances are legitimate they're grounded in truth but to say as I often say to the left hardship is not the same thing as victimhood and we're not going to choose victimhood we're going to choose recognition of Truth as our best path to
heal over whatever's happened and then to move forward that's why I've come out and been very vocal about the fact that I would pardon Trump of each of the two indictments that have already been brought in if the j6 indictment is brought against him I would do the same
thing I think that we have to be able to recognize the truth of our past grievances of our fellow Americans and actually not just pay lip service to it but feel into it and acknowledge the reality of them I think that's then the table Stakes events meeting a demand
that many in our Grassroots conservative base have I'm one of them a desire to also move forward as one nation and I think both of those elements are going to be required they don't go together I think there are people in the Republican
primary who offer each of those on their own yeah whoever successful gonna have to offer both this morning there was a an opinion piece I'm assuming you read it by Rich Lowry chief of the National Review published on Politico get ready for the Vivek ramaswamy moment
in which I would say he's fairly effusive about the campaign you're running right I mean would you agree like effusive you said yeah so there was so really yeah did you read the piece I mean I thought there were some really is it abusive oh really
interesting he loves you yeah no he said he doesn't love me actually no he doesn't love you but he said something I think he said some complimentary things about your campaign about your character but said there's no way you're going to win and win for president well you went
from under one percent I think now the latest polls has you above five percent and we're in the very early Innings here right I think there's one that just came I mean yeah there's some that have you know bounced a little higher than that
but yeah you're a little higher before the first debate the thing that vivek's done let me just State this Observer and then you can react to it is that you have kind of inserted yourself in the debate on every issue you know every day as it comes up I mean you're kind of
living off the land as a candidate not out there with just kind of a traditional stump speech but you're finding a way to insert yourself into the debate every day on social media I see it right I mean you post a tweet that will hit the nerve of whatever the
issue is going viral that day which means that you'll go viral and so for months I've been seeing your tweets go super viral and so it's not surprising to me that your kids is starting to you know catch on in that way what's remarkable to me is that other
candidates can't do it I mean when you first started doing it I was kind of like okay this is obvious and easy of course this is what you would do but other candidates have not really done that for whatever reason so I mean my perspective yeah my perspective on
that because if we use it I don't like it is when you accuse us of creating a banking crisis but other than that yeah I do want to close the loop on that one we can either do it on air or off actually because yeah let's go do it right now yeah yeah you know so for the
other kid it's not doing it it's anyway that's less interesting it's fine maybe they'll do it it's not running it through a filter right because I think the traditional political thing is and here's what's going to happen to me as a consequence I'm going to eat the
consequence of this right everything comes at a cost there's no free lunch I'm gonna say something in real time that reflects my honest instincts that's my whole strategy right people can tell the difference but then I'm going to change my mind on one out of 100 things
okay and that's just gonna happen right and it's going to be open to that and eat my words and you know I'm gonna do it at some point and that's the trade-off we're making is that I'm not running it through the filters I'm I'm not making up what I believe I'm telling
you actually to the contrary what I truly believe but if I'm doing it really that rapidly in response to what's happening I think people appreciate that but I'm going to eat my words at some point and that's okay in response to new information
response new information or sometimes even in response to reflection right basically because it's less filtered this is what you're saying you might make a gap do you want to close the loop on this other thing yeah do you think Jason caused a banking crisis by using
all caps locks when he tweeted yes or no I do nothing tweet on a Saturday night call as a bank run I did not say I I did not I never said that either but we did go at it pretty hard I think actually I I think there's a chance we might still disagree Dave
but I think that I've done the sacks here but yeah so so I've actually talked to a lot of friends who were in the position of running companies that had some amount of Gap and and we talked through this like the specifics of the situation and then it dawned on me
where and it might it's not it's not necessarily we're gonna agree at the end of this but there's a chance that we might actually which is this so in the lead up to this before that Friday I was already against any governmental intervention here let
this play out why because like let's put aside all the histrionics do the math on it and I'm remember there's a little hazy now right so on the facts but I think it's approximately right and you correct me if you have up-to-date facts on this but I think it's approximately right if
everybody had run and gotten their money out I think it would have been like 94 cents on the dollar that everybody would have walked out with right and so what happened on Friday is in this department where I want to potentially build a
bridge here the part that what happened on Friday was that Friday was the government uh with FDIC or otherwise froze yeah Friday morning yeah yeah the Friday morning you're much closer to this you know in the details but the California regulator froze the ability to take out
deposits so I am more sympathetic to the point that once the government's gotten involved because that really has been like you know kind of like an oh crap moment where your CEO of a company or CFO and you want to get your money and then you
can't now it's Panic right right and so I think that there's a version of the world where the version of the world I wanted I was talking about this before you and I were talking directly to each other I just think they should have stayed out of it 94 cents on the dollar
not bad which is why the public didn't actually end up directly using taxpayer funds was because the bank was healthy in its own right that's what that's the worst result a bank run would have produced there which actually should have been heartening in terms of
confidence let me give you an Insight that maybe you weren't as close to as the rest of us were which is on all the boards that all of us sit on all of the boards were discussing independent of this show and the conversations and the media we need to
move all of our money out of all of the banks that aren't one of the top three and move all of our money into those top three so the point which is a shame that's that's the point of view that we all saw was that there was a mad rush in Corporate America in startup land in
small business land this isn't even VC land this is like everything from the non-profits that we sit on the board of to the you know laundromat to the dry cleaner to every business in a small Bank was saying I gotta move my money into a big bank now and that's where the
whole banking system is put at risk and that is why we all universally felt that it was important to highlight that the federal government needs to step in and reassure and rebuild confidence in the small banks in this country and that the only way to do that was to
say your deposits are safe and that was it and that that was the point because the Panic that was going on in small business land in America which as you know employs half of the people in this country was at risk and that those people those small businesses were
fearful and they were looking to rush to the big Banks and that would have cradered the small banks around the country so and I think it's it's a different advantage point right we have a discussion about populism and everything else yeah
I don't think Dave sacks caused the bank run anymore that I'm causing populist waves in this country again it was Jason with his caps lock but yeah go ahead but I think I think the reality is pure literally have tweeted that I caused the bankrupts insane but there's there's a
technical there's a technical Point uh I'll make and then we'll get to the deeper way the technical point to close lupus I think Dave I find your position more reasonable given that it's after Friday when the California Regulators
came in and locked in but in my version of the world I would have just said stay the heck out government of any kind 94 cents on the dollar there's a six percent haircut and and we've discovered the market actually works and we avoid playing favoritism in the first place
and I say this as somebody who and this is where you understand my vantage point have been a long time opponent of the creation of the notion of sibs systemically important banks in the first place as an opponent to the bailouts of 2008 as somebody who's
running for U.S president not to lead incremental reforms but a sort of revolution in the kind of restoration and the Integrity of both capitalism and democracy that I think is actually the best antidote to would you try to deconstruct the sibs well I mean give the status quo of where
we are I think that I would have to offer a credible enough basis to make sure that people know that if there's a system so-called previously known as systemically important bank that fails that the Public's still not going to be there for them but in a way that allows
for enough of a enough of an unburdened banking sector that we have resilience in terms of exactly who can actually fill that void and I think that there is a discursive impact on I don't think it has to be and this is where we may
disagree a little bit and there's a small scale disagreement I don't think it has to be a state of the world where we just assume consumers are dumb and don't take this into account consumers are in part dumb because we treat them as dumb right and so these it's like a
Heisenberg effect right you can't you know you you assume you're following what's then what I mean is you you know basic principle in physics you can't you know observe the spin and not affect the spin of the electron at the same time I think the same thing
applies to a relationship between the government and its people and so I think part of the reason that people I think I feel the same way about the FDA by the way I think people would be far more scrutinizing of the medicines they took
if it didn't come with the crowding out effect of that individual level of self-responsibility and due diligence that the government wasn't doing but now we live in the worst of all worlds where we have neither the government's neither actually protecting nor actually
providing the space for individual responsibility I just wanted to hear you know you make a statement you collect data one in a hundred you say you'll change your mind I just want to understand with all the data the past the present and probably who knows every every incremental day we
see something new what is the full 360 degree view that Vivek ramaswamy has of Donald Trump full 360 degree view got it yeah I actually haven't had a space to articulate this yet so I I think this I think is useful so my view is that he was a successful
president measured by Reviving the economy sex over president period how why do I say that Reviving The Economy growing the American economy I think that recognizing and speaking to and partially addressing concerns that had been historically unaddressed by both
both major political parties we did not enter a major war we were on the brink of major conflict with North Korea on the precipice in other parts of the world Isis was a thing it is you know by it exists but it's by and large not the same threat that it was after his
presidency as it was when he took over these are major accomplishments right I think the immigration crisis I think is far worse today precisely because Biden's in office and not Trump so I believe he was a successful president that's view number one view number two
he has an effect on people about 30 percent of this country that I think becomes psychiatrically ill when he is the U.S president I I think it's just a fact right agreeing with things that they otherwise wouldn't have agreed with because the 30
number applies on our pod too one in four well I think that I think it's just it's just the reality is people lose their ability to process information people lose the ability to think independently it's like a demonic possession that happens in this country
of about as best I can tell about 30 of the country and I think that's not good for the country and we can debate who's to blame for that or whatever but I'm just stating in an observation that I feel pretty strongly about and so I think most of Trump's policies
were good do I have some policy disagreements with them of course I do it would be weird if any two people agreed on 100 of things I would re-enter the cptpp he exited the TPP I think his exit of the TPP gives us a stronger negotiating position with Malaysia and
Japan to you know fix some of the micro things that we might have wanted China's not in the TPP that's part of the path to actually declare economic independence from China if it comes to that we could go into a lot of different details I would have rescinded the
affirmative action executive order that Lyndon signed that I asked Trump's people why they didn't they said it was a political Hill they didn't want to die on I'd shut down the Department of Education we can go on but broadly he was a successful president with whom
I mostly agree on his broad policy vision and especially his handling did he get wrong and what and was the election stolen yeah so so I mean I gave you like small examples of what he got wrong but I think the real character the real thing that he got wrong
I'm not sure that getting wrong is the even framing it's just a fact that 30 of this country became psychiatrically ill and you're the leader of this country you're leading a nation and so you could decide whose fault that is but I believe
leaders are ultimately judged by their results and for whatever reason even when I'm saying the same things that Trump often did as a matter of policy or foreign policy or domestic economic policy maybe it's because people don't don't yet know me broadly but I don't think
that's it actually I don't think I'm having that effect on people and I think that that's why I'm in this race to carry forward Unapologetic George Washington America First policies and to do so more successfully but also in a way that unites the country around
that Vision more so than Donald Trump ever did or could in a second term was the election stolen here's the sense in which I think the election was stolen in a data-driven way I have not seen any data to suggest that the ballot fraud or anything like that
would have been sufficient to overturn the ballot count of the ballots I've not seen any evidence to that effect what I do see is hard evidence that people in this country would have elected a different president who's that I like who's that this is tally this is
child number five number five she's cute but number one in our hearts oh you can't say that that's nice all right so continue that's your name I would say hey I have I'm away from my sons these guys next last few days so I I you know I'm happy for you hopefully we'll be
with our little guys soon you know what I was saying is let me get to the punch line the sense in which the election was stolen was the hunter Biden laptop story and the systematic suppression of information I think that there is no doubt that is no
doubt I think that the evidence strongly suggests that Trump would have been elected and not Biden had we actually a voter base that had access to that information and I think that that is something that we ought to learn from and I think that it does cast a lot of doubt and
frustration on the legitimacy of the election let me double click on that uh you seem to have said on other programs I've heard you at least a half dozen times talk about uh deep space deep state conspiracy trying to frame Donald Trump
Federal indictment of the 37 criminal charges for the stolen documents refusing to give them back you got the New York case 34 more felony accounts we're about to have another one drop on January 6th you got the Georgia where he tried to get people to get 10 000 more
votes he got the New York case where CFO is going to jail you got him guilty of sexual assault and then you got latita James's suing the Trump organization of these seven are all seven a deep state conspiracy I think it's it's a collective anaphylactic immune response to an
antigen that challenged the system if you do anything wrong you think well seven of these cases he's scot-free and it's just that I want to be really clear about something I'm running for U.S president in this race against Donald Trump because I'm the best position to
lead this nation forward because I think he's guilty of any of these seven I would have made I would have made very different judgments than he did but I think criminalizing bad judgments especially when done so against political opponents in the midst of a
presidential election is an awful judgment for a U.S president and the Department of Justice underneath him to make do you think that the Department of Justice and the person he put in charge of it they're all conspiring and that he didn't do anything wrong
well there's like a lot in that statement right sure does he did he do things that I think are reprehensible that I wouldn't have done yeah I think so I mean as they exist absolutely do I think that Biden and a lot of other politicians who have come
have done things that I would have done differently and actually think we're wrong decisions absolutely but do I think that conflating a bad judgment with a breakage of law is a risk to our future I think it is do you think he sent those people to I mean
January 6th I don't think he did no no I mean to March down there and when he told the proud boys to stand by and stand back you don't think that he was inciting them let me just say I'm not here to defend the Donald Trump's behavior I'm running for U.S president I think we
need to but I think your opinion on it I don't think yeah but my opinion on this matters yes I want to be very clear about the hat that I'm wearing I would not have done what he did but he was very clear I mean you look at the transcripts you run the spies I have
First Amendment Scholars just to check my I mean inciting violence is not protected speech by the First Amendment there's no sense in which when he tells people to peacefully make their way to the Capitol that does not meet any Supreme Court test for what constitutes
inciting violence in this country I think that let's just take let's take the New York example I mean some of the stuff the details actually let's take the Oath Keepers one because that Foundation First hold on let me get my first Oath
Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes got 18 years do you think that the justice department did that because they're trying to frame Trump and you and Trump told The Oath Keepers to stand by and to stand back do you think he incited The Oath Keepers yes or no
based on the facts that I have seen I've seen no evidence of that you're delusional stand by okay so I'm also there's also an indictment that hasn't been brought so I've offered my opinion no the first two indictments that have been brought against him right sure I read them I
read all 49 pages in the last one I'm responsive to facts yeah on the first two indictments I think they're absolutely politically based and I can go through the if you're interested we can go into the specifications you know on New York right I mean I'll
just give you a light on each right okay in New York let's take a fact that it's a state offense that was up charged to a felony and outside the statute of limitations only by tying it to an alleged federal crime and what was that federal crime
failing to report a hush money payment to a porn star as a campaign contribution there would be a stronger case for using and paying hush money and using campaign funds to do it that that was a federal campaign Finance law violation then not actually counting it
so so many accounts that the politicized prosecution against anybody else they would have brought it documents case a 49-page indictment read it twice that does not once mention the presidential records act the most relevant statute that talks about what the basis is for
president to keep documents or not and instead charges him according to I think one of the most Un-American laws in U.S history passed during World War One to silence World War One dissenters including Eugene V Debs who Eugene V Debs who was actually put in prison over
this I have long argued that that was a statute that should have long been over should have been rescinded that's now being used to charge a crime rather than even more precise crime so I tend to be very responsive maybe to the point of
frustration of being technical on these things but I believe facts and law actually matter I think that if Trump was the best guy for the job I wouldn't be running in this race if Ronald Reagan were alive and well today I would not be running in this race
I want to just go back to the I have a question I have a question about these Trump scandals do you think that's one of the seven well I think do you think Trump should be indicted for Donald Trump Jr being paid 83 000 a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian Energy company
despite having no energy expertise oh wait that's Hunter and his personal life being in crisis because he's a drug addict him getting that job three months after his father approved a and backed a coup against Ukrainian government do you think that Donald Trump Jr should be
investigated for that and David is this is this also after uh that Donald Trump then sends 200 billion dollars of U.S taxpayer money to that very country after he's elected an office I think that's the strongest of the scandals I've heard so far so you believe Biden
is a great ways what do you think of Jared Kushner getting taking down 2 billion from the Saudis after he walked out of the White House I I don't have that's not a matter that I have views on so you don't have views on that but you got plenty of views on
Trump because he's not in government he's not in government okay let's move on past troll because this is a great example of why I'm in this race yeah I'm telling you this is there something about the existence of Donald Trump exactly can't get away from Criminal
Minds that deflects our ability yeah criminal behavior and trying to carry forward the agenda of this country much of which was Trump's own agenda so Vivek in order to win this candidacy and the reason I brought up the Politico uh publication this morning obviously there
was a bit of tongue-in-cheek on the effusiveness but the the key point being made was you have no chance of winning and that you shouldn't be in the race at all now look I I'd like to that was the thesis of the piece what's interesting
is where it's coming from right it's coming from The Establishment voice and I think we'd like to hear just a little bit around your political strategy what is your intention around Building Bridges and ties to the Republican establishment to support your candidacy
here or does the or does the Republican establishment largely sit on the sidelines right now and wait to see who emerges with this popular movement and and who's out there you're obviously running an incredible campaign on the road very active very vocal and as
everyone says probably by far the most articulate and most thoughtful and most intelligent of the candidates in the race today but lacking experience lacking connections not part of the establishment and as a result cast in this negative light consistently by the
um by these sorts of writers so what is your strategy to win this race given me is it not important as Trump showed in the last election cycle to have those Republican establishment ties or are you going to be building bridges and then my
follow-up question is if you don't win what are you going to do so yeah so yeah let me uh let me address the first it's basically in the camp that I don't think it's the voters that ultimately matter not the people who have appointed themselves in the reigning establishment
or it's not even the establishment anymore it's an outdated establishment that I don't think actually is going to influence meaningfully the result of this election except for one respect which is money which I'll get back to so the area where we're punching above
our weight right debates haven't even happened yet in at least in the last week I'm third in most of the national polls this is well ahead of even where we planned to be right we planned it to be in third by November December ahead of
the Iowa caucuses out of New Hampshire overperform expectations in both of those use the momentum to then win the race that was broadly the strategy with the debate stages the play as the way where I would steadily work my way into that I think we're just now on a
different curve where you know we might be in second place by then and by a smaller margin Than People expected I think the debate stage is critical the campaign strategy is actually to combine the initial investment that because I've lived the American dream I've was able
to make but to combine that with a true Grassroots uplift we've got close to 70 000 maybe more I have to check the exact numbers unique donors already yeah former you know vice presidents or other candidates that are you know well on their way and struggling by some
measures to get to 40 000 which is the threshold for the first debate so our strategy is very much a Grassroots strategy I've done more campaign events than anybody in the Republican field and so this is our strategy is very Grassroots driven I said I'm punching
above my weight in terms of events unique donations polling the one area where I'm punching below weight is large-scale donations so we are not raising Mass numbers of large check external funds yet into the campaign my super Pacs or I don't have it I mean
whatever they're independent expenditures I don't there's an entity that exists out there that's been affiliated with me has based on public reports uh tiny amounts of money compared to those that are supporting and all in for candidates from Tim Scott to Ron
DeSantis and that's also a reality right and I think that that comes with competitive advantages and disadvantages there are two sides of the same coin I think I am at Liberty total Liberty I feel totally unconstrained to pursue the strategy that David mentioned earlier which is
that I'm reacting in real time to what I believe have you been surprised by the lack of clarity maybe of the DeSantis campaign in really creating a pathway through Trump and if you are surprised what do you think he's doing wrong if you have to critique it yeah I'm not
surprised because you know I know him and I think he's a good executor right I think he has been a I disagree with some other people on this I think he's been quite an effective governor I think that when you're talking about and Scott Walker in the last cycle was
quite an effective governor and for the same reasons that people believed Scott Walker was going to be the runaway nominee last time around I think that people naturally gravitate people think they want somebody who has done something as an effective executor but
when it comes to the U.S presidency I think it's a unique role where what matters is actually having a vision for where we are going right and so I'm not uh with I don't without saying things that are interpreted as being mean about somebody
else or not I know all of these people have known them for a long time I've shared stages with them over the course of my woke Inc book tour and nation of victims book tour I'm not surprised with how things are going in this race you know I said we
expected to be where we are in November we're here in July I'm not surprised that we're doing well I understand how audiences across this country responded to my message in wilkink I'm not surprised that they're continuing to respond well to Trump I think there's
nothing surprising about where we are in this race right now and so you're not surprised because because DeSantis is a competent administrator but that is a great job as Governor but not the bill of goods for the president I'm really at a point of this race
but to be honest with you I think I think there's a lot of Truth to what you said yeah don't you think part of it though is that Trump has singled out DeSantis as the one candidate who he's gonna beat the hell out of I mean I don't think so David actually I'll tell
you why um he has not attacked you Trump's actually said good things about you yeah he's not attacked anybody else in this race actually yeah have you spent time with Trump I know all these guys I know all of you spend time with Trump when's the
last time you talked to him not a serious amount of time I've spent more time with DeSantis than I have with them at once yeah when this is long before I was running for president but um we had dinner and tried to build Bridges with you I mean most of us when we intersect each
other were speaking at the same forums the NRA the family leader thing that Tucker did backstage we have interactions with all the other candidates and I'd like to think I'm friendly with everybody uh you know I don't know how you know I
haven't talked to Ron recently but I've talked to him more before but I think the reality is uh you know so Dave what you said is definitely true and I'm not in this to be a political analyst right I'm in this to State what my beliefs are say who I am and people
can vote for me or not but I actually do think I I don't think that Trump's commentary on the other candidates is having so much of an effect I think voters many people who are maybe initially behind the sand is I know many of them are people who are part of that
traditional establishment that didn't want that most of them didn't want to have nothing to do with Trump but decided that that was the next best thing so I don't think that Trump's attacks are going to persuade them one way or another I think it comes down to the study of
what happened in 2016. right Scott Walker great Governor really respect the guy and I like what he's doing in his post elected office life as well but everybody has a role to play in Reviving this country and I think we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask
ourselves how are we gonna make our unique contribution and I think it's going to require Governors who are effective implementers of a vision that makes their states thrive I think Governor says it's done a really good job of that I think Christy gnome
has done a really good job of that I think there are people who hopefully will continue to have an impact on our culture outside of government altogether there's a really important role for that Jason I think that's my answer to your other question uh which I forgot to
answer can I go back to two things that you mentioned just in passing but I just want you to clarify your thoughts on them one is you said you would abolish the Department of Education and I thought I'd never heard anybody say that really
so could you just expand on that what you mean and then the second I'd love for you to talk about some of these Supreme Court decisions that have come in the last little while specifically the abortion debate the affirmative action debate the rights of businesses to
not service people that whose ideology they disagree with and then sorry the third point is maybe use that last part as a jumping off point I'd love for you to understand your position on lgbtq the role of the trans movement what's happening in schools those are the three
kind of big chunky areas that that I think are worth talking about if you if you can just give a few minutes yeah there's a lot there yeah so so so let me if I skip over something bring me back so Department of Education I think the federal government is not as
a factual matter directly involved in education I think it is a therefore a deadweight waste for money to cycle from the taxpayers to the Federal Department of Education to then disburse those funds inefficiently as they do tilting the scales to four-year college degrees
over choices that people might have otherwise made that are better choices for them vocational training one year two year programs using it as a cudgel and this relates to the bladder issue you asked about to tell Local Schools they don't get that money unless they're
adopting what I certainly view is toxic racial and gender ideology-based agendas they use the money as a cudgel to do it so I've said that that department that spends about 80 billion dollars of taxpayer money I'll shut it down tonight
in New Hampshire I'm laying out the anatomy of exactly how we'll shut it down and then return that money to the states to the people put it in parents pockets very specifically you have to be a state that has a school choice program in order to receive that Department of
Education shutdown dividend I think that if you're such a state I would also believe that those States need to write their teachers union teachers contracts in a way that stop teachers from joining teachers unions which I think have been a destructive force on our
Public Schools if you're unionizing against the public think about who you're unionizing against the very kids you're supposed to represent now we have transparency we have choice if you teach it in the classroom put it online and then there's an interesting fact in
this country where I think you guys will appreciate how bizarre this fact really is there's not only like a failed positive correlation there is a negative correlation an inverse correlation between how much money per student a public school spends
and the actual outcomes that that school achieves for its students so in my version of school choice my preferred version it would not just be that parents get to get these vouchers and educational savings accounts to send their kids to some
other school that's part of the story it's a first step but I think any parent who moves to a school that spends less per student which we know based on the data is actually all the SQL a better performing school as it relates to achievement should be able to take half the Delta
with them so to take Chicago or Pennsylvania spending 35 40 000 per student 15 miles away you have a school spending 15 to 20 000 per student I think they should be able to take half the difference that ten to fifteen thousand dollar half that difference up to twenty
thousand say ten thousand dollars they take with them you run the math on normal investment returns you're talking about a quarter Million Dollar Plus graduation gift when that kid graduates from 12th grade so you tell me which is a better use of
money it's not even close and I think the head of the same great idea that's a great arbitrary did you come up with that idea or did is that synonymous actually another guy's an arbitrager who's a friend but who shares similar instincts and like I'm like I'm
a value investor I believe it's a great incentive it just makes sense of the world yeah okay let's move past education yeah I want to talk about the specifically the gay and the trans issue um two questions one do you think it's normal to be gay
and do you have any problem with people being gay and then no I don't know so then the second of course talking about trans I heard you on Meet the Press save the trans was a mental disorder which yeah you know it was in the dsm-4 I guess or whatever the latest
one was yeah just to a couple years ago and now it's changed so maybe explain why you think differently about those two things one you think it's fine to be gay but you think it's a mental disorder in all likelihood if people want to transition yeah so uh
you know I want to leave you with a good sense of where I'm at on on these issues right so I think it's at least curious that when you take the lgbtqia Plus value set and vision for what the movement stands for it does require you to adopt simultaneously conflicting beliefs at
once right the gay rights movement was predicated on the idea which I'm quite sympathetic to that the sex of the person that you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born but now with the T component of that same movement that now says your own
gender is completely fluid over the course of your own life and I think if we're not going to observe the tension between these two observations I think that we're purposefully having our heads stuck in the sand I think what's happening in many cases is
somebody who claims to be trans is really just gay and part of what we're saying is it's not okay to begin so to answer your first question part of what the trans movement is effectively telling people is that it's not okay to be gay you know who else says that Iran
actually Iran is a nation that if you are gay they force you to undergo gender conversion surgery it's not that different than what's baked into the ideological premise of much of the trans movement here and so I just want you to come from the fact
there's a lot of people in the GOP will offer surface level stuff here I mean I've spent a lot of time thinking about this gender dysphoria is what I've said is a mental health disorder I've been very precise let's take the intersex case out of it kleinfelter
syndrome Jacob's syndrome right kleinfelter is xxy Jacob syndrome is x y y these are ultra rare they exist they are real for the purpose of our discussion though it's under the broad trans umbrella I'm going to take that out of it because that's not a
mental health disorder that's a genetic reality but now let's go back to the conflicting supposition there's no gay gene yet the sex of the person you're attracted to we accept for civil rights purposes is hard right and the day you're born yet there are X and Y chromosomes and
yet your own biological sex slash gender is now completely fluid over the course of your life there's a tension there and I think that tension is best explained by the way we've treated it for most of our national history for most of our
medical history all the way through actually I think the DSM-5 not just the four as a mental health condition and I think the compassionate thing to do is not to affirm especially when it's a kid to affirm a kid's computer I think the compassionate thing to do is
to recognize that there's some other psychological struggle manifesting itself in this form and it is cruel to affirm that kid's confusion surgery or hormone surgery hormone therapy exactly so you would limit that to when you're an old adult 18 years old
yes and you would base two women here in New Hampshire literally like where I am right now yeah who are in their 20s that badly regret undergoing double mastectomies one of them underwent a hysterectomy both of them underwent puberty so even if the parents and
doctors agreed with it you would say they can't make that decision for the child just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of 18 in most what we say is a decision that you are likely to regret many in many cases at least likely to regret later in life we let
you make that decision as an adult and I do believe we live in a free society as an adult you're free to identify how you want a free to wear what you want but kids aren't the same as adults and even among adults there's a difference between living your life freely and
expecting that everybody else changes their linguistic and traditional understandings in sports and traditional understandings in locker rooms and traditional understandings and language that's a difference and so I don't believe in a tyranny of the majority but
I don't believe in attorney of the minority either do you think this topic is over indexed on right now and is a really important topic of this presidency or do you think this is like some sort of culture wars thing that this actually isn't that important to
the National discussion should be held privately by currents I appreciate you asking that Jason is I think I feel this way about a lot of the topics right from the position on that I think like why is this the most important topic yeah this is this is interesting because it's a
symptom it's interesting only to the extent that it is a symptom of the deeper void of the deeper vacuum and I think the mental health epidemic is not limited to gender dysphoria anxiety depression drug usage fentanyl suicide these let's have
the conversation more holistically these are symptoms of the deeper void and all I care about is running through these topics without somebody holding the line of defense by stopping us to get to a discussion about that void to say no this is exactly what that kid is and
you're wrong to think about as a mental health disorder I think that's unproductive because if it stops us from getting the truth over the years it's been the case that young people tend to orient to being counter-cultural or anti-establishment
generally speaking it's part of the psychological seasoning of a human to be against the parents against the system and ultimately to create Independence for oneself and that's typically counter to what came before it and it has manifested in every generation with this
point of view that there is some psychological torment that has taken over the young people that is causing them to act out from beatniks to hippies to punks to goth to emo and every generation had some cultural representation is your point of view
that gender dysphoria is the current manifestation of that pattern of behavior that we've seen over the generations that's not exactly my view my view is that it's not limited to young people I think there's something unique going on in America right now
it's true of all of us it was some sense some of this comes from self-reflection but I think it's it's true for most of us that were hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves yet we cannot even answer what it means to be an American or what
it means to believe in God or what God is and we have come up with new false Idols that substitute for that so you want to talk about generational history I mean you know Moses by the time he comes down from the Mountaintop you got the golden calf Israelites are lost in the desert
they say they want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh yeah I think the historical Trend I'm talking about is a slightly different one and maybe has a longer Arc to it than the one you're talking about but I but am I diagnosis is not specific to young
people it's specific to where we are in a National History when like a bunch of blind bats in a cave right how does a bat figure out where it is it sends out echolocation signals sonar signals that come back and say this is where I am I
think we human beings are wired to do the same thing and the pillars the walls the fixed points of truth from family to Faith to patriotism to hard work to individual Pride the things that used to ground us when those things disappear we're now sending out these signals and
then nothing's coming back and so we're making up new pillars instead and maybe one of them is a trans flag and maybe one of them is a Ukraine flag and maybe one of them is a climate cult and maybe one of them is a racial intersectional hierarchy and maybe one of them is
fentanyl but I think that that's foreign agreement with you and Jason that I think we sometimes get too hung up both sides maybe Republicans a lot so right now on the symptoms without getting to a deeper discussion of the deeper cancer the deeper void
that we need to fill and that's what I'm interested in brought up the Roe v Wade issue I'm wondering what do you think is the most productive path forward for the country in terms of of reasonable right to choose versus right to life argument
because you personally feel that abortion should be banned am I correct I am personally pro-life you're pro-life be able to get an abortion under any circumstances or do you have rape inside of you as someone who's running for U.S president and responding to the question
about the Supreme Court case is that Roe versus Wade was correct to be overturned on constitutional grounds okay fine it was it was made but but it leads also to the path for moving forward which is that I think the federal government should stay out of it and so there's a discussion
amongst Republicans I think I'm the only Republican candidate in this field who has come out and said that I would not support a federal abortion ban of any kind on principled ground because to me I am grounded in constitutional principles and I think there's no legal
basis for the federal government to legislate here the 10th Amendment says that part of the American experiments we have diversity across States and I think this is a state's issue now at the level of the states I'm personally a believer that unborn
Life Is Life I think that the pro-life movement needs to we need to walk the walk when it comes to being pro-life what do I mean I'm pro-contraceception I'm pro-adoption I'm pro-child care I'm pro-more sexual responsibility for men for God's sake we live in an era of
genetic tests we can actually put more responsibility on men this doesn't have to be and should not be a men's versus women's rights issue and nobody on our side is really talking about these issues I do because I don't think this has to be as divisive as we've made it
out to be but I can almost prove to you that more people in this country share my instincts than are willing to admit it there's a case you know Clarence Thomas brought it up of pregnant woman walking down the street she's assaulted the unborn child dies as
a result I haven't met and I have many liberal friends most most of my friends growing up have been you know have different political Persuasions than I have now I haven't been a single one of my liberal friends or otherwise who says that that criminal does not
deserve liability for that death and so I I just think more of a leadership if one state wants to ban it they can ban it if another state wants to have a 24-week rule they could have a 24-week rule that's that's you I like other Republican candidates I
will not be signing a federal abortion ban unconstitutional States and I remain open to persuasion if some legal scholar convinces me that the U.S Constitution gives the federal government the authority to sign that into law so be it but I have not been so convinced and I
think many other principled constitutionalists haven't been convinced even though the other Republican field has all best candidate in this race has said they would sign one what is your thought on just the gross tonnage of dollars that we spend
on the military and defense and Espionage and you know internal external security and then when it goes bump up against civil liberties just give us your kind of framing on how you think about those sets of issues around National level security but where and personal personal
privacy so I'm uh I I for more of my life than not identified as a Libertarian than a conservative and I still have all of those libertarian instincts in my core it's just that I care about more issues than Libertarians care about because libertarianism is all
about the relationship between the state and the individual and I actually do care about culture and the fabric of a society outside of government too it's a long way of saying I'm deeply skeptical of the National Security establishment I
was deeply skeptical of the Iraq War at the time I think I am today in retrospect I was deeply skeptical that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay should have been denied constitutional due process rights when that's exactly what enshrines the justice system that we otherwise believe
in I would pardon Julian Assange I would pardon Edward Snowden I've committed to a long list of Pardons of people who have taken steps to expose corruption that we otherwise would not have seen in this country and I think part of the reason why is
there's a weird corporate analogy here we're talking about companies and finding their purpose in coinbase I think there's a version of that going on in the US Military I think the US military has lost its sense of purpose actually and so my view is the purpose of the US
military is to secure Americans on American soil to make sure that we when necessary win Wars and more importantly deter Wars and I think part of what you see in the loss of you know people complain about wokeness in the military Etc these are
against symptoms of a deeper loss of purpose of an institution not that much different than a company but my view is I'm not in the same way with the immigration debate I'm I don't engage in this what's the cap you know higher or lower it's the wrong debate
Merit purpose what are we achieving I feel the same way about the military it's not a higher lower discussion it's a what are we doing discussion and I think there is a legitimate case for the U.S to have and continue to have the strongest military in the world
but I think that deputizing that military to fight Wars that are really deflection tactics often for our own ailments at home I think it has been a mistake and we're at risk of making those same mistakes again right now most pertinently in Ukraine unless we learn
from those past mistakes I want to ask you about the division within the Republican party on this specifically Ukraine so at turning point which you just spoke at and I think you did very well in the straw poll there you had Tucker interviewing Mike Pence
asking him why should we prioritize Ukraine over our own cities that are increasingly broken down you've got homeless people living on the streets you've got this price of drug addiction you've got rampant crime you've got schools that are terrible and yet
Ukraine seems to be this fixation of the unit party in Washington and and Pence gave this totally dunderheaded answer or something like that's not my concern which I guess his apologist said afterwards that well no he was talking about something else he wasn't saying that
American cities weren't as concerned which even if you grant that was the case means that he wasn't really paying attention to Tucker's question but then you also had Tim Scott say something it was definitely a better phrase than what Penn said but basically
said that he thought it was a good idea for us to be giving all this money to Ukraine because degrading Russia's military was a good deal for the United States you know by which degrade I assume means killing Russian boys and you've heard Lindsey Graham say
this sort of thing then I had this Republican pollster named Patrick raffini who I didn't really know before but he's apparently a republican pollster he's got Slava Ukrainian his bio I'm not quite sure what's motivating that but he tweeted at me saying that Ukraine is
like number 17 on a list of GOP voter priorities despite efforts by the likes of Carlson and sax to make it a thing notice how it almost never gets brought up on the trail unless Tucker is there my response to him was to post a quote from Mitch McConnell
saying that Ukraine is the number one priority of the GOP right I'm like you're making my point for me I know that it's number 17 in the eyes of Voters in our party in terms of what they think we should be focused on but it's number one in the minds of Mitch
McConnell and Pence and Scott and Nikki Haley and you know Lindsey Graham these people are obsessed with this idea so I guess you know a what is your reaction to that b how are we going to change this I mean it just seems like there's something fundamentally broken
in our party when the base understands that we should not be focused on Ukraine focused on our own borders our own cities as opposed to some Far Away lands borders and cities and then also in that same Turning Point poll 95 of the attendees at a conference
were opposed to U.S involvement in Ukraine it was the single highest number for anything they pulled on I think Trump got like an 85 approval opposition to Ukraine Got 95 so clearly there is a fundamental divide between what the establishment or Elite of the party
thinks and what the base thinks yep what is your explanation for that and how does that ever get solved I mean how are we going to fix it I'm going to give you a facile answer David it has to do with why we're doing what we're doing
I want to be elected the next president I think I will be and I think reflecting the will of the people in the way this country is governed is part of how our system is actually supposed to work both in the primary and in the general
election and so United we're sitting in different seats but I'm sitting in the seat that I am now precisely because I think somebody needs to actually step up and fix it when most of the Republican party has locked Stock and Barrel for all of their criticisms abide none the
most important foreign policy matter of right now have Lock Stock and Barrel adopted what is effectively the Biden position which is mysterious and it's interesting now I think that it has become a a sort of a a fixation not because these candidates I think have arrived at this Viewpoint
independently through reasoning their way to it but just understanding that that's what they are supposed to say in the tradition of a party that was historically based on projecting hard power through deterring the USSR not recognizing the fact that people
sometimes seem to forget this fact the USSR doesn't exist anymore and NATO which is created to contain the USSR has now expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did before which is itself a symptom of a Republican party that still sometimes
militarism it's a muscle memory what about the influence of the military-industrial complex do you think somehow like it's related to donors like what do you mean yeah so I'm I'm a I'm very open-minded to and I'm getting the signal that so we're going to this
um event where we're meeting with parents of kids who have died as a consequence of Fentanyl and I don't want to keep them waiting longer than uh than we need to but if you guys are down to do this again this has been a lot of fun this has been great we gave us 90 minutes it's
fantastic we can let me just answer David's last Dave what was your last question wait no no I have a better question just that last question number one are you vaccinated against covid number two what do you think of fauci and what could we have done differently
I mean you're a man of science so I'm just curious what you think about the whole thing great question so I am vaccinated against covid had I had the facts that I do now as a young thankfully healthy male I would not have actually chosen to get vaccinated
I think that Anthony fauci betrays science by substituting the scientific method which depends on free speech and open debate and inquiry with authority which is actually fundamentally anti-scientific at its core and I think one of our main lessons to have learned from the
pandemic and I hope we do learn it in the future is that it is precisely in times of emergency that Free Speech becomes most important I think if we had been able to debate in the open the merits of lockdowns for children we would not have locked down our schools I
think we had been able to debate the open what the origin of the pandemic was a lab and Wuhan appears to be the overwhelming it's the truth I mean we we know that that's exactly the most likely to correct explanation it's in the name
it really is but but it was a name you couldn't have said at that you couldn't call it you couldn't name the Unspeakable City for which the virus originated so I think one of the top lessons is free speech and open debate the path the truth runs through that
science depends on the free exchange of ideas that's who we are and the beauty is our country is founded on that very principle it's in the First Amendment for a reason we'll let you get to your event but I just want to say thank you for being incredibly Dynamic and open and honest
it's really great to have guys like you to talk to it's I appreciate it guys if you guys want to do it again I had a lot of fun too yeah thanks for not being like political politicians speak and being so honest and taking on every single topic we
asked you every single topic I think you did a great job I appreciate it guys appreciate you take care guys thank you Vic we didn't talk about this did you guys mention where you are or is that based on the number of buttons here I can tell you I'm in uh you know what I
can't dox myself because you know did I ever tell you the story about two years ago when I was in Italy and the stalkers you [ __ ] told everybody you were there no I didn't everybody where I was at chamots beach club it was ridiculous I took a picture of
the ocean and in the corner of one of the towers was the logo of chamonte's beach club and some guys found that logo on the towel did a Google image reverse search found the beach club that chamat's part of and then showed up at the beach club while I was drinking
150 Dollar Bottles per second on two months account to pitch me their startup so I don't want to say exactly where I am but I'm in Italy where are you guys me and Zach are at shouting distance from each other we're about to see each other after this did I ever tell you
guys the story about last summer when I was in Italy chamoth and I were walking down the streets of Milan yeah do you ever tell the story no no no okay this was like the last time that Jake Allen Friedberg were having a major Feud and
it looked like the Pod was maybe about to break up so I mean for real breakup number one yeah this is Breakup number one remember two or three I don't know but you guys are definitely feuding so we're walking down the street and all of
a sudden somebody stops us and he this is like a fan from I don't know like and he stops Us in the street and takes a photo and the whole thing and as we're walking away jamas says we better make this thing work because I like being famous you can't go back you guys
you guys grew this up because I like being it's a delicate balance fame or being right for people who didn't get the joke last week I love Freeburg I'm trying to develop a deep meaningful relationship with framework I love framework what do we think of vivac let's get back to the
you know brass tacks here RFK versus vivac we've now had two of the top five candidates and Chris Christie's agreed to come on the mooch put me in touch I have to be honest with you RFK and he are more similar than they are different on a lot of topics
you know the Contours I think are are different on a few very specific ones obviously but it's like these Outsider candidates I think have like a they're just they're a breath of fresh air because I think and Vivek said it right the Heat and RFK
they have nothing to lose so they just tell you what they think they don't have to memorize anything because what they think is what they think and so you just consistently get this cream of Consciousness and the more and more I hear from these kinds of candidates the
more and more they make sense and juxtaposed Against The Establishment candidates it's very Stark would you consider Trump Saks um you know as being the sort of precursor to these two non-traditional candidates so now we have three non-traditional candidates in the mix Trump Vivek
and RFK and they all are shoot from the hip here's what I honestly think and maybe more moderate and pragmatic in terms of their positions well sure I mean Trump ran for office for president without having ever run for office before and so yeah as a Democrat he's a
Democrat who ran as a republican too amen and he moved the Republican party in a bunch of ways that were totally new Trump's lasting impact I think is going to be on the Republican party I mean he moved the Republican party from an open borders completely free trade
sort of party warmongering mongering knee-jerk militarism neocon to being anti-war wanting to have strong borders being at least skeptical of trade at least with China if not other countries and I think he hasn't wanted to mess with entitlements he understands that's
the third rail and very much against the Paul Ryan wanting to touch those at least in a non-bipartisan way I think that for the Republicans to take on those issues by themselves I think he understands a suicide they lose votes when you start taking on
entitlements and I think that what Trump also did which is really interesting is that it cascaded a wave of self-reflection in a lot of other Western countries so Italy's more right as a result the UK went right Spain looks like it's about to tip right the
Dutch actually just lost their election because of national border issues or you know that they dissolved their government so there's like a real clear nationalism would you say it's more of the Nationalist inflection as opposed to the globalist I mean
that's right the Overton window I think changed quite a bit with Trump in the mix because now you actually had this much more America First nationalist orientation as the alternative to this sort of globalist whether it's neoliberalism or neoconservatism
those two things have more in common with each other than they do with this more nationalist populist approach right Freebird what did you think what was your take oh I mean RFK obviously concerns you a bit because of the I don't want to use the conspiracy word
but let's just call it maybe you know his open-minded to he's open-minded to different theories so where do you stand on RFK in relation to vivec today Freeburg obviously I I think he's crafted his narrative in a way that can be broadly appealing and as I mentioned
in our Tech stream I think also appeals to the Trump base in a way it's a very smart campaign I think that the strategy the the positioning Everything feels like it's hitting the mood of the moment and you know I I would argue like you could probably call any election
cycle any campaign one of two things it's a promise of what can I do for you or how can I go and destroy the system that did bad for you and Trump RFK and by the way the higher the magnitude of that statement the more appealing the candidate is I
think vivec is doing a great job hitting a reasonably High magnitude on the you know the system has failed us we need to go and fix these problems kind of moment and and it's it's really good but I think it's really good for call it the audience that's engaged in
the intellectual debate around it not necessarily would you vote for vivec at this point I need to spend a little more time with DeSantis to be honest and understand where he sits I I obviously have deep concerns about Biden what would your concerns on Biden be his
cognitive issues or the SP out of control spending I I don't think he's running the country and I think that those who are there's absolutely no accountability and discipline in what's going on with respect to spending as I mentioned vivec
did not appeal to me in resolving that concern either by the way he thinks we're going to grow our way out of it which is part of the premise of modern monetary Theory which I think is a flood so you still don't have a candidate in terms of controlling spending yeah
yeah look I think the problem with Vivek is he's not going to be appealing to the masses because he's so smart and so articulate that it doesn't have the the Trump Basics the Trump Basics are insult the bad guy call yourself the best thing in
the world make jokes and people might be over that I think people might be over it I don't know good job are people over it The Bullying the name calling the the bombastic Trump nature do you think people are over it you think that's going to burn people out this election cycle
well not if you look at the polls they're not on the Republican party I think in the general they might I mean look I think right now it looks like we're on track to have a Biden Trump rematch and right now Biden probably looks like he's going to win barring a
recession happening or the Ukrainian side collapsing in in the war right I mean I mean that indictment dropping sounds pretty you know like another bombshell so do you think there's any chance no no no no no okay so what's your favorite moment you know from this
discussion was were there was there a standout moment for your sacks we thought sorry I want to hear yeah moth would you vote for him are you still in rfk's Camp are you kind of still open-minded about everything I wasn't sure what his campaign was about and
and I come away pretty meaningfully intrigued about what he had to say um I think that there are some fundamental issues that RFK has me on that I wanted bevec to own and he he flirted with them but he didn't quite own them such as I think that the just like the
deconstruction of the military-industrial complex was is so definitive in RFK and it was it was almost quite there with the vet but not quite there so I wish he would I wish he would own that I think that the deconstruction of the Department of Education I need to think
more about about some of his ideas are frankly more compelling the pro-life pro-choice thing I think is very complicated and I think you can go to this place of saying let the states choose but I I'm just not sure whether that's the right ultimate solution
and you know proposing some federal legislation or would you want to end up on that you would want to end up like Europe like a certain number of weeks federally and then maybe some local laws around abortion and right to choose I think that there is just like you you have to
fundament if you believe in personal freedom I think having an arbitrary definition of what a person is and then what that freedom means to me is already the slippery slope and so I have a real issue with that but I also agree with him about the actual
decay of American society you know the lack of religious institutions and the lack of family and purpose those two things above all others I think are tearing this country apart because people substitute something for it was his point right it's leaving people
incredibly empty and so I just think that you have to have some of these fundamental protections sex what were your favorite moments during this or or moments where you think he stood out or he shine at moments where you maybe have some fundamental disagreement
well okay there's a few issues let me um respond to so in terms of the vague versus RFK Jr I think where Kennedy really shines is like jamas said when he talks about the military industrial complex and I would say more generally RFK has this critique about regulatory
capture which he describes as the marriage of state power and corporate greed and included in that is what's happened to the FDA and big Pharma and the whole government's response on covid and then he wraps in censorship as being the way that this rfk's
thoughts are very marriage of corporate greed and state power the way it defends itself that and that's unacceptable so I think like on those issues I don't think anybody speaks as deeply as RFK Jr now when it comes to the list if you're to
like list out all the issues and where Vivek is and where I am it's a pretty close match I mean I'm not aligned with him completely on every issue but I think it would be pretty close and I do really appreciate where he's coming from on Ukraine he's not afraid to just come
right out and say the truth which is this is not an important enough American interest to be spending hundreds of billions a year on I wish we had more time what an amazing moment let's actually delve into that and particularly I wanted him to explain
what was happening in the party because there is a divide within the party between these like oxygenarian and sort of more establishment Republicans like McConnell like Scott like pens the war machine the War Machine and then people like him and Trump and and you put Trump
in this category too who are resisting that so I would have liked to hear more about that what did you think of the moment where I kind of pinned him and I said would you you so you wouldn't defend Ukraine but you would defend Taiwan and he said yes for the next five
years I would defend Taiwan because of the semiconductor I mean that I've never heard a candidate say something that fragmatic here's my interpretation well it is pragmatic what he's basically saying is that America right now is dependent on these chips these very
sophisticated high-tech chips so many conductor chips and not just like the low end ones the high-end chips that are made in Taiwan and that is a vital American interest and until we alleviate ourselves or wean ourselves off that dependency by making them ourselves
we're securing some other Supply then we need Taiwan and so therefore we cannot allow it to fall into Chinese ants I'm saying a lot more than he did but it's kind of an argument like saying chips is the new oil and as long as this is a
critical input into our economy we have to secure our supply I can understand the difference being Bush never said we're going to the Middle East for oil he said we're going there for democracy so that that's what I thought was like the very candid moment there sir yeah
but what always happens is that when America has a vital interest you always cloak it in Liberal rhetoric about rights and freedom and democracy and that kind of thing democracy but what's frequently driving the decision is American interests underneath he's being
explicit about it what he's basically saying is as long as Americans yeah as long as America's got this dependency and we need Taiwan we better defend it and protect it from falling into Chinese hands but once we don't have that interest then we don't
I can understand that position it's wild it was wild I mean refreshing for me and actually was a highlight of the discussion there's a couple other things he touched on so we talked about the other candidates I think he's being not disingenuous but
maybe a little bit unfair to the scientists I think there's no question that DeSantis alone has been singled out by Trump and not just Trump but Trump surrogates to be relentlessly bashed on and this happens on social media it happens in speeches and talks all this
kind of stuff so they are going after the Sanchez and that has an effect for a reason he's number two right and Trump clearly has pegged him as the biggest threat and that's why they're targeting him so that does have an impact the advantage that someone like
Vivek has in a way is that he doesn't have a record as an elected official and so he can just go out there and speak freely on these issues and like I described on the show with him he goes out there and inserts himself in the
conversation when it makes his issue is going viral he jumps in and I think it's very important that he's doing it so quickly because if you're a candidate and you wait till the next day moves on you missed it right so yeah he's timing it perfectly so he hits The
Sweet Spot there's only one way to do it which is not to have surrogates not to have a process like because we're thinking it yeah well it's the same thing with our portfolio companies right they run it through like all these PR people and like a PR agency and it
gets reviewed and by the time by the time it goes through his 10th draft it's too late it doesn't go viral so he's running a social media campaign and it's very effective now I think that DeSantis is running a different kind of campaign DeSantis actually has a record
I think it's a fantastically successful record as being the most successful governor in the country running the most successful state in the country so he's out there with this idea that listen let's make America Florida yes so that's what he's campaigning on and so he is
going out there with kind of a pre-determined agenda and a person speech A playbook and it's different than someone like Vivek who's letting the issues come to him and then he's responding as the issues come up Vivek is living off the land and and
that is all of that is free media for him it's free it's earned media and Trump did the same thing in 2016 right every day he would figure out like what are the issues today and he could go out and speak about them and you know you go all the way back to
Pat Buchanan working for Richard Nixon back in I think this is a 72 election something like that where every morning Buchanan and there's a couple other speechwriters that opened the newspaper and find an issue or two and they would go to Nixon and say Here's your talking
points you know and so they would find an issue that back in those days was going viral and have the candidate speak to it so they were Nimble and I think that's what they were doing and if you want to go viral in the social media
area that's what you have to do you have to lean into the issues where people are talking about that day and and this is the thing is that I think Vivek knows how to do that Trump clearly knows how to do it RFK knows how to do it RFK definitely knows how to do it there's
social media every day they're trusting topic native and that's the difference Freeburg did you have a highlight or a great moment or two from vivec things that made you go huh I really appreciate this person or candidate during the discussion what I appreciated was that
we didn't see him like fall down on any topics and I think that his ability to go through the full discourse with us for however long we went 90 minutes yeah hour 40 says a lot you know RFK junior did the same but again it's a stark juxtaposition
from what I have seen Biden do in terms of interview formats he his edited his interviews are edited they're short and so yeah to be able to have this breadth but also have the data and be able to pull it from the top of its head and not have speaking notes we gave him no
questions ahead of time there's no agenda of course not and I think it's great to see a candidate who can engage in that level of discourse which was important and impressive for me I just hope it's broadly appealing and this by the way I just want to repeat something
I've said many times in the past there are two things I hate about politics besides the relationship to a growing government the first is that people pick Politics as a career and I think that that's ridiculous I think people in a democracy should have a private life and then they
should rotate into being civil servants and go and service that's right and so they were you know had they had their jobs and their businesses and everything and they would rotate in and then they would rotate out of government the fact that people can
be a politician for 30 years is ridiculous and I think it leads to all of the disincentives that have driven to a large government what I appreciate about Vivek and RFK Jr is that they come at this from and even Trump they come at this from
private life and they take their turn in government and rotate out and that's why I I did not get him to answer the question around what would he do besides being president if it didn't work out what's he going to do next the second thing I I don't like about Paul by the
way they're just on that point there's a lot of speculation about that within Republican circles this is something I could we just didn't have time to get into vice president let me just finish it yeah let me just finish and then we'll talk about it so sorry yeah let's
come back to it but the second thing is just money in politics and I hate that you can raise money and get votes just the general concept that you buy ad space and that you get people to change their vote I think is the most I love that yeah but I think it's so [ __ ] up
but what I like about what we just did is we actually had a conversation with the candidate and people can just listen to the conversation that's the Old Town Square that sax talks about that doesn't exist anymore because everything is
chopped up and been sold as media bytes on paid streams whereas what we just did is a free conversation with a guy that anyone can tune in and listen to and learn about him and that's what I found most compelling is we had a real conversation instead of watching a 30
second advice what's the rumor Saxy poop yeah so sorry go ahead sex the knock on the vague is that he's basically a trump surrogate and I mean Trump has said good things about him Trump likes him to be out there clearly I mean Trump has all
but said that so the idea is that Vivek is out there and initially he's doing this less now but early on he was just launching broadside after broadside on DeSantis and so the idea is that he's out there as a trump surrogate attacking the people Trump wants him to attack on
the whole saying good things about Trump and that he'll be rewarded for that somehow a cabinet position or a vice president position people even now saying VP because he's doing so well or maybe he gets an endorsement for a senate run or something like that so if
we had more time I would ask him about this like service would have said no but that's why I asked him specifically how much time have you spent with Trump and when's the last time he talked to him and he was honest about that I've only spent like I had dinner with him before
I was even a candidate so right I'm wondering if there's some clandestine agreement with them through some back Channel for him on his own accord I think well clearly his answer would be no I'm not a surrogate of my own candidate and he probably is I mean so
my guess on it is that you can go out there and act like a surrogate knowing that Trump's going to like it and then you'll be rewarded you don't need to have an explicit deal to understand that that would work out for you in that way can I respond to freeburg's point so you
know Friedberg you said you don't like the money aspect of politics and you don't like the sort of careerist aspect of of politics I think what we're seeing with candidates like Vivek or RFK Jr or Trump is candidates who are bucking
those two Trends I mean clearly these are not lifelong politicians they have maybe had a lifelong interest in politics but they're not like lifelong office holders or candidates for office and then on the money side what they're all showing is something that we all
know from our portfolio companies which is that earn media is so much more valuable than paid media totally paid me a cost of Fortune and it doesn't really work no one really wants to look at advertising they block it out so you spend a lot of money on advertising and
it never really gets you much compared to earned media which is you figure out a way to insert yourself in the news cycle by appealing to people on issues that are being talked about you figure out how to kind of hit your wagon to like you said Jason a trending topic and
that's what all three of these candidates have done and it works so well and I think the sort of the career politicians who are proceeding in this very kind of Playbook way which is we're going to go out we're going to raise the most money from donors then we're going
to buy the most TV time and we're going to be on message I mean we're only going to talk about the things we want to talk about the problem is that doesn't work anymore because earned media is so much more valuable than paid media well look
I hope that's a trend and I hope it flushes the money out of the system and that candidates win based on the Merit of the conversation that they have in earned media instead of buying more ad space on paid media and that it changes the game and I hope that the laws change
too and I also hope that the laws change with respect to Career politicians and term limits and all that sort of stuff because this whole career system and money in this thing is what's driving so I understand one of the contributors and
government spending and government accountability and all the nonsense that goes on and I would love to see it change I think the earned media is so valuable now that I think candidates who try to stay on their message on their agenda it's going to cost too much money
it's basically an unsustainable path I would urge all the Republican candidates including DeSantis just to get out there by the way DeSantis is a tremendously smart man I mean he went to where is he Harvard he's not on all in he's a lawyer where is he yeah to be fair I haven't
asked him yet but why yeah what's going on Chris Christie's coming on the last time I'm asking to do something we had technical difficulties remember that it didn't go over too well just for the record uh the mooch who loves the fact that a unit of time
has been named after him from usags oh yeah any 11-day period is known as a mooch so if you have one of the lessons yeah but he uh he literally introduced me to Governor Chris Christie over text so I'm in touch with Chris Christie's coming on the Pod so that's three of the top six
or five in terms of polling I'll ask to see it just to come on we never get Biden because he'll fall asleep I don't think Biden can do 45 minutes without him yeah that might show up let's see if we can get him I think he may you know he may get binded I don't know let's
let's not I can't ask yeah I can ask I mean let's try and get Biden I mean it would be great about half an hour with him and he can have a real conversation with us I'd be thrilled be really interesting it was an interview that was pretty much
localized to talking about foreign policy in Ukraine he and he also did that other woman on MSNBC they're all canned he gets the questions ahead of time yeah and then they edit it for him so he gets post-production yeah which you know then you could shape the thing
however you want and shame on the media for doing that honestly to the left media you're not helping the Democracy here in the United States by you know putting the fix in for Biden if he can't do the interview if he can't handle an hour at least then can he be the
president I mean let's be honest here well they'll get the ratings just in terms of debrief was there anything we want to say about the the whole banking crisis I appreciate that he tried to find common ground with us yeah I agree I nearly made a joke that
you were now going to do a fundraiser for him after that no I mean listen he said it himself I'm going to respond to everything one out of a hundred times I may change my position based on new information which by the way we do here every week every
week we all listen to each other we have vibrant debate and sometimes we change our positions you know like I think that's what any reasonable person does go ahead yeah I mean look I don't think we were that far apart from him on this whole banking crisis I mean I think we
all agree that there should be no bailout for the shareholders and the bondholders of these banks that are poorly managed and go under and I think that Vivek did endorse a proposal which we I think Jason you and I had both come up with which was to
have a higher level of FDIC Insurance business banking I think it was like 10 million or something like that and you just include that in the cost of the insurance yeah exactly it's just paid by the premiums of these banks for banking
insurance and viveka at this point about you know if Roku is stupid enough to keep 500 million in a checking account and the bank goes under maybe they should lose it it's like okay my goal is not to save Roku if they're stupid enough to manage their money to save the
local school really the only difference is that and I think Friedberg you hit the nail on the head is when you have a bank run underway you have to stop it before the Panic can spread contagion is real the contagion was absolutely real I
don't think people outside Silicon Valley could understand that because they weren't in those Friday morning emergency phone calls and board meetings that were happening so we know it was it had already moved so far beyond svb at that point we had Founders moving their
money out of First Republic and all these other Banks Thursday and Friday on Thursday and Friday and they wanted to go to the top four Banks and if it wasn't a sip it wasn't good enough if it wasn't called Silicon Valley Bank this would have been a totally different
thing and if it hadn't been us raising the alarm let's be self-aware people hate Silicon Valley Tech there's this contingent of people wait Silicon Valley Tech and rich people and they were just gleeful you know there's 20 percent of the sort of far left communist
socialists you know idiots who mids Elizabeth Warren's whoever's who are just like oh great silicon Valley's getting kicked in the nuts they were thrilled to see it right that was that was short and Freud all right we got a wrap hey uh pull up these pictures real
quick this is your five second science Corner look these are photos taken on Mars yesterday how cool is this that's all I had to say yeah those that's exactly the chances of taking a photo on Mars are three billion 721 tours if you can see this looks just like this those
are from Uranus yeah those are from Mars very similar to the photos I took of my ages last night I took my iPhone 14 and I squatted down and took pictures of these tingle Bells into a mirror and I said look at what's going on down there
huh these these Boulders are very similar to the dingleberries if you look at those two both there's similar to my huge balls you guys can't put this out I love you guys don't you think that's cool that there's these cameras on Mars yes it's incredible and how cool are
those photos I feel like we should have had two episodes this week since there were so many good topics for us to talk about but let's talk about any of the the topics but yeah that was good uh good meeting love you guys love you guys uh Hey if you guys are uh around you
know anyone who wants to get some wine and some pasta I've got some wine later maybe next week or something who knows maybe we'll all get together in person have a glass of wine I see you soon I love you guys ciao for the architect himself the
dictator the Sultan of science obviously after today's performance I am still the world's greatest moderator this has been another episode of the all-in podcasts were still together the band is still together producing hot tracks we'll see you next week coming at
you two for Tuesday Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World including Vivek next time Chris Christie uh coming at you 100 Z morning Zoo we'll see you tomorrow [Music] besties [Music] it's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release [Music] oh [Music]