Inauguration Interviews: Trump's Talent, Democratic Rebrand & more with House Whip Emmer, Reps Swalwell & Khanna

(0:00) House Whip Tom Emmer on Trump's political talent, the Biden conspiracy, taking back the Democratic party, immigration, the role of Whip (33:53) California Rep. Eric Swalwell on where Democrats went wrong, how to rebrand the party, TikTok ban, and more (1:08:01) California Rep. Ro Khanna on reforming the Democratic party, Bob Iger as LA Mayor, CA Leadership, TikTok ban Follow the Besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow Whip Emmer: https://x.com/GOPMajorityWhip Follow Rep. Swalwell: https://x.com/ericswalwell Follow Rep. Khanna: https://x.com/RoKhanna 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.

• 0:04Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome to the All In inauguration special. We are here in town to celebrate and/or commiserate the second term of Donald Trump, depending on where you sit on the political spectrum. And we are extremely lucky to have a partner in Spotify who has given us a box. Yes, we're in a glass box on the street. They really splurged and got a trailer. It's absolutely fantastic. But we thank them for their hosting us. It's very cool. With me today, of course, my co-host, Chamath Poli-Hapatia, and David Friedberg, who is a little under the weather. Because, let's be honest, Friedberg, you've been out there. You and Lex took on the town last night.

• 0:45David Friedberg?

  I had a good time with Lex Friedman last night. That was good.

• 0:47Jason Calacanis?

  Let's leave it at that.

• 0:48David Friedberg?

  Let's leave it at that.

• 0:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that sounds great.

• 0:49David Friedberg?

  It's been a couple nights in a row. I'm pretty beat.

• 0:51Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, you have a very busy social schedule, and you've been just bouncing around town with the who's who and taking credit for Donald Trump's victory. How's the victory lap going here? Because you played such a key role here by coming out and being even more unlikable in our hometown of the Bay Area and supporting Trump.

• 1:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm a small bit player.

• 1:12Jason Calacanis?

  A bit player, but as you said to me in the car over here, you were the fulcrum that started the boulder that created the win.

• 1:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I said, none of that. But I think more changes are coming, Jason. Maybe to our home state of California. Let's see.

• 1:25Jason Calacanis?

  Let's see.

• 1:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's see. Phase two.

• 1:28Jason Calacanis?

  We're extremely honored to have Tom Emmer here. He is the US Representative from the amazing state of Minnesota, home of Bob Dylan, Prince, and the Coen Brothers.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  And Tim Walz.

• 1:39Jason Calacanis?

  And Tim Walz. Don't be so hoots. We're coming in hot already. Well, let's start there. Tom, let's start there. How much of a disaster was the Democratic Party? And when you watched what happened with Biden in all seriousness, do you think there was a cover up in terms of his mental acuity? And what do you think of? Kamala's job out there not doing podcasts and essentially being anointed and not having a primary, the Democratic Party seems lost.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Crooked.

• 2:12Jason Calacanis?

  And crooked, okay, yeah.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  I mean, the leadership, I got good friends who are Democrats, so I'm not going to disparage them. But first, Jason, all of you, thank you, it's nice to be on All In, I've heard, everybody's heard about it, everybody wants to be here, so it's just nice that.

• 2:27Jason Calacanis?

  And you promised you'd listen to it after this?

• 2:29Speaker 03

  That's right. Actually, I listened last week. Sadly, it was about the fires, but the way they did this was, if you think about it, ballot access is a big thing. You have to run for months and you have to get delegates and you have to make your case state by state and you have to meet certain requirements to actually end up on the ballot. How the Democrats are able to remove Joe Biden, literally in a coup, a back room coup, and install Kamala Harris in a matter of hours or days and avoid any convention, like

• 3:13Speaker 03

  real democracy taking place where people are debating their candidates and where they're at. And then to your other question, that's wrong, but your other question was, Joe Biden, was there a cover up? A cover up is when you don't see it, when you don't know about it, when you're totally unaware. This wasn't a cover up, this was a conspiracy. Everybody in this town for four years watched when he came in, he was already diminished, and watched him continue to diminish over the course of his, over the course of his term. It was the mainstream media that refused to actually.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Comment on it and then it was amazing overnight when he has the debate last June. It's like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. Look at this and and suddenly it was like they'd never seen it before. This was a conspiracy by a left wing media that they're littered with people who have a partisan view and they write about it. They create stories about it and they don't tell you the whole story.

• 4:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So let's go down this pull this thread a little bit more because you said the the Democrats themselves are good people. Some of them, many of them you know, but then the leadership you said was corrupt. So just can you help us understand who is the leadership? And then how does the corruption play out? What does the corruption look like?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Well, remember I'm on the Republican side.

• 4:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, no, but I'm.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  But I can tell you what I watch. What I watch is there were two times that they literally whoever they are, it would be the super delegates. A lot of people would say it's the Obamas, it's the Clintons, it's the, you know, original.

• 4:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's the that's the boogeyman for what it's worth that people point to at least when you're not in DC. Like if somebody said, who were the leadership elected or otherwise that runs a Democratic Party? A lot of people would point to the Obamas and then some of these super donors. Is that sort of your perception of how it works?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  It is. And the reason I go back, as you remember, Bernie Sanders is marching towards the Democratic nomination.

• 5:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  And they get to South Carolina and all of a sudden Amy Klobuchar from my state, it just one after another, I'm out, I'm out. I support Joe Biden.

• 5:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Clearly, the whoever that is, because you're right.

• 5:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, they.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  We're not in the room to see, is it the Obamas? Is it consultants like Carville or Axelrod or whoever?

• 5:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Soros, whoever.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. But whoever's in that room, they have a plan when it gets to the end. And I never thought Joe Biden was going to be the candidate.

• 5:51David Friedberg?

  And that's not how the Republican Party operates. Because I think some people in the public have this perception that both parties operate that way, that there is a cabal of the most influential, and ultimately, they end up getting to pick. And the other party does the same thing. Is that not the case?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:06David Friedberg?

  And clearly, that wasn't the case with Trump, right?

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, ours, I would say that watching from the outside, again, we're not on the inside of the Democrat machine, but watching from the outside, that's a top-down process. On the Republican side, that's a bottom-up process. And Donald Trump is the best example of it.

• 6:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Best example.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Because people in this town, you know, especially in the House where I serve, are like, you know, "We got the American people, we have a mandate." And you gotta remind them, "Yeah, no, no, Donald Trump has a mandate." He got 77 million votes. We got a little less than 75 million. So if you're looking at who literally is expanding this party and pulling this party over the line, it's one guy. It's Donald Trump.

• 6:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So to your point-

• 6:49David Friedberg?

  Do you view him the party leader?

• 6:50Speaker 03

  I do.

• 6:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So to your point, this was a, almost like a Donald Trump hostile takeover of the Republicans. Meaning, if you look at the establishment rhetoric of what Republicans stood for, I don't think Trump really cared. He had a point of view, and he had his own intellectual agenda and ideology. And to your point, 77 million people said, "I go with that." Do you think that that's possible on the Democratic side as well? Do you think that there's a different ideology that needs to be born there?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  I can only tell you the experience I've had with one of my Minnesota colleagues, who, I won't name him, but he might have run against the sitting president. He was, we were talking on the House floor one day, and I was complaining to, or giving him a hard time, I should say, about some of the off-color remarks coming from the Squad. And he made a point of telling me-

• 7:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Off-color, sorry, off-color how?

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Well, let's just say there were some anti-Semitic comments, all about the Benjamins, this stuff. And there was a censure that was being worked on.

• 7:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and- Uh, it was public, but the point is, when I was saying, boy, you've had quite a week, he goes, oh, yeah. He says, that's a very small group of people in our party with very large voices. And my response to him was, okay, well, that might be true, but then people like you have to stand up and speak up and take my grandfather's Democrat Party back.

• 8:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  And so, no, I think they've got a problem. Identity politics, which they've perfected and been playing for years. It has now come back to bite them.

• 8:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh huh.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  And there's, where is the way out? They don't have a brand, they don't know who they are, they, they, they're fighting about uh, things like uh, uh, men participating in, in women's sports. I mean, it just, it isn't resonating with the American people. So they're, they're gonna have to figure that out for the future. But on our side, we're gonna have to figure out Donald Trump is the one that pulled this across the line. Uh, here's, here's the problem with the Republican Party for me. The last thirty years, we've had great people representing us, but the public has been very frustrated because it seems like government and the bureaucrats always get a, a better deal.

• 9:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Than the average citizen in this country.

• 9:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  We're talking about Main Street. We're not talking about Silicon Valley, which has its own Main Street. But I'm talking about just good old Main Street, USA. You know, where it's rural country, it's uh,

• 9:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  You know, people who are just trying to live their lives.

• 9:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  They feel like their government hasn't been listening to them for years. This is what spawned the Tea Party.

• 9:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yep.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  This is why we've had this over and over. And Donald Trump, you gotta give him credit. This energy was out there and he actually grabbed it. And he showed us what it looked like when he ran in sixteen and got elected.

• 9:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He took the time to understand it.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Or, or he just innately has a, an ability to read people.

• 9:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Better than I've ever seen.

• 9:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I mean, I think he is a generational retail politician.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  A generational? I think he's a one and one hundred and fifty year.

• 9:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Leader.

• 9:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Jason Calacanis?

  Free Bird, you have a, a lot of thoughts on fiscal responsibility and have been banging the drum on the national debt. Uh, Tom, you also have a passion for fiscal responsibility. Maybe you have some thoughts on that, Free Bird?

• 10:02David Friedberg?

  Or maybe you can tell us your point of view on how much of an impact Doge can have. I don't know if you've talked.

• 10:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And what you think reconciliation is gonna look like? I mean, this is gonna be a very gnarly. Pitch battle here. How do we get 2 trillion out of the

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Why are you stopping at 2?

• 10:18David Friedberg?

  Exactly. Why are you stopping at 2?

• 10:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, actually, let's ask that question. Is 2 even possible? And if so, how do you think you can get 2 trillion dollars out of it?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  So I'd rather, let's do it two ways. I'd rather look at what's, what could we put on the table? And we do this privately. So you won't get me to say what it is, where it is. But I'll tell you, there's a list that we've sat down with that reaches somewhere between 5 and 7 trillion.

• 10:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  A year?

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Over the next 10 years.

• 10:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  In the, that's what that 2 trillion would be over the next 10 years.

• 10:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  I mean, listen, if you're

• 10:54David Friedberg?

  The budget's 7.2.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 10:55David Friedberg?

  The budget, the annual budget, 7.2.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:58David Friedberg?

  Right, so.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  And the goal is, first, we gotta balance the budget. You gotta quit bleeding 1.5 to 2.2 trillion every year.

• 11:05David Friedberg?

  It's like, oh, it's another trillion.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:06David Friedberg?

  Whatever.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  You gotta balance.

• 11:07David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Second thing you gotta do is start to bend the curve down. We've got the greatest economy in the world. It hasn't been performing where it could. I think with Donald Trump, we can put it in a place where Ken, you can see those revenues start to go up again. And if you have this, so you're controlling it, you could pay that, you could pay that down rather quickly. I mean, if you're talking in terms of a decade.

• 11:30Jason Calacanis?

  But this requires sacrifice, and it requires representatives from each city and each state to then go to their constituents and say, hey, we fought to get you X, Y, and Z, and you're only going to get X and Y.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, be careful. Some tell you they fight, but they're not really fighting. The, this, this thing is going to happen because of Donald Trump. I think I leave it to Mike Johnson. He's the speaker. He will make these decisions. I'm not.

• 11:58David Friedberg?

  Got it.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  I'm the whip. Whatever you tell me, my job is to make sure we get it done. And that's what we'll do. But I think you're going to see a two-track process. Mike Johnson for reconciliation has set a deadline. He wants to vote on a budget resolution by the first week of February. Why is that important? The budget resolution you have to have before you can even move forward with reconciliation. That's usually pre-negotiated with the Senate. So if we can keep with that aggressive timeline, you'll have that back to the House sometime in February. Once you have that, that allows your 12 subcommittees to get their allotment

• 12:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  and start to build out their, 12 appropriations subcommittees, build out their budgets.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Jason Smith, our Ways and Means Chair, believes we can have that process done by the end of March. Mike, again, in this, our Speaker, in this very aggressive timeline, if that's possible, he would like to vote on it in the House in the first two weeks of April. This includes the tax permanency, extensions, et cetera, from the Trump tax cuts back in 2017. If we're able to keep to that schedule, then you could realistically have a reconciliation bill to President Trump's desk by Memorial Weekend.

• 13:16David Friedberg?

  Let's just talk about the other long-term challenge and your point of view on the solution. What's gonna happen to Social Security by 2030, 2032, 2033? Where's this headed?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Well, I think people are gonna have to innovate, and I think you gotta honor the promises that have been made. There are many different things out there that are being looked at, like a voluntary program that people in a certain range, and this is above my pay grade, a certain range, age range, like, I don't know, 18 to whatever it is, that are just coming into this system, that it would give them a choice. They would have a choice to stay in Social Security as we know it, or to pursue a private route that will have federal parameters, so you can't just be putting it into a retirement account, taking it out. It would serve the same purpose.

• 14:06Jason Calacanis?

  Like Australia's system, the super system.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  It would, obviously, and then it would grow the private side.

• 14:11David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And sorry, is that ultimately necessary? We need to change Social Security. And when do we have to change it by? And now that the election is over, because every politician is scared to talk about Social Security, because everyone's got an election coming up. Are we gonna hear something different this time around? Or is it always gonna be the kick the can down the road with Social Security and whenever? It's just such a golden goose, no one can talk about it, no one can touch it.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Donald Trump was elected for three reasons. One, to fix our economic woes, the inflation that's killed people, get energy moving again, seal the southern border, and create peace and stability around the globe. If we perform, and I'm gonna change that, because that's not really my attitude. When we perform, you start to build credibility with the American public. Yeah. Then, and only then, can you start talking about, because nobody believes us. Right. Right? So, and the media plays games, they try to pit us against each other with these different ideas. The key is, you have to honor the promises that have been made to Americans since Social Security was created.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  And then you have to look forward, and again, we've said we're not going to touch Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That was the president who said that. I got that. But there are some efficiency things, reforms, that you can do around these programs, that actually will make them not only more viable financially, but more efficient.

• 15:41Jason Calacanis?

  Should Americans be able to trade cryptocurrency freely without regulations? Or do you think those regulations are in place for a good reason?

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Well, you're talking, so you remember Animal House with the evil and the good on the shoulders? I had that last night, and the evil won. Well, I got the libertarian and the republican with a small r. Either one. Libertarian always wins for me, but yeah. Well, and it used to for me, but I realized that I was a republican with a small r when I was doing a radio show with an anarchist for several months. And all he ever said was, "Shut her down, she's pumping mud." And it's like, oh, I must be a republican. The libertarian says, "Absolutely."

• 16:22Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  The republican with a small r, I think the key is gonna be, we have the greatest financial system, markets here in the United States, in the world. We have an existing legacy two-tier banking system. It needs to come into the 21st century. The beauty of crypto to me is not just that it's crypto. One, it's going to help us if Congress does its job, if we put some parameters up, market structure, you know, give people rules of the road, so they know what they can and can't do, and who's gonna be having responsibility for oversight. We can protect the existing two-tier legacy system. Yeah. And allow it time to move into the 21st century.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  I think the key is, and this is why the central bankers are so worried, this is so disruptive and potentially destructive. That they're scared to death. It's not just losing their power. They're afraid that this decentralization is going to somehow send finance back to the

• 17:25Jason Calacanis?

  I suppose there are also concern that consumers maybe who are not super sophisticated or new to it, might lose their money. And yesterday, Trump launched a thirty billion dollar coin, which we refer to on the internet as a [BLEEP] coin, or a meme coin. Are you troubled by him doing something like that? Was that a wise decision on his part?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  I don't know. Tom will tell about that. He seems to make some pretty good decisions they've done well for him.

• 17:50Jason Calacanis?

  Work on the regulations for that. If he can do that, can we all just do it? And take any, or you could have done it too. Well, the SEC previously would have actually gone after you for taking money from retail investors.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Ding dong, the witch is dead. Now we're going to be moving forward with a new SEC.

• 18:10Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so, YOLO?

• 18:13Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 18:14Jason Calacanis?

  YOLO?

• 18:15Speaker 03

  YOLO.

• 18:15Jason Calacanis?

  You only live once. Just go for it.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  My staff gives me a hard time because I don't know all those cute quips.

• 18:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, but you're cool with it. You're cool with him doing a coin twenty-four hours before he

• 18:27Speaker 03

  I have no problem. Did you see the meme that said Baron apparently had his dad's phone last night and made a billion dollars?

• 18:34David Friedberg?

  I love the Baron meme. They're my favorite.

• 18:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They call him the Lisan Al-Gaib, which if you like, if you watch Dune, is like he's the savior that's sent in Dune to basically save all of us.

• 18:46Jason Calacanis?

  It's definitely going to be an interesting four years. Let's talk about

• 18:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right now, Jason is about to implode, Congressman. What you're seeing is him melting down inside.

• 18:52David Friedberg?

  Jason has a big negative bias against these coins.

• 18:56Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, no. I have a bias against stealing from unsuspected people.

• 19:00David Friedberg?

  You want every retail investor to have access to buy startups and because that'll benefit you. But when it comes to coins, you're like, oh, no one should be able to do that.

• 19:06Jason Calacanis?

  I'll address that. I think there should be a sophisticated investor test where people learn about things like diversification. They learn who owns eighty percent of the coins that have just been dumped on retail and under what circumstance they can sell them. And, you know, there is a legitimate issue here that

• 19:26Jason Calacanis?

  could just buy these coins and influence the president. I think that's a real concern that people should have. So you can diminish it.

• 19:31David Friedberg?

  No, no, you're actually right.

• 19:33Jason Calacanis?

  It's actually a real issue.

• 19:34David Friedberg?

  I actually agree with you. Like, securities regulations require, and when you do an IPO, you file an S1.

• 19:39Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 19:39David Friedberg?

  And you disclose who owns the shares.

• 19:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 19:41David Friedberg?

  And it has to go on a regulated exchange, so you know who the buyers of the shares are. So I do actually think your framework is pretty reasonable.

• 19:47Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, I thought you were just mocking me.

• 19:49David Friedberg?

  Well, I do mock you generally, but yeah.

• 19:50Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, sorry. Let's go to the next one then.

• 19:52David Friedberg?

  No, no, I do think that's right.

• 19:53Jason Calacanis?

  You brought up the border. Steve Bannon says.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Huh? I did?

• 19:58Jason Calacanis?

  You did. You said the border was one of the main reasons why.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  In his mandate, yeah.

• 20:03Jason Calacanis?

  So let's talk about that part of the mandate that you brought up. Steve Bannon says.

• 20:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's doing a great job today, his moderator.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Is he?

• 20:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, you do.

• 20:09David Friedberg?

  I think he's the only one that's left. They knock you down and then they build you up.

• 20:13Jason Calacanis?

  It's all good. I'm not paying attention to them. I'm paying attention to you. This is called management. Steve Bannon said he wants all 15 out of day one.

• 20:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So what's going on?

• 20:22Jason Calacanis?

  Steve Miller says America is for Americans and Americans only.

• 20:27Jason Calacanis?

  Do you believe 15 million people should be dragged out of this country, day one, like Steve Bannon and Steve Miller?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I think we should look at what the American people think. So, New York Times, of all outlets, had a poll that said it's like 80% believe that criminals, terrorists, people who have committed bad offenses should be the hell out of here.

• 20:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, easy one to have a sense of on you.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  No, but then it starts to drop down.

• 20:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Which is, the next one is, oh, I forget what the second one is. It drops down about 60, but 55% of Americans believe any illegal immigrant should be out of here.

• 21:04David Friedberg?

  How many? 55%?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  55% according to a New York Times poll.

• 21:09Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think that'll do to the economy? You brought up inflation. We have to tame that. We have 4% unemployment, the lowest of our lifetimes.

• 21:15David Friedberg?

  Can I just tell you, agricultural labor costs have climbed by probably 3X in the last four or five years.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:22David Friedberg?

  It's, and there's not enough labor to address kind of agricultural production needs in this country, particularly in specialty crops, because of the world I, I work in. How do we get a kind of address both the kind of economy economic demand for labor in this country and address this kind of immigration challenge?

• 21:38Speaker 03

  You don't fix your labor problem with illegal immigration. You fix it by fixing your immigration system and making sure that it's working the way it's supposed to. By the way, I come from the state of Minnesota. The two primary drivers of our state's private economy are manufacturing and ag. I mean, I've got huge operations of families that have bound together as a co-op that they literally have to bring in foreign workers. And they they built a village, housing, they have teachers. But there's there's the solution. This idea, and I come from Minnesota, which is why you made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The the argument is, oh, illegals, people who are here illegally and their advocates are bracing for Trump's arrival.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  And then they write an article that says, if they remove all these people, our economy's going to tank. Stop it. You you you've got laws for a reason. You got to enforce the laws that are on the books and if they don't work? This is why we passed the strongest border bill in 20 years with 222 members in the last Congress, which Chuck Schumer never looked at. They they wanted to say that Trump killed the bipartisan bill. You realize the House bill did five things. Finish the wall, reform the parole process, reform asylum, end catch and release, and restore remain in Mexico. Those were the five pillars that so-called bipartisan bill actually codified catch and release. Said that if you don't have emergency authority on the border until you have 5,000 plus

• 23:08Speaker 03

  one coming across a day. That's the answer.

• 23:12Jason Calacanis?

  We seem to have, you know, pretty solid consensus here and in the country. Criminals who are basically committing two crimes, whatever crime they committed here and come across the border illegally, they have no standing, they go. But you seem to be punting and not answering the question of should the 14.5 million other people dragged out of the country in year one. So maybe you can answer that one.

• 23:32David Friedberg?

  This is a journalist.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  I'm telling you right now, Trump was elected to get this done.

• 23:38Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think though? You are from a state where that's going to be highly unpopular.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  I don't think you should be here if you're illegal.

• 23:43Jason Calacanis?

  So all 15 million got to go in year one?

• 23:46Speaker 03

  I don't think you should be here if you're illegal. Now, you're painting with a pretty broad brush. We don't know what specific situations.

• 23:53Jason Calacanis?

  I'm using what Steve Bannon and Steve Miller have said. So I'm just quoting their words.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Again, I think the goal is to make sure.

• 24:00Jason Calacanis?

  How would it be possible?

• 24:01David Friedberg?

  Katie Vance came on our show and he said, hey, you got to do the first thing first and then the second thing second. It's not all going to happen on day one.

• 24:07Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'm trying to interpret that, but you're not being straight.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Well, actually, I resent that. I am being straight. I will tell you straight.

• 24:14Jason Calacanis?

  No, I just want to know if, I think there's a lot of Americans who want to know if 15 million people are literally going to be dragged out. This is a big question for the American people. Are you going to drag 15 million people out of the country or not? Because Stephen Miller, who seems to be, you know, a big part of this administration, and Steve Bannon, who was the architect of the previous administration, say that's actually going to happen. People are actually nervous about that.

• 24:35David Friedberg?

  This is when we need Sacks here to check you, to fact check you on whether those guys have said that.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  And the problem is, you're using terms like dragged them out. No, I mean, they're going to start with the worst of the worst. In JD's answer, you start with those because you know that this is going to have an emotional aspect to it. And guess what? If you start doing it the way you're supposed to do it, I'm going to suggest to you that a lot of them are going to leave voluntarily. And then if we fix the system that we have, then we can start to restore this.

• 25:03David Friedberg?

  By the way, that's already happening because I've heard from a lot of agricultural leaders, they're seeing labor depart the country right now in anticipation of the administrative change. And a lot of labor is very scared of what's happening. They don't want to be caught. They just came here for work. These are individuals who came to this country to work. They are employed, whether legally or illegally, to do work that's in demand in this country. And they're worried they're gonna go to jail, so they're leaving. And that there's a massive outflow right now. Particularly in rural areas, there's a massive outflow right now of labor. That's really critical to a lot of those farming economies. And a lot of people in the agricultural sector are very nervous about what's about to happen. In the impact. But let me ask you another question. Do you think, and aligned with Elon's point of view and some of the stuff that's been promoted, that there's a big push by the Democrats to keep the borders open, to create more voting Democrats in this country?

• 25:48David Friedberg?

  That that's a big reason or rationale for the alternative of, you know, having illegal immigration and then converting everyone to legal?

• 25:54Speaker 03

  I think it's, I think it's more basic than that. I do think there's a political element to it. States like Minnesota, where the, where the traditional educated,

• 26:06Speaker 03

  what entrepreneur is leaving, they're being replaced with, in many cases, with illegals. Right? Because we are a sanctuary state.

• 26:17David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  So they come into Minnesota, whether they vote or not, that it, there is a big, there's a big argument that, yes, many of them are. But I think the bigger issue is how Congress is divided up. You're losing, you're hollowing out, whether you're Illinois or you're New York, you're hollowing out your state. They bring illegals in and incredibly, our census calculates them in the numbers.

• 26:42David Friedberg?

  That doesn't make sense.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  No, so you've got these blue states that are completely mismanaged.

• 26:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Cartel, just to try to.

• 26:47David Friedberg?

  But how does that, yeah, I guess, that's a longer conversation. We probably need to wrap up in a minute. I never understood how that works.

• 26:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a totally different question, something more fun. The job of whip was totally romanticized after House of Cards.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Is that romantic? You got to kill people?

• 27:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, no, because you had, you had Spacey, you had Spacey in this really famous scene.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  You got an interesting romantic.

• 27:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Calling the whip and saying, "When I was whip, my job was to whip the votes." And then he was screaming into the phone, "Whip the votes." And I just remember this thinking, now that seems like a really cool job.

• 27:17Jason Calacanis?

  His nickname is Chairman Dictator, just so you know. He was voted like, number one commentator by Xi Jinping. Chinese Communist Party in the first year of his podcast.

• 27:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a lot of important people that look after me, yes.

• 27:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But just the job of whip, is it as enjoyable as it sounds?

• 27:33Speaker 03

  So, everybody likes to say to me, "You've got the worst job in Washington DC." I think the speaker has the worst job in Washington DC. That guy can be having a great day and he's got all kinds of people that are just throwing [BLEEP] sandwiches at him all the time. The majority leader, uh, does a calendar, manages the floor, works with the chairs, uh, great job. The whip? You don't get to do anything those guys want to do unless we can actually get it across the floor. And, and the, the world has changed, uh, you know, they, I think, I know they elected me because they thought my personality is very direct. I am from, uh, Minnesota.

• 28:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I get the sense that you're incredibly effective, that you could whip the votes.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Well, but it's, you just gotta be honest and you gotta respect everybody. And, and it's a different world, because we probably have forty percent of our members who will vote for whatever Mike Johnson says we're gonna put on the floor.

• 28:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  But we got sixty percent, and this is what's been changing, I think, over the last couple of decades. It keeps getting larger. They didn't come here to follow somebody, they came here to, to lead.

• 28:31David Friedberg?

  To represent their people.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  And they need to be involved in the process. And, and what I tell them all the time, "I don't care if you like each other, I don't care if you despise one another, I don't care if you socialize together, or the second you walk out of here, you run to two polar opposite places." When you're here, the American people elected Donald Trump, and we have the benefit of, uh, a majority.

• 28:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  See, you're whipping the votes.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  But, but that's what it is, and I, I tell them, "You gotta get over yourself." We're gonna let everybody participate in the process. We're gonna take all of your ideas. We've put the, uh, the more centrist part of our, our, our majority, and the more, uh, right wing part of our party together, and that, that list of, uh, savings, cuts, offsets I was talking about, we privately run that through small groups, one at a time, so that they can talk to each other.

• 29:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  So that if, if you come from a ruby red district down south, and I come from a, you know, swingy, swingy district in New York, we can have a conversation about why I can and can't do something, and why you will and won't do something, and at the end of the day, th- this is how you're successful. Everybody wants to be involved. It's, it's hard only from the aspect that you, you can't afford to leave anyone behind.

• 29:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Last, last question, uh, when you saw the, last week was pretty prolific in terms of the Senate confirmation hearings that started, um, I think we're still waiting to figure out when Bobby's gonna come up, like, do you see any pushback? Who do you think?

• 29:58David Friedberg?

  Who might not make it?

• 29:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who might not make it?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  I think everybody's making it. I think anybody that listens to you guys or anything that interview where they start saying, bringing this up, we gotta remind people, this has been the left's playbook since Robert Bork.

• 30:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  They started it with Robert Bork, they took him out of his Supreme Court appointment, they did it to Clarence Thomas, they really did it to Kavanaugh, and look at this, now they've moved it to cabinet picks.

• 30:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  And Pete Hegseth is a great example. None of us is perfect, but all of that was anonymous, and I think once it started going through the process, and somebody asked me this question a few weeks ago, I said, yeah, they're starting with Pete, Pete's gonna get, he's gonna get through the process, they'll move on to Tulsi, then they'll move on to Bobby Kennedy Jr.

• 30:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  Those will probably be their three biggest ones that they'll attack.

• 30:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. I mean, my perspective on this is that, to your point, in the absence of somebody being compromised, it's not an ideological difference that should stop cabinet picks on either side. Whoever is the president should get to pick their team. Put the team on the field, that's the mandate he was given by the people, and then the people should get to vote it up or down.

• 31:07David Friedberg?

  It's supposed to be an advisory capacity, right? I mean, the congressional role.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  It is, but the beauty of what Donald Trump is doing, you can't fix what's broken with people that broke it. He's going outside of this godforsaken place and bringing people in that have completely new ideas, whether you like them or not.

• 31:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Come on, folks, let's see what this does. We've been doing the same thing now for years.

• 31:29David Friedberg?

  Which, by the way, is what happened 250 years ago when the...

• 31:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, wait, Congressman, last question, okay, this is the last one. Give us the redoubts and opinion. You said you listened to the FIRE episode that we did, but just general, from the outside in as a Minnesotan looking at California, just diagnose what's going on there.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  It's more complicated than the right and the left wanna make it seem, but there definitely is a problem. It's not just limited to California, it's across this country with not managing our resources the way we should. We had this problem in northern Minnesota probably 20 years ago, 25 years ago. We had a blow down in the BWCA, the Boundary Waters canoe area. You had all those trees laying down, they were kindling, right? And I think our governor at the time, Jesse Ventura, said he was gonna go in there and he was gonna log it, right, so we could protect the citizens and their property, and we could actually make use of these trees that had been destroyed in the storm. The federal government told him he couldn't do it.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  And of course, we've had fires, right? California, this is tragic. My brother-in-law sent me a picture, he lives in Woodland Hills, he sent me a picture of flames at the end of his cul-de-sac above the palm trees.

• 32:42David Friedberg?

  That's where my parents live, they probably live a couple of blocks from each other, in Woodland Hills. The fire stopped two blocks from their house.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  That's the picture he took?

• 32:49David Friedberg?

  Yeah, well, they might live right by each other.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Did the winds just take?

• 32:52David Friedberg?

  No, so the Ventura County line comes up to right there, and the fire department didn't, and I, Cal Fire and Fire Department are incredible, they stopped it from entering the neighborhood.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 33:02David Friedberg?

  It was amazing, yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  I don't know how his house is still standing, based on the picture he sent.

• 33:06Jason Calacanis?

  Thomas has been amazing, you fit right in here, I appreciate the honesty and candidness, and we'd love to have you back anytime.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  I appreciate the conflict, I love that.

• 33:14Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, the American people have questions. This is why we love Jacob.

• 33:16David Friedberg?

  Well, he got motivated, we went to a Spotify dinner last night and they were talking about journalism, he's like, "I'm a journalist, I'll show you guys, I can be a journalist."

• 33:23Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, I mean, I think it's a really important conversation, and, you know, the one thing I'm a little concerned with is just some clarity, because Trump has an ability to say things in a bold way, in an effervescent way. And then, you know, sometimes, these things actually affect people and they want a little more clarity, so.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Well, and the whip has to find clarity amongst 219 people.

• 33:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, good luck with that job. Appreciate it.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 33:51David Friedberg?

  Thank you.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  You guys are fine.

• 33:52David Friedberg?

  Thanks.

• 33:55Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, everybody, welcome back to the All In Podcast. We're here for the inauguration of Donald Trump in his second term, and we're delighted to have Eric Swalwell with us today. He is obviously the House Representative from California in the Democratic Party. You guys got... East Bay?

• 34:11David Friedberg?

  East Bay.

• 34:11Jason Calacanis?

  East Bay? Yeah. You guys got shellacked this time around? Wasn't great, wasn't good, yeah. What are the lessons that the Democratic Party can take from this? I will insert myself into this a little bit. I'm a moderate, who's voted Democrat two out of three times. I was absolutely...

• 34:33Jason Calacanis?

  Really disappointed. I'll just leave it at that, that you didn't have a speedrun primary, that Biden was put up when he was clearly in cognitive decline. And I'm absolutely disgusted by the Democratic Party's hatred of successful entrepreneurs in this country. You've kind of lost me as somebody who voted two out of three times. Why has the Democratic Party left me, somebody who, you know, two out of three times would vote Democrat, and now you hate, as a party, entrepreneurship, winning, and you seem to hate democracy, and you won't even have a primary?

• 35:13Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ. We don't hate democracy.

• 35:16Jason Calacanis?

  No, but this is my perception. I know a lot of Democrats feel this way.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  And we just lose you. Silicon Valley Democrats.

• 35:21Jason Calacanis?

  You lost a lot of folks.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Like a lot of flipping.

• 35:22Jason Calacanis?

  Nah, I mean, this is across the board.

• 35:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There's a lot of middle-of-the-road folks that just.

• 35:26Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we need a story that connects with everyday Americans. I think when you look at a lot of the policies that we like, believe in, and you look at polling and focus groups, people will be like, oh yeah, I like that. I like that. I like that. But our story right now, I don't think we know who we are and who we're fighting for. Now, so it is to me exciting that we can go through this reset and renovation to find that story that connects. I'm a blue collar kid. I was raised by a cop and a mom who had six different jobs. I was the first in my family to go to college.

• 36:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I like to think you were raised by two Republicans.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was. They, they, they were, they are, were and are two Republicans. And I've got three little brothers who are cops. And I grew up in Dublin, California. Everyone called it scrubbing, until we invested there and we saw success.

• 36:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What was your ideological change, growing up in a Republican household of cops, essentially?

• 36:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  To becoming a, you know, you're a bit of a Democratic poster boy.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  Well, that's that's only because I've gone after Donald Trump. But if you look, I ran against the most liberal member of Congress, Pete Stark. Um, I have been a pretty independent vote in Congress, and I root for success of entrepreneurs and business and want to connect that success to the people who work hard at those businesses. So everyone does well. And I think if we're just perceived as rooting against success overall and vilify people who are successful, um, then no one can be successful. If that's the case.

• 37:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you like or not like, did you agree with Biden's framing as he was leaving about this tech oligarchy?

• 37:10Speaker 04

  It it's only an oligarchy if working class folks don't benefit from it. So if that's what it becomes, then that that's a problem. What I want to see, and I think what you all are rooting for, is that anyone, if you work hard, work your ass off, you should do better for yourself and dream bigger for your kids. And I think we have an opportunity to do that. The president, the president-elect, has an opportunity to make that happen. And where he tries to do that, he'll find a partner in me. But do we have this branding issue? Yes. No, I think that's.

• 37:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is the branding issue?

• 37:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's unpack the branding issue.

• 37:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The wokeism? Is it the judgmentalism? Is it the sanctimonious pandering? Is it the moral grandstanding?

• 37:52Speaker 04

  You have to be perfect and pure is what the perception is right now.

• 37:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But nobody's perfect.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  No, no, no, that's the perception of people who like.

• 37:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Like, we're all riddled with errors and faults.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Of course, we're not perfect and pure. But I think the perception is that to be a Democrat, you have to check all these purity boxes. And then you can be a part of the party. And right now, the Republican Party is like, I think, the exact opposite. It's like, do you like Donald Trump? Great. Come to the party. And so. By the way, they're even like, if you don't like Trump.

• 38:21Jason Calacanis?

  Can we get you on these three policies? And you can still come to Peter Thiel's party. I have never been more courted by a political party than Trump's. And I have never been more hated than I've been by the Democratic Party.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  But that's wrong. It shouldn't make people feel that way.

• 38:34Jason Calacanis?

  Chama feels that way, I think. He was a major donor. You guys are talking about having a... You guys are saying you should have a Joe Rogan equivalent. You had Joe Rogan.

• 38:45David Friedberg?

  He wasn't there.

• 38:45Jason Calacanis?

  He's a Democrat.

• 38:46David Friedberg?

  If you watch all the early shows, they were all...

• 38:48Jason Calacanis?

  He had Bernie Sanders on. He wanted to have Hillary on. You guys fumbled it. You guys had Elon Musk. You fumbled it.

• 38:54David Friedberg?

  Well, say the party fumbled it, maybe you can comment on it.

• 38:57Jason Calacanis?

  Well, you represent the party.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  And we have...

• 38:59Jason Calacanis?

  Let's talk about rebuilding.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  And we have this... We have an opportunity to rebuild now. And so, on, for example, the Department of Government Efficiency. Like, we should root for government to be more efficient, and we should try and enable that. But, like, if that effort goes into an area where it's going to cut Social Security or cut, you know, Medicare, then I think you'll see us be guardians against that. But, like, most small businesses think it's pretty [bleep] hard to start a small business, and then even once you do, you don't have the resources that bigger businesses do. And they see regulations as what gets in the way. So we should try and knock those down.

• 39:36Jason Calacanis?

  What's happening in the party? Like, what are you guys doing? Or is it just headless as an organization? Yeah, who runs the Democratic Party?

• 39:43Speaker 04

  I would say in the House right now, Hakeem Jeffries has been pretty effective at uniting us. And even in the last Congress, you saw something that you've never seen before in any Congress in our country, any parliament in the world, which is the minority party delivered the majority votes on every vote of consequence. So keeping the government open, lifting that ceiling, which the incoming president now supports, which we welcome that, and we would love to get rid of it, by the way. You know, the funding of... Even the funding, you know, to Israel, that...

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Move forward because Democrats were unified on that front. So I think Hakeem has shown himself as like a practical negotiator and someone who can work with Speaker Johnson.

• 40:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I think the the other fair commentary is he's young and he's inexperienced. What I mean by leadership is

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who who is the elder statesman that can

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  help push and cajole and influence the Democratic Party to find a more solid ground.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  I think one of I think one of our best thought leaders is Mark Cuban. I I think he's

• 40:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Mark Cuban?

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Mark Cuban, yeah. He he's very influential, has a lot of relationships with my colleagues and myself. He has business experience, but I think he's also not lost touch of like what regular people care about. And I thought he was an effective surrogate for Kamala being out there on the trail. But I I go to Mark on a lot of stuff, and I think he um understands where most people are.

• 41:17David Friedberg?

  How did Kamala get selected?

• 41:19Speaker 04

  How did she get selected? So she was vice president and the runway was about a hundred days. And I we can go through the different scenarios. I don't think any of them were good. And as you said, if if your premise is that President Biden should not have run for reelection, making that decision that close to the election, you know, I don't know for any candidate.

• 41:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you know Eric?

• 41:39David Friedberg?

  Should there have been a speed primary, like J. K. Hall?

• 41:41Speaker 04

  I

• 41:44Speaker 04

  we could go through a hundred scenarios. There are a bunch of great candidates. I I still think all of them would have probably been set up to fail.

• 41:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you?

• 41:51Speaker 04

  It's too too short of a runway.

• 41:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you in your interactions with the president, did you say to yourself, gosh, what's going on here?

• 41:59Speaker 04

  I I didn't. And my colleagues and I, I don't think we interacted with him

• 42:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That much.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  that often. And and we kind of, you know, we started his presidency in COVID. And so the Joe Biden that I knew when I was in a baby, you know, child in the Congress in twenty thirteen was very engaged and, you know, loved meeting with Congress. And the meetings would go an hour over the time allotted. And it was kind of that Bill Clinton charm offensive that he could put on. And I will just tell you, like, the first two years with the COVID restrictions that we had, we didn't see that because we, you know, we would have remote meetings with the White House. And so um

• 42:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They hit him. They hit him.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  I don't, yeah, I don't know. The reports are he was gay cat. Yeah, yeah, like I said, I'm I'm focused on the future.

• 42:50David Friedberg?

  Okay, let's talk about the future. Let's talk about Doge.

• 42:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Before we talk to Doge.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Eric, you're on the House Intelligence Committee.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 42:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let's talk about TikTok.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah.

• 43:00David Friedberg?

  Okay.

• 43:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Done and dusted. What? What do you think?

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Might be back tomorrow.

• 43:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Might, might not.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're you're in the room and these things happen. There are these off the record, I guess, intelligence briefings that happen and um, this was a nine oh unanimous Supreme Court decision. It was an overwhelming majority

• 43:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  in Congress. Can you just help us understand? What needs to happen for something like those two events to happen?

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Just be general. You don't have to say specifically, obviously, and disclose anything that you know, but we're just trying to understand how does something when it's such a rancorous Congress, which can't seem to agree on anything? Or a Supreme Court, which tends to be five, four on every issue? Finds a nine oh and a super majority in Congress. Can you just help us understand?

• 43:48Speaker 04

  So the Supreme Court was not saying whether we should ban or not ban TikTok. They were saying that Congress voted, President signed.

• 43:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Correct.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  And there's no way around

• 43:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  this ban. So they, I think they were just following the law. I voted against the ban. I think China is the place where you ban things. And the problems that I have with TikTok as a father of like three little kids are the problems that I have with Meta and the problems that I have with, yeah. It's all social.

• 44:15David Friedberg?

  So you don't view it as a security risk for the United States?

• 44:18Speaker 04

  And and I look to Jim Heims, who is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, the ranking member. He's in what's called the Gang of Eight. He has the most exquisite access to intelligence. And Jim voted against the ban. And I thought, you know what? If this guy is not seeing anything on the national security level.

• 44:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There was an off the record or confidential briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. So you think in that meeting, there was nothing that was very meaningful that was disclosed about TikTok?

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Nothing that I had seen. Is it owned by the Chinese government? Absolutely. But is there a national security risk? I have not seen that.

• 44:54Jason Calacanis?

  Hold on a second, though. I mean, if the Chinese government owns 100 million plus American phones, their location data, access to their microphones, access to their cameras, how is that not a security risk? And where, I mean, that seems incredibly naive to say that.

• 45:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I want to, I want to build on what Jason was saying. We know that there are security vulnerabilities, for example, in WhatsApp. It's riddled with stuff. So, you know, you could send a PDF before, then you could send an image. Now you can just send a message and you can root your phone. The difference is WhatsApp is owned by an American citizen. I really, and so what, which is to say, all these apps are compromised. It's just that the TikTok is owned by a Chinese owner who is out of the reach of the United States government.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, and.

• 45:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is that fair or unfair to you?

• 45:39Speaker 04

  It is out of the reach of the United States government. But what I will say is most of what we buy as far as, you know, what's in our basket at Walmart is, has a Chinese component.

• 45:50Jason Calacanis?

  What's in our basket doesn't have a microphone or your GPS.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  A lot of it does.

• 45:55David Friedberg?

  Have you seen a lot of stuff you buy?

• 45:57Speaker 04

  Drones, Chinese-made drones.

• 45:59David Friedberg?

  There's a whole website now, there's a whole website now that, that breaks down modern consumer electronics from China.

• 46:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 46:05David Friedberg?

  That actually have these hacking devices built into them. I don't know if you've seen this.

• 46:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I don't know. I mean.

• 46:09David Friedberg?

  Like, you'll, you'll buy like a USB charger that's like eight bucks on Kimo or something. And it's inside, it's got like an IP address and it actually finds Wi-Fi, it connects and it transmits information.

• 46:19Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, this is incredibly dangerous.

• 46:21David Friedberg?

  And like, there's so many, and I bought this like cheap drone for like Christmas, someone, uh, for like, anyway, one of my little nephews brought it. And I'm like, dude, this thing is like 149 bucks. And I looked it up online. It's like, got camera, connects to your Wi-Fi and then asks for access to your phone.

• 46:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, Dave.

• 46:35David Friedberg?

  And I'm like, I'm not doing that. Like, yeah.

• 46:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I tweeted this a few months ago.

• 46:38David Friedberg?

  Like, only TikTok's the issue.

• 46:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The USB C charging cables.

• 46:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, those can be hijacked.

• 46:43David Friedberg?

  Yeah, they're rooted.

• 46:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The charging cables.

• 46:46Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, this is more reason to ban, this is more reason to ban it, not ban it.

• 46:50David Friedberg?

  No, I don't, but I don't think TikTok's a problem.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  I guess my point is like, we, yeah, TikTok's. You want to ban everything that's made in China? That's great. You'll destroy the economy.

• 46:56David Friedberg?

  Exactly.

• 46:57Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, but one thing has 100 million people and an algorithm that could influence people's perception.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:01Jason Calacanis?

  That, you know, the, that Hamas is being harassed by the Israelis. Like, they, they literally can change. How Americans, especially young ones, perceive the world, even if they're not doing it currently, do you not see how obvious it is that they can use it?

• 47:20David Friedberg?

  That's a censorship point of view, which is.

• 47:22Jason Calacanis?

  No, I want to hear his answer.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess I'm the only one of the four of us that doesn't want to ban speech.

• 47:28David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I'm no, I'm with you.

• 47:30Jason Calacanis?

  I want to, I want to, I want either reciprocity, where we can put our apps in China, or I want it gone.

• 47:37David Friedberg?

  Now you're making a different case. Now you're saying it's like reciprocity as opposed to controlling. First, you were saying it's security. Then you're saying it's like controlling our point of view. Now you're saying reciprocity. You're like, those aren't the same thing.

• 47:49Jason Calacanis?

  Here's what I.

• 47:50David Friedberg?

  Security, security risk likely lies everywhere.

• 47:52Jason Calacanis?

  On security?

• 47:53David Friedberg?

  On controlling the point of view of stuff.

• 47:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think you guys have to separate, look, TikTok, there are three things in TikTok, okay? There's the content and the content creators. That's one thing. Then there is a network effect, and then there is the vessel, which is the app, okay? Which is the code. My very specific point of view is the content creators and the network effect can easily be replicated in other places. The vessel itself is corrupt. And I think if you can't technically see that, it's probably because you just, you're not steeped enough in the technology.

• 48:28David Friedberg?

  The Intelligence Committee doesn't technically see that, so.

• 48:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, no, they've seen.

• 48:31David Friedberg?

  Clearly, they're not a great.

• 48:32Jason Calacanis?

  They've, they've been caught, they've seen. Tracking journalists.

• 48:35David Friedberg?

  You've got a guy on the Intelligence Committee here telling you.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Well, but I, I also looked at the small business owners who use that as a platform. I understand how you just, the buckets that you just created.

• 48:44David Friedberg?

  People depend on it.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  And more people, in the, what I was telling the White House was more people watched President Biden's State of the Union address on TikTok than anywhere else. And the, and President Biden had just gone on TikTok.

• 48:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But that's why, but that you're speaking to is the content and the network.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Sure, no, I get it.

• 48:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So my point is, across Meta or across X, my preference would be X. You can replicate the network effect and you can create a mechanism for those content creators who are already on those platforms anyway, to shift. My point is, the vessel itself is easily rooted. I, I told this to President Trump when we were sitting down, I was like, that phone. The microphone on that iPhone can get turned on remotely. You can choose what state actor wants to do it. But I will bet you dollars to donuts, it is inconceivable to me that the NSA did not find that capability. And the reason is not because TikTok is bad or good. The reason is all of these apps are rooted. The only difference is that most of these apps are controlled by American citizens.

• 49:41Jason Calacanis?

  So there is fallout.

• 49:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Control mechanism, and this app is not.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  I mean, I think Donald Trump is going to allow TikTok.

• 49:50Jason Calacanis?

  Well, he got a $50 million donation from Jeff Yass.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  That, and I think he also recognized.

• 49:55Jason Calacanis?

  Super PAC, 50 million.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Yes, and I think the reason he cares is because he knows a lot of his followers are out there. And for whatever reason, they didn't choose, they have not chosen to go to that.

• 50:03Jason Calacanis?

  You know what else is very popular exported from China? Fentanyl.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:06Jason Calacanis?

  You should probably ban that too.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:08Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, the fact that it's popular should not be why we are doing it. That's why I think your framing is wrong, respectfully.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  What I'm saying is you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. And so you're gonna take away a platform that is widely used by Americans.

• 50:21Jason Calacanis?

  It's the weakest, weakest.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Not chosen to go to those other ones. And I just don't think we ban things in America. I think that's.

• 50:27Jason Calacanis?

  This is the Chinese Communist Party.

• 50:28David Friedberg?

  Jason, if you, if you actually didn't have.

• 50:31Jason Calacanis?

  They spy on their own citizens.

• 50:33David Friedberg?

  If you're, just think about this for a second. If your business depended on you using TikTok, how would you feel about the TikTok ban? And you're not wealthy.

• 50:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have sympathy for them. I have sympathy for them. You guys have to assume that if it is true that the CCP uses the Chinese version of TikTok as a mechanism to surveil their own people. The idea that for an extra few units of resources, they wouldn't spy on the most important, powerful nation in the world, to me seems pretty illogical and dumb. They are gonna, they would do it. And separately, it's not to say that President Trump is using TikTok per se, or, you know, important people. But it is true that when you have enough people use an app, and those people come into contact with other people. Like, look what happens today. How do you exchange contact information with an iPhone?

• 51:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You touch one another, right? There's an NFC capability to pass code from one to the other. I mean, I just think it's really naive, guys, for us to not assume that, that technology is very deterministic. There are so many good things that happen.

• 51:39Jason Calacanis?

  But there are people that are paid to find every single edge and to push it because the stakes are high. And I just think that this is an assumption that we have to live with.

• 51:49Speaker 04

  I'm just very cautious when it comes to bans. That's.

• 51:52Jason Calacanis?

  That's fair. That's an ideological thing. And I generally agree with you.

• 51:55David Friedberg?

  Because because Chamath, where this goes is you're like, well, I don't want to import Korean cars because they've got electronics that are connected to the internet. In every Korean car. Now the Koreans can spy on where we are. I mean, you can very quickly see how this can open up a floodgate of banning because foreign adversaries could take advantage of us in different ways.

• 52:11Jason Calacanis?

  Which is exactly.

• 52:11David Friedberg?

  Including, including banning.

• 52:12Jason Calacanis?

  What we did with networking equipment.

• 52:14David Friedberg?

  Banning chip imports, including banning router imports. You could very quickly make this a whole.

• 52:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Happened with routers.

• 52:19David Friedberg?

  A whole.

• 52:19Jason Calacanis?

  Literally the number one thing we do with routers in the West because it was too dangerous.

• 52:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Literally already happened with telecom equipment.

• 52:25David Friedberg?

  We're gonna go down a very nasty place like.

• 52:27Jason Calacanis?

  No, we're going down an intelligent route, which is to not give access to all of the personal information of the sons and daughters of representatives of military experts to the Chinese Communist Party.

• 52:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  There, there is a reason why Huawei is banned in America.

• 52:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 52:42David Friedberg?

  Yeah. Security vulnerabilities were found.

• 52:45Jason Calacanis?

  They don't have our best interests.

• 52:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And all of a sudden you think that it stopped there? China like gave up and said, okay.

• 52:49David Friedberg?

  I'm saying there's a different.

• 52:50Jason Calacanis?

  Let's go watch the dance videos now. It's great. Let the Americans dance.

• 52:55David Friedberg?

  By the way, it does seem, it does seem a little crazy to me. Isn't the US revenue for TikTok for ByteDance like 5%?

• 53:01Jason Calacanis?

  If it wasn't according to the Chinese government, they would have divested it.

• 53:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think it's a 30 or 40 billion.

• 53:04Jason Calacanis?

  And they would give up their golden share.

• 53:06David Friedberg?

  The US is 30 or 40 billion.

• 53:07Jason Calacanis?

  Let's move on to the border.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:09David Friedberg?

  Wait, wait, Doge. We're gonna do Doge.

• 53:11Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 53:11David Friedberg?

  Let's do Doge because you, you tell us your point of view on Elon Vivek coming in, what they're gonna do, what's good about it, what you really don't think is good about it.

• 53:19Jason Calacanis?

  Do you have concerns? Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 04

  Well, so I do think it's funny that a committee about efficiency has two people running it. But I think it just, it just cut itself in half with Vivek's running, you know, for governor. So that is their first success. Um, I guess, you know, to cut, you know, the size of the committee.

• 53:36David Friedberg?

  But they got a lot of people that they've recruited.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  No, I got, yeah. And yeah, it's a, knock yourself out. If you want to make it easier for small businesses, you know, to start a business, if you want to save, you know, money and fraud.

• 53:47David Friedberg?

  Federal employees, federal employees not showing up to the.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  Look, I, my staff shows up and, and we benefit from people being in the office. We show a lot of flexibility for people who have family issues, kind of on a case by case basis, and, and people with disabilities have more access to work. But I, I generally, I see the benefits of having everybody at the office. And we were one of the first offices to come back on the hill, you know, during COVID, because I saw the benefit of that. And if they can draw a, a straight line between, you know, benefiting our constituents and people being in the office, I'm, I'm open minded to that.

• 54:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Eric, tell us about how you think this reconciliation bill, the budget, it's going to be a very knockout, drag out kind of a process. We're going to hit the debt ceiling tomorrow.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And so you guys are going to be back to work right away. What do you expect?

• 54:42Speaker 04

  What I'm going to be asking my constituents, you know, as tax cuts are proposed and regulations, you know, potentially are cut is, you know, what did you get out of this? And what have you lost? Because if it's just, as I said, if it's just kind of a, a bro oligarchy that benefits and, and you don't benefit, then I won't support it. But if you can draw the line and say, you know, this business getting this benefit or this corporate tax rate going down means that, you know, you're going to do better and dream bigger, I can be for that. And, and so that's what I'm going to be looking at.

• 55:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you think generally that governments should generally just have less tax receipts and be forced to spend less, to be more ingenious and less over reliant on overpowering things with money?

• 55:30Speaker 04

  Yes. And frankly, a lot of that starts with the Department of Defense. I mean, look at where the cost drivers are.

• 55:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Is that where you look?

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that, but that means you need to have alliances in the world, right? You're going to have, if you're going to reduce what you spend on defense, you better strengthen your partnerships.

• 55:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Some people on the Republican side, so I think it's a wonderful point. Some people on the Republican side say this is why energy is so important for us because when we have resource independence, it actually allows us to forge and recast many of our relationships abroad that then create a very different security envelope.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  So I chair the Rare Earth Minerals Caucus and for this reason. And it probably surprises people that a Bay Area Democrat wants to get the US, you know, back into mining.

• 56:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yep.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  And that's because we're getting our ass kicked by China on this, on the, you know, not just the mining, but the processing and the magnetizing. But we do have allies who have these resources. So we can do it in the United States. There's Mountain Pass where they're doing it with almost 100% recycled water. So you don't have the ass upon issue, but you also have countries that you could have.

• 56:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I helped Jim to get that thing off the ground.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've been out there.

• 56:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And going, it's an incredible thing. But even he will tell you, doing these kinds of projects in America today is almost next to impossible. And the reason he was able to do it, I mean, he has support from folks like you, which are forward thinking, but the reason was because it had already largely been built.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And he said if he had tried to get it permitted.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 56:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's just a question, you know, less money for the government, less regulation. It almost seems like sometimes if the Republicans say yay, the Democrats say nay. And if the Democrats said yay, the Republicans would say nay. But if you ask everybody privately, everybody agrees the government should have less. And to your point, business people should just have more of a wide berth to actually go and work.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  And then be held to account, as I said, if the wealth is only concentrated at the top.

• 57:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right. So your issue is guys, just make sure we can point to people at every part of the economic spectra. That's like, but that's a very reasonable thing to say, what you're saying.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  Well, I hope that's how we govern in this next.

• 57:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But it doesn't come out that way.

• 57:34Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I think this is a key point, that what you lead with and what you talk about and what you make a priority, that will be people's perception of your focus.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:45Jason Calacanis?

  And the perception that I have as somebody who again has voted Democrat two out of three elections is that you're focused on and talking about things like DEI, things like. Having trans kids get surgery and no parent agrees with this. Nobody agrees with this. They're banning it around the world and you guys lead with that. That shows a lack of prioritization that is palatable to the voting populace. What they want is effective leadership. And when you look at what happened in Southern California, it is the height of arrogance that they're working on things like DEI and saying this is important. When the reservoir is not filled, when they're not clearing brush and you have to make trade offs in the world.

• 58:28Jason Calacanis?

  And you guys don't seem to be able to communicate that. It's incredibly frustrating for me. You can hear it in my voice. That you can't say, you know what? We care about nature. We care about the trees, but you can't have trees on the floor around homes in a fire zone.

• 58:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, you said floor. You didn't say ground. So no, I'm gonna just not listen to you.

• 58:44Jason Calacanis?

  Or we can't get minerals that we're going to be dependent on China for minerals.

• 58:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 58:51Jason Calacanis?

  We need those minerals. We cannot be dependent on foreign adversaries to make important weapon systems, to make important things like electric vehicles. And you guys are concerned about the cranes and trans kids being able to get surgery that nobody wants. That's the problem with the party.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  We need a better story and I don't think you lead-

• 59:10Jason Calacanis?

  Stop focusing on those weird things.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  That story with the concerns people have with DEI, although I would argue now the new DEI is Don, Eric and Ivanka. And people probably won't like that approach to it either.

• 59:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Eric, is that you floating the trough? You're trying to-

• 59:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not sure, but okay.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  We need a better story and I look forward to being in-

• 59:32David Friedberg?

  Was that the first time?

• 59:32Speaker 04

  I-

• 59:33Jason Calacanis?

  We did workshop.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Did you workshop recently?

• 59:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We did workshop, but yeah. Yeah, you can have the workshop.

• 59:38Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, there's a long tradition in these parties of the kids being grifters, hunter, everybody's getting in on it. Um, but let's, let's close on the borders.

• 59:47David Friedberg?

  No, no, hold on. Before we do that, I just want to ask you about, um, should the United States spend, spend $200 billion to acquire Greenland from Denmark?

• 59:54Speaker 04

  I don't give a if he tries to acquire Greenland. I just want the cost of eggs to go down. That's what my constituents are proud of. Knock yourself out. Go get Greenland.

• 1:00:03David Friedberg?

  Mineral rights, security aspects.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  Of course, there's, there's benefits there, but I, I just, I want to know, you said you're going to lower the cost of eggs. Eggs are pretty expensive. What it, how are you gonna do that? And if you can tell me that, you know, spending $200 billion to get Greenland is gonna help lower our costs, great, but I think people wanna see costs come down.

• 1:00:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a question about today, and I just wanna actually go back in time. Today, are there any of President Trump's nominees that really give you ajuda? And if so, who and why?

• 1:00:35Jason Calacanis?

  And who's inspiring? Give some credit if there's something like inspiring.

• 1:00:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, who do you like?

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:00:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Give us one that inspires you and give us one that you're like.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  I think Rubio's gonna do a great job as Secretary of State. I think he's, he has the gravitas and the experience to do it, and I wanna, I wanna see that happen. Kash Patel is the one that I, I think could destroy the president's agenda, because.

• 1:00:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can you say more?

• 1:00:58Speaker 04

  Well, what I see, and I may be a little bit biased, because the guy wrote a book, he listed 100 enemies. I'm not in that 100. I'm actually in the preamble. He starts it with, of course, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell are the most dangerous.

• 1:01:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, you were part of the House Russian investigation.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  But I, I do believe if, if the president focuses on going after his enemies, he's going to lose the ability to bring order to the border.

• 1:01:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yep.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  To get the most violent, you know, the most violent undocumented immigrants out of the country.

• 1:01:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  And make people feel safe in communities where they don't feel safe.

• 1:01:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you think about Jason's comment? Do you think that we should systematically work through a process to deport 15 million illegal?

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  I, I think you should focus on violent offenders.

• 1:01:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, no blame.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Sexual.

• 1:01:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So let's say you get that done in six months. What do you do after that?

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  Well, you also need order at the border, right? I mean, and I, I support surging resources to bring that, but 40% of my constituents were born outside the United States. We are the eighth wealthiest district in the country. No thanks to me. I'm not contributing to that wealth. There is a straight line between those immigrants and that wealth. And so if we can find a way to address, you know, shortages in the workforce, in agriculture, hospitality, food and beverage, of course, we see it in biotech and tech, I think we can have the best in the world. I'll just leave it, leave you with this. A foreign minister in Asia said to me in the past year, he said, Eric, he said, you know, the population of the United States is three billion people.

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  And I looked at him and I said, no, you mean it's like 300 plus million? I thought he misspoke. He said, no, he said, there are three billion people in the world who would give up

• 1:02:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yes.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  everything.

• 1:02:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yes.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  To come to the United States. And he said, if you get it right, he said, you can pick the best.

• 1:02:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's right.

• 1:02:49Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. Recruitment as opposed to immigration is a better framework.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Go, go back, please. You mentioned this. The House Russia investigation created a lot of

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Talking points on both sides that I think are still lingering. And in the spirit of sort of putting it to bed.

• 1:03:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Any regrets about that whole process?

• 1:03:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Was there anything substantive that came out of it ultimately? Or was it the beginning of this more politically directed kind of action reaction, which is now why people are afraid about what happens?

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  No, Russia had a preferred candidate and they did a lot to try and get that guy to win. I think he could have, and I think he may regret that in a lot of his trolling, he made himself look guiltier when he probably could have shown us that the concerns we had weren't there. But I don't, I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm not going to, you know, focus on the fact that he was impeached twice and sent a mob that, you know, could have killed many of the people in the Capitol with me on January 6th. I'm going to focus on if he wants to bring order to the border, make our communities safer and raise wages and lower costs, I'm going to work with him.

• 1:04:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What I meant, what I meant more.

• 1:04:02Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's a great message.

• 1:04:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You and Adam worked backwards from

• 1:04:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  an outcome, or do you think you and Adam actually just followed the facts and?

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  I was an Alameda County prosecutor in the same office Earl Warren, you know, worked in. And we were trained that it's not about wins and losses. It's just about doing justice. And I approached it just trying to follow the facts.

• 1:04:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And when you were watching some of the other things that happened post all of this?

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Like what's happening in New York and whatnot, what were your thoughts as a prosecutor? On the legal veracity of some of the things that were going on to, to Trump, leading into this election?

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  A lot of people around him went to jail and it felt like, well, if Michael Cohen went to jail, like, why the is this guy not being held to account? Like, Michael Cohen went to jail for being a part of that hush money settlement. So a- again, just being a blue collar kid who resents people who think that their position entitles them to be better than regular folks. I just wanted everyone to be treated the same. And so that's the way I was raised. My dad lost his job as a cop when he wouldn't essentially be get bribed. He wouldn't allow a bribe from a mayor um to influence him and and he

• 1:05:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, that's amazing.

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  That that was my earliest experience. We're in a small town in Iowa and he was the police chief. The mayor very publicly tried to like corrupt him and he wouldn't do it. So my earliest memory is that he was willing to lose his job to do the right thing.

• 1:05:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But you're saying something very important, which is everybody should be treated the same. So

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:05:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  If one of your kids were charged with a misdemeanor, would you hope that it was just prosecuted as a misdemeanor? Or do you think that folks that may not like Eric Swalwell figure out a way to now make it a felony?

• 1:05:45Speaker 04

  The former, yeah.

• 1:05:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  As I said, I'm I'm going into this open minded to what we can do. No, I'm just saying into this new year, open minded, not focused on the past, on what we can do to make the country succeed.

• 1:05:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and on the border issue, I think that's the one where y'all could maybe get some consensus and some clarity, because it really does seem to be creating an underlying tension in the country as to what's going to happen.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  And you can't do anything on the workforce issues until the public believes you've secured the border. That's just a, whether that's rational or not.

• 1:06:18Jason Calacanis?

  How much of that was why you you think Kamala lost? Was just her not taking ownership of the border?

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  I just think she was attached to an incumbent party. Incumbent parties worldwide are just getting pounded and there wasn't much that was going to change where this thing was going.

• 1:06:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Eric, what's what's happening in California?

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  Well, I was in

• 1:06:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Give us the grade on Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass.

• 1:06:41David Friedberg?

  Which Republican will be the next governor of California?

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  Uh, well, they they don't have their together either, by the way, the Republican Party in California. Look, I'm I I was in the Palisades on Monday. I have 10 friends who lost everything. I was with a woman who stood on top of a pile of ashes that was her house, looking for any memento for her family. And it's it's awful. And I'll I will also be open minded as to what we could have done to prevent it, to prevent it, why resources that should have been there, weren't there. And as a member of the Homeland Security Committee, make sure that, you know, we're better prepared next time. And if there is accountability that should have, that should come to be part of that. But like there's fires are still burning right now. And so I don't want to be that meme where it's like,

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  you know, the guy that like last week, I was a hostage expert. This week, I'm a wildfire expert.

• 1:07:33David Friedberg?

  Well, that's us.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, that's our function.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. Tune in every Friday. My job is is to look at, you know, what we could have done, who should be held accountable. But with the fire still burning and families, you know, living with friends and relatives right now, I don't want to hop. I don't want to give this a hot take.

• 1:07:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, fair enough. Thank you.

• 1:07:52Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Eric, we really appreciate your candidness and good luck rebuilding the party. Thank you. Well done.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Okay. Thanks.

• 1:07:59Jason Calacanis?

  Awesome. Great job, bro.

• 1:08:02Jason Calacanis?

  All right, welcome back to the All In Podcast at the inauguration of Donald Trump, our 47th president. And we're really delighted to have friend of the pod, Ro Khanna, back on the program. He is the US Representative for California's 17th District, aka our hometown, Silicon Valley. How are you, Ro?

• 1:08:21Ro Khanna?

  Honored to be back on. You made it big time, huh? You're now like in DC inauguration.

• 1:08:27David Friedberg?

  Jason's a Republican now, did you know that?

• 1:08:28Jason Calacanis?

  No, I remain a moderate.

• 1:08:30Ro Khanna?

  Jason, I'm holding on to you as the Democrat in Silicon Valley.

• 1:08:33Jason Calacanis?

  I'm a moderate. I've always been a moderate. I like to vote for what I believe is the most qualified person. And this time around, I was what they call in your business, a double hater. And let's let's get right into that with the Democratic Party. You guys got shellacked. The candidate who you put up didn't go through a primary. The previous candidate seemed to be in cognitive decline. We can all agree. And it feels like a bit of a mess in the party. What is going to happen to the Democratic Party going forward? Is there a voice saying this is the plan? Or is it a little Game of Thrones right now? We're all wondering, where are the Democrats? It feels like you went dark.

• 1:09:15Jason Calacanis?

  Is that a strategy to just sort of let Trump have his moment? And then come back and be adversarial? Or state a new platform? What's going on inside the Democratic Party?

• 1:09:25Ro Khanna?

  I think crises are times for reform and renewal. And the reality is that this was a huge blow to the establishment of the party. People wanted a more competitive process. They want new voices. They want a new generation of leadership. And now that's going to emerge. And so you're seeing it happening in California with Dan Lurie winning in San Francisco for mayor, Matt Mahan winning in San Jose. You're seeing new people in Congress emerging, new governors emerging. And so I think that there's going to be a lot of reflection. One of the things I've said is the Democrats need to spend as much time understanding

• 1:10:06Ro Khanna?

  why many Americans voted for Donald Trump as we do criticizing Donald Trump. And I think you're starting to see that happen.

• 1:10:14Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think the new platform will be? If you had to think of things to remove from the platform and things to prioritize in the platform, if you were in charge, or Dean Phillips, friend of the pod as well, there are some people who feel there's more important issues than the ones that maybe you've been focused on, that you, the Democratic Party, has been focused on for this last election cycle. So maybe give us two or three ideas of what you would add to the agenda and two or three things that you might say, hey, this isn't a priority for Americans anymore.

• 1:10:45Ro Khanna?

  I think the whole thing has to be about prioritizing the economy, the economic independence of Americans. How are we going to have economic renewal, economic growth in a stagnant working and middle class? And then let's argue our different visions. Donald Trump says that the way he's going to turn around Johnstown and Youngstown and Downriver Michigan is just with a large tax cuts and deregulation. Our view has got to be that it has to involve technology leaders, business leaders, but also strategic government investments to be able to build new industry there, to be able to credential new folks there, to be able to build a workforce. But we have to offer a compelling economic vision. And then

• 1:11:28Ro Khanna?

  an economic vision so people aren't dependent on the denials of private health insurance and so that they have childcare. But I think whoever wins the argument that there's going to lead America in the 21st century on the economy and on economic independence is going to win.

• 1:11:43David Friedberg?

  Ro, you're saying government investment in building new businesses, building new industries is necessary to achieve that vision. That's a better alternative. What is the historical kind of examples where policies or government was going to go start new investments, start fundamentally supporting new businesses being built that's worked successfully and worked better than free markets? Like, the Republican argument is the free market is more efficient, the free market works better. Let capital and capitalists find where the capital is best applied, it'll be more efficiently utilized, versus government making the decision about where capital should go. It's typically lower ROI, very often negative ROI, and doesn't actually create sustainable economic growth.

• 1:12:26Ro Khanna?

  I think I said government investment that's market sustainable, but you look at Hamilton, you look at Lincoln, and you look at FDR. That is, in my view, what built America.

• 1:12:36David Friedberg?

  Infrastructure.

• 1:12:37Ro Khanna?

  Well, it's infrastructure, but it's also manufacturing. I mean, I have a bill to build new steel plants in Johnstown in Ohio. Now, you need the private sector, you need Cleveland Cliffs, you need a private steel company. But if we're going to finance that, the scaling of that, the federal government has to have some role. And what we ended up having in free market economics is

• 1:13:01Ro Khanna?

  China, last week, one trillion dollar trade surplus. Now, we are at almost a trillion dollar trade deficit.

• 1:13:08David Friedberg?

  Yep.

• 1:13:09Ro Khanna?

  You know the economics well, so that's finance with a capital account surplus. That means all that money is coming into to Wall Street. Wall Street is doing really well, the finance sector is doing really well, but it's hollowed out our manufacturing base, it's hollowed out our industrial base. That is free market economics gone too far.

• 1:13:26David Friedberg?

  That's globalization, is what some of the non neocon Republicans would say, is that global trade versus cut off some of the global trade, create a tariff program with China, and we'll reignite manufacturing. That's kind of a counter policy argument, but to your point, it's a different point of view that uses different set of data to make the case.

• 1:13:44Ro Khanna?

  And I I'd agree with some of the strategic tariffs. I just don't think that's going to be enough for us to have pill factories here, have the steel factories, alumina factories to to revitalize these areas and to look at what is the investment.

• 1:13:58David Friedberg?

  You think we need government programs?

• 1:13:59Ro Khanna?

  I think we need government partnering with the private sector.

• 1:14:01David Friedberg?

  And on dereg, so, you know, do you feel and does the party feel that there should be no deregulatory effort in the United States to unleash kind of, you know, economic investment and growth? Or like this this whole point, you know, it just feels wrong to me to say like we don't want dereg, like shouldn't dereg be a thing that we're always cutting back? Things bureaucracy, bureaucratic red tape that we've created to unleash, I mean, even Gavin Newsom is making this claim now in California with respect to the rebuilding.

• 1:14:29Ro Khanna?

  I I think you need effective government, I think execution matters, and I think there's fair criticisms to say that the execution of the CHIPS and SCIENCEHACK, which I helped write, or the IRA, wasn't enough, I mean, the money didn't get out fast enough, there were the bureaucracy in permitting was was slow, and if there are ways to make government procurement more competitive, that is good. I mean, why is it that five primes are dominating the defense procurement system? So Michael Bloomberg had a plan, which I think seems pretty reasonable, have 15% of Department of Defense spending for startups and innovative technology as opposed to just going for the five primes, that's regulatory reform. But we also have to Look at the fundamental, why is Intel not succeeding?

• 1:15:14Ro Khanna?

  We had asked Pat Gelsinger, who was asked to leave in Intel. And I said, is it, was it the permitting reform? And he said, no, it's that the, the, the capital expenditures to make Wall Street's numbers were, was very high and there was no government, no procurement.

• 1:15:29David Friedberg?

  Everything's too expensive in this country. By the way, this goes back to nuclear energy. It's too expensive to build a gigawatt of nuclear power in this country. It's too, takes too long. Meanwhile, China can do it for about a tenth of the price. And they're scaling up 300 XR rate in terms of new energy production.

• 1:15:45Jason Calacanis?

  And they can do it in half the time.

• 1:15:47David Friedberg?

  Half the time, a tenth of the cost. And there's a regulatory path for gen four reactors going up in China versus here.

• 1:15:53Ro Khanna?

  I'm for nuclear energy. I'm for smart modular nuclear energy. I'm for looking at how we build nuclear energy here in the United States in a safe way. But in one that I agree that our part, my party has been opposed to largely.

• 1:16:07David Friedberg?

  So this is really important because I think what happens is the Republicans or the Democrats will come forward with a general policy statement. We need to dereg to unleash economic prosperity or dereg to unleash nuclear. But the, the other party then says, well, we've got to figure out a way to attack them on that vector. And then they take this like diametrically opposed point of view to try and diminish the strength that they're gaining because of their strong policy perspective that may be good for America. And then we end up in this unfortunate circumstance where we can't ever align on the things that really are good for America. That's how I feel as an American, looking at how the, the parties attack each other. One party says, this is a good thing for America. Why doesn't the other party say, you're absolutely right. We all agree on that. Let's move forward.

• 1:16:48Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, can you, can you give the win on Doge? Like government efficiency seems like consensus.

• 1:16:53Ro Khanna?

  Well, I've gotten criticized because I put out an innocent tweet and I've said that if Musk and Ramaswamy have a good idea, then I want to look at that. And, you know, Musk disrupted the entire Pentagon with SpaceX. I mean, he worked with Ash Carter to do that.

• 1:17:09Jason Calacanis?

  The track record's there.

• 1:17:10Ro Khanna?

  The track record's there. So if he's gonna, and you have all of the progressives like me saying the defense budget is bloated, 56% of spending. We need to figure out how to have more competition. We need to. Look at the waste that is there. I mean, spending a hundred fifty thousand dollars on soap dispensers. And so now if Musk is, it's really is Boeing hundred fifty thousand dollars, sixty minutes. And fourteen hundred dollars for breast pumps. I mean, I think it's outrageous.

• 1:17:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Ro Khanna?

  And so now because Musk is saying, let's look at the Defense Department. You don't want to do it, even though you've been saying to do that for the past five, six years. That's the stuff that drives people crazy. Or I floated, you know, that Bob Iger would be a a good person to run next time for for mayor of of LA.

• 1:17:53Jason Calacanis?

  He's considering it.

• 1:17:54Ro Khanna?

  It well, I mean.

• 1:17:55Jason Calacanis?

  Did he tell you that?

• 1:17:56Ro Khanna?

  Yeah, I don't want to talk about what he what we've talked about privately. I just think he'd be.

• 1:18:00Jason Calacanis?

  But you did ask him.

• 1:18:01Ro Khanna?

  I did ask him. I I and so now I'm getting attacked for, well, am I for an oligarch? That's that's literally my my Twitter.

• 1:18:09Jason Calacanis?

  Bob Iger's an oligarch? He runs Disney.

• 1:18:13Ro Khanna?

  I said, I want someone who's going to rebuild this this place. He's it would actually be a public service for him after.

• 1:18:18David Friedberg?

  I want popcorn and lemonade stands on every corner.

• 1:18:21Ro Khanna?

  And, you know, and FDR was FDR, FDR was an oligarch. FDR was one of the wealthiest people, John F. Kennedy. So I think there's got to be a there's got to be common sense.

• 1:18:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Ro Khanna?

  How do we actually help people? That has to be the the metric and willingness to to to work across the aisle on things.

• 1:18:38Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it does seem in the wake of what's happened in Southern California, Pacific Palisades and all the other regions that were impacted, that a large number of affluent

• 1:18:52Jason Calacanis?

  and and voters and people who are active in politics are now saying it's kind of enough. The progressivism went too far left. We need really qualified people in office. And so what do you think is going to happen in California? And what impact do you think these twelve thousand, fourteen thousand homes being destroyed? And of course, the twenty five people who lost their lives tragically. What impact is that going to have? Is you think that's a turning point in some ways?

• 1:19:19Ro Khanna?

  I do. I I mean, first of all, it's just horrific. And I'm sure you know, people.

• 1:19:24Jason Calacanis?

  I have a couple of friends who lost.

• 1:19:25Ro Khanna?

  Who lost their homes.

• 1:19:26Jason Calacanis?

  They're alive, and that's what's important, but they did lose everything.

• 1:19:29Ro Khanna?

  They lost everything. And I mean, a place is just burned down. It's it's it's devastating. And I think it's just a culmination in California of something that's been creeping up, which is governance matters, execution matters.

• 1:19:43Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:19:44Ro Khanna?

  Keeping places safe matters, making sure that we're pragmatic matters. And that's why you saw Dan Laurie win. That's why you saw Matt Mahan win. That's why you've seen sort of reasonable people in district attorneys win. I think that's, and you're going to see that in LA. I think you're going to see that in the governor's race. I do think California is saying regardless of your ideology on issues, we need to be able to govern well.

• 1:20:08Jason Calacanis?

  So you have the economy. I think safety is up there for folks. What else do you think on that short list of things that the party in California could say to the voters in terms of winning them back and letting them understand you're focused on something other than, in their perception, DEI, maybe environmental overreach. Can't believe I'm saying that, but like, the fact that people don't believe in clearing the forest around homes and they're fighting it on environmental grounds. Well, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that these wildfires have been occurring for a long time. You've

• 1:20:51Jason Calacanis?

  got the salt in the science here, can go into the science of it. And that if you want to live near a forest in a fire zone, you kind of got to clean up the detrius on the forest floor. Like, it feels like, you know, the leadership in California is kind of, President completely excluded, has kind of lost its script here, huh?

• 1:21:08Ro Khanna?

  I think it's reasonable to ask why the brush wasn't cleared outside LA. I got in trouble for asking that. I said, these are legitimate questions. That's not going after people. And I supported Karen Bass in full disclosure against Rich Caruso. I was proud to do it. But if Caruso asks reasonable questions, the whole point of being in governance is you say, okay, the guy had a good point.

• 1:21:30Jason Calacanis?

  You're disappointed in her performance. The fact that she's out of the country.

• 1:21:32David Friedberg?

  Going back in time, when you endorsed Caruso, knowing what you know now?

• 1:21:36Ro Khanna?

  I don't know if I would have endorsed him, but I certainly think it's fair to say that people are disappointed in what's happened in LA. And I endorse someone like Iger or others. I think there's, I certainly think there needs to be a new mayor.

• 1:21:50David Friedberg?

  Do you think there was any reason for her to be in Ghana?

• 1:21:53Ro Khanna?

  Well, she said, she says that she went on, uh,

• 1:21:56David Friedberg?

  To the inauguration of the president.

• 1:21:58Ro Khanna?

  The inauguration. I, I,

• 1:22:00David Friedberg?

  She was in a palace having cocktails.

• 1:22:02Ro Khanna?

  Now, whether, if there were actual warnings before, I think she would probably say she should have stayed.

• 1:22:07David Friedberg?

  Even be going to Ghana as the mayor of a city that has no economic interest in Ghana? On vacation, I suppose.

• 1:22:12Ro Khanna?

  No, well, that, no, look, that's a common thing where the president of both parties ask people, mayors, governors, I haven't been asked this in Congress with you, to represent them at a, at a Ford inauguration.

• 1:22:23David Friedberg?

  Oh, is that right?

• 1:22:24Ro Khanna?

  Yeah, that's a common thing. And I don't, if there weren't the warnings, I don't think that's a big, big issue. Now, she's going to Paris because, you know, the, uh, LA is hosting the Olympics. The question is, though, your first priority. And if there were warnings, she should explain why, why, why, why she didn't go. And I, I like her. I think she's a good person. But the question is, uh, what is it going to take going forward? But the big point about, one of the points about, well, what we need to do differently other than the economics is we've got to also go around the country and say, my party is not going to look down on people who we have different, uh, uh, cultural or social viewpoints with. I think there was this sense of condescension in that if you disagree with someone, somehow our party is morally superior, and that's got to stop.

• 1:23:08David Friedberg?

  And this whole thing about if we disagree, the policy generally is wrong, which is, I think, this, this thing, distinguishing the policy from the party.

• 1:23:19David Friedberg?

  Do you think California has a chance of electing a Republican governor for 26? Do you think that that chance is now greater than 50% after the wildfires?

• 1:23:30Ro Khanna?

  I still think, and I will, uh, support most likely the Democrat. I mean, whoever the good, a good Democrat is, there are a lot of good Democrats, uh, that can run. But, you know, I mean, Arne Schrosteneger was a Republican. And can a Republican who is a pro-choice and take some of the social issues off the table be competitive? Yeah, I think the Democratic Party would be naive, uh, to take that for granted. And we need to have, uh, thoughtful, strong people on our side run and run, understanding people care about public safety. They want effective government. They want, uh, reform. I mean, people like Matt Mahan, uh, who now have had a couple of years and have been effective, uh, are, are the type of Democrats I think that can win statewide.

• 1:24:12Jason Calacanis?

  What are your thoughts on, um, TikTok? Going dark in the last 24 hours here.

• 1:24:18Ro Khanna?

  It's terrible. I've been vocal. We had 1.3 million people sign a petition. Never had that in orders of magnitude saying, keep TikTok.

• 1:24:27Jason Calacanis?

  Because they like the product or they make a living on it?

• 1:24:30Ro Khanna?

  Yeah, it's first of all, it's the stories about people who make a living. There was one person, a content creator, her husband cheated on her, abusive marriage, she leaves, she's got four kids, two toddlers, and two kids around five, and she's broke, she's in a hotel, she's staying in her best friend's living room for four months, and then she starts telling her story, and now she's making $60,000, $70,000 as a content creator. I could tell you 50 stories like this of people who are actually relying on this for their livelihood. Some people are making it, using it to make rent. And then you have the issue of free speech and just being able to express it. Now, people say, what about

• 1:25:11Ro Khanna?

  China? Well, why don't you pass a broad, broader law that says any interference by a foreign government in algorithms is going to be illegal and criminal?

• 1:25:21Jason Calacanis?

  Well, India banned these apps.

• 1:25:23Ro Khanna?

  Yes.

• 1:25:23Jason Calacanis?

  And

• 1:25:24Ro Khanna?

  We're not India.

• 1:25:25Jason Calacanis?

  They're pretty savvy, though. I mean, these things are an attack vector. You can remotely control these phones. They were caught spying on journalists, and they could shape public policy. So, and they've had years to divest. Seems to me that the Chinese government sees this as a strategic military asset. Do you disagree with that?

• 1:25:45Ro Khanna?

  I do. One, I think the United States has a much, much more robust tradition of free speech than in India. And so I think our considerations are different. I also think we have far more capability in making sure that we protect our data and protect any foreign interference in algorithms. Now, President Trump has floated this idea that you have 50% US ownership. My understanding is 60% of the investors already are US investors. I will work with him and Mike Waltz, I know very well, we were co-chairs of the India Caucus together in Congress. I will work with him in a bipartisan way to figure out how do we have this app operational.

• 1:26:25Jason Calacanis?

  Chinese government spies on their own people, why wouldn't they spy on their adversary, the American people?

• 1:26:30Ro Khanna?

  Well, certainly they would, but the question is, are they, can we protect the American people from that happening on this app? We can, as long as we have two clear laws, one that the data stays here. By the way, a lot of the data that's going to China, the China Communist Party is through data brokers. There's no law against that. So pass a law that all data of Americans, if it goes to in the hands of-

• 1:26:52David Friedberg?

  Which, by the way, there's US companies that are selling that data, there's US companies that are buying that data. Any third party can access that data if they want to buy it in one of the markets. That stuff exists, it's existed for a very long time.

• 1:27:03Ro Khanna?

  And, and the irony of it is, I'm going back to the trade deficit. China's got, the same week China announces $1 trillion trade surplus, they're building more drones than us, more ships than us, more steel than us. We're talking about banning this TikTok app.

• 1:27:18David Friedberg?

  More electricity.

• 1:27:18Ro Khanna?

  You know, I mean-

• 1:27:19Jason Calacanis?

  Well, what about the concept of reciprocity? Would you be in favor of requiring that we have our social networks in China if they want to have theirs here?

• 1:27:29Ro Khanna?

  I would be in favor of us pushing for our social media networks to be there just because of free speech. But I would not allow the Chinese Communist Party to be controlling any social media app or having any influence, whether it's on TikTok or whether it's on any other app. I don't want to name another app because I don't want to malign other apps incorrectly. But pass a law that says it's a criminal offense if an executive in this country is found collaborating or overseeing any app that has any influence in the algorithms by the Chinese Communist Party, or if our data goes to the, in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. You could, you could have a law where it's still keeping TikTok operational.

• 1:28:09David Friedberg?

  Yeah, you litigate the outcome, you don't litigate the method.

• 1:28:12Jason Calacanis?

  I don't trust China as much as you gentlemen do.

• 1:28:14David Friedberg?

  It's not about trusting China, Jason, it's not about trusting China, and you keep trying to characterize it as like people being pro-China. If they're pro-free speech or they're pro-giving people options-

• 1:28:22Jason Calacanis?

  It's not the only platform you can have free speech.

• 1:28:24David Friedberg?

  You're making, you continue to make assumptions about security when there are security issues with a lot of apps and security issues with a lot of phones.

• 1:28:30Jason Calacanis?

  They don't have the same scale as TikTok.

• 1:28:32David Friedberg?

  Disagree.

• 1:28:32Jason Calacanis?

  The scale of TikTok is extraordinary.

• 1:28:34Ro Khanna?

  Jason, I'll tell you where we got the politics wrong. I, I mean, so Donald Trump comes in there and he says, you know what? The Chinese took your jobs, they took your steel jobs, they took your auto jobs, and we're going to have tariffs. And by the way, this TikTok thing, pretty popular app for young people, we're gonna keep it. What do, what do, what do we do? We do the exact opposite. We have running ads, we don't want tariffs. So we're telling all these folks in the Midwest that were opposed to the policies that could save some of their jobs. And then we're telling all these young people that we want to ban TikTok.

• 1:29:07Jason Calacanis?

  And in fairness, they didn't take the jobs we gave them to them.

• 1:29:10Ro Khanna?

  At, at some point, I think we've got it. One of the things the Democrats need to do is stop listening to the foreign policy blob and the Beltway exec, you know, pundits who've got fancy titles and fancy think tanks. And every time we get these letters, 500 groups, 200 groups, I said, who are these groups? These are 200 groups with 130 people. It's like every person has three groups. And we're listening to them as opposed to listening to the people.

• 1:29:36Jason Calacanis?

  I just popped up five groups while we're speaking here.

• 1:29:38Ro Khanna?

  You know, and I, and I think part of what Trump was doing, I mean, I, and I obviously totally oppose him. I voted for his impeachment twice, but it was sort of like in the, in our world, A B testing or fast iterations. He put out ideas, he'd get feedback, he iterates it. He may not call it that, but he's just kind of gauging where people are at.

• 1:29:56Jason Calacanis?

  Let's talk about one of those ideas. Americans want the border secure. There's no doubt about that. The statistics just show it. 80% of Americans want it kind of shut down and be orderly and legal, maybe even more. But this idea that we're going to drag 15 million people out of the country.

• 1:30:13David Friedberg?

  Jason's using the word drag because he continues to.

• 1:30:15Jason Calacanis?

  No, I'm just quoting Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who work, one of them worked in the first administration and architected his first win. And the other one is the most powerful person inside the administration this time. So I'm just quoting people. They say day one, 15 million are going. So do you think that's actually going to happen? And do you think it should happen?

• 1:30:35Ro Khanna?

  It shouldn't happen. Whether it's actually going to happen or not, I don't know, is the answer. Whether they're gonna try. What do you think should happen? I think you should have people who are convicted. First of all, we need a secure border. We need to encourage people to come here through the legal process like my parents did or like so many.

• 1:30:55David Friedberg?

  When you say encourage, do you say encourage or require?

• 1:30:58Ro Khanna?

  Require, but, but, but to do that, we've got to have reform to make that more possible because right now that's a, a, a, a very hard thing to do. And it wasn't as hard, by the way, when my father came in the 1960s, studied engineering, had a green card within months of, of, of graduating. So how do we do that? But of course, require people to come through the legal process and secure the border. I don't deny that there's been a problem on the border, but, and then for those who are criminals here, who are convicted, convicted of crimes, fine, deport, deport.

• 1:31:32Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we all agree on that. Those all seem logical and, and obvious.

• 1:31:35Ro Khanna?

  But, but in terms of, so let me tell you someone in my district without telling your name. I mean, you, you tell me what, what should happen to this person. She's a, she's been in the country. She's undocumented. She came to, to, to see me with a, a group of people. She's a dental hygienist. Her daughter is going to med school.

• 1:31:53David Friedberg?

  She's undocumented.

• 1:31:54Ro Khanna?

  She's undocumented.

• 1:31:55David Friedberg?

  Do you consider yourself to be her representative? She's not a citizen of the United States. She doesn't have a legal right to vote. Are you representing that undocumented, non-American person?

• 1:32:04Ro Khanna?

  I am supposed to represent everyone in the district.

• 1:32:06David Friedberg?

  That lives there, regardless of their citizenry.

• 1:32:09Ro Khanna?

  I, I, my, my.

• 1:32:10David Friedberg?

  Citizenship.

• 1:32:11Ro Khanna?

  I don't, we don't ask in terms of their citizenship, in terms of just being a representative of the area. No, I won't.

• 1:32:18David Friedberg?

  But as a congress member, you believe that you should represent non-Americans that happen to be domiciled in your region, in your district?

• 1:32:25Ro Khanna?

  I don't think, I don't think that I need to represent their political views, but if they're being abused in terms of the process in some way, and they came to us within the law, we would figure out how they got due process.

• 1:32:39Jason Calacanis?

  So you would have empathy and sympathy for the person living in your district, even if they weren't legal, is what you're saying, I think. It's quite reasonable, if I may interpret.

• 1:32:47Ro Khanna?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a more eloquent way of putting it, but let me just tell you about this, this person. So she's, she, her daughter is in, uh, med school in, in Southern California. She drives down once a month. And drives back because she can't afford a hotel down there. And the reason she can't afford a hotel is she's being underpaid as a dental hygienist for 20 years. Now, do you really think we need to deport her? And what is that going to do to her daughter? Or do, can we find a path?

• 1:33:12Jason Calacanis?

  Sounds like a great potential American to me.

• 1:33:15David Friedberg?

  Well, the, the, the, um, the alternative point of view, someone would say, um, I'll play the, the advocate, the devil's advocate here. They would say, but there is another American who is qualified to be a dental hygienist, who cannot get a job, who would be getting paid more because they are a citizen and they are legal and documented. This person is undercharging their employer and they are taking a job away from America. And that's what the counter argument would be from some people.

• 1:33:39Ro Khanna?

  So there are two things. One, I agree that if there's someone who is in a position that is undocumented or even on an H1B, and they are being underpaid, that's wrong. That's why we need reform so that people are being paid appropriately and aren't being, employers aren't abusing the process to drive down market wages. But the argument that they're taking American jobs misses a central point. And that is when you have a immigrant as a worker, yes, you're increasing the labor supply. And the, if you increase supply, that drives down price or wages. But you're also increasing demand because they're spending a lot of money on things. And most-

• 1:34:17David Friedberg?

  I've always viewed this to be more of a demand part of the equation for growing the US population. You can actually increase the economic growth.

• 1:34:23Jason Calacanis?

  So let's put a number on this. Yeah. You know, so clearly you don't believe these people should be dragged out of the country.

• 1:34:29Ro Khanna?

  Correct.

• 1:34:30Jason Calacanis?

  I think we're in agreement on that. Some people are not. MAGA 1.0. Do you believe they should be dragged out?

• 1:34:36David Friedberg?

  It's a long, uh, let's-

• 1:34:37Ro Khanna?

  I don't want to put you on this fire.

• 1:34:38David Friedberg?

  No, no, it's, it's not that simple. Um, and I'm really hungover today, so I'm not going to be super articulate about it. Um-

• 1:34:44Jason Calacanis?

  What about that dental hygienist who's been here for 20 years? Would you give her amnesty? I would. Seems like a great American. Working hard, has a daughter.

• 1:34:53David Friedberg?

  Obviously, being empathetic, I think, for me, would always be a priority. That person should not lose their job, lose their life. That's a very hard circumstance. At the same time, there are a lot of Americans who feel they are getting underpaid, that they don't have jobs. And there's empathy that I think is part of the alternative side of that equation.

• 1:35:09Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I would, you know, let me, let me ask this question. Whenever we talk about immigration- We never have a number put on it.

• 1:35:17Ro Khanna?

  I should have been a politician.

• 1:35:18Jason Calacanis?

  And we never have a point, we don't have a point based system here. So it devolves into this discussion we're having right here, which is, oh, they, they stole our jobs and wages are down in the face of the lowest unemployment of our lifetime, uh, 4% and 7, 8 million jobs out there. There's two jobs for every person who's unemployed. If you do that basic math. Now, of course, there's some disparity in people having the skills to take certain jobs and geography. Putting all that aside, we have 340 million Americans. Would, would an easy situation here be to say, we will import people based on the need in the country? So if we don't have enough people working in healthcare, we're going to open up.

• 1:35:56Jason Calacanis?

  And if unemployment's under 10%, we'll have 3 million people coming a year. We'll have 2 million people coming a year and just put a number on it and then have Americans and our representatives debate that number. Why don't you guys do this?

• 1:36:09Ro Khanna?

  Well, I'd say two things. I think my view of why we have lost jobs and stagnation has been the offshoring of so much of our industry and the hollowing out of towns and communities where we just watched as wealth piled up in districts like ours. Not because we, people in our district stole the wealth from Youngstown or Downriver. It's just that the wealth was piling up, industry was being offshored, and there was kind of indifference towards it. And if we want real solutions, we need to have economic revitalization instead of blaming the dental hygienist in my district. Like, that's not why, uh, you know, Johnstown or Warren, Ohio are suffering. They, the broader point, though, is that we have a number on, uh, green cards and, uh, legal immigrants, around 1.4 million a year.

• 1:36:52Ro Khanna?

  And then we should debate, how do we, uh, where, which categories do you want to increase it? Why? Uh, and how do you get people out of the status where they're being underpaid? I do think that's what's hurting is these, is whether you're on an H1 and you're there for years and you're being underpaid, uh, or whether you're undocumented and being underpaid, that's hurts the American worker far more than when they're in a status.

• 1:37:15Jason Calacanis?

  That's such an important point. People don't understand this about the H1Bs is they are transferable, but you have 30 days, which makes essentially, as it was explained to me when I was in the IT business, these are indentured servants and they don't have choice and they have this, you know, threat that they're constantly under. If you don't do what we say as an employer and you don't accept the salary, you're going to be out of the country.

• 1:37:35Ro Khanna?

  Exactly.

• 1:37:36Jason Calacanis?

  And you're going to have to take your family with you. Would an easier solution to be to just charge 10% of the salary into a pool? As a tax, so people don't abuse it, the salaries go up, have a minimum salary, and give them maybe a year to find another job. What do you think of that?

• 1:37:50Ro Khanna?

  I think that type of a solution is reasonable and have them be paid well. I mean, this idea that they're being abused, you know, put a floor or have it be prioritized based on the highest wages because that's a reflective of talent coming in. But, you know, you don't want a situation like now where you're on H1 for three years, then you get it extended because you apply for a green card to six years. And then while your green card application is in process, it keeps getting extended. So these folks are here 10, 12 years. And, and, and, and the abuse of it. And, and my view is, you know, I think the American people are pretty decent and fair. I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was 95, 98% white. It was a few Indian American families. And I grew up with a belief that you could do anything in America.

• 1:38:35Jason Calacanis?

  Look at you.

• 1:38:36Ro Khanna?

  And, and, you know, the country trusted me to represent a district with $12 trillion of value of the most economically prosperous place perhaps in the history of humanity. Perhaps.

• 1:38:47Jason Calacanis?

  What a meritocracy, huh?

• 1:38:48Ro Khanna?

  Right. And I, I, I just think that that is America. And people are upset at the extremes. They're upset at the abuses. They're upset that there wasn't a process on the border. But deep down, this country has always been one that embraces immigration. And most, almost, most immigrants tend to be very patriotic.

• 1:39:08Jason Calacanis?

  So when you hear Stephen Miller say, "America is for Americans and American only," you think that flies in the face of the spirit of this country?

• 1:39:16Ro Khanna?

  I'd say, what does he mean by Americans? You know what I want to do? I'd love to have lunch with him, actually.

• 1:39:21Jason Calacanis?

  Me too.

• 1:39:21Ro Khanna?

  You know, maybe have him on All In.

• 1:39:23Jason Calacanis?

  Be great.

• 1:39:24David Friedberg?

  You want to join for that?

• 1:39:25Ro Khanna?

  I'd love to. And, you know, we should all, instead of just reading every tweet, you know, read Lincoln's.

• 1:39:30David Friedberg?

  Because I heard he's a guy that if you sit down with him and have a long form conversation, you get a lot more than what the short form media. Bytes have been about him. So I'd actually be really

• 1:39:40Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, no, I would love to have him on because I watched his entire speech and the way he speaks seems incredibly xenophobic and a bit racist to me.

• 1:39:46Ro Khanna?

  So what I would, I would argue, what I would ask him about is, is, is without being too pedantic about history is Lincoln has the speech in 1858 on Independence Day. And the challenge for Lincoln is to say, how is a German American or French American, American? Because back then, to be American, you literally had to trace one great grandparent who fought the Revolutionary War. How could you be American if no one in your family fought the Revolutionary War? And Lincoln has this brilliant formulation that he says, you're flesh of the flesh, blood of the blood of the founders, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in the Declaration of Independence. And so I'd say to Stephen, do you, do you still believe that? What, how are you defining?

• 1:40:27Jason Calacanis?

  It's okay if you don't too, right? I mean, if we can have that discussion in America, if we're pulling the ladder up now and we're not a land of immigrants.

• 1:40:32David Friedberg?

  But I agree with you. I'm an immigrant. I think the immigrants are the most patriotic.

• 1:40:36Jason Calacanis?

  That's why I believe in it. It's because of you, Friedberg.

• 1:40:38David Friedberg?

  Everything was, well, I mean, you should because

• 1:40:40Jason Calacanis?

  You've done great things and look what you're gonna do for potatoes.

• 1:40:43David Friedberg?

  From, you know, South Africa when I was six years old and I'm hanging out in Washington DC with a congressman.

• 1:40:48Jason Calacanis?

  And how many jobs have you created?

• 1:40:50David Friedberg?

  And the president and the vice president, I get to meet all these people and hang out with them. It's

• 1:40:53Jason Calacanis?

  And you've created thousands of jobs and you're gonna create billions of extra calories with these amazing Ohana strawberries.

• 1:41:00David Friedberg?

  Ohalo is the name of my company.

• 1:41:03David Friedberg?

  I think, I think my company might actually be in your district. You cover Santa Cruz County?

• 1:41:06Ro Khanna?

  Uh, no, that's Jimmy Panetta.

• 1:41:07David Friedberg?

  I see. Okay.

• 1:41:08Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Well, no favors here.

• 1:41:09David Friedberg?

  Let me ask you a question. Um, do you think the United States should spend $200 billion to acquire Greenland from Denmark?

• 1:41:14Jason Calacanis?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:15David Friedberg?

  Denmark has $150 billion debt.

• 1:41:19Ro Khanna?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:20David Friedberg?

  They could build a public pension plan. They could

• 1:41:22Ro Khanna?

  Here's what, what are we trying to solve? First of all, I'm a person that believes that we need to respect the self-determination of other countries. That's what makes us different than Britain. That makes us different than Rome, America, you know, when my

• 1:41:34David Friedberg?

  Even though we intervene in foreign elections and use military force to overturn foreign governments?

• 1:41:39Ro Khanna?

  Well, nobody's perfect. There you go. There you go. I gotta get this guy on. He's got my tongue.

• 1:41:47David Friedberg?

  You know, if you ever need a hype man or a campaign manager.

• 1:41:49Jason Calacanis?

  Fuck yeah, let's go.

• 1:41:51David Friedberg?

  When you do your, when you do your run for governor.

• 1:41:53Ro Khanna?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:41:54Jason Calacanis?

  By the way, this show has been brought to you not only by Ro, but also Roman. Go to get Roman Ro. I gotta wrap up. You gotta go.

• 1:42:01David Friedberg?

  No, no, hold on. I want to hear the Greenland answer.

• 1:42:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, Greenland. Yes, no, maybe.

• 1:42:04Ro Khanna?

  No, but the question is why, what interests does Greenland have? They have critical minerals. They have a lot of important resources and basically they want to partner economically with us. They're letting us invest. They're letting us develop it. So what, what, what, what do we gain?

• 1:42:21David Friedberg?

  You're saying we could achieve our objectives without, without it becoming a territory?

• 1:42:24Jason Calacanis?

  What about Puerto Rico as a 51st state?

• 1:42:26Ro Khanna?

  Do you really want, here's, here's my cautionary tale. I think this could be the dispositive argument. Every time Bernie Sanders ran, you know what he talked about? The politics of Denmark. You really want Greenland as a state?

• 1:42:39Jason Calacanis?

  We're gonna get to Denmark. They call it getting to Denmark.

• 1:42:42Ro Khanna?

  Greenland is gonna, that's gonna, those two senators are gonna be Democratic senators.

• 1:42:46Jason Calacanis?

  We're gonna have two years of paternity.

• 1:42:48David Friedberg?

  If you watch some of the interviews that have come out on Twitter from the people that live in Greenland, they're sick of the socialist, you know, kind of overseers. I think they do want to have a different way of governing.

• 1:42:56Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know, man. I'm gonna have more kids if I get two years of paternity. It sounds pretty amazing.

• 1:43:00David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but it is, I mean, look, I don't think that you're necessarily getting that, but there's.

• 1:43:04Jason Calacanis?

  What about Puerto Rico?

• 1:43:05David Friedberg?

  It's an important question is like, does, um, does the United States need territorial dominion? To achieve its strategic objectives.

• 1:43:14Jason Calacanis?

  I'm open, I'm open minded. What about Puerto Rico?

• 1:43:17Ro Khanna?

  Well, I, there too, like, look, every Democrat is like, oh, we want Puerto Rico. Why? Cause you're gonna get two Democratic senators and congresspeople. But my view is it should be a Puerto Rico self, a referendum.

• 1:43:27Jason Calacanis?

  If 80, 90% want to do it, you'd be down?

• 1:43:29Ro Khanna?

  Yes, if they want to join the United States, because that's a different thing. There, there we cut, you know, we basically took that as a territory. Now let's see what they want to do.

• 1:43:37Jason Calacanis?

  I'm all for it. Let's go straight to 60 states.

• 1:43:38David Friedberg?

  And are you, are you running for governor in California?

• 1:43:40Ro Khanna?

  No, are you?

• 1:43:42Jason Calacanis?

  Why not? You've done such a great job.

• 1:43:44Ro Khanna?

  Well, I've thought about it, Jason, but...

• 1:43:46Jason Calacanis?

  No, not you, Roe.

• 1:43:47Ro Khanna?

  I think there's a... I love being in Congress. I love representing Silicon Valley. And I have been focused on how do we get innovation, technology partnering with communities to have economic revitalization.

• 1:44:01Jason Calacanis?

  If you were asked, would you consider?

• 1:44:02David Friedberg?

  But didn't I see a rumor this week that someone said something that you were? Am I wrong?

• 1:44:06Ro Khanna?

  I think someone may have floated a rumor. I'm trying to get...

• 1:44:08Jason Calacanis?

  If asked by your party and the citizens of California, would you consider? Would you consider it? That's just it, consider it.

• 1:44:15Ro Khanna?

  I'd consider anything, but, you know.

• 1:44:17Jason Calacanis?

  There you go. All right, he considered it.

• 1:44:18David Friedberg?

  Your campaign manager might...

• 1:44:20Ro Khanna?

  I need to... I mean, he's good. Well, he's got his moments. I'll give him that. His hand is wrapped.

• 1:44:27Jason Calacanis?

  That's a wrap from the 47th inauguration of the United States, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.