Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History

(0:00) Sacks and Jason welcome Senator Eric Schmitt (2:34) Biden v. Missouri, uncovering government censorship as Missouri AG (6:06) Section 230 and social media, the legacy of Russiagate, big tech censorship in the age of AI (18:44) Behind the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID censorship (30:17) The NGO "Leviathan" and how censorship requests were laundered, Hamilton 68 (36:38) Russiagate and the Obama intel report on the 2016 Election (47:15) Russia-Ukraine War, possible peace deal, and US foreign policy Buy The Last Line of Defense: How to Beat the Left in Court: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-last-line-of-defense-eric-schmitt Follow Senator Schmitt: https://x.com/senericschmitt Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Sacks?

  I put on a jacket because, you know, we're interviewing a senator, but I see that uh

• 0:04Jason Calacanis?

  It's polo day.

• 0:05David Sacks?

  Senator Schmitt pulled a Zelensky here.

• 0:07Speaker 02

  I yeah, I did, but I told him I do have the stiff, I have the stiff collar on the polo, which is

• 0:13Jason Calacanis?

  You look great. It looks great. And, you know, I lost the weight. Thanks for noticing, Senator. And um Uh, I've been hitting the weights on like Sacks and so I am too trying to get the gun show going like you have achieved there.

• 0:26Jason Calacanis?

  All right, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions. Admit it.

• 0:35David Sacks?

  We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What'd you gotta say? That was fun. That was great.

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to a very special interview. Yeah, you know, we're doing these interviews here uh with me, my amazing co-host and your czar of crypto and AI, the Rain Man himself, David Sacks. David, how you doing, brother? How's your summer wrapping up?

• 1:01David Sacks?

  Good to be here. The summer ended way too soon. Way too soon. So sad.

• 1:05Jason Calacanis?

  Isn't it? It's just like

• 1:06David Sacks?

  I'm not ready for it to be over.

• 1:08Jason Calacanis?

  Kids going back to school, all that. And look, you're a civil servant now. You are working for the people and the people demand, you're a public servant. Yes. And the people demand results. And hey, we have another civil servant here. David, why don't you introduce our guest today?

• 1:22David Sacks?

  This is Senator Eric Schmidt from the state of Missouri. How did we meet? It was, it was through another former senator, now Vice President J D Vance, I believe.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. Yeah.

• 1:32David Sacks?

  And you guys, you guys entered the Senate together at the same time.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  We did and uh got to be very close and uh shared a lot of um life experiences and uh and our freshman group got, you know, pretty tight. We go to Denver once a month and try to keep that going now that he's even VP, which is a lot of fun. But yeah, we got introduced through him and uh have enjoyed getting to know you.

• 1:52David Sacks?

  And you now have a new book called The Last Line of Defense, which is about your time in your previous job, which was as Attorney General of the state of Missouri. And I remember talking about before I even knew you on the All In Pod when we were dealing with censorship and

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Talking about that issue, the Twitter files, this is back in, I don't know, this is like three or four years ago.

• 2:12Jason Calacanis?

  2022, I would say, yeah, three years ago now. My time is moving.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  We talked about the case Biden v. Missouri, which you were the one who brought that case when you were Attorney General. When I met you and then found that out, I knew that we had some views in common, let's say, about free speech and the need to avoid censorship.

• 2:28Jason Calacanis?

  And you went right at the, "Show me, don't tell me what your fancy speak, what's going on." You went directly to discovery. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the approach from the Senator from the Show Me State. There were rumors and kind of this feeling people were being censored, but nobody knew exactly how it was occurring. So you had some intuition that if we do some discovery here, there's got to be something under the surface, or had somebody leaked something to you? How did you know to go after this? I guess was my question.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and one of the reasons I wrote the book was just to, you know, I think it's, it's easy. The book starts with, you know, in November 2024, the fever broke. And so if you think about the four previous years, you know, this was a time of lockdowns and compulsory COVID shots and forced masking of five-year-olds, but also this vast censorship enterprise that existed that, in my view, was the greatest affront to the First Amendment we've ever seen in the history of our country. And so if you go back in time, right, to, to, in 2022, you had seen, to your point, Jason, you had seen, um, sort of Jen Psaki at the podium talking about, hey, we're flagging this for Facebook.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  There were rumors of a disinformation governance board with the Mary Poppins herself, right, talking about how this misinformation and disinformation. Jankovets, I think, right? Right. Wasn't that her name? That they needed to, to flag this stuff and do something about it. We knew that if they were willing to talk about that stuff so publicly, there had to be something much more beneath the surface. So in May of 2022, when I was Attorney General of Missouri, we sued the Biden administration and sort of this Leviathan of agencies that were working to censor American speech. And we filed the lawsuit and we knew that it would be, you know, highly scrutinized, be called sort of furthering conspiracy theories, but we knew that there was something there.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And a really important strategic decision in the case was normally when you file a lawsuit like that, you immediately seek a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to get the government or another party to stop what they're doing. But we felt like we needed to get evidence first, right? We had the allegations in the complaint. So we sought discovery and the judge granted that discovery. And what we found from that discovery was shocking, right? We got reams and reams, tens of thousands of documents, emails, text messages about this communication, the special portals that existed for, you know, these folks in big government to work with big tech to silence Americans. And so it really was shocking. And then, of course, we got to the point where we were able to take depositions. We took the deposition of Anthony Fauci.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  We took the deposition of Elvis Chan, who was the FBI agent in charge of Northern California that was pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story, even though the FBI had the laptop in 2019, right? So we took the deposition of a CDC official who was basically flagging specific words and phrases that the government within censor and then agencies like CISA, all of these groups were part of this enterprise. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, The Last Line Defense, that people can get on Amazon right now. It you, we go inside those deposition rooms, you go inside the prep for that. What we, what were we trying to find out? What did we find out? How we uncovered this? Because you got to remember, this was before Elon bought Twitter.

• 5:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  And before the Twitter files.

• 5:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. We, we joined him there for those first couple of days.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  What's interesting about this is that you were taking the discovery from the government's side. So you were getting the government documents, you were deposing government witnesses, and then Elon released the Twitter files, I don't know, about six months later. And then we saw it from the Twitter side. Yeah.

• 6:05Jason Calacanis?

  And this was happening at Facebook too, right? Like you had information on the Facebook side, yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had Meta, you had YouTube, we, you know, all the, this was all happening. And, and the way it was working was, as you guys know, these big tech platforms have something called Section 230 protection, right? Which is basically. In the 90s, when the internet's becoming a thing, Congress says, you're not, you're not a publisher, you're a platform, so you can't be sued. That is a huge advantage. And by the way, if they're actually acting as a platform, as a proponent of free speech, almost as a free speech absolutist, that's a great thing. The problem was, a lot of these entities were then becoming publishers. They were throttling things they didn't like. They were taking down opinions they didn't support, that sort of thing. And so what you had was Joe Biden saying, maybe there's criminal liability.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  You saw these text messages in the lawsuit from, from Rob Flaherty, who is the deputy communications director of the White House, cussing these guys out, saying, you, you need to know that from the highest levels of the White House, we see this, you're not doing enough. And so as much as I think some of the, the people at these big tech companies were willing participants, there was a coercion that was happening. And that's the basis of the lawsuit, which was, we all know the government can't censor speech, but you also can't outsource that censorship to private companies, which is exactly what was going down. And I think exposing that was really important. Of course, Elon and all the work that he's done in making that a true free speech platform then. And then, of course, the congressional hearings that followed. I think all of this has sort of laid the groundwork for this kind of free speech renaissance

• 7:37Speaker 02

  that we're experiencing. One of the things, you know, when I was in college, you know, in the late 90s, I was, um, I was always pretty conservative. One thing I was kind of jealous of, of liberals was that they kind of had the high ground on free speech. They were viewed as sort of like the vanguard. And even the ACLU actually did things like protect free speech. That's all gone now, like that, there's no, like, it's about power and control and limiting and labeling things misinformation, disinformation to, to suppress speech. So I think it's an interesting moment right now for this new coalition that came together to elect President Trump, which is, for me, exciting. It's kind of a working class coalition, so.

• 8:12Jason Calacanis?

  Just to steel man it, Senator, we know that our foreign adversaries, this is bipartisan for many decades, interfere in our elections. We know they do that. You would agree, yeah? This has been like something-

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Certainly would try to influence, of course.

• 8:25Jason Calacanis?

  Certainly try, right. And of course, we could be like, hey, is it possible in 50 different states with 50 different set of regulations, pretty hard to actually tip an election, as we've seen, right? If you look at that, if we steel man a foreign adversary, because this is the cover that they were seeking, hey, we're doing this to protect America and democracy. But the truth was, you know, they were doing it for their own personal reasons and their affiliation with one particular party. If you just look at the percentage of people who are Democrats at those companies, it's like 80, 90, 95%. So I think we all agree on that. Is there a way for the FBI, for the CIA, for our government to say to Twitter, to Facebook,

• 9:07Jason Calacanis?

  hey, you've got people here who are foreign adversaries. They're doing something that is against the American public. We need you to monitor this account and take them down. What would have been the proper channel as opposed to setting up a covert back channel where they kind of threaten them? One layer here that I've never heard anybody connect, but when I was listening to your Tucker interview, it just dawned on me. They also put Lena Kahn in. Now Zuckerberg is a cutthroat business executive. He likes to buy companies. That's his thing. And Twitter was known for buying a lot of companies. So now you've got Lena Kahn saying, we're gonna, we're gonna come down hard on you, not let you buy anything. And at the same time, this other group from the Biden administration is saying, hey, take this stuff down. So they had two really big clubs to, to, to

• 9:51Jason Calacanis?

  threaten these folks. But what would be the proper channels to say, hey, these things are stolen, right?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's a difference between sort of making people aware versus the coercion that was happening under the threat of investigations or losing Section 230 protections, right? That was, that was, that was our argument, which was this went beyond informing and this was about colluding and coercing, which of course then crosses the line of what the government can do, you know, as far as violating the First Amendment. There's also, to your point, there's a couple of things that are happening at the same time here. The first is kind of this, honestly, is kind of legacy of the whole Russiagate hoax stuff. In that they concocted this, um, this theme, um, that is playing out now like Tulsi Gabbard is exposing

• 10:41Speaker 02

  a lot of the stuff, but that gave them the, in their view, that gave them the guys to talk about Russia, this Russia, that everything that they don't like is misinformation, disinformation, right? The other thing that was happening with Zuckerberg in particular, you know, you gotta remember, if you go back to 2016, a lot of people blamed him. If he didn't like Trump, they blamed him because they thought that somehow, um, what was happening on Facebook contributed to his election and it shouldn't have happened. But then of course, he, he then is part of the whole Zuckerbucks movement in the lead up to, to 2020. Then he comes back around and Biden's in office and he's pressured, um, and he kind of, you know, on the rogue, on Joe Rogan, kind of talks about the, the links at which they went to pressure him. And now it, it seems as though maybe he's been red pulled,

• 11:25Speaker 02

  pilled again. I don't really know where that's at.

• 11:27Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, I can tell you, he's a weather vane. That's just how you know which way the wind's blowing.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Right. So yeah, like it's out of expedience. It's just. But it's interesting, like him as sort of this kind of, maybe that's the right word of kind of how this was vacillating from, from one place to the next. But the point is.

• 11:42Jason Calacanis?

  If Kamala won, he would have been all in for Kamala. A hundred percent. He would have been at the inauguration for her. He would have donated to her. Trust me, we know him. It's my opinion.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Well, I, I give him, I give him a little more credit in the following sense is that Zuckerberg gave a speech a while back where he talked about how social networking was the fourth estate and you've got the media and then you got social networking and it's very disruptive and therefore people want to censor it. And he basically supported that we should have freedom of speech for social networking like we do for the press because it's equally important. And I think that is his actual view. It's just that the question is, you know, how much stomach does he have for fighting the government when it's pressuring him and coercing him and some other part of the government is basically threatening to break up his company. Right?

• 12:30Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Like a fifth estate. Right. And so I think that if he wasn't being pressured by the government at all and just left his own devices, I think he'd be fairly.

• 12:41David Sacks?

  Pro free speech, but I just think that he wasn't really willing to take up the banner and fight the way that Elon was, you know, and really

• 12:48Jason Calacanis?

  He's the anti Elon in that respect. He's the anti Elon. He cares about his stock price. He cares about money. This is my interpretation and he's going to protect the franchise and the stock price.

• 12:57David Sacks?

  But that's what most business people would do. I mean, I think Elon was an outlier in terms of being willing to fight for principle, which is why I think that going back to the central premise of Biden v. Missouri, when the government is jawboning these companies, instructing them to take down content or highly suggesting it and basically threatening that there'll be repercussions if they don't, most business people are going to give into that.

• 13:18Jason Calacanis?

  Of course.

• 13:19David Sacks?

  And it is, and it is de facto censorship.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Well, and if you think about it too, I mean, there's just a couple of things that they didn't happen. All of this stuff would still be considered a conspiracy theory or we wouldn't know about it. Like if we didn't, nobody else had filed, if we didn't file that lawsuit and seek discovery and if the richest guy on the planet doesn't choose to buy Twitter and expose all of that, people would still be claiming that this was some conspiracy theory, right? Like we wouldn't, if you just think of the world would be a much different place right now. And so I think that's a big success.

• 13:50David Sacks?

  Well, I agree. And just to take people back, you're exactly right that conservatives were called crazy and conspiracy theorists for believing that Twitter, you know, then Twitter was shadow banning and throttling traffic. And I remember when Elon took over, you know, we had the Twitter transition and Jake Hall and I were there and we were just helping out first couple of weeks. And it was mostly just getting org charts and trying to rationalize the org structure. And Elon went in and started making cuts. But then I think I left around Thanksgiving and we were all kind of with our families and, you know, I think we went down to Mexico and Elon was still there working. And I remember I got a text from him at like two in the morning, like, are you up?

• 14:34Jason Calacanis?

  You up?

• 14:35David Sacks?

  You up?

• 14:36Jason Calacanis?

  You up? He's going to be a banger.

• 14:38David Sacks?

  Yeah, I'm like, sure. Yeah. So anyway, he calls and basically what he told me was that all the conspiracy theories are true, that we've now gone into the admin tools that the trust and safety team was using. And they literally have checkboxes to throttle accounts based on exclude them from search. And they had all these different tools that they created again to throttle traffic, which was effectively shadow banning. So they could just ban you outright or they could prevent your content from being seen. In other words, everything that conservatives had claimed was true.

• 15:10Jason Calacanis?

  And just to add to that, Senator, before you respond, the thing that's particularly interesting about this is you talked about 230. We want platforms to have 230, but when you start making editorial decisions, when you're the New York Times and you say, hey, this is going on the front page, it's an editorial decision. When you assign the story, that's an editorial decision. The 230 was given to platforms that didn't make editorial decisions. This is an editorial decision to say Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer or Alex Jones, whatever the reason is, they could be anti-Semitic, they could be crazy, they could, you know.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Or the President of the United States, which was ultimately.

• 15:43Jason Calacanis?

  We'll get into that one for sure. There's a lot of good questions there.

• 15:46David Sacks?

  This is one of the things that Elon had done that very day was he opened up the Twitter jails and let Trump back onto the platform. And there were some others. Jordan Peterson was on there.

• 15:57Jason Calacanis?

  It was a little bit like Arkham's asylum. You did let a couple of crazy people back on too.

• 16:02David Sacks?

  No, all the bad boys of free speech were let out. I mean, it was Trump, Tate, Jordan Peterson, Jay Bhattacharya, folks like that.

• 16:09Jason Calacanis?

  I would put Jordan Peterson.

• 16:11David Sacks?

  The public doesn't need to be protected from any of these people.

• 16:13Jason Calacanis?

  No, I mean Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, you may find them loathsome or funny or anything in between, but it is freedom of speech. But Senator, this has led to a discussion of 230 being repealed. And this is where I think, you know, the lawsuit you did, and there could be further work, is clarifying the nuance of 230. Should an algorithm de facto be an editorial decision? So if you have an algorithm and you say, hey, I'm going to show you more MAGA stuff, I'm going to show you more AOC, that's an editorial decision in my mind. Should that break Section 230 if somebody decides to build an algorithm that shapes the content you see when you open the app, just like the New York Times editors do?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Right. That's sort of like in The Last Line Defense book, is sort of like, what are the solutions are? We talk about what's the proper role of Section 230? Because I actually think if you are a true platform, as somebody, again, that believes in free speech, it's a very important thing. One of the concerns, like I'm not a doomsday guy on AI. I think there's, I think it can add to human flourishing. I think it can actually make us more productive. And there's a lot. There's a lot of opportunities that roll with it. One of the things I'm most concerned, though, is about censorship creeping in to AI, right? And so I think you have to be very clear that if you're going to start making these, whether it's a, you know, somebody individually is flagging it, or you have an algorithm that is essentially excluding 50% of the points of view.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  You should not get the multi-billion dollar subsidy that effectively what Section 230 protection is, right? It's a huge advantage and it should, and by the way, I'm all for that. But I think this manipulation that, by the way, is sort of

• 17:52Jason Calacanis?

  So specifically though, the algorithm, because you know what an algorithm is. You're like a tech savvy guy and it's great to have senators who are.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  But you can't, but, but like, just like government

• 18:01Jason Calacanis?

  How can you have an algorithm that's designed to produce a certain output? How can you have that coexist with 230 is my question. I have my own answers, but I'm curious in your answer.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think you got to get back to one of the first amendment principles, which is it has to be content neutral. That's how I view it. Now you can have protections that you, you know, you, there are certain public safety protections that are going to play. You could have protections against people, you know, sort of pedophilia that, that, you know, would violate terms of service. Something there is a

• 18:27Jason Calacanis?

  Would violate laws, right?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 18:29Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  And but I also think what's interesting is when you go back and look at this case, the pressure on the platforms wasn't just about phrases. They made them alter terms of service to actually meet what the desired outcomes that they wanted. And also, and David, you guys were, you saw this. Interestingly, the kind of how deep the rot really was, let's just take Twitter for an example. James Baker, who's James Baker? James Baker was the general counsel for the FBI during the Hunter Biden, or I'm sorry, the briefings during the Russiagate back then, at the end of 2016. He then, after a stint at some think tank, becomes the general counsel at Twitter.

• 19:08David Sacks?

  He was the one inside Twitter, we now know from the Twitter files, was advocating to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, even though he should have known, based on his time at the FBI, that the laptop was authentic, i.e. it was Hunter Biden's actual laptop. And the grounds upon which that story was censored was that the laptop was Russian disinformation. This was the tried and true tactic for years is that any speech That was inconvenient and that Democrats wanted to censor. They just called Russian disinformation, even though the Russians had nothing to do with that laptop.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  And to dig even further into that, what's interesting is so Elvis Chan is the guy at the FBI in in late 2019, 2020 is briefing the big tech companies monthly, at least monthly, then it becomes weekly. And we took his deposition in the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit and it was kind of shocking. You read about in the book, but like what he, what he talked about was they had the, they had the Hunter Biden laptop in, in November of 2019, the FBI did, they knew it was real, like they knew it was real. It's Hunter Biden's laptop. Yoel Roth, as you remember, who was like the integrity guy at Twitter, signs an affidavit with the FEC after complaint was filed against Twitter,

• 20:30Speaker 02

  noting specifically that the FBI was telling them that this could be a Hunter Biden. So this wasn't just going to be some random hack and leak operation for the Russians. It was related specifically to Hunter Biden.

• 20:40Jason Calacanis?

  Senator, in fairness, the Russians did hack Hillary Clinton's email. That was confirmed and

• 20:45David Sacks?

  We don't know that.

• 20:46Jason Calacanis?

  We, of course we do. The FBI confirmed it. Absolutely was confirmed.

• 20:49David Sacks?

  That's, I think that's all part of the hoax.

• 20:51Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay. Well, let me give you a couple of reasons why I could see the New York Post. Uh, oh, I'm sorry. We could see the platform saying if the FBI calls and says it's a Russian hack and we've had a bunch of Russian hacks before and the president said, you should, hey, Russia, if you're listening, send me the emails and you had Paul Manafort be indicted.

• 21:15David Sacks?

  You're like the last person who still believes in this Russiagate hoax.

• 21:17Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, but let me finish my point.

• 21:19David Sacks?

  Which is the laptop was authentic and the FBI knew it was authentic.

• 21:22Jason Calacanis?

  Let me finish mine. Let me finish mine and you can give me the key point. Tell me why I'm wrong. There was a bunch of noise around Russia. I think Russia did this on purpose to cause chaos here. I don't think they cared who got in. I think they just want chaos. That's my personal belief. But if you were Twitter and the FBI calls and says, hey, this was hacked and we have these previous instances of hacking that the FBI has confirmed and has told the world, this is what happened. And you have Paul Manafort being indicted and you have all this other noise. It's a reasonable thing for Facebook or Twitter in my mind to say, okay, maybe we wait a week. Maybe this is like the, the Russians really are doing this. I don't blame them as much. Do you?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Well, the truth is like there's parallel tracks here. First of all, we know now that the Russia, that the Trump was some Russian asset. That's totally fake. That's like it like.

• 22:11Jason Calacanis?

  No, he's not an asset. We all agree on that.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  It didn't happen, but they use that, of course, then to spy on a presidential candidate. That's what Barack Obama did. And then you had, of course, Brennan and Clapper and Comey continue this and really tried to sidetrack a presidential administration. So I think indictments are probably coming. That's a sort of a separate issue. The reality is because if because, you know, even though statute of limitation may have expired, a conspiracy, if ongoing, the statute of limitation has not expired. So we'll see where that all goes. But if you're making the point that the government shouldn't be having that much influence and coercing and threatening these big tech companies, I would agree with you that that's a violation

• 22:54Speaker 02

  of the First Amendment. My point is, I just the idea that the big tech was so willingly going along with all this, though, right, is a little scary. These are some of the biggest companies in the history of the world. And the idea that something that the FBI knew to be true wasn't out there for the American people to sort of weigh in on 10 days before an election is kind of Orwellian.

• 23:15Jason Calacanis?

  But that's on the FBI, I think. Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, no, the FBI, I'm totally unclean hands here. There's no doubt about that.

• 23:21David Sacks?

  Okay. Yeah, let me jump in here with a couple of points. So, okay, let's just focus on this Hunter Biden story because I think there is a very plausible argument that the censorship of this story could have swung the results of the 2020 election. Okay. Because the Hunter Biden laptop showed a bunch of shady foreign business dealings between the Biden family and China and Ukraine and other countries. And if that had been properly examined by the media instead of being censored by social media 10 days before the election, who knows what the outcome would have been. So this was a major, major deal. Now, why did that story get censored? We now know from the Twitter files, this was the reporting of Matt Taibbi, who was given access to the Twitter files.

• 24:04David Sacks?

  That, like Eric is saying, the FBI knew in late 2019 that the laptop was real because they had it in their possession and therefore authenticated it. What was their reaction to it? In my view, they could have done three different things. Number one is they could have investigated the crimes that were suggested by the evidence on that laptop. They didn't do that. Number two is they could have just sat on it and done nothing. They didn't do that. They did number three, which is they basically began a campaign to suppress the contents of the laptop. How do they do that? Elvis Chan, representing the FBI, was engaged in weekly meetings with these social networks. Again, this is from the Twitter files. And Elvis Chan represented the intelligence community.

• 24:45David Sacks?

  One of the emails described his group as the belly button of the conduit between the social networks and the intelligence community. And remember, Elvis Chan had something like 80 FBI agents who were submitting takedown requests to Twitter and other social networks. So this is the scale of the censorship that was happening. In any event, in these weekly IC meetings, and a lot of the evidence has been destroyed because they were using that disappearing tool, teleport, in any event, in these weekly meetings, we now know that they were warning the social networks, be on the lookout for a Russian disinformation campaign in which Hunter Biden is accused of something.

• 25:27David Sacks?

  And so they, for months, were priming the social networks to view any story, any revelations about Hunter Biden as being Russian disinformation. Now, why were they doing that? In fact, there was, at one point, there was what was called a quote-unquote "tabletop exercise," where all the heads of trust and safety of these social networks were brought, I think they were brought to the Aspen Institute, and they literally ran a tabletop exercise where they said, okay, two weeks before the election, the Russians are going to do an oppo dump on Hunter Biden. What's your response to that going to be? And where they all ended up is that they were sentenced to the story. I mean, this is like crazy Orwellian stuff.

• 26:06Jason Calacanis?

  In this sense, for, just to steel man it, for them to want to do the right thing if the FBI is telling them it's Russian disinformation.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't blame the social networks.

• 26:18Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that's what I'm trying. That's the only point I'm trying to make.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  And Zuckerberg went on Rogan. Remember when Zuckerberg went on Rogan and he said, "The reason why we censor that story is because the FBI had told us to." Most people in that situation would have believed the FBI.

• 26:31Jason Calacanis?

  All three of us would.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  The point is, though, that the FBI, again, they could have investigated the crimes on the laptop. They could have sat on the laptop and done nothing. That's not what they did. Instead, they began this campaign to discredit the eventual revelations as Russian information.

• 26:47Jason Calacanis?

  Senator, what happened to those individuals at the FBI? I'm curious if you can get to that as well, who were involved in all this? Were they ever brought up on charges?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:55Jason Calacanis?

  Do we ever figure out who they are?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  There, there needs to be accountability here because I also think it's important to point out that, so take CISA, which is the Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency. No one's ever heard of it. It was created effectively to protect infrastructure from cyber attacks. In that era when Trump was president, underground, they work on, under the guise of Russian disinformation, what's called the Election Integrity Project. So they work with Stanford, they work with the University of Washington, two flag posts to work with social media companies. Then when you get into COVID, they just flip the switch and turn it on any, you know, if you're questioning the efficacy of the vaccine, or you're questioning the efficacy of masks, they turn that around in the American people too. So part of the point that's outlined in the book, Last Line Defense, which you can order right now on Amazon.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  The part of the point was exposing all this was, this was a leviathan. This wasn't just like one person making a phone call. This was all these agencies that were lined up with the regime's narrative, and then working and coercing and threatening social media companies, "You will take this down, or there will be consequences." And so, you know, the CDC, I mentioned the CDC, what were they doing? The government went to them and said, "Tell us the phrases that you want us..." To flag and take down and and then we will work with social media companies effectively, right, to go do that. And so the FBI was involved in this, CISA was involved with this, the CDC was involved with this. And then, of course, when we had the opportunity to

• 28:21Speaker 02

  take Anthony Fauci's deposition at NIH, that was mind blowing. It's only the second time his deposition was taken. And we find out all the links at which he went to to undermine people. Like, by the way, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was a plaintiff in Missouri versus Biden with me, to undermine his efforts to say things like, well, natural immunity is kind of a thing still. I mean, they tried to take down this guy's career. And anybody like that who would just sort of question anything other than what Anthony Fauci said. So it really was a time that was wild and crazy. And we can't ever let happen again. That's the sort of the point. And for me, as you guys, I know this is a law, as a, I told Jason, first time, long time on the show now.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  The the First Amendment really is the beating heart of the Constitution. One of the great tests of this American experiment is our ability to tolerate people's point of view or their expression of a point of view that we vehemently disagree with, even if we think it's dangerous. Like, that's really a big part of what this whole thing's about. And what you saw during COVID in particular, was people who who had, who never should have had this power, were exercising in ways that you would have thought was from another country. You know what I mean? Like, this couldn't happen here, but it was happening here.

• 29:36Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know if you remember the Foil Lady, literally, the person who was supposed to be policing, and making sure that things were on the up and up, at the CDC, was teaching them allegedly, how to use hackerspeak or their personal email addresses to subvert freedom of information requests. I mean, I'll put allegedly in front of it, but I think this was all, you know, discoverable, and it was in the email. She just taught people how to lie, and how to subvert. FOIA requests. So when you start saying Orwellian, it does feel like this absolute power has that ability to absolutely corrupt it.

• 30:14David Sacks?

  You know, Eric mentioned the NGOs that are part of the Leviathan. I think that is a really important part of it because I think that one of the ways that the Biden administration was able to kind of create cover for the censorship they wanted is to kind of launder those censorship requests through some of these NGOs in addition to using the FBI and the IC and their connections to trust and safety. One NGO in particular I want to talk about or ask about is Hamilton 68. Did you, did you look at this at all, Eric? Remind me which one Hamilton 68 is. The reason I wanted to talk about this one is this idea of Russian disinformation because Hamilton 68 was another one of these groups, this is all exposed in Matt Taibbi's reporting, where it was set up by another former FBI official named Clint Watts. You

• 30:57David Sacks?

  know, these former FBI guys are, are kind of all over. And they claimed that they were tracking 600 or so Russian disinformation accounts or bots. And they claimed to know which accounts these were. And they would put out stories that whenever there was a story that Democrats didn't like, they would accuse the Russians of being behind it, amplifying that story. And this was the, the source for thousands of MSNBC stories, thousands of CNN reports and so on, claiming that the Russians were involved in our politics, they were engaging in disinformation. Well, why, why is this relevant? Well, during the Twitter files, we found out there was, um, Yoel Roth, who you mentioned was the head of trust and

• 31:42David Sacks?

  safety and definitely not a conservative. There was correspondence inside of Twitter saying, hey, we looked at their so-called API and these are just regular accounts. And he said, basically, this is all bullshit. I mean, I think he used that word bullshit. In other words, the whole idea they were tracking Russian accounts was just total nonsense. These were, you know, it was just a random smattering of some were conservative accounts, some were Canadian accounts, they were just random accounts. And so anytime they needed to oppose conservative opinion on an issue, they would just supposedly point to this Hamilton 68 dashboard. Hamilton 68 created this dashboard that supposedly showed, you know, this vast Russian influence campaign. It all ended up being nonsense.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Well, and I think it's

• 32:23David Sacks?

  Totally created out of thin air. I think it speaks to

• 32:26Jason Calacanis?

  There's a long track record of the Russians hacking, including the RNC recently. So, you know, I, I, I do think you are painting a very one-sided picture here, Sax.

• 32:36David Sacks?

  Maybe it's all bullshit.

• 32:37Jason Calacanis?

  You think the Russians are not hacking foreign adversaries at all? You don't believe any of it?

• 32:42David Sacks?

  Russia's got a lot of good hackers in it, and I'm sure they have cyber operations and things like that. But again, that's a little different than saying that the Russians are heavily involved in our elections. I believe that that was largely a made up story. Now, look, do I want to say that no Russian ever was involved in some sort of operation? I'm not going to say that, but we know Hamilton 68 was total nonsense. In fact, it was worse than that. It was a hoax. Okay, it was a hoax. And for years, it was the basis for thousands of stories that the Russians were interfering in our politics. We also know that the Steele dossier was a hoax, and that was the whole basis, once laundered through the FBI and that whole investigation, that somehow the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election. So when you start to peel away all these bogus accusations, Jason,

• 33:25David Sacks?

  yeah, I don't really believe any of this stuff. When I hear the words Russian disinformation, what I hear now is red scare.

• 33:32Jason Calacanis?

  Senator, I'm going to have you, Senator, I'm going to have you chime in here and maybe balance out our two opinions. Obviously, the Russians have been hacking political organizations in the United States and other countries for decades. They did it to the RNC, they did it to Hillary, they do it as a tactic. That is a fact. And also, I don't think anybody thinks like Trump is a Manchurian candidate. So you tell me where reality is between these two.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Chinese do it too. There's no question that

• 33:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, Chinese are big on it, sure.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Of course. But I think what, what separates this, though, was that now that we know what we know, I mean, actually, in the documents that were released by, released by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, was that Hillary Clinton was the preferred candidate. They had the goods on her, they had her medical records, all this stuff. So Trump was not like this preferred Putin candidate.

• 34:19Jason Calacanis?

  The Russians had all that hacked information.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  The Russians, yeah, they had that. And so what was done was Hillary Clinton knew that she had an email problem. And then she works with a George Soros funded NGO, right? They come up with this plan to say, well, Trump is cozy with Russia. The Steele dossier finds this oppo, whatever is fake oppo. Then they, as David said, they laundered through intelligence agencies. Then that became the thing. And I think the problem is and why people have lost trust in a lot of these institutions, in many cases, rightfully so, is because they were really weaponized against political opponents and they were weaponized against the American people. And there's going to be, have to be a sort of a lot of accountability, but I think before people gain that trust back.

• 34:59Jason Calacanis?

  So I think. Yeah, that was my next question is how do we get past this? Because we're sitting here with like one group who feels, hey, there's all these really suspicious Russian connections to Trump and the people around him.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Jason, can't you see that this was manufactured? It's many, you have to start with the realization.

• 35:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. And then some parts of it are.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  The Steele dossier manufactured. It was a hoax.

• 35:20Jason Calacanis?

  We get it. There's, there's.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Hamilton 68 and all the stories based on it. Manufactured hoax.

• 35:25Jason Calacanis?

  How do we get to reality where we can trust the?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  You got to peel back all the fakeness.

• 35:30Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I think also you have to accept that the Russians are hackers and don't have our best interests at heart. And they actually want to come after us politically, David.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  I'm sure the Russians have cyber operations. I'm sure they do.

• 35:40Jason Calacanis?

  That they hacked Hillary. He's in, you know, he knows and this has all been confirmed.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  The problem here is that that was used as a predicate. Again, this is why it's so jarring. It was used as a predicate to spy, Barack Obama authorized it to spy on a presidential candidate. And then as a predicate then to investigate a president in waiting. And then as a predicate to try to destroy his administration. It was used and it gobbled up so much time in those first two years. That to me is a pretty unique circumstance and beyond just, yeah, foreign nations are trying to get information.

• 36:17Jason Calacanis?

  Since we're here, there's this lawsuit that is now happening or this investigation, I guess. As a, as an attorney and you were the AG, explain to the American people what the case is right now that they're going after, you know.

• 36:33Jason Calacanis?

  With this Russiagate allegations? And then where is it in the courts? Give us the mechanics of it and where do you think it winds up?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  So the question is, was there, was anything done illegal during this sort of Russiagate hoax stuff that could be chargeable? I think you've got ironically Barack Obama has presidential immunity because of the case that President Trump won at the Supreme Court, which by the way, my Solicitor General at the time in Missouri was John Sauer. He's now the Solicitor General of the United States. He was also Trump's lawyer who argued that presidential immunity case about a year ago. But so he probably has immunity from official acts when he was in office, but not when he's out of office. So the, the real question will be, um, he's sort of a conspiracy, I think the most likely

• 37:23Speaker 02

  charge, you can make the case is a conspiracy against, a conspiracy to defraud the United States. This is a very elaborate scheme again to undermine people and, and whether they get indictments or not, I think they should pursue them and, and we'll see if that happens. But I think the like, the most likely targets of that are Comey, Clapper and Brennan for their role.

• 37:48Jason Calacanis?

  And they're being accused of what exactly?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Of manipulating this, and manipulating these falsehoods into actionable intelligence, again, against the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

• 38:00Jason Calacanis?

  What are they being charged with, I guess, is what I'm getting at? Or has that not gotten to that point?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  You can't be the head of the FBI or the head of the CIA and have information you know is false to then open up a criminal investigation against the President, which is what happened, right? And so that's a kind of a big thing. So again, most people would say probably the statute of limitations has, has run on, on many of those charges. But again, an ongoing conspiracy is something different. And by the way, the conspiracy doesn't need to involve you from point A to point Z. Once you sort of begin the conspiracy, so like. You know, again, it just go down this rabbit hole a little bit. Like, what was Jack Smith looking for at Mar-a-Lago when he went down there?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Like, he's probably looking for some of the information related to the Steele dossier that they thought that he probably took with him. I don't know that for certain, but that's certainly a plausible explanation. So this, and again, you have to remember, Jason, that President Trump leaves office, he announces he's running for president in the fall of 2022. Three days later, a few things happen then. The assistant district attorney in Atlanta in a state case visits the White House counsel's office. The number three person at DOJ leaves the Department of Justice and goes work for Alvin Bragg, who then later brings a case against President Trump. Jack Smith is appointed a special counsel, who's in prosecutor world, you know, he's this hired gun. He goes out and tries to put President Trump in jail for the rest of his life.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  They try to bankrupt his family. So like, it is very obvious to anyone paying attention that this lawfare that was aimed against Donald Trump was meant to make sure he never got back in office again. And by the way, if he never got back in office again, all this stuff that Tulsi Gabbard discovered and laid out there, the Cash Patel found in burn bags, wouldn't be out in the open. So much like how we exposed the corruption in Missouri versus Biden, I think that's kind of where we're at right now.

• 39:59Jason Calacanis?

  This is a big jump, though, because the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was because Trump wouldn't give back these specific documents that they were asking for.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Right, but what were the documents they were looking for? Right, what were the documents they were looking for?

• 40:10Jason Calacanis?

  And that he was obstructing justice and that they were, you know, deleting video cameras, etc.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  And that case didn't get past a motion dismissed, right?

• 40:19Jason Calacanis?

  You're making the jump from that, that they were looking for something related to the Steele dossier. And Trump could have just given those documents back. I always wondered in that one, why he just didn't give the documents back? Like, why was he so steadfast against them?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  He can declassify anything as president, which was the likely scenario, but they but they did it anyway. I mean, I think.

• 40:37Jason Calacanis?

  But why would he just, I mean, if you were advising him, wouldn't you just tell him like, hey, just give the documents back?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Like, I think he was in touch with the archivist and. And that was an ongoing conversation and then Jack Smith with the federal prosecutor down in Florida moved with guns to seize these documents, right? I mean, it's very

• 40:55Jason Calacanis?

  It was dramatic for sure. I just don't, I mean, I just never understood why he just didn't give the documents back. It would just, I mean, I know Trump does unique things in the world and, but I would have just given the documents back, which is what every other president did when they were asked to give documents back.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Sure, but except remember Joe Biden, who wasn't ever president, he was vice president, who can't declassify documents, had boxes and boxes of classified documents in his garage where Hunter Biden lived.

• 41:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, he had no idea.

• 41:22David Sacks?

  I love what you're down to now, J Cal. You started believing that Trump was a Russian asset, he was a Russian spy.

• 41:28Jason Calacanis?

  I never believed that.

• 41:29David Sacks?

  Based, yeah, you did. You were tweeting it at the time for years.

• 41:32Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, I didn't. I always thought that was like a crazy concept.

• 41:36David Sacks?

  You deleted those tweets, but you did.

• 41:37Jason Calacanis?

  No, no.

• 41:38David Sacks?

  It's okay. You were fooled by the media. It's okay.

• 41:40Jason Calacanis?

  I always thought there were, I said this very clearly on the pod. I always believed the Russians wanted to create chaos, like we're experiencing here in this discussion amongst Americans to distract us and that they would do it even handedly with anybody. They would do it with-

• 41:54David Sacks?

  The people who are creating the chaos were actually the people who perpetrated this coup attempt against the president, the people who perpetrated the Hamilton 68 dashboard fraud. Those are the people who perpetrated the chaos.

• 42:05Jason Calacanis?

  Sure. I think if the Russians weren't hacking everything.

• 42:08David Sacks?

  You don't really have any evidence. You don't have specific evidence. You don't have specific evidence of a Russian hack. Go read Matt Taby's reporting.

• 42:15Jason Calacanis?

  I just gave it to you. I just gave it to you. The RNC, the head of the RNC said, yes, we were hacked. Our partners were hacked. They explicitly said this. This is all facts, David. But anyway, we got the senator here. We can have our Russia gay debate forever. You could tell me that I think Trump's a Russian asset. I don't think Trump's a Russian asset. I think that's insane. But I do think the Russians like to cause chaos. Moving on.

• 42:37David Sacks?

  Brennan, I believe it was Brennan, and these Tulsi documents that just got released, here's what I think is so notable about them. I mean, other people may have their own opinion, is that it shows that, I think there's a document there where Brennan, Brennan was like the head of the CIA.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 42:52David Sacks?

  He received an intelligence assessment. From the organization in which they said, look, there's nothing to this. It's bogus. We haven't.

• 43:01Jason Calacanis?

  The Steele dossier, you're saying?

• 43:02David Sacks?

  Not just the Steele dossier, but the whole idea of somehow that the Russians had run this elaborate interference operation in the 2016 election and that somehow Trump was compromised. In other words, the intelligence analysts did their job and came up with the correct conclusion. And nonetheless, Brennan said that the Steele dossier should be included in the official intelligence assessment because it had the, quote, "ring of truth" to it. Okay, so he was advised by his own analysts that this was nonsense. And yet he pushed to include it in the official intelligence report. And then that became the basis for opening the investigation. You see how this worked?

• 43:47Jason Calacanis?

  Allegedly, and we'll find out. He'll have their day in court. I mean, I'm totally fine with.

• 43:51David Sacks?

  This is what's in the documents.

• 43:52Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, we'll find out if this is a theatrical exercise or if it's actually going to go to court. What do you think?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  I think it'll go to court. I think this is, and by the way, I think it's one of the reasons why they were so obsessed in making sure President Trump never got back into office. One of the reasons. I mean, again, in the book, I talk about how there's this, an emergency, real or perceived, then you other people, and then you try to silence dissent. I think it happened with COVID. It happened with this, anybody that claimed that Russia didn't have, you know, that President Trump wasn't a Russian asset, was a traitor and a Putin lover. I mean, this stuff, it's kind of wild, honestly, but I think we're on the other side of the fever dream. But there does need to be some accountability now.

• 44:36Jason Calacanis?

  This is your first term as Senator, I believe?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, so I was elected in 2022. Yep.

• 44:41Jason Calacanis?

  I'm curious, one, any great stock tips? Two?

• 44:47Jason Calacanis?

  You have to call.

• 44:48David Sacks?

  Are we done with the Russiagate now?

• 44:49Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we're just trying to get some inside information with the trade on number two.

• 44:54David Sacks?

  Look, I think one of the reasons why the Russiagate, we can stop talking about Russiagate, but I think one of the reasons why it was so important, first of all, it was effectively a coup against the President of the United States because these were executive branch officials who owe a duty of loyalty to the elected president. Instead, they were working to subvert and undermine him based on essentially lies and hoaxes and manufactured material. I mean, that is, that is basically the definition of a coup. So I think that is a big deal in and of itself. But I think the other reason why it's such a big deal is I do think that it helped create this intense Russophobia in the United States that has led us to the point we're at right now, which is we are basically in a war with Russia, or at least

• 45:38David Sacks?

  we're backing Ukraine in a war with Russia. And actually, you heard this at the Alaska summit. I think that this whole Russiagate thing, which we now know is completely bogus, poisoned relations between the United States and Russia for years because the media kept reporting this bogus idea that somehow Trump was a Russian asset and somehow they had interfered in our elections. And I think this helped create a very hostile relationship between the United States and Russia.

• 46:05Jason Calacanis?

  Clearly, Russiagate led to Putin invading Ukraine.

• 46:10David Sacks?

  It led to, it led to a souring of the relationship. It led to a souring of the relationship.

• 46:18Jason Calacanis?

  It doesn't justify his murderous campaign in Ukraine, David. You would agree.

• 46:22David Sacks?

  I'm not, that's not the argument I'm making.

• 46:24Jason Calacanis?

  I know, but I'm forcing you to agree that he invaded Ukraine and murdered people and he's a war criminal. And, you know, that, those are just facts as well, David. I'm sorry.

• 46:32David Sacks?

  I think those are cliches that, that basically attempt to strip that complicated war of all of its context so that we can achieve a peaceful solution to it.

• 46:42Jason Calacanis?

  I'm all for peace, but you gotta accept reality.

• 46:45David Sacks?

  Obviously Putin invaded the country, but the conflict there goes back 10 years. There's a long history to it.

• 46:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 46:51David Sacks?

  I'm not looking to rehash all of that. The point is, we could have worked out a resolution to this conflict maybe before it started if we didn't have hostile relationships with Russia. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

• 47:00Jason Calacanis?

  Senator, I'll give you the choice. I want to talk to you about just the Senate in general and.

• 47:06Jason Calacanis?

  And then I wanted to talk a little in your experiences there, or we could just go right into what's happening with this Russian peace deal and the status of that.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can do both. I, I, um, I think I was actually, I was on a Sunday show yesterday and, and I, I consider myself firmly in the camp of being an American realist. I, I think that a lot of the people that are really critical of President Trump's efforts right now have been wrong about foreign policy for a very, very long time. Jake Sullivan included, right? Who presided over the, with the disastrous withdrawal of Afghanistan, who, um, by basically on his watch, Russia invaded Ukraine.

• 47:40Jason Calacanis?

  What is their position, Senator? What do you think their position is? Like, why are they so tweaked? Why are they so tweaked that he met with Putin, you think?

• 47:47Speaker 02

  I don't know, uh, because there is no plan. There's never been a plan. The only plan they ever had was is that the United States taxpayer would continue to funnel over $200 billion without a plan. And I had a problem with that in my first couple of years. The Vice President Vance viewed the world kind of similarly with that in, in the same way. I think we ought to focus on our core national interests, the homeland. We have to figure out a way to pivot to China. We have to get our NATO allies to step up in a much more meaningful way. I think one of the great ironies of all this is that, you know, the, these European countries who are going to be in the White House in the Oval Office today, they talk about Putin being this existential threat. Well, they sure don't act like it. They don't, you know, they don't really provide-

• 48:25Jason Calacanis?

  They don't spend like it, you mean?

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Correct. And it, by the way, if they spent what we spent on national defense, that would free up about $300 billion for us to focus actually on the Indo-Pacific where China now has a bigger navy than we have. Not a better navy, but a bigger navy. They're in space for real.

• 48:40Jason Calacanis?

  Trump's biggest accomplishment is probably geopolitically getting NATO, uh, to spend what they're supposed to spend. Yeah?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I went over to, uh, I was actually at the, uh, the, um, the Munich Security Conference. I went over there. I'm a bit of a contrarian there, I guess. I would say the ascending wing of the Republican Party on this kind of realism versus, um, this kind of Wilsonian adventurism that's dominated.

• 49:04David Sacks?

  Permanent Washington for a long time, just to tell them the truth, which is not what they wanted to hear, but the truth, which is the things I just said, you need to step up in a meaningful way. Um, you know, if you think about the Cold War, it was meant to sort of prop them up to defeat Soviet communism. Our trade deals were never renegotiated. We never expected much more from them and all that's happening now. So this is kind of the place that I've been hoping to be. But I think President Trump's trying to broker a peace here. The problem with the critics is they just don't have an alternative. This is a meat grinder. This is a war of attrition. This is what Russia does. That's what they've done for centuries. So if you're, if you're, if your solution is that, well, we shouldn't, we shouldn't talk to Putin, I don't know how you get to a peace deal. Diplomacy means

• 49:45David Sacks?

  you talk to some people that you would never want your daughter to marry, but like you accept the world as it is and try to move forward. And I think that's what he's trying to do.

• 49:54Jason Calacanis?

  And David, I think the chances of successfully negotiating anything with a dictator who gets to do whatever he wants is like five or 10% on, on a good day.

• 50:03David Sacks?

  Are you talking about Zelensky?

• 50:04Jason Calacanis?

  My Lord, you have it in for the, the emerging democracy that was invaded.

• 50:10David Sacks?

  Zelensky is now in his, was it fifth or sixth year of a four-year term? Hold on, no, this is, this is just me saying it. I'm not referring to anyone else.

• 50:17Jason Calacanis?

  You're out of your lane.

• 50:19David Sacks?

  So Zelensky basically banned opposition political parties. He basically cracked down on the press.

• 50:24Jason Calacanis?

  Emerging democracy.

• 50:25David Sacks?

  You don't get, you don't get to be a reporter in Ukraine unless you get a license from the government. He cracked down on, uh, religion, on the Russian Orthodox Church, priests, none so forth. He's basically seized the assets of his political opponents. And most importantly, he's now in the like fifth year of a four-year term. He canceled elections. So I'm not quite sure upon what exactly you're making these highly moralistic condemnations. I just think the conflict is much more complicated than you would like it to be. And you know, this whole idea that Zelensky represents democracy, whereas Putin represents authoritarianism, that's not what's going on.

• 51:04Jason Calacanis?

  Just statistically, you're wrong. If you were to look at any of the ratings of democracies in the world, Russia would be amongst the lowest scores and the Ukraine would be in the high middle scores compared to the truly free countries like ours.

• 51:17David Sacks?

  Zelensky canceled elections, but I'd have to, you have to think twice about that after, since he canceled elections.

• 51:22Jason Calacanis?

  Well, it's an emerging democracy.

• 51:23David Sacks?

  There is no democracy in Ukraine right now. There's just not.

• 51:26Jason Calacanis?

  Well, they're at war. Yeah.

• 51:27David Sacks?

  Okay, fine, but.

• 51:28Jason Calacanis?

  Fighting for their lives.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  But we had, we had elections when we were in, you know, the Civil War and we were, we were in World War II. We had elections. I don't know that that's a great reason not to have elections.

• 51:38Jason Calacanis?

  Democratic country, Ukraine or Russia?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Russia is an authoritarian regime, but I think David makes some, like, I'll give you one example.

• 51:44Jason Calacanis?

  So you can't just answer the question?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Well, no, I'm gonna give you context.

• 51:48David Sacks?

  You're using, Jake, you're using democracy as a bumper sticker and a buzzword instead of actually thinking about what it really means. And actually, if we're really gonna think about what democracy means, then let's ask what the people of Ukraine think. That's what, to me, democracy means. You actually listen to the people. Gallup just did a survey of the people of Ukraine. Let's put these numbers on, on the screen. This is Gallup, and this is before the Alaska summits. This was not politically motivated in any way. And what they found is that Ukrainians have lost their appetite for war. Support for the war has collapsed. A year ago, support for the war was in the 60s or 70s. Now it's collapsed to 24%.

• 52:28David Sacks?

  So the vast majority of Ukrainians now want a resolution to the conflict, even if it means making concessions.

• 52:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I know. I, I, I wouldn't, you can't dispute this, of course. They're, they've got war fatigue like they should.

• 52:41David Sacks?

  This is what democracy means to me, is that we should actually listen to the desires of the Ukrainian people.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Russia has five times the people, three times the, or three times the people, five times the munitions. Um, they have an industrial base. This, you know, for, for Ukraine, I think the next step here is, um, there has to be a negotiated peace here. This, this can't go on forever. Europe is not in a position, I think, to provide what they claim to want to provide. In the United States of America, I mean, part of the problem is, and other people have made this point, that even if you spent, let's just say we wanted to spend another $100 billion. The industrial base doesn't exist to build all of the stuff that they need right now anyway. Like, they have, there's a real problem here, and I think President Trump campaigned on the idea of negotiating a peace. I don't know why that's so controversial.

• 53:27Jason Calacanis?

  When, um.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And I'm not saying from you, I'm saying, but the pundits.

• 53:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like he, he can't. You know, the idea, you know, Russia has nuclear weapons. The idea that he wouldn't have a one-on-one conversation.

• 53:38Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. That's why I asked that question, like, is there any steel manning of this position that we shouldn't meet with Putin? Or, you know, President Xi or Kim Jong-un? We should obviously meet with all of them. It makes sense if we have even a 1% chance of making forward progress. When should the United States Senator say enough is enough? We're out. Figure it out for yourselves. You've got the EU right there. You've got Europe. They've got plenty of money, but America's out. If you want to buy some weapons, we sell weapons. That's fine. And I think Trump has done an amazing job of enforcing the loan lease that Biden set these up. So when we keep saying we're spending 100 billion, that's no longer true.

• 54:19Jason Calacanis?

  Right? We're getting all that money back because Trump forced Zelensky to the negotiating table. We're getting all that money back. But when should we, just so we have clear facts here, that this is not costing the American people, you know, this hundreds of billions of dollars anymore, thanks to President Trump, deaf negotiator, I'll give him credit, where credit is due. But when should we, in your mind, step back and say, you know what? Not our problem anymore. You guys figure it out. Because that seemed Vice President JD Vance, friend of the pod's position as well. At some point, we have to say enough. And Trump sort of said that, too. He alluded to that. At some point, we're out. Are we at that point if this doesn't get resolved this time around, do you think?

• 55:00Speaker 02

  I think, yeah. I think that that's what this phase is all about, which is to give a legitimate peace process a chance. But the idea that we're going to be voting on, I mean, I wouldn't support it, more a taxpayer aid to Ukraine for a war that, you know, doesn't seem to look like it's ever going to end and is a blank check is just unacceptable as a senator for a state in the United States of America, right? Like, it's just not. Now, President Trump, I think, has opened up avenues to sort of make it clear to both parties that there's pressure that could be ramped up to try to bring this to a head. And I think that's where we're at. It's not going to all happen today. It's not going to all happen tomorrow. But that's really what this diplomacy, in this TikTok age that we live in, I think we think

• 55:45Speaker 02

  it's instant gratification. But diplomacy is difficult when you're dealing with other countries with their own national interests and their own sort of inner dynamics.

• 55:53Jason Calacanis?

  Possible we walk away this year from the situation, you think?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  I don't know. I wouldn't want to put a timetable on. I would not want to get in front of the president who's actually sitting in front of the, across the table from these world leaders. But look, I think that he's been pretty clear. This is not our war. It's not our war. This is, but I think that up to this point, we've wanted to try to provide a time and space for a solution. And I do think if there's anybody who can do it, it's Trump.

• 56:20David Sacks?

  Uh, there's nobody else on the planet. I mean, Macron could not broker this. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, so it's the last best hope. Uh, my hope is that you do get to a peace process because you're just gonna have billions of more people die. Um, and really,

• 56:33Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think, Sax? You think we should walk away if we can't get this resolved with this latest volley of negotiations? Or at some point, should we, to the president, say enough? Because he's, he seems exacerbated based on his public statements about this. He's kind of exacerbated with the two parties, it seems.

• 56:51David Sacks?

  Well, look, you're asking me what the president should do, and I'm not on the foreign policy team.

• 56:55Jason Calacanis?

  Correct.

• 56:56David Sacks?

  I'm not gonna venture and wait into that, but

• 56:58Jason Calacanis?

  Is it a possibility?

• 56:59David Sacks?

  I'll just say this. I'll just say this. Listen to what the Ukrainians want. I mean, Zelensky's interests may not be the same as his people's because as long as there's a war, there's no election. They've canceled democracy over there while the war is going on. And as long as that is true, he stays in power. So he has incentives that may not be true for all of his people. His people want a negotiated peace.

• 57:26Jason Calacanis?

  And you think if, uh, they give up the Donbass and whatever other regions, you know, are on the table here, do you think Putin stops here? Or do you think we'll see him invade another country? Do you worry about that, Sax? Do you worry that this is enabling his behavior? His worst demons?

• 57:43David Sacks?

  I don't think the Russians have the intention to invade another country, and they don't have the capability. Look at how much trouble they've had. We're now three and a half years into the war. They're definitely winning the war, but they've only conquered this eastern part of Ukraine. They haven't

• 57:56Jason Calacanis?

  Pretty humble for them, yeah.

• 57:57David Sacks?

  They haven't made it to the Neper. I don't even think they can conquer all of Ukraine, or at least it'd be extraordinarily difficult and resource consuming. So I just think that this threat of Putin conquering or attempting to invade all of Europe, this is threat inflation.

• 58:12Jason Calacanis?

  That's my, uh, that's my takeaway from it, Senator. It's like, Putin couldn't even take Ukraine?

• 58:18Speaker 02

  I mean, agree. Look, this is, this is part of the inconsistency of the argument that I've heard in, in the Senate for two and a half years, which is that he's Hitler, that he's about ready to march through Europe and this is a, we can't be Neville Chamberlain and this is the moment, but at the same time, he can't get to Kiev, right? Like both things can't be true at the same time.

• 58:38Jason Calacanis?

  And he's got,

• 58:38Speaker 02

  so again, I think you just have to recognize the realities.

• 58:40Jason Calacanis?

  Recruiting North Koreans to fight on the frontline? I mean, like, what? It's so humiliating for him. All right, listen, Senator, you're welcome on the pod anytime. Great having you here. Everybody buy the book. It's out right now.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  I don't know if this is the interview you were expecting, but.

• 58:56Jason Calacanis?

  No, it's great. We had a, he's, no, I, I talked to him before you came on and I said, hey, listen, to keep it not like a monoculture here, like, you know, Tucker and the Senator were like, high fiving the whole interview, but it was great. It was a great interview. It's a great Tucker classic. You need to have a little spice here to, to figure out.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Debate.

• 59:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  I love free speech, which is why I wrote the book. The Last Line of Defense.

• 59:16Jason Calacanis?

  Now available on Amazon.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  On Amazon right now.

• 59:19Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  All right, everyone check it out.

• 59:21Jason Calacanis?

  Everybody buy the book. All right, everybody, see you next time. Bye bye.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Great guys. Thanks.

• 59:24Jason Calacanis?

  Great job, everybody. It was fun.

• 59:42Jason Calacanis?

  I'm a moderate, truth be told, but right now the left calls me a MAGA retard. And then the right calls me a libtard. So the only thing they have in common is they both think.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:56Jason Calacanis?

  I'm an idiot. Right. Yeah. So I'm a.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Well, if everybody agrees, then maybe there's something to it.

• 1:00:01Jason Calacanis?

  It could be consensus. There's your cold open, folks.