Rahm Emanuel: Trump's Foreign Policy, China, Europe's Decline, Immigration & DSA vs Democrats

(0:00) Jason and Friedberg welcome Rahm Emanuel (1:16) Lessons from working with Clinton and Obama (7:45) China: How to approach conflict, new economic bloc, isolation, and Taiwan (28:49) Europe: Reasons for the decay of the West (38:37) Immigration: US solutions, who to emulate, subsidizing college for Americans (46:55) National debt, government interference in markets, fixing education (1:09:24) DSA vs Democrats Follow Rahm: https://x.com/RahmEmanuel Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@allin 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.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody, we are super pleased to have Rahm Emanuel join us for the all in interview today. He was the senior advisor of Bill Clinton, last president, reside over zero national debt, and he was Obama's chief of staff, mayor of Chi-Town, ambassador to my favorite country to visit Japan under President Biden. He hasn't made an official announcement about his presidential run in 2028, nor do I think he's going to make an announcement here, but he's been talking a lot about where the country needs to go in a post-Trump world, specifically in 2028. Friedberg and I are going to ask Rahm about the most important topics facing America today: the economy, inflation, employment,

• 0:41Jason Calacanis?

  surging national debt, never-ending wars, the rise of socialism and sadly antisemitism, immigration, skilled and legal, and how his positions have evolved over four decades of service to America. Welcome to the all-in interview, Rahm Emanuel. Welcome, Rahm.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:58Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, there you go.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  I didn't know that was the cue. I was like waiting for, that was a bit, it felt like an obituary. I was waiting for the rabbi to get up. That introduction is the only one that ever starts with Clinton. Usually, they start my career in Congress, and so I give you a lot of kudos for remembering that I started as senior advisor to President Clinton, so.

• 1:29Jason Calacanis?

  Well, let's start with that. What did you learn under Clinton and Obama and, you know, these two, what I would say are the last two sane presidents we seem to have had who were moderates, in my mind, I'm a moderate, slightly left-leaning, but these seem to have been two great presidential runs that you were involved in. What did you learn from each of those individuals?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  They have different skill sets, so let's also, but they, they had an outlook of the world, they had an outlook of the United States in the world, they had an outlook of kind of a progressive affirmative view of government. I think they, most importantly, which I kind of remind everybody, you can't have progressive policies if people think that the government can't run an organized one-car parade. Not possible. They have to have an affirmative view. And the last time you've had a net positive was under Bill Clinton. And it actually wasn't for, the balanced budget obviously helped, but actually it shifts when he signs welfare reform. And you can go back and look at the data. But

• 2:31Speaker 01

  to their skill set, Bill Clinton was a unique person who, in my view, was able to integrate in three-dimensional chess both policy, politics, and press, and understood the presidency as a, in a way that Teddy Roosevelt had redefined it. He was redefining it for the 21st century, and he really meant what he said being a bridge there. And nobody was better, not just in giving a speech, but taking a policy, being able to communicate, to carry people from where they were to change and may not make change threatening, and then achieve

• 3:10Speaker 01

  the objectives you wanted. That said, President Obama, in my own view, coming at the end, or not the end, but the Iraq War, etc., understood that this was a different president, both the end of the Iraq War or towards the end, and the financial meltdown, that we were at a pivotal moment and a transitional moment for America. And I do think, you know, look, every president gets judged, what's the world you inherited? What is the world you leave behind? And sometimes the harshest critics of both Obama and Clinton come from the left, not the right. And I said, is it the peace or the prosperity you don't like

• 3:51Speaker 01

  most? Because I'll, I'll address it, was it the fact that post-Reagan, Clinton's economy grew the most, jobs grew the most, and income disparity shrunk the most? And people were calling it the unipower, that no country, both economically, politically, militarily, had as the power the United States had. Now, we can get back to what happened there. And then I think, in the same way, the left criticizes Obama for being kind of tepid. And, you know, he hires a country that's near a depression, known as the Great Recession, but it was actually getting close to a depression, saves it from that, transitions from losing

• 4:31Speaker 01

  800,000 jobs to creating 200,000 jobs, and, you know, gets America out of two wars, continues, obviously, the war on terror, but repositions America in the world to be a force for good. And I learned how you, you know, it's not like a to-do kit, there's no kind of, there's no to-do kit in the drawer of the Resolute Desk, but the merging of policy, politics, and I want to say public relations, but communications.

• 5:03David Friedberg?

  Did Obama export American democracy as a point of primary policy? And did that lead to this world that we find ourselves in today where there's this pullback because a lot of what gets exported ends up being kind of one side of the political spectrum, not the other? And now we're kind of seeing this, what did we do?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I made this point a long time ago. I said it recently at the Aspen Security Conference, so I'm now writing my next op-ed on this, the journal, as a prelude of a curtain raiser to the summit by Xi and Trump. I'm, I'm labeling it the summit of disruption. Xi's largest export is not autos, electronics. It's the domestic economic dysfunction of China. They're crushing everybody else's countries' manufacturing base, industrial base across the world. They have more cases, WTO cases, than any other country, and all of them combined are against China. Chile's steel plant, Indonesia's garment plant, Brazil's

• 6:07Speaker 01

  for furnaces. We are exporting our domestic political and cultural dysfunction. That is, the two superpowers are holding the world hostage, one through economic dysfunction and the domestic, I mean, Xi refuses to deal with the, obviously, the real estate bubble popping, a consumer that's flat on their back, and an industrial base that makes no rational sense. And so they're, I mean, literally, they're, as an example, their auto industry is now exporting more cars and their profits are down 20%.

• 6:41David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  We, I mean, by, through Trump, you can look at what he's doing in Brazil, nine days before the German election, meeting with the neo-Nazi party, the AFD, there was race tensions in Great Britain, we seemed, we want to exacerbate them. We are literally exporting both political and cultural dysfunction at our home, onto the world. Now, I happen to think this president stylistically likes to punch down and kiss up to Putin and Xi, but that's a stylistic point. But that's what the two superpowers, they don't seem to have managed their internal, and now they're exporting it on the rest of the world as a dumping ground for their domestic problems. I happen to think, coming back from Japan,

• 7:27Speaker 01

  etc., that rather than have terrorists, we should have an economic block so all of us together can withstand China, to actually organize not only that economic block, but then kind of other, meet them in the marketplace. That's how we, you know, win friends and influence enemies.

• 7:45David Friedberg?

  Yeah, is that a different view than the Obama-era notion that we should be exporting American culture, American democracy, I think was the framing? And that then opened the floodgates to exporting our culture wars. And then our culture wars became this kind of battleground where there's like transgender theater in Africa and like things that, right? I mean, all of this stuff.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  No, I don't think that's what opened the door. Look, David, I think the United States of America, like every country, has four tools in their national security toolbox. One is military power. Second is political persuasion. Third is economic statecraft, and fourth is cultural attraction. And you're saying that, I mean, I think America's culture writ large, not just Hollywood.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  The American brand is a cultural attraction, or was. I actually think this president has hurt the American brand. Our economic statecraft, our market, our technology, our universities and research, our national labs, that is a piece of our economic statecraft, is a piece of our national security. And our ability, you know, there was a great story the other day by David Granberg, you know, only the United States can get Russia and Ukraine around the table. There is no other world like power. Our political persuasion to do that is an asset in our national security toolbox. If you wanted to do, the reason I laid out in my speech in the Middle East, in Israel, the 23-state solution, China, Russia,

• 9:29Speaker 01

  or Europe cannot do that. Only we can do that. Now, we have a massive political, a military power. Each, I happen to think it's not prepared for the future. That's on both parties. I was also present at them. I think we got so enamored with the war on terror, we lost sight of the transformation that was happening on the battlefield and the technologies. You can see that in the drone areas, example. Neither Iran or Ukraine have a navy, and they both control waterways near their fronts. Tells you everything you need to know, that you're not fighting two wars, you're fighting two different types of wars. And we got to get ready for that. So, to me, this also is a slight sickness

• 10:09Speaker 01

  of all you guys in media, which is, where do we point the blame? I don't think Obama representing our cultural attractions around the globe. I do think America being popular around the globe is a political asset that then you use. Now that America's brand, under Trump, is in the toilet, that actually hurts America and its political power, its economic statecraft, and its military capabilities. Simple. So, I don't kind of say, you know, I don't think that we were exporting those cultural things, and therefore, that's where this problem came. I don't, that's not how I see the point of origin, or what has happened here.

• 10:47David Friedberg?

  Fair enough. Can I just ask one thing on China? So, China's been historically-

• 10:52Speaker 01

  It's your podcast. You can ask whatever you want. It's whether I answer it.

• 10:56David Friedberg?

  Well, I'm just here for Jason, at his pleasure, but, um, so- You're doing fine, sweetie, keep going.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true for both of us.

• 11:05David Friedberg?

  Okay, well, thanks. Jason's gonna have me back. Okay, so, as I look at China, historically, it's been about this manufacturing base, this energy production capacity, right? I often reference, they're on their way to eight terawatts of electricity production. We're kind of sitting around one, hovering around one, finding it very hard to get to two by 2040. So, China's got this massive amount of energy that they can use to power electrified things. They've got 20 times the manufacturing square footage of the US, and much of it is automated. But now, with AI, and open sourcing AI, not only is China kind of dampening the capacity to compete in manufacturing, making molecules, making pharmaceuticals,

• 11:49David Friedberg?

  making materials, now we're seeing them effectively eliminate the capacity to compete in knowledge, services, and IP. And this has really been the heart of the US economy, at least for the last 30 years, probably going back even further. But as we shifted to a more kind of global trade-oriented economy, and we allowed manufacturing to move to China and elsewhere, we focused on this kind of knowledge and services base. Do you think that we have a response against China today with how we're positioned economically and what's going on with AI? And this is the thing I worry a lot about in this China-US conflict, is we're all still looking at the last 30 years, as opposed to thinking about what the next 20 years look like, in a world of kind of AI commoditization, of all the things that American economy's been powered by?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  One, so let's step back. The way I see it is, we got, Xi comes to power, and we buy into this win-win stuff that he's selling. And it was never a win-win. China wants everybody dependent on China, and them independent of you. That is their theory of the case. Our markets are going to be so big and important, you can't do anything about it. You're going to be dependent, your economy, on our markets. We're going to leverage that, and then destroy,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  manipulate, and control your sovereignty. And we'll be independent of you. We don't need your market. And we'll have multiple, if you give us barley, we're going to have five other people give up. Look at the soybeans case, the United States. We'll cut off your soybeans, we've got Brazil and Argentina soybeans. So, they have duplicity in the system. So, they have maximum latitude with minimum for us, or anybody else. Second, I take a lesson out of COVID. And I think this is illustrative of their plan, and how we have to get smart. We have to learn from our mistakes. You can't ignore them. You

• 13:51Speaker 01

  should look. And I'm going to get back to your software piece. But in COVID, Xi notices in Operation Warp Speed, that within 12 months, 14, whatever, the United States develops a vaccine that has a 90-plus percent efficacy. China takes 18, 19 months, and their efficacy is in the 60%. And we know for a fact that a lot of Chinese leaders were not taking the Chinese vaccine, but they were ended up taking quietly Pfizer, Moderna, et cetera. And they couldn't export this vaccine. Nobody in the Third World wants, that's a huge opportunity

• 14:31Speaker 01

  for America. We squander it. On the political side, the economic side, the cultural side. Winning, quote-unquote, the global cell. Second, Xi makes a decision that will never happen again, massively invests in the life sciences, and within five years, China is not just nipping at our heels to pursue with the United States in life sciences. A place that the United States, outside of one or two examples in Europe, dominated. Now, again, I'm going to take a shot at Trump. Every budget, he's proposed a 40% cut in NIH. Every budget. And the Republicans face off and allow 15%. You're not going to cut NIH in your way to

• 15:16Speaker 01

  American leadership. There's a pancreatic drug on the market. It came from NIH funding. And it's actually now looking like it will actually address three or four other cancers. The NIH, the National Science Foundation, and DARPA, and America's national labs, and our national universities, are our crown jewel. And what are we doing? We have an administration declaring war, and actually involved in unilateral disarmament. Now, software and manufacturing, we are dominant in software and in those tech spaces. It doesn't, we shouldn't think it's either software or manufacturing. It's both. We allowed one

• 15:57Speaker 01

  to atrophy. Everybody, we allowed a commercialization of our national security. The Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, way over-influenced our national security vis-à-vis China, when we saw industry by industry, supply chain by supply chain, move offshore, and America's economy kept getting vulnerable. And that's on everybody. Everybody. And the other piece of it is, so what we need to do, what's the next 20 years? One, aggregate Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, EU, friends in Latin America, and get more friends. Don't declare war on Brazil. It's a big economy in the region. Make it an economic block. Because

• 16:40Speaker 01

  standing together makes China isolated. Isolate the isolator. Then, use that time of a block, not our unilateral actions, but in an economic block where we're the dominant player, to organize our research and our capacity to then build up. Now, example, using the defense industry. The United States, again, flat-footed, but don't underestimate the United States. New technology, entrepreneurs, venture capital, the DARPA research arm, and the United States' ability to deploy, you give us five years, and our capacity of that incredible system

• 17:24Speaker 01

  will produce, as long as we don't let Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics, to kill it, and Pentagon to nurture it. But we have to use the time of an economic block to stand up what we have allowed to atrophy, and then to organize that block to confront China, and then China, and North Korea, and Iran, and Russia. We isolate them. And right now, I got to be honest, the president has isolated America, and America's vulnerability. So, that's how I look at the next 20.

• 17:58David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And where do the Middle East nations fit into that equation? Are they part of the block?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Sure. David, I would say this, there's three trends going on in the Middle East. Step back from the news of the Strait of Hormuz. There's three or four trends that we then aggregate. And one of the reasons I laid out, what I laid out in Israel-

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Is a way that would isolate Iran. It would be a good day for Israel's security, a good day for America's leadership, and a good day for American allies in the Middle East. The UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait are staying with kind of the United States. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan in that first list. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar look like they're hedging. They know they're reliant on America, but they're not going to be so dependent that they're vulnerable because of the lack of the leadership in two wars, Iran and Iraq. That's one trend.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  And one of the reasons I mentioned the speech, the India, Middle East, Europe economic corridor, it keeps everybody coming closer to the United States economically and also politically on 23 states. Second, Iran invested 40 years and 40 billion plus in the, what Israel described as the octopus, the proxies. Hamas is degraded to defeat. I thought there was a very good article in the Foreign Affairs on this point. Hezbollah is cornered. Damascus and Syria has been lost, and the Iraqi president seems to be making a pretty good headway, not all the way there, on dealing with the militia.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  That strategy of the proxies is so different. And an example of that, you have the Lebanese government working with Israel on cornering Hezbollah and degrading it. Syria, a non-Assad president, is now talking to Israel about a security agreement. That would mean Jordan peace, Egypt peace, Syria security agreement. The three forces on the Six Day War all came to some resolution with Israel as a fact. Massively different, strategically different. And Syria will be the outlaw of a pipeline from Basra to their port for energy around the Strait of Hormuz. These are big opportunities.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  So what I say, and then you obviously know about semiconductor chips, other pieces of the economics, but yes, major players in the Gulf would be part of that economic block.

• 20:39Jason Calacanis?

  Let's, before we leave China, talk a little bit about Taiwan. Obviously, Trump administration's been talking about, hey, in 2027 or 2029, China plans on invading Taiwan, seizing the fabs, et cetera. You worked under multiple administrations where strategic ambiguity was the process we're dealing with.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  One China plus.

• 21:01Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and hey, we support Taiwan and China and just keep it super ambiguous. The next president's probably going to have to deal with this.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Actually, let me say this. We keep the politics ambiguous, but as it relates to using kinetic force to change the status quo, we're not ambiguous.

• 21:17Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, unpack it.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Well, there's two different parts to the Taiwan. One, China policy, that's a political statement. And then, nobody changes the status quo through the use of force. Those are two things.

• 21:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and is, if...

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Just to prove that someone, so just to prove that somebody knows something about the Taiwan act as well as policy, yeah.

• 21:38Jason Calacanis?

  Is your thinking Taiwan will, at some point, block and do a blockade? And how would the next president, or how should the next president, deal with that circumstance? Should we be airlifting, you know, all the equipment and people out of Taiwan? Or should we be engaging in a blockade? This is, I think, the escalation that maybe isn't getting enough attention, and then we'll go back to the Iran.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Right. Well, Jason, let me start here, which is the consequence of the Iran war. China's watching the United States bog down in the Strait of Hormuz, resources allocated. Their confrontation with Philippines has picked up dramatically. Their economic, military, and political isolation in Japan, much more aggressive. They're doing things around the Senkaku Islands that are much more aggressive. They fired a live missile from a submarine in and around Australia, and all our allies in the region, those are just some of it. I could go on to Vietnam, what they've done, and other things in the Philippines being the most dramatic, in the South China Sea.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  All they now, China, is sending a message to all our allies, Korea, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Philippines, and Vietnam even. Look, your protector? No more. And the damage by this administration moving, not only resources there, attention, political, the one thing I know, you guys didn't ask, but it's not that you didn't ask, but when there's a war, the White House becomes a one-ball juggler. Okay? This White House is consumed with what's going on, and they have lost focus on the Indo-Pacific. And it's quite evident. China has picked up their aggression.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Our long pole in the Indo-Pacific is Japan. They are under economic pressure, political pressure, military. Yes, we have just come to the benefit of the yen, but we haven't done, and done anything in and around the Senkaku Islands. We haven't done anything as it relates to the economic coercion China's involved in, or the political battering.

• 23:51Jason Calacanis?

  So if China moves in, what do we do?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  So, hold on. So you say 2027. I'm like, I'm looking at today and say, you don't get to wait. It's happening now. And second is, I happen to think the South China Sea, everybody talks about the Taiwan, and I'll get to that. I think when you look at the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and you look at China's behavior and the islands they're creating again, out of the shoal, out of, you know, Scarborough Shoal, et cetera, they aren't waiting to try to say that the South China Sea, in which they lost the court case in 2016, is their backwater. And Philippines is not Taiwan, it's a country, it's a treaty ally, and it won a 2016 case. And if we don't stand up there, I don't, before you get to Taiwan...

• 24:38Jason Calacanis?

  So it sounds like, sounds like you think we should be projecting some force there, or putting some troops there, some ships there with our allies, and we have to rebuild those bridges that we burned?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Jason, we already have, we already have troops there, and we already have resources. We need to double them up and give Philippines the confidence, especially given that President Marcos is taking massive risks. Second, in Taiwan, there are three strategies. One idea is a quarantine, two is invasion, and three, off of the mainland China's coast are three islands associated with Taiwan. They got a rock, a butterfly, and a tree, and a fisherman. That's it. Now, there's three strategies. One is the economic quarantine that just suffocates Taiwan. One is an invasion that tries to end this in 96 hours. And the other one is they take over those three islands and look at the world, say

• 25:33Speaker 01

  you're going to start a war over this. And they do their incremental strategy. And if you look at China and their history, they have done all three of those, historically, with different countries. We have to be prepared for all three. One, they want a 96-hour, not a Ukraine example. We have to say, no, this is going to be 96 days, and have the resources, the capacity to say, this isn't going to be one and done, quick. Two, as it relates to quarantine, we have to be able to show, both through our resources, which is why the Philippines and the Okinawa Islands, a quarantine can't work, both air, naval, otherwise you can't pull it off.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  And then, third is the little islands off of Japan, off of China, how we have to project where before, et cetera. Because remember, there's a security piece, and there's a deterrence piece, and we need to be, our deterrence piece is very weakened right now.

• 26:31Jason Calacanis?

  I want to get your opinion also on Japan re-militarizing, since you spent some time there, and their role in this, because that seems to be an ally that's critically important, as well as South Korea. So let's go to around, right after we sort of sum up what's happening with those two allies, in your estimation, how we should be courting them. Obviously, we just backstopped the yen, and we have a pretty solid relationship with Japan.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Look, Japan is the long pole of America's Indo-Pacific policy.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  You look at the Quad, India, Australia, Japan, the United States. You look at the Trilateral, the two of them that I worked on, between Korea, Japan, and the United States, United States, Japan, and the Philippines. The one constant is Japan with the United States. Our Okinawa, our largest military footprint in the world, in a single country, is in Japan. Europe, the biggest by continent, but it's the only place in the world there is an aircraft carrier permanently based. So militarily there, last five years in a row, number one direct foreign investor in the United States, Japan. Last five years in a row, number one direct foreign investor in Japan, the United States.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  So from economic term, you know, I could, soft power, or what's called the cultural attraction, you can look at what Japan's done on baseball in the United States, between the two countries sharing a cultural attraction. So I'll just go through it. And Japan now, because the Prime Minister had the audacity to say publicly, which we have tried for 30 years to get a Japanese Prime Minister to say publicly, that a move on Taiwan would be a national security threat. She says it, China goes crazy because she said publicly, what she never wanted announced. For domestic reasons, they're now under economic coercion, political coercion, and military intimidation. You have to get there to be, and it's not just, and I'm not, I'm happy the administration's

• 28:27Speaker 01

  decided to support the yen intervention. I think there's a lot of self-interest as it relates to our treasuries and our dollars, and the pressure on our treasuries right now because of the amount of debt we have. But we have to do more, from a military training, from when Russia and China are doing exercises around the Senkaku Islands, that we're just not present for.

• 28:49David Friedberg?

  Can we go over to Europe for a minute? Before we talk about-

• 28:52Speaker 01

  This is your show, do whatever you want.

• 28:54David Friedberg?

  Domestic issues. I do want to talk about domestic issues, particularly the economy and government spending's interaction with the economy. But before we do, there's an argument that Europe is in this kind of state of irreversible decay. And many have indicated points that I think are counter to your kind of characterization of the AFD party in Germany being a neo-Nazi party, that that party is really a response to an open border policy in Europe, an open immigration policy, that many would say has really drained resources, has diluted culture.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  David, let me say one thing.

• 29:33David Friedberg?

  Yeah, please.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  The German intelligence agency has the AFD under watch. Forget whether I characterize it as a neo-Nazi, you don't want to buy it.

• 29:41David Friedberg?

  Well, the US intelligence also had Donald Trump under watch, right? So, I mean, a lot of ways we could paint that.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of ways.

• 29:50David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to be supportive of the party, I'm trying to indicate that there's a reaction to something going on in Europe. And I, yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  That, there's no doubt about, both on the cultural side and economic side, there's a reaction in Europe like there is here in the United States.

• 30:04David Friedberg?

  And so what's your view on where Europe is, how immigration played a role, and where things are going in Europe?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Look, I think immigration played a role, in the same way that I think economic stagnation played a role. And I think that, and this is also somewhat, as we get, as we transition closer to home, before we keep pushing Iran off, and we'll do that, but, look, you look at what has happened to incomes, where here in this country, we have a greater share now of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. That has-

• 30:42David Friedberg?

  Almost two-thirds, I think it's 63% of Americans are in that situation.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so that has changed our politics, and it's changed our cultural landscape. So do I think immigration plays a role? 100% it does play a role. I also think stagnating incomes, when there's greater concentration, not just of wealth, but greater concentration where the political system is skewed towards that wealth, all of that gets mixed into the stew. There isn't a separate soup dish for immigration, separate from the dish on, you know, incomes, economic growth, GDP, etc. I mean, Europe, here's my thing, I think the former Italian Prime Minister Draghi wrote

• 31:26Speaker 01

  a good plan for the EU, it is in our interest for a strong, robust, European-based economies to be technologically and otherwise contributors to the Western system. If I'm right about a block, you don't want hangarons, you want people that are actually rolling. And so I happen to believe Europe is important for America's security, important for our economic prosperity, most importantly, and we want them to be competitive. I do think they have participated in their own kind of suffocation.

• 32:05David Friedberg?

  Just on this point, Ron, because this idea that Europe is committing suicide is kind of taken form in the political narrative that's being spun, right?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Do you disagree with that?

• 32:18David Friedberg?

  I think, I think Europe has made policy decisions that are not in the best interest of the citizens of Europe.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Okay, well, okay, okay, so you said that, I said something, should, other people say suicide, okay, there's no difference.

• 32:33David Friedberg?

  But, but what is-

• 32:34Speaker 01

  The short answer is yes, you agree.

• 32:37David Friedberg?

  So, yeah, so let me ask, the policies are arguably leftist policies, they're policies that come from the left. The, the energy policy that gutted Germany's nuclear power production, and made them dependent on Russian energy, was an insane set of policy decisions. The idea that you will provide public services and public welfare programs while opening the borders to increase the population for non-productive people to come in, and then drain those resources, and then, you know, there's all the cultural dilution stuff, which I think, but the idea that AFD and other parties in Europe are arising out of, you know, like-

• 33:15Jason Calacanis?

  You're saying open borders, Friedberg, are a leftist policy for the last 40 years, that's been a Republican policy to let as many people into the country as possible to get cheap labor.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Wait a second.

• 33:26David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Is the party affiliation of Angela Merkel a mystery to you, David?

• 33:32David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Oh, no, wait a second, you made this broad brush attack about the left, Angela Merkel came out of the Christian Democrat, the conservatives. Two, it was her decision to cut the, wait, no, wait a second, you're making a point that is, I apologize, this will be the last time I'm on your show, historically wrong.

• 33:51David Friedberg?

  That's fair enough.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:53David Friedberg?

  You're welcome to tell me I'm wrong.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I'm, well, good, put on your seatbelt, I'm enjoying this right now, it's like third one. She, she's from the CDU, and when the Syrian, 1 million people that come out of Syria, she says we can handle this. That's a, that's from the Christian Democratic Union, the conservatives, that element, Kohl's Party. Number two, after the nuclear facility in Japan has its meltdown, she shuts down the nuclear facilities, and makes Germany much more dependent on Russian energy, and we were the ones that warned against it. So don't tell me this is from the left, you're wrong.

• 34:37David Friedberg?

  There was a lot of anti-nuclear rhetoric coming for a long time, just to be clear.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  But who's, who's the chancellor that said, shut it down?

• 34:45David Friedberg?

  Yeah, that was-

• 34:47Speaker 01

  No, who?

• 34:48David Friedberg?

  Merkel, Merkel, yes.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  What party is she from?

• 34:50David Friedberg?

  The Christian Democrat Union.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  What, what part of the political landscape, left or center, or right?

• 34:56David Friedberg?

  Well, nowadays, I would say far right, but-

• 34:59Speaker 01

  This is, this is crap you're selling.

• 35:02David Friedberg?

  You would probably want to characterize it, but I think the argument, yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Your basic argument, let me say, let me, now that I've decided to score my Emmanuel points on you, let me back up.

• 35:12David Friedberg?

  And immigration, and immigration, I think, yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, she did, she opened the borders when she should have been a more thoughtful person. Look, the one thing we know, I'm gonna speak at home about immigration. Look, people don't like disorder, they don't like it on the border, and they don't like it on the streets of Minneapolis. And Europe responded to the disorder, whether that's in Stockholm, whether that's in Berlin, that it seemed way out, that Europe is a very welcoming continent, but it looked out, totally out of control, as you saw just this weekend, vis-à-vis Morocco. Okay? So that's not a surprise, but to say that this is leftist is just not accurate. Brussels, on the economic front, while they were trying to regulate, suffocated innovation,

• 35:59Speaker 01

  entrepreneurship, and competitiveness. And they're trying to correct that now. Where I find fault with us, and not us being, through the Trump administration, is we are exacerbating their tensions when they're trying to deal with it. Germany today is losing, I read a story, and I gotta remember the number right-

• 36:19Speaker 01

  I think it's five to 10,000 manufacturing jobs a month to Chinese pressure. That should be an opportunity for us to come in and say, let's work together and confront China, not independently, but together. We're not doing that. We're meeting, our Vice President, nine days before election, is meeting with the AFD. When there's race problems in Great Britain, we're exacerbating them. When Maloney is dealing with some stuff domestically, we attack her.

• 36:44Jason Calacanis?

  What's the political calculus there, Rahm? Why does Trump do that?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Look, I think this is-

• 36:49Jason Calacanis?

  What's the strategy in his part if there isn't?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Jason, I have said this before and I'm gonna repeat. This president punches down and kisses up. He has this fixation about Putin and Xi admiring him as an equal, and they think he's a joke. They think he is not their equal. America is their superior, but he is not their equal. He then takes Alula in Brazil, Merz in, or a Maloney, or a Carney, or a Scheinbaum, and he punches down because he thinks if you're a middle power, I'm gonna show how big and bad I am. He is nothing but a bully, and nobody's buying it anymore. Everybody is looking at the emperor wearing no clothes.

• 37:36Jason Calacanis?

  Which I guess would be a great point for us to wrap up-

• 37:37Speaker 01

  There is no strategy to this. This is all his insecurities.

• 37:41Jason Calacanis?

  He's just winging it. Okay, so let's do Iran and then go to the United States.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I know, I was kind of feeling, I was feeling good beating up David there for a second.

• 37:50David Friedberg?

  Well, no, I mean-

• 37:50Jason Calacanis?

  This is why we're here. We're here for fucking content, David.

• 37:53David Friedberg?

  If you showed me Angela Merkel's decisions on a blank sheet of paper, I would say that's a leftist program that's pointing out.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Here's what I would say.

• 38:02David Friedberg?

  And so I would say, like, and I would say across Europe, across Europe, there has been almost this like, I don't know how to describe, and what I'm trying to understand is also the psychology versus the foreign influence on the suicidal policy decisions that seem to be wrapped up in what are prescribed leftist notions that end up becoming policy actions at scale and maybe-

• 38:26Jason Calacanis?

  And specifically, you're talking about immigration. So let's just go right at immigration.

• 38:30David Friedberg?

  Economic decisions, energy decisions, immigration decisions.

• 38:34Jason Calacanis?

  The core of it. So let's talk about immigration, Rahm. Okay, Rahm, let's just tackle one thing at a time. Immigration is a critically important one. I think we've gone from too hot, too cold. Americans didn't like an open border, as you pointed out, chaos. They also hate the chaos, just according to surveys, that ICE dragging people, you know, out of their homes and taking people who are picking strawberries and, you know, just basically beating the shit out of Americans. And in some cases, I guess we've had four deaths, and they'll be adjudicated over time. But I want to know what your solution is to immigration. We had President Trump on this podcast. He promised we'd put a green card on every diploma

• 39:16Jason Calacanis?

  of every immigrant coming here, and then they reneged on that, and they've been trying to essentially kick out some of these best and brightest we brought here, which has a negative impact on our ability to build great companies in Silicon Valley, et cetera. Almost all the great entrepreneurs we have are either immigrants or sons of immigrants, like my friend David Friedberg here. So tell us, what is Rahm Emanuel's plan for immigration post this hot and cold that we've had? Is there like a Goldilocks zone?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I actually bizarrely, I'm like the last optimist that you could actually get a deal legislatively.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I start with two principles. We're a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And whatever we do on legal and illegal has to be true to both.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Nobody likes people breaking the laws and giving a pass, and I'm included. You're looking at the guy for President Clinton that designed Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, Operation Safeguard in Nagales, Arizona, did this stuff in El Paso, my view, and then also the resources at the workplace. Tough borders, tough enforcement.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  There's a thing called the Dignity Act, has 23 Republicans, 23 Democrats in the House.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  It's true to being a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. Is it the bill that Jason would write? No. Is it a bill that Rahm Emanuel would write? No. But does it achieve the goal? Yeah. So everybody else is hiding, using rhetoric. I endorsed it. Now, if you were doing politics to think of what I'm praying, you would stay away from this and use just pablum. But to me, we gotta get this problem behind us so we have a future in front of us. You got 23 Republicans that signed on to certain things around legal and certain things around illegal. Does it tilt from the first time when the Democrats were in the majority, a little more to the Republicans' side? Yeah, they're now the majority. Now, could you tilt it back to the original?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you need leadership out of the White House, not just coming on this show of President Trump speaking pablum and never really following through, like he did on Dreamers, like he did on green card on every diploma. Legal immigration, getting the best and the brightest, going back to our China example, all these people that are leading China's life sciences came out of the United States trained, worked in our life sciences. We kicked them out like fools. Okay, so to me, pass the Dignity Act. Don't mess with it. And again, I want to be clear. It is not the bill I would write if I was sitting down at my keyboard. Does it accomplish the goal I set out? Is it a true compromise?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Do we finally do what we have to do at the border? Correct. Does it finally do what we have to do to attract the best and the brightest? Yes. And that, to me, would stop the Civil War.

• 42:17Jason Calacanis?

  What about a point-based system? It seems like all the great, high-functioning immigration countries in the world have a point-based system, and even Japan, I just learned on my last trip a couple of weeks ago, they're gonna require you have to speak the language fluently to get those jobs. And there's so many people who want to go to their great nation, they've kept it pretty tight, and they force people to assimilate. So what's your views on assimilation, speaking the language, and point-based systems?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Well-

• 42:45Jason Calacanis?

  Any lessons there from Japan?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I think the best lesson for the United States, if I could, but there's lessons. Now, remember, because you're touching something that's also both legal, et cetera, but is also historic and cultural, I don't think Japan is a perfect analogy, given it's an island.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I think if you're looking for something analogous, the two countries I would say that we have a lot to learn on to emulate as well as is both Canada, that has somewhat of a point system, their variation, their signature on it, a Canadian signature, and Denmark. And so if you're asking me, and look, Japan has 98% homogeneous society, only like 3.7 million immigrants, and they think they have an immigration problem. You look at the United States out of Denver, kind of just a quantitative, it's like totally different.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  So I look at the Canadian system, well, how Canada, because of our system or our dysfunction, is now attracting what used to be the talent that would come to America, the ability to study in America.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I actually think the Canadian model, the Danish model, closer to where we get best practices and lessons learned. The Dignity Act does some of that. Now, I'll give you an example. This is not about immigration, but it's something I spoke about when it came to affordability for higher education. I would let universities, colleges across the United States go up, set a goal. You can go up to 20% foreign students.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Today, some of them are six, some are more. I don't care how you divide it between your grad and undergrad. That's up to you, yours. But those students pay full play, they pay full price. It would subsidize our ability to get American students get a three-year BA rather than a four-year, saving mom and dad a year's worth of tuition, because the foreign students pay full boat, and they want the American brand. So, and given that they came here to study, they would more likely want to stay and then start building this country economically, as you said, from the technology and other type of companies across the United States.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  A lot of immigrants and children of immigrants came because of the university system. And that is a political power and persuasion and capacity the United States has underinvested in. So I kind of look, and the short answer is Canada and Denmark are the better examples. The Dignity Act, I don't want to sit here and go through the bill with you and rip it apart, but A, that does it. B, I want to be very clear. If you control the border,

• 45:41Speaker 01

  you send a signal that people who break the law don't get rewarded. And I'm so angry at my party, not only losing control of the border, but in the 2020 debate, raising your hand and saying, I'm gonna give healthcare to people that cross illegally. From a, forget the immigration policy, the value system. You have American families suffocating under healthcare costs. Not everybody universally covered, but we're significantly well on our way there. And you're talking about free healthcare to having crossed the border illegally? At every level, that was foolish by the party.

• 46:22Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, you're up.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Can you, Jason, I'd like you to start referring to him as David, okay? A little more, a little more comedy.

• 46:30Jason Calacanis?

  We have two Davids on the program. We got a Saxon and a Friedberg, so you say your last name.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  I'm not, that's not, that's your problem. I just think Free, I just, Friedberg is so insensitive to, and we've clearly proved that David has a lot of sensitivity on this show.

• 46:43David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I, I am very sensitive. I am, I always tell people, I'm probably the, the, the last person to ever get offended by anything, but Jason always offends me off the bat. So, Ron, I will start by just a framing, and it's a contention I'd like you to disagree with, that.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I disagree.

• 47:02David Friedberg?

  Yeah, federal, this debate club. So, no matter what I say, you are to disagree, okay?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And let's clearly establish a fact. Angela Merkel came, came out of the CDU.

• 47:13David Friedberg?

  I, I would establish a fact that I consider Angela Merkel a leftist, but we'll, we'll leave that.

• 47:18Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, it does speak to, I think, what defines each of these parties. I mean, you were part of a party that the Democrats, you know, in, I think, their, the peak moderate era, that wanted to balance the budget, that wanted the border to be controlled, and that wanted to have, you know, globalism, you know, and now that seems to be half Trump's. I mean, it's hard to define these parties anymore, especially with social.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  That's why I think actually categories like saying these are leftist policies is actually all broke, all wasted and broken. But go ahead, David.

• 47:49David Friedberg?

  Yeah. No, because I mean, even in the Trump administration, we're taking equity stakes in companies, which is not a typical free, free market conservative view, but let me just frame this up. So, I would argue that over the last 30 years, where the government spends more to try and make things more accessible to American citizens, the cost of those things goes up in a disproportionate way. The average rate of inflation in the last 30 years has been 2.5%, but housing's gone up by at least 5% a year, on average compounding. Education, over 6%, healthcare, 5.5%. And all three of these categories are categories where the federal government has launched programs to either subsidize or make available these categories of services to people through

• 48:33David Friedberg?

  promises, you're going to all have a home, you're all going to have education, you're going to all have healthcare, and the more that the government provides, 300 billion a year in housing support, 200 billion a year in education, over a trillion dollars, $2 trillion almost in healthcare, the more things get more expensive. And so, is it really the role of the government to provide these services, or get the F out of the way and let the market work? Because in all the places where the government hasn't launched services, hasn't provided support, hasn't provided loans, like technology, energy, food, consumer services, we've seen a net decrease in total cost. And so, deflation actually works when you let markets work.

• 49:18David Friedberg?

  But when the government comes in and tries to rally up markets to provide more to more people, things simply get more expensive.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:25David Friedberg?

  Tell me, tell me why I'm wrong.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  You're wrong. And the, first of all, the GI Bill was a government initiative.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Massive increase in housing and homeownership in America. Would you have recommended after World War II, for those who served overseas, no GI Bill, because the market will take care of your housing needs? It also had an education component. Number two, when you said, we don't have a, we don't, food costs went down, and the government wasn't involved, what do you consider the agricultural bill that subsidized growing of food in the United States to big agri?

• 50:02David Friedberg?

  Well, I know that bill very well, but we, we can debate that bill if you'd like, but I can, yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  No, no. Two, you say, we're not involved in energy. Well, we have a tax write-off for drilling. We're involved in energy. That's just not true.

• 50:14David Friedberg?

  You, you could make that case about everything, Ron. Like, you could say we touch everything, but our total dollar spend, our total dollar spend is what I'm talking about.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  That, that's why your analogies are wrong. And B, that, right. Now, I happen to think that the United States government, and there's a balance between

• 50:35Speaker 01

  both the private sector and the public sector. And this balance is trying to, when the forces and concentration of both power and wealth get too much, you, and I'm just having opened up the Teddy Roosevelt library, et cetera, that was a redefinition of what the government does to come to the aid of those who are most vulnerable, not just vulnerable, but vulnerable to the concentration of power. Now, to housing, there is where the government has messed up, and this is not on the national level, but on the local level, it has made it, both when you get things like in San Francisco, like in New York, you have a concentration of, of really, an economy that's doing well,

• 51:21Speaker 01

  but restrictive laws as it relates to zoning, building, permitting, that drive up costs. Not the only reason, but a contributor, a significantly contributing factor. Now, I'm not mayor today, but if I was mayor of Chicago, I would say, okay, I'm gonna put all our zoning laws, all our building laws, and all our permitting, planning laws, and I'm gonna measure them up against Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix. You tell me what we have, and why they don't have it, and why we have it, and they don't have it. And if you can't justify it, get it the hell out of here.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I would also do things, because I think the biggest problem we have in housing is first time homeownership.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  And that is a post-financial 2008 meltdown. For whatever reason, the market has gone on the high end and the low end, and the first time homeownership is where we are stuck in a sense of new construction. And I actually do think that's a place where both the public and private sector together needs to address a problem that has been now around for almost 20 years, and the private sector on their own have it fixed.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  And so, I don't agree with your analogies, and I do believe now there's places where the government gets in its own way, and there's places in which it should be targeted to incentivize the private sector to address those problems.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Now, I, that's where I would go in addressing that.

• 52:55David Friedberg?

  But do, do education, Ron, like, yeah, go ahead.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  No, I was turning my attention there.

• 53:00David Friedberg?

  Okay.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Uh, now, look, I spent eight, eight years and every day, every hour, working fixing an education system that was broken. And when I was done, Stanford called it the single best, Sean Reardon there at Stanford, the single best education system of the top 100. We drove, by example, we drove our graduation rates from 56 to 83%.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  We were, our reading and math scores at every one of the elementary levels, I'm doing this by memory, so I could be slightly wrong, it's in the report, but we were six months ahead of our peers.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  And trust me, that is not easy to achieve. Now, I'm gonna go to Louisiana at the end of September, because it's the only state whose reading and math scores have gone up to pre-COVID level, to find out what they're doing, like I went to Mississippi. On the higher ed, on the elementary level, one is, we created kid, full day kindergarten, free, full day pre-K. I'm a very big believer in early childhood. In the elementary years, three things. Universal accountability, not just teachers, parents, principals, and the schools. Two, reboot our teacher education and training, so it's constant, not just one and done.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  And the teacher, uh, training today is really flat. Give the teachers the support, so they know what to do on the subjects they're supposed to do. Constantly train them, it's not, and redo, reboot the entire teacher training program starting in our colleges. Three, is braid the resources together, so states and cities can meld it, because what happens on the south side or west side of Chicago, or what happens in our suburbs, or what happens in some of our best schools like Northside and Peyton, just isn't the same students, and, or students need more resources. But accountability through the system. Now, fourth, nobody wants to talk about it. Guess what? You gotta be at this every day.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  This is a 20-year project, not a two-year project. That's what Mississippi and Louisiana showed us. High school, fundamental reform. Elementary, stay with the, uh, the fundamentals. High school, we drove 50% of our kids, which was our goal, were graduating with college credit on high school day.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  I'd set a goal, if I decided to do this, 100% of our kids will graduate high school with college credit, through dual credit and dual enrollment with our local community colleges, of which are 1,200. Second, we're the only school district in America to set this up, and I'm gonna make it a national requirement. Nobody graduates and gets a high school diploma without showing a letter of acceptance from a college, a community college, a branch of the armed forces, or vocational school. Every child, not just Jason, David, and Rams, has a plan. They know where they're walking to when they're walking on graduation day. Universal post-high school education, I requ, and now, we hired a huge amount of college careers in the city of Chicago, but we accomplished 98% compliance with it.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Third, take $8 billion you're wasting on detention centers at the ICE, and modernize our community college systems. Both the campuses, the curriculum, and the relevancy it has to the industries in and around. Finally, fifth, higher education.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Twenty percent foreign students you're allowed up to. Two, identify 10% of the stuff that you do pay for in complying with the federal government. You keep 100% of those dollars.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Three.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  If a child graduates with 20 college credits from high school, that child is open to a three-year BA, not a four-year, saving mom and dad the equivalent of a full year of tuition. Oxford and Cambridge do three-year BAs. Second, if your income is below 200,000, you're going to go to college for free.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Fourth, or third, finally, in that area, if your income's above 200,000, it does, each year it doesn't go above inflation. That's what I would do on education. Get kids, minimum four years, ideally three, in universal pre-K. Return to the fundamentals, stay at it, bring accountability and standards back into the school system. Revamp our high school years into college career, not just diploma-driven. With two to three examples, the best one I also did, first and only school district, first city to do it. You got to be average in high school, we made community college free. The goal here is to take the high school years when you lose students and the community colleges and meld them.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  So kids are graduating high school with college credit, prepared for the next step in their life. Eighty percent of all the jobs require some education, minimum of two years post-high school. And we've done nothing to revamp our high school years since Teddy Roosevelt. That's kind of top to bottom.

• 58:20David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  And it makes, and no child, no student of any income or background is left out of that. You want to go to college and then be an engineer, great. You want to be a nurse, you want to be a carpenter?

• 58:33David Friedberg?

  As you pour more of these dollars into the community colleges, into the federal student loan program, the administrative staff continues to bloat. We've seen administrative staff grow from 10% to 60% in the last 30 years. As they've had no limits on spending, because the federal student loan program doesn't provide a criteria that says, if your tuition costs too much, if your school isn't that good, et cetera, et cetera, we restrict your access to this loan program. The loan program is so unrestricted that it provides a fuel for the fire.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:04David Friedberg?

  For cost, that is, for cost.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Right, okay, I just sat there and told you, okay, great, now let me ask you.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  You haven't addressed the fact that 50% of our kids can't read at grade level. You want to talk to me about, oh, no, no, wait a second, wait a second, David. The way you asked that question told me where your priorities are. Your priorities, okay, I want to talk about student loan program.

• 59:25David Friedberg?

  Higher education, higher education, I'm not, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  How do you get to higher education? Well, I get, I get you're not talking about it, but there's a lot of parents sitting around the kitchen table talking about it.

• 59:36David Friedberg?

  I'm talking about cost, cost, cost and higher education, that's it, that's all I'm talking about.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  I just gave you a plan. Ask anybody that gets on your show, I just gave you a plan on how to control costs. None of it dealt with the student loan program. It dealt with the fact that we cut our nose off despite our face by not letting foreign students come in and pay full price, which are squeezing our colleges. You get up to 20%, you decide how you want to do it. You can identify 10% of the savings that you comply with federal government, you keep 100% of the cost. But here's what you're going to do different. And to get that, wait, wait, wait a second. I get the, this is the answer part to the question part.

• 1:00:11David Friedberg?

  Go for it, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Okay, you want to get to college? Revamp what goes on in not only the elementary years, but the high school years. You know when kids drop out of college, David? Third grade. That's when they start dropping out. And when you have 50% of your kids not reading at grade level, college cost is not your problem. We're going to compete against China with 50% of our kids not reading. I'm sorry, that's not how you beat a country that's three times your size.

• 1:00:37David Friedberg?

  Yes, we need to fix, we need to fix that issue, but like just taking a zoom out. And, and so my concern arises.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Kids drop out of college in third grade, David.

• 1:00:46David Friedberg?

  I'm not, yeah, I'm not talking about dropping out of college. I'm talking about how much we spend on administrative bullshit in colleges. And how much we've allowed it to inflate. And that ultimately leads to a cost and an accessibility problem to higher education, Rom. Because as it gets to be 30, 40, 60, 80,000 dollars a year for a kid to go to school.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Two things. You are talking about costs. That is a problem. To me, the problem is that we've given up on 50% of our kids. Given up.

• 1:01:15David Friedberg?

  Yeah, that's a fair statement, it's a fair statement.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Okay, what you identified is a problem. I'm identifying the problem. Number two, in my view. I have spent more time on the subject of education, since I wanted to be an early childhood educator when I went to college. And I took a system that William Bennett called the single worst in America, to where Sean Ritter in Stanford called it the single best of the top 100. And it took everything of my soul to get it there.

• 1:01:45David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  We need to take the high school years, let alone the standards and accountability in the elementary years, and revamp them. As in the three things I talked about that fit together. Be average, community college is free. 50%, which I would set as a goal, is 100. Have to graduate with college credit under the belt. And third, nobody gets a diploma that doesn't tell us what they're doing next. College, community college, branch of the armed forces certification school. I'm not just about college. You're 500 to 600,000, electrician short just for data centers. Broadband 150,000. You can't build submarines because we don't have pipe fitters and plumbers. Okay, so I'm, you want to be a pipe fitter?

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Great, you want to be a physician? Great, you want to be a physical therapist? Great. Have an education system that actually reflects the economy and skills that we need.

• 1:02:39David Friedberg?

  Yeah, that's a good point. And, and my concern, Rom, comes from the fiscal.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Can we get it there? Since you said it was a good point that I get to go on.

• 1:02:46David Friedberg?

  You make a lot of, you make a lot of great points and you make some that I disagree with, but that's what we're all about. And as I zoom out, I mean, I look at our $7 trillion a year spend in the federal government, 5 trillion a year in revenue. We're 2 trillion short. We've got 40 trillion of debt, 30 years at 5%. That's 2 trillion a year in interest expense. We have to figure out a way to reconcile the fiscal condition of the federal government to have a future for our kids. And so for me, everything, everything comes down to this like cost model. And I'm like, where are we spending money that we're inflating costs? And it doesn't make sense to do it, so.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  I have a slate, I have, I have a slate.

• 1:03:20Jason Calacanis?

  And by the way, Rom, this was something that Trump promised he would do with Doge and other cuts and his only increase.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  It was, it was all, it was all steak oil salesman. Look, I don't accept redistribution. And I don't accept the corruption. You can't have capitalism or economic freedom with corruption as a, as a grounding principle. It's against the rule of law, which is key to capitalism and economic freedom. And redistribution doesn't solve anything as it relates to growth. I believe in five things that are essential to grow the economy and grow incomes. And so people are no longer living paycheck to paycheck. One, everything we just talked about on education and training from pre-K to BA. Two, the dignity act, as I said, as it relates to immigration.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Three, modernize our energy system, vis a vis Texas is the best example of the United States. And I said that. Three, four.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  10% levy on all predictive markets and online sport gaming. And it has to go to the NIH, National Science Foundation and DARPA. Double our dollars into research. Fifth, a tax code that does not reward wealth preservation, but wealth creation. This tax code is an abomination as it relates to economic freedom. Control the overall spending for the next five years so it can't grow. And start making some tough choices within the system. I told you, you don't support it. I would not spend $38 billion on detention centers nobody wants. I would take eight of it as a starting point and modernize the 1,200 community colleges throughout the country

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  that are the economic backbone of across Wisconsin, Spartanburg, South Carolina. Go down the list. I seen it firsthand because we did it in our community colleges, the World Bank called it the best college career program in America. That to me is what we should be doing. And we're going to make some tough choices. I don't believe in sending ICE agents out with $50,000 bonuses. When I'd rather give a bonus to signing up to be a carpenter or electrician. That's more important to America's future than some masked man running around the streets of Minneapolis.

• 1:05:37David Friedberg?

  What's the politics of this? How do you get Congress to come along? Because for years, we've heard a lot of points from both parties about we are going to rationalize spending, we are going to do the right thing, we are going to get ourselves out of the deficit, we are going to make things economically viable for the United States, for people are going to advance. Everyone's got great ideas, but when push comes to shove, representatives of their district or of their state end up saying, I'm going to give more to my people in order to get reelected. And the budget goes up and up and up.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  David, David, here's the thing, which is unfortunate about American politics. As a person that coined the term, never allow a good crisis to go to waste. It's the opportunity to do big thing.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Look, I believe the surplus created sloppiness that Bill Clinton left. We tried to fight two wars with two tax cuts, really stupid. Never been done in American history. And that's the beginning of a wild, we went from a surplus that Alan Greenspan described would be a danger to America because of the 10, 10-year treasury note, to running $38 trillion of deficit, from a surplus to that. Because it was reckless. We fought Iraq and Afghanistan with two tax cuts. Never tried in American history. And it proved to be stupid. Now, that crisis has come and due. And it's going to force some really tough things on the system.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  And no, and we cannot have, while also AI is hovering, a further concentration of wealth to a very few. Can't happen, because you can't get to the fiscal sensibility you want, just talking about cutting. Not just because of the politics, because it's not right and it won't work. So we're going to have to actually deal with the revenue side as well as the spending side. I gave you a cap, but we have a tax code that everybody on this show, me included, are rewarded for preserving wealth, passing it on. There was a story the other day in the Wall Street Journal, six weeks ago. Retreats are being organized to help kids figure out how to handle their inheritance.

• 1:07:40David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  You have got to be kidding me.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  And we have a tax code that favors that. You are the idiot if you don't take advantage of actually preserving your wealth and passing it on from one generation to another. And you all know this, we all know it. The step up basis is a way to avoid all taxes when everybody else is working for a living and can't make monthly pay bills. So it's going to hit everybody and you're going to make some changes.

• 1:08:11Jason Calacanis?

  One thing I was, as most capitalists not concerned with, was minimum wage because I just thought, well, the free market will work that out. And then after watching it raise in cities in the United States and what's going on in New Zealand and the Nordic countries, all of the studies now show when you go to 12 to $20 an hour, there's no difference, doesn't cause any economic hardship for those companies, and it doesn't cause unemployment or automation. So what's your take on the federal minimum wage being raised?

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Three things. I worked with Bill Clinton when we raised it. When Nancy Pelosi and I helped make her speaker, that was the last time I was raised, it was seven and a quarter. When I was mayor, I raised it. I'm a big believer not only in raising the minimum wage, I would raise it and have it go up each year as we did in Chicago, coupled with a very generous earned income tax credit. That's what makes work pay. So a minimum wage with a very robust earned income tax credit, of which I would, if I was waving a magic wand, I would take the earned income tax credit, the per child tax deduction, and do a single family credit. So it's all in one thing.

• 1:09:21Jason Calacanis?

  I think we should talk about DSA before we wrap.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  You know, last weekend in Chicago, the DSA held their convention. You're not Democrats, you're a separate party. I'll see you in November. You're literally beating Democrats. Forget about it. Not interested in it. I spent my whole life, Bill Clinton replacing George Bush, Barack Obama competing against John McCain, flipping 31 districts from red congressman to blue congressman so Nancy Pelosi would be speaker. I am not into turning a blue district midnight blue. It doesn't do anything for a minimum wage. It doesn't do anything for universal pre-K. It doesn't do anything to give 10 million children who didn't have healthcare, healthcare. So I'm not impressed.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  You are a separate party, you're the Democratic Socialists of America. I'll see you in November on the ballot. You had a party convention? You are not a Democrat. And there was a person the other day in Tom Etzel's party, in Tom Etzel's column, who a Justice Democrat, part of the DSA network, who said they're not interested in beating Republicans. Well, now, I appreciate the honesty. I am. I think Donald Trump is an existential crisis. You think Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Hakeem Jeffries are an existential crisis. I don't. And we have a fundamental strategic difference, we have a fundamental policy difference, and we have a fundamental political difference.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Go to your own party, stay there, I'll see you in November.

• 1:10:57Jason Calacanis?

  There you have it, folks. Over in an hour with Ram Emanuel. We will have you back in the coming months and years.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  I don't think David will.

• 1:11:05Jason Calacanis?

  This has been amazing, and we got to get you on with Chamath and Sacks next. Thank you so much, Ram.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Thanks, guys.