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There are certain trillion dollar ideas that the private sector just won't do because it doesn't pencil or because of
00:00:06
whatever market failure is there. That's where you need government. First of all, the the debt path we're on is not sustainable. That I think identity has
00:00:13
become too central to how my party thinks. My big worry is that if we're already at a level of concentration of
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wealth and power that no republic has ever survived. Is this going to be a development that just makes wealth and
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power even more concentrated in even fewer hands? All right, besties. I think that was
00:00:33
another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your
00:00:39
questions in a minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun. That was
00:00:45
great. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In podcast interview series.
00:00:52
Last week, we had Joe Mansion on. This week, Pete Buddha Jesus here. Everybody knows Mayor Pete, born in Southbend,
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Harvard, road scholar, uh, McKenzie, US Navy, and, uh, of course, ran for
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president and was the transportation secretary under Biden. Welcome to the
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program, Pete Booty Judge. How are you? Good. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. Uh, meet Shamath Poly Hapatia,
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a former Democrat who rewrite his support of your party and now is uh a
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Republican and really the spirit of this program is to just have a candid
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discussion. We like to get into the details and so I thought I wanted to start with your perception of
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entrepreneurs, technologists, etc. I was watching a clip of you on um Bill Maher
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and you said, "Hey, you know, these these libertarian, science-based folks
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in Silicon Valley, they made a very practical decision. These are rich men
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who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for rich men. And these rich men include Tim
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Cook, uh Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. These are people who have been part of
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the Democratic party for a very long time. huge donors to the Democratic party and they all made this sort of
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flip. Do you think it was just pragmatically based upon the desire to
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have less regulations, a better business environment to personally make more money or do you think there were other
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things at work with the loss in 2024? Well, I don't think you can reduce it to
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any one thing, but I certainly think that's part of the story. Uh look uh uh it's no secret that Republican policies
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tend to favor people who are wealthier. Uh and a lot of people who drifted away
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from the Democratic party, at least the ones who are getting a lot of attention. Like how could these business figures,
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investors, billionaires have gotten away from from Democrats and gone to Republicans might be kind of a you know
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dog bites man story. like not something that's wildly complicated. If you look at the fact that, you know, Democrats
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have been extremely concerned about wealth and income inequality and you got
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a lot of very very wealthy people. I don't think it was just that. I mean, I think uh there are a lot of things that
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that kind of combined at once. But, you know, for a lot of my friends who are scratching their heads saying, "Wait a
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minute, these are folks who are from the tech and science world. How could they back a president or administration
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that's been deleting references to science and kind of censoring science at least anytime that climate is concerned?
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A lot of these guys are libertarian. How could they be on board with the uh you know the administration that is uh
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sending troops into streets and has uh uh really led a crackdown on freedom. That's kind of something out of the
00:03:37
fever dreams of my conservative and libertarian friends back when we were, you know, arguing about politics over
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beers that I never thought I would see happen. uh these folks, some of these folks are gay and how can they be
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backing an administration that's, you know, really uh assaulted uh LGBT rights? And you know, if you just go
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down the list, there's a lot of things that are counterintuitive uh about some of these Silicon Valley
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leaders who flipped in many cases flipped from being very very active Democrats uh to backing Trump. And you
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know, maybe there's an intuitive answer to that counterintuitive thing, which is that many of them feel their short-term
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business interests or personal financial interests are better served by Republicans. I get that. I would I would
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counter, as I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are still Democrats would, that look, a healthy business
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environment, you know, you don't want to be overregulated, but you also want to make sure you're an environment with
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rule of law. You want to be in a place where it's safe to say scientific truths out loud. you want to be in a place
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where somebody can't impose their interpretation of their religion on other people. I, you know, I have a
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whole counter to that. Uh, but, you know, I think that's the kind of swirl that we got into. Uh, definitely just in
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those short years between 2020 and 24. Do you think that there was censorship under the Biden administration for
00:04:54
things like scientific truth? Let's just focus on COVID for a second and the back doors that it seemed that the Biden
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administration had to places like Facebook and places like Twitter to just suppress scientific thought and debate
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as you just talked about. So, this is an amazing example of some of the false equivalencies that I've seen thrown around out there. So yeah, I
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I would acknowledge I think a lot of folks would say that uh you know it came really close to the stove some of the
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times when the administration was trying to make sure that you know bad information or misinformation wasn't
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being pushed uh into the kind of public health conversation and was engaging social media companies that were trying
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to you know be responsible and do the right thing and and there might be moments that that you know they got that
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wrong or went too far. But right now, we're in a moment, right, where the president of the United States doesn't
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like being criticized by a comedian and has the head of the FCC, which regulates
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corporations that are trying to buy TV networks, go out and threaten them and
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say, you know, you're we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I mean, that is a whole different level of
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censorship. Not to mention just the way they've gone through like every government website, right, and deleted
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anything that could accidentally be a reference to climate change. So, you know, I'm worried about the false equivalencies here. You could definitely
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say there were moments under the last administration or any administration where we could argue that that having
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fidelity to to free speech, you know, you should have done this way instead of that way or these edge cases should have
00:06:21
been different. But but I am nervous that anybody would equate a president
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trying to direct the destruction not only of journalists but of comedians that he doesn't like with public health
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authorities in a public health emergency that killed a million Americans doing their best to try to make sure that
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people got good public health information. Let's talk a little bit about where the rubber meets the road,
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which is tax policy. And I think a lot of what we've seen in this back and forth to add to why the Democrats lost
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all of these amazing entrepreneurs and capitalists who build these amazing companies that create all the jobs in
00:06:56
the tax base for this country. Two tax proposals recently, New York
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City with Mandami and I don't know if you've come out and publicly supported him yet, but he's proposing 54% tax for
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the top earners there. Here in California, we uh have the floating of a bill to charge a wealth tax of 5% on
00:07:15
billionaires. At a recent Mandami rally, they were chanting tax the rich.
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And Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, who I think are far left of you, and you
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can correct me if I'm wrong, are saying, "Hey, ban the billionaires." And we have this sort of movement that being a billionaire is in some way immoral or
00:07:36
unethical. So, let's start with some brass tax here. Would you support, and obviously you're going to run for
00:07:42
president again in 2028, and you're one of the lead candidates. Would you ever support a wealth tax?
00:07:47
In principle, maybe. Yeah. I mean, you rightly said, you know, folks like Bernie uh are to my left. I don't know
00:07:53
the details of the state and local proposals you just mentioned, but those sound on their face like they're further
00:07:59
than I would go. Uh but look, in reality, we tax across a variety of
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things, right? There's income tax, there's payroll tax, there's property tax. Wealth tax would be kind of along
00:08:10
the lines of a property tax. And the thought, of course, is that you've got a lot of folks who become incredibly
00:08:16
wealthy. And importantly, the way taxation works now, less and less of the
00:08:22
way the wealthiest people accumulate their income is actually booked as income, right? And this is why you have
00:08:28
these stories of, you know, multi-billion dollar corporations or multi-billion billion dollar individuals
00:08:33
somehow paying an effective tax rate that's lower than a teacher or a
00:08:38
firefighter. And I think most people get that that's wrong. So I guess my overall take is, you know, everything has a
00:08:44
balance, everything has limits, but if if you're asking me the question, are the wealthiest people in America right
00:08:50
now paying too much tax or too little tax? I would say the wealthiest are paying too little tax. and whether you
00:08:57
adjust that through income tax, whether you adjust that through, you know, something like a wealth tax. And there's a lot of ways to do it. Uh I think
00:09:03
what's important is that it's fair, that it makes sense, and and that you do it in a way that that can make sure that
00:09:10
the people who are spectacularly rewarded by our system are contributing to it without being so extreme that that
00:09:16
uh you know, you're you're you're crushing wealth creation. What is the responsibility of the US government in your eyes with the tax
00:09:23
receipts that they get? How do we understand that money is being spent
00:09:30
appropriately and well versus pet projects or pork barrel
00:09:35
spending or frankly just waste and grift. Where is that line? And give us some examples of how you would make sure
00:09:42
that as tax receipts went up, accountability went up with it. Yeah, I think that's that's super important and
00:09:47
and people's willingness to pay taxes depends on some level on their, you
00:09:52
know, sense that they're getting good value for their money. So, I I cut my teeth as a mayor. We didn't we couldn't
00:09:58
uh, you know, print more dollars if we wanted to. As the city of South Bend, we had a cash budget, had to balance it
00:10:04
every year. If we took on debt, we really had to think hard about how we were going to pay on that debt. We made
00:10:10
sure that any time we're asking people to be paying revenue into the city, they
00:10:16
know what they're getting for that. Whether it's police service or parks or trash pickup, I don't think that's the
00:10:22
worst metaphor to think about how things should work at the national level, too, right? We we should believe that we're getting good services, good
00:10:28
infrastructure. That was obviously what what I worked on when I was uh at the federal level as as Secretary of
00:10:33
Transportation. We should get good national defense and all the other things that we, you know, as a country
00:10:38
are How do you how do you make sure that it's not wasted? Like I'll give you an example. You had billions and billions
00:10:44
of dollars allocated to you from the infrastructure and jobs act to deploy
00:10:50
charging infrastructure, right? And as of this year, there's only a few hundred of these charging stations. It's been
00:10:56
pretty much an abject failure. Uh that's not true. And and I'm really glad you raised that because it's
00:11:01
actually one of the biggest red herrings we had to deal with. So this is a program to get EV chargers deployed by
00:11:07
2030. The thought was, you know, by 2030, we think about half of the sales or we were hoping about half the sales
00:11:14
of cars in the country would be EVs. Now, in order to have that work well, we're going to need more chargers. The
00:11:20
market does a good job of delivering chargers in a lot of places, but there were other places where we found it was
00:11:26
lower income or it was more rural. It was more spread out and it just wasn't going to pencil for the private sector
00:11:31
to do to do it, right? So, uh we had a fund uh called NEVI. uh I can't even remember what the acronym was, but the
00:11:37
point was it was like you said about $7 billion uh to buy down the difference to
00:11:42
uh subsidize or just outright build those chargers in places where they were needed. And we made a couple of choices
00:11:49
uh that we knew would mean that it would take longer, but we were okay with that. One of them was to have it led by the
00:11:55
states. So instead of sitting there in Washington saying where all the chargers ought to be built, we send the funding
00:12:00
to the states. We let them set up their own program. And importantly, we let them set up their own programs differently. So, you know, we were going
00:12:07
to dictate what the optimal subsidy was in Wyoming compared to West Virginia or whether you even do it through a subsidy
00:12:12
or whether it's owned and operated by the state. We took we took a step back on that, let the states innovate, even
00:12:18
if that means it's going to take a while for them to polish the program, knowing that that meant most of the chargers
00:12:23
would go in in 2026, 2027, but well ahead of 2030. Now, the second thing,
00:12:29
this is really important, too. We made a conscious decision to insist that the Chargers be made in America. Now, when
00:12:35
you do that, you're deciding that it's going to take longer. I'll just admit that because just buy them off the shelf
00:12:41
from China would be dramatically quicker. We thought that was worth it because we thought it was important to have a US-based industry with, you know,
00:12:50
American workers, ideally union electrical workers, uh, making and installing these chargers. Again, we
00:12:55
knew that if if the goal was to get them all done by like 2023 or 2024, we wouldn't have had the luxury of doing
00:13:01
that. But since we thought most of the charges would be needed by well, by 2030, we were okay with that. Now, here
00:13:08
comes Washington politics, right? And somebody gets a hold of the numbers. They see it's a seven or eight billion dollar program and then falsely try to
00:13:15
make it look like we spent the seven or eight billion dollars already on the handful of chargers that that they
00:13:20
already managed to build first even though we never thought most of the charges would be built even during our
00:13:25
first term. And that's where the Washington game comes in, right? Take something that I mean the jury is still
00:13:30
out, right? The program's not done. We'll see how the Trump administration does in completing the program. But, you know, you can't really say whether it
00:13:36
was a success or a failure until the program's been run. But they move the goalpost. And I'm not challenging you that like there's waste that there's uh
00:13:43
bad things that happen in and and and government spending that I don't like. But what's your what's your best guess in
00:13:49
general? For every dollar that gets given to the United States government by US taxpayers, what actually lands in
00:13:56
productive programs that benefit Americans versus what gets leaked away?
00:14:03
What's your best guess? Is it 50 cents of every dollar, 10 cents of every dollar, a penny, 90 cents? Like what is
00:14:09
your best guess? you've been in the bowels of these organizations. So my experience in transportation is
00:14:14
that most of it goes to very good use. I mean if you just break it down uh it goes to things that keep the aviation
00:14:20
sector operating safely. It goes to things like highways, roads and bridges. That was the biggest slug of funding
00:14:26
that we had in the infrastructure package. uh and when you know the general or the government accountability
00:14:32
office or or the inspector general by the way institutions that Trump is demolishing right now but the
00:14:37
organizations that do the auditing and really dig in on a bipartisan basis um often in terms of outright fraud you
00:14:44
know they're going to come in a number that's well below 1% but but but you know I've also seen my own sense as
00:14:50
effective no effectively this is this comes to the other part I was going to say I mean I think about my time in the military for
00:14:56
example you know there was a building. I think it was Leatherneck. Maybe it was Kandahar, but I think it was
00:15:02
Leatherneck. When I traveled out there, there was a building that had taken years to go up. I think it was like $30
00:15:08
million. And just before they were about to activate it, uh, they tore it back down. I mean, it's just a complete
00:15:14
boondoggle. And and we see stuff like that happening for sure. We see cost escalations on a lot of projects. So,
00:15:20
it's not, you know, it's not the same as fraud. I mean that's the like under 1% but it's still a huge waste if you have
00:15:28
a project cost 1% or 10% or sometimes 100% more than it should right I mean by
00:15:35
definition every penny it takes to build something more than what it was actually required is wasted and I do think
00:15:42
there's a lot of that I think government gets in its own way with procedure just explain to us as a secretary how
00:15:47
much control do you have in stopping that waste So if you see it, so I'll
00:15:53
give you a specific example. In 2023, there was some pretty incredible outages in the FAA. We've all now learned that
00:16:00
we have an incredibly brittle air safety infrastructure that needs to be
00:16:06
upgraded. You saw that in 23 there was outages all the time. What do you do to stop that? And when you see the waste,
00:16:13
how do you stop it? You know, that was an example where we needed to invest, right? So, it's that tough situation and needing to swallow
00:16:20
hard and go before Congress and the taxpayer and say, "Look, we need more funding for this." But that's what we did. And by the way, this is one of the
00:16:26
rare areas where I agree with my successor who's done pretty much the same thing uh to make sure we got the funding to upgrade the technology. Now,
00:16:34
this is one of the few audiences might be nerdy enough that that I can geek out a little bit and talk about the big
00:16:39
upgrade to the communications backbone that that we were doing. It was to go from TDM to IP from from copper to fiber
00:16:46
and to I think a lot of people would be astonished to know that you know something as important and theoretically
00:16:51
modern as our aviation system uh is working on TDM. Uh so that obviously had
00:16:56
to be upgraded. We launched a contract. Verizon is the contractor. You know, obviously a multi-year multi-billion
00:17:03
dollar IT contract when you have to have, you know, not even 59s but like
00:17:09
billion to one uh chance of anything going wrong 24 by7 by 365. You know,
00:17:14
it's challenging and it takes a while. But, you know, that's one of the reasons why we felt a lot of urgency on that particular issue. But again, there's two
00:17:21
ways of looking at this, right? Both of which are true. One thing is to look at the system and say how can the system
00:17:26
not be more modern like we need to make better use of the dollars that go into the system to have more up-to-date
00:17:32
communications infrastructure to have uh more controllers uh who are both well equipped and well-rested and FA's got to
00:17:40
do better on that. The other way to look at it is consider the civilizational achievement that is aviation safety in
00:17:47
this country. So it's easy to grumble and I grumble and more than grumble. I mean, I got pretty upset with a lot of things about how aviation works as a
00:17:54
passenger, which is why we pushed airlines so hard on on passenger protections. But, you know, just in the
00:17:59
four years I was secretary, we had about 4 billion passenger implants. So, 4
00:18:05
billion times somebody got on an airplane, right? Um, and zero commercial
00:18:10
airline crash fatalities out of that 4 billion. In other words, what this kind of clunky, imperfect federal government
00:18:16
has achieved is a standard of safety on afford a form of transportation that involves being propelled through the air
00:18:22
almost at the speed of sound by flammable liquids miles above the ground. And you know, frankly, you and I
00:18:28
are one of us is more likely, not to be flip about it, but one of us is more likely to randomly die of natural causes
00:18:34
during this taping than to be involved in a commercial airline fatality. Let's hope it's Jason.
00:18:41
Wow. Well, I was about to say, I mean, it is like in some places in our some
00:18:46
places in our infrastructure, we're incredibly blessed. And I'm wondering as, you know, now you're in your 40s,
00:18:52
you've seen a lot of the world, whether it's your military service or or, you
00:18:58
know, just being a mayor of a small town and then, uh, obviously working in a cabinet position. How has your view of
00:19:05
free market dynamic solving problems versus the government solving problems evolved if at all? Because when we talk
00:19:13
about these problems, you look at what's happening with space. We now can get to space for, you know, 5% of the cost than
00:19:19
we used to. Thanks to Elon Musk and SpaceX, we have superchargers and chargers everywhere thanks to Tesla and
00:19:26
a number of other folks putting them out there, Charge Point, etc. when it comes to putting
00:19:32
fiber into rural areas, which the FTC was trying to do, they were going to spend5 to $25,000 per home. And now we
00:19:39
have Starlink and their competitors. Again, back to Elon, which your party
00:19:44
decided under Biden, you wouldn't even invite the guy to the EV summit. So,
00:19:49
well, let me talk about that, but we'll I want to park that to the side because we should probably talk about what happened there. But let's forget that
00:19:56
cuz I want to I want to mention that because when you when you know I I'm a I'm a moderate but voted Democrat about
00:20:02
65% of the time and Republican a third of the time. When I look at it, I just can't understand how the Democratic
00:20:08
party hates us so much. Hates entrepreneurs and that's how they feel. But that's how that's how Silicon Valley
00:20:14
feels. We'll talk about whether you want to deny it or not. But it feels like hate entre like I don't think most
00:20:20
Democrats do. I I but I I know what you mean about the vibes and we should get to the piece about about Elon particularly but but but on the piece
00:20:27
you're on the substance of the question you're raising. Yeah. I think it's really important to think of this as
00:20:33
not like should it be government or should it be the private sector but like which parts should government do and
00:20:38
which parts should the private sector do. So to me like the classic example is just the smartphone right. Um, I cannot
00:20:46
imagine that a smartphone designed by the federal government would be a pretty
00:20:52
thing or that an app designed by a matter of fact having been in the military and and dealt with I guess you
00:20:57
could call them apps like some of the kind of uh software that that that you have to deal with even if it's done by
00:21:02
contractors. It's kind of done in a way that you can tell was designed by the government and and and it's not pretty.
00:21:07
Um, on the other hand, you know, when you talk about capital allocation, the federal government literally invented
00:21:13
the internet, right? So, there's things there's certain trillion dollar ideas that the private sector just won't do
00:21:19
cuz it doesn't pencil or because of whatever market failure is there. That's where you need government. That's things
00:21:24
like basic research. That's things like filling in gaps that especially on network effects like you know broadband,
00:21:30
EV charging networks, that sort of thing where the bulk of it can be done quite well by the private sector, but there
00:21:35
are pieces that just don't click unless you have unless you have federal involvement. And that's the attitude we tried to take on things like EVs. Like I
00:21:43
never thought that we were going to, you know, create a government EV or that you even needed the government to make sure
00:21:48
that a transition to electric happened. But we did believe that for it to be made in America, for it to happen as
00:21:54
quickly as we wanted, and for it to reach people who maybe couldn't afford those those initial buyin costs who we
00:22:00
really wanted to help out, you know, that's where there's a role for policy. That's where there's a role for funding. What I get confused though, Pete, is
00:22:05
like on the one hand, you're saying the government should set up these clear moonshot objectives that advance America
00:22:13
for itself and relative to other countries. But then the other side is that if you do too well achieving those
00:22:19
objectives, we want to go and take a bunch of that away from you. How do you reconcile that? And how do you think it
00:22:25
impacts the the motivations of young men and women who want to learn and excel and put themselves at risk but also want
00:22:32
to believe that if they put themselves at risk and then they are rewarded that they've earned those rewards.
00:22:38
Look, uh I love people being entrepreneurial, creating something and doing well by it. I mean that's but to a
00:22:44
certain basic idea only to a certain level like beyond a certain point of entrepreneurship if you create a monopoly. Yeah. If you create a monopoly
00:22:51
I might not like it. If you hurt other people I might not like it. If you concentrate power into your hands to an
00:22:57
extreme extent I might not like it because that's just that's just not American. But in general if we're
00:23:02
talking about taxation I just want to make sure people who are really well off do their part to pay into a system that
00:23:07
has helped them to thrive. uh because uh you know that's what it takes for the
00:23:13
next generation to do well and that's what it took for all of us to do well. I mean let's just assume you're president. You
00:23:18
get trillions of dollars of receipts. Mhm. I'm going to guess the party line that you have to take as Doge was bad. Okay,
00:23:25
fine. What is the version of Doge that you would implement so that Great question. We could figure out what percentage of
00:23:31
that dollar that we're giving you is wasted and stop it. Yeah. So, I would love in theory a
00:23:39
department of government efficiency that was actually about government efficiency. I think that would make tons of sense. Uh, it's what I tried to do
00:23:45
again when I was mayor. We took apart the small government that I was in charge of about a $300 million operation
00:23:50
and put it back together and found that it could be radically more efficient in many ways. And we need to do that at the
00:23:55
federal level. We need to How much money did you take out from that 300? Uh, we we used it better. I would put it
00:24:02
that way. So, uh, you know, we didn't I mean, there were areas where we were able to kind of have, uh, uh, have a certain, uh, budget line item shrink,
00:24:09
but in a city where the average per capita income was 18 or $19,000 per person when I came in, uh, we weren't
00:24:16
handing that over in tax breaks to wealthy residents. We were putting it to other use on uh, on public safety uh,
00:24:22
and fundamentals like that. But look, again, I agree that the doge we could have could do a lot of really good work.
00:24:28
It could find duplicative regulations. it could find cases where we could move
00:24:33
from inputbased to outputbased uh evaluation of our programs. In other
00:24:38
words, instead of saying like this is a meaningful program because how many billions went into it, uh figure out how
00:24:44
much value came out of it. But the Doge we got was one that couldn't even count
00:24:49
that put uh information sometimes that was wrong by three orders of magnitude on its own website then erased its own
00:24:56
information because they didn't believe in the transparency. The doge we got sent an email to every air traffic
00:25:02
controller in the country during an air traffic controller shortage and suggested they quit being an air traffic
00:25:09
controller and get something quote more productive to do in the private sector only later on to be told actually uh
00:25:15
that was a mistake. The Doge we got apparently wasn't supposed to send that information all the air traffic controllers. Whoops. the Doge we got
00:25:22
fired people in charge of making sure our nuclear weapons were safe and in charge of making sure that bird flu
00:25:28
didn't spread and then whoops you know tried to hire them back in a race. So yeah, there's a huge difference between the doge we got and the doge we could
00:25:35
have had. But if you're talking about in principle should we unleash like really smart talented people with an outside in
00:25:42
perspective and a free hand to evaluate what is working and where we're not
00:25:47
getting value for our money in government. like you and I would be on in violent agreement that that's a good
00:25:52
idea and there's no better place to find some of those opportunities than the things that the federal government does
00:25:58
because it just does or because there was a good reason once upon a time but that reason has expired or maybe the
00:26:04
reason was not good to begin with. Can we go to debt maybe um as part of this? I don't know where you were going
00:26:09
to go chas but I think maybe I wanted to I wanted to go to the inner workings of the Democratic party but go ahead to debt and then we can go
00:26:15
yeah and then that's a good segue. I was just going to point out, you know, we've we've added about $2 trillion in debt
00:26:20
over the last uh well, nine years now under Trump, one uh 45 46 Biden and now
00:26:27
again with Trump, we just hit 38 trillion. So, it seems like we're adding 2 trillion a year. What's your take on
00:26:34
the sustainability of this? First of all, the the debt path we're on is not sustainable. And that's one area
00:26:39
where you're right, neither party has covered themselves in glory. And it's an area where I would part with some in my
00:26:46
own party. I think for too long you've heard the message from
00:26:51
Democrats is basically debt doesn't matter like or there's no such thing. And there was a moment when this felt a
00:26:57
little more credible. Some of the evidence at as of a few years ago uh put a lot of wind in the sales of what was
00:27:03
called modern monetary theory. Uh I think a lot of that looks different now. It looks different. And then you had the
00:27:09
And then you had the Republicans, right, who say that debt matters but then uh act the exact opposite. Now, look, as as
00:27:16
a good Democrat, I could point out that I would argue there's a difference in terms of what history empirically has
00:27:22
shown us in terms of the return on investment you get when you raise debt to fix roads and bridges and other
00:27:28
productive infrastructure versus if you blow up the debt in order to give massive tax breaks to the wealthiest
00:27:35
people in the country. because that has just never generated the growth that you know I mean the laugher curve has
00:27:41
collapsed empirically and it just doesn't work that way right so I could quibble over if you're going to do debt what's the best thing to do with it and
00:27:47
I would argue the best thing to do with it is education healthcare investing it make sure kids don't get lead poisoned
00:27:53
investing it in ports and roads and not investing it in uh uh you know in tax
00:27:59
cuts for extremely wealthy people who who didn't need them and in some cases weren't really asking for it and were perfectly productive in fact history
00:28:05
would say more productive at times in history when they were paying more taxes in the US. But leaving that partisan
00:28:11
fight aside, I do want to come back and agree with you again that that where we are right now is not sustainable. That
00:28:18
contrary to what some on the left would say, there is such a thing as the debt. It does matter and we need to make sure
00:28:24
that what we're doing going forward is more consistent with with some basic
00:28:29
fiscal responsibility. What is the fiscal responsibility? I mean, I hear all these, you know, political speak over and over again from
00:28:36
you guys, but I never hear anybody say, "You know what? We got to tighten our belts, folks. We're going to have to cut
00:28:41
unemployment. We have to cut these uh and we're going to have to raise taxes here. We have to make cuts here." I don't ever hear any of you come up with
00:28:47
like a plan that actually would pass mustard with any of us in the business community who have to run companies and
00:28:54
make sure they're solvent. This does not seem like you have a plan or anybody else has a plan. And it's is it because
00:29:00
it's so unpopular that you can't just say, "Hey, it's there's going to be some austerity here and it's going to be
00:29:06
painful and there's going to be more taxes and that's going to be painful and then you don't get elected." Is that the issue?
00:29:12
I literally did put out a plan which I balanced every single spending back when I was running for president in 2020,
00:29:18
which feels like another lifetime. Every single thing that I proposed spending on, uh, I also proposed to pay for and
00:29:24
explained what would have to happen tax-wise in order to do it. And again, that's just those are the habits that I built as a mayor who had to do my budget
00:29:31
in cash. So, look, it's not like it's a completely unsolvable problem. There are measures that we got to take to reduce
00:29:38
things like the cost of providing healthcare, which is one of the biggest uh uh sources of pressure on uh
00:29:43
Medicare, Medicaid, you name it. Not just getting people insured, but the actual underlying cost. Same with
00:29:49
pharmaceuticals. And then there are things you got to do on the revenue side. Like I'm I'm sorry, but like we can't just slash a trillion bucks from
00:29:56
from what the wealthiest people are paying again and again and then call this a sustainable budget. The trillion dollars of cuts. What is
00:30:02
that specifically that's being cut? Oh, you mean the on the on the tax side? Yeah. Well, start with OBBA, right? Uh and
00:30:09
then TCGAA, too. Like we know that the vast majority of the benefits of those tax cuts went to the wealthiest. Uh, we
00:30:16
could say the same about the broader pattern of cutting taxes going back to I mean I guess if you look back over the
00:30:22
50 years. I mean why do you think that the American entrepreneurial class was more productive in terms of annual
00:30:27
productivity growth back when taxes were higher? How do you measure that? Well, I don't know. Productivity growth
00:30:33
and income taxes. I mean those are two pretty simple measures you could use. And as I'm sure you know
00:30:38
which era well look at the 70s and 80s, right? 60s7s 80s. look at GDP growth, productivity growth, and tax rates. I
00:30:45
I'm sure you're aware that those growth rates were higher and the tax rates were higher, too. I'm not saying there's no
00:30:51
correlation where like if you overt tax, you'll eventually get less productivity, but you know, if you look at where we
00:30:57
are in the spectrum between too far this way and too far that way, it's not like we're doing this in a vacto data. But I just want to make
00:31:04
sure. You think the BBB was a giveaway to rich folks? Like no taxes on tips, extending the Trump tax cuts that
00:31:10
disproportionately affected middle-income folks. Those are those are giveaways to rich people.
00:31:15
Do I think the majority of the OBBA tax cuts went to rich people? Yes.
00:31:21
And how do you define majority? Like dollar tonnage of depreciation or actual dollars in pockets of humans?
00:31:28
I mean, either way you look at it, right? It's important how you look at it because it's actually if you're low income uh dollars
00:31:34
in your pockets is going down when you account for what they've done with the subsidies. I mean remember this is I
00:31:41
don't care how subsidies which subsidies can you name me a measure can you name a measure by which
00:31:46
I'm ask I'm asking you I'm asking the politician I don't know yeah I don't have a line item breakdown in front of me what I'm telling you is
00:31:52
that it is not terribly contested like if anybody listening to this podcast
00:31:58
feels like opening up a window and looking it up for themselves uh just to figure out which one of us is right it's
00:32:04
not terribly contested that the majority of the benefit of TCGA and OB OBBA went
00:32:09
to wealthy people and it's definitely not contested or I would say generally not contested that OBBA represents one
00:32:15
of the largest transfers of wealth from lower income people to upper income
00:32:20
people in global history. How do you measure that? You can measure it in terms of wealth before and after. You can measure it in
00:32:27
terms of the incidence of the different forms of taxation. You can measure it in a total package that accounts for subsidy as well as as benefit. I mean
00:32:35
any number of ways. But again, if you measure it a different way, I'd love to hear it because I don't I don't regard
00:32:40
this as something that's deeply contested, but it sounds like you have a measurement in mind that's different, and I'd love to run with it and look it
00:32:46
up so I can see where you're coming from. And we definitely cut corporate taxes and personal taxes because of TCJ. Yeah.
00:32:53
Right. I mean, that was And to be clear again, because the LER curve turns out to be we did
00:32:58
not just grow our way out of the deficits that created. Right. Let me ask you a question about the inner workings of the Democratic party.
00:33:04
I'm sure you've been asked this a hundred times, so sorry for us being the 101st, but in Kla Harris's memoir, she
00:33:10
points in part to your identity as a reason why you weren't considered as her
00:33:16
running mate. Can you explain to us the role of identity in Democratic politics?
00:33:22
Both perhaps you on the way in when you were nominated for secretary and then
00:33:29
maybe on the way out when you were not considered as a credible VP candidate. Let's just say I would love for identity
00:33:36
to play a less central role uh in the politics of our country and and the politics of my party and and not just
00:33:42
because I might have been passed over for uh for an opportunity, but just because I think it is it has really
00:33:48
dominated so many people's thinking in a way that makes it harder for us to build a message across identities. I mean,
00:33:54
don't get me wrong, I I don't think it I don't think it makes sense to pretend that identity doesn't matter. I don't think it makes sense to pretend to be
00:34:00
colorblind. I also don't think it makes sense to allow that to explain everything, which is one of the habits
00:34:06
that's formed, I think definitely on my party's far left, that that made it harder for us to get through, especially
00:34:13
when you have a lot of people whose interests are shared. I'm thinking about the economic interest of poor people and
00:34:18
low-wealth people in this country, for example, who are black, white, and of of every ethnicity and identity and gender,
00:34:25
of course, who maybe didn't hear a unifying message that was speaking to them as a group because it felt like my
00:34:30
party was it was like a salad bar, like here's something for your group and here's something for another group and here's something for another group and
00:34:37
it didn't add up into a story. Now, I would argue that Trump practices a kind
00:34:42
of identity politics, too. a sort of a white identity politics that uh makes people feel like they are encircled by
00:34:48
the other that that that immigrants are sort of an invasion. I mean, we can go down that road and I often have, but uh
00:34:54
the more straightforward way to answer your question about my party is that I think identity has become too central to
00:35:00
how my party thinks. How have they reacted? You know, you you took a pretty firm line on Israel Gaza.
00:35:07
You took a pretty firm line on transgender folks in sports. tell us
00:35:13
about the dynamics of taking those positions inside the Democratic party. Famously, our party has a lot of
00:35:20
different voices within it. And so, you know, some folks uh if you are not saying the leftmost thing, uh they're
00:35:26
just done with you. But I think a lot of others believe in the idea of politics
00:35:32
as as building a coalition and and pulling people into a bigger picture. and and I'm going to say some things that uh you know won't be in conformity
00:35:39
with what every activist group in my party wants to hear. That's okay. That's
00:35:45
that's part of it. How do you navigate the the necessary extremism maybe that's required then to
00:35:50
get out of a primary process? Well, this is the classic issue with going from primaries to generals, right?
00:35:55
you you are pressured to say one thing to appeal to the base in your party and
00:36:00
then you wind up if if you're not careful saying things that make it hard for you to have credibility in a general
00:36:07
election when you're trying to uh paint a picture that the broadest number of people possible can can see themselves
00:36:12
in. That's nothing new. But one thing that has happened more and more and more
00:36:18
is that that's happening in more and more races. So the presidency is always a little bit like this, but the presidency is also the one that gets
00:36:23
painted in the broadest strokes because it's it's a campaign for the whole country and it's all the different
00:36:29
jostling around all the issues and all the groups all boiled down into two people running for one office. But where
00:36:34
I think this actually hurts us the most is in Congress. So we got 435 seats in
00:36:40
the House. Last time I checked, less than one out of 10 of them is considered to be seriously competitive at best.
00:36:47
like less than 40 are actually competitive, which means in nine out of 10 races, the primary is pretty much it.
00:36:53
So, you never even have to bother thinking about whether some stance you took in the primary is going to make it
00:37:00
harder for you to work across the aisle or or harder to win people over or bring them together in the general because
00:37:05
these districts are so gerrymandered, right, that uh that all you have to worry about is your right flank if
00:37:11
you're a Republican uh or your left flank if you're a Democrat. That's where I think it hurts us the most. the Democratic Party. Really two parties
00:37:17
right now. The classic Democratic Party, I'll call it the Clinton Obama party, you know, hey, we're socially liberal,
00:37:23
but we're not like absolutely crazy and insane. We we don't necessarily uh need
00:37:31
to advocate to have trans kids get surgeries and uh when they're 12 years
00:37:36
old and 14 years old and all the stuff that's now become, you know, illegal in most modern countries. Is it two parties
00:37:42
now? is I'm watching Manny and like that group go, "Hey, ban the billionaires,
00:37:48
more taxes and socialism, and here's all the handouts. We're going for it." And
00:37:53
then there's guys like you and you know the I would say the the more Clinton era, Obama era kind of moderate
00:38:01
Democrats now is is kind of how I'd frame it. And then can those two ever
00:38:06
coexist in the same party? I think both parties have their contradictions and that's definitely true for my party. Uh, I mean the way I
00:38:12
view it is one of the biggest problems we have as a society is this level of inequality we've hit that like
00:38:19
historically there's no evidence that any republic can reach this level of equality to hold on to it and continue
00:38:25
to be a republic. And so the question is what do you do about it? And you've got obviously a socialist left that says the
00:38:31
answer is socialism. Uh you've got uh Republicans who tend to say this is not
00:38:36
a problem at all. And then you got where I think of as the center or at least what I would like to be the center of my party, which is saying, "Yeah, we've got
00:38:43
to do things. We got to lean in. We got to use uh the tools of the state, not in a socialist way, but uh in a way to try
00:38:49
to have things be more balanced in this country." Um is there a contest between
00:38:54
kind of the center left and the far left or however you want to characterize it? Sure. But then, you know, I mean,
00:39:00
today's Republican party is a coalition of normal Chamber of Commerce business Republicans, more of the kind of tech
00:39:07
Republicans who to me are more libertarian, even though it puzzles me that they're for uh such uh dramatic
00:39:12
government control over society right now and Trump. But whatever. My point is you have you have normal business Republicans, you have technibertarians,
00:39:20
you've got economic populists, right, who's who who are in many ways to the left of even even left of center in some
00:39:27
weird ways on on trade and some uh issues like that. And then you got white nationalists, right? And I don't know
00:39:33
that they can coexist for long if they're not held together by the awe of
00:39:39
or fear of, you know, the personality of Donald Trump. Uh and you know people keep imagining maybe what if we had a
00:39:46
third party and you know I look at other countries that have it's not it's not unusual in a lot of other modern
00:39:51
countries to have four five six seven parties. In some ways it feels on its face like that would make more sense in
00:39:57
the US but I I think the reality in practice is anytime somebody tries to go off and start a third party it just it
00:40:03
just winds up screwing it up for one of the other two and we're right back where it started. Pete, do you think that Donald Trump made the right decision to
00:40:11
close the border? And if not, why not? I think that he is right to draw attention to the problem of the border
00:40:17
and that it is uh it is important to have a secure border. I don't believe it was true that it was exactly open
00:40:24
before. Uh I think it is functionally closed now, but I I would agree that the last administration uh didn't do enough
00:40:30
and didn't do enough early enough. Yeah. Yeah. And why do you think Biden looked the
00:40:35
other way? What was the strategy? Was there a strategy? Yeah, I think what happened was he was really looking to Congress to do it. He
00:40:41
came out of Congress. He was a creature of Congress and thought, you know, Congress can forge a bipartisan since, you know, there's actually a bipartisan
00:40:47
agreement among the American people on what to do, right? Which is what most people believe, what I believe, which is
00:40:53
let's make it harder to come in illegally and easier to come in legally and and to get legal if you're not. I
00:40:59
mean, that's where most people are most country. Yeah. And that's where most of the space for compromise has been on the hill. And
00:41:05
yet, you know, I think it was the '8s last time we had an actual bill to fix it. So, I think he, and this is
00:41:10
speculating, I I never really, you know, was in the middle of the immigration side of things, but I think he felt like
00:41:17
the way to do this was to get things done in Congress, he he felt that, you know, he'd managed to get the infrastructure bill done, IRA. Um but
00:41:24
what's interesting is when he finally gave up on Congress uh when it was clear that we just weren't going to get very
00:41:30
far and meanwhile you had had that that exe set of executive orders that came late in the term that had a major effect
00:41:37
on the number of illegal crossings. So you got to ask yourself if that executive order that happened toward the end if that had been done in year 1,
00:41:43
year two, would we be in a different place? Now of course we're on the other extreme. I mean, we got we got citizens
00:41:50
who just have an accent or look brown getting picked up sometimes getting detained without access to a lawyer for
00:41:56
a frighteningly long amount of time. And that's citizens, let alone other people who, you know, maybe they shouldn't be
00:42:02
here, but they also shouldn't be brutalized, right? And I think one reason you see the pendulum swinging on
00:42:08
on this is is we're seeing just how extreme it's gotten at a time when again I think the only way forward really is a
00:42:15
kind of a grand bargain where we bring together the the the the people who believe in these simple realities that
00:42:20
we've got an economy and a society that exerts a pull that actually needs more
00:42:26
people like for our demographics and our economy to work then there is room in the kind of legal pipeline to come in.
00:42:32
Just to clean this up, Pete, like if you if it were up to you, would you reopen the border or would you maintain the
00:42:37
Donald Trump position right now of okay, now it's closed, now let's figure out this grand bargain, as you say, keep
00:42:43
more precise by what we mean. I mean, if you mean like having it be difficult, at least as difficult as it is now, to cross illegally. I think that's it's a
00:42:50
good thing for it to be difficult to cross illegally. Um, but again, I think calling it open then or closed now,
00:42:56
you're talking about a lot of different overlapping things. Obviously, there are a lot of things about Trump's immigration policy I think are wrong,
00:43:01
destructive, possibly illegal, too. I mean, if everybody has consensus that the border should be closed and it
00:43:07
should be orderly and legal, uh, you know, great. It's 80% of the country. Um, and then the majority of the country
00:43:13
doesn't like what we're seeing with ICE agents without badges wearing masks. That's the majority of the country is uncomfortable with this. A large
00:43:19
percentage of the moderates who voted for Trump, at least this is what the surveys are saying, people are not comfortable with this. So, I'm curious
00:43:26
about what you think the motivation is, and you can go into conspiracy corner if
00:43:31
you want. It's allowed here on this program. We can speculate, but the conspiracy corner for Biden was he
00:43:38
wanted to let a lot more people in in order to build the Democratic base in order to get voters. Okay, that's one
00:43:44
theory. Now, the theory here is Trump is doing these violent deportations,
00:43:51
tackling people, spending a lot of money while doing it. Um, why why is Trump
00:43:56
doing it this way? Why does Pete think he's doing it this way? I I I think he thrives on a politics of
00:44:03
fear. I think chaos is good for him. I think he thrives on chaos. Uh I think when you see images of uh people getting
00:44:11
beaten up or you know what what he used to call American carnage like anything that validates that basically the worse
00:44:18
it it's a weird thing but the worse it feels to be in this country the better off Donald Trump is whether he's running
00:44:24
for president or whether he is president and sending troops marching into the streets. Can I just say as the only
00:44:30
immigrant right now on this podcast who immigrated here legally, I feel much safer and better under a Donald Trump
00:44:37
presidency than I ever did under a Biden presidency. Just want you to hear from my mouth for what that's worth.
00:44:43
Do you feel safer about the fact that a Latino doctor crossing the street in Washington DC uh is getting hassled or
00:44:50
harassed because they're brown? I don't think that I've heard that. Now, okay. So, you're not aware of any case in which a US citizen who is like but
00:44:58
you're No, but but I will tell you, for example, after 911, you wait. You're on a podcast commenting about immigration. You have some level
00:45:05
of awareness. Let me let me tell you after 9/11, for example, for years, I had SSS on my boarding passes
00:45:11
and I was pulled over constantly and people probably thought that I was a Muslim hijacker.
00:45:16
So, I know what it feels like to be harassed. And what I'm telling you categorically is I feel safer in this presidency than I have ever felt. And
00:45:23
I'm just letting you know that. This is just my lived experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm glad you feel safer. I'm worried
00:45:29
about how most Americans feel. Well, I mean, I think we're all aware that people are being picked up and
00:45:35
they're being racially profiled and their Fourth Amendment rights are being suspended here. And
00:45:40
let me put it a different way. Has it crossed your mind that if right now they started by going for people who are
00:45:46
illegal and then they've started roughing up people who are citizens but who are speaking up against the
00:45:51
administration that even if you feel safe now in a country where that sort of thing can be done where people can you
00:45:58
know where even comedians could lose their jobs for criticizing the government. Does any part of me wonder
00:46:03
if that might ever come for you Pete? It did come for me. Here's what I'm trying to tell you. after the Patriot Act passed after 9/11, I had to
00:46:11
come to terms with the fact that even as a legal immigrant into the United States
00:46:17
that I was going to get extra searches, I was going to get stopped. And it
00:46:22
happened for six years. I came to terms with it. I put my head down and I kept
00:46:27
working. But that didn't mean it was okay, right? It was a law that was passed and people
00:46:34
felt for whatever reason that there was an amount of racial profiling that could happen then. And what I'm telling you is
00:46:40
every immigrant class at some point has felt this. My point is it made things
00:46:45
safer in the aggregate. And what I'm telling you now is what is happening now
00:46:51
makes cities safer. It makes places safer. If you go to Washington DC, it is the safest it's ever been. And you hear
00:46:58
this consistently from many many brown and black people. I guess what I'm telling you is if you
00:47:03
take the amount of money that it costs to do a full-scale military deployment in American city and you just used it on
00:47:11
uh you know improving funding for the police and mental health and a whole lot of other things, you probably get a pretty good result that way too. But I
00:47:17
know there are a lot of people and I I I have heard you know personal direct examples of people who are in some cases
00:47:24
US citizens or in other cases here illegally who no longer think it's even okay to go outside who ask people to run
00:47:31
errands for them because of the atmosphere that has been created in Washington DC. So it's definitely not safer for them.
00:47:38
Let me ask you a different question which is I really want to get some insight into what it was like for you to
00:47:43
work in the Biden administration. We've had the sea of tell alls coming out, Kla Harris's book, KJP's book. We had Joe
00:47:50
Mansion on last week and one of the things that he said is that it was not that Joe Biden changed, but
00:47:57
that the staff were nuts and that Ron Clay was effectively a gatekeeper and if
00:48:04
you had reasonable proposals, they would go into some black hole and die. Can you give us a sense of what it was
00:48:11
like to work under Biden and the the positives but also the negatives? Give
00:48:16
us a fair representation. Yeah. And and in the spirit of fairness, I should say this is the only time I've outside of military, it's the only time
00:48:22
I've ever worked in the federal government. So I can't benchmark, you know, to compare one white house to another or one president to another. But
00:48:29
I'll tell you what my experience was like. There's a high level of ambition trying to get big things done quickly,
00:48:35
especially in the first two years when there was uh felt like there was that opportunity to uh work with both houses
00:48:40
of Congress to make it happen, including just a ton of energy going into well among other things spending time with
00:48:47
folks like Joe Mansion trying to make sure that that we held together that that coalition to do things like the
00:48:53
infrastructure law. Um there were calls I agree with, there were calls I disagreed with. Um, there were also a
00:48:59
lot of times when it looked like something wasn't going to happen and then somehow it happened. And that was
00:49:04
where I I do think it helped to have a president who spent as much time as he did in the Senate because, you know, it
00:49:10
really felt like the infrastructure bill was dead. We forget this now cuz cuz it happened and it's kind of hard to imagine it was any other way, but you
00:49:17
know, it was proclaimed dead many, many times in that summer of 2021 before it got done. So these moments of snatching
00:49:24
uh uh victory from the jaws of defeat, you know, the word gatekeeper gets used
00:49:31
a lot for White House staff. I don't think that's unfair. I would also say though that I don't say that's new. Um
00:49:36
you know, the gatekeeper is often the the kind of other word you use for a chief of staff. Was he into cognitive decline or when
00:49:43
did you first realize he was in cognitive decline, I guess, would be the better question, or suspect that he wasn't,
00:49:49
you know, up for the job. You could feel that he was growing older. I mean, I think we all saw that. Uh, I think my experience and obviously,
00:49:56
you know, I wasn't at the White House every day. Most of the time I was I was out in the field doing transportation work. But, uh, you know, what I would
00:50:03
see if I was at an event was the same as what you'd see, you know, watching TV. Um, I think the debate was a real
00:50:09
turning point. Yeah. I mean, the debate was a turning point, right, where you just saw I think everybody saw what everybody saw. On the
00:50:17
other hand, you know, when we were something like that happen, h how does somebody who is so in cognitive decline
00:50:23
get put up into that situation because it's clear that they knew many months before that this was not going to end
00:50:30
well. How did they get to that point? How insular were they? And then I want to talk about the uh selection of Kamla
00:50:37
without having a primary. So yeah. Yeah. I think the short answer is there there's not really a they that makes
00:50:43
that decision, right? people give advice, but there's a he like one person decides if he's running again. One
00:50:48
person decides at the end of the day on the campaign strategy and is accountable for that. Uh so, you know, I think I I
00:50:55
can't imagine what exactly was going on in the inner circle. I wasn't I wasn't part of those conversations, but um
00:51:01
yeah, I I do think that, you know, by the time it got to that debate, uh it was just very clear that it wasn't
00:51:06
serving him well, wasn't serving the party well. Okay. So now you don't want to go to that point. But but just as the last
00:51:12
thing about the speedrun, there was no primary. Yeah. And you know, we were speculating on
00:51:17
podcast like why not run a speedrun? Just have the six or seven candidates, including yourself, just do three weeks.
00:51:23
This would be like blockbuster television. Were you in favor of the speedrun or not? Was there discussion of
00:51:28
that? We're hearing that Obama and maybe some other people wanted to have a quick primary. And what do you think the
00:51:34
outcome would have been? Would you have had a shot at uh winning? Yeah, there's there's a lot of chatter of that. Um,
00:51:41
and I think in hindsight, we we've obviously got to ask since the outcome of what did happen was not good. I think
00:51:47
anyone serious in our party has to say, okay, what if we'd done that? And you could argue that it would would have led to I don't know, but you could argue it
00:51:53
would have led to a different nominee. You could also argue it would have led to the same nominee, but that she would have been stronger, right? I mean, if if
00:51:59
she had become the nominee by prevailing over another half dozen people who wanted a shot, presumably that kind of
00:52:05
sharpening that that happens uh would have served her well in the general. And and let's remember that that's actually
00:52:10
more normal, right? Like most countries don't drag out their their presidential
00:52:16
process for more than a few weeks. Let's move to a different more tactical question. This is my last question for
00:52:21
you, Pete, which is there's some discussion about moving NASA under the Department of Transportation.
00:52:28
Good idea, bad idea. Give us your reasoning. Well, let me think of it. To be honest, I haven't like deeply reflected on this.
00:52:35
Um, at a selfish and nerdy level, it would have been amazing as Secretary of Transportation to be working NASA, too.
00:52:43
Um, I think generally anytime you can have like one uh box or on an org chart where you
00:52:50
where there's two, you know, as long as it's justified, I think there are some benefits to that. I mean, definitely
00:52:55
right now the way that it let me put it this way. If we think the future of space is going to be more and more about commercial space, which is is clearly
00:53:02
just as a matter of numbers what's happening. The mishmash we have now where you got NASA obviously leading
00:53:09
government-driven space missions. You got the Department of Transportation which actually already had responsibility over some things and we
00:53:14
did commercial space licensing. We wound up having to radically accelerate how that worked. Uh because that actually
00:53:20
comes under the FAA um largely because you have to go through the national airspace to get to space, right? And
00:53:27
there's actually parts of it that sit with commerce. So it would make sense to disentangle that one way or the other,
00:53:32
whether it's inside of DOT or whether you configure it a new way. I mean, I do think that Washington in general, my
00:53:39
part is definitely guilty of this, is too attached to all of the like structures that we have right now and the existing or charts and existing
00:53:46
habits. And you know, one message I'm trying to get my party to accept is, you know, if and when we get another chance,
00:53:51
a lot of the things that he has burned down just aren't coming back the way they were, why would we put them back
00:53:56
the way they used to be if it was full of problems anyway? So, I don't have a really deeply considered answer for you, but I wouldn't be hostile to a change
00:54:04
just because it's a change or just because it came from this administration. This is my last question. There was a report that came out today. I think the
00:54:11
amount of miles driven per day by Whimo is about to pass 250,000.
00:54:16
We have Tesla with cyber cab and robo taxi. These things have a material
00:54:22
ability to prevent drunk driving and prevent vehicular deaths.
00:54:29
What do you think should be done? Should we let this play out at this exact pace? Is there a responsibility in from the
00:54:35
federal government? Do you wish you had done more to accelerate this? Tell us about autonomous driving and its role in
00:54:40
society. So, I I think that there's the potential to save a huge number of lives. You
00:54:46
know, we talked earlier about the incredible standard of aviation safety, right? Zero fatalities per billion better. It's the opposite on roadway
00:54:53
safety. Nobody talks about it. I we had a plug door blow out of an airplane and we we reconsidered our whole oversight
00:54:58
framework because somebody could have gotten hurt that day. Meanwhile, every day 100 to 150 people die on our
00:55:06
roadways to car crashes and vehicles driven by humans. I mean, it's enough to
00:55:12
fill a 737 every day. It's on par with gun violence. 30 40,000 people a year.
00:55:17
So, human drivers have a murderous track record. It's a little bit different when we talk about professional drivers who
00:55:24
have incredible I mean I met truck drivers who'd have, you know, two million miles with no uh crashes or
00:55:29
accidents. But just as a general rule, most of us the average driver thinks they're safer than the average driver.
00:55:35
And the average driver stands a shockingly high percentage chance of getting somebody killed. So, you know, I
00:55:41
think we're at the point where at least some of these technologies right now already are safer than human beings and
00:55:48
that's only going to increase and improve. And the the irony of it is, you
00:55:53
know, even if a handful of highly publicized uh negative incidents will
00:55:58
will really change public acceptance. So my approach was and they have. Yeah. Yeah. So my approach was we we do need
00:56:04
to be conservative as a safety regular to make sure it's safe. Not because I don't believe in the technology, but because I do because I think if people
00:56:10
see it unfolding safely, uh there's going to be more acceptance. But are there things we could or should do or
00:56:16
could or should have done to accelerate AV adoption? Um, I think the answer is
00:56:22
yes. Like the the simple reality is we we can't tolerate like it's no big deal
00:56:27
human drivers killing more than 100 people a day on our roads. This is a perfect segue for my final question. We've had a grand debate occurring in
00:56:34
our industry about job displacement. Uh Amazon announced yesterday, I'm sure you saw 30,000 white collar jobs to be
00:56:41
eliminated. UPS today something around 40,000 people and there was a leak in the New York
00:56:48
Times that Amazon was planning on eliminating
00:56:53
600,000 job wrecks for the future and not hiring them because they're so convinced that robotics will do that. We
00:57:00
all know AI is going to be the biggest change of our lifetime. I don't think that's the debate. The question is um
00:57:05
what will job displacement and new job creation look like this time? What does Pete Buddhajed think? Do you think that
00:57:12
we have a serious issue on our hands or do you think we'll be able to navigate it? And then what's the government's role in it
00:57:18
when you're president? What will it look like if you inherit this chaotic AI job
00:57:25
displacement potential? Yeah, I'm I'm seriously concerned about it and and part of that's from growing
00:57:30
up in the industrial Midwest. Like, you know, we were told I grew up in Northern Indiana, uh, a lot of auto industry
00:57:37
supply chain companies there. And in the 90s and 2000s, a lot of trade and automation, but the truth is mostly
00:57:44
automation came in. And uh everybody was told, you know, don't worry too much
00:57:50
about what you're doing today. The pie is going to get so much bigger that everybody will be better off. And the thing is, the pie did get bigger, but
00:57:57
the rest of that promise didn't come true. And people were pissed. People were pissed because they lost their
00:58:02
income, but also even after they got their income, if if they went through a training program and got another job in
00:58:08
a field that was growing, but it wasn't who they thought they were, it wasn't connected to their their sense of
00:58:14
identity or belonging, then you continue to have a displacement that's not just economic, but but but really deeper than
00:58:20
that. And I actually think a lot of that kind of leads directly to the populism and the nationalism that you see in this
00:58:26
administration and this in this political moment. So uh and the thing that really haunts me is you know as
00:58:34
much as any auto worker or electrical worker I know like their sense of
00:58:39
belonging and identity you know very much depends in many ways on being an autoworker or an electrical worker.
00:58:44
That's even more true for most white collar workers. I know people who work in law or or software or you know um uh
00:58:53
you know you see what's happening in radiology just to take one example what's happening in medicine that's really changing because of AI and the
00:59:00
the displacement that could come with that I think is enormous and I don't think we're prepared. Yeah. I don't know
00:59:06
you know I don't want to get into prediction games about which things will happen in which order but I think it's clear that it's big. It's clear that
00:59:13
it's fast. It's coming. It's accelerating. And my big worry is that
00:59:18
if we're already at a level of concentration of wealth and power that no republic has ever survived, is this
00:59:25
going to be a development that just makes wealth and power even more
00:59:30
concentrated in even fewer hands? I don't think it has to be. I think that's where, you know, good policy can make a
00:59:36
difference. But I think if we just sleepwalk into it, that could happen. It could be even more dabiliz. The thing that you just said is
00:59:42
the key. It doesn't have to be. It requires very smart, thoughtful legislation. I think that we had
00:59:49
some really idiotic legislation under Biden that President Trump and David Saxs have largely unwound these
00:59:55
diffusion rules, the gatekeeping, all of those things, Pete, would have seen us lose to China. Just to be very clear, as
01:00:01
a technologist who's in the middle of it, who is investing and building, what I'm telling you is those historic
01:00:07
rules were terrible and dumb. and they had one or two companies who would have
01:00:13
basically had all the spoils and the rest of us would have been standing on the outside looking in. That's no longer
01:00:18
the case. We can run the race now. But I think what you said there is very critical. It doesn't have to be a winner
01:00:24
take all or winner take most outcome. Well, and to me that's, you know, that's not just a question of tech policy. Like that's a question of
01:00:30
Well, this is by way and this is, by the way, I just want to be clear. The reason why it was likely under Biden is because
01:00:36
it was so difficult to actually talk to him. he wouldn't talk to anybody. The difference with Trump, just so it's
01:00:42
clear, is that he'll talk to everybody. He'll make his own decision, but he gets the broad tapestry of everybody's
01:00:48
feedback. The danger of that Biden approach is that when one or two people are allowed in and everybody else is
01:00:54
shut out, and you can't even find a way of just proposing ideas or explaining how it's going to be, you get things
01:00:59
like the Biden diffusion rule. So, just as something to think about, I think being open and being available to people
01:01:05
is a really good way of running the country. That's one thing I definitely believe in. If you win, Pete, you going to forget us
01:01:11
and not come back on the pod and you won't invite us to the White House or if you win, can we still can I get an invite to the White House?
01:01:16
I would love for this not to be our last conversation. Our friends at Poly Market, I'm sure you know uh all about these uh prediction
01:01:24
markets and how good they are. Looks like Gavin AOC oddly in second place and
01:01:31
then yourself in third place right now. Gavin obviously is running up the hill. Who knows if he takes the arrows first,
01:01:37
but it looks like you're in a pretty good position here. What are your thoughts here on the early um indicators
01:01:44
of who's connecting with the sharps over at Poly Market? Well, you guys don't strike me as folks
01:01:50
who'd be content with a 6% return, but got to get those numbers up, Pete.
01:01:57
Maybe a day, Pete. Maybe a day. Well, I mean, what do you think about Gavin coming out just strongly and
01:02:03
saying, "Hey, I'm running. Obviously, I'm running. He's he's been pretty clear about it. Do you think that's smart
01:02:08
savvy move or is that a crazy move three years? I don't know. I mean, you know, one interesting thing about what the current
01:02:14
president did is I if I remember right, he didn't even wait for the midterms uh in order to announce.
01:02:20
So, you know, it feels like the timelines keep shifting. I'll tell you like I'm in no hurry to be in the middle
01:02:25
of presidential politics. Obviously, it's something I care about. It's something I have done uh already once before in 2020, but you know, this year,
01:02:32
this is the first year in in about 15 that I haven't been uh in office or running for office, and I'm kind of
01:02:39
enjoying it. I mean, I'm I'm working hard supporting candidates I believe in. We have a a pack uh and and I travel a
01:02:45
lot and speak a lot, but uh you know, there there will be a time for those kinds of things, and I'm not uh uh I'm
01:02:51
not going to try to rush. You support mom Dami? Did you did you support him? Did you come out publicly for him or you have concerns? I'm not
01:02:56
getting directly involved in that race uh or endorsing or anything like that. You're gonna you're gonna dunk the
01:03:02
globalize the inifat bullet. I mean that is the craziest obviously that's that's
01:03:07
a that's a problem. Uh you know he's got a lot of he's got a lot of views that I mean it's no surprise or secret that he
01:03:13
is further left than I am in the Democratic coalition. That said, you know, uh I was a a 29year-old mayor
01:03:20
that a lot of people wrote off and and uh didn't take seriously uh and was able to get big things done. So, you know, I
01:03:26
expect that he's going to win. Socialist experiment in the what was at least before the greatest city in
01:03:32
America and one of the greatest cities in the world. Well, uh you know, the thing about winning is you get a chance to uh find
01:03:39
out very quickly uh how good your ideas are and whether they'll have the results you have in mind. And you know, that's something that I expect that he'll win
01:03:46
and then we'll all get to see. Yeah. I mean, it's it's going to be interesting to see when that 54% tax
01:03:51
hits like if people are like, you know what, Miami and Texas look pretty great. You know, maybe I'm going to bounce. All right, listen. Pea Judge, uh, thanks so
01:03:58
much for taking the time. We'll have you on again. Uh, great to talk with you and, uh, we appreciate you coming on the
01:04:03
program. We'll see you all next time. Byebye. Same here. Good day. Great job.
01:04:09
[Music] I'm going all in.
