E105: Tech culture wars: Elon vs. SBF, Sabotaging Republicans with Trump

No, he texted delay.

Also, he had zero intention of bringing me and my family with him. Zero.

I feel a bustered.

He fell a buster.

No, the truth is, the plane was with me, I was using it. I'd be happy to let you borrow the plane if I'm not using it.

Here's Sachs. The last time we went to dinner. Ready? The check comes, Miller unlocks, lands on the table. Here's Sachs. What you're seeing, see that? You know what that is? Sax going for his wallet. You can just count.

It's almost ironic because I can't remember the last time. He's almost the last time you picked up a check. Jcal, what do you.

Every time I pick it up on.

The way in, maybe for a slice of pizza.

Come on. Sax is one of the most generous people I know.

I remember we went to a bar once, we barely had time to get a glass of still water, a diet coke, and some of the free nuts. And then Jcal was like, guys, it's on me.

But we have to. I pulled out at 20. I gave it right to the bartender. That's true.

My turn.

I got it.

Jamath, you got the white truffles and the flame mignon last week. I think these bar nuts are on me.

It's only fair.

Yeah, throw in some cashews too. Throw in the cashews and raisins.

The trail mix.

I'll get the trail mix because you got the truffles last time. Chamath.

Oh my God.

Let your winners ride, rain man David sack. And instead we open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Love you, West. I queen of Kinwa. All right, everybody, welcome to the all in podcast. We're still here. Episode 105. I don't know if you saw boys last week, the pod hit a new high watermark, 16th overall in the world. So congratulations.

Incredible.

I thought we peaked at 14, actually.

Was it 1414 people listen to this pod.

When I was in DC this week, I had a bunch of meetings and so many of the staffers listened to the pod and they came up to me, they're like, hey, love you guys. Listen every week. It's really crazy, actually, the reach of this thing. It's really cool.

Now, when you were in DC, how gleeful were they about Sachs's absolute shellacking last week? That must have been high fives all over the dems. Like they won twice. Trump announced and Sachs lost.

Listen, we, we talked.

Are they about SBF and how much money he gave them in order to stop that red wave?

Take it easy.

I talked to a lot of folks and what I would say is we talked a lot about energy policy, life sciences, obviously two areas that I invest a lot of money in, and foreign policy. And actually, David, you'd be surprised by how many fans you have there.

Cool. Well, I mean, like General Milley, like we talked about last week, he's come around. Jake Sullivan just this week said that he told the Ukrainians it was reported that they can't have Crimea back. Get realistic. So Jake Sullivan and Millie are like the voices of reason now in the administration on this. And they're just saying the same thing I've been saying, for which I was excoriated by the foreign policy establishment. And I got into a little Twitter spat with Ian Bremner this week because all of a sudden he posts that, oh, everybody has been privately saying that we need to. No, no, you haven't. You were criticizing, you were denouncing Elon as a Kremlin agent when he posted that Twitter poll suggesting that Ukrainians should negotiate. So you were publicly denouncing those of us who are calling for negotiations, and now all of a sudden you're saying, well, this has always been the position, but I think what's significant about that is the guy's just a weather vein for the blob and the foreign policy establishment. And so the weather vein is now pointing towards negotiations. So that's the good news here.

Do you think that if DeSantis wins the presidency, you will be nominated as secretary of state?

Treasury, what would you take? Treasury, state.

If you were offered a cabinet position, would you take, should.

You should take.

What you have to understand is that my position on foreign policy or Ukraine specifically is not adopted by either party. I mean, McConnell and the center of republican leadership are very much on board with the Biden administration's policy on this. They are very, very hawkish. It's really the uniparty on this issue. There's really just one consolidated blob.

Okay. But back to the question. Would it be a dream of yours? Would you find great joy in having a White House position when DeSantis goes.

In to serve your country?

Would you serve?

Would I serve? If the president, if the United States calls you up and asks you to do something, obviously you have to serve your country, but it's not something I'm actively looking for.

That's a yes.

What if he asked you to serve as the US ambassador to Burkina Faso?

Where what?

The ambassador roles are so funny. It's like you have to compete for the good ones, and then some people get stuck with the bad ones.

Those are available for purchase.

Yeah, exactly. There's like a menu of these things, like these ambassadorships. I don't think it's written down anywhere, but it's kind of like unspoken. It's like if you want the ambassadorship to the UK, that's like $10 million and then affordable.

No, the thing with UK and France, every embassy, every ambassadorship comes with an annual budget. But the cost of actually running that embassy and really throwing the parties is much more so for the UK and France. The gap is 10 million a year that you have to fund out of pocket. So you got to be really willing to put the money up, but apparently you got to pay for the parties. My friend was the ambassador to the UK under Obama, and I went to a party there. It's unbelievable. And he has the best life because he was meeting everybody in the world you can imagine goes through the UK and then wants to meet the US ambassador. It was a great job for him.

Right. But the money I'm talking about is the cost of buying one of these synocurs. You have to typically raise that bundle. Yeah. You bundle that much money for whoever. This is what I've heard. I mean, I don't know. This is what I've heard is that.

Well, does that mean that SBF's parents. If Elizabeth Ward wins the presidency, SBF's parents are going to get some ambassadorship.

Right now. The Illuminati right now just revoked all of our Illuminati cards. We're not supposed to talk about this, guys, that you can buy an ambassadorship. But speaking of buying politicians and coverage, let's get an update on Trump.

Speaking of.

Because if I bring it up, I didn't want to tilt five minutes.

The only thing I want to bring up is I think I'm entitled to, and I told you so on this. There was a story where the FBI said that the reason why Trump kept the boxes in his basement, the FBI has definitively said it's because he was just trying to preserve mementos, not try to sell state secrets to the Saudis or something like that, like some people were making wild conspiracy theories about. So, J Cal, it looks like I was right about that. In fact, I think we had that very discussion on this pod.

Yeah.

I said I thought he was keeping it for keepsakes, like mementos. That was my position, too, because he's.

You didn't support the conspiracy theory.

Let me ask a question, because I.

Wouldn'T put it past him. He's a maniac.

I think if you believe that this was about mementos, which the FBI has now said it was, I think you also have to say that the FBI's approach in raiding his home with armed soldiers was heavy handed. Now, I'm not saying they didn't have the legal right to do it. I'm sure they checked all the right boxes, but it was heavy handed. But look, that brings me to another point. Why do they do it? I actually suspect now that what the Biden administration is trying to do is keep Trump in the news. I think they actually want to provoke.

They want him to run.

It's the exact same thing. Remember the 50 million that went into republican primaries to support the election denier candidate? Turns out that was a successful strategy for them. As much as I hate to admit it, as reckless as I think that was, and hypocritical, because I don't think you can be out there claiming that these candidates are a threat to democracy at the very same time you're funding them. So I think it was completely hypocritical and sort of machiavellian, but it worked. And I think in a similar way, what the Democrats are going to try to do over the next years is keep Trump in the news as much as possible. And in fact, CNN ran his entire speech announcing last Tuesday. I think for this reason, if Trump.

Wins the republican nomination, he's going to, then he will lose the presidency. Because if you look at all of these exit polls that came out of these midterms, he's just so massively unfavorable. But that's not what's going to know. Litigated in the primaries. In the primaries, it's just republican on republican. And there are a non trivial number of paths where Trump actually beats DeSantis. And I think that's very scary to the Republicans, who want to just move on and have a chance of actually consolidating power. And it's gleefully blissful for the Democrats, because if, again, and we saw this, look, if the Democrats were able to fund and field MAGA candidates in the republican primaries that then lost in the general election,