#390 — Final Thoughts on the 2024 Presidential Election

Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

This is Sam Harris.

Okay,

well, it's the final stretch before the 2024 presidential election.

I might have a few more thoughts to express on this topic over on Substack in the coming days, but this will be the last podcast I drop before the vote on Tuesday.

Earlier this week I did a debate with Ben Shapiro

for Barry Weiss's Honestly podcast.

You can find that on YouTube.

and over at Honestly.

And today I'm speaking with Mark Cuban.

Mark is a very well-known entrepreneur and investor.

He's also known for his role on the television series Shark Tank and his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks.

And as you'll hear, he's been an outspoken supporter of the Harris campaign.

And today we give something like a closing argument in favor of Harris.

Of course, much of this amounts to expressing our concerns about Trump and a second Trump term.

We talk about Trump's ethics, his bewildering indestructibility as a candidate, election denialism, the influence of Elon Musk, the strengths and weaknesses of the Harris campaign, the mystery of the southern border, Trump's immigration and deportation policy, Elon's delusional endorsement of the Great Replacement Theory, Trump's economic policy, Harris's tax and health care proposals, the effect of tariffs, the U.S.

supply chain, the problem of wealth inequality, the notion of taxing unrealized capital gains, support for Israel, a much-needed return to normal politics, and other topics.

No paywall for this one.

And now I bring you Mark Cuban.

I am here with Mark Cuban.

Mark, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me on, Sam.

So

I think this could be a a short conversation.

We're now speaking six days before the election, and I know you have been making the rounds on various channels in support of the Harris campaign.

Are you a formal surrogate of the campaign at this point?

I mean, I don't have any formal relationship with them, but

where they ask me to show up if it's convenient for me and I think it's valuable, then I do it.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I feel you've been very effective in that role, and I'd like to press you into service for another hour here because

I think there's something to say.

If there's anything left to say that could be useful, I think we should try to say it here.

And I think you have a capacity to reach people in your cohort.

I mean, there's not that many people perhaps in your exact cohort, but I'm just thinking of your standing in the business community.

And

you are surrounded by people, it appears, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, who, if they have some misgivings about Trump, they have nonetheless rationalized their support for him for a few reasons.

And I think the reasons are generally misinterpreted on the Democratic side.

I mean, there are many people, I would think the standard answer in Democratic circles to the question of why people like Elon Musk and David Sachs and other billionaires and quasi-billionaires are voting for Trump, the answer is, well, they want lower taxes.

They want less regulation.

These are entirely self-serving, avaricious decisions on the part of extraordinarily wealthy people who have no moral scruples.

And I just happen to know that's not true.

I mean, I know, I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, I agree with you.

It's not even close to true.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, the marginal value of any delta in taxes is not going to change their lives.

Right.

And they're not so vapid that they think that.

you know, that's their focus.

It's just not the case.

Yeah.

I mean, the one footnote I would add to that is I think people like, I mean, Elon specifically and other people like him do worry about regulation.

And I know Elon wants to get to Mars, and he's worried that, all things considered, the left might regulate that project more than the right.

And I think some people are worried about AI regulation, although Elon is on the side of the regulators there.

So the real reason, and

I know this to be true for both these guys because they've they've said a lot on this topic, is that there are a few specific social issues that have radicalized them, specifically immigration and what Elon often refers to as the woke mind virus.

I mean, this is really what has exercised them.

And they've exercised many of us as well who are supporting Harris.

So I want to keep those semi-grotesque objects in view as we track through this.

But to start, how would you describe your politics?

Independent.

I look at each issue individually.

I haven't given to a candidate or PAC or anything else for that matter since 2002.

So I just look at each issue and I said, okay, what do I think is best for the country?

What you do I think will best reflect that.

And if I don't think there's a clear-cut choice, I'll vote for the candidate who does the least.

And so you're actually a registered independent?

No, I'm not.

I mean, in Texas, you don't have to register as an independent.

So I'm just not a Democrat or a Republican.

Right.

Right.

And in your view, what is the shortest way of making the case against Trump?

He's unethical.

He's not bright.

He can be easily bought.

He's very transactional.

He doesn't understand his own policies and he makes no effort to learn.

That's it in a nutshell.

And how you know him to some degree.

How well do you know him?

I mean, we're not best friends, but over 25 years, you know, we've talked a couple dozen times.

You know, I've been around him a couple of times.

You know, we've sparred a lot on Twitter at various times.

So, I mean, I wouldn't say we're acquaintances.

We're not going to say, hey, what are you doing today?

But we have enough of a relationship where it didn't surprise me when he got elected that he called me and, you know, and asked for help.

And then did you give him help at that point?

Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I'm an American first.

And, you know, it pertained to healthcare.

Some questions there that never really went anywhere.

And then when the pandemic hit, I helped him and Peter Navarro source PPE equipment.

There's a mass manufacturer, the only domestic mass manufacturer just outside of Fort Worth.

And so I worked with them and helped them grow and helped get them prepared to be able to amp up their manufacturing capabilities.

And when you say he's unethical and unintelligent, how are you getting that impression of him?

Am I asking this?

Well, I just go through the list.

I mean, Trump University, Trump Soho, Trump Foundation.

You know, Michael Cohen, when he testified in the Stormy Daniels hearings in New York, he came out and said, you know what, Mr.

Trump told me to short pay vendors.

And every other business person on the planet, when he had his little impromptu press conference, at the end of the day would say, no, I would never do that.

It didn't even cross his mind to deny it.

And then, you know, here we just had a little audio problem coming into this.

You know, a couple of weeks ago in Michigan, the audio cut out for 17 minutes.

And the minute it was turned back on, it wasn't, you know, hey, let's hear for the audio guy.

Let's, you know, give him a hand.

I'm glad we could turn it around.

It was, you know, I wouldn't pay him.

And then it was like, I would sue him.

He has no concern for hardworking Americans at all.

The list of companies that he's ripped off, the list of people he's ripped off is long.

And to me, that's the definition of unethical.

I mean, If somebody short paid me as a business, I would never do business with that person again.

And if anybody ever accused me of short paying another business, I would be so vocal in denying it because it's not something I would ever do.

To him, that's just another day at the office.

And to me, that's as unethical as you can get.

Well, then, how do you explain the fact that so many people are disposed to grade him on a curve, right?

I mean, people like the people we've named, like Elon and David Sachs, but really, this is just a widespread cultural phenomenon that

Trump seems to function by a a different reputational physics.

And this is something that he actually remarked on himself.

And I think it was in 2016.

I think it was two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, where he said, you know, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose a single voter.

That was him marveling at the fact that he at the time was perceived, and this is fairly early in his career as a politician.

He perceived that he was politically indestructible.

And I mean, this is so we've lived with this phenomenon now for nearly a decade where we see Trump commit indiscretion after indiscretion of every conceivable size and some, you know, many of which are completely pointless, some of which serve his political ends, and any one of which, at a glance, you can see would have ended the career of a normal politician.

Why is it that nothing sticks to him?

I saw a video from Chris Cuomo, and I think he nailed it.

He said that there's, you know, almost half the country that feels like they've been wronged in some manner by the country, whether it's the elites, whether it's DEI, like we alluded to, whatever it may be.

And the only counter to that issue is a virus.

And he is the virus.

And that's a positive.

All these indiscretions, all these negatives, all these personal failings of his, that just, you know, makes him, somebody once told, I did a podcast and the the guy was like, he's a gangster.

That's why we love him.

He's the guy that's going to take on the incumbents and just turn it upside down.

And I remember back when he first ran, I was like, I know this guy.

How can you support him?

And my friend Dan said, look, Mark, I've been voting for politicians my entire life.

You know what they got me?

Nothing.

You know where they got me?

Nowhere.

That's why I'm voting for Trump.

And if you think of him as a virus that just, you know, infiltrates, you know, or suggests he's going to infiltrate all the things that are causing particularly young men to not get jobs, to not be where they are, to not have the vision or be able to achieve what they want to achieve.

It makes perfect sense.

But how does that account for someone like, again, I watched you on the all-in podcast and I know Jason is a friend.

I don't know the other guys, but I've met David and I'm just trying to understand,

do you have a theory of mind about someone like David where, obviously he's a lawyer, right?

I mean,

he's a bright guy.

How is it that the spectacle of a sitting president not committing to a peaceful transfer of power?

I mean, really, at multiple opportunities, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

And then

we didn't have a peaceful transfer of power.

He still has not conceded.

Yeah, and he still has not conceded that he lost that election.

And his denial of that, his endorsement of this big lie, stands as a continuous provocation to violence and division in our country.

I mean,

he's telling half the country, he's been telling them this now for years, that their democracy has been stolen from them by an illegitimate president.

And in his communication with his base, this is not received as mere hyperbole.

This is a statement of fact.

He won the election and it was stolen from him.

And you don't have a democracy anymore.

I really have no theory of mind around

how someone like David, and obviously there are many, many people like David, justifies that or averts their eyes from it so as to still endorse this man.

I mean, my only theory is when it was Trump versus Biden, you could make the argument about, you know, Biden's cognitive abilities, et cetera, and they went all in on Trump.

Hey, my guy can think, my guy can do this.

True or not,

they justified it to themselves.

And then when Kamla came along, they were already all in.

So that's part one.

I think, you know, they're not going to just change their minds and look bad.

And I think that has a lot to do with it.

But I think the greater Silicon Valley ethos now, you mentioned DEI, you mentioned immigration.

But I also think that there's a feeling that truly among the Musks and the Teals that they can manipulate Trump.

He's a technical

ignoramus.

I mean, he doesn't, he's never sent an email.

And he did, obviously he does that.

to protect himself legally.

But, you know, if you have no technical ability whatsoever, I I mean, he calls AI the AI.

And when he talks about it, he only references the fact that it consumes more electricity, more power.

He has no inkling what it is at all.

You know, if you listened at all to the Donald Trump, Elon Musk spaces that they did on X, there was nothing of substance from Donald Trump.

And you could see Elon trying to drag him to at least come to some positive conclusions that made sense.

And he couldn't do it.

And so the only conclusion I can make is that he is so incapable of understanding those things.

If they're able to develop the trust or buy his trust in a transactional manner like Elon has, he'll do what they say.

And if Elon wants to take over NASA, here you are.

Elon, here are the keys to NASA along with the budget.

That's enticing to Silicon Valley.

And if they want to change the immigration laws, okay, you do what you need to do, Elon.

You know how I feel about immigration and mass deportations.

Go for it.

You want to change what happens in schools and

you feel a certain way about DEI, go for it.

I mean, that is seductive for those people who can

gain control of what Trump is going to do.

Even if that accounts for

the Elons and Peter Thiels of the world, obviously there are many, many millions of people.

Yeah, but there's also the cult of personality behind them.

Whatever they do, you're going to get David Sachs and others to follow right behind because they want to be part of it.

They might not know exactly what they're going to be part of, but their rationale is, hey, I'm an Elon acolyte.

I, you know, I believe in him.

He's the world's greatest entrepreneur ever.

You know, ignore the fact that he's also the world's biggest troll on the, you know, on a platform designed for trolls, but, you know, I'm Team Elon.

And once you're, you know, it's like him going around campaigning in Pennsylvania.

He's not saying anything of substance.

He's just throwing out nonsense.

But people scream and yell because, you know, they're Team Elon.

Well,

he is saying stuff of substance that just happens to be filled with lies.

I mean, he's now denying the election himself.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly the point.

And so, you know, when you look at that, you, you realize that, you know, that combined with social media.

So let's just take whatever he says, not only on Twitter, but on every social media platform, the algorithms are going to reinforce.

the things that you've already searched out or the things that you've watched and liked already.

And so if you liked a Trump video, if you liked an Elon video, you're going to get much, much, much, much more of that.

And there's going to, I mean, as much as, you know, all of us spend online scrolling, that algorithm customizes that feed for us individually.

And if you have any allegiance to Elon, if you've shown an interest in Trump, if you have interested in things that tree out, meaning, you know, wow, you're interested in, you know, Andrew Tate, you're interested.

in football.

And their algorithms think if you're interested in either one of those, you're probably going to be a young man and you probably are going to be interested in Donald Trump.

And that just can, I mean, that's eight hours a day of continuous reinforcement.

So it's not surprising to me we see these things because if you're fed a commercial, you know, a hundred times, 200 times in a day, it's going to sink in at some point.

What do you make of Elon's increasingly Trump-like behavior, which is to say increasingly dysregulated and unethical and unprincipled behavior.

Yeah, you mean lying his ass off on Twitter?

I mean everywhere else?

Lying, yes, but also it runs to everything like, you know, singling out individual citizens,

putting them on blast, knowing that the consequences are going to be awful in their lives because he's not going to be able to do it.

I mean, yeah, he's called me a racist multiple times, called me a turd, all this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, he's become the world's biggest troll.

And he bought a platform to allow himself to do that.

And that's his right.

But I think the bigger picture, and and maybe I should have mentioned this earlier, you know, the question is, why did Elon buy Twitter?

I think initially he saw it as a business.

He was interested in free speech.

But, you know, it was, it was a true financial interest was in there somewhere.

And I think he figured out very quickly that because Twitter is in so many different countries and every prime minister or head of state has an interest in what's said on Twitter.

Now, all of a sudden, he's one of the most influential, if not the most most influential, non-politicians in the world.

And from that perspective, you know, I think he's trying to just send the message globally, not just here in the United States, that, you know, he's in charge.

This is his world, and he's going to say and do whatever it takes to increase his status and power.

Yeah, I mean, there was also just the fact that he personally was and is obviously totally addicted to the platform.

I mean, whatever dopamine he's getting from it is

central to his sense of what it is to be alive at this point.

It appears to have deranged him and turned many of his priorities upside down.

It's hurt his businesses, too.

Yeah.

I mean, it's been productive in some way.

I mean, you know, obviously he's the richest man on earth

or on any given day he is.

So you can't really say it's harmed him financially.

But yeah, I mean, in terms of what it's done to his reputation in half the world, it's pretty grim.

And not to say

I can speak personally that he's lost some relationships over it.

So

I think in the ears of many listeners, you and I will have already started on the wrong foot here by simply running down Trump and not making a positive case for Harris as though that were

necessary.

Which I'm happy to do.

Yeah, I mean, I think we should do that.

But I would point out that it actually isn't necessary if you think Trump is so bad that you you would vote for virtually any other human being over him, which is really the position I'm in.

I mean, I just think he's such an abnormal person psychologically and ethically.

I mean, in terms of the degree to which he is interested only in himself and his fame and wealth, that

he's uniquely vulnerable to manipulation by flattery.

He's just uniquely myopic with respect to his ethical priorities and his, you know, any priority that can be mapped onto the geopolitical interests of our country, right?

I mean, so this is something that, you know, like it may seem like he is a good ally for Israel, say, at the moment, but I think if any enemy of Israel would offer him a, you know, a golf course deal somewhere, that could bend American policy under his standard.

Without question, he's transactional.

Yeah.

It's just a question of how much.

Yeah.

So

let's talk a bit about Harris's campaign and Harris as a a candidate and as a potential future president.

I think I mean, I'm not at all sheepish about talking about the weaknesses as I perceive them in her campaign because they're there and some of them are glaring.

I mean, the biggest one for me has been that she has not been able to speak candidly about her changes of position

on immigration and DEI policy and anything else that is driving people right of center berserk.

She should have been able to explain her pivot from 2019.

And I think she can do that without saying anything that's politically damaging to her campaign.

But for some reason, I mean, somebody on her team has drummed it into her that under no circumstances can you admit that you've changed your mind about anything when you're asked point-blank questions of, you know, on

this date here, you said you were in favor of decriminalizing people coming across the border or you were in favor of taxpayer-funded gender reassignments.

I just don't want to get down to lists, though, right?

There's just, that's, you know, it's not to say that she's flip-flopped on everything, but

I think she's dealt with it conceptually by saying she's open-minded.

She's not an ideologue.

She's not dogmatic.

But just to put it in context, I look at it a lot of these things in business terms.

If I take over a company and I effectively have 14 weeks to turn the company around or I lose my job,

then I've got to go out there and find as many customers as I can.

And that's effectively what happened with Kamala Harris.

She took over 13, 14 weeks ago.

And the mission wasn't to, you know, there's not a checklist after you lose an election that says, but she answered these questions well.

There is the only, you know, scoreboard is who got more votes or who got more electoral college votes.

And in 14 weeks, you've got to have the mission.

to go out there and communicate with as many people as you can that you think you can get to vote for you, particularly when you're starting from a favorability deficit and an awareness deficit.

Even Trump said early on, nobody knows who she is.

And so she had to counter that by going on as many

in a tour and doing as many rallies as she possibly could, because speaking in front of crowds at a rally really is one of her strengths.

If you've had the chance to go to one, the energy is great.

She hits topics that people there care about.

They're screaming.

They're yelling.

it's Obama-ish, both Obama-ish in terms of the response she gets.

And I think the campaign was right to play to her strengths.

And so you saw her do, you know, rallies around the country and you saw the results.

You know, she got to a favor, a positive favorability rating.

The awareness went through the roof and she caught up.

She went from being where Joe was when she took over to it being at worst a dead heat.

So, you know, from my perspective, you can't really argue with the strategy.

It's worked.

Now, you know, would it have been nice for high information voters to get specific feedback on the things that are important to us?

Sure, of course.

But I also think that, you know, you don't necessarily get specific, get to specific voters when you do a lot of the general interviews.

I think she felt the pressure to need to do those things and she did them.

We can argue whether she was good or bad.

But the reality is when they put together a rally, they're putting together not only the faithful, but also people who are undecided or potential voters in order to get them to feel, you know, to drink the Kool-Aid with those around them.

And so I think it's a more target-rich environment, if you will, from a conversion, for a voter conversion or getting someone to vote for Kamala Harris.

So I didn't necessarily have the problem, even though I would have liked to like a lot of people.

to geek out on details and not only why she's changed, but where she is.

Yeah.

Well, it wasn't just the absence of detail.

It was the optics of her looking evasive when the question was inevitable.

When the question was asked.

No, no, sir.

No question about it.

I agree with that.

It's just, you know, you can't win every battle and you're not going to be great at everything.

And, you know, you've done enough interviews where you've been the interviewee and as have I, where you go through a learning process of, you know, how do you interact with interviewers who may not, who may be hostile?

You know, and I don't think even as a senator, she had to go through all that many, certainly not as an AG.

And I think she tries to talk to interviewers more like she's in front of a crowd where she feeds off the energy and tries to gain, you know, some emotional connection.

And that you've got to learn that just doesn't work.

And, you know, I think over the last couple of weeks, she's gotten far, far better and she's done a much better job.

And you can tell when it, you know, she knows it's not going to be hostile.

Even if the questions are the same, she's more comfortable answering.

Do you think she should go on Rogan's podcast?

No, I think that's a a waste of time.

It's a waste of time or it's just too dangerous to do.

No, it's not the danger of it at all because Joe Rogan's a good interview.

I don't think it's a danger.

And I think when he says he just wants to get to know her, he's honest about that.

I just think you have X number of days left.

And just going out there and doing an interview where you know the Trump faith were going to slice and dice the interview any way they choose and that's going to position itself on social media.

I don't think there's any upside.

I mean, how many people's minds are you really going to change by doing the interview versus taking that same time and saying, okay, I need to make sure I reach as many people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, et cetera, Georgia, North Carolina.

That's time far better spent.

So perhaps we can fill in some of the blanks here on a few of these topics.

How do you view

what really is the

bewildering fact of the openness of the southern border and the fact that the Democrats took so long to recognize, I mean, forget about the social problem it may or may not represent and the ethical issues and every other thing that people

causes people to worry about it.

But just think from

the pure position of political pragmatism, it is just a gaping political wound.

I mean, for any day during the Biden presidency, someone could, and many did, just held up a cell phone and caught

the video thousands of people streaming.

You said the key words, the Biden presidency.

Which I think is far, far, far left of Kamala Harris.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: But how do you explain the fact that this is ⁇ because it was the case.

I mean, this is why, and I think he said as much in his interview with you, someone like David Sachs thinks that the Democrats getting religion now about the border is not persuasive because for the longest time, and certainly during Trump's presidency and his campaign,

Democrats greeted his promise to build the wall as just a sign of racism.

It was just a pure indiscretion and forsaking of American values, as though American values rest on having a completely unpoliced border where you have no idea who's coming into the country.

Yeah, look, I think that was a mistake of theirs to wait, and I think that's a Biden mistake.

But, you know, if you look at what's happened, he signed the executive order, which limited the border crossings, which has now pushed them down to where they were under Trump pre-pandemic.

And so they've kind of dealt with that.

And she has said that anybody who crosses since the executive order was signed, she will send back and you can't come back for five years.

And she's also said if you're here in the country illegally and you break the law, you know, steal something, whatever, you are being deported and won't ever come back.

which gets us to dead even, except for the question of deportation.

And I think that is where I've been focused in talking to people.

And I think she's starting to talk more about it.

On one hand, you have Donald Trump, mass deportation, no qualifiers.

On the other hand, you have Kamala Harris that says, okay, I've told you, you know, the people I'm definitely deporting now, but there are going to be circumstances where I'm open to a path to residency or citizenship.

And the foundation for the Delta is, you know, imagine a grandmother who has four American children, a grandmother who's here

and is undocumented, and she's been here 20 years, four American children, 10 American grandchildren.

Do you knock on her door, pull her out of the house, and deport her?

Yeah.

Donald Trump says yes.

And if you take that one step further, where do you stop?

And so when I go out and talk to small businesses, they're terrified, right?

And it's not so much about their own workers.

because you have to file this thing called a 9-9, which defines the residency status of your employee.

And, you know, you get in trouble if you do it and aren't accurate.

But what we're terrified about is, you know, someone from Stephen Miller's little group comes and knocks on the door of your warehouse, your factory, your restaurant, and says, I want a list of all your I-9 employees with their addresses and phone numbers.

And then they go start knocking on doors and pulling people out and deporting them.

And it may sound far-fetched.

And to some Trump supporters, when I talk about us, they're like, oh, he'll never do that.

I'm like, you have to believe what he says.

And then even more, what's happening more and more as I've gotten closer to the border in Arizona, I'm hearing examples.

You know, one person said that their mother went to the embassy during the Trump administration, had been here 20 years, wanted to get all her papers aligned, and they just immediately deported her.

Another gave an example of a 20-year-old woman

who came here to the country when she was six months old with her parents and has an American daughter deported.

Is that who we want to be?

Do we want checkpoints on roads asking for papers?

Do we want another Elian Gonzalez-looking set of events where someone's just banging on the door and someone in the police and military equipment are dragging people out of their homes?

So while we can argue about what they did wrong on immigration, we are where we are now.

They've changed those immigration policies.

And now the big question is deportation.

What kind of country are you?

Are we?

And, you know, I did a little Twitter poll and

60% of people said, okay, we shouldn't deport, you know, grandma.

40% of the people said yes.

And when you look at Donald Trump, his Madison Square Garden speech, you know, day one, we're deporting everybody.

Yeah.

I mean, one hopes that the people, and I think an official poll had that those percentages flipped around, or it was something like 60% of Americans were in favor of deportation.

But one hopes that they're not actually doing the moral math and they don't even know what they're supporting.

I mean, when you actually think about the details that you just described, where you have ⁇ I mean,

you can make the case for younger kids.

I mean, there are kids in very likely your kids' school, if you have kids at

elementary school,

whose parents,

one or both parents, are undocumented.

But the kid is an American citizen, right?

I mean, this is just.

But why are we giving him the benefit of the doubt?

That's the question.

Because on a probabilistic basis, it's definitely greater than zero.

And I would argue it's greater than 50%.

And it's not like he's saying Stephen Miller is not going to be part of his advisory group or cabinet or whatever it may be.

You know, his deportations are.

And Stephen Miller certainly isn't pulling any punches.

Well, this also just speaks to the larger, completely corrosive issue of not taking him.

seriously or taking him seriously, but not literally.

I mean, this idea that you systematically discount every crazy thing he says, even while we know, because we have the continuous testimony of the people who worked under him,

the 40 of his 44 senior most appointees, we know that they had the experience behind closed doors of being asked to do idiotic and immoral and illegal things.

And the only reason why

he didn't accomplish those things is because they refused.

Yeah, the crazy dichotomy to me in all this is people who support Trump, like David Sachs, are always explaining away what he did, like January 6th and what he he said.

People who are opposed to Kamala Harris are always talking about what she did say, you know, as if she, like I think Bakari Sellers or Van Jones said, she has to be flawless.

And it's, you know, it's insane the way they are treated so differently.

But we have to take him seriously in what he says.

He's had nine years to formulate these things.

You know, he's talking about the American Enemies Act of 1798.

This is a man who probably hasn't read a book since C.

Dick Run.

It's not like he was reading and all of a sudden he stumbled across the American Enemies Act of 1798.

That had to be presented to him specifically.

And for those who aren't aware, it says that if there is a country that is defined as an enemy of the USA, not only can he deport those who are undocumented and here illegally, but he can also deport or or intern, as we saw with Japan and the Japan with the Japanese, people who are here legally.

Well, did you see his, I forgot the man's name, but the person who ran ICE under Trump, interviewed on 60 Minutes?

I did not.

There's a clip of him.

He's so back to the details we just discussed about deporting the undocumented parents or grandparents of citizens.

He was asked, well, isn't there a way to keep families together?

I mean, this just seems an atrocious thing to do.

And he said, yeah, you you can keep families together.

We can just deport all of them.

Yeah.

I mean, is that the country we want to be?

Is it truly?

I mean, you know, when you talk about fascism, the

analogies are easy at that point.

I just don't think it is.

And I don't, I think we as a country, most Americans have a good heart.

And that's not, you know, when I talk to people that bring that up to me and I said, and I give them the example we just spoke of, they're like, no, he would never do that.

I mean, to a person, they say that.

And it's just, it's insane that we are giving him, always giving him the benefit of the doubt, always explaining away all these things.

Well, and just wanting to do that is already disqualifying.

I mean, even if you had a story about why he wouldn't be able to do that, the fact that he claims to want to do that should be enough.

Yeah, he's not writing his own speeches.

You know, somebody is putting this on.

a teleprompter for him to read.

He hasn't read the American Enemies Act of 1798.

I'd bet any amount of of money.

And so there is somebody feeding him this, and he's taking it and running with it.

That is not an accident on his part.

It's not, you know, like Joe Biden blurting something out, you know, yesterday.

It's him, you know, specifically and intentionally saying these things and trying to convey it in a manner that all his supporters believe it and take it to heart.

We need to respond to that.

And so when we talk about the positives of Kamala Harris, you may not agree

with what she decides to do with deportations.

But what she's been clear about is that she is going to be transparent and there will be a process and there will be a path to residency and or citizenship.

And if it doesn't include you, you may have to leave.

But at least everybody's going to know what the process is and it'll be transparent.

And that's all you can ask for.

So what do you think about this conspiracy theory that Elon is trafficking in

seemingly at every opportunity that the Democrats want an open border because they they want to get voters?

Yeah, they want to fill the swing states with millions of voters who are for some magical reason guaranteed to vote for them, even though we see abundant evidence that there's a trend toward Trump among Hispanics and other immigrants.

But leaving that out of the-

He's talking about millions of people being flown.

I'm trying to picture them being flown on airplanes, millions of them, to the swing states, and we will never have a fair election again.

It'll be a single-party party state until the end of time.

That's Elon's thesis.

It's obviously ridiculous.

And, you know, when you have cult-like followers and you have a platform where you're allowed to say whatever you want and the algorithm you designed amplifies it to as many people as it possibly can, I mean, it's strategic in some respects.

It doesn't, it's obviously a lie.

It's obviously not true.

You know, just if I was reading the other day on what are the paths to citizenship because I was curious.

The fastest path is to serve in the military.

You can be a resident, non-citizen, and serve in the military, and that'll accelerate your ability to become a citizen in three years.

Beyond that, it's going to take you four or five years or more, and you still have to apply for it.

You still have to get approved.

It's still not easy.

And so it's obviously a lie.

And then the other thing that's always interesting to me is the whole Springfield, Ohio thing with the TPS program.

I don't think anybody's ever stated it publicly, but again, I like to geek out on these details.

You literally have to pay $572 to apply.

So if you wanted to go to Springfield, Ohio from Haiti, it's not like, hey, here's the plane, get on like we're leaving Hanoi.

You know, you have to pay $572 and your application has to be approved.

And then because you're being flown in, you also have to pay for the flight.

So this is not, you know, people just waiting at the airport, waiting for the plane to land and jumping on.

This is intentional and it costs money.

And it really is not what Elon and others are painting it to be.

Now, I've spoken to many Trump supporters who

have chief among their reasons the expectation that he's going to be much better for the economy.

I mean, leaving questions of taxation aside for the richest people who can point to the reason why they expect to pay less in taxes.

There's a general sense that he's going to be better for the middle class.

He's just going to be better for growth.

He's going to be better for inflation, et cetera.

And yet two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal surveyed, I think it was 50 economists, and the results were 68% of them thought his policies would be worse for deficits, for inflation, for interest rates, and only 12% thought hers would be worse.

And slightly different percentages favored hers

for economic growth, for growth in GDP.

Sure.

And yet you point that out, and these people who ostensibly care about economics and the middle class

magically now.

I don't even talk, you know, studies or studies, economists or economists.

I don't think anybody really trusts them or most people don't trust them or understand them.

And so did you see the post that Elon Musk agreed with?

I think it was yesterday or the day before, where somebody said that the first couple of years of Trump will probably crash the economy and it's a chance to rebuild the whole economy.

Yeah, I did.

I did.

I saw rumors of it.

I didn't see it as a problem.

Yeah, and then Elon agreed with it.

You know, that's probably right.

So here's Elon saying that, you know, Trump's policies are going to crash the economy.

I mean, it's again, but here's what I say.

So I'm, you know, when I am out there as a surrogate, I'm typically going out there and visiting with small business people in swing states.

And the request I have for the people who put, that organized the whole thing is I don't want a room full of Democrats that does us no good.

I want independents, Republicans, and undecideds.

So I want this to be, you know, I want them to challenge me on everything because I want the details to be able to get out and apply it to their own personal corporate interest or personal interest.

And so, the first thing I always do when I'm in that group is I tell them there are 33 million companies in this country.

Of those, 99% of them are small.

So, you know, round numbers, let's just say there's about 31 point something million companies that are small businesses in this country.

Of those, the vast majority, more than 98%,

are pass-through companies, subchapter S, LLCs, sole proprietorships.

And of those, 98% make $400,000 or less.

So for almost every single business in this country, your taxes are going to be the same or go down.

And that always raises eyebrows.

And then I say, look, you know, from a personal tax perspective, there are only 4 million people in this country.

that make $400,000 or more.

So you just do the math.

That means there's 330 million people out of 334 give or take whose taxes are going to stay the same or go down as she said that

the taxes for 100 million people will go down.

So for the vast majority, when I say vast, I mean literally 29.7 million give or take entrepreneurs and CEOs and solo entrepreneurs, their taxes are staying the same or going down.

So Donald Trump is doing nothing,

nothing for small business or the entrepreneurs that run them.

Does the cutoff fall in the same place if you're just talking about individuals for the country as a whole?

So if like the

cut between the 1% and the 99%, is that drawn at an income of $400,000 a year?

So I just looked it up and I said, okay, you know, ChatGPT and

Grok even, I said, how many people make $400,000 or more?

And I asked them both.

And the answer was about $4 million.

Right.

So all these tax changes that Donald Trump hasn't even really suggested yet.

He just says your taxes are going down.

He hasn't said what he's going to do or given any details whatsoever, but it applies to 4 million people out of 330 plus million in this country.

And so he's doing nothing, nothing at all for 330 million people.

Well,

if he imposes the tariffs that he wants to impose on the title of the target.

Well, we'll get to those.

We haven't got to those yet.

We'll get to those.

Right.

So the second element when it comes to people's personal household costs and net worth, if you will, and expenditures is healthcare.

Donald Trump says he has a concept of a plan.

Well, the reality is the largest single expense for most households when things go wrong is healthcare.

And the second largest expense for businesses, whether they're small, medium, or large, is benefits slash healthcare.

Kamala Harris has been very, very, very specific that she is going to take on the pharmacy middlemen, also known as pharmacy benefit managers, who artificially inflate the price of medications.

And I know this because I'm in this business.

And she's also saying that she's introducing transparency.

From my experiences with costplusdrugs.com, I can tell you that the cost of medications, the minute this is implemented, will drop by 20%,

30%

or more.

And when you talk about inflation, healthcare has been inflating for years and is a big component of of that 20 plus percent people talk about over the last four years.

And if you have the opportunity to cut medication costs for households, and if she gets any help from Congress at all, apply the same principles to the rest of healthcare, you're more than going to offset any increased costs in Gatorade, toilet paper, and bacon.

Because, you know, we've all been in that situation.

where you go to the doctor and you don't know what the outcome is going to be.

That's scary enough.

And not knowing if you're going to be able to pay for it because you have a high deductible plan where you have no insurance, that's terrifying.

Kamala Harris is dealing with that directly.

I mean, think about what happens when you get a prescription, Sam.

They say, okay, you're going to have to take this medication.

And the second question is not, can you afford it or how will you pay for it?

It's what's your pharmacy?

And then you've seen or heard all the stories about somebody standing in line and finding out that they can't afford the medication because there is no transparency.

And that's that's what's allowed these pharmacy benefit managers to jack up the price of medications and their affiliated companies to do the same in healthcare.

And so when Kamala Harris says we are going to take on the middlemen, the pharmacy middlemen and introduce transparency,

the direct result of that is that your costs for medications will go down quickly.

And again, If you can extend that to healthcare, the fear and the out-of-pocket costs of, you know, when you get sick sick will go down dramatically.

That will more than offset any increase in inflation that we've seen to date during the Biden administration.

And then we can go to tariffs.

And also inflation has been brought under control, right?

Right, right.

But not for healthcare.

Right.

You know, the cost of Gatorade may only go up 2.5% going forward.

But the cost of healthcare, because it's so opaque as an industry, the regulators are slim.

You know, there's been some transparency on the hospital provider side, but not enough to really change behaviors or reduce the overall costs.

And so she's focused on that.

Donald Trump has a concept of a plan.

Now, if you want, we can get to tariffs.

Yeah, I mean, as far as I can tell, the jury is not out on the effect of tariffs on an economy generally.

And all you got to do is look at his first four years.

They didn't work.

Name the one example of where tariffs had a positive impact either on the economy or bringing back manufacturing.

Then, what accounts for the fact that sophisticated...

Wait, I'm not done ripping the moderny yet.

Yeah, hold on.

There's more.

There's more.

So let's look at it from a personal perspective.

Let's say that Donald Trump, God Help Us, wins.

And this time next year, we're looking to make decisions on the Christmas presents we're going to buy.

Well, people may or may not realize, but the sporting goods, equipment you buy for presents, the knickknacks you buy from the knickknack shop, the dresses, the backpacks, you name it, almost all of them are made in China.

And

when you impose a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China, now all of a sudden, if you're looking to buy your kid a basketball, that price is going up 60% at least.

And if it goes up 60% at least, along with all the other Chinese imports, then you're going to have to make some hard decisions at Christmas.

Because with those increases because of Donald Trump's tariffs, I call them the Grinch that's stealing our Christmas, you're going to make a lot of hard decisions and you're not going to be able to buy as much.

And it's not only awful for you and your family and disappointing your kids, but look at the retailers that you would be buying from.

That sporting goods store where you've bought mitts and bats and balls for your kids since they were three years old.

The knickknack store where you buy all your favorite candles.

The little dress shop owned by the lady that you see at church that's been there for 20 years.

Those are the people who are going to suffer as well.

And not only that, the crazy part is the steps that businesses take when there's even a discussion of tariffs.

So let's just say across with these across the board tariffs, and look, there are strategic tariffs that make sense, but we're talking about the negatives of across the board tariffs.

And those across the board tariffs, we'll use the basketball example.

You're a...

a sporting goods retailer and you sell a lot of basketballs and you import them from China.

Now, because you know the price is going up 60%,

what are you going to do?

You're going to either borrow money or

you're going to take money that was designed to use for expansion, to hire more and more people, to grow the business in one way or the other.

Now you're going to take that and use it to pre-buy inventory from your Chinese importer so that you beat the price rush.

The downstream impact of tariffs is far more than just a taxation.

It is personal.

It hurts businesses.

It hurts families.

And Donald Trump says, well, it's a negotiating tactic.

It gets them, it brings manufacturers back.

Remember the 33 million companies I told you about?

The number of people who own foreign factories that

would come back,

maybe

five of them are small businesses.

And then there's others like John Deere who even don't even have factories overseas, but get threatened if

they move jobs or anything to Mexico, the tariffs are going to go up to 200%.

And when Donald Trump tariffs John Deere equipment 200%,

that literally makes the Chinese companies that import Chinese products cheaper than John Deere, giving them an advantage.

And I can just go on with example after example after example.

And then, you know how people always say, well, Kamla had three and a half years.

Why didn't they do it then?

Donald Trump had four years to implement tariffs.

It didn't work.

During, you know, he started his tariff negotiating, quote unquote, in January of 2018.

And they started to implement the tariffs not long after, I think June or July of 2018.

And then, of course, there were retaliatory tariffs that came in from China.

And back and forth it went.

And there was no upside whatsoever.

There was no positive gain.

In fact, During that period of trade wars, the economy took a turn for the worst and the Federal Reserve had to implement interest rate cuts to try to spruce back up the economy, mostly as a result of Donald Trump's implementation of tariffs and causing this tariff war.

But he has fallen so in love, it's also going to impact our foreign policy and our defense strategies for our allies.

And probably the most insane outcome or discussion of his tariffs that I've heard is as it applies to Taiwan.

There is a company in Taiwan called Taiwan Semiconductor.

Are you familiar with it at all?

Yeah.

But explain it to the audience.

It is literally the most important company in the world.

They make the most advanced semiconductor chips.

And their customers for those chips are NVIDIA, the highest market cap company in the country, who makes all the most advanced AI chips, which allow us as a country, including our military, to be the most technologically advanced in artificial intelligence in the world.

One of their other customers is Apple, and then the list goes on.

Donald Trump, when asked if he would defend Taiwan if it looked like China was going to invade them, said,

no.

What I'll do is I'll just put 200% tariffs on China if they invade Taiwan.

So effectively, rather than making a decision that becomes life or death, you know, you know, a literal war for China as it applies to Taiwan.

He's making it about the prices of dresses.

So President Xi can say, Xi can say, well, if I attack, if I go into Taiwan and take over Taiwan's semiconductor, yeah, our imports will go down some, but I'll just put more retaliatory tariffs on the United States of America, but I'll get to keep TSMC.

I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever.

He is so in love with tariffs, he doesn't understand them.

But the idea that not protecting Taiwan, an ally at all, when for, you know, put aside all the other reasons, but it has the most valuable company that effectively controls the future of artificial intelligence is insane.

And to Biden's credit, that's where the CHIPS Act came in because Biden recognized that and his administration did the CHIPS Act.

And now TSMC has broken ground in Arizona and is starting to get better yield with some of the more normal chips and hope to have the most advanced chips available in 2028.

Yeah, I was going to say, it doesn't, wouldn't it make sense to onshore some of the critical supply chain?

I mean, if we learned anything from COVID, it was that our supply chain was not quite what we thought it was.

The question is, how do you get companies to do it?

And the underlying question is, why haven't they done it already?

Because there are mission-critical products that we really need here.

And there's, you know, obviously non-mission critical like basketballs and, you know, toilet paper and paper plates.

Why don't we already have manufacturing here?

Because Americans will not pay a premium for American-made.

If Americans paid a premium for American-made, as an entrepreneur, I'd be starting factories left and right.

I mean, we built a factory for costplusdrugs.com.

We did it for one of my bike companies, and it's all robotics driven.

And

if I could just amortize the cost over a shorter period of time because people would pay a little bit more.

for American-made products, you would see that happen.

But that's not who we are.

We want the least expensive.

So, you know, we outsource a lot of this manufacturing.

But again, to continue the tariffs conversation, China has learned a lot more from their experience when Trump was president than Trump has.

China has started, has built or bought manufacturing plants, factories around the world.

And China also has done the same thing in Mexico.

so that they can manufacture in Mexico and under the USMCA that Trump's designed and signed, it reduces the cost to, I don't know if it's zero tariffs or close for anything that's made with their components in Mexico and shipped to the United States.

And if Trump jacks up the tariffs, they're just going to tell their importers here in the United States, why don't you buy from our factory in Indonesia or buy from our factory in Vietnam?

And the tariffs, meaning the tariffs accomplished nothing except inflating the cost of goods.

for all of us.

And he just doesn't understand that.

And that's where I spend a lot of my time going out there and explaining those things.

And the last thing, you know, I'll go back to deportation.

The impact on businesses is significant.

You know, when you run a small business, it's almost like family.

It's like you're podcasting, your business is the same.

You know everybody.

You know when their kids are sick.

And, you know, when you have a restaurant, when you have a warehouse, whatever it may be.

If someone's knocking on your door, asking to see paperwork.

and checking and going to the homes of your employees to check to see if grandma is documented or not, that impacts everything that happens in that business.

That makes it near impossible to run that business.

And then, of course, if there's mass deportations for hardworking people, what happens to the economy could be far, far worse.

So when they talk about, when the economists have talked about the impact of tariffs, they haven't talked about the impact of deportations, nor have they included the economic impact, not just on businesses, but of the physical, the actual cost of deporting somebody.

What I read is that it's

thousand dollars per person now to give you a frame of reference on the numbers he's looking at there are 1.9 million incarcerated people in this country from federal down to local prisons and jails he wants to deport millions

millions yeah so who's like 12 million 20 million i have whatever he decides yeah if he just starts to deport a million people times 15 000 per person that's 15 billion dollars plus the time and cost for all the local

police departments or whoever he militarizes to go and pull them out of their homes, to do the checkpoints, whatever it may be.

That's incremental cost above and beyond the $15,000 per person.

So you want to talk about a budget breaker and a deficit grower.

If he actually does $10 million, that's $150.

billion dollars.

If it's 20 million people like he says and he's going to deport them,

you can do the math.

That's $300 billion.

To say nothing of the knock-on effects economically, but ethically,

when you think about the details, they're so horrific ethically.

I just get the sense that, again, this comes back to the fact that nothing sticks to him and everything is hyperbolically discounted.

So his words mean nothing.

I literally think he could say, we're just going to round them up and kill them and turn them into dog food.

And his fans would still say, oh, he's not going to get it.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

So

it's funny.

So he came out at one point, and I don't know if he's mentioned it since, where he's going to put caps on credit card interest rates.

And I went on Twitter.

I was like, oh, so he's a socialist now.

Maybe he's even communist, you know, because Kamala Harris doesn't have any price caps anywhere.

And then the response was, no, but it makes perfect sense.

Nobody likes those interest rates.

I thought, and I was like, I thought you were against Marxism and price caps and price limits.

And oh, no, you know, Donald Trump is looking out for us.

Well, how concerned are you about wealth inequality?

And

what would you propose as a sane approach to taxes?

I'm glad you brought that up.

So when I've sold my companies, each and every time I've given a big chunk to the employees.

My first business when I was in my 20s, you know, we sold for 6 million, a million went to employees.

My second business, we sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock, taught people how to hedge, and 300 out of 330 employees became millionaires.

When I sold a chunk in the Mavs, we handed out $50 million in bonuses.

So I'm a big believer that this is a group effort and everybody deserves to be rewarded.

And I, you know, the only way to minimize or reduce, not say minimize, but reduce income inequality is for people to have appreciable assets.

There's no, you know, when you're living paycheck to paycheck, there's just no amount of payment that you're going to get where you can save enough to truly make a difference.

And so I'm a big believer in employee stock ownership plans.

And as it turns out, so is Kamala Harris.

And she's come out and said specifically that she is going to endorse and support and increase and enhance the employee stock ownerships programs and similar programs that will allow, that will make it easier for employers to give equity to everybody.

So if you work for a startup and in itself, you get paid.

If you work for a big company, she'll give them incentives to give stock to everybody.

So if there's a liquidity event, you'll get paid.

If there's dividends, you'll get paid.

And so taking on businesses and incenting them to offer stock to everybody, in my mind, is one of the best ways to do it.

The second best way to do it is her down payment assistance plan.

Now, a lot of people have made it sound like, oh my God, this is so inflationary.

But what they don't realize is that it's not new.

Like in the city of Houston, they have down payment assistance programs that will support, that will offer you up to $50,000 in down payment assistance.

I mean, if you just, you know, Google down payment assistance programs, they're all over the country.

There's hundreds of them.

So this is nothing new.

This just codifies it on the national level and helping people who are first-time homebuyers, who have great credit because you don't want.

you know, mortgage lenders being stuck with the bag and people having, not being able to pay.

And so having that available is a great way to help people get an asset that appreciates.

I mean, it's very, very straightforward.

And, you know, to me, those are the two best ways to start to address income inequality.

Now, what is your reaction to the proposed, I think this proposal has since been withdrawn or otherwise deprecated, but the proposed tax on unrealized capital gains.

It's not going to happen.

Yeah, it would have been horrific.

And so did that come directly from the Harris campaign or was that a Biden campaign?

So

both, both.

So what happened was when the proposed, the initial presentation of it, if you will, was never truly proposed.

So when Biden came out with this 2024 budget, they had to find a way to balance it.

That's how it was explained to me.

And so they incorporated this tax on unrealized capital gains.

And when I saw that while Biden was still the candidate, I called one of the people I know there and I was like, what the hell is this?

This is an economy crusher.

And they go, yeah, we understand.

It's It's never going to happen.

We just needed it in there for budgetary reasons.

And then someone, when Kamala became the candidate, someone went on CMBC and said, yeah, she supports it.

Well, we haven't heard from that person since.

So I called up the Harris folks and I'm like, tell me this is not true because this is the worst thing for the economy.

And they're like, no, it's not true.

It's not going to happen.

And the proof is obviously every Harris sponsored campaign event that I do, I bring this up and say it's not going to happen.

And, you know, they're still sending me out there.

And, you know, so they've told me from the paint.

I haven't heard it from her mouth, but I haven't asked her.

But I've heard it from the mouths of multiple people in the campaign that it's not going to happen.

It would be helpful if she said it's not going to happen.

Yeah, you know, and I said the same thing, you know, but the response was, people don't care about the people that impacts.

You know, you got to have $100 million or more in assets.

And there's not a whole lot of sympathy for folks in my position.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just when you think about the details of trying to impose that tax, though,

it imposes such crazy cognitive overhead on the government.

It's just bizarre to think of

ups and downs.

It's ridiculous.

And plus, the people that'll get whipsawed.

I mean, you take your company public and you're equity rich and cash poor.

You know, you might have to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to pay your tax bill and have $50 in the bank.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I guess finally, Mark, let's just touch on your expectations around

America's place in the world

in

backstopping the rules-based international order, and I think specifically supporting allies like Israel.

What is your expectation of a Harris administration?

Because to take that final point first, I think there are many Jews who imagine that there's some lesson to be drawn from Trump's first term, that he is a totally reliable ally for the state of Israel and, above all, will defend it.

And

there's nothing to worry about on that front.

And conversely, you have in the example of the Biden and Harris administration some obvious support.

I mean, we've given them a lot of military aid, and although we've had moments where we seem to be withholding that aid or delaying it, but we've given, apart from those first weeks after October 7th, there has been a kind of talking out of both sides of their mouths phenomenon coming from the administration.

And obviously there's pressure from the activist class within the Democratic Party to be far more concerned about what's happening to the Palestinians than

really any other people on earth.

How do you do the math on this issue?

I mean, I can't speak from a lot of detailed discussions with them other than to say, you know, my brief conversations with Doug Amoff, who is Jewish, that, you know, he's hardcore and he's fully supportive of Israel and she takes a lot of counsel from him.

And I think, you know, they've had to walk a fine line and find an equilibrium.

And I think that's been smart because I think the more,

if they don't pay any attention to Gaza, then the protests on college campuses get worse.

And I think that is why they've walked a fine line, but that's just me.

supposing.

But I don't think there's any doubt and there's no doubt in my mind that they'll be fully supportive, that they're all in on Israel without any hesitation whatsoever.

But that's just my opinion.

And in terms of the rest of the world, I think they'll back all of our allies.

I know when

we talked, and I literally talked to the campaign when I was in Pennsylvania about Polish Americans and the issue of Ukraine.

You know, I think it's a given that if Ukraine is given up to Putin, Poland is next.

And to the 770,000 Polish Americans in the state of Pennsylvania, that's a big deal.

And she's made that commitment that she will be there for her allies, as has all of NATO.

So, you know, I mentioned Taiwan.

She says she will, you know, that they will support and protect Taiwan.

They're not going to get into the politics between the two countries, but if there's any type of military action, we will be there.

And I think that's smart.

And so, I mean, I think, you know, with the exception of the four years under Trump, I think you'll see a lot more or a lot of what's already happened historically from the United States military and from a diplomacy perspective.

And I will also add, Kamala Harris understands diplomacy.

She knows what the word diplomacy means.

And she understands the process required and the quality of people in a cabinet and in ambassadorships required in order to make diplomacy work.

You don't have any sense of that from Donald Trump.

You know, the thing about Donald Trump, you can't point to one situation or example where he has given a detailed explanation of policy.

You can't point to one example where you think to yourself, wow, that was really a nuanced response from Donald Trump about a policy issue.

Never.

Ever.

The exact opposite with Kamala Harris.

You know,

she's a policy geek.

She likes to dig into policy.

She likes to read it.

She likes to understand it.

She wants to know what's happening in the world and how we can have an impact.

And to me, that's critically important because, you know, we've talked about Donald Trump being transactional.

We don't want him selling our relationships to the highest bidder.

You know, in some respects, and I'm not an expert on this, he did it with Yemen in 2018, was it?

When there were people, you know, 100,000 plus people died in Yemen and we kept on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.

You know, and there's just, that's who he is.

Strangely, there's not a lot of protests on college campuses around that.

I wonder why.

No, shockingly enough.

And, you know, the never wars, Donald Trump did nothing to stop this war.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Mark, is there anything left to say, but either against Donald Trump or in favor of Harris before we close out here?

Yeah.

I mean, in favor of Kamala Harris, what's critical to me, what she said yesterday at in D.C.

When she talked about, I'm not trying to get people who disagree with me.

I'm trying to put them at the table with me.

I want to hear from them and learn from them.

That's leadership.

That is the definition of leadership.

She's not out to get people.

She's out to learn from people.

And when people question, you know, is she too far left or, you know, is she still progressive?

That is your answer right there.

She's open-minded.

She's not an ideologue.

How often does that happen in politics?

And just, this is my personal opinion.

across the board.

I think she's learned a lot from Donald Trump over the past nine years that party politics takes second to directly communicating with the people and being in a position to understand their needs.

And it doesn't matter what the Democrats think.

We learned it doesn't matter what the Republican Party thinks anymore.

He's taking it over.

It's now the family business.

And for Kamala, I think similarly, she realizes she's got to communicate with Americans.

that in order for this country to be successful going forward, she's got to represent everybody.

And if you disagree with her, that's okay.

She wants to hear from you.

She says she's going to put independents and or Republicans in her cabinet.

That's leadership.

That's talking to people.

The best leaders are people who communicate with everybody.

You don't have to agree with them.

You don't have to give them what they want, but you have to be able to communicate, listen, and understand.

I don't think Donald Trump is capable of any of those things.

I know Kamala Harris is.

Yeah, she had a nice line along those lines in one of her speeches where she says, you know, I have a to-do list, he has an enemies list,

which really does sharpen up the distinction.

I mean,

what she has most in her favor, and I really, I don't mean to discount her competence as a leader or as a politician, as a possible president.

I mean, I think she'll be fine and perhaps even quite good.

But above all, she'll be normal.

I mean, I just yearn for this return to normal politics.

Gay men, just

the ajada that happens between families.

I know it's in my family.

You know, who you're voting for?

You know, my brother-in-law started talking crap about me online and I had to block him.

I mean, it's just crazy.

Well, that's a point I think that there's really no denying whatever you're, I mean, even if someone does not agree with anything we've said so far about Trump or about Harris, what is undeniable is that Trump drives half the country crazy.

Right.

And if you even, so if you just think half the country has TDS, okay, fine.

But you have to admit that's not a good thing.

Even if that's your view, you should want to live in a country where politics is not taking up this much bandwidth.

I agree.

And we're not,

one half of the country isn't despising the decisions of the other half of the country.

And the reason why we haven't returned to normal under Biden is Trump hasn't gone away.

Yes.

We're still in this mode where Trump has the, you know, we don't, we, we don't, we no longer have a normal Republican Party.

There's not a normal conservative.

It's just a personality cult.

Exactly right.

How sad is it that rather than being looking at the election and election day as a crowning achievement for our democracy, our republic, it's like, okay, I'm so glad it's over.

Yeah, and I hope half the country accepts the results.

Finally, the other point here is that even if you are a single-issue voter and the far left has just driven you crazy this last decade, whether it's the trans issue or immigration or defund the police or whatever the tipping point was articulated by the far left, if that's your issue, my argument is that the pendulum is in the process of swinging back in the Democratic Party.

And if we elect Trump again for four years, it will swing out again into crazy town.

Even if you just want to normalize the left side of our politics and have sane institutions, if you want Harvard and the New York Times to be sane again and reliable, well, then if you had to place a bet, it gets more normalized and more reliable under Harris than under Trump because Trump is a continuous provocation to the left.

And you can't, there's no path to get him to understand something.

With a Kamala Harris presidency, you can lobby against the things you don't like.

You can protest against the things you don't like, and you will be heard.

And there'll be at least some normalcy in Congress that hopefully you'll be heard.

With Trump, he doesn't listen.

You know, he listens to, I was talking to somebody

who knows him well, who actually served in the Trump administration.

And he was saying that Trump would call him and others.

24-7, right?

He just spent all his time on the phone into the wee hours of the morning, getting perspective from only the people he knows.

He got perspective from watching television, Twitter slash true social now, and his friends on the phone.

That's no way to run a government.

Yeah, well, it is if you want My Pillow Guy and Mike Flynn and

the other freaks and grifters in power.

And I even knew some of those freaks and grifters before they went for Trump.

And they were freaks and grifters before.

And he just ignored the fact that they were freaks and grifters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Mark, it's great to have you on the podcast.

Thank you for everything you're doing.

And I will be thinking about you next week, whatever happens.

Thank you.

Sam, thanks for having me on.

I'm a big fan, and I really appreciate it.

It was a lot of fun.