BONUS EPISODE with Jason Calacanis: The Civil War in Silicon Valley

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 9 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 12 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list, like your husband, who fidgets through the night like he's sending Morse code with his toes.

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Speaker 13 Hey y'all, I had a little special bonus interview with Jason Calicanis.

Speaker 13 For those of you that don't know him, he's a massive angel investor, a big early investor in Uber, and he has this podcast called the All-In Podcast with co-host David Sachs, Chamoth Palhapatya, and David Freeberg.

Speaker 13 Jason's kind of like the squishy centrist on this podcast, Sachs and Chamoth. I'm going all-in with Trump.

Speaker 13 I posted a video, which you'll get to hear on this episode on Twitter, of the four of them talking after January 6th, and they all sounded quite a bit like the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 13 And Jason was the one who wanted to defend himself and defend his honor and say he hasn't changed his views on all that.

Speaker 13 And so I invited him on, and we wanted to have a wide-ranging conversation that got a little bit into his view of politics and the Silicon Valley view of politics, as well as a couple of burning questions I have about Silicon Valley.

Speaker 13 It went way longer than I thought, in part because Jason took the mic and started asking me questions.

Speaker 13 And so rather than try to shoehorn it into our existing daily podcast, we just wanted to put put it out as a bonus.

Speaker 13 And for those of you who cannot stomach listening to somebody that is on the fence between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, you know, you can maybe skip this one.

Speaker 13 But for the rest of us, I think it was a very interesting exchange that shed a lot of light on these tech bros who are getting weak in the knees for Donald Trump and why that is.

Speaker 13 And I think that some of Jason's answers and some of his non-answers were pretty revealing on that front. So I hope you enjoy it.
Once again, his name is Jason Callakanis at Jason on Twitter.

Speaker 13 So if you have positive or negative reviews, you can reach him there.

Speaker 13 Up next, Jason.

Speaker 13 All right, I'm here with Jason Calicanis. I must just say to start, we didn't have to do this.
Jay Cal, they call him over in the all-in podcast.

Speaker 13 I, you know, took a little swipe at the all-in boys at some of his besties, his podcast co-hosts on Twitter. And Jason engaged in good faith.
And so, let's do this. Let's hash it out.

Speaker 13 And I'm grateful that he did it. So here he is on the Bullwork Podcast Little Crossover.
How you doing, Jason?

Speaker 14 I'm well. And I appreciate you pulling up the clip from, was it episode 16 or something? Four years ago.
And it was our reaction to January 6th. I hadn't seen it since then, so it was great.

Speaker 14 The edit was a little dicey, but overall, I thought it's great that you linked to it because it is good to see how people's opinions have changed over time about that day.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I want to, we'll get to that on this on the January 6th. Let's, let's, We don't need to start with old Trump.
We'll talk about a few other things.

Speaker 13 I was actually an early, I don't think episode 16 early, but pretty early listener of all in because I was mostly interested in, I just like looking for ways to consume information outside of my little bubble, right?

Speaker 13 And so kind of learning about tech stuff. You guys all have bunch of VCs and you're an angel investor.
And so I was learning things about, you know, kind of what was happening in the tech world that.

Speaker 13 I wasn't getting from my other media. And then David Sachs made the whole podcast about politics.
So I've started to tune out lately, I have to admit.

Speaker 13 But you don't have to comment on that if you don't watch. The balance has shifted a little towards politics.

Speaker 14 Oh, I'm not a politics guy. And so I find it, you know, it's actually very educational for me because

Speaker 14 we have a very first principled thing in Silicon Valley, right? We like to go to first principles. We like to, you know, argue both sides.
We like to steal man stuff.

Speaker 14 And then it comes to politics, people become incredibly partisan and that kind of goes away.

Speaker 14 So it's been interesting to watch my friends, David included, who really care, who are partisans, you know, and then Reid Hoffman on the other side and Mark Cuban, who I've been friends with, both those guys for a long time, over 20 years.

Speaker 14 So watching this civil war in Silicon Valley as a moderate independent from New York who's voted, I would say I voted Democratic two out of three elections and, you know, voted for Pataki, Giuliani, you know, when you live in New York, you don't really have much choices.

Speaker 13 My people, the rhinos, back when Giuliani was a rhino, you know, that was my touch.

Speaker 14 Yeah, exactly. And it was great, Mary.
But anyway, I'm kind of independent, socially liberal, and fiscally conservative, and kind of like, and so I don't know where I fit in the spectrum anymore.

Speaker 14 But it's been really fascinating to watch what's happened in Silicon Valley, where you generally were quiet about your politics because it didn't help business.

Speaker 14 And in fact, it hurt business to pick a side. And generally, it's 95% left-leaning Democrats, and that's changed radically.

Speaker 13 For people who don't know, just give us a real quick reader's digest on the show.

Speaker 13 And we've got some listeners probably just don't care about tech news, don't follow it, so like have no idea who you are. So

Speaker 13 what's the shorthand?

Speaker 14 So, yeah, 14 years ago, I started, I'm a former journalist, publisher from New York. I did a magazine in the 90s called Silicon Valley Reporter.

Speaker 14 I did a blog company, I sold AOL, which did Engadget Autoblog and competed heads up against Nick Denton and Gawker. I made a bunch of money selling that.

Speaker 14 I became an angel investor in startup companies. And when I did that, I started a podcast 14 years ago, and I've done 2,000 episodes of something called This Week in Startups, just about startups.

Speaker 14 And then two of my frequent guests and friends, David Sachs and Chamath Polyhapatia, who are capital allocators as well and entrepreneurs, we created this new podcast during COVID because we couldn't see each other called All In.

Speaker 14 It's just a Zoom.

Speaker 14 I named it All In after the fact that we used to play poker every Thursdays. And during COVID, we couldn't.
So it was just a way for us to chew the fat and it became extremely popular, extremely fast.

Speaker 14 And now when the episode comes out on the weekends, if you were to look at the like Apple charts or something,

Speaker 14 sometimes it breaks the top 10 episodes, typically the top 20 episodes. It's once a week.
We've done 199 episodes. There's a conference that goes with it called All in Summit.

Speaker 14 And we've been doing that for three years.

Speaker 14 And this year was kind of a high watermark for both the pod and for the event in that like Trump came on, JD Vance came to the event, Elon was at the event, Sergey Brim was at the event, Travis from Uber was at the event.

Speaker 14 So, if you were in the tech business, you would listen every week. If you're not in the tech business or finance business, you might have heard about it, but probably not.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And, you know, the flashpoint, I guess, for the pod this year, as I said, you said you had Trump on, but of your co-hosts, you mentioned two of them.

Speaker 13 You also have David, who's like kind of afraid for

Speaker 13 a token lefty, though maybe not that left.

Speaker 13 But Sachs and Shamas both had a fundraiser for Trump earlier this year. Your co-hosts.

Speaker 14 Yeah, that was a big seminal moment, I think, in the history of Silicon Valley and politics

Speaker 14 because, you know, if you were to actually come out in public support of Trump in Silicon Valley, that would be, I don't want to say career ending, but it would be damaging to your startup.

Speaker 14 You would lose employees.

Speaker 14 So during the you know, let's call it the hyper-woke era of Silicon Valley, it was, you know, Trump, like in New York, Trump was considered an existential threat to democracy, capitalism, America.

Speaker 14 And, you know, he was so toxic that to even say you would vote for him was kind of crazy.

Speaker 14 Now, that doesn't mean people weren't voting for him, but you would never in 2016 or 2020 host a fundraiser for Trump.

Speaker 13 To your point, since you led us right there about this change, right? Like that this is something has changed, right? Where being for Trump would have been verbote and now it is not.

Speaker 13 I mean, that was, I guess, the fundamental point of the video that I, that I had put up, but that nothing has changed with Trump, right? Like, Trump hasn't changed.

Speaker 14 I would agree with you that Trump hasn't changed. Yeah.
I mean, I think there was a moment when people felt he was changing.

Speaker 14 And I called that Trump 2.0 or all-in Trump, some people called it, because he had an appearance where he was fabulously normal on all-in.

Speaker 14 And, you know, people came to me and said, wow, you're you're going to vote for him? Like, I mean, it seems like he's actually learned a lot. He's like maybe matured.

Speaker 14 He's got, you know, he's evolved and, you know, he's different.

Speaker 14 And then, of course, after the first assassination attempt, we watched that RNC speech and people were like, hey, first half of the speech, he seems like a changed guy. Like, I guess almost dying.

Speaker 14 We do that to you. And the second half, he went right back to insult comic

Speaker 14 calling. And so I think he should be up right now 10 points at least if he was that Trump 2.0.
And maybe J.D.

Speaker 14 Vance is that, you know, in my mind, which is somebody who believes in traditional American values, free markets, less spending, doesn't believe in identity politics.

Speaker 14 But Trump has obviously reverted back to full insult comic grievances, you know, adjacent to kind of racist, sexist stuff, right?

Speaker 13 So what do you think explains the change in attitude towards Trump and about your co-host specifically, but I guess maybe Silicon Valley broadly, right?

Speaker 13 Because you said that now there's more things, like, so you don't have to speak for them specifically, but like, why? So that's hard for me to wrap my head around.

Speaker 14 Oh, I think it's pretty simple, actually. It's not so much,

Speaker 14 obviously, elections, and you're into politics more than I am, but it's a choice, right? So it's binary. So you have to pick A or B.

Speaker 14 It's not like you get to write somebody in and have a chance of them winning.

Speaker 14 So, you know, if we look at Biden and his performance and what happened in San Francisco over the last decade, I think people are very nervous in the the capitalistic part and free market part of the economy.

Speaker 14 And I'm not speaking for David or Chamoff, but just in general, what I hear from folks is they don't want socialism and they don't like identity politics and they like meritocracy.

Speaker 14 So there was a moment where, you know, DEI kind of was the main focus in Silicon Valley. Everybody had a DEI department.
Everybody was obsessed with it.

Speaker 14 And now founders have started talking about merit, exceptionalism, and intelligence, MEI, I think is their like, you know, counter-trolling. And so

Speaker 14 if you have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders attacking capitalism, success, that is how I think a lot of folks have been flipped by the Republicans.

Speaker 14 And if you look at Joe Rogan, Elon, Chamoth, and a number of folks, they all voted for Biden. They all voted for Obama.
They voted for Hillary. They, in some of these cases, ran fundraisers.

Speaker 14 And then that party then set a test, I think, you know, a purity test

Speaker 14 for, you know, people who are moderates and capitalists in the middle. And we, and we all failed it.
And I think that's when people looked at Trump as the better option.

Speaker 14 They felt, and, you know, really losing Joe Rogan and losing Elon is like the most ridiculous self-inflicted wound of the Democratic Party. They had them.

Speaker 14 All they had to do was just say, like, hey, you know, we might disagree about, I don't know, taxes, meritocracy, or whatever, but there's room in this tent, this Democratic tent for, you know, capitalists, for billionaires.

Speaker 14 And they kicked them out.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I guess I don't, that's the part I don't really get.

Speaker 13 I mean, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren lost in the Democratic primary to Joe Biden, who did not institute any type of socialism, who passed a lot of bipartisan bills, frankly, on the chip stack and infrastructure, type stuff that Elon would have liked.

Speaker 14 I think it's the general tone of the Democratic Party is what people were picking up on.

Speaker 13 But Kamala is not running on DEI or socialism. I mean, like her platform does not include anything related to socialism.
There's no threats to capitalism. I had Doug M.

Speaker 13 Hoff on the podcast last week, and he called himself a capitalist.

Speaker 14 Yeah, most people believe she's lying in her move to the center.

Speaker 13 Okay. Well, even if you believed that, like her 2019 platform, even the most left version of herself, I think we can all agree kind of the Democrats got caught up a little bit in the sort of lefty,

Speaker 13 what, woke, wokeification, if you will, of the party during 2019. But like, she never ran on socialism.
She never ran on socialism.

Speaker 13 I guess I just don't understand it.

Speaker 14 I think that's people's perception is that there is a hatred of entrepreneurship. And I'm not saying this is real.
I'm just telling you the perception in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 13 Her brother-in-law works for Uber. Her husband was a corporate lawyer.

Speaker 14 You're making a great counter case. I'm just telling you, you asked me how it happened.
Okay, sir, this is how it happened. You don't invite Elon to the EV summit.

Speaker 14 That's kind of like not inviting Michael Jordan to the All-Star game. You kind of get the message loud and clear as entrepreneurs.
You introduce a wealth tax.

Speaker 14 You put a tax on people selling their homes in L.A. or in San Francisco for over $5 million.

Speaker 14 And if people feel like you're constantly under attack for building and creating jobs,

Speaker 14 that was what the Democratic Party did to capitalists in their minds. I'm not saying it's true.
You can make counter arguments for it.

Speaker 14 I'm telling you about the perception I hear from inside the room where people discuss these things. They feel like the Democratic Party is absolutely anti-capitalist.
And I think

Speaker 14 the process in which they hid Biden's

Speaker 14 mental capacity and then Kamala not having to do a proper primary, they considered all all that part of this deep state machine of elitists. And we, I see you smirking.

Speaker 13 Come on.

Speaker 13 I mean, you're on a podcast. It's a four podcast of four billionaires.
So like the deep state elitist. I'm not a billionaire.

Speaker 13 But I mean, that's like a superficial.

Speaker 14 I would say that's a superficial way of describing us. We're actually, three of them are immigrants and we're all self-made.
So you can be dismissive and say, oh, four billionaire.

Speaker 13 Well, no, I'm just saying,

Speaker 13 you're talking about other elites. Like there's some elite cabal.
Like, I mean, Elon runs the biggest, one of the biggest social media platforms. Like, they're all.

Speaker 14 So, the thing you're missing, Tim, is self-made people versus Ivy League elites who had it handed to them and journalists. That's the perception in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 14 Now, again, I'm not saying this is necessarily my take on it, but you asked, like,

Speaker 14 what's driving it? You take a bunch of people who are self-made

Speaker 14 and then you start attacking them, and

Speaker 14 you just sort of take over the Democratic Party, and you don't have a primary, and you hid this guy who is obviously in mental decline.

Speaker 14 That's the kind of stuff that kind of counters how Silicon Valley and how capitalists think.

Speaker 14 They think about performance, think about meritocracy, they think about radical independence and being self-made.

Speaker 13 That's their worldview.

Speaker 14 And then, when a bunch of elite people, and by elites, the derogatory comment is Ivy League educated, working as journalists working in think tanks working in politics but having created jobs and then that's the tension that I think led a lot of them to flip to Trump yeah and so that's the answer to your question why did they flip there I think the Democratic Party and that elite machine kind of made them feel like even though they were donating money that they were hated does that make sense no I mean no and yes it makes sense that they think that but the argument doesn't make sense I mean Kamala went to Howard and she hasn't attacked self-made people.

Speaker 13 I don't think she, and her argument for her campaign is that she wants to have an opportunity economy.

Speaker 13 If you just look at her economic proposals, there's nothing in there that is an attack on self-made people.

Speaker 14 No, when it comes to Kamala, that's a different story. They just think she's dumb.

Speaker 13 They just think she's dumb.

Speaker 14 I mean, that's not what I think, but I think generally people think she's not that bright and not well-spoken.

Speaker 13 And they think that Donald Trump is, what, smart?

Speaker 14 I think they think it's a better option. And they think JD is very smart.
So

Speaker 14 the people who have flipped, that's their perception.

Speaker 13 Let's just go back to your perception for a second because you sent one to what you really agree with. And I just, I want to have one agreement here for a second.
You wrote this. I like this a lot.

Speaker 13 You wrote, my lord, what a run-up. The last two administrations added $8 trillion each to the debt, and the stock market has ripped.
Entrepreneurs in the U.S.

Speaker 13 are violently and consistently building amazing, humanity-changing products. Unemployment is at record lows, and wages are rising faster than inflation.

Speaker 13 You can learn anything, anytime for free, and y'all are miserable. This is the golden age, so soak it in.
It can be a lot worse. I totally agree with all of that.

Speaker 13 That is the thing that's so flummoxing to me.

Speaker 13 It's like you just, there are plenty of little criticisms you could make of Biden or Kumbler, their policies, or all this, but like we are not in American carnage right now.

Speaker 13 There is not an attack on entrepreneurship. It's never been.
I don't understand why this is the moment to look at, to say, we really need a radical shake-off of the system.

Speaker 13 I don't get that.

Speaker 14 Yeah, so what the counter-argument that these folks make is:

Speaker 14 so

Speaker 14 there is a new phenomenon that people perceive the economy, and this manifested itself after Bill Clinton, and it happened during Obama, and I'm not sure, I'm not a political science expert, but people's perception of the economy bifurcated and became inversely correlated with their political party.

Speaker 14 So during a Republican,

Speaker 14 you know, like during Trump, Republicans thought the economy was great, Democrats thought it was terrible, and vice versa.

Speaker 14 And there's a psychological phenomenon here of this tribalism that's been talked about, and they've written about it, but it didn't exist actually during Clinton and Obama and Bush and other presidencies.

Speaker 14 It was minor, like maybe 10% difference of perception of the economy. Now it's just become totally tribal.

Speaker 14 So if you point out to a Republican who's voting for Trump and supporting them, lowest unemployment of our lifetime, highest stock market of our lifetime, and 60% of Americans participate in the stock market.

Speaker 14 So almost everybody benefits, or the majority of Americans are benefiting from that. Inflation's been tamed and looks like we're going to have a soft landing.

Speaker 14 Then they immediately go to, yeah, but the border and the immigrant crisis. And, you know, and the truth is, it's really actually not that much difference between these two past administrations.

Speaker 14 If you actually looked at it from brass tax, they both spent an enormous amount of money and put us into massive debt. And they both will do the same in their next administration, I predict.

Speaker 14 They both had relatively, if you take COVID out, the same GDP, a similar unemployment. I mean, everything's been basically the same.

Speaker 14 So, any perception you have of this, or when you talk to partisans, you can tell who a partisan is, is because they'll look at it and say, oh my God, people are suffering.

Speaker 14 There's always people suffering in the world. That's the nature of human existence.

Speaker 14 But the amount of suffering in the United States, we are the envy of the entire world right now, who are still suffering from 5%, 6, 7% inflation, 10%, 15, 20% unemployment in other countries.

Speaker 14 And so there is an argument to be made that obviously printing money has created a lot of this and government spending is not healthy at this level.

Speaker 14 If we do this for two more administrations, it'll be cataclysmic. One more administration, we might survive it.
This happens for eight years of Kamala or eight years of Trump and then Vance.

Speaker 14 This country is going to have really seismic level problems. It will be cutting services at a rapid rate and raising taxes at a phenomenal rate.

Speaker 13 All right. I want to get to January 6th, but just to put a button on that.
So we agree, we both agree that the deficit is a big problem that neither party is taking seriously.

Speaker 13 But we both agree that the entrepreneurship, capitalism, the economy during the Biden-Harris administration has been basically fine. Been great.

Speaker 13 That the policies that they have put in place have, like maybe

Speaker 13 they goosed inflation, I think, probably by spending a little too much at the beginning. But besides that, it's hard to come up with specific policies that are attacks on entrepreneurs.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it's more the vibes. People feel

Speaker 14 that they are not.

Speaker 14 If people donate a bunch of money to your party and then you spend a decade criticizing them, they might, don't be surprised if they flip parties.

Speaker 13 So their feelings are hurt. Shamath and Elon's feelings are hurt.
I don't speak for them. They just didn't get invited to the party.

Speaker 13 Once again, Tim, I don't speak for Elon. I've never been invited to the light.

Speaker 14 I'm just telling you how entrepreneurs feel writ large. That's how they feel.

Speaker 14 They feel when they hear the Democratic Party, which, you know, I would say Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren coming out and saying ban billionaires and all that rhetoric.

Speaker 14 Yes, that is, and being anti-free markets and then the government spending is what I would say I hear most of all from people who've switched parties. That's what I hear most of all.

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Speaker 4 Get Ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 9 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 11 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 13 Let's do January 6th really quick. Well, not really quick.
It's impossible to do really quick, but we'll do it.

Speaker 13 And we'll do it in a way that you can feel that you have a full-throated context for your argument.

Speaker 13 I guess actually, before we do the January 6th, because we haven't answered that, just so we've said, so Saxon and Shamath, because we're going to hear from both of them in this clip that I played that you said was a little out of context.

Speaker 13 And so they're both for trump and fundraise for him have you said who you're voting for i'm a double hater you're a double hater are you going to decide do you think or do you or i'm a resident of texas so my vote doesn't matter um might do a write-in vote can i work you over what about all red cruise do you have an all red cruise vote yet i don't know what that means the senate race in texas colin all red versus

Speaker 13 i haven't actually given him much thought i just became a uh i just i just moved here this year texas resident okay well i don't i don't really think it's probably the best use of our time for me to try to convince you to vote for Colin All Red over Ted Cruz.

Speaker 13 We can do that off. We can do that all in the green room if we still like each other at the end of this.
All right. So this is what started all this.

Speaker 13 We went back to, as you've said at the beginning, this podcast from right after January 6th. Obviously, emotions are running high, and we put out a one-minute version of it.

Speaker 13 Obviously, an hour-long podcast. And so I want to replay that, and then you can tell us what you think was missing from it.
But let's listen.

Speaker 14 I would rather take every single person arrested

Speaker 14 and give them zero days in jail and add it all up and give it to Trump. He is a complete piece of shit fucking scumbag.

Speaker 15 He's garbage.

Speaker 18 Is Trump responsible for this?

Speaker 13 I mean, clearly.

Speaker 14 100%.

Speaker 15 100%.

Speaker 18 Yes, because

Speaker 18 he is the one who put forth this theory that the election was stolen and was constantly repeating it for the last two months. If you want to see this mob as a gun, I think he loaded the gun.

Speaker 18 He pointed it in a certain direction.

Speaker 14 And that's the end of his political career.

Speaker 18 I think he's disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.

Speaker 14 Can I ask you guys what you think of this?

Speaker 14 Basically, Pelosi has told Pence, you have to invoke the 25th Amendment or they're going to take up impeachment. What do you guys think about that? I think it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 19 He's a maniac.

Speaker 14 I mean, this is insane, deranged, criminal, lunatic behavior. It's completely possible that he could do something more dangerous in the last 14 days.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 Naturally, I agree with all of that. Yeah.
So

Speaker 14 I stand by my statements 100%. Yeah.
The biggest blocker for me with Trump has always been his behavior on January 6th.

Speaker 14 I come from a family of law enforcement, and I was going to be a cop and then an FBI agent, and I just happened to get accepted to night school and didn't go into the forest.

Speaker 14 And my brother went into the forest, and he's a cop and retired now. You know, anybody who's got members of their family in law enforcement understands exactly how bad that day could have been.

Speaker 14 And the fact that those cops.

Speaker 13 Well, that's for some law enforcement. I mean, some got injured.

Speaker 14 Yeah. But if in

Speaker 14 those moments,

Speaker 14 when a cop's getting beaten like that, if one of those cops had done what other cops told me would have been absolute proper protocol, which is shoot their guns and defend themselves against people spraying them with bear spray and beating them savagely, we would have had 50 dead Americans, 25 dead Americans.

Speaker 14 And I think that that is the thing that anybody who is voting for Trump has to really deeply consider, is that he could do this again.

Speaker 14 And the fact that he didn't accept, you know, the election results and that they're still on about like the election wasn't a clean election, despite them doing everything they could to fight it and every lawsuit getting turned over by Trump judges half the time.

Speaker 14 And then Pence, his own vice president, saying like, you're lost, bruh. That's it.
It's over. And then his own family saying, hey, call off the hounds.
You know, you sent these people there.

Speaker 14 You said fight like hell. But, you know, I think for partisan people, you know, they've reframed their position on Trump.
They've re-underwrote it. I have not re-underwritten my Trump position.

Speaker 13 You said you're a double hater. And so I just don't like, how do you get from a place where somebody is criminal,

Speaker 13 insane, deranged, a lunatic,

Speaker 13 possibly liable to do another insurrection, and then say, well, I don't know, even Stephen, I don't like

Speaker 13 Kamala because Bernie Sanders said something mean about billionaires. Like, I just, I don't understand.
Why not just be forgetting that?

Speaker 14 No, I just don't know that I don't think she's qualified for the job is my question.

Speaker 13 I mean, she's been an attorney general, a senator, vice president. Yeah.

Speaker 14 I am not impressed by her at all.

Speaker 13 Sure, but I mean, there are plenty of people I'm not impressed by that I would vote for over Trump. I mean, I guess I disagree with you on Kamala.

Speaker 14 Basically, there's making a strong argument. I don't even know what that is.

Speaker 13 Yeah, there's 435 people in Congress. I mean, I would probably vote for all of them over Trump, except maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 13 I don't know, Elon Omar, but like, I mean, you could pick a random person out of the hat I would have over Trump.

Speaker 13 I don't understand what, like, how do you go from saying this person should be jailed, he's disqualified, he's a maniac, to being like, well, I don't know.

Speaker 14 Well, I'm not a fan of either person, and I'll probably do a write-in vote, but I don't think Trump's going to win, if I'm being honest. I think women who had their rights taken away by Roe v.

Speaker 14 Wade, which is my second major blocker with Trump, you know, January 6th being number one and overturning Roe v. Wade number two.

Speaker 14 I think women are going to come out in force and he's going to get shellacked. But I could be wrong.
You know, I'm no political expert.

Speaker 13 Sure. You had him on the podcast, though, and you didn't even ask about January 6th.
So this is the other thing I don't understand.

Speaker 13 Like Jamathi called him a piece of shit fucking scumbag, and then he comes on the podcast and you don't even ask him.

Speaker 14 You can ask Jamath about that. I was going to ask him about it and we ran out of time.

Speaker 14 And I am only 25% of the questions, but I did get my two questions in about abortion, which went national news, and

Speaker 14 visas and immigration, which went national news. So I had three questions I wanted to ask, and my interview technique was going to increasingly go with the more difficult ones.

Speaker 14 And then when we got to January 6th, they pulled the plug on it.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 14 I just. But no, sincerely, Tim, you're laughing, but I don't know.

Speaker 13 No, I'm laughing because it's just like, I don't, I don't.

Speaker 14 Did you hear my other questions?

Speaker 13 I did. I did.
They were fine. They They were tough questions.
They were tough questions. I like that.
I mean, I'm the only person who asked me to ask your questions. Yeah, you're the only one.

Speaker 13 But then I feel like

Speaker 13 you look at your colleagues. You don't, in the post-game, though, then I listened to the post-game.
And it wasn't like you were like mad at them for not asking him or you didn't say like, hey, Johnny.

Speaker 14 I mean, they're not journaling.

Speaker 13 And you thought he should be jailed.

Speaker 13 I just don't understand how you get there from, I thought he should be jailed to I'm going to host a fundraiser for him. You'd have to ask them.
Like, does he no longer think he should be jailed?

Speaker 13 You'd have to ask them. It just seems like, well, why don't you ask him, though? You guys have a podcast.
You meet every week.

Speaker 13 Isn't that, aren't you a little cute yeah actually we've had the debate many times on so then do you understand what what changed i mean again trump has all the things that led to january 6th yeah i mean chamap did a whole episode where he talked about his re-underwriting of it so you can listen to that episode yeah okay like i'm saying like you know i'm i'm here to talk about my opinion i don't can't tell you about theirs that's fair yeah well but your opinion is still neutral though which i'm struggling with like i just i struggle with how

Speaker 14 i think trump's kamala an existential threat um i think if she spends a ton of money, I think they're both existential threats. If they spend another $8 trillion, yes.

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Speaker 13 So you said you were in a politics guy, so maybe I can, I'm going to try to win you over here. Okay, the Senate right now is 50 to 50, 51 to 50, 51 to 49, excuse me.

Speaker 13 And Joe Manchin is one of the Democratic senators. He's not running again.
So the Republicans are going to win that state. That's West Virginia.

Speaker 13 So the Republicans have at least 50 senators. They're almost certainly going to win the Montana Senate race, which is John Tester.
He's running. Nice guy.

Speaker 13 Lost a couple of fingers, but it's just Montana is pretty red these days. And so the Republicans are going to have 51 Senate seats.
Like if the threat to Trump is... He might try another insurrection.

Speaker 13 He's going to mass deport people. He might unilaterally put in a tariff.
And the threat to Comalis, you might spend a lot of money, but there's going to be a Republican Senate.

Speaker 13 It just seems like a risk, you're a risk assessment guy, right? When you're deciding what to invest in, isn't it like general risk analysis part of this thing?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think she's a bit of a neocon. And I think

Speaker 14 the one thing I do like about Trump is that...

Speaker 13 I think Kamala is a neocon?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I think she will start wars. And I don't think she will be able to handle those geopolitical situations as well as Trump.

Speaker 14 This is the only thing I can say for Trump that I appreciate about him is his ability to bond with with dictators.

Speaker 14 And he does quite well with them, communicating with them, and he doesn't like to start wars. And he's, you know, I think that he will do better on that issue.

Speaker 13 So that was that where your risk assessment? Because that's really where it kind of lands for me.

Speaker 13 I just like, even if I were a double hater, which I'm not, like, my risk assessment is I look at the two sides and it's like

Speaker 13 we've established that things are basically fine in the country right now, even good.

Speaker 13 And it's like we could continue that path with mixed Washington, with the Supreme Court being Republican, with the the Senate being Republican, with Kamala Harris as president, or we can take a flyer on Donald Trump unleashed.

Speaker 13 We've already seen what happened at the Capitol. Who knows what would happen in a second term? Like, doesn't the risk, isn't it just

Speaker 13 a basic risk assessment?

Speaker 14 I think your analysis is excellent.

Speaker 13 So have I won you over? Have we done it right now?

Speaker 14 I'm in Texas.

Speaker 13 You vote kind of matters. You just said at the beginning, you have a lot of people that listen to your podcast.
I'm sure there are a lot of Jasons out there.

Speaker 13 I'm sure there are a lot of people that are annoyed with Saks and they're like listening to Jason and they're like, I don't know, I'm on the fence right now, and I live in Atlanta, and I'm an all-in fan, and maybe you can nudge him in the right direction.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I'll take it under advisement.

Speaker 13 Okay, all right, that was a good try.

Speaker 14 I mean, I also, I tell you the other issue I have with Kamala is not her not going on any adversarial podcasts or talking to people who are adversarial.

Speaker 13 She's doing Fox this week.

Speaker 14 Finally, finally, yes. I give her credit for doing Fox this week.
Yes, okay. That's the other big thing.
Like, I really feel like there should be three debates.

Speaker 14 And that anybody who's a presidential candidate should have to do three primary debates and three regular debates, presidential debates. And

Speaker 14 I think Trump did two debates and Kamala did one. And neither of them did any primary.
And then Kamala had no primary process. So what do you think of that not having a primary process for her?

Speaker 13 I wish there was primary. But also parties picked presidents like this for a long time.
And so I don't like really see it as a grave threat to democracy.

Speaker 14 So would you rather have than Kamala? If you had like your, yeah.

Speaker 13 I mean, Kamala has grown on me, to be honest. And I don't like.
so why? Well,

Speaker 13 maybe part of the reason that you don't like her, the Kamala is a neocon thing. I feel like her foreign policy comments have all been directly in line with where I'm at, basically, on foreign policy.

Speaker 13 So she's grown on me in that sense. I thought her convention was really an appeal to the big middle and to, you know,

Speaker 13 kind of the American tradition, particularly when it comes to, you know, immigration and speaking about, you know, kind of the diverse backgrounds of her and Tim Walls and giving people opportunity and protecting freedom.

Speaker 13 I just think all of her rhetoric's been right in line.

Speaker 14 What do you think of Tim Walls? I didn't like that pick.

Speaker 13 I wanted Shapiro. Me too.
I like Shapiro a lot better.

Speaker 14 Why didn't she pick Shapiro? It makes no sense to me.

Speaker 14 Like, is it this idea of like, you don't want somebody who's a little bit brighter in terms of shining bright, not brightness, intellect shines brighter?

Speaker 13 I have on pretty good authority. I think that the reason was simply vibes that like her and Walls clicked, that Walls was more of like a cheerleader type, like I'm here for you.

Speaker 13 I'm going to be your second command. Also, the like kind of the vibe of bringing a little bit of balance.

Speaker 13 Like, Shapiro, despite the fact that they're different, like, they both are still like cultural lawyers,

Speaker 13 right? Like, I think Shapiro still was a lawyer,

Speaker 13 you know, and yeah, so it's kind of a double lawyer thing versus a lawyer and a guy that's like a teacher and a veteran. So, I think that, I just think that was really the reason why.

Speaker 13 But, yeah, I don't know. And it would have been interesting to have a whole primary follow-up.

Speaker 13 I think that she's really like stepped up and exceeded expectations in the big moments in the debate at the convention speech.

Speaker 13 I mean, just to be candid, like back before it was all, I was, my argument was just solely focused on beating Trump.

Speaker 13 And I was like, you know, if we could move on from Biden and get a Shapiro and Whitmer situation where they both are popular in their home states and center-left Democrats, that that would be like the safest way to beat Trump.

Speaker 14 If she loses, why will she lose? And if Trump loses, why will he lose? I'm curious. Your take.

Speaker 13 It's a good question. If she loses, it will be in part totally out of her hands because globally, incumbents have done horrible since COVID.

Speaker 13 And inflation, despite the fact that Republicans want to make this all about America, we've had actually the best inflation. Inflation hits people, particularly working-class people, hard.

Speaker 13 And so we've seen incumbents lose all around the world.

Speaker 13 And I think that if she loses, it's because she loses with non-college, you know, kind of middle and working-class people that had traditionally been Democratic voters, and there's bleed there.

Speaker 13 Like, I don't think that there's going to be a ton of bleed among my people, like the center, college-educated folks.

Speaker 13 I kind of feel like the you're Silicon Valley people, a little bit of a weird outlier for some of the unique reasons we discussed. But I think like most of the people

Speaker 14 Silicon Valley people are weird.

Speaker 13 I can confirm. I think most of the suburban, yeah, the suburban types and that like that Democrats have continued to do better with will continue to do better with.

Speaker 13 So I think it would be a bleed among working class Hispanic voters. So and I think that would be the reason why she'd lose.
And I think it would have hurt that she would have had

Speaker 13 such a short runway to do a campaign. And I think the Biden...
unfortunately will have some culpability with that. So I think those would be the main reasons.

Speaker 13 I guess I have a darker reason about what it says about the nature of our country, but I don't know. Maybe this podcast

Speaker 13 for private

Speaker 13 race or gender? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just, again,

Speaker 13 just to my same perplexion, how perplexed I am asking you about how people could go for Trump a third time.

Speaker 13 I think if the country goes for Trump after seeing what happened on January 6th, it's hard to come up with a rationale.

Speaker 14 It's so interesting how people who, you know, had reactions where they're like, hey, this is terrible, have now reframed it in their minds as it was like an outing that got out of control and that Trump had nothing to do with it and if you look at the oath keepers you know delusional we've had this debate many times online you know the oath keepers came there explicitly to take over the capital and they brought guns to the hotels around it like those individuals are highly qualified in many cases ex-military and ex-law enforcement individuals and uh they could have made, they obviously would not have overturned the government, but man, you could have had a lot more than this being a riot that got out of control kind of situation.

Speaker 13 Or imagine if Mark Milley would have been Michael Flynn.

Speaker 13 Or imagine if instead of Brad Raffensburger in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene was the Secretary of State and actually did try to find the votes. I mean, like, there were so many catastrophic.

Speaker 13 And again, this just circles me back to the risk assessment. Like there were so many catastrophic potential outcomes.
And it's like, I had a debate with Dan Crenchau last week. Can I use this analogy?

Speaker 13 I was like, it's like when I listen to Sax Troth and some of these people who have come around and changed their views and Dan, for that matter, it's like saying that I got hammered at the bar.

Speaker 13 I drove 100 miles an hour from LA to Vegas to go gambling for the night. I spun out on the highway and flipped around three times and landed going straight and ended up in my hotel in Vegas.

Speaker 13 And meanwhile, my friend over here was like following the rules and got T-boned. And the lesson that I take away from that is that I should get hammered and drive 100 down the highway again.

Speaker 13 It's just like, just because we survived it doesn't mean it was okay. Like it was an extra, like it was wildly dangerous.
And there were a ton of more.

Speaker 14 What do you think of the law fair?

Speaker 14 I'm curious, accusations, like this first case that they did against Trump, obviously with like election, the hush money case and like kind of extending that that one felt like to me the weakest of all the cases.

Speaker 14 It felt like a little bit like it was lawfare and political, whereas the other ones don't seem as much.

Speaker 14 And their claims, you feel like they're weaponizing.

Speaker 13 I mean, I agree that it was the weakest of all the cases, but again, like we have a system of, and I mean, John Edwards was charged with a similar thing and got off, and he was a Democrat.

Speaker 13 I just, but as for the January, the lawfare thing, this again, I know you don't speak for Chamas, but I want to go back to the podcast.

Speaker 13 He said that he wishes that all of the people that storm the Capitol, we added up all those sentences and gave them to Trump. That was a current Trump donor's view.
So like, I agree with that.

Speaker 13 It was Trump's fault.

Speaker 13 If there was anyone except Trump that had lost, including people I hate, like, if it was Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders that had lost, like, they would have just conceded and there wouldn't have been a rally that day, and nobody would have charged the Capitol.

Speaker 13 Like, the only reason anyone is in jail is because Trump lied to them. And so, then to say it's law fair, I don't get that.
Like, it's Trump. It's obviously Trump's fault.

Speaker 13 It was plain that it was Trump's fault from the moment that it happened. So I don't, I don't see it as lawfare.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I'm in total agreement that he was culpable that day. I think if he had just said, we're going to go there and it's peaceful, be peaceful and don't fight like hell.
And if he had actually

Speaker 14 not told the others.

Speaker 13 Well, they shouldn't have even gone there, though. This is all it takes us to.
He lost.

Speaker 13 Just clearly, right? There shouldn't have been a rally.

Speaker 13 He should have been working with the Biden team on the transition, like every other president in history.

Speaker 14 Yeah, and they will bully you into into saying that you're overreacting about January 6th. I know.
And that's what I face. I mean,

Speaker 14 constantly online, people are bullying me like, oh, my God, there was just a guy in a shaman outfit.

Speaker 14 I'm like, yeah, the mentally ill guy in the shaman outfit is different than the guys who brought long guns to their hotel and then were acting in formation to breach the barriers.

Speaker 14 And a woman jumped through a window with a

Speaker 14 pistol in her face from a Secret Service agent who begged her not to jump through the window.

Speaker 14 And she decided she would breach that window with multiple guns trained on her saying, do not jump through that window. We will have to shoot you.
And she still did it.

Speaker 14 I mean, you want to talk about Trump derangement syndrome. That's the definition of it.

Speaker 13 Amen, brother. Okay, we've gone too long.
I want to, but you picked my brain about politics. I get to pick your brain about one thing that you're an expert on that I don't know nothing about.

Speaker 13 I was excited to see this when I was Googling you. You tweeted this last year about crypto.

Speaker 13 For a decade, I said most crypto projects were a scam, and I got brigaded with laser eyes saying, have fun being poor.

Speaker 13 As a non-Silicon Valley person, as a total neophyte on all of this stuff, I just like, I've tried to get into crypto. I've looked at it.
I've considered it. I've had smart people talk to me about it.

Speaker 13 And everything that I look at, I'm just like, this is a scam. It's a fake.
It's nothing. It creates no value and I don't get it.
So have you changed your view on that? Or do you also share that view?

Speaker 14 When executed, it's 99% of the time a giant scam or incompetence or a combination of those two things, incompetent people running a scam, which is why it looks so weird.

Speaker 14 There are a collection of underlying technologies like blockchain or NFTs and decentralization that are real and that could have applications.

Speaker 14 It's just if you created a global casino where there was absolutely

Speaker 14 no oversight, what do you think would happen? Bad actors would take it over and it would become a scam. And that's what's happened.
Yes.

Speaker 13 And there should be some reasonable regulation. Absolutely.
This is the other thing that the crypto people get mad about Kamala about, and she's actually been more pro-crypto on her

Speaker 13 than Biden was, but like, yeah, right. There should be some regulation.
It's crazy that there's no regulation.

Speaker 14 It's really simple. The regulation in this space is super simple.
There's something called accreditation. 6% of the country are accredited investors, which means they make over $200,000 a year.

Speaker 14 They have over a million in net worth.

Speaker 14 You could create an accreditation test, like a test to own a firearm or drive a car or cut hair and be a barber where people can...

Speaker 13 We should get rid of the cut hair test, but I'm with you on all the rest of it. Yeah.

Speaker 14 And you just do 50 questions and people take a three-hour course. They answer 50 questions.

Speaker 14 If they pass that test, and it doesn't have to be onerous like a Series 7, which takes weeks and and, you know, a couple of hours to take a test.

Speaker 14 If they pass that basic test, they could invest in crypto.

Speaker 14 And then on the crypto side, they should have to have insurance be registered, but they should be allowed to let people buy NFTs and trade them and go crazy, as long as the people coming in are sophisticated enough to understand diversification.

Speaker 14 Do not put your entire net worth into it. And then they could look at it alongside gambling on DraftKings or going to Vegas.
Sure.

Speaker 14 And it would be part of that, which is the reason there's a little bit of tension here is there's a group of people who do look at it as like draft kings and they look at it like going to Vegas.

Speaker 14 And then there's another group of people who think they're investing in the next Uber or the next Google and they don't realize they're actually at a casino.

Speaker 14 And that's where education would, you know, be something the SEC could do really easily.

Speaker 14 And then if you took a course and you knew there were no customers and there was no revenue and there was no profits and you were still invested in a project, you would be an angel investor like I do.

Speaker 14 And you would take small bets and then increase the investment size as they proved the product and the use case.

Speaker 14 So, yeah, I'm hoping that some reasonable legislation, and there has been some, around a path to becoming a sophisticated investor is the term I use.

Speaker 14 So it's a term in Australia, as opposed to accredited, which is just a nebulous term. Sophisticated is like a really good term, an educated investor.

Speaker 13 We've ended with several agreements. Thank you so much, Jason Calicanis.
And if I've won you over, you're going to think about this. You're going to sleep on it tonight.

Speaker 13 And if I've won you over, like we're not airing this podcast till tomorrow, I'd be happy to have breaking news that Jason has agreed with me and he's going to reluctantly vote for Kamala Harris.

Speaker 13 I would love to, I would love to be the person to break it.

Speaker 14 I plan on announcing my vote on the all-in live stream on election night.

Speaker 13 Okay, well, maybe you don't want to do it before. You'll feel a little guilt.
A little guilt will come in, Fletch. You'll think about those cops at the Capitol.

Speaker 14 Everybody should make their own decision.

Speaker 13 All right. We'll see you.
Thank you so much, Jason. We'll talk to you soon, man.
My pleasure.

Speaker 13 Okay,

Speaker 13 so your heart is broken

Speaker 13 You're sitting around moping, moping, moping Crying, crying

Speaker 13 You say you're even thinking about dying

Speaker 13 Well, before you do anything rash, baby, baby

Speaker 13 Listen to this

Speaker 13 There's no exception to the rule.

Speaker 13 Listen, baby.

Speaker 13 It may be facts you or it may be cruel.

Speaker 13 I ain't lying.

Speaker 13 Everybody plays a fool.

Speaker 13 Falling in love is such an easy thing to do.

Speaker 13 But there's no guarantee that the one you love

Speaker 13 is gonna love you.

Speaker 13 Oh,

Speaker 13 nothing I think cannot see.

Speaker 13 A certain person could never be.

Speaker 13 Love runs deeper than any emotion. You cloud your mind with the emotion of one.

Speaker 13 Everybody plays a fool sometimes.

Speaker 13 There's no exception to the rule.

Speaker 13 Listen, baby,

Speaker 13 it may be factual, it may be cruel.

Speaker 13 I

Speaker 13 The Bull Ors podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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