PBD Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy: Walz vs Vance Debate, Clinton Predicts Kamala Surprise, Hassan Nasrallah Dead | 481
Episode Date: October 1, 2024Patrick Bet-David, Vivek Ramaswamy, Adam Sosnick, Tom Ellsworth, and Vincent Oshana cover Hillary Clinton's 'October Surprise' prediction, the Walz vs Vance VP debate, the death of Hamas leader Hassan... Nasrallah, and the US East Coast dockworkers strike! 💸 BUY 1 VT WALLET, GET 1 KEYCHAIN & CARD HOLDER FREE: https://bit.ly/3N6VHkr 📕 PURCHASE VIVEK'S NEW BOOK "TRUTHS": https://bit.ly/3TOnlq0 📕 SIGNED COPY OF PBD'S NEW BOOK "THE ACADEMY": https://bit.ly/3XC5ftN 🧢 NEW FLB HAT - WHITE W/ RED LETTERING: https://bit.ly/3BgUAvR 🧢 NEW FLB HAT - RED W/ WHITE LETTERING: https://bit.ly/3MY7MIQ 🇺🇸VT USA COLLECTION: https://bit.ly/47zLCWO 📰 VTNEWS.AI: https://bit.ly/3Zn2Moj 🏦 "THE VAULT 2024" RECORDING: https://bit.ly/4ejazrr 👕 VT "2024 ELECTION COLLECTION": https://bit.ly/3XD7Bsm 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: https://bit.ly/3ze3RUM 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: https://bit.ly/47iOGGx 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: https://bit.ly/4e0FgCe 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: https://bit.ly/3MGK5EE 📕 CHOOSE YOUR ENEMIES WISELY: https://bit.ly/3XnEpo0 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: https://bit.ly/4d5nYlU 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: https://bit.ly/3XC8L7k 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/3XjSSRK 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support
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30 seconds.
Did you ever think you would make it?
I feel I'm so f***ed, like it tastes sweet victory.
I know this life meant for me.
Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got bet David?
Valuetainment, giving values contagious.
This world are entrepreneurs, we get no value to haters.
I ain't running homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
You have AIDS too, right? No, but listen, I mean, mean for me you already know how I feel with you in 2028. We're live and
we have the one and only Vivek Ravaswamy in the house and by the way a very interesting poll I'm
going to show you that you and I know about the poll because you know when I show you the poll I
just want to see your reaction in a minute and folks I want to Get your reaction when I show you this poll. It's interesting
There's a lot of things to talk about Vivek has a new book out
We're gonna put the link below as well the entire time truths by Vivek Ramaswani the future of
America first the link will be below go order it support him if you're somebody that likes
What he talks about the first thing you ought to do is go order his book the link will be below however
talks about the first thing you ought to do is go order his book the link will be below however
Story another strike today happen and by the way, this is not just any strike
This is a strike that could affect you that's watching this
36 ports we'll get into the details 45,000 employees. We haven't had one of these since 1977 It's, the number of raise they're asking for, 77%,
they want certain things to match fears.
We'll explain what products you could be affected by that could affect the cost of it.
We'll talk about that.
Then there's a big debate going on tonight.
Maybe it's not a big debate, maybe it's a big debate.
Who knows?
There's a VP debate going on tonight between JD Vance, his highlight reel with debates, he's very good at what he does,
as well as going against this other guy
that there's not a highlight reel, but his name is Waltz.
There will be a debate tonight,
there'll be a VP debate for some of you guys.
I do believe usual suspects, Vinny, you guys are-
Unusual suspects are on tonight.
You guys are watching it tonight and reacting to it,
which is gonna be exciting.
We're gonna be live, yeah.
Israeli airstrike, killed Hezbollah leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, which we'll talk about.
We haven't reacted to it yet.
I know it happened last week but we'll talk about it today as well.
Mark Cuban and Elon Musk.
Elon Musk posts what happens if Trump is not elected.
We'll read that to you.
Mark Cuban tries to respond back.
His response is so ridiculous because he revealed so many things and you
had them on your show. I had them on in 15, you had them on recently and it was one of
the best shows to watch. I thought it was so, it was great that he did it and it was
great that you guys did it together. We'll talk about that here in a minute as well.
John Kerry, folks, is concerned. First Amendment is a crisis. This is not good for America It's what John Kerry is saying and then there's a poll of college students who now support Donald Trump
This is something Tom wants to share with us. We'll talk about the debate. We'll talk about Mark Cuban and
Then aside from that Wall Street executives are split between Trump and Harris data shows
We'll discuss that Kamala Harris visits Arizona
border amid criticism. Adams pleads not guilty after Fed accused him of accepting $123,000
in luxury gifts, fraudulently obtaining $10 million in public funds. Again, this is allegedly.
Is he somebody that they cannot use and he was being too much too loud against the Biden and the establishment that they have to get rid of or
Maybe he did something who knows we'll kind of process that as well
Israel is downgraded by Moody's again as war takes economic poll toll a few other stories that we'll talk about the walkout
We'll talk about Disney layoffs indicate more Hollywood cuts are coming.
Sorry, a story from Wall Street Journal, Harvard.
Everyone wants to go to colleges in the South now.
They don't want to go to Harvard.
Interesting.
Why wouldn't somebody want to go to Harvard?
This is W.S.
Shea.
And then Americans are more reliant than ever on government aid.
And last but not least, America's young men are falling even further behind.
Now a couple things before we get into this podcast and I show you the first poll.
Number one, if you've done business with our consulting firm, if you've been to the vault,
if you've been to BPW, if you've bought a merch, if you've done a maniac, if you are
a subscriber to VTNews.ai, if you're doing any of those, you're going to get an email
today at 12 o'clock about a big event that we're
hosting at an interesting location, but those people will get the email first.
Then I will announce the event publicly to everybody on Thursday.
So to those of you that are insiders, you're going to get the email first.
You'll have 48-hour advance notice before everybody else does because that's only being
sent to actual customers
that have done business with us.
And then on Thursday, Rob, do we have a guest on Thursday?
Oh, we may, we may not, we'll announce it to you.
And then on Thursday, we'll announce it to everybody
what this event's gonna be
and trust me, you're gonna wanna be a part of it.
Some of you guys asked us about
the only wallet that I wear.
This is the wallet that I wear,
this is the Valuetainment wallet that I wear.
ID, cards, cash, easy to use, it's not heavy, it's not thick, it's not,
and it's 100% leather, it is the only wallet you will see in my pocket.
It's not a Fendi, it's not a Ferragamo, it's not a Louis Vuitton, it's none of that stuff,
it's a value taming wallet with the logo on the side, they're back and here's what we're
doing today which I'm excited about. If you order one of the wallets, which Rob, let's put the link on the side. They're back and here's what we're doing today which I'm excited about.
If you order one of the wallets, which Rob, let's put the link for the wallet, if you
order one of the wallets that we have, we have them in brown, we have them in black,
we're going to give you the card holder and the keychain of Valuetainment, sent your way,
price 99 bucks.
The link will be below for you guys to get.
And you can add other Future Look sprite gear anyways because the event we're hosting here soon that we'll announce to attend it you will have to wear future
like sprite gear now starting with that rob i got a poll i want to show you okay i got a poll i want
to send to you that i think the audience needs to see which is a very weird poll nobody expected
this poll this wasn't like a poll that we woke up this morning with
Vivek saying, yeah, you know, this poll is going to come out and here's going to be on
this list. Rob, if you don't mind pulling this poll for people to see in them, Vivek,
I'm going to come straight to you because we really want to know what your plan is next.
Are you planning on running BuzzFeed full-time? Are you planning on running a media company?
Are you planning on putting maybe the Avengers together to do something? Are you planning on running a media company? Are you planning on putting maybe the Avengers together to do something?
Are you planning on somehow, somewhere between now and the next election cycle, 2028, to
maybe do something politically?
I don't know, but this is the poll that just came out that shows us this.
The next election for governor of Ohio is 2026.
Look who's leading in the polling for the race, even though he's not running for it.
Look at this.
Jim Renacci, John Hosted, Lieutenant Governor, Robertsburg, all these guys are 15.9 as a
highest one, completely undecided 26%.
Vivek Ramaswani at 40%.
Is there a possibility that you would even entertain this?
You know, if you asked me six months ago, I would have said no.
I mean, it wasn't even in my headspace.
But I will tell you, as I live in Ohio, I was born and raised there.
This is the number one thing that people across the state will come, literally plead with me, beg me to do.
And so when people are in your own state, begging you to do something that you're not, it's not something that I view as a pleasurable job.
It's not something that I have always aspired to in my whole life, but public service is
about serving the public, right?
And so would I consider it?
Yes, I would consider it.
But am I definitively on that path?
I'm not definitively on any specific path right now.
We're going to let the election play out.
It's in less than 40 days.
I prefer to have clarity. And when I'm clear and called into doing something
with clarity, then I'm good to go. But I will tell you
that it does have an impact on me. I would love to tell you that I'm not
affected by what other people say. It does have an impact on me. I mean, I
went to Springfield a few weeks ago, right? Springfield, Ohio, it's where I
spend a lot of time growing up. Obviously the center of national
conversation. The number one thing coming out of there, that everybody, even that town,
there's hundreds of people that were in the room.
There were 2000 people that wanted to come.
All I put on social media posts saying that we're showing up.
And the overwhelming mandate, I wouldn't call it an ask.
It was a mandate.
It was a demand of me is you need to come
actually take our state to the next level.
And the reason is, and take me to one side,
there's no reason that a state like Ohio, which is actually a deeply conservative state, historically
very successful, there's no reason it can't be competitive with, if not even then some
versus a Florida or a Texas. And that's what many people in Ohio want to see is a state
that's not a zero tax state. It's not a state that has constitutional carry. It's not a state that has universal school choice. But you look at the
reason why people are drawn to places like Florida and Texas, Ohio could be a magnet like that.
And so whether it's me or somebody else, I think that's a that's an untapped opportunity
that I hope somebody steps into that void and definitely leads the state to even new heights.
But I love the place. I had not aspired to it.
Am I thinking about it?
Well, if you see stuff like this
and people demanding you to,
you got to give it some thought,
but we'll wait till after the election.
Here's a clip, Rob.
If you want to play this clip, go for it.
Are you going to run for governor of Ohio?
And...
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
That was in Springfield.
Standing old from a question.
The guy had a two-part question, they didn't let him get to the second part.
I'm a little more inclined than I was about 10 seconds ago.
So, it's interesting. In your mind, because, you know because are you at a place in your mind where the phase of being a capitalist, one, is behind you, where now it's more the role of an investor
and more serving and giving back to your country on the political side?
Is that kind of the transition that's been made?
It's where I feel like I am in that stage of my own life.
Makes sense.
And I think having kids and also entering that sphere
already once as a presidential candidate,
it's very hard to just go back to pure capitalist mindset.
However, I will also say this.
There are many ways to have an impact on a country,
and I do think that action through the private sector
can fill some voids that government cannot fill and even this year
This is more out of out of
Selfish desire not monetary desire, but even just interest desire
I miss scratching the business side of my brain a little bit right it working that side of their scratching that itch
And so it's been fun to get involved with some projects in the private sector
I've gotten a few companies off the ground, one in particular that I think is going to
have some real impact this year.
So that's fun for me.
It's natural.
I know how to do that.
I know how to do that well.
But I'm at a stage in my life where when you're thinking about having an impact, I've lived
the American dream already.
My kids grow up under conditions that my parents would have never imagined when they came to
this country that I grew up in just 30 years ago. And it is all about how do we pass that on to the next generation. That's my obsession.
And whether that's through public service, which is the likely path for me, or whether it's some
other way, what I'm focused on is how do we pass the inheritance of a greater country to our kids.
And whatever that is, whatever the biggest way possible it is to have that impact, I don't want
to do something that's small. That's my rule.
I don't want it to be there's room for people to do small things, but it takes about as
much effort to do something small and to do it really well as it does to do something
really big and do it really well.
It takes equal amount of effort both ways.
So I'm at a stage in my life where I want the next thing that I do to not be small but
to be but to be big.
And we will, you know, in short order,
probably let's see how things play out in November,
I'll be having to make some decisions in the months ahead.
Well, listen, either way you go,
you have a massive fan base and people that believe in you.
I will tell you guys one thing.
Remember when the story leaked
about the BuzzFeed meeting that was had?
Remember when they wrote the story about it,
and it's like, hey, this person, that person,
this person was part of it.
I've watched people on how they are,
because I learned 20 some years ago,
people have a few different talents.
There are those that are good one on one.
You know in business you have good one on one guys,
where you sit in a room, you're doing a deal,
handshake, getting the guy to agree,
hey guys, can you guys just give us an hour?
Just you and I need to talk, and you figure it out.
Then there's guys that are one to five,
or one to 10, smaller setting, and that's their strength.
So what do you think, what do you think?
How about this, what if we can make this work?
Would that, and it's kinda like a smaller group setting,
and then it's one to hundreds, if not thousands, right?
We know the one to thousands you're very good at.
You shine in a major way and
we know you shine on the big stage with the controversy and the heat and
Criticism you shine we got every single one of the debates
We watch what you did and then it becomes the smaller one to five
I had never seen you before on how you are and when we had that meeting and I saw how you handle the whole
Situation of questioning it was a very awkward, uncomfortable meeting.
The first interaction.
The first interaction, it was very,
to put the kind of setting there, the Buzzfeed,
he's coming into buy shares in a company,
and this is public information,
it's not people that don't know.
So they're having an interaction with people
that he's choosing possibly to be part of,
names that he's recommending.
But the way you handled
all of it in that one hour call that we have, that's said a lot because that's how you're going to be
negotiating when you're coming out with policies. And as a guy that's in business who's seen people
handle those steps of meetings before, it was a 10. I mean, I was so impressed by the way you ran.
It was incredibly impressive seeing that take place. You know what I'm talking about, it was fascinating, but I'm sure if you commit to wanting to become
the governor of Ohio, it's a lock if you do that.
And I think the reason why that's a very important state to be the governor in is because that
state matters.
And that state's going to matter in 28, that state's going to matter in 32, that state matters. And that state's gonna matter in 28, that state's gonna matter in 32,
that state's gonna matter in 36,
that state's gonna matter in many different ways.
So that could be a way of getting to the next step
to kind of get a state that is very important
and then whatever you choose to do next.
You know, to me, I think your 20-28,
I've said this before,
I have Jamie Dimon running in 20-28 as a Democrat.
I have the Rock will consider 20-8, he may run 32.
I have Mark Cuban for sure is gonna wanna run in 20-8,
unless if some of the stories comes out.
And I have you running in 20-8.
If Kamala wins, you'll run in 20-8.
If not, if they win, you may still run in 20-8.
But well, yeah, you would still run in 20-8
because it's gonna, by the way,
it's very technical when you kind of, right?
It's very technical because Trump wins, it's one term.
So somebody's gonna come out, so it could be Vance, you,
that matchup is gonna be like, it'll be a classmate,
it's gonna be fiery, that one will go to.
We got one step at a time, brother.
I told you, I'm talking about it
from the entertainer standpoint, right, that I see.
That's going to be one that we'll be looking forward to and watching that take place.
Anyways, Rob, if you can pull up Elon Musk's tweet and then Mark Cuban's response to Elon
Musk, and I want to go right to him because you had Mark Cuban on your podcast about a
month ago and it was a very, very good conversation, the two of you guys had.
Back and forth, I thought it was one of those shows
that everybody needs to watch, but this is Elon Musk.
Rob, if you go to his account, good luck finding it.
This guy tweets 50 times a minute,
so you're gonna need to keep going down.
It's almost like he owns the thing.
Yeah, it's almost like he owns the thing.
So what date is that, Rob?
It's hours.
Seven hours ago.
Okay, do me a favor.
Why don't you do it this way, Rob?
Go to my Twitter account, Rob, if you could.
Go to my Twitter account, okay?
If you go there, you will see that,
go one more, rest in peace, go one more,
go one more, right there, okay?
Click on his first, then click on Elon's.
There you go, okay.
So.
I saw this one, yep.
Very few Americans realize that if Trump is not elected, this will be the last election,
far from being a threat to democracy.
He is the only way to save it.
Let me explain it.
If even one in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are
expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be two million new legal voters in four
years.
The voting margin in the swing states is often less than 20,000
votes.
That means if the Democratic Party succeeds, there will be no more swing states.
Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration has been flying asylum seekers who are fast
tracked on citizenship directly into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin,
and Arizona.
It is a sure way to win every election.
America then becomes a one-party state and democracy is over the only elections will be Democratic Party primaries
This already happened in California many years ago following the 1986 amnesty
the only thing holding California back from extreme socialism and
Suffocating government policies is that people can leave California and still remain in America
Once the whole country is controlled by one party, there will be no escape. Everywhere in America will be like the nightmare that is downtown San Francisco.
Then Cuban responds, if you want to go back one day, you go Rob. He responds back and
says, Elon, there will come a time when you need something from Trump, you will think
you will have earned the right to ask and receive. You have been a loyal, faithful soldier
to him. You have supported him politically with tens of millions of dollars.
Then at the point you need him the most, you will find out what so many before you have
learned.
His loyalty is only to himself."
So when you see that, I give my response.
I said, in other words, Kamala owes you many favors.
Two, you trust that Kamala Harris will 100% deliver on her favors
She owes you three you were expecting a job from Trump in 2016 and didn't get it or for you're assuming
Ilan is wired like you what is your thoughts Vivek when you see this interaction? So look I actually love authentic
No holds bar take off the filter interactions
And I think the beauty of X right which Ilan bought is that you can have these exchanges out in the open. So I give Mark Cuban, you know, he's going
to, he's going to take some criticism for it, but he's got the guts to say what he wants.
Elon is like so many other business people who are too afraid in corporate America of
being canceled for their views. You know, what he told the advertisers to go screw themselves
the F off basically is what he told him. And so I think it's just great when we have more
of these gloves off straight, pummeling conversations.
Now I'll tell you this about Elon is both of those things
that those two guys said can be true, right?
Where Mark Cuban says, oh, well, you're not gonna get
something from Donald Trump for it,
which may reveal that that's not actually Elon's motivation.
Elon's motivation is that he cares about the future
of the country.
And so there's two different visions of American politics.
One is where you're dealing with politicians as puppets, pieces on a chessboard, and you
got the people who are wielding those interests moving them on that chessboard.
That's one vision.
And that exists.
I mean, that is a real sad, dark reality of how a lot of American politics works.
And then there's the separate version, which is the idealistic vision, which is to say that I have certain shared ideals. And Elon and Donald
Trump don't agree on everything. Donald Trump and I don't agree on everything. You know,
I think the part of the coalition that President Trump has built this time around, especially
is it's a group of people who don't agree on 100% of every last issue, but still agree
on the basic principles of how the country is supposed to work. Free speech and open
debate, meritocracy, the best person ought to get the job,
not based on their race or their skin color.
You actually have to have self-governance.
It shouldn't be bureaucrats running the country,
but elected representatives.
The rule of law, that's a big one.
I mean, that relates to this whole issue
related to the immigration crisis.
Elections we can trust and believe in.
Those are basic rules of the road.
And we're united around that.
Great, I'm not expecting anything in return.
I just want to see that happen for the country.
I think that's where Elon's coming from here.
And so is there an element of truth to what Mark Cuban says
about generally how American politics works?
Absolutely the idea that there are people
who do it expecting special favors in return.
Is that the relationship that Elon says he has
or even appears to have with Donald Trump?
Absolutely not.
It's a group of shared allies,
and I consider myself in this boat as well,
who I don't want anything for myself in response.
I don't care about what that means for me individually.
It's not what I get, but it's about what do we all give
to advance the ball forward for our country,
and that's my sense of where Elon's coming from as well.
Tom, your thoughts.
I think there's some very obvious things
that Mark Cuban was projecting.
I mean, Mark Cuban has entered the pharmaceutical industry
with fanfare.
I believe there is some nobility to what the company is trying
to do, but also he needs a lot of assistance.
He's made a comment about wanting to be head of the SEC,
and he also went head to head with the SEC,
and they went after him,
and he had a famous quote that was,
you have to be very careful if a government investigator
wants your skin on the wall,
because they're probably gonna get it.
And so there's kind of something
that's come full circle there,
but I think I'd I I
Appreciate what you said because I don't believe that both men
Elon and Cuban are on the same wavelengths. I do believe Elon is very
Very concerned and very serious and accurate without spin about about the country and about the future of elections
I think that's true
and I also think that Cuban is a little self-interested right now and seems to have kind of put on
the jersey all the way.
And I think there's stuff that he wants and I think he's serious about the SEC and I also
think he's serious about the assistance he wants for his pharmaceutical company.
Do I think that there's nothing in Cuban that cares about the country no no no no no I don't
think he's completely over the waterfall Adam well I think just think it's most
ironic to see who's in Trump's corner these days we're being very political
right yeah so this is like very safe talk so far so well maybe I'll be a
little controversial then can we pull up that that boat again
Elon's spot on with what's going on with with the border
I mean, I think that whatever's happened with the border sort of disqualifies the never was the borders are
Kamala Harris from
Actually protecting the border but the part of this let me explain forever the even 20 legal's become citizens
But you're something that Democratic are expediting, similarly possible, that would be a 2 million
new legal voters in four years.
There's been talk of this for a while.
You know, the one thing that Cuban gets true is Trump does demand loyalty.
I mean, I don't know if he, you know, asked for your hand in loyalty or anything like
that.
But he that is sort of something that you hear about Trump is that there's a one-way street to loyalty
We've heard it. We've heard people talk about this
How many people have come through the Trump administration that said I cannot support this guy generals
The list goes on and on and on but if it's a binary choice, which it is at this point
I mean Kamala has disqualified herself in my opinion, but it doesn't mean that Trump
is perfect. So let me let me say this word because this comes up a lot with Donald Trump
and people use it mostly as like a negative to say that he wants loyalty. Let me frame
this in a different way, which I think is closer to the mark. I think if you're an executive,
right, and Patrick will just bring this back to the business setting. You have a mission
at a company. You want people who work at the company who are aligned with that mission.
That doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you're not.
Let's say your mission is, I don't know,
making water bottles.
Maybe we could think about a different example.
Maybe your mission is you have a steakhouse, okay,
and you want to serve excellent steak.
You want people who are aligned with that mission,
not somebody who's opposed to the existence of a steakhouse. That doesn't mean that person doesn't have the right to have that
opinion, just means they shouldn't be working at your company. Well, the same
thing I would say of running the US government. You have a vision for the
country. You have a way you want to run the show. You want to thin out, let's say,
bureaucracy. You want to limit the number of federal regulations that are being
passed by bureaucrats. You don't want people who are working for you who
believe in a different vision for the country. That doesn't mean they're bad people. That doesn't mean that
they don't enjoy the same rights as every other American. But who on earth would say that I'm
running as an executive an entire set of departments, but I have people who are unaligned
with the mission that I'm on. So there's a difference between loyalty in the sense of like,
okay, you have to sign. No, I did not when I endorsed Donald Trump, I was not asked to sort of
do a blood oath. Okay, there's no blood oath, all right?
We did not cut our arms and bleed together.
No, that was not that kind of-
Like the hangover.
But the question is, are you aligned with the same mission?
Now, it doesn't mean you can have some disagreements.
Of course, I said earlier,
we don't agree on 100% of issues.
Elon and Donald and you have a bunch of other people
and Trump who are supporting Trump
don't agree with him on every other issue,
on every individual issue.
But are you aligned on the basic mission?
I do think you gotta be loyal to the overall mission
of making America great again,
of reviving our constitutional principles.
And I think that that's again,
like so many things with the media have been perverted
to mean something very different
as though it's some type of personal thing.
Yeah, I mean, you earned that, right?
And what's the earning? Moral authority, how do you get moral authority? something very different as though it's some type of personal thing. Yeah, I mean, you earned that, right?
And what's the earning?
Moral authority.
How do you get moral authority?
By delivering on your promises.
If you're doing your part and you're setting the example, then the expectation for loyalty
goes higher.
This is in sports, Tom Brady.
The other day, a clip came out, which I freaking love.
I don't know if you saw this exchange with Baker Mayfield and Tom Brady.
I did not.
Okay, so check this out.
So Tom, Baker Mayfield, if you have that type in Baker Mayfield and Brady, that clip is everywhere.
I would like to see Baker and Brady, if there's a video that shows both of them, it's not
in there.
I'll just tell you what he said.
So Baker says, look, I mean, when Brady was was here at Tampa it was very stressful
you know because you know guys were all on the edge you know they wanted me to
this is the one go and play this Rob this is the entire clip so watch this
quote they wanted me to come in be myself bring the joy back to football
for guys who weren't having as much fun it's funny because you've made this
environment for me very stressful up here in the booth so I understand where
he's coming from do Do you feel it?
No.
A little stress?
No.
Watch what he says.
I was going to say, I thought stressful was not having Super Bowl rings.
So there was a mindset of a champion that I took to work every day.
Watch what he says.
If I want to have fun.
If I want to have fun, I was going to go to Disneyland with my kids.
You could pause right there.
Now, listen, Baker's having a good start,
but there's a difference between somebody who is on, you know, he's on the road working his ass off, away from his family, doing their part.
You can expect loyalty.
So I don't have a challenge with that part, and I know sometimes the argument is you got to be loyal to the country
for sure over, but that person gave you their job. Let's fulfill the mission and be aligned towards whatever the
mission is.
Okay.
Do you think do you think Cuban this is just a feel I'm curious
to know what you'll say.
Do you think he has interests of running in 28?
I think I would not shock me if he did.
I think if you asked him right now in his own heart, he would
tell himself that no, of course, I'm not interested in that
I'm crushing it in the private sector.
I can't handle, you know, that type of public life.
But I think in his heart, he's clearly got something in him that is drawing him back.
He's really interested in American politics, really interested in expressing his own opinions,
and to his credit, engaging with people who disagree with him.
He and I had a great hour long conversation.
I didn't want to dunk on him too much there.
My goal was to bring him on.
I know, you weren't trying to do that.
Yeah, yeah, that was not the goal. But I think that would I be shocked if he did in 28? No,
I would not.
Yeah, I think, by the way.
And I think he'd have a reasonable following behind him.
I think he would.
Because people like a businessman.
I think he would be a phenomenal candidate for the left. I think he'd be a phenomenal
candidate for the left and I think he'd be formidable.
Look, look at it this way. If instead of Kamala Harris being the nominee, say it was fill in the blank of who it
was, but somebody of Mark Cuban's pedigree, right? Maybe use him as an example. Would that be better
for the country? Undoubtedly, it would be better for the country, right? Because then we could have
a contest based on ideas about people who on both sides say what you will, know at least how to win
through American capitalism, which is part of what made this country great
the first time around.
I think that would be better for the country.
Do I disagree with his policy views?
I do, especially on issues relating to ESG, DEI,
equity in the country.
But let's have that debate in the open
amongst people who at least are competent
and have achieved success,
rather than what we have right now,
which is somebody who's never signed the front
of a paycheck, only ever signed the back of one from public funds to their bank account.
And I think that that is something we need more of on both sides as people who have succeeded
in the private sector, businessmen or business women, whatever in American politics.
I think that's a good thing.
But as the Democratic Party shifted so far left that the thought of a white male billionaire
running their party at this point
is just absolute absurdity at this point.
You know, it's interesting.
So I was at the hotel, my family's here,
and we were hanging out in the beach in Miami.
A guy comes up to me by the pool,
and he's just, he's kind of, you know, people are always,
you notice when people notice you,
but I've had a lot of conversations
about taking pictures all day.
So I'm trying not to really make eye contact right there
because I was looking for some alone time.
But he says, hey, you're Vivek, right?
I said, yeah.
He said, well, listen up, I'm a Democrat.
I'm pretty involved in politics.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm a big fundraiser for Democrats.
But I gotta tell you, I don't agree with you on everything.
I'm not for your guy,
but I agree with your criticisms of the far left.
And I'm about as fed up with
the far left as you are. And I just want you to know that. I said, Oh, okay. Well, that's
interesting to me. I see that current. I think the same is probably true for Mark Cuban too.
But he's still going to vote for Kamala. That same guy. Of course, we're going to vote for
their policies. That's the biggest problem. Well, so here's the thing. I don't agree with
those people on left, but I'm still going to vote for them. But here's what's going
on in this election actually. So I think our side sometimes misses the plot
when we say Kamala is a communist or a socialist,
that's giving her too much credit, right?
Because she doesn't actually have policies.
The fluidity of her policies is actually a feature,
not a bug for the people who are controlling her.
So Biden had these cognitive deficits.
Biden's cognitive deficits were a feature
because it allowed the people who controlled him
to have total wheel control over his thoughts
or his behaviors.
With Kamala, it's the equivalent with her policy deficits.
So it's not that they're voting for Kamala
despite the fact that she is some sort of far left ideologue.
It's the fact that she's not ideological really at all.
She's another cog in the system,
just a different kind of cog.
So I think their bet is that,
a lot of these people, even billionaire types on the left,
center left that I've talked to, I'll say,
okay, how is it defensible to stand for a tax
on unrealized capital gains?
And I think that, and you all know what that issue is about.
100 million, 25%, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, but the basic point is they could bring it down
to other people as well, which is to say that even if you
don't have the cash to pay the tax, you have to sell an asset in order to pay it.
Of course, you're going to be affected by it.
And everyone's going to be affected by it.
And it would be the source of a second grade depression, in my opinion.
Their responses, don't worry, it's not going to happen.
I said, well, she's put it along with Biden in their budget for the last several
years, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders have all been advocating for this.
And it's like, no, no, no, it's almost like an attitude like we got this one.
We got it, which suggests to me that they
don't view her as an ideologue, they view her as somebody who
doesn't matter what she says. She said this before she's
saying we got it already say this other stuff now. It's
going to be okay, which suggests to me the real criticism of
Kamala is the same criticism I've had of this system all
along. This is a charade. The whole thing is about cogs in a
wheel. We don't want to just go in and defeat
one candidate. We want to go in and defeat that system. And I think that's the better criticism
here than the idea that she's some kind of Marxist or socialist. I mean, Bernie Sanders is a true
socialist. He calls himself one. He calls himself part of the socialist party. Democratic socialist.
And at least he's an ideologue.
I give him actually more credit than I give the person who's just a puppet and a cog in
the wheel.
But that I think is closer to the flame with Kamala.
You say he's a true believer.
Bernie is.
That's what Pat always says about Bernie.
Bernie is a true believer.
Kamala is not.
I don't think Kamala is really a true believer.
I think that she is she's just another cog who doesn't have particularly independent thoughts
and that's an advantage to the people who control. I think that she is just another cog who doesn't have particularly independent thoughts
and that's an advantage to the people who control her.
The one thing Vivek and Pat that I saw from that thing
that Elon posted is actually scary as hell.
I don't think we actually realized,
well he said if one out of 20 actually become citizens,
then we're screwed.
We know it's way more than that.
They're saying the numbers are 20 million
by the end of this four years.
How is our side gonna even combat that?
Has the damage already been done, Vivek?
Because they're here, they're not going anywhere.
The border, it's still wide open.
I love how when people talk, as if it's still right now.
I saw a video yesterday of a line
of 25 to 50 Middle Easterns.
None of them are speaking English.
None of them are from here.
And Vivek, I know you guys saw these stats.
Out of the seven million that ICE released into the country,
663,000 have criminal histories,
13,000 were convicted of homicide,
16,000 sexual assault, 1,845 face homicide charges,
and that's not counting the terrorists that they let in
and the 325 missing children.
When it comes to the voting, Vivek,
when it comes to that, is that,
are they already good for like election
and election and election for the... So I think it's getting in that direction. So I got a whole
chapter dedicated to the hard facts on this in the book. The chapter title is called An Open
Border is Not a Border, which by the way, the fact that you have to have a chapter entitled
that book called Truth is remarkable. So there's two things I'll say about that. One is, go back to 2012. You see articles in
political magazine where Democrats actually made the case for this as a political strategy. So
today, if you say the thing, Elon says they dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist. Actually,
go back to 2012. This was part of the democratic strategy mass migration into the country,
including legal and illegal included was a way of securing lasting electoral majorities. back to 2012, this was part of the democratic strategy, mass migration into the country,
including legal and illegal included, was a way of securing lasting electoral majorities.
Now, they stopped saying that about a decade later because they realized it didn't look
great, but that was part of a longstanding strategy and it's working.
Here's the other thing though that, and I point this out in the book in a way that I
think Republicans have not yet put their finger on yet, all right?
Let's talk about the legal immigration system even.
Right. Even you talk about the Haitians and Springfield, that wasn't border crossers.
That's a different type of, under the government at least, legal mechanism of temporary protective
status. Let's talk about legal immigration. Let me ask you this. What is the number one human
attribute that the current immigration system selects for? I'll give you some possibilities.
You can imagine immigration system that selects for intelligence.
You could have one that selects for hard work
or ability to make economic contributions.
You could have one that selects for ability
to speak English or knowing about the civic values
of the country.
All of those could be reasonable bases
for an immigration system that values those attributes.
Those are examples of human attributes.
The case I make in this book is,
and it's supported by the evidence,
the number one human attribute
that our current immigration system selects for
is your willingness to lie, actually.
Because if somebody wants to come into the country
and they say, okay, I cannot in good conscience
select that I'm seeking asylum
at imminent risk of bodily harm for my race or my religion,
I can't say that in good conscience because it's not true. Even though I'm undergoing
conditions of difficulty, that person's not going to get in. But the person who
does get into the country is the person who checks that box, knowing full well
that it's not true. So now you look at that stat from Elon, not only is that
those are the people who are coming into the country, a small fraction of which
become Democratic voters, they're a small fraction of which even in the path to
becoming Democratic voters are demonstrated to be,
are demonstrably already the people most willing
to be dishonest and to lie.
And by the way, if you're selecting systematically
for people who are more willing to lie
to the US government than not, you're selecting
for people who are more likely to break the law
when they continue to be here as well.
So that's the hard truth is you get what you pay for.
Okay, the incentives you set up, that's what you collect.
And what we reward right now, it's not like Harvard's college admissions,
okay? Or maybe they reward that too, who knows? But your willingness to lie is the number
one attribute that gets you into the United States or not. That is a hard truth in today's
immigration system. So that makes that stat all the more scary. And that's, I think, one
of the strongest cases
for mass deportation.
Thank you very much.
Because if your country has interest,
it's illegally gotta be returned to your country.
Thank you very much.
I have personally worked at companies
that were venture funded,
and there were hardworking people
that wanted to get here in the H-1B program,
had a degree from IIT, coming over here,
or from Taiwan, all these places,
and they just, all they wanted to come here is work is work and they wanted they believed in the exceptionalism that was
coming out of Silicon Valley and really marvelous companies and what to work for
and yet the H1B would have quotas and so honest people with a great education who
wanted to come here who weren't checking the box and claiming asylum
persecution or anything like that suddenly Suddenly every year, you know this
this day, it was around April, April fools. So around April 1st, the H1Bs run out for
the year because now there's a backlog of apps and you're stuck. And so you have one
of the mechanisms of immigration, which is a way to legally get here, you know, constantly
has a lid on it in terms of numbers, but then if you're willing to lie
or you just open the border, here comes the flood.
And so we all came from somewhere else, right?
At the bottom of the Statue of Liberty,
it says, give us your tired, your poor,
your huddled, master's yearning to breathe free.
We all come from somewhere else,
but it's supposed to be legally,
and we've got all these mechanisms to incentivize.
It's not just the willingness to be dishonest as you correctly point out
I believe you correctly point out based on the data. It is the fact that we encourage it
Yeah, we encourage and we encourage it
We say well just just just do this just do this and hard-working people that want to come here
Have to wait in Germany at a refugee camp so your family can be checked out
Or you have to wait two years for the H1B
your number finally to come up because they have an artificial
Quota cap on it and you're just a hard-working person with the degree wants to come over here and be an engineer
So let me let me lay I love the way you say that because
Sadly, if you're honest your odds of coming to the country plummet if you're dishonest they spike
Let's just take two first principles here though. I don't care if you're on the left or the right
You could I'm gonna give you a framing of what I think our immigration policies should look like based on first principles. And if you disagree, let's disagree about it.
Let's think about your nation like a body, like a human body. So we often use the term, right,
for your human body consent. My body, my consent. Left, right, most people agree with that,
whether it's a vaccine, whether you're talking about, you know, sexual assault, abortion, whatever it is, my body, my consent.
So think about the nation like a body. No migration without consent. That's number one.
Number two is consent should only be granted to migrants who benefit America. It's number
two. And number three is those who enter without
consent must be removed. It's that simple. Three basic principles. No migration without consent.
Consent should only be granted to migrants who benefit America. And those who enter without
consent must be removed. That's the case. That's where I land on this book. I try to do this in
every issue. Just offer some simple, clear principles that I believe most Americans, Democrat, Republican, Black or white, will agree on.
I think most Americans agree on those principles. I think those are hard truths that most Americans
are behind. All right, so we may disagree on how to apply them, but once you've stated the principles,
now you're just talking about disagreeing over application, rather than what we fall into the
trap of thinking, oh, well, we actually disagree on the first principles.
I don't know many Democrats who on the face of it would say they even disagree with those
three principles.
But if you agree with those three principles, that means based on number three, you got
to have deportations of those who are in this country illegally.
Those who enter without consent must be removed.
You can't, you got to have secure border policies because no migration without consent.
So I think that that's something we don't do enough in politics is just identify our first
principles on each of these seemingly difficult issues. The surprise, and I
think it is a beautiful surprise, is that most of us actually tend to agree on
those principles and then it's just a question of application and that's what
I try to do in this book as well. Again folks, if you haven't ordered a book yet
Rob, let's put the link below for people people to be able to order the book
Truths that came out just a few days ago, a week yet Rob, let's put the link below for people people to be able to order the book truths
That came out just a few days ago a week ago, but let's get to the next story
This is a story that could affect everyone's pockets with what's going on a dock workers
Walkout could batter the American economy and tie up US trade Wall Street Journal story
represented by the International Longshoreman's
Association ILA are preparing to strike across ports from Maine to Texas, threatening to disrupt
US trade and the economy. JP Morgan analyst estimate the strike could cost
the economy 3.8 billion dollars to four and a half billion dollars a day. The
White House has urged negotiations but believes the supply chain could withstand
a short strike. The ILA, led by Harold Daggett, demands a 77% wage increase over six years, rejecting
an offer of nearly 40%, Daggett argues.
Workers deserve a share of shipping companies, pandemic and recent profits.
A strike would halt most container movements but not affect military cargos, cruise services
and oil and gas export retailers
and manufacturers from Walmart to GM, warned the strike could drive inflation, especially
during the holiday season.
Vivek, thoughts on the story?
My first thought is this is not good for Kamala Harris.
I mean this is just not good for her on the eve of the election.
I'm not trying to say that because I'm obviously voting for Trump, I'm not voting for her.
And I'm actually somebody who is urges against complacency
for our own side.
So if something's bad for our side, I'm gonna call it out.
This is not good news for Kamala Harris
on the eve of an election.
I think what we're gonna start to see is,
we're gonna see some weird things happen in the next month.
I can't tell you what, and with an exact prediction
what those are gonna be, well, one possibility,
the least weird of the weird things I think we're gonna see
is her rapidly
distancing herself from
and even possibly criticizing Joe Biden.
So I think you're gonna see a lot of this in the next month.
Is the Democratic Party further making Biden the fall man
for all of these policies and even leaks
or other stories coming out?
They might be made up, right?
They probably will be made up, but made up nonetheless, that Kamala was the person who
was trying to push Joe in this direction, but he didn't go on economic policy or border
policy.
I think we're going to have to see it's almost inevitable that we're going to see some of
that in the next month, because otherwise she is so saddled correctly with the Biden
Harris policies that are giving us everything from the largest strikes we've seen to the
largest influx of mass immigration we've seen
to the largest crime wave we've seen.
She is gonna have to take the next level of steps
to separate herself from these policies.
I don't think it's gonna necessarily be successful.
I don't think most people are gonna fall for it,
but I think we're gonna see more of that
when I see stories like this.
Tom.
I think she's cornered here.
This is a massive union work know, union work organization.
And if you think of it that way, and she just went toe to toe in the back room with the
teamsters and couldn't get them to do it. They pulled their their own people. It was
like 5835 and in favor of Trump. And so the union teamsters comes out and says, you know
what, no formal endorsement this go around.
And by the way, we encourage all of our people to vote,
vote your conscience, vote the way you would,
boom, step back.
Now you've got this, this is the,
these are the major strikes where the White House
usually has to step in with leadership
and to enforce like a federal negotiator
or somebody to come in to mediate.
And she is cornered on this. This is going to this is going to create well
pandemic type interruptions and supply chain is what's going to happen here
number one and and if we don't think that in very short order a shortage of
certain things is going to lead to you know inflation of those things then you
weren't paying attention to what was happening
to certain food products at Walmart and Sam's Club
and all of the, and Target.
Even in the earliest days of the pandemic,
soon as you interrupt the supply chain, the price goes up.
And she's cornered because how does she stay in this middle?
Like last week, she suddenly became Trump on the border,
spending 20 minutes at the border, 26 minutes,
I gotta give her full credit, 26 minutes at the border,
and then making statements that were almost completing
her run to the middle to be as much like Trump as possible.
She's stuck here, she's absolutely stuck.
If she comes out and supports the union side,
that's not the moderate position,
and we've got an economic impact.
Well, I just have a question for Rebecca,
because we've seen, you said that comrade Kamala.
Stay on this topic.
On the port topic.
I am.
Adam, I'm gonna tell you on the port topic.
I'm with you, Pat.
Okay, let's see here,
because I know you're gonna digress here in a second.
But we're starting to see like UAW, Sean O'Brien came out and spoke at the Republican convention,
I believe right around the time you were there.
He gave a long speech there.
A passionate speech there, thick Boston accent, we're not going for it.
And then we've seen Sean Fain sort of a counterpart with the UAW, these strikes that are taking
place, we saw Hollywood taking place. What's going on with this specific strike right here? And why Tom touched on it? Why are
these unions that are typically so entrenched in the Democratic Party, all of a sudden being like,
yeah, I don't know about this, this time over here. What's going on?
So there's a psychological component to this that runs deeper. I don't think that there's a lot of people
who are truly upset about saying,
I'm not getting paid enough and price are going up.
People are bothered by it, they suffer.
But what really gets people to move is to say that,
it's not just that I'm not making enough money
but prices have gone up.
It's that I'm not making enough money
but prices have gone up and nobody else seems to give a damn.
It's the second part that actually matters a lot, Right. And so I think that that's something I saw
that when I went to Springfield, by the way, when you showed up, even the community, the thing that
they're frustrated by is not that they're struggling, they are, but it's a struggling and nobody else
seems to care. And I think that this is something that Donald Trump and the Republican Party under
Donald Trump has done really well is to communicate. Yeah, we've got the policies, but Kamala Harris
can claim to stand for the same policies.
That's the thing about policy shifts is you can say anything.
But who actually really seems to care and have that as a core motivation?
They can feel that, you can smell that, you can kind of feel it in your bones.
And I think that's what we're seeing is more of a psychological shift.
It's not that the union members are saying, okay, these policies are going to be better than Trump's
policies, because a lot of Kamala's policies are now looking like Trump's policies anyway,
at least at the last minute. She's trying to make them seem that way. But I think it's that deeper
psychology of who do I actually think gives a damn about me. That's what gets people riled up is not
that I'm struggling, but I'm struggling that nobody else actually seems to care. That's the real problem. So the emotional concern. If you want to, if you want, if you're asking
like this event or all of them period. Yeah. This one is specific to this or this one is a symptom.
Yeah this is a symptom. Because stay on this. This is not a regular thing by the way just so you know
this. Like the stuff that this is affecting. This is 45,000 employees.
This is 36 ports.
This is a quarter of all bananas.
Like if you wanna talk about product,
this is Hokel, Governor Hokel came out and said,
if you're buying a car,
make sure the car is gonna be delivered type of thing.
This is people asking if gifts are gonna get in
by Christmas, toys, if you ordered in advance.
That's the concerns that people are coming up with.
This is these guys asking for a raise of 77% while the average salary on West Coast for
the same work is $116,000.
They're making $81,000 a year.
That's a, what, 19, 16, $35,000 raise that would give them 43%, but they're asking for
77% over six years.
This is a legit thing.
And by the way, the question you asked, which was actually a very good question, I thought
you were going to digress and go and talk about something else when we're on this topic,
is unions.
How are unions historically?
You think about Jimmy Hoffa, you think about all these guys.
Even Pete Buttigieg was trying to get them
to agree to do the, what's that one thing called,
the Taft-Hartley Act, or the Taft, which,
if you can pull up the Taft, are you familiar
with the Taft-Hartley Act?
Which, no, no, the Taft-Hartley Act is where the government
can force unions to not bully employers and threaten them
to say, if you don't come back to work, you may lose this,
you may lose that, you may lose that, you may lose this.
And they came up with this many, many years ago because unions with Ford, there was so
much of that happened in the 20s and 30s that they came up with this and Kamala Harris and
Biden are like, we want to have nothing to do with this because if they come out and
do this the next 40 days, the impact of this could be in a big way.
But why don't we do this?
Tom or Vivek?
Vivek, I'll go to you first.
The average person, okay? Not even how this affects Kamala. How could this affect the average person?
You're married, you got two kids, you're trying to do your thing, pay your bills, you're doing your
thing. How can this affect them? Price spikes and supply shortages. That's how that could affect
them. I mean, if things aren't able to goods and services that show up at your grocery store or show up at Walmart or
Target don't end up showing up on that grocery store. If we ever get to the point of that
type of supply shortage actually affecting an everyday family, I think that this thing,
I think the election is basically done no matter what tricks they pull. That's what
I believe. Now, whether that happens in the next four to six weeks, we'll see with these
negotiations can go in any given direction.
I'll tell you this though,
this is not a super interesting topic to a lot of people,
but I also think the United States needs to take
a long hard look at the Jones Act,
take a long hard look at a lot of these regulatory statutes
that were passed with good intentions,
but that are also contributing
to these types of difficulties, right?
So that's
an act that was designed to protect American shippers, ship companies and shipbuilders,
but actually gets in the way of efficient, low-cost shipping into the United States of America.
So I think that there's two competing views. And this is where, by the way, I think this is
even a divide on the right. It's not just between Republicans and Democrats. This is a divide on the American right where when we get, well hopefully when we're successful in taking over
the levers of power, the question is do we want to use that regulatory state and expand it
to advance pro-conservative or so-called pro-American goals? Or do we actually want
to dismantle a lot of that regulatory state in the first place. That I think is the future divide
even in the direction of America first.
And I'll tell you this is,
it's not a divide even between neoliberals, neocons,
and America first.
That's a divide within the America first right.
I come down in the camp of get in there and shut it down.
And a lot of those statutes I think are actually impeding
the interests of American workers and manufacturers
in the name of helping them.
So anyway, that's a longer discussion we could have,
but that's where I land on it.
Tom, you look like you wanna say something.
I think the first thing that,
first of all, I agree with that.
When you go into government, the first thing,
I mean, Reagan said it best.
He said, you know, when he was asked about a situation
and he said, people are looking for government
to the solution, but in this this particular case government is the problem.
It was you have well intended regulations on one day that have evolved and now literally
need to be dismantled because the conditions no longer exist, the markets are different,
the mechanisms, the advancement of the economy itself is different.
Now what are people going to see in this right now?
You mentioned bananas.
Bananas don't wait.
Bananas get ripe.
And if those bananas can't be unloaded,
because bananas are picked bright green,
and they have these special,
kind of these big water-filled tubs and stuff,
they ship these bananas, those bananas don't wait.
And so what you're gonna see is immediate price spikes
on perishables and
and and agriculture products. You're going to see it like within weeks. The same
way that when there's a hurricane in Houston, Texas sees an immediate increase
in the price of gas because you've interrupted the supply. So people are
going to see this you know immediately and they're going to be hearing
something that maybe they don't understand.
CNN, day 31 of the longshoreman strike.
And by the way, Taft-Hartley, that's where the president's
supposed to say, hey, I'll send a mediator in
to get you guys talking, because you don't want us
to go to Taft-Hartley.
And that's the mechanism.
But if they go to Taft-Hartley,
this election is over with, Tom.
Correct. If they go to Taft Hartley, this election is over with, Tom. Correct.
If they go to the force side right now, you can do this year two, you can do this year
three, you cannot do this 40 days out.
In a re-election time, while Kamala's getting the kind of rating that she's getting, you
cannot be doing something like that.
Let me get to the next story.
I want to see what you're going to be saying about this.
Tim Walz is nervous about upcoming VP debate.
Okay, this is a story that came out.
Walz is reportedly nervous about the upcoming debate against JD Vance, telling friends he's
worried he will let Kamala Harris down.
Walz has admitted to Harris that he's a bad debater and has brought in Pete Buttigieg
to play Vance in mock debate sessions.
Buttigieg, in a frequent Fox News guest, helps Waltz prepare but won't be growing a beer
to fully embody the Republican Senator from Ohio.
Vance, a Yale graduate with sharp debating skills, is being prepped by Representative
Tom Emmer, who described Waltz as like Gavin Newsom in a flannel shirt and aims to expose
Waltz. Minnesota's a nice persona as a fraud.
Emmer has spent the last month studying Waltz's debates and said if I do my job
JD is going to expose him. The goal is to make Waltz look like an out-of-touch
liberal vouching for another liberal. What do you think is gonna happen tonight
with the debate? I think it is going to be a probably a demolition destruction.
That's what I would call it. But I think that that may matter very little
because one of the things we learned even
from watching the Republican primary debates last year,
certainly I learned, is that it's not what happens
on the debate stage that matters
so much as the media's distillation of them.
At a presidential level debate
between the two major candidates, it's a little different
because you have just a significant number of people who are actually
watching the debate, who are able to form their own judgments.
But for any other debate other than the two lead presidential candidates facing off, whether
it's a primary debate, whether I think it's probably going to be similarly true for the
vice presidential debate, most people aren't going to watch the whole thing or even half
of it.
What they're going to do is they're going gonna read the media's distillation of it afterwards.
And that was one of my biggest learnings from last year is,
you probably, I don't know if you remember this last year,
but you could pick up the pages of the New York Times
or Washington Post, and then you could have actually
watched the debate, and it was like there was
two different events going on.
If you were actually the person who watched both,
you would wonder what debate they were watching.
So I think that what you're gonna see is probably just, I mean, just based on
obvious factors. I know JD, but just from watching, even if I
didn't just watching both candidates here, for Vice
President face off, I think that there is a massive disparity
would be like the equivalent in UFC before they had the weight
classes, you got to have the weight classes. So we have
people of like natural capability
going against each other.
Otherwise it's not very fun to watch.
I think that's what it'll look like tonight.
But it doesn't matter as much
because the media's distillation of it
will be what the media wants to make the distillation of it.
And that's what more people are gonna see
than the debate itself.
I would tend to agree, oh sorry.
I think you hit on something there.
Look at the presidential debate.
We had all these polls, these were opinion polls
of who won the debate, but what the real important thing
was what was happening to the undecided voters
that were self-identified with the major parties
and the ones that were identified as independents.
And what did Reuters find out and others find out
when they conduct focus groups?
Guess what, people broke for Trump on the economic issues.
So all this banter was going on about the opinion polls.
Oh, 58% said Kamala won the debate.
In fact, there were independent voters
that actually were moved by the debate,
and so the point of it, now when you get to a VP debate,
you're absolutely correct.
What is it?
It's this is going to be in the far-left mainstream media a
Another kind of little mini RNC. They're gonna be talking about it endlessly for 72 hours
And there's gonna be like certain enthusiasm that's gonna come in the form of hyper criticism advance
That's what you're gonna see and what it's gonna feel like but at the end of the day the important people are
What in the distillation that people will
see, what are they going to be really caring about?
And what do they really want to know about?
Because it's those undecided and independent voters that's what are the keys to what comes
out of this.
Just a question for Vic.
I would typically say I agree with you that the VP debate is almost irrelevant. I mean, who was the MVP of the last VP debate between Kamala Harris and Mike
Pence? It was the frickin fly on Mike Pence head. So like you don't remember anything
that they argued about other than her. Excuse me. I'm talking, I'm talking, which is reminds
me of my third grade teacher and just gives me PTSD. But however, this potentially might be the last debate of the election season.
Trump has basically said he's not going to come out and debate Kamala.
I think it's scheduled, agreed upon October 23rd, which is in three weeks.
But I think Trump is not doing this debate.
Do you think Trump is making a mistake, not doing another debate with Kamala?
I think it depends. I mean, what the dynamics of this race, you know, they change week to week.
I personally think one of the formats that's been used in every other prior presidential cycle other
than 2020 with COVID was actually the town hall format. Okay, so the first debate is a straight
on debate like the one that Trump and Kamala and Biden already had. But the second debate traditionally has been Trump
did this with Hillary Clinton.
There's actual real human beings, real citizens,
real Americans who themselves ask the questions
of the candidate.
And that format's excellent
because it reduces media bias.
There's some media bias, of course,
they can hand select the questions,
the moderators can cut in.
But in general, it becomes harder to stack the debate when you're
hearing from real Americans directly of the candidate. I
think Donald Trump shines in that setting. I think Kamala
Harris does not. So my view is, and Trump is Trump is a smart
guy, he knows how to he knows how to play the cards. And so my
view is if there is another debate, it should be a town
hall style debate. We're not making this up. It's
always been done this way. This is the tradition for every presidential election, other than the
one that occurred during COVID in 2020, where they didn't do the town hall format, bring that back.
And I think that that will be a great format, both for the country, but also for Donald Trump. And
so we still got another four or five weeks before this thing plays out. Right. So let's, let's just see how things unfold.
I fully agree that they would need something like that, but it's trending the wrong way.
Now the last two debates, there's no audience. You can't even speak over each other.
So you crush it at the debate, speaking over people with Nikki, with Ron DeSantis, like that.
There's a dynamic there. You need that with no audience.
We got to see that this time around.'re gonna see an audience We gotta see live questions
Usually the way they do it look at these old presidential debates
You actually have people sitting on the stage you're gonna pull that up with with Trump and Hillary you could see that second one
There's people sitting on the stage. I think that that is a pretty good format because it gives people a sense for how they
interact with human beings not just with these fake moderate
But I think but I think with Trump and Trump is just a master at that,
with the crowd, and we talked about earlier, Pat,
about small group, big group.
He's a showman, but he's a New Yorker, and he kicks ass.
It's because of him that they stopped doing all of that.
And there's good luck trying to have NBC or CNN
try to have another one of these ever again.
That's with their favor, and our side has to agree has to agree with
That no no audience. She can't have this
There's no like it all the rules are set up to help the left
And I mean when 98% of the media is mainstream is left where we're at a disadvantage
I think there's really a point here because whether you like it or not there is a key moment in Bill
Clinton's candidacy
where he approached the woman talking about the economy. It was huge.
That was a huge moment where he walked right out to her and just really you
could feel the vibe that was there like I feel you and his charisma that he was
projecting at that with a person and we all saw it from at home. And debates can
be spicy too. We were at a debate earlier this year.
One of the candidates, man,
went after the leader of the party, correctly so.
And then went after the broadcaster
that had been so manipulative in the past.
So there's also, I think, opportunities
to get a little bit spicy and call people out
who need to be called out.
Sure, I think there is.
So I think that that's a great format
both for the country and my opinion
for Republicans and for Donald Trump. But, you know, let's stay tuned. So I think that that's a great format, both for the country and my opinion for Republicans
for Donald Trump.
But, you know, let's stay tuned.
Let's stay tuned.
You got a couple of these couple of these examples from that in the past.
And I think that that's great.
I think that's great.
Let's see what happens tonight.
The dynamics of this race are going to change.
You mark my words, at least three or four more times between now and Election Day.
I mean, this October is going to feel like the equivalent of a year between now and the
election.
And so I think there's a lot yet still to unfold. Kevin McCarthy said it's going to feel like the equivalent of a year between now and the election. And so I think there's a lot yet still to unfold.
Kevin McCarthy said it's going to feel like it's, it's a Hillary said something to Hillary's
like, Oh, something's coming in October, like warning us about today's October 1st.
Let's read that.
Let's read that.
So let's go through that.
So Hillary Clinton, something will happen in October to distort and pervert Kamala Harris.
She's not even talking about anybody.
She says, I anticipate there will be a full court press in October, the digital airways will
be filled.
And why does it matter?
Because the press, this is pro-Trump anyway.
Interesting.
Really?
Oftentimes, stories are put on digitally, then are picked up by, let's say, Fox and
others, and then those stories are stories so the mainstream press reports on them.
And so that the story then takes on a life of its own.
Is this the one, Rob?
Yes.
Of what she says?
If you wanna play this clip, I mean,
her voice is amazing, go ahead and play this clip
if you can.
And I anticipate that something will happen in October,
as it always does.
The Russians, as I said earlier,
are very active in this election.
We know the Iranians are active as well.
Chinese uses TikTok, or they certainly did against Biden and for Trump.
I think they're a little less pro Trump right now.
So you look at where people get their information and they get their
information largely from social media and so the campaign is doing the best
job it can to combat that, combat both domestic and foreign false
disinformation. But I anticipate there will be a full court press in October.
The digital airwaves will be filled.
And why does that matter?
Because the press that is pro-Trump anyway, oftentimes stories are put on digitally that
then are picked up by, let's say, at Fox and others.
And then those stories are stories.
So the mainstream press reports on them.
Who actually believes that? Who's the audience? Who pays to come here? And so that story then takes on a life of its own.
There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert.
Vivek, who is she talking to?
I think mostly to herself.
No, what I'm asking is like,
who believes that and who is she actually talking to
about this?
So look, I think there is an echo chamber on the left that is increasingly in need of believing the
things that they, many more of them used to believe back in 2016, but increasingly a number
of other Democrats have been disabused of this mythology, right? You see a lot of the people
moving from the center or the center left now even to come around to vote for Trump in this cycle.
So I think there's a group of people who kind of miss the solidarity they used to have in
2016.
The idea of that Russia disinformation hoax, the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, that was
something that people had a big attachment to.
I even know professors from MIT, other places, who I knew back then, who for them, they weren't
even terribly political but this idea that somebody else is is really colluding we know something's
wrong in the country the idea of having a boogeyman to pin that on that was really valuable it filled
kind of a vacuum in their heart and in their soul and so when that when they were disabused of that
notion most people were there's a small group of them that still needs somebody to be giving them that sense of
The feeling they had back in 2016. That's the increasingly shrinking group that she's talking to right there. The interesting thing was
Even Hillary Clinton might need some of that for herself
She still hasn't given I mean how many times how would she go an interview where she can't talk about Russia and disinformation?
Russia when it was her own campaign. So let's actually just take a pause on this.
Every time we've heard the message about Russian disinformation, let's do the pattern recognition
all the 2016 and 2020.
And then let's come to 2024 2016.
The alleged Russia disinformation and interference that supposedly was proposed to propel Donald
Trump to the White House was actually domestic interference
from the Steele dossier,
Hillary Clinton's opposition research,
that was laundered through the narrative
of Russian intervention.
So the real Russian disinformation
was created by domestic disinformation
laundered through Russia.
That was 2016, maybe that's a one-time incident.
Well, then you get to 2020.
Now you have the Hunter Biden laptop story,
which contains probably the most damning information about a major presidential candidate ahead of an election that we've seen in modern American history.
And that was systematically suppressed because they again, they laundered it through the narrative of Russian disinformation.
So when she's talking about the idea of somehow Russian disinformation coming up in 2024, it makes me wonder what might be domestically cooking
because that's exactly what they've done each of the last two election cycles.
And I think that in some ways, is she lying about it? Is she some sort of evil genius?
I think it's actually none of the above. She in some ways is the same part of that psychologically
needy group to believe in this grand illusion to fulfill Some vacuum in their heart that they didn't quite have fulfilled back in 2016
I think it's a psychological deficit rather than it is some sort of masterminding plan even on her own part
That's how I would say you go back to LBJ and LBJ said if I've lost Cronkite
I've lost the country
It was very famous and he was talking about Vietnam and things were happening and they used to have
the mainstream media as their lapdog and
Absolutely, and so now what I hear John Kerry saying what I hear
Hillary Clinton saying here is they are frustrated in their inability to control narratives and free speech that are coming from other corners
But then as you correctly say they've had these convenient methodologies
to rinse or launder, you know, these scandalous things and
actually use social media to help do so when the mainstream media didn't go far enough for them.
And I think that I agree with you on the Psychologically needy thing. I think there is a lot of denial on we can't believe we lost to this guy in 2016
You saw Deepa Destha when he came down to the ballroom and talked to the the sobbing mob of her supporters
Remember that and I believe I believe that they suffered the equivalent of a political nervous breakdown that night that they've never really emotionally recovered from exactly
Because we lost to this guy we lost to this guy
Yeah, but the part when she says we know mainstream media is mainly on the right
Come on that is her says that is that the gas lighting to just try to at the highest exactly that's that's that's her
Just yeah, who believes it though?
It's either denial or gaslighting.
Who on the left believes it?
All of them.
I had a Manette yesterday with a guy
that was self-proclaimed TDS.
He's like, I don't know what the...
And he couldn't get out of it.
And he's like, listen, even though what you're telling...
I'm not even joking, in fact, this guy paid
for 30 minutes to tell me, he's like, since then,
and he's like, it's just embedded,
they believe everything that
she's saying Pat that's their golden goose they still adore this woman if they they would have her
as president in a heartbeat but she's so unlikable every time she speaks and that's why I was being
funny about but you and you nailed it the Clinton global initiative what is that that's not the
Clinton foundation what is that what is their global initiative what what is it I don't even
know what the hell they're talking about the Clinton global initiative yeah what is their global initiative? What is it? I don't even know what the hell they're talking about.
The Clinton Global Initiative?
Yeah, what is she doing?
That is their, that is their.
It's a very serious initiative, global.
That is their foundation.
About what, people disappearing?
I'm so disappointed by your criticism of this initiative.
But if you had to.
It's basically like a roach motel for money,
money goes in but it doesn't go out, right?
Got you, okay, perfect.
If you had to. It goes to private jets. If you had to go to private jets, if you had to, I bet I would
buy guests if I had to guess. Don't say, don't say I wouldn't choose either. This is a binary
option. Just hypothetical complete game here. Had to vote for Hillary Clinton or Kamala
Harris to be the president of the United States. Now who would you actually vote for? Now?
If you're asking the question, who's more qualified. It's not even close. Yeah, if you're asking who's more qualified
For the left you're saying Hillary's more. It's not even close
Kamala is not qualified like Hillary was qualified to run but she she is that hated
To have that like ability to have that kind of a resume your husband was a former
Liked Democratic president for two terms and how do you screw that up how do you go from having a president that a lot of people on the left say Bill
Clinton's my favorite president you know hear people saying it regularly what's
interesting is people should go back and listen to for example Bill Clinton's
like 1992 campaign speeches and acceptance speeches, even for the nomination
and his inauguration.
A lot of what he would say back then is exactly what a lot of Republicans would and do support
today.
Welfare reform in the 1990s.
Bill Clinton was, I mean, I disagree with him on a lot of things, don't like the guy,
obviously, you know, the deep dishonesty and a lot of it rejected. But as a matter of the policies that he advanced, even in the mid 90s, a
lot of them actually are more pro-conservative by today's standards
than they were even viewed as being back then. Welfare reform is a good one and I
would love to see, this is what this gets back to that point about where I want to
see the future direction of the Republican Party go, is we've got to go the direction of dismantling this nanny state and I think that in many ways what's happened over the last several
Years is the Republicans have imported many ideas from Democrats into the Republican Party itself
That was the ultimate coup actually in the last 30 years was not just the Democratic Party wielding more power or over the mainstream media
It's that many of those ideas have become blasphemy just the Democratic Party wielding more power or over the mainstream media.
It's that many of those ideas have become blasphemy of what the Democrats used to be
against.
They're not blasphemy even amongst Republicans, like adding work requirements to welfare,
adding, you know, let's just say dismantling the nanny state of the welfare state Medicaid.
You could think about the regulatory state.
And so what I want to see is a revival of a Republican Party that goes back and takes aim at that regulatory state. And so what I want to see is a revival of a Republican party that goes back
and takes aim at that regulatory state.
And the funny thing is if you go all the way back
to Bill Clinton's speeches in the 90s,
but you put them in today's language,
you would think it was a hardline conservative
making those same statements,
which I just think is pretty interesting, Patrick.
I don't disagree.
This is why a lot of people forget
about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, set that aside.
He was actually not a bad president.
He was a guy that in many, him and Newt were able to sit across from the table and negotiate
and get some things done.
Right?
What year was Newt's Man of the Year Time Magazine?
This is when they were men before they became persons.
Wait, this is what?
Ninety-four?
I think he was the Man of the Year.
It was in the Clinton in the Clinton my arm
They were able to make things work 95 the back on this topic of sort of what the Republican Party stands at this point
You you wrote I read it all the time. Thanks to Pat Wall Street Journal
You wrote an article maybe a week ago two weeks. Yeah, that was an excerpt from the book. Actually. It was awesome
Thank you. And it's you. And the premise was the
America first divide should the Republicans be more protectionist or libertarian in nature.
Walk me through that and the different distinctions between those two options. Sure. So let me first
say America first rejects the neo conservative neoliberal vision of yesterday, foreign interventionism
rejects the idea that somehow we're going to make China a democracy by trading with them.
No, that has failed.
But for the America First future, what's the goal?
The protectionist camp, and I think most of the prominent voices in America First right
now, most of them fit this description, would say that we need to protect American manufacturers
from the effects of foreign price competition.
We need to protect American workers and their wages
from the effects of immigration.
That that's protecting the economic conditions of the worker.
And we should also make sure
that we use the regulatory state,
we use regulations in the Department of Transportation
or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
or the antitrust laws of the FTC,
that we should use the regulatory
state to advance conservative goals rather than liberal goals.
The alternative view is the national libertarian perspective.
That's where I fall, which is to say that no, no, no, no, no, we don't want to use the
regulatory state to advance our goals.
We want to get in there and shut down the regulatory state.
You want to talk about trade.
Well, if we're serious about declaring economic independence from China, and I am in critical sectors like the US military,
which depends on China, our pharmaceutical supply chain, critical sectors, if we're really
serious about reducing our economic dependence on China, that requires, yes, onshore into
the United States, but if we're really serious about it, it also requires nearshoring to
allies, Japan, South Korea,
India, Vietnam, Philippines, and so on.
But if you're truly in the protectionist camp, you'd say, no, no, no, let's trade with everybody
because that means American workers or American manufacturers aren't going to get quite the
same high price.
When it comes to immigration, my view is we need an immigration system that selects for
your readiness to assimilate, your ability to speak speak English your ability to know something about the country through
civics exams your love of the country your ability to make contributions that's
one view of immigration we'd probably have less immigration in the near term
as a result of that but it's because it's based on the principle of what
stands for pro-american values but the protectionist views I don't care about
any of that I just say think of a company can hire somebody to do a job for $20 an hour versus being
able to hire two immigrants to do the same job for $10 an hour.
We should stop those immigrants from coming in so the American company has to hire the
American worker.
The problem is that results in fewer workers being hired.
So the reason I stand for the national libertarian perspective, which is to say that I don't
want to replace the left-wing nanny state with the right-wing nanny state.
I want to dismantle the nanny state.
That I believe should be the future of America first.
The reason I say that is not because that's a more important goal than helping American
workers and manufacturers.
That is the way to help American workers and manufacturers for the long run.
And I do see a little bit of a deficit, a little bit of a gap in willingness
of leaders to step up and adopt those positions, which is why I've made that a big part of my book,
which is why I'm actually going to be, I expect to fill that void in a bigger way, because I think
that that's the debate we need to be having. Now, here's one thing I'll say about Donald Trump is,
Donald Trump does a good job of melding both of these positions. And for a leader at the
right time, he's the right leader for the right moment you need to build a coalition you need to
be able to draw from the best ideas from all camps and so he's done a good job and I think
we'll continue to for the next four years do a good job of bridging this divide but I think after
Donald Trump hopefully a successful second term that we're all rooting for after that I think that
this rift is going to become pretty unavoidable and
I think the rift between the protectionist version of the America first right in the libertarian leaning version the America first right is
Going to have to be the choice and I think that's where the future
Direction of the Republican Party the conservative movement the America first movement goes from the back
Let me ask you this. What is the difference between putting a tariff on a country versus a company?
Yes, so that's a good question. Well, first thing is let's talk about on, what is the difference between putting a tariff on a country versus a company? Yeah, so that's a good question.
Well, first thing is, let's talk about the level of the country.
These are two different situations where one is you just say, hey, I want to protect American
manufacturers.
I'm just going to slap a tariff on your company's products coming into ours versus saying that
your country is already applying a higher tariff to our companies than we are to yours and we're going
to play on an even playing field. Those are two different objectives. So on the first where we're
just willy-nilly just saying, yeah, I want to protect American manufacturers and they shouldn't
have to compete. You know, I'm just going to slap a tariff. That doesn't work because the other
country is just going to raise the tariff to the same place. But, and I think this is where you
got to listen to Donald Trump very carefully, what he's
saying is we gotta plan an even playing field, which I agree with.
Which is to say if another country's already applying those tariffs at a higher rate to
us, directly or indirectly, right, there's many ways to apply a tariff.
The regulation or otherwise, those are forms of tariffs too.
If you apply regulations selectively to foreign companies, that's effectively a tariff.
So if you have other countries that are already treating us unevenly, then say no, no, no,
we gotta compete on a level playing field,
that to me is fair game.
And that's a distinction where you have others
who would be in the protectionist right
that would say it's not just about the even playing field,
we wanna create an uneven playing field in our direction,
that doesn't work because everyone loses.
But right now, are we competing on an even playing field
with other countries?
We're not, and that's where you gotta use
either the threat of tariffs at least
to get them to be able to abide by the same rules and response.
So let's go with this. Let's go a little bit deeper with this. So let's just say I am
Ford and I'm trying to get my, you know, workers working here, but I'm dealing with the union.
It's always a fight. And for me to build the same car to sell it for $24,000,
I can make that same car in Mexico for $7,800 instead
of making it in Detroit for $13,900, right?
And if I build it in Detroit for $13,900, that means that $21,000 car I would have to
sell for whatever, add additional $5,500, $27,000, right?
If you and I were part of the board
Okay, and the CEO comes you're not the chairman. We're board members There's nine of us and the chairman comes up and says guys our CF will just give us the numbers
We produce these cars in New York. We're paying this much. We produce these cars in Mexico. We're saving $6,000
We need to consider building something
Elsewhere so we can somehow someway avoid the constant battles
we're having with the union.
What is the right move there?
So the job of a company's board of directors
is always to maximize shareholder value, period.
You operate within the laws as you're given.
You may not like the laws,
but within the constraints of those laws,
how do you maximize the equity value of the company?
That's the job of the board, period.
I don't compromise on that.
It was a core premise of even the company I founded,
strive to compete with other asset managers
that have taken these other ESG philosophies.
However, let's talk about policy.
Why is it more expensive to actually produce
here in the United States?
We don't often enough ask that question.
Here's a big part of the reason why.
The regulatory state in the United States
is far more cumbersome for American companies
than it is in other countries where those companies are then choosing to set up instead.
Climate change, emissions caps.
Now, interestingly, they don't apply those in China.
Well, that's why a lot of US businesses have gone to places like China to say they don't
have to track their emissions there or limit them in the way that they do here in the United
States.
So that brings me back to the solution.
The right answer for American manufacturers and American workers is to dismantle that excess regulatory state.
But the irony, Patrick, is a lot of people on the right, I see them making
this mistake and it hurts me when I watch this, it's like a slow-motion train
wreck you kind of see happening in plain sight, you got to stop it, is to say that
oh no no no we need to actually make sure that they're not allowed to move
but at the same time we're also going to favor greater regulations right here at home.
Take the disaster in East Palestine.
There's two ways to go, right?
One is to say that, oh, we need to apply greater restrictions
on what companies can and cannot do.
We have to regulate them even more
to make sure those disasters don't happen.
Well, that further drives up the cost in the United States,
which further increases the demand to go to other countries,
versus the right answer is to say,
is a lot of those regulations were flawed in the first place, we need to actually let
the market compete, embrace the fact that capitalism is not a bad word.
And I don't want to see capitalism become a bad word in the Republican Party or in the
future direction of the America first right.
I think America first and capitalism are deep, not only deeply compatible, I think that they're
part and parcel of the same great American story
of what made America great the first time around.
And if we're being really frank,
I do think that that is a subject of debate
on the America first right.
Some people will want limits on credit card interest rates.
Some people will want limits on what companies
are or aren't able to do,
or to break up big companies just because they're too big,
versus the right answer is actually let
the market solve the problems as long as we're competing on an even playing field
as long as we're not dependent on China for our own military or our own
pharmaceutical supply chain which is crazy for our national security we have
an immigration system that's not just about an economic zone but people who
share our civic values that's what I call the national libertarian future and I
think that's something that I feel a sense of obligation to really fill a void in what I see in the future
direction here. That's where I think the country needs to go. We don't we listen, we will, none of
us will always 100% agree on everything. You said this right off the bat at the beginning of the
podcast. When he announced the tariffs, possibly the 200% on John Deere, are you someone that would say,
I'm fully for that? Or are you kind of like, ah, it's a little bit.
Well, here's the thing about President Trump is he is a master negotiator, right? So he knows how to
pull the different levers in order to be able to get people to the table and have a conversation.
So each person's got to lead in a manner that's most authentic to their own style. I'd put this more in a stylistic category. Okay. The stylistic category I put
in is to say that we're not talking about an important issue we need to be talking about.
Let's get people to the table and have a conversation. Donald Trump's been the master of that. Even
in the first term, a lot of the tariffs that were threatened were never implemented, right?
They were a way of getting people to the table. You know, talk about Mexico, they're not keeping their obligations or have not for a long time about actually doing their part of
the border crisis. So you say, oh, if you don't take care of that, I'm going to slap a border
tariff on you. I think that's a fair discussion to be able to have as a lever of countries
operating according to even playing field. So here's where I land, even playing field,
I'm in favor of it. At that stage, capitalism works and we should embrace it. But it's not
capitalism when other countries are using state-directed mercantilism, and we're pretending
It's capitalism where they're taking advantage of us
No, we've got to get our other trading partners to operate on the same two different things those are two different things
Those are two different things. I totally get the terrorists being put on I want to say today Morgan Stanley came up Rob type in Morgan Stanley
says Trump's
came up, Rob, type in Morgan Stanley says Trump's tariffs could cost American people 70,000 jobs a day.
I think I saw that.
70,000 jobs a day.
Yes, two hours ago.
Okay, there you go.
Morgan Stanley warns that 70,000 U.S. jobs.
So this is different when they're talking about the fear of, I haven't read this article,
I just saw the title.
Can you go lower a little bit to see what it says?
So Morgan Stanley's implementation of the Tariff Hike proposal would drive up inflation
and pose a hit to economic growth.
Okay, if the proposed tariffs are fully implemented, we estimate that the near-term acceleration
of the inflation or drag in GDP, Morgan Stanley said, the bank's economists and strategists
model the scenario in which Donald Trump wins the White House and quickly moves to implement a 10% blanket tariff in global
imports and a 60% tariff on inbound shipments from China that would mean
tariffs as high as 25 to 35 percent about half of the US industry the
inflationary effect happens more quickly judging from history more
against an economist at the model indicates 0.9% bump in PC Bryce okay so
your thoughts on this yes so first of all that's take the headline I find it Oregon's economic system model indicates 0.9% bump in PC Bryce. Okay.
So your thoughts on this.
Yes.
So first of all, let's take the headline.
I find it interesting they call them the Trump tariffs when Biden chose to leave them in
place.
Bingo.
So it's really interesting how they're going to that shows you the tilt right out the gate.
Okay.
No, no, the bias.
You can talk about hit from from tariffs.
You could at least have a reasonable debate about that.
And that's a separate policy debate. But I knew the slant right away when Biden has left those same tariffs in place
and you're still calling them Trump tariffs, that tells me what that entire story and the so-called
economic modeling is really about. Yes, I don't have a problem with that. I think you need to
do that with countries because I do think a lot of these countries have been negotiating in a way of,
like the way you would draw it up is the
following.
Okay, we're buying this much from you.
It's generating you this much revenue.
What are you buying from us?
How are you buying from us?
Is it just me buying from you?
If that's the case, and I'm not getting anything, like that was a negotiation with China, which
the arbitrage was 400 billion a year that they were making on us.
It's got to be an even playing field.
They're also subsidizing their own companies
from their own side.
That's not capitalism either.
And they're especially doing it to increase US dependence
on them in critical areas to our national security.
So here's my rule.
The end state is if everybody's playing
on an even playing field,
we get rid of our regulatory state
to be able to actually make our companies
most competitive here, then great.
Trade is a great answer.
But if we're not playing on an even playing field, which is the status quo, and then our
regulatory state makes it even worse because we're applying constraints to our own companies
that don't apply in other countries, that's a one-two double whammy.
So Republicans, I think some people may actually go the wrong direction to say, okay, then
we need more protectionism and we need more regulations to make up for it.
No, no, that's the wrong direction. It's actually the exact opposite
direction. We need to force the other countries to play by the same set of rules. That's where a good
negotiator like Donald Trump makes a difference. And then if we're playing by the same set of rules
and our environment's less competitive, let's look ourselves in the mirror and say, why are we less
competitive? A lot of that's the regulatory state, slash and burn that. That's my three-word slogan for the future of the conservative movement, you know, to
summarize it in one nutshell, shut it down.
When it comes to the nanny state, the regulatory state, shut it down.
That's what makes the United States competitive.
And when everybody's, you know, when you're talking about the everybody's smoke screen
is gone and clothes are laid bare, at the end of the day, I believe the United States
of America is and should be the most, I believe the United States of America is
and should be the most competitive place to make a lot of things in the world. But if we're not,
that's the fault of our own government and we need to fix that by dismantling that regulatory state.
I agree. There's a lot of that that's got to be done. Hopefully it will be in this next election
once if he ends up winning. Okay, so next story here. Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader
Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel airstrike killed their leader in Beirut, a pivotal figure who led the group for over
30 years.
The strike also killed senior Hezbollah commander Ali Karakhi and Iranian Brigadier General
Abbas Nelforshan of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
This marks the culmination of Israel's intense two-week campaign targeting Hezbollah and is even seen a
major blow to both the group and its backer Iran.
Israel's ministry warned civilians to evacuate before launching the airstrike which flattened part of Beirut's southern suburbs.
Nasrallah's death is a strategic setback for Hezbollah, Iran and their allied militias with
President Biden calling it a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese.
Nasrallah was overseen Hezbollah's growth into a powerful militia and its integration
into Lebanon's political system.
What is your thoughts on this story, Yavriv?
This is a big deal, for sure.
And you know, I think that for all of the criticisms of, you know, killing civilians in Gaza or whatever, I think that this is an example of doing what you want to do if you want to actually defeat your enemies, go after in a targeted way after the leadership.
So I think this is a big deal. I think that a lot of people were skeptical that Bibi was going to be able to and the idea was able to pull this off. They did.
be able to, and the idea was able to pull this off, they did. And I think that it also is a good example of the fact that Israel is able to get this
job done.
People say, is Israel able to get the job done or do people actually need other countries
to get involved in this conflict?
I think that this is a good example of Israel looking at the leadership of their opposition
able to get that job done.
And so I think this was definitely a big milestone in the war.
Tom?
I think it's huge and I think what it shows is that
everybody who doubted Israel's ability
to take care of herself needs to kind of take a step back.
This is Israeli military, Israeli intelligence,
and them tracking where they were from the pagers
and the radios that they they disrupted their communication because they weren't using
Smartphones because smartphones are hyper targeted so they went back to old-school stuff
They infiltrated a supply line got stuff into their hands
caused those to detonate it and then had incredible intelligence on here to make a precision strike.
And I've seen, you know, I want to see everything calm down and I want to see, you know, the
people that are over there, the citizens that are, you know, so horribly affected be able
to, you know, live at peace.
But I'll tell you, over the last two weeks, I've seen nothing but what I think is strategic wins for Israel,
the way they're handling this and the way they're going after this.
I mean, what is more targeted than the pager in the pocket of your target?
Vinny.
Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, the tactics of this from what you just said, Tom, think about,
so they killed Nostralallah and Beirut,
they managed to plant the mini bombs in the pages and walkie talkies of hundreds Hezbollah members. They managed to kill Haniyeh while he was in Iran. They killed Hussain Soleimani in Iraq.
And just with all this intelligence, all this tactical stuff, it brings me back to the October
7th and how, if you have all that intelligence, how did you not see that coming? You know what
I mean? It kind of begs that question where you're like, that's like,
by the way, this isn't a rinky-dink mission what they're doing. They're going everywhere
and they're, they're knocking out people with precision, with the pagers and everything.
So it's just, I don't know.
Vinny, I mean Adam.
So look, one thing is just becoming clear and clear and clear in the Israel situation.
Because sometimes you have to take a sort of pan out from what happened October 7th and
what they've been doing in Gaza.
It's becoming clear and clear to me that Israel is basically doing one thing and one thing
only fighting Iran's web of terror that is basically set up all across the Middle East, whether it's the
Houthis that are going on, you see what's going on in the seas out there,
whether it's Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether it's Hamas, whether it's
militias all across Syria, Iraq, all over Afghanistan.
I mean, Iran has their, you know, people say the head of the snake,
they like
to use the term an octopus because it has tentacles everywhere.
And Israel, here's what I know about them.
If they go too hard in Gaza, you guys went too hard.
Oh my God.
It's your, you take, if they go to surgical in Lebanon, well, that's not fair.
You mean you went, you're very specific strikes.
You just took them.
They're going to be criticized regardless.
So if you look at BB and you know what BB's approval rating is in Israel right
now, you know what it is?
It's hovering in the mid to low thirties.
It's not like they're a big fan of what's going on with him because they
want to basically their, um, um to basically their people back who are basically
being held ransom, is that he's saying, listen, I'm going to get criticized no matter what I do.
So let me just eliminate the terror groups that are basically an existential threat to our country.
And we'll apologize later, or maybe never, because these people have a clear motive of destroying Israel and if you just look
at who is aligned with Iran, where's Iran getting your funding? China, Russia,
they're doing weapons supplies over there. The US has just moved what?
More military assets to the Mediterranean and to the Red Sea.
Hopefully this does not escalate even further, but I'll
circle back to one final point. Where the hell is Joe Biden during all this? You know, they said in
the Bible, no man can serve two masters. Joe Biden should have come out and said, we stand with our
ally. We're eliminating these threats. Enough with this. Just like Trump did.
I got a question for you. I got a question for you. I got a question. You're typically, Rob,
I found this speech. I just send it to you if you want to find
it, I text it to you.
Vivek, there's an element of division on the conservative side with the way things are
being handled with Israel.
How are you processing that?
You know what I'm saying, right?
With some people, like, well, you know, look at these guys, how many bodies, how many children
and women is enough? And these are influencers that are going to vote'm saying, right? With some people like, well, you know, look at these guys, how many bodies, how many children and women is enough?
And these are influencers that are going to vote for Trump, right?
What do you say to them when there's a split on their opinions on this issue?
Well, look, I think especially when it comes to foreign policy, I think it shows with the
modern Republican Party is definitely a big tent coalition for sure.
And I think that that's one of the things even I talked about protectionism versus libertarianism.
I would say the same thing with respect to foreign intervention versus conservatism on
staying focused on domestic affairs.
Donald Trump does a good job of bridging that divide.
I'll say this is that I'll tell you where I land.
My view is that it is the job of every country to look after its own best national interest.
And I think it would be hypocritical to say on one hand that we believe
that America first should pursue America first policies, but that somehow Israel cannot pursue
Israel first policies. Right? I think that Israel has as a sovereign nation, the right and responsibility
to defend itself to the fullest, just like we would if we had an attack on our own homeland of
the same kind. So I think that it's, you could argue the hypocrisy
is in a lot of different directions,
but I think it would be hypocritical for us to say that
we don't want the US to intervene in foreign conflicts
that don't directly affect the US,
but we're going to be some sort of global arbiter
of saying that here's what Israel can or cannot do.
I think Israel should have the latitude
to determine for itself
what is the right way to defend itself.
Now there's a lot of debate in Israel about this.
Keep in mind, you pointed out Bibi's approval rating.
There is a healthy level of debate.
You've had members of his cabinet,
including his war cabinet,
resign over disagreements, right?
Gantz was the most prominent, certainly.
And so I think that that is a debate
that Israel gets to have for itself
without the US or any other country in the
West tying its hands or tilting its scales. And I think that that's when a nation makes the best
decisions for itself, where, back to your point, no man can serve two masters. Well, I think that
applies to the leader of a nation. The master is the citizens of your nation, not some sort of
international council determining what you can or cannot do.
And so that's where I land on it, Patrick, is you could have, you could say that, okay,
I don't want the U.S. troops to be used in this conflict.
I think that that is a principled position to say that we'll diplomatically support Israel.
We don't think our troops should be involved here.
But you can't at the same time say that, okay, we don't want our troops involved here, but
then we're also going to pass moral judgment about what they're doing isn't or isn't, is
or isn't the right way from a U.S. perspective. Because the principal perspective from an America First
standpoint is Israel has the right to defend itself just like the United States would and will,
God forbid, something like that happening here on our own home ground.
So here's a follow-up. Here's a follow-up to that, which you'll hear on the, even in Twitter,
people asking it. They'll say, hey, you know, how many people died because of Helena?
What's the number?
Rob, what's the most recent number that we have?
Almost 600, is it?
It's up there.
Is it up there?
I saw 600, I saw 2,000, I saw 1,000.
It's a big number.
It's a travesty of what happened
that went up there with the hurricane that took place.
No, it's a lot more than that.
I think it's almost 600.
That's just in Carolina, right?
And people are posting stuff and they're saying, hey, if you're in Carolina, if's just in Carolina, right? And people are posting stuff and they're saying,
hey, if you're in Carolina, if you're in Florida, if you're in Atlanta, if you need help,
unfortunately you're not Ukraine, you're not Israel, you're not going to get the money.
Because Ukraine and Israel will get the money before we do. What do you say to folks who,
their challenge is sometimes the money is sent to people overseas more than Americans who need it today. Well, look, I think the first and sole moral duty of a nation's leaders is to its own citizens. So
I think that's, if I may, deeply consistent with what I just said before, which is it's not our
job to be the person passing judgment that Israel is doing too much or too little. I think Israel
gets to make that decision for itself. On the flip side, our own nation, you think about even
the amount of money
we've sent to Ukraine, for example,
I mean, there you're talking about like mass numbers,
like $200 billion in the last couple of years.
I think that that is unconscionable for Americans
who are struggling right here at home.
There are some questions that have been raised,
and I'm not gonna speculate on this
until we get exact answers,
but even in terms of divisions of the US military
or whatnot that have historically been used,
or divisions of US resources that have been used to rescue people here in the United States.
We talked about the 82nd Airborne.
There's other examples.
Why aren't they able to actually come to the rescue here in North Carolina?
We got two issues.
One is an American government that is failing to serve its own Americans here at home.
And part of that reason is, are we overstretched too thin, engaging in parts of the world? I think
Ukraine is the foremost example of this, where we otherwise shouldn't be. Yes, I think that that's a
reality. So I think that those are legitimate concerns. But I come back like I did before to
first principles. The first and sole moral duty of US elected leaders is to US citizens. Again,
the chapter in the book is called
Nationalism Isn't a Bad Word.
Well, I think that that's a principle
that shouldn't be controversial,
and the fact that that is controversial today, Patrick,
tells you, I think, a lot of what's wrong in our country.
Yeah, Benny, what are you gonna say?
I was gonna say, because you were talking about,
Pat, about deploying troops.
We're sending a couple more thousand recently,
this came out yesterday on AP,
and this additional forces would raise the total number of
Troops in the region as many as forty three thousand. I mean Israel doesn't seem like it's slowing down. This thing is escalating
It's gonna get ugly and other I mean they're doing these attacks, but and I guess I said this to
Pat to Rob Pat
The PM of Jordan expressed the era Arab world is ready for peace, but they're saying that
Israel is refusing it.
He's saying like, listen, we're asking for it, we want it, but they're not even coming
to the table for it.
But my thing is this Vivek, and being a military member just like that, when you're deploying
all these people, it's not just as a deterrent.
This is getting to escalate to the point where it's only a matter of time, because I just
read it right here as well, Vivek, that we have F-15s, F-16s, the jets and everything like that, I mean, with people in these jets. So if not
permit something happens.
You can also just look at these stats. I mean, it's striking to me. There's over 100,000
U.S. troops in Western Europe right now. I mean, why the heck are they over there? I'm
actually having a debate with John Bolton later this week. I forget which day at the
Virginia Military Institute,
we're exactly talking about these questions.
They invited me, they said, you want to debate?
Would you be open to having a debate with Bolton?
I said, absolutely, because my own view is, again,
the job of a nation's leaders foremost
is to protect its own homeland and its own citizens.
And we're clearly failing to do that,
but I also believe in open dialogue.
So let's get the best views for the other side on the table and have at it. But there's a hundred thousand troops
in Western Europe. You want to go back when Dwight D. Eisenhower was talking about whether
there was going to be U.S. troops 10 years later. This is like in 1951. He said, if there's U.S.
troops still in Europe 10 years later, that is an example. That's the best evidence we'll have that
NATO has failed in its mission. Well, guess what? Now we're in the year 2024, and we've got 100,000 US troops
in Western Europe. So I do think that this is a philosophical divide in the country. It's not
right versus left. It exists within both the right and within the left of what is the job of the US
military to engage in conflicts in other parts of the world?
And I come back to one principle.
It is whether or not it advances
clearly identifiable American interests or not.
Is that an isolationist position?
No, it's not, because I think there are clear examples
of where it is in the US interest
for making sure that Americans aren't adversely impacted
by, for example, loss of access to the semiconductor supply chain
coming out of Taiwan.
You go straight down the list.
Correct.
But that should be the guiding principle,
not to be some sort of global policeman,
which I think that I'll call it out,
whether it comes from the right, the left,
from the nationalist right, from the liberalist right.
That's the first principle across the board,
is what advances US interests.
The question becomes, the question becomes, if that's ever going to happen.
And here's why why I say that because is it possible to win elections with what Eisenhower
talked about the military industrial complex, knowing both sides need the money from the big guys that are lobbying God knows how much money
that they make money the more wars there is like even with COVID you know the business model of a
hospital is to make sure every bet is taken the business model of a hotel is to make sure every
bet is taken the business model of a company that sells weapons is to have more wars you need
customers you need people that are having issues
for you to be able to sell more stuff.
If you don't, there's a problem there, right?
So is it even possible that that could be addressed?
And if yes, how?
Yeah, so it's telling that even Eisenhower,
he saved that for his farewell speech, right?
At that point, the farewell speeches are interesting.
You want it to live longer.
Because then you got nothing to lose, right?
You've got nothing to lose.
And so, look, I think it's a major problem in this country.
Is it possible?
Yes, because I believe in America, right?
We are a country that fought a revolution,
defeated the greatest empire in the world in 1776,
but it's going to take that type of energy from we, the people,
to say we're the ones who self-govern.
But go with it.
Do I think it's possible?
Yes.
No, no, it's not.
It's the key question is how. So is how do we do it? Because this is this is the one part where so there is a you're running for office. Okay. So hey,
I've got to find a way to give my poor people that are going to vote for me. And we have to
find an enemy who's's gonna be our enemy?
Rich billionaires.
We're gonna tax them on unrealized capital gains.
The average person is like, wow.
So what is unrealized capital that was gained?
What is unreal?
But that's great, that's more money for us, right?
Let's do that.
So there's stuff that you're gonna say during a campaign that you're like, that's more money for us, right? Let's do that.
So there's stuff that you're going to say during a campaign that you're like, there's
no way we're going to be able to do anything about that anyways.
But I got to say, because my party wants me to say it.
Then there's the stuff that you can actually truly change.
Do you really think this can change?
And if yes, how do you do it?
Which president is willing to put their life on the line to say we have to figure
this out, well we can't have these military industrial complex continue with all the money
you guys are making?
Look, I think it's going to take somebody who's independently wealthy, somebody who
did not grow up within that system. If you're a product of the system, then you're there
to protect the system. The system didn't advance you. Somebody who grew up outside the system didn't advance. You're somebody who grew up outside of the system, who has the willingness to take actual risk,
and who has access to independent wealth
to say that you're not dependent on that same system
to be constrained in what you say.
And somebody who's in it,
not necessarily to just win as the goal for itself,
because winning an election isn't the ultimate goal.
Winning is winning for the country.
You could win on paper, but you've lost for the country. Yeah, so,. So, it's one of the things that certainly compelled me to run for president as an
outsider. It's one of the reasons I'm supporting Donald Trump is I think that he's somebody that
is independently wealthy, doesn't have to be doing what he's doing. I think we need more
people like that in American politics that aren't a product of that system. Are there obstacles? Yeah,
absolutely. I mean, I think there's many ways to sort of take
the air out of the other side. One is just through capture. So I think one of the things you got to
be alert to is making sure that you're not being captured at every step of the way. What does it
look like? I think it starts with the ability to spend independently, the ability to be
financially independent, and it starts with somebody who is obviously willing to lose.
And if you have somebody who's not taking real risk in the things they say, that means they're going to be captured. And if you have somebody who's not taking real risk
in the things they say,
that means they're gonna be captured.
But if you have somebody who's willing
to stick to their convictions,
even when it's inconvenient,
that's I think the best shot you're gonna have,
especially if they're financially independent.
This is gonna be a tough enemy to go up against.
You got Big Pharma, you got Military Industrial Complex,
you got some of these guys that are gonna be tough ones
where one could sit there and say,
well, you know, this may be, to do it,
you have to risk more than just your job and re-election.
Because I understand not wanting to be re-elected.
And it's funny what you say is how he saved the speech.
You know?
It's like, it's kinda like you work for UPS for 40 years
and on the last day say, listen, not gonna lie,
the benefits sucked, my back hurts, okay? I don't appreciate this but I'm out of
here you guys do whatever you want to do with it now but let me read something
to that kind of has to do with you as somebody that you went to Yale anyone
to Harvard and I think you went to Yale with JD Vance I think you guys are
classmates right so here's a story from Wall Street Journal. Sorry Vivek, it says specifically Vivek there
in the title.
No, it's sorry Harvard.
Everyone wants to go to college in the South now.
Okay, let's see if there's any credibility here
or for the parents that still wanna send their kids
to Harvard, let's see if you have something else to say.
Northern student migration to Southern schools
has surged by 84% in two
decades, a 30% jump from 2018 to 2022. Schools like University of Alabama saw northeastern
student enrollment rise from less than 1% in 2002 to 11% in 2022. At the University
of Mississippi, northeastern freshmen increased from 11 in
2002 to 200 over 2022.
Pandemic experiences on social media influenced their shift as northern students saw their
schools under lockdown.
While southern campuses stayed active, Georgia Tech's Rick Clark noted, they are seeing sororities
at Alabama and football games in Georgia and Florida.
Life is happening. Applications to Alabama surged by 600% in 2002 compared to 200% increase at Harvard.
Economic benefits and post-graduation prospects drive the move, with southern schools offering
lower tuition.
The median out-of-state tuition at southern public schools is $29,000, much lower than
northeastern counterparts.
What do you say to this story?
It's competition, man.
It's beauty. Competition breeds innovation. And I think that the response
to the pandemic, I think was horrific by a lot of these schools, effectively still charging
the same tuition while doing remote learning. That's a joke. But I also think that a lot
of the bureaucracy at places like Harvard have added cost. You have the managerial class,
the associate deans of diversity or whatever, adding cost without adding actual value.
Harvard used to be predicated on, I mean, the slogan of the school is veritas.
It was, means truth, right?
And that is, that meant something when I was there, actually.
It was a liberal leaning place, but forget about the liberal versus conservative, I don't
care about that.
It still was a place where you could exchange ideas, where you could express your ideas
even if they ran against the norm and the best ideas would win. I loved it. I had a great experience
there. That is not the same school that exists today. Same thing I would say of Yale. And so
when a school itself or university starts becoming something other than its true self,
then people are going to flee. It's like a company. It's like a state. It's like a government. Same
thing as a university is when it falls and falls short of its own true North Star, right? Harvard's never a party school,
so it's not that people are going to the South, I don't think it's just because, oh, they're
able to have more fun football games. That's been the case, I'm sorry, for the last 50 years,
okay? Harvard's football games have not been as fun to go to as Clemson's or Georgia's,
okay, or Ohio State, where I'm at. That's not the axis where Harvard's ever going to compete.
That was never its value proposition.
But when it fails on its own value proposition
to say that, okay, you're gonna pursue truth,
that all ideas are fair game.
No, you can't even do that
and you have to fear for free speech.
Well, then it's a question of like,
what the heck am I getting out of this?
Because I'm not getting fun football.
I'm not getting a good party environment.
I'm not having a lot of, let's just say,
traditional college-age fun.
But at the same time, I'm also not getting the rigors of intellectual exploration, freedom, and exchange of thought
and open debate.
Well, at that point, now prices are that much higher because they've hired an associate
dean of God knows what.
I'm not getting the value relative to what this institution has to offer.
Do I think that a lot of those schools in that article where people are flocking to
are offering that old value proposition that Harvard used to?
Probably not, if I'm being honest about it.
But are they offering at least some value proposition
that's different and more authentic
and true to what their university is?
Yes, and I think that people want that.
There's institution, you want it to offer
the best version of itself.
Harvard is not offering the best version of itself,
and perhaps the likes of Georgia Tech and Clemson and Ole Miss are. So competition, that's how it works.
Tom, your thoughts on this. I think you're exactly right on competition. You know,
USD News and World Reports puts out the rankings, and they're generally regarded as being probably
the most acceptable ranking. And University of Florida is up to number 25 and they have
Tremendous engineering school that's up there as does Georgia Tech
Rice and Vanderbilt are known as the IVs of the South
Specifically and I think also we all saw kind of the dark underbelly in front of
Congress as you had the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn, I believe that was the three,
sit there and not give acceptable answers on how they would provide protections for
all students if protests on campus were getting a little out of hand, leading to some of those
presidents taking different jobs or being removed.
And I think...
I got to say a word about that one though, because this will be just, this is so important.
Let's just inject a little bit of diversity of opinion here. I think that
there's two directions those schools could go. Okay. And I'm in the camp of, I actually
want Harvard and Yale to become great schools and great universities true to their mission
again. I think that's good for them. I think it's good for the country. I don't want to
see them go the direction of saying, okay, well, we've been censoring all this other
speech. So now we're going to censor this other kind of speech too, and we weren't doing
enough censorship.
I think the right answer is the opposite of that is, OK, actually, let's be really honest.
We're standing in front of Congress saying we stand for free speech, when in fact we
have not.
Let's go back to first principles where any opinion, any opinion, not violence, not obstruction
of classrooms, but expression of any opinion is fair game.
And I think that is the fork in the road ahead for these universities.
And what I'm worried about is we're seeing them learn the wrong lesson from all of this
and say, oh, yes, yes, you're right.
We've censored all different forms of speech in the name of woke dogma, but we didn't censor
what we will call anti-Semitic speech either.
And that we need to expand the net of what we censor.
I think it's the other direction that they need to go to say, actually, we weren't really
staying true to principles of free speech in the first
place. Let's re-embrace that that's who we are. And so anyway, that's a fork in the
road ahead for these universities. I'm not one of these Republicans that likes
to just, it's a very fashionable thing to do right now, where you go to like an
Ivy League school and you rail against the elites and rail against the Ivy
Leagues. I'm not that person. I actually had great experiences at
Harvard and Yale. I'm proud that I was able to get a great education.
I'm grateful to a country that was able to provide it.
I want those schools to become
the best version of themselves again.
I don't want to see us retreat to mediocrity,
which is to say that,
oh, well, there's a lot of other schools
where you can get a decent education
and it'll be one of the top 300 schools in the world no I want the best universities on planet earth
to be in the United States of America as they always have been. As a guy who went
to Harvard and Yale
how many kids do you have? Two. Okay would you want them to go to Harvard or
Yale? Very interesting question
so if you'd asked me maybe before we had kids this would have been maybe six seven
ten years ago
I would have said yes. If you ask both me, and I think my wife probably
would have said the same thing, she went to Yale
for undergrad and from med school.
If you ask both of us now, we totally are agnostic on this
because, I mean, there's nothing really that special
about these places right now.
In fact, you get a lot of the self-importance
without the actual substance.
But I hope those places, or maybe it's gonna be somebody else
that takes their place, but there is a unambiguous
Class of university that's the best place on planet Earth to get a higher education
I hope that exists in the United States and whether that's Harvard or Yale or somewhere else
I hope that place exists because that's where we would
Dream in a spider to send our own kids just as a poor Vinay were able to enjoy ourselves and that's different from
The current that's like sort of just anti-elite. I mean, it's sort of like a fashionable thing.
I don't really know what that exactly means,
but it's sort of say, no, well,
you know, all that higher education stuff
is mumbo jumbo bogus anyway.
It's not the right answer for everybody,
but I want that to exist as an option
for the people who it is right for.
And right now, the sad part is the places
that were the standard bearers of that type of education, the top
form of education. I think it's great for that to exist in America. The problem is Harvard
and Yale aren't fulfilling that standard right now. But that's a different point from saying
that, oh, I think the whole category is a mistake. No, I don't. I think the category
should exist and I want America to have the best version of it. And you know, I think
that that's different from just lazily sitting in an armchair and saying, oh, we're against
the elites. Fully agree with you because this comes down to value. I mean, the know, I think that that's different from just lazily sitting in an armchair and saying, Oh, we're against the elites.
Fully agree with you because this comes down to value.
I mean, the bigger, larger conversation is, is college a scam?
You've done content on this.
We've seen people on the left, like Andrew gain, come out and basically say the math
just doesn't add up.
You know, his whole math thing that he's doing, you even see what Charlie Kirk is doing going
on campus.
I've gone meeting the kid.
You've got seen this Charlie wrote a going on campus. You've seen this.
Charlie wrote a book. Yeah, the whole college is a scam thing. So the bigger question is
everything's changing in this country. Social media has changed the game. COVID has changed the game.
We talk about all the time, 13 to one liberal professors in universities and the elite
centers of higher education versus for everyone conservative.
You know, is it indoctrination?
Is it education?
Harvard's endowment fund, $50 billion.
You know, Pat has a discussion who's the number one client of the university.
A lot of times it's the endowment $50 billion, the Bill Ackman's of the world, the Leon
Blacks of the world basically pulling their money away from these universities.
Things are changing. You know, 50% of people in the United States never even graduated
college, I believe is what it is. Technical schools, trade schools, entrepreneurship was a
taboo word 20 years ago. Now it is forefront in the world. I think just things are changing so fast
that the old answer of you got to go to college and get your degree. And that's the answer.
That's no longer what it comes down to.
Obviously, obviously.
Yeah.
And I just think that we I just don't want to see us make the
same mistake that we made by saying that, okay, we're going
to be close by and say for your college degrees.
The only answer that was silly and in retrospect, it was wrong
for a lot of people who were forced into that system versus
two-year trade schools, vocational programs, maybe even
getting an entrepreneurship or small business
right out of high school,
that's an answer for a lot of people.
I don't wanna see us shift in the other direction
because a four-year college degree is the right answer
for a number of other people who may view that
as the right calling or the right way
to fulfill themselves.
And so I think that, again, it comes back to competition.
We should have multiple options.
The government shouldn't be subsidizing
some of these things.
The Department of Education,
this is actually a good example
even in the America First Right.
It's kind of a divide that I talk about in the book.
One answer could say,
oh well the Department of Education
has subsidized four year college degrees
to be a gender studies major in California,
which didn't work out.
Well now we should instead be subsidizing
two year college programs or vocational degrees.
I view it differently.
We shouldn't be subsidizing any of it.
Shut it down and just give the money back to the people.
That's the true answer.
So here's a question I got.
Watch this before we wrap up.
We got 10 more minutes before we wrap up.
So think about the product, okay, of Yale.
There's a guy that's born August 2nd, 1984,
who is 40 years old, who went to Yale.
There's another guy that's born
August 9th 1985 who is 39 years old who also went to Yale. Okay? One guy's name is
JD Vans. The other guy's name is Vivek. Okay? So both of them are Leos. Okay?
Two Leos. Now here's the question I got for you Vive Vivek, because we're at a phase right now with kids and classmates
that I go to school, and as a parent,
I'm sizing up other kids.
And I know when Dylan will tell me that kid is real,
or this kid is real, or Tico will tell me,
you're like, that person takes their school seriously,
sports seriously, all this stuff.
When you guys were there, did you say, that's a stud, he's going to do something,
this guy's a stud?
Or was it just kind of like, nah, we're just going to college, no one's thinking long-term
what's going to happen?
I don't think we were sizing each other up, but I think it was certainly that I thought
he was a cool guy, he was good fun to hang out with, and we used to watch Bengals games
together.
Bengals games?
Yeah, because we're both from greater Cincinnati.
Really?
Yeah.
So actually even funny thing is we didn't know each other that well.
We didn't know each other until law school.
But apparently where I grew up till I was six is probably about a 15 minute drive, 10
minute drive from where he grew up for where a lot of his upbringing was set in Middletown.
So it's funny.
So pre-Yale were you guys friends or no?
No, we didn't know each other.
So only at Yale?
Yeah, but we discovered we were fellow Cincinnati fans.
And let me ask you this question.
Was there a kid more impressive
than the two of you guys in the class
that everybody knew or no?
I'm not asking for names.
You know, I don't view things in terms of these hierarchies.
I think especially in law school,
what happened was you had so many people
who were so focused on what I call the treadmill, right?
Okay, well now I have gotten out of undergrad, then I've gotten taken my outside, then I got into law school.
Now I'm gonna which corporate law firm I'm gonna work for, which cloak trip I'm not gonna get and they're simply running.
I don't think you guys are part of that treadmill because both of you guys went different routes.
Yeah, so that's one of the things we shared in common is we could both sit back and laugh at the treadmill a little bit.
Right. Like these guys and every one of them wants to be a US president or a candidate or whatever.
That's probably like the dream of every Yale Law student
and what's the path to get there.
And I think probably the thing that JD and I
both shared in common was we could both kind of sit back
and kind of laugh at that for different reasons.
I mean, it was just sort of a game.
And some of that's maturity and maybe a lot of those people
now more advanced in their lives would go back and laugh
at that version of themselves too.
But it was a very largely a hyper-stressed environment
where people are very worried
about what their next career step was.
I knew I was just doing it for fun.
I was interested in the subject matter
and I knew I was gonna go back into business.
In fact, I had a job at a hedge fund full-time
while I was at Yale Law School.
Ain't no funny, most of my classmates didn't even know that.
So I was just hanging out in law school
but I had a Bloomberg terminal in my in my New Haven apartment. I
I did pretty well. We those are some of my most productive years working at Edge fun
But I probably made about 15 million bucks while I was in law school just as a side job
But
Yale law school made 15 million dollars part-time over those three years, yeah. Did other kids know you were making that kind of money?
No, they had no idea.
Yeah, they had no idea.
It was almost like I had, and I liked that.
When have you ever shared the story?
I like having different spheres of my life.
I don't know if I might have mentioned it
amongst friends in the past.
A lot of them probably don't know it now even, right?
And I think that that was great
because I found the world of Wall Street
to be often very stuffy, right?
You're getting just the finance crowds,
I was sitting on a trading floor. I liked having my own separate space, but I also find Yale Law School
to be really stuffy in a different way.
Hey, I made $2000 a month part time while I went to college. Yeah, that's good. There's
this guy named Vivek, made 15 million in three years while he's going to college. Part time.
And it was fun. It was exercising a different style of my brain. And I met my wife, she
was in med school. We would hang out, watch NBA games, we'd go hiking every weekend, we'd fly take out, take, you know, we'd do a lot
more traveling than the other students because I had, you know, excess. So were they wondering,
like, how are you able to do all this stuff? Or no? We know it wasn't, everything wasn't visible
to everybody, right? I think the people who are closest to me probably had some sense of,
but I'm not, I didn't, you know, we live in the same, we live in the same apartments.
Social media. Yeah. And also, and also I wasn't even on didn't, you know, we live in the same apartments. Because it's not social media, right? Back then it's not really social media. Yeah, and also, I wasn't even on social media
until probably 2020.
But even still, I'm not big on being super flashy
about this stuff.
We live in the same apartment building
as the other students, and it was great.
And for me, that was good, right?
It was a, so I'm somebody who thrives
on having different environments.
Yale was cool because it was an academic environment
that was different than the Wall Street environment
that I had come from, which was itself different
from playing sports.
I used to, I still picked up my tennis game,
would play a lot of sports with different groups there.
So I like having different groups in my life
at the same time or else you become sucked
into an environment.
And turning back to the Yale Law School question,
the environment there was just,
it did have the character of most people, not all people, but most people were very sucked into the
treadmill of what that next rung on the ladder was going to be. And my bet was you're probably
going to get further anyway by not climbing the ladder that's set in front of you, but just
following your own purposes. Even though you made $15 million, who's counting while in law school,
you know, please tell me at the very least, if you're hanging out with JD Vance you were having some good tailgate parties rooting for the Bengals
we were rooting for the Bengals. There was a Bar. There was AJ Green. What's going on there? You're eating the Fritos. This is not AJ Greenface. This is Carson Palmer. This is 2012-2013.
This is Carson Palmer. You're not doing, 2013. This is Carson, probably Carson Palmer
is probably what we're talking about.
You're not doing the Icky Shuffle at this point.
You know, funny thing is Icky Woods lived not that far away
from where I grew up to.
His daughter would go to the same elementary school
that I went to as well.
And so the Icky Shuffle was legendary back in the day.
People don't, people probably don't know what that is,
but it's the dance that you do.
By the way, you know what's the most annoying thing is?
The fact that bangles are one and eleven the last four years to start the season
And he finally got he 211 because he just got his first victory by the way the last
Four seed five seasons the first two games burrow is one and nine
Drives me insane because he is so freaking good.
It takes some time to get the blood flowing. Joe is my son's favorite player, Joe
Sandilin, a game-worn, I don't know what it was, a jersey signed with a note
specific letter to him. Oh he did? Oh nice. We met Joe at a UFC match and he came up we had a
great conversation together and then we exchanged messages and he sent that over
to him. Listen I'm rooting for the guy. They just got their first one.
You guys got your first one.
I know, but it's the same as last season.
And the Chiefs, man.
It's like one point loss to the Chiefs.
Devastating.
Yeah, that was tough.
Anyways, last thing, Vivek, about the book before we wrap up.
So if there's two, three things I'm going to pick up from the book, if I read it, what
would that be?
From the book. If I read it, what would that be from the book? So this, so this book is designed to be a toolkit to arm Americans to have debates at
the dinner table that they're not confident enough to have already.
So it was a reflection from the presidential campaign.
My best moments, the moments that I relished the most were not even the ones where I dunked
on the left happened occasionally with the media, et cetera.
But the better moments were ones where
we actually got young people or people who were
dissenting views at an event, maybe even a protester,
but would have an interaction, a conversation
that changes somebody's mind.
And so the question that I got from people afterwards is,
how do I do that in my everyday life?
How do I change the mind of somebody who disagrees with me,
but do it in a civil manner? And so I thought, okay, I'm one person I'm able to do this, but what if we have millions of somebody who disagrees with me, but do it in a civil manner?
And so I thought, okay, I'm one person I'm able to do this, but what if we have millions
of people who are armed with that same toolkit?
That's what this book is designed to give you the toolkit to do.
And so there's 10 truths that I lay out in the chapter.
And in each of them, my goal is to give the best possible arguments for the other side,
not some straw man argument, but like really the best arguments for the other side, not some strawman argument, but like really the best arguments for the other side.
Let's get him on the table and then sort of debunk them one by one, pick them apart.
I do something in this book that I've never done in my other books.
I would have cringed if you told me I had to do this in my prior book, but now I think
it's a good idea.
Even at the end of every chapter, we lay out five truths where there are five core facts
or arguments you take away from that chapter.
So this book is designed as a toolkit to arm Americans.
Generally, probably right of center, Americans will agree with more of the views
in here, but to arm them, not just to talk to ourselves, but to talk to our friends.
And I still say the word friends on the other side, to be able to not defeat them,
not just defeat them, but even more importantly, to persuade them, to bring them along.
And I think that's how we save our country
on the most controversial subjects,
the climate change debate, really unpacking
our surface temperatures going up.
Yes, I'll grant you that.
But is that a bad thing for humanity?
No, I give arguments in this book
for why there may be some positive effects for humanity,
which have been gone previously under-reported
or under-discovered, backed by hard data.
The transgender debate, the debate about nationalism, the debate about the border and what that
actually means.
What is our immigration system actually selecting for?
Let's get to the bottom of it.
So the book launched last week, it was number one on Amazon for a good portion of last week.
And you know, I think I just appreciate people want advice on making money.
Writing books is not the way to do it,
but if you want to get a message out,
it definitely is a good way to do it.
And so, so I just come from-
So that's not how you made your 15 million,
150 million cap.
The books had nothing to do with it, you know,
for better or worse.
Vivek, as usual, I appreciate people coming in.
It's great to have you on, to talk to you about this book,
as well as other things.
Every time it's both entertaining, interesting
to get your thoughts and perspective
on issues that's going on today.
And my position's not gonna change.
I still have you as the number one draft pick in 2028.
I'm keeping it as that.
But if in the interim, I mean listen,
if you can make part-time, you know, $15 million
while you're going to school outlaw,
you can part-time become a governor and then become a president.
I mean, anybody can do that part-time and take the next step.
Step by step, brother.
That's a nice step.
Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
Go to the book. Go to the book. Links below. Bye-bye.