00:00:00
Ro, how many times have you been on the pod now? Is this number four for you? Three or four? No, this is my uh fifth time.
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Oh, wait. Sorry. I'm not Ro. Sorry. Over to Roan. Sorry. We all look the same. You're Sri Lankan. He's Indian. I know the difference. We all look the same, bro. We all look the same. It's like you're saying to the Irish
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guys. That's how that's how I won my seat. I just had Indian-Americans, every Indian-American go knock on doors and
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say, "I'm Roana." You know, they all thought I they thought the candidate came to every door.
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I'm going. All right, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the
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interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions a minute. We are giving people
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ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun. That was great. going.
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I will say one of my appearance, I think this is number four, but one of them was on election night and it was uh with uh
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Trump uh Trump Trump's son uh Donald Trump Jr. and I actually ran into him in the green room right before we were doing Squawkbox and he brought up the uh Pod interview. So there you go. Bringing
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bringing the sides together. It's been pretty amazing. I think it's a good place to start. how successful uh
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Indian-Americans have become and a really important topic I think for us to kick off with maybe this time on your
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fourth appearance is uh immigration H-1Bs. What's your take broadly on what we're
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seeing out of the Trump administration on maybe trying to correct the abuse in these systems uh and maybe uh monotize them and and maybe do you
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think that's a good strategy for correcting the abuse? First of all, there's definitely abuse. Uh second, it
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definitely needs to be corrected. The uh reality is that the some of the H-1B visa holders are uh being paid below market wages. Some of them are not going to super talented individuals or in the
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uh jobs that actually require a lot of skill. And I had a bill, a bipartisan bill actually, that uh would have reformed it, requiring paying a prevailing wage, requiring um making
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sure that the categories actually were skilled categories. I don't love the blanket 100,000 fee. I think that that's
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not the best way to reform it. But if partly because it puts an unfair burden on startups, it actually may uh hurt
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with with talent. But if you wanted to say, look, there's going to be some prevailing wage standard and we need
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reforms. I'm open open to that. Do you think that the president is on the right direction then in actually
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trying to reform the system? Yeah, I I I don't I I think in terms of reforming the system, he's in the right
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direction. I don't you know, I don't agree with the specifics of require the way he's doing it. Uh like many things,
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I think sometimes he identifies the right issue and he has a solution that I I don't agree with. Uh but the the the
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reality is that it has to be reformed. I mean I and anyone in Silicon Valley, you guys know this. I mean it's it's been
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abused. It's been abused by uh some of the mass uh IT outsourcing firms that just uh just have people coming. It's been very it's been very difficult to find some of the the best young minds
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to work at our startups to your point Ro because it has been gamed and the people that have perfected the application
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process have won the H-1Bs. And I think that that's where these systems go off the rails because it should be, as you said, the really talented young men and
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women that moved to the United States supported by an American company trying to do something ambitious. It should not
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be because you know how to apply multiple times through multiple shell companies. Yeah, I agree. And as you know, some of
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the outsourcing consulting companies, I don't want to go through all the names, but you know what they are. or taught at
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Consulting or Cognizant or others, they've gained the system and they get a a bulk of those uh H-1Bs and that needs
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to stop and there needs to be uh actual talent. But I want to make a point. I was just in China. We had gone to a
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bipartisan delegation there. Onethird of the AI talent is in China according to a
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lot of uh the reports. And so I want some of those folks to come to the United States so we can stay ahead of of
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AI. So there are legitimate uses of the H-1B program. Uh and what we need to do is fix uh fix the program so you can have the legitimate talent still coming to Silicon Valley and around the nation.
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Do you think that for that cream skimming things like national interest waiverss and 01 visas and EB1s and EB5s,
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do you think that those are sufficient to accomplish the task of that or it should be factored into the H1B program
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itself? I think there needs to be an H-1B program. I don't I don't think the national waiver and the the other
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programs are uh are enough. A lot of times, you know, look how Sundra Pachai came or Satya came who are now leading
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Google and Microsoft. They came uh they they studied here uh and then they got uh an H-1B. But I would also make it that you don't stay on an H-1B indefinitely, that we move towards a
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green card, which by the way, President Trump said on your show in your one of your episodes, he said, "I'm going to
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make sure that we actually move folks quickly uh to a green card." That to me seems like a a win-win because you're then not exploiting an individual.
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you're going to pay them the market wage as they have flexibility of moving uh and uh at the same time that they're
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going to stay in the United States instead of going back to to China or or to to India. By the way, a lot of these
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companies that if you just limit H-1Bs, they all have overseas uh a lot of the big companies have overseas headquarters. So, they're going to just offshore the jobs instead of bringing the jobs here. Bro, one of the one of
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the points that Jason has made really well actually consistently for years is in order to fix the immigration system, I think the first thing you have to do is rebuild trust in the immigration
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system. Fair point. And one of the things that the president has done is effectively now completely sealed the border. And I think the stat
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that he said is that since January, literally there have been no illegal immigrants at the southern border. I'm
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presuming it's probably similar at the northern border as well. Can you just talk about that part of the
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immigration spectrum and what you think the positives and the negatives of what has happened over the last nine months?
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We need a secure border. The border uh let we let in too many people under uh the uh Biden administration without uh having uh the proper security. I think
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the Democrats need to acknowledge that, own up to that and say that we need to make sure that there are uh there is a
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secure border. Now, I don't agree with Trump in the way he's shut down uh basically all asylum claims and and he's
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just taken it to to to zero. And I don't agree with that approach. But do I think we needed uh to do things to secure the
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border more? I do. Uh now, the question is, okay, he's done that. I disagree with uh how he's secured it and in that
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he's basically made asylum impossible. But will he take some of that goodwill that he's earned in terms of the trust and do things that I think can be bipartisan in terms of immigration
00:07:22
reform? One is an industries uh like agriculture, food production, construction for people who are here,
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who are paying their taxes, who have been undocumented for a long time. Give them a path to legalization. By the way,
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you want to see food prices come down, that would be one way to do that in terms of giving those folks a path to
00:07:42
legalization if they're here. Nonc no criminal record uh and paid uh paid their taxes. And I've seen him sometimes
00:07:48
suggest that. Yeah, he came out and said it. He said we have to look at it, right? He explicitly said it. I'm a Democrat willing to work with him
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on that. And the second would be on this green card thing, which he said explicitly, which is look, people are
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here. they if they've gotten get a college degree, we're paying for their education. Uh we want them here. I
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someone comes 600,000 students come from uh 300,000 from China. I'm glad, by the
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way, the president pushed back against his own base and said that those students should still come because he got a hard time uh saying that they
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should still come. Well, they come here, they study at Stanford, they study at Berkeley, they study at MIT or Harvard or at uh at a state college. We're
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basically financing in some way their education because all these universities get federal subsidies. Wouldn't you want
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them to stay here and create the jobs you're an investor instead of going back to China and doing it in Shanghai or
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Beijing? Yeah, I think this is part of the one of the reasons I love having you on the program, Ro, is you take a very first
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principled and a logical nonpartisan approach to this. You just gave Trump his flowers for, hey, good job closing
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the border. Good job identifying that 80% of Americans agree with that. I'm curious what's going on inside the
00:08:56
Democratic party where a large number of people can't seem to give Trump any credit, right, for this basic win and then challenge him and say, "Hey, but
00:09:07
this is where we have to go." So, how does the Democratic party look at you, your contemporaries, when you're a
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moderate, when you try to tone things down, when you try to take a first principled, logical approach to these
00:09:18
issues? How are you within your own party? Are are you the skunk at the garden party just for saying that Trump
00:09:24
actually did something right? Well, yeah. And I'm a progressive Democrat, but what I am is a progressive Democrat who's tries to call balls and
00:09:30
strikes. And like I said, I don't agree with uh all of the policies he's done to
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to to to shut down the border. But it would be just foolish to think that we didn't have a problem on the border, that we weren't uh didn't have too many people coming in, that we didn't do
00:09:46
enough to to strengthen the border. I think that should have been Vice President Harris's answer. what she would have done differently. And she
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could have even said, "I learned we we we we made a mistake. We didn't we we didn't have the the the right uh uh
00:09:59
approach on on border security." That look, today I tweeted out something about how I agreed with what Trump's
00:10:06
doing on uh the prescription drug uh issue that uh he has a a a government website that is basically going to sell pharmaceutical drugs at a cheaper price.
00:10:19
Now, that's a policy that if Bernie Sanders had put forward or Joe Biden had put forward,
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that's exactly what I was going to say. Bernie Sanders had put this out. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. That we'd all be cheering. I
00:10:30
mean, it's not Is it as far as I want? No. But it's a step in that direction. So, I guess my point is, well, why not
00:10:36
just then say, "Okay, that's that's good." Or I've been very critical of uh the president's policies on the Middle
00:10:42
East, and I was I've been critical of the policies of Biden on the Middle East. But today he put forth the plan
00:10:47
that the Arab countries are are saying that Hamas should take. So I tweeted out that Hamas should accept this, release
00:10:54
the hostages, Israel should withdraw. Now that's because I'm rooting for America to succeed in peace in the
00:10:59
Middle East. That doesn't mean that I adopt Donald Trump's policy. But I just think we need as a party to uh to to be
00:11:08
honest about where uh someone is is is putting forth something that we may agree with and where they're not. Now, of course, he's doing a lot of things that we could get into it that are unconstitutional and that's and he puts
00:11:20
does antics like having Jeff in a in a sombrero and and it it you can see why there is such anger. He's been Randon Carr threatening to take Jimmy Kimmel
00:11:33
off the air. I mean, threatening universities with uh with their speech. So, so there's reason for for the the
00:11:40
anger, but I don't think just being anti-Trump is the way back for the Democratic party. Yeah, go ahead.
00:11:47
Can just just diagnose this for us because I think we've entered a phase of politics where just it seems like
00:11:53
decorum has been lost and underneath that is it that there's hatred or is it that there's just incredible competition now to accumulate power and win elections? What do you believe is at the
00:12:05
root cause of why people can't call balls and strikes? I think it's both. It's that uh
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unfortunately there has been more extremism and hate uh in in our country. I mean people really uh have lost the ability to try to see uh the good in
00:12:23
others and to to say look we've got some humility. We may not have all the right answers and we want to engage. I think I
00:12:30
used to say money in politics is our biggest problem. Now, I believe hate and extremism is our biggest problem in in
00:12:35
in this country. And then you're rewarded uh if you do the most outlandish things because we're in an
00:12:42
attention economy. And if you pick a fight, people pay attention. Uh and so uh if you're kind of sober, uh you're you're going to lose support from your your own party, your own base. But my my
00:12:55
hope, and I I hope this for both parties, that after the Trump era, and I think even Trump supporters would
00:13:01
acknowledge he's divisive. I mean, look at what he said at Charlie Kirk's uh funeral where Erica
00:13:07
Kirk gives this beautiful statement of uh forgiveness and he says, "Well, I can't forgive. I I hate my enemies." But
00:13:13
after eight years of that, I really hope that we don't devolve into both sides just hating each other more, mimicking
00:13:21
Trump's style of communication. I hope uh whoever the Republicans put forward uh will say, "Look, we want to go
00:13:27
forward. We want it's a new generation. We've had three 80-year-old presidents in a row in this country. Like we have a
00:13:33
new generation of governors and we're going to be aspirational and we're going to talk about positive things and I hope the Democrats will do that."
00:13:39
Who do you think those are on the Democratic side? I think there folks that folks like Andy Basher, there's folks like Wes Moore.
00:13:47
You know, whatever you think of the three people who are going to win in November, Mumani, Abigail Spanberger,
00:13:53
and Mikey Cheryl, you know, one thing all three of those campaigns have in common, they don't spend a lot of time
00:13:58
talking about Donald Trump. They're talking about their own vision, their own ideas about what they want to do uh
00:14:04
for their city, their state, for the country, and the world. And that's what politics should be about. The politics
00:14:09
should be about here's what my vision is. Here's my plan. Uh here's where I want to take the nation. By the way, Ro,
00:14:16
you know, I don't agree with Ro on Medicare for all. I don't agree with him on where he thinks the tax rate should be. I don't agree with him on having the
00:14:23
state play some role in building modern factories in in Ohio and this thing he calls economic patriotism. I'm more
00:14:30
libertarian. I'm for deregulation. He doesn't understand how you really grow the economy. That's that's what we
00:14:35
should be talking about. Uh instead, it's just, you know, everyone's trying to see how they can curse in terms of
00:14:40
being authentic as if that makes you intelligent, right? I mean, it's it's actually just the expression of emotion
00:14:46
without a thought. And I uh I I I'm hoping that we'll have a more serious politics.
00:14:51
You had a you had a really great moment on a podcast I heard you on. I can't remember which one, but you were saying,
00:14:56
"I wonder if comedy is the precursor now. Being funny, uh being witty on programs is like the precursor to to running for president." But let's let's talk about um I think maybe an
00:15:09
interesting place to go would be how the technology industry how to win that back
00:15:14
on the Democratic side. You had essentially the entire industry. You had monopoly. Let's call it what it is. Nine out of 10 95 out of 100 Democrats.
00:15:26
We even had Shamat. You had Shamat. You had Mark Pinkis. I mean listen even inside the cabinet.
00:15:32
Bessent Lutnik Trump himself. I didn't know they were all Democrats. Yeah. All previous Democrats, including Trump himself. So, is there a road back? And then if we were just to do a little, you
00:15:43
know, post-mortem on how the tech industry was kind of abandoned, vilified. I know for me as a moderate basically up until this time have been like two out of three times I voted
00:15:56
Democrat. Now it's like 6040ish. the banning of the billionaires, the demonization of entrepreneurs. It it
00:16:03
must have been uncomfortable for you to watch. And obviously you see the entire um digerati at the White House having
00:16:10
dinner. You must be thinking to yourself, my god, Biden could have done that at any time. He could have summoned everybody and said, "Hey, come let's
00:16:16
talk about your issues." But instead, the industry was vilified. So if you I don't want to spend too much time on it,
00:16:21
but what's what's your diagnosis of how that happened? And then how does the Democratic party win back technology and
00:16:29
leaders and billionaires? I do joke that I think the tech industry has become the new uh new new
00:16:34
aristocracy. I look at I look at the white house there they are sund Tim Cook and Satya and all the group and then
00:16:40
then the king of England King Charles there they are or something. So it's a it's a it's a it's a a group that
00:16:46
obviously has a lot of stature and respect. I guess here was my point to the Biden administration that uh they
00:16:54
didn't agree with or they ignored. I said you're you're making a mistake if you think that getting Silicon Valley
00:17:01
folks uh on your side is about the money because they would always say, "Oh, Biden's going to raise all this money. We don't need need the valley's money." I said, "Yeah, you're going to raise all the money." And they did. They raised
00:17:12
tons of money. Klaris raised tons of money. I said, "That's not what it's about. It's about culture." I said you
00:17:17
you there are a lot of young people in America who admire these entrepreneurs who listen to AllIn, who want to build wealth, who want to build the next generation of wealth. By the way, all
00:17:28
crypto is why why are there so many young black and Latino uh folks who care about crypto? Because frankly, it's the
00:17:35
closest often they're going to get to a friends and family round in technology that we've got to expand economic
00:17:40
opportunity so they have more options. But there are a lot of people who want to have a part of the digital economy,
00:17:47
who want to who look up to entrepreneurs and innovators. And you basically let Trump, this 1980s real estate guy who
00:17:54
was kind of pay a who was wondering whether we were going to get more reruns of The Apprentice and another act on on
00:18:00
politics, and you let him be the cool guy with hanging out with all these tech folks saying, "No, I'm the future." And
00:18:06
I said, "That's the the the the worst mistake our party has made because we've got to be the party of the future. We've
00:18:12
got to be the party of entrepreneurship and innovation." And you can be like me, a guy who says, "We should tax the
00:18:20
I I'll just tell you I'll just tell you one quick story. I think I think it's not that. I think it's something I think it's
00:18:25
something more basic. When when we were at that dinner, Yeah. he asked everybody, "What is the biggest
00:18:31
issue that you're dealing with?" and he goes around the table and he asks what is a very basic and open-ended question.
00:18:40
And I I can say this because I think it was pretty clear what happened afterwards, but one of the things that was mentioned was just the overwhelming
00:18:47
pressure that the Europeans were putting on Google. I don't know if you remember this. And the day after, beyond making
00:18:54
some calls, what he did was he put a pretty meaningful pressure campaign that allowed the release valve to get released. so that Google had less pressure from the European regulators
00:19:06
and less ownorous terms. I think that that's what it is because when you sit with him, he's not selling an agenda. He mostly just asks you what's going on and
00:19:18
then he says what can I do? And I think that that is a unique feature that many politicians I think have lost. And
00:19:25
listening and and and you said an important thing which I just want to double click on because I would love
00:19:30
your perspective on this. I do believe that President Trump views the lens through economic patriotism. I've been
00:19:38
largely convinced that I think that that is a very powerful way of behaving in the world.
00:19:44
You know, Alex Carpet or Allen Summit referred to it in the spirit of Chinese Tai Chi. It's internal stability. It's
00:19:52
how do you make sure that you have the resources so that you have effectively infinite optionality abroad. That makes sense to me. So I'm just curious what is
00:20:03
the opposite of the economic patriotism that Trump offers that you've seen expressed in other countries right the Chinese I think is very fair to say had their own view of economic patriotism
00:20:16
and why is the opposite of that a better model well economic patriotism been my platform that's why Ben and says you know watch out for this kind of guy I've been talking about and writing about
00:20:27
economic patriotism for years I would say try how let me talking about why it's different uh from from where Trump
00:20:34
is. And and it gets to partly your point. I I I think fine he listens, but he's not listening uh enough to people are saying, "Well, the tariff policy is
00:20:45
not going to get get us to economic development." He's not listening enough, in my view, to people who are saying
00:20:51
that you can't just take a sledgehammer to universities and research that that's not going to help build the economy of
00:20:58
this country. uh he's not listening enough uh to people who are saying don't don't just have all this vetting and uh
00:21:05
for international students and and don't don't insult immigrants coming to the United States and we do need immigrants.
00:21:11
Now I I agree that he gave some of those answers and and and allin but overall uh
00:21:16
there hasn't been the same understanding and case for the role of immigrants in the community. What I believe is we need
00:21:21
a Marshall plan for America and I wish that we had a White House economic council. I did this bill with Marco
00:21:28
Rubio that actually looks at Johnstown that looks at Warren Ohio that looks at Milwaukee and that says not only
00:21:34
advanced manufacturing we we should put tech jobs there AIM is there healthcare and let's have an economic renaissance in this country and bring the country together and that to me uh we should be
00:21:46
arguing in the parties of how we do that uh and I have a different view on some of the policies I articulated but that
00:21:52
should be the goal if you look at if you look if you look at promoting that economic exceptionalism there are a bunch of
00:21:59
categories where I think the policy has diverged pretty meaningfully and paradoxically
00:22:06
the most obvious example is around AI where we've gone from a much more regimented stagegated way of seeing the world and under President Trump and our
00:22:17
bestie David Saxs we've gone into a much more open mandate that acknowledges we're in a very tough competition with an extremely talented a Chinese competitor. What's your view on some of
00:22:29
these groundbreaking areas of tech? How do we think about protection versus how do we think about proliferation? Well, that's a big question and uh first
00:22:41
we start by saying I I believe AI is going to do more good than bad in the world. I mean, I know that's a simple
00:22:48
statement, but there are many people who may not agree with that. uh the the the
00:22:53
advances it can make in uh human disease and diagnosis of human disease, the advances it can make in uh education
00:23:01
curriculum for young people, the advances they can make in production. You know, one of the places we went to
00:23:07
in in uh Beijing was Shyomi, the the the factory that makes these phones and I was stunned. I mean, Xiaomi is Yeah. I mean, I was stunned. It's a the AI has
00:23:20
these machines that are basically putting together the the the phone. I mean, it's a model of the iPhone. To your point, we had Josiah, who is the chairman of Alibaba, at the
00:23:31
summit. The most incredible thing that Josai said is that by government edict, essentially, they've mandated that 95% of all government institutions need to
00:23:42
be running on AI by 2030. where and you and I both know in any western country if such an edict or something happened you'd kind of just say let's just discount this essentially to zero maybe
00:23:56
maybe it's like PR fluff but you know I don't know Jason what you thought but I was sitting there thinking
00:24:01
the only country that can probably pull this off is the Chinese because if UAE top down you can you can yeah
00:24:08
mandate it. Yeah. So to your point, Ro, like we're going to have an incredibly formidable competitor and so in some
00:24:16
ways like the infighting and the ranker just needs to get dialed down otherwise we're going to miss the conditions on
00:24:22
the field. And you know just to maybe pivot to this, you're on the verge of a shutdown. Can you walk us through the inside baseball of what's happened over
00:24:33
the last few days, where we are, what the sticking point is, and what you think the odds are that that this thing will get resolved, and what happens if there's a shutdown? Can you just walk us through all of that?
00:24:43
Sure. Just two two points on on on AI, though. We do need to think about the job displacement and what we what we can
00:24:50
do as a country. I I believe the federal government has to step in uh for young people in particular to say look you can
00:24:57
work for a few years if you can't find a private sector job in helping on child care, elder care, your communities,
00:25:03
healthcare, government services. Maybe we make AI so that the DMV works better and and you know people start to think that the the government services actually are effective. But I I think
00:25:13
there has to be a lot of thought put in uh to the displacement and being a ahead
00:25:19
of the ahead of the curve. The only thing I'd say about China is while they're formidable, the one statistic
00:25:24
that made me think we've got a lot of things right here that they haven't 20% youth unemployment in China. And that's
00:25:31
because there all these college graduates, they don't want to work at on a factory line. Uh and I I tease Lutnik
00:25:39
about screws on the iPhone or something. you know a lot of college graduates they didn't they didn't want to do that in
00:25:44
China and uh at the same time not everyone is going to be like making EVs and so in our country you do a lot of what that Chinese would say silly things like you make dating apps and you make
00:25:56
comedy apps and you make sports apps and you do a lot of other things and they don't have that and I think the that
00:26:02
gives us a huge advantage uh in terms of the creativity and the and the culture if we can get the basics right now the
00:26:09
government shut down the the fight first is over something that I'm biased but I
00:26:15
fundamentally believe is is a basic principle which is if Congress passes something like the president has to
00:26:21
spend what Congress passes it's it's not discretionary you know Federman said elections matter well the elections to
00:26:26
Congress matter too and you can't you may you may just want to explain to the audience because I'm not sure all of us are up to speed on exactly the thing
00:26:33
that that is happening so Trump said this view that okay spending is too high these agencies are
00:26:39
wasting money. Uh, I'm going to come in and I'm going to make certain decisions about cutting spending that that
00:26:45
Congress may have appropriated. He did this on foreign aid. He's done it on some of the things with Department of Education. We can go through other
00:26:51
programs. Uh, I I got into an argument with with Elon when he was there. I originally said, "Look, I'm open to
00:26:57
working uh with Doge if they're reasonable uh things that we can save, but you got to do it through a process."
00:27:04
and they have a view. Their view is, well, Congress is never going to do this, so we're just going to go there and we're going to do it. And uh that's
00:27:10
not the way the Constitution works. And so, you can't expect Democrats to say, "Okay, we're going to give you our votes
00:27:16
for a budget if it's all discretionary and Trump can do whatever he wants anyway with the budget." And that's
00:27:22
that's the basic uh fault line. The second argument is over over healthcare. Uh this is just factual. If the tax credits expire on the exchange, people
00:27:34
who are paying about $7,000 on the exchange would go up to about $21,000. I mean, you basically be kicking off a ton
00:27:41
of people on the exchanges. Uh, and Democrats just can't do that. Now, you can say, well, uh, you lost the election. Then I have no problem getting
00:27:52
rid of the filibuster, and the Republicans have the votes in the Senate and the House and the pre Trump, and they can, uh, they can pass pass the
00:27:59
budget. But my my hope is that they will realize that these tax credits are worth
00:28:05
saving, that they're not going to want people kicked off health care and they're not going to want these premiums
00:28:10
going up high and then that will be the deal. Ro, the argument on the other side says that the the tax credits and the
00:28:17
health care subsidies will largely go to folks that are here illegally. Can you confirm or debunk that? First of all,
00:28:24
it's a it's a very small uh portion of people uh that we're talking about. So 90% uh is not uh anything to do with those who are undocumented. That's just
00:28:36
the math, right? I mean, so we can argue about the 10%. But we have in this country something called uh emergency
00:28:43
Medicaid. What does that mean? If you're undocumented and you show up to the hospital, we will take care of you. I
00:28:50
believe that is correct. I don't think if you're undocumented and you show up to a hospital that you should be denied
00:28:56
care. Well, who pays for that? We have an emergency Medicaid program. And I guess if you mean that when you fund
00:29:02
Medicaid, when you fund the Affordable uh Care Act that uh you're saying you're funding some of it for undocumented people who are showing up in uh in emergency situations, then yeah, you're
00:29:13
you're you're funding that. Uh but the my view of it is that let's be honest that that's not where the big money and the budgets are. You're talking about a small group of folks. You can argue the
00:29:25
cultural point about it. Uh but don't uh don't make that the the numbers. So So for the average person watching listening, what technically happens if
00:29:37
there's a shutdown? Like what happens to their everyday lives? Well, first of all, it's a it's bad for some of the
00:29:44
public servants, right? Will the capital police will police officers get paid? Will uh will military get paid? Will
00:29:52
people if they have a family member who is in government service, will they get paid? And they just may as Americans or
00:29:57
family members care about that or you're going to have people without pay. Second, there will be some services
00:30:03
that'll start getting cut, right? Like if you're flying a plane, you may not notice it for a few days, but then after
00:30:08
a few weeks, you're saying, "Oh, they have less government uh less flights because we don't have enough people
00:30:13
showing up or staffing at the airports and uh some of the parks may shut down." Uh things that involve the government that aren't national security uh urgent
00:30:24
are going to get affected. Let's um talk a little bit about the censorship issue. This has come up
00:30:29
multiple times. It's a culture issue for sure, but why are both sides so obsessed with this? And how do we get this uh
00:30:36
resolved between both sides? And then there's another both sides issue, which is political speech that's violent.
00:30:44
Fight like hell, Trump is Hitler. The stuff that I don't hear you saying, but that we do.
00:30:49
Steven Miller is a fascist. Steven Miller saying it the other day. Yeah. Tweeted it out. He's he's gone full Trump in terms of the dueling. I I wouldn't I wouldn't
00:31:00
call it full Trump. I would just say it was really trolling issues each other. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there's a way to to
00:31:07
to to argue. I' I've gone back and forth with Steven Miller and and he we we have
00:31:13
exchanges. I've gone back and forth with Vice President Vance. I mean, sometimes I think some of it is iner, but the point is it's within a bounds. You're
00:31:19
not he he's not uh saying, you know, uh deport row. uh and I'm not uh uh using the words of uh Hitler or or other things in in in talking about him. I mean you can have spirited debate uh in
00:31:34
a way that uh isn't polyianish uh is tough but respects certain norms that the other person uh is a person of intelligence uh whose views you disagree
00:31:47
with. Is there no leadership though Ro like where when you're in DC people come together and say you know what the people who have the most to lose here are us. So it's in our best interest in
00:31:58
terms of self-preservation for all of us to just speak in a more kind civil way to each other because there are a large number of mentally ill people out there. I believe that's like at the core of
00:32:10
this is mentally ill people hear different things when you say fight like hell or this person's Hitler etc. and
00:32:17
they may act on it. And I can I can I say something? I I think this is an important point, but I want
00:32:22
to just push back on that. It's too simple to sweep it under the rug as a mental illness issue. Like when you have
00:32:28
somebody get assassinated where the bullet says, "Hey, catch this fascist." And then less than 10 or 12 days later,
00:32:34
you have one of the if not the most visible leaders of the Democratic party in all caps screaming on X, Steven
00:32:41
Miller is a fascist. I think that that's just irresponsible. I think we can all admit that that is irresponsible and
00:32:48
that I think what happens is as Rose said the extremes have been amplified in an attention economy but I think it's
00:32:55
too simple to say that they have something that can just be swept under the rug. I think that this chronic issue
00:33:01
and uh you can both sides it. you know, when when Trump said go fight like hell and they went and beat police officers,
00:33:07
you know, at the capital, I don't know if you were there, Row, and what that was like, but I was you were there and like it's pretty
00:33:14
scary and that thing could have gotten out of hand. And the Oathkeepers and Antifa, these are both radical
00:33:19
organizations that will murder people, that will beat police. They're they're very disturbed individuals in both of
00:33:26
these groups. So I think you can both sides of this and every time we see one of these crazy people, these extreme
00:33:32
people, it's it's really the same profile. It's it's white men who are disconnected from reality. So I don't
00:33:38
know how a sane person drives into a church, kills people, and lights it on fire like we saw the other. No, Jason, I understand. But I'm saying
00:33:44
there there's a broad group of people that are committing these actions that are not just deranged. They're being
00:33:50
incited. They're being programmed. They're being pulled into behaving in ways that if they had other things,
00:33:56
other attachments, they may not necessarily have done this. I would agree with that. If there was religion and family and they weren't
00:34:02
shut in and playing video games, I agree. Let me hear you, bro. No, no, it's good. I feel like I'm in like a uh the therapy session with old
00:34:13
Mary poker table. This is the whole point of the podcast at the poker table. Here you are at the table. Go ahead. Tell us your
00:34:19
Here's my view. Obviously, it's it's that that kind of extreme rhetoric is leading uh in cases of political
00:34:26
violence, but it's more than that, right? It's not just the Charlie Kirk assassination or January 6th or the
00:34:31
attack on Pelosy's home. It's also making us hate each other as Americans. It's making us incapable of coming
00:34:38
together to say, you know what, I agree with Donald Trump selling pharmaceutical drugs at a cheap
00:34:46
price because that's the direction that Bernie Sanders would go. we can't we're not able to do that. Why? Because we've
00:34:52
created such uh anger and extremism and uh tribalism in in in our politics. And the reality is right now you're rewarded for it. If you grab the attention and
00:35:06
you show that you've kind of got vengeance on the other side, your poll numbers go up in within your own uh
00:35:13
base. Uh you're uh you get more contributions. I mean, we just need to speak plainly about some of the
00:35:19
incentives. And if the election was in November of 2025, uh, the next presidential election, I think both sides would end up nominating the the side that's going to take it to
00:35:32
to to the other one, the the own the libs from the Republicans and, you know, fight fire with fire with everything and
00:35:39
own the MAGA folks from from the Democrats. I am hoping I don't know if that's true. I'm hoping that people will
00:35:45
see that this is a a spiral downwards, that fire, that fighting fire with fire leaves ashes for everyone. That's what Emanuel Clever says. And that we've got to find a different way of of moving
00:35:59
forward. By the way, even people who agree with Trump on policies, there have been a lot of presidents in our country's history, FDR, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, not all of them
00:36:10
were divisive. There's one guy who did that. And my view is first of all, American politics disdains a copycat.
00:36:17
You're probably not going to be successful just mimicking him. And secondly, why wouldn't you return? Why
00:36:23
wouldn't you want this country to return to a aspirational inspirational politics whether your choice is right? I think
00:36:30
people are going to get burned out on it. So the the other two issues I wanted to to hear from you on is the the
00:36:36
censorship one and then the lawfare one. It was pretty clear that of the six or seven cases that were uh done against Trump during his time off and and the
00:36:47
Biden administration was in, you know, were were reaching, right? And maybe were lawfare would be fair to say were
00:36:55
lawfareesque. And now you're having the exact same thing Trump doing with Comey where he's firing the attorney general
00:37:02
in that district, putting a new one in. So, I'm wondering how you think about the censorship wars going back and forth
00:37:09
and then now the lawfare ones because we as moderates and I think moderates are the ones who are swinging these
00:37:14
elections right now. You guys are we're getting very tired of it. I am exhausted with the fact that neither
00:37:20
side will stand down on censorship or on the lawfare. What are your thoughts? Well, on censorship I have a particularly strong record. I when people say what makes you a different kind of Democrat, I say free speech. And
00:37:33
all these people who got uh outraged when Jimmy Kimmel was was pulled down were silent uh often when Twitter was
00:37:40
censoring uh the New York Post with Hunter Biden's laptop stories. And as you may remember my email leaked uh where I said that no,
00:37:51
you shouldn't be pulling down that story and you shouldn't be uh having the New York Post uh take that down. And then I
00:37:57
got criticized from my own side, even though I'm one of the strongest defenders of trans rights. And you we
00:38:03
may have disagreements over where my stance is because I said that comedian who was arrested at Heathrow airport for
00:38:10
a transphobic post should not be arrested that that you should not be arrested for that. I got criticized from
00:38:16
from the left. So my point is then when I speak out and say, "Okay, Jimmy Kimmel shouldn't be pulled down and we
00:38:22
shouldn't be cancelling speech or going after left-wing groups," there's at least some credibility because I'm
00:38:28
willing uh to say, "Look, our side is engaged in that kind of censorship as well." And it's wrong when either side
00:38:34
has it. And I think our side would have a lot more credibility in going after Trump, even if they didn't do it back
00:38:40
then if we just acknowledged that we've got this speech problem on our side. It's easy to be for free speech when
00:38:46
it's speech you like. Like Kim, it's hard to be for free free speech. The test is not will you stand up for it
00:38:52
when you like it. It's will you stand up for it when you don't like it. And that's okay. Now do cuz this is you know I didn't like it
00:38:59
when they did it to Trump. There did seem to be like some situations where he was provocative or did some things that
00:39:07
you know on the margins could have gotten you a ticket let's say. But then you have, you know, these
00:39:13
big judgments against him that I don't think would have been brought if he wasn't running for president again or
00:39:18
they didn't want him to run for president again. And now we have the same thing happen with Comey and they're literally picking the attorney generals
00:39:25
and firing them and putting people in who've never actually even been in front of a grand jury just to get this, you
00:39:31
know, revenge. And so it's it's a pretty dark time, I think, on the law front. What do you think? Yeah, look, I I don't want to relitigate
00:39:38
uh Trump's actions. I do think he did certain things like January 6 others that were blatantly uh illegal and and
00:39:45
and unconstitutional. But I will say this that we whoever going forward for the parties should be make a firm commitment that uh they're going to follow the law and not engage in
00:39:56
vengeance and not engage in retribution. Uh and it's sad to me that that that we've gotten to the state. I I understand Trump feels like, okay, he won a second term. He he was spared from
00:40:09
assassination. He had everyone against him and and and he's going to get the people who he he feels he was wronged
00:40:15
by. But it's a it's a horrible thing uh for the country and we've got to we've got to make make it clear that that
00:40:22
we're going to move past this chapter. Not that okay now we're going to uh Democrats are going to come in and we're
00:40:28
going to go after uh everyone on their side. I mean then we're no different than any other country. Jumping off tangentially from Lawfair,
00:40:35
let's talk about crime for a second. You know, you described your self-described progressive Democrat. One of the themes
00:40:42
around that is social justice reform and you're seeing some of the implications of that, the the abuse of no bail, the abuses by DAs who are letting teen
00:40:55
repeat offenders out on the street. You're now seeing how that manifests in crime, right? everything from this this
00:41:01
young woman from Ukraine who was brutally murdered to this young woman, the 22-year-old who who's killed as part
00:41:08
of a home invasion. Her her father gave this gripping testimony a few days ago. Where are the Democrats on this idea of
00:41:16
keeping the streets safe and law and order through the lens of the social justice reforms you believe in as a progressive? So, one of the things I say is that uh my district, and
00:41:30
I don't say this to brag, I just say this to make a point, my district is actually one of the safest in America. Right? When you look at Fremont, uh
00:41:37
Certino, Sunnyville, Santa Clara, and San Jose, they're all in the top 25 safe cities. And I say that's correlated with the fact that we have five trillion dollar companies, Apple, Google, Nvidia,
00:41:49
Tesla, and Broadcom. You wouldn't have the economic prosperity of Silicon Valley if you didn't have the safety of Silicon Valley because you wouldn't have executives living there. You wouldn't
00:42:00
have families living there. You wouldn't have people uh wanting to participate in the economy. So safety is essential if
00:42:07
you believe in creating economic opportunity and economic mobility. And I think that there is a group of pragmatic
00:42:14
mayors now. Dan Luri I would say in San Francisco, Matt Maym in San Jose, Raj Salwan in Fremont who recognized that
00:42:22
the pendulum had swung too far that you know I supported that ballot initiative that was on the ballot last last
00:42:28
election that said you know if you if you are committing multiple crimes of uh smashing into Walgreens, then you're going to be charged that you can't just say, "Okay, yeah, you can keep smashing
00:42:41
into Walgreens committing taking under $1,000 and It's okay. Uh I don't view that as being not progressive. I mean progressives I thought the whole point is you believe
00:42:53
in the rule of law. Now if you say yeah you shouldn't lock someone up for the rest of their life or a mandatory
00:42:58
minimums fine. But that doesn't mean you excuse behavior that is how does a how does a 14 time feline, you know, never end up being held
00:43:09
accountable and then is on the streets and then just savagely murder somebody in it's totally unacceptable. I mean
00:43:16
it's totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. It happened with that Ukraine I I don't remember all the details, but I think it happened with
00:43:21
that Ukrainian girl. It happened with this Indian-American who was beheaded in uh Texas where the the person had all
00:43:27
these arrests. uh and and you know what the the interesting thing is I spoke out about about those and I didn't get that
00:43:35
much push back from a liberal base. So I don't what I don't understand is where the the pressure is coming from from
00:43:42
just saying look we got to be common sense in this country. Now, I don't think the answer to that is, you know,
00:43:47
put federal troops like Trump is. But what the Democrats should realize or my view is like is that why is the country
00:43:55
letting him do that which we which I don't think is constitutional or the right right solution because they're so
00:44:01
frustrated with what's going on and just citing statistics, you know, going out there and saying, "Well, the statistics are down." Yeah. This doesn't match people's reality. They people are smart. And you
00:44:13
know, I think this is really a stupid strategy by the Democrats. If Trump says, "I'm going to send in the National
00:44:19
Guard because you guys haven't done the job." The the obvious kung fu move to redirect that energy and say, "Yes, here
00:44:26
are the five places, these are hot spots where we need those troops. If you can put these troops on these five corners,
00:44:31
on Turk Street, on Sixth Street, that's where we need them. And uh how long can we get them for uh before you move them
00:44:37
to the next hot spots? That would totally just take away what is an obvious play by the Republican party to make the Democrats fall for the trap of
00:44:48
we're pro crime, we don't care about people's safety, which by the way is the It's just so dumb. It's so dumb. Like why are Democrats in
00:44:59
this respect from these specific cities, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, why are they so dumb?
00:45:06
Well, these are hard cities to govern. I mean, it's it's not dumb. They're not they're hard but and I
00:45:13
I dis, you know, because I'm always honest, I disagree with you on on the National Guard coming there, but I do
00:45:18
agree. I disagree I I agree with you, by the way, that it's not constitutional. But in a situation where people are
00:45:25
suffering day in and day out, what happened in Washington DC when they put those people when they brought in the National Guard, we should have Jason. I
00:45:30
think everybody said, "I love Jason. Jason Jason with I think this comes down to leadership. When you look
00:45:36
at these big cities, there are examples of when they have been governed well and it takes a point of view and the balls
00:45:43
to just say this is how it's going to be." The last best example of this is Mike Bloomberg in New York. Yes.
00:45:48
I remember the first thing the first thing Mike did was he said, "Soda out." Second thing he did, smoking, done.
00:45:55
It completely changed the way the world works. If you guys remember, you used to go to bars everywhere.
00:46:01
Yeah. And you would smoke incessantly and even if you didn't smoke, you were subject to all this disgusting secondhand smoke.
00:46:07
But when Mike did that one thing, it cascaded throughout the world. It takes leadership before Bratton did
00:46:13
crime stat under Giuliani. But anyway, Ro, explain to us why what the right solution here is. Well, I think Bloomberg Bloomberg had a
00:46:19
good record. I think Matt look at what Matt Mayan and and Dan Lurri are doing closer to home. I mean, they're saying, "Look, we need more police. We need to
00:46:26
uh understand that uh I if people have mental health issues and that they're not getting off the street again and again and again that you can go uh to a
00:46:38
court and say that they they need treatment that that we need uh to be funding uh more uh temporary housing not
00:46:46
just permanent housing because yeah we want permanent housing long term but that doesn't mean in the meantime we do
00:46:52
uh we do nothing and you know so I I I think that they're they are pragmatic. Uh they would they've acknowledged it's a problem and uh and they're working at it. What I what I don't think works is
00:47:04
just denying people's feelings because partly it's like when I was growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, we used to leave our house doors uh unlocked
00:47:11
unlocked and that's the lived memory of a lot of people. And you know the problem of
00:47:16
doing denying it is if you embrace Trump's whole thing is look life used to be simpler in the 1960s and you could
00:47:24
leave your doors unlocked. You had a good job. You worked in a manufacturing place. You you you supported your
00:47:30
family. And you know what? If you don't want to move backwards because there's a lot of social progress we made. There's
00:47:35
a lot of great parts to our our diversity and people from around the planet here that we've got to make sure
00:47:41
that everyone buys into the future and safety is first in that. Stay on this local theme for a second.
00:47:48
Tell us about Mum Donnie. What is he? You know, it's it's10 billion for, you know, bodeas.
00:47:54
It's billions of dollars for this. It's billions of dollars for that. I think I heard recently he wants to charge a 2%
00:48:00
tax on people above a certain salary. He wants to charge any company that does business in New York City an extra tax.
00:48:08
What? What is Yeah. And how does he come out of nowhere and just run the table on the establishment?
00:48:13
Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you tell you why. And I, you know, I've campaigned in cander for three candidates November elections or haven't
00:48:20
campaigned. I campaigned for Abigail Spanberger who's gonna win in Virginia, Mikey Cheryl, and I've supported uh
00:48:26
Mumani because of of the moment he's had. I think Mamani's success was based on two things. one uh the the
00:48:33
recognition that New York City was unaffordable and just speaking about that unaffordability. So there's certain
00:48:39
things which are pretty practical like most people don't pay for the buses anyway. They're on the buses without uh
00:48:45
paying the the ticket and if he wants to make the buses free uh that that's a a a
00:48:51
reasonable policy. But he was basically saying look you can't afford to live in New York. And none of the other candidates really spoke about that. They
00:48:57
were speaking about crime and public safety and they weren't talking about uh the economy. And the other thing is uh
00:49:04
and you know I have a differences on him on on on on the Middle East. I'm for a two-state solution. I've condemned globalizing in but he was saying look there are too many people that are being killed in in Gaza and Netanyahu's
00:49:16
policies are wrong. And and that resonated with people in in New York City. And so the challenge for our party
00:49:23
is how do we uh recognize the is he is he the is he the candidate of giveaways or is he the candidate of
00:49:31
where we realistically need to be in order to have stability. I think he's a candidate that is
00:49:36
sounding the five alarm fire on affordability and the loss of the American dream. How he governs is I
00:49:42
think going to be a challenge and I hope that he he's a very talented guy. I hope he
00:49:48
says, "Okay, look, I'm going to sit down as I am with business leaders and uh other leaders and say, help me achieve
00:49:54
my goals." Like, okay, I want to have a rent freeze on the the apartments that are controlled by New York, but I also
00:50:00
want to make sure we're doubling housing construction and building new housing. And how do we do that? I want to make
00:50:05
sure that if I am increasing taxes that that there's not capital flight from New York City. uh what happens if he which
00:50:13
is pretty clear if after winning he's a complete utter disaster in how he runs that city. What what does that do to the Democratic party? I don't think he will be but that would hurt us, right? I mean I I I don't think
00:50:23
he can have a a record uh that is a that's a failure. I think he has in fact a lot of the progressives are are invested in him succeeding and and making sure that he has a has a
00:50:35
pragmatic success record. But look, I I think you would people who just want to say, well, we should just reject
00:50:42
Mandani, etc. They they're not understanding the the amount of people that he speaks for in the Democratic
00:50:48
party who feel like we need to tackle the economic inequality. He speaks to young people.
00:50:54
He's clearly hit a note on those issues. And then the question is, can he execute? I I remember when Dinkets came
00:50:59
into office, that was when we bottomed out in New York. I was a teenager. And then that's when we got Giuliani
00:51:04
Bloomberg back to back and we cleaned up the city. I get Dinkens vibes if he doesn't, you know, actually take on the
00:51:10
the safety of the issue in addition to these other issues. Um, man, wrote, as we wrap, just one last question, which
00:51:17
is there's a movement of foot to ban stock trading by people in Congress and you've been supportive of that. And then I think that we saw something recently that said, I don't even know if you know
00:51:27
this, but somebody that manages your money has traded like 30,000 times uh or something in some number. Do you want to just address what that is and where you stand on banning stock trading and
00:51:40
whether it's just simpler to move everybody to ETFs and just call this a day? I am totally for uh a stock trading ban.
00:51:47
I've led on that. I don't trade stocks. My wife's money was inherited uh in trusts that I'm no say over, no control over and it's in a trust and the trust act would require actually every person
00:51:59
to be uh in a trust and uh that eliminates conflict. So I've been very consistent about it and I've been one of the leaders on actually a ban on stocks. So what do you got? What tip? Any tips
00:52:11
for us? What do you No, but did you know did you know that somebody somebody related to you is
00:52:16
trading 30,000 times a year? I have no idea. It's like a citadel inside of Rokan. I
00:52:22
don't know if you know this, but it's it has nothing to do with me, right? It's not my money. It's not I mean I have no and frankly I have no uh no no
00:52:30
uh involvement in it. And so that's it's tiny amounts too. That's really interesting. Like it's um small trades. Lots of small trades. Anyway, whoever's working for you seems to be doing a good job for you.
00:52:41
No, not for me. Working for the family. Uh listen Ro Kana uh voice of reason moderate honest
00:52:49
and uh just really excited for you to run for president. Bro, last last question actually last
00:52:55
question. There's still a pretty open field for California governor. Have you thought about it and um if not why not?
00:53:03
No. Uh because a lot of you know I think you've got to really have spent some time in in in Sacramento to to deal with
00:53:09
those issues. And a lot of my issues have been how do we build economic prosperity in parts of the country that
00:53:15
have been left out? How do we uh deal with our competitiveness with China and other nations? I'm on the China Select Committee. I'm on the House Armed Services Committee. I've been focused on economic patriotism. Uh and I don't
00:53:27
think you just run for a title. And so the type of person who should run is one who's going to focus on getting our
00:53:32
utility costs down in California, who's going to focus on making our streets safer, who's going to focus uh on
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building more housing and being a Yimi and saying uh that that we need to to do these things. And so I think there will
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be good candidates emerging with those skills in California. Ro, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Ro. To have you
00:53:54
Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, sir. [Music] I'm going all in.