Adin Live - January 29, 2025
Adin Ross & Vivek Ramaswamy Have An Unfiltered Conversation
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 37 minutes
Words per Minute
230.14873
Summary
On this episode of the podcast, I sit down with author, entrepreneur, and author of 4 books, Dana White. We talk about how he got started in his career, what it's like running a boxing business, and how he's going to make a name for himself in the world of boxing.
Transcript
00:00:21.080
I had three of them at home when we were leaving this morning.
00:00:29.120
So, they're not all, they're not, you know, I kind of had different spots.
00:00:36.020
Yeah, that was the hardest one to write because once you start doing it, then it becomes easier.
00:00:59.200
I was going to invite you to go to, but it's like a boxing.
00:01:07.400
I was doing it last year, but I got shut down because I wasn't doing it, like, right.
00:01:15.280
I had to get, like, basically, like, sanctioned.
00:01:22.520
I got served at my warehouse for doing unsanctioned boxing events a year ago.
00:01:33.380
So, because I am generally an anti-regulation guy, unless it's, like, an absolute necessity.
00:01:39.920
So what is the necessity of people having to sanction whether or not...
00:01:45.380
To have amateur and pro boxing or boxing fights?
00:01:54.780
I know that it's difficult to do in a lot of states.
00:01:57.600
I know Florida was one of the easy ones, which I got lucky with.
00:02:00.200
Okay, well, that's better, but maybe not as easy.
00:02:18.780
I think because, look, when I was doing my first few events, it wasn't really done through
00:02:22.940
the full safety precautions, meaning, like, the paramedics weren't fully there.
00:02:29.120
So you think it was reasonable for you to have to...
00:02:32.820
Because eventually it would be shut down and all that stuff.
00:02:43.620
A lot of them are streamers and other content creators in my world.
00:02:58.960
You've kind of got your instincts of how you want to do things, you know?
00:03:08.120
And again, like, this is just such a big thing for me.
00:03:16.940
And honestly, like, I instantly was like, wow, this is great because what you've done is amazing.
00:03:23.340
And what I want to do this new chapter I'm going down is motivate people and help them find paths.
00:03:29.500
And American excellence is what you kind of were.
00:03:33.140
So I want to, like, even if one person in my chat can be inspired to do something by this conversation is kind of like my goal here.
00:03:44.720
I don't want people to be like, yo, why do you watch Aiden's stream?
00:03:48.960
You know, I don't want people to be like, oh, it's a waste of time, all this stuff, because I can see how degenerate content constantly being spammed can be that way.
00:03:55.320
And people also, they love me, but I want people to also gain from my stream.
00:03:59.220
I want people to, like, even if it's one person, they're like, okay, I saw this and I love this and I'm going to apply this to my real world.
00:04:05.440
That's my whole purpose of kind of like, oh, I wanted to rush and do this.
00:04:11.320
But I see that you just did Breakfast Club, right?
00:04:16.740
I was in, slept in Ohio, my home bed last night.
00:04:22.600
As many nights, even if it's 1 a.m., I'll be sleeping there tonight, too.
00:04:25.500
My home bed, head on my pillow at home, see the kids in the morning and then go.
00:04:28.880
Oh, so you're here and you're going right back to Ohio.
00:04:38.020
But once you have, certainly once you have kids and even once you're married, if you have
00:04:41.760
a job that's taking you in a lot of different directions, I think things can go in, you know,
00:04:47.760
you used to see other people and friends when they go through, you kind of just lose connection
00:04:53.100
So the rule that I set up before I ran for president or anything else is we own a plane.
00:04:58.160
Get back that night, even if it's 1 a.m., go to sleep at home base.
00:05:06.900
Guys, I wanted to actually ask you guys this question because when people first started
00:05:29.100
So when I mentioned, when we had talked on the phone a couple of days ago, it's cool
00:05:35.040
to see when I was speaking about, you know, when Trump did the stream with me, I told you
00:05:40.540
or I told everyone that Baron Trump was appointing his dad to do, you know, me, Theo and all
00:05:48.200
And it's cool because it's like, I like to think even if it was a 0.001%, if I had any
00:05:53.880
type of effect on an actual presidential election, it's crazy.
00:06:02.320
I mean, it's whether it's a combination of you had a guy who, despite in his case being
00:06:07.840
in his 70s, still saying, you know what, I want to reach the next generation.
00:06:11.920
And that was one of the things I tried to do when I ran was, in some ways, the political
00:06:16.340
class forgets about who the youngest demographic is they're serving, even though the whole purpose
00:06:21.820
of what we're doing is for the next generation.
00:06:28.060
You know, it was a little different for a politician or presidential candidate to show
00:06:36.140
I like, people like to see the fun side of people.
00:06:41.860
Like, outside of like, you know, business and politic world and all, you know, what do
00:06:49.560
There's a good chance I'll be at the Ohio State tennis practice tomorrow morning.
00:06:53.460
Most days when I'm in Columbus, I show up and I'll warm up with coaches of the team.
00:06:59.980
I used to train with some of those guys in the juniors.
00:07:04.380
And then once you have kids, you've got to narrow your hobbies.
00:07:09.160
I like to go out to the quietest place I can get to.
00:07:13.860
You know, if it's winter hiking in Cold Mountains in Colorado, whether it's Brazil where we spent
00:07:18.400
Christmas in the Amazon, I love being in solitude in nature.
00:07:26.940
I don't like doing things where it's like you only have to enjoy something after you get
00:07:38.680
So, you know, I'm not like a, obviously not like a bodybuilder or anything, but I work
00:07:42.860
out probably four or five days a week with a trainer.
00:07:47.220
And then after that, just take a bunch of quiet time, maybe with a notebook.
00:07:59.480
I love playing competitive sports, especially tennis.
00:08:14.560
I'm telling you guys, I'm telling him, I've never read a book in my entire life.
00:08:18.760
Well, let me tell you something about that before you, you know, sort of think that that's
00:08:25.300
I actually, each person is writing differently.
00:08:30.960
You know, so I'm actually, people expect me to be like a really super fast reader or whatever.
00:08:37.160
It takes you, you know, you read something you want to think about it.
00:08:40.020
So there's many ways to, to consume other ideas, but let me ask you, like reading is
00:08:49.980
Well, I like watching, um, whether it's, you know, you know, you know, movies, not even
00:08:56.340
I love the movies where actors reenact real life events.
00:08:59.660
Like for example, um, I just watched this, this recent one that was so fixated on it.
00:09:05.020
It was the Aaron Hernandez, HBO TV shows, like a series of actors actually acting.
00:09:10.020
Out there in Hernandez and his life and what happened.
00:09:12.500
And I was fascinated by it because it's like, I like to think how people who obviously aren't
00:09:16.340
are there, like how they think I'm very interested in like, how does it like, how, like I'm very
00:09:20.700
interested in like human beings and their minds and all that stuff.
00:09:23.720
So I was really, you're clearly a deeply curious person.
00:09:26.980
That's what I find a little surprising if you say you've never read a book, but you clearly
00:09:30.680
consume your, the inputs for your thought, right?
00:09:34.720
It's once you start to think, you could think on your own, but you got to have some inputs
00:09:39.760
So movies maybe for yourself, movies, and you know what I watch conversations?
00:09:44.200
I also like YouTube short videos telling stories.
00:09:47.260
Like I didn't, for example, like in high school, I wasn't the best student and I make
00:09:51.260
it very clear, um, to everybody that watches and stuff like that.
00:09:54.120
But, uh, like when I didn't know the full on history of like the cold war, for example,
00:10:00.900
I, I went back and I watched a YouTube video of animations and cartoons and I was like, okay,
00:10:06.720
And it's easier for me to understand this than in, in, in high school and the history
00:10:11.960
I, you know, I had learning disabilities too, as well.
00:10:14.180
Well, is there anything you wish your high school would have done differently to teach
00:10:26.020
I think, I think high school is a very outdated system.
00:10:28.940
Um, I'm, I'm all for people getting an education.
00:10:33.660
It helps with people's, how it helps their brains and it helps people kind of like get
00:10:38.740
But I think, I think the subjects are mentally outdated.
00:10:43.200
I mean, history is clearly a core high school subject.
00:10:50.740
I would just say like, like, I don't know, like, like, and, and again, this is very general
00:10:56.560
I haven't used the periodic table since junior year chemistry.
00:11:00.700
And so it's like, um, or I haven't talked about, you know, um, how chromosomes work, um,
00:11:10.340
I'm, I'm, I'm just speaking for like mainly people that don't really, you know, um, I don't
00:11:17.460
Yeah, you're speaking for, you're, you're saying high school isn't for everybody and
00:11:22.560
In my personal opinion, I never went to college.
00:11:24.820
I don't give people educational advice for that specific reason.
00:11:27.680
Like I'm far from the person people should listen to and all that.
00:11:30.600
Um, I think that in high school you should be taught more social skills.
00:11:33.900
I think kids go through more things nowadays because of TikTok and all these things.
00:11:41.700
They make, they make America, everyone's, everyone's fat.
00:11:47.820
It's like when you're not active, you become depressed.
00:11:55.760
So there used to be this thing called the presidential fitness test.
00:11:58.240
That was the norm in middle school where there's just many push-ups.
00:12:06.460
Actually, when I ran for president, that was one of the things I wanted to do.
00:12:09.100
It's called the presidential fitness test, but it's actually for junior high school.
00:12:16.600
I mean, even in terms of like the SAT, you've got math, you've got reading, you've got writing.
00:12:21.280
And I'm in favor of all of those subjects, but I also think there should be a physical
00:12:26.260
I think that's part of, in some ways, you prioritize what you measure.
00:12:30.200
And so I'm a big fan of the physical fitness piece.
00:12:32.260
The only thing I would say is I totally get the way that biology and stuff is taught.
00:12:47.100
What more do you know about the world if you just happen to know that?
00:12:50.440
But at its best, actually, there's a different version.
00:12:57.480
What's really interesting is even if you never want to go be a chemist or a biologist, if it's
00:13:00.660
taught in the right way, it makes you change the way that you actually think about other
00:13:09.520
It's just fascinating the idea of every one of the cells in your body has 23 chromosomes, one from your dad, one from your mom, and that that is entirely determinative of the proteins that are produced in your body that help decide who you are visually and physically.
00:13:27.080
And even you could debate spiritually as a person.
00:13:29.720
It makes you think about what you're actually made of.
00:13:31.900
And then if that's an entry point to not just memorize which chromosome or which gene is on an X or Y chromosome, but instead to think about it's like a path to reflecting on the fact that you are made of something that preceded you.
00:13:46.600
So that's actually education at its best causes us to really think about questions we otherwise wouldn't have.
00:13:53.040
And I know that high school education doesn't necessarily go there.
00:13:59.320
And I don't think that that is necessarily something that helps people discover a love of learning.
00:14:05.380
But if you get to sort of just seeing the beauty of describing the world, right?
00:14:15.180
But I do think that there's the version it's taught where it's memorization rote, not good.
00:14:20.240
But if there's an opportunity to sort of see just the beauty of this is one lens to understand how the world works, I think that's pretty cool.
00:14:27.840
And the next time you go for one of those long hikes, you think about the world around you a little bit differently.
00:14:33.140
The way that you put it, you know, it's like you're agreeing that it is fascinating.
00:14:38.280
Like the same genes that make you and me are also you go hiking in the forest and you see a bunch of trees or like the ant that's like biting you.
00:14:44.940
And in the Brazilian rainforest that I went to, we're all made up of the exact same underlying genetic material and makeup.
00:14:57.400
About seeing the universality of it even merges with religion at that point.
00:15:01.340
Like where your respect for other human beings or your respect even for nature comes from, it's grounded in something that's true that you can study.
00:15:09.940
And I think that might, for me, that's where I really discovered my love of learning is it's just a different, it's like a different set of shades through which you view the universe.
00:15:18.220
Then it's like, oh, okay, I kind of want to learn more of that even if I don't know that FE means iron.
00:15:26.480
So I tested 150 at the time, but they said it only went up to 150 when I was in the fifth grade.
00:15:33.440
Wait, fifth grade was the last time you tested it?
00:15:42.080
Wait, oh, how many hours of sleep does somebody like you get?
00:15:47.900
Like, I'm not a good example for what I want to be, but like.
00:15:53.100
I'm probably averaging about four hours this week.
00:15:56.360
This week I'm averaging about four hours, but I feel like my brain's working a little more slowly because of that.
00:16:02.360
So I would rather, I would rather be at seven or eight, to be honest with you.
00:16:09.520
So I am, I'm normally skeptical of it, but I do, I've recently started taking magnesium glycinate before you go to bed.
00:16:22.580
And again, it goes back to your study of basic elements.
00:16:28.280
So it's not like some sort of synthetic, made up, ultra process thing.
00:16:34.640
It actually has a, I found it, maybe it's just psychological, but I feel like I get to sleep a little bit faster.
00:16:47.900
I think, I think, I've actually never taken melatonin because I believe I would take up groggy.
00:16:53.280
I would wake up groggy based on my understanding of how it works.
00:17:00.200
So that would be, that's like the only thing that I take for sleep.
00:17:03.900
Yeah, because I used to, I used to take, I used to have a lot of sleep problems, a lot, a lot of sleep problems.
00:17:08.900
But what I, what I noticed helps me the most was the melatonin.
00:17:16.500
And I don't know if it's from not drinking enough water.
00:17:18.880
Probably just, because melatonin is a vitamin, isn't it?
00:17:25.120
You could sort of, yeah, call anything a vitamin.
00:17:29.720
What would you say it is just a sleep, like a sleep?
00:17:31.500
Yeah, I mean, it's like closer to affecting your kind of hormonal and metabolic balance.
00:17:44.280
But I do think that some of the longer term effects make me a little bit freaked out.
00:17:48.320
So I'm not, you know, like I'm not going to get a CBD oil massage just because I think it might make my brain work a little more slowly.
00:17:58.380
I mean, what I do know is for sure it's been proven like, you know, because I've had a couple family members that have had cancer.
00:18:06.560
Yeah, they've had to go through chemo and all that stuff.
00:18:08.660
So when they would smoke, they wouldn't do the THC.
00:18:13.060
And from what I, how they would basically tell me, they would tell me like it would help them a lot like when it comes to like sleeping.
00:18:17.920
I mean, also just dealing with pain, cancer pain.
00:18:21.860
If you don't mind me asking, what kind of cancer did they have?
00:18:30.100
I have a totally different view if you have a disease state and you're looking at managing your disease.
00:18:34.460
But in ordinary life, I think we've got to find ways to relax that don't rely on chemicals all of the equal.
00:18:41.560
Like I take my magnesium gummy once in a while.
00:18:43.540
So that's, I think you want to, don't want to use external chemical substitutes for something that like some deep breaths and some quiet time might actually take care of.
00:18:55.800
Like I feel like with nowadays, you know, pharmacies are so easy to just prescribe X, Y, and Z.
00:19:00.780
It's like, it's so easy and accessible, you know?
00:19:02.660
But, you know, so I mean, the only thing I would say is, yeah, pharmacies can prescribe.
00:19:05.780
But also even the stuff that's not prescribed, but just because you can get it doesn't mean that it's any better than the stuff that was prescribed.
00:19:10.760
It would just be equally bad and somebody didn't have to prescribe it.
00:19:13.840
Versus, you know, however far you're able to get without chemical dependence.
00:19:21.780
I'm actually just a big fan of independence, period.
00:19:24.680
Independence from my government, independence from chemicals, independence from addiction.
00:19:29.520
And, you know, it's easy to look to the outside to substitute for, you know, what you probably may do better to find inside.
00:19:41.460
I, okay, so I had a, I feel like I had a, I've had a few spiritual, um, I wouldn't call it a full-on awakening, but I feel like I've had a couple spiritual moments in my life.
00:20:07.780
Like, I believe in, like, if you're, like, spiritual, you have, like, a third eye.
00:20:11.840
It's interesting you use that, because that's actually, like, a very Hindu concept, but I think you might mean it in a different sense.
00:20:16.120
Um, like, um, I just don't know what I believe in yet.
00:20:25.920
I just, you know, it's just, like, I don't know what's real.
00:20:29.080
Sometimes I don't know what, what to believe in, what to not believe.
00:20:31.980
But are you, are you interested in finding out?
00:20:36.080
But I want to, because I feel like my life right now is so mechanical, and it's so, the word is, like,
00:20:40.960
it's just so, um, I'm not, I don't have that spot that I want to find.
00:20:49.380
I want to know what, I want to, I want to know what's true, and I want to know what to believe in,
00:20:54.160
and I want to know what to praise, and, because I do know there's a God.
00:21:01.640
It kind of, it's kind of the only way it could be, I believe.
00:21:04.920
Actually, so one of the things I, so the, the book I gave, what did I give?
00:21:12.980
The first chapter is about, is about the question of belief in God, actually.
00:21:17.500
The chapter's titled, God is Real, but it goes through, actually, many people think of the
00:21:23.280
scientific explanation for the universe as being the Big Bang.
00:21:32.380
Yeah, yeah, but it's also, you know, you understand.
00:21:37.980
But actually, there was a funny thing, is they thought that that was
00:21:41.800
And then the Catholic Church came out and said, no, no, no, we love this, actually.
00:21:47.060
Because it is consistent with the idea of a supreme being, of a God, who actually created
00:21:56.760
Like, it didn't, the Big Bang theory doesn't include Adam and Eve, but it includes the
00:21:59.420
idea of a universe who banged the Big Bang, who catalyzed the Bang.
00:22:05.000
That had to be something that started before the Big Bang, which they argue actually means
00:22:09.640
And conversely, there was, like, a Maoist legend.
00:22:13.260
It's a Mao, who was a Chinese communist, who was totally opposed to the idea of a God.
00:22:18.180
They were totally opposed to the idea of a Big Bang.
00:22:20.180
Because if there's a Big Bang, that means that that might suggest the actual existence
00:22:24.060
So, you know, back to our earlier discussion about, like, boring stuff about biology and
00:22:27.480
chemistry and the way it's taught in high school, which I agree with you, is largely unhelpful.
00:22:33.980
But at its best, I actually think that studying, my study of science, certainly leads me to
00:22:44.820
I mean, it's just, it's just, that conversation can just be, you know, you could, I mean,
00:22:49.500
man, you could speak about that for hours and hours and hours, because there's so much
00:22:52.840
to talk about, and there's so many, like, different things.
00:23:09.480
You guys, you guys, my dad actually wanted me to ask you a few questions, too.
00:23:29.380
Streaming is nowhere near as hard as a nine to five.
00:23:31.900
I'm just being real with all of you, and I actually know that.
00:23:36.760
So, you can say you have authority to say that.
00:23:38.080
I cut and split wood when I was in high school.
00:23:40.120
I worked as a busboy in two different restaurants, and then I cleaned Airbnbs.
00:23:44.060
So, those are my four jobs that I worked before I was a streamer.
00:23:48.800
Yeah, nothing crazy, crazy, but I mean, I have some type of experience.
00:23:58.360
Okay, so this is a big one for me, because my dad was a vegetarian at one point of his
00:24:03.960
life, and my mom, too, and my, actually, a lot of my family were.
00:24:07.640
I want to ask a vegetarian now, because I've tried it as well.
00:24:16.880
So, I do whey protein shake when I work out in the morning.
00:24:20.860
I eat a lot of nuts, beans, lentils, chickpeas, eggs, milk.
00:24:38.620
So, yeah, I mean, there's ones that are high protein.
00:24:41.760
The ones that are made of, like, grain and veggies are less so, so.
00:24:44.800
Yeah, but eggs, whey protein, direct, cheese, milk, nuts, lentils, chickpeas, like, that's
00:24:58.440
I mean, as a lot of people switch into it, it becomes a little bit more difficult.
00:25:01.560
It's not necessarily, I wouldn't argue that it's necessarily healthier.
00:25:04.120
I mean, eating just, like, a straight fish diet with lean meats or fish and chicken.
00:25:10.660
I'm not saying that, like, if you're looking at it from a pure health perspective,
00:25:15.700
You can also be really unhealthy as a vegetarian.
00:25:18.940
You can obviously be really unhealthy if you eat meat, but you can also be really healthy
00:25:31.680
But, yeah, I just, it's so hard to be vegetarian.
00:25:38.880
Yeah, I mean, I, it comes to me from, like, more of a religious sort of background or whatever,
00:25:44.340
which is, I would prefer all else equal, not to take life for the sake of just my pleasure.
00:25:52.280
Now, if it comes down to my health, absolutely, I would do it.
00:25:55.120
If it comes down to necessity, absolutely would do it.
00:25:57.460
But if it's just down to my preference, yeah, all else equal, I'd rather not.
00:26:10.700
You want to ask him a question, like anything like that.
00:26:12.680
Yeah, just, I mean, what do you guys want to hear about?
00:26:17.020
He's, it's so cool you pulled up on me, by the way, man.
00:26:21.980
I kind of like the idea of taking live, live questions from.
00:26:38.360
I think there are also opportunities to get screwed along the way.
00:26:43.380
I think that there's a difference between cryptocurrencies where there's a finite supply versus ones where
00:26:52.280
The ultimate example of one where there's a finite supply is Bitcoin.
00:26:55.940
Through the mathematical formula, they can't print and make up more of it.
00:26:59.560
But you look at the dollar, you look at most kinds of currencies around the world, what
00:27:05.680
So crypto is interesting potentially as an alternative to say, if the government's money
00:27:13.100
They could just print more money, which means all the money in circulation is worth less.
00:27:18.840
And that's how the governments have been able to overspend money.
00:27:21.620
Is they literally just go to the printer and just say, oh, there's this many dollars.
00:27:26.960
Let's make the debt, let's make the dollars worth less so we can actually pay back the
00:27:32.180
We just print much more money and release it into circulation.
00:27:37.640
That's just how governments generally have operated.
00:27:40.020
So the promise of an alternative to that historically has been gold because the thought is gold is
00:27:56.400
What if there was a different way to hold a finite supply of something of inherent value?
00:28:00.080
So that was actually part of the premise behind Bitcoin.
00:28:02.700
So I would put that in a different and in some sense superior category to something that
00:28:08.780
you could just print more of because then it's not differentiated.
00:28:11.980
I'm not one of these people, though, that turns crypto into like a new religion.
00:28:20.900
But I do think that the ability to opt out of the traditional financial system is a good
00:28:26.640
thing and it would hold people accountable, hold people's feet to the fire by keeping
00:28:32.200
the government more accountable if people had the ability to opt out of the traditional
00:28:38.460
That then forces the government itself in the long run to be more disciplined about its
00:28:42.520
spending rather than just turning on the money printing machine.
00:28:48.480
What were your thoughts on the, you know, are you aware of Silk Road is?
00:28:53.040
So what were your thoughts on the pardoning of, you know.
00:28:55.540
Well, my thoughts on it was it was a good decision to pardon him.
00:28:57.800
And the reason I say that is I think when I ran for president, I think I was the first
00:29:07.880
But the first time I met his mother, it was in New Hampshire at like a place called, it
00:29:14.200
It was like a festival randomly in northern New Hampshire.
00:29:20.140
And she shared with me how she felt that her son had been badly, unfairly treated.
00:29:24.040
I promised her I would look into the details of the case, which I did.
00:29:27.860
And having looked at it, it was clear that he was held to a really different standard,
00:29:34.040
There's all kinds of platforms today on the internet where people do awful things.
00:29:38.580
But the owner or the founder of the platform doesn't go to prison for all the awful things
00:29:44.520
And I think that Ross was held to a very different standard.
00:29:47.380
And the poor guy spent about a decade of his life that he's not going to get back.
00:29:51.740
But the fact that he got a pardon, I think, is a good thing.
00:29:54.620
I've been a big public advocate for it, actually.
00:29:58.620
But yeah, the chat's very happy about that as well.
00:30:02.300
People love that, that he knows he got pardoned.
00:30:19.440
What about Elon do you guys want me to ask about?
00:30:29.580
Yeah, well, I mean, Elon's obviously super genius.
00:30:31.760
I think we need more super geniuses in America.
00:30:34.520
And so, like, let's get some more of them, please.
00:30:38.120
Seriously, I don't mean to toot your horn, but you really are.
00:30:40.760
We each are good at certain things and not others.
00:30:43.840
But I will say that we are a country where we want to celebrate super geniuses.
00:30:50.760
And not just super geniuses in, like, math or in writing or anything.
00:30:54.580
Like, the best athletes, the best musicians, the best engineers, mathematicians, all of
00:31:00.060
And then if those super geniuses are also willing to at least dedicate a little bit of
00:31:03.040
time to helping the government get better, I think that's better for our country.
00:31:18.820
So look, I think that we didn't have an income tax for most of our history.
00:31:25.500
For most of our national history, during our early national rise, right, we started as,
00:31:31.140
like, effectively the equivalent of, like, a backwater third world country in the global
00:31:36.080
scheme of things, 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard.
00:31:39.060
And by the early 1900s, we were the rising ascendant dominant force on the global stage.
00:31:49.080
So I think what happened is actually starting the income tax laid the foundation for government
00:31:55.720
And once you have government overgrowth, what happens is people start to think of themselves
00:32:04.660
I'm tempted to say the biggest problem in America, it's one of the biggest problems in
00:32:07.960
America, is victimhood culture for the last hundred years is the idea that you ought
00:32:12.680
to be dependent on your government rather than independent from it.
00:32:16.060
And the income tax, I think, was one of the original sins in making that happen.
00:32:19.280
Because once you have the income tax, then the government's able to fund itself to grow,
00:32:22.580
to tax those who achieve, to tax those who are able to produce things.
00:32:26.240
Once you do that, then everybody else views them as a villain.
00:32:29.260
And it's one giant game of, you know, tug of war of who gets what from whom.
00:32:35.300
Because what I like better is, let's just consider a world, in theory, if you had a world without
00:32:40.440
an income tax, a country without an income tax, then you actually have more people with
00:32:44.740
the maximum incentive to actually create things in that country.
00:32:51.600
The states that have no income tax are whooping the rear end of the states that do have an
00:32:57.460
So the number one and two states that people move into are Texas and Florida.
00:33:05.580
But unfortunately, Ohio is one of the states that people aren't moving into.
00:33:14.820
California and New York are at the highest end of people who are moving out.
00:33:17.320
Isn't there city tax, too, in LA and in New York City?
00:33:22.140
And so if for every dollar you earn, half of it, 50 cents of it goes away, you have
00:33:29.700
If you have less of an incentive to earn, you have less of an incentive to create, and
00:33:32.680
our economy shrinks, and actually everybody's left worse off.
00:33:35.440
So anyway, I think the – I know it was a fast comment.
00:33:37.760
Somebody made it going down, but I thought the no tax thing caught my eye.
00:33:49.600
Like, you got a state like California, Los Angeles, you know, the city, homeless people
00:34:04.760
Why are we paying the highest tax in somewhere like Los Angeles, California, where it's the
00:34:20.240
So generally, when you have a government that is running on the excess of taxing its people,
00:34:26.160
it is actually doing a worse job for the people they're supposed to serve.
00:34:30.680
This is kind of a private sector analogy, but it goes back to government, which I'll come
00:34:36.140
That thing was created with like a tiny budget, but with scarcity, you actually are often able
00:34:41.940
to achieve more than companies that have hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:34:48.000
Well, the same thing is true for the government.
00:34:49.120
Just because your government takes in a whole bunch more money from its citizens doesn't
00:34:53.120
mean that it's doing a better job of providing for those citizens or preventing fires or putting
00:35:02.220
So you might as well actually figure out the best way you're able to get out of the way
00:35:06.220
and do the minimal function that you're supposed to do.
00:35:08.420
So I think the minimal function for government, the only proper function for government, I
00:35:12.020
believe, is protect private property rights and protect actual national defense.
00:35:16.960
We shouldn't have foreign invaders coming into the country.
00:35:20.940
Provide that, protect private property rights, and then mostly just get the heck out of the
00:35:26.520
And the irony right now is we have a government that's not doing those two things well, but
00:35:29.660
it's trying to do a bunch of other things well and taxing the hell out of us as a way
00:35:36.960
Well, I want to talk about the California fires a little bit because it didn't really
00:35:41.940
Also, I saw President Trump meet with the mayor.
00:35:55.240
And it's going to give us in five, four, Karen Bass.
00:36:00.680
I saw she was trying to be like, we need to wait all this time.
00:36:10.040
Because in L.A., and specifically in San Francisco, these major cities, it's like you're living
00:36:17.540
in an actual GTA V video game where it's like chaos mode.
00:36:22.600
It just doesn't make sense to like, why would you spend millions of dollars on a house out
00:36:27.880
And like, and it's not safe for you, your family.
00:36:33.980
I have a deep heart, space in my heart for California.
00:36:38.920
It's beautiful weather, nice people, nice people.
00:36:41.360
You have the mountains, you have the snow, yeah.
00:36:42.980
It's like one of the most naturally best endowed states probably in the world.
00:36:51.640
This is a man-made problem, demands a man-made solution.
00:36:54.380
I think California should try and go into being a zero tax state.
00:36:58.240
People would no longer leave the state, come back, get the government actually out of the
00:37:02.140
way, and then get competent people into government.
00:37:08.920
You know, I mean, he didn't get to where he is by, you know, he's a very, he knows how
00:37:17.640
But in terms of the results for running the state, it doesn't look great.
00:37:20.940
And I don't think some of this, what you can attribute to incompetence, never attribute
00:37:26.600
So what I believe is, always bet on incompetence first as the first and best explanation.
00:37:32.000
But part of what we need is actual competition.
00:37:34.900
I think there could be a good next governor of California.
00:37:43.260
And, you know, I'm pursuing a similar path elsewhere in my home state.
00:37:51.400
He's going to do what he needs to at the federal level.
00:37:53.640
But the country's also led at the state and local level all the way, too.
00:38:08.260
And I actually want to kind of address it because it's, frankly, part of my language,
00:38:17.760
Yeah, it's like a bunch of – it's this – it's the thing we run for office.
00:38:21.880
People make up the worst crap about – like literally we'll just have no problem on the internet
00:38:34.980
Because I think this is something that is – it's interesting.
00:38:37.620
I'm proud of it, but I also want to share the story to give people ideas of how they –
00:38:48.500
So I started a company after I left my job as an investor.
00:38:51.800
So I got my first job investing in biotech stocks.
00:38:55.920
So I studied biology, applied that to figure out what companies were developing interesting medicines.
00:39:04.340
And then I saw an opportunity, which is that big pharma companies behave like governments.
00:39:09.760
They're super bureaucratic, and they're like lemmings.
00:39:12.660
They all go in the same direction at the same time, right?
00:39:15.240
So you mentioned people in the family with cancer.
00:39:17.660
Well, back in 2007, 2008, all the pharma companies were like, oh, no, no, we don't want to do cancer.
00:39:23.040
But five years later, cancer is like the main area they want to go into.
00:39:27.480
So in 2014, I started this company, and the whole premise was we'll develop the drugs in the area that big pharma has actually run away from.
00:39:36.660
And big pharma has run away from many of those areas after developing those drugs.
00:39:42.180
But then when they switch direction, a lot of those projects are hanging half complete.
00:39:45.460
Let's pick the best of those in the areas pharma is ignoring and develop those drugs.
00:39:50.260
And the whole model is, you know, some of them are going to succeed.
00:39:54.640
But even if you have a few successes in the world of developing new medicines, that's how it makes up for all the failures.
00:40:02.380
So I ended up developing a company which focused on areas like women's health, focused on dermatology.
00:40:08.140
And then one of the areas that pharma had completely decided they were abandoning at the time was in Alzheimer's disease.
00:40:13.800
So one of the first drugs I developed, and it was the biggest challenge of my life, was an area with 99.7% failure rate.
00:40:22.660
Nearly every drug in Alzheimer's disease has failed.
00:40:24.880
So everybody in the farm industry threw their, you know, towel and said, we're not doing this.
00:40:29.360
I said, okay, there's a drug that this company GSK was developing.
00:40:32.740
They had gotten it partway through the process.
00:40:35.200
The guy who was heading their neuroscience division said, this thing has promise.
00:40:38.260
But they said, we're not doing Alzheimer's disease anymore.
00:40:40.980
So I did a deal with them and said, you know what, we'll develop this drug.
00:40:44.280
And if we get it to the finish line, you guys participate in the upside of it.
00:40:48.300
But we got to take the risk of running that study.
00:40:50.580
So what we did is each, I did that for a bunch of drugs.
00:40:53.060
And each of those drugs, we took them public in their own separate subsidiaries.
00:41:19.920
this is like in American politics, one of the, way worse than business.
00:41:23.940
Dirtiest lines of business is American politics.
00:41:26.620
So what they say is, oh, I made money off of that failure.
00:41:31.000
Because there was like a, was there a sale of shares in that company, Axevan?
00:41:39.020
Did not sell a single share of Axevan, that company, all the way through the failure.
00:41:49.560
They literally will just, people will make shit up with zero accountability.
00:41:55.220
Well, you know, you know what I, you know what I saw.
00:42:03.420
The stuff, I mean, the stuff I've, the people made up about me is by now a tiny comparison
00:42:07.320
Oh yeah, they, they, they, they accused him of being the most craziest, horrible human
00:42:11.640
They accused him of being this insane person, this, this felon, all the, made up stuff about
00:42:17.140
But the, but the moral of the story, I don't want to end on the, on the, on the sad part
00:42:20.400
because I think the reality is even though that drug failed, the company, and this is
00:42:25.360
the, my experience in my life is we're all strengthened by our failures.
00:42:29.960
The company got stronger in the sense that the people who worked there were doubly committed
00:42:36.900
Then five other drugs get through phase three, succeed.
00:42:42.300
One of them is a life-saving therapy in kids where a hundred percent of kids die with this
00:42:47.960
One of the drugs that we developed, 70% of those kids now live lives of normal duration.
00:42:55.840
And I just think, and that's like an $8 billion company traded on the NASDAQ today is Roivant,
00:43:04.080
But one of the things that, that irritates me, but then you remind yourself, okay, this
00:43:10.980
Is when people, when people sort of make the kind of stuff up that they've done with Donald
00:43:15.560
Trump or me or whatever, it's what deters people from going into
00:43:22.240
I want to ask you a question because obviously like with my generation, I want to give people
00:43:35.100
My buddy, my buddy Sneak, Nicholas is his real name.
00:43:42.260
There are two genders, male and female, period.
00:43:45.920
You know, I lost, you know, I lost, you know, I lost like millions of dollars of deals because
00:43:52.140
See, this is where the biology class would have come in handy.
00:43:53.940
There's two X chromosomes, you're a woman, and X and a Y, you're a man.
00:43:58.320
And look, that doesn't mean that there's many different ways to be a woman.
00:44:00.920
You don't have to wear a skirt, you can wear pants, you can wear whatever you want.
00:44:05.660
But it is a biological hard fact that there are two genders.
00:44:12.200
I mean, reproduction, genetic diversity is fostered.
00:44:18.120
And the idea that, look, I think we, I don't want to, I think we sometimes get into the
00:44:22.820
habit of just trampling on people who are suffering.
00:44:26.140
And I don't want to do that because if you believe your gender does not match your biological
00:44:31.440
sex, especially if you're a kid, that means that you likely are suffering from a mental
00:44:38.200
And I think that our response should not be to laugh at that person.
00:44:44.440
If they believe, despite having male sex organs and an X and a Y chromosome, and they
00:44:49.580
were born a boy, but then they get to 16 years old and decide they're a girl, that
00:44:53.920
means something else is probably going wrong in their life.
00:44:56.480
And we should actually have the compassion to figure out what that is and address it
00:45:00.160
rather than, you know, indulge a fantasy, which actually is worse for the very person.
00:45:06.520
Most people after going through gender conversion surgery, they don't, yeah, they don't have
00:45:10.260
this, it's not like their depression is suddenly gone.
00:45:15.280
It was just that they assumed that that was what was actually going to make them feel better.
00:45:19.340
And I've met, I've met young women who, two young women when I ranked for president
00:45:32.960
They're in their twenties, but they did it when they were in their teens.
00:45:35.800
I don't think somebody under the age of 18 should be allowed to make permanent decisions.
00:45:40.660
I mean, if you're an adult, it's different if you're an adult.
00:45:46.620
You don't get to compete with women in sports competitions.
00:45:50.840
But broadly speaking, you want to live your life the way you want.
00:45:55.260
You respect everybody's individual rights, but kids aren't the same as adults.
00:45:59.440
It just sucks, man, because obviously now you can kind of say what you want to say
00:46:05.600
Well, two, three years ago when I made a tweet about there's two genders, I lost out on
00:46:11.400
Everyone started to kick me, ban me, all these things.
00:46:14.080
I just liked showing people the real side of me.
00:46:16.820
I just feel like when you hide behind something and of who you are and you can kind of like
00:46:23.300
I just never really thought that was cool, but I am working on something big.
00:46:28.000
I want to inspire people to do good things for people.
00:46:30.200
And that's kind of like the way I want to do my streams and what I do.
00:46:37.560
And the reason why I say America is because, look, you look at a country like Japan, it's
00:46:43.720
When somebody drops a pen and if you're walking down Shibuya, if you drop a pen, they're all
00:46:49.540
going to try to help you grab your pen and hand it to you.
00:46:55.560
It's like we are in a, it's like we're so divided as a nation and it really sucks because
00:47:05.000
I don't know when, because I was young at that point.
00:47:06.880
Maybe you know when there was a shift, but man, there was a shift at some point where
00:47:11.260
America really, like everyone just started saying, you know, F you to everybody and everyone
00:47:21.880
I think we go through these cycles over time and over the years.
00:47:24.820
I mean, but I will tell you this idea of speaking openly, I believe that actually unites us.
00:47:30.400
I think that the idea that you could say these controversial things, they would say that,
00:47:34.780
Now, people feel more united when they actually are able to speak their mind freely.
00:47:42.360
So I wrote that, so talking about my time as a biotech CEO, I told you about the business
00:47:52.560
Riots across the street, what they call mostly peaceful protests.
00:47:58.800
And suddenly there was an expectation that every biotech and tech CEO is supposed to say
00:48:11.960
It said that they called for dismantling the nuclear family structure.
00:48:16.940
But then also, I didn't think a company should be wading into this.
00:48:20.160
I said that our company is not wading into this.
00:48:26.440
That actually created a lot of controversy for me.
00:48:29.100
I know you said you face a lot of consequences for saying there's two genders.
00:48:32.240
The equivalent of this for me was there was a lot of controversy in the biotech world.
00:48:36.660
I would say six months later, I refused to get into this realm of the company wading into
00:48:43.100
Either I could remain the CEO of the company that I founded by then, a multi-billion dollar
00:48:48.720
I could remain the CEO and shut up on, you know, follow the line, toe the line, which
00:48:54.520
is just to say whatever the other CEO was, some statement in favor of BLM or whatever
00:48:59.640
Or I could actually speak my mind, like actually tell people what was on my mind, which is
00:49:04.560
But then I would have to step down as my job as a CEO, which I did.
00:49:08.060
So you stepped down to say what you really wanted to say.
00:49:13.820
So I'm sure it didn't feel good when you lost the deals that you lost at the time.
00:49:20.260
You know, it feels good to just know that, okay, here's one thing.
00:49:27.040
People in my realm, like people in my world realm, a lot of them are like, they have these
00:49:32.580
And obviously, they have to kind of bite their tongue on what they can and can't say.
00:49:35.720
They're not allowed to have like a political opinion.
00:49:37.340
They're not even really allowed to speak about certain things.
00:49:39.500
And again, like if they want to go down that path and they want to be brand friendly and
00:49:47.300
Like at any moment, if someone's like, Aiden, what do you think about this?
00:49:49.520
I'm allowed to say whatever I want to think about it.
00:49:57.040
My boy, this is a great question too from Sneak.
00:50:02.860
Because so many people were calling this guy a hero.
00:50:08.540
He might have deep-seated psychological issues.
00:50:13.920
And you know, it's like, is it because he was a handsome guy?
00:50:23.240
Only because people had already turned him into kind of like a...
00:50:25.800
The cult hero worship started even before they knew what he looked like, right?
00:50:30.980
When the video came out, people were saying, you know, this guy's a hero.
00:50:36.700
I think it reveals that the people just have a lot of deep-seated frustration, right?
00:50:40.920
We live in a moment where people are understandably frustrated, that they feel like they've been
00:50:47.880
told that you go to four years of college, take on a loan, graduate, live the American
00:50:58.340
You may not be able to afford what you think of as a reasonable way of life.
00:51:02.200
Even if you're working hard, you're not being able to access a better life for yourself.
00:51:05.500
So I think that there's a lot of latent frustration and mistrust of the system.
00:51:13.880
I think the government and our leaders in every domain of life haven't been forthright.
00:51:18.120
But then there's this culture of not being able to talk about it in the open that you
00:51:22.840
And when you tell people to shut up, sit down, do as they're told for a really long time,
00:51:27.060
they bottle that up and really toxic things start to happen.
00:51:30.440
All of that being said, that's not an excuse at all.
00:51:34.860
It's completely unacceptable and disgusting and subhuman.
00:51:42.240
It's not the standard we want to hold ourselves to to say that somebody's going to kill another
00:51:51.000
But I think that the way we're going to address this is one, call that out.
00:51:56.280
At the same time, understand that there's a deep sickness in our country, a mental health
00:52:00.000
epidemic, a deep sickness of frustration, a deep sense of disempowerment that we have
00:52:05.580
to give people a true sense that they're in charge of their lives again so that we can
00:52:11.180
get back to a place when a murderer kills somebody in cold blood that there isn't people
00:52:16.520
in America who thinks that that's an act worthy of celebration.
00:52:19.360
Look, I think people, some people do deserve, like I'm all for like death penalty on some
00:52:30.160
You're talking about a guy who's a healthcare CEO.
00:52:35.020
I'm just saying in general, like I just don't think like death, like killing is wrong,
00:52:45.040
He passed something where like pedophiles in Florida, they get death penalty.
00:52:50.220
I just, I think nowadays, man, with pedophilia and you see a bunch of like famous people who
00:52:55.380
used to work in Hollywood, stuff's coming out about them.
00:52:58.840
I mean, it's like, I mean, some of that stuff's just like, but it's crazy, right?
00:53:03.600
It's like, first of all, what do you think about the Diddy, by the way, the Diddy stuff?
00:53:07.340
I mean, what I think is, it sure seems like a lot of other people who are now coming out
00:53:14.760
I mean, anybody in Hollywood who immediately after that comes out trying to come out as
00:53:20.820
some sort of virtuous saint, you better, you better believe that they were probably part
00:53:27.880
I mean, you got the Epstein version in the business world and the political world.
00:53:30.620
Then you got the Diddy world in the music world.
00:53:38.020
I think that it wasn't that long ago either, by the way.
00:53:42.960
Like, I think this was a kind of a norm in the country that somehow, when it was with
00:53:46.700
respect to somebody who's in like a pop star position, you're supposed to look the other
00:53:51.800
And, you know, I'm always a fan of somebody getting a fair trial and going through the
00:53:58.160
But assuming some of those accusations are true, assuming that, shame on, like, our entire
00:54:05.880
country for turning our eye away from the kind of disgusting behaviors that we're hiding
00:54:16.120
You know, it's kind of shameful that we claim to be a values-grounded Christian values nation
00:54:22.420
or whatever when we're actually just tolerating all of this vile, vile child abusive behavior.
00:54:28.440
I'm not going to leak anybody specifically, but let me tell you this.
00:54:31.240
Some of the biggest musicians, like, they got paid to promote and endorse Kamala.
00:54:37.980
And I know for a fact, because I saw, check this out, I saw actual proof with my own eyes
00:54:42.380
of a private text conversation between somebody and somebody saying that I did this for the
00:54:52.000
It's like, and I'm giving you an example of, like, how easy it is for people, you know,
00:55:09.020
Because you're making, these guys are making hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:55:12.140
You really want to take a quick little five, ten million dollars to just go.
00:55:20.540
This is none of my business, but, like, what's your net worth?
00:55:32.120
A lot of people have a lot more than that, but, you know.
00:55:35.560
You're a billionaire, and, like, you say what you like.
00:55:37.660
Yeah, I mean, my view is, the funniest thing is, some of the people who are the most scared
00:55:42.600
of sharing their beliefs are actually billionaires, at least from, until about maybe a year ago.
00:55:48.160
And my view is, what's the point of having a billion dollars if you can't even speak your
00:55:51.860
The true free person is the person who's actually able to speak his mind, and actually
00:55:58.800
And so, I don't think that happiness correlates all that much with how much money you have,
00:56:04.340
I think you need to have a certain minimal amount to be able to-
00:56:07.260
Yeah, to be able to put food on the dinner table.
00:56:10.820
To be able to make sure that, you know, if you get sick, which everyone does at some
00:56:16.420
But above that, you know, I don't think your happiness necessarily correlates to how much money
00:56:22.160
Is there a difference between $50 million and $100 million?
00:56:34.640
Depends on just what your view of the world is, man.
00:56:36.880
Like, I think that our house, you know, we're grateful for where we live, but it's like
00:56:41.460
some people come to our house, it's like, oh, it's just like a- it's a beautiful
00:56:45.320
house when I said, but it's like a regular house.
00:56:48.820
That's not like a traditional billionaire house.
00:56:51.040
And it's like, would I be happier if I had, like, more space to take care of?
00:56:56.040
We also like going on, you know, vacations to nice places, but I also like having a house
00:56:59.800
that's not that different than the one that I grew up in as a kid.
00:57:03.480
I don't think, like, with difference between 50 to 100 million.
00:57:05.680
I think at a certain point, what you can do is you can start using that money to do good
00:57:12.500
Or to change the country for the better, hopefully.
00:57:16.420
Like, that, to me, that is a threshold you could hit where if you're, you know, able
00:57:22.620
to write a $100,000 check, that could change somebody's life.
00:57:27.260
And, you know, I think you can't do that if you're, you know, or if you have a family,
00:57:32.220
but you're a millionaire, you're worth two million bucks, but, you know, you can't necessarily
00:57:36.700
just take that money out of your accountant without thinking about it, donate it to some
00:57:40.000
cause that you believe in if you also have a family that you feel like you need to take
00:57:43.360
care of, so that, to me, is, I think, one of the liberating parts about actually generating
00:57:47.180
liquid wealth is that you can then at least start putting it to use in ways that you think
00:58:01.680
Maybe let's, I got to fly back tonight, so maybe we'll go till nine.
00:58:22.040
They're putting Ws, which is meaning a win, meaning they like you.
00:58:51.060
There's multiple levels of social media censorship.
00:58:53.080
One is when social media companies ban particular expression of content on their website, I'm against that.
00:59:00.080
And I think the reason they've been doing it is, in many cases, the government has been threatening them behind closed doors to do it.
00:59:07.140
When you mean the government, do you mean like the-
00:59:09.360
I'm saying the presidential administration who's currently in office?
00:59:16.500
But frankly, even under the first Trump administration, you have a lot of actors in what's called the deep state, okay?
00:59:22.200
The people who we never elected to run the government, but for a few bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., where the president has no visibility into what they're doing.
00:59:28.920
They think of themselves as totally unaccountable.
00:59:30.920
Where behind closed doors, they tell these tech companies, hey, you've got to remove that or else we're going to come after you.
00:59:35.460
Well, then those tech companies censor that content, but that's not really big tech censoring the content.
00:59:41.460
Which in the United States of America, the government's not allowed to do because we have a speech.
00:59:44.380
Exactly, the government says the government can't do that.
00:59:46.500
So what the government started to do is they started to threaten these companies to do through the back door what the government could not do through the front door under the Constitution.
00:59:55.860
But let me talk about a different kind of social media censorship.
00:59:57.980
I talked about this when I ran for president and got myself in major trouble.
01:00:09.780
In 2023, when I said this, this wasn't considered like, ooh, that was kind of brave.
01:00:17.260
This was in the Republican Party, the idea that this could, like a candidate for president could say this was nuts.
01:00:22.980
What I said was, I don't think we should ban TikTok.
01:00:25.540
And what I said was, in fact, I'm going to join TikTok.
01:00:37.840
They said, how are you going to join this toxic platform?
01:00:40.840
My view is, if you want to reach the next generation, are you sure you just want the other side to have a monopoly on it?
01:00:46.000
And instead, everybody and their mother was in favor of the Republican Party of banning TikTok.
01:00:51.560
And I just thought it's a bad idea where we don't want to act like we're not going to beat China by being China.
01:01:00.360
You can't set that precedent in the United States.
01:01:04.540
And one of the things I've learned is, in business, it's a big advantage.
01:01:11.280
If you're too early in politics, all people remember is that that was a guy who said some really weird things.
01:01:17.840
But actually, those weird things ended up being right.
01:01:19.780
Because now most Republicans, most Republican influencers are on TikTok.
01:01:23.160
Even some of the very ones who back then were hitting me hard for being on TikTok,
01:01:27.080
they're now making their name and making their careers on TikTok as well.
01:01:31.620
So I think that that's a different kind of social media censorship is just censoring entire platforms,
01:01:38.160
My question to you, this is, you know, with TikTok, obviously, it's ran by China.
01:01:42.960
But at the end of the day, we get everything from China.
01:02:03.600
But it's just so funny that like everybody fixated on TikTok when there are plenty of other Chinese
01:02:08.980
That's just like, oh, well, that wasn't what made the news headlines.
01:02:11.180
And therefore, I'm not going to pay attention to it.
01:02:13.220
I just prefer applying principles across the board.
01:02:21.720
And I will say it was because I wanted to travel around, man.
01:02:27.600
I'm a big tennis fanatic and I wanted to go to the US Open.
01:02:30.900
I would just say, you know, was I at risk for it?
01:02:34.920
And even at the time, we didn't even know what this was going to do.
01:02:45.340
Let me pull it up for you really, really quick.
01:03:04.560
But APAC is a particular political donation group that supports the cause of Israel and
01:03:11.500
And I think that probably what they mean is like, what's the influence of APAC on our
01:03:17.500
The influence of all kinds of PACs on our politics is huge, right?
01:03:25.260
I don't want any kinds of malicious foreign interference in the United States.
01:03:29.980
There are all kinds of malicious foreign interference in the United States.
01:03:33.740
And at least as it relates to APAC, they're a lot more transparent.
01:03:38.380
They're a lot more transparent than other kinds of foreign influence in the U.S.
01:03:42.060
So I'm not a big fan of politicians turning into puppets of PACs.
01:03:46.220
That's just, unfortunately, the way modern politics works.
01:03:48.460
So a better second best solution is at least have enough competition in the marketplace
01:03:58.220
And at least then people can judge for themselves whether their politicians are actually telling
01:04:14.820
George Soros is a very wealthy man who has funded democratic causes and has effectively
01:04:21.520
turned a lot of prosecutors across the country into soft on crime, you know, left-wingers.
01:04:29.860
So basically a lot of crime waves in many cities across the country have gone up.
01:04:34.020
After George Soros helped fund the election of prosecutors.
01:04:37.860
That no longer prosecuted even violent crimes or theft or robbery.
01:04:42.900
It's part of why San Francisco and other cities have actually done that.
01:04:46.320
Well, I mean, you could say it's a lot of reasons, but was he funding the prosecutors
01:04:52.380
And was it part of a vision of just rolling back prosecution and tough on crime policies?
01:04:57.000
And so I think a lot of people are understandably, I'm among the pissed off that you have somebody
01:05:01.780
using vast amounts of wealth to put prosecutors in seats where they're not actually enforcing
01:05:07.160
the law in ways that leave everyday Americans suffering.
01:05:17.680
Actually, it's probably not a popular answer, but I like Bo Nickel, actually.
01:05:27.440
Yeah, I think he does what he needs to do to win.
01:05:31.560
So it's not designed to be, you know, it's like, it's not designed.
01:05:44.120
We went to the Penn State game, we went to the Penn State-Ohio State game in Pennsylvania
01:05:47.720
together, which Ohio State thankfully won, but we hung out that day.
01:05:50.860
And I always admired him from afar in terms of his discipline.
01:06:02.920
It's also kind of one of these things we were talking about business before, about finding
01:06:07.820
It existed, but the thing I love about Dana White and the Fertitta Brothers is they spotted
01:06:17.400
This could actually be a little bit of structure around it.
01:06:20.580
It could be huge at a time where people thought that was going to be a nothing.
01:06:23.860
It's like the same way that we were looking at, I was giving you the examples of like
01:06:30.380
When I met Dana and his investors, I told him about the analogies in the worldview.
01:06:50.880
I'm just, you know, there aren't great movies made quite in the same way anymore.
01:07:13.940
The second, Jura, Jura number two, I heard it was pretty good.
01:07:17.780
So it's on my list to watch, but I haven't seen that.
01:07:19.900
I just recently watched Shutter Island with Leonardo.
01:07:36.960
I will say that, you know, Trump has been probably most forthright in his willingness
01:07:44.240
to declassify the stuff you're not supposed to touch.
01:07:54.680
Well, I mean, look, I think that his biography was written last year.
01:07:57.760
There's a lot of documents that have been declassified.
01:08:00.840
I think we should just see historical figures for who they are.
01:08:08.140
And so a lot of people who have done great things, I mean, people say the same thing about
01:08:12.360
We're all imperfect beings, but we don't need to make up mythology and pretend that our
01:08:16.580
figures from history were perfect human beings.
01:08:19.240
In order to still admire the parts of them that were respectable.
01:08:21.400
My view is, you know, whether or not, just give us the truth.
01:08:29.660
And I think transparency, I think, is the way forward because people trust their government.
01:08:34.340
When the government says, oh, no, no, people can't handle the truth, then people actually
01:08:37.700
imagine far worse than the truth might have even actually been.
01:08:43.000
I think President Trump's been good about that, as good as we've had in modern history.
01:08:47.460
And I hope he continues that for the next couple of years.
01:08:55.920
You know what I think is most compelling proof?
01:09:07.540
I'm always one to question conventional wisdom, but I'm sorry the Earth is not flat.
01:09:15.460
So, why haven't we been there, like, anytime soon?
01:09:20.380
I thought we, okay, because, look, and again, maybe I'm incorrect.
01:09:23.920
I think one of the targets of space exploration should include, I mean, I'm a fan of all of
01:09:28.640
the above, Mars, moon, but I think we're a little bit underweight on going to the moon.
01:09:32.660
Well, didn't we send a chimpanzee to the moon, right?
01:09:43.120
Yeah, you might know something I don't, but I'm a big fan of continuing to expand our exploration
01:09:49.600
and even preparation for long-term life on the moon.
01:09:58.080
Do you think, within the next 10 years, do you think that we'll be able to live on Mars?
01:10:09.040
Would you live on Mars if you had the option to?
01:10:20.780
For the expansion of humankind's possibilities, go as far as we possibly can and learn as much
01:10:27.480
For the purpose of individual satisfaction, if you believe that you have to look that far
01:10:33.000
to find actual satisfaction, it means you're not looking close enough to home.
01:10:52.000
You know, I mean, you got to have that intellectual humility, right?
01:10:56.260
Are there phenomena about outer space or even phenomena that have been observed in the Earth
01:11:00.900
that we need to be curious about and learn more about?
01:11:05.380
I'm a guy who's grounded in fact, so I'm not going to make up fairy tales.
01:11:10.300
I'm open-minded to the possibilities that we do not know everything we think we know
01:11:16.820
about what exists, whether life exists in outer space or not, and even whether there
01:11:21.800
are other forms of intelligent non-human life even on Earth.
01:11:27.820
I haven't seen evidence to that effect on Earth, but I do think that it is a...
01:11:31.220
Certainly, when you think about the expansiveness of the universe, the idea that we are the
01:11:35.760
only intelligent beings in the entire universe, I think is at least...
01:11:41.460
And I think that we should have curiosity to explore it.
01:11:43.980
At the same time, I don't think that you should just make stuff up and believe in something
01:11:59.180
I think she, at times, has said some interesting things, maybe.
01:12:04.400
I think Bernie is maybe more interesting to me, frankly, if I'm looking at figures on
01:12:10.200
I find Bernie slightly more interesting than AOC.
01:12:16.520
There's not really anything interesting to talk about there.
01:12:19.060
I think Bernie's a little bit more interesting just because he's willing to take positions
01:12:22.700
that actually sometimes will challenge the left.
01:12:27.260
It's super boring when you have politicians in either political party where, like, the
01:12:31.740
only thing they say is the thing that they are supposed to say...
01:12:38.100
And it actually, like, it irritates me when I see it amongst fellow Republicans.
01:12:40.960
Like, even when you run for president, you see this stuff.
01:12:43.220
Like, other people on, you know, who are in partisan politics.
01:12:49.320
They literally just sort of check what they're supposed to say they say.
01:12:52.340
So anyway, what I like about Bernie is he's on the hard left and I disagree with him
01:12:57.000
And at times he'll just say stuff that actually people on the left will be like, wait a minute.
01:13:05.700
So I haven't told this story before, but when I was running for president, I was in
01:13:11.860
And I think Bernie had just said something kind of interesting.
01:13:16.600
I had a friend who had worked in the Obama administration.
01:13:19.180
I was like, you have Bernie Sanders' phone number.
01:13:21.520
And so he gave it to me and I just picked up the phone and I called Bernie Sanders.
01:13:27.060
And I think he thought it was some type of, he thought it was some type of prank call.
01:13:32.440
He doesn't, he, like, I think he did not believe that it was actually me.
01:13:38.960
But I'm sure we'll end up, I'm sure we'll end up meeting at some point.
01:13:41.740
Does he know that or that was your first time I've ever seen that?
01:13:46.660
I decided not to follow up by other things too.
01:13:48.780
But in that particular moment, I thought it'd be kind of interesting to give a call.
01:14:06.520
Well, guys, I'll let him give you a little background on that in about 10 minutes or so.
01:14:18.820
Yeah, Cincinnati's a good city, but I live in Columbus today.
01:14:21.640
So, um, yeah, we used to go to Columbus a lot growing up.
01:14:29.960
I like living in Columbus, and I like visiting places like Miami.
01:14:41.200
What do you like more, Miami or L.A. as of right now?
01:14:48.560
But that's because of the political circumstance.
01:14:50.420
If it weren't for the man-made damage done to California and L.A.
01:14:57.920
I like Miami, but, like, there's no mountains here.
01:15:01.540
I mean, L.A., you know, just L.A. and the surrounding areas, it doesn't really, just the nature,
01:15:08.900
There's no mountains, snow, mountains, everything.
01:15:11.820
So, at its best, but obviously the way it's been mismanaged, you probably don't want to
01:15:16.260
By the way, did you see what happened with Selena Gomez?
01:15:19.720
Matter of fact, can we get that link right now?
01:15:22.300
I saw, I feel like I, in my social media feeds, have seen her name pop up more recently
01:15:26.880
now that you mentioned it in the last day, but I have not.
01:15:30.860
What are your top three, like, artists or musicians?
01:15:32.940
You know, it used to be, I like classical, I like solid rappers.
01:15:55.300
I like, you know, I mean, I actually like classical music also.
01:16:12.860
You know his concert I went to in Columbus recently, who's actually really, like, really freaking
01:16:22.860
We're at dinner one night, and we were looking up what was going on, and he was just performing.
01:16:27.340
And actually, the place we went, it was surprisingly not big.
01:16:46.800
I think I'm going to predict a second comeback for him.
01:16:55.600
I don't have the speaker here, but you can kind of hear it through here.
01:16:59.900
So, Selena Gomez was crying about the deportions, but she deleted it quickly after.
01:17:22.120
Just like to adjust for the emotional response.
01:17:26.840
Because I don't want to be ragged in one person.
01:18:30.920
You waited a little bit and then you posted it.
01:18:45.800
Was that, was that like a big deal on the internet?
01:18:52.520
I think, I think it probably convinced many more people to be in favor of mass deportations.
01:18:59.660
It was like some sort of ingenious, uh, psyop, maybe.
01:19:08.340
Um, what are your actual thoughts on mass, uh, deported, what is it?
01:19:15.820
It's like, look, some immigrants in my opinion are good.
01:19:21.620
I'm just saying like, there's bad people that come to this country and there's good people
01:19:25.640
I want to find a way where, well, not me obviously, but I want there to be a way where the good,
01:19:30.080
the good people can come and be here and they come to America like the right way and all
01:19:34.320
But like the bad criminals and the, and the, and the, the guys that come in here and they
01:19:42.520
So my thoughts are, um, follow the law, the rule of law.
01:19:50.820
But what's an easy way to first separate the good from the bad, or at least the bad.
01:19:55.460
The first way of separating the bad is if your first act of entering the country broke
01:19:59.140
the law, then you don't get the right to remain here.
01:20:04.200
If you did not come legally, there's a lot of people who are trying to do it the right
01:20:07.300
way, waiting in line, years may never come to this country, despite the fact they would
01:20:14.600
If you decided to just come in through the back door across the Southern border, your first
01:20:18.740
act of entering this country broke the law and we're going to send you back.
01:20:20.880
But the, the one caveat to that is the government's given them a wink and a nod for a long time.
01:20:26.320
So maybe it's, they're not a bad person, but they still broke the law.
01:20:29.860
So my view is, if you look at the people who came in just in the last two years of Joe
01:20:34.220
Biden, you're talking about millions of people in just those last two years who illegally
01:20:40.180
I think every one of those people, at least, should be returned to their country of origin.
01:20:44.520
I think most people think that's reasonable because some of the arguments you'll hear
01:20:46.720
is, oh, people have established roots in this country and what are you going to do?
01:20:49.300
No, somebody who came here in the last 12, 18, 24 months.
01:20:52.880
They have not established roots in this country.
01:20:54.880
If they entered illegally, return them to the country of origin.
01:21:01.040
In fact, not only is that a mass deportation, that alone would be the largest mass deportation
01:21:07.100
And I think that that is morally, ethically, not only justified, but necessary to protect
01:21:18.800
No, I want to just tell you something really quick.
01:21:22.000
Like, he used to do these, he would catch pedophiles, meaning he would hire an actor who looked
01:21:30.720
It would be an illegal person who would try to meet up with a little 16-year-old boy who's
01:21:49.600
He lets the guy go for free with the meth on the table.
01:21:54.180
And the cop says to Vitaly, you keep recording these pedo catches.
01:21:57.140
We're going to arrest you for basically filming some.
01:22:04.040
Last year, I was an executive producer on a movie.
01:22:13.920
It is about, it tells a, it's based on a true story of this young man who is a boy.
01:22:20.740
15 years old, who is trafficked into the United States of America from Pueblo, Mexico.
01:22:29.240
Exactly, some of the incidents that you described, exactly the same type of situation where the
01:22:33.440
cops would actually get in trouble for going after.
01:22:37.100
The guys who were actually doing the trafficking rather than actually just sit back and let
01:22:45.060
So, so in some ways you can only explain this to people who don't believe it, but if you
01:22:47.580
watch that movie, it at least highlights one boy's story.
01:22:55.580
Is there a possible way you can give me copyright so I can watch it on my live stream in front
01:22:59.980
Dude, let me, let me see if we can work on that for you.
01:23:03.640
Actually, let me, let me, let me, you want me to make me call the guys right now?
01:23:16.540
It was, it was a 24 year old guy who wants to meet up with a 16 year old.
01:23:32.640
I think you just need the courage to sound and call the director of the movie.
01:23:44.700
I thought of you, but I can tell you, I'm actually live on a stream right now with Aiden
01:23:54.400
So he has a question and it's zero pressure, dude, but he says, as I was talking about
01:23:59.760
City of Dreams, cause he was talking about human trafficking in the U S and I said, he
01:24:05.020
He asked, would he, would it be cool if he actually streamed the movie live to his viewership
01:24:11.160
without like violating any, any, uh, rights and stuff?
01:24:16.820
Streaming just opened on Hulu, he says on Friday.
01:24:32.480
Cause, cause it would be, it would, I'm sure they could work it out with Aiden to make
01:24:55.500
He's a, maybe he may, he has some ideas on how to make it work.
01:24:58.700
So we're literally live on the stream right now.
01:25:00.680
So I'm going to, I'll, I'll hook you up with him on text and I think it will actually
01:25:04.700
get, especially when you have a kind of a younger audience.
01:25:07.120
It will be like a younger audience, uh, to watch them.
01:25:10.040
They're not really old, old, but they're, they're getting there.
01:25:23.440
He wants to make it work, but he did this deal with Hulu.
01:25:25.300
So they got to jump through, you know, make sure it's done the right way.
01:25:30.520
And it's, it's like, I don't mean to be bragging about my own movie that I was executive producer
01:25:35.240
It's the goal is to achieve impact, to be able to at least educate people about an issue.
01:25:40.460
But it's like, when you have like a heavy handed, like documentary movie, it's just
01:25:44.360
like, people know it's an issue, but they don't feel like watching it.
01:25:47.620
The goal with this movie is, it was made to be at once, it's like a thriller, actually.
01:25:52.820
It's made as like a movie that is a, designed to be a thriller, but it is actually a true,
01:25:58.120
based on a true story that educates people on an issue that otherwise they're, they have
01:26:03.980
I think even most people who will watch this will be like, that can't possibly be happening
01:26:08.800
And then you go actually open your eyes and it's like, once you see it, you can't unsee
01:26:21.640
If you have to come to Ohio sometime or do it, I'll, I'll even try to join you if you
01:26:26.360
What I would like to do with you our next time, we only have a few minutes here, but guys,
01:26:33.440
I, I honestly feel like I could literally conversate with you for hours.
01:26:39.140
I mean, obviously, but like it just, it's insane.
01:26:43.460
We could do an IRL stream and do some fun stuff and like in real life.
01:26:47.060
Oh, well, we're going to have a camera follow us and do.
01:26:54.140
Guys, before we, we, we, we do, you know, we say goodbye or whatever.
01:26:58.980
I do want to say he loved the idea of helping me find somebody.
01:27:03.820
I told you guys, I'm looking for people with stories out there.
01:27:06.580
I'll let you obviously give the background, the context about the story, but guys, we,
01:27:10.660
you know, I explained to him how I'm trying to help out one person per stream to motivate
01:27:14.160
at least one viewer out there to do something nice, just, just, just to help heal the world.
01:27:18.540
And I know it may sound corny, but it's really not because if one person doesn't think it's
01:27:22.440
corny, one person can use it and apply it to the real life.
01:27:26.180
So with that being said, he picked somebody and you can give it a, a little update on
01:27:33.780
We're about to, we're going to give him a call.
01:27:35.200
If you want to just give like a quick 30 seconds to them about Eric.
01:27:39.040
So Adrian and I were talking and you were keen on, you know, particularly thinking about
01:27:43.180
a younger person who might be going through some, some struggles.
01:27:46.760
And that's one of the things I care about as well is, um, so this is a good guy.
01:27:52.480
He's a senior at Ohio state and his dream in life was to serve in the military, serve our
01:28:02.260
I met him because he ended up being an intern for me where like when I was doing my
01:28:06.560
presidential campaign in the period afterwards, he started interning.
01:28:10.080
He was open to do anything for an internship, but he ended up being the guy who helped me
01:28:13.260
with a lot of the camera work, which is actually not an easy job, but he was so diligent.
01:28:17.260
We didn't really, we didn't speak directly, but there was this, be this guy who's tall
01:28:23.940
And then after a while I started talking to him, his name's Eric.
01:28:26.300
And I said, okay, thank you for being so diligent early hours of the morning, or if
01:28:30.080
it's a late hour in the night of a trip, whenever I'm needed, unless he plays in a band,
01:28:34.260
unless his band has a concert, he would always be game to just show up.
01:28:42.680
What happened over the course of the last year was he had shared at the time that he
01:28:52.080
They train you and recruit you into the military.
01:28:57.040
So that's part of the, part of the positive of being able to pay for your education, but
01:29:04.260
He told him when he signed up, everything about him, including the fact that he had
01:29:08.100
a peanut allergy, no big deal, knows how to handle it, lived his life the whole way.
01:29:12.340
Later, when it comes to his senior year, he goes back and just reveals the same thing
01:29:16.040
he's shown them before, which is that he had a peanut allergy.
01:29:20.560
Despite the fact you've gone through the whole program, put all of this time and effort in,
01:29:28.800
And so he was, he went through a tough time this year with that.
01:29:32.940
And he asked me if there was anything I could do to help him.
01:29:37.440
I asked him if there was anything I could do to help him.
01:29:44.140
He said, look, I'd just like to serve my country.
01:29:45.720
I introduced him to Pete Hegseth, who very recently was confirmed as our Secretary of
01:29:53.920
But I always told him that I'd help him if I could.
01:29:56.500
And he's so diligent at what he does that if I could hire him on my team to do something,
01:30:02.620
In the meanwhile, he was screwed over out of the money that he thought he was going to
01:30:10.460
So anyway, I hope he doesn't mind me having shared all of that.
01:30:13.500
But when you called me and said, think of who's a young person, maybe in their 20s or
01:30:21.020
whatever, who we could think about helping out, who deserves it, who is somebody who is
01:30:27.740
a good example for all people and young people in the country, I thought of Eric.
01:30:44.840
But I'm really, really happy he brought Eric to call in.
01:30:54.240
And honestly, he has that hero mindset where he wanted to just basically protect all of
01:30:59.540
us and, you know, and I love, I love people that are all for, you know, being a part of
01:31:09.320
You're, you're, you're here on my book and I look at you so differently.
01:31:13.960
It's to, to have the love and, and, and, and, you know, you want to help serve and protect
01:31:22.680
I'm going to call him in right now over, uh, discord.
01:31:25.280
Um, let's, uh, let's get him, uh, let's call him up really, really quick.
01:31:58.840
Um, Eric, look, man, it's, it's a pleasure to meet you and connect with you.
01:32:02.640
And, um, I'm really, really happy that, uh, you know, Vivek had connected you and I together.
01:32:07.540
Um, I was so fascinated by your story and I just want to say, I appreciate you.
01:32:11.300
The whole chat's putting W's in the chat because, you know, you're, you're a hero, man.
01:32:18.260
I don't want to take words out of your mouth, but you've, you've wanted to protect, uh,
01:32:22.220
and fight and, and, and, and, you know, be, be a hero to this country.
01:32:25.120
And I just want to tell you, I personally, I appreciate you.
01:32:32.240
Um, you know, my whole life, I always wanted to be a part of that elite group.
01:32:36.540
Um, that though, I mean, those are the true heroes, you know, I'm not a hero by any means
01:32:41.640
Um, I just wanted to, to, to be given the opportunity to be, to be a part of that elite group.
01:32:46.480
Um, and I, you know, I tried my hardest and I think I tried my best and, and, and I was
01:32:55.440
Um, so I picked that up and, um, I took, uh, after I was able to pick up that scholarship
01:33:00.820
and get that contract, I was going to be, um, an aviator from Marine Corps.
01:33:04.580
That is when I started going through the medical process.
01:33:07.400
And that is when, um, everything kind of got caught up and, and, uh, kind of ended
01:33:15.240
So you did not end up getting the scholarship though, right?
01:33:25.740
I never got the money though, because in order to actually get the contract and get the scholarship
01:33:35.360
And I went through immunotherapy, um, trying to take different doses of, of, of nuts to
01:33:41.580
try to bridge that, um, or to try to overcome that allergy.
01:33:45.200
And, uh, ultimately it, it didn't work out, but, um, that's correct.
01:33:52.540
Well, look, um, what I could tell you what I could do for you today, Eric, is, uh, we're
01:33:58.480
Um, and that's, you know, hopefully that'll help you take care of what you need to be, you
01:34:02.600
know, at least if it's a piece or whatever it is, hopefully this can help you, man.
01:34:05.560
And, uh, you know, like I said, if I would love for you to give, um, some, some words
01:34:09.720
for people in your position, people that want to, you know, acquire education like yourself
01:34:13.900
and, uh, you know, uh, you could just say some words as well.
01:34:22.600
Um, from the bottom of my heart, it means the world to me.
01:34:28.760
Um, my family, it's very, they're a very service oriented family.
01:34:32.440
My dad is a lieutenant on the fire department in Chicago and my mom's a nurse and she's a
01:34:39.120
And they just work so hard to help send me to school and get me through school.
01:34:44.040
And, um, from the bottom of my heart and the bottom of their hearts, thank you very
01:34:52.980
So I believe it would have been at my stage, it would have been two years of college.
01:35:03.000
Because, right, because I picked up because, because when I joined the program, I entered,
01:35:10.760
And the whole idea is you need to earn, um, your way through the scholarship.
01:35:14.560
And, and I worked hard and I was able to earn it.
01:35:18.100
And I'll just say, um, I didn't know what, what portion of it.
01:35:31.580
Thank you for all the hard work you've done, dude.
01:35:35.080
I'm planning on coming out to Ohio in a couple of weeks, man.
01:35:40.280
And this is to spend most, I don't even know what to say.
01:35:49.040
You come to, you come, you come, uh, you come kick it with us a little bit.
01:35:55.280
And, um, and look, whatever, whatever you got going on in life, man, uh, just, I could already see it,
01:36:00.180
I mean, you seem like a very pure soul and keep going.
01:36:09.780
And also, I just wanted to say, um, to Vivek that I just wanted to say how much I appreciate,
01:36:16.340
um, everything that, that you've done for me and the ability to see potential.
01:36:22.220
Um, because when I, when I was started as a policy researcher intern, um, it was right
01:36:34.680
Um, but working there and then continuing on with videography, it's just been the best
01:36:44.420
But I hope that, uh, and I'm glad you had that.
01:36:57.100
And, uh, I just want to say thanks for jumping on and I appreciate you, man.
01:37:10.460
I like to see, uh, the world is often not kind in the short run to the, to the best of us,