JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024

this speaker is not on the program not on the program but I did notice there was a little bit of security here today little extra security this is your saxs red meat moment yes all right here we go little red meat for Sachs uh please welcome me in joining vice presidential candidate jie Vance let your winners ride Rainman David and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy [Music] with hey guys man good to see you man how you doing time all right see you hey guys welcome so Zach is GNA introduce you welcome to the Lions who who's here with us Z well do we do we actually need

a a big introduction here but I'll I'll give you I'll give a few um those of you who are really bad at context clues I'm JD Vance I'm running for vice president and normally he's he's beside his wife Usha but now you get that's right she's at like the tarpits or whatever yeah yeah oh yeah we brought a three kids out here so she wanted to take and see some fossil stuff so they'll have fun good I'll say a couple of things about JD because um he's a friend I think what what I think um really made me want to support JD for for Senate and also for the VP position is that I think he represents two you could almost say

contradictions uh back in 2003 when JD graduated from high school uh you know this was after the Twin Towers had come down and we gotten involved in the Iraq War he was gung-ho to go fight America's enemies and he enlisted in the Marine Corps and went off uh to serve in in the Middle East eventually he came to realize that that war was a mistake and I thought that really represents uh one of the traits that we really want in in a vice president or someone next to the president uh which is that he had the patriotism and the courage to go serve America but also the wisdom to realize when America shouldn't get involved in a

war so I want to [Applause] just the the other uh like I said almost contradiction that JD represents is that he had worked in the tech industry he had been a a venture capitalist he had been in rooms like this and he understands what it takes to make America a more Innovative place at the same time he comes from a part of the the Midwest Appalachia that's a very poor part of the country and did not grow up in a privileged uh environment at all and he still remembers those people and he represents those people and I think his ability to understand both parts of the country makes him uh I'd say a pretty unique political figure so with that let me stop and do you want

to react to any of that uh well you know first of all thanks to all for having me I've been a big fan of the Pod for a while I think my first appearance so it's good to be with you you know I the only thing I'll say to that David is I I do think there is a deep connection between the the poverty that I saw growing up and the fact that our entire economy is just less Innovative than we pretend that it is and you know I know you know Peter teal and Tyler K other folks have talked about this but if you look at the real innovation of the American economy it's been in the world of software if you look at where the economy has been most stagnant it's been

in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy which is where 90% of the people that I represent in the Senate and 80% of the people that I hope to represent as their vice president actually make their living run their business and go to work every single day and I think that you know when I think about tech one of the things I'd like us to do is broaden the aperture a little bit and think about innovation not just in software but innovation in transportation and Logistics and Innovation uh in energy and the whole Suite of things because unless our economy is actually technologically Innovative then the stagnant economy is

is fundamentally like the worst thing and I think a lot of actually America's pathologies right now stem from the fact that we feel like we live in a very zero some country because in some ways we do right when when when the econom is growing four 5 6% a year then Democrats can kind of get what they want Republicans kind can kind of get what they want and it all makes sense if the economy is growing between 0er and 1% a year then I think it makes the whole society and our political system a much much much more insane and I think it's kind of a subtext of what's been going on in this country for the last 30 years um let me start by going back a little

bit I think three of us um initially would have been described sort of like you know non-trump people yeah um and in different ways and shapes and form we were all V about it because of what was presented to us through the filter of the media and we've all gone through an evolution in large part by meeting the person and this is the first time actually where a presidential candidate I've known and I've kind of known a vice presidental candidate in this case as well get try you know they try to Corner you and paint you in a certain way can you just talk about what you realized and the person that you got to know and what it says about what we need to do so

that we don't get manipulated yeah so first of all when Biden was running against Trump one of the things the media tried to do is to say well you know you have these two guys who are a little bit older than average and both of them clearly aren't fully with it and I would hear the media talk about Biden like this and then talk about Trump like this and it's like guys Donald Trump remembers exactly what I said about him n and a half years ago to the minute to the day to the exact line like trust me his memory is 100% there uh even if it would be in more more in my interest if it wasn't and you know what what what changed for me I mean two things I mean

one Chim you just sort of hit on this is a lot of the things the Press said about Donald Trump and says about Donald Trump are just straight up Fabrications and so if you think the Press is like biased that's one thing but if you think the Press is fundamentally trying to tell you the truth even if it's in a bias way and then you realize that like Donald Trump never called white supremacist very fine people after Charlottesville a total fabrication of the American Media it's like okay what other things am I hearing about Donald Trump that are actually not true right the second thing

is you know and we talked about this a little bit last night but look if you go back to the date of my or the year of my birth which is 1984 there's this chart that's really interesting and it tracks corporate profits the wages of workers and the size of government and for pretty much my entire life the wages of workers were stagnant corporate profits were going up and the size of government was going up and there was a 4-year period where the wages of workers outpace the size of government corporate profits it's the four years that Trump was president and I think that we have to like give some credit to where it's due the policies actually work and if you go into the presidency

saying I don't think Donald Trump's going to be a good president and then lo and behold he's the best president at least in a generation it's like okay time to change my mind admit to myself but also to all the people who listen to me I was wrong about Donald Trump he was a hell of a good president of course I'm running as his running mate I think he'll do it again let's flip it around now what what does it say about him that he I mean how's that process of saying JD you said this yes I did I changed my mind I then but then he has to change his mind so that says something so talk us about that you know I think the the president one thing I'll say about him

is the again the media perception of Donald Trump is that he's like this deeply AG grieved guy who holds really terrible grudges the actual reality of Donald Trump is that yeah he remembers what you said about him because it's like part of the inputs that he takes as he tries to evaluate a human being but most most importantly he's asking like what what can you do now how can you help the country now how can you help me as I try to help the country now and I think for whatever complicated set of factors he decided that I was the guy who could help him the most um but no I mean it's it's it is interesting the perception of him as this guy who holds grudges he selected a guy who was very

much a Critic of his back in 2015 as his running mate clearly something doesn't make sense and I think that what doesn't make sense is this idea that Trump is more motivated by grievance than he is by the public interest he's actually much more motivated by the public interest that's the truth that's awesome you're um thanks for coming of course um you're going to replace um Mike Pence uh as I hope so yeah as uh GNA be a close election but um if you do um Mike Pence um your new boss Trump is a little upset at Mike Pence because Mike Pence refused to uh overturn in the election results and um if you were in that same position what would you do would you have overturned

the election results well I think it's let me take itue with the premise a little bit Jason because I don't think the argument was Mike Pence could overturn the election results I think the argument was that Mike Pence could have done more whether you agree or disagree Mike Pence could have done more to sort of surface some of the problems in the election would you have not certified the El well I I think that what I would have done I mean look I I I happen to think that there were issues back in 2020 particularly in Pennsylvania even you know some of the courts that refused to throw out certified ballots did say that there were ballots that were cast in an

illegal way they just refused to actually decertify the election results in Pennsylvania do I think that we could have had a much more rational conversation about how to ensure that only legal ballots are cast yes and do I think that Mike Pence could have played a better role yes but I again the the the two premises that I take issue one is one pence was not asked to overturn the election he couldn't have but two the reason asked to not certify it sure so would you have certified it last year for the third again I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an

election that we have states to be clear I would have asked the states to submit alternative slate to that's that's what I would have done again I've said that publicly many times but again Jason the important part is we would have had a big debate and it doesn't necessarily mean the results would have been any different different but we at least would have had the debate in Pennsylvania and Georgia about how to better have a rational election system where legal ballots are cast and again I I you know look I have no personal problem with Mike Pence I've never really talked to him um but I think that the idea that the reason Mike Pence

isn't on board with Donald Trump is over the election of 2020 that's the other thing I want to take issue with Jason because I think in reality that if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now and fundamentally the reason the old guard of the Republican party hates Donald Trump it's not because of January the 6 2021 whatever your views on it it's because Donald Trump doesn't think that we should start stupid Wars in foreign countries and that's why they all hate him can I I have a fall on that let me continue my line of questioning then I'll give it to you because I want to

hear JD's since he's here I've heard yours many times um so uh how many how many followups how many follows are you going to have about January 6 we 2 minutes talking about I want to hear David especially if he gets me out of answering so I think we've you've had like three follow-ups on on J first of all freeberg you never got a chance to ask your question I want to talk about let's let's talk about January 6 for the next 45 minutes I'm sure the most important thing going on in the country right now can we talk about policy for a minute that'd be great okay I'd love that I I'll just I'll just reflect back on your comment about government growth compared

to wage growth compared to corporate profits there's only so much Capital it gets sucked up somewhere right there's competing interests that suck Su it up the government is a competing interest that sucks up Capital fundamentally the government has been successful in sucking up capital and ultimately the government has been proven time and again to be the least efficient way to grow the economy of allocating capital allocators or labor and um Trump has made this commentary that Elon who's going to be here later today should come in and help rightsize the government you've now you've now spent a few years as a senator this is my most distressing

issue right of all the panic attacks I have that Jason teases me about it's government spending the debt level and ultimately you reach a Tipping Point I believe in democracies where the government is spending uh most more people are dependent on the government than are not and that ultimately leads to a very bad outcome for democracy that's how I feel and So based on what you've seen as a senator now for the last few years and based on the commentary that Elon where where would you go in you know cut where where's the most kind of efficiency gaining opportunity that we can kind of execute against without needing to go

and negotiate with Congress what's the opportunity ahead for the executive branch to rightsize government to make things more efficient to hold things accountable to improve the way that the government is functioning which I think ultimately leads to better economic growth and opportunity for Innovation because Capital flows to the right places so I agree with you and let me just say let me say two things and I'll try to answer briefly because I know there are a lot of topics that we can get through so so number one is one of the things that our government should do obviously I think it should be doing less than it currently does but what it does I want it to do well

and most importantly I want the critical social welfare functions of our government to go to the people who actually deserve to be here so as United State Senator I have asked multiple staff members I've asked officials in various government departments if you take the give or take 25 million illegal aliens that are here in this country right now how much money do we spend on illegal aliens every single year in this country and I've gotten estimates that range between a100 billion a year to $600 billion a year and where does that money come from well it comes from Healthcare benefits even though illegal aliens aren't entitled to section 8

housing their children are entitled to section 8 housing there's also a lot of Social Security fraud a lot of Medicare fraud so one thing that we could save a lot of money on is actually focusing our national interest on American citizens people who deserve to be here we'd save a lot of money that way that'd be a huge 7.3 trillion budget what do you estimate that impact to be well again and I'm trying to do that scene in the movie Dave they go in and they just like line up like nope no or like no pulled everything off the board if you call it a $ 1.7 trillion deficit right uh again it's between $100 billion to $600 billion depending on how you cut the

numbers now the the other thing about that just to answer your question about efficiency is I think the government procurement process especially in military equipment is really broken uh if you go back to Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex I mean I I was a seed investor in andil I imagine you guys have some andil people here today um great lucky here great yeah great great chat you know one of the things that that company as as I as you know I haven't talked to to the guys about the details of their business in the LA in the last few years but one of the things that they founded the company on was the idea that the procurement process was broken and that is

definitely true in the you know we do way too much cost plus procurement and way too little actual spurring of innovation and what it ends up meaning is that our equipment isn't as good as it should be and we end up spending a lot more money than we should be I actually do think you could cut the American defense budget and make our country stronger but you would have to make the procurement process much more efficient now that's a big thing to tackle but that's what we're in this business do you pass legislation to do that I don't know that you have to pass legislation but you really as a president and vice president you have to be willing to take on some very powerful

defense contractors and that's something that I know president Trump and I very much want to do and how would you like your role as vice president to be cast differentially from how other vice presidents have have operated what would your role as an individual be just speaking about I want to do all of the good things and none of the bad things that's my goal as as vice president that's so the ribbon cuttings of the new federal like I mean look I mean obviously joking but the the reality is that I I want to be a second set of eyes and ears for the president's agenda right one of the things that was true and he will tell you this the first time

he was he was President of the United States is there were people in government there were people in his own Administration that he was a newcomer to politics he didn't fully trust everybody who was around him we want to build a team who's actually aligned on the agenda because agree or disagree with Donald Trump on a specific policy issue assuming the American people make him the next president pres and I think that they will that is the next president and his policy determinations should dictate the executive administration of government if they don't we don't have a real democracy and by the way just not

to weigh back into January 6 territory like what is a bigger threat to American democracy is it that we had a big fight about some of the uh some of the certification in January the 6 and of course you had some riers at the capital or is it that for example The Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't obey the president of the United States on Troop redeployment in Syria which actually happened during Trump's Administration like if we're going to talk about threats to democracy we need the government to be responsive to the American people's elected president if you don't have that you don't have a real democracy how [Applause] much a lot of this if you design it in

one way has to go through Congress which as we know is sclerotic and mayic nothing can happen and then the other path is for you guys to go ham a little bit and say okay what can we do with executive order have you had a chance to discuss if you win repositioning the focus as basically that what is the totality of everything that we can do from the White House from the oval and then getting all of these and the other thing that we should talk about at some point is like it's like a Avengers movie now at this point you Bobby Kennedy Elon Trump so but I don't the Justice League the Justice League I I don't know which character in that Justice League I am no

but but the point is like you know have you had that discussion about like all right folks let's not wait for Congress and get a plan ready starting day one of all the stuff that can happen through EOS or how are you thinking about this well at a high level certainly you know I'm I'm one of the co-chairs of the transition team there are a few others of us who are working on it you to sort of think about I mean look the way the founders set up our government whether you like it or not there are certain things especially when it comes to budget and Appropriations you just have to go through Congress right you fundamentally have to now I I do think that the Congress is willing to work

with us at least you know the first couple of years of an Administration you can largely get the budgetary and Appropriations things that you need but there's a lot that you can do through EO and by the way in a lot of ways I think the enlargement of the president at the expense of Congress is a bad thing but fundamentally there is a lot that happens in our government purely through executive orders through EOS and yes we're thinking very deliberatively about all the things that you could do through EOS on day one or in the early parts of the administration and again not to make

this too partisan but one of the ways that that um that Biden and Harris opened up the American southern border was through executive orders right it was an executive order that suspended deportations an executive order that ended the remain of Mexico policy so you can screw up a lot through EOS you can also fix a lot through EOS which is certainly Something That We're focused on let me um uh go in a different direction just in the last couple of days um Dick Cheney endorsed KLA Harris for president and that endorsement was warmly embraced by by KLA Harris and the Democrats the same people called him a war criminal like three years ago yeah well yeah I'm old enough to remember

back in 2008 uh Obama first beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary because he had opposed the Iraq War and she had supported it and then he got elected president the United States and the whole country seemed to recognize that the Iraq War had been a disaster it destabilized Middle East it you know I don't need to go through all the litanies of of horribles that that happened from it but there seems to be a widespread recognition and like you're saying Di was kind of demonized as this um like the Darth Vader Prince of Darkness type figure which I think basically was right I mean he was the principal architect of of the Iraq War and now I find myself agreeing with

everything the Democrats said in 2008 about right total coincidence on a separate track a few weeks ago we had Bobby Kennedy endorse uh Donald Trump so you now have a dynamic where the bush Republicans are now Harris Democrats and the Kennedy Democrats are now Trump Republicans clearly something big is happening in our politics here can you explain this realignment how do you see it yeah I mean look uh one way think about it is that we traded Dick Cheney for Bobby Kennedy and that's an upgrade I'll take every single day right look I mean one way of understanding is you have to ask yourself who is benefited and who is harmed from the last 30 years of the

bipartisan consistence in this country right so um you want to talk about a manufacturing policy that I think promoted the offshoring of millions of good American manufacturing jobs and in the in the process by the way made made us less self-reliant as a country uh that really benefited people like Dick Cheney and kamla Harris and their donors it didn't benefit the people that I serve in the state of Ohio okay uh if you ask yourself who actually went off and fought these ridiculous Wars it was very often working in Middle Class kids in communities like mine it wasn't the family of our current leadership class by and large though of course they're exception

and you go through each of these issues and what you find is increasingly Republicans are the party of working in Middle Class people you know Bobby Kennedy has talked about this a lot and I think he puts it better than I ever could but that you know you go back even 30 years ago and Approximately 80% of the counties that represent sorry 80% of the wealth in American counties went in places that voted Republican and about 20% of the wealth went to places that voted Democrat now it's 70% of the wealth goes for Democrat and about 30% of the wealth goes for republicans and you saw this in a big way I mean just one illustration is I believe that in 2012 Wall Street which I think Wall

Street fundamentally has been the main beneficiary of globalization of of a lot of the policies that I I pushed back against and criticize over the last 30 years Wall Street went 3 to one for Romney over Obama in 2012 I believe they went 4 to one for um for Clinton over Trump in 2016 and then like nine to one for Biden over Trump in 201 20 so there was a massive shift in who makes up these parties wealthy people direct their money to Democrats is what incre increasingly wealthy people direct their money to Democrats working in Middle Class People direct their money to Republicans why do you think that is j i i i again because I think their policies

have benefited look the the the unip party the kamla harrises and Dick Cheney their parties have benefited a certain group of people those people are increasingly Democrats uh Donald Trump has been pushing back against that consensus in his party in his policies I think benefit the majority of the country so increasingly I think the working middle class heart of the country is going for Republicans like another another spin on this cuz I know we're you know focused on Tech in this conference is Big Tech has become increasingly pro-democrat little Tech has become increasingly Pro Republican right so if you're an upstart if you're in crypto if you're if you're like a

small AI company I think you're much more likely to be pro- Republican if you're a monopolist in big Tech I mean look at Facebook Google how they're how they're how they're putting their resources it's much much more Pro Democrats so there are a lot of different spins on it but fundamentally I think the people who've benefited from the American decline are becoming Democrats the people who have suffered from it and are pushing back against it their Republicans I have a followup question on that JD which is um you were a venture capitalist uh for a period and Lena Khan has essentially taken m&a off the table um you well know that if we can't get those singles and doubles in

the industry um it kind of freezes the industry and we have a problem with returns which then is having creating a a secondary order problem where we can't get LPS to put more money into funds because we're not getting those returns what's the proper way to look at m&a because you're you want to break up big Tech from what I understand and you have a major problem with big Tech you mentioned little Tech what's the proper m&a architecture you know to to balance those two uh goals there yeah so this is obviously very complicated like Jason you probably understand this better than I do but as as Somebody by the way who's defended Lena Khan against some of her critics from the right I think what Lena

Khan fundamentally gets correct is that big Tech really is a threat it's a threat to free speech it's increasing oligarchic it controls too much of what we're allowed to say and also it controls a lot of the ways in which capital gets invested in these various ecosystems but where I think Len lenon goes wrong is that you're exactly right like you need the singles and doubles you need sometimes a medium-sized company to buy a smaller company for 300 millon right that liquidates Founders that gives the Venture fund some money to go back into the system and I think that you know not I don't know her super well but my basic read on Lena is that she is

so anti-monopoly as sort of a baseline bias and anti that becomes anti-g and acquisition as a baseline bias that Google buying YouTube is a much much different thing from a$2 billion market cap Healthcare company buying a $500 million Market healthare company and I think that we have to sort of draw a very big distinction between little little Tech and big Tech and look I'm going to keep on making that argument both in public and private to Lena and hopefully she comes around to rvw a little bit because I do think some of her ideas on big Tech are right I think a good place for us to Pivot would be the border and just talking about this issue more from first principles when

President Trump came on the podcast we talked about hey maybe really talented people we should recruit them to our country and give them green cards um but very quickly um your group walked that back a bit it's such a political hot potato and it doesn't seem to me that it needs to be but you spent a lot of time in government now why can't politicians just do what 80% of the country wants which is allow very talented people into the country close the border and make it like a a more point-based system like Canada Australia and everybody else like why is this so weaponized by both of your parties well I think the reason why it's so difficult right now and I mean

look generally I agree that okay we're going to let some immigrants in we want them to be high Talent high quality people you don't want to let a large number of illegal aliens in obviously that you know that that is that's president Trump's view but I I think that the reason why it's so broken down right now is because you have 25 million illegal aliens in this country and you like you can't fix what I would call the minor or sort of less important immigration question until you fix the real problem and part of that goes back by the way to the way in which the system got broken in the first place so Ronald Reagan of course great governor of California

a great president but Reagan did in 1986 a massive amnesty program where in some ways he was trying to do exactly what you're talking about fix the problem of people who are already here make sure that our immigration system is more proskill but also close down the border and what happened is we got all the amnesty but we didn't get the closing down of the border and so in order to do anything I think meaningful on immigration policy meaning legal immigration policy you've got to close down the border and establish some basic order and and we go back to First principles here I I think that people who are generally I mean look this is

I'm sure a very diverse crowd and I'm sure there are a lot of immigrants In This Crowd legal immigrants uh hopefully um I'm married to the daughter I'm married to the daughter of legal immigrants to this country and I of course love not just my wife but the whole extended family I do think they've they brought a lot areal immigrants yeah um and but but but here's the thing when you allow 25 million people into this country it breaks down the entire social compact right so think about this okay you're down on your luck you lost your job you get unemployment insurance you're really down on your luck you need food assistance from the federal government I believe as a conservative

that part of being in the same American Family whether your family's been here for a generation or 10 Generations is that we support people who are down on the luck we don't want a cradle to grave welfare state but we want to support people we don't want kids who are dying because of starvation because of no fault of their own we want to promote some basic fairness and we want to help people out when times get tough but you can't do that if you extend that generosity to tens of millions of people who can't even be here in in the first place and I think that what what kamla Harris has done at the border it's not just bad economically it's not just bad for Public Safety she has eroded the

very foundation of the social contract in this country and we talk about division in our politics and kamla has this ridiculous slogan we're not going back the reason why politics is so divided is because she has turned American citizens against one another while she's placed theit the the interest of illegal aliens above American citizens you want to turn the page and get back to Common American citizenship stop putting illegal aliens to the front of the line of American citizens is the motivation do you do you believe the motivation is endless empathy or is it as simple as we want new Democratic voters or is there a kind of not

publicly spoken about economic argument about bringing wages down having economic growth having new buyers in the economy that there's some benefit despite the1 to 600 billion and I'll add another one guilt yeah it's the endless empathy aspect yeah yeah I mean empathy is different than guilt it's all of these things right I mean so so let me tell you a brief story and this goes back to my my changing my mind on Donald Trump I was probably it's probably 2017 2018 I was at a business conference and I happened to be seated next to one of the largest Hotel chain CEOs in America and my wife was there and we talk about this as the Monopoly story because the guy is just going off maybe it had too

much to drink he's going off about how Donald Trump's immigration policies have for had forced him to raise the wages of his workers and I was like oh that's an interesting fact like explain more about this sir please I W understand and he said well because we can hire a lot of immigrants and frankly we can hire a lot of legal immigrants under the table and we can't do that because there are fewer legal immigrants so we have to pay our American citizen workers more money and I'm like oh that sounds pretty good actually isn't that like what we want is for people to be earning higher wages for doing a good job so there's

definitely an economic piece of it but I also think I mean look this is this is chilled out a little bit partially because we're in election year if KLA Harris won I think it would come back with a vengeance but think about all these like ridiculous land acknowledgements right where people say well you know I want to acknowledge that this be belonged to like this tribe before I was here and if you genuinely think that you have to acknowledge a Native American tribe from 300 years ago then one attitude that comes along with this is why can I control it all who comes into the country right I have no right there's this basic I think this is

the empathy it's the guilt it's sort of all these things but all structural Norms degrade exactly I I have no right to say who comes into my community and I think again it's it's deranged but I think that's part of it I think the economic piece of it is part of it it's certainly a vote argument I mean Democrats will say this of course Republicans are accused of racism for just repeating what Democrats have said when somebody like Chuck Schumer says well you know we're going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we're going to have all these new immigrants and all the old Americans well they're going to vote for Republicans but we're going to replace

them with a bunch of new people who vote for Democrats it's like that's pretty sick but again if you call it out you're somehow a racist even though Chuck Schumer is himself calling it out as if it were a good thing so I just want to ask on a different topic now thank you for talking about the Border um can I just have one final on this topic okay goad is um your plan is to deport tens of millions of these people tell us how that will happen practically how are you going to take million of people put them in cuffs drag them out while people have their cell phones out recording this or is that just Trump being Trump well Jason

it's I like it you like the balance in the podcast yeah I do I do though In fairness JD told me JD told me ask the hard questions please I want to address them head on you did say that nothing's I think Jason should be on the left and David should be on my right appropriately where am I he's been pulling me to the right I'll it's funny he didn't have any of these hard questions for Reed Hoffman I don't know why SX Jason wait do you want me to leave the left and go to the right I'm on the left right now but I could go right okay yeah I guess it depends on perspective my perspective here but you know Jason if if the if the VC

thing doesn't work out you'd make a great panelist at CNN so back but I um no I by the way I love this and I like I I genuinely think like this is what a person who wants to be your Vice President should actually do is answer some tough question I do give you credit for that that you will face the hard question so back to the question tell me about dragging millions of people out of the country Jason here here's why I find this question a little off and I will answer it but it's like somebody who comes to me and I'm like eating my lunch and they say look that sandwich is 10 times the size of your mouth how are you possibly going

to eat that whole sandwich and it's like well I'm going to take a first bite and then I'm going to take a second bite and I'm going to take a third bite and eventually the problem's going to be look you start out with the million people who are what we call criminal migrants people who have committed violent crimes in some form or another get them out of our country yes handcuff those people and force them out of the country but you also do other things simultaneously first of all you stop the bleeding right you undo KLA Harris's policies that open the southern Border in the first place I've got a piece of legislation in the United States Senate

uh that we've got a lot of colleagues who have signed up for it which would tax remittances right because we know a lot of people are earning money and then sending it back to Central America where wherever they came from if you end that practice then you have a lot of people who go backck willingly I think you ought to make it harder for people to hire illegal labor as opposed to American citizens you tick through these things and I do think that you know that's the sandwich approach to this is you try to take it one step at a time but the most important thing and I think the deportation Focus again it is important because we're eventually we

are going to deport people but the most important thing is to stop the bleeding you've got to stop the millions of people flowing across the southern border every single year it happened because of KLA Harris's policies it's going to stop when Donald Trump is President let me ask a national security question yeah there's a lot of videos elon's gone down there Bobby Kennedy has gone down there you've gone down there sure and the interdictions are not necessarily coming from countries in Central and South America anymore they're coming from places in you know near around near Asia and a lot of places that you wouldn't normally think people coming

from Middle East Etc from a national security perspective what do we think is happening yeah why is that happening yeah so well part of the reason it's happening is it's not Hondurans necessarily it's it's Iranians it's it's people from you know all over Asia Africa look if if you look at this that is the open door right so if you want to come to this country that is the open door and God knows why some of them want to be here I mean you know given what's going on in the Middle East I do worry about military age males from Iran coming into this country through the American southern border um but you know I actually asked a border patrol

agent about this uh on one of my visits and you know great guy was actually kind of heartbroken because he signed up to protect his country and he's a relatively recent immigrant I could tell that that by his accent this guy's like very nervous and very heartbroken about the fact that he can't do his job and he told me this story and I you know I feel like an idiot in hindsight because he's like we we have a guy who came in here I asked the guy like you why do you think this guy's Iranian and he said well because he came through and he said that he was Mexican and I was like well

couldn't he have been Mexican he said well he didn't speak Spanish like oh that's a tell you knowy Mexico legal alien doesn't speak Spanish that's that's probably a pretty significant tell but it it's it's happening because this is what KLA Harris has done she's created this massive Gap in our national security and people are taking advantage of it it's really not that surprising J let me just ask you um one more foreign policy question um on China so there's a balancing act with China but the rhetoric is that's our enemy there's going to be a cold war the CH the the the the structural relationship that the United States has with China is a very kind of codependent relationship they

buy our bonds I guess they're selling them off now uh we we buy a lot of product from them it allows us to go into a Walmart and get you know $40 scooters for our kids or $20 scooters for our kids the technology industry is deeply dependent on a supply chain coming from China there's a great commercial interdependency with China they have historically been a very important partner to the United States in our economic prosperity and I know the argument about hollowing out the middle class and so on because of moving everything offshore to China but you how do we rip that Band-Aid off and not cause massive problems with INF how do we not um you know Drive the cost

of everything up by taring things that are coming in from China what's the the way forward with China is it necessarily A deeply kind of divisive cold war or is there a path here that allows us to maintain a balanced trading relationship and and kind of a peaceful transition with with China as they continue to to build up their kind of capabilities economically and um with energy which I think is one of the biggest drivers for their success well so so there's a lot there and let me try to sort of take a few pieces of it cuz I know we're relatively short on time so so number one is the energy piece of it's is very important part of the way that you reshore American manufacturing is that

you open up American Energy it matters for crypto it matters for AI you've got to open up American energy or you're never going to have whether it's the next generation of manufactured goods or the past Generations you've got to open up American Energy okay that's number one number two is look I I don't want to go to war with China I think it would be hugely destructive but I do think that we have to reshore more American manufacturing and you one of the weird things about China if you think about past eras of developing nations right so go back to like when the UK was the most advanced economy in the world and America was a developing Nation well one of the things that happened is that like

Capital was flowing from the UK into the United States right from the developed into the developing Nation what's really weird about China is that it's like Americans borrow money from Chinese peasants to then buy the things the Chinese peasants are making for us right so it's not just the the goods flow that's jacked up it's the capital flows that are jacked up and I really think that the next you know Donald Trump is going to be the next president of United States and this is something we're going to have to figure out is that you need to balance both the capital and the goods flows okay I'm not saying we're going to have absolutely no trade with China but right now the relationship is

fundamentally that the Chinese have figured out they can create a massively powerful producer Society while America becomes a weaker weaker consumerist society that is the broken nature of the relationship and I think rebalancing is the right way to think about it but we have got to do it and I think we're way way behind the you maybe final question but you said something which I thought was incredibly well said so I just want to repeat it when us growth is 1 and 2% everybody's fighting exactly but when us growth is 4 to 5% everybody prospers yeah can you walk us through just how you think about how we get that extra two or 300 basis points of growth and where you need to have less regulation

so that you can have more entrepreneurship or more regulation to kind of constrain folks how do you think for that energy sector yeah I mean I I I really do think that we have to recognize that we have massively overregulation Transportation over-regulated energy over-regulated home construction uh I don't know that it's I don't know how easy it is to get another 300 bips of growth but I think you can get a lot more growth whether it's 300 or 150 just by massively reducing the amount of regulatory burden in the real economy and again I I'm an optimist I'm fundamentally an optimist on both you know crypto blockchain web 3 stuff but also on AI and you know the

way out of this may very well be to radically open up the way the technological innovation drives things in the United States and and just on this point about China uh I don't know how much time we're we have I'll try to be quick about this one of the things that Bob lik you need okay more about you all right well I'm a politician so uh Buckle in we're going to be here for three hours L but um one of the real conceits of the 30 years of globalization that I think was really really deranged and hindsight very wrong Bob leiser who is Trump's trade representative talks a lot about this is we had this conceit that we could separate the manufacturer of

things from the design of things right so if you get an iPhone right now and you get it out of the box you will see that it says designed in Cupertino California of course the implication is that it's manufactured in chinen or wherever they're manufacturing iPhones these days that that the idea that the iPhone designed in Cupertino is increasingly no longer even true right it's something that we lie to ourselves about because the people who are doing all the manufacturing of the hardware of the iPhone are getting much better at design and Innovation and part of the reason why I care so much about this manufacturing thing is whether it's antibiotics for example why why haven't

why hasn't America invented an antibiotic in 30 years it probably has something to do with the manufacturer of antibiotics has done almost entirely in very lowcost manufacturing areas you can go through a whole host of goods like this but if you want to build a high tech High Dynamic growth economy you have to have some native manufacturing and some self-reliance and so these two things are very related and I think it's a big part of getting back to four or 5% growth is accepting that yes we're going to have trade but we can't let everybody make all of our stuff SX yeah let me a question for you yeah

well I want to I want to wrap this up because I think we're we're basically at Time by um by just observing that both Donald Trump and JD Vance have been on this podcast and it's not because I'm a crazy right-winger it's because we invited them just because not just because um it's it's because we invited them and they accepted we have similarly invited KLA Harris and Tim Waltz to and before that but he forgot so we're We're still wai he said yes forgot he lost the he lost the zoom link so we we want to re to be on this call yeah we want to re extend the invitation yes to KLA Harris and Tim Waltz you're welcome to come on the

podcast at any time and the format will be similar yeah and I just want to say JD I think your answers were fantastic here today and I I really do appreciate you coming on and answering these questions very thoughtfully and you know from my perspective when I heard that you were announced as the VP I thought well this is great a young person um who's got a lot of experience in venture capital and Building Things in the world and somebody who comes from humble beginnings like the four of us um and believes that a meritocracy where people work hard and get reward for it so you check all my boxes in that way and I really think I feel much better you know

have my issues with your boss but um when you talk about you know the bite-size you know steps to it you know I think one frame work to look at your relationship with Trump is he says things you know at the top of the the highest vibration we're going to deport 20 million people and then you have a very practical approach 60% tffs makes no sense but hey we've got to rebalance this and so I really do like your measured approach to this and I think that you're a great counterbalance and I think we understand why he picked it I I want to say one thing um thanks and this is not really related to anything except that you are not

supposed to be here that's exactly right yeah and that is really inspiring to other people who were not supposed to be here thank you well yeah I appr and if you haven't read JD's book I read your book long before all of this and I just want to say your book was so inspiring and I I have recommended it long before today to you know literally hundreds of people it's a fantastic read if you haven't read it well and by the way available wherever books are sold you're like Jak out exactly do you have an affiliate 529 account for the kids let I just just just two things first of all Jason I I appreciate what you said but I also just want to defend uh my my running mate here because I

think that again the media doesn't often tell you the truth about Donald Trump Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I've ever met in public life that's actually real he thinks about how this stuff affects the real economy and Real Americans so if you're on the fence whether you like what I said or dislike what I said I just encourage you listen to what he actually says because I think that you'll become a believer that he can make the country great again as he promises uh but but but separate from that I just want to say this is such an important conversation and you guys hold

and host important conversations every single day we should do more of it as a country but I'm glad to participate today God bless everyone thank you ladies and gentlemen JD [Music] Vince that's great [Applause]