Transcript of Trump's market impact: Bitcoin, M&A, IPOs + transition picks; Polymarket CEO raided by FBI

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the All In podcast. With us again today, Yauning from Milan, your favorite, the chairman dictator, Chamal Polyhapatea. You look a little tired, my friend. How are you doing over there, buddy?

I left Monday. I flew to Singapore. I was on the ground for two days, and I flew here. I'm here for two days, and then I go to London for five days.

I'm exhausted. You are on a worldwind tour.

I mean, I'm flying around the world, literally flying around the world moving West. Man.

Right. I'm tired. And this is all in service. How do people do it? My gosh. I mean, at our age, you feel it. I know people do it? It hits differently when you pass 40. I'm assuming this is '80, '90 business. Are we out there selling? You selling? You selling grock. You selling '80, '90. You're out there doing BD.

Little selling, little closing. Then I'm speaking at the Oxford Union on Wednesday.

Okay. Okay. Well, that sounds fancy. Bucket list.

Checking the bucket list.

Okay, there you have it. In his camo hat and in his election afterglow. Afterglow. Look at the glow. He is in that afterglow. He is post-quoitus here, post-election.

Anybody got a cigarette? I need to light up a cigarette. I need to light up a That was a close one.

I didn't think I was going to make it, but you did.

Do you like that camo hat, J. Kell? What does it say? This is the hat. Well, it says Trump fans on it.

You look like Elmer Fudd. What does it say? Your hunting lives.

No, remember when Tim Walsh rolled out the camo hat? Oh, yes. And you said it was going to win the election for Harris Walsh.

It might. I thought that he might have a shot. Yes. I was wrong about that one. Be belly, belly, quiet.

We got all the camo guys. They voted for us.

We're hunting wibbles. Nobody's going to get this conversation, but it's very good. It looks good.

Is that Elmer Fudd?

That's Elmer Fudd. Be belly, belly, quiet. We're hunting wibbles.

That sounds like Mike Tyson.

Well, I'm going to mess up that. Jake Paul.

How about I wear a different Trump hat every week for the next four years?

Absolutely fantastic. I mean, the ratings on this show- There's so many good ones. I mean, all I care about at this point, I'm getting Savage in any way possible. You're fine. All I care about is ratings now. Let's go. You're fine. Maga, get in the comments. Let's get these ratings up. And with us, of course, the CEO of OHA Lo. Oha Lo, David Friedberg.

How are you doing, little buddy? Thanks for having me again, J. K. Thank you.

All right. Well, it's good to have you. It's good to be here. How are you doing?

I'm chilling, man.

Just nice to be executive producer to have you on the show.

Yes, I've been executive producing you here. I appreciate the invitation. I'm always thinking about your best interests. I was hearing a little I heard you on a phone call before you said you had a perfect body. What was that in reference to? Did you get a scan?

My wife makes me go... Yeah, she makes me go to the dermatologist where she examines your whole nude body to look for moles. So this morning, I went in early to the dermatologist. She examined it. She said, Perfect.

I said- Does she have to wear sunglasses because you're just so white? It's blindingly white.

She's a poor woman. Does she get hazard pay?

That poor dermatologist, my God.

Actually, I'm on my way out.

She's Thank you for the experience.

But this is why we need to... In all seriousness, this is why, Sacks, we have to legalize psychedelics. This poor woman has PTSD after that.

We need to get her some- Get out of here. It was a wonderful examination. She was thrilled.

I'm in. All right. Okay. And of course, I'm Jason. And there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, Sacks. I don't know if you know this, but a comedy might still be legal here on the All In podcast. But there's been a lot of scuttlebutt, a lot of debate, a A lot of energy, dare I say, around- Oh my God, here we go.

Are we going to break the rules today, finally?

I don't know. We'll see. Oh, my God. Anything's possible. People get a little sensitive sometimes with the comment.

Do I have to put my pronouns back in my Zoom channel?

You put your pronouns back in.

Shabbat Pali, happy to Douchebag. Here we go. You might not know this, but a lot of appointments are being made, Sacks. Did you know this? Are you aware that the appointments are being made?

I'm aware, yeah. It's happening.

You've seen the flow of them. Well, I got a dumb. I'm not I'm not going to say who sent these to me, but I actually got the next five or six announcement that Trump's going to make. I'm not going to say who gave it to me, but John Cushner.

This bit has the potential to be so good. I'm so tired, but you've got me awake.

I'm ready.

Okay, I'm awake, too.

I'm ready. Well, here's our first one. Here's our first one. Oh, my God. This is a very interesting one.

I hope this is good.

Yeah, here it is. This is a statement from Donald J. Trump. It is my great honor to announce that Hunter Biden of Delaware will head a new department, the Bureau of Founder Mode Procurement. Founder Mode Procurement. You notice Sacks dropped off. He doesn't want to have a reaction shot here. Next one up. This is interesting. Tony Hinchcliff. I don't know if you know him. He has been appointed to a new role. He's the ambassador to Puerto Rico. That's a good one. Chamoth, actually, your wish has come true. Now, your sole duty is to ensure all executive branch knitwear is on point. The Sweater Inspector General. Everybody's going to have perfect knit wear. Net wear. Net wear. Absolutely nit wear.

And I am- By the way, just so you know, that's a Laura Piana cashmere sweater in that picture.

Apparently. I'm actually decided I would flip. I've gone full Maggie. Here I am. I've been appointed as Chief Virtu Signaler. That I like. Every time we do the All In podcast- You're going to have stiff competition from Mark Cuban for that post. I know. I beat him out. I beat him out. Oh, you beat out Cuban, okay.

Well, I bent Anthony.

I went down to more-Oh, he deleted.

He deleted all of his pro-comola tweets. Have you done the same?

No, I haven't yet.

You're going to have to work on that if you want to get this job.

Look at the lusty eyes in this picture.

I know. It's pretty great.

That's me after losing. You have an art found to virtue. You didn't want to just burrow yourself.

No, absolutely not. Hey, Friedberg, you've been appointed. Here we go. As Bobby Kennedy's whipping boy, you will be officially his little bitch. Anything, any innovation you come up with is officially blocked. Here he is. My great honor to announce David Sacks is now the Chief Retribution Officer. Congratulations. Well done.

Retribution must be had, J. Cal.

Payback is a bitch.

There were a lot of people who were out of line just a little bit, a little bit. They deserve to get smacked around a little bit.

Graham is going to get his shoeshine box.

Just on X, a little bit. Just a little bit. To let your winners ride.

Rainman David Sack.

And it said, We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Love you guys. It's the queen of Kinnwa. There's been a lot of talk about a holiday party, Freebird. You want to give us an update on the holiday party?

Quick plug on the party. So the party is coming up in three weeks, the All-In holiday Spectacular. Steve Aoki, Andrea Botez, Gary Richards, a. K. A. Distructo, a. K. A. Distructo, a. K. A. Distructo, a. K. A. They're going to be DJing.

Several of the sections. And me, I'm doing a secret DJ set.

I may. It's actually a good idea. I may track the beat. We will have chest challenges with Alex Botez. Several sections are sold out. Vip is sold out. Draymon is joining us. Draymon Green from The Warriors. He's going to come and do a little bit with us on stage. It should be great.

He's great.

So it should be great. Get your tickets at allin. Com/events.

All right, let's get into it, everybody. I just want We'll start with a little bit of finance here. Bitcoin and finance stocks way up since the Trump win, which was now 10 days ago. Bitcoin peaked at 92,000. Unbelievable. It's dropped down to 89, but obviously that's an all time high. And as we all know, we talked about it on the show, Trump heavily, heavily corded the crypto industry during his campaign. In addition to the Bitcoin news, since early August, Affirm, Robin hood, PayPal, Coinbase, all up, double or 50 %. It's an extraordinary run. In July, Trump headlined a Bitcoin conference. He laid out his plans. Number one, he was going to fire SEC chairman Gary Gensler. Here's the clip.

On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman.

I didn't know he was that unpopular. I don't know. I'm going to fire him. Too bad for Gary.

I didn't know he was that unpopular.

Let me say it again.

On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler.

There it is. Okay, enough with that. Technically, President can't fire the SEC chair, but he can appoint a new one when Gary's term ends in 2026. Or Gary could resign, and Trump takes office. That happens sometimes. And folks are speculating, Gensler has already made that decision to step down. He put out a press release with a quote in it that a number of people took note of, where he said, It's been a great honor to serve with them, the people who work at the SEC, doing the people's work and ensuring our capital markets remain the best in the world. Trump also said, The federal government will never sell, never, ever sell its Bitcoin holdings, which they own through criminal assets, as you know. Number three, he said he would create a Bitcoin and Crypto presidential Advisory Council Hustle, where Trump said, The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not your industry. And he also advocated that all future bitcoins would be minted in America. I don't know that he gets to make that choice, but they have Friedberg, any thoughts here on the crypto market and this incredible bull run here we've seen in the last 10 days and then before that couple of months?

I think, like you said, it's not limited to crypto. Crypto is one market I have several that have been significantly affected by the outlook based on Trump's election. I think that Trump's election has a couple of key features that are changing market dynamics. One is folks view some of policies to be obviously stimulatory with lower tax rates and more deregulation. This is theoretically going to drive up investment and economic growth. The deregulatory nature on its own benefits markets that have been encumbered by regulatory oversight and regulatory challenges like crypto, finance, and fintech. Those types of businesses are clearly going to benefit or expected to benefit significantly by being able to launch products more quickly and have features and ways that they can generate revenue that they might be challenged to do under the current regulatory schemas. Then there's also this element of things being inflationary, the feature of tariffs. If we don't get spending cut fast enough, there's an effect on market. We're still seeing 10-year treasury sit at about 4.5%, up from 3.5%, which is where we were right around the rate cut beginning in September. Remember, since those rate cuts began in September, we've got 75 basis points.

We're still seeing the 10-year treasury hold high, which implies that there's expected to be persistent inflation. In fact, the October inflation number accelerated again. So it's back up, not going down. I think it went up to 2.6%, up from 2.3% the month prior. These general effects that are predicted from the Trump policy plans is having an effect in different markets. Obviously, in equities, we're seeing more risk-seeking, risk-taking. And then in the bond markets, because of the 4.5% treasury yield, there's a really interesting dynamic, and I sent this link out yesterday. But if you look at the spread on yields between US treasuries, which have historically been considered and talked about and are deemed the risk-free rate, and the yield that corporates have to pay to borrow money. We haven't seen a spread this low in 26 years. It's a 17-year low for the spread between the yield that companies that issue junk bonds have to pay from treasuries, and it's a 26-year low for credit rate bonds. This means the market is either more risk-seeking, meaning they're looking for more yield and they're going into corporates because they feel like there is a higher probability that these companies are going to be successful in the future.

They're not going to have higher default rates, etc. So the market is becoming much more risk-seeking. Or the alternative is that parts of the market are reassessing the risk-free nature of treasuries themselves. If spending doesn't get under control, the treasury market appetite is decreasing. So there's this spread that's shrunk in the last couple of months. So we're seeing capital flooding into the markets for risk-seeking assets, and this is obviously affecting crypto, equities, and bond markets all across the board. And we'll talk a little bit about IPO and M&A later.

Great. Shemoth, your thoughts? Aside from Yum Yum? I mean, Yum Yum? You could say it. It's a yummy.

It's going to be...

Just say it.

No, I mean, look, what did I say at the beginning of the year was going to be the biggest risk asset winning trade? Yeah, it's great. Bitcoin is great.

Lord, I haven't seen you this happy in a while. What made you more happy? Getting to Milan and spending time with your white truffle dealer or watching Bitcoin break 90K? Which one was more exciting for you personally?

Honestly, you know what I think about? I actually think about all the Bitcoin I sold. I had a bunch of Bitcoin in my funds when I managed outside capital. That's, I don't know, a three or $4 billion mistake in growing now because my partners at the time capitulated and I wanted to be a good team member, and we distributed and it was profitable. But obviously, I shouldn't have sold it. It would have made them a lot more money. Then I think about, I bought some land. I remember that. It was in the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure you can find it. But how much is that worth now? Probably a couple of hundred million dollars, maybe more. Rough in the afternoon.

But you do have Bitcoin holdings.

Can I ask you a question? Why do you say sold Bitcoin as opposed to converted Bitcoin into dollars? When you think about Bitcoin just as a participant, do you think about Bitcoin as is a dollar denominated asset that you go and buy Bitcoin and then you're eventually going to sell it, turn it back into dollars and use the dollars? Or what do you think about the purest idea that Bitcoin should be the de facto currency and store value in the future and the dollar doesn't matter and we I'm not necessarily be talking about the value of Bitcoin in dollar denominated terms as something I'm going to eventually turn it back into?

It hasn't happened yet. And so until it happens, I think you have to view it as a very good gold proxy. But But it's a largely dollar-denominated asset.

Now, why do you see it going the other way? A lot of folks thought that as a safe haven, it should do well when there's a negative economic outlook, but it has traded the last couple of years the opposite.

No, it's totally correlated. No, it's a totally correlated asset. There will be a point, and it's probably in our lifetime, where it is an independent asset and a non-speculative store of value. There will be that day, but that day is not now. I think it's very important to see the conditions on the field as they are versus what you wish it to be. The reason is that it allows you to risk manage more appropriately. Because if you don't see it, then when something happens to the dollar complex, good or bad, or when something happens to rates, good or bad, or when something stimulative happens, good or bad, you're not going to react properly if you're in the business of managing it as a risk asset. If you're in the set it and forget it bucket, and there are some people, I think it's great. None of these conversations matter. But like most people, you're probably going to be motivated to do something. I think if you're motivated to do something or you have FOMO that stimulates you to do something, whatever the psychology is that leads you to action, it's probably important to just view things as they really are versus how you wish them to be.

I think the purists may eventually be right. I think they will be right at some point in my lifetime. But they're not right now. And that's why these things are correlated. If the market goes up- If the market goes up. The other thing I'll say just broadly about the market is I think that there's a tremendous amount of optimism about the economy. I think that's why you see risk spreads get crushed.

Definitely.

I think that as long as we see the prognostications that the Trump administration is putting out, I think people are going to be mostly bullish. I think the way that this trade turns around is when something actually breaks in terms of the inflation picture or in terms of the deficit picture. If those things look like going into 2025, that President Trump's actions are not going to be able to course-correct it, then I think you're going to see people go massively risk off, which I think will not be great for markets, obviously. But right now, we're not in that point.

You don't think that tenure reflects that already? At 4.5%. I mean, that's showing some degree of inflation and concern about the deficit. I think the tenure could be at 7%.

What is 4.5% What does that 100% mean? I mean, if you're going to run 8% of GDP level deficits for the next four, five, or six years, you're going to have the 10 year at 7 to 8%. That's just mathematical.

Right. Sacks, your thoughts on crypto before we get into IPOs and M&A, if any?

Yeah, just on crypto, the House Republicans already passed a framework for crypto regulation earlier this year. It actually got Democrats to join it. It was called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act or FIT-21. And it would classify digital assets like crypto as commodities regulated by the CFTC. If the blockchain they run on is, functional and decentralized. That's the key requirement. If their blockchain is functional but not decentralized, then there would be concerned securities and fall under the purview of the SEC. I think the crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they're a commodity and they want commodities to be governed, governed like all other commodities by the CFTC. So that's what the Republican bill would do. I think with the Republicans now winning the Senate, the prospects for that bill to get enacted are now greatly improved, especially because Sherrod Brown, who used to run the banking committee, just lost to Bernie Moreno. This was a seating Ohio. Elizabeth Warren is still going to object to this legislation, but she's just going to have way less influence. And like you said, it's not clear that Gary Gensler is going to be sticking around very long at the SEC.

Look, the bottom line here is that I think that we are close to having clear rules of the road codified by Congress, which is what the crypto industry has been asking for. And the days of Gensler terrorizing crypto companies by issuing Wells' notices without clarifying what the rules are that he's prosecuting, those days are about to be over. So I think this is why crypto markets are rallying.

And so to your point, if it's centralized or partially centralized, you're going to be a security. If you're decentralized, anybody can join the network. No one person controls the network. And I guess most people would consider that Bitcoin versus, say, Ripple, which is partially decentralized, but largely centralized. And that's going to be, I guess, the new rules of the road. In addition to that, there are new rules that are being enforced that hopefully Trump supports.

Assuming FIT-21 passes, right? This bill is called FIT-21. But I think much, much higher likelihood that it or something like it now can get through the Congress. It makes sense, yeah.

And then there's also legislation that's already been enacted that's There's multiple ways and multiple paths, but accredited investors. There's going to be a path to becoming an accredited investor with a test. So that is something that is also on the docket. We'll see if it happens. Let's talk about IPOs and M&A, Yum Yum, boys. Just a level set here with the audience. Here's the number of IPOs per year. And as you can see, the last three years have been some of the lowest since 2008 and 2009, the Great Recession, for those of you who are old enough to remember it. And if you look at VC, the number of distributions have been absolutely on the floor for the past three years. In fact, if you look at the distributions from 2022 through 2024, those three years combined, it's been around 200 billion, which is less than 2019 in total. And with this year, projected to be about 100 billion in distributions. That's about 14 % of the peak Zerp era, when in 2021, we had $710 billion in distributions here. So the backroom buzz is that Donny from Queens is going to make M&A great again.

Again, a couple of reasons there. Sacks, the Rath of Lena Khan's coming to an end. Mag7 sitting on massive amounts of cash, and that cash is growing as people have laid people off and they're focused on getting fit. Obviously, we all know the Fed did another quarter point cut last week, although some people maybe don't know that because it seems to have gotten lost in the election news. And psychologically, I think everybody's feeling very optimistic. So maybe these IPOs are back on the menu. So Chamath, I don't know if you saw it, but Klarna just filed for their IPO. That's a Swedish fintech company. They were the pioneers in buy now, pay later. What are the other IPOs we could see? File in 2025, Databricks, Stripe, Whizz, Canva, plaid, Rippling, and Airtable. There's a long shot that people have been buzzing about. I don't have any inside information, but people have been speculating, SpaceX could IPO Starlink, their Starlink unit. And if you want to get really crazy, Chamath, maybe Maybe there's a long shot that Sam Altman jumps the fence and decides he's going to take OpenAI public during this window that people expect to be opening.

What do you think, Chamath? What's going to happen here in terms of M&A and IPOs in 2025?

I think it's going to still be pretty subdued.

Subdued? Okay.

I don't think that you're going to see these crazy M&A deals that I think everybody is expecting. I also don't anticipate a lot of these big companies going public, at least in the first half of the year. The only reason I say that is I just think that this year and the first half of next year, What's the difference? The IPO market is what the IPO market is. And if the 10 year is back to four and a half, five %, that's not a compelling strategy for some SaaS company or some internet business that didn't take an opportunity to go public when rates were at zero. So if you just look mathematically at what the actual fair value of these companies should be, I don't know, it's not like such a great IPO market. Then on the M&A side, if all you're doing is waiting for Lena Khan to not be there, to me, I think that that betrays what M&A is supposed to be, which is you're supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first principles where things are very accretive. And very accretive things should not hang by a thread on the emotional regulation or dysregulation of the FTC Commission.

So I think that you would have seen some of this stuff already as well if the industrial logic was so high. And again, when rates are non-trivially high, I just think that it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off a really big M&A event, nor is it a really easy thing to pull off to pull off a huge IPO. When, again, there's a reason why Warren Buffett has $325 billion sitting in T-bills making four and a half % a year. He owns more T-bills than the United States government. He's making about $15 billion a year in interest. When you can do that with absolutely no risk, again, relative to stocks, at least, what is this IPO going to give you?

Jamal is right. The tenure is at four and a half %. You're basically paying 20 times cash flow to own a risk-free bond, the US Treasury bond.

Or you can pay 23 times to own a totally risky asset.

It's 30 times to own the S&P 500 right now.

It's nuts.

But there is a lot of risk-seeking, shifting happening, Chamath, right? We talked about some of the crypto stuff, some of the fintech stuff, deregulation, that the PE might seem high today, but if you forecast out 10 years for some of these businesses in a deregulated, detaxed environment or reduced tax, a reduced regulation environment, that the earnings should accelerate in a way that outpaces the multiple you're getting today. This is part of why some of the fintech companies are ripping right now, why some of the finance companies are ripping right now. If under Trump and the Republican control of the House and Senate, laws don't pass and regulations get reduced. Theoretically, earnings are going to rip, and you should pay a higher multiple today because you're actually buying these things at 8 to 10 times earnings five years from now. So there seems There's going to be some risk appetite there. But I do agree with Chamath on the M&A point. If you think about what's gone on over the last couple of years- Hold on a second.

Can I ask you a question? Do you think that regulation is the reason why these SaaS companies have never made a dollar a profit?

No, I'm not talking I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm not talking about SaaS. I'm talking about I guess we should- Then you're talking about industrial companies? No, the Fintech market. We were talking about Fintech and some of these assets earlier, some of these equities that have been written.

It's a very narrow part of the economy. If you look on a broad-based basis, the tens and tens of trillions of dollars of market cap that exist, I do agree with you that deregulation benefits a bunch of those companies, but it benefits the non-tech businesses more than the tech businesses. The tech businesses right now are relatively lightly regulated. I would think that it benefits pharma businesses, it benefits ag businesses, it benefits real estate companies, it benefits a whole swath of the economy. But we've started to see that rewriting, and maybe we'll see a lot more. So maybe, Jason, the more nuanced answer to your question is the M&A that I think you want to see, I mean, let's face it, that we all want to see here because we all have a vested interest, which is really specifically tech M&A. I don't think that any of this deregulation particularly accelerates that. But maybe a more nuanced take on this would be that these other more regulated parts of the economy could do well and catch up to some of the earnings potential or the forward pricing of the tech businesses. But again, now you get into this weird trade where you can buy steady cash flowing businesses that can grow in valuation as fast as a fast-growing but money-losing tech business, but then you trade both of those two things off and it has effectively the same yield as a tenure, what do you do?

I think there's a lot of backed up in Inventory where venture capitalists, boards, and founders, people who control and make these decisions on M&A, if they would sell the company to a larger company, I think there's a lot of exhaustion in the market, and that will drive the capitulation on valuation. What do you think the valuations will be?

Yeah, exactly.

Why would a larger company pay for?

Yeah, I mean, they'll be haircuts, but I'm watching it right now.

I mean, do you think Warren Buffet is going to take 325 billion of cash in premium? No, no.

But I do- He don't even buy his own stock.

So what do you think he's going to pay in terms of a multiple- I think it'll be more like Salesforce or Microsoft or Google or Amazon getting off the sidelines because they've looked at and said, The juice ain't worth the squeeze.

We might as well put our efforts and our capital into buying big hardware and building new products and services. But if they think, Hey, I got a chance of pulling this through. I'm sitting on all this cash. What if I hit another YouTube and Instagram? Really great acquisitions that were transformative for those two companies. Metta would not be where it is right now. Facebook, you know that well, Chamov. If they hadn't gotten Instagram, and certainly, Friedberg as an alumni of Google, if they didn't get YouTube, it would be a completely different picture for that company right now. I think there's a lot of those type of acquisitions. Hold on. I think there's a lot of those acquisitions that have been sitting there waiting, and I'm watching the secondary markets. To your question, what's the discount going to be? The discount was last year. I kid you not, 70, 80, 90 % off the last round for SaaS companies. And this year it's 20 or 30. I'm seeing this when I'm getting offers to buy our shares in some private SaaS companies, some private fintech companies. And then I also think if you're a CEO and you watch Robin hood, Uber, Reddit, DoorDash, and Instacart, those five have Actually, after getting a little bit of a gas kicking when they first went out, they have all rebounded massively.

And for the people who held on to their Reddit shares, Robin hood shares, Uber shares, they have been rewarded massively, massively for having faith through this storm. So I think those two things, the capitulation of all these boards and founders, are going to say, You know what? Let's take the haircut, let's go public, and let's tell our story and see if we can make it work as a public company. And then the people who feel one step weaker than that, I think they want to cash their chips in. They've been in some of these investments, Chamant. It's year 11, 12, 13, 14 for some of these private companies. There is capitulation on those boards. People are exhausted. So I'm going to take the other side of the argument on this one.

I'll play along. I think, and I'll disagree a little bit for a couple of different reasons, these big tech companies, the ones that have had media businesses, because remember, there's tech that's tech. Nvidia does not have a media business. But there's been a conversation over the last couple of years where we need to break up big tech has been part of the conversation with the Dems, and now the Republicans are coming in and they're saying the same thing, We got to break up big tech. I think there are a few of these companies, Google being one of them, that are very much handicapped right now with respect to what M&A they can do without dealing with the regulatory sledgehammer coming down on them. So I don't think that those guys are buyers, J. Cal. I don't think that Google is in a place right now where they can go out and make a bunch of acquisitions. They're going to do everything they can to avoid the regulatory sledgehammer that's coming their way. First, it was coming from the Dems, now it's coming from the new administration. There's a bunch of other companies that don't really fit that bill, like Microsoft probably doesn't fit that bill, NVIDIA, Adobe.

Maybe they'll make some acquisitions, but I don't think it's as simple as, Well, we'll sell at a low price, we'll buy at a low price. I'm just not sure they really need to do that right now.

I completely agree with you. I completely agree. I think that these big tech companies will need to pay a pound of flesh for the deep platforming and the censorship that they did and are still continuing to do.

Well, it is a perfect time if we're going to go to the political angle to bring you in, Sacks. What are the vibes? My perception is Trump likes to win, and Trump wants to see the economy soar. That is his platform. He's a business guy. I think he wants to see fluidity. I know JD has been not a fan of the Googles, et cetera. So maybe you could help us navigate this. Who's right here? What's the possibility of M&A becoming more vibrant in a Trump administration?

Well, there's no question that in general, President Trump wants to have the most vibrant economy we can have. I think to that end, you're going to see the of this era of deceleration, of regulatory capture, and law fare. I think all those things are over. I think that equities that have been straining or tamped down under the weight of these abuses. You see them ripping now. For example, Tesla, it's gone from roughly $250 to $320 a share since the election. And you could call that the law fair discount. I mean, that basically is the discount on Tesla's stock because the market was pricing in the risk of retaliation. If the Republicans lost, there's a widespread belief that the Democrats would go after Elon and his company. So you can actually measure the lawful discount based on Tesla's stock.

And some part regulation, right? Because there's a lot of regulations around self-driving, rocket ship launches, all those things he's involved in. There's a lot of regulation there, too.

There was this crazy thing where they made some regulator made him put a headset on a seal. Did you see this? To test the effect on seals of loud noises, the Sonic Booms. The Sonic Booms. This poor seal. Do you see this poor seal had a headset on?

No, don't do that to Friedberg. No, don't put it on the screen.

Put it in post. I don't want to put it on the screen. Don't put it on the screen.

Friedberg is going to- Anyway, so they subjected this poor seal to exactly the thing that they were worried would harm seals. In any event, the seal seemed totally fine.

It didn't- They tortured seals to make a point. I got it.

Anyway, it's really crazy. It is crazy.

But what about this, JD? Help us navigate. I know JD is the VP, and then you have Trump is the CEO. Chamoth pointed out maybe there's a little on the GOP anger, resentment, residual because of the banning of Trump from YouTube and some of these other platforms. Do you think that makes its way into M&A or not?

I guess, Sacks, let me be specific to J. Cal's question. Not all tech companies are the same in that point of view, right? Correct. Thank you for punching it up. Tech M&A, generally, is a thing, but specifically, the companies that have had social media platforms may be in a different lens from a regulatory perspective. Is that fair?

Yeah. I mean, look, I think that not everything Lena Khan did was bad. In fact, she definitely has some fans among the populist Republicans, and some of them who have spoken out on her behalf in various areas have been JD Vance, Matt Gates as well. She did do some good things, specifically She was willing to take on the big tech companies. I mean, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, frankly, they just had a free ride for the last couple of decades where they were allowed to do anything. And she came in and said, There's a new sheriff in town. And she was actually willing to apply pressure on them to not engage in anti-competitive tactics. So I think she deserves credit for that. I think she did change the conversation. I think that we've talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as targeted and surgical approach was used. And as a result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M&A. And so it hurt the small tech environment. And so I think that we need to fix that part of it. But I hope that whoever replaces Lena Khan will continue to apply pressure to big tech because they are monopolies, and they will abuse their power if they're allowed to, and they need to be controlled.

Sacks, if you had to handicap the probability of A lawsuit or some attempt to dismantle Google and Facebook, would those be the two companies at the top of your list? And how would you handicap that?

So my view is that Google should be broken up. There's abundant reasons for that. There's at least three monopolies in that company. There's the search business, the advertising business, and YouTube. I think they should be busted up. What are the odds that that happens? It's It's hard to say, but what are the odds that that is pursued in the next administration in some capacity or at least investigated? I'd say high. I'd say Facebook or Meta, less so. I don't see the compelling need to bust them up. But quite frankly, I think the issue that Metta is going to face is just there were a lot of abuses in terms of censoring the free speech rights of Americans. Now, I don't think that was all the company's idea. I think a lot of pressure was put on the company by the Biden administration. I think they wanted to do the right thing and just didn't show enough backbone. I think Elon showed- But Zuckerberg is being clear that he regrets it.

He regrets it, yeah. And he's bent the knee now. He's like, Listen, I'm not going to do it again.

Yeah, he published a letter, and maybe it was done to some degree to inoculate himself against the result of this election. But I'd say to his credit, it wasn't clear at all who was going to win the election when he put out that letter. And he basically said that he regreted the fact that Metta had gone along with the censorship request by the Biden administration. And he specifically referred to that whole Hunter Biden story that got censored in 2020. That was election interference. It was a completely true story by the New York Post. It got censored by big tech at the request of these 51 former intelligence officials who were lying through their teeth claiming it was Russian disinformation. So he clearly regrets going along with that. In any event, I think there are better of handling the speech issue on social networks than busting up Facebook. But I do think, though, that Congress should investigate or continue investigating what went wrong there and what exactly is the involvement of the intelligence community and the deep state in the censorship request that we saw exposed by the Twitter files, remember.

Can I bring up something maybe tangential and you can react to this? Just speaking of like, censorship and then just the the media complex that we have. I saw today that Trump filed a $10 or $15 billion lawsuit against the broadcast networks. Maybe this is old news, and maybe I just saw the news now.

I saw a headline go by on X.

I don't understand what it is. I saw it on X as well. Yeah, didn't make a difference. Then separately, with Bobby Kennedy's nomination to HHS, one of the things that he has said that he wants to put an end to is the advertising that pharma on these broadcast stations. If you put these two things together where you deprive these folks of their largest revenue source, and at the same time, they have to answer for censorship or manipulating content, it Do you think that that changes the landscape of how all these companies behave in the future, or how do you think that that plays out?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. All right, let's take each one of those. On the broadcasters, and we've talked about this before, the big broadcast networks and their affiliates receive free spectrum licenses from the SEC, and they get some of the most valuable spectrum there is through those licenses in exchange for certain requirements that their broadcast are in the public interests. Namely, they have to follow a fairness doctrine, which is supposed to mean that you give equal time to both candidates. Well, in the final weeks of this campaign, we saw some really egregious abuses. Nbc brought on Kamala Harris, but not Donald Trump, for a very favorable believable segment on Saturday Night Live the week before the election. Separately, you saw 60 Minutes deceptively Edit, an interview with Kamala Harris, where they actually took one of her answers from one question and put it as the answer to another question. I mean, really deceptive. So you have a couple of examples with both CBS and NBC, which were violating the equal time requirement, were clearly working on behalf of the Kamala Harris campaign. And when you look at the coverage itself, this election was the most unequal in terms of favorable coverage.

It was something like a 60-point difference, something like Kamala Harris received 87 % favorable coverage, and Trump received something like 85 % negative coverage. So there's no way- Who's that according to?

Do you know?

Yeah. It's a report by Brent Buzell's Media Watchdog Group. It's been around forever and it's been recording this stuff in every election the last 30 years. In any event, I think that there's a very strong argument that the broadcasters have not been fair. That's a violation of their licensed requirements, and we should be reevaluating their spectrum, especially because it's not the highest best use of spectrum anyway.

You know the great irony of this, though, Sacks, is that they have already been demolished. I don't know if you saw, but a bunch of the anchors at CNN are not renewing because their advertising is so far off that, like Chris Wallace, I think, was making eight million a year, nine million a year, and he just said, I'm going to go do Yes, because I think they low-balled his offer. And if they lose all that advertising from pharma, which I think in some of these networks is a third or a half. And that's all networks. That's from Fox to CNN and every MSNBC, everybody combined. If they lose at Advertising from pharma, it's over. Those news networks are going to lose half their revenue overnight. That would be a death blow, Chamath, to your question.

Yeah, well, let me get back to that. So just on CNN and MSN, MSNBC, you're absolutely right that they're announcing a bunch of layoffs. Their ratings are destroyed. I think they're down. Msnbc ratings are down like 50% since the election. What that tells me is that their own audience- Wait, sorry.

Since the election? Since the election. Is that 50%?

Yeah. Oh, my God. What that tells me is that their captive viewer base who's been tuning in for years to all of this TDS has now realized that they were deceived by MSNBC, and they've lost credibility even with their most fervent supporters. So there's no question that CNN, MSNBC, SMBC, they're hurting. Now, J-Cal, just to make one small modification, they do not receive... They do not have spectrum licenses from the SEC, right? No, they're cable. Because they're cable network. So they're in a different bucket. They don't have to abide by the fairness doctrine that CBS and MBC do, right? But they have different problems. And to your point about pharma, there's absolutely no reason to be allowing pharma advertisements on these TV networks. The fact of the matter is the people who are viewing those networks can't buy. You can't buy pharmaceuticals without a prescription, right? It's up to doctors to write you the prescription. And this is why most countries, most Western countries, prohibit pharma advertising on the networks. I think Bobby Kennedy has a very strong argument that it would serve the public interest not to allow this. We don't allow advertisements for tobacco, right?

I guess the thing that doesn't make sense to me, Sacks, is you're such a first amendment absolutist and free speech absolutist, isn't it? I'm not saying this is my opinion, but my challenge to you would be, is tell me about freedom of speech and expression in relation to being able to do advertising for these products? Well, I mean- Aren't consumers smart enough to figure it out?

The point of the advertising, I think, is not at the end of the day to influence consumers because consumers can't buy pharmaceuticals. They have to go to a doctor. Well, that's what they in it.

Ask your doctor about.

The purpose of the advertising is to buy favorable coverage. That's the point. And there are many examples- Okay, explain that. Well, there are many examples of people who've worked in these networks saying that they had a story that was negative about pharma companies, and that story got spiked because the pharma companies are the biggest advertisers. In fact, I think it was there was a story about Fox News. Who was the guy, Roger Ailes?

Well, Well, there's been a number of stories. I know what you're talking about. There's been stories about Anderson Cooper. Who's the guy who does international coverage on the weekends? Gps is the name of his show. I can't remember right now.

Farid Zaharia.

Thank you. Farid Zaharia, yes. I think a bunch of those shows were literally brought to you by, Pfizer brought to you by these things. And so those shows potentially would just go away. And then there was reporting on the number of times they would report on those companies, and it showed they didn't. So what do you think, Friedberg, of should pharma companies be allowed to advertise to consumers, to ask their doctors, to ask them about Viagra? What's your take? He's thinking, for those of you at home listening. He's giving a deep thought.

While he's thinking, J. K, let me just say that. Yeah, please go, Frank. I think there is a free speech issue that has to be weighed, okay? So I don't want to be totally dismissive of that. However, I think that the Viagra example is on the far end of the spectrum of a drug that by advertising it, you could actually get consumers to request it from their doctor. I don't think most drugs are like that. And I think my contention would be that the real reason they're paying all this massive advertising is not to influence consumers, but to influence the coverage that they get. And there is something very corrupt about that. And I think that Bobby Kennedy has a really strong point that if you were to remove to prove that incentive that many people inside the industry have admitted it exists, then you would get much fairer coverage of these pharma companies, and we would actually get to be a healthier country because you wouldn't allow them to basically manipulate the public debate. So that's the argument.

Friedberg, you want to chime in on it or no?

I feel like there's some market correction that takes place here, which we're already seeing, which is the consumer Members are moving away. We just talked about moving away from cable news, moving away from legacy media. They don't trust it. The trust is at an all-time low. I don't know if it's necessarily the government's job to determine who advertises what, where, how, and why. I don't like the government having that degree of authority, generally speaking, because it can then lead into the government having overreach and oversight to control entities that maybe are competitive with the government in different ways. I I do believe that the beef with big tech is a result of big tech's influence over the population where big government wants to have that degree of influence over the population. It's actually a battle between government and private entities over who can influence the population and who has the ability to control the narrative. I think that the general concept that the government should be determining who advertises where, what, how, and why is not a great one. I don't think that consumers are dumb. I think that consumers are showing their proclivity for independent media and independent news sources because they don't trust the influence that's been imparted upon these other channels and these other sources, and they're moving away from it.

I don't know if it's as much a regulatory question and big pharma needs to be affected. I think that the market, to some degree, does its job. I don't think that consumers are dumb. I will also just counter one of Sacks' points. I think that there are drugs, like multiple sclerosis This is a good example. There was a drug introduced a couple of years ago called Ocrevus, and it was a new therapy for multiple sclerosis that is extremely effective. It's a really big step change in biological therapies. A lot of people that were on MS and have had MS for decades take old-school drugs that maybe aren't that effective. To create awareness, and they're not regularly seeing their doctors. They may not go in and see their doctor every year like they're supposed to. The pharma companies are creating awareness that there's this new modality and this new product that could help them to get them to go into the doctor's office. I don't want to say that these are all evil, trying to control and influence. There are good drugs that come to market. They are beneficial to people, and people don't know about them.

How else are they supposed to get that word out if they're not able to advertise? I don't think that it's all negative and all malicious behavior and manipulation of media. We all have the resources, we all have the capacity, and we are all likely very frequently going to doctors. Most people don't. Most people that have chronic disease or have health issues, there has to be a mechanism for making them aware of new options, new alternatives, new products that are coming to market. I'm not super putting my foot down saying pharma company shouldn't be able to advertise, shouldn't be able to buy media out there and put ads up and tell people about stuff that they've discovered or that they've invented that's been regulated, that's been tested, that's been approved, and that works and can help save lives. I think they should have the freedom and ability to do that. I think there's a bit of a nuance here to how this gets handled is my point.

Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not saying that there's no benefit at all to letting pharma companies advertise some products. I think the question you have to ask is, why is so much money going from pharma to these news outlets? Because most of the products that you generally can't buy them.

I'll tell you the reason. The reason is that the pharma companies make so much money off of government-funded insurance programs. Let me I'll just state that again. If we only had private insurance or if consumers had to pay for their drugs and their therapies themselves, the cost of drugs would go way down. The reason the cost of drugs has gone way up is because so much of the government insurance programs don't negotiate drug prices. There are all these middlemen and all these people that sit in between that have been regulated through regulatory capture into the system that has allowed an incredible inflation in the cost of drug prices. Therefore, there is a lot of money to continue view the capture of the system. I don't think that it is right. I think that the free market, generally, or having a less regulatory captured market, will allow an appropriate pricing of therapies, an appropriate adjustment in the market, which doesn't exist today. So much money to keep the market the way it is needs to keep flowing. That's my sense of this. I don't think it's about bad drugs need to stay in play as much as it is this market has been allowed to inflate and the cost of health care and the cost of drugs has inflated in a way that's simply untenable, and it doesn't make sense.

I think that it's because of regulatory capture, and I think that that needs to change, and I'm hopeful that it does.

That's the second reason then to get this form of money out of advertising, because you're basically explaining it as a self-looking ice cream cone. But again, there's another reason as well, I think, that explains the sheer magnitude, which is its influence buying, its influence pedaling.

To your point, Sacks, that was what I was about to bring up. There It's very subtle. You're not going to have somebody at NBC or CNN or Fox come down and tell Tucker Callson or Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper, Hey, you can't cover this story. But there is a bunch of self-censorship that occurs, I believe, where people just don't select certain stories to be on the docket. And they just shape the coverage. So they might not say something positive or negative about Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson, whoever it is. They'll just avoid that story because these anchors are getting paid or have been previously paid 10 million, 25 million a year. Do you think they're going to really go hard at Pfizer or somebody like that? No, they're just not going to. I've been inside the machine. They just avoid those stories. Okay, let's keep going through the docket here. I think it was a pretty good conversation. By the way, I just wanted to say to the Trump administration, if you want the economy to rip, let M&A rip. But my The one caveat is, it's a really simple way to do this. If you're under a trillion dollar valuation, let those companies buy and sell each other, because then we could go from a Mag7 to a Mag70.

That's where I think actually it makes the most sense. If you actually are concerned about the consolidation of power in the top seven, let them sit out acquiring more great companies and let the people under that who are the mid-market cap companies, let them do the buying and selling, because then you might have a Mag 8, 9, 10 show up. That's not talking my book. It would be better for me Friedberg to let the Mag 7 participate because they can pay higher prices. They're not price sensitive. But I do think the mid-market companies buying and selling would make a healthier environment for competition.

Sorry, you think it creates more competition, which will benefit consumers and grow the economy.

Well, look at it this way. If somebody wants to buy, let's say, Waymo gets spun out, somebody wants to buy it. If Amazon can't buy it, and Tesla can't buy it, and Amazon can't buy it, but they could merge with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, all those mid-Airbnb. If those companies could consolidate, can you imagine what would happen if Amazon couldn't buy those companies, but you could see Waymo spin out and then partner with DoorDash and partner with Airbnb, and you had that as one company? Now you got a $400 billion company that is nipping on the heels, that is aggressively competing with Amazon. That's what you want in the market, is more competition for the Mach 7. You don't want the Magnificent 7 to run away with it. And we could create the eighth, ninth, and 10th. So just imagine that, Friedberg. If there was another trillion dollar company. Actually, I think Tesla just became a trillion dollar company again. So now that they're up in those ranks, great. Don't let Tesla, don't let Amazon, etc, NVIDIA buy more companies. Let that mergers and acquisitions and that strength happen under the trillion dollar mark. What do you think of that general concept, Friedberg?

Yeah, I generally think competition is good. I generally think free markets should be allowed to operate. And I've shared my point of view. I think bigger is going to drive more innovation than lots of little.

Okay.

Again, Waymo wouldn't exist if not for Google plowing billions and billions. And I don't know about you guys. I took Waymo around the city yesterday. Pretty sick. It is legit.

I don't go to the city.

Yeah, it's pretty legit. Because it's a toxic cesspool. By the way, I will say my other comment is I think San Francisco has gotten 10X better now that I've been working I've been thinking downtown the last week or two. 10x is a big number. 10x is a big number.

From a toxic cesspool just means a cesspool.

I think part of the reason is all of Walgreens is gone. There's no Walgreens left.

You can't buy deodorage. It's problem solved.

There's no where to do crime anymore.

You can't buy a drug store that doesn't exist? How do you do that?

You got to ask Jason.

Jason, how do you- Amazon. Get an Amazon package delivered.

Yeah, I don't... Hey, man, I'm in Texas. You can do whatever you want here.

There's Jason gets his supplies air dropped in once a month.

What are you talking about?

I'm bullish on the San Francisco turnaround because I think- I am, too. Daniel Loury getting elected mayor was huge, and this doesn't get really as much attention, but it's very important.

The board shifted.

The radicals got voted off the board of supervisors.

The board of supervisors are less progressive. Daniel's in the mayoral office. Good progress. I think the city is already turning around. I've been super blown away the last couple of weeks I've been downtown. I'm like, Why am I not working downtown every day? It's It's actually really nice. It feels like San Francisco 20 years ago. Let's see if it's safe. I'm pretty bullish.

I mean, safety is the number one thing. If they can stop the overdosing.

This budget needs to get put under control. San Francisco spends one and a half X per capita of what New York City spends. That's something that Daniel and his team have said they're going to address, like their own doge. There's a team going in there to address this. I'm really bullish on what's going to happen with the city.

It's just such a great place. It seems like the power resides in the supervisors, and they seem to have flipped two or three of the really lunatic ones, right, Sacks? They got rid of Dopey D. Preston. Who was the other guy? Peskin. Peskin. He was an idiot. And those guys are done. So that's progress.

Do you want to talk about the Trump candidates, J. K. L?

Yeah, let's get to that in a second. But before we get to that, FBI rated the home of Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland. He was on the election night stream. He was rated on Wednesday, November 13th, eight days after the election. They say Polymarket is Bloomberg. Says Polymarket is being investigated for allegedly accepting trades from US-based users. Here's the backstory. In 2022, Polymarket paid 1.4 million to settle a case with the CFTC for offering option contracts without proper designation. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also ordered the company to prevent US traders from making bets. They recently said Polymarket, that is, that they had taken additional measures to block Americans from trading. At the same time, Calshe and Robin hood They were able to offer presidential prediction markets because Calshe, it seems like they won their lawsuit against the CFTC last month. So that allowed some betting markets to happen. But Polymarket is still banned from the US because of that settlement in 2022. Here's the Polymarket claim. They claimed the raid was obviously political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election. And Shane posted on X, discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.

Bunch of conspiracy theories flying around. Peter Thiel and Founder Fund have made an investment into the company, and Nate Silver is an advisor.

I guess I'll just point out two things. They were much more accurate than Nate Silver. Totally accurate. So how manipulated can it be if they got everything right?

Yeah. I mean, that's literally the point I was about to make, and I'll just end with and then give it to you, Sacks, for red meat. Americans are not allowed to participate in a lot of different markets, and these actions have been taken many, many, many times, as we all know, poker, crypto, real estate, and prediction markets have all had actions like this taken against them, and they typically are a speeding ticket.

But sorry, did they raid the offices, too, or just his house?

Just his house, according to the information we have right now.

They bused into his house at 6:00 AM, and they took his phone. By the Wait, shout out to- No, but if you were breaking the law, why wouldn't they go to the offices?

All that TBD. Yeah, it's a great speculation. It's very straight. And important to note, this action came after the election is resolved. So it's Obviously, FBI knew that doing this beforehand would be seen as political and doing it after, I guess they made the decision. No, I know what you're saying. I'm adding something else, which is they obviously knew this would be political, Sacks, and so they did it They knew if they did it before, that would be looked like really bad, that the prediction mark, that's prediction, a Trump win was rated. So they did it after. What do you think, Sacks? What's going on?

Do you think it's political or not? I guess that's the question. We don't know what was driving this. It's certainly an extreme action to bus into someone's home at 6:00 AM with the FBI and take your phone. So it's very curious. I think there's three theories that I've heard that I think could explain this. And I want to just be very clear that there's no proof on any of this. It's just speculation. Alleged. Yeah, it's just speculation about what could be going on. Everything's alleged and speculation. Yeah. But by the way, just before I get into it, I think Shane Copeland had one of the funniest tweets I've ever seen. New phone who diss. Yeah, new phone who diss. You should show that. I mean, that was like, ballsy. The FBI buss in your house, takes your phone, and that's the first thing you tweet.

I think that means that this is probably not a serious situation. But anyway, go ahead.

Well, who knows?

Or he's confident, is what I would say.

Yeah. Okay. So theory Theory number one is that what the feds are looking for is whether any domestic whales were illegally wagering on the election outcome, because theoretically, the money is all supposed to be offshore because domestic wagering on the election was illegal. However, a court ruled just days before the election that domestic wagering was legal. So theory number one doesn't really make a lot of sense because the FBI would be enforcing a rule or a law that the courts had just overruled just days before the election. But that's theory number one. Theory number two, and this theory was raised by Fortune magazine, is that that Polymarket was rife with what's called wash trading, which is a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold often simultaneously and repeatedly by the same people to create a false impression of volume and activity. This is illegal in the US, and it does occur in crypto markets. So they It could have been going after that. But again, it does seem like a very extreme thing to bust into his house. Why don't you just ask Shane for the records during business hours?

What authority would the US government have if it's all offshore in that context?

I don't know. I'm just laying out possible theories. But Fortune magazine did raise that theory. But again, if that's what your claim is, just subpoena Polymarket during business hours. I don't know why you need to raid the guy's home.

Or raid the office. That's where the files are.

Right. Now, let me lay out theory number three, okay? Oh, boy. Which is going to be a little bit more controversial. Here we go.

Get the chip oil.

If somebody was manipulating these sites, then on whose behalf were they doing it? And what you'd have to say is that they were doing it on behalf of the Kamala campaign, because in the last few days of the election, there was a weird blip where Polymarket, and Kalchi, especially, Kalchi even more than Polymarket, all of a sudden flipped to Kamala. And you could see this, particularly in Pennsylvania, where all of a sudden there was a big flip at the end away from Trump towards Kamala. That turned out to be totally fake. And Trump won Pennsylvania pretty handily. And so you got to wonder, well, wait a second, was a Kamala supporter maybe trying to push the narrative that there was a last minute surge to Kamala? Because that's what the action seemed to imply. And remember that at the same time this was happening, There was a big... There was like a media push to create a narrative by her supporters in the media that there was a late break for Harris by independence. And so you have to wonder, was somebody trying to push the prediction markets at the last minute to feed a media narrative that they were trying to create?

Look, I have no evidence of this whatsoever, but the action in the betting markets and the narrative they were trying to create in the media do line up. So if somebody was going to investigate election manipulation, this is what they should look into.

Chamath, you have any thoughts here?

No.

Zero thoughts. I mean, yeah, my thoughts on an error. I don't see him ever doing anything risky or illegal, so it makes no sense to me I'm guessing that somebody made him aware, pure speculation, of something in the system, and that probably was on his phone, and they probably wanted to get that. It's probably like a speeding ticket, ticky-tacky thing. And you just have the law still working its way through the system because they, Sacks, were under in order to not take US, but Kalash' had gotten the law changed with their successful lawsuit, or they had defended their case. I I would say it's all allegedly, folks. And so, wait for more information. It's always a good idea. All right. Trump is building his team, and it's a long list. We've got, I guess, dozens of names right now. So let's start with the four.

Who's your favorite, J. K.

Well, my opinion probably doesn't matter all that much, but let me go with the four that are creating the most buzz. Let's go with the four that are having the most buzz, and then I'll let you each tell me what you think of those candidates.

Jason, is there one that you love?

Yeah, there is one, actually, I love. But I'll say that for now.

Who's that? I'm curious. I'm genuinely curious.

Vivek and Elon doing Doge is my absolute favorite.

Yes. Anything else that- I am fascinated by Bobby Kennedy going in and trying to make the country healthier.

The country is the most sick country, I think, of all of the Western countries, and I think our food system has massive problems. I'm very excited to see what he does inside of the Health and Human Services Department. I think it's a little bit controversial, obviously, but I don't see how it could be any worse than what we currently have. How do you feel about that? Who's your favorite? I guess we can just go with people's favorites if you want to go that way.

The way I interpret his cabinet picks is that he's creating a coalition. I view it more as a package deal, J. Cal. I'm not going to pick out one or two, although I do have my favorites. The person who I think very astutely understands what Trump is trying to do is Charlie Kirk, who's a major influencer on the Republican side. And he says that what Maha, which is make America healthy again, they get RFK, Bobby Kennedy, HHS, obviously. The libertarians get Tulsi at DNI. I would add to that that they also get Elon Vevake at Doge. The populace base, gets Matt Gates. They get Hexeth at DOD, they get Homen. And then the Peace Through Projecting strength crowd, which is a nice name for Neocon, gets Rubio as Secretary of State and Stefanic at the UN. So I think that Trump is basically trying to have his cabinet reflect the diversity of views within the Republican Party. He's not decisively choosing one side over another. What this means is that during his presidency, he's going to get all the views and all the options within the party.

Okay, so that's the collective view. That's an interesting way of about it. Yes, exactly. Let's go point by point through the most controversial ones. Matt Gates is obviously the most controversial attorney. They're all young, though. That's what's incredible. They are all young. That's another trend, yeah. He has been put up as an attorney. She's attorney general. He has to be confirmed by the Senate, obviously. He's the House rep from Florida. Sacks, how qualified is he for this job on a scale of 1 to 10?

I think that Matt Gates would be a breath of fresh air at DOJ. I mean, look, here's the- Why is that? The DOJ has been involved for the last eight or nine years in a completely fabricated effort to portray Donald Trump as an agent of the Russians. It started with the Steele dossier. They then opened an investigation based on that phony piece of opposition research funded by the Hillary campaign. They lied to the FISA Court to spy on Donald Trump's campaign. They then worked with the various intelligence services and with the media to create this hoax that went on for years and years. There's been no accountability for that. Furthermore, in the 2020 election, you also had that effort to essentially cover up the Hunter Biden hard drive that the FBI and DOJ We're sitting on that for roughly a year. They created a phony story that it was Russian disinformation when it turned out to be completely authentic.

So you think there's a lot to clean up there? How qualified would be on a scale of 1-10? Look, there's no question.

What the President ran on was that the DOJ needed to be de-weaponized, that it had been turned into a partisan political apparatus for the Democrats. I don't think anyone can argue with that at this point. I think the American people clearly bought into that argument. Now, in order to clean it up, you're going to have to bring in a total outsider who's willing to break some eggs and shake things up. Is Matt Gates the only person who could do that? No, there are other people who could do it, but Matt Gates is definitely qualified for that role. He was one of the most outspoken critics in Congress of this weaponization of the FBI. He was never fooled by the Russiagate hoax. Most of the establishment was. And anybody who bought into the Russiagate hoax is not qualified to run the DOJ at this point. Okay.

Any concerns?

Well, there's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations have been made against him. We'll put it inside that.

Any other concerns?

Excuse me?

Aside from the investigations and whatever and the smears- There's a bunch of unproven smears and accusations have been made against him.

My own view on that is that if there was really something there, I think Merrick Garland's DOJ would have acted on it two or three years ago. I personally discount all these smears without there being any evidence whatsoever. I think it's very predictable that what we're seeing with both Matt Gates and with Tulsi is that the worst accusations get made without any evidence in the media when the blob or the establishment wants to stop a true populace reformer from cleaning up their backyard.

Friedberg, your thoughts on Matt Gates? That seems to be the most controversial one. Any concerns? Do you think he's the most suited guy for the job?

I don't want to comment on Matt Gates, but I'd like to talk about- Why not? Because I'd like to talk about a broader point of view on it.

Okay.

I think there's this thing that happens in biology called evolution, and a lot of people think evolution is this continuous process, but it's not. Evolution is this process by which there is some significant growth for a period of time, and then there is an extinction event or an external force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called punctuated equilibrium. The whole system resets, and then the healthier, stronger species survive, and they grow, and they persist. If you look at the first chart, nick, that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction events, large amounts of biomasse over the past half billion years get wiped out when these extinction events occur. Then evolution occurs because the species that can survive the extinction event persist in the environment, and they grow, and That's how evolution actually takes place, is there's an external force that changes what survives and what doesn't. It's a testing force. If you look at federal spending, and this is a crazy link, but here's federal spending over the last couple of decades. I would argue that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the operating models, many of the behaviors can be viewed as a species or species There's a lot of agencies within this ecosystem that have grown a lot over the last few decades.

I think what Trump's mandate was by the people, and people don't want to hear this and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be the extinction event. Whatever agencies, whatever operating processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems exist within the federal government that can withstand the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive and they can come out the other end. There is certainly some degree of strength and resilience and hardiness. This is not about right or wrong.

You say they deserve to exist if they can survive.

I'm saying this is going to bring in the most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen. The intention with Trump isn't to find some person to keep running things the way they have been run in the path. His mandate from the people who elected him, based on the message he put out there, is to do the opposite, which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible. And whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be harder, and theoretically will be more resilient. And I think that that's the event that's underway. Now, the people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's candidacies are the Democrats. They were saying, Trump is going to put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office, and he's going to make them the cabinet, and now they're able to clap their hands and say, We told you so, we told you so. And I'm not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the systems, and test the systems with the most challenging oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in charge of each of these agencies.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong one way or the other, but I'm making an observation that this is going to be an extinction-level event, that Trump's decisions on who he's putting in place, I think, are going to drive an outcome on the other end that's going to make the government look very different. I'm not going to sit around and say, This person's good, this person's bad, because I don't think the point is to find someone that's, quote, qualified to do the job. The intention is actually quite different, and the outcome may actually be positive for America if you fast forward a couple of years, in some cases, and there's some cases where things could get really messed up and people could suffer and jobs will be lost and all sorts of bad things will happen. But we cannot continue the way we have been. With respect to federal spending, and inefficiency in the federal government. So something has to happen. If this is the path by which this gets resolved in the limited window that's in front of this particular administration, which is probably two years, maybe four, maybe this is what has to happen.

Shabbat, where do you stand on Friedberg's interesting metaphor here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction-level event? I saw you nodding. Do you think this is an interesting framing?

Great take. I have nothing to add to Friedberg's take.

Got it. Who's your favorite? You asked me the question, I answered. Who's your favorite?

Well, I think let's take Elon and Vivek off the table because- That's an obvious one that we all have been behind since the beginning.

No, we all support the idea. Who's not against more efficiency? I mean, you have to be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's the easiest one to say you love.

I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy. I think the second highest beta pick is Matt Gates.

Explain highest beta pick in this context, please.

I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there is the potential for an enormously positive two or three Sigma outcome, but there's also the chance that It can really not work.

That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy, because he's going to shake it up.

Peter Thiel just did this podcast with Barry Weiss.

It was fantastic, by the way. Highly recommend.

Highly recommend.

He's awesome, yeah.

The One of the great things he said is that he was talking about science, but I think the example works here as well, which is that we didn't have enough skepticism and we had too much dogma. He was talking about the death of science. I think that that idea applies here as well, which is that the federal bureaucracy has not really been challenged. Vivek put out a very compelling post on X, where he basically said, look, on the one hand, there's going to be radical transparency, but on the other hand, there's a lot of case law that we can use to try to really dismantle the government apparatus. And they're putting themselves on a shot clock to do it by 2026 for the 250th anniversary. I think I'm really predisposed to this idea that it'll force the government to be very resilient at the end of this process. I I think that's a good thing. It'll probably be very different than what it is on the way in. I think that that can be very positive.

All right. We got Chamath and myself actually giving some specific names that we thought were interesting. I'll go back to you, Sacks. Maybe I'll phrase it as, to Chamath's phrasing, which one do you think has the greatest chance of creating a massive potential change that could be positive, but also has some possibility of a destructive downside? In other words, it could go either way, but man, if it goes the right way, it could be brilliant and amazing and great for all Americans. Who would be your number one, number two in that regard?

Well, you have to identify what the potential downside is. I think the single biggest risk in a second Trump term is that somehow the United States gets into an unnecessary war, a war that we don't need, another forever war. It's certainly not what President Trump wants. He's been abundantly clear on the campaign trail that he wants to avoid wars. He wants to avoid World War III. It's clearly where all his instincts are. But the fact of the matter is we have a very fraught and difficult international situation right now. The Middle East is on fire. We have a proxy war going on with Russia. So there is the chance that things could always spiral out of control. And you need I think within the cabinet, not just hawkish voices, but also dovish voices, so that the President has the full range of options at his disposal. And so in that sense, I would say that, Tulsi is being one of the more dovish voices is incredibly critical, just to balance out some of the other voices who are more hawkish. And so in that sense, I think just making sure that the President gets to hear from a wide spectrum of views, I think that part is very important.

So that would be Tulsi. Tulsi would be your pick for- Yeah, just because Tulsi could literally make the difference between whether we get in a necessary forever war or not.

I would also just say that with respect to the other picks, there's obviously a a lot of hysteria going on, a lot of hyperbole about the downsides. I don't think it's going to be like a meteor hitting the Earth. I don't think it's that destructive. I think that it's more like, will some eggs be broken up to make an omelet? That's the analogy I would use rather than the meteor. And the thing I would just say is that we all agree the United States is currently on an unsustainable fiscal path. We know that we're spending too much money. We know that the bureaucracy is too big. What's the downside of shaking it up? There's just way more upside than downside in terms of shaking up this bureaucracy.

Because the current path is bankruptcy. Exactly.

Why do we have to act like that it's so risky to bring in outsiders and populists and reformers into these agencies? We know there's going to be huge resistance to them. The biggest risk, frankly, is inertia taking over, and the reformers aren't able to do enough, and we all- Doing nothing is not an option. Yeah, and then we go bankrupt. That's the big Why is Tulsi getting attacked?

What's the Russian connection? People are saying... I don't know any of the history here, so tell me.

It's obvious. It's because Washington is a very hawkish place. It's basically run by the war machine. There's no money going to Washington to lobby for peace. All the money in Washington is coming from the military-industrial complex. So by definition, it's extremely hawkish, and it's geared towards war.

And Tulsi is- But is there some history with in Russia? Yeah.

Just to finish my point.

Yeah.

Tulsi has been one of the few consistent voices advocating for peace. So of course, the establishment wants to basically get her nomination vetoed. But again, I think you have to see the cabinet as a package deal. I think it's very important to have Tulsi as one voice for peace within a larger cabinet that already has many Hawkish voices. Got it.

Okay. All right, everybody, for your Sultan of Science from O'Hallo, David Friedberg, the chairman dictator Here, Chamalpai Hot Pizza from 8090, and David Sacks from Craft Ventures. I am Jason Cali-canis, your host here at the All In podcast. And this week in Startups, we'll see you next time on the All In podcast, Bye.

Back at you, Chief Retribution Officer.

Chief Retribution Officer.

It's so brutal. We'll let your winners ride.

Rainman David Sacks.

I'm going all in. And it said, We open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

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I'm doing all in. What your winners were. What your winners were.

Besties are gone.

That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless.

It's this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

What?

You're the beat.

What you're the beat. We need to get merches.

I'm doing all in.

I'm doing all in.