Hey, everybody, welcome to another all in podcast.

This is an all bestie, no guestie episode of all in.

The last time you heard from the besties, it was election night

and it was a shit show, a fucking crazy shit show.

Let’s be honest.

I mean, we if we go back and look at that historical document,

we had moments where we thought Trump was going to absolutely crush.

Then we had moments of confusion.

And now here we are.

And I think we have to give a couple of bestie kudos to first off Chamath

pointing out Pennsylvania was going to be big.

And then second, when we went through the possible scenarios of who

what what could possibly happen, a big giant blue wave,

Trump winning it all, and then maybe something in the middle

option three came through.

And that was Saksipu nailed it.

I think that was your assumption, Sax.

The soft landing, the soft landing. Yeah.

So why don’t we just for the people who didn’t tune in live?

Sorry, Jason, can I ask a question?

Saksipu, Saksipu, was that your

like projection or was it from that

from that guy who lives in his dad’s basement, his mom’s basement?

My my researcher.

Well, Newman, Newman works for me.

Newman, Newman.

Yeah. Newman, Newman and I worked together on on those takes.

But yeah, the take that we thought was was possible, but probably unlikely,

but could represent a really good scenario was the soft landing

where you get a split decision.

And I think that’s what the American people voted for.

You know, you had the Democratic frame on the election

was that we needed a return to normalcy and decency.

The Republican frame was that the radical left cannot be trusted with power.

And voters basically said they were both right.

They sort of surgically removed Donald Trump while thwarting

the radical left’s dream of total control in Washington.

And what the electorate seems to be saying is they want the parties

now to work together instead of voting for extreme ideology.

But TBD, Sax, I mean, Georgia is still up for grabs.

They’re going to go after it hard, right?

I mean, they filed in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, so I think there’s a series of court challenges we can talk about.

I think that they’re unlikely to prevail.

Very, very unlikely.

I think Joe Biden will be the next president.

We can kind of compare this to, you know, Bush v.

Gore from 2000.

And if you you want to compare Trump’s case to Gore’s case,

it’s weaker in every respect.

I mean, first of all, with Bush v.

Gore, Gore only had to overturn one state, which was Florida,

whereas Trump has to now contest and overturn three or four states

simultaneously. Second, you know, Gore was within a few hundred votes of Bush.

It was extremely close.

Trump is no closer than about 12000 votes in Georgia.

That’s the closest one.

Third, you know, Gore

or Bush never trailed Gore in any in any recount.

And and Trump has that problem that he’s never

and he’s very far behind Gore as well.

So you look at those three things and you’d say, you know, Gore couldn’t overcome it.

And he had a closer situation than this.

And of course, I’d say finally, you know, W had the velvet

hammer, James Baker, working for him, whereas Trump frankly has Rudy Giuliani,

who’s throwing press conferences in the parking lot of forces and landscaping

between a dildo shop and a crematorium.

And I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

I think somebody was tweeting, you know, it’s this is perfect

because, you know, they were saying they wanted Rudy to fuck off and die.

So it was so appropriate

that this press conference was held between a dildo shop and a crematorium.

So, you know, it’s not exactly the A team

that Trump’s got playing for him here in the courts.

But I mean, David Bossie, by the way, David Bossie, who is in charge of the whole

thing, David Bossie is not even a lawyer.

And then he gets covid.

So he’s on the sidelines.

I mean, just there’s so many angles we can take here,

including the fact that am I correct that?

Trump’s campaign adviser got covid

like the day after or no, no, no.

Mark Meadows, Chief of Staff, Chief of Staff got it.

But David Bossie, who’s in charge of this whole recount process, got covid as well.

OK, so I want to just shift us now to what could have so many things

went right for the Democrats.

But there was also something very clear here that happened, which is the

what I call the HSP, the Hysterical Socialist Party of America,

I think was dealt a death blow.

If you look, this was very close.

And so, you know, even if we want to talk about the Electoral College,

et cetera, these are still very low numbers.

I believe if the Pfizer news comes out last week,

Trump wins or if any combination

of AOC Biden, AOC, Bernie or Warren

were in any way involved in this election process

and weren’t pushed to the side, the squad was squashed

because we knew that if they got any kind of play.

Trump sails into victory.

So when we look at what happens going forward

and I’ll let any one of the three of you take this,

what does this say about the Hysterical Socialist Party,

the HSP, the squad, the Bernie bros?

What does this say about them?

Well, you have a you have a look, you have a you have a loud group

of people on both sides.

And the reality is that both extremes of both parties

actually after this election have very little to stand on that’s unique,

because if you think about what the plurality of Americans want

is actually just a common, decent, centrist, do no harm alternative.

And they’re going to pick that more times

than they’re not going to pick it.

It’s only when things get extreme, like in 2016,

in order to send a message, will they do it?

And until it’s resolved, they tried to do it again now.

So we should actually talk about that.

I don’t think that this was, you know, a runaway.

It was way too close on too many dimensions that actually matter

for the future prosperity of America.

But that being said, what does it mean for the future?

I think the future is like a Pete Buttigieg must be high fiving,

you know, the people in his camp right now, because a common,

decent, thoughtful, centrist platform will win.

For example, like let’s just say you believe in gay rights.

Guess what?

You don’t need to be at the fringes to believe in that.

That’s mainstream.

You believe in like a reasonable form of health care.

That’s mainstream.

If you believe in climate change, it’s mainstream.

You start to go and tick off the things that the extremes

would want to believe.

There’s very little room for them to stand on.

So one party is going to be basically about like a federalized

nanny state, and the other party will be a bunch of conspiracy

theorist crazies.

And I think it’s going to force more and more people to the middle.

I think that’s the future.

To me, that’s that’s a much safer place to be than I think

where we could have been if, you know, Trump had won or if

the extreme left had basically been been validated with

a candidate that won.

Right.

And I would add to that, that the proof of that, the proof

of the electorate’s desire to attack towards the center as

you look at the down ballot election.

So, you know, in the Senate, the Republicans are still holding

on to a majority pending the Florida runoff, but the Democrats

failed to take out Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, Steve Daines.

These were three incumbent Republicans who are way behind

in the polls heading into election day.

They didn’t come close to taking out Lindsey Graham or Mitch

McConnell, despite spending a million dollars.

Get out of this one alive.

Explain that.

Susan Collins.

No, Lady G.

Lindsey Graham.

Oh, I see.

You know, Lindsey Graham, they said that it was neck and

neck, and he actually ended up winning that state by like

14 points.

It wasn’t close.

The polls were wildly off.

And you saw that across the board in the House to Democrats

expected a gain of 10 to 15 seats.

Instead, they’ve lost about 10 seats.

They failed to defeat a single GOP incumbent.

The GOP House members ran about two or three points ahead

of President Trump, and then the Democrats were completely

shut out in Texas, which was supposed to be going purple.

There were eight open GOP seats.

Democrats won none of them.

So anyway, I’m providing some support to the idea that this

was a split decision election.

The voters voted to remove both of the or voted against

the extremes of both parties.

So, Friedberg, when you look at this, you see, I think,

an absolute just people don’t want to deal with Trump anymore.

How much of this do you think is Trump derangement system

syndrome and what got Trump into office, eventually taking

him out, which is the guy just takes up too much oxygen

in the room.

And that’s coming from me.

And the guy is just incredibly annoying to have to deal

with day to day.

That’s also coming from you.

And that’s also coming from me.

Friedberg, what do you think?

I think we’ve been at a rave for four years, and everyone’s

coming down from the Mali.

And you’re not going to go to a Marilyn Manson concert right

after being at a rave.

You want to go sit in the parking lot, and you just want

to chill out a little bit.

And we all just want to have a beer and relax.

You know, like, I mean, I think I need some five HTP and

a banana.

You want to go sit in the 7-Eleven parking lot at four in

the morning, and you want to, like, go get a fucking sweet

cappuccino and smoke a cigarette and relax.

Like, it’s been too much.

And I think it’s like, everyone’s just kind of ready to chill

out a bit.

And so this whole fucking swinging back to the concert across

the road sounds just as bad as what we’ve just been through.

So let’s just, you know, let’s just live our lives a little

bit. And we’ll come back in four years and figure out how

to fuck things up again.

I think that’s kind of the psyche.

That’s right.

I think voters want a presidency they can forget about.

You know, I think Trump’s sort of Achilles heel as he demanded

too much of the voters constant time and attention.

There was, like, this psychic cost to it.

It obviously antagonized the other side and drove turnout

for the Democrats.

But it seems like voters are saying, look, just leave us

alone. We want to just forget about what’s happening in

Washington for four years.

And now they can, because pending the Georgia runoff, it

looks like Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden will have to be in

a power sharing arrangement, and nothing gets done unless

the two of them agree.

And by the way, just on that, there was a great tweet by

Paul Graham.

He said the day after the election, something to the effect

of it feels like some background process in my computer

had was just killed that was consuming 5% of my CPU.

And it’s and it’s so it’s so true.

Mac operating system spinning wheel of death.

But it’s David is so right.

It’s like, you know, it’s been this omnipresent thing in all

of our lives over the last four years.

And it’s just exhausting.

And, you know, there wasn’t that much value that came from

paying so much attention and worrying so much.

And so it’s just a great opportunity to come off the

sugar high and reset ourselves and take a nap.

I think that’s a very astute point, Chamath, in that what

was gained from this Trump derangement from this Trump

sucking all of the attention and constantly tweeting.

And, you know, I think the big win here, Freeberg is, if you

look, the proof is in the pudding.

Trump, we find out on Saturday morning that Trump is, you

know, has lost and Biden has won.

And 48 hours later, we find out Pfizer has 90% efficacy

on their vaccine.

Obviously, these two things are highly correlated.

Biden has already delivered the vaccine in just 48 hours.

And then today we got the rapid testing has been approved

by the FDA.

I mean, look at this.

But if at this rate, Biden is going to cure global warming

by the end of the year.

Look, first off, I think it’s a little it is pretty

paradoxical that the vaccine news came 48 hours.

Yeah, and I don’t think it’s paradoxical.

I mean, that was crazy.

I mean, there’s supposed to be an October surprise, not a

November surprise.

I think if Trump has any legitimate argument about being

done dirty in this election, it is over this vaccine news,

because, you know, the Chinese announced it three hours after

Biden’s declared president.

Pfizer announces it a day after Biden’s declared president.

I mean, when Trump went around the was campaigning, saying

a vaccine was mere weeks away, everyone thought that was

bullshit.

But as it turns out, he was telling the truth.

And if those guys had announced it, Jason, like you’re saying

two weeks before the election, it might have changed this

thing.

But you guys might have 100% and this is not something he can

go to the courts.

It’s not like he can go to the courts and get the election

recounted overturned because of this.

So it’s not something that’s legally actionable.

But I do think that on this news alone, Trump in four years

will be able to claim on some level that this was a stolen

election.

But couldn’t the same be said about Hillary’s email server,

right?

So like 100% news came out like, oh, and it was like timed

around the election.

And I do think that there was a concerted effort to not let

you know, the progress with COVID get in the way of the

election in any way, you know, biased it either way.

And I think it’s like pretty reasonable and fair to say,

like, let’s just not make this part of the news cycle leading

into the election.

And this was expected, like, if you guys go back a couple of

podcasts, like you had a prediction on when we would have

a vaccine, I think I predicted end of September, because of

the way that they set up the production cycle in parallel

with the testing cycle, and the way that they were fast

tracking a lot of the testing in a way that wasn’t normal

for this sort of development.

And it was it was going to happen this fall.

If I’m an executive at one of these companies, I don’t want

my vaccine to become a politicized event, right?

Like, I just want to be like, I think it’s it’s the reasonable

thing to say, like, let’s just put it on hold.

Let’s deal with it all after the election.

We’re still moving forward.

We’re not holding anything up in terms of production and getting

this thing across the finish line.

It’s just the announcement of where we are.

So why make that part of the new cycle, you know, and I think

like people learned their lesson with Hillary’s server last

time.

It’s like this one news, you know, bombshell drops in the

news cycle spins up and she loses the election.

Everyone blames her losing the election for that coming out.

No one wants to be culpable for that.

Right.

I’m a Pfizer exec.

I’m just trying to make fucking medicine.

Like, I don’t want to be on the hook for said another way.

Someone winning or losing an election said another way.

Chamath.

Nobody wants to go to a Warriors finals game versus the Lakers

and have the refs called, you know, decide the game in the

final couple of minutes.

So do you think Chamath this is if you were running Pfizer, if

you were on the board of Pfizer and you have this information

and you know, it can come out in this two week window at any

time, what decision would you make Chamath?

Well, just imagine that the vaccine was 90% ineffective,

and it was announced two weeks before the election.

You’d have an entire cohort of people saying this was meant to

basically sabotage the election and the other direction.

So the point is, it’s a no win situation.

The only answer is to wait until after the election, because

that’s the only way that you can actually say, you know, we

were not we were being impartial.

So I’m sympathetic to this idea that all the news had to wait

two or three days, or maybe it was two or three weeks.

Now, knowing in advance what the answer was, obviously, you

can read into that.

But I think even if it was 90% ineffective, it should have

waited till after the election as well.

I don’t get the sense that you do agree with that.

Well, let’s put it this way.

I mean, we know from our time working in large companies that

it takes them weeks to even approve a press release.

And so Pfizer had this news weeks ago.

Now, I understand their reason for not wanting to appear to be

influencing the outcome of the election.

So that’s why they held on to it.

I think everybody saw the way that Facebook was scapegoated

four years ago for the election, and no one wants to no

corporation wants to put themselves in that position of

being accused of affecting the election outcome one way or

another. I’m sure that’s why they did it as opposed to a

conspiracy against Trump.

But this news was available.

I think we will find out weeks ago.

And so I guess you’d have to blame or there’d be some

culpability on the part of Trump’s election team or his

head of the FDA or what have you.

They must have known some of this information, and you would

think they would have done a better job getting it out there.

No, he did say it every rally.

It’s just around the corner.

It’s just around the corner.

We’re around in the corner, and we all thought it was bullshit.

You thought it was bullshit.

We thought it was bullshit, right?

And you know why we thought it was bullshit?

Well, because Trump Trump does have a tendency towards

hyperbole, hyperbole on Trump’s most honest day.

He’s hyperbolic.

On Trump’s average day, he is lying incessantly.

So if anything, if he was right, and he was right that we were

turning the corner and the vaccine was coming, and it was

going to be beautiful, beautiful, perfect vaccine, and everybody

was going to get it.

He’s paying the price for being a liar for four years.

Right.

But it’s the kind of thing.

Boy who cried wolf.

Well, and so does the media, by the way, but but yeah, look,

in order for a piece of news this big to be believed before

the election, it can’t come from a candidate.

And it’s it’s it’s pretty amazing that none of this news

got out there through some other source, you would think that

some of the people on the health care task force that Trump

appointed might have been, you know, surfacing this or paying

attention to it.

Maybe Pfizer did a really good job of hiding it.

I don’t know.

But it is pretty amazing that didn’t come out sooner.

Well, the other crazy thing is like, you know, even the Pfizer

team didn’t exactly know what was going on.

The chief, the head of vaccine research, she said, we’re not

part of the federal government’s, you know, warp speed

program.

And then two days later, Pfizer was like, actually, we are part

of the warp speed program.

It’s just that, you know, we’re a supplier.

The whole point is that I’m not sure that Pfizer actually

knew two weeks in advance, David, I think that they were

probably trickling stuff together, and they probably had

a sense of it at the end of the last week.

I’m surprised it didn’t leak.

To be quite honest, that’s the more shocking thing, which

means that it was probably something that very, very, very

few people knew about.

Well, the CEO, the CEO put out a statement saying that he would

be first in line to take the new vaccine, which I thought was,

you know, a great statement, because a lot of people were

questioning whether you know how real it was, or how rushed

it was.

But in order for him to do that, and in order just to get like a

press release announced, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing

that comes together in the, you know, one or two day period

between the announcement of Joe Biden winning the election and

their and their announcement.

So, you know, I just think they had to know weeks ago.

I just want to say to my Greek brother, Alberto Borlas, the CEO

of Pfizer, a great Greek, who has led to the saving of the

world.

Oopah.

Saganaki is on me.

If you if you if you take 90% efficacy, and you assume at most

in the United States, 40% of people will take the actual

vaccination, you’ll have 36% of the population covered, which is

still not enough to get the are not less than one.

Is that correct?

Freeberg?

What do you know?

I don’t know.

I’m not an epidemiologist.

I’d have to.

What I mean, does it sound directionally correct to you

that people in the States are going to take it?

I think I think you don’t take it.

Isn’t this like,

everyone who’s high risk will take it?

Yeah.

And as of about two months ago, you know, it was estimated that

30% of people on the East Coast had already developed immunity

due to the seroprevalence studies that showed antibodies.

On the West Coast, it was much lower, closer to 3%.

You can estimate based on the growth in cases since then, and

assuming we’re kind of missing a bunch, we’re probably on a

national basis, we’re at 10% back then, on a national basis,

you’re probably up to 20% right now of Americans have already

been effectively immunized by getting the virus.

So, you know, if that’s true, then you’re at 55%.

And you’re getting pretty close to a, you know, an ability to

kind of inhibit this thing from, from spreading rapidly again.

So how do we each feel?

I’ll just go around the horn.

How do we each feel about the COVID-19 endgame?

When will we see all schools open, all NBA arenas open with

no distancing, give us a quarter in 2021, when in America,

enough vaccines will have been delivered and distributed and

rapid testing, that life goes back to, let’s call it 85% of

normal.

Yeah, I don’t think you ever get there.

I mean, it’s like, we talked about this a couple episodes

ago, but it’s after 911, you know, the TSA emerged, and

American travel never went back to the way it was before.

And I think there’ll be a lot about the way we live that’s

going to be, you know, kind of permanently scarred and

permanently changed here for a while, whether it is taking

people’s temperatures at football games, wearing masks,

and, you know, farmers markets, who knows, it’s going to be all

these weird rules are going to pop up, they’re going to last

for years, regardless of how much immunization takes place,

regardless of how cheap and available testing is, we’re

going to have this scar for a long time, in terms of how we

live as a society.

I don’t think we should kid ourselves that we’re going to

go back to quote, unquote, normal.

And I do think kids are going to get tested and schools are

going to be like, this friggin, you know, almost like TSAs now,

you know, kids are going to go into school and get tested

regularly, and they’re going to do all sorts of stuff that we

would have never dreamed imaginable in a free country a

year ago.

And I think that’s permanent.

I think, you know, we’re going to, you’re already seeing

people going nuts at bars and restaurants, and people that

have had it are out there partying and living their life

again. So there’s certainly don’t you think if you get the

vaccine, you’re just going to be like YOLO? I’ve had enough of

this? Yeah, but I don’t think that that systems are going to

change back to normal. I think systems have changed to the

point that we’ve now got a way of living that we think is

safer that we think is we are now kind of inhibited because of

the system.

You agree? Yeah, there’ll be a lot fewer. It’s what Dave

Chappelle said on Saturday, there’ll be a lot fewer mass

shootings. The pandemic has done a great job of keeping the

whites at home.

We watched it. All you besties watched it together. All you

all you guys got on your mass shooting rampages. You know, the

whites are at home. They’re frustrated, but they’re at home.

Thank God. So I think there’ll be some advantages.

Well, I mean, but let’s talk about it. Chamath does does 2021

mean kids go back to school? I think 2021 September, no

problem. No, I think free burgers, right? I think that the

best we’ll get back to is sort of this 80% state and I don’t

think it happens until probably 2022. And maybe 2023. But

probably 2022. Because you have to remember, like, we have to

ramp up now billions of vaccine production. Like it’s a this is

a non trivial path from here to quote unquote, mass market. And

that takes a long time. I think we have to figure out how we’re

going to administer it. By the way, it’s and the way that the

Pfizer vaccine works, and maybe these other folks is you get the

shot. And then, you know, three months, three weeks later, I

think you get a booster. So you have to take two cycles of this

thing. And it’s not gonna last forever. And it’s not gonna

last forever. So this is a free burgers, right? It’s the

beginning of a very different way of living. I think I think

that the good part about it is that, you know, we’ve made a lot

of changes that makes our lives a lot more efficient. The bad

part about it is we’re even more detached from our neighbors.

And, you know, we’re probably even more likely to be a little

bit more separated if we don’t make an effort to be together.

Saks, do you buy this? Because I get the sense that you might be

more optimistic than free bird. Yeah.

I guess I guess I am. I think COVID is going to be a distant

memory by next summer. I think we’ll have one to two quarters

of transition. But I think that once the vaccines widely

available, plus the treatment and the testings for the people

who slip through the cracks. Yeah, I tend to think things are

going to snap back very fast. And COVID will just be this bad

memory, a very distant, bad memory. And I think, in fact, I

think things may bounce back the other way. Everyone having been

cooped up and afraid of getting some life threatening illness

are going to come out of this really wanting to party. I think

the whole world’s going to be like Tel Aviv for, you know, a

few months or something. And, yeah, I mean, I really do think

it’s going to bounce back, I think, to the point politically,

where a few years from now, people could ask, wait, what,

why? Why was it again, that Trump lost, you know, you know,

this COVID thing will be, it will be so in the rearview

mirror that will wonder why we were so afraid of it.

I think this is, I’m going to go with David’s saxes position

here, because of the simple fact that we had 130,000 confirmed

cases, you know, up until this election period, the last week

or so, and deaths, still, not spiking, it’s a little just a

major minor uptick, you know, we had a day with like, I think,

maybe 1500, but still staying in that, you know, 1000 range,

even with cases spiking. And I think that we were so

incompetent with test and trace in this country, that we didn’t

see exactly what happens in an authoritarian country, or a

country that is lucky enough to be an island and has easy

borders, which we almost do. I mean, we basically have two

borders, we’re like, two thirds of two, you know, 50% island.

But Hawaii, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, all quarantine

people on the way in, they tested them, and they had

extremely, extremely low death counts, and extremely low case

counts, with the vaccine, being half as effective as you know,

they claim, and rapid testing, which some of us have no, some

of us know people who have experienced rapid testing at

homes. That combination, I believe, is going to make this

go so low. And the people who are high risk are still going to

be scared staying home. I think, like David, come the summer of

next summer, people are going to be at a rave with freebirds,

you know, custom made Molly or whatever he’s making during this

downtime, going absolutely bonkers. I think Burning Man

next year, becomes like the, the greatest Burning Man ever,

there’ll be it’ll be the burn of all burns. Why was let’s shift

a bit over to the economy. What a rip? Did we see when that

Pfizer, I mean, the election and Pfizer this week, led to a huge

rip. Obviously, there’s a little bit of cyclical movement,

the tech stocks were the big winners. Now people are starting

to buy Disney back up to 140. I guess people assume the parks

will reopen. What’s our outlook for the stock market in David

saxes, you know, scenario three, you know, I don’t say gridlock

government, but forced to compromise government, what do

we think the markets look like the next two years? I think you

have to go ahead.

I was gonna say gridlock is great for the markets. But both

when Bill Clinton was president with a Republican House, and

when Obama was president, and there was a Republican House,

and I guess, Senate for a period of time, gridlock is great for

the markets, especially given the amount of stimulus that’s

taken place. I mean, you had the Trump tax cuts, especially

those corporate tax cuts, really set the market on fire. And

then you’ve got this pumping by the Fed and the Treasury, all

the stimulus money for COVID. I mean, those conditions, and then

you know, why is gridlock good? We didn’t explain that here.

Well, because we’re playing to somebody who doesn’t understand

why gridlock is good. Why gridlock is good? Well, because

it creates predictability for business. And it means that

Washington’s not going to get in the way and do something to

screw up the good times. I mean, we have fundamentally, you know,

great underlying conditions for economic growth, which is we

have now pretty low taxes. And we had this, for better or worse,

we had this tremendous amount of stimulus, fiscal stimulus.

What we know historically is over the past 100 years, right

since the 20s, independent of Republican administrations or

democratic administrations, you know, more progressive, less

progressive, more conservative, less conservative, during world

wars, not during world wars. The markets go up 8% a year. So

the do no harm solution is that things inflate naturally by 8%,

especially if those things are public stocks. So you know, the

markets love the fact that there’s nothing that could

theoretically get in the way of that natural 8%. And then when

you layer on top of it, as David said, all this free money,

that’s just like, rocket fuel, jet fuel. But you know, but you

saw, though, that there was a rotation, right, there was a

rotation out of these high growth software names,

particularly the work from home bid kind of got crushed, you

know, I mean, I think zoom was off 25% over two days or some

crazy thing like that. Meanwhile, sort of all of these

theme park stocks and cruise lines and airlines all of a

sudden ripped. So I mean, look, the reality is the scary thing

about all of this is if any of that stuff actually comes to

pass, we’re going to see inflation. And the reason is

because if you start going out and spending a bunch of money on

tickets and vacations and flights and this and that and

pumping money into the economy and taking all that stimulus

money, and putting it back to work, prices will go up. And by

the way, that’s not such a bad thing for the economy, which

which needs a little bit of it. So all of this is, I think,

generally very, very good news.

Friedberg, do you have a position on what you think will

happen in the coming? Let’s look, I would think the midterm

is what people care most about. So that would be, let’s call it

two to six quarters.

There’s one potential speed bump still, which is what I

mentioned at the beginning, which is Georgia. The Democrats

could still win both runoffs in Georgia for Senate. And they

could, because Kamala Harris would then have the breaking

vote, it would be a 50, Republican 50, Democrat Senate,

and the Vice President would, would break any ties.

The question is, if you have that same turnout, where do the

libertarians break? Because I think the libertarians were

almost 2% of the vote?

Well, I think, yeah, what’s interesting is, um, the I don’t

know if you guys have, but I’ve gotten emails from a lot of

people asking me to donate money for this runoff campaign in

Georgia. I think we’re

God, I got so many, so many.

I think we’re gonna see literally the biggest, the

biggest funding for a Senate runoff race in history by far,

don’t you think sacks like probably north of $100 million

being spent, maybe 100 to $200 million being spent on

advertisements in Georgia to try and get people to go vote one

way or the other. The Democrats think they have a real run at

this, they think it’s make or break two years to kind of get

their, you know, history changing policies in effect,

Republicans think it’s saved the nation time. So everyone’s

rushing to Georgia right now. So the markets are going to have

a very close eye on what’s going on over there. I think I’m, you

know, I’m very nervous about it. If the Democrats look like

they’re getting much more money into the state, and they’re

actually going to, you know, get people to the polls and to the

voting booths and actually get into this runoff on January 5,

and actually flip, get both of those seats to be to be blue,

it’s going to be a very different market environment. I

mean, you could see the market drop by 30 40% in the next six

months, we have a situation where it’s 4848. There are two

seats up for grabs, those two seats are in a runoff. And I

want to get into the let me correct that Jason. It’s 4850.

Yes, the Republicans have a 50 to 48 advantage with two open

seats in the runoff. Actually, sorry, what one seat is open the

other. It has an incumbent Purdue who’s facing awesome.

Purdue one in the last election, he got like 49.9% 50. If you get

50%, you get to this runoff in January, Georgia, the only place

that has this where you have to get to 50 in order to win. It’s

crazy. It’s crazy. So weird. Is this just they want the extra

attention? Or who came up with this idea? This seems just like

every state’s got its own history. It’s crazy. It is one

of the unique things about living in the United States of

America, as opposed to America. Let’s talk about exit polls.

Well, this is what’s incredible here. Let me tee this up for

you. So in in 2020, Biden got 80% of the black vote, Trump got

six, this is aggregate. So we can break this down by man and

age group. And you can, it looks even, even more interesting.

Latinos, Biden got 67. Trump got 22% of the Latino vote between

the ages of 18 to 34. So boomers, or sorry, pardon me,

Gen Z, and millennials. Again, I would have thought 100% Biden,

it was on it was 62%. Biden 23% went for Trump, one in four,

amongst women. And again, you know, we thought, okay, you know,

suburban women are breaking Biden 8020. It turned out Biden

got 58% of women, Trump got 35% of all the female vote and the

coup de gras whites with the degree. Again, you would have

thought this would have been 8020 9010 and said it was 53%

Biden 38% Trump.

So this really was something that if we look at this, if we

look back on this, the pollsters were completely wrong in

thinking that once again, that these groups of people are

monolithic. And then I think the most the most mind boggling

to me, and I had a candid discussion about this was the

term Latin x is a catch all term for people who are of Latino,

Spanish speaking descent. And what somebody told me who is in

this Latin x group is that it’s the most insulting thing they’ve

ever been told. It’s almost as a term, like the term saying

Oriental to describe people from Asia, you’re just grouping us

all into one thing, people from Cuba, Venezuela, and Mexico all

think the same. This is the absolute, you know, endgame of

identity politics, which is, we have to put you in a corner, we

own you, we own your opinion, and you belong to our party,

whichever party it is, oh, you don’t have a degree. You’re a

GOP hillbilly. Oh, you, you’re Latin x. Okay, well, then we own

you. You’re a democrat, David, what I know, and I know that

this is an area where, you know, you have a lot of expertise,

what are your thoughts?

Well, as it turns out, promoting socialism to people who fled

Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to escape it turns out not to be a

great election strategy. And, and so yeah, it’s this, this

idea that Latin x is is one block, it’s not it consists of a

bunch of different, of immigrants from a bunch of

different nations. And the ones who fled socialism are not eager

to reenact it in the United States. The Republicans flipped

to house seats in South Florida, where there’s a lot of Cuban

Americans. And even in the, the heavily Mexican American

counties in along the Rio Grande in Texas, Trump improved.

Let’s see, it looks like he improved 59 and 30% 39%,

respectively over his 2016 showing. So this is not just

some fluke of the exit polls. It seems like Trump really made

progress in a lot of these groups that seem to defy their,

you know, what, what the promoters of identity politics,

the way that they want them to vote. Gay Americans were another

one. I think Trump improved his share of the gay vote from 14%

in 2016 to 28% this year. So I mean, really, it’s, it’s pretty

amazing. People are not voting the way that they’re supposed to

vote. Trump also improved from 12 to 18% with black men, and

four to 8% of black women. I mean, those are still pretty

low numbers, but there was improvement there. And I think

part of the reason is that not all of the African American

community is on board with defunding the police.

Well, I also think what it means is identity politics is a

stupid strategy, forget whether you’re offended by it or not.

At this point, what’s clear is it’s a stupid fucking strategy.

It doesn’t work. It’s a path to losing. Because the more and

more you do it, the more and more you’re going to

disenfranchise individuals who want to be judged sort of sound

mind and body. Right? I mean, if he took 1000 Sri Lankans and

put them in a room and said, Jamal, I’m going to judge you as

a Sri Lankan vote, I would tell you to go fuck yourself.

I would be deeply offended by that.

And this is where I think the radical left is going to have to

retool because their theory of how they take power in America

was always that demographics is destiny, that, you know, as the

country simply becomes more diverse, we’re gonna, they’re

automatically going to vote for us. And there’s a lot of data

in this election to show that that’s not what’s going to

happen. You actually have to run on issues that people care

about. Let’s think about this in the context of internet

advertising, right? The world prior to internet advertising,

you had, you know, channels, and you would have an audience

that was estimated to be made up of some demographic set on that

channel, and you would buy an ad spot on that channel. And

that’s who you would reach. And so you would create a message

for that. Now, today, we can create personalized ads and

personalized messages. And internet advertisers are much

more thoughtful about targeting, targeting based on

psychographic profiling, behavioral targeting. And I

think that’s where politics has to head in the United States is

kind of keeping up with this personalization of both

products, but also of media and ads. And, and I think that’s

what we’re going to see. If you listen to James Carville, who’s

like, you know, a classic kind of democratic campaign advisor,

and he did a podcast just leading up to the election. And

if you listen to this podcast, these guys are very old school,

it’s like the whites are going to do this, and the blacks are

going to do that. And the college educator are going to do

this, and the others are going to do that. And they don’t

realize that the segmentation that’s possible today, I think,

reveals a lot more about the character of the of the

population. They’re basically I think it’s such an astute point

for a break. They’re basically living in the level of

granularity of network cable. It’s like cable TV. Yeah.

Got to cable TV. And they’re like, okay, bet ESPN, NASCAR,

and get guess what, like, like, the world is much more complex

individuals have found their own personal voice. And they found

their own personal voice through social media, through Instagram

through this ability to kind of define themselves not fit within

a cohort. And I think that’s what maybe they always did feel

that way. And we just had never had the technology to get there.

Yeah, but I think it’s I think it’s also about people like

people have complex points of view, you know, the four of us

sit here and none of neither of us, none of us identify as a

party anymore. We all identify with with certain points that we

think are important to us individually. And then we have a

point of view on those points. And I think that’s the case for

the majority of the population in the United States. I don’t

think people are like, I’m just a fucking Democrat, no matter

what number Republican, no matter what people care more

deeply, in a more complex way. And I think politics needs to

resolve to that. And, and that’s going to require a shift in how

you communicate, how you message how you get feedback,

how you drive blocks for voting, and it’s gonna it’s gonna, you

know, be a really interesting change over the next 15 to 20

years. And it may be what saves the republic.

I think this is an incredible observation. It might be the

observation of the episode. And I just want to point to a tweet

I did because this is this election has really led to me

doing two things. One, I’ve been just thinking deeply about what

do I actually understand about Americans in America. And then I

also, you know, there’s all these red pills around. So I

decided I would crush up a red pill. And I would just, you

know, put a little on my finger, and I try a little red pill for

a second. And everybody told me I’ve been red pilled now on

Twitter, and then I’m a Trump fan. I’m not I hate the guy. I

think it’s horrible. But I did this quick survey here. I said,

if you voted for Trump, I want to understand what percentage of

your vote vote was based on the combination of a cancel culture

be identity politics, see socialism, D coastal elites

telling you how to live, explain other issues that contributed

in a reply, ie spending, immigration, SC, the Supreme

Court, etc. And I just said, 0% 1 to 2526 to 50, and over 50.

And and I got 12,000 votes, go ahead and look at the results.

Not the replies, but go ahead and vote. It doesn’t matter

which one you pick. Over 50% of people who voted for Trump, and

I know this is unscientific. It’s my followers, but it’s

definitely feels directionally correct. The people who felt 26

to over 50% was part of the cancel culture identity culture

was what they were trying to communicate with their vote.

Well, this is this is such an important thing, because I think

this is what we’re fighting over the every single 70% of them,

every single election going forward, like if you if you put

this on top of the 70 odd million people that voted, this

kind of roughly makes sense, which is that, you know, there’s

probably about 20 million people who will completely vote

Democrat, no matter what, and 20 million people who will

completely vote Republican, no matter what, their their just

eyes are closed, their ears are closed, they don’t care. But

when you take those people out, there’s this enormous amount of

people in the middle, who have the ability to vote a split

ticket, you know, and as and as and as sexy poo said, like

they’ll vote a Democrat into the White House, but then down

ballot, they’ll vote a bunch of Republicans, and they’ll just

make sure there’s a balance of power. So they’ve been telling

us about this kind of centricity for years. And so if you want to

win an election, you do two things. Part one is you

understand this dynamic that centrism wins. And part two is

what Friedberg says, which is you understand that we need to

enter sort of the Google CPC world of political advertising,

and really cater not just the ads, but also the message to

individual people and stop the you know, the cat, the gross

high level categorization, which isn’t working anymore.

Yeah, and Jason, let me can I can I add the connection between

cancel culture and the selection. So, you know,

obviously, the pollsters got everything completely wrong.

And again, again, and but the reason is because of cancel

culture. So in exit polling, 45% of Republicans with college

degrees, express fear that their careers could be at risk if

their views became known, compared to only 23% of

Democrats saying that. And so there were these, you know,

quote, unquote, shy Trump voters, who are afraid to tell

pollsters what they really think. Now, it wasn’t the Trump

voters that you think of, when you see the pickup trucks and

the convoys go by or the rallies, sort of those, those

were the voters from 2016, who weren’t counted, it was sort of

the non college blue collar voters, the Michael Moore, you

know, people who turned out for Trump and big numbers and

weren’t properly counted four years ago, the pollsters

actually counted those people correctly this time, the people

they completely underestimated was actually the white college

vote, who swung for a lot of swung from Democrat to

Republican, they voted for Trump because of this issue,

and they were afraid to say anything about it, because

they’re afraid of getting cancelled.

And by the way, they, they are every other person, everybody

listening to this podcast works with. And so deal with that one.

Right, exactly. Anybody who’s not actively virtue signaling

on Twitter for Biden is a Trump voter.

Not sure if that’s exactly correct, but I think it’s wrong.

Roughly, you know, if people aren’t, if people in tech,

aren’t explicitly endorsing Biden on Twitter, they’re

probably closet Trump voters.

It is going to be very interesting for people to go

back to offices, because now we have had a resolution, and

identity politics, cancel culture, and extreme is among

both sides, hysterical and trolling, trolling Republicans

hysterical libs. This has been a loss for both of those

parties. And now the pandemic is ending. We’re going to be

back in offices at some point. I mean, what is office culture

going to be like, are people going to go with the Brian

Armstrong? Let’s just get work done here. Let’s not talk about

politics. It’s just too charged or not. It’s going to be a very

interesting.

It’s every it’s every, it’s every company’s right. You know,

it’s every company’s right to care about what they want to

care about every board, every CEO, every controlling

shareholder, and then it’s every employee’s right to vote with

their feet about whether that’s okay or not. And I think that

look, I mean, the whole Brian Armstrong thing, again, just to

say, one of the most pathetically poorly written, you

know, pieces of English prose I’ve ever fucking seen, you

know, he’s a crypto in fairness, my dog, my dogs, he’s not a

coder, he’s a he’s a CEO, my dog slamming his her paw on the

keyboard would have created a better pros in that, but he was

coming from a reasonable place, he had the right to say what he

said. The problem is that it’s so antithetical to what you’re

allowed to believe, for example, living in San Francisco. But I

think that that’s going to change because you can’t ignore

every other person telling you that there are meaningful

economic issues that matter, and that the prioritization and

the policing of these, you know, sort of high value social

signaling issues are no longer a priority. And I think that

what’s going to happen is there will be room for a party that

focuses on that, and a group of people, but they will be

relegated, just like on the other side, that will happen to

the Republican version of that as well. I just think this whole

thing to this, honestly, for me, it was, it seems like such a

tight election it is, but I really think the huge winner

here is centrism.

I agree with that. And I would say that this election proves

that Brian Armstrong was right. Because the average American is

tired of these highly charged political situations. And the

last thing they want to do is have these conversations at

work, where they can get reported to where they can

offend their co workers and get reported to HR, but it can make

them feel unsafe. They don’t want to have these conversations

at work. Certainly, by the way, only 5% of Coinbase’s employees

took Armstrong up on that offer to leave. So the number of

people who actually want to have a politically charged workplace

is very, very small. They’re just the noisiest. They’re the

squeakiest wheel. I mean, that was a ridiculous deal. I mean,

what did he say six months and we vest as he made it really

attractive to leave if you didn’t agree with this policy

that was that written because I couldn’t figure that out. It was

an attractive deal to leave if you wanted to leave and 95% chose

to sit Yeah, I did I say it was poorly written. I didn’t

understand it because it was so poorly written. So anyway, so

9095% stayed. So my point is just the number of people who

actually like this highly polarized politically charged

situation in which we’re all arguing with our friends over

politics, and children are divorcing their parents because

they’re not woke enough. I mean, people don’t want to live

in that kind of country anymore. And I think this is the thing

that Joe Biden really got right in his campaign. I mean, this is

why I mean, this is the only way that his basement strategy

could actually work and result in him getting elected, elected

is people actually do want this return to normalcy.

You know who the biggest loser is going to be coming out of

this, I think not when you think holistically about the

ecosystem. It’s going to be the media, because they have made

an absolute fortune over the last four or five years picking

aside. What is the point of watching Rachel Maddow, January

20? What is the point of tuning into Fox News, or reading the

hysterical opinion page of the New York Times, all of these

places that were being propped up by either Trump ism, or

anti Trump ism are now going to find themselves where they

started, which is a job without a job. And we just wanted you to

tell us the news. And there was a straight, there was a great

article, the New York Times have an opinion page, rip the

opinion page out of the New York Times, rip it out of the

Wall Street. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I, no, I disagree. I

think the opposite happens, which is that opinion page was

meant to be where people could have an opinion so that

everything else was fact. And the problem is that all the

other pages became opinion as well. Nobody told anybody.

Nobody can tell the difference.

That’s right. They can’t tell the difference. And look at that

expose about how Barry or Barry Weiss was run out of the New

York Times. It basically the activists ran her out. And the

reality is activists have completely captured the New York

Times and CNN and MSNBC. And there is no they always had Fox

and the New York they always had Fox, but but now we have no

objective neutral media. And so who’s going to call the

election? I mean, you complain about the fact that Trump is

sowing dissent, but who is the universally trusted spokesperson

for neutrality the way that Walter Cronkite was, when he

could just declare it, and that’s the way it is. And

people believe that’s the way it is.

Who did the best job Friedberg that night when we were doing

that? Let’s reflect on the live stream. I have two questions

for the live stream. Number one, who was your bestie guestie?

Who did you think added the most as a guestie? And why? And

then number two, or do we’re doing whatever we’re gonna do a

poll, a human value.

Got a lot of feedback on the guesties. There were girly

people. Can I say one more thing? Brad, before before we

go there, there was a there was a really good article in the

New York Times about Maggie Haberman, right? And Maggie,

who’s a fantastic journalist, but built an entire career,

it really amplified came to a head in 2016. And she just

scoop after scoop about Trump. But the most impelling thing

about that whole article was somewhere near the, you know,

third of the way from the bottom. She’s like, look, at the

end of the day, she said something like, I’m dispensable,

and I know it. And it was the most honest thing, because it’s

like, despite her popularity, and despite sort of, you know,

how big of a stick she carries, the reality is sans Trump.

There’s just nothing to do. There’s nothing to leak. There’s

there, there just is not nearly as much to do.

I did just put in the, the chat here, the Washington Post, Fox

News, The Hill, basically, like the full gamut of, of, of media

opinion, have highlighted that the media generally is the

biggest loser of the of the 2020 election. And I think I think

they’ve just lost the the faith of their audience. And, you

know, it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s just access point, I don’t know

how many people were, you’re either looking for objective,

and you’ve lost it, or you’re looking for opinionated, and you

feel like you’re, you know, you’re aligned opinion setting

media partner has betrayed you. You know, the fact that Fox

called it for, for Trump, and Trump’s now saying Fox is a

liar. The fact that the New York Times doesn’t feel like they’re

being objective anymore. And they’re, you know, they’re

running people out of the out of the newsroom. In general, I

just feel like we’ve been disenfranchised. And I think

that’s, that’s something that’s going to be really hard to kind

of recover from and resolve. And for the love of God, can

somebody please get I don’t want you to break any laws. But

however, if we could read the slack channel of the New York

Times reporters leading up to the hundred days of this

election, that would become the greatest best selling book of

all time to watch the New York Times writers bicker with each

other, sacks. I mean, we could do 10 hours on that. No problem.

Let’s talk. Okay, bestie guest. Guesties. What’d you think of

our guests? I thought they were all great. I thought they’re all

great. Are we now becoming a media critics? We’re gonna now?

Yeah. What do we like? Why don’t you go? Why are you that

navel gazing? You go.

Jason wants Jason wants to throw mute under the bus. Go ahead,

Jason. No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, contraire. Does anyone have

a video they want to person on the

mute in his place? And it was not the it was not the point

guard in this case. Somebody pulled a dream on and pulled

help me up the side and said, Stop, you got to pass the ball.

I do think Brad did a great job. He had some great insights. I

think Bill Gurley had some great insights. We I think we’re just

really good job of getting some people to rotate in. I enjoyed

it. Yeah, I thought it was really everyone was great. I’ll

give a shout out to my bestie Newman. He was better. He was

better as a political analyst and all those jokers on CNN and

Fox and MSNBC. The dude with the with the map and he kept

touching the map and yeah, it’s like that guy gets paid to do

that. I can’t believe he gets paid to do that. I’m gonna get

my daughter on CNN. She can do that. When the guy on CNN who

does that john john king john king. God bless this guy.

Because I don’t know how much Adderall he’s on. But I turned

it on at 8am. And he was zooming into Pennsylvania. And he’s

like, Oh, well, of course, in 2018. This I’m 2016. He’s like,

let’s zoom out. Let’s go back to Arizona. Of course, in

Arizona, this place. I was like, is this guy a geography

teacher? I mean, he was amazing. And just the dexterity. He

looked like he was Tom Cruise and minority report with the

finger. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d call him Tom

Cruise. When I look like Tom Cruise, but the minority report

pinch and zoom in and out. It was incredible when when when

does Trump call this thing? That’s a great question. Well,

I think he has to run out these court challenges, which will

take a few weeks, but I predict by Thanksgiving, but it may have

to go up to the Supreme Court. But he’s gonna he’s gonna dot

the dot every i and cross every T that he’s got legally. But

he’s got like we talked about the very beginning, he’s got a

huge uphill challenge. I see the court ultimately ruling

against him or throwing it out. What is the point, David? What

is well, because why shouldn’t he? He’s not gonna win? No, I

don’t I don’t know that he he knows that he he I think it’s

his right to exhaust every legal possibility. And let’s remember

Al Gore didn’t concede for 37 days after the election. So I

certainly think Trump is within his rights over the next few

weeks to run this out. In terms of what the point is, I mean,

other than the obvious attempt to challenge it legally, I do

think this is partly a branding exercise by Trump. It’s a

marketing exercise, I don’t think he’s going to come up with

enough malfeasance to overturn an election. But I do think

he’ll probably produce a lot of smoke. And this is about

protecting his brand as a winner. And, you know, if he

kicks up enough, you know, examples of voter fraud, or

what have you, he’ll always be able to say, you know, years

from now that this was, it was a stolen election. And when you

combine the fact that COVID really did drive this, this

election, you could call that Chinese election interference,

if you want the fact that the vaccine is now here already,

you could call that, you know, some sort of election

interference, he’s going to have enough arguments where if he

wants to run four years from now, I think he probably gets

the Republican nomination again, what what’s the

percentage chance to math that he runs again in four years?

Zero. Freiburg.

Yeah. I think he’s gonna be making so much money. He’s not

gonna know what to do with himself. He’s not going back to

that fucking tortures. He didn’t even think about the

White House, like some terrible Blumhouse production movie set.

He’s like, fuck that. I’m not going back there. It was awful.

Where’s he going? Where’s he going? He’s going to Shanghai?

Is he going to? You can be in New York, he’s gonna buy a law

firm because you’re gonna need a law firm to keep everyone at

bay. And he’s gonna be probably printing 100 million bucks a

month. You know, put it at Dubai, Saudi Arabia. I think I

think I think he’s definitely gonna launch a media business.

And he’ll, he’ll try to become kingmaker.

I think he will become a kingmaker Republican politics,

he will launch a competitor to Fox News, but it will also be

Fox News hybridized with a grassroots movement like the Tea

Party. And every Republican will need to go get his

endorsement or they will be primaried by the Trump Party.

And I would not put it

agree more, could not disagree more. I think he’s a disgrace.

I think he will be. I think what David said is gonna come not

you, David, I’m talking about Trump. I think David’s

incredible. No, I think the stuff that comes out after this

the deluge, the number of SDNY suits, all the grift and the

graft, it’s all coming out. Not only is he not going to be a

kingmaker, he will not be able to get the backing for this

network. It’ll be Breitbart light, and it’ll be shut down

within 24 months, he’ll fail so miserably, that when he walks

into a restaurant, it’ll be like Game of Thrones, shame, shame.

Well, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think so. I think that

it’s very likely that the Donald Trump that runs for

President 2024 is Donald Trump Jr.

Oh, God, no, he’s horrible. whole Republican Party has to

start over. Let’s end on this. Pompeo did a press conference.

Is the State Department currently preparing to engage

with the Biden transition team? And if not, at what point does a

delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to

national security? There will be a smooth transition to a

second Trump administration. All right, we’re ready. The world

is watching what’s taking place here. We’re going to count all

the votes. When the process is complete, there’ll be electors

selected. There’s a process the Constitution lays it out pretty

clearly. The world should have every confidence that the

transition necessary to make sure that the State Department

is functional today, successful today, and successful with the

president who’s in office on January 20. A minute afternoon

will also be successful. Can I just say I don’t disagree with

the position they’re taking. It’s not immoral. It’s customary

and traditional to concede your election. But, you know,

December 15 is the date that Congress ratifies the electoral

votes to determine who the next president is going to be. And

these guys are just taking a very kind of pragmatic legal

line that is not immoral in a way. They believe that they have

some case on what the vote should be. The votes are all very

close, yada yada. I’m not saying that he’s going to win by any

chance. But I don’t think that folks saying like, let the votes

be counted and let Congress do their job of having the states

tell them who their electoral votes are going to is an

inappropriate position to take. I sound like I might sound like

some conservative, you know, Trump head, but I’m not. I think

that these guys, what I’m just saying is that these guys aren’t

that immoral in kind of asking for that for that, you know,

sorry, I also think at the fringes of the Republican Party,

this is what you keep all these militia folks and all these

other folks at bay is just you show a really methodical, you

know, stepping away from the spotlight. And I think that this

is, you know, honestly, it’s, this is a very deliberate, safe,

calming thing to do. Because there’s been nothing about the

Trump administration from 2016, through to this very moment that

has been customary or traditional. And so I don’t know

why we all expected him to step in and say, like, I can see like

the way that we’ve been doing it. It would be worse. It’d be

worse if he had conceded and all of a sudden was holding a bunch

of protests and rallies all over the country that he’s not

doing anything illegal. No one has any legal requirement to

concede. And, you know, and I think as long as these guys on

December 15, which is the date that we should all be watching

and waiting for, as long as these guys do the appropriate

thing at that point, then, you know, that that’s the only point

in which I would have any sort of concern or worry about what’s

going on with the transition in the government. But sorry, I

think this is about saving face and saving brand a sexy percent.

He’ll he’ll be out by December 15. Meaning it’ll this will all

be done. Yeah, I agree. And look, let’s remember that Al

Gore was able to challenge the election result for 37 days

without being hysterically accused of undermining

democracy. So let Trump have his day in court. It’ll play out

over the next few weeks. I expect that the obstacles he

has has to overcome are too large and he will lose these

lawsuits. It might go to the Supreme Court. It would not be

a bad thing if the Supreme Court were the ones to make this

decision. They’re one of the last institutions that still

trusted. Clearly, the media are not. And I think that, you know,

Trump will accept the result, he may not concede, but he will

accept the result when it comes from the Supreme Court.

Is there a nonzero chance that he could win on a recount?

He would have to prove systemic fraud, because it’s not like

Florida, where there’s just one state and a few hundred votes,

he’s got to overcome over 12,000 votes in at least three

states. So that’s the issue is, is it’s

a percent on its acts if you had to lay money on it?

Oh, I mean, it’s like sub 10% chance, I think.

Sub 10% chance one in 10, you’d give 10 to one odds.

No, I’m saying it’s under 10%. I’m saying it’s a very small

Well, here’s the thing. So Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court ruled

seven to two. I mean, you would have thought it was nine to zero.

So clearly, there was some sympathizers in Bush v. Gore. So

hopefully, you know, it’s something like seven to two.

And, you know, we move on.

I believe if it gets the Supreme Court, it will be at least

seven to two, if not a one or nine zero. Just because I think

Trump has a much harder case to prove. In Florida, the issue

was simply whether the recount should be allowed to continue.

James Baker went to the Supreme Court to stop the recount

that was in process, because of the fear that the local corrupt

election officials basically steal the election for Gore that

you know, but but but Bush was always ahead in that election.

There was never a time when Bush was behind.

Biden is now ahead in every swing state that matters.

Trump has to now overturn that result in at least three of

those states. I don’t know how he does that by 10s of thousands

of votes. I just don’t know how he does that. He has to prove

some sort of systemic fraud that took place across the nation

that and look, I think from like a marketing or branding

standpoint, he’ll be able to create a lot of smoke. I think

they will actually find quite a bit of misconduct because I

don’t think our elections are perfect. But will it rise to the

standard that the Supreme Court is going to set for overturning

an election? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

I mean, they’ll probably find it on both sides. There’s got to

be some crazy. Well, the other Trump supporter who has 10

ballots they signed and there’ll be some crazy liberal who did

this. Well, the nuance on that out, the nuanced issue is

whether they can do a constitutionally valid recount by

you know, the time necessary as well. So the longer that this

delays on, then they’ll be forced to basically say no to

that also, because otherwise it will be effectively throwing

out an election. And so as we wrap here, San Francisco’s

continuous to devolve revenue down 40% in terms of taxes,

budget is double what it’s been just a few years ago, crime is

going crazy. Walmart is closing their stores and leaving

Walgreens because of Walgreens, I’m sorry, Walgreens, we don’t

have a Walmart here. And there’s 20 there’s more homes on the

market now than there have been too much of anything is a bad

thing. If you eat too much broccoli, it’s a bad thing. You

know what I mean? So too much of a single party monoculture is

bad. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, you need a diverse

centrist plurality. And in the absence of that, many cities

that veer in one direction or the other will decay and die.

And San Francisco is going to be the tip of the spear for the

left’s version. And there’s been a bunch of cities that have

already been the examples of the rights version. So you know

what, apparently the water is warm, and they want to join.

Anybody else?

I can’t find a lot to disagree with there. I think San

Francisco, we’re basically an Atlas shrugged. I mean, the

half the storefronts are closed, they’re boarded up, the city is

completely surrendered to the criminal element, you can’t park

your car anywhere in the city without having it getting broken

into they won’t prosecute people for crimes, including

increasingly violent crimes. The, you know, the, the city is

about to go bankrupt, and the entrepreneurs are all

disappearing. They’re all leaving. I mean, it’s right out

of the shrugged.

Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s the, the action is the wrong action,

right? So San Francisco, the biggest disappointment of

election night for me was the new business taxes that were

passed for San Francisco businesses. And, and there was

also this, like, for 99.9999999% of people, they’re gonna shrug

and say, I don’t give a shit. But there was this new tax of 6%

for homes that get sold over $10 million. Now, if you’re a

successful entrepreneur, an investor, or a CEO of a company

in San Francisco, and you know, it’s, it’s like a slap in the

face. You add the business tax with that kind of high end

property tax. And it’s almost like an invitation to leave the

city. And some people are nodding their head. This 6% is on

leaving or buying transaction when you sell. So you literally

6% off the top. When you sell a home, the city basically just

took 6% of my house. Yeah, the city just took 6% of my house.

It’s now they’re now a part owner of my house. Yeah, it’s an

estate tax. And so there are people like there are people in

San Francisco, who we all know, how much warning did you have

before they took your non bedroom? Yeah, I mean, there’s a

London breed put some people in taxes their 13th bedroom on the

third floor. They’re all living there right now. But it’s okay.

I got like wings I don’t even know about. It’s like, it’s like

Richie Rich’s house or something. So look, no, nobody

cries. Nobody cries for super rich people. And you know, but

it was short sighted is the point, right? Right? Exactly.

I’m not complaining about the taxes on me, but it’s going to

do tremendous damage to the city. People are not going to

want to move here. And we Yeah, yeah, I look I’ve built

businesses in San Francisco since 2006. And I will not build

another business in San Francisco. And I hear the same

from other entrepreneurs, if you’re going to build a

business, do it in the South Bay, do it in the East Bay, do

it in the North Bay or do it in Austin or LA or somewhere else.

But this is just not a place to build businesses. The city is

basically saying we don’t want you here. Now, that would be

fine and dandy if the city was being conservative in the way

that they spend and if they were actually reducing their

budget and you know, kind of reducing the city’s activities.

The problem is these these taxes diverge with the budget

because the taxes are now going to go down because businesses

are leaving people are selling their homes, they’re not going

to buy expensive homes anymore. And we are seeing a budget

crisis, San Francisco, I think it’s looking at a 1.7 to $2

billion budget shortfall this year. I mean, like, where’s that

money gonna come from? This is a city with 800,000 and we have

and there was that expose in the San Francisco Chronicle

talking about how there’s over 20,000 city workers making over

$150,000 a year, 30,000. Yeah, what are we getting for all of

that? The evidence is not apparent. And this is where

okay, look, I’d be happy to give the city 6% of my house and pay

all these high taxes if we actually got something for it.

But the city just keeps getting less and less livable.

Yes, city budget in 2013.

And so we have a fiscal crisis and we have a livability crisis

that I think is even worse. And that’s a huge problem. And let’s

be frank, San Francisco was always the accidental

beneficiary of Silicon Valley. If you will, San Francisco was

the accidental billionaire. It was Silicon Valley that created

this enormous wealth and all the jobs and the companies. It

wasn’t San Francisco policies or politics that created any of

that. It just so happens that Silicon Valley got big enough.

It started around Stanford, it got big enough that San Francisco

as the nearest metropolitan area really was a beneficiary of

that. And, and, you know, because they never really did

anything to create the conditions for that prosperity,

frankly, they took it for granted. And now that the rug’s

been pulled out from under them, I don’t think they’re really

going to know what to do.

Local San Francisco politicians treated Silicon Valley success

as a grab bag. And Uber set up here and Twitter and Square and

Salesforce. And San Francisco politicians put their hand in

the honey jar and took as much as they could. And it’s now

backfiring because new businesses don’t want to set up

here. Entrepreneurs don’t want to operate here. And as Saks is

pointing out, the, you know, the rapid kind of inflation has

caused this tremendous decline in the quality of service.

There’s zero accountability, zero checks and balances. So San

Francisco is in for a really, frank, scary reckoning. And a

lot of people are really worried about it. And it’s like a very

real problem. It’s not like, oh, the city’s fucked. Ha ha, like

a $2 billion budget shortfall. You’re either going to have to

cut a lot of jobs of public employees, or you’re going to

have a city that’s going to go bankrupt. And you know, bonds

are going to get defaulted on. And at the same time, you’re

going to have this mass exodus of people and businesses. And it

is a it is a very kind of unwinding not right now. So it’s

it’s a scary moment. I don’t think there’s a real great

answer for what I think it’s more nuanced, but I think it I

think it will happen. Mark my words, San Francisco will file

for bankruptcy in the next 10 years.

Wow. I mean, Pelosi, you know, Pelosi held out a major city

filing for maybe 15, maybe 15 years. But yeah, 10, 15 years.

Remember, a big part of what Pelosi held out on the big

thing she held out on in the stimulus negotiations last

month, was for local and state governments to get bailout

support in this stimulus package. And she’s acutely

aware she lives one block away from me down the road here.

She’s acutely aware of what’s going on in San Francisco. And

the solution may not be to bail out these cities and these

states, if they’re going to continue to operate the way they

are, because it’s, it needs to break in order to rebuild.

Well, you need to cut budget. I mean, any of us running a

business? No, like, you know, if you have a little revenue

coming in, and you’re spending too much, where the fuck’s the

money coming from? You can’t just keep going to Big Papa in

DC and asking him for more money.

What about Masayoshi San? Maybe he’ll he consider coming in and

maybe it’s back? Maybe

I really I’m buying I’m going to SPAC San Francisco.

Kamasi Yoshi side do the secondary and then

Listen, I think Chamath Chamath is right about San Francisco

being the proof of what happens when you have a one party

system. And I really hope that the the tech community, the

tech liberals who are listening to this podcast, they’re not

gonna listen to me because they probably, you know, think I’m

too conservative. But, you know, Chamath is pretty liberal.

And, you know, he makes the right point. And, you know, we

cannot have a one party system that remains healthy for very

long. We need the pendulum to swing back towards the center.

And, you know, I really hope that, yeah,

power corrupts, absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. As you’ve

as you’ve said many times, it’s true.

That’s Lord Acton said that.

We this is literally what the Dark Knight Batman series is

about. It’s literally about not having a basic standard of

policing and allowing criminals to run a city. We’ve turned

into a goddamn comic book. Like, you have to arrest people who

commit crimes. And I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings. And

one of the things that beat people up. Yeah, you’re right.

Yeah, you’re right. And one of the things that’s like the

comic book is the sense of fatalism. You know, it’s like

everybody knows San Francisco is broken, but nobody thinks they

can do anything about it. That’s really the tragedy of it.

That is the tragedy. And you know what, if any of us I’ve

said it before, I’m like, I know exactly how you can stop all

these car break ins. You there’s a thing called the bait car, you

put 10 bay cars out, you put cameras in them. And now that

Einstein is spoken, boys, I love you. I love you all. I miss

you. I can’t wait to see again. And for those of you who’d like

to advertise on podcast, the advertising rate has been set at

$10 million a year for however many episodes we do. I will

read the ad at the end of the show if you give $10 million to

the charity of Chamath’s picking, which apparently is

going to be San Francisco. I think that’ll valid point 7% of

the budget. Follow Friedberg on the Twitter, follow David

Sachs, follow Chamath Palihapitiya. If you like the

show, tell your friends and write a review or don’t we don’t

care. We just do this because we like hanging out with each

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on the show, we don’t accept any guest recommendations for

the love of God. I don’t know how many people are begging to

be on the show. It’s there’s room enough for four people

maybe on a live show bestie guesties. You’re not getting

your CEO of your whatever company on the show. Period. End

the story. And I cannot introduce you to Chamath to

SPAC your company enough of that. Love you besties