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All right, everybody. Today on the All-In podcast, we're joined by our friend Ben Shapiro, and we have a full
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docket, including Trump's trip to the Middle East, the executive order on pharma benefits. We talk a little bit
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about mock meat being banned in Montana, and Freedberg is really upset. He drops
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a disc on the tax bill being supported by Republicans. All that and more on the
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number one podcast in the world, the Allin podcast. Stick with us. One thing I'm trying to figure out. Do daily mail
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stories actually end because I've scrolled up like seven times. No, no,
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no. Daily times they never end. Those guys are like the methamphetamine of clicks. It's like click crack. Yeah.
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They're like one more paragraph. Every time I see a Daily Mail article, I'm like, "Okay, do I have 15 minutes here?" Because I'm going to click on one. I'm
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going to look at the photos. Then I'm going to go to the right rail. I'm going to click on the right rail. See, that's disgraciad. When you go on the right
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rail, you're a true degenerate. I love stay off the right rail of the Daily Keep on the carousel for hours. Oh my
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god. The carousel. My favorite Daily Mail story. One time that Jared and Vanka were were over at our house and
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the paparazzi were were following them around. They were like, "Can you give us a tour of the area?" So, we drove them outside for a hot second and the
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paparazzi immediately captured a picture of them on the back of our golf cart cuz we're in Florida and me and my son in
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the front. And the Daily Mail, it was the Daily Mail Paparazzi. And so the headline was Jared Ivanka, unnamed
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driver and small boy. Nick Nick,
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can you cut it in? [Music] We'll let your winners ride.
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[Music] We open source it to the fans and
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they've just gone crazy with it. Love you. We don't want all. If you want to
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come to our next event, it's the All-In Summit in Los Angeles. Fourth year for All-InSummit. Go to
00:02:01
allin.com/events to apply. Hold on one second. Let me do the intro properly. I have to do an apology. Ben, this is
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going to be so good right now. You're going to feel so uncomfortable. It's going to be amazing. Go ahead. It's going to be great. So, look, Ben has a
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heart out in an hour and 40 minutes. So, we're going to get the show started. However, Ben, I we need to take a pause.
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Jason will explain what happened last week. He is going to issue a formal apology. If that formal apology is not
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good enough, I will step in. Over to you, Jason.
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Okay. We, the members of the Allin podcast, including Chim Poly Papetilla and myself, Jason Calakanis, would like
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to formally and respectfully apologize to poker legend Phil Helmu for our previous comments about his relationship
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with Hollywood actor Timothy Shalamé and the Los Angeles celebrity community more
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generally. On a previous episode of this podcast, a number of inaccurate, potentially legally actionable statements were made by the host
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regarding Mr. Helmu. It was strongly implied on this program that Mr. Helmu was not acquainted with Mr. Shalamé and
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it was further suggested that he had harassed and manheld of the Oscar nominated performer during a social event in Miami, Florida. This was a
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flagrant misrepresentation of the facts for which we are sorry. We here at Allin are committed to journalistic
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responsibility and integrity and we hope to use this time to correct the record. In fact, as a noted Bon Vivant and
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publicly visible representative of the gaming community, Mr. Helmu is acquainted with many celebrities from
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the worlds of film, television, athletics, business, modeling, finance, and beyond. The list of c celebrity
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friends is far too vast to list here in its entirety. But we have prepared this
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section we feel demonstrates how his overwhelming popularity among this
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demographic. Matt Damon, Steve Martin, Charles Barkley, Bill Clinton, Khloe
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Kardashian, Mr. Beast, The Guy from Billions, Tiger Woods, Maril Lopez, Drake, and of course, Jay-Z. Once again,
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we here at Allin regret the error. We should publicly apologize to Mr. Helmu and recommmit ourselves to truth and
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accuracy in reporting. Thank you, Jason. That was great. I would just like to add a couple
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things. Phil is my best friend. Has been for a very long time. I love him. He
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does have a lot of friends and he opens his rolodex to us and so to the extent that
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Phil was hurt because he was a little bit hurt last week um because we were ribbing him. We ri him a lot. We make
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jokes in the group chat a lot but it's because we enjoy it. He enjoys it. But I think the way that we said it really
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hurt his feelings. So Philly, I love you. We love you. We love you, Phil. We're sorry. Sorry. I'm I specifically
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I'm sorry because to be honest, I probably started the whole thing and got
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everybody, you know, we're just trying to have fun with you, Phil. Sorry. We love you. Love you, Phil. I called you a
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panda eating eating bamboo. And I did not mean to say that you put your meat hooks into Timothy Shalom. And I didn't
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mean to say that you took credit for and, you know, didn't have a major contribution to the All-In podcast,
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obviously. But Phil, honestly, you're you're the best. you you you've been really instrumental in a lot of these
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important relationships that have joined our group. So, thank you and we love you and let's keep going. Okay. Yes,
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absolutely. And we wish you well in the World Series of Poker. Go get him. Hope you hit go get him. World's greatest
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17th, 18th, 19th, who knows? He's not playing this year. Did he Isn't he
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skipping? He's not playing in the main. He's not playing the main. He's not playing the main because the WSOP are ridiculous in how they set up these
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tournaments. It's stupid. We will do a better version, by the way, of the WSOP to announce us. We will be doing an
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event during the F1 in Las Vegas where we will be launching our poker
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tournaments. So, for those of you who would like to have some quality, high class poker tournaments and some
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ridiculous cash games, let us know. Late November, guys, book
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it. Make sure you got five, six days where you can pretend you have COVID, get out of your job, come to Las Vegas.
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What about you, Ben? Do you like to uh gamble? You ever play the horses, the ponies? I can say that I've been big on
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the gambling. It hasn't worked out well for me. I I have I have an addiction, so
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I wouldn't want that to get out of control, you know. All right. Well, we'll uh we will absolutely take advantage of your addiction. Ben, have
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you have you ever rolled the dice? Have you ever rolled dice? No. I I've never rolled dice. No. Okay. So, this is
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perfect. We have to take Okay, Ben, we're you're coming to our all-in event in Vegas, and I'll tell you why. You
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We'll do something on stage, but more importantly for me, Ben, go ahead. More importantly for me, there is an
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incredible rule in craps where when you have a virgin shooter, somebody who's never touched the dice. Absolutely. I
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don't know what it is, but you are the people that go off where you can make
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millions. Yes, I have seen this 20 times in my gambling life in Las Vegas. I
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remember I took my father-in-law I took my father-in-law and my kids while my wife was pregnant. She was like, "Get out of the house." So, my father-in-law
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and I took our the three older kids to Vegas. He had never shot dice before. He touched the dice. Broke the casino. It
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It is the most fun game, Ben. I'm telling you. So, you need to come November 22nd. We'll make the
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arrangements. We'll make sure you get out there. You'll have a really great time. He'll do something with us on stage and and Ben is going to touch
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those little dice and he's going to break the wind and I'm going to be there to finance it. Absolutely. You are going
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to get such great parenting and husband advice from Shamath Ben. All of this dedication you have to your family,
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we're going to teach you a new approach, which is to just off to Vegas and yeah, take your kids and your father-in-law
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and leave your pregnant wife at home. She's she's got work to do. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In podcast. Really excited to have Ben
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Shapiro back on the program. Yeah, I listen to the Ben Shapiro show. You know about Daily Wire and uh Ben, you've been
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covering this Trump Middle East trip uh all week. So, let's get into that. As our first topic here, as everybody
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knows, Trump was in the Middle East. He secured a huge investment from the Saudis, $600 billion, $140 billion for a
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defense partnership. and NBS said he wants to make it a trillion. Bunch of
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high-profile CEOs joined Trump, including friends of the show, Elon, and of course, Dar from Uber, Andy Jasse
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from Amazon, who else was there? Alex Karp, Jensen, tons of people, including our fourth besty here, David Saxs was
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there. He also closed a $200 billion deal with Qatar or gutter which includes
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96 billion from Boeing to send 160 planes there with an option of 50 more. And he removed sanctions against Syria.
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Little controversial. We'll get into that. To quote give them a chance at greatness. He gave a speech at a Saudi
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US investment forum in Riad where he powerfully outlined his vision for a new
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Middle East basically rejecting 20 years of American interventions and forever wars and uh he gave big credit to a
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quote new generation of leaders including NBS for building better societies. Ben, what do you think here?
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What was your take on the trip? Is this the best Trump? Of all the versions of Trump, this did seem to me to be the
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best version. He seemed really comfortable with this category of leader in this region in particular. What were
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your thoughts? Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right? I mean, he likes NBS. He obviously likes the the Emiratar. He likes the the folks
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in in UAE. We've known that for a while and and he's he's really signaling a a shift away from the Obama Biden policy
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toward a lot of these places where Biden liked to say the word democracy and then immediately divide off from Saudi Arabia
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on the basis of that and chide MBS and all this kind of stuff and then try to cut a deal with Iran for example at the
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same exact time which of course pisses off the Saudis. Trump is going over there and he's in dealmaking mode and you can see he's in dealmaking mode and
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his entire sort of approach to the Middle East is what he said in the speech, commerce above chaos, right? Let's do some business here and he
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understands that there are a lot of people in KSA uh Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and and also in Qatar UAE as well who
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are really looking to do business and I think there are a bunch of strategic aspects of this that are really good. One of them obviously is driving these
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places away from China and the more business ties you have with places like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, the
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the further away they're going to get from China. I think you do have to be careful with Qatar in particular which has some divided priorities shall we say
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when it comes to terrorism. Obviously Qatar the case they will make to sort of steel man what Qatar says about itself
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is that they have to have good relations with terrorists that the West can talk with the terrorists on occasion uh to to
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not steal man the case. They gave $2 billion to kamas over the course of the last several years and have funded the American university systems that's $6.3
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billion for a country that has a grand total of 2.6 million citizens. It's smaller than the state of Connecticut in
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terms of its citizenship. It spends something like 2/3 what China spends on lobbying which seems, you know, pretty
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weird. But with that said, the idea of bringing dollars into the United States, combining on things like AI is what
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David Sachs has been working on over there. Like that stuff is all really really good. the the warning that I'd issue to to President Trump is just make
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sure that that you have strings attached too. Meaning clearly there are strings attached from the other side when you're talking about Qatar. So also the United
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States should have strings attached. So you mentioned Syria there. If you're talking about you know getting rid of the sanctions on Syria, there's an
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argument to be made. Obviously Erdogan in Turkey would love that because basically the the the leader of of Syria
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now Alani, he changes his name. He's kind of like the prince of terrorists, right? He like he he's the artist
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formerly known as Alalani. Now he's Al Sharai, thank you. He changed his name to he was al-Qaeda, then he was ISIS, then he's HDS. He basically works for
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the Turks. And so obviously the Turks would love for Al Galani to have sanctions removed. That's fine. I mean,
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I think there's a case to be made for it, but you have to make sure that he actually delivers on the other end of that, which would be getting rid of the terrorists in his country. What do you
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think, Ben, about Qatar Qatar? Uh, for people, it's it's the same word just
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said differently here in the West and in their country. Um, do you think we should have deep
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ties to them? And is the steelman argument that their relationship with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
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acceptable to you, Ben Shapiro, or do you think we should hold the line with them and say, "Hey, you got to cut off these relationships if you want to have
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a relationship with the United States?" I mean, it seems to me that we have a lot more leverage in in the latter situation and and Qatar has obviously
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paying some$8 billion dollars to have this air base on its own territory, but then it puts restrictions on how the United States can use that sort of air
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base. that air base was previously located in Saudi and and so you know it's my perspective that after October
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7th for example the United States under Joe Biden should have gone to Qatar which which obviously has a deep
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relationship with Hamas as proven by the release of that American hostage while President Trump was in the Middle East which was done at the behest of Qatar
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that that probably the United States should have gone to Qatar and said listen the air base goes away unless all the hostages come out and the kamas
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leadership goes into exile and you avoid the entire war. So there is leverage that can be exerted. Uh I'm I'm not sure
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that the leverage is being properly exerted on Qatar. Let's put this way. I'm much more enthusiastic about the ties that President Trump is fostering
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with Saudi and UAE than I am the ties that he's fostering with Qatar. I mean back in 2017 there was nearly a war
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between Saudi and UAE and Qatar. I mean that's how bad the relations were back in 2017 and President Trump was on the
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Saudi UAE side of that. So you know moving Yeah. Let's just say trust but verify I think would be a much better
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strategy than just trust. Here's some stuff. We'll hope that you you give us back on the back end. Shimoth, let's go
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to the business side here. Uh Trump making a lot of deals. Uh little bit of
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a brewhaha over a $400 million plane given to Trump. Not sure how relevant
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that is or if he's even accepted it personally and and I'm sure you've you've got some thoughts on that. But
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what did we see there? I saw Sundep, our friend from Grock, one of your investments was there. We're seeing a
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level of investment and collaboration between Saudi, UAE, and America and the
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West that, hey, let's face it, we haven't ever seen. And they do seem to be leaning more towards I won't say
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democracy, but a lot of social reforms and uh a lot of women uh was pointed out
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by David Saxs in the business community there. I've I've made a couple trips there. It seems to have changed on a
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human rights basis more in the last three or four years than in the last, I guess, 20. So what's your take generally
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on this position Ben has of hey better they be doing business with us and let's
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build and foster these relationships as opposed to have them fall into the arms of Russia, North Korea or China. Let's
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just go do a little clean up on a couple of these things and I'll give you my take. Sure. First thing is we announced
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almost $2 billion deal 1.7 I think is what it was for did a deal. Yeah. for AI
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inference. We're starting to build some enormous data centers in Saudi. I'll get
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to why Saudi is a critical place to do that, but they've been exceptional partners. We are the only inference
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company in the world with an export license from the United States to do this. So, yeah, it was great. That's why
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Sunny was there and Jonathan Ross, our founder and CEO. So, that was that was really big for us. This has been company
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that Jonathan and I got off the ground 10 years ago. It's been a long long slug.
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So yeah, there's a lot of commercial activity that happened there. Our friend Brian Yuko, who was just announced as
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the head of the commercial plane development group at Boeing, who's making all the next generation planes.
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Boeing was there. Kelly Orbrook, they announced a $ 160 billion deal for
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Boeings and a bunch of other stuff. Elon announced that Saudi allows Starlink now for maritime and aircraft usage. He also
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announced robo taxis are coming to Saudi. So the business community I think was quite central to this trip which is
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cool. With respect to the plane just to do some cleanup this is
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a gift that is being handled between the department of defense and the department
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of defense of Qatar. If and when that plane does get transferred over, it will then be scanned and
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retrofitted to militaryra spec that then can be used by the then sitting
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president of the United States. And while people want to be up
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in arms, just to be clear, this has happened and Qatar specifically has done
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this multiple other occasions. You may dispute the countries. You may not like the fact that it's happened, but they've
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they've given a plane as a gift to the leader of Iraq, to the then sitting
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leader of Turkey, to the then sitting leader, I believe, of Yemen. So there are customs, I guess,
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and again, who am I to judge these customs, but that to us may seem
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excessive or untoward or maybe an attempt to graft, but to them is just actually a sign of deep respect or
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relationship building. I think that we should not overjudge this thing and let the DoD do their job and it's a gift to
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the United States of America and move on. I don't think it's a particularly big deal. What is the big deal here is
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what Trump did that I think is historic. I think the most important
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thing to recognize is that we America has been a global hgeimon since World
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War II. But I think that what we did was we took our eye off the ball and over the last
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20 years and particularly the last 17, we have seen China slowly erode our
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global influence through an initiative that they frankly were very open and honest about and branded called Belt and
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Road. And in Belt and Road 1.0, Though what China did was use the balance sheet
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of China to invest incredibly aggressively and thoughtfully in all
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these critical geographies of the world, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and
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Africa, specifically in the Middle East and specifically between Saudi and Qatar. China I think has invested about
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$200 billion over the last 15 years. What does that do? It allows him to
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exert influence and economic cooperation, hard power and soft power.
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Right? In one week, the sitting president of the United States announced $2
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trillion of investment from those countries into the United States. What
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does that effectively do? I think what that effectively does is say that the Middle East is turning a
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page, that they are beyond these regional conflicts, that they want to
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thrive as a society, and that they are 100% aligned with the United States. How
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do you know that? Because I don't think that there's another $2 trillion of deals to be done with any other country
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other than America. That's number one. And then number two, the reciprocation
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of how American companies are investing in that region is to the tune of several hundred billion dollars. Now, why is
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that region critical? It's critical for two things. The first is that when you draw a thousand mile radius around Saudi
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Arabia, you touch 4 billion human beings.
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Four. Half the global population is within a thousand mile radius of Saudi.
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And so if you can establish cooperation and strategic alignment with that area,
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it is an incredibly important thing to do. The Saudi coastline, as an example,
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is thousands and thousands of miles. These are all these huge strategic things that we've known in the context
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of other conflicts and other geopolitical things that we've done for decades. But what Trump basically did
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was clean the slate. He wiped the floor with all this neocon establishment
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nonsense. That's what his speech did, which we can talk about in a second. But he created and forged an
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economic alliance that I think is going to be very difficult for any other country to undo. That is what I saw. $2
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trillion. That is an enormous bet for country to make on with another country.
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And I think the fact that he did that with Saudi and Qatar and UAE speaks a lot to a really important strategy.
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Freeberg, your thoughts on this trip and the growing and deepening relationship between UAE,
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Saudi and the United States and apparently Qatar as well. I think the
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biggest moment was the speech that Trump gave. It underscored, I think, a really important narrative shift for me. This
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was a powerful embrace of Saudi Qatar of their choices, their way of life, their
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way of being basically showing I would say respect to those peoples without
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judgment which I think is quite different from leadership of the past. I'll just highlight the mainstream media
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narrative is oh my gosh, Trump goes to Russia, Trump goes to China, he goes to North Korea, he goes to Saudi, he
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embraces dictators. So the narrative has been that these individuals in
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leadership positions in these countries are dictators and Trump embraces dictators. He loves Xi. He loves Putin.
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He loves Kim Jong-un. He loves NBS. That's a bad thing because the liberal
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view and I would say largely the American view in the past has been that
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there's right and there's wrong. There's our way of governing and then there's the other
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way of governing and the other way of governing is always wrong. That our form of American democracy is the only model
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that is right and all the others have to be wrong. And fundamentally that's a colonial mindset is what he's
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highlighting in this speech. He's saying that the point of view that all others are wrong means that they should come
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around to our point of view, our model of democracy, our model of governing.
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And in the speech, he basically underscored that that's not really the case anymore. We are no longer going to
00:22:05
be colonizers where we are going to enforce our view of government on the
00:22:10
rest of the world and say this is the only good path. But there are other paths and we can respect them. We can
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work together so long as we aren't harming one another. So long as terrorism goes away, which he underscored in his speech has gone away.
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And by the way, I'm not trying to highlight or kind of prop Trump up for the speech itself, but I I do think that
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this underscores a shift in the political viewpoint that has now come to power in America that, you know, we are
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no longer going to have this kind of moral or sociopolitical framework that says it's our way or the highway. But we
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are now going to go to folks like Shei, like North Korea, like China and say we
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can respect your way of living. we can respect your way of governing and we can have partnership and continue to build a
00:22:54
world together without saying that if you don't follow our path, we're never going to be true partners. So for me,
00:23:00
the biggest thing that came out of this whole visit was that shift in narrative that I think really is different than
00:23:06
what we've seen in the past and it counters a lot of how the mainstream
00:23:11
media has kind of, you know, framed his quote embrace of, you know, differing
00:23:16
ways of governance. Ben, this was obviously a Republican position as well,
00:23:22
you know, just we're going to have a hard line on human rights and democracy. And in fact, the entire Republican
00:23:30
position in terms of and globalists, Clinton, too, was hey, let's embrace
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China and we will lean them towards democracy. That obviously didn't happen.
00:23:40
They did build a vibrant economy and took 400, 500 million people out of poverty into a middle class. But here
00:23:47
we're seeing something different. You know, I've spent a lot of time in the region, maybe four or five trips in the last couple years. Last couple times I
00:23:54
was there, women doing business, dancing, music, and now there's alcohol in the kingdom in some select locations.
00:24:01
There's a casino coming to UAE. We're actually seeing maybe this strategy of less judgment, more engagement actually
00:24:09
result in more modernization. So, what's your take on this? I mean, I think that one of the things that's happened in the
00:24:15
media coverage of President Trump's speech is is this sort of false binary that isn't really what's going on. So,
00:24:20
it was sort of posited as neoconism versus isolationism. And he mentioned both of those sorts of concepts in in
00:24:26
his speech. But the reality is that I think we should be careful about how we define these terms. What we really mean is that Wilsonian interventionism has
00:24:33
been completely rejected by the American people and by President Trump. President Trump is is saying that we are not going
00:24:38
to go into these like to pretend that President Trump is being isolationist is obviously not true. I mean he's literally cutting trillion dollar deals
00:24:45
with foreign countries and traveling there and making common bonds with them. It's the opposite of isolationism in a
00:24:50
lot of ways. It's a realism, right? He's a foreign policy realist who wants to make deals where he can make deals and he wants to make the best deal for
00:24:56
America. The exact opposite of isolation if they're doing projects, you know, in the Trump family and the plane. This is
00:25:02
the opposite of isolationism. Right. Exactly. And so I think that that all the debates that are currently happening within sort of the Republican ecosystem
00:25:09
are sort of which version of realism are we pursuing, right? There there's a more hawkish version of realism that suggests
00:25:14
that you ought to be more skeptical. I mean, I think that's where I am of of, you know, what you want from these countries in addition to the money. And
00:25:20
then there's a sort of more dovish realism that says, you know, basically as long as the deals go forward, maybe no strings attached. And that's that's
00:25:26
an interesting debate and and it depends on sort of what levels of trust you have in various countries. And again, I think it differs country to country. Why would
00:25:32
you I want to Ben I want to build on what you're saying and just ask a question because I I completely agree
00:25:38
that that that rejection has all of these downstream consequences. The most interesting consequence for me but I
00:25:44
would just like your opinion on this is Trump goes there cuts all these deals
00:25:49
announces all of it. There's just an incredible show of force frankly right economic force and political alignment
00:25:56
and then within one or two days Iran caves. Now, we don't know what the final contours of that deal are going to look
00:26:02
like, but that also has incredibly important implications to the safety and security not just of that region, but
00:26:08
for everybody. I don't know what you thought about just how it seemed that there was a capitulation there, you know. So, I this is where again I remain
00:26:14
pretty skeptical. I I think that that one of the issues that we have when it comes to negotiations with Iran, the sort of phrase that's been used by
00:26:21
Saudi, Israel, UAE with regard to Iran is that Iran has never won a war or lost a peace. So, Iran is very good in
00:26:26
negotiation. uh they're they're quite sophisticated in how these they approach these issues and when President Trump says they can't have a nuclear weapon
00:26:33
that's all we need to know all the rest it's details but actually when it comes to things like negotiating a nuclear deal the devil is the details because is
00:26:39
it going to be JCPOA part two which is basically you can enrich to civilian levels with a certain level of
00:26:44
transparency but also you get money and the money can be used for terrorism or for ballistic missile development or rebuilding your air defenses and what do
00:26:51
those details actually look like and and you know obviously Qatar is very very close with the with the Islamic Republic
00:26:58
of Iran. And so they they've been negotiating again as sort of a representative of Iran in in those
00:27:04
negotiations. And so I'm going to hold off. Let's just say I'll be I'll be I'll be skeptical until I agree with you.
00:27:09
They need to be in the penalty box for some number of years because they have not earned the trust of the world in that they that they can conform to these
00:27:16
things and they're not going to do nefarious things once they get access to capital and funds. So to your point,
00:27:21
they have to earn their way out for sure. That's right. And I think that when when you look at Saudi Arabia, I think that one of the things that that would would be interesting to see is
00:27:27
President Trump said in his speech in Saudi Arabia that he would he would consider it an honor if they would join the Abraham Accords. His signal
00:27:33
accomplishment obviously during his first administration was the Abraham Accords. The the the notion that he again continued to press forward that
00:27:39
commerce matters more than sort of ideological conflict. Right? That's why UAE and Israel, for example, now have a
00:27:44
pretty solid relationship that's withstood a lot of the the stressors that have been created by October 7th
00:27:50
and the and the ensuing war. The the question of whether Saudi actually does that is an interesting one because if
00:27:56
you're looking for a a a new region in which commerce really does take the four then obviously UAE Saudi they're they're
00:28:03
very close. I mean that essentially UAE is there's no I don't think there's no distinction there's no there's no better
00:28:08
place I think in the world right now if you're trying to find a net new place to put capital to work than the UAE and
00:28:14
then Saudi. Yeah. I mean I I agree with that and I think that that you know obviously integrating the region across
00:28:20
religious boundaries would be a very very good thing and I think President Trump also has an interest in that. So it'll be interesting to see how things
00:28:25
develop from here. I could it's it'll be again I I remain skeptical of sort of
00:28:32
the idea that that just commerce alone is going to usher in a new era. I do think that that the United States
00:28:37
typically when it's when it's brokering these deals does put its thumb on the scale in particular ways. Uh, and th
00:28:43
those ways are not just putting money into KSA or taking money out of KSA, which again, I'm I'm great with that. I
00:28:49
think it's brilliant what President Trump is doing. I know a number of businesses obviously that are working in Riyad and doing wonderful work in Riad
00:28:55
and and I'm I'm I think what NBS has done transformatively to KSA is
00:29:00
incredible. If what you're looking for is a broader sort of regional calm that's going to last the course of time, what you don't need is an upsurgent
00:29:06
Muslim Brotherhood or a resurgent Iran or the rebuilding of terrorist groups that threaten both Saudi Arabia as well
00:29:13
as as Israel and other Sunni allies in in the region. And so, you know, I I think that there are a couple of ways to
00:29:19
see what President Trump is doing. One of them is I hope that there's a step too, right, which is okay, now Saudi
00:29:25
Arabia, we have a great relationship with you. It would be really great if you did join in Abraham Accords and now you have this very strong regional block
00:29:32
that economically is is more interdependent which is of course what he pursued during his first administration or is he moving in a
00:29:37
direction and this is also plausible where he's basically saying listen everybody's sort of on their own we're going to cut independent deals with each
00:29:42
one of these nations in bilateral fashion with the United States and I think it sort of remains to be seen
00:29:47
which strategy President Trump is taking the sort of bilateral approach to to relations with each one of these countries individually or whether he's
00:29:53
attempting to forge more of an interdependent regional economic block. Two questions
00:29:59
for you, Ben. Rapid fire. Abraham Accords was brought up. Will the Saudis sign it? Will NBS sign it and Trump sort
00:30:06
of alluded, hey, they're going to do it in their own time. What's holding it up in your mind? And if they if and when
00:30:12
they do sign it, what impact would it have on the region? Then number two, your thoughts on this Qatar plane
00:30:17
kurfluffle and the media sort of obsessing over it. Are they overindexing on it or not? So, as far as the Abraham
00:30:24
Accords, you know, again, I think that this is a it is a shift in tone for President Trump. Abraham Accords was considered sort of his signal foreign
00:30:30
policy accomplishment during term one. And it's my belief if he'd been reelected in 2020. By February 2021, I
00:30:36
think Saudi would have been in the Abraham Accords. Obviously, one of the obstacles continues to be the war in Gaza, what actually ends up emerging
00:30:43
there. But one, ironically, one of the things that actually has undermined the the kind of incentive for Saudis to join
00:30:48
the Abraham Accords is Israel's complete devastation of all of the proxies of Iran. So one of the things that was
00:30:54
driving Saudi and Israel together was the fact that there was this really giant threat in Iran. And so now it
00:31:00
appears it could be at least plausibly read that one of the reasons why President Trump is selling $150 billion
00:31:05
worth of military hardware to KSA is to provide a defensive barrier against Iran while assuming that maybe Iran does end
00:31:12
up going nuclear. So, you know, what what happens with Iran does have serious ramifications for the possibility of an
00:31:17
Abraham Accord, including Saudi Arabia, that seems like it's more distant than it was a couple of years ago. Uh, and it
00:31:24
may take more time than I think that special envoy Steve Whit and and the Trump administration would like it to be. As far as as far as the plane
00:31:30
kurluffle, on my show, I said that it looks skezy. Um, you know, and and I will I will maintain that position. Uh
00:31:36
it doesn't have to be that it's illegal in order for it not to look particularly good because of course the other half of the deal is that once the plane is
00:31:42
retrofitted and used by the president for a certain period of years it then goes to the Trump presidential library and that was one of the conditions of
00:31:48
the gifting and Qatar is quite famous for for putting a lot of money in a lot of various pockets ranging from the
00:31:55
attorney I mean the current attorney general of the United States Pam Bondi was a foreign registered agent for Qatar for a while being paid by by Qatar to do
00:32:03
that sort of lobbying work. Um, Qatar is pretty famous for for putting its money Yeah. in in a variety of pockets. By the
00:32:09
way, just ju just just to put a a number on that, Qatar uh sovereign wealth fund, the QIA, the investment authorities,
00:32:16
it's about a half trillion dollars of capital, about 50 billion of which is invested in US
00:32:21
funds. And many of the folks in and around the circles that are associated
00:32:27
with the White House obviously have QIA as an LP or have had funds that they're
00:32:32
affiliated with that have QIA as an LP. And my point about this is that put aside whatever moral qualms you know
00:32:37
anybody has about this sort of stuff which again you can argue either way. The the key to me is if you like
00:32:42
President Trump's agenda the biggest obstacle to President Trump's agenda. They're basically two obstacles. One is the economy goes south right. That's an
00:32:49
obstacle to any president's agenda. That's why it's really important what he's doing in the Middle East. It's why it's important what he's been doing
00:32:54
backing off of the tariff war in a lot of ways. It's why deregulation passing the tax cut is important. All of that's
00:32:59
important. And then the second thing that can really hurt any administration is corruption. And even allegations of
00:33:04
corruption can be incredibly damaging. And so, for example, there was a crypto bill that was on the floor of the Senate
00:33:09
or was about to enter onto the floor of the Senate just last week. And it ended up being killed by Democrats plus a couple of Republicans. And Democrats at
00:33:16
least publicly maintained the reason they killed the crypto bill was specifically because of allegations
00:33:21
surrounding the Trump family and Trumpcoin, Trump memecoin, world liberty financial and all this sort of stuff.
00:33:26
And so the question, listen, as a Trump supporter who raised money for President Trump and campaigned with President Trump and campaign for President Trump,
00:33:32
as as a person, what I want is his agenda to be successful, if an obstacle to that agenda, is the optics of a thing
00:33:38
like taking a $400 million jet from Qatar, which does amount to the single
00:33:44
biggest monetary gift ever given to the United States, even if you consider it, to just be a gift to the United States
00:33:49
generally, not to the the Trump library personally or anything like that. Is that is that the kind of thing that
00:33:55
harms him in the public mind? And if that ties into a broader narrative that his political opponents are trying to
00:34:00
drive that he is corrupt or the people around him are corrupt, is that a win for him? Right? Just on a practical efficacious level, is that a win for
00:34:07
him? Is that a win for his agenda? Because the media coverage this week, it could have all been about him doing
00:34:13
deals in these various places and bringing money back home to the United States. An unnecessary distraction. That's kind of that's kind of my view of
00:34:18
it. And the appearance of impropriy. Yeah, I agree. amongst half the country who doesn't like him and he's now
00:34:25
tipping into, you know, almost as unpopular as his first term. They're just going to weaponize that in the
00:34:31
midterms and it's going to scuttle the important agenda, Doge, you know, and and this is one of the things that I'm
00:34:37
afraid of. You know, this is this is the thing that also ties in to the economic problem, right? The right now everybody
00:34:43
is is basically like, oh, who cares about this kind? I think a lot of people are like, who cares about this kind of stuff? As long as the number goes up and to the right, then all this sort of
00:34:49
stuff doesn't matter very much. uh if the number starts going down, then you start having all these kind of
00:34:55
corruption allegations rise to the surface in a in a new way, right? Because that that's what happens with
00:35:00
with presidents very often is what you see is there are kind of a bunch of little dents that are in the in the vehicle and then there's a car crash and
00:35:06
suddenly, you know, all the dents are very evident to the naked eye and and that's what I'd like for him to avoid. What if he loses the midterms and then
00:35:12
we start impeachment 3, four, and five, investigation 3, four, and five, and now we're back to lawfare and insanity,
00:35:17
which nobody wants to be in. Let's talk about another win. It was a pretty great week objectively for Trump. On Sunday,
00:35:24
Treasury Secretary Bessant announced a trade deal with China in Geneva. The
00:35:29
details were basically, here we go, another pause. Tariffs will go down from
00:35:35
145% to 30%. Maybe that's manageable. China's cutting their tariffs for the US
00:35:40
from 125 to 10%. And they're going to end this dimminimous rule, also known as the like
00:35:47
garbage fashion rule. Teimu, sheen, all that kind of stuff when they drop shift you stuff that's under I think the
00:35:53
numbers 800 or so. The market love the news. Don't don't make America dress
00:35:58
well again. Don't do it. I think this is like an important part of this is like this, you know, ridiculous garbage
00:36:05
fashion. I hate it. The market was up massively but you know the Dow and the NASDAQ are basically flat to slightly
00:36:12
negative. Our partners over at poly market you know have a nice market on
00:36:18
the chances of a US recession that peaked at 66% during the liberation day
00:36:27
chaos fallout. And hey here we go now it's 38%. So we're kind of uh maybe
00:36:33
cleaning up the chaos. He shook the globe, the economic globe, Freedberg. And now maybe, as I think a lot of
00:36:40
people are predicted, he found an exit ramp. Maybe that was the plan all along. Maybe it's for each chess. Maybe he's
00:36:45
reacting to the market. Maybe all that doesn't matter. But here we are. Dave Freeberg, when we look back on this
00:36:52
whole trade, Trump tariff turmoil, what are we going to look back on this a year
00:36:59
from now and think? Was it just a distraction or is it actually going to create a trillion dollars in tariff
00:37:04
revenue and we're going to get rid of 150 people paying taxes who make under $150,000? What's going to happen with
00:37:10
this when we look back on it a year or two from now? Well, I don't know where the tariff deals are going to end up.
00:37:17
So, we don't know yet. Right. Yeah. I'm asking for a guess, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, I I don't know. I don't know.
00:37:23
Like I said, I think one of the biggest things that needs to happen that is being discussed in these trade deals is
00:37:28
regulatory par such that US companies can participate evenly in foreign
00:37:35
markets. I kind of have highlighted a few examples of why it's challenging for US companies to set up and do business in the local jurisdictions for a lot of
00:37:41
our trade partners across multiple industries. I think that's being heavily negotiated. So that doesn't make the
00:37:47
headlines. That's not kind of the top of the news. Everyone talks about the tariff number, the tariff number, the tariff number. But at the end of the
00:37:52
day, the access to foreign markets for US companies. You can even think about, I mean, a good example for us is a lot
00:38:00
of the fines that happen to US tech companies in the EU. And there are just billions and billions of dollars of
00:38:06
fines being paid out of our companies. That's another form of taxation. The fact that China won't
00:38:12
allow US tech companies to operate, but we allow Chinese tech companies to operate here. So the regulatory parody
00:38:18
is kind of the biggest thing that I think needs to kind of be identified in these deals before we have a real sense
00:38:23
Jake Al because this again could be a real economic growth driver for American
00:38:28
businesses and that could have a real effect on our GDP. So that's the biggest thing I'm looking for versus just the
00:38:34
tariff number is par and access to global markets for US companies. I don't
00:38:39
think we know and and those are the details of the deals that are going to take several months. Normally, these are
00:38:44
multi-year trade negotiations with, you know, big trade teams that go back and forth over several years to figure these
00:38:50
deals out. So, to create maximal leverage and accelerate outcomes, it seems like a lot of this trade hype got
00:38:57
everyone to the negotiating table. Now, the hard work's being done to figure out the details of these deals and hopefully
00:39:03
we end up in a better place for American businesses because of it. Shimoth, I I know where you stand on this. Uh, he creates that big pothole crater.
00:39:10
Everybody gets excited. it creates a lot of attention and then uh maybe the real negotiation starts. So a year from now
00:39:16
when we look back on this what would success look like for the Trump administration in Chimath Papertia's
00:39:23
mind and assessment? I think this goes back to what I said at the beginning.
00:39:29
I think tariffs have the potential to be the on-ramp to our
00:39:35
version of Belt and Road. And I think that that is an incredible jiu-jitsu
00:39:41
move of what was an exceptionally wellexecuted and methodical program by
00:39:49
the Chinese government to cement hard and soft power all around the world
00:39:54
while the United States wasn't looking and obsessed with cheap garbage that they could buy at Target.
00:40:00
Okay, so this should be a wakeup call to us. We don't need all this cheap
00:40:05
nonsense. We can live with fewer things. Those things could be of higher
00:40:11
quality. They may be of higher price. But more importantly, we need to make sure that we're
00:40:17
cementing bilateral deals with as many countries in the world and building the
00:40:22
next phase of PAX America of American hijgemony. We need to do it. So the fact
00:40:29
that we are negotiating with China, I think is very good. I think that they are a necessary partner of ours. But we
00:40:36
can't take our eye off the ball. The tariffs was a way of ripping the band-aid of all this globalist free
00:40:42
trade nonsense and now we need to reset this in a methodical calm way. Now some
00:40:48
markets we're not going to get right and in some industries we have some very complicated thinking to do. As an
00:40:54
example, which we'll get to later, the pharma eo is very complicated and very nuanced.
00:41:00
Okay, but this is the hard and necessary work. So my perspective is this is the
00:41:05
beginning of Belt and Road 2.0. I think we started with a real bang in the Middle East and I just encourage
00:41:12
the administration to go and finish the job and get as many bilateral deals done as possible and reset how important the
00:41:20
United States is as a partner. We always knew it, but we allowed that hard
00:41:26
influence and hard power to get frittered away with all kinds of nonsensical idealistic thinking that was
00:41:32
just wasteful. And now we just need and it was also globalists who wanted to make money, right? It's like easier to
00:41:38
make cheap stuff over there and then sell it here. And uh it's harder to make money once. I think that was
00:41:45
short-term and non-strategic thinking by many of those companies. I think that
00:41:51
we've created dynamics that we can change. We can change the incentives for how consumers consume in the United
00:41:56
States. And I think it's worth thinking about how to do that. All right. Well, here is the poly market on tariffs
00:42:01
generating greater than 250 billion in 2025 that we set or poly market set.
00:42:07
Basically, no chance that that's going to happen. So, we will see I think
00:42:14
everybody coming to the table and reciprocity. I don't I don't even know how you're going to settle this Jason because what does it mean will
00:42:20
terrorists generate? I think it's a really interesting bet, but the real question is is on the measurement. There
00:42:25
is not going to be some number that OM or somebody else puts out that says it
00:42:30
generated X. Well, I think Lutnik was saying he was tracking that, but we'll see. I mean, cuz if it's reciprocity and
00:42:37
we see us making more money or getting charged less fines to the examples we had earlier, then you could include
00:42:43
those in it. But yeah, it's a hard it's a hard bet to settle, but I think people believe it's not going to generate a massive amount of revenue. the
00:42:51
relationship with China and this sort of changing concept of consumerism. You think that's a possibility for America
00:42:57
or do Americans just want cheap stuff on Amazon and an unlimited number of Amazon
00:43:03
boxes in their recycle bin? I mean, I'm not sure that's how consumers have ever thought about this sort of stuff. I'm,
00:43:09
you know, I remember when I was younger, there was, you know, a lot of talk about made in America cars and, you know, buy by buy by by made in American and and
00:43:15
that just kind of failed because it turns out that the American cars just weren't as good as the stuff that you could get elsewhere. And it turns out
00:43:20
that Americans are both producers and consumers. And yeah, it's it's it's easy to say don't buy cheap crap from China.
00:43:26
But it turns out a lot of stuff that actually is not all that cheap also was manufactured in China. Hopefully now it'll be manufactured in Vietnam or or
00:43:33
manufactured in India or in other third party countries. The idea that we're going to be, you know, reshoring all that stuff to the United States. We're
00:43:39
not going to be making t-shirts in the United States. That that's not a thing. Um but, you know, I I I do think that
00:43:44
right now my read is that we it's too early to tell. Um, meaning that this
00:43:49
this just reminds me of the old Yiddish joke where the couple isn't getting along. So, they go to the rabbi and they say, "What do we do, Rabbi?" He says, "I want you to bring a chicken into your
00:43:55
house." They bring the chicken in their house and still isn't working. They go back to the rabbi, say, "I want you to bring a cow in your house." They bring a cow into their house. And they say, "It
00:44:01
still isn't working, rabbi. It's just terrible." They They go back to the rabbi. He says, "I want you to bring two goats into your house." They do that.
00:44:06
They come back. The husband says, "This is awful. I can't handle." He says, "Take everything out of your house." They take all the things out of their
00:44:11
house. And they're like, "Oh my god, this is this is just fantastic." Because that that's basically what Trump did here, right? you put the chicken and the
00:44:18
cow and the two goats in the house. I still think you left the chicken, right? And so it's it's kind of it's going to be, you know, a question as to how much
00:44:24
impact the chicken has. Meaning the 10% tariff rate that we still have on the rest of the world is, you know, more
00:44:29
than quintuple what it was at the very beginning of this process. I mean, the average tariff rate, and not to use, you
00:44:35
know, a number that David doesn't like, but the average tariff rate right now is higher than it's been anytime since the 1930s. Is that going to have some carryover effect? I mean, Walmart is
00:44:41
already suggesting they're going to have to start increasing their prices. So, I don't think that we're out of the woods. And I do think that the biggest threat
00:44:48
with regard to this sort of stuff is less the tariffs than the feeling of uncertainty for investors as to what comes next. And that's where the
00:44:53
pharmaceutical EO starts to come in or the negotiations over over the tax bill. What actually makes it in, what doesn't
00:44:59
make it in. When it comes to, you know, the stuff that makes investors sanguin, I think, one of the reasons why investors are sanguin about Saudi Arabia
00:45:06
is because Saudi Arabia is a kingdom. And that kingdom is very wealthy. And that very wealthy kingdom doesn't have
00:45:12
to worry about the next election. they don't have to worry about the next policy that that they just have to throw
00:45:17
out there for public consumption. President Trump because of the rapid shifts in policy. The the feeling if if
00:45:23
the feeling comes away is we're now back on a solid path. This was all a tactic and and we're hunky dory. Great. You're
00:45:28
going to see the markets go up. You're going to see more investment and all the rest. If the feeling basically more Scott Bessant and fire Peter Navaro into
00:45:35
the ocean via catapult would be my advice to the the Trump administration. reasonable actionable suggestion, Ben. A
00:45:43
very reasonable action. Well, predictability. You know, we were sitting here a couple weeks ago and I was, as I was mentioning, I I know a lot
00:45:49
of e-commerce folks and they were saying layoffs coming. We don't have predictability. And the really hard part
00:45:55
is how do you invest in a business? You know, you're running Daily Wire. It's a nine figure business. You want to hire people. You know, you need to have
00:46:01
advertisers. Many of the advertisers you probably have are somehow related to consumption in America. What's the first
00:46:07
thing they're going to pause? They're going to pause advertising, right? Why am I advertising this, you know, uh,
00:46:13
mattress and why am I ma, you know, advertising eight, the best mattress in the world? I happen to be an investor. I'm a little biased, but why am I going
00:46:18
to market eight if I can't get it to the country or if the price is too high? You know, it's like it it causes all these
00:46:25
downstream uh issues. I guess during all of this now, talking about like shaking
00:46:31
the globe and the and the economy here, Republicans are working hard on the big beautiful bill. It's it's big and it's
00:46:37
beautiful. Ben, I don't know if you want to get into your Trump dueling Trumps, but it's a big beautiful. So big. So
00:46:43
beautiful. Many people are saying and many haters, Nancy Pelosi, nasty woman.
00:46:48
Uh she bet on Walmart. Bad bet. GOP's plan is to push this bill via
00:46:54
reconciliation so they can avoid the Senate filibuster with 51 votes instead of 60. The Trump bill would extend the
00:47:01
2017 tax cuts and jobs act through 2034. That's kind of the big piece here is these tax cuts. And there's a bunch of
00:47:07
campaign stuff like no taxes on tips or overtime things that Trump promised to,
00:47:13
you know, in some cases swing states like Nevada. Those are trying to get in there. And an increase on university's
00:47:19
endowment tax and the tax foundation. This is a nonprofit that analyzes tax policy. Estimates the tax cuts would
00:47:26
reduce revenues by 4.1 trillion over 10 years. That's 400 billion a year. And uh
00:47:31
the bill also aims to cut 1.5 trillion in spend over the next decade. Some Republicans think this is weak and are
00:47:38
pushing for 2 trillion in cuts or more. Notable cuts include a stricter SNAP
00:47:43
rules, tighter Medicaid caps, and removing taxpayer benefits from illegals. Gosh, Freeberg, you actually,
00:47:51
I understand from our group chat, did a deep dive here, and you, I think, are responsible in many ways for bringing
00:47:58
the issue of our national debt to the forefront, especially particularly with this administration in Doge, which we
00:48:04
give you a lot of credit for. You being a single issue voter for this, are you worried about the budget now? We're
00:48:11
we're 100 plus days into Trump. Do you think he's got any chance of cutting the deficit? I'll talk about the house tax
00:48:17
bill which I think is to use your term JCAL absolute
00:48:22
discretziad. I uh bill is a bill is a disc. Wow. It is absolute
00:48:30
discard. If you are an American, you should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing that this is the
00:48:37
bill that gets passed, that we vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much further in debt, that we do
00:48:43
not treat this situation as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill
00:48:49
ultimately yields no real change in the annual deficit. the annual deficit could
00:48:54
climb to $2.5 trillion being added to the federal debt load every single year going
00:49:02
forward. In fact, if you look at the Treasury yields, the 30-year is now kissing
00:49:07
5%. So, the United States has called $ 37 trillion of debt. At 5%, we're paying
00:49:16
close to $2 trillion a year just in interest on our debt as this debt gets
00:49:22
refinanced. do us a favor for the audience if you could explain why it's going up, why it's so high, and what
00:49:28
that means. What's so high? The debt or the interest rates? The interest? Interest rates. Well, the interest rates are going up because the probability
00:49:34
that the US will default on its debt payments, which is what you're buying when you buy US treasuries. You're
00:49:40
getting the US government to pay you some number of dollars with interest over time. And the market is now
00:49:46
demanding that that interest rate be as high as 5%. Because of this fiscal situation that the United States finds
00:49:52
itself in. We are now burning an additional $2.5 trillion a year adding to our debt load. We are in a fiscal
00:49:59
crisis and we're not willing to admit it. And I've said this from day one that Doge can only do so much. And clearly
00:50:06
that's the case where they're now talking about sub $300 billion a year in potential annual savings from Doge
00:50:11
action. At the end of the day, Congress needs to take action. And this bill from Congress doesn't take much action. I
00:50:17
will tell you that if you look across the board, all of these programs are still being proposed to be run at a cost
00:50:23
that is well in excess of their precoid levels. And so I would set two guiding principles if I was to be the benevolent
00:50:31
dictator of the United States of America. My guiding principle number one would be that any program that we intend
00:50:36
to continue to persist have its budget level cut to pre-COVID to 2019 levels.
00:50:42
Second would be, and if we did that, by the way, we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The second would be that we add no new programs in the
00:50:47
moment. There's a whole bunch of new thrown into this bill, as well as increasing the cost and a few cuts here
00:50:53
and there. I'll just highlight a couple that I think are worth noting. You know, there's a cut in the SNAP program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
00:51:00
Program. That's food stamps. And I talked about this with Brook Rollins in the interview I did a few weeks ago. You can watch it on YouTube. And we talked a
00:51:06
little bit about how this SNAP program has absolutely exploded in size from 60
00:51:12
billion a year in 2019 to 120 billion a year today. So in this budget proposal,
00:51:19
they're actually cutting it back by about 30 billion. So to 90 billion. So it's still 50% higher than it was
00:51:26
precoid. And there's a lot of kind of stories we could go through on what happened during CO that caused this
00:51:32
thing to blow up the way it did. But political wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets and
00:51:38
that is persisting today. I'm a big believer in cutting taxes. Obviously,
00:51:44
I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else on this show or that we've ever had on this show, but at the end of
00:51:49
the day, you can't just say, "Hey, let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making." It doesn't make sense. A lot of
00:51:54
the stuff's going to be exploitable. The tips and overtime exclusions are a way to pander to people to get votes and now
00:52:01
keeping your promises on those votes. I think at the end of the day, the tips and overtime rule could invite a lot of
00:52:06
gamesmanship and loopholes that will be created and people will wake up and be like, "Uhoh." For example, if I'm an
00:52:11
independent contractor, I will enter into a contract with someone that says, "Here's the service I'm providing you for 50 bucks." And then there's an
00:52:17
optional tip you can give me at the end, and then I will pay taxes on that tip. And I can give you a hundred other examples that this will create an
00:52:23
inordinate number of crazy, insane loopholes. The interest on the debt at $
00:52:29
1.9 trillion a year equates to 7% of GDP. That means 7 cents of every dollar
00:52:35
that moves in every transaction in this country is being used to pay down interest on money we over spent in the
00:52:42
past. It has become an absolute crisis. I think that there's a few folks that should be shout out on this, which is
00:52:48
Senator Paul and Senator Ron Johnson who both highlighted how ridiculously
00:52:55
underimpressive the spending cuts are in this bill. I think we've got a lot of work to do. I'm deeply disappointed. I'm
00:53:01
scared and I hope that um that this all gets kind of fixed up and in
00:53:12
reconc that's that's rule one. And rule two is all existing programs got to go back to pre-COVID levels. You do those
00:53:18
two things, we're in a great place. Yeah. And just to put some numbers and some charts behind it, here is the the
00:53:24
debt back to Clinton era. Clinton obviously balanced the budget. So you get this nice uh flatness there. Clinton
00:53:29
added uh 392 billion in 8 years. It's barely noticeable on the chart. 4050 billion a year. Bush 5.4 trillion four
00:53:37
years about 1.3 trillion a year. Obama a trillion a year. And then we get to Trump 1.0 you know 2 trillion a year
00:53:43
suddenly we decided we would double it Biden same thing they added almost exactly the same amount to the right and
00:53:51
yeah think about this on track to do the same yeah it's not total dollar amount it's percent of GDP that you're adding
00:53:59
and you know right now at at $2.5 trillion a year of deficit we're talking
00:54:05
about a deficit to GDP of like 8% yes 8%
00:54:11
a This is like Argentina. This is like insane. The fact that we don't treat
00:54:17
this like a fiscal emergency and everyone goes up and they tout, oh, we're going to make 60 billion in cuts in Medicaid. That's out of $820 billion
00:54:25
of annual spend. You know, oh, we're making 30 billion in cuts in SNAP. That's still 50% higher spend in total
00:54:32
than we were in 2019, a few years ago when we didn't have that much of a problem. This has become like such a
00:54:40
reset of expectations and I worry again that we went into this I think in a very
00:54:45
optimistic way thinking that this administration was going to treat things differently. We had Doge, we had alignment on the importance of the
00:54:51
budget. Besson has highlighted it and then it's kind of back to gamesmanship in DC. All these representatives from
00:54:57
Congress show up and try and get money for their constituents in a way that is not sustainable. we're not going to be
00:55:03
able to keep this up and we're not really having the hard and tough conversations we need to be having. And every year, everyone wants to get
00:55:08
elected by keeping programs and keeping money flowing that their constituents elected them to do. And they want to add
00:55:14
new programs so they can go on CNBC and say, "Look at this cool new program I stood up. It's great. This is going to create the future of America. And
00:55:20
meanwhile, there's no future of America because we're burning two and a half trillion dollars a year." So would you call this the Bessant wants the 333
00:55:27
plan? You'd call this the 338 plan? I don't know if there's a three, but yeah,
00:55:33
it's definitely the eight. This is eight almost nine. Yeah, nine. I I think all of this is
00:55:39
right. I mean, the reality is that the US debt to GDP ratio is extraordinary already. Um it's it's only going up from
00:55:46
here. And we have to acknowledge here that the Republican majorities in the
00:55:51
House and the Senate are incredibly narrow. that for every Ron Johnson who's saying the right things, you have a Josh Holly who's saying the wrong things in
00:55:57
Missouri and writing full-scale op-eds in the New York Times talking about how not a buck should be cut from Medicaid under any circumstances. And this, you
00:56:04
know, does run headlong up against a reality which is that the one one of Trump's signal changes from the old
00:56:10
Republican party was not just a change away in terms of foreign policy toward more realism and less and less, you
00:56:15
know, interventionism, but it really was a change away from the Paul Ryan Tea Party Republican party as well. And whatever you think about Paul Ryan on a
00:56:22
lot of other issues. Paul Ryan was on your side of this, David, when it came to actually trying to fix the fiscal problems with the United States. And I'm
00:56:28
old enough to remember the Tea Party when we were out protesting literally in the streets about government overspending as a response to Obamacare.
00:56:34
And that's gone completely by the wayside. And so when when you're looking at Republicans today arguing over
00:56:40
whether to zero out waste, fraud, and abuse, the problem is not in the end waste, fraud, and abuse. The problem is the programs themselves as they are
00:56:46
currently structured. And unless you're willing to make serious systemic changes to things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, you're not going to
00:56:53
solve any of these problems. And here's the the sad reality is nobody is willing to do that. So just as we were saying earlier, maybe Americans are addicted to
00:56:59
to cheap goods from abroad. Americans are certainly 100% addicted to government sustenance. They are they're
00:57:04
absolutely addicted to this. All net taxes in this country are paid by the top quintile. All of them. Because below the top quintile, you're getting as much
00:57:10
back from the government or more than you are paying into the system. And we are also gaming out to the future,
00:57:16
paying away our kids' fiscal future because of all of this. So, you know, when people ask me what's going to
00:57:21
happen, I mean, the answer is we're going to either wildly inflate our currency or we're going to go into massive austerity measures, you know, 5
00:57:27
to 10 years from now. There's not going to be a third choice. I mean, and so maybe politicians keep kicking it down the road. Maybe that's what this is. But
00:57:34
even the kind of cuts that are that are being talked about by some of the people in Congress who I like are not going to be enough to actually put us back on the
00:57:40
right fiscal road. Even if the Republicans do what they're talking about with regard to work requirements,
00:57:45
for example, on Medicaid, they're saying there should be an 80h hour a month work requirement if you're able
00:57:51
month. That's crazy. That's crazy, right? that 5 hours 4 hours a week day
00:57:57
for for for a month to to get your Medicaid requirement if you're an able-bodied person in the United States
00:58:02
of of working age. You know, that sort of stuff is not sustainable. But nobody's actually going to take that on.
00:58:08
And so the question for President Trump is going to be, is he willing to actually go to the barricades and not just make the case that the tax cuts
00:58:14
have to be maintained because they absolutely do, but also that Republicans need to get on board with some of these
00:58:19
cuts because you're going to have a lot of push back from the purplish Republicans, from from the Josh's in Missouri and from the Mike Lawers in New
00:58:25
York and and all of the people who are afraid they're going to lose their seats if there are any cuts. That's right. And
00:58:31
existential cuts. I mean, it is like an existential crisis that no one's willing to stand up and highlight just how
00:58:36
critical this emergency is. $2.5 trillion of deficit spending on a $28
00:58:42
trillion GDP. Tell me when in history that's actually worked out at the end of the
00:58:47
day, except when you're in some war and you're going to end up taking over some country and getting all their resources. And as you mentioned, this actually this
00:58:53
has this has, you know, knockon effects with regard to things like deolarization. Why are you investing in the American dollar if you believe?
00:58:59
That's right. That's why this is the debt. This is the debt death spiral that we find ourselves in because
00:59:04
what happens is people stop owning treasuries when they start to question whether or not 30 years from now the US
00:59:10
government is going to meet its debt obligations. Even the smallest marginal question of that drives interest rates up 1% 2%. Suddenly your 30-year Treasury
00:59:18
yields at 6% 7%. And then your interest rates climb and then your deficit spending climbs and that's how it
00:59:24
becomes a spiral. So now the debt goes up even more than it did the year before and then the next year it goes up even
00:59:30
more per year than it did the year before. That's why it's called a debt death spiral. And I will say that let me
00:59:36
sorry let me say one thing. One of the things I've heard in a lot of members of the cabinet that I've met with over the last couple of months is we've got all
00:59:42
these new sources of revenue. I had an interview with Doug Bergam. He talked about unlocking America's assets. We've
00:59:48
got this balance sheet with lots of assets. We're going to do land leases and all sorts of other things. We we met with Lutnik. He's going to sell the
00:59:53
Trump gold card, the immigration card. We met with Bessant. He's got these ideas on how we're going to drive.
00:59:58
Everyone's got great theory on how we're going to grow GDP and actually grow government revenue. But until those
01:00:04
dollars start to flow in, we have to get our fiscal house in order. We have to cut spending. When those dollars start
01:00:11
to flow in, then you can start to spend. But you can't spend ahead because otherwise the cost of the debt and the
01:00:17
economics uncertainty is going to limit our ability to execute on the back end on that revenue generation. And I'm very
01:00:23
worried about no one's kind of paying enough attention to this. So I just, you know, I feel very passionate having seen this bill that we're just not on the
01:00:29
right track. It's really it's really frustrating. Let me pull up a tax chart here, Nick, from the chat and get
01:00:36
Chimathy your comments on this uh bar chart here. Just who's paying taxes. As you can see, you know, the top 1%, which
01:00:43
I think is this panel here, and the top 5% paying the majority of the taxes in the country. Is there any way to
01:00:51
increase revenue? And is there any way for politicians to say, "Hey, let's cut
01:00:58
military that hasn't come up yet as a concept, but maybe cut a little bit of military spending and maybe put in some
01:01:05
modest austerity measures." Now, before as Ben's pointing out, we get to, you
01:01:11
know, Spain and, you know, Greece, I don't know what was that 10 years ago when they had to
01:01:16
Portugal and they had to do like intense things. So, your home country, Chimoth of Italy, like with austerity measures,
01:01:24
Americans, I don't think we've had to ever face austerity measures, certainly not in our lifetime. So, income, taxes,
01:01:30
can we get more revenue in or is that unrealistic? and then cutting military maybe on the margins or do you not see
01:01:37
this as a major issue? It's easy to catastrophize. Okay. I think I think that is easy because I think there's enough data
01:01:44
there. The harder thing if you're going to make a directional bet is to try to find the nuance. So what is the nuance?
01:01:51
The nuance is you can point to all of these countries, but what is singularly different between all of those countries
01:01:57
and the United States of America? Is that a question? It's it's rhetorical. Okay. The difference is We are the
01:02:04
shining city on a hill and every other country is not. And as much as we want to believe that there's equality, there
01:02:11
isn't. There's a hierarchy and America is the most important country in the world. Period. Full stop. End of story.
01:02:16
What does that give us the ability to do? It gives us very different parameters with which to solve this
01:02:21
problem. It gives us, I think, the parameter of time and it gives us the parameter of acceptance from a lot of
01:02:30
other foreign governments. Why? because they need America to also succeed. There's this very funny quote which is
01:02:36
when you owe the bank a million dollars, it's your problem. But when you owe the bank a billion dollars, it's their
01:02:42
problem. This is true here. And I think that we have to recognize that the right
01:02:49
thing to do is obviously what Ben and Dave are saying. I don't disagree with that. But if you panic, I think you're
01:02:57
going to start a cascade that is unnecessary. And by moving to a place where you're
01:03:02
all of a sudden trying to cut entitlements incredibly aggressively, I don't think sets the
01:03:09
stage for a thriving American population that then allows this problem to actually be solved. So what is my
01:03:16
proposal? I do think we have to monetize the balance sheet of America. I do think we own probably 100
01:03:25
trillion to 150 trillion of assets. All of us as citizens, we own that. And I do
01:03:33
explain what those assets are to the to the people listening because they may not know. So the largest land owner in the United States is the United States
01:03:39
of America. The ability to allow you to drill is given by the United States of
01:03:44
America. The ability to do many things. By the way, Chimath, I'll just give you the numbers from my interview with
01:03:51
Bergam. The federal government owns 500 million acres of land and they have
01:03:58
control over 3.2 billion acres in the outer continental shelf which is the land under the ocean around North
01:04:05
America. The resource availability in that land uh under the
01:04:10
water and in the the kind of mainland is in the kind of immeasurable trillions of dollars of value. and their business
01:04:17
model, Bergam stated business model in the interview I did with him is land leases and royalties. So enter into
01:04:23
private partnerships and then participate in the value. I've talked to Doug about this so I agree with him.
01:04:28
We're talking about a balance sheet. Again I said 100 trillion. You could probably make the case that it's two or
01:04:34
three or 400 trillion but let's just use a hundred trillion. My point is that our
01:04:40
balance sheet is much larger than our debt obligations. Number one. Number two, we owe $33 trillion. It's as much
01:04:47
their problem as our problem. And number three, every country that owns debt does
01:04:52
so in part because they need America to be successful so that they themselves can be successful. So I think if you
01:04:58
look at all of these interdependencies, the right thing to do is we need to monetize the balance sheet of America
01:05:04
much more aggressively than we've looked at before. and two, what Dave and Ben
01:05:09
said we must do, which is we need to draw a firm line and say no new spending. I completely agree with that
01:05:17
idea. But I think if you do both of those two things at once, you have meaningful inflows that can fund a lot
01:05:25
of the tax cuts that people want to propose. It'll also allow us to show
01:05:30
that we have some level of discipline by not overspending in all of these other random pork barrel projects. And I think
01:05:37
it allows us to set a path towards this 3 I3 plan. Just to be clear to everybody
01:05:43
what Scott Besson's 333 plan is, it's which is also Dalio's plan.
01:05:49
It's 3% inflation. It's 3% GDP growth and it's a 3% deficit to
01:05:56
GDP percentage. And if we do that, that's a renaissance in the United States mathematically. Okay, we can
01:06:03
quibble about the politics, but it would be a economic and mathematical renaissance. So that's what I would do
01:06:09
if this is the best plan that Jason Smith and Mike Crapo can get done between the
01:06:18
House and the Senate. If this is the best plan, I urge the United States
01:06:24
government to figure out how to start aggressively and quickly monetizing our balance sheet. I'll just I'll just respond to two things. Oh, not Hold on.
01:06:31
Before you do that, let me just ask one question. Who the land we're talking about here, Freedberg, and the oil, I
01:06:38
guess, or the minerals that are under the ocean floor. Everything. Everything. Well, what else is there under the ocean
01:06:44
floor? Is sort of the question people are asking. Earths, zinc. So, who's going to buy lithium? Okay. Who is the
01:06:51
customer I think is what we're all wondering of this land in the United States and for what purpose? The private
01:06:57
companies that that would then use those resources to manufacture critical requirements for the United States and
01:07:04
other countries who want and so for example the US is now the largest exporter of methane. We have four
01:07:12
pipelines that go to this facility that I visited with Doug in the interview I did in Louisiana. They liquefy that
01:07:19
natural gas, which is methane. They put it on ships. Those ships go to India. They go to Taiwan. They go to Japan. So,
01:07:26
US companies are selling liquid methane that we're pulling out of the ground to
01:07:31
those countries that they then use to heat their homes and power electricity production. We don't necessarily need to
01:07:37
go back today and say, "Hey, let's cut entitlement programs deeply. We should certainly should make entitlement
01:07:43
programs more efficient." We don't need to. All we have to do is take all the other programs and reset them to CO or
01:07:48
pre-COVID levels. So, and is get rid of all the new programs. What's wrong? So, we all agree on the new program.
01:07:55
No, my wife, she she texts me. She's sitting there and she does things to tilt me and she says this in the series
01:08:02
moment. My wife and I fought last week. You got in a fight last night? We got a fight last night and I just sent her a very quick text that said, "I'm really
01:08:09
sorry about last night." And she says, "I've moved on." Just from the fight. No, she moved on. That's
01:08:16
the question. Did you send her that text while I was talking about
01:08:30
defic flying back from DC? Oh my god, this fight. Oh my god. So
01:08:36
I saw you. You were talking to the waitress and you the way you look at the
01:08:41
waitress serious way more serious than that. Way more serious than that. And it's like
01:08:46
when you're in like in a coffee house or a coffee shop in Europe and there's this like European couple speaking some
01:08:52
language you don't understand. At some point
01:09:01
the more you hang out with us there will be a moment where you will observe me and Nat fighting. It will be a multi-our fair. It is not initiated by me. It is
01:09:08
not how long I want to keep it going. It does end with a passionate making from a 12:30 to a 12:36 a.m. full of 6 minutes
01:09:18
of a chaotic. Honestly, right now 6 minutes feels like a long time. And then we all
01:09:25
go downstairs and we eat the leftover managot. It's an incredible tradition in Italy. We fight for three hours. So, we
01:09:32
make a love for four minutes and then we eat. Get this thing back on. Let me get this back on the rails here. I want to
01:09:38
ask you an important question, Dave, if I may. Are you, as a man of science who believes in global warming and who cares
01:09:44
about the environment? Is it a great idea is what a lot of people are thinking here. Is it a great idea for us
01:09:50
to rip everything out of the ocean shelf in Alaska and sell all this incredible
01:09:56
land we have that's preserved with nature and trees to foreign governments
01:10:01
and people who own our debt? Is this a great idea? Do you have concerns about this versus austerity and maybe not
01:10:07
buying as many bombs? Here's the economic argument. Energy demand, heating demand, power demand is growing
01:10:13
globally with or without the United States. Okay. Does the United States, which produces that energy cleaner than
01:10:20
anyone else, want to participate and benefit from that energy demand? Or do we want to leave it to other countries
01:10:25
that are going to do it in a dirtier way? And what do I mean by that? So natural gas is methane. I'll just give
01:10:31
you the natural gas story real quick. We pull it out of the ground. We figured out a technique for putting pressure into the ground. That pressure forces
01:10:37
the methane to come up through the rocks and then we capture that methane and then we liquefy it. So reduce it down by
01:10:43
like 800 times size. So now it's liquid. It's negative 160° C and we can
01:10:49
transport it. Methane when it burns to create electricity is 60% less carbon
01:10:57
into the atmosphere than burning oil or coal. So the first argument is methane
01:11:02
is a cleaner way of producing electricity than oil or coal, which would be alternatives. However, when
01:11:07
methane leaks, it's 80 times more heat capture than CO2. So you got to make
01:11:12
sure that your methane production, your methane extraction systems are tight, aren't leaking methane and that makes it
01:11:19
a cleaner and we have a net regulation in America and other countries don't and other countries don't do as good a job
01:11:25
etc etc and then that power is going to be generated and someone's going to make that energy somewhere. So if it is a
01:11:30
cleaner power source and we can make it cleaner and we can do it better then it's certainly the case that the United
01:11:35
States should be as we are today an LNG or liqufied natural gas or liquid methane exporter. So that's like also
01:11:43
can I can I build on this? Can also it's like can Americans grow up? I mean these
01:11:49
are industries that have to exist. Have the courage to have some hierarchy and
01:11:54
some priorities please. Like we are talking about a potential debt spiral on
01:12:00
the one hand, we're talking about cutting entitlements on the other and people want to run around and basically
01:12:06
say don't do anything. Well, don't do anything is not an option. So yeah, monetize the
01:12:13
assets. Okay, you may not like the way that Trump says it when he says drill baby drill, but the actual outcome is
01:12:20
the same. We need to monetize. We need to generate revenue in the United States
01:12:26
as quickly as possible. We need to do the things that maintain technical supremacy. We need to do the things that
01:12:32
maintain political supremacy. If we don't, we will be a second and third tier country. Why does anybody in
01:12:38
America want that? If you're an American citizen that wants that, go to another country. Ben, as we're saying here, do
01:12:44
you think maybe we do solar or maybe clean gas here, drill, baby drill? or probably some people in the audience are
01:12:50
thinking, well, why don't you rich guys pay 1% more taxes and cut the military 5% and then a little bit of austerity
01:12:55
measures on the margin sound like a better strategy. How would you respond to that argument that many people in the
01:13:00
audience are probably thinking right now? So, I mean, if the numbers added up, that might be plausible, but the numbers just don't add up. I mean, the idea that if you just incrementally
01:13:07
increase the top tax bracket that that's going to pay off the massive national debt that we have racked up or the national deficit that we're racking up
01:13:13
every year, the numbers don't add up in any way like that. Uh and and when you take a look at energy production, the
01:13:18
same thing is true. Solar is not going to be making up for LG anytime soon, that's for sure true globally. Uh and
01:13:24
you know, when it comes to America's role in the world, which is the biggest thing here when it when we talk about cutting the military budget, that always
01:13:30
sounds sexy, but the reality is that undergirling things like, for example, the big deals that President Trump is cutting in Saudi and UAE is the giant
01:13:37
American air base that we have in Qatar and the ability of the United States to provide the defense mechanisms for those
01:13:42
countries. I mean, let's be very clear about what's going on in the Middle East. If the United States did not exist, there's a solid shot that the
01:13:48
Saudi monarchy, the Qatar Emirates, and the UAE would not exist in their current form and you would have something like a
01:13:55
Muslim Brotherhood running many of those nations. And so the reality is that always backing American soft power is
01:14:00
the threat of American hard power. And this this is for sure true when you look at things like what's going on in Taiwan. I mean, one of the ways that we,
01:14:07
you guys know much more about this than I do, one of one of the ways we've been talking about getting out of the possible debt spiral is massive
01:14:12
increases in productivity due to AI. Well, if China out competes us in AI or if China were to take Taiwan like right
01:14:19
now, that would basically crush the hope of that. And the reason that China is not doing that right now is because
01:14:24
number one, we actually are building up the the American naval assets. President Trump is is is working on that. But
01:14:30
number two, because we are rapidly scaling with regard to our our own energy production. I mean, you have to
01:14:36
be an energyintensive nation in order to produce AI and and so the United States has to has to play this game. If we're
01:14:42
not playing this game, we're losing. I mean, China is outproducing us on energy by leaps and bounds right now. Leaps and bounds. My simple request for Americans
01:14:49
is don't be mathematically illiterate and let's all grow up together. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just say like the
01:14:54
the just to go back a couple comments to Chimat's point. Number one, monetize our
01:14:59
assets. Totally agree. There's opportunities. We got to do it in a clean way. We follow the law. We follow
01:15:05
the EPA's there to make sure that these methods and systems that we use are not endangering species or the planet or
01:15:10
whatever other kind of acts were are important, but I'm not sure that the ramp up is going to make up for the
01:15:17
deficit. I think that's really important as I it's great to say that at a high level. There's a north star there. we
01:15:23
can monetize our assets. But as you build out the annual plan over the next 10 to 15 years, first of all, political
01:15:30
cycles are going to affect this. If the Democrats come back into power in this next election cycle, they'll put a blockade on this stuff. It's not going
01:15:36
to be persistent. So again, we have to fix the spending problem. And this idea
01:15:41
that we have to cut entitlements to fix the spending problem, I don't even think that that's step one. I think step one
01:15:47
is don't add new programs. Step two, go back to COVID level spending. And then step three is you can address the
01:15:53
entitlements and all the other kind of spending. And step four is you execute as quickly as you can on monetizing
01:15:58
America's assets. But I'm not sure that the ramp up is going to be fast enough to make up for the deficit over the next
01:16:04
one. One one quick comment here also that I think is important and that that is that the American people, we're going to have to get used to the idea that we
01:16:10
can't just spend every dollar that comes in. So if you take a look at at the the Spanish Empire in the 16th century,
01:16:16
Spanish Empire in the 16th century is a dominant power in Europe. And then they discover all the gold in the new world.
01:16:22
And so suddenly they are easily the richest power on earth because of the amount of of money that's coming in. And they immediately start spending all of
01:16:28
it and they immediately start expending all of that capital in order to build up and build up and do different projects
01:16:33
and pretty soon they're bankrupt and they're defaulting on their debt routinely. I mean there's there's not a a correlation between your asset base
01:16:41
and inability to go bankrupt. I mean we all know very rich people who go bankrupt because they outspend their
01:16:46
asset base. In in the United States, we can expand our asset base for sure and we should do that of course. But if we
01:16:52
don't wean ourselves from the addiction to spending particularly on social programs because that's what's going to bankrupt us. Then all we will do if we
01:16:58
increase our asset base is say, "Hey, look how much more money we now get to spend because it's there." Just so you know, Chimath did hit the brakes before
01:17:05
he hit that situation. He hit the he bumped the brakes. So yeah, I I churched a couple billion, but I learned a couple
01:17:10
lessons. He almost flipped the car. I uh not not really, but I think I just want to pick up on what Ben and Dave said.
01:17:16
This is a great opportunity for us to grow up as a society collectively to have some priorities. The problem that
01:17:22
we have right now is we allow all kinds of fringe belly aching and we don't have a good sensemaking mechanism to
01:17:28
prioritize that belly aching and so everything seems like a class 5 hurricane and everything is not a class
01:17:35
5 hurricane and how we respond should be proportionate. We need to react
01:17:40
proportionally to the actual challenge at hand. And I think what maybe just
01:17:46
said differently is this is a class five category issue. How we spend and our revenues are
01:17:54
completely completely broken. So we need a new way of addressing it. And the
01:18:00
people that would have issues with how that's solved need to have the maturity
01:18:05
to actually point to what the alternative is because there is no way to quickly raise several trillion
01:18:11
dollars without selling land and without giving land leases and without taking royalties for drilling. And so they
01:18:18
should say explicitly, I would rather the country go into a debt spiral and go
01:18:23
bankrupt. Okay, then just say that. Yeah. I mean, and to the point of taxes,
01:18:29
if you even if you raise taxes 20% on the rich, it's gonna like impact 300. We're talking about the pimple. It's the
01:18:36
pimple on the dog's ass, people. Yeah, we we have to stop the spending train.
01:18:41
Hey, let's talk about um Do we want to go farm or do we want to go science corner? I don't want to have you uh miss
01:18:47
your science corner there. Uh free. Well, my science corner today is just a rant against the governors who are
01:18:52
signing laws banning cellular meat. And uh I'll just uh hit on it real quick.
01:18:57
This is a this is a your this is your take two on this because you've done this once this ranch. Correct. Governor DeSantis did this in Florida since then.
01:19:04
Alabama, Mississippi, Indiana. What's your issue with the cellular meat, sir?
01:19:12
Governor 3D print a little. It tasted like a little pepperoni. Yeah,
01:19:18
like a little pepperon. This week, Montana's Governor Greg Gianforte signed a law, House Bill
01:19:25
401, banning cellular meat. That bill goes into effect on October 1st. You
01:19:30
guys can laugh all you want. If it was in a market that you were an investor in, in innovation or technology, for
01:19:36
example, if they said, "We ban AI in our state." How would you guys react? What sort of opinion or commentary would you
01:19:42
guys have on? Move around, move around the state, let the state go to zero, and then come pick up the ashes later. We have 49 other rules. And I think that
01:19:48
that's really important. And and now, by the way, there's a House bill being proposed to do the same thing throughout the United States. Meanwhile, China and
01:19:54
Europe are building cellular meat systems that are rocketing ahead. They're actually economic drivers
01:19:59
because they make the cost of food cheaper. They create new industries. There's a lot of supply chain that goes into these industries. Whether consumers
01:20:06
like or want to buy the product or not should be left to the consumer. It should be a free market. The market should decide as long as they're
01:20:12
regulated. Check for health, check for safety, as they all are today. the FDA, the USDA, and others are all involved in
01:20:18
regulating these systems. They shouldn't be banned because in every single state they've said the reason we're banning
01:20:23
them is to protect our ranchers, our cattle ranchers. And so in all these cases, they're saying economic
01:20:29
protectionism. No, but that's I I look I I take this very different view. I mean, these are Okay, let's ban Uber to
01:20:35
protect the cab drivers. We just hit 90. Why are we talking crazy? Yeah. I don't like the
01:20:42
benevolent dictatorship model of running a country. Each of these 50 states have the ability to make decisions. Some are
01:20:48
good, some are bad, some are neutral. If they want to make fundamentally bad decisions for themselves, let them. If
01:20:54
they want to make fundamentally good decisions for them, let them. At the end of the day, those populations in those
01:20:59
places are making those decisions. I don't see it as a big deal. Yeah. And I think the reason is that most of the
01:21:05
consumers, 95% of them don't give a about the product. Whereas Uber and others were different. many people did
01:21:11
care about the product, but fundamentally it unlocks economic opportunities that they don't see today. And I think that's what's really
01:21:17
frustrating about this is a small cohort has created regulatory capture mechanisms by getting these laws passed
01:21:22
in these states. These are this rancher industry. Can I say something as somebody who's tried this? That meat
01:21:27
sucks ass. Okay? If the meat was delicious, just be honest with you. No,
01:21:32
this is my point. I've not even had it. I don't give a about it. No, let me make my point. If this product was
01:21:38
exceptionally delicious, it would be widely consumed all over America and this would never come to pass because
01:21:45
there were taxi drivers in Montana, but the reality was Uber was better in Montana. And there were taxi drivers in
01:21:52
Florida, but Uber was better in Florida. And my point is that when the product is so good, it allows adoption and it
01:22:00
quells the naysayers at the fringes. Okay, then let me point something out to you. When the product is a little bit more meh, I got it. But what if someone
01:22:07
banned Uber before it had a chance to do that? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think your point there was no developing technology. It's early stage
01:22:14
and they're stopping it from because what would happen is there there were places that banned Uber and what happened? They all flipped. That's
01:22:20
because Uber and broke the law. No, we reinterpreted regulations even in
01:22:28
favor of what's right for the people of America. What I'm saying is not in the
01:22:33
place that it was banned, but there were enough places around it. Yes. Where the product value could be demonstrated and
01:22:39
government that doesn't mean you pass a law banning it. You should still let the consumers have the choice. It's
01:22:44
regulatory capture. Who cares? If this was some one of your companies, Jimoth, and they were banning some pharma
01:22:51
company or social media or some that you started or got invested in, you'd be all up in arms saying they're
01:22:56
blocking us. They're keeping us from developing. We're early stage. No, I don't I don't cry. I'm not an investor
01:23:01
in anything that's going to benefit from this. I think it's up. Well, I don't think so because it happens all the time. I would say get over it, grow
01:23:07
up, figure out the markets where you can make it and make the product excellent so that then all these people in these
01:23:13
states you and I have a very different point of view on regulatory capture, capitalism and free markets come up. That's a fact.
01:23:19
Would you eat pork that's made in a fermentation tank instead of because he's Jewish? You got to bring up pork.
01:23:24
No, I'm actually curious about this. I'm curious. Honestly, God, this this is the only reason I'm interested in this topic at all. This is like not to get into
01:23:30
obstruuse Jewish law, but this is like an actual open question is that if you grew pork in a tank and it didn't come
01:23:35
from an actual pig, would it then become kosher? And is it considered a vegetable as opposed to a meat because it's not
01:23:40
coming from an animal, right? It's like like this stuff to me is really interesting and hey, if it gets me to be
01:23:45
able to eat bacon, I'm all for it. Like that's I' I've heard amazing. They have the reviews are excellent on bacon.
01:23:50
Yeah. Okay, let's go to farmer here. Shout out to longill pana steaks. We'll send you Oh, I just made an order from
01:23:56
Longill. I just bought $500 worth of stuff. I got a discount though. I don't know if you got the email, but if you
01:24:02
put the Memorial Day promo code, you get 10% off. I order I have a standing order
01:24:09
with Long Hill Wagu. I mix I mix it up. I mix up the kind. No, I do the picana, but I do some Denver steak sometimes. I
01:24:16
mix it up. Nice. Yeah, I like the New York strip. We'll send Ben. You eat steak, right? Of course. Of course. Of course. Try try this place called Long
01:24:23
Hill Wagyu. It kicks us. It's right by me in Austin. It is incredible. And you know, Freight Burke doesn't eat meat and he, you know, it's just the the nature
01:24:30
of it. Okay, let's uh wrap on pharma. Okay, Trump signed an executive order to slash drug prices on Monday. I mean,
01:24:38
this is like a great week for Trump. I like everything Trump did this week. The goal is to cut prices 30 to 80% by
01:24:44
giving the US MFN. If you don't know MFN, just stands for most favored nation status. That's a a generic term in
01:24:51
business. It means we get to pay the same price of whichever country gets the lowest priced for a specific drug. This
01:24:58
executive order would cut out the famous middleman. He's talking about PBM. You've heard Mark Cuban, friend of the
01:25:04
pod, talk about that a whole bunch. Here's RFK Jr.'s quote. Congress is controlled in so many ways by the
01:25:10
pharmaceutical industry. This was an issue that people talked about, but nobody wanted to do anything because it
01:25:16
was radioactive. It's radioactive obviously chimoff because listen so many politicians are
01:25:22
getting donations and lobbyists. What's your take on this? Obviously Amore is in
01:25:27
this business and is in pharmaceuticals so she has some great insights I'm sure as you do. Yeah, let me start by talking
01:25:34
about the specifics of the EO. The really interesting thing about this EO was that there was a very
01:25:41
detailed report that was published in the National Bureau of Economic Research a few years ago that studied this exact
01:25:48
thing. So the president used the term MFN, but
01:25:54
the concept here is called international reference pricing. Anyways, there was an
01:25:59
extremely detailed study that said, okay, what happens to drug prices when
01:26:04
you use this IRF pricing mechanism? Okay. And what they showed in that study
01:26:11
was a very interesting takeaway, which is if you set the IRF with only one
01:26:18
country, typically what happens is for the United States, the change is about minus 2%. If you do it with a basket,
01:26:26
the actual profitability of the pharma companies would go up slightly. If you
01:26:31
had a required comparison, meaning it had to be a like for-like opportunity, profits fall about 20%. And
01:26:38
if you use the US bargaining framework, then profits could fall about 27.5%. So
01:26:43
this is the impact of that. But there are a lot more nuances of it. So the question would be what does this all
01:26:49
mean then to the downstream impact of pharma? The thing to keep in mind is
01:26:55
that we are in a very complicated situation on the R&D side of the house
01:27:01
and what this chart shows is clinical trial enrollments in China versus the
01:27:06
United States. Now, this has been happening well before the EO. But what
01:27:11
this effectively shows is a really important comment which I'll come back to. China a few years ago very smartly
01:27:19
completely reformed the way that it does trials and the procedures. And as a
01:27:24
result, what they saw when they had this regulatory reform was an explosion in the number of clinical trials. And there
01:27:32
are as many clinical trials now in China as there are in the United States. And often times they're bigger. which is to
01:27:38
say that the amount of innovation and the surface area there is already
01:27:44
exceeding what's happening in the west. So that's where we are. Now why does this all matter? If you go to the next
01:27:51
chart to tie it all together, as you saw at the beginning,
01:27:56
international reference pricing has an impact to profits. Profits can have an
01:28:02
impact on R&D. As we stand today, R&D we are neck
01:28:07
andneck with the Chinese. What is more important to understand is that actually the last 10
01:28:14
years has been very complicated for western pharmaceutical businesses. When you look at the average rate of return
01:28:21
as an industry, these things used to be extremely profitable businesses, but as
01:28:27
of the last decade, it's been very very hard. In fact, I think like the Deote study that I saw was that the can you
01:28:33
believe this? The average ROI for broad-based pharma is 1.5% as of 2022
01:28:40
per year. So if you invest a billion dollars, you're making back 10 million a year. You'll make 10 million bucks, which is not enough to fight this R&D
01:28:46
battle. So if you then further affect the profitability scale of pharma, the
01:28:51
impact is probably that we push R&D to different places.
01:28:56
So, I I bring all of this up basically to say I think that what Trump did in one vein was brilliant. Why? He took a
01:29:06
plank of the Democratic party. Like, if you guys think about like what Bernie Sanders ran on, yeah, it was this and he
01:29:13
took it and he jiu-jitsued it and now he owns it. He'll be able to take credit for it. And the Democrats are robbed of
01:29:20
a very critical political plank that they have which they'll have to fill in with something else. And if you saw, by
01:29:27
the way, Roana and other folks said, "Oh, we agree with this and we'd like to do this via, you know, some bill." So
01:29:34
even they had to kind of flip and say, "Yeah, this is kind of a good idea." So politically, it's good. The execution of
01:29:39
this is going to be complicated because of what I showed. we were already at this delicate balancing act of how to
01:29:44
make sure that there could be a lot of domestic R&D that's was still economically viable. The last thing I'll
01:29:51
say is we still need to do one important thing which is I think that this EO is
01:29:57
an important start but it doesn't yet address the much bigger problem which is that there is a lot of money that goes
01:30:06
to many other things other than drugs. So when you look at a dollar of healthcare spend which is you know almost 20% of
01:30:13
GDP I think the number is that you know there's 30% that is administrative
01:30:18
complexity 20% that is pricing failures which is effectively to say PBM's
01:30:24
failure of care coordination is 5% over treatment is 10% fraud and abuse is almost 10%. So there's a lot of other
01:30:32
organizations in this value chain that kind of eat out of that dollar before it gets to the sense that goes to pharma
01:30:38
and so it's important to make sure we don't overlook those. The biggest ones being the PBMs. Yeah. Ben, your thoughts
01:30:44
on this? 9% goes to pharma. Yeah. What are your thoughts Ben on this? Broadly speaking. I mean I have a general rule.
01:30:49
If if Bernie Sanders likes a policy, I don't like the policy. And so the and so when it comes to when it when it comes
01:30:55
to this particular EO I mean the the real problem here for using MFN status
01:31:00
as President Trump is calling it is that if we are going to use the kind of tariff tools that President Trump has
01:31:05
talked about to even the playing field. It seems to me this is where you actually should put pressure on places like Canada or Mexico or the EU is for
01:31:13
them to actually pay their fair share for the drugs that they are getting from the United States because we're
01:31:18
patenting all the drugs over here and then we're selling it at discount prices to all of these nationalized healthare
01:31:23
systems. And so if you do that with Medicaid, what you'll probably get is number one, a lot of these pharmaceuticals just won't be used by Medicaid. Pharma won't sell it to them.
01:31:30
Instead, you'll have to go into the private sector which means it's going to be more expensive in the private sector than it would have been otherwise. If you're covered by private insurance,
01:31:36
your pharma bill is actually going to be higher than it otherwise would be. What we should be doing is getting other countries to pay their fair share, drive
01:31:43
up the price on those other places, and then you can actually do something that looks more like an MFN status because
01:31:49
you're not artificially you're basically squeezing the balloon here and you're inflating the balloon here. The the the inflation side being the private health
01:31:56
care insurers in the United States and private consumers in the United States. And so if you're talking about, you know, just artificially lowering prices
01:32:02
by basically clocking pharma, I mean, the reality is if you want to kill R&D, this is a great way to kill R&D. People
01:32:09
in the United States, I don't think, have a clue as to how much money gets spent on R&D that craps out because what
01:32:14
you see is the big winners. It's like going to a casino and only watching the guy who's got the hot hand with the dice, right? I'm I'm I'm the the version
01:32:19
with the dice, got the hot hand, right? It's me. But you don't see the other hundred guys the casino is absolutely cleaning out. And the reality is the
01:32:26
vast majority of biotech companies and pharmaceutical startup pharmaceutical companies and people who are trying to
01:32:31
do this sort of stuff spend literally billions of dollars and then crap out at phase three in the FDA trials. Ben, just
01:32:37
to build on this because you're you're making an excellent point. Did do you guys know what the cost of the average trial was in in the early '90s? It was
01:32:45
about $250 million. The average cost of that same trial in 2025 is $2.3 billion,
01:32:52
10x. And effectively what happened in that 30-year period was a thousand regulations became 150,000 regulations.
01:33:00
And so to your point, one thing that we could do is if if this EO, you know, is
01:33:06
going to continue and and really be implemented in a forceful way. The other side of it is we have to find a way of
01:33:12
decreasing the regulatory burden so that then the cost of the trial isn't all the administr.
01:33:20
Well, and isn't the issue here, Friedberg, that there's a free market for drugs outside of the United States,
01:33:26
where they seem to negotiate really well, and that inside the United States, we we don't seem to negotiate our prices
01:33:32
for drugs as aggressively as Canada, Mexico, and European countries do. As is the case with the cost of education and
01:33:39
the cost of housing, the cost of drugs is largely inflated because of the federal government's role in being the
01:33:45
primary buyer or capital provider to that market. So, similar to how the US government provides all the capital
01:33:51
through the federal home loan program and all of the capital through the federal student loan program, the cost
01:33:56
of tuition has no market check and the cost of housing doesn't have a great market check because there's an
01:34:01
unlimited endless supply of capital coming from the federal government. Similarly, through our purchases of
01:34:07
prescription drugs, uh the federal government as a buyer doesn't have any incentive to keep prices low. There's no
01:34:14
individual, there's no shareholder, there's no one that has some check that says, you know what, we're actually not
01:34:19
going to buy that drug because it costs too much or hey, we need an alternative.
01:34:24
If every individual had to pay for their drugs or private insurance was the only way to get your drugs was through private insurance, we would have a much
01:34:31
more dynamic marketplace. So, the way that we negotiate drug prices is pretty messed up. There's also this construct
01:34:36
in the market, these PBMs or pharmacy benefit managers. If they got cut out of the market, it would save a lot. I'll
01:34:42
just give you guys some numbers on these PBMs. There's three major PBM, CVS, Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optimum
01:34:48
RX. These three companies make on average approximately three bucks in operating profit per prescription claim
01:34:55
processed. They make money in markups. The FTC has been investigating them and have several open cases between 2017 and
01:35:03
2022. the estimate that these companies generated $7.3 billion in excess profit
01:35:08
by marking up prices on specialty generic drugs. The list goes on on kind of the egregious behavior and the role
01:35:15
that they play as middlemen in the industry. Their job, and I'll kind of describe it, is to be the managers of
01:35:21
prescription drug benefits on behalf of the health insurers, large employers, Medicare Part D plans, and other payers.
01:35:29
So as an intermediary they provide this role where they can coordinate between the
01:35:35
health insurer, the pharmacy which dispenses the drugs and the drug manufacturers. But they're allowed to be owned by the payer which is crazy. And
01:35:41
now they're allowed to be owned by the payer. And and and there's a lot of obfuscation of the true cost of the
01:35:47
drugs. There's a lot of markups, a lot of spread taking. And so if you took the PBMs out of the market, that would solve
01:35:52
one of the problems. But at the end of the day, I've said this many, many times before, anytime the federal government
01:35:58
is involved as a payer in any market-based system, it creates a distortion and the market is no longer
01:36:03
free or efficient. All right, for Ben Shapiro of the Ben Shapiro show and Daily Wire, Poly Habitatia, and David
01:36:11
Freeberg, I am executive producer for life. We'll see you all next time. Love
01:36:17
you boys. We all bye We'll let your winners ride.
01:36:24
Rainman David and it said we open sourced it to the
01:36:31
fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you queen of quinoa.
01:36:36
[Music]
01:36:42
Besties [Music] are my dog taking notice your driveway.
01:36:49
Oh man, my habitasher will meet the We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all just
01:36:55
useless. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.
01:37:02
Wet your feet. We need to get our
01:37:09
[Music]
01:37:15
I'm going all in.
