How JD Vance Became a "Butler for Billionaires" with Kara Swisher

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Speaker 4 Who is our guest?

Speaker 2 Today we have Kara Swisher, who is the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast. She's editor-at-large at New York Magazine and a CNN contributor.

Speaker 2 She's considered the top reporter in the tech game and called Silicon Valley's most feared but revered journalist. I think that tracks.
I revere her and I'm also a little scared of her.

Speaker 2 Swisher has established herself as the oracle of the tech world with unrivaled access to the industry's most significant leaders.

Speaker 2 She's the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Burn Book, a tech love story. Welcome, Kara Swisher.
Tell us all the things about

Speaker 2 J.D. Vance.

Speaker 3 And the tech bros who own him.

Speaker 2 Kara, I'm gonna explain why it is that I needed you to come here today

Speaker 4 okay

Speaker 2 I come from the Christian world okay I was in the evangelical whatever movement church for a long time okay I'm aware yeah

Speaker 2 now this thing happened when I was in my early 20s which is that I was listening to what was coming from the pulpit and there was a lot of you'll be shocked to know there was a lot of misogyny and racism and homophobia coming from the pulpit.

Speaker 2 And I have actually

Speaker 2 really committed to the Bible, like have read the Bible and it was very intensely into scripture. And so what was coming from the pulpit felt very

Speaker 2 different than what I understood was the root of the thing. And so I started meeting with people.

Speaker 2 Thinking that I was just going to get an explanation that would make it make sense.

Speaker 2 And what I started to understand is the higher that I met with people, my sister will remember this as a hard time in our lives,

Speaker 2 the more I understood, oh,

Speaker 2 the higher the people get, the less they even care about these issues. They don't care.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They have created a group of people who think that this is based upon we all care so much about abortion.

Speaker 2 But actually, what I learned over time was that that church and many movements are created by people who create these banner issues in order to incite and entice people into following them.

Speaker 2 They create believers.

Speaker 4 Yeah, marketing.

Speaker 2 It's called marketing. Yes, it's called marketing.

Speaker 2 But then they

Speaker 2 don't actually, they have completely private, separate agendas in separate meetings, right? And with separate priorities. So this is how we got...

Speaker 2 Reagan and the religious right united under, because of Falwell and racism and segregation in schools.

Speaker 2 So what I know is that you can't really understand a movement until you understand the hidden agenda of the leaders behind it.

Speaker 2 So what we're asking you to do is come here today and tell us about the hidden agenda of J.D. Vance and Trump.
Okay. As it connects to Silicon Valley and the tech world.

Speaker 4 I'm all for it. I don't think it's very hidden, though.
Well,

Speaker 4 I think it's pretty much in place.

Speaker 2 Unhide it even more. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, the Post has this thing, democracy dies in darkness, but I think it dies in the full light of day. I think they're not hiding any of their intent.
They think they're very clear.

Speaker 4 They say it over and over again. They're doing it explicitly.
They may be doing it in unusual ways by posting, like Bill Ackman was posting. He's part of their little cabal right now.

Speaker 4 He's a hedge fund manager, and certainly.

Speaker 4 That makes him an expert on DEI.

Speaker 4 But they're posting it rather explicitly, what their goals are, which is control, I think, pretty clearly, and money making and the ability to slime people in order to get to those goals.

Speaker 4 And so the first line of my book was, so it was capitalism after all. And I think if you start with that premise, you'll pretty much have your answer to almost everything they're doing.

Speaker 2 Okay. So J.D.
Vance

Speaker 2 writes Hillbilly Elegy.

Speaker 4 He does. Okay.

Speaker 2 He comes from Appalachia. Is that true?

Speaker 4 No, that's not true. He comes from the suburb of Dayton.

Speaker 4 His family does. His family does.
My grandmother grew up in rural West Virginia. I don't call myself a hillbilly, but okay, sure.
I mean, he certainly had, you know, roots there.

Speaker 4 So did I, but it has nothing to do with my life. And he grew up in a relatively, for that area, affluent, actually.
His family made quite a bit of money for that area.

Speaker 4 And then he went, of course, to Yale and et cetera, et cetera. So I find him to be an elite.
I would call him an elite if I had to pick.

Speaker 4 It's been a long time since he's been down in the holler, you know, making corn pwn grits, but okay.

Speaker 3 you know it's nonsense it's the equivalent of us saying that i mean our great-grandfather was a coal miner in pennsylvania so was mine oh really i didn't know that so we are as hillbilly as jd vance's that's correct

Speaker 3 that's correct you mentioned yale so jd vance is at yale and he meets peter teal at Yale at Yale as a student when he comes to speak.

Speaker 3 And that moment he calls a very big moment, which I would not argue because it created the rest of his life.

Speaker 4 Well, he got a sugar daddy right there and there.

Speaker 4 And I think what's interesting is a lot of these men that I've dealt with in Silicon Valley, a lot of men in general, they try to like bring up these smart young men.

Speaker 4 You know, they all have like a pastel of them, and you've seen that. It doesn't matter where it is.
And he was the latest in that particular version. And Peter does that a lot.

Speaker 4 He does a lot of mentorship stuff. And he's created the Teal Fellows.
And so he creates sort of a cult following among those people. And JD is one of them.

Speaker 4 And he rides that train for as long as possible. And until this, till right now.

Speaker 4 And one of the things I really appreciated, which I've been trying to get out, is he wasn't a very successful tech investor at all, in fact. And this is with...
Yale and the help of Peter Thiel.

Speaker 4 And he still wasn't successful. That's during a boom time.
That tells me a lot. It means he's a bad investor.
And some people he's worked with, who I've talked to, he just wasn't good at his job.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 Peter got him all his jobs. Rachel Maddow calls him Peter Thiel's intern, perpetual intern.
And then Peter paid for his Senate candidacy and got Trump to endorse him, which got him to win.

Speaker 4 And so he's had a very lackluster Senate career so far, completely inexperienced for the job, if you're thinking of experience.

Speaker 4 And then he slingshotted him into this using the help of other tech billionaires because Trump is easily convinced. You know, I think they dragged Don Jr.
in, who's not the sharpest hack in the box.

Speaker 4 And so he probably thought it was cool to hang out with Elon Musk. And,

Speaker 4 you know, let's listen to him. And there, here we are with this guy.

Speaker 3 You just gave such a beautiful overview, a whole overview. Can we break that down into little chunks? Because that's the whole story that you just told.
And let's chunk it out. So he's at Yale.

Speaker 3 Peter Thiel is there. He meets him.
Can you tell us who Peter Thiel is, first of all?

Speaker 4 Peter Thiel is a very talented investor in Silicon Valley. Some of his stuff has worked, some of it hasn't.
But he's definitely, there's no question he's talented. He has a point of view.

Speaker 4 largely to do with the destruction of current government. That's really, he wants to burn it all down.
And he's been like that since college, really.

Speaker 4 You know, he was very famous in college for being a disruptor. And that's fine.
He had several people like David Sachs and some others around him at the time.

Speaker 4 I got acquainted with him because he was an investor in Facebook and other things around Silicon Valley, but he's certainly done well. He's very good at tax tricks.

Speaker 4 He did a lot of tax tricks to keep money that he made. He's been sort of a lone wolf in Silicon Valley.
I think they're non-political for the most part. And he was political.

Speaker 4 And so he funded Facebook. There's a, you know, he was one of the early people, not the only person, and a bunch of other stuff, including Palantir, including Anderall, I guess.

Speaker 3 I think he's in that one. Founded PayPal, right?

Speaker 4 Co-founder of PayPal? He's one of the founders, yes. He was a critical one.
Elon was not a founder of PayPal, if people have to stop saying that.

Speaker 4 They merged a company called X.com into PayPal because they were competing and they were both sort of losing. And so you can't have two competitors in the same space.
So they merged together.

Speaker 4 And Elon was kind of zeroed out by Peter.

Speaker 4 Peter's smarter than Elon, I would say, if I had to pick. And so they managed to sell it off to eBay, which was a big win for them.

Speaker 4 They were lucky because they were not headed in a good direction, but eBay thought they needed it, and that's what saved them.

Speaker 4 And then they looked like geniuses, which they saw the opportunity and they took it. And then they parlayed that into this mythology around themselves.

Speaker 3 So Vance barnacles himself to Teal. He decides to go from Yale.
This is the hillbilly guy. Yeah.
Decides to go from Yale to venture capitalist position in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 4 And yeah, he had several. He had a company.
He worked for Mithril. He was unsuccessful there.
He worked for Steve Case. He was only there 18 months, unsuccessful.
And Steve has said it explicitly.

Speaker 3 And he said he didn't really work there, right? Isn't he on record for saying like he sort of didn't work much?

Speaker 4 He didn't work much. Yeah.
He said it to me, actually.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Ron Klain was there, who was chief of staff to Biden.

Speaker 4 Steve was really interested in an important thing, which was talent across the country in places that weren't Silicon Valley and New York and Austin.

Speaker 4 And so JD was the natural person to hire after Hillbelly Elegy. Is we're going to reach down into the small towns and find entrepreneurship everywhere, which was a laudable task for sure.

Speaker 3 But the first company, that executive is on record saying that he gave Vance the job as a favor to Peter.

Speaker 4 Yes, they all did. They all did.
He's Peter Thiel's intern. It's like that guy that, you know, here, my dad told me to hire me, and that's the kind of thing.

Speaker 3 And then he goes after the last job, then he says, I want to go into politics.

Speaker 4 And Teal gives him what for the time is a record-breaking investment 15 million 15 million dollars he scored with a very small amount of money for peter uh to get his own senator he got his own senator essentially

Speaker 3 and he's three years on the job okay so bring us to the moment where trump is deciding who to have for vp

Speaker 4 well all these tech people got involved in it you know got super involved elon's been moving ever rightward for a couple years now and david sacks someone someone who was also at PayPal, he was at school with Peter Thiel and he ran a bunch of different companies in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 4 He's sort of a middling entrepreneur, I would call him.

Speaker 4 He had a company called Yammer that he sold to Microsoft.

Speaker 4 Microsoft then sort of mothballed it really, pretty much. Just a typical entrepreneur.
Again, not the top level, but fine.

Speaker 4 He wrote a book in college with Peter that I got him to apologize for because he called rape belated regret in the book. You can find the story.
He apologized for saying so.

Speaker 4 He said he didn't mean to say it that way, but he did say it that way.

Speaker 3 I know, right? Yes. That's not exactly a slip of the tongue stumble into conversation.

Speaker 4 No, yeah, I know. I agree.
You know, there was this pack of people at Stanford that were trying to be like disrupty and contrarian.

Speaker 4 There was another one named Keith Raboy, and he's gay, and as is Peter. And they, I think they yelled dive AIDS to a professor who was liberal.
They just like to be contrarian, right?

Speaker 4 No matter who they were.

Speaker 4 JD got money from Peter to do this. This is pretty much.
And so it's kind of a pretty easy, straight line.

Speaker 4 At the same time, he got influenced by a bunch of philosophers and bloggers and theorists that are very troubling.

Speaker 4 I don't have the names right at my hint, but there are a bunch of people who have, I think Patrick Denin is one. But as you get deeper into them, they get rather problematic.

Speaker 4 There's one blogger who was talking about slavery being good and all kinds of stuff. You know, you just have to read it.
It's really wacky once you get into it. And this is is stuff that Vance,

Speaker 4 you know, really embraced. And Peter also being one of the people he really embraced.

Speaker 2 So do you believe that Peter actually believes this shit? Yes. So Peter as a gay man.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we've had encounters, a lot of encounters. We have a long video of us arguing about, for example, well, I don't know if it's on the video, but we had a meeting where I did it.

Speaker 4 We were talking about Facebook at the time, actually, but after the camera went off, you know, he was talking about gays getting special rights. And I said equal rights.
And he said, special rights.

Speaker 4 And I said, well, I have children. And so I feel like I should have equal rights to straight people around adoption and everything else.

Speaker 4 And, you know, he now has kids, of course, but he's a conservative and sort of a way out there.

Speaker 4 And, you know, one of his big ideas, and there's a bunch of theory people around that he also admires, is the idea that we should have a, the United States should be run by a CEO,

Speaker 4 you know, an all, all-powerful CEO in the version of Mark Zuckerberg or anybody else, where you can't fire them. And dictator is what what you would call it in politics, right?

Speaker 4 And it's because they can make better decisions than the government. And he feels that the government is too, the bureaucrats have too much power.
Look, that's a long time conservative thing.

Speaker 4 And so he's sort of the joke that you've got to sort of get rid of it all and have it run like a company is, or most things in government should be made private.

Speaker 4 And oh, look, I have a defense company that I can get money from taxpayers from. So what's really fascinating is they all like insult government and then take government contracts or

Speaker 4 you know manipulate the tax system. Or, you know, in Elon's case, he took a loan that saved Tesla from the Obama administration.
He paid it back, but you know, we should have taken stock.

Speaker 4 Obviously, the United States government should have. But, you know, he avails himself to government when it suits him and he insults it when it suits him.

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Speaker 3 Is it the racism that unites? Is it the, I mean, we know that Vance has promoted this kind of a little bit more sterile version of the replacement theory, which is, you know, white people are,

Speaker 3 it's a liberal plot to get rid of white people through immigrants. Is that what unites all of them under this umbrella?

Speaker 4 They each have their own sad little journey to where they are, I think, you know, whatever it happens to be.

Speaker 4 I mean, there was a long biography written of Elon, which I thought was just typing what Elon said. I thought it was a very long press release.

Speaker 4 His story is that his father was terrible to him and therefore he must take out his childhood promise on the rest of us for the rest of his life.

Speaker 4 Although I think he should just personally seek therapy. They each have a different story, right?

Speaker 4 Something. I'm not a therapist, but I suspect J.D.
Vance's mom's drug problems probably contributed to the way he is.

Speaker 4 He had to really be scrappy, of course, dealing with a consistently problematic parent. And he did have the support of his grandmother, of course, who was a character, sounds like.

Speaker 4 But each of them have their own little particular journey and demons that plague them, I think.

Speaker 3 He is scrappy in his inconsistency. Vance is.
I feel like he's like a, he's kind of like a tofu. Like, I feel like he takes on whatever identity makes him more.

Speaker 4 He did that with, I have to say, when I had met him, he was very anti-Trump, like too much almost, right? I was like, styling back, okay? Like, look, you know, he, I have never called Trump Hitler.

Speaker 4 I think I studied Hitler in college. It was my minor, Nazi studies and propaganda.
That is, that's a real term to say. He called him America's, he could be America's Hitler.

Speaker 4 I was like, gobsmacked when he said that. I was like, okay.

Speaker 4 But he went way far than most people, you know,

Speaker 4 than anybody so far in that group than I saw of the never Trumpers. And then it suddenly, when it suited him to,

Speaker 4 when he was, I would say, not doing well in the tech investing space to make his next leap, he's a chameleon and he changed his colors and then became the other way.

Speaker 4 Now, the question is: does he really, really believe it now? He might. He might have, you know, a lot of these people get red-pilled into that.

Speaker 4 I think Elon certainly believes a lot of the conspiracy nonsense. He's been quite exercised over Kamala eras, of course.

Speaker 3 Does it matter what he believes if he's owned by if all of his jobs, including his job as senator that he's only had for three years, is

Speaker 3 a direct result of Peter Thiel's investment?

Speaker 4 I think he thinks he's not bought. He sees it as the way on his way up the slippery pole, essentially.
And so this gives him a boost.

Speaker 4 And you have to kind of at some point believe what you're saying if you're going to say it over and over again. I don't think he's suddenly going to convert to liberalism again.

Speaker 4 But he was, especially for a tech person, was, he was quite vehement against Trump. Like he went out of his way, which I think very few of them do.
Usually they say nothing.

Speaker 4 That's my experience with a lot of those people. But he certainly was quite vehement on the topic.
We've had friends who suddenly have gotten right wingy.

Speaker 4 I have a bunch of friends who suddenly like, Trump's not so bad. I was like,

Speaker 4 like, how'd that work? And I mostly, if you trace it rather simply, it usually has to do with money, taxes, things like that.

Speaker 4 And, you know, again, the opening of my book was about that was about how all these tech people went to trump tower even though they had decried them to me each personally to get the tax breaks they so desperately wanted or the money repatriated the income repatriated into the united states or less regulation and that trumped everything so you think you're saying that this slippery slope from of course we do not support this

Speaker 2 dictator to be Trump to, oh, he's not that bad. You've seen that.
You've experienced that with friends. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Which, when you peel it back, it's always they say tax breaks.

Speaker 4 I think it is. And I think a little bit of, you know, if I had to trace some of Elon's stuff, it's

Speaker 4 to one event because he went on and on about it to me was when Biden didn't invite him to that EV summit because unions. He can't.

Speaker 4 He couldn't because he's a union supporter and Tesla's virulently anti-union. And so he had GM there, I guess, for whatever.
He lost his mind. I am the father of,

Speaker 4 like, it was crazy. He was very angry about that.
And

Speaker 4 he was upset that he didn't get his due. I think COVID kind of, we were in an interview and he was really demented about COVID early on.
He was like, it's only going to kill 10 people.

Speaker 4 I have looked at all the studies and I was like, well, last time I checked, you weren't a medical doctor. So I'm going to not take your word for it.

Speaker 4 And historically speaking, these kind of things usually kill a million people. That's usually the number.

Speaker 4 Like, I feel like, you know, and then he got, he tried to, he threatened to leave an interview. And I thought that was weird at the time because he wasn't really like that.

Speaker 4 He wasn't, you know, foot stampy tantrumy. Well, now he is all the time, but he wasn't.
So COVID did something. He started to talk about the deep state and them getting in the way of his business.

Speaker 4 And, you know, he started to surround himself with people of that ilk. He was somewhat like that, but not, it was a very small part of his, it was mostly stupid penis jokes.

Speaker 4 It really wasn't, you know, who cares? Like, although I always found a man at the time, he was in his 40s, a man in his 40s still making boob jokes.

Speaker 4 I was always like, huh, wow, you really need to grow up or something. I think he's 52, 53 now, I guess.

Speaker 3 It's funny that you say about that personal kind of insult of not being included in Biden's EV Summit, because the same thing I heard about, I'm wondering if you found this to be true also, of Vance's quick shift when Hillbilly Elegy was made into a movie and it was panned.

Speaker 4 Well, it was a bad movie.

Speaker 3 It was a bad movie. But, you know, the LA people, the New York people people all were like terrible making fun of this movie.
And that that coincided very closely with his,

Speaker 3 I am anti-elites. I hate.
It was almost like a, you made fun of me.

Speaker 4 I'm sure that irritated him. I mean, he got so much kudos for the book.
Again, there were other books that were better. And I do think he created, he's a very good writer, FYI, but some of it is.

Speaker 4 embellished i would say embellished you know it has to be he's telling a dramatic story and i think a lot of people are really attacking him for like all this stuff that isn't like, he really isn't a hillbilly.

Speaker 4 And he sort of played into a trope about hillbillies, right? He really did.

Speaker 4 I mean, if you want to talk to an actual hillbilly who actually made it and is of good humor, one might turn to Dolly Parton, right?

Speaker 4 Who actually did grow up in those circumstances and doesn't think that people from that area are irreparably damaged. She treats them with respect.

Speaker 4 These tropes that we have about different groups and definitely people from Appalachia, you know, that's what he played into and it was successful. It is though.

Speaker 2 That's always his vibe. Even in Hellbilly Elegy, I remember reading that long, long ago.
And I remember distinctly feeling uncomfortable and feeling like, oh, this is not for people.

Speaker 2 This is not for them. No.
Because there was a self-blaming vibe of it. There was a very distinct, like, well, this is if we did better.

Speaker 3 I love what Tom Nichols said when he said that it's he described his book as the smugness of a man who escaped a shipwreck and now has some thoughts about the swimming techniques of the people behind him who drowned.

Speaker 4 Yes. Yes, that's correct.
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. These areas do have people like J.D.
Vance. We have immigrant stories like that.

Speaker 4 I got out of wherever, Sudan, slash Ireland slash Italy slash whatever, and I made it. That's terrific.

Speaker 4 I just think the idea of slagging the people who didn't is unkind, would be my way of thinking about it.

Speaker 3 So if we've established all of these connections for the American listening to this, what do we say to the question of

Speaker 3 how is J.D. Vance's deep connection to these tech billionaires a problem for Americans if that ticket gets elected?

Speaker 4 Well, he's a butler for billionaires who have their own interests, right? That's what I call them a butler. I'm sure he doesn't like that.
I mean, he's such a strange guy.

Speaker 4 I mean, at one point, after he

Speaker 4 became more conservative, what was interesting is at one point he tweeted at me, and I should have saved the tweet, but he was like, Liberals don't believe in the future, right? Something like that.

Speaker 3 Shady Vance tweeted this at me, yes.

Speaker 4 Okay, I'm a favorite of their little group. They recently attacked me for something else the other day.

Speaker 4 They like to attack a high-profile lesbian, that's their favorite activity who disagrees with them.

Speaker 4 What he tweeted was like, liberals, something along the lines of liberals don't believe in the future.

Speaker 4 And I think I wrote back, I said, Well, I have four kids and you just have two, so I believe in the future twice as much as you do.

Speaker 4 No response, no response, no response. So, you know, they're just, they're just all performative.
They're all performative. The whole thing is performative from these people.

Speaker 3 What from a policy perspective does being a butler for billionaires mean? What will he be advancing? as the butler for billionaires.

Speaker 4 Tax breaks. They want no cyber laws.
They want no regulation.

Speaker 4 So anything that would advantage him, any defense contracts, privatization of things, just hand over, like oligarchs, hand over the state blank kind of thing that helps us.

Speaker 4 And let's try to hinder our enemies. So I would expect that he would try to get the Trump administration to go after open AI, but not Elon, right?

Speaker 4 You know, one thing that's interesting is Elon is quite behind in AI compared to Open AI, which he used to work with and now he's angry at. He sued them and then unsued them, got rid of the lawsuit.

Speaker 4 But, you know, he's quite behind. Like, if you notice, what was really interesting, that union guy,

Speaker 4 Sean O'Brien, I'm so brave talking about unions here at the Republican Convention. He didn't mention Tesla.
He mentioned Amazon, who's a Trump enemy, right?

Speaker 4 Not Tesla, who is the most virulently anti-union company in tech. Period.
End of story. How funny that he didn't mention.
How brave of you, Sean. How brave.
What a brave thing for you to do.

Speaker 4 It's so ridiculous.

Speaker 3 That's so interesting. It's down not only to like, we are going to pass policies for billionaires.
It's we are going to pass policies for these particular handful of billionaires.

Speaker 4 Probably that's what they'll do. You can watch them do it in their attacks and stuff like that.
The attacks and say, Elon's attacks on open AI are just so obvious.

Speaker 4 He's just hurt that he got kicked out, essentially, or he left in a huff. And then they're like, CLA, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Speaker 3 It's like the EV conference.

Speaker 4 He's personally aggrieved.

Speaker 4 Yes,

Speaker 4 he's a longtime aggrieved person. He really is.
He's got a lot of aggrievements. Because being the world's richest man is such a

Speaker 4 burden, really. It's a burden.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, when these guys are in meetings behind the scenes, when they're on phone calls, when they are, when the Thiels and the Musks and the Trumps and the Vance's are on phone calls or sitting around a table, sure, okay, yeah,

Speaker 2 are they talking about

Speaker 2 only

Speaker 2 business? Are they talking about how to get tax cuts? Are they talking about how to personally become more powerful and rich?

Speaker 4 Probably not, or are they talking about we need mass deportation we need anti-abortion like how does their conservative agenda i don't think they have any values i think you you mistake this i think they just now i think for sure elon's been really red like he's now the he loves conspiracy theories now they were on this idea that there were two shooters with the Trump thing.

Speaker 4 I don't quite know why. They're kind of like grassy-knulling it.
And then suddenly now Biden is weekend at Bernie's and Kamala put out the letter. That's their new thing with no proof whatsoever.

Speaker 4 They just, people are saying, like,

Speaker 4 and of course, when he appears, I don't know what they're going to do. Well, he's been drugged.
I don't know. This is such fucking nonsense.
It's just ridiculous.

Speaker 4 And because they're terrified, because actually this invigorates and energizes. So they do anything to cheat.

Speaker 4 Like now, Republicans are trying to stop the money flow, saying he can't give the money to Kamala, which will just piss off, say, Lorraine Powell Jobs or Cheryl Sandberg or Reid Hoffman, who are just as rich as them.

Speaker 4 And they'll give more money. So whatever.
Good luck. Good luck with that.
You know, Elon uses lawsuits a lot to slow people down and then ends up either dumping them or losing them often.

Speaker 4 That's one of their techniques. Peter is much more successful at lawsuits than Elon, but they use them as a tool.
Okay.

Speaker 2 But do you believe that they believe in this extreme conservative agenda? Do you believe that they even believe in mass deportation, in women's rights being repealed, in all of that?

Speaker 2 Is that important to them? Or is that just the banner that they're putting out?

Speaker 4 I don't think they care. Some of them do believe in certain things.
Some of them don't individually. I just don't think they have a value system that you and I might have.

Speaker 4 I think they think they're golden gods.

Speaker 4 And someone told me, which I thought was actually true, that the problem with Elon is he thinks he's, you know, I did an interview where he talked about that we're maybe all in a simulation, that this isn't real.

Speaker 4 I think sometimes I think they think that, that they actually, like several of them believe it, by the way.

Speaker 4 Tony Shea, who died, absolutely was like, Carol, we're in a simulation i'm like okay tony you know he's the one that ended up dying and sadly tragically he was a lovely guy but really was quite bent mentally but so elon believed there was a simulation possibly and that this isn't real and one person pointed out to me that he thinks he's

Speaker 4 And I think this is true. I thought that was the best explanation.
He's living in a video game and he thinks he's ready player one. He's the main character in the video.
So nothing

Speaker 4 matters. He has no empathy.
He has no, you know, talk about someone who has a trans kid being so vile about trans issues and pretending it's because he cares about kids.

Speaker 4 If he cared about kids, he wouldn't be so vile to his child. It's sad.
And I've been in touch with several family members.

Speaker 4 And, you know, that poor kid, the Paul Pelosi thing that he did, that's where I really

Speaker 4 died when he, that was just, why?

Speaker 4 What would possess you? That's just really, that's a choice at some point.

Speaker 2 It's so interesting, though, and it helps to sympathize with people who are actually do have a set of values and are trying to present a case against this other thing that you just constantly feel like you're grabbing sand and there's nowhere to hold on to.

Speaker 2 And that is the point. It's just chaos, say whatever,

Speaker 4 have no value.

Speaker 4 Create this. I think they do have a disdain for government.
They don't like the system and they think they're smarter.

Speaker 4 That is not a fresh. thing from so they just think they can do government better you know but some certain things don't avail themselves with tech solutions.

Speaker 4 And by the way, they don't have the greatest record of safety, they don't have the greatest record. It's literally as if chemical companies had no rules on them.
You know what they do?

Speaker 4 They would pollute things because they're capitalists,

Speaker 3 you know, and the regulations.

Speaker 3 I mean, and that's what they're promising to do in this administration: they're promising the industries that have rules now, they're saying that they're going to go in and take all of those away, too.

Speaker 3 But what a better way if you believe that government is a stupid idea and that the best case is that it doesn't exist,

Speaker 3 then your best choice is to put yourself in the decision-making power of the government.

Speaker 4 That's right. And they find it easy because it's so cheap.
Politicians are such cheap whores. I mean, they really, you know, it didn't cost, it only cost them $15 million to get him into.

Speaker 4 That's not anything to Peter. The way it was done, it sounds like to me that Trump was sort of veering different ways.

Speaker 4 And, you know, when you're rooting for Rupert Murdoch's choice, you know things are fucked, right? Like, Doug Bergman would have have been fine.

Speaker 4 Like he's certainly competent and a toady, but whatever. He's certainly competent.
He's certainly not incompetent. And same thing with Marco Rubio.

Speaker 4 Not a fan, but not incompetent, if you want to be fair to people.

Speaker 3 If you're interested in actually governing.

Speaker 4 Governing, that's correct.

Speaker 3 There were people, but if you're interested in not governing, this is your choice.

Speaker 4 What was interesting, it sounds like he made that choice on Sunday after he got shot. So he's probably on painkillers.

Speaker 4 He's probably like having his son going and Elon Musk calling him and petting him all day long. And oh my God, Elon Musk is calling me, right?

Speaker 4 You can see how they could easily, and that Rupert Murdoch was mean to me. I'm not going with the, you could, this is how decisions are made, just FYI.

Speaker 4 In some way, I said to someone that weekend, I said, I almost feel sorry. I almost feel sorry for Trump because I wouldn't turn my back on any of these people.

Speaker 4 I think Trump is just a vehicle for them. And they just, they pump him up with, oh, sir, you know, the oh, sir, you're so smart.
Aren't you amazing? And he's just a vehicle. Same thing with Bannon.

Speaker 4 He's a vehicle. Bannon called him a vehicle.
At least Bannon's being honest about what he's doing, which is using Trump as Trump has no values whatsoever, like zero, I would say.

Speaker 4 If it suited him tomorrow to say everyone can have an abortion on demand, he'd do it if it suited him. He doesn't care.

Speaker 3 Well, he wants to be cool. Yeah.
Trump wants to be cool. And that's the highest value.
And he equates cool with rich and powerful.

Speaker 3 So when he's in that room and he literally, in a recent fundraiser where Vance was in the room and all the billionaires were in the room, he said, who should I pick for VP?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 3 And they said Vance.

Speaker 3 And he's like, so I'll make the cool people think I'm cool. Yeah.
I don't think the calculus is that, but like, who's easier to control than someone who all you have to do is make them feel cool?

Speaker 3 Very easy.

Speaker 4 Yes, I agree. No, he just needs to be petted.
That's all you need to do is say you're so smart or so attractive. You're so virile with this guy.
So it's, he's kind of pretty easy.

Speaker 4 He's kind of an easy one. I do think actually of all of them, I think Trump really does think we waste money on wars.

Speaker 4 I think where it falls is this idea that at some point the world is an ugly place and we do have to intervene.

Speaker 4 Imagine this group being in charge during Nazism. There was an America First group that was very powerful and it was Henry Ford, it was Charles Lindbergh, it was all kinds of powerful people.

Speaker 4 The guy who ran the Chicago Tribune, which was Colonel McCormack, Tom, I think it's Tom McCormack. You know, there was a group like this back when that was doing the same stuff.

Speaker 4 But, you know, in that regard, I do think Trump, that is his inclination, is to not be globally involved. These people take it to an extreme, right? What do we need to save anybody for?

Speaker 4 Why do we need to intervene anywhere? And, you know, different people have a version of America that's different.

Speaker 2 Well, if you're in a simulation. I mean, it really feels that way.
If you're in a simulation, that sort of nihilism, like nothing matters, people don't matter. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That is what they have been trying to wear us into.

Speaker 4 I feel it.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's correct. And so it's either nothing matters or something matters.

Speaker 4 Well, it's capitalism at its ugliest, right? There's a version of capitalism. I'm a capitalist, you're an entrepreneur, right? It's a question of what kind of capitalism do you want.

Speaker 4 Do you have to do it where everybody loses but you, or can you do it in a way that's much more generous, where you lift a lot of people up?

Speaker 4 That's my version of capitalism: is that the more people do better, the better you do, right? The better audience, the better educated, the better this, the better, the more stable world.

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Speaker 2 Do you believe right now that the leadership of whatever might be next in the Republican Party we believe is a chaos and a nothing matter simulation.

Speaker 4 It's a Trump Party. I wouldn't call it the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, they're uniting over there.

Speaker 4 Some of them are. There's a whole lot of discontent underneath.

Speaker 4 Mike Gallagher, who was on the China committee, boy, don't I agree with him on lots of things, but he's a really intelligent, someone you can have a discussion with about it. He left the party.

Speaker 4 He quit. You know why? Because he didn't want to be part of the permanent.
a kiss-ass crowd, right? He wants to run for president someday when Trump is gone, as inevitably he will be.

Speaker 4 And so he didn't want to sully himself with these people at this point, which is what J.D. Vance is willing to do, right? He's willing to bend his knee to these people.

Speaker 3 That's the danger of Vance for me, is that there is, I think, a very naive perspective that used to be true, which is when Trump is gone, Trump is a misgone because it is a cult of personality, because it is all him.

Speaker 3 And then we will revert to the Republican Party of York Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 There's got to be an A York. It's going to be a different Republican Party, right?

Speaker 3 But Vance is the one. He is.

Speaker 4 No, he's not. No, he's not.
He's not. There are so many.
There are, no, I don't think he is. I don't think he's up to the task because everything, he's failed upward.

Speaker 4 He doesn't excite people in the same way that Trump does. And look,

Speaker 4 I am not pro-Trump, but when he started running in 2016, I had watched Every Apprentice. I understood his appeal.
He was self-deprecating. He was funny.
He was interesting.

Speaker 4 He seemed like he told it to to man. He was a poor person's version of a rich person, right? Like, oh, he must be successful, even though the facts were not, that wasn't the case.

Speaker 4 Talk about failing upward. And I did understand his appeal.
And he's a, you know, in a very, in the way Reagan was, he's one of these spectacular political creatures, whether you like him or not.

Speaker 4 He's definitely appealing. And I'm not so sure it survives him, certainly not with his own children.

Speaker 2 If that side is chaos and nothingness and assimilation, do you, in your conversations with your friends behind the scenes believe that there is a there-there on the other side?

Speaker 4 On the Democrats? Yes. Or the Republicans.

Speaker 2 On the Democrat side. Do you believe that there is a set of values that they are navigating?

Speaker 4 I do. They're different.
They're different. Like years ago, Nancy Pelosi asked me to come speak in front of the Democratic caucus.

Speaker 4 It was out at a hotel in Virginia, one of those big old, you know, empty hotels. And I brought my son, who at the time was one of my kids, was maybe 12, something like that.

Speaker 4 And I spoke to them and they, we stayed there for the day, right? And we're just sort of witnessing everything. And my son goes up to Nancy Pelosi, he goes, none of these people agree with each other.

Speaker 4 And they're all arguing and they're all different arguments and this and that. And she goes, that's the beauty of it.
Like we are allowed to disagree in this group.

Speaker 4 We don't have to be in lockstep in this cultish kind of cultish personality. There was a cult around Reagan, same thing.

Speaker 4 And she goes, and I'm the one who knocks the grandma who knocks him into line, which she's clearly done in this case.

Speaker 4 She's done it again.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I think that's the case. This was, everyone's like, oh, it's so dysfunctional.
I don't think it's dysfunctional to have done this this way.

Speaker 4 It was a lot of disagreement that got a little bit testy, that's for sure. But so what? I think it's very healthy to have these.
You'd never see this.

Speaker 4 There are tons of people in the Republican Party who really think Trump is problematic and terrible and et cetera, et cetera. And they just don't can't speak up.

Speaker 4 Our party has the problem is we speak up too much, right? There's too much speaking up. And I think that's healthy.
I do think that's healthy, even if it presents as dysfunctional.

Speaker 2 Me too. Me too.

Speaker 4 All right, Kara.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling in this moment about the direction the Democratic Party is going right now?

Speaker 4 I feel good about it. I really like Kamala Harris.
I really, I've known her since she was a DA in San Francisco. I know her very well.
First of all, it starts off woman of color.

Speaker 4 So therefore, she starts. 10 yards behind, right? No matter what she does.
And she, I think people will start to really, if they get a really good taste, will be very interested in her.

Speaker 4 She's a really interesting character. I think she's got a real chance.
I really do. People are dying for a choice that's not too old men, you know.
And I think Doe Biden did a real thing here.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he did. Very hooked.
Can you imagine giving up the friggin presidency? I mean, people should not have given him such a hard time. That's a tough.

Speaker 3 thing to do. And he did it.
It was a really beautiful thing for him to do. Yeah.
Okay. I know, last thing.
Who do you think is the most effective

Speaker 3 VP pick for her?

Speaker 4 Probably Mark Kelly.

Speaker 3 Ah, but don't we need him? I agree totally. But don't we need him in the Senate?

Speaker 4 No, no, because Katie Hobbs will appoint the senator. He gets to stay senator.
Okay. Same thing with J.D.
Vance. If he doesn't win, he gets to stay senator.

Speaker 4 And if he doesn't, Katie Hobbs is the one that appoints, the Democratic governor appoints him.

Speaker 2 God, he'd be so good.

Speaker 4 He'd be so good. He would be my choice.
You know, obviously, I'd love a Buddha judge one because he's so

Speaker 4 such a killer debater. Yes.
But it's probably a little too much for people gay. Although, you know, I think that I hate to say it, but there's, you know, there's anti-gay stuff.

Speaker 3 No, Cooper. You don't think North Carolina Cooper?

Speaker 4 There's another one, I suppose. I don't know much about him.
I think that's harder because then we have a governor there. Same thing with Shapiro.
I've interviewed him.

Speaker 4 I haven't interviewed Cooper yet, but I've spent a lot of time with Shapiro. We did a great long interview last year.
Really impressive and very well liked. My brother's a Republican and he likes him.

Speaker 4 Like there's he's liked by a lot of people. And I think he's really astonishing.
He's an astonishingly talented person. I would love a Gretchen Whitmer-Kamala thing.
I know.

Speaker 4 Like, just come on, everybody. Let's have one.

Speaker 4 We're all in. We're all in.
If it wasn't such a risk, if it wasn't such a risk. She's the obvious one.

Speaker 3 If it wasn't such a.

Speaker 4 She's such a talent. Talk about a talented, a natural politician.
She's such a natural, people love her in Michigan, even if they don't like her, right?

Speaker 4 She's one of those, same with Shapiro in Pennsylvania. You've got Gavin.
You've got the governor of New Mexico is fantastic. She's a spark plug.
You've got Chris. What about Bashir? Westmore, Bashir.

Speaker 4 They're all talented. They're all like the Democrats have a real bench.
And unfortunately for the Republicans, they're killing their top ones, right?

Speaker 4 Nikki Haley is a talented, whether you like her or not, she's talented.

Speaker 4 Same thing with Mike Gallagher.

Speaker 4 There's a spate of people who are super talented that I think would be very appealing to people if they just got Trump out of the way. But Vance is not the way to go on any of this.
So.

Speaker 2 Kare, thank you.

Speaker 4 No problem. Good luck.
Don't look worried. Why are you worried today? Have a little moment of joy.
This is my wife is like this. All right.
She just came home.

Speaker 4 She goes, I'm finally, just stop fucking complaining and get there. Go for it.
Stop.

Speaker 3 I feel delighted.

Speaker 4 I know. Not just delighted.

Speaker 3 I feel like, you know how when you're like, maybe, maybe, but you're worried about having your own hope because you think your hope is going to break your heart.

Speaker 4 It doesn't matter. That's it.
And then it happened. They don't care.
They don't care. On the other side.
Let me just say this. Just stop complaining.
This is what we got. This is our chips, people.

Speaker 4 Like, play it through.

Speaker 3 Exactly. We are all in.
We don't have time to F around.

Speaker 4 We are all in. That's right.
Anyway, thank you guys so much.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Bye, Pod Squad.

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