In conversation with Mark Cuban

Speaker 1 All right, everybody, welcome to the number one podcast in the world. Here we are on the all-in podcast.

Speaker 1 We have a fifth bestie with us today, joining David Freeber, Chamoff Pai Hapatia, David Sachs, and myself is the one and the only Mark Tubin. How you doing, buddy?

Speaker 2 What's up, guys? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 Of course, of course.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I've been practicing my virtue signaling, so I'm ready.

Speaker 1 You're ready to go. All right, let's go.
I think we're going to have twice the virtue signaling as normal.

Speaker 1 Double the virtue signaling.

Speaker 2 I don't virtue signal.

Speaker 1 I'll say f ⁇ you to everybody.

Speaker 1 Let your winners ride.

Speaker 1 Rainman David Saxon.

Speaker 1 And that said, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you as I think.
Queen of Kinwa.

Speaker 1 You have gotten very vocal about politics. during this cycle.

Speaker 1 And you seem to be, I don't know if it's official, you know, speaking on behalf of the Kamala ticket. So why

Speaker 1 are you this active? What is the reason that you've decided to get this active during this election?

Speaker 2 Because I'm proud to be an American.

Speaker 2 That's exactly why. I mean, you know, we all make choices and think what's best for the country and show our patriotism in different ways.
And, you know, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican.

Speaker 2 I'm an independent through and through.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Like J.
Cal. He's an independent too.
There we go.

Speaker 1 Why is it that all the Democrats are afraid to call themselves Democrats?

Speaker 2 Well, look, I've said this many, many times. If it wasn't Donald Trump running, if it was a non-MAGA candidate, particularly if it was Joe Biden still, I'd vote Republican.

Speaker 2 I've voted Republican before.

Speaker 2 If it was a non-MAGA candidate versus Kamala Harris, it would be, you know, let's look at the policies, let's look at the character of the people involved, and let's make a decision.

Speaker 2 It's just Donald Trump is not a Republican. Republicans are Donald Trump.
You know, the Republican Party is now the family business for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And to me, I just think Kamala Harris is a better choice for the country.

Speaker 1 On a percentage basis, how often have you voted just to level set Democrat versus Republican, would you say, out of 10 elections?

Speaker 2 Presidential, probably. I voted for George W.
twice. Then I voted for

Speaker 2 Obama twice. And then I voted for Clinton and Biden.
But before that, I voted for Ross Perot Jr. My first vote was for a guy named something

Speaker 2 John Anderson. So, I mean, I literally worked on Ross Pro Jr.'s campaign way back when.

Speaker 1 Tell us about that. That's fascinating.
He got 19% of the vote as an independent candidate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was living out in LA and this was 92. And this is when computers were relatively new.

Speaker 2 I had sold my company and I was taking acting classes and just living by Manhattan Beach and just loving life.

Speaker 2 And, you know, being from Texas, I knew people there and they were like, look, we need somebody who understands PCs and computers and software. Can you help us? And I was like, definitely.

Speaker 2 um i mean i wasn't to the point where i was involved in his decisions but i actually had met him um

Speaker 2 my first company was a company called micro solutions where we did systems integrations local and wide area network i wrote software for you know single multi-user app wide area network apps and we literally helped perot systems um get into local and wide area networking and so you know one of my favorite stories from back then is you know i'm terrified i'm a 26 year old kid i'm in dallas i'm going into pro Systems.

Speaker 2 I get to meet Ross Perot Sr., the man, right? And I'm walking through him and he's got the original, the model for the

Speaker 2 original Magna Carta, one of like the 13 Magna Cartas, and he had the original model for the Iwo Jima statue, right, with the flag up and everything. And I'm just terrified.

Speaker 2 I'm going to trip and just wipe out American history. And I walk up to him and I said, Hi, Mr.
Cuban, Ross Perot.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 Reverse that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, I was so nervous.

Speaker 2 And he like made fun of it and, you know, got to be friends and did a lot of business, helped those guys a lot. I made them a lot of money.
They made me a lot of money.

Speaker 1 Did you have any more interactions with them when you were on the campaign? Did you get a sense of?

Speaker 2 No, I did not. No, I was just a little plebe just trying to do little plebey stuff in LA.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that you took acting classes. That's interesting.
Did you want to be an actor or before a businessman or what?

Speaker 2 Oh, no, no, no. This was after I sold Micro Solutions.

Speaker 2 I bought a lifetime pass in American Airlines, moved to LA, got a place right on Manhattan Beach, right on the beach, get two flight attendants as roommates. And I was just loving life.

Speaker 2 And I was like, how else can I meet women? I'm going to take acting classes.

Speaker 2 And it was like one of the best things I've, one of the best things I've ever done because, you know, being a business guy, it's always right brain, right brain, right brain.

Speaker 2 And acting is like, don't think just be, don't think just B, just let it go. So it was a totally different experience.

Speaker 2 And that's why you see me do all these cameos and stuff, because I like to do it, because it's the one place where you just have to completely let go, and it's a completely different approach to life.

Speaker 2 So, you know, little backstory.

Speaker 1 You got, yeah, you got a good character arc on Entourage. I think that was probably the best one.

Speaker 2 Seven episodes plus the movie, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 That was uh pretty memorable. So, uh, Sax, lead us off here.
I don't know if you've been following Mark Cuban on social media at all, or if you guys interact. I can't resist asking.
So,

Speaker 1 is your um, is your acting as a surrogate for Kamala? Is that acting too?

Speaker 1 Hey, oh,

Speaker 1 hey, wow.

Speaker 1 When they go lie, when they go love, we go high, loose.

Speaker 1 No, not at all.

Speaker 2 Obviously, I truly believe in it. And look, it's always relative.
It's always relative to the other candidate.

Speaker 2 And so, obviously, as you guys know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump. I gave him a shot eight years ago.
It didn't work out. Okay, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Could we get into this? Because you obviously have like a love-hate relationship with Trump going back 20-something years. So

Speaker 1 let's just go through

Speaker 1 the timeline here.

Speaker 2 first of all i don't hate the guy at all if he wasn't was running for president and we all got together and you know just shot the like we are now he's a blast he's fun to talk to you know he's got charisma he's got personality he's easy to like i mean you know he's used to schmoozing he's a he's one of the world's best schmoozers and so he's easy to get along with it's not personal but that doesn't mean like you guys with each other it doesn't mean you can't you know as different things happen over time you can't go back and forth and you know he did the same thing.

Speaker 2 So the whole history of it was back

Speaker 2 right when

Speaker 2 we went public at broadcast.com. No, right after we announced the sale in 2000,

Speaker 2 was it 2000? Yeah, after we announced the sale and January 2000, he threw a Super Bowl party at Mar-Lago. And one of my buddies

Speaker 2 who knew him invited me. And I was like, cool, I'll go.
Mar-a-Lago, I hadn't seen it, Donald Trump, maybe I'll meet him.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, you guys have seen Mar-a-Lago and the beautiful pools, beautiful view. There's a veranda up there.

Speaker 2 And he had like a bunch of hooters and what's the suntan lotion that always had girls, whatever.

Speaker 1 Tropicana?

Speaker 2 Tropicana? No,

Speaker 1 but you suntropic,

Speaker 2 one of those, right? And so they were all dressed in orange and they were walking around and it was just like a big deal. And it was funny as hell.
And so not that that's a bad thing.

Speaker 2 It was actually kind of entertaining. And

Speaker 2 so he comes up to me and I'm with the VP of Visa, my buddy, and Jerry Yang, I think it was. Maybe it wasn't Jerry, but

Speaker 2 co-founder of Yahoo. And he was like, hey, guys, nice to meet you.
And I'm like, hey, I'm Mark, Donald, da, da, da.

Speaker 2 And he just, you know, not to be mean, just in a flipping way, he was like, hey, someday you'll be able to sit up there with the rich people pointing to the veranda and walked away.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, okay, fine, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 and so um then um not long after that through my friend he got back in touch with me and you know this is the early days of the internet early 2000s and um it's still i guess too still 2000 and um i get an invitation to go to um his office in trump towers and i'm like this is cool of course and you know he wants to talk to me about business and i'm like you know what Donald, I'll help you all I can.

Speaker 2 He, you know, he's getting DonaldTrump.com and he wants to sell tchotchkes and merchandise i guess some things never change um and so you know so i'm in there trying to tell him about what you can and can't sell online and what works and that was all fine and good metavanka it was all really cool but the one thing that left with me if you've ever been or seen pictures of his office every inch of his office is covered with pictures of him

Speaker 2 every single inch of the office instead of like meeting celebrities right stuff like that yeah yeah or you know whatever um covers he was on and just whatever right and i I just remember walking through there and afterwards, you know, it was, it was a nice meeting and we had some follow-up calls and everything, but it never went anywhere in terms of the online stuff.

Speaker 2 But I just remember thinking to myself, if I ever become, you know, visible or famous, you know, to that level, don't let me get so caught up in just having pictures of myself.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I'd had conversations with my buddies about it, just like, you know, you guys would. And so then in 2004,

Speaker 2 I got a chance to do a show called The Benefactor. ABC called me and said, Okay, wait, let's show this.

Speaker 1 We have this. This was got tweeted.

Speaker 1 You did Oppo Research, Sax? You got Oppo Research?

Speaker 1 This is on Twitter.

Speaker 1 This is all on X.

Speaker 2 People try to put me on Twitter.

Speaker 2 So anyway, so when I got the gig,

Speaker 2 he was like, congratulations, good luck, and everything. I was like, thank you, and whatever.
And then when I got canceled, he sent me that letter basically saying, you suck. And so.

Speaker 1 Well, he was dancing on the grave of your show but so you're saying you didn't have beef with him before that letter no it was not a beef no yeah it was not a beef but it was just like that's what it was and so it was just like okay whatever and um okay but then when he ran in 2016 you were supportive can we show that let's show the

Speaker 2 okay okay so that's 2004 2007 um Eric reaches out to me and goes, hey, there's no hard feelings with my dad or anything. And I'm like, no, I don't care.

Speaker 2 He goes, we're working with these Russian MMA fighters, this guy named Fedor Emilienko, who was like one of the best ever at that point in time, and Josh Barrett.

Speaker 2 And kind of the irony of all this is we were competing with Dana, Dana White, and the UFC in some respects, because a lot of fighters felt like they weren't getting paid enough.

Speaker 2 There was no healthcare. There was no nothing, right? And so I had a TV network.

Speaker 2 We had started the first all-high definition TV network called HDNet back in 2000, back when TVs cost $20,000 and everybody thought we were idiots. But slowly but surely, it was taking off.

Speaker 2 And so they came to me and said, we'd like to put, we're partnering with these guys who are putting on this MMA fight with Fedor and Josh Barrett and some other folks.

Speaker 2 And we'd like to broadcast it on HDNet because we had a show called This Week in MMA. So we were promoting.
We had fights that we were already putting on every Friday night.

Speaker 2 So it actually was a good fit. So you'll see pictures of me sitting with them.
And actually, I couldn't find it. I was so pissed because I was going to f ⁇ with him some more.

Speaker 2 What he said in the end, you know, during the time we were sitting at that podium was everything Mark Cuban touches turns to gold. And so I was like, that would have been so great to have out there.

Speaker 2 And so, and anyway, so we're friends again. And so it's 2007 and we're friends and nothing happens between then until whenever he started going crazy on Twitter and

Speaker 2 all the Obama stuff and everything and the birth certificate and the

Speaker 2 birthday stuff. So he's on Twitter and and he started with me like saying that.
So let me just preface this by saying I golfed once in my life in 1989 and I hated it so bad.

Speaker 2 I was throwing clubs because I'm one of those really super competitive guys. I'm like, never again.
But I went and worked.

Speaker 2 I auctioned off myself to be a caddy at a golf tournament that he also was at. But he starts tweeting that I saw Mark Cuban and he swings like your girl and this and that.

Speaker 2 This swing is like your girl.

Speaker 2 Like, nobody saw me swing because I don't golf. And so I started back with him.
And so we went back and forth on Twitter for years, for years. And then he comes down the escalator in 2015.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, all right, this guy's got no chance to win.

Speaker 2 But I think it's great because I don't like traditional politicians.

Speaker 2 I'm not, you know, there's nothing about me that thinks that the way we do politics or the way the government is run is a good thing, not at all. I mean,

Speaker 2 my heart is libertarian, but I realize you can't, libertarians are not problem solvers or ideologues. You know, like you look at Rand Paul, everything's only one way.
He doesn't try to solve problems.

Speaker 2 So anyways, I digress. So he comes down the, I'm like, that's cool, right?

Speaker 2 He doesn't have a chance to win, but I'm like, he's the best thing to ever, you know, you know how, you know, I forget where I was, but I was like, he's the best thing that ever happened to politics.

Speaker 2 He's not a politician. He's not going to be a step forward candidate.
I may not agree with his positions, but. you know, just the fact that he's not a politician is a good thing.

Speaker 2 And so from there, he called me and we we talked a lot probably 10 to 15 times on the phone he would call me you know and he tweeted one time mark cuban would try to come i never had a number there was no way for me to call him right he would you know and you know the way he emails he refuses to send an email because he doesn't want any proof of anything he's done right and so

Speaker 2 you know he would write it up like you had one of those pictures so bring up the one on the cnn where he says what happened so right there CNN nasty, what happened? See, see what he does there?

Speaker 2 His email, he writes on a piece of paper and then someone scans it and and sends it as an image via email. And so what happened?

Speaker 1 So just so the audience can understand, so the email is from you to him saying, tell the boss, I said, congrats on his sweep.

Speaker 1 And then, and then his assistant printed it out and then wrote back to you.

Speaker 2 And like I said, this is one of many emails that we went back and forth on.

Speaker 1 But just to be, just as a weird point, he literally prints out his emails. writes on them, has them scanned in and sent as an image to you.

Speaker 1 Mark, wow, so are are you on cnn nasty whatever how did he send this to you he mailed this to you or what he mailed it an image he doesn't use email i mean the guy no no is this a different generation

Speaker 2 system prints it out he reads it hilarious he writes on it she scans it she scans the sends the image to me official the big question there be you can't just let that slide why do you think he does that is this a different generation no at least that's my interpretation no absolutely not nope i'm with mark he don't want paper trails anymore because he's doing so much shady stuff man I think you're reaching there.

Speaker 1 Obviously, there's a paper trail.

Speaker 1 If he writes, hold on. If he writes on a piece of paper, hold on.
If I write right now on a Post-it note, scan an email to you, there's a paper trail.

Speaker 2 No, no, you can't search for it, and it's not his. You know, yes, to your point.

Speaker 1 He's signed.

Speaker 2 I'm just telling you, he won't send emails at all.

Speaker 1 He doesn't want to send it. He just created an electronic record.
What's the difference?

Speaker 2 You have to ask him on that, but he's

Speaker 1 a generational thing. This is my interpretation.
I think it's a generational thing. So he has said it out loud, David.

Speaker 2 He has literally said it out loud that he doesn't want a paper trip. But anyway, so let's go back.
So, so now we're talking back and forth, and we're having legit conversations.

Speaker 2 I remember asking him, you know, you realize as president, you're going to have to make decisions where people can die. And he really wouldn't respond.
Yeah, I get it. I get it.

Speaker 2 I'm like, Donald, you don't have a ground game. What are you going to do? How are you going to get through this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got the evangelicals doing all that. I'm not worried about it.
I'm like, Donald, you know, and we would, I would bring up things about there was this one thing where

Speaker 2 the FBI used this device to break into an iPhone. And there was a big thing about, you know, privacy.
And I tried to engage him on a conversation on it.

Speaker 2 And it's just like, I don't know, you know, just didn't want to talk about that at all.

Speaker 2 And that would have, that would happen multiple times where I would try to engage in conversations about some type of policy. And there just, it never got anywhere.
And there was never a conversation.

Speaker 2 And I said to him, I'm saying, there's another email where I said, Donald, at some point, you have to learn these things. You literally have to learn these things in order to be president.

Speaker 2 And he didn't respond to that. And that's when I went on CNN and I said, basically, look, I like the guy, but he's not learning.
He doesn't make any effort to learn anything.

Speaker 2 And I think that carries on till this day because you can't look at things he says and say, that's really an in-depth response or that's a nuanced response. And so that's what I said on CNN.

Speaker 2 And that led to the image that you guys posted.

Speaker 1 So that was the falling out.

Speaker 2 That was the falling out. Yeah.
Or maybe. But it wasn't a complete falling out.
Just to finish this. You want me to continue? So it's not a complete falling out because after that, he gets elected.

Speaker 2 I sent him a congratulatory message and I say, congrats. You know,

Speaker 2 if I can ever help, I'm happy to. And so.
When they were starting to look at replacing the ACA, I was starting to get into healthcare and be excited about healthcare.

Speaker 2 And so they invited me to the White House and I spoke to Jared. I spoke to this woman named Brooke Rollins, I think her name is.

Speaker 2 And I spoke to a whole group of people. I went to CMS and I spoke to the head of the agency.

Speaker 2 I spoke to the head of CMS, all talking about this thing I've created called the 10 plan, which is a means tested ability to support anyways.

Speaker 2 And so they brought me back in. And then when the pandemic hit, I sent him some ideas on, you know, backstopping

Speaker 2 bank accounts and credit card accounts so everybody doesn't just default. And he had Mnushkin call me.

Speaker 2 And then when they had with the pandemic, he connected me with Peter Navarro and I worked with him and actually found a company here in actually outside of Fort Worth that I put together with them and I helped that company increase their output.

Speaker 2 And Peter Navarro worked with them closely and we, you know, really made a dent in all the PPE issues. And, you know, he invited me to the White House.

Speaker 2 And then I went to the White House one time, went into the Oval Office, and there's pictures of me talking. And again, I tried to explain the healthcare stuff.

Speaker 2 He just wasn't having any type of in-depth conversation. He wanted to tell me about how much money he saved on

Speaker 2 from Boeing, how many billions and this and that. And then it was a short conversation.
And then I was leaving. He goes, are you still on that show? And he goes, I'm like, yeah, Shark Tank.

Speaker 2 He goes, yeah, that's Baron's favorite show. And then as I'm leaving further, he goes, wait a minute, I really like that suit.
So, you know, and, you know, he's called me since,

Speaker 2 not since he left the White House, but in the, you know, later in his tenure at the White House and invited me to dinner.

Speaker 2 I mean, and so it's not like we left as foes, and it's not like I don't like him. I just don't think he's the best person to be president.
I don't think he was a good person.

Speaker 1 Let's just test that.

Speaker 1 How would you think about the four years that he was president in hindsight?

Speaker 1 What would you say was done well? What would you say was done poorly?

Speaker 1 Just those two things.

Speaker 2 I think the way he dealt with

Speaker 2 the Zeitgeist isn't the right word, just the vibe of the country was really, really, really bad.

Speaker 2 I think the hate that he conveyed, I think the fact that what he tweeted negatively, you know, so companies didn't know what was coming next. You know, he tweeted negatively about me.

Speaker 2 He tweeted negatively about other people. I thought that was a real bad thing.
When the BLM protests happened and turned into riots, when they went into Minnesota, he was like,

Speaker 2 when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Who the f ⁇ says that as a president? And so we had more people die during riots during his term than Biden by a long shot.

Speaker 2 And I think he misrepresented where he stood in terms of being anti-war. If you go back to 2019

Speaker 2 and look at the war in Yemen,

Speaker 2 there were hundreds, at least 100,000 people plus died. And there was a bipartisan resolution to say, we're not selling any more to the Saudis.
We're not selling any more weapons to the Saudis.

Speaker 2 And a bipartisan resolution, including Mark Meadows and Rand Paul and others, said, you know, passed it and it went to his desk.

Speaker 2 And he said, we're still going to sell these munitions and this, these weapons to Saudi Arabia, even though these people continue to die.

Speaker 2 So when we talk about, it's, you know, it's not all that much different than Ukraine in some respects, only Saudi Arabia got the Glen Gary leads and Ukraine got our old stuff and we replaced it.

Speaker 2 And so it's when he talked comes out now and says, look,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm against all wars. There were no wars.
That's bullshit, right? The mainstream media.

Speaker 1 Well, okay, so there's two things there. So just on the 2020 riots, I don't know how you blame Trump for the BLM riots of summer.
In fact, I don't blame him for the riots.

Speaker 2 What I said was how he dealt with it.

Speaker 1 I get, you don't like the mean tweets. I get, I totally get it.

Speaker 2 No, don't diminish it, David. Don't diminish it as just mean tweets.
People pay attention to what happens. And when you have people whose lives are...

Speaker 1 I think it's far worse to actually have riots going on in the streets. That's what needed to be controlled.
How many people?

Speaker 1 wanted to hold on he wanted to send in the national guard to minnesota it was actually waltz who rejected the national guard he had no problem and there were plenty of ties between hold on there were plenty of ties between democratic activists and the blm organizers of those riots time magazine did a nice story on that i'm not saying he's at fault that the riots happened i just i can't believe that you're using the the riots throughout the summer of 2020 as an argument against trump when it was the left no i think what he's saying is the leadership that he shows is of low moral character

Speaker 1 did he do anything right mark well wait i'm not done with the wrong stuff okay but wait there's more right okay let's just let's go back to the the foreign policy for a second uh-huh trump is correct that he did not start any new wars during his presidency you agree with that right

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 1 that no new wars started or he didn't start any um he didn't start any He was like the first president in 20 years not to start a new war.

Speaker 2 Well, he inherited some for sure.

Speaker 1 He inherited Syria and Afghanistan and he wanted to get out and the generals didn't let him.

Speaker 2 And there wasn't really a war that happened in Turkey. And then when we got shut down,

Speaker 2 he didn't know there wasn't really a war.

Speaker 1 I'll agree with that. He didn't start.
That's his argument is that he did not start any new wars.

Speaker 2 Has Biden started any?

Speaker 1 Well, I would argue that Biden provoked the proxy war in Ukraine. Yes.
I mean, you can disagree whether he provoked it or not, but there's no question the U.S.

Speaker 1 has been deeply involved in a war with Russia in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 And what I'm saying is the corollary of that, the analogy to that is what happened in Yemen, and that we had a chance to get out of Yemen and reduce the deaths in Yemen, much like they're talking about getting us out of the out of Ukraine now.

Speaker 2 And we had the opportunity to stop selling weapons, but he looked, as best I could tell, he looked at it as a sales opportunity to sell to MBS all these weapons. And he thought that was a positive.

Speaker 2 A lot of people died and we're still in there today. So it's not, he had a chance to get us out and he did not.
So I'm not arguing that he's perfect and Biden's perfect and it's tit for tat.

Speaker 2 It just is what it is. I'm just saying,

Speaker 2 making this statement of fact, you know, and that's it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, look, we did, we did support, we did support the Saudis in their war with Yemen.

Speaker 2 So wait, let me give you the one last thing and then we'll keep going. So then I'll go to some positives.
So the next thing, you can actually trace that Yemen war.

Speaker 2 I can't say you actually, I'm a little bit of hyperbole, but I can trace that from that Yemen war to the start of inflation.

Speaker 2 And here's how I explain that. And so in Yemen, he did a a deal for his boy in Saudi Arabia and sent them all the weapons in 2019.
Fast forward one year. And you're in May, no,

Speaker 2 April, let's say of 2020.

Speaker 2 And you're looking at the price of gas, the lowest it's ever been, the price of oil just collapsing. At one point, people were paying you to take their oil.
And so there was an opportunity.

Speaker 2 He made a decision because there was a situation that came up. The oil companies came in and said, this price of oil being so low is killing us, right? We're losing a lot of money.

Speaker 2 We anticipate losing more because with the pandemic now starting, demand is dropping like a rock. And so he, and that was coming from the oil companies.

Speaker 2 And so what he did, he said, okay, MBS owes me a favor over in Saudi Arabia. That's the connection.
And Putin's my boy. I'm going to go to them and ask them to reduce production.

Speaker 2 Now, what happens to the price of gas when the

Speaker 2 largest producers of oil and energy decrease their production?

Speaker 2 The price starts going up and up and up.

Speaker 2 And so you can track the increase in the price of gas and how that impacted the price of goods the entire time that the production from the 10% reduction until they increase it like 300,000 barrels a day for two years.

Speaker 1 What is your argument here? You're saying that somehow Trump caused the inflation?

Speaker 2 Yes. And I'm explaining it to you.
I'm getting the mainstream media.

Speaker 1 First of all, by the way, the war in Yemen started on March 26, 2015, according to Chat GPT, which is under Obama. No, I can't.
So that started under Obama.

Speaker 2 That's fine. But he had a chance.
He was asked to end it by Congress. He was that we were sending, he was selling $660 billion.

Speaker 2 I don't know the number.

Speaker 1 I can't remember exactly in weapons to Saudi saudi arabia and he there was a rounded the fact that we had nine percent inflation in 2022 so two years after

Speaker 2 how in the world is trump responsible for that and not biden error so glad you asked that because the mainstream media never talks about this stuff and so she did a little dig there

Speaker 2 so trump goes in and says we're going to cut the production by 10

Speaker 2 Demand is still relatively low, but in April, May, June, as people started venturing outside their house into the end of 2020, the end of this term, there's an increase in demand.

Speaker 2 But the increase in demand, the increase in production doesn't match the increase in demand. They limited as part of this deal that Trump put together between

Speaker 2 Russia and Saudi Arabia, and that led to other people in OPEC Plus

Speaker 2 participating.

Speaker 2 They only increased the production of oil by 300,000 barrels a day, which didn't keep up with the amount of demand that was happening. That started increasing the price of gas.

Speaker 2 That price of gas continued to increase for the two years this program was in place. This program wasn't like, let's just cut it for 60 days and go back at it.

Speaker 2 It wasn't, let's just do this for 90 days. Let's just do this during the Trump administration.
No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 This deal went before they got, it took two years before they got back to pre-pandemic levels of production. And so listen listen to what Trump says about drill, baby, drill.

Speaker 2 Why does he say drill, baby, drill will lead to lower costs? Because

Speaker 2 oil and energy costs are part of everything. And you know what matches up perfectly? What matches up perfectly is that 9.1% in 2022 and the day that that agreement ended,

Speaker 2 where MBS and Russia limited production, that agreement ended it like this. If you did your little Venn diagram, it likes end, increase production, decrease production, bam.

Speaker 2 So to put it, that is the answer to your question.

Speaker 1 So just to summarize what you, the argument that you don't like about him is you got to know him like many people do.

Speaker 1 You worked with him on projects and like Pence, Barr, Mateus, Tillerson, Bill Barr, and Mike Cohen, and the moosh, Omarosa. You realized this person is out for themselves.

Speaker 1 They don't care about the people they work with. And you fell out of friendship with him or whatever.

Speaker 1 There's a long list of people who don't, who worked with him, who think he's an idiot and don't like him now. You're on that list.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I don't think he's an idiot. I'm not saying that's my position.

Speaker 1 I'm just summarizing it. Look, I don't think he's an idiot.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 2 he's one of the greatest salespeople ever. He's one of the greatest, you know, motivators in terms of crowd motivation ever.

Speaker 1 But can I say that? He's Roy Cohen Jr.

Speaker 2 He's Roy Cohen Jr. That is who he is.

Speaker 2 If you read books about Roy Cohen, everything Roy Cohen says to do, tracing back to the McCarthy hearings in 54, everything Roy Cohen says to do, that is exactly what Donald Trump does.

Speaker 1 I just want to paint this thing, and then I'd like to hear the glass half-full version to the extent you have one. But basically,

Speaker 1 I just want to understand. So, my understanding was in 2020, what happened was not that Saudi Arabia and Russia were cooperating to cut prices, but they got into a fight because

Speaker 1 it wasn't really Saudi, but it was OPEC, which includes us and OPEC plus

Speaker 1 versus Russia. And we initiated against them, which they counteracted, a price war.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 they initiated against. So Saudi Arabia initiated against Russia.

Speaker 1 So what I'm trying to understand is there's a war in Yemen.

Speaker 1 We don't stop the armaments of Saudi. And I guess what you're saying is

Speaker 1 that then triggered

Speaker 1 an OPEC no no what I'm saying is NBS owed Trump one

Speaker 2 MBS owed Trump one so MBS starts the price war with Russia one year later and the oil companies come to Donald and say look we're getting destroyed demand is dropping they've increased because of this price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia Saudi Arabia decides to take it to Putin and increases their production significantly so in order to keep their revenues up Russia's got to do the same thing.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile,

Speaker 2 all the demand is dropping because of the pandemic. And so Donald gets asked by the insurance company, the oil companies to go to MBS and to Putin and say, we need to stop this price war.

Speaker 2 We need to reduce production. And to his credit, if you think that's a positive, to Trump's credit, he did it.

Speaker 2 And so by reducing production over a plan of two years, and you can go look at the production numbers, right?

Speaker 2 And when that stopped, by doing that, that increased the price of gas, the price of oil, the price of energy.

Speaker 2 And that was bad for American consumers who utilized gas, who, you know, paid for gas for their cars, really bad for him. But he decided to work with his oil company buddies and protect them.

Speaker 2 You can say that's a good decision or a bad decision. Maybe it's strategic.

Speaker 2 He really felt they could go out of business and he wasn't willing to give them money money to help them. But the bottom line was that

Speaker 2 that matches up exactly to that 9.1% that David Sachs mentions. It also

Speaker 2 matches up to, okay,

Speaker 2 does he fully support the oil companies over the price of gas? And will that influence what he will do as president again?

Speaker 2 So when he says, I'll just get out of Ukraine, depends on who's making the money and where it is. When he says, I'm going to get people to drill, baby, drill.
Okay. Well, we already learned a lesson.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait. Sorry.
Okay, so like, this is very hard to. Hold on a second.
This is very hard to fact check in real time because I've never heard this theory before.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 We can have a theory on the pod. I just

Speaker 1 get involved. Freeberg hasn't asked a question yet, so let me try to.

Speaker 1 The point is that, you know, this is like totally novel. I don't even think I've heard you make this theory on X before.
I was waiting. Okay.
So here we go. So you're talking a whole lot of time.

Speaker 1 Freeberg hasn't been able to get involved. Let's have Freeberg.
I'm just going to let him basically cite this nonsense and I don't get to interrogate it a little bit.

Speaker 2 That's the nonsense, David.

Speaker 1 You can't.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. But I just wanted to include Freeberg in the discussion.
It's 40 minutes in.

Speaker 1 Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question.

Speaker 2 Freeburg targets. Go chat, GPT, it go Google it, go look it up however you want.

Speaker 1 Okay, what about the fact that Biden's first day in office, he cancels the Keystone pipeline and a bunch of leases. He makes it harder to drill in the United States.

Speaker 1 So he reduces the ability for domestic producers to produce. You don't think that that would have an impact?

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it wasn't on the price.

Speaker 2 It wasn't on the price of gas because the price of gas is a global phenomenon, right? The price of oil rather is a global phenomenon.

Speaker 2 We are the largest producer of energy in the world, but we're still only about 13%, I think it is. Don't quote me on that, but that's a range.
And so the other 87% has more of an impact.

Speaker 2 And even to that, there was still an unlimited amount of drilling available on public lands and leases available that weren't fully used. Now, that said, I think Biden did mistakes, did make mistakes.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah, so wait.

Speaker 1 Okay, guys, hold on.

Speaker 1 Let's just finish one thing before the other. I would just like an answer of what is the good and the bad of Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 And then what I was going to ask you is, what was the good and the bad of Biden? I just want those

Speaker 1 40 answers. Guys, just

Speaker 1 give me one second. Can I just ask, make one comment? I've been here for like 40 minutes.

Speaker 1 I want to respond to the inflation point, Mark.

Speaker 1 I just shared two images. First was the U.S.
crude oil production chart, and more than half of this oil is exported. So you can see the reduction in production, but the domestic oil production

Speaker 1 capacity remained high relative to our consumption. So U.S.

Speaker 1 consumption, if oil was the biggest driver, it really would have affected the profits of the exporting companies, not necessarily the cost of energy domestically.

Speaker 1 I will, however, point out that the federal balance sheet, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet swelled during COVID from $4 trillion to $8 trillion.

Speaker 1 And as we all know, there was significant fiscal stimulus, meaning the federal government bought a charge.

Speaker 2 David, I didn't say it was the only cause.

Speaker 1 I didn't say it was the inclusion.

Speaker 1 Well, I would argue that flooding the world with dollars, which is what the Federal Reserve did, because they bought up all the bonds as the federal government started to issue money in lots of different ways, caused the supply of dollars to go up, which causes the cost of anything that's dollar-denominated to grow up.

Speaker 1 And I think many economists would argue and make the case that the fiscal policy and the monetary policy of the federal government and the Federal Reserve is largely to account, and I'm not going to use the word blame, but to account for the inflation we saw in the cost of everything from energy to production to labor to assets and so on.

Speaker 2 But they're not mutually exclusive.

Speaker 1 They're not mutually exclusive. They're not, but there was also significant, as we can all acknowledge, massive in a dynamical system.

Speaker 1 Global supply chains are a dynamical system. Stuff is made in one place, moved to another place.
When one thing breaks or it slows down, it all breaks.

Speaker 1 And we had a massive shortfall in the ability to move goods around the world. And that was the biggest driver of the inflationary effects that we saw in the city.

Speaker 2 I agree 100%. But even if you go back to the first two charts you put up, it matches up with exactly what I said.

Speaker 2 Production went down, demand went up, and the net result was that price of gas went up. And price of gas is in everything.
Is it the only thing?

Speaker 1 No, but production went down in everything, not just energy, but everything. And not because of energy, but because of a lot of other reasons.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 And then we had a whiplash problem where we had over-demand relative to the natural, and none of the production systems could keep up with demand. I agree.
Because of the fiscal stimulus.

Speaker 2 I agree 100% with you. All I'm saying, you can trace it back to maybe it's 1% of the price.
Maybe it's 3% of the price. Maybe whatever the percentage is.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying it's exclusive, but you can trace it back to the decision being made to support the energy companies and say, we are going to reduce production rather than just letting the market play out and saying, we'll let gas prices stay as low as they are based off of supply and demand.

Speaker 2 Now, do I agree with you that supply chain disruption? transitory?

Speaker 1 Yes, of course. And fiscal and monetary policy.
Yes. Stimulating the world economy by pouring a shit ton of money out that's never happened in history, right?

Speaker 2 For sure, 100%.

Speaker 2 The question is, and proportionality.

Speaker 1 Do you think Larry Summers was wrong when in Q1, the first quarter of the Biden-Harris administration, Larry Summers warned that if you pass another $2 trillion of COVID stimulus, like they were planning to do, that could set off inflation, that we were on the brink.

Speaker 1 He said that. He did make that declaration

Speaker 1 against his own party, Mark. And he said, this is the wrong thing.
As a Democrat, he said, this is the wrong thing to do. And they went forward with what they planned to do for for various reasons.

Speaker 1 Some would argue political, some would argue that they thought it was the right thing to do. And the effect was precisely as Larry had predicted.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for that inflation explosion act,

Speaker 1 otherwise known as the American Rescue Plan.

Speaker 1 Otherwise known as the American Rescue Plan.

Speaker 1 Here is the actually.

Speaker 1 I agree with Pre-Berg. It's really the cause of this massive 20% inflation we've had over Biden's four years.
But that's the whole thing.

Speaker 1 There's a secret deal between Trump and MBS and like Putin's in there somewhere?

Speaker 2 You can dismiss it all you want, David. Just look at the data and look at the numbers and they match up.
Now, to Freeberg's point, to Freeberg's point, is it the only thing that caused inflation?

Speaker 2 Of course not. When you spend too much money, when you inflate the economy, when you have supply chain disruption, all those things contribute.

Speaker 2 But we're also not having the conversation to say, okay, how much of the supply chain disruption contributed to inflation? Was it 3% of that 20%? Was it 5%? Was it 7%? Was it 1%?

Speaker 2 We don't know. It's impossible.
It's all the functionality.

Speaker 1 The supply chain was constrained during COVID and it was healing. It was getting better.
And then they pumped all the stimulus and everyone got these similarities.

Speaker 1 Let me just

Speaker 1 say that. Mark has an opinion.
Let's leave the opinion. I'm just really curious.
I just want the high-level report card on the last two presidents. What is the high-level report card, Mark?

Speaker 1 To put a cap on this, just for the audience, here is our national debt over the two presidencies, the two terms.

Speaker 1 And as you can see, with the taking out the bump for COVID, it's pretty much they're both wild spenders.

Speaker 1 I think we can all agree they both are spending too much money and we need to have more fiscal discipline. We all agree on that.

Speaker 1 Now, to Chamat's point, Steelman, anything you like about the Trump presidency? And then we'll go to Kamal.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 there was good elements of the tax cut. I think he went too far, but I think they needed to come down from 35%,

Speaker 2 whatever the the corporate rate, 35%, I think, was corporate. That was too expensive.
It made us difficult for us to compete globally.

Speaker 2 I thought 20% and I thought bringing down cap gains, again, I forget exactly what they were, maybe 29%, I forget, was also smart. But I think he went too far.

Speaker 2 But you can argue that there's no right answer on what that is going to be. It's a guess, right? You just put it out there and you hope

Speaker 2 what you plan and what you propose and what is implemented works. And you don't know until it does.
So I didn't have a problem with him trying that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 35 to 21. You got it exactly right.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You've acknowledged that Kamala's unrealized gains tax is a disaster.

Speaker 2 Well, I'll acknowledge that it's not real and you're making it up that you've never heard her say that.

Speaker 1 I made it up.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You made her up her statement.

Speaker 1 It was in the Biden, the last Biden-Harris budget. It was in the Harris platform at the DNC.

Speaker 2 It was in the Biden platform at the DMC.

Speaker 1 You have never heard her talk about it. They did a search of place on his name and put her name in there.

Speaker 2 but you're you're you're reaching david you're reaching right you've never heard her talk about it at all she's been very specific that cap gains goes to 28

Speaker 2 that um that so mark whatever what has biden what has biden done well and what has he not done well and then the follow-up question is if it were an open democratic primary would you have voted for kamala harris i don't know but then again if donald trump participated in the debates on the republican primary in the republican primary would you have voted for Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 You know, there's a lot of...

Speaker 1 You're saying it's analogous. The Republicans had an open primary.

Speaker 2 No, but they did.

Speaker 1 DeSantis competed, but Bank competed. Nikki Haley competed.
They had an open primary. Trump was 50.
Hold on a second. Trump was 50 points ahead.
Maybe he should have debated. I don't know.
Maybe. But

Speaker 1 no, I mean, look, I would have been in favor of him debating, but he was 50 points ahead, and everybody had a chance to run.

Speaker 1 The Democrats seem totally different.

Speaker 2 The Democrats pretended.

Speaker 1 Hold on, hold on, let me finish then you can get your response.

Speaker 1 The Democrats pretended that Joe Biden was just fine, that he was sharp as a tack, that he was the best version of Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 And when the primary came and you had outsiders like Bobby Kennedy try to compete,

Speaker 1 not only did Biden not debate, they basically used lawfare to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot.

Speaker 1 They did not allow him a fair shot at the nomination, which is why he had to leave the party and run as an independent. Then we find out after the debate that actually Biden is not fine.

Speaker 1 He's actually appears to be in significant cognitive decline. So somehow Nancy Pelosi gets him out of there.
And then Kamala Harris is anointed. She's never won a primary vote ever.

Speaker 1 She, in 2020, she ran and dropped out before the first primary. And then this time around, she never had to compete in the primary.
And somehow she's never the candidate.

Speaker 1 The question is, I don't think, well, the question is, how can you liken this to what the Republicans did, having an open and competitive primary?

Speaker 2 So first of all, the Republicans did not have an open and competitive keyword competitive primary, because if one of the candidates refuses to participate because they have a lead, look what happened to Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 For all we know,

Speaker 2 Vivek would have destroyed Trump as much as Trump destroyed Joe Biden. Nikki Haley would have destroyed Trump as much as

Speaker 2 Donald Trump destroyed Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 i was supporting desantis at a time and it was definitely and i think desantis would have crushed him too right they

Speaker 1 all wanted to defeat their names were on the ballot you're talking about a very

Speaker 1 would you do you think desantis nikki halley or vivek would have beaten trump in a in a debate no i think when if you look

Speaker 1 okay well hold hold on i'm saying it's unclear i don't think you can just say that they would have won i mean trump

Speaker 2 so that means it's not a truly competitive

Speaker 1 when trump when trump was in a crowded republican field and debated he crushed everybody So I just don't know what would have happened.

Speaker 2 That was 2016.

Speaker 1 That was a good question. This is just debate.
This is just debate. Okay.
What about the point that the Democrats kept other contenders off the ballot? They used lawfare.

Speaker 1 And moreover, they lied about Biden's cognitive condition. And then they anointed Kamala Harris through a process that is opaque.
And we still don't know what happened.

Speaker 2 Okay, so here's my answer, right? First, going back to Republic. It wasn't a competitive primary if the contender doesn't participate.

Speaker 2 And yes, he did well against 15 other candidates in 2016, but I'd be willing to bet that he's also had cognitive decline. Everything he says and does is reflective of that.

Speaker 2 If Joe Biden had said the same thing, we would be having a lot of,

Speaker 2 we would,

Speaker 2 we don't judge Donald Trump and his cognitive ability the way we did Joe Biden. Okay, so we'll put that behind.
Now let's go to Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 I do think Democrats lied about Biden's condition. Let's just.

Speaker 2 I'm going to tell you my personal experiences with Joe Biden, right?

Speaker 2 I didn't talk to him a lot twice during that period.

Speaker 2 And I can tell you from the first time I saw him, a year before the last time I saw him, which was, you know, probably in March or April, I forget, there was a decline.

Speaker 2 But the decline was in his sharpness, right? His quickness of response. If you sat down and you listened to him speak about something, which I did, he wasn't forceful.
He wasn't.

Speaker 2 you know, he looked like a walking corpse.

Speaker 1 He looked awful, right?

Speaker 2 But in terms of content, it was there. And so I understand why they positioned him the way they did.
It's just to sell it was impossible. So that's part one.

Speaker 2 So I don't think the decline is nearly what you're saying it is, but I do agree.

Speaker 1 Why are they going to get rid of him?

Speaker 2 Why are they riding riddle? Okay, so now we're moving forward, right? His ability to respond in real time, you slow down. We all slow down, right?

Speaker 2 I'm 66 years old and I've slowed down versus where I was at 45.

Speaker 2 So you know at 81 and at 78, you are going to be slower.

Speaker 2 Joe Biden just was not as quick that was a real problem he got destroyed in the debate by trump because of that not because he didn't know the the materials and the content but he just couldn't respond and think fast enough so i think that's where the the misunderstanding is it's not that he had cognitive decline in the pure sense it's that his ability to respond quickly was gone and he looked like he had cognitive decline.

Speaker 2 So now let's go forward to the Democratic National Convention where and right before that, where they replaced it. I was curious about just the mechanics of the whole thing.

Speaker 2 So being the curious person I am, I went and pulled up the bylaws and the rules of the Democratic Party and the Democratic National Convention.

Speaker 2 And they reset those every four years prior to them pulling out. And it's very, very clear that the only mission and the only task, and it's pretty much the same in the Republicans.

Speaker 2 I looked at theirs too. The only mission is to win.
You want to win the presidency. You want to have control of Congress.
That's all they care about.

Speaker 2 And they give themselves every bit of flexibility to do whatever they damn well please to put themselves in that position. They are a private.

Speaker 1 Are they the party? Are they the party then of democracy as they claim to be? Or are they the party of winning a vote?

Speaker 2 No, so now you're trying to, you know, play branding games, right? It's starting to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just saying that their rhetoric is on odds with what they actually did. Hold on a second.
There were 14 million primary voters in the Democratic primary.

Speaker 2 That's the mainstream media media discussion of this, right? They say there's 14 million voters. I say Trump didn't debate at all.
There were zero debates with Donald Trump. Which one was it?

Speaker 1 In the primary, though, people got to vote for their candidates.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it's not an open primary because it's Donald Trump's family business. He controlled what happened.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Listen, I mean, I was, again, I was supporting someone different during the primary, and the reason why DeSantis lost is he didn't get enough votes, okay?

Speaker 1 If you would have

Speaker 1 missed an opportunity to Donald Trump, that's

Speaker 1 Trump won the primary fair and square, whether he debated or not. He was up 50 points on everybody else.
And I bet, and I don't know what that is. That is not what happened with Biden.

Speaker 1 What happened with Biden is Biden.

Speaker 2 Let me finish, David. Let me finish.

Speaker 1 Biden won the Democratic primary. He got 14 million votes.
And then they

Speaker 1 threw out that result and put in Kamala Harris because they didn't like his.

Speaker 2 We were in a fraternity.

Speaker 2 What's that? Were you ever in a fraternity? Were you ever in a fraternity? No. Okay.
In a fraternity, they get to vote on all kinds of.

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day, if the chapter, the national organization says no, right, doesn't matter who won the election.

Speaker 1 Right. So you're saying the Democratic Party is a click.
I get it. It's this.
I think we're talking about it.

Speaker 1 Let me regain control here. Just to

Speaker 2 break it, David, you're just talking branding. You can brand it however you want.

Speaker 1 No, the Democrats said they're the party of the people.

Speaker 1 I'm not a Democrat.

Speaker 2 I don't care what they do. I don't care.

Speaker 1 But you're supporting them.

Speaker 1 I'm supporting Commonwealth. Can you acknowledge? Hold on.
Can you just acknowledge that their rhetoric is hypocritical?

Speaker 2 I don't care what the rhetoric is. I don't pay attention.
I don't pay attention to their rhetoric.

Speaker 1 We're not going to get progress. I really want to hear what Mark thinks.
Yes, here we go. Move forward.
Move forward.

Speaker 1 Two things seem to be true at the same time. If I'm recapping your position here, Mark, one, you would have liked to have seen Trump debate.

Speaker 1 Two, I think you would have loved to seen a speed run primary, perhaps. Maybe Kamala battled it out.

Speaker 2 I honestly didn't care.

Speaker 2 Once Donald Trump was the candidate, I wanted the best person to beat Donald Trump. That's what I cared about.

Speaker 1 Let me go back to my question. So I'm just going to give you a succinct summary of Mark Cuban's position, his evaluation of the Trump presidency.

Speaker 1 The positives were tax cuts and warp speed and Operation Warped.

Speaker 2 And warp speed.

Speaker 1 The negatives were continuing the war in Yemen when they had a chance to. And then this.

Speaker 2 And actually, the negative wasn't so much that. Sorry, Tamara.
Okay.

Speaker 2 The negative wasn't so much he continued it. The negative is the hypocrisy and his opinion.
Hypocrisy. Okay.

Speaker 1 Right. In the style.
Okay. Now the tone and the style of how he governed.
Can we do Biden? What are the things that Biden and Harris did well that have helped the country?

Speaker 1 And what are the things that they could have done better, did not do well?

Speaker 2 So I'll start with the negatives first. So just so you know that there's a lot of them.
One, the way they handled the border was horrific.

Speaker 2 There's no way to, you know, to say it any differently. Now, I understand why they took the approach they did.
Literally, if

Speaker 2 I were in a

Speaker 2 Central American country and my family was at risk of getting shotgun because there's a drug war, I'm doing everything I can. And

Speaker 2 I recognize that if I just set foot on American soil, I have a chance for asylum. And I get that.

Speaker 2 And I get why Biden and his administration might say, just for humanitarian reasons, we're going to increase the number of people that we allow to do that. I understand why he would do it.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, he opened the door too wide. And he made it so that there were too many people that came through.
And that created cascading problems. Now, to his credit,

Speaker 2 back in June, I think it was,

Speaker 2 he signed an executive order, which he now has made permanent or as permanent as you can as president, that changed that there's no longer the option to just set foot on American soil and be eligible for a hearing for asylum.

Speaker 2 You can't do that any longer. And to her credit, she worked with the head of the Mexican government, and they have taken steps to reduce the flow of people to the border.

Speaker 2 And so now the number of encounters at the border is about the same as what it was right before the pandemic under the Trump administration. So while he was too long to do it, while he

Speaker 2 handled it incorrectly overall and messaging was horrible, I think they got to the right place. But now we have a problem, right, that he created where we have too many

Speaker 2 non-citizens, illegal aliens, however you want to call them, however you want to brand them, and we have to understand how to deal with them.

Speaker 2 I think that they have talked about, Kamley has talked about first, and even J.D. Vance said this, first, we're going to get rid of the criminals, which makes sense.

Speaker 2 But Donald Trump says, we're just going to deport everybody. Any illegal, we're just going to deport them.
Now, Obama was the deporter in chief.

Speaker 2 He deported more people than Trump or Biden, over 3 million people, but he had a specific process in place that everybody could understand.

Speaker 2 And I think with Trump, remember that Orion Gonzalez kid, the six-year-old kid in Miami?

Speaker 1 Elion Gonzalez, right?

Speaker 2 Where all of a sudden you had these cops with

Speaker 2 riot gear on and machine, you know, and AR-15s or whatever they use, pointing them at a six-year-old kid cowering in a closet.

Speaker 2 If Donald Trump does that, and that's not contrary to how he approaches things, we could have another series of riots and protests that go really, really bad.

Speaker 2 And so while I think Biden handled things completely wrong at the beginning, I think with Harris,

Speaker 2 and she's saying she'll support the

Speaker 2 immigration bill that was bipartisan, et cetera, et cetera. You guys know that.
I think she has a more common sense approach to dealing with deportations and getting people through the asylum system.

Speaker 2 And the asylum, that bill, I think, said that it would reduce the amount of time to adjudicate asylum to 90 days, which means that there's a chance to get control of this before it turns into a rock.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that was border was bad. Anything else bad or should we shift to the good?

Speaker 2 I think the spending was bad. I think that we overspent.
And I think we went through a period where, and I'm not trying to make excuses for him.

Speaker 2 I just think, you know, you guys mentioned this before, he did overspend. And I think the infrastructure bill was good.
I think the broadband bill was good.

Speaker 2 And everybody says we spent $42 billion on broadband and got nothing. We should have gone to Starlink.

Speaker 2 But the reality is the money went to the states and they could buy Starlink from Elon all they want. So that's just kind of the mainstream media poo-pooing something they shouldn't poo-poo.

Speaker 2 But the EV stuff, the EV chargers, that's a cluster, you know, and there's no way around that. And so I think that was bad.

Speaker 1 So pork barrel spending, basically unaccountable spending.

Speaker 2 Yeah. No, I think, you know, what they did in healthcare, you know, you can take Lena Kahn and say what she's doing for the mergers, you know, Albertsons and Krogers, I think is too much.

Speaker 2 I think, you know, and I even told her this, I sat on a panel sitting right next to her and I said, the most important thing from a technological perspective in this country today is that we win AI.

Speaker 2 That is going to find everything militarily for us and economically for us. And that when you try to break up companies like Google and Facebook, you diminish our ability to compete globally with AI.

Speaker 2 And she told me now that she didn't impact her at all, that she understands that and she's heard that before. I think their approach to that is wrong.

Speaker 2 I think that what she's done with the FTC against pharmacy benefit managers has been good, right?

Speaker 2 Pharmacy benefit managers are ripping off more companies and costing and increasing the cost of medications more than anything else that's happening in healthcare.

Speaker 2 And she's called them on the carpet with a recent report and just sued them. I think that's good.

Speaker 2 I think in terms of other negatives, like Kamala Harris now, I think the

Speaker 2 filibuster, I think that's a mistake to try to get rid of the filibuster because then somebody else gets rid of it for something else and it's just cascading problems.

Speaker 2 On spending, we talked about. I think he spent too much money.

Speaker 1 And what have they done well?

Speaker 2 I think he changed the tone of the country. I think that was really, really important.

Speaker 2 No one woke up, you know, and David calls it mean tweets, but not waking up concerned about mean tweets is important.

Speaker 2 Not waking up concerned about there being some random tariff on your company that you didn't expect, not waking up being accused of doing something. I think those were all huge positives.

Speaker 2 I think supporting workers, I think, you know,

Speaker 2 just having just a sensibility of, okay,

Speaker 2 we're not in the middle of everything. There just wasn't this uncertainty like every single day that every business woke up with with Trump.
Just removing that was the biggest positive of all.

Speaker 1 So let's look forward now to Akamala Hara's candidacy for president.

Speaker 1 Of the things, so we know the Donald Trump track record because he gets the credit for the things he got right and he has to take ownership of the things.

Speaker 2 But how it's been defined, I'll use the Yeaman example again. I'll use the price example on oil again.

Speaker 2 We have Trump nesia, right? We presume that what he did in terms of the economy and everything and no wars, you know, no, everything was just rosy under Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And I think that's another thing that's negative.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest, I've never heard this specific theory. I'll take the time to look and figure it out for myself.
And I'll let you. But what I'm curious about is that track record is there.

Speaker 1 Now, how much of the and do you think it's important

Speaker 1 for us to give credit for the good things to kamala and responsibility for the bad things to kamala in that so that you have an equivalent a b comparison do you think about it that way or not no i don't and i'll tell you why okay i'm assuming all you guys have had a boss at one point or another

Speaker 2 yes yeah and do you all agree with everything that that boss did all the time

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 2 no, no, but you had to do what the boss told you to do. Yeah.
And that's Kamala's job.

Speaker 1 But I like to take credit for when the boss tells me I'm owning something and then I do it.

Speaker 2 Well, but at the same time, you get credit for doing it, but it doesn't matter. You know, if it turns out to be wrong, it's still the boss that's on the hook for it.

Speaker 1 What about the border, Mark? Because you made a comment about the border and she was declared the borders are.

Speaker 2 Yeah, again, that's branding. I mean, we play branding games with politics all the time.
If you look at what her specific responsibility was, I alluded to it earlier.

Speaker 2 Her job was to go to Central America and talk to the heads of the countries there and try to reduce the reasons why people were leaving their countries to go to the United States.

Speaker 1 Why do you think they open the border so much? I'm wondering, Mark, there is a conspiracy theory or theory,

Speaker 1 you can pick how you want to frame it, that this is to increase the number of Democratic voters.

Speaker 1 At the same time, we hear that a lot of the folks coming in who are the working class, that the Republican Party is now the populist party. So those votes would go to the Republicans.

Speaker 1 So I've heard this argument from both sides. What is one another?

Speaker 1 There's another theory, an economic theory, Mark, which is that it increases the base of workers when we're at our lowest unemployment rate in history and inflation is raging.

Speaker 1 So by bringing in low-cost workers

Speaker 1 that you're able to get to work at a lower wage rate, you actually have a deflationary effect and a stimulatory effect because then they end up being spending.

Speaker 2 And I get the logic there. I don't think they're...

Speaker 2 I think maybe they might have thought of that earlier, and that's why they let too many people in, but I think they realize now that they screwed up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that shouldn't be an executive authority, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, that should be like a legislative congressional authority that makes that decision and that determination on whether to change immigration policy.

Speaker 1 Do you think that the executive branch should be able to unilaterally determine who comes into the country without following laws?

Speaker 2 No, I prefer that the Congress does it. Unfortunately, that's just not what works.
Look at the SEC with Gary Gensler. The guy's a f ⁇ ing moron.
And, but, you know,

Speaker 2 they

Speaker 2 go.

Speaker 1 We can agree to all that, actually. Yeah, so that's an area we can agree on.
But before we get to that, so your claim on border. We finally found ground truth.
Here we go. No,

Speaker 1 we can agree on that.

Speaker 1 We'll get to that. But before we do that, I just want to finish up on border here.
So your claim is that Kamala Harris really wanted to seal the border, but she was prevented.

Speaker 1 No, that's not what I said by Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 David, you're really good at trying to position things so you have, you know, you have talking points to go out with.

Speaker 1 You said that.

Speaker 1 This is a case of a VP who was thwarted by her boss.

Speaker 2 No, that is not what I said.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you admit that you are the king of virtue signaling, David. You are the key virtue signal.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the truth is she was on board with Joe Biden's agenda.

Speaker 2 I don't know. She's doing what she was told.

Speaker 1 Which one is it?

Speaker 2 No, you're creating false choices, David. You're creating

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 2 So, David, if you do the job your boss told you to do, does that do you make a declaration before you do it if I agree or disagree?

Speaker 1 And how do you know know she disagreed with joe biden about these policies because i see what she's doing now because she changed the policy right she has a different policy it's an election year conversion she realizes what a disaster it's been so so when trump does it it's brilliant when

Speaker 1 her own work okay so she flipped her position she called trump's border wall un-american and medieval and mocked it and this is before she became biden's wife right around the same so when trump hold on when when she was in the senate and trump was trying to build the wall remember democrats tried to thwart that They subjected him to years of litigation to prevent him from building that wall.

Speaker 1 And she multiple times was on record saying the wall was un-American, medieval, mocked, and so forth. She also compared ICE to the KKK.

Speaker 1 She said that images of Border Patrol agents evoked slavery. Okay, this is her rhetoric.
I don't think Joe Biden made her say that. She suggested that we abolish ICE and start from scratch.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And now she wants to talk about how tough she is on the border.

Speaker 2 Maybe she talked to J.D. Vance back then and was taking his positions.

Speaker 2 People changed their mind for whatever reason. People learn.
You're positioning as.

Speaker 1 Okay, so for, so hold on. So throughout her whole time in the Senate, she was arguing against a border wall, okay, in the strongest possible language.

Speaker 1 She then becomes border czar, or you could call it point person for the Biden administration. And for three years, they gaslit us.

Speaker 1 that the border was not a problem, that it was not an open festering wound, like the videos were constantly coming out. I remember on this show, we talked about it.

Speaker 1 And I was told when I would raise the issue of the border that was a conspiracy theory, that Fox News was just cherry-picking videos. Remember that, Jason? And any event.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, people were actually, it was interesting.

Speaker 1 People were sharing videos and playing them on Fox that were from like 10 years ago. So there was a lot of misinformation.
Democrats, the whole thing.

Speaker 2 You know, the thing about caravans, David, all those caravans never made it to the border. How many caravans did we hear about?

Speaker 1 Something like over 10 million migrants have entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. The first thing they did, hold on a second,

Speaker 1 when Biden, when Biden,

Speaker 1 we do know those 10 million are just the border encounters. Those are the recorded crossings that they let into the country.
The number we don't know is whether how many more were not recorded

Speaker 1 or 30 million. You can look up what happened.
Why did this happen? I'll tell you why. When Joe Biden took office, he repealed all of Trump's executive orders.

Speaker 2 No, he did not. What is it? Section 92?

Speaker 1 What's it? 90 of them.

Speaker 2 Title 42. Title 42.
And they stood around until the end of 23.

Speaker 1 And in addition, they got rid of Trump's Remain in Mexico policy.

Speaker 1 And they changed the meaning of asylum so that anyone who went to the border and said that they were suffering economic hardship, which is basically the whole world, okay, could now qualify for asylum.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they were given like a ticket to appear in court one day, like three years, five years, and they were ushered into the country.

Speaker 1 And then there were like nonprofits working with the Biden administration to put them on buses. David, I agreed that they screwed up on the border.

Speaker 2 I agreed they screwed up on the border.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 No, fine. They screwed up.
But now we are back.

Speaker 1 But Connor Harris offended it.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, but she changed just like Donald Trump, just like J.D. Vance.
J.D. Vance called him Hitler, JD Vance in 2020 and after diminished Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 That was in private communications in 2016. And J.D.
Vance explained, including last night, why he changed his mind about that.

Speaker 2 Right. And that's fine.
So he talked to people. So did she, representing the state of the people

Speaker 1 like six months ago.

Speaker 2 And now all of a sudden she's the nominee so she's no no no no no no no no no you're you're trying you're virtue signaling like a mother right you're trying to put you're trying to brand anything you tried to brand anything that you disagree with that you think is a negative and just put it on her which is politics 101 right but you're not looking at what she's actually doing what she's actually doing

Speaker 1 for the administration okay look when

Speaker 2 does it matter if she was if if she was in charge does and she said you know what what you want her to do is like jd vance said about abortion, right? I talked to somebody and they proved it. Great.

Speaker 2 That was a smart move by him. Would it be smart for her to say, I was wrong? Now I've learned more and I've picked up more information.

Speaker 1 Now that's actually a good question for you, Sax. If JD Vance can lobby and want a national abortion ban and then change his mind as the number two for Trump, can Kamala change her mind when she

Speaker 1 is no longer running for, you know, in the number two seat as Biden?

Speaker 1 I think JD explained why he changed his mind about that. He said that there was a referendum in Ohio and his side lost.

Speaker 1 So he can change his mind. Can Kamala? And do you have the grace for Kamala to change her mind or not? Hold on a second.
He's taking a learning from that.

Speaker 1 Kamala Harris has never explained why she changed her mind.

Speaker 1 In fact, the media, hold on a second. When will the media even ask her this question? She doesn't submit for interviews.
And certainly the debate moderators like on ABC never asked her a question.

Speaker 1 Mark, if she's going to change her mind, if she's going to have this election year conversion, why doesn't the media ask her, what is the basis of this? When did you change your mind?

Speaker 1 Was it five minutes ago? Why then did you support Biden throughout your entire last three and a half years? Why don't they ask her these questions?

Speaker 1 If you were part of the Biden administration, why did you volunteer to be the border czar if you disagree with Joe Biden about these policies? When exactly did you change your mind?

Speaker 1 Those are the questions that she should be answering.

Speaker 2 Why won't she? Those are the questions that you want to do.

Speaker 1 I want you to an adversary.

Speaker 2 No, those are the questions that you want so that you think you can put her on the defensive and get and have

Speaker 1 useful information.

Speaker 2 No, look, you want to know, but let me just tell you what's important.

Speaker 2 Put yourself in the shoes. Let's just call this a business, right? And the business of this business is getting votes and winning this election.

Speaker 2 And you came in and the product that you originally had, New Coke, failed, right? Buy this new Coke in this example. And you come in and you say, I'm, you know, I'm bringing it back.

Speaker 2 This is the new New Coke. And we're going to test to see if that's working.
Well, when you brought in Kamala Harris, she had no favorable ratings whatsoever.

Speaker 2 She was behind in all polling right where Joe Biden was. And now she's either even or ahead or a little bit behind in every single poll.
And why do I bring it up?

Speaker 2 Because it means what she's doing is working.

Speaker 1 You don't have to be a very good person. I think you actually agree.
I think we actually have found a point to agree on, which is I think Kamala Harris is just saying whatever it takes to get elected.

Speaker 2 You can say the same thing about her true belief.

Speaker 1 Hold on. She stated her true belief years ago and throughout the Biden administration, which is she never believed the border was a problem.

Speaker 1 She thought the border wall, Trump's wall, was un-American and medieval, and she thought that ICE needed to be abolished. I think that was her true belief.

Speaker 1 Now, if it's not her true belief, I would like her to explain when she changed her belief and why the same way that J.D. Vance did.
And I think the American people are entitled to know that.

Speaker 1 And I think if the media was doing its job, they'd be asking her those questions.

Speaker 1 She's never been asked that. Stephanie Ruhl's latest interview did not ask that.
And the debate moderators do not ask that.

Speaker 1 Let's just go outside of America for one second, because, Mark, you're Jewish. You're of Jewish heritage.
I would really like your opinion on what's happening outside of America.

Speaker 1 There was some crazy pictures over the last few weeks coming out from the Middle East. There's still all this

Speaker 1 complicating stuff with China.

Speaker 1 Where do you stand on all of these things? Where do you stand on the Mearsheimer-Sachs,

Speaker 1 Jeffrey Sachs kind of school of logic that there's a military industrial complex that tends to just push us towards these war zones and these forever wars? Where do you just stand on those issues?

Speaker 1 And how do you think about that?

Speaker 2 I mean, honestly, I don't have enough information to give you a qualified response. I'm pro-Israel to the core because I'm Jewish.
I'm anti-Hamas to the core. I think, you know, they're terrorists.

Speaker 2 They are terrorists.

Speaker 2 I want to see Israel to succeed. I want to see Israel succeed.
I want to see the United States States support them and help them in that.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 you know, when Israel was going into Gaza, I thought it was too blunt an instrument. But when they went after Hezbollah, I thought they did it the exact right way.
And so, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm always only going to receive a lot of people.

Speaker 1 You have a nuanced opinion of this. Yeah.
And Ukraine?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ukraine, I don't want to see American blood spilled. And as long as there's a NATO and I agree there should be a NATO, I'd rather see us spend money than put soldiers in harm's way.
And so

Speaker 1 does the Harris campaign agree on that point? Or do they have a

Speaker 2 conversation? I haven't had that conversation with them.

Speaker 1 I haven't. So, Mark, let me ask you

Speaker 1 just a point on arithmetic, which I think is the most important arithmetic we should all be talking about. Today is the first,

Speaker 1 yesterday was the first day of the federal

Speaker 1 fiscal year, right?

Speaker 1 And here's a little image for us to all look at together as a group. An image that everyone should wake up every morning in the United States and look at.

Speaker 1 The first thing they do, instead of looking at Twitter, is they should look at the image that I'm sharing on the screen right now, which is federal debt in the United States.

Speaker 1 I thought this would give you a screen of you taking a bath. This is

Speaker 1 on the first day of the new fiscal year, federal debt jumped by $204 billion in one day. Federal debt now stands at $35.7 trillion.

Speaker 1 And the biggest challenge we have in the year ahead is that $10 trillion of the outstanding debt comes up for refinance. It's going to refinance at around 4%.

Speaker 1 So we're going to be adding another $300 billion in new interest expense next fiscal year.

Speaker 1 Plus, the Biden administration has proposed a $7.2 trillion budget for next year, which will inevitably lead to another $2 trillion of deficit spending, which means that by the end of 2025, we could be staring at $40 trillion of federal debt.

Speaker 1 And if you do the math on that at 4% interest, it's $1.6 trillion a year of interest expense a year just on interest expense on the outstanding debt, which effectively begins to eclipse the entire federal budget very quickly and gives us no ability to maneuver to meet the needs of all the policy demands that are being described and shaped in all of these elections and all of these debates and all the bullshit that's going on is really not fundable.

Speaker 1 What does the Harris campaign say about the situation with respect to deficit spending and debt?

Speaker 1 And I don't know how high you can raise taxes and not cut spending to even make a dent in the challenge ahead without driving a massive recession.

Speaker 1 What do you think like the Harris versus the Trump campaign's kind of intentions are as we look at this abyss that we're now kind of jumping?

Speaker 2 I can't speak for them. I can only tell you the conversations I've had and what they've said to me.
Whether or not they take these directions is completely up to them and I don't know.

Speaker 2 But I've said the exact same thing. They know that the

Speaker 2 deficit's a problem.

Speaker 2 It won't be a budget by a Biden budget. There's no Biden administration to happen.

Speaker 2 They've already, you know, just the tax rates are completely different than the Biden budget proposals where there's no, you know,

Speaker 2 unrealized capital gains, et cetera. They went to 28% and 28%.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's not going to be what was proposed by Biden.

Speaker 1 There's a limit on tax, basically, right? Like that, that people want to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a point of diminishing returns and raising taxes and they realize it, right?

Speaker 2 So when we talked about unrealized capital gains, and I gave them a thousand reasons why not, they're like, we already know this,

Speaker 2 yada, yada. Now, to David's point, why don't they just come out and say it? Because the 1% of high-information voters don't know the difference of unrealized capital gains or not and don't care.

Speaker 2 The 99% want to hear about the things that they're talking about. So that's why people like me can go out there and talk about it.
But to your point, and the bigger point, David, Dave, that.

Speaker 2 They've realized that there's only a couple of ways to reduce the deficit. One, you get inflation under control and that reduces interest rates.
And that's going to work in our favor.

Speaker 2 And I think that's happening. Now, if it's $1.6 trillion,

Speaker 2 then, you know, if interest rates go below 4%,

Speaker 2 that saves a lot of money, probably the most you can save. They realize efficiency is an important element.
In her last speech in Pittsburgh, she talked about how long it took.

Speaker 2 It only took one year to build the Empire State Building. That is crazy.
There's too much friction in the government to be able to do building the right way. They're going to reduce friction.

Speaker 2 I've had conversations with them about AI as a service and being able to optimize integrating

Speaker 2 artificial intelligence intelligence into all these processes so that they don't have to keep on hiring people.

Speaker 2 I don't think their mindset, again, I'm speaking for myself and my perspective of my conversations with them.

Speaker 2 I don't think their mindset is to just go out there and just cut a ton of people, but I do think the mindset is how can we implement technology to become more efficient so that we can provide more value to the citizens of this country at less cost.

Speaker 2 I think that's important to them. I think

Speaker 2 you're going to see a lot of reduction.

Speaker 2 I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.

Speaker 2 it she knows that technology is the ultimate driver of success and if she supports new technologies and you heard that again in pittsburgh she wants she mentioned blockchain but more importantly she mentioned ai and how ai is key to us being a dominant military um

Speaker 2 having our military be dominant and to have our economy grow because the other way to get results isn't just to slash and burn like a Vivek wants to do, but to grow the economy and that there truly are ways to grow the economy without just more spending.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 do you support Elon Musk going in? Like if you're saying shed regulatory burdens, shed inefficiency, improve productivity, don't we need an Elon Musk style model that Trump has talked about with Elon?

Speaker 1 Send someone in and let's go fix the inefficiency across all of the administrative efforts run by the federal government.

Speaker 2 First of all.

Speaker 2 When you just cut, when you do a

Speaker 2 Vivek type, just cut the Department of Education, right? Whatever it is, we don't know what Elon would actually do.

Speaker 1 Well, I think that triggers a recession because then you got a lot of people unemployed, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly right. And there's contracts.
And so that means the United States of America is violating all these contracts with small businesses and medium-sized businesses.

Speaker 2 And maybe Elon put Doge in the treasury. Who knows? And that's how we make it all up.

Speaker 2 But you can't just crap and slash and burn, to your point, Dave. I mean, it just won't work.
And so what you can do, though, is introduce technology.

Speaker 2 We have yet to have a president that fully understands technology. I'm not here to tell you that Kamala Harris is a geek.

Speaker 2 She's not, but she understands the impact and she has a lot of people who truly are geeks

Speaker 2 around her. And she truly believes that implementing technology is a way to improve efficiency.
But the whole idea is you can't take the libertarian approach. That's ideologic.

Speaker 2 You have to take a problem-solving approach. How do you look at any? specific problem we're trying to solve.
How can you apply technology to that?

Speaker 2 I think you will get that from the Harris administration, as opposed to Donald just talking about the AI and how much energy it consumes.

Speaker 1 Mark, you said of all the roles, if there's a Harris administration, you said you want to run the SEC.

Speaker 2 I was just trolling Gary Gensler. Yeah, I was just trolling Gary Gensler because it's fun to do.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay. So do you think,

Speaker 1 and particularly why? Is Gensler, has he done a particularly bad job? Are you just trolling? Are you just trolling? Are you just trolling David Safety?

Speaker 1 I can't keep up with the trolling.

Speaker 1 I could control the trolling. I'm telling you where I agree with Mark.
That's the trolling. That's the trolling.
No, so Mark. You call trolling Sachs.

Speaker 1 Mark is actually supporting Trump. He's just trolling Sachs and coming on the show.
He's been going on for a week. I know he's not supporting Trump.

Speaker 1 But I tell you, one Republican that, as I understand it, you are supporting is John Deaton, who is running against Elizabeth Warren in the Massachusetts Senate race. Yep.

Speaker 1 So I'm curious about this because I think this is an area we could agree on. You're not a fan of Europe.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 that's pretty interesting yeah i mean i'm not a fan of elizabeth warrens i've talked to her about crypto i mean i understand her position her basic position is you know bad nation states use crypto to fund their operations the bad stuff and she just wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater as opposed to using you know like i proposed a a blacklist from ofac that can be implemented and all kinds of i need to get into the details right but it just it wasn't going to happen and so when john not just being pro crypto but you know his background, his character, I thought really was a positive.

Speaker 2 And so even before he got through his hat in his ring, I was talking to him, supporting him, giving him feedback and helping him. So again, I'm not a Democrat.
I have no problem.

Speaker 2 And I think John Deeden will be better for the country, better for the citizens of Massachusetts than Elizabeth Warren would be.

Speaker 1 What would be common sense crypto regulation? Obviously, you don't want people bilking people out of their money. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 So what would be a way to balance accredited investors versus the populist, non-sophisticated investors, if that's even a thing?

Speaker 2 So I've got a company called people running amok, you know? Right. So I've got a company called lazy.com.
And like if you go to lazy.com slash mcubin, you'll see all my NFTs.

Speaker 2 And all it is is a way to display your NFTs. It hardly makes any money, but I wanted to see if we could release a token.

Speaker 2 So first thing I did was I had one of our people call the SEC and say, hey, what steps do we have to take to release the token?

Speaker 2 They went through this whole rigmarole about getting securities lawyers and this and that. There's There's no way a company with $100,000 in revenue is going to be able to afford to do that.

Speaker 2 So then I said, okay, I'm going to go right to the SEC.gov and see about Reg A and see if I could just fill out the forms myself and, you know, just see what.

Speaker 2 So you start filling in name, address, and then you get to the type of business and the only category is other.

Speaker 2 And once you follow that other connection, there's just no way to put the round hole,

Speaker 2 just there's no way to make it work.

Speaker 2 You can't make it work.

Speaker 2 And I actually said that directly to gary gensler and so to answer your question you have to make it easy to follow the rules and you can't and in terms of everything being a security

Speaker 2 gensler says everything applies to howie right there's a howie rule and everything you know but the reality is there's also a rule that came after ruling that came after um called reeves reeves versus ernst ⁇ young that had to do with interest and if you think about it have you guys ever shorted stocks or done stock loan where you can make some money off a stock loan a borrow yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, but you know, you can make a share, you can make one of your shares of stocks available to the borrower and get paid a VIG, right? You might get 10 or 12%.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 doing that is the exact same thing as loaning out Bitcoin for somebody else to borrow. And there's no, they don't call that a security.

Speaker 2 So I asked, I asked Gary Gensler, if it's not a security to loan out

Speaker 2 a share of stock, and why is it a security to loan out a Bitcoin to somebody else?

Speaker 2 That didn't have an answer. And the point there is he has an approach that is regulation through litigation.

Speaker 2 He's going to sue you first, ask questions later, and hope that the result of that litigation becomes a rule that everybody else has to follow. I literally said, what's that?

Speaker 1 Well, I was going to say, wouldn't a more common sense approach here be to say, if we had an accreditation test, a sophisticated investor test, we've talked about it here on the program.

Speaker 2 Which you do, yeah. Yeah, which there is.

Speaker 1 Well, there's not one for the populace to take like a driver's license where they could say, hey, I've taken this test. I understand diversity, diversification, et cetera.

Speaker 2 If you're able to register with the securities and exchange commission for your company for the release of your token, then depending on how many people you're trying to sell it to, you would only be able to do that with qualified investors.

Speaker 2 But what happens is Gary Gensler is making it so difficult to register.

Speaker 2 And what he should be doing is saying, here's the bright line regulations if ftx wants to loan out all their ethereum you have to do what they did in japan you have to have 95 collateral and 95 of anything needs to be put in cold storage if he had followed the same rules for crypto that japan did ftx would still be in business sam bankman free might still be in jail but ftx three euros capital they'd still be in business because he did the wrong thing now i've literally talked to kamala harris at lunch about this specific specific topic of litigate regulation through litigation.

Speaker 2 And as a lawyer, she got it immediately and she knows it's a problem. And they know, and she's even mentioned it in one of her speeches that that's something that they're going to deal with.

Speaker 1 Can I ask you? Can I get your reaction to this story from the Washington Reporter? There was a story. I don't know if it's true.
Website, Washington Post. But no, Washington Reporters.
So

Speaker 1 according to some Senate sources, Kamala Harris was considering Gensler for Treasury Secretary.

Speaker 2 I would call that bullshit.

Speaker 1 Okay. What's the Washington Reporter?

Speaker 2 I haven't asked her about any position at all, but what I was told, and look,

Speaker 2 talking to people who are like

Speaker 2 always in the same room with her, the response to me about Gary Gensler was, have you heard anybody say anything positive?

Speaker 2 That's intentional.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, the reason he's in that role is because he is Elizabeth Warren's ally, and she has been enormously powerful during the Biden administration. Have you heard her say a word?

Speaker 1 Mark, Mark, boil it all up. Like, what's your general sense of her? How should we all think about her?

Speaker 2 So here's the way I look at Kamla, right? She is open-minded. She's smart.
She does the work. She digs in and learns.
She's ethical. She's honest.
She cares.

Speaker 2 She wants to bring the country to the middle.

Speaker 2 She knows that when she was far left, that might have been great for the state of California, but it doesn't solve the problems of the United States of America of America today.

Speaker 2 And that's why you've seen her go to the middle. And that is truly, I know, David, you might not believe this.
It is truly honest and through and through her.

Speaker 2 When she gives speeches now, she says, I'll take ideas from independents. I'll take them from Republicans.
I don't care. We have a lot of problems to solve in this country.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't be shocked if she wins, she talks to Elon Musk, if Elon would talk to her. She doesn't care where the ideas are.

Speaker 1 Why would she do interviews with unfriendly or challenging folks? this seems to be like you know a really valid criticism

Speaker 1 we've had Jason Vance here

Speaker 2 yeah I don't disagree look it is not

Speaker 2 why does she hide do you think I don't think she's hiding there's two elements there right one I think she understands the assignment wishes to win the election And the best way to reach the most number of people and get them to change their mind is not the 1% of people who are high information voters.

Speaker 2 It's all the people who are showing up at rallies and screaming and yelling. Those are the

Speaker 2 people whose mind she has changed so far. And that's how she's caught up and who she wants to change.
And that's where she's putting her focus. And two, and this is brutally honest,

Speaker 2 she has too long a windup in answering every single question. And that makes interviews difficult.

Speaker 2 She wants to inspire everybody with everything that she answers and tries to get people all excited about what she's going to do. And so she takes too long to get to that.

Speaker 2 If you cut out the windups, her answers aren't so bad. Her answers are absolutely legit, but that wind-up makes it seem like the whole word salad thing.

Speaker 1 You don't think it's relevant that she was born to a middle-class family as the answer to

Speaker 1 that.

Speaker 2 I said she's got to drop that, yeah. But on the flip side, I mean, if you listen, I literally, because I knew I'd be talking to you guys, I listened to Donald Trump's speech in Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 Did any of you guys listen to that?

Speaker 1 Yes, I was there.

Speaker 2 Okay, you were there, Sachs?

Speaker 1 I was there.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, not the RNC, not the RNC. Two days ago, This week.
Oh, no. Yeah, I'm talking two days ago.
No. Two days ago.
Talking about the RNC.

Speaker 2 So Kamla might have a long wind up.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump has an eternal windup where all he does is get to his slogans and talking points and then talks gibberish the rest of the time. Let me fill you in on some of the gibberish.

Speaker 1 You're talking about a rally? He will speak extemporaneously for over an hour.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but what he says shouldn't happen.

Speaker 1 It matters any day over someone on a teleprompter for 19 days.

Speaker 2 David, so what you're saying, it doesn't matter what he says?

Speaker 1 No, I think it does matter, but I think

Speaker 1 I've watched enough Trump rallies, including his speech at the convention where I was there listening, to understand

Speaker 1 what issues he stands for.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, tell me what issues he stands for when he diminishes Jimmy Carter, who just has his 100th birthday. Tell me what issues he stands for.

Speaker 1 I've heard him say good things and bad things about Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 Okay, so let's put that aside.

Speaker 1 Everyone makes fun of Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 Okay, so let's put that aside. Let's just say it is what it is, even though it's

Speaker 2 aside. We'll go put that under the character.

Speaker 2 He started talking about apartments with no windows, that builders under Kamala Harris are going to start, are being forced to build apartments with no windows.

Speaker 1 I haven't heard that bit yet.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Oh, I listened to this today.

Speaker 1 And then he also said that I also know that people take a lot of what Trump says out of context to make it seem a lot worse. If you actually listen to one, if you listen to

Speaker 1 what he says and you don't try to,

Speaker 1 you know, shade it in the worst possible way, a lot of what he says makes sense. I believe that if you, if you want to know why I support Trump, number one, the border, okay? okay?

Speaker 1 Unlike Kamala Harris's election year conversion, he has been very consistent ever since he came down the escalator.

Speaker 2 Yes, he has.

Speaker 1 That we needed to have a wall. And that really, that was just the first part of our border security.
We needed to have a border.

Speaker 1 Democrats, not just Kamala, pretty much all the Democrats fought him on that for the last eight years to the point where.

Speaker 1 So you get that. Okay.
So I think that he and only he has credibility in this election on that issue. Number two,

Speaker 1 on the foreign wars, we talked about this. I mean, I don't think his record on foreign policy was perfect, but it is true that he did not start any new foreign wars.
Neither of Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 No. What war did Joe Biden start?

Speaker 1 The Ukraine war. We could have ended that.

Speaker 1 He invaded Ukraine? I've argued on the show many times.

Speaker 1 In my view, he provoked it.

Speaker 1 He provoked it.

Speaker 2 Okay, so you're assigning whatever to Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 Hold on.

Speaker 1 So he forced Putin to invade ukraine come on stop acting dumb you understand that we tried to convert ukraine into a giant nato base that was the russians said over and over again that that was a red line to them it was the brightest of all but to blame it on biden and bill burns our current cia director said it best it's the brightest of all red lines of all red lines for the russian elite not just putin okay okay that has been a consistent

Speaker 1 you think he contributed 20 years and moreover hold on a second even if you don't believe even if you disagree with me and you say that biden Biden didn't provoke it, we had the chance to end the war in its first month with a deal at Istanbul.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the mainstream media denied it for a year. It was only an alternative media.
And then finally, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, wrote stories about it. It is the truth.

Speaker 1 Victoria Newland just admitted it. We could have agreed to a deal in the first month.
The Biden administration shot that down. That is why we have the war going in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 Okay, so let's just say that's a fact.

Speaker 1 Remember,

Speaker 1 remember, if you care about Israel, hold on, Mark, if you care about Israel, you should be really concerned about the fact that the United States has significantly depleted its stockpiles of weapons and artillery ammunition in Ukraine on a war that is futile.

Speaker 1 We sent them a newspaper.

Speaker 2 We sent them our old shit, David. We didn't give them anything new.
We sent them our old shit.

Speaker 1 Israel gets the Glengarry leads.

Speaker 1 155 millimeter artillery shells are 155 millimeter artillery shells. It's not about new or old.

Speaker 2 Israel gets the Glengarry leads. Right.
And look, and on top of that, Zelensky, there's only so much air defense.

Speaker 1 There's only so many patriots to go around.

Speaker 1 All right. Zelensky has to fight.

Speaker 2 Do you agree that Zelensky could have said yes to that deal?

Speaker 1 The one in Istanbul?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He could only say yes to it if the U.S. supported it.
And instead, we encouraged him to fight. We threw cold water on that deal.
We blocked it.

Speaker 1 We should have told Zelensky, you know what? Just make that deal. We don't need another war right now.
Okay. This NATO thing's not happening anyway.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Because we're not letting Zelensky into nato well no the guy from norway the guy who just took over nato says otherwise

Speaker 1 that we're not going to let in zelensky was just here in the u.s last week with his so-called victory plan you know what his victory plan was let us into nato immediately so that you can fight our war for us or no i get that the biden administration to its credit rejected that okay i give biden credit for that the good news is biden is not running in this election whenever it's inconvenient you want to pretend that harris has nothing to do with this administration

Speaker 2 I'm giving you reality.

Speaker 2 When I've had people who worked for me and started, went out and started their own companies like Shemath and Facebook, right?

Speaker 2 They're not, people have different opinions. The people who work for me do what I say.
Period. End of story.

Speaker 1 Maybe they do a better job. She was just following orders, basically, than Nuremberg.

Speaker 2 Do you think J.D. Vance is going to do anything contrary to Donald Trump if he wins?

Speaker 1 There's an abundant record. I know what J.D.
Vance stands for. There was an abundant record that the Kamala

Speaker 1 Kamala Harris as a senator before she even

Speaker 1 rated the most liberal member of the Senate by Dovetraft. But why don't you answer Mark's question? It is.
The question is, what does she really stand for? What she really stands for?

Speaker 1 Sorry, what's your question? I'm happy to answer it.

Speaker 2 Would J.D. Vance ever go against Donald Trump?

Speaker 1 No, obviously, I understand that a VP cannot go against Mark Trump. That's it in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 That's it, period. Now we can cut half the episode out.
Now moving on.

Speaker 1 Hold on a second. That fact does not prove that Kamala Harris has a different policy than Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 Whenever it's inconvenient for you to admit that Biden's what she's doing, David, no, you're doing the exact thing you're saying that I'm doing.

Speaker 2 You're trying to position her so that everything from the Biden administration is, she has ownership of it. And what I'm saying is, just look at what she's doing.
Look at what she's saying.

Speaker 2 See,

Speaker 2 here's the Trump derangement. Here's the antithesis of the Trump derangement syndrome, right?

Speaker 2 You tell, whenever Donald Trump says something stupid, everybody explains it for for him when kamala harris says something smart everybody tries to explain why it's stupid and not true

Speaker 1 smart i mean seriously what was the last thing she said that was smart just so

Speaker 1 i'm curious jason you want to fact check the windowless by the way the windowless the the windowless thing mark just so you know because nick's shared it with us it's an architectural digest article apparently eric adams the mayor of new york proposed windowless bedrooms as a way to change the building codes to incentivize more apartments being built I think it's also fix the housing crisis.

Speaker 1 Converting the problem with converting the placement.

Speaker 1 This is the gaslighting. They try to make,

Speaker 1 I mean, Trump lies constantly.

Speaker 1 And then you find out that there's a real basis to his. Now, in some cases, he just lies.

Speaker 2 Anyway, Trump can't ever explain it himself. Why is it that the guy that you like can never come out and say, hey, you know, this is crazy.
This is the most ridiculous thing. Eric Adams suggested.

Speaker 2 Everybody else has got to do the research and explain what Trump really means because he is losing it. He is cognitive.

Speaker 1 No, you're the one who raised it as somebody who's incognito sex as an example of Trump.

Speaker 1 Do you think it's incognito client sex?

Speaker 1 No, I think he's very sharp. We met him personally.
So let's wrap the politics section with just a final question because. No, wait, I have a question.
Yeah, let's leave politics. Mark,

Speaker 1 very pointed question. Why did you sell the Mavs at this moment?

Speaker 2 So I sold three quarters of them, not the whole thing. I still own 27.7%

Speaker 2 for a couple of reasons. One, when I first bought in in 2000,

Speaker 2 I was the tech guy in the NBA. I was the media guy.
You know, broadcast.com just sold it. HDNet just created the very first ever high definition television network.
I had every edge in every angle.

Speaker 2 Now, fast forward, 24 years later,

Speaker 2 in order to sustain growth, to be able to compete with the new collective bargaining agreement, you have to have other sources of revenue.

Speaker 2 And so you see other teams and all sports for that matter, you know, talking about casinos, talking about creating, doing real estate development

Speaker 2 hotels. That's just about me.
I wasn't going to put up $2 billion to, you know, to get an education on building.

Speaker 2 So that was one, that's part one. Part two is my kids are now 15, 18, and 21.

Speaker 2 And over the next 10 years, that's a lot of pressure on them to have to take over the team or deal with the trust, you know, God forbid something happens to me, deal with the trust fund issues.

Speaker 2 And so by selling three quarters of it, I took all that pressure off of them because you guys see the hate. I mean, Jason can tell you all day long about Jimmy Dolan, you know.

Speaker 1 He's MIA right now and the Knicks are doing great. Do you think valuations peak, Mark?

Speaker 2 I don't think they've peaked yet because it, for the reasons I just mentioned, if we're able to build a Venetian type casino, in Dallas with an American airline center in the middle of it, the valuation is $20 billion.

Speaker 2 But I own 27% of that.

Speaker 1 Well, and you bought it for under 300 and you sold it through 25. Just not everybody's keeping the records.
I think, Chamath, you bought it 300 and sold at 3 billion as well.

Speaker 1 So, congratulations, boys. Actually, let me ask you a question about that.
When you did it, did you just do it for fun and it worked out to be a great business?

Speaker 1 Or did you think it was going to be a great business?

Speaker 2 No, I did it for fun. So, you know, it's a great question, David.
From 2000 to 2010,

Speaker 2 the actual valuations went down.

Speaker 2 And in 2010, we were not even able to sell the New Orleans Hornets. The league had to buy it.

Speaker 2 And it was right around then that the Sixers got purchased for $200 for the same price I paid. And, you know, the

Speaker 2 cap, the NBA salary cap is a reflection of the total revenues of the NBA.

Speaker 2 There were multiple years when the salary cap went down, meaning our overall revenues went down, which was great for me competitively because I would buy first-round picks for $3 million.

Speaker 2 I would buy players from other teams that couldn't afford to run their teams and that's why we went on this you know 15 year streak of never having a losing season and winning 50 games in a row for for for 10 years in a row so um you know it worked against me worked for me competitively but that just shows you that things can change and so i did do what's that what tv deal so when when um cable and satellite and um over the air became very competitive and they started to grow and subscriptions grew to 130 million people um or subscriptions that's a lot of money and they had to compete for content so that there would be less churn and i i literally remember in 2001 when we first signed our first cable deal they nbc had the deal and they were going back to david stern saying we need fewer games and i sat there in one of our board of governors meetings and i'm like look TBS just signed a deal to pay a billion dollars per episode for repeats of Seinfeld.

Speaker 2 If you do that on evaluation per hour, ours is fresher. Our ratings are actually better.
Don't think of it as

Speaker 2 less product will lead to more demand. It's the exact opposite.
We're so inexpensive, we can charge more. And that led to the next TV deal and that led to the explosion.

Speaker 1 Mark, you have a lot of fingers and a lot of pots in other businesses. You have a really important thing you're doing in drugs that you may want to talk about.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Jamath.

Speaker 1 If you look at the next 10 years of your life, so you're 66 between now, 14 years, between now and 80, 81,

Speaker 1 what's your goal? Like, what are you working on? What are the things that you care about? Where are you putting your capital? What are you trying to do?

Speaker 2 The number one is family, obviously, but beyond that is cosplustdrugs.com.

Speaker 2 We're up the health industry like you wouldn't believe.

Speaker 1 If you've seen just explain it for the folks that don't understand it.

Speaker 2 So let's just say guys our age, or you guys are close enough to my age, we use

Speaker 2 a drug called tadilophil, right? For those of you who know what it is, and you it's generic sialis.

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 waiting.

Speaker 1 We got a double click on this.

Speaker 1 So, you've heard from Sachs, right? Are you a Sialis or a Viagra guy, Sachs? What's going on here?

Speaker 2 Or both? So,

Speaker 1 Sialis just seems better value for money. Wait, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 Never heard of him. Sacks, like, what is that?

Speaker 2 Never heard of him. He's turning red, actually.

Speaker 2 So, if you go to costplustdrugs.com and you put in Tadilophil, when it comes up, we show you our actual cost. And then we mark it up by 15%.

Speaker 2 And if you buy it via mail order, then we add $5 for a pharmacy fee to review everything and $5 for shipping and handling.

Speaker 2 The net result of that is, you guys have a general idea of what the price is now from all the ads. You can buy a 90 pack.
of Tadilophil for about $9.90 plus shipping and handling.

Speaker 2 So for less than the price of a bag of MMs, you could put up a little cup or jar next to your bed of either MMs.

Speaker 1 What is the name of this website?

Speaker 1 I'll be right back. $9 for 90 days.

Speaker 2 Right? We're like, let's go. For Tremont.

Speaker 1 That seems free. It's an incredible deal.

Speaker 2 But you apply that to the 2,500 drugs that we have. And now all of a sudden, you see what's wrong with these things called pharmacy benefit managers and the problem of an industry that's opaque.

Speaker 2 And I'll give you another example. There are drugs that are called specialty generics.

Speaker 2 And the only thing special about them, they're actually just pills, is that they were traditionally more expensive. So there's a drug called a metinib, which is a chemotherapy drug.

Speaker 2 If you just walk into

Speaker 2 a CVS as an example,

Speaker 2 a big, big pharmacy,

Speaker 2 and just you have you are a cash payer or a high deductible payer and you just needed it, they'll charge you anywhere from $200 to $2,000. You have no idea what you're going to pay.

Speaker 2 If you get it from cost plus drugs, depending on the number and the strength, it might be $21 to $30.

Speaker 2 There's another drug, Droxodopa. One of my buddies came to me and said, I'm losing my insurance.

Speaker 2 They want to charge me, the pharmacy wants to charge me $10,000 a quarter for this medication called Droxodopa. All right, Landon, let me check.
Then initially it was $64 a month.

Speaker 2 Now it's in the $20 per month because as our cost goes down, we pass it on. And that's just changed the industry because think about what happens when you get a prescription.

Speaker 1 What's the pushback? But, Mark, I mean, what is the pushback you get? Because that's

Speaker 1 counter to the trend, right? So, is it just infinite growth or how does the industry respond when you create that price differential?

Speaker 2 So, it's the innovator's dilemma. They can't just give up all of this margin.

Speaker 2 Most of the business of pharmacy benefit managers, not most, so a big chunk of their businesses comes from corporate, from corporations, right? And self-insured companies.

Speaker 2 And they go to them and they put together the thing called the formulary, which is all the drugs, right? That's available to them.

Speaker 2 And they say, we're going to price this so that we get rebates and we'll pass on the rebates we get from the manufacturers to you. Now, they say they're going to pass on 100% of that rebate.

Speaker 2 They don't.

Speaker 2 They create all these subsidiaries and everything that skim 10% or whatever off the top, but they know that they can continue working with these companies because the core competency of a CEO is not to know their healthcare costs.

Speaker 2 And literally, for any CEOs that are out there, audit your PBM contract. Audit it right now.
I promise you that that PBM is going to tell you you don't need to audit.

Speaker 2 And then you can say, we want to add cost plus drugs to our pharmacy supply contract.

Speaker 2 And they're going to say, no, you're not allowed to do it because they know our prices are so much lower that it's disrupting their industry.

Speaker 1 Are you doing this as like a for-profit business? Are you losing money on this and doing it just to help society?

Speaker 2 What's your plan here? Right now, I'm losing money. And most of that was because we built a factory, a whole robotics-driven factory that manufactures sterile injectables that are in short supply.

Speaker 2 So now, like with the hurricane, you know, we're using our robotics to switch over to sterile water, of all things, and some other things, so that we can manufacture it and get it to them at, you know, a reasonable price as opposed to price gouging, which Kamala has talked often about.

Speaker 2 So, you know, because there will be price gouging in pharmacy, and we're here to be an alternative.

Speaker 2 So, to answer your question, I've spent a whole lot of money on these robotics and putting this together, but our path is hockey stick, double, triple hockey stick.

Speaker 2 And so we're taking business from them. And I think the traditional legacy companies in the world.

Speaker 1 Did something happen to you or somebody around you that motivated you to go after the PBMs or was just this clinical business analysis of like, this just doesn't make sense and it can be done better?

Speaker 2 So both.

Speaker 2 What happened was I got an email from my partner, co-founder, Dr.

Speaker 2 Alex Oshmaansky, and he wanted to create a compounding pharmacy in denver that made drugs that were in short supply because there's always for whatever reason some generic drug that is on a shortage list and i'm like you're thinking too small and this was right around the time that the pharma bro was going to jail and i asked him you know how is it that this dude buys up a one-year supply of deraprim the drug he bought and just jacks it up and how does that happen And he goes, it just happened.

Speaker 2 I'm like, well, let me do some homework. And I dig in.
And the reason was obvious. The industry was completely opaque.

Speaker 2 The first line in every single pharmacy contract and healthcare contract for that matter is you're not allowed to talk about it. You are restricted from talking about this to anybody, anybody at all.

Speaker 2 So we had a completely opaque market. So we put together the website called costplustdrugs.com.

Speaker 2 But really, the smartest thing that we did, and it was unintentional in terms of impact, we created a full price list.

Speaker 2 So you can get our 2,500 drugs, the actual price list, and we release it every week because we're on a roll now where we've had since last a year ago, more than a year ago, every weekday we've lowered a price on a drug.

Speaker 2 And so we just put that out.

Speaker 2 And what's happened as a result is now companies can just get the price list and do comparisons to approximately what they're paying because their PBM won't tell them exactly what they're paying.

Speaker 1 One suggestion for you there, Mark. You can make this a non-profit when you sell the MAVs.
You could donate money to this.

Speaker 2 Then like six, seven years later, you could flip it into a for-profit and take it public there's like a strategy here this could work out exactly jake exactly the point and you know sam altman is an investor no i'm just kidding um and so um

Speaker 2 so we put out this price list and all of a sudden harvard medical and vanderbilt and um the all these research institutes took our pricing and compared it to what medicare was paying for the same drugs and it was like well this is this is what i was going to ask you because cms is now empowered to negotiate.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this is sort of maybe ties together with the governmental efficiency and just do the obvious right thing. But shouldn't they just work with you as an example? And

Speaker 1 why don't they?

Speaker 2 They are. And it's just starting.
They are. Right.
So here, again, I can't speak for her to say what she's going to do, but here was the conversation I've had with her team.

Speaker 2 When it comes to reducing out-of-pocket costs to deal with inflation, what I've told them is

Speaker 2 one key area that impacts most families at some level, nobody dies healthy, is the cost of healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 2 And by working, by requiring transparency in all contracts signed by anybody, anywhere in terms of pricing, you are going to see the same impact on across the board pricing of a decrease of 30, 40%.

Speaker 2 And so all that is going to reduce out-of-pocket spending for everybody, reduce government spending for everybody, and have a net positive impact. They see that they have

Speaker 1 had that conversation with the Republicans as well. So that they, I mean, it seems it makes sense for everybody.

Speaker 2 I had a conversation, a similar conversation, like, as I mentioned to you in the White House when I went there, and it just didn't resonate.

Speaker 2 Boys, any final questions for Mark here as we're not going to ask me about Elon and why I troll Elon and any of that good stuff.

Speaker 1 Well, I want to know about, are you investing in AI technology? Where are you investing in the stack? How do you think about that? Are you an active venture investor, Mark?

Speaker 2 I mean, I know we've obviously done some stuff stuff together but i'm curious like how you look at stuff so now i've kind of slowed down i invested in grok right with schmatz right schmatz is yeah let's go right and he can tell you all the reasons i think we all i think we all have a piece of that now okay well good so you guys know the whole story right and so i think that that's great picks and shovels i think are important i think the problem and this happens with all new technologies is we're seeing the gold rush right now where everybody calls everything ai particularly with agents and i think you can put all these vertical agents together to do all these different things but agents are just going to be a feature, not a product, because inherently in AI, as it advances and gets smarter, then it's going to be able to create its own agents for its users and go forward from there.

Speaker 2 So I've been really hesitant now because, you know,

Speaker 2 you're not going to invest in the foundational models. I mean, through a fund, I have part of Open AI, but, and some others, but it's, that's just so expensive.

Speaker 2 You don't know who the winners are going to be. But yet everything that

Speaker 2 everything that happens is going to be a derivative of what's your what's your business intuition tell you about that actually?

Speaker 1 So you have this crazy capital race between closed and open. How do you think that plays out?

Speaker 2 I think there are going to be tens of millions of models. Everybody's going to have a model.
Your kids are going to have models.

Speaker 2 You know, their little invisible friend is going to be a model that's in a, you know, a teddy bear that they grow up with.

Speaker 2 So there's going to be an unlimited number of models, but we don't know who the winners are going to be to host those models. I have no idea.
And if you go back over the history of technology,

Speaker 2 that's always the case.

Speaker 2 Everybody, there's always a race to be the winner for the foundation, whether it was broadband, whether it was networking, whether it was whatever it's streaming, and everybody battles it out.

Speaker 2 And so it's okay. And for me now, I'm just like, let me just wait.

Speaker 1 You think there's going to be or a chance at job displacement? What do you think of like this universal basic income cataclysm?

Speaker 2 I think it's the exact opposite. Okay, explain.
So I think that

Speaker 2 in order to train a model, you need access to information. And the internet ain't what it used to be in terms of being a source of information.

Speaker 2 And so IP is becoming more valuable. You're not, I think everybody by this time expected all the foundational models to have all this healthcare information.

Speaker 2 But if I'm Mayo Clinic, I'm not giving Microsoft or Google or Open AI my IP because that's what brands me. And so there's going to be a lot of money available there.
And I think

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 that has got to be a way to, there's got to be a way to figure that out, right?

Speaker 2 First, how does IP work and how is it distributed? And then how are we using it just in general? We really don't know how we're going to implement it or use it or what the interface is going to be.

Speaker 2 And all that will be figured out by some kid somewhere.

Speaker 1 So maybe just to wrap, Mark. So these, these next 10 or 15 years, is it about doubling down on these current things, making cost plus thing huge, like harvesting essentially?

Speaker 1 Or are you going to do new things or does just the bar getting on?

Speaker 2 When I'm gone, I want him to say, Mother, he did it.

Speaker 2 It was expensive when we were sick. It ain't expensive no more.
And to me, that's the ultimate mission. Now, it's fun to learn AI and build models and do all that stuff, right?

Speaker 2 But when it's all said and done, to me, that's when you watch your mark. That's

Speaker 1 Let me ask you a final, final question then. That's great.

Speaker 1 You've done a reality show, just retired from that, cashed out of three quarters of the Mavericks check, did that.

Speaker 1 Helping people with this cost plus drugs and saving people money, it's a pretty noble mission. Kind of adds up to you're going to run for president.

Speaker 1 No, there's no way. No, why not? It would be a great thing to do.
You've checked off all the boxes. Why wouldn't you?

Speaker 1 Too old now, right? Mark? He's not

Speaker 1 20 years younger than Trump and Biden.

Speaker 2 Wikipedia is wrong. I changed, I'm a sock puppet in my spare time.

Speaker 1 I changed four years from now, eight years from now, would you even consider it? Or if you were going to consider it, yeah, right to our era, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1 how would you process making that decision?

Speaker 2 My kids hated the idea, my wife hated the idea. They want, you know, it's hard enough for them to have a normal life as it is.
Um, and that just takes it to a whole nother level.

Speaker 1 Plus, you'd have to run as a Republican because Democrats hate billionaires like you. No, actually, they're Bloomberg, right? You saw it happen at Bloomberg.
Yeah, but that's

Speaker 1 the chance made it to the first question of the first debate. Boom.
Elizabeth Warren knocked him out.

Speaker 2 But let me just tell you this, and we don't have to talk more about politics. Parties don't exist anymore.
They don't.

Speaker 2 There's fundraising vehicles and they have procedures in place. But this is.
Donald Trump. He took over the Republican Party.
They do what he says. And Kamala Harris has learned from Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Give him credit. She has learned what worked for him.
They're not stupid. She has learned that she has got to be that personality that takes over and they have got to do what she says.

Speaker 2 You haven't heard a word from Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. And that's not unintentional.
She is doing it her way.

Speaker 2 Now, whether or not you agree what she's doing or her approach to win, everybody can argue. And that's what makes a market.
But there are no political parties anymore.

Speaker 2 And the idea of the ideology of a party on the Democratic side is no more in place than on the Republican side.

Speaker 1 All right. So with that, my Knicks got a shot this year.
What do you think?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I thought the trade was great.

Speaker 1 I thought

Speaker 1 The trade was great.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think. Kat's great.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's a little leaky on the defense, but he's.

Speaker 2 But with KP, right, that's what they're doing. How do they match up with Boston? And so KP and Kat match up, and that's what.
We got a shot.

Speaker 1 You're saying there's a chance.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think my Knicks might get there. I'm saying you and Jim Carrey have a lot in common.

Speaker 1 There's a chance. All right, everybody.
This has been another amazing episode. Thank you.
That was fun. Thanks, guys.
A real time. Come back anytime.
Mark, and we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 Thanks, guys. That was awesome.
They'll They'll give you instructions on how to upload, and I'll see you. That was great.

Speaker 2 A game soon. Appreciate it.
You guys are awesome.

Speaker 1 Cheers.

Speaker 2 And I don't mind arguing, David. I love to argue this stuff, right?

Speaker 1 I know. I know.
Look, I give you credit. You're fun to talk with and argue with.
And you obviously don't take it personally. And I appreciate that.
And yeah, I give you credit for having fun with it.

Speaker 1 I know too many depressed billionaires. So

Speaker 1 I give you a lot of credit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't get that. But you know what? If you were, if you were f when you were poor, you're fed up when you're rich, right?

Speaker 2 And it just doesn't change anything i was hoping you we talked about elon outside

Speaker 1 well we could still go there where's jake we can still go there you can ask the question if you want all right two of my besties the last 25 years you and elon is this uh you guys just uh goofing on each other you got an issue with elon that's sincere or is it just playful fun trolling so two things one as an entrepreneur elon's like the of the of the right yeah there's i'm i'm a huge fan what he's been able to accomplish is insane.

Speaker 2 It's incredible.

Speaker 2 I would never diminish anything he's done as an entrepreneur. As a Twitter user, he's a troll.
And I mean, he just trolls to troll to troll. And every good troll deserves a foil, right?

Speaker 2 Somebody to troll back. And it's just so easy and so much fun.

Speaker 2 Now, you know, I get some of the underlying principles, I think, at least in my mind. Like when he talks about...

Speaker 1 What do you think about the First Amendment principle that he's doing here of like radically changing Twitter from like it's pretty controlled to, hey, anything goes?

Speaker 2 I think that's almost anything goes. I think that's a fear of losing users.
So I think that

Speaker 2 within the conservative community, they are more joiners and heavier

Speaker 2 social media users. Participants.
Yeah, participants. So

Speaker 2 they subscribe to more things. They listen to more podcasts.
They're more active. And I think he recognized that.

Speaker 2 And that was a fundamental underpinning of why he kind of connected to them on the free speech thing, because he still has his limits. Obviously, it's his platform.

Speaker 2 And what he doesn't want doesn't get shown. So I think that's why.
And I can't blame him.

Speaker 2 I wish he would call me. I'd help him on

Speaker 2 his revenue and all that. And then I think on the immigration side, here's my...
theory. And you guys can tell me if you agree or disagree.

Speaker 2 I don't think he's anti-immigration like he says, you know, anti-illegal immigration, where anybody who's in the country should be deported.

Speaker 2 I think as an immigrant himself, and I'm second generation, you guys are, you know, immigrants at some level, we all are.

Speaker 2 But I think as an immigrant himself, he thinks that the number of illegal immigrants in this country and the hate that's pushed towards them

Speaker 2 carries over to legal immigrants, including himself. And I think

Speaker 2 he believes that by diminishing the illegal or the non-citizens in this country and asking for their removal, it improves the standing of the legal immigrants, including himself.

Speaker 2 And so that's kind of my theory on both of those things.

Speaker 1 Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's certainly different. Honestly, I don't think you need much of a theory to explain Elon's use because he's just so transparent about what he believes.

Speaker 1 I truly believe that his core conviction and the reason he bought Twitter X is because he wanted to unlock it as a free speech platform.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I don't know how much more money he can lose in pursuit of that goal.

Speaker 2 But see, here's why I disagree. You don't take other people's money to do that.

Speaker 2 I don't think he knew.

Speaker 1 He didn't know that he would get boycotted by all these advertisements.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but he knew he knew that

Speaker 2 I think he went in open eyes, carried the sink in the door to run it with some improvements operationally, which he did a great job of, and to

Speaker 1 taking out a huge amount of the cost structure, which he did. Yeah, but Jason and I were there on the first day.

Speaker 1 The first day he took over, there was an organized boycott of advertisers, and they called him anti-Semitic, which is ridiculous, before he even had a chance to

Speaker 1 think about that site.

Speaker 2 So I've heard from a lot of those folks.

Speaker 2 And it's not so much.

Speaker 2 Look, when you talk about free speech, free speech applies to advertisers as well. They get to associate with whoever they want to, no matter what.
So

Speaker 2 there, there are

Speaker 1 unless there's a, unless there's a, uh, a collusive effort going on to sort of organize.

Speaker 2 No, and I get that organization just dissolved immediately. So there weren't, but look, I could, from my own self, right?

Speaker 1 I don't understand why you won't give them credit for believing in free speech. That's clearly.
I don't have no problem. I have no problem with free speech.

Speaker 2 Look, I've always said people are like, get rid of the anti-Semitic people. You get anti-Semitic tropes.
I get, you know, zillions of anti-Semitic tropes, you know, in my, in, in my replies.

Speaker 2 Just non-stop. I mean, I'm not white.
You know, my grandparents changed their name from Chabinski to Cuban, not even intentionally. And so it's always your real name is Chabinski.
Why?

Speaker 2 There's just the hate there is insane. And my attitude has always been, I want to know who the morons are.
I have no problem with them still being allowed on the platform.

Speaker 2 But the trade-off is for advertisers. They don't want to be associated with that.
There is no upside for being on Twitter right now or Exxon right now. And you add to that the porn.

Speaker 2 Kids 13 years old can go on that site and you can find any insane thing you want on X right now. And that also is a problem for advertisers.

Speaker 2 That's part of free speech, but you got to pay the bill when you're willing to accept that. I don't think he realized just how deep users will go in order to use their free speech.

Speaker 2 And I think that really surprised him. And so that's why I don't think that he bought it specifically for free speech, because I think he's always, one of the things I really admire.

Speaker 1 No, I don't know. I mean, he said, he said before he bought it that he was going to open it up as a free speech platform.

Speaker 1 And this is why, hold on, this is why the left immediately started boycotting him before he even changed one policy. JCL, help me out.
You were there.

Speaker 1 I know for a fact that

Speaker 1 this was a free speech mission for him. I do think

Speaker 1 multiple things can be true. Mark, you are correct that if you have spicy content, advertisers don't want anything to do with it and they have choices.

Speaker 1 And it's also one of the smaller platforms to have choices that have more scale. So that makes it even easier.
And it's also true that they're boycotting him and specifically targeting him.

Speaker 1 But all these things are happening at the same time.

Speaker 2 That's fair.

Speaker 1 And I think, you know, when you look at what he's done there, we'll look at it historically as this place that was very controlled and clean and owned by the press and the elites became this.

Speaker 1 chaotic thing, but also ultimately the one place where at scale, you cannot be canceled. And, you know, if you look at cancellation as a concept, the number one place to get canceled was Twitter.

Speaker 1 You said something even slightly off, man, they came down on you, they destroyed you.

Speaker 1 And now that we've gotten rid of cancel culture and people can say what they believe and people can make themselves. I don't know why it's necessary to find out.

Speaker 1 I do think it's, let me just finish the thought.

Speaker 1 I do think that that will be looked at as a beautiful thing that he gave to society as a gift and it will be looked at as a really challenged business because it was an ad business that lost its advertising base.

Speaker 1 and Apple and Disney have choices. I don't see the need here to look past or to look for an ulterior motive in what Elon's doing.
Elon believes in free speech. It's very clear.

Speaker 1 He's run the platform that way, and it's cost him money. So, what else could the motivation be except his principles? Obviously,

Speaker 1 but he was also addicted to it. I can tell you that.
As the person who got him, I know, but that's not why he's running.

Speaker 2 Let me give you my calendar to that. You know him better than I do.

Speaker 1 But why are we even having this debate? Who cares? I mean,

Speaker 1 he's running as a free speech platform.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's fine. Obviously, it's his choice.
That's free speech by definition.

Speaker 1 To me, this debate is kind of pointless, but let's talk about actually the issue. There's a news story this week where Open AI just raised, was a $6 billion at a $150 billion valuation.

Speaker 1 They originally started that enterprise with $50 million or so from Elon. It was a nonprofit.
Then Then they became a for-profit.

Speaker 1 Now there's a report saying that they're telling investors in this round that they can't invest in any other AI companies.

Speaker 1 So they're acting like, I mean, they've gone from non-profit philanthropy to Piranha for-profit company. That's pretty sharp elbow.
Sam, yeah, it is sharp elbowed.

Speaker 1 Sam said he wasn't going to take compensation. Now he's getting compensation.
Yep, 10 billion. I mean, what do you think about this?

Speaker 2 I mean, look, it's their company. They get to do what they want.

Speaker 1 Period.

Speaker 1 It's false pretenses. I mean, it's not that much.

Speaker 2 But don't invest. I mean,

Speaker 1 he didn't invest. He gave him a donation.

Speaker 2 Which leads to something I want to say very positive about Elon. Put aside his genius in coming up and running these companies.

Speaker 2 The one thing I respect the most about Elon Musk, and he does more than anybody I've ever seen, and that is he goes all in.

Speaker 2 He doesn't just, you know, he takes every cent he has and he believes in it and he goes all motherfucking in. He never hedges his bet at all until Twitter, right?

Speaker 2 That's why I say, you know, he brought in investors, you know, he brought investors to Tesla and everything, but initially he went all in himself.

Speaker 2 You know, I think with Twitter, I think he was kind of surprised. But going back to open AI,

Speaker 2 I don't, I wouldn't do business with people like that. And there are people who just look for what they think is the next big thing.
And I certainly could have given him money, didn't give him money.

Speaker 2 I said one of our funds that I'm in did give them money originally, didn't give them money another time. To me, that's just wrong.
And that catches up to you.

Speaker 2 When people over investors and whatever, it always comes back. Karma's a bitch in business too.
Now,

Speaker 2 you know, Gemini with Google, I've done a lot of stuff with them. Notebook is insanely good.
Gemini 1.5 is insanely good. Meta as open source and what they're doing is getting better and better.

Speaker 2 There is no, you know,

Speaker 2 there's nothing that says that Open AI is going to win. Nothing at all.
And so I don't feel bad about what they're doing.

Speaker 2 And to me, it tells me they're more scared than anything by trying to restrict what people are doing.

Speaker 1 Yep. That's your perspective.

Speaker 1 It says it's more a reflection of Sam than anything else.

Speaker 1 Is what you're saying.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that would be reflected in the fact that so many people who are the co-founders have left.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's a really big red flag. If this thing is going to change the world,

Speaker 1 all the co-founders leave.

Speaker 2 I heard 40 of the 44 co-founders left.

Speaker 1 Yeah, with the original employees. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but that's

Speaker 1 also think about this business, Jamath, and where it's headed. Sorry,

Speaker 1 there were 44 co-founders.

Speaker 1 We're on the Donald Trump cabinet members thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, but I mean, if you, if you,

Speaker 1 we did a joke about it last week, but if you just look at the competition set that they're up against, they're losing $5 billion a year. They're making $3.5.
They put this thing at $150 billion.

Speaker 1 It's 40 times, 50 times revenue. To fill in that valuation on a price to sales basis, you know, it's kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 Here's the one thing that I'll say, and I think Mark said this in a different way, but I'll just,

Speaker 1 I don't think you can underestimate how companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon will react when they feel cornered.

Speaker 1 And I think in the last 20 to 25 years, what you've seen is those companies, when their backs are against the wall, they use money, they're sharp elbowed. But the consistent thing is they've won.

Speaker 1 And so the real question is, do people look at the chart of the users? Because typically what happens is it's users what tilts these companies.

Speaker 1 When something, some upstart, you remember when Snapchat was about to explode? Yeah. There was a decision, we're going to decapitate this company.
Facebook effectively did that.

Speaker 1 They relegated it to Zynga. Yep.
Zynga. There's many companies.

Speaker 1 So the real question is when they see that this app is going to be at 300 or 500 million Mao and they appear on some list where they're bigger than, I don't know, pick your favorite app inside of Meta.

Speaker 1 Ever, ever, yeah. Will they freak out? And if they do freak out, what do they do? Oh, I can tell you they're freaking right now.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. It's an ex it's an existential risk to them.
Right. And the crazy, I mean, look what Microsoft did.
They bought Three Mile Island.

Speaker 2 The nuclear reactor. They bought it.
Everybody's looking for the angle. And the the crazy part is move.

Speaker 1 It's really crazy.

Speaker 2 There used to be Moore's Law that everything followed, right? The price performance curve always went like this, you know, and power goes up.

Speaker 2 Now, because you don't know, you don't know what you don't know and what you need to do next. That's part of the challenge that Elon has with Tesla in terms of full service driving.

Speaker 2 You don't know what you need to do next to get there to solve

Speaker 1 the problem. Do you have a Tesla, Mark? I do.

Speaker 2 And I do also, I also have a Kia EV. I have a Tesla EV and I have a Kia EV.

Speaker 1 Do you use the FSD? And if so, how is it?

Speaker 2 I have, but I stopped using it just because it terrified me.

Speaker 2 Because it doesn't know what adversarial things it doesn't know. Because you know, you know, anything that's adversarial, that something has to train on something it's seen.

Speaker 2 And it's not smart enough to figure out what it hasn't seen and whether or not it's a risk.

Speaker 2 And I've said this before, my my four-year-old mini Australian shepherd, I can put it in a risky situation to cross the street and trust it'll get across the street no matter what it is.

Speaker 2 It doesn't have to be pre-trained. You can't do that with full-service driving yet.

Speaker 2 And so until that gets to where it needs to be, where adversarial issues aren't an issue, I'm not going to fully trust it.

Speaker 1 I have the 12-point.

Speaker 1 I got a 12-point point. Appreciate it, David.
Mark, thank you. You've been really fun to talk to.
So good talking to you.

Speaker 1 This has been Overtime with the all-in podcast with Mark Cube, and we'll see you all next time.

Speaker 1 Thanks so much. I love you, boys.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 Let your winners ride.

Speaker 2 Rainman David Sachs.

Speaker 1 And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Bestie.
I'm the queen of Kino.

Speaker 1 Besties are gone.

Speaker 1 That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

Speaker 1 My habitasher will meet me at Winnie. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orbie because they're all just useless.

Speaker 1 It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

Speaker 1 Where did you get Mercy's artist?