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E12: Biden wins, Pfizer vaccine, markets rip, Trump's next act, COVID endgame scenarios & more

November 11, 2020 / 01:18:15

This episode covers the aftermath of the 2020 election, discussing predictions, voter behavior, and the implications for both parties moving forward.

The hosts, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Sacks, reflect on their predictions about the election results, including the significance of Pennsylvania and the concept of a "soft landing" in the election outcome. They analyze how voters seemed to reject extremes from both parties.

They discuss the implications of the election results for the Democratic Party, particularly the impact on progressive candidates and the idea that centrism may be the future of American politics. The conversation touches on the importance of appealing to a diverse electorate.

The hosts also examine the role of the media in shaping public perception and the challenges faced by both parties in the current political landscape. They highlight the disconnect between traditional polling methods and actual voter behavior.

Finally, they speculate on the future of the Republican Party and Donald Trump's potential influence, as well as the economic outlook in a gridlocked government scenario.

TL;DR

The hosts analyze the 2020 election results, voter behavior, and the future of American politics, emphasizing centrism and media influence.

Video

00:00:00
hey everybody welcome to another all-in podcast  this is an all bestie no guestie episode of all  
00:00:08
in the last time you heard from the besties it  was election night and it was a [ __ ] show a  
00:00:16
[ __ ] crazy [ __ ] show let's be honest i mean we  if we go back and look at that historical document  
00:00:24
we had moments where we thought trump was gonna  absolutely crush then we had moments of confusion  
00:00:31
and now here we are and i think we have to give a  couple of uh bestie kudos to uh first off chamoth  
00:00:41
pointing out pennsylvania was gonna be big and  then second when we went through the possible  
00:00:46
scenarios of who wha what could possibly happen  a big giant blue wave uh trump winning it all and  
00:00:56
then maybe something in the middle option three  came through and that was sexy poo nailed it  
00:01:02
i think that was your assumption saks the soft  landing the soft landing yeah so why don't we just  
00:01:09
for the people who didn't tune in live sorry jason  can i ask you a question sexy poo sexy was that  
00:01:15
your um like projection or was it from that from  that guy who lives in his dad's basement his mouth
00:01:30
yeah newman uh you and i worked worked together  on on those takes but yeah the the take that we  
00:01:37
thought was was possible but probably unlikely but  could represent a really good scenario was the the  
00:01:43
soft landing where you get a split decision and  i think that's what the american people voted for  
00:01:49
um you know you had the democratic frame on  the election was that we needed a return to   normalcy and decency the republican frame was at  the radical left could not be trusted with power  
00:01:59
and voters basically said they were both right  they sort of surgically removed donald trump while  
00:02:04
thwarting the radical left's dream of total  control in washington and what the electorate  
00:02:10
seems to be saying is they want the parties now  to work together instead of voting for extreme   ideology but tbd sacks i mean georgia's still up  for grabs they're gonna go after it hard right  
00:02:21
i mean they just they filed in pennsylvania yeah  so i think there's a series of core challenges  
00:02:27
we can talk about i think that they're  unlikely to prevail very very unlikely   i think joe biden will be the next president  um we can kind of compare this to you know uh  
00:02:38
bush v gore uh from 2000 and if you you want to  compare trump's case to gore's case it's weaker  
00:02:46
in every respect i mean first of all with bush  v gore uh gore only had to overturn one state  
00:02:53
which was florida whereas trump has to now contest  and overturn three or four states simultaneously  
00:02:58
second you know gore was within a few hundred  votes of bush it was extremely close trump is   no closer than about 12 000 votes in in georgia  that's the closest one third you know um gore uh  
00:03:11
or or bush never trailed uh gore in in any in any  recount and um and and trump has that problem that  
00:03:18
he's never um and he he's very far behind gore  as well so you look at those three things and  
00:03:23
you'd say you know gore couldn't overcome it and  he had a closer situation than this and of course  
00:03:29
i'd say finally you know a w had uh the velvet  hammer james baker working for him whereas  
00:03:35
trump frankly has rudy giuliani who's throwing  press conferences in the parking lot of forces and  
00:03:40
landscaping between a dildo shop and a crematorium  uh i mean you can't make this stuff up i think  
00:03:49
somebody was tweeting you know it's  this is perfect because you know   they were saying they wanted rudy  to [ __ ] off and die so it was  
00:03:56
so appropriate that this press conference was  held between a dildo shop and a crematorium so  
00:04:01
you know it's not exactly the a team that  trump's got playing for him here in in   the courts but i mean david bossie by the way  david bossie who's in charge of the whole thing  
00:04:11
david bosse is not even a lawyer and then he gets  government so now he's on the sidelines i mean  
00:04:18
just there's so many angles we can take here um  including the fact that am i correct that trump's  
00:04:28
campaign advisor got covered like the  day after or he's no no mark meadows  
00:04:35
staff got it but david bossie who's in charge of  this whole recount process got coveted as well  
00:04:41
okay so i want to just shift us now to  what could have so many things went right  
00:04:48
for the democrats but there was also something  very clear here that happened which is the what  
00:04:54
i call the uh hsp the hysterical socialist party  of america i think was dealt a a death blow if you  
00:05:04
look this was very close and so you know even  if we want to talk about the electoral college  
00:05:12
et cetera these are still very low numbers i  believe if the pfizer news comes out last week  
00:05:19
trump wins or if any combination of aoc by aoc  bernie or warren were in any way involved in this  
00:05:30
election process and weren't pushed to the side  the squad was squashed because we knew that if  
00:05:38
they got any kind of play trump sells into victory  so when we look at what happens going forward  
00:05:47
and i'll i'll let any one of the three of you  take this what does this say about the hysterical  
00:05:54
socialist party the hsp the squad the  bernie bros what does this say about them  
00:06:00
well you have a you have a look you have a  you have a loud group of people on both sides  
00:06:06
and the reality is that both extremes of both  parties actually after this election have very  
00:06:14
little to stand on that's unique because if you  think about what the plurality of americans want  
00:06:21
is actually just a common decent centrist do no  harm alternative and they're going to pick that  
00:06:28
more times than they're not going to pick it  it's only when things get extreme like in 2016   in order to send a message will they do it um and  until it's resolved they tried to do it again now  
00:06:39
so we should actually talk about that i don't  think that this was you know a runaway it was  
00:06:44
way too close on too many dimensions that actually  matter for the future prosperity of america   but that being said what does it mean  for the future i think the future is like  
00:06:52
a pete butterjudge must be high-fiving you know  the people in his camp right now because a common  
00:06:59
decent thoughtful centrist uh platform will win  for example like let's just say you believe in  
00:07:05
gay rights guess what you don't need to be at the  fringes to believe in that that's mainstream you   believe in like a reasonable form of healthcare  that's mainstream if you believe in climate change  
00:07:13
it's mainstream you start to go and tick off the  things that the extremes would want to believe  
00:07:19
there's very little room for them to stand on  so one party is going to be basically about like   a federalized nanny state and the other party will  be a bunch of conspiracy theorists crazies and i  
00:07:31
think it's going to force more and more people to  the middle i think that's the future to me that's   that's a much safer place to be than i think  where we could have been if you know trump had  
00:07:40
won or if the extreme left had basically been  um been validated with a candidate that won  
00:07:48
right and i would add to that that the the  proof of that the proof of the elector's   desire to attack towards the center is you  look at the down ballot uh elections so you  
00:07:58
know in the senate the republicans are still  holding on to a majority pending the florida   um runoff but the the democrats failed to take out  susan collins tom tillis steve daines these were  
00:08:10
three incumbent republicans who were way  behind in the polls heading into election day   uh they didn't come close to taking out lindsey  graham or mitch mcconnell despite their names  
00:08:18
gee get out of this one alive explain that  susan collins no lady g lindsey graham oh i see  
00:08:26
you know uh lindsey graham they said that it was  neck and neck and he actually ended up winning   that state by like 14 points it wasn't close uh  the polls were wildly off and um and you saw that  
00:08:36
across across the board in the house too democrats  expected a gain of 10 to 15 seats instead they've  
00:08:43
lost about 10 seats they failed to defeat a  single gop incumbent the gop house members ran  
00:08:49
about two or three points ahead of president  trump um and that and then the democrats were  
00:08:55
completely shut out in texas which was supposed  to be going purple there were eight open gop   seats democrats won none of them so this you know  so anyway i'm providing some support to the idea  
00:09:06
that this was a split decision election the voters  voted to remove both of the or to voted against  
00:09:12
the extremes of both parties so friedberg when  you look at this you see i think an absolute um  
00:09:23
just people don't want to deal with trump  anymore how much of this do you think is  
00:09:28
trump derangement system as uh syndrome and what  got trump into office eventually taking him out  
00:09:34
which is the guy just takes up too much oxygen in  the room and that's coming from me and the guy is  
00:09:42
just incredibly annoying to have to deal with day  to day that's also coming from you and that's also  
00:09:48
coming from me free burger i i think we've i think  we've been at a rave for four years and everyone's  
00:09:54
like coming down from the mali and you're not  going to go to a marilyn manson concert like   right after being in a rave like you want to go  sit in the parking lot and you just want to chill  
00:10:03
out a little bit and we all just want to like have  a beer and relax you know like i mean i think that   you need some 5 htp and a banana you just yeah you  you want to go sit in the 7-11 parking lot at four  
00:10:14
in the morning and you want to like go get a [  __ ] sweet cappuccino smoke a cigarette and relax   like it's been it's been too much and i think  it's like everyone's just kind of ready to chill  
00:10:23
out a bit and so this whole [ __ ] swinging back  to the you know to the concert across the road   sounds just as bad as what we've just been through  so let's just you know let's just live our lives  
00:10:34
a little bit and you know we'll come back in four  years and figure out how to [ __ ] things up again   i think that's kind of the psyche that's right i  think i think voters want a presidency they can  
00:10:42
forget about you know i think trump's um sort  of achilles heel as he demanded too much of the  
00:10:47
voters constant time and attention there was like  this psychic cost to it it obviously antagonized   the other side and drove turnout for the democrats  but um but it seems like voters are saying look  
00:10:57
just leave us alone we want to just forget about  what's happening in washington for four years and   now they can because you know pending the georgia  runoff it looks like you know mitch mcconnell and  
00:11:06
joe biden will have to be in a power sharing  arrangement and nothing gets done unless the   two of them agree and by the way just on that  there was a great uh tweet by paul graham he  
00:11:15
said the day after the election something to the  effect of it feels like some background process  
00:11:20
in my computer had was just killed that was  consuming five percent of my cpu and it's and it's
00:11:29
operating system spinning wheel of death but  it's it's david is so right it's like you know   it's been this omnipresent thing in all of  our lives over the last four years and uh  
00:11:39
it's just exhausting and you know there wasn't  that much value that came from paying so much  
00:11:46
attention and worrying so much and so it's just  a great opportunity to come off the sugar high  
00:11:53
and reset ourselves and take a nap i think  that's a various due point chamath in that  
00:11:59
what what it was gained from this trump  derangement from this trump sucking  
00:12:05
all of the attention and constantly uh tweeting  and you know i think the big win here freeberg is  
00:12:14
if you look the proof is in the pudding trump  we we find out on saturday morning that trump  
00:12:20
is uh you know has lost and biden has won and 48  hours later we find out pfizer has 90 efficacy  
00:12:29
on their vaccine obviously these two things are  highly correlated biden has already delivered the  
00:12:36
vaccine in just 48 hours and then today we got the  rapid testing has been approved by the fda i mean  
00:12:44
look at this by if at this rate biden's going  to cure global warming by the end of the year  
00:12:50
look um first off i i think it's a little um  it is pretty paradoxical that yeah the vaccine  
00:12:58
news came 48 hours yeah and i don't think it's  paradoxical i mean that was crazy i mean you  
00:13:04
know there's supposed to be an october surprise  not a november surprise i think if trump has   any legitimate argument about being done dirty in  this election it is over this vaccine news because  
00:13:15
you know the chinese announced that three hours  after bayes declared president pfizer announces   it a day after uh bayern's declared president i  mean you know when trump went around this the um  
00:13:26
you know was campaigning saying a vaccine was mere  weeks away everyone thought that was [ __ ] but   as it turns out he was telling the truth and if  those guys had announced it jason like you were  
00:13:34
saying two weeks before the election it might have  changed this thing but you guys that might have a   hundred percent 100 and this is not something  he can go to the courts it's not like he can  
00:13:43
go to the courts and get the election recounted  overturned because of this so it's not something  
00:13:48
that's legally actionable but i do think that on  this news alone trump in four years will be able  
00:13:54
to claim on some level that this was a stolen  election but couldn't the same be said about   hillary's uh email server right so like one night  news came out like oh and it was like timed around  
00:14:05
the election and i do think that there was a  concerted effort to not let um you know the  
00:14:10
progress with kovid get in the way of the election  in any way you know bias it either way and i think  
00:14:16
it's like pretty reasonable and fair to say like  let's just not make this part of the news cycle   leading into the election and this was expected  like if you guys go back a couple of podcasts like  
00:14:26
um you had a prediction on when we would have a  vaccine i i think i predicted end of september  
00:14:31
because of the way that they set up the uh the  production cycle in parallel with the testing   cycle and the way that they were fast-tracking  a lot of the testing in a way that wasn't normal  
00:14:39
um for this sort of a development and um it was it  was gonna happen this fall if i'm an executive at  
00:14:46
one of these companies i don't want my vaccine to  become a politicized event right like i just want   to be like i think it's it's the reasonable thing  to say like let's just put it on hold let's deal  
00:14:54
with it all after the election we're still moving  forward we're not holding anything up in terms   of production and getting this thing across the  finish line it's just the announcement of where  
00:15:01
we are so why make that part of the new cycle  you know um and i think like people learned their  
00:15:06
lesson with hillary's server last time it's like  this one used you know bombshell drops in the news  
00:15:12
cycle spins up and she loses the election everyone  blames her losing the election for that coming out   no one wants to be culpable for that right  i'm a pfizer exec i'm just trying to make  
00:15:20
[ __ ] medicine like i don't want to be on the  hook for said another way someone's winning or   losing an said another way chamoth nobody wants  to go to a warriors finals game versus the lakers  
00:15:32
and have the refs call you know decide  the game in the final couple of minutes  
00:15:38
so do you think chamoth this is if you were  running pfizer if you were on the board of pfizer  
00:15:45
and you have this information and you know it  can come out in this two-week window at any time  
00:15:50
what decision would you make chamof well  just imagine that the vaccine was 90  
00:15:55
ineffective and it was announced two weeks before  the election um you'd have an entire cohort of  
00:16:01
people saying this was meant to basically sabotage  the election in the other direction so the point  
00:16:07
is it's a no-win situation the only answer is to  wait until after the election um because that's  
00:16:14
the only way that you can actually say you know  we were not um we were being impartial so um i'm  
00:16:21
sympathetic to this idea that uh all the news had  to wait two or three days um or maybe it was two  
00:16:28
or three weeks now knowing in advance what the  answer was obviously you can read into that but  
00:16:34
i think even if it was 90 percent ineffective it  should have waited till after the election as well  
00:16:40
exactly i i i just think that i don't get  the sense that you do agree with that saks   well let's put this way i mean we we know  from our time working at large companies  
00:16:48
that it takes them weeks to even approve a press  release and so pfizer had this news weeks ago  
00:16:55
now i understand their reason for not wanting  to appear to be influencing the outcome of the  
00:17:02
election so i that's why they held on to it  i think everybody saw the way that facebook  
00:17:07
was scapegoated four years ago for  the election and no one wants to   no corporation wants to put themselves in  that position of being accused of affecting  
00:17:15
the election outcome one way or another i'm  sure that's why they did it as opposed to   a conspiracy against trump but you know this  news was available i think we'll find out  
00:17:25
weeks ago and so i guess you'd have to blame  or or there'd be some culpability on the part   of trump's election team or you know his his head  of the fda or what have you they must have known  
00:17:38
some of this information and you would think they  would have done a better job getting it out there   no he did say at every rally it's just around  the corner it's just around the corner we're  
00:17:46
around the corner and and we all thought it was  [ __ ] you thought it was [ __ ] we thought it   was [ __ ] right and you know why we thought  it was [ __ ] well because trump trump does  
00:17:54
have a tendency towards hyperbole hyperbole  on trump's most honest day he's hyperbolic  
00:18:00
on trump's average day he is lying incessantly  so if anything if he was right and he was right  
00:18:08
that we were turning the corner and the vaccine  was coming and it was going to be beautiful a   beautiful perfect vaccine and everybody was  going to get it he's paying the price for  
00:18:17
being a liar for four years right but it's the  kind of thing right no no no boy who cried wolf  
00:18:24
well and so does the media by the way but but yeah  look i i in order for a piece of news this big to  
00:18:31
be believed before the election it can't come from  a candidate and it's it's it's pretty amazing that  
00:18:39
none of this news got out there through some  other source you would think that some of the   people on the health care task force that trump  appointed might have been you know surfacing  
00:18:48
this or paying attention to it maybe pfizer did a  really good job of hiding it i don't know but um  
00:18:53
it is pretty amazing that it didn't come out  sooner well the the other crazy thing is like you   know even the pfizer team didn't exactly know what  was going on the chief the the head of vaccine  
00:19:02
research she said we're not part of the federal  government's uh you know warp speed program  
00:19:09
and then uh two days later pfizer was like  actually we are part of the warp speed program   it's just that you know we're a supplier the whole  point is that um i'm not sure that pfizer actually  
00:19:22
knew two weeks in advance david i think that they  were probably trickling stuff together and they  
00:19:27
probably had a sense of it at the end of the  last week i'm surprised it didn't leak to be   quite honest that's the more shocking thing which  means that um um it was probably something that uh  
00:19:39
uh very very very few people knew about well the  ceo the ceo put out a statement saying that he  
00:19:46
would be first in line to take the new vaccine  which i thought was you know a great statement   because a lot of people were questioning whether  you know how real it was or how rushed it was  
00:19:55
but in order for him to do that and and in order  just to get like a press release announced i don't  
00:20:01
think that's the kind of thing that comes together  in the you know one or two day period between  
00:20:06
uh the announcement of joe biden winning the  election and their and their announcement   so you know i i just think they had to know  weeks ago i just want to say to my greek brother  
00:20:19
alberto borlas the ceo of pfizer a great  greek who has led to the saving of the world
00:20:38
saganaki is on me if you uh if you if you take  90 efficacy and you assume at most in the united  
00:20:46
states 40 percent of people will take the  actual vaccination you'll have 36 percent  
00:20:51
of the population covered which is still  not enough to get the r naught less than one   is that correct free berg what do you think  no i don't know i'm not an epidemiologist  
00:21:00
i'd have to what i mean does it sound  directionally correct to you that  
00:21:05
people in the states are going to take it i mean  i think you don't take it isn't this like uh   everyone who's high risk will take it yeah and as  of about two months ago you know it was estimated  
00:21:15
that 30 percent of people on the east coast  had already developed um uh immunity due to  
00:21:20
the seroprevalence studies that that showed um  antibodies on the west coast it was much lower  
00:21:26
closer to three percent you could estimate based  on the growth in cases since then and assuming   we're kind of missing a bunch we're probably on a  national basis we're at 10 back then on a national  
00:21:35
basis you're probably up to 20 right now of um  americans have already been effectively immunized  
00:21:41
by getting the virus so you know if that's true  then you're at 55 and you're getting pretty close  
00:21:47
to a um you know an ability to kind of inhibit  this thing from um uh from spreading rapidly again  
00:21:55
so how do we each feel i'll just go around  the horn how do we each feel about the  
00:22:02
covet 19 end game when will we see all schools  open all nba arenas open with no distancing  
00:22:13
give us a quarter in 2021 when in america  enough vaccines will have been delivered  
00:22:20
and distributed and rapid testing that life goes  back to let's call it 85 percent of normal i  
00:22:29
don't think you ever get there i mean it's like we  talked about this a couple episodes ago but it's   after 9 11 you know the tsa emerged and american  travel never went back to the way it was before  
00:22:40
um and i think there will be a lot about the  way we live that's going to be you know kind   of permanently scarred and permanently changed  here for a while whether it is taking people's  
00:22:50
temperatures at football games wearing masks and  you know farmers markets who knows there's going  
00:22:56
to be all these weird rules they're going  to pop up they're going to last for years   regardless of how much immunization takes place  regardless of how cheap and available testing is  
00:23:06
we're going to have this scar for a long  time um in terms of how we live as a society  
00:23:12
i don't think we should kid ourselves that we're  gonna go back to quote unquote normal um and i do   think kids are gonna get tested and schools are  gonna be like this friggin you know almost like  
00:23:21
tsas now uh you know kids are gonna go into school  and get tested regularly and they're gonna do all   sorts of stuff that we would have never dreamed  imaginable in a free country a year ago um and i  
00:23:31
think that's permanent um i think you know we're  gonna you're already seeing people going nuts at  
00:23:36
bars and restaurants and people that have had it  are out there partying and living their life again   um so there's certainly don't you think if you  get the vaccine you're just gonna be like yolo  
00:23:45
i've had enough of this yeah but i don't think  that that systems are going to change uh back   to normal i think systems have changed to the  point that we've now got a way of living that  
00:23:55
we think is safer that we think is we we are  now kind of inhibited because of this system  
00:24:01
you agree yeah there'll be a lot fewer it's  what dave chappelle said on saturday there will   be a lot fewer mass shootings the pandemic has  done a great job of keeping the whites at home
00:24:11
we watched it all you [ __ ] three out  of four besties watched it together   all you all you guys go down your mass shooting  rampages you know the whites are at home they're  
00:24:20
frustrated but they're at home thank god uh so  i think there'll be some advantages well i mean   but let's talk about it your mother does does  2021 mean let's go back to school 2021 september  
00:24:30
no problem no i think free burger's right i think  that the best we'll get back to is sort of this 80   state and i don't think it happens until probably  2022 and maybe 2023 but probably 2022 because  
00:24:41
you have to remember like we have to ramp up now  billions of vaccine production like it's a this is  
00:24:46
a non-trivial path from here to quote-unquote  mass market and uh that takes a long time  
00:24:53
i think we have to figure out how we're going to  administer it by the way it's and and the way that   the pfizer vaccine works and maybe these other  folks is you get the shot and then you know three  
00:25:03
months three weeks later i think you get a booster  so you have to take two cycles of this thing um  
00:25:08
and it's not gonna last forever and it's not gonna  last forever so this is uh freeberg's right it's  
00:25:13
the beginning of a very different way of living um  i think i think that the the good part about it is  
00:25:19
that um you know we've made a lot of changes that  makes our lives a lot more efficient the bad part  
00:25:25
about it is we're even more detached from our  neighbors and you know we're probably even more  
00:25:30
likely uh to be a little bit uh more separated  if we don't make an effort to be together  
00:25:36
sacks do you buy this because i get the sense that  you might be more optimistic than free berg yeah  
00:25:43
cha cha i guess i guess i am i think covet is  going to be a distant memory by next summer i   think we'll have one to two quarters of transition  but i think that once the vaccine's widely  
00:25:53
available plus the treatment of the testings  for the people who slip through the cracks  
00:25:58
um yeah i i tend to think things are going to  snap back very fast and kovitt will just be this  
00:26:04
bad memory a very distant bad memory and i think  in fact i think things may bounce back the other  
00:26:10
way everyone having been cooped up and afraid of  getting some life-threatening illness are going to  
00:26:16
come out of this really wanting to party i think  the whole world's going to be like tel aviv for  
00:26:22
you know a few months or something and um yeah i  mean i really do think it's going to bounce back i  
00:26:28
think to the point politically where a few years  from now people could ask wait why why was it  
00:26:34
again that trump lost you know um you know th this  covet thing will be it will be so in the rear view  
00:26:40
mirror that will wonder why we were so afraid  of it i think this is uh i'm going to go with  
00:26:47
david's sax's position here because of the simple  fact that we had 130 000 confirmed cases you know  
00:26:55
up until this election period the last week or so  and deaths still not spiking it's a little just a  
00:27:03
minor uptick you know we had a day with like  uh i think maybe 1500 but still staying in that   you know thousand range even with case of spiking  and i think that we were so incompetent with test  
00:27:16
and trace in this country that we didn't see  exactly what happens in an authoritarian country  
00:27:24
or a country that is lucky enough to  be an island and has easy borders which  
00:27:29
we almost do i mean we basically have two borders  we're like two-thirds of two you know 50 percent  
00:27:34
island but hawaii taiwan japan and australia all  quarantined people on the way in they tested them  
00:27:43
and they had extremely extremely low death counts  and extremely low case counts with the vaccine  
00:27:51
being half as effective as you know they claim and  rapid testing which some of us have know some of  
00:28:00
us know people who have experienced rapid testing  at homes that combination i believe is going to  
00:28:06
make this go so low and the people who are high  risk are still going to be scared staying home  
00:28:12
i think like david come the summer of next  summer people are going to be at a rave  
00:28:21
with freeberg's you know custom-made molly  or whatever he's making during this downtime  
00:28:27
going absolutely bonkers i  think burning man next year   becomes like the the greatest burning man ever  it'll be it'll be the burn of of of all burns  
00:28:39
why was let's shift a bit over to uh the economy  what a rip did we see when that pfizer i mean  
00:28:49
the election and pfizer this week led to a huge  rep obviously there's a little bit of cyclical  
00:28:55
movement the tech stocks were the big winners  now people are starting to buy disney back up  
00:29:01
to 140 i guess people assume the parks will  reopen what's our outlook for the stock market  
00:29:07
in david sacks's you know scenario three you know  i don't say gridlock government but forced to  
00:29:15
compromise government what do we think the markets  look like the next two years i think you have to  
00:29:21
go out saxophone no glasses well i was gonna say  gridlock is great for the markets um but both   when bill clinton was president with a republican  house and when obama was president and there was a  
00:29:31
republican house and i guess uh center for a  period of time gridlock is great for the markets  
00:29:38
especially given the amount of stimulus that's  taken place i mean you had the trump tax cuts   especially those corporate tax cuts really set the  market on fire and then you've got this pumping  
00:29:49
by the fed and the treasury all the stimulus money  for kovid i mean those conditions and then why  
00:29:55
is gridlock good we didn't explain that here well  because explain to somebody who doesn't understand   why gridlock is good why good luck is good well  because it creates predictability for business and  
00:30:04
it means that washington's not going to get in the  way and do something to screw up the good times   i mean we have fundamentally you know great  underlying conditions for economic growth which is  
00:30:14
we have now pretty low taxes and we had this for  better or worse we had this tremendous amount of   stimulus fiscal stimulus what we know historically  is over the past hundred years right since the 20s  
00:30:25
independent of republican administrations  or democratic administrations you know more   progressive less progressive more conservative  less conservative during world wars not during  
00:30:35
world wars the markets go up eight percent a  year so the do no harm solution is that things  
00:30:44
inflate naturally by eight percent especially if  those things are public stocks so you know the  
00:30:49
markets love the fact that there's uh nothing that  could theoretically get in the way of that natural  
00:30:55
eight percent and then when you layer on top  of it as david said uh all this free money  
00:31:00
that's just like rocket fuel jet fuel um but  you know but you saw though that there was a  
00:31:07
rotation right there was a rotation out of these  high growth software names particularly the work   from home bid kind of got crushed you know i mean  i think zoom was off 25 over two days or some  
00:31:17
crazy thing like that um meanwhile sort of all  of these theme park stocks and cruise lines and  
00:31:24
airlines all of a sudden ripped so i mean look the  reality is the scary thing about all of this is if  
00:31:29
any of that stuff actually comes to pass we're  going to see inflation and the reason is because   if you start going out and spending a bunch of  money on tickets and vacations and flights and  
00:31:39
this and that and pumping money into the economy  and taking all that stimulus money and putting   it back to work prices will go up um and by the  way that's not such a bad thing for the economy  
00:31:48
which which needs a little bit of it so um all  of this is i think generally very very good news  
00:31:55
freeberg do you have a position on what you think  will happen in the coming let's let's i would  
00:32:01
think the midterm is what people care most about  so that would be let's call it two to six quarters  
00:32:08
there's one potential speed bump still which is  what i mentioned at the beginning which is georgia   uh the the democrats could still win both runoffs  in georgia for senate and they could um because  
00:32:21
kamala harris would then have the breaking vote  it would be a 50 republican 50 democrat senate and  
00:32:27
and the vice president would uh would break any  ties the question is if you have that same turnout  
00:32:33
where do the libertarians break because i think  the libertarians were almost two percent of the   vote well i think yeah what's interesting is um  the i don't know if you guys have but i've gotten  
00:32:42
emails from a lot of people asking me to donate  money for this uh uh runoff campaign in georgia  
00:32:48
i think god i got so many so many i i i think i  think we're gonna see literally the biggest um  
00:32:55
the the biggest funding for a senate runoff  race in history by far don't you think saks like  
00:33:01
probably north of 100 million dollars being spent  maybe 100 to 200 million dollars being spent on  
00:33:07
advertisements in georgia to try and get people to  go vote one way or the other the democrats think   they have a real run at this they think it's  make or break two years to kind of get their  
00:33:15
you know um uh history changing policies in effect  republicans think it saved the the nation time  
00:33:22
so everyone's rushing to georgia right now um so  the markets are going to have a very close eye  
00:33:28
on what's going on over there i think um i'm you  know i'm very nervous about it um if the democrats  
00:33:33
look like they're getting much more money into the  state and they're actually going to you know get   people to the polls and um to the voting booths  and actually get into this runoff on january 5th  
00:33:43
and actually flip uh get both of those seats to be  uh um to be blue uh it's gonna be a very different  
00:33:49
market environment i mean you could see the market  drop by 30 40 percent uh in the next six we have   we have a situation where it's 4848 there are two  seats up for grabs those two seats are in a runoff  
00:33:59
these and i want to get into the exactly let me  correct that jason it's 48.50 yes the republicans   have a 50 to 48 advantage with two open seats in  the runoff actually sorry one one seed is open  
00:34:10
the other it has an incumbent purdue who's facing  ossip purdue won in the last election he got like  
00:34:19
nine point nine percent fifty yeah if you get  fifty percent you get to this runoff in january   georgia the only place that has this where  you have to get to fifty in order to win yeah  
00:34:28
it's crazy it's crazy so weird is this just they  want the extra attention or who came up with this  
00:34:33
idea this seems just like every state's got  its own history it's crazy it is one of the   unique things about living in the united states  of america as opposed to america let's talk about  
00:34:43
exit polls uh well this is what's incredible  here let me tee this up for you so in in 2020 um  
00:34:53
biden got 80 of the black vote trump got six  this is aggregate so we can break this down by  
00:34:59
men and age group and you can it looks even uh  even more interesting latinos biden got 67 trump  
00:35:08
got 22 percent of the latino vote between the ages  of 18 to 34 so boomers oh sorry pardon me uh gen  
00:35:18
z uh and millennials again i would have thought  100 biden it was on it was 62 percent biden 23  
00:35:27
went for trump one in four uh amongst women uh  and again you know we thought ah okay uh you know  
00:35:34
suburban women are breaking biden 80 20. it turned  out biden got 58 percent of women trump got 35  
00:35:44
of all the female vote and the coup de  grace whites with a degree um again you  
00:35:51
would have thought this would have been 80  20 90 10 and said it was 53 biden 38 trump  
00:35:59
so this really was uh something if we  look at this if we look back on this  
00:36:08
the pollsters were completely wrong in thinking  once again that these groups of people are  
00:36:14
monolithic the the and then i think the most the  most mind-boggling to me and and i had a candid  
00:36:23
discussion about this was um the term latin x is  a a catch-all term for people who are of latino  
00:36:34
spanish-speaking uh descent and what  somebody told me who is in this latinx  
00:36:40
group is that it's the most insulting thing  they've ever been told it's almost as a term  
00:36:46
like the term saying oriental to describe  people from asia you're just grouping us all  
00:36:51
into one thing people from cuba venezuela  and mexico all think the same this is the  
00:36:59
absolute you know end game of identity politics  which is we have to put you in a corner we own you  
00:37:07
we own your opinion and you belong to our party  whichever party it is oh you don't have a degree  
00:37:14
you're a gop hillbilly oh you you're latinx okay  well then we own you you're a democrat david  
00:37:23
what and and i know that this is an area where  you know uh you have a lot of expertise what are  
00:37:29
your thoughts well as it turns out um promoting  socialism to people who fled cuba nicaragua and  
00:37:36
venezuela to escape it uh turns out not to be  a great uh election strategy and um and so yeah  
00:37:43
it's this this idea that latinx is is one block  it's not it consists of a bunch of different  
00:37:50
of immigrants from a bunch of different nations  and the ones who fled socialism are not eager to  
00:37:55
reenact it in the united states the republicans  flipped two house seats in south florida  
00:38:03
where there's a lot of cuban americans and even  in the um the heavily uh mexican-american counties  
00:38:11
uh in along the rio grande and texas uh trump  improved uh let's see it looks like he improved  
00:38:19
um 59 and 30 39 respectively over his 2016 showing  so this is not just some fluke of the exit polls  
00:38:28
um it seems like trump really made progress in  a lot of these groups that seemed to defy their  
00:38:35
you know what what the promoters of identity  politics the way that they wanted them to vote   um gay americans were another one i think  trump improved his share of the gay vote  
00:38:45
from 14 in 2016 to 28 um this year so um i  mean really it's pretty amazing people are not  
00:38:53
voting the way that they're supposed to vote um  trump also improved from 12 to 18 with black men  
00:39:00
and four to eight percent of black women i mean  those are still pretty low numbers but there was   improvement there and i think part of the reason  is that not all of the african-american community  
00:39:09
is on board with defunding the police well i also  think what it means is identity politics is a  
00:39:15
stupid strategy forget whether you're offended  by it or not at this point what's clear is it's  
00:39:20
a stupid [ __ ] strategy it doesn't work  it's a path to losing because the more and  
00:39:26
more you do it the more and more you're going to  disenfranchise individuals who want to be judged   sort of of sound mind and body right i mean if  he took a thousand sri lankans and put him in  
00:39:36
a room and said i'm going to judge you as a sri  lankan vote i would tell you to go [ __ ] yourself  
00:39:41
you know i would be deeply offended by that and  this is where i think the radical left is going   to have to retool because their theory of how they  take power in america is always that demographics  
00:39:51
is destiny that you know as the country simply  becomes more diverse we're gonna they're   automatically gonna vote for us and there's a  lot of data in this election to show that that's  
00:40:01
not what's gonna happen you actually have to run  on issues that people care about let's think about  
00:40:07
this in the context of internet advertising right  the the the world prior to internet advertising  
00:40:13
you had um you know uh channels and you would  have an audience that was estimated to be made  
00:40:20
up of some demographic set on that channel  and you would buy an ad spot on that channel   and that's who you would reach and so you would  create a message for that now today we can create  
00:40:28
personalized ads and personalized messages and  uh internet advertisers are much more thoughtful  
00:40:33
about targeting targeting based on psychographic  profiling behavioral targeting and i think that's  
00:40:38
where politics has to head in the united states  it's kind of keeping up with this personalization  
00:40:44
of both products but also of media and ads and  um and i think that's what we're going to see if   you listen to james carville who's like you know a  classic kind of democratic campaign advisor um and  
00:40:56
he did a podcast just leading up to the election  and if you listen to this podcast these guys are  
00:41:01
very old school it's like the whites are going  to do this and the blacks are going to do that   and the the college educator are going to  do this and the others are going to do that  
00:41:08
and they don't realize that the segmentation  that's possible today i think reveals a lot more   about the character of the uh of the population  they're basically i think it's such an astute  
00:41:17
point freyberg they're basically living in the  level of granularity of network tv it's like cable  
00:41:23
tv yeah it's like they got to cable tv and they're  like okay bet espn nascar and guess what like like  
00:41:30
the world is much more complex individuals have  found their own personal voice and they found   their own personal voice through social media  through instagram through this ability to kind  
00:41:39
of define themselves not fit within a cohort and i  think that's what maybe they always did feel that  
00:41:44
way and we just had never had the technology  to get there yeah but i think it's i think   it's also about people like people have complex  points of view you know the four of us sit here  
00:41:52
and none of neither of us none of us identify  as a party anymore we all identify with with um  
00:41:57
certain uh points that we think are important  to us individually and then we have a point of   view on those points and i think that's the case  for the majority of the population in the united  
00:42:06
states i don't think people are like i'm just a [  __ ] democrat no matter what and i'm a republican   no matter what people care more deeply in a more  complex way and i think politics needs to resolve  
00:42:14
to that um and and that's going to require a shift  in how you communicate how you message how you  
00:42:19
get feedback how you drive um uh blocks for  voting and uh it's gonna it's gonna uh you know  
00:42:25
be a really interesting change over the next 15  to 20 years and it may be what saves the republic   i i think this is an incredible observation  it might be the observation of the episode  
00:42:35
and i just want to point to a tweet i did because  i this is this election has really led to me doing  
00:42:42
um two things one i've been just thinking  deeply about what do i actually understand   about americans in america um and then i also  you know there's all these red pills around so  
00:42:52
i decided i would crush up a red pill and i would  just you know put a little on my finger and i try   a little red pill for a second uh and everybody  told me i've been repelled now on twitter and  
00:43:02
that i'm a trump fan i am not i hate the guy  i think it's horrible but i i did this quick  
00:43:08
survey here i said if you voted for trump i want  to understand what percentage of your vote vote   was based on the combination of a  canceled culture b identity politics c  
00:43:17
socialism d coastal elites telling you how to live  explain other issues that contributed in a reply  
00:43:23
i.e spending immigration sc the supreme court  et cetera and i just said zero percent one to  
00:43:29
25 26 to 50 at over 50. and and i got 12 000  votes go ahead and look at the results not the  
00:43:38
replies but go ahead and vote it doesn't matter  which one you pick over 50 of people who voted  
00:43:44
for trump and i know this is unscientific it's my  followers but it's definitely feels directionally   correct the people who felt 26 to over 50 percent  was part of the cancel culture identity culture  
00:43:58
was what they were trying to communicate with  their vote well this is this is such an important  
00:44:03
thing because i think this is what we're fighting  over the every single 70 of them no every single  
00:44:09
election going forward like if you if you put this  on top of the 70 odd million people that voted  
00:44:15
this kind of roughly makes sense which is that  you know there's probably about 20 million people  
00:44:21
who will completely vote democrat no matter what  and 20 million people who will completely vote  
00:44:27
republican no matter what their their just eyes  are closed their ears are closed they don't care  
00:44:33
but when you take those people out there's  this enormous amount of people in the middle   who have the ability to vote a split ticket you  know and as and as as saxxypoo said like they'll  
00:44:44
vote uh a democrat into the white house but then  down ballot they'll vote a bunch of republicans  
00:44:50
and they'll just make sure there's a balance  of power so they've been telling us about this   kind of centricity for years and so if you  want to win an election you do two things  
00:45:00
part one is you understand this dynamic that  centrism wins and part two is what friedrich   says which is you understand that we need to  enter sort of the google cpc world of political  
00:45:10
advertising and really cater not just the ads but  also the message to individual people and stop the  
00:45:18
um you know the cat the gross high level  categorization which isn't working anymore  
00:45:25
yeah and and and jason let me can i add um that  the connection between cancel culture in this  
00:45:31
election so you know obviously the pollsters  got everything completely wrong and again again  
00:45:38
and but the reason is because of cancel culture  so in exit polling 45 of republicans with college  
00:45:45
degrees expressed fear that their careers could  be at risk if their views became known compared to  
00:45:51
only 23 democrats saying that and so there were  these you know quote unquote shy trump voters  
00:45:57
who are afraid to tell pollsters what they  really think now it wasn't the trump voters   that you think of when you see the pickup trucks  and the convoys go by or the rallies sort of the  
00:46:07
those those were the voters from 2016 who weren't  counted it was sort of the non-college blue collar  
00:46:12
voters the michael moore uh you know people who  turned out for trump and big numbers and weren't  
00:46:18
properly counted four years ago the pollsters  actually counted those people correctly this time   the people they completely underestimated  was actually the white college vote  
00:46:27
who swung for a lot of swung from democrat to  republican they voted for trump because of this  
00:46:32
issue and they were afraid to say anything about  it because they're afraid of getting canceled   and by the way they they are every other person  everybody listening to this podcast works with  
00:46:42
and so deal with that one right exactly anybody  who's not actively virtue signaling on twitter for  
00:46:49
biden is a trump voter i'm not sure that's  exactly correct but roughly i think it's wrong  
00:46:56
roughly you know if people  aren't exp if people in tech   aren't explicitly endorsing uh biden on  twitter they're probably closet from voters
00:47:08
it is going to be very interesting for  people to go back to offices because now we  
00:47:14
have had a resolution and identity politics  cancel culture and extremism on both sides  
00:47:22
hysterical and trolling trolling republicans  hysterical libs this has been a loss for both  
00:47:30
of those parties and now the pandemic is ending  we're going to be back in offices at some point  
00:47:36
i mean what is office culture going to be like  are people going to go with the brian armstrong  
00:47:41
let's just get work done here let's not talk  about politics it's just too charged or not   um it's going to be a very interesting it's  every it's every comp it's every company's right  
00:47:53
you know it's every company's right to care about  what they want to care about every board every ceo   every controlling shareholder and then it's every  employee's right to vote with their feet about  
00:48:03
whether that's okay or not and i think that look  i i mean the whole brian armstrong thing again  
00:48:08
just to say one of the most pathetically poorly  written you know pieces of english prose i've ever  
00:48:15
[ __ ] seen you know he's a crypto in fairness my  dog my dog is my dog he's not a coder he's a she's  
00:48:22
a ceo my dog slamming his her paw on the keyboard  would have created a better prose than that but  
00:48:28
he was coming from a reasonable place he had the  right to say what he said um the problem is that  
00:48:33
it's so antithetical to what you're allowed to  believe for example living in san francisco um  
00:48:39
but i think that that's going to change because  you can't ignore every other person telling you  
00:48:44
that there are meaningful economic issues  that matter and that the prioritization and  
00:48:51
the policing of these you know sort of high-value  social signaling issues are no longer a priority  
00:48:59
and i think that what's going to happen is there  will be room for a party that focuses on that uh  
00:49:05
and a group of people but they will be relegated  just like on the other side uh that will happen  
00:49:10
to the republican version of that as well i i just  think this whole thing to this honestly for me it  
00:49:16
was it seems like such a tight election it is but  i really think the huge winner here is centrism  
00:49:22
100 i i i i agree with that and i i would say  that this election proves that brian armstrong  
00:49:28
was right because the average american is tired  of these highly charged political situations  
00:49:35
and the last thing they want to do is have these  conversations at work where they can get reported   to where they can offend their co-workers and  get reported to hr they can make them feel unsafe
00:49:48
they don't want to have these conversations  at work certainly by the way only five percent   of coinbase's employees took armstrong up on  that offer to leave so the number of people  
00:49:57
who actually want to have a politically charged  workplace is very very small they're just the   noisiest they're the squeakiest wheel i mean  and that was a ridiculous deal i mean what  
00:50:06
did he say six months and we invest he made it  really attractive to leave if you didn't agree   with this possibility was that was that written  because i couldn't figure that out yeah it was  
00:50:14
written it was an attractive deal to leave if you  wanted to leave and ninety-five percent chose to   yeah did i say it was poorly written i didn't  understand it because it was so hollywood  
00:50:23
so anyway so 95 percent stayed so my point  is just the number of people who actually  
00:50:28
like this highly polarized politically charged  situation in which we're all arguing with   our friends over politics and children are  divorcing their parents because they're not  
00:50:38
woke enough i mean people don't want to live  in that kind of country anymore and i think   this is the thing that joe biden really got right  in his campaign i mean this is why i mean this  
00:50:47
is the only way that his basement strategy could  actually work and results in him getting elected  
00:50:53
is people actually do want this return to  normalcy do you know who the biggest loser   is going to be coming out of this i think not  when you think holistically about the ecosystem  
00:51:03
it's going to be the media because they  have made an absolute fortune over the last  
00:51:10
four or five years picking aside what is the point  of watching rachel maddow january 20th what is the  
00:51:18
point of tuning into fox news or reading the  hysterical opinion page of the new york times  
00:51:24
all of these places that were being propped up by  either trumpism or anti-trumpism are now going to  
00:51:33
find themselves where they started which is not  a job without a job and we just wanted you to  
00:51:39
tell us the news and terrorism straight there  was a great new york times have an opinion page  
00:51:46
rip the opinion page out of the new york times  rip it out of the wall no no no no no no i i  
00:51:52
no i disagree i think the opposite happened which  is that opinion page was meant to be where people  
00:51:57
could have an opinion so that everything else was  fact and the problem is that all the other pages   became opinion as well and nobody told anybody  but yes i don't think that but nobody can tell  
00:52:06
the difference and look at that nobody can tell  the difference that's right they can't tell the   difference and look at that expose about how barry  or barry weiss was run out of the new york times  
00:52:17
it basically the activists ran her out um and  the the reality is activists have completely  
00:52:23
captured the new york times and cnn and msnbc  and there is and they always had fox and the  
00:52:29
new york times they always had fox but but now  we have no objective neutral media and so who's  
00:52:35
going to call the election i mean you complain  about the fact that trump is sowing dissent but  
00:52:41
who is the universally trusted uh spokesperson  for neutrality the way that walter cronkite was  
00:52:48
when he could just declare it and that's the way  it is and people believe that's the way it is  
00:52:53
who did the best job freedberg that night when we  were doing that let's reflect on the live stream   i have two questions for the live stream number  one who is your bestie guestie who who did you  
00:53:02
think added the most as a guestie and why and then  number two we're doing we're doing whatever what  
00:53:09
we're gonna do we're gonna do a poll a human  valuable before i got a lot of feedback on  
00:53:16
the guesties there's a little girly people  can i say one more thing on this stuff brad  
00:53:21
before before we go there uh there was a there  was a really good article in the new york times   about maggie haberman right and maggie who's a  fantastic journalist but built an entire career  
00:53:32
it really amplified came to a head in 2016 um  and she just scoop after scoop um about trump  
00:53:40
but the most impelling thing about that whole  article was somewhere near the you know a third  
00:53:45
of the way from the bottom uh she's like look  uh at the end of the day uh she said something  
00:53:51
like i'm dispensable and i know it and it was the  most honest thing because it's like despite her  
00:53:56
popularity and despite sort of you know how big  of a stick she carries the reality is sans trump  
00:54:03
uh there's just nothing to do there's nothing  to leak there's there just is not nearly as  
00:54:10
much to do i did just put in the um the chat  here the washington post fox news the hill  
00:54:17
basically like the full gamut of um of uh of uh  media opinion have highlighted that the media  
00:54:26
generally is the biggest loser of the uh of the  2020 election and i think i i think they've just  
00:54:32
lost the um uh the faith of their audience  and um you know it's it's i mean it's this  
00:54:39
access point i don't know how many people were  you're either looking for objective and you've   lost it or you're looking for opinionated and  you feel like you're um you know your aligned  
00:54:48
opinion setting media partner has betrayed you  um you know the fact that fox called it for  
00:54:54
uh for trump and trump's now saying fox is is is a  liar the fact that the new york times doesn't feel  
00:55:00
like they're being objective anymore and they're  you know they're running people out of the uh   out of the newsroom in general i just  feel like we've been disenfranchised um  
00:55:09
and i think that's uh that's something that's  going to be really hard to kind of recover from   and resolve and for the love of god can somebody  please get i i don't want you to break any laws  
00:55:21
but however if we could read the slack channel  of the new york times reporters leading up to the  
00:55:32
hundred days of this election that would become  the greatest best-selling book of all time to  
00:55:38
watch the new york times writers bicker with each  other sax i mean we could do 10 hours on that  
00:55:44
no problem let's talk about okay bestie gasting  guesties what did you think of our guests i  
00:55:50
thought they were all great i thought they're all  great are we now becoming uh media critics we're   gonna now yeah who do we like our own podcasts  what are you going for are we why are you yeah
00:56:07
jason wants jason wants to throw  youth under the bus go ahead jason   no no no no no no oh contraire does anyone have  a video they want to share person on the podium  
00:56:18
youth in his place that it was not the it was not  the point guard in this case somebody pulled a  
00:56:27
draymond and pulled she held you at the side and  said stop you gotta pass the ball i do you think  
00:56:33
brad did a great job he had some great insights  i think bill gurley had some great insights which   i think was just a great really good job of  getting some people to rotate in i enjoyed it  
00:56:42
yeah i thought it was really well everyone was  great i'll give a shout out to my bestie newman  
00:56:47
he was better he was better as a political analyst  and all those jokers on cnn and fox and msnbc the  
00:56:54
dude with the with the map and he kept touching  the map and yeah it's like that guy gets paid to  
00:56:59
do that i can't believe he gets paid to do that  i'm gonna get my daughter on cnn she can do that  
00:57:05
when's the guy on cnn who does that john k john  king john king god bless this guy because i don't  
00:57:11
know how much adderall he's on but i i turned it  on at 8am and he was zooming into pennsylvania  
00:57:17
and he's like oh well of course in 2018 this  time 2016. he's like let's zoom out and let's   go back to arizona of course in arizona this place  i was like is this guy a geography teacher i mean  
00:57:28
he was amazing and just the dexterity he  looked like he was tom cruise a minority   report with the fingers i don't know i  don't know if i'd call him tom cruise  
00:57:38
i don't look like tom cruise but the minority  report pinch and zoom in and out it was incredible  
00:57:43
when uh when when does trump call this thing  that's a great question well i think he has to  
00:57:48
run out these core challenges which will take a  few weeks but i i predict by thanksgiving um but   it may have to go up to the supreme court but he's  gonna he's gonna dot the eye dot every eye and  
00:57:59
cross every t that he's got legally um but he's  got like we talked about the very beginning he's   got a huge uphill challenge i'd i see the court  ultimately ruling against him or throwing it out  
00:58:08
what is the point david what is it well because  why shouldn't he doesn't he's not gonna win  
00:58:14
no i don't i don't know that he he knows that  he he i think it's his right to exhaust every  
00:58:19
legal uh possibility and let's remember al gore  didn't concede for 37 days after the election so i  
00:58:26
certainly think trump is within his rights  over the next few weeks to run this out   in terms of what the point is i mean other than  the obvious attempt to challenge it legally i  
00:58:34
do think this is partly a branding exercise by  trump um it's a marketing exercise i don't think  
00:58:42
he's going to come up with enough malfeasance  to overturn an election but i do think he'll  
00:58:47
probably produce a lot of smoke and this is  about protecting his brand as a as a winner and  
00:58:53
you know if he kicks up enough um you know  examples of voter fraud or or what have you he'll  
00:59:00
always be able to say you know years from now that  this was it was a stolen election and when you  
00:59:05
combine the fact that kovid really did drive this  this election you could call that chinese election  
00:59:13
interference if you want the fact that the  vaccine is now here already you could call that   um you know some sort of election interference  he's going to have enough arguments where if  
00:59:22
he wants to run four years from now um i think he  probably gets the republican nomination again what  
00:59:28
what's the percentage chance chamath that he runs  again in four years zero um free berg trump yeah  
00:59:38
i think he's gonna be making so much money he's  not gonna know what to do with himself he's not   going back to that [ __ ] torture support your  house if you think about the white house like some  
00:59:46
terrible blumhouse production movie set he's like  [ __ ] that i'm not going back there it was awful  
00:59:51
where is he going where is he going he's going to  go to china he's going to shanghai is he going to   he's going to launch it you're going to be in  new york he's going to buy a law firm because  
00:59:59
he's gonna need a law firm to keep everyone at  bay and he's gonna be probably printing a hundred   million bucks a month you know put it at dubai  saudi arabia i think yeah i think i think he's  
01:00:07
definitely gonna launch a media business and uh  he'll he'll try to become king maker i think i  
01:00:13
think he will become a king maker republican  politics he will launch a competitor to fox   news but it will also be fox news hybridized with  a grassroots movement like the tea party and every  
01:00:25
republican will need to go get his endorsement or  they will be primaried by the trump party and i i  
01:00:31
would not put it aside more could not disagree  more i think he's a disgrace i think he will be  
01:00:38
i think that's not what david said he's gonna  come not you david i'm talking about trump i  
01:00:45
think dave is incredible uh no i think the stuff  that comes out after this the deluge the number  
01:00:52
of sdny suits all the griff and the graft it's  all coming out not only is he not going to be  
01:01:00
a king maker he will not be able to get the  backing for this network it'll be breitbart light  
01:01:07
and it'll be shut down within 24 months he'll fail  so miserably that when he walks into a restaurant  
01:01:14
it'll be like game of thrones shame shame well  i i don't i don't i don't think so i think that  
01:01:22
it's very likely that the donald trump that  runs for president in 2024 is donald trump jr
01:01:30
oh god no he's horrible the whole republican party  has to start over let's end on this pompeo did  
01:01:41
a press conference is the state department  currently preparing to engage with the biden   transition team and if not at what point does a  delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk  
01:01:51
to national security there will be a smooth  transition to a second trump administration  
01:01:59
all right we're ready the world is watching  what's taking place here we're going to   count all the votes when the process is complete  there'll be electors selected there's a process  
01:02:08
the constitution lays it out pretty clearly  the world should have every confidence that   the transition necessary to make sure that  the state department is functional today  
01:02:16
successful today and successful with the president  who's in office on january 20th a minute afternoon  
01:02:22
will also be successful can i can i just say i  don't disagree with the position they're taking   it's not immoral it's customary and traditional to  concede your election but you know december 15th  
01:02:35
is the date that congress ratifies the electoral  votes uh to determine who the next president is  
01:02:40
going to be um and these guys are just taking a a  very kind of pragmatic um legal line that is not  
01:02:49
immoral in a way they they believe that they have  some case on on what the vote should be the votes   are all very close yadda yadda i'm not saying that  he's gonna win or by any chance but i don't think  
01:02:59
that um folks saying like let the votes be counted  and let congress do their job of having the states  
01:03:05
tell them who their electoral votes are going  to is uh is an inappropriate position to take i  
01:03:10
sound like i might sound like some conservative  you know trump head but i'm not i think that  
01:03:16
um these guys i'm what i'm just saying is that  these guys aren't that immoral in in kind of   asking for that for that you know sorry i also  think at the fringes of the republican party  
01:03:24
this is what you keep all these militia folks  and all these other folks at bay is just you  
01:03:30
show a really methodical um you know um stepping  away from the spotlight and i think that this is  
01:03:38
yeah honestly it's this is a very deliberate safe  calming thing to do cause i think there's there's  
01:03:45
been nothing about the trump administration from  2016 through to this very moment that has been   customary or traditional and so i don't know why  we all expected him to step in and say like i can  
01:03:54
see like the way that we've been doing it it would  be worse it'd be worse if he had conceded and all   of a sudden was holding a bunch of protests  and rallies all over the country that but  
01:04:01
he's not doing anything illegal no one  has any legal requirement to concede and   um you know and i think as long as these guys on  december 15th which is the date that we should  
01:04:10
all be watching and waiting for as long as these  guys do the appropriate thing at that point then   um you know that that's the only point in  which i would have any sort of concern or worry  
01:04:20
about what's going on with the transition in  the government but sorry i think this is about   saving face and saving brand a sexy passenger  he'll he'll be out by december 15th meaning right  
01:04:29
it'll this will all be done yeah i agree and look  let's remember that al gore was able to challenge   the election result for 37 days without being  hysterically accused of undermining democracy so  
01:04:40
let trump have his day in court it'll play  out over the next few weeks i expect that the  
01:04:45
obstacles he has has to overcome are are too large  and he will lose these lawsuits it might go to the  
01:04:51
supreme court it would not be a bad thing if the  supreme court were the ones to make this decision  
01:04:57
uh they're one of the last institutions that  still trusted clearly the media are not and i   think that you know trump will accept the result  he may not concede but he will accept the result  
01:05:07
when it comes from the supreme court is there a  non-zero chance that he could win on a recount  
01:05:15
he would have to prove systemic fraud because  it's not like florida where there's just one state  
01:05:20
and a few hundred votes he's gotta overcome over  twelve thousand votes in at least three states so  
01:05:28
that's the issue is is it it's a percent  on its sacks if you had to lay money on it   oh i mean it's like some ten percent  chance i think except 10 chance 1 in  
01:05:37
10 you'd give 10 to 1 odds no i'm saying  it's under 10 i'm saying it's a very small  
01:05:43
well here's the thing so bush v gore the  um the supreme court ruled seven to two  
01:05:50
i mean you would have thought it was nine to  zero um so clearly there was some sympathizers in   bush v gore so hopefully you know it's something  like seven to two and um you know we move on i i  
01:06:02
believe if it gets the supreme court it will be at  least seven to two if not eight one or nine zero  
01:06:07
just because i think trump has a much harder  case to prove in florida the issue was simply  
01:06:13
whether the recount should be allowed to continue  james baker went to the supreme court to stop the   recount that was in process uh because of the  fear that the local corrupt election officials  
01:06:24
basically steal the election for gore that  you know but but but bush was always ahead  
01:06:30
in that election there was never a time when bush  was behind um biden is now ahead in every swing  
01:06:36
state that matters trump has to now overturn  that result in at least three of those states  
01:06:43
i don't know how thousands of votes by tens of  thousands of i just don't know how he does that   he has to prove some sort of systemic fraud  that took place across the nation that and  
01:06:54
and look i think from like a marketing or branding  standpoint he'll be able to create a lot of smoke   i think they will actually find quite a bit of  misconduct because i don't think our elections  
01:07:04
are perfect but will it rise to the standard that  the supreme court is going to set for overturning  
01:07:09
an election i don't think so i don't think so  i mean they'll probably find it on both sides   there's got to be some crazy well  the other trump supporter who has  
01:07:18
10 ballots they signed and there'll  be some crazy liberal who did this  
01:07:23
the nuanced issue is whether they can do a  constitutionally valid recount by you know   the time necessary as well so the longer that  this lays on then they'll be forced to basically  
01:07:32
say no to that also because otherwise it will  be effectively throwing out an election and so   uh as we wrap here san francisco's uh continues to  devolve revenue down 40 percent in terms of taxes  
01:07:46
budget is double what it's been uh just a few  years ago crime is going crazy walmart is closing  
01:07:53
their stores and leaving because of walgreens  i'm sorry walgreens we don't have a walmart here  
01:07:59
um and there's 20 there's more homes on the market  now than there have been too much of anything is  
01:08:05
a bad thing if you eat too much broccoli it's a  bad thing you know what i mean so too much of a  
01:08:11
single party monoculture is bad whether it's  republican or democrat you need a diverse  
01:08:20
centrist plurality and in the absence of that many  cities that veer in one direction or the other  
01:08:26
will decay and die and san francisco is going to  be the tip of the spear for the left's version  
01:08:33
and there's been a bunch of cities that have  already been the examples of the rights version so   you know what um apparently the  water is warm and they want to join  
01:08:43
anybody else freedberg i can't i can't find a lot  to disagree with there i think san francisco we're  
01:08:48
basically an atlas shrugged i mean the uh you know  half the storefronts are closed they're boarded up  
01:08:55
uh the city is completely surrendered to the  criminal element you can't park your car anywhere   in the city without having it getting broken into  they won't prosecute people for crimes including  
01:09:05
uh increasingly violent crimes um the uh you  know the the the the city is about to go bankrupt  
01:09:14
and the entrepreneurs are all disappearing they're  all leaving i mean it's right out of the shrugged  
01:09:20
yeah i mean it's it's the uh the action is  the wrong action right so san francisco the  
01:09:27
biggest disappointment of election night for me  was the new business taxes that were passed um  
01:09:33
for san francisco businesses um  and and there was also this like um  
01:09:39
for for 99.9999999 of people they're going to  shrug and say i don't give a [ __ ] but there  
01:09:46
was this new tax of six percent for homes that  get sold over 10 million dollars now uh if you're  
01:09:51
a successful entrepreneur an investor or a ceo of  a company in san francisco and you know it's it's  
01:09:57
like a slap in the face um you add the business  tax with that kind of high-end property tax  
01:10:03
and it's almost like an invitation to leave the  city and some people are nodding their heads   wait this six percent is on leaving or buying uh  transaction when you sell so you literally six  
01:10:13
percent off the top uh when you sell a home the  city basically just took six percent of my house  
01:10:19
yeah this the city just took six percent of my  house it is now tax they're now a part owner   of my house yeah it's an estate tax and so there  are people like there are people in san francisco  
01:10:29
uh who we all know how much warning did you  have before they took your bedroom yeah i mean  
01:10:36
um there's a london breed put some people in  sax's third 13th bedroom on the third floor  
01:10:41
and they're all living there right now but  i mean it's okay i got like wings i don't  
01:10:46
even know about it's like totally it's  like richie rich's house or something so   nobody cries nobody cries for super rich people  and you know but it was so short-sighted is the  
01:10:56
point right right exactly i'm not complaining  about the taxes on me but it's going to do   tremendous damage to the city people are not going  to want to move here and we yeah yeah i look i've  
01:11:06
built businesses in san francisco since 2006 and  i will not build another business in san francisco  
01:11:12
and i hear the same from other entrepreneurs if  you're going to build a business do it in the   south bay do it in the east bay do it in the north  bay or do it in austin or la or somewhere else  
01:11:21
but this is just not a place to build businesses  the city is basically saying we don't want you   here now that would be fine and dandy if the city  was being conservative in the way that they spend  
01:11:30
and if they were actually reducing their budget  and you know kind of reducing the the city's   activities the problem is these these uh taxes  diverge with the budget because um the taxes  
01:11:41
are now going to go down because businesses are  leaving people are selling their homes they're   not going to buy expensive homes anymore and  um we are seeing a budget crisis san francisco  
01:11:51
i think is looking at a 1.7 to two billion dollar  budget shortfall this year um i mean like where's  
01:11:56
that money gonna come from this is a city with  eight hundred thousand and we have and there   was that expose in the san francisco chronicle  talking about how there's over twenty thousand  
01:12:04
city workers making over a hundred fifty thousand  dollars a year 000 yeah yeah what are we getting   for all of that the evidence is not apparent um  and this is where okay look i'd be happy to give  
01:12:15
the city six percent of my house and pay all these  high taxes if we actually got something for it   but the city just keeps getting less and less  livable uh yes city budget in 2013 so we have  
01:12:26
a fiscal crisis a fiscal crisis and we have a  livability crisis that i think is even worse  
01:12:32
um and that that's a huge problem and let's be  frank san francisco was always the accidental  
01:12:38
beneficiary of silicon valley if you will san  francisco was the accidental billionaire it was  
01:12:44
silicon valley that created this enormous wealth  and all the jobs and the the companies it wasn't   san francisco policies or politics that created  any of that it just so happens that silicon valley  
01:12:54
got big enough it started around stanford it  got big enough that san francisco as the nearest  
01:12:59
metropolitan area really was a beneficiary  of that and and you know because they never  
01:13:06
really did anything to create the conditions for  that prosperity frankly they took it for granted   and now that the rug's been pulled out from under  them i don't think they're really going to know  
01:13:13
what to do local local san francisco politicians  treated silicon valley success as a grab bag  
01:13:20
and uber set up here and twitter and square and  salesforce and san francisco politicians put  
01:13:28
their hand in the honey jar and took as much as  they could and um it's now backfiring because new  
01:13:34
businesses don't want to set up here entrepreneurs  don't want to operate here and as sax is pointing   out the you know the the rapid kind of inflation  has caused this tremendous decline uh in in the  
01:13:44
quality of service there's zero accountability  zero checks and balances so san francisco is   in for a really frank a scary reckoning and a  lot of people are really worried about it and  
01:13:52
it's like a very real problem it's not like  oh the city's [ __ ] haha like a two billion   dollar budget shortfall um you're either going  to have to cut a lot of jobs of public employees  
01:14:03
or you're going to have a city that's going to  go bankrupt and you know bonds are going to get   defaulted on and at the same time you're going  to have this mass exodus of people and businesses  
01:14:11
and it is a it is a very kind of unwinding not  right now um so it's it's a scary moment i don't  
01:14:16
think there's a real great answer for for what  to do it's more nuanced but i think it i think   it will happen mark my word san francisco  will file for bankruptcy in the next 10 years  
01:14:26
wow i mean pelosi is just looking you know pelosi  held out a major city filing for maybe 15 maybe 15  
01:14:33
years but yeah remember a big part of what pelosi  held out on the big thing she held out on in the  
01:14:38
stimulus negotiations uh last month was for local  and state governments to get bail out support  
01:14:45
uh in this stimulus package and she's  acutely aware she lives one block away   from me down the road here she's acutely  aware of what's going on in san francisco  
01:14:54
and the solution may not be to bail out these  cities and these states um if they're going   to continue to operate the way they are because  it's um so the state needs to break in order to  
01:15:04
rebuild well you need to cut budget i mean any  of us running a business know like you know if   you have a little revenue coming in and you're  spending too much where the [ __ ] the money  
01:15:12
coming from you can't just keep going to big papa  in dc and asking him for more money what about   masayoshi-san maybe he'll he consider coming in  or maybe it's back maybe should we do it i really
01:15:31
francisco listen i i think chamath traumath is  right about san francisco being the proof of what  
01:15:38
happens when you have a one-party system and i i  really hope that the the tech community the tech  
01:15:44
liberals who are listening to this podcast they're  not going to listen to me because they probably   you know think i'm too conservative but you know  tremoth is pretty liberal and um you know he makes  
01:15:53
the right point and you know we cannot have a  one-party system that remains healthy for very  
01:15:59
long we need the pendulum to swing back towards  the center and um you know i really hope that yeah  
01:16:06
power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely  as you've as you've said many times yeah   it's true that's yeah lord acton said that we this  is literally what the dark knight batman series is  
01:16:20
about it's literally about not having a basic  standard of policing and allowing criminals to  
01:16:28
run a city we've turned into a goddamn comic book  like you have to arrest people who commit crimes  
01:16:36
okay and and i'm sorry if that hurts your feelings  and one of the things that's beat people up yeah  
01:16:42
you're right and one of the things that's  like the comic book is the sense of fatalism   you know it's like everybody knows san francisco  is broken but nobody thinks they can do anything  
01:16:50
about it that's really the tragedy of it that  is the tragedy and you know what if any of us  
01:16:55
i've said it before i'm like i know exactly how  you can stop all these car break-ins you there's  
01:17:00
a thing called the bait car you put 10 bait cars  out you put cameras in them and now that einstein   has spoken boys i love you i love you all i miss  you all i just can't wait to see you again and uh  
01:17:13
for those of you who would like to advertise on  podcast the advertising rate has been set at 10  
01:17:20
million dollars a year for however many episodes  we we do i will read the ad at the end of the show  
01:17:26
if you give 10 million dollars to the charity of  chamot's picking which apparently is going to be  
01:17:31
san francisco i think that'll balance point seven  percent of the budget uh follow friedberg on the  
01:17:38
twitter follow david sacks follow champion if you  like the show tell your friends and write a review  
01:17:44
or don't we don't care we just do this  because we like hanging out with each other   we'll see you all oh and if you want to be a  guest on the show we don't accept any guest  
01:17:51
recommendations for the love of god i don't  know how many people are begging to be on  
01:17:56
the show it's there's room enough for four  people maybe on a live show bestie guesties  
01:18:02
you're not getting your ceo of your whatever  company on the show period end of story and  
01:18:08
i cannot introduce you to chamoth to spack  your company enough of that love you besties

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Episode Highlights

  • Election Night Chaos
    The besties reflect on the wild election night and its unexpected outcomes.
    “It was a crazy show!”
    @ 00m 08s
    November 11, 2020
  • Trump's Legal Challenges
    Analyzing the difficulties Trump faces in contesting the election results compared to Gore's case.
    “Trump's case is weaker in every respect.”
    @ 02m 46s
    November 11, 2020
  • The Future of American Politics
    Exploring the shift towards centrist politics after the election results.
    “The future is a common decent centrist platform.”
    @ 06m 52s
    November 11, 2020
  • The New Normal
    We're not going back to normal; society has changed permanently due to the pandemic.
    “I think that's permanent.”
    @ 23m 21s
    November 11, 2020
  • Economic Outlook
    Gridlock in government can create predictability for business and boost the markets.
    “Gridlock is great for the markets.”
    @ 29m 31s
    November 11, 2020
  • The Future of Parties
    Voters are complex and won't fit neatly into party lines anymore.
    “Identity politics is a stupid strategy.”
    @ 39m 20s
    November 11, 2020
  • Cancel Culture's Impact on Voting
    45% of Republicans with college degrees fear career risks for their views, compared to 23% of Democrats.
    @ 45m 38s
    November 11, 2020
  • The Rise of Centrism
    This election proves that the average American wants a return to normalcy, away from political extremes.
    “The huge winner here is centrism.”
    @ 49m 16s
    November 11, 2020
  • Media's Biggest Loss
    The media has lost credibility and trust, becoming the biggest loser of the 2020 election.
    “The media has made an absolute fortune picking a side.”
    @ 54m 32s
    November 11, 2020
  • Tax Burden on Homeowners
    New taxes on high-end properties are driving entrepreneurs out of San Francisco.
    “The city just took six percent of my house.”
    @ 01h 10m 19s
    November 11, 2020
  • San Francisco's Decline
    The city faces a potential bankruptcy due to a budget shortfall and exodus of businesses.
    “San Francisco will file for bankruptcy in the next 10 years.”
    @ 01h 14m 16s
    November 11, 2020
  • One-Party System Consequences
    A discussion on the dangers of a one-party system and its impact on governance.
    “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
    @ 01h 15m 59s
    November 11, 2020

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Election Night00:08
  • Soft Landing00:56
  • Permanent Changes23:06
  • Post-Pandemic Partying28:27
  • Media Credibility Crisis54:32
  • City in Crisis1:11:51
  • Crisis of Livability1:12:26
  • Tragic Realities1:16:50

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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