E12: Biden wins, Pfizer vaccine, markets rip, Trump's next act, COVID endgame scenarios & more

Follow the crew: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Show Notes: 0:00 Besties reflect on the election night special, comparing Trump's case to Al Gore's in 2000 4:44 Was this election devastating for extreme-ism in politics? 12:13 Pfizer vaccine, withholding the vaccine from the political news cycle 21:54 COVID endgame scenarios 28:45 Public markets ripping, gridlock great for the economy 34:43 Analyzing exit polls, death of identity politics 50:57 Biggest loser of the election: Journalism 57:43 When will Trump concede? What will his next move be? 1:07:37 San Francisco's collapse - will it eventually go bankrupt?

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody, welcome to another All In Podcast. This is an all bestie, no guestie episode of All In. The last time you heard from the besties, it was election night and it was A shitshow. A fucking crazy shitshow. Let's be honest. I mean, we, if we go back and look at that historical document, we had moments where we thought Trump was gonna absolutely crush, then we had moments of confusion, and now here we are. And I think we have to give a couple of bestie kudos to, first off, Chamath, pointing out Pennsylvania was

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  gonna be big. And then second, when we went through the possible scenarios of who, what could possibly happen, a big giant blue wave, Trump winning it all, and then maybe something in the middle. Option three came through, and that was

• 1:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  SaxiPoo nailed it.

• 1:02Jason Calacanis?

  I think that was your assumption, Sax, the soft landing.

• 1:07David Sacks?

  The soft landing, yeah.

• 1:08Jason Calacanis?

  So why don't we just, for the people who didn't tune in live,

• 1:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, Jason, can I ask a question? SaxiPoo, SaxiPoo, was that your, like, projection? Or was it from that, from that guy who lives in his dad's basement, his mom's basement?

• 1:24David Sacks?

  My researcher. Well, Newman, Newman works for me.

• 1:28Jason Calacanis?

  Newman, Newman.

• 1:30David Sacks?

  Yeah. Newman, Newman and I worked, worked together on, on those takes. But yeah, the, the take that we thought was, was possible, but probably unlikely, but could represent a really good scenario was the, the soft landing, where you get a split decision. And I think that's what the American people voted for. You know, you had, the, the Democratic frame on the election was that we needed a return to normalcy and decency. The Republican frame was that the radical left could not be trusted with power. And voters basically said they were both right. They sort of surgically removed Donald Trump while thwarting the radical left's dream of total control in Washington. And what the electorate seems to be saying is they want the parties now to work together instead of voting for extreme ideology.

• 2:15David Friedberg?

  But TBD Sax, I mean, Georgia's still up for grabs. They're gonna go after it hard, right?

• 2:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They just, they filed in Pennsylvania.

• 2:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, so I think there's a series of court challenges we can talk about. I think that they're unlikely to prevail, very, very unlikely. I think Joe Biden will be the next president. We can kind of compare this to, you know, Bush v. Gore from 2000. And if you want to compare Trump's case to Gore's case, it's weaker in every respect. I mean, first of all, with Bush v. Gore, Gore only had to overturn one state, which was Florida, whereas Trump has to now contest and overturn three or four states simultaneously. Second, you know, Gore was within a few hundred votes of Bush. It was extremely close. Trump is no closer than about 12,000 votes in Georgia. That's the closest one. Third, you

• 3:08David Sacks?

  know, Gore or Bush never trailed Gore in any recount. And Trump has that problem that he's never, he's very far behind Gore as well. So you look at those three things and you'd say, you know, Gore couldn't overcome it, and he had a closer situation than this. And of course, I'd say finally, you know, a W had the velvet hammer James Baker working for him, whereas Trump frankly has Rudy Giuliani, who's throwing press conferences in the parking lot of forces and landscaping between a dildo shop and a crematorium. And I mean, you can't make this stuff up. I think somebody was tweeting, you know, this is perfect because,

• 3:52David Sacks?

  you know, they were saying they wanted Rudy to fuck off and die. So it was so appropriate that this press conference was held between a dildo shop and a crematorium. So, you know, it's not exactly the A-team that Trump's got playing for him here in the courts, but...

• 4:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, David Bossie, by the way, David Bossie, who was in charge of the whole thing. David Bossie is not even a lawyer. And then he gets COVID, and so now he's on the sidelines.

• 4:16Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, just, there's so many angles we can take here, including the fact that, am I correct that... Trump's campaign advisor got COVID like the day after?

• 4:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, Mark Meadows.

• 4:34Jason Calacanis?

  Chief of Staff. Chief of Staff got it.

• 4:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

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

• 4:41Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so I want to just shift us now to what could have so many things went right for the Democrats, but there was also something very clear here that happened, which is the, what I call the HSP, the Hysterical Socialist Party of America, I think was dealt a death blow. If you look, this was very close. And so, you know, even if we want to talk about the Electoral College, etc., these are still very low numbers. I believe if the Pfizer news comes out last week, Trump wins.

• 5:21Jason Calacanis?

  Or if any combination of AOC Bernie or Warren were in any way involved in this election process and weren't pushed to the side, the Squad was squashed because we knew that if they got any kind of play, Trump sails into victory. So when we look at what happens going forward, and I'll let any one of the three of you take this, what does this say about the Hysterical Socialist Party, the HSP, the Squad, the Bernie Bros? What does this say about them?

• 6:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, you have a, you have a, look, you have a loud group of people on both sides. And the reality is that both extremes of both parties actually after this election have very little to stand on that's unique. Because if you think about what the plurality of Americans want is actually just a common decent centrist do no harm alternative. And they're going to pick that more times than they're not going to pick it. It's only when things get extreme like in 2016, in order to send a message, will they do it? And until it's resolved, they tried to do it again now, so we should actually talk about that. I don't think that this was, you know, a runaway.

• 6:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was way too close on too many dimensions that actually matter for the future prosperity of America. But that being said, what does it mean for the future? I think the future is like Pete Buttigieg must be high-fiving, you know, the people in his camp right now because a common decent thoughtful centrist platform will win. For example, like, let's just say you believe in gay rights. Guess what? You don't need to be at the fringes to believe in that. That's mainstream. You believe in like a reasonable form of healthcare, that's mainstream. If you believe in climate change, it's mainstream. You start to go and tick off the things that the extremes would want to believe, there's very little room for them to stand on. So one party is going to be basically about like a federalized nanny state and the other

• 7:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  party will be a bunch of conspiracy theorist crazies. And I think it's going to force more and more people to the middle. I think that's the future. To me, that's, that's a much safer place to be than I think where we could have been if, you know, Trump had won or if the extreme left had basically been, been validated with a candidate that won.

• 7:47David Sacks?

  Right, and I would add to that, that the, the, the proof of that, the proof of the electorate's desired attack towards the center is you look at the down ballot elections. So, you know, in the senate, the Republicans are still holding on to a majority pending the Florida runoff, but the, the Democrats failed to take out Susan Collins, Tom Tillis, Steve Daines. These were three incumbent Republicans who were way behind in the polls heading into election day. They didn't come close to taking out Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell despite spending over $200 million.

• 8:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How did Lady G get out of this one alive? Explain that to me.

• 8:21David Sacks?

  Susan Collins?

• 8:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, Lady G.

• 8:24Jason Calacanis?

  Lindsey Graham.

• 8:25David Sacks?

  Oh, I see. You know, Lindsey Graham, they said that it was neck and neck and he actually ended up winning that state by like 14 points. It wasn't close. The polls were wildly off. And, and you saw that across, across the board. In the House too, Democrats expected a gain of 10 to 15 seats. Instead, they've lost about 10 seats. They failed to defeat a, a single GOP incumbent. The GOP House members ran about two or three points ahead of President Trump. And that, and then the Democrats were completely shut out in Texas, which was supposed to be going purple. There were eight open GOP seats. Democrats won none of them. So this, you know, so anyway, I'm providing some support to the idea that this was a split decision election.

• 9:08David Sacks?

  The voters voted to remove both of the, or to voted against the extremes of both parties.

• 9:14Jason Calacanis?

  So Friedberg, when you look at this, you see, I think, an absolute, um, just people don't want to deal with Trump anymore. How much of this do you think is Trump derangement system, uh, syndrome? And what got Trump into office, eventually taking him out, which is the guy just takes up too much oxygen in the room. And that's coming from me. And the guy is just incredibly annoying to have to deal with day to day. That's also coming from you. And that's also coming from me. Friedberg, what do you think?

• 9:50David Friedberg?

  I, I think we've, I think we've been at a rave for four years and everyone's like coming down from the molly and you're not going to go to a Marilyn Manson concert like right after being at a rave. Like, you want to go sit in the parking lot and you just want to chill out a little bit and we all just want to like have a beer and relax, you know, like, I mean, I think that's-

• 10:08Jason Calacanis?

  They need some 5-HTP and a banana.

• 10:10David Friedberg?

  You just, yeah, you, you, you want to go sit in the 7-Eleven parking lot at four in the morning and you want to like go get a fucking sweet cappuccino and smoke a cigarette and relax. Like, it's been, it's been too much. And I think it's like, everyone's just kind of ready to chill out a bit. And so this whole fucking swinging back to the, you know, to the concert across the road sounds just as bad as what we've just been through. So let's just, you know, let's just live our lives a little bit. And, you know, we'll come back in four years and figure out how to fuck things up again. I think that's kind of the psyche.

• 10:39David Sacks?

  That's right. I think voters want a presidency they can forget about. You know, I think Trump's sort of Achilles heel is he demanded too much of the voters' constant time and attention. There was like this psychic cost to it. It obviously antagonized the other side and drove turnout for the Democrats. But it seems like voters are saying, look, just leave us alone. We want to just forget about what's happening in Washington for four years. And now they can because, you know, pending the Georgia runoff, it looks like Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden will have to be in a power sharing arrangement. And nothing gets done unless the two of them agree.

• 11:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, just on that, there was a great tweet by Paul Graham. He said, the day after the election, something to the effect of, "It feels like some background process in my computer was just killed that was consuming 5% of my CPU." And it's so true.

• 11:29Jason Calacanis?

  It's like that Mac operating system spinning wheel of death.

• 11:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But David is so right. It's like, you know, it's been this omnipresent thing in all of our lives over the last four years. And it's just exhausting. And, you know, there wasn't that much value that came from paying so much attention and worrying so much. And so it's just a great opportunity to come off the sugar high and reset ourselves and take a nap.

• 11:56Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's a very astute point, Chamath, in that what was gained from this Trump derangement, from this Trump sucking all of the attention and constantly tweeting. And, you know, I think the big win here, Friedberg, is if you look, the proof is in the pudding. Trump, we find out on Saturday morning that Trump is, you know, has lost and Biden has won. And 48 hours later, we find out Pfizer has 90% efficacy on their vaccine. Obviously, these two things are highly correlated. Biden has already delivered the vaccine in just 48 hours.

• 12:39Jason Calacanis?

  And then today, we got the rapid testing has been approved by the FDA. I mean, look at this. At this rate, Biden's going to cure global warming by the end of the year.

• 12:50David Friedberg?

  Look, um, first off, I think it's a little, um, It is pretty paradoxical that the vaccine news came 48 hours. Yeah.

• 13:00David Sacks?

  I don't think it's paradoxical. I mean, that was crazy. I mean, you know, there's supposed to be an October surprise, not a November surprise. I think if Trump has any legitimate argument about being done dirty in this election, it is over this vaccine news because, you know, the Chinese announced that three hours after Biden's declared president, Pfizer announces it a day after Biden's declared president. I mean, you know, when Trump went around this, the, um, you know, was campaigning, saying a vaccine was mere weeks away. Everyone thought that was bullshit. But as it turns out, he was telling the truth. And if those guys had announced it, Jason, like you were saying, two weeks before the election, it might have changed this thing.

• 13:37David Friedberg?

  But you guys might have a hundred.

• 13:39David Sacks?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. And this is not something he can go to the courts. It's not like he can go to the courts and get the election recounted overturned because of this. So it's not something that's legally actionable, but I do think that on this news alone, Trump in four years will be able to claim on some level that this was a stolen election.

• 13:57David Friedberg?

  But couldn't the same be said about Hillary's email server, right? So like, One hundred percent. That news came out like, and it was like timed around the election. And I do think that there was a concerted effort to not let, um, you know, the progress with COVID get in the way of the election in any way, you know, biased it either way. And I think it was like pretty reasonable and fair to say like, let's just not make this part of the news cycle leading into the election. And this was expected, like, if you guys go back a couple of podcasts, like, um, you had a prediction on when we would have a vaccine. I think I predicted end of September because of the way that they set up the, uh, the production cycle in parallel with the testing cycle and the way that they were fast tracking a lot of the testing in a way that wasn't normal.

• 14:39David Friedberg?

  Um, for this sort of a, uh, development. And, um, it was, it was going to happen this fall. If I'm an executive at one of these companies, I don't want my vaccine to become a politicized event, right? Like, I just want to be like, I think it's, it's the reasonable thing to say, like, let's just put it on hold. Let's deal with it all after the election. We're still moving forward. We're not holding anything up in terms of production and getting this thing across the finish line. It's just the announcement of where we are. So why make that part of the news cycle, you know? And I think like people learned their lesson with Hillary's server last time. It's like this one news, you know, bombshell drops and the news cycle spins up and she loses the election. Everyone blames her losing the election for that coming out. No one wants to be culpable for that, right? I'm a Pfizer exec. I'm just trying to make fucking medicine. Like, I don't want to be on the hook for

• 15:22Jason Calacanis?

  Said another way,

• 15:23David Friedberg?

  Someone winning or losing an election.

• 15:25Jason Calacanis?

  Said another way, Chamath, nobody wants to go to a Warriors finals game versus the Lakers and have the refs call, you know, decide the game in the final couple of minutes. So do you think, Chamath, this is, if you were running Pfizer, if you were on the board of Pfizer and you have this information and you know it can come out in this two week window at any time, what decision would you make, Chamath?

• 15:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, just imagine that the vaccine was 90% ineffective and it was announced two weeks before the election. You'd have an entire cohort of people saying this was meant to basically sabotage the election in the other direction. So the point is it's a no win situation. The only answer is to wait until after the election because that's the only way that you can actually say, you know, we were not, we were being impartial. So I'm sympathetic to this idea that all the news had to wait two or three days, or maybe it was two or three weeks. Now, knowing in advance what the answer was, obviously you can read into that. But I think even if it was 90% ineffective, it should

• 16:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  have waited till after the election as well.

• 16:39Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, do you agree with that?

• 16:41David Sacks?

  I just think that

• 16:41Jason Calacanis?

  I don't get the sense that you do agree with that, Sax.

• 16:43David Sacks?

  Well, let's put it this way. I mean, we know from our time working at large companies that it takes them weeks to even approve a press release. And so Pfizer had this news weeks ago. Now, I understand their reason for not wanting to appear to be influencing the outcome of the election. So I, that's why they held on to it. I think everybody saw the way that Facebook was scapegoated four years ago for the election and no one wants to, no corporation wants to put themselves in that position of being accused news of affecting the election outcome one way or another. I'm sure that's why they did it as opposed to a conspiracy against Trump, but you know, this news was available. I think we will find out weeks ago.

• 17:26David Sacks?

  And so I guess you'd have to blame or there'd be some culpability on the part of Trump's election team or, you know, his, his head of the FDA or what have you. They must have known some of this information and you would think they would have done a better job getting it out there.

• 17:41Jason Calacanis?

  No, he did say at every rally, it's just around the corner. It's just around the corner. We're rounding the corner.

• 17:47David Sacks?

  And we all thought it was bullshit. You thought it was bullshit. We thought it was bullshit, right?

• 17:50Jason Calacanis?

  And you know why we thought it was bullshit?

• 17:52David Sacks?

  Well, because Trump, Trump does have a tendency towards hyperbole.

• 17:55Jason Calacanis?

  Hyperbole. On Trump's most honest day, he's hyperbolic. On Trump's average day, he is lying incessantly. So if anything, if he was right, and he was right that we were turning the corner and the vaccine was coming and it was going to be beautiful, a beautiful, perfect vaccine and everybody was going to get it. He's paying the price for being a liar for four years.

• 18:20David Sacks?

  Right, but it's the kind of thing where no, no, no.

• 18:22Jason Calacanis?

  Boy who cried wolf.

• 18:24David Sacks?

  Well, and so does the media, by the way, but, but yeah, look, I, in order for a piece of news this big to be believed before the election, it can't come from a candidate. And it's, it's, it's pretty amazing that none of this news got out there through some other source. You would think that some of the people on the healthcare task force that Trump appointed might have been, you know, surfacing this or paying attention to it. Maybe Pfizer did a really good job of hiding it. I don't know, but it is pretty amazing that it didn't come out sooner.

• 18:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, the, the other crazy thing is like, you know, even the Pfizer team didn't exactly know what was going on. The chief, the, the head of vaccine research, she said, we're not part of the federal government's, uh, you know, warp speed program. And then, uh, two days later Pfizer was like, actually, we are part of the warp speed program. It's just that, you know, we're a supplier. The whole point is that, um, I'm not sure that Pfizer actually knew two weeks in advance, David. I think that they were probably trickling stuff together and they probably had a sense of it at the end of the last week. I'm surprised it didn't leak, to be quite honest. That's the more shocking thing, which means that, um,

• 19:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was probably something that very, very, very few people knew about.

• 19:43David Sacks?

  Well, the CEO, the CEO put out a statement saying that he would be first in line to take the new vaccine, which I thought was, you know, a great statement because a lot of people were questioning whether, you know, how real it was or how rushed it was. But in order for him to do that, and in order just to get like a press release announced, I don't think that's the kind of thing that comes together in the, you know, one or two day period between the announcement of Joe Biden winning the election and their, and their announcement. So, you know, I just think they had to know weeks ago.

• 20:15Jason Calacanis?

  I just want to say to my Greek brother, Alberto Borlas, the CEO of Pfizer, a great Greek, who has led to the saving of the world. Opa, khanis. Saganaki is on me.

• 20:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  If you, if you, if you take 90% efficacy and you assume at most in the United States, 40% of people will take the actual vaccination, you'll have 36% of the population covered, which is still not enough to get the R not less than one.

• 20:56Jason Calacanis?

  Is that correct, Friedberg? What do you think?

• 20:58David Friedberg?

  I don't know. I don't know. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'd have to...

• 21:01Jason Calacanis?

  What, I mean, does it sound directionally correct to you that half the people in the States are going to take it? I mean, if you don't take it, isn't this like a...

• 21:09David Sacks?

  Although, everyone who's high risk will take it.

• 21:11David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And as of about two months ago, you know, it was estimated that 30% of people on the East Coast had already developed immunity due to the seroprevalence studies that showed antibodies. On the West Coast, it was much lower, closer to 3%. You could estimate based on the growth in cases since then, and assuming we're kind of missing a bunch, we're probably on a national basis, we were at 10% back then, on a national basis, you're probably up to 20% right now of Americans have already been effectively immunized by getting the virus. So, you know, if that's true, then you're at 55%, and you're getting pretty close to a, you know, an ability to kind of inhibit this thing from, from spreading rapidly again. So...

• 21:55Jason Calacanis?

  So how do we each feel? I'll just go around the horn. How do we each feel about the COVID-19 end game? When will we see all schools open, all NBA arenas open with no distancing? Give us a quarter in 2021 when in America enough vaccines will have been delivered and distributed and rapid testing that life goes back to, let's call it 85% of normal?

• 22:29David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I don't think you ever get there. I mean, it's like, we talked about this a couple episodes ago, but it's after 9/11, you know, the TSA emerged and American travel never went back to the way it was before. And I think there'll be a lot about the way we live that's going to be, you know, kind of permanently scarred and permanently changed here for a while, whether it is taking people's temperatures at football games, wearing masks and, you know, farmers markets, who knows? There's going to be all these weird rules are going to pop up. They're going to last for years regardless of how much immunization takes place, regardless of how cheap and available testing is. We're going to have this scar for a long time in terms of how we live as a society. I don't think we should kid ourselves that we're going

• 23:13David Friedberg?

  to go back to quote unquote "normal." And I do think kids are going to get tested and schools are going to be like this friggin', you know, almost like TSA's now. You know, kids are going to go into school and get tested regularly and they're going to do all sorts of stuff that we would have never dreamed imaginable in a, in a free country a year ago. And I think that's permanent. I think, you know, we're going to, you're already seeing people going nuts at bars and restaurants and people that have had it are out there partying and living their life again. So there's certainly a lot of

• 23:42Jason Calacanis?

  Don't you think if you get the vaccine, you're just going to be like YOLO, I've had enough of this?

• 23:47David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but I don't think that, that systems are going to change back to normal. I think systems have changed to the point that we've now got a way of living that we think is safer, that we think is, we, we are now kind of inhibited because of the system.

• 24:00Jason Calacanis?

  Shmoff, you agree?

• 24:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, there'll be a lot fewer, it's what Dave Chappelle said on Saturday, there'll be a lot fewer mass shootings. The pandemic has done a great job of keeping the whites at home.

• 24:11Jason Calacanis?

  We watched it together.

• 24:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  All you fucking whites.

• 24:14Jason Calacanis?

  Three out of four besties watched it together.

• 24:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  All you, all you guys got on your mass shooting rad pages, you know, the whites are at home. They're frustrated, but they're at home. Thank God. Uh, so I think there'll be some advantages.

• 24:24Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, but let's talk about it, Chamath. Does, does 2021 mean kids go back to school? 2021, September, no problem?

• 24:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I think Freeburger is right. I think that the best we'll get back to is sort of this 80% state. And I don't think it happens until probably 2022 and maybe 2023, but probably 2022. Cause you have to remember, like, we have to ramp up now billions of vaccine production. Like it's, this is a non-trivial path from here to quote unquote mass market. And, uh, that takes a long time. I think we have to figure out how we're going to administer it. By the way, it's, and, and the way that the Pfizer vaccine works and maybe these other folks is you get the shot. And then, you know, three months, three weeks later, I think you get a booster. So you have to take two cycles of this thing. And it's not going to last forever. And it's not going to last forever. So this is, uh, Freeburger is right.

• 25:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's the beginning of a very different way of living. Um, I think, I think that the, the good part about it is that, um, you know, we've made a lot of changes that makes our lives a lot more efficient. The bad part about it is we're even more detached from our neighbors. And, you know, we're probably even more likely, uh, to be a little bit, uh, more separated if we don't make an effort to be together.

• 25:36Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, do you buy this? Because I get the sense that you might be more optimistic than Freeburger.

• 25:42David Sacks?

  Yeah. I guess, I guess I am. I think COVID is going to be a distant memory by next summer. I think we'll have one to two quarters of transition, but I think that once the vaccine is widely available, plus the treatment and the testings, um, for the people who slip through the cracks.

• 25:59David Sacks?

  Yeah, I, I tend to think things are going to snap back very fast and COVID will just be this bad memory, a very distant bad memory. And I think, in fact, I think things may bounce back the other way. Everyone having been cooped up and afraid of getting some life threatening illness are going to come out of this. Really wanting to party, I think the whole world's going to be. Be like Tel Aviv for, you know, a few months or something. And, um, yeah, I mean, I really do think it's going to bounce back. I think to the point politically, where a few years from now, people could ask, wait, what, why, why was it again that Trump lost? You know, um, you know, th- this COVID thing will be, it will be so in the rearview mirror that we'll wonder why we were so afraid of it.

• 26:44Jason Calacanis?

  I think this is, uh, I'm going to go with David's Sacks's position here because of the simple fact that we had 130,000 confirmed cases, you know, up until this election period, the last week or so, and deaths still not spiking. It's still a little, just a ma- minor uptick. You know, we had a day with like, uh, I think maybe 1500, but still staying in that, you know, thousand range, even with cases spiking. And I think that we were so incompetent with test and trace in this country that we didn't see exactly what happens in an authoritarian country

• 27:24Jason Calacanis?

  or a country that is lucky enough to be an island and has easy borders, which we almost do. I mean, we basically have two borders. We're, we're like two thirds of two, you know, 50% island. But Hawaii, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, all quarantined people on the way in. They tested them and they had extremely, extremely low death counts and extremely low case counts with the vaccine being half as effective as, you know, uh, they claim. And rapid testing, which some of us have, uh, no, some of us know people who have experienced rapid testing at homes. That combination, I believe, is going to make this go so low.

• 28:08Jason Calacanis?

  And the people who are high risk are still going to be scared staying home. I think, like David, come the summer of, next summer, people are going to be at a rave.

• 28:21Jason Calacanis?

  With Friedberg's, you know, custom-made molly or whatever he's making during this downtime, going absolutely bonkers. I think Burning Man next year becomes like the, the greatest Burning Man ever. It'll be, it'll be the burn of, of, of all burns. Why was, let's shift a bit over to the economy. What rip did we see when that Pfizer, I mean, the election and Pfizer this week led to a huge rip. Obviously, there's a little bit of cyclical movement. The tech stocks were the big winners. Now people are starting to buy Disney back up to 140. I guess people

• 29:03Jason Calacanis?

  assume the parks will reopen. What's our outlook for the stock market in David Sacks's, you know, scenario three, you know, I don't say gridlock government, but forced to compromise government. What do we think the markets look like the next two years? I think you have to. Go ahead, Sacksy.

• 29:21David Sacks?

  Well, I was gonna say gridlock is great for the markets. Both when Bill Clinton was president with a Republican House and when Obama was president and there was a Republican House and I guess Senate for a period of time. Gridlock is great for the markets, especially given the amount of stimulus that's taken place. I mean, you had the Trump tax cuts, especially those corporate tax cuts, really set the market on fire. And then you've got this pumping by the Fed and the Treasury, all the stimulus money for COVID. I mean, those conditions and then, you

• 29:55Jason Calacanis?

  Why is gridlock good? We didn't explain that here. Explain to somebody who doesn't understand why gridlock is good, why gridlock is good.

• 30:02David Sacks?

  Well, because it creates predictability for business and it means that Washington's not going to get in the way and do something to screw up the good times. I mean, we have fundamentally, you know, great underlying conditions for economic growth, which is we have now pretty low taxes and we had this, for better or worse, we had this tremendous amount of stimulus, fiscal stimulus.

• 30:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What we know historically is over the past hundred years, right, since the 20s. Independent of Republican administrations or Democratic administrations, you know, more progressive, less progressive, more conservative, less conservative during world wars, not during world wars, the markets go up 8% a year. So the do no harm solution is that things inflate naturally by 8%, especially if those things are public stocks. So, you know, the markets love the fact that there's nothing that could theoretically get in the way of that natural 8%. And then when you layer on top of it, as David said, all this free money that's just like rocket fuel, jet fuel. But, you know, but you saw though

• 31:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  that there was a rotation, right? There was a rotation out of these high-growth software names, particularly the work-from-home bid, kind of got crushed, you know? I mean, I think Zoom was off 25% over two days or some crazy thing like that. Meanwhile, sort of all of these theme park stocks and cruise lines and airlines all of a sudden ripped. So, I mean, look, the reality is, the scary thing about all of this is if any of that stuff actually comes to pass, we're going to see inflation. And the reason is because if you start going out and spending a bunch of money on tickets and vacations and flights and this and that and pumping money into the economy and taking all that stimulus money and putting it back to work, prices will go up. And by the way, that's not such a

• 31:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  bad thing for the economy, which, which needs a little bit of it. So, all of this is, I think, generally very, very good news.

• 31:55Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, do you have a position on what you think will happen in the coming? Let's, I would, I would think the midterm is what people care most about. So that would be, let's call it two to six quarters.

• 32:07David Friedberg?

  There's one, there's one potential speed bump still, which is what I mentioned at the beginning, which is Georgia. The, the Democrats could still win both runoffs in Georgia for Senate. And they could, because Kamala Harris would then have the breaking vote, it would be a 50 Republican, 50 Democrat Senate, and, and the Vice President would, would, would break any ties.

• 32:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The question is, if you have that same turnout, where do the libertarians break? Because I think the libertarians were almost 2% of the vote.

• 32:37David Friedberg?

  Well, I think, yeah, what's interesting is, um, the, I don't know if you guys have, but I've gotten emails from a lot of people asking me to donate money for this runoff campaign in Georgia.

• 32:48Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God, I got so many, so many VCs are so interested in this.

• 32:53David Friedberg?

  I think we're gonna see, literally, the biggest, um, the biggest funding for a Senate runoff race in history by far. Don't you think, Sax, like, probably north of $100 million being spent, maybe $100 to $200 million being spent on advertisements in Georgia to try and get people to go vote one way or the other. The Democrats think they have a real run at this, they think it's make or break, two years to kind of get their, you know, um, uh, history-changing policies in effect. Republicans think it saved the nation time. So everyone's rushing to Georgia right now. So the markets are gonna have a very close eye on what's going on over there, I think. Um, I'm, you know, I'm very nervous about it. If the Democrats look like they're getting much more money into the state and they're

• 33:37David Friedberg?

  actually gonna, you know, get people to the polls and, um, to the voting booths and actually get into this runoff on January 5th, and actually flip, um, get both of those seats to be, um, to be blue, uh, it's gonna be a very different market environment. I mean, you could see the market drop by 30, 40% in the next six months.

• 33:53Jason Calacanis?

  We have, we have a situation where it's 48-48, there are two seats up for grabs, those two seats are in a runoff, and I want to get into the exit.

• 34:00David Sacks?

  Let me correct that, Jason.

• 34:01David Friedberg?

  It's 48-50.

• 34:03David Sacks?

  Yeah, the Republicans have a 50 to 48 advantage with two open seats in the runoff, actually, sorry, one seat is open, the other, it has an incumbent Purdue who's facing Osip. Purdue won in the last election, he got like 49.9%.

• 34:19David Friedberg?

  You have to get 50.

• 34:20David Sacks?

  You have to get 50% to get to this runoff in January.

• 34:23Jason Calacanis?

  Is Georgia the only place that has this, where you have to get to 50 in order to win?

• 34:27David Sacks?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 34:28David Friedberg?

  It's crazy.

• 34:29Jason Calacanis?

  So weird. Is it just they want the extra attention? Or who came up with this idea? This seems just like...

• 34:35David Friedberg?

  Every state's got its own history, it's crazy.

• 34:38Jason Calacanis?

  It is one of the unique things about living in the United States of America as opposed to America. Let's talk about exit polls.

• 34:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, this is what's incredible. Here, let me tee this up for you. So, in, in 2020...

• 34:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Biden got 80% of the black vote, Trump got six. This is aggregate, so we could break this down by men and age group and it looks even more interesting. Latinos, Biden got 67, Trump got 22% of the Latino vote. Between the ages of 18 to 34, so boomers, oh sorry, pardon me, Gen Z and millennials. Again, I would have thought 100% Biden, it was 62% Biden, 23% went for Trump, 1 in 4. Amongst women, and again, you know, we thought, ah, okay,

• 35:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  you know, suburban women are breaking Biden 80/20. It turned out Biden got 58% of women, Trump got 35% of all the female vote. And the coup de grâce, whites with a degree, again, you would have thought this would have been 80/20, 90/10, and instead it was 53% Biden, 38% Trump.

• 35:59Jason Calacanis?

  So this really was something, if we look at this, if we look back on this, the pollsters were completely wrong in thinking, once again, that these groups of people are monolithic. And then I think the most mind-boggling to me, and I had a candid discussion about this, was the term Latinx is a catch-all term for people who are of Latino, Spanish-speaking descent. And what somebody told me who is in this Latinx group is that it's the most insulting

• 36:41Jason Calacanis?

  thing they've ever been told. It's almost as a term, like the term saying Oriental, to describe people from Asia. You're just grouping us all into one thing. People from Cuba, Venezuela, and Mexico all think the same. This is the absolute, you know, endgame of identity politics, which is, we have to put you in a corner, we own you, we own your opinion, and you belong to our party, whichever party it is. Oh, you don't have a degree?

• 37:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're a GOP hillbilly. Oh, you're Latinx? Okay, well, then we own you. You're a Democrat. David, what, and I know that this is an area where, you know, you have a lot of expertise. What are your thoughts?

• 37:30David Sacks?

  Well, as it turns out, promoting socialism to people who fled Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to escape it, it turns out not to be a great election strategy. And, and so, yeah, it's the, this, this idea that Latinx is, is one block. It's not. It consists of a bunch of different, of immigrants from a bunch of different nations. And the ones who fled socialism are not eager to reenact it in the United States. The Republicans flipped two House seats in South Florida, where there's a lot of Cuban Americans. And even in the, the heavily Mexican-American counties in, along the Rio Grande in Texas,

• 38:15David Sacks?

  Trump improved, let's see, it looks like he improved 59 and 30%, 39% respectively over his 2016 showing. So this is not just some fluke of the exit polls. It seems like Trump really made progress in a lot of these groups that seem to defy their, you know, what, what the promoters of identity politics, the way that they wanted them to vote. Gay Americans were another one. I think Trump improved his share of the gay vote from 14% in 2016 to 28% this year. So, I mean, really, it's, it's pretty amazing. People are not voting the way that they're supposed to vote.

• 38:56David Sacks?

  Trump also improved from 12 to 18% with black men and 4 to 8% of black women. I mean, those are still pretty low numbers, but there was improvement there. And I think part of the reason is that not all of the African-American community is on board with defunding the police.

• 39:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I also think what it means is identity politics is a stupid strategy. Forget whether you're offended by it or not. At this point, what's clear is it's a stupid fucking strategy. It doesn't work. It's a path to losing. Because the more and more you do it, the more and more you're going to disenfranchise individuals who want to be judged sort of of sound mind and body, right? I mean, if he took 1,000 Sri Lankans and put them in a room and said, "Chamath, I'm going to judge you as a Sri Lankan vote," I would tell you to go fuck yourself.

• 39:41Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I would be deeply offended by that.

• 39:43David Sacks?

  And this is where I think the radical left is going to have to retool because their theory of how they take power in America was always that demographics is destiny, that, you know, as the country simply becomes more diverse, we're gonna, they're automatically gonna vote for us. And there's a lot of data in this election to show that that's not what's gonna happen. You actually have to run on issues that people care about.

• 40:06David Friedberg?

  Let's think about this in the context of internet advertising, right? The world prior to internet advertising, you had, you know, channels, and you would have an audience that was estimated to be made up of some demographic set on that channel, and you would buy an ad spot on that channel, and that's who you would reach, and so you would create a message for that. Now, today, we can create personalized ads and personalized messages, and internet advertisers are much more thoughtful about targeting, targeting based on psychographic profiling, behavioral targeting. And I think that's where politics has to head in the United States. It's kind of keeping up with this personalization of both products, but also of media and ads. And I think that's what we're gonna see. If

• 40:49David Friedberg?

  you listen to James Carville, who's like, you know, a classic kind of Democratic campaign advisor, and he did a podcast just leading up to the election, and if you listen to this podcast, these guys are very old school. It's like, the whites are gonna do this, and the blacks are gonna do that, and the college educated are gonna do this, and the others are gonna do that. And they don't realize that the segmentation that's possible today, I think, reveals a lot more about the character of the of the population.

• 41:15Jason Calacanis?

  They're basically, I think it's such an astute point, Friedberg, they're basically living in the level of granularity of cable TV. It's like they got to cable TV, and they're like, okay, BET, ESPN, NASCAR.

• 41:29David Friedberg?

  And guess what? Like, the world is much more complex. Individuals have found their own personal voice, and they found their own personal voice through social media, through Instagram, through this ability to kind of define themselves, not fit within a cohort.

• 41:42Jason Calacanis?

  Or maybe they always did feel that way, and we just had never had the technology to get there.

• 41:47David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but I think it's also that people, like, people have complex points of view. You know, the four of us sit here, and none of us, none of us identify as a party anymore. We all identify with, with, um, certain, uh, points that we think are important to us individually, and then we have a point of view on those points. And I think that's the case for the majority of the population in the United States. I don't think people are like, "I'm just a fucking Democrat no matter what, and I'm a Republican no matter what." People care more deeply, in a more complex way, and I think politics needs to resolve to that. Um, and, uh, and that's gonna require a shift in how you communicate, how you message, how you, uh, get feedback, how you drive, um, uh, blocks for voting, and, uh, it's gonna, it's gonna, uh, you know, be a really interesting change over the next fifteen to twenty years, and it may be what saves the republic.

• 42:29Jason Calacanis?

  I, I, I think this is an incredible observation, I think it might be the observation of the episode, and I just want to point to a tweet I did, because I, this is, this election has really led to me doing, um, two things. One, I've been just thinking deeply about what do I actually understand about Americans in America, um, and then I also, you know, there's all these red pills around, so I decided I would crush up a red pill, and I would just, you know, put a little on my finger, and I'd try a little red pill for a second. Uh, and everybody told me I've been red-pilled now on Twitter, and that I'm a Trump fan. I am not, I hate the guy. I think he's horrible. But I, I, I did this quick survey here, I said, "If you voted for Trump, I want to

• 43:10Jason Calacanis?

  understand what percentage of your vote was based on the combination of A, cancel culture, B, identity politics, C, socialism, D, coastal elites telling you how to live, explain other issues that contributed in a reply, i.e. spending, immigration, SC, the Supreme Court, etc.?" And I just said, "Zero percent, one to twenty-five, twenty-six to fifty, and over fifty." And, and I got twelve thousand votes. Go ahead and look at the results, uh, not the replies, but go ahead and vote, it doesn't matter which one you pick. Over fifty percent of people who voted for Trump, and I know this is unscientific, it's my followers, but it's definitely feels directionally correct, the people who felt twenty-six to

• 43:52Jason Calacanis?

  over fifty percent was part of the cancel culture, identity culture, was what they were trying to communicate with their vote.

• 44:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, this is such an important thing because I think this is what we're fighting over. Every single poll-

• 44:06Jason Calacanis?

  Seventy percent of them.

• 44:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, every single election going forward, like if you put this on top of the seventy-odd million people that voted, this kind of roughly makes sense, which is that, you know, there's probably about twenty million people who will completely vote Democrat no matter what, and twenty million people who will completely vote Republican no matter what. Their eyes are closed, their ears are closed, they don't care. But when you take those people out, there's this enormous amount of people in the middle who have the ability to vote a split ticket, you know, and as Saxipu said, like they'll vote a Democrat into the White House, but then down ballot, they'll vote a bunch of Republicans and they'll just make

• 44:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  sure there's a balance of power. So they've been telling us about this kind of centricity for years, and so if you want to win an election, you do two things. Part one is you understand this dynamic that centrism wins, and part two is what Friedberg says, which is you understand that we need to enter sort of the Google CPC world of political advertising and really cater not just the ads, but also the message to individual people and stop the, you know, the gross, high-level categorization, which isn't working anymore.

• 45:25David Sacks?

  Yeah, and Jason, can I add that the connection between cancel culture and this election, so, you know, obviously the pollsters got everything completely wrong-

• 45:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Again.

• 45:37David Sacks?

  Again. But the reason is because of cancel culture. So in exit polling, forty-five percent of Republicans with college degrees express fear that their careers could be at risk if their views became known, compared to only twenty-three percent of Democrats saying that. And so there were these, you know, quote-unquote shy Trump voters who were afraid to tell pollsters what they really think. Now, it wasn't the Trump voters that you think of when you see the pickup trucks and the convoys go by or the rallies, sort of those, those were the voters from 2016 who weren't counted, it was sort of the non- College, blue collar voters, the Michael Moore, you know, people who turned out for Trump and big numbers and weren't properly counted four years ago. The pollsters actually counted those

• 46:21David Sacks?

  people correctly this time. The people they completely underestimated was actually the white college vote who swung for a lot of swung from Democrat to Republican. They voted for Trump because of this issue and they were afraid to say anything about it because they're afraid of getting canceled.

• 46:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And by the way, they, they are every other person, everybody listening to this podcast works with. And so deal with that one.

• 46:44David Sacks?

  Right, exactly. Anybody who's not actively virtue signaling on Twitter for Biden is a Trump voter.

• 46:52Jason Calacanis?

  Not sure if that's exactly correct, but I don't think it's wrong.

• 46:56David Sacks?

  Roughly, you know, if people aren't, if people in tech aren't explicitly endorsing Biden on Twitter, they're probably closet Trump voters.

• 47:08Jason Calacanis?

  It is going to be very interesting for people to go back to offices because now we have had a resolution and identity politics, cancel culture and extremism on both sides, hysterical and trolling, trolling Republicans, hysterical libs. This has been a loss for both of those parties. And now the pandemic is ending. We're going to be back in offices at some point. I mean, what is office culture going to be like? Are people going to go with the Brian Armstrong? Let's just get work done here. Let's not talk about politics. It's just too charged or not. It's going to be a very interesting.

• 47:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's every, it's every, it's every company's right. You know, it's every company's right to care about what they want to care about. Every board, every CEO, every controlling shareholder, and then it's every employee's right to vote with their feet about whether that's okay or not. And I think that, look, I mean, the whole Brian Armstrong thing, again, just to say, one of the most pathetically poorly written, you know, pieces of English prose I've ever fucking seen, you know.

• 48:17Jason Calacanis?

  He's a crypto, in fairness.

• 48:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My dog, my dogs, my dog, he's not a coder. He's a, he's a CEO. My dog slamming his, her paw on the keyboard would have created a better prose than that, but. He was coming from a reasonable place. He had the right to say what he said. Um, the problem is that it's so antithetical to what you're allowed to believe. For example, living in San Francisco. Um, but I think that that's going to change because you can't ignore every other person telling you that there are meaningful economic issues that matter. And that the prioritization and the policing of these, you know, sort of high value social signaling issues are no longer a priority.

• 48:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And I think that what's going to happen is there will be room for a party that focuses on that. Uh, and a group of people, but they will be relegated, just like on the other side. Uh, that will happen to the Republican version of that as well. I, I just think this whole thing, this honesty for me, it was, it seems like such a tight election. It is, but I really think the huge winner here is centrism.

• 49:22David Sacks?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I agree with that. And I, I would say that, that this election proves that Brian Armstrong was right. Because the average American is tired of these highly charged political situations. And the last thing they want to do is have these conversations at work where they can get reported to, where they can offend their coworkers and get reported to HR.

• 49:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They can make them feel unsafe.

• 49:46David Sacks?

  Right, exactly. They, they don't want to have these conversations at work, certainly. By the way, only 5% of Coinbase's employees took Armstrong up on that offer to leave. So the number of people who actually want to have a politically charged workplace is very, very small. They're just the noisiest. They're the squeakiest wheel.

• 50:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, and that was a ridiculous deal. I mean, what did he say, six months and we vest as obvious?

• 50:08David Sacks?

  He made it really attractive to leave if you didn't agree with his policy. Was that written? Because I couldn't figure that out from the way that it was written. It, it was an attractive deal to leave if you wanted to leave and 95% chose to sit. Did I, did I say it was poorly written? I didn't understand it because it was so poorly written. So anyway, so 90, 95% stayed. So my point is just the number of people who actually like this highly polarized, politically charged situation in which we're all arguing with our friends over politics and children are divorcing their parents because they're not woke enough. I mean, people don't want to live in that kind of country anymore. And I think this is the thing that Joe Biden really got right in his campaign. I mean, this is why, I mean, this is the only way that his basement strategy

• 50:50David Sacks?

  could actually work and result in him getting elected, is people actually do want this return to normalcy.

• 50:57Jason Calacanis?

  You know who the biggest loser is going to be coming out of this, I think? Not when you think holistically about the ecosystem. It's going to be the media. Because they have made an absolute fortune over the last four or five years picking a side. What is the point of watching Rachel Maddow? January 20th? What is the point of tuning into Fox News? Or reading the hysterical opinion page of the New York Times? All of these places that were being propped up by either Trumpism? Or anti-Trumpism are now going to find themselves where they started, which is

• 51:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Without a job.

• 51:36Jason Calacanis?

  Without a job. And we just wanted you to tell us the news and tell it to us straight.

• 51:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There was a great article.

• 51:42Jason Calacanis?

  Why does the New York Times have an opinion page? Rip the opinion page out of the New York Times. Rip it out of the Wall Street.

• 51:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, no, I disagree. I think the opposite happens, which is that opinion page was meant to be where people could have an opinion so that everything else was fact. And the problem is that all the other pages became opinion as well and nobody told anybody.

• 52:04Jason Calacanis?

  But I don't think that, but nobody can tell the difference. So I agree with that, but nobody can tell the difference.

• 52:10David Sacks?

  That's right. They can't tell the difference. And look at that expose about how Barry Obary Weiss was run out of the New York Times. It basically, the activists ran her out. And the reality is activists have completely captured the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC. And there is no

• 52:27Jason Calacanis?

  And they always had Fox and the New York

• 52:29David Sacks?

  They always had Fox, but, but now we have no objective, neutral media. And so who's going to call the election? I mean, you complain about the fact that Trump is sowing dissent, but who is the universally trusted spokesperson for neutrality, the way that Walter Cronkite was? When he could just declare, and that's the way it is, and people believe that's the way it is.

• 52:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who did the best job Friedberg that night when we were doing that? Let's reflect on the live stream. I have two questions for the live stream. Number one, who was your bestie guestie? Who did you think added the most as a guestie? And why? And then number two. We're doing, we're doing, we're gonna do a poll? A human value poll? I got a lot of feedback on the guesties. There were the girly people. Can I say one more thing on this topic? Before, before we go there, there was a, there was a really good article in the New York Times about Maggie Haberman. Right? And Maggie, who's a fantastic journalist, but built an entire career, it really amplified, came to a head in 2016.

• 53:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And she just scoop after scoop about Trump. But the most compelling thing about that whole article was somewhere near the, you know, a third of the way from the bottom. She's like, look, at the end of the day, she said something like, I'm dispensable and I know it. And it was the most honest thing because it's like despite her popularity and despite sort of, you know, how big of a stick she carries, the reality is sans Trump, there's just nothing to do. There's nothing to leak, there's, there's just not nearly as much to do.

• 54:10David Friedberg?

  I did just put in the, um, the chat here, the Washington Post, Fox News, The Hill, basically like the full gamut of, um, of, uh, of, uh, media opinion have highlighted that the media generally is the biggest loser of the, uh, of the 2020 election. And I think, I think they've just lost the, um, uh, the faith of their audience and, um, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's to Sax's point, I don't know how many people were, you're either looking for objective and you've lost it, or you're looking for opinionated and you feel like your, um, you know, your aligned opinion setting media partner has betrayed you.

• 54:51David Friedberg?

  Um, you know, the fact that Fox called it for, uh, for Trump and Trump's now saying Fox is, is, is a liar. The fact that the New York Times doesn't feel like they're being objective anymore and they're, you know, they're running people out of the, uh, out of the newsroom. In general, I just feel like we've been disenfranchised. Um, and I think that's, uh, that's something that's going to be really hard to kind of recover from and resolve.

• 55:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And for the love of God, can somebody please?

• 55:18Jason Calacanis?

  Get, I, I, I don't want you to break any laws, but however, if we could read the Slack channel of the New York Times reporters leading up to the hundred days of this election, that would become the greatest bestselling book of all time. To watch the New York Times writers bicker with each other, Sax, I mean, we could do 10 hours on that. No problem. Let's talk about, okay, bestie guesting, who, who, who, guesties, what'd you think of our guest?

• 55:50David Sacks?

  I thought they were all great. I thought they were all great. Are we now becoming a media critics? We're gonna now.

• 55:55David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 55:56David Sacks?

  Who do we like?

• 55:58David Friedberg?

  Why don't you go first?

• 55:59David Sacks?

  Are we, are we that naval gazing?

• 56:02Jason Calacanis?

  You go first. Naval gazing, but it was the first time we had guesties.

• 56:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

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

• 56:11Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, contraire.

• 56:14David Friedberg?

  Does anyone have a video they want to share?

• 56:15Jason Calacanis?

  Person on the pod who had to put mute in his place and it was not the, it was not the point guard in this case. Somebody pulled a Draymond and pulled, he, he held me at the side and said, stop, you gotta pass the ball. I do think Brad did a great job. He had some great insights. I think Bill Gurley had some great insights. We, I think we just agree, really good job of getting some people to rotate in. I enjoyed it.

• 56:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I thought it was really well.

• 56:43David Sacks?

  Everyone was great. I'll give a shout out to my bestie Newman. He was better, he was better as a political analyst than all those jokers on CNN and Fox and MSNBC.

• 56:54David Friedberg?

  The dude with the, with the map and he kept touching the map and yeah, it's like, that guy gets paid to do that? I can't believe he gets paid to do that. I'm gonna get my, I'm gonna get my daughter on CNN. She could do that.

• 57:05Jason Calacanis?

  When the guy on CNN who does that? John King?

• 57:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  John King, John King.

• 57:09Jason Calacanis?

  God bless this guy because I don't know how much Adderall he's on, but I, I turned it on at 8:00 AM and he was zooming into Pennsylvania and he's like, oh, well, of course in 2018, this, I'm 2016. He's like, let's zoom out and let's go back to Arizona. Of course in Arizona, this place. I was like, is this guy a geography teacher? I mean, he was amazing and just the dexterity. He looked like he was Tom Cruise in Minority Report with the fingers.

• 57:34David Friedberg?

  I don't know. I don't know if I'd call him Tom Cruise.

• 57:38Jason Calacanis?

  Looked like Tom Cruise, but the Minority Report pinch and zoom in and out. It was incredible.

• 57:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  When, uh, when, when does Trump call this thing?

• 57:46Jason Calacanis?

  That's a great question.

• 57:47David Sacks?

  Well, I think he has to run out these court challenges, which will take a few weeks, but I predict by Thanksgiving, but it may have to go up to the Supreme Court. But he's gonna, he's gonna dot the I, dot every I and cross every T that he's got legally. But he's got, like, we talked about the very beginning, he's got a huge uphill challenge. I see the court ultimately ruling against him or throwing it out.

• 58:08Jason Calacanis?

  What is the point, David? What is?

• 58:10David Sacks?

  Well, because why shouldn't he exhaust every?

• 58:12Jason Calacanis?

  He knows he doesn't, he's not gonna win.

• 58:14David Sacks?

  No, I don't, I don't know that he, he knows that. He, he, I think it's his right to exhaust every legal possibility. And let's remember, Al Gore didn't concede for 37 days after the election. So I certainly think Trump is within his rights over the next few weeks to run this out. In terms of what the point is, I mean, other than the obvious attempt to challenge it legally, I do think this is partly a branding exercise by Trump. It's a marketing exercise. I don't think he's gonna come up with enough malfeasance to overturn an election, but I do think he'll probably produce a lot of smoke. And this is about protecting his brand as a winner. And, you know, if he kicks up enough, you know, examples of voter fraud or what have

• 58:59David Sacks?

  you, he'll always be able to say, you know, years from now that this was, it was a stolen election. And when you combine the fact that COVID really did drive this, this election, you could call that Chinese election interference if you want, the fact that the vaccine is now here already, you could call that, you know, some sort of election interference. He's gonna have enough arguments where if he wants to run four years from now, I think he probably gets the Republican nomination again.

• 59:28Jason Calacanis?

  What, what's the percentage chance, Chamath, that he runs again in four years? Zero. Friedberg?

• 59:36David Friedberg?

  Yeah. I think he's gonna be making so much money, he's not gonna know what to do with himself. He's not going back to that fucking torture, torture house. He didn't even think about the White House, like some terrible Blumhouse production movie set. He's like, fuck that, I'm not going back there. It was awful.

• 59:51Jason Calacanis?

  Where's he going? Where's he going? Is he gonna go to China? He's going to Shanghai? Is he going to Russia?

• 59:57David Friedberg?

  He's gonna be in New York. He's gonna buy a law firm, because he's gonna need a law firm to keep everyone at bay. And he's gonna be probably printing a hundred million bucks a month.

• 1:00:04Jason Calacanis?

  I'll put it at Dubai, Saudi Arabia.

• 1:00:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I think, I think he's definitely gonna launch a media business and he'll, he'll try to become kingmaker.

• 1:00:12David Sacks?

  I think, I think he will become a kingmaker in Republican politics. He will launch a competitor to Fox News, but it will also be Fox News hybridized with a grassroots movement like the Tea Party. And every Republican will need to go get his endorsement, or they will be primaried by the Trump Party. And I, I would not put it.

• 1:00:32Jason Calacanis?

  I couldn't disagree more. Could not disagree more. I think he's a disgrace. I think he will be, I think what

• 1:00:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's not what David said.

• 1:00:41Jason Calacanis?

  Is gonna come, not you, David. I'm talking about Trump. I think David's incredible. Uh, no, I think the stuff that comes out after this, the deluge, the number of SDNY suits, all the grift and the graft, it's all coming out. Not only is he not gonna be a kingmaker, he will not be able to get the backing for this network. It'll be Breitbart light and it'll be shut down within 24 months. He'll fail so miserably that when he walks into a restaurant, it'll be like Game of Thrones. Shame, shame.

• 1:01:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think so. I think that it's very likely that the Donald Trump that runs for president 2024 is Donald Trump Jr.

• 1:01:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh God, no. He's horrible. The whole Republican Party has to start over. Let's end on this. Pompeo did a press conference.

• 1:01:42Jason Calacanis?

  Is the State Department currently preparing to engage with the Biden transition team? And if not, at what point does a delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to national security?

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.

• 1:01:59Speaker 04

  All right, we're ready. The world is watching what's taking place here. We're going to count all the votes. When the process is complete, there'll be electors selected. There's a process. The Constitution lays it out pretty clearly. The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is functional today, successful today, and successful with the president who's in office on January 20th, a minute afternoon, will also be successful.

• 1:02:24David Friedberg?

  Can I just say, I don't disagree with the position they're taking. It's not immoral. It's customary and traditional to concede your election, but, you know, December 15th is the date that Congress ratifies the electoral votes to determine who the next president is going to be. And these guys are just taking a very kind of pragmatic legal line that is not immoral in a way. They believe that they have some case on what the votes should be. The votes are all very close, yada, yada. I'm not saying that he's going to win by any chance, but I don't think that folks saying like, let the votes be counted and let Congress do their job of having the states tell them who their electoral votes are going to,

• 1:03:07David Friedberg?

  is an inappropriate position to take. I sound like, I might sound like some conservative, you know, Trump head, but I'm not. I think that these guys, what I'm just saying is that these guys aren't that immoral in kind of asking for that, for that, you know?

• 1:03:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, I also think at the fringes of the Republican Party, this is what you keep all these militia folks and all these other folks at bay is just you show a really methodical, you know, stepping away from the spotlight. And I think that this is, you know, honestly, it's This is a very deliberate, safe, calming thing to do.

• 1:03:44David Friedberg?

  There's been nothing about the Trump administration from 2016 through to this very moment that has been customary or traditional. And so I don't know why we all expected him to step in and say like, I concede like the way that we've been doing it.

• 1:03:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It would be worse. It would be worse if he had conceded and all of a sudden was holding a bunch of protests and rallies all over the country. That'd be nuts.

• 1:04:01David Friedberg?

  He's not doing anything illegal. No one has any legal requirement to concede. And, um, you know, and I think as long as these guys on December 15th, which is the date that we should all be watching and waiting for, as long as these guys do the appropriate thing at that point, then, um, you know, that, that, that's the only point in which I would have any sort of concern or worry about what's going on with the transition in the government. But sorry.

• 1:04:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think, I think this is about saving face and saving brand, as Saxi Pu said, he'll, he'll be out by December 15th. Meaning it'll, this will all be done.

• 1:04:31David Sacks?

  Yeah, I, I agree. And look, let's remember that Al Gore was able to challenge the election result for 37 days without being hysterically accused of undermining democracy. So let Trump have his day in court. It'll play out over the next few weeks. I expect that the obstacles he has to overcome are too large and he will lose these lawsuits. It might go to the Supreme Court. It would not be a bad thing if the Supreme Court were the ones to make this decision. They're one of the last institutions that's still trusted. Clearly the media are not. And I think that, you know, Trump will accept the result. He may not concede, but he will accept the result when it comes from the Supreme Court.

• 1:05:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is there a non-zero chance that he could win on a recount?

• 1:05:15David Sacks?

  He, he would have to prove systemic fraud because it's not like Florida where there's just one state and a few hundred votes. He's got to overcome over 12,000 votes in at least three states. So that's the issue is, is.

• 1:05:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Put a percent on it, Sax. If you had to lay money on it.

• 1:05:33David Sacks?

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

• 1:05:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sub 10% chance, one in 10? You'd give 10 to one odds?

• 1:05:39David Sacks?

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

• 1:05:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, here's the thing. So Bush v. Gore, the, um, the Supreme Court ruled seven to two. I mean, you would have thought it was nine to zero. So clearly, there was some sympathizers in Bush v. Gore. So hopefully, you know, it's something like seven to two and, um, you know, we move on.

• 1:06:02David Sacks?

  I, I, I believe if it gets to the Supreme Court, it will be at least seven to two, if not eight, one or nine, zero. Just because I think Trump has a much harder case to prove. In Florida, the issue was simply whether the recount should be allowed to continue. James Baker went to the Supreme Court to stop the recount that was in process. Because of the fear that the local corrupt election officials basically steal the election for Gore that, you know, but, but, but Bush was always ahead in that election. There was never a time when Bush was behind. Biden is now ahead in every swing state that matters. Trump has to now overturn that result in at least three of those states. I don't know how he does that. By tens of thousands of, I just don't know how he does that.

• 1:06:48David Sacks?

  He has to prove some sort of systemic fraud that took place across the nation. That, and, and, and look, I think from a, like a marketing or branding standpoint, he'll be able to create a lot of smoke. I think they will actually find quite a bit of misconduct because I don't think our elections are perfect. But will it rise to the standard that the Supreme Court's going to set for overturning an election? I don't think so. I don't think so.

• 1:07:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, and they'll probably find it on both sides. There's got to be some crazy, Trump supporter who has 10 ballots they signed and there'll be some crazy liberal who did the same. Well, the nuanced, the nuanced issue is whether they can do a constitutionally valid recount by, you know, the time necessary as well. So the longer that this lays on, then they'll be forced to basically say no to that also. Because otherwise it will be effectively throwing out an election. And so.

• 1:07:37Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, as we wrap here, San Francisco's, uh, continues to devolve revenue down 40% in terms of taxes. Budget is double what it's been, uh, just a few years ago. Crime is going crazy. Walmart is closing their stores and leaving.

• 1:07:55David Friedberg?

  Walgreens.

• 1:07:55Jason Calacanis?

  Because of Walgreens, I'm sorry, Walgreens. We don't have a Walmart here. And there's 20, there's more homes on the market now than there have been.

• 1:08:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Too much of anything is a bad thing. If you eat too much broccoli, it's a bad thing. You know what I mean? So. Too much of a single-party monoculture is bad, whether it's Republican or Democrat. You need a diverse centrist plurality. And in the absence of that, many cities that veer in one direction or the other will decay and die. And San Francisco is going to be the tip of the spear for the left's version. And there's been a bunch of cities that have already been the examples of the right's version. So you know what? Um, apparently the water is warm and they want to join.

• 1:08:42Jason Calacanis?

  Anybody else?

• 1:08:43David Sacks?

  I can't, I can't find a lot to disagree with there. I think San Francisco, we're basically an Atlas Shrugged. I mean, the, uh, you know, half the storefronts are closed, they're boarded up. Uh, the city is completely surrendered to the criminal element. You can't park your car anywhere in the city without having it getting broken into. They won't prosecute people for crimes, including, uh, increasingly violent crimes. Um, the, uh, you know, the, the, the, the, the city's about to go bankrupt. And the entrepreneurs are all disappearing. They're all leaving. I mean, it's right out of Atlas Shrugged.

• 1:09:20David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the, uh, the action is the wrong action, right? So San Francisco, the biggest disappointment of election night for me was the new business taxes that were passed, um, for San Francisco businesses. Um, and, and there was also this like, um, for, for 99.99999999% of people, they're going to shrug and say, I don't give a shit. But there was this new tax of 6% for homes that get sold over $10 million. Now, uh, if you're a successful entrepreneur, an investor, or a CEO of a company in San Francisco, and you know, it's, it's like a slap in the face. Um, you add the business tax with that kind of high-end property tax, and it's almost like an invitation to leave the city.

• 1:10:05David Friedberg?

  And some people are nodding their head and saying that's exactly what we want.

• 1:10:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This 6% is on leaving or buying?

• 1:10:10David Friedberg?

  Uh, transaction when you sell. So you literally 6% off the top, uh, when you sell a home.

• 1:10:15David Sacks?

  The city basically just took 6% of my house.

• 1:10:19David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19David Sacks?

  The city just took 6% of my house.

• 1:10:21David Friedberg?

  It's an estate tax.

• 1:10:22David Sacks?

  They're now a part owner of my house.

• 1:10:24David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's an estate tax. And so there are people like, there are people in San Francisco who we all know.

• 1:10:30Jason Calacanis?

  How much warning did you have before they took your

• 1:10:33David Friedberg?

  None.

• 1:10:34Jason Calacanis?

  bedroom?

• 1:10:34David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a London Breed put some people in Saks's 13th bedroom on the third floor. And they're all living there right now. But I mean.

• 1:10:45David Sacks?

  It's okay. I got like wings I don't even know about. It's like Richie Rich's house or something. So look, nobody cries. Nobody cries for super rich people and you know.

• 1:10:55David Friedberg?

  But it was short sighted is the point, right?

• 1:10:57David Sacks?

  Right, exactly. I'm not complaining about the taxes on me, but it's gonna do tremendous damage to the city. People are not gonna want to move here. And we, yeah.

• 1:11:05David Friedberg?

  Yeah. I look, I've built businesses in San Francisco since 2006, and I will not build another business in San Francisco. And I hear the same from other entrepreneurs. If you're gonna build a business, do it in the South Bay, do it in the East Bay, do it in the North Bay, or do it in Austin, or LA, or somewhere else. But this is just not a place to build businesses. The city is basically saying, we don't want you here. Now, that would be fine and dandy if the city was being conservative in the way that they spend, and if they were actually reducing their budget and, you know, kind of reducing the the city's activities. The problem is these these taxes diverge with the budget because the taxes are now gonna go down because businesses are leaving. People are selling their homes. They're not gonna buy expensive homes anymore.

• 1:11:47David Friedberg?

  And we are seeing a budget crisis. San Francisco, I think, is looking at a 1.7 to $2 billion budget shortfall this year. I mean, like, where's that money gonna come from? This is a city with 800,000.

• 1:11:59David Sacks?

  And we have, and there was that expose in the San Francisco Chronicle talking about how there's over 20,000 city workers making over $150,000 a year.

• 1:12:06David Friedberg?

  30,000, yeah.

• 1:12:07David Sacks?

  Yeah. What are we getting for all of that? The evidence is not apparent. And this is where, okay, look, I'd be happy to give the city 6% of my house and pay all these high taxes if we actually got something for it. But the city just keeps getting less and less livable.

• 1:12:23David Friedberg?

  Yes. City budget in 2013 was $7 billion.

• 1:12:26David Sacks?

  Fiscal crisis, and we have a livability crisis that I think is even worse.

• 1:12:33David Sacks?

  And that's. Huge problem and let's be frank, San Francisco was always the accidental beneficiary of Silicon Valley. If you will, San Francisco was the accidental billionaire. It was Silicon Valley that created this enormous wealth and all the jobs and the companies. It wasn't San Francisco policies or politics that created any of that. It just so happens that Silicon Valley got big enough, it started around Stanford, it got big enough. That San Francisco as the nearest metropolitan area really was a beneficiary of that. And, and you know, because they never really did anything to create the conditions for that prosperity, frankly, they took it for granted. And now that the rug's been pulled out from under them, I don't think they're really gonna know what to do.

• 1:13:14David Friedberg?

  Local, local San Francisco politicians treated Silicon Valley's success as a grab bag. And Uber set up here and Twitter and Square and Salesforce. And San Francisco politicians put their hand in the honey jar and took as much as they could. And it's now backfiring because new businesses don't want to set up here. Entrepreneurs don't want to operate here. And as Sax is pointing out, the, you know, the, the rapid kind of inflation has caused this tremendous decline. And in the quality of service, there's zero accountability, zero checks and balances. So San Francisco is in for a really frank, scary reckoning and a lot of people are really worried about it. And it's like a very real problem. It's not like, oh, the city's fucked. Ha ha, like a $2 billion budget shortfall.

• 1:13:59David Friedberg?

  You're either gonna have to cut a lot of jobs of public employees. Or you're gonna have a city that's gonna go bankrupt and, you know, bonds are gonna get defaulted on. And at the same time, you're gonna have this mass exodus of people and businesses. And it is, it is a very kind of unwinding knot right now. So it's, it's a scary moment. I don't think there's a real great answer for, for what to do. It's more nuanced, but.

• 1:14:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it, I think it will happen. Mark my word, San Francisco will file for bankruptcy in the next 10 years.

• 1:14:26Jason Calacanis?

  Wow.

• 1:14:27David Friedberg?

  I mean Pelosi's look, you know Pelosi held out.

• 1:14:29Jason Calacanis?

  A major city filing for.

• 1:14:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Maybe 15, maybe 15 years, but yeah, 10, 15 years.

• 1:14:34David Friedberg?

  Remember, a big part of what Pelosi held out on, the big thing she held out on in the stimulus negotiations last month was for local and state governments to get bailout support in this stimulus package. And she's acutely aware, she lives one block away from me down the road here. She's acutely aware of what's going on in San Francisco. And the solution may not be to bail out these cities and these states if they're going to continue to operate the way they are because it's.

• 1:15:02Jason Calacanis?

  So the state needs to break in order to rebuild.

• 1:15:05David Friedberg?

  Well, you need to cut budget. I mean, any of us running a business know like, you know, if you have a little revenue coming in and you're spending too much, where the fuck's the money coming from? You can't just keep going to Big Papa in DC and asking him for more money.

• 1:15:15Jason Calacanis?

  What about Masayoshi-san? Maybe he'll, he consider coming in and.

• 1:15:20David Friedberg?

  Maybe a SPAC, maybe.

• 1:15:21Jason Calacanis?

  Can we do a secondary?

• 1:15:22David Sacks?

  I really.

• 1:15:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Fine, I'm gonna SPAC San Francisco, fuck it.

• 1:15:25Jason Calacanis?

  We SPAC San Francisco. Kamasi Yoshi-san do the secondary and then we SPAC San Francisco.

• 1:15:33David Sacks?

  Listen, I think Tremath, Tremath is right about San Francisco being the proof of what happens when you have a one-party system. And I really hope that the, the tech community, the tech liberals who are listening to this podcast, they're not gonna listen to me because they probably, you know, think I'm too conservative. But, you know, Tremath is pretty liberal and, um, you know, he, he makes the right point. And, you know, we cannot have a, a one-party system that remains healthy for very long. We need the pendulum to swing back towards the center. And, um, you know, I really hope that, yeah.

• 1:16:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely. As you've, as you've said many times, and it's true.

• 1:16:12David Sacks?

  That's, yeah, Lord Acton said that.

• 1:16:16Jason Calacanis?

  We, this is literally what the Dark Knight Batman series is about. It's literally about not having a basic standard of policing and allowing criminals to run a city. We've turned into a goddamn comic book. Like, you have to arrest people who commit crimes.

• 1:16:36Jason Calacanis?

  And I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you cannot beat people up.

• 1:16:41David Sacks?

  Yeah, you're right. And one of the things that's like the comic book is the sense of fatalism. You know, it's like, everybody knows San Francisco is broken, but nobody thinks they can do anything about it. That's really the tragedy of it.

• 1:16:52Jason Calacanis?

  That is the tragedy. And you know what? If any of us, I've said it before, I'm like, I know exactly how you can stop all these car break-ins. You, there's a thing called the bait car. You put 10 bait cars out, you put cameras in them. Now that Einstein has spoken, boys, I love you. I love you all. I miss you all. I gotta get with to see you again. And for those of you who'd like to advertise on our podcast, the advertising rate has been set at $10 million a year for however many episodes we do. I will read the ad at the end of the show. If you give $10 million to the charity of Chamath's picking, which apparently is going to be San Francisco, I think that'll ballad 0.7% of the budget.

• 1:17:36Jason Calacanis?

  Follow Friedberg on the Twitter. Follow David Sacks. Follow Chamath Palihapitiya. If you like the show, tell your friends and write a review. Or don't, we don't care. We just do this because we like hanging out with each other. We'll see you all. And if you want to be a guest on the show, we don't accept any guest recommendations for the love of God, stop asking. I don't know how many people are begging to be on the show. It's, there's room enough for four people, maybe on a live show, bestie guesties. You're not getting your CEO of your whatever company on the show. Period. End of story. And I cannot introduce you to Chamath to SPAC your company. Enough of that. Love you, besties.