The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's ＂Strong＂ Economy Spin, and Smears Over Ukraine Nuclear Concerns, with David Sacks and David Friedberg ｜ Ep. 413

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.960 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:00:15.920 Lots of news to get to today, including President Biden assuring Americans that the economy is not

00:00:20.700 just strong, but strong as hell, while licking an ice cream cone. Let them eat cake. 0.86

00:00:25.760 Uh, this is Kanye West, apparently buys Parler and former President Obama, again, lecturing

00:00:33.060 Democrats on cancel culture. He thinks they really need to dial it back because of Fox News.

00:00:39.400 Uh, well, okay, we'll play you the soundbite. Uh, and to react to all of this news, two of Silicon

00:00:45.200 Valley's most brilliant minds. David Sachs is a founding member of PayPal. He's a successful

00:00:51.040 entrepreneur and venture capitalist who now runs craft ventures. After a stint at Google,

00:00:56.960 David Friedberg started the climate corporation, which he later reportedly sold for a billion

00:01:01.440 dollars. Among other ventures, he now invests in startups focused on health and wellness and has

00:01:07.080 all sorts of advice on how to keep your microbiome in good shape, your gut, uh, which we're going to

00:01:13.100 talk about. He packs a company that makes shakes and bars that actually help you lose weight. And he

00:01:16.880 also wants you to throw away your probiotic in favor of something you may found find far more

00:01:21.080 disgusting. We're definitely going to get into that together. They are two of the four co-hosts

00:01:27.000 of the very popular tech podcast, all in it's not just tech, but it's big in the tech world,

00:01:32.660 uh, which just celebrated its 100th episode. What sets them apart from most people in Silicon Valley

00:01:38.700 is they're not afraid to speak their minds, not at all. And they teach others to not be afraid either.

00:01:46.880 Sachs and Friedberg. Welcome to the show. Great to have you.

00:01:51.780 Good to be here.

00:01:53.000 Thanks for having me.

00:01:54.320 Welcome, David.

00:01:55.340 We've upgraded your, uh, your besties this time.

00:01:59.260 I appreciate it.

00:02:03.400 I'm not going to have the same moment that happened a few weeks ago. I promise.

00:02:07.300 Okay, good. I didn't never foresaw it devolving to the point where I was going to call him a prick,

00:02:12.620 but that's kind of where it went. And I later found out you guys call him that all the time.

00:02:16.880 Yeah, we were surprised as much as I'm used to it. It was still a little cringeworthy to watch

00:02:23.080 him on your show, but it was a little cringy. Yeah, I felt the same. Um, okay. So let's talk

00:02:28.120 about cringy as, as long as we're on the subject. And that is the president of the United States.

00:02:31.780 I mean, truly is a let them, let them eat cake moment. Downing his chocolate ice cream again.

00:02:36.260 Like, why is he always eating the ice cream? It's just so weird. He's like, you know, the slurring 1.00

00:02:41.760 chocolate, chocolate chip. And now he is, he's eating it again, telling us we're fine. We're fine now.

00:02:46.880 The economy is not too strong. It's strong as hell. Here's a little bit of that. Just

00:02:50.660 in case anybody missed it. Sot too.

00:02:52.660 I'm not concerned about the transfer of dollar. I'm concerned about the rest of the world.

00:02:59.700 That make sense?

00:03:00.820 Can you explain that?

00:03:02.100 Yes. Our economy is strong as hell. In the internal world.

00:03:06.240 Inflation is worldwide. It's worse off everyone else than it is in the United States. So the problem is

00:03:14.160 lack of economic growth and sound policy. In other countries, not so much work. And that's it.

00:03:23.780 It's worldwide inflation. It's a consequence.

00:03:26.400 You're giving a speech check over here.

00:03:28.640 Worldwide. So that's, this is the new line. We've heard this a little bit from the White House last

00:03:32.820 week too. It was worldwide. You know, we're like, we're, we're the thinnest kid kid at fat camp.

00:03:37.600 You know, it's like, we're bad, but we're not as bad off as the others. Economy strong as hell.

00:03:42.500 And then last week he also added, oh, and inflation while it may be at 8.2% up September over September

00:03:51.260 year to year. It's really only up 2%. If you just look at the last three months on an annualized

00:03:57.620 basis, my eyes started to glaze over, but I recognized a lie when I heard it. So what do you

00:04:01.980 guys make of that claim? I'm going to, you want to go for your, well, I think, I think this claim

00:04:08.260 the economy is strong is going to be the inflation is transitory of this year. I think the, you know,

00:04:13.160 the, the administration, when it gets bad, economic news has a tendency to want to spin it. Obviously

00:04:18.640 we have an election coming up in a few weeks, so he's, they're spinning it the best they can.

00:04:22.880 But the truth is that there's a lot of weakness in this economy. In fact, it's scary how weak it is.

00:04:27.620 And I think most smart investors and economists at this point expect a recession next year.

00:04:35.540 Well, we're already technically in a recession. We've had two quarters of negative GDP growth,

00:04:40.020 but, but they're expecting economic conditions to worsen significantly next year and just to see

00:04:47.180 unemployment go up as a result of these interest rate hikes that we've had, which again have been

00:04:52.180 driven by inflation. So the economy is very shaky. I think people are, are feeling it. And

00:04:57.580 that's why you're seeing all of a sudden the generic ballot shift, uh, very, uh, dramatically

00:05:03.780 towards Republicans for this election.

00:05:05.500 Mm-hmm. Just to update the viewers on that, there was a New York times Siena poll

00:05:09.280 showing the Republicans that have a now four point advantage on the generic ballot. When they have

00:05:15.640 just a one point advantage on the generic ballot, they tend to crush in the midterms because they tend

00:05:20.760 to under poll. So now showing a four point, uh, advantage is very big, very significant,

00:05:25.860 this close to midterms. Go ahead, David. No, I mean, I was going to say, I think that there

00:05:30.900 is a frailty and fragility to the global economy right now. It is true in the last couple of weeks,

00:05:37.560 the U S dollar has rallied unlike any other time in history against nearly every other

00:05:42.740 major foreign currency. And that's because all of those, uh, global economies are underperforming.

00:05:49.600 There are significant inflationary pressures and recessionary pressures at once around the world.

00:05:55.120 And we do just happen to have the shortest straw. The problem is we end up typically having to step

00:06:01.760 in as the United States to bolster and safeguard the rest of the world's economies. And that means that

00:06:07.180 we're going to have a significant cost ahead and a significant trade problem going into the next year

00:06:12.400 that is almost certainly going to hit the P and L hit the, the, the, the profit line of nearly every

00:06:17.840 major U S corporation fueling our recessionary problem. And so this isn't just a, Hey, we're great

00:06:24.600 because we don't just buy and sell goods to ourselves. We buy and sell goods around the world.

00:06:29.540 And so the global economy collapsing or, or shake being very shaky right now. Uh, and the U S dollar

00:06:35.780 rallying is not good for us. And it does mean that we are going to face a real headwind going into 2023.

00:06:40.820 So it's a little bit of a, you know, um, uh, uh, lipstick on a pig kind of moment.

00:06:46.200 How about the 2% inflation? Because honestly, those numbers hurt my head and they really make

00:06:52.380 me want to just shut off. I know it's a lie, but I can't totally figure out how it's a lie,

00:06:56.060 but he's looking at just the last three months and saying, if you annualize the, I guess the

00:07:01.080 percentage increase, I don't know, but it's not true. We're up basically 8% year over year when it

00:07:07.420 comes to our prices. That's what people are feeling when they go to their grocery store,

00:07:11.280 when they pay their electric bill, when they go to the gas pump, even still. So what is he saying?

00:07:16.460 It's only 2% when we look down at the numbers and we could see it's 8.2%.

00:07:20.140 Inflation is always measured on a year over year basis, Megan. So this, this idea that you can

00:07:26.100 somehow measure it on three month basis, it's just an arbitrary timeframe they've picked because

00:07:29.640 those three months sort of mitigate the problem. But the problem is even worse than what you're

00:07:34.020 saying. Yes. On a year over year basis, it's, it's over 8%, but you got to remember that last

00:07:39.640 year around this time that inflation was getting bigger and bigger. So if you remember last summer,

00:07:44.620 when we first got that shock inflation print of 5.1%, it went up to in the sevens by around this

00:07:52.840 time last year, the expectation was that as we started to lap a bigger and bigger number from last

00:07:59.140 year, that this year's inflation number will come down because again, you're, you're measuring your,

00:08:04.240 you're comping on a year over year basis. So what's actually happened is inflation has not gone down.

00:08:09.600 It stayed above 8%, even though it's 8% above a much bigger number last year. So price levels just

00:08:16.360 keep increasing. This is not slowing down and the problem is not going away. It's persistent rather

00:08:22.880 than transitory. And this implies that, that interest rates need to keep going up. And then that has a

00:08:27.780 huge impact on the real economy. If I could just, just add one more point about this idea that

00:08:33.420 inflation is happening all over the world. There, there is some truth to that, but I think it's

00:08:37.080 important to understand that we exported a lot of this inflation and we did this in a couple of ways.

00:08:42.300 First, we bought into this whole idea of MMT, modern monetary theory, this idea that the government

00:08:48.460 could just keep printing money and there'd be no comeuppance for that. There'd be no consequence to

00:08:52.740 that. So we exported this doctrine intellectually. And then on top of it, when the U S persisted in

00:08:59.420 these zero interest rate policies for so long and quantitative easing, other central banks had to do

00:09:04.220 the same thing. Otherwise their currencies would rise against the dollar, making their exports

00:09:08.880 extremely unattractive relative to American exports. And so other central banks basically copied

00:09:14.420 our policies. And that's why you're seeing this sort of inflation all over the world. It also doesn't

00:09:20.080 help that we have persisted in this policy of no diplomacy towards the Ukraine war. And that's

00:09:27.040 exacerbated all sorts of problems with the cost of energy. We'll get to that. I definitely want to

00:09:31.840 get to Ukraine, but on the modern monetary theory, I mean that in defense of Biden, that was, that's

00:09:38.180 been pursued for many, many years now by the U S. Yeah. You've, you've had this idea of, of ZERP or

00:09:44.300 zero interest rate policy since 2008. But what happened is that originally we, in 2008, we, we had

00:09:51.300 this sort of global financial crisis. We broke the glass in case of emergency and the government

00:09:54.940 started doing extraordinary things like quantitative easing, effectively bringing the real interest rate

00:10:00.240 below zero. The problem I think was not breaking the glass when there was a genuine emergency, but the

00:10:06.060 fact that the fed persisted in this policy for roughly a decade after the crisis had passed. And even last

00:10:13.760 year, even last summer, after you got that surprise inflation print, Powell and the fed persisted in

00:10:20.420 this policy of buying us bonds, they bought something like 160 billion of us bonds after last summer. So

00:10:28.080 they were basically continuing to print money and flood the zone with liquidity, even after the

00:10:33.240 inflation problem had become clear. And the question you have to ask is why Powell was up for

00:10:39.580 renomination. He is the only Trump official who was renominated by Biden. It went through in November,

00:10:44.400 but they were already talking about it starting in the second half of last year. The administration

00:10:48.700 had come out with this line last summer, that inflation was transitory. Powell bought into that

00:10:53.460 hook line and sinker. And you have to imagine that part of the reason is he wanted Biden's

00:10:59.240 renomination. Well, he sailed through the only Republican to sail through as, as a, again,

00:11:06.520 as a nominee by Biden, because he got online with, he got on board with this party line. And the result

00:11:11.660 is the fed made this problem, you know, enormously worse by continuing to print money into an

00:11:18.420 inflationary spiral.

00:11:20.380 Freeberg, they could see it coming if they just read the tea leaves, because it was, I mean, those who

00:11:24.960 raised challenges to this modern monetary policy had been doing it for quite some time and said at some

00:11:30.460 point those chickens are going to come home to roost. And now you have the pandemic and the slowdown of

00:11:35.140 businesses, the intentional lockdowns. And so that's what had a lot of fair-minded economists

00:11:40.100 saying it's, it's, it's coming. Like we need to stop the spending now because all these, these things

00:11:45.660 are going to sort of peak in an inflationary crisis. And yet we were told over and over, no,

00:11:52.100 no, it's transitory. Don't believe your lying eyes. And even now, even now it's, I know it's an

00:11:58.280 overused term, but the gaslighting of the economy is strong as hell. What's interesting to me is

00:12:03.460 they're not buying it. Like you can't hide the truth from the American people. That's why the

00:12:08.980 New York times Siena poll is so strong for the Republicans. It's the economy. In fact,

00:12:13.740 what they said was, um, let me get the number. This is likely voters, by the way. So it's the

00:12:19.080 only kind of poll that matters. Don't, don't pay any attention to registered voters at this point.

00:12:22.420 All that matters is likely, uh, economic concerns were the most important issues facing America.

00:12:27.960 Um, and the, and the number who believe that has leaped since July, uh, from 36% in July to 44%.

00:12:36.940 There's nothing close. It's far higher than any other issue. Everything else is down in the single

00:12:43.140 digits. Um, it is the economy stupid. So they're not believing transitory economy strong as hell.

00:12:49.980 They're not believing any of this. Yeah. I mean, um, Stan Druckenmiller,

00:12:55.200 Larry Summers were banging the table last summer, declaring that this, uh, policy is ineffective and

00:13:01.120 counterproductive and no one listened. And now you can actually see Larry Summers, uh, effectively

00:13:06.720 going rogue. And despite his, uh, deep, uh, seated connections back to the white house and, uh, current

00:13:13.700 kind of, uh, you know, economists, uh, uh, sitting there, he's kind of writing his own op-eds trying to

00:13:20.380 get someone to listen, uh, to the policy changes that are needed and the forecast ahead. Uh, and

00:13:25.500 it's really, uh, challenging to watch because these are some of the smartest minds and historically been

00:13:29.960 proven over and over again to be kind of the best policy, uh, advisors on these topics. And they've

00:13:35.060 not been listened to. I'll say if we, if you zoom back a second, I would argue that we're still

00:13:39.820 coming out of, or being fueled by the 2008 global financial crisis. We really took on this idea

00:13:46.600 of quantitative easing at scale and almost normalized it as common as behavior coming

00:13:52.040 out of that, where, uh, we saw the fed actually build up a balance sheet and start to buy bonds

00:13:57.560 and try and, uh, you know, fuel the debt market, uh, to support economic growth. And it became this

00:14:04.080 accelerated behavior in the pandemic because we'd done it before in 2008, we were still sitting at

00:14:09.500 zero interest rates from 2008 or very low interest rates in 2008. And then there was nowhere else to go

00:14:14.160 in the COVID pandemic hit. And then that normal behavior got accelerated. Uh, and now it's become

00:14:18.900 a real crisis and a real problem. If you look back historically, debt has been used to fuel economic

00:14:24.440 growth. If you can borrow money and invest it in something that creates a productive system

00:14:29.780 of taking an asset in and making something more valuable out the other end, debt makes sense. You grow

00:14:35.100 the economy, you build more value. People are willing to spend money on a new, on new goods and services.

00:14:40.440 The problem is if you have too much debt than the economy can keep up with, then you have inflation

00:14:46.300 and you actually have recession. And that's what we're now facing where we've tried to artificially

00:14:51.500 grow our economy by using debt to create businesses, create jobs. But guess what? The economy can only

00:14:57.740 grow at a certain natural rate and there's only so much new value to be created each year. And so instead

00:15:02.900 prices are shooting up and jobs are now declining and we've simply got too much debt. The United States

00:15:08.700 is sitting with $31 trillion of federal debt and at a 5% interest rate that ends up being

00:15:15.280 more debt service than we've ever seen. We're spending $800 billion a year on debt service

00:15:19.500 right now. That could skyrocket to $1.5 trillion, which is over a third of the federal budget each

00:15:26.180 year going into next year. Uh, it's a scary position to be in. It's a scary place to be.

00:15:30.800 And we really do have a global economy that is addicted to debt and it's creating all of these bubbles,

00:15:35.560 these asset bubbles, and these services that don't actually create value. The financial services

00:15:40.480 industry in 2008 took all of the free debt that they got and they inflated the cost of houses and

00:15:47.800 they inflated the cost of mortgage-backed securities and they took on more risk. And it looked like the

00:15:51.660 economy was growing. There were all these new services popping up. And at the end of the day,

00:15:54.860 you didn't actually create new value for the economy. You just increased prices. And that's where we are

00:15:59.400 sitting today. And it's really scary going into next year, continuing to spend like we were,

00:16:03.340 like we are with our federal deficit growing every year and 5% interest rates on $30 trillion of debt

00:16:09.300 means we as a federal government need to spend a trillion five a year just to cover debt service.

00:16:14.500 Um, and you know, we really need to kind of at some point face austerity measures. Yeah.

00:16:18.380 Let me ask the basic question there. So does, is that why despite the Fed now hiking rates over and

00:16:25.480 over and over, it's like every time you turn around now they're hiking them after not having done so

00:16:29.420 in all that time, is that why it's not doing much? Because, you know, I mean, the inflation

00:16:34.600 numbers keep continuing to grow. You would think that it would have some sort of measurable effect,

00:16:40.000 right? I assume it would be even worse if the Fed were not doing that. But this is what they're up

00:16:44.380 against what you're talking about. Yeah. Let me let me say one thing on kind of the curve of inflation,

00:16:48.960 because everything doesn't inflate together at the same time. So the first thing we saw inflate was

00:16:53.640 sort of hard commodities and soft commodities, things like energy and agricultural products

00:16:58.620 and metals and so on. And those are easy because you can deflate them later. So, you know, the prices

00:17:04.020 go up and down all the time, but then suddenly businesses start getting addicted to the revenue

00:17:08.400 of selling higher price commodities and they start to raise their prices. And then eventually their

00:17:12.280 service providers raise prices. So the last part of the inflationary cycle is the services part of

00:17:17.700 the economy. So now the accountants and the lawyers and everyone's wages start to go up.

00:17:22.620 And when that happens, inflation becomes sticky. It's a lot harder to go back from inflation

00:17:27.800 once everyone is earning 30% more and all the accountants and the lawyers and all the service

00:17:33.300 providers that aren't selling a physical good are charging 30, 40% more. And at that point, it's harder

00:17:38.960 to kind of recede back and decline. And that's why if you do it too late, if you start to raise rates

00:17:44.700 too late and, you know, yeah, now the economy, the commodity prices are all starting to come down a

00:17:48.940 little bit, but the services have already raised their prices. And so now this is becoming, how do

00:17:53.620 we catch it? How do we keep it from becoming a wildfire problem?

00:17:57.840 You know, I looked at this politically, David Sachs, and thought he'll find a way before the

00:18:03.000 midterms to get these numbers ticking down the right direction. Now, maybe I'm just too much of a believer

00:18:08.580 in the political savvy of the people who got him elected. But now I'm asking myself, are they just

00:18:13.920 playing a longer game? Are they going to just take the hit on the House? And now at this point,

00:18:17.760 you'd have to say, perhaps the Senate and just work on saving the White House? Could there be a

00:18:22.920 two-year plan that ratchets down these numbers considerably so he's got something to run on

00:18:26.720 or some Democrat does? I just think the problem has gotten so big now that they just can't cover

00:18:31.960 it up. I mean, for the last few months, they've been releasing oil from the National Strategic

00:18:36.780 Petroleum Reserve to try and bring down the price of energy before the midterms. But there's so much

00:18:42.160 inflation now in the economy. It's not just energy. It's also sort of this core, this non-energy

00:18:46.620 component. And the problem now is just so big that I just don't think they can do anything about it.

00:18:51.100 I mean, remember, Biden spent so much money. At first, you had that. I think this problem all

00:18:56.320 started. MMT goes back a while, like we talked about. But if you talk about Biden's political

00:19:01.480 problem, it really started when he passed that $2 trillion American rescue plan. This was the sort of

00:19:07.460 COVID relief bill that we didn't need because COVID was basically over. This is when Larry

00:19:11.680 Summers first sounded the alarm bell. This was in the spring of last year. And he sounded the

00:19:16.920 alarm bell that this could cause inflation. And that's why when inflation happened a few months

00:19:21.460 later, the administration was so eager to dismiss it as transitory because they said Larry was crazy.

00:19:27.640 So politically, they didn't want to acknowledge they might have caused this. And again, that,

00:19:32.220 I think, caused Powell to get on board with this party line. And he waited six months longer than he

00:19:36.960 should have to raise interest rates to control the problem. And now we have a wildfire that's 0.60

00:19:41.200 running out of control. And they just can't cover it up anymore. So I don't think there is a good

00:19:45.180 answer to this. I think we're headed for a very severe recession last year. And I think the bill

00:19:49.980 is coming due, not just for all the spending over the last couple of years, but really over the last

00:19:53.900 decade. And I think we're in for a long term period of austerity here.

00:19:59.680 So what does that look like for the average person listening to us right now? What are they going to see?

00:20:04.160 I mean, I'll say if you see rates rise to 5%, which is likely what they'll kind of drive to.

00:20:13.320 So the market currently is pricing four and a half, and the market's probably off by half a point. So

00:20:17.940 folks think it should get to about 5%. The economic models indicate you should see about 6% unemployment,

00:20:24.280 7% unemployment at that level. And so there could and will likely be job loss across certain sectors of

00:20:31.900 the economy. I think the manufacturing sectors are likely going to be better supported than some of

00:20:38.700 the services sectors, which is really where the first cuts are going to be made, because you can

00:20:44.040 kind of get more productivity out of people than you can out of a factory. But that means job losses.

00:20:49.940 And I don't think that this food price and energy price problem is going to go away anytime soon. A lot

00:20:55.440 of folks think that by raising the price of stuff, by raising rates, you have what's called demand

00:20:59.880 destruction, which means people are going to, you know, it's going to be so expensive to afford

00:21:03.700 stuff, people are going to buy less. And the reality is that there's so many elements in the

00:21:09.080 supply chain now that have inflated, that it's likely going to be a long time before we see a

00:21:13.640 decline in food prices and energy prices, insurance prices, healthcare prices. And so, you know,

00:21:19.840 I think one of the most prudent things to tell folks, you know, right now is we have to be very

00:21:26.820 careful about overspending and individuals need to be careful about saving. We saw in the last

00:21:33.660 consumer credit report that consumer credit spiked once again. I think there was a trillion eight

00:21:40.000 in revolving credit now. And if you have a credit card balance and the interest rate spikes by, you

00:21:46.620 know, 5%, it's going to be very hard to make payments. So, you know, credit card rates are going

00:21:52.160 to go up. The food prices and energy prices are not going to come shoot at rocketing back down.

00:21:57.460 And there may be unemployment on the horizon. So it's a really bleak picture going into next year.

00:22:03.000 This is reminding me, David, to access. Yeah, go ahead.

00:22:05.120 Well, just to add to that, I think in addition to the job loss, which is coming, there's also a

00:22:09.460 wealth effect. So people have already seen their 401ks go down 20 to 30%. On top of that, I think the

00:22:15.500 housing market is already starting to correct. So the immediate impact of interest rate hikes is on

00:22:21.120 the mortgage rate. Right now, the 30 mortgage in California is 7.6%. It was something like three

00:22:27.740 to three and a half percent at the beginning of the year. So the cost of a mortgage has literally

00:22:31.420 doubled. That means you can only buy roughly half as much house as you could at the beginning of the

00:22:36.480 year. That means that the value of people's homes goes down and homes stay on the market longer.

00:22:42.800 So the sort of the inventory piles up. And that's what we're starting to see right now. So

00:22:47.700 I think that most people's source of wealth is the equity they have in their homes and the equity

00:22:53.100 they have in their 401ks. Both of those are taking a huge hit right now. And so next year,

00:22:57.860 you can expect that people are just going to feel a lot less wealthy. There's also going to be

00:23:01.860 increasing risk to their jobs. And I think people are just going to hunker down and not want to spend

00:23:07.560 nearly as much next year because these economic conditions. And then that cascades into obviously the

00:23:14.200 revenues and earnings of companies. And then, you know, that translates into, you know,

00:23:19.540 worse financial results and so on. So I think that this is really going to impact the real economy

00:23:25.740 right now. We're talking about sort of more financial impacts, but there will be a real

00:23:30.380 impact to Main Street next year. All right. I have a question relating, relating to this,

00:23:36.100 but not directly on point. Hearing you, you know, we talked about how it sort of got started

00:23:40.360 with the 2008 financial crisis, this MMT. And it's almost like a hedonism that we've been

00:23:45.700 undergoing since then, you know, thinking that we have all this money that we don't really have

00:23:49.760 and living high on the hog when we really shouldn't be either both at the corporate level and at the

00:23:54.660 individual level. And I was having a conversation with somebody who very successful person the other

00:24:00.980 day who was suggesting to me that there's more and more corporate executives who don't want to hire

00:24:06.120 from Harvard and Yale and Stanford and Princeton because these kids come in, they're privileged.

00:24:12.980 They're wearing jeans and a T-shirt. What are you going to do for me? You know, they have so much

00:24:17.340 choice and they need to be lured in with promises of unlimited vacation, all this stuff. Right. And

00:24:24.620 that a lot of employers are now looking more to the Midwest and the schools that used to be considered

00:24:29.360 more second tier because you get the guys and gals showing up in a suit and saying, what can I do for

00:24:34.500 you? And I'm ready to work and so on. And I just wonder whether this world in which we're, you know,

00:24:40.560 that we're about to enter, according to you guys, maybe it'll have a somewhat of a silver lining.

00:24:46.440 Maybe we're going to get back to people who understand the value of a job and how to work

00:24:50.920 hard and how not to be a smug elite prick when applying for jobs or working at them. You know what

00:24:57.020 I mean? Like, could there be an upshot? I never even considered that this attitude we're looking at

00:25:01.520 on campuses and so on may be linked to this larger economic fallacy that we've been immersed in for

00:25:08.440 the past however many years. Yeah, I mean, the Internet also is a resolving factor here, Megan.

00:25:14.840 We see knowledge being democratized. People can go on YouTube, people can go get online educations

00:25:20.540 and they can come up the ramp and be as smart and as educated and as knowledgeable as an Ivy Leaguer.

00:25:26.580 Sure, they didn't get access to the institutional connections that, you know, have enabled success for,

00:25:31.380 many for generations coming out of those institutions, but they can be as smart, as capable,

00:25:36.440 as well equipped as those people because of the democratization of education online now and the

00:25:41.560 ability for everyone to access information. And I think that the other big trend is work from home

00:25:45.700 because so much of the U.S. economy now is based on a knowledge economy, meaning folks are working

00:25:50.460 on computers and they're doing services online or through the phone. We can actually see people

00:25:56.400 working from anywhere. I think the trend that you're pointing out is absolutely happening,

00:25:59.780 which is a burgeoning economic growth engine for non-urban America, for non-institutional America,

00:26:07.440 for a diversity of educational backgrounds, for diversity of work backgrounds and regional

00:26:14.080 backgrounds. And I think you're absolutely right. There may be a big transition that we see because

00:26:18.860 it's going to be far more cost effective to have well-educated, well-equipped people that didn't go to

00:26:23.420 these Ivy Leagues that can work from, you know, different places because knowledge work allows us to do that

00:26:28.660 today. So it's, yeah, it's, I think there's definitely a couple of trends that are pointing

00:26:33.960 in that direction.

00:26:35.220 And who want to work, David Sachs, you know, like one of the co-hosts on your podcast, I was just

00:26:39.380 refreshing on your bios before you guys came on, Flip Burgers, you know, and that Charles Koch told

00:26:44.520 me that one time that they have this program where they reach out to kids and they try to help them

00:26:49.400 get into the corporate, into corporate America. And that's really the, what they try to teach them is

00:26:53.620 that if it's, there's no problem being a burger flipper, but you better be the best damn burger

00:26:58.360 flipper McDonald's has ever seen. And then before you know it, you're going to be running the McDonald's

00:27:02.000 and then before you know it, you're going to be owning a McDonald's and so on and so forth. But I, I feel

00:27:06.900 anecdotally we're getting away from that. We're getting to this sort of, you know, like I say, what can you do

00:27:11.460 for me culture with people seeking jobs, not at my company, but at a lot of these big companies, I hear from all

00:27:17.200 my friends who work at the wall street banks and it's disgusting to me. Yeah. I mean, I think that

00:27:23.300 if you look at the labor force participation rate, it's still very low. So the number of people who

00:27:28.820 could be working, who are actually working is, is low, it's lower than it should be. We should have

00:27:33.440 a lot more people participating in the economy. And part of the reason why is we've had this mentality

00:27:38.240 of needing to protect people from work. I mean, I guess that was the whole premise behind the stimmy

00:27:43.440 checks is that we're going to sort of protect people from having to go out and get jobs. And I

00:27:49.180 think that was a mistake, or at least we overdid it. And so that would be one offsetting benefit is

00:27:55.540 if we could get more people into the labor market. And like you're saying, these entry-level jobs are

00:28:00.860 important jobs because they begin people on the ladder of economic opportunity and working their

00:28:05.820 way up. And there's a lot of people who might, you know, who end up becoming very successful starting

00:28:10.720 off as a burger flipper at McDonald's. And if you try to protect them and say that they shouldn't do

00:28:15.420 that job, then they'll never go on to have the type of career that they could have. So I think that is

00:28:21.300 a silver lining, but I still think that overall, I'd rather have a sort of healthy, bullish economy

00:28:28.660 than one that is retrenching and in the sort of austerity mode. Yeah.

00:28:33.560 Right. Exactly. Wisdom tends to come hard. You heard David Sachs mention Ukraine and how it's

00:28:40.900 affecting this. We're going to get into it because he's been very outspoken about the war and gotten

00:28:45.740 into kind of an interesting fight with Adam Kinzinger, which is like whoever's opposed to him,

00:28:50.840 I'm kind of on the side of. We'll talk about Kinzinger's tears and how he may be shedding them

00:28:56.160 over David Sachs and Ukraine right after this.

00:29:03.560 So let's talk Ukraine and make that understandable for people. I respect what you're doing online,

00:29:15.700 David Sachs, because it's really crazy now. Ukraine has crossed over to the area of questioning the 0.91

00:29:22.400 COVID vaccines, you know, like push back on whether this is really worth our while. And should we really

00:29:29.300 be this far down the line of threatening nuclear war or being on the receiving end of those threats

00:29:34.820 over Ukraine is now treated as the COVID started in a lab and the vaccines do more harm than good, 0.88

00:29:43.600 right? Like that it's in that category of information, but you're fighting the good fight.

00:29:47.580 So how do we get there and why do you feel so strongly about this?

00:29:52.560 Well, I mean, it's even more extreme than that. I mean, I remember a year or two ago when I was

00:29:57.580 tweeting against COVID lockdowns and getting blowback from that, this is 10 times worse than

00:30:02.960 that in terms of the attempts by pro-Ukraine partisans and sock puppets and bots to silence

00:30:10.320 dissent to basically accuse anyone who raises a question about what we're doing over there and

00:30:17.320 what the American interest is in all of this. And anyone who dares to suggest peace as Elon did,

00:30:22.580 he just floated a peace proposal. And if you do any of that, you're denounced as basically being a

00:30:26.500 pro-Russian puppet. Even Elon was denounced by no less than Zelensky himself for this peace 0.68

00:30:32.800 proposal, even though Elon's given them Starlink at an out-of-pocket cost of $80 million.

00:30:38.440 Can you explain what that is just for people who don't know?

00:30:40.740 Starlink is a satellite system that's given Ukraine internet access in the field remotely.

00:30:46.760 So they would have no ability to communicate in their war effort if it weren't for Starlink.

00:30:51.800 And yet, you know, all Elon did was float a very reasonable peace proposal for, you know,

00:30:57.260 as kind of a sort of a straw man to debate on Twitter. And for this, he was just denounced

00:31:02.220 widely by Zelensky himself and then mobs of sort of pro-Ukraine partisans who were ordering,

00:31:09.100 you know, Musk to stay in his lane.

00:31:11.100 The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany told him to F off. And just so people know, this is all Elon

00:31:16.480 proposed. Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Crimea, formerly a part of Russia,

00:31:22.840 as it has been since 1783. Water supply to Crimea assured and Ukraine remains neutral. That's what

00:31:30.160 got him an FU from the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany. And not to mention Zelensky accusing

00:31:36.180 Musk of supporting Russia, despite this, the SpaceX donating Starlink thing you just mentioned.

00:31:42.140 Right. I mean, so basically what's happening here is that the pro-war faction, these sort of super

00:31:48.640 hawkish war hawks and Ukrainian partisans are using woke cancellation tactics to basically try

00:31:54.500 and shape our public discourse on this issue. And they're basically demonizing anyone who supports

00:31:59.740 any reasonable diplomatic solution as being pro-Russian. We're not pro-Russian. I have no 0.76

00:32:05.220 interest in Russia. I'm sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause. Elon's donated massively to the Ukrainian

00:32:10.900 cause. But I'm not interested in getting in war three over Ukraine. And the fact of the matter is

00:32:16.660 that Ukraine is not our 51st state. It is not part of America. It is not even a treaty ally of America.

00:32:23.720 We have no obligation to defend Ukraine. And we need to think about what is in our national interest,

00:32:29.360 not just what's in Ukraine's national interest. We are a different country and it is not in our interest 0.98

00:32:35.460 to get into a direct shooting war with Russia that could lead to war three. And if you merely state

00:32:41.860 what I'm saying right now, you'll be roundly denounced by hordes of the sort of Ukrainian, 1.00

00:32:47.480 the sort of pro-Ukrainian online Twitter mob. And, you know, you'll be smeared in the most extreme

00:32:53.700 terms. In fact, there's an organized effort to do this. It's called NAFO, N-A-F-O. The name is the

00:33:00.360 North Atlantic Fellows Organization or something like that. It's an online effort to basically go

00:33:06.020 around the internet and basically attack anyone who expresses any of the concerns that I do about

00:33:10.760 this war. And this includes not just, again, Ukrainian partisans and bots and sock puppets, 0.65

00:33:15.580 but also a congressman, Adam Kinzinger, who came, who sort of unprovoked started attacking me,

00:33:21.520 presumably because of my Jewish name. I don't really get it. And as it turns out,

00:33:25.340 the founder of this NAFO effort was actually a neo-Nazi. So, you know, Kinzinger should really 0.94

00:33:30.740 think about who he's keeping company with in terms of this online organization that he has

00:33:35.460 self-enlisted in and self-identified with. Let me explain what you're talking about.

00:33:41.640 You tweeted out, if one of my companies told me that it had a 25% chance of going out of business,

00:33:47.600 we would drop everything and focus on that. Intel analysts say there's a 25% chance of nuclear war

00:33:53.140 and Biden is in Oregon. And that was Leon Panetta who said that he said is between 20 and 25% chance

00:33:58.140 now of nuclear war, which is significant. Yeah. And he's in Oregon having his ice cream. That's

00:34:04.460 what happened. By the way, the president in Delaware this weekend, he gets back to the White

00:34:08.940 House around noon today. Nothing else scheduled tomorrow. He makes remarks at one point on some

00:34:14.000 lame thing. Nothing else scheduled. I mean, this is his whole week. Maybe he makes one appearance.

00:34:18.920 Nothing else scheduled. He is not working full time on preventing this 25% of nuclear war.

00:34:24.920 Then Kinzinger responds to you. Must be a tough existence being so afraid. The Ukrainians started 1.00

00:34:31.540 as the underdog, but still fought and now will win. Old snowflake at David Sachs is trembling as he

00:34:39.500 blames America for the invasion. Hashtag NAFO, which, as you point out, stands for North Atlantic

00:34:45.920 fellas organization, supposedly an informal alliance of internet culture warriors, national security

00:34:53.500 experts, and ordinary Twitter users, users who are trying to push back against Russian online

00:34:58.240 disinformation, or are they doing the bidding of some neo-Nazi? We report you decide, but that's the

00:35:04.780 fight to which you are referring. Yeah, exactly. So it's this really bizarre thing where now they

00:35:11.780 have framed any concern about the destructive power of nuclear weapons as somehow being cowardice.

00:35:17.720 Our entire philosophy during the Cold War, our doctrine that kept us safe for 45 years,

00:35:22.940 was the principle of mutually assured destruction. We worked very hard to avoid a hot war with the

00:35:28.100 Soviet Union that could lead to, that could escalate into World War III. And today, if you have that same 0.91

00:35:33.740 concern, you are now denounced as a snowflake by this prime congressman. So look, I'm not ashamed to say

00:35:40.220 that I am very concerned about the risk of escalating into War III. That does not make me a coward. It

00:35:44.960 makes me sane. And I don't really understand the insanity of this online mob that's formed to

00:35:51.740 denounce anybody who is pushing back against the escalation of this war into nuclear use.

00:35:58.060 Isn't Adam Kinzinger the one who was crying at the January 6th hearing? He was crying over it?

00:36:03.600 Yes, yes, that's what I'm referring to.

00:36:04.820 But you're not allowed. Yeah, there he is. But you're not allowed to be concerned about nuclear war.

00:36:09.980 OK, so that's where we are. Meanwhile, there's there's an article by Jeremy Shapiro called War on the

00:36:18.900 Rocks, a national security website. It's he entitles that we are on a path to nuclear war.

00:36:24.220 This is the former director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

00:36:28.560 He's at the Brookings Institution, which is a left wing organization, but he served in the U.S.

00:36:32.560 State Department under Obama. And even Rich Lowry wrote a column about this op ed, which is

00:36:37.940 somewhat scary. Now, this is a guy on the left. The left now is sort of marching in lockstep for

00:36:42.380 the most part behind Biden and his interventionalist policies. So it's interesting this guy should stand

00:36:47.100 up and say, hold on, hold on, stop it. And he lays it out in great detail how this has become a

00:36:53.240 proxy war between Washington and Moscow, which, you know, that that's scary in and of itself and says

00:36:59.640 we're locked in an escalatory cycle that will eventually bring these two countries into direct

00:37:04.440 conflict and then go nuclear. And he goes on killing millions of people and destroying much

00:37:09.520 of the world. It's worth a read. But he talks about how we've already crossed a lot of Putin's

00:37:14.680 so-called red lines, which turned out to be more like pink lines. But at some point, Putin's actually

00:37:20.040 going to mean it. And then it's off to the races. And it's a scary thing to have that kind of a showdown

00:37:25.520 between two huge nuclear powers. And he lays out exactly how it will escalate, what the next steps

00:37:31.260 will be and who the diplomats will be. And David Sachs, I thought this played perfectly into what

00:37:34.920 you tweeted out, which I wrote on my notes. Yes, yes. And I'll block letters. Yes, you write.

00:37:40.320 Here's why we're in a pickle. Biden does what the staff tells him. The staff does what the media tells

00:37:45.460 them. The media does what the Twitter mob tells them. And the Twitter mob is a bunch of keyboard

00:37:50.080 warriors who think they suffer no consequences for their virtue signaling. That's what's terrifying.

00:37:55.160 The Twitter mob may be getting us into World War III. Yeah, I call it woke War III, because again,

00:38:00.760 you have this woke virtue signaling phenomenon where everybody is playing this game to be more

00:38:05.600 pure than the next person. And the way that you win this sort of purity contest is by expressing

00:38:09.860 more and more unqualified and unlimited support for Ukraine, no matter what the consequences are.

00:38:14.740 And that has influence. That influences the media, and then the media influences the staff.

00:38:18.920 And the staff basically influences or decides for Biden. So we have this very scary,

00:38:23.340 I think, dynamic in our society. We've never had a social media war before. And I think it could lead

00:38:28.980 to a really extreme outcome here because we keep pushing for maximalist demands. Remember, Shapiro,

00:38:34.920 the guy you cited, he worked at the State Department. He's a very prudential person.

00:38:38.600 Leon Panetta, who's citing a 25% risk of nuclear war, was the former director of central intelligence

00:38:44.320 and a defense secretary under, I believe, Bill Clinton. So these are people who know what they're

00:38:49.500 talking about. We face a very serious risk here. This is not just me making it up. This is what

00:38:54.400 I'm concerned about. But what I don't see happening in response to this risk is anybody saying, stop,

00:39:00.740 let's reappraise the situation. Let's evaluate how we got here. And let's work to find a diplomatic

00:39:06.120 solution so we can step back from this brink.

00:39:10.020 Friedberg, what about the economic consequences of Ukraine? Because, you know, you heard David Sachs

00:39:15.820 earlier say this is going to play into our economic numbers. But before it really starts

00:39:21.540 to do a number on ours, it's going to affect our friends in Europe who are dealing with this

00:39:27.040 Ukraine war as well. And there are a lot of predictions that it's going to shake their

00:39:31.400 support because the Europeans are facing a rough winter, given all the sanctions that we've placed

00:39:36.320 on Russia, who supplies a lot of the European oil. So how does Ukraine affect, for example,

00:39:41.840 that New York Times Siena poll, right, showing this huge spike in voters here in America who are

00:39:46.820 worried about our economy and inflation? I mean, energy prices and food prices are the most obvious

00:39:54.900 effect. We've obviously seen significant energy price spiking in Europe, as well as rationing happening

00:40:02.920 now. And around the world, we're seeing food prices spike. Most food is made with fertilizer.

00:40:08.320 Fertilizer is made with natural gas to make ammonia. And natural gas prices have doubled and

00:40:13.980 tripled. And so it's much more expensive to make fertilizer. And potash and phosphate are the other

00:40:19.980 two fertilizers. Russia exports 20% of the world's potash. So these fertilizer costs have doubled and

00:40:28.240 tripled in the past year, year and a half, past year. And that means that it's harder for farmers around

00:40:34.240 the world to afford to buy fertilizer, which means less food is being grown. And the UN World Food

00:40:39.360 Program has declared that we're marching towards 300 million incremental people that are facing

00:40:45.160 undernourishment and starvation in 2023, because of the food shortages that are arising from the

00:40:50.780 increment in fertilizer prices. And no one's really paying attention to this or thinking about it.

00:40:55.780 But when it starts to hit, the US is already spending $5 billion a year supporting the World Food

00:41:01.300 Program and trying to get food to those in need around the world, but there's simply not enough

00:41:06.220 food showing up. And so these are the moments where I think people wake up and realize, but they're a

00:41:10.640 slow-moving train. And it's much easier to have the fast-moving conversation about moral superiority

00:41:16.300 and who's right and who's wrong on the moral bandwagon than it is to take a look in the mirror and

00:41:22.080 realizing that 300 million incremental people are about to go starving. That's an increase of over 50%

00:41:27.260 of the starving people in the world, by the way. And so these are these moments where I think people

00:41:31.880 start to wake up and realize, but at that point, it may be too late. And so the unfortunate asymmetry

00:41:37.540 here is that the negative consequences and impact that might cause us to think objectively and rationally

00:41:44.760 instead of emotionally about these sorts of decisions take a lot longer to resolve than the

00:41:50.680 reason to kind of push forward and drive forward. And remember, there's no right and wrong in war.

00:41:55.700 There's only suffering. Every side thinks that they're right. Every side thinks that they're

00:41:59.780 morally correct. And so you can make the moral superiority and the moral argument, we need to

00:42:04.880 protect and we need to defend, or we need to protect ourselves and defend ourselves. And every side of

00:42:09.340 every war has always said they're doing it for other people. They're doing it for the purposes of

00:42:15.300 others. And then you kind of wake up one day and everyone's in trouble. And that's kind of where we're at.

00:42:20.660 I keep thinking about President Biden saying, you just wait, wait a couple of months,

00:42:25.160 and then we'll see how Putin's doing. You know, when we first imposed the economic sanctions

00:42:28.920 after this war first started, not quite a year ago. And the reports out of Russia are Putin's doing

00:42:36.880 just fine. His gas is being priced at astronomical levels. And while there's been some blowback on the

00:42:44.020 Russian economy, he's gamed this out pretty savvily. And I'm waiting for the big surrender because we've 1.00

00:42:51.260 imposed so many economic sanctions that Putin can't last another month in office. It's not

00:42:55.660 happening. Well, let me say, let me say one thing on the, sorry, Saks, but when we put those economic

00:43:02.260 sanctions on, on Russia at the beginning of this conflict, we basically made it illegal to trade

00:43:08.040 in Russian securities and the stocks of Russian companies. And they were all delisted around the

00:43:12.620 world. Over $600 billion of value was wiped out. Those shares were largely owned by pension funds

00:43:19.880 and mutual funds that support retirees around the world, not by a bunch of rich people, not by a

00:43:25.160 bunch of hedge fund guys. They were owned in retirement funds. And so part of our economic

00:43:29.460 sanctioning of removing Russian stocks from European and US listed stock exchanges caused a

00:43:35.440 $600 billion wipeout in value that ultimately affected retirement accounts. The cost of this war has

00:43:41.380 already been born several fold more than the cost of the weapons we're sending over. And folks aren't

00:43:46.800 even paying attention to this. We've also stranded over $150 billion of US assets in Russia because of

00:43:53.160 the sanctions. So I'm not an advocate for Russia. I'm not an advocate for the Russian economy or their 0.70

00:43:57.620 businesses, but there's a significant cost to this war that we need to kind of weigh the benefit against.

00:44:02.780 And we're not really having that conversation or that debate. It's a very kind of morally superior

00:44:06.980 one, one shot decision. And these consequences are being borne by us and by people and primarily by

00:44:13.480 developing nations all around the world. Yeah. So just to add one idea here, the fundamental

00:44:23.360 paradox of this war, Megan, is that the administration says that, and the media says

00:44:31.040 that we are winning, that we've just had the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, and yet

00:44:35.640 the risk of nuclear use has actually gone up. Panetta says from this one to 5% number at the beginning

00:44:42.080 of the war to 20% to 25% right now. So if we're winning the war, why is nuclear use more likely?

00:44:49.700 And the reason is pretty obvious, which is that if the Russians cannot achieve their aims through 0.77

00:44:54.480 conventional arms, they are more tempted and incentivized to turn to unconventional weapons.

00:45:00.760 That's always been the sort of paradox here. And the Russians have declared that this war is

00:45:06.620 absolutely existential for them. It was existential for them last year. They said that admitting

00:45:11.760 Ukraine into NATO was an absolute red line for them because they cannot tolerate American weapons,

00:45:17.520 troops, and bases directly on their most vulnerable border. And basically, they said they're willing

00:45:22.380 to go to war to prevent that. And now their entire global position is at stake, and Putin's personal

00:45:28.240 survival is at stake. So obviously, this is massively existential for them. And so they're going to be

00:45:33.560 willing to do anything to avoid a total defeat. And yet a total crushing defeat is the only position

00:45:39.420 that the administration insists on as the, again, as the only acceptable position here.

00:45:45.540 This is what Zelensky is saying. Zelensky is saying that too.

00:45:48.480 Zelensky is saying that too. Exactly. So we are really playing with fire here. We are courting

00:45:52.660 disaster. And the problem for all these moral absolutists is that what Freeberg is saying is that

00:45:57.700 war is not about moral absolutes. The moral absolute here is that you're either going to end up with

00:46:04.280 a total Ukrainian victory or nuclear war. Those are basically the polarities. If that is an 0.64

00:46:12.080 unacceptably risky situation for the United States of America, I can understand why Ukrainian 1.00

00:46:16.420 nationalists might take that point of view. That should not be our point of view. We need to find

00:46:20.480 an off-ramp here. And the scary thing is Biden says, oh, we're wondering what Putin's off-ramp is

00:46:25.600 going to be. Well, why are you talking in the passive tense? Why don't you give him an off-ramp?

00:46:29.700 That's what you should be working on so we can avoid the risk of this escalating into nuclear war.

00:46:34.580 Well, and I've seen you tweet about this too, but it's like, I love the delusion that if we can just

00:46:39.980 somehow get rid of Putin, we're going to get Gavin Newsom in as the new Russian leader.

00:46:45.560 The way they talk about regime change in Russia shows no understanding of Russian history whatsoever.

00:46:52.640 Some senior intelligence folks that I spoke with told me that we really don't have a great sense of

00:46:59.320 who's going to fill the void if Putin is toppled. And that's what's most scary about this proposition

00:47:05.780 that we're facing right now. If he goes, we don't know who's going to fill the void, and they're

00:47:10.380 going to have the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world at their disposal. So it's actually a

00:47:15.140 very scary proposition. Right. And on top of that, if you look at who is Putin really under pressure

00:47:21.040 from, it is his far right is the hawks in his government, like this Chechen leader and some

00:47:28.080 of these other military figures, the military bloggers, who've been questioning, why did you

00:47:32.540 only go in with 100,000 to 200,000 troops? Why did you go in so light? Why was this a special military

00:47:37.940 operation instead of an all-out war? They basically are criticizing Putin for half measures. They think

00:47:43.740 that Putin needs to do whatever it takes and that his big mistake was not going in heavy

00:47:47.980 from the beginning. I know that we think Putin is Hitler, but to these people, he has not gone

00:47:53.100 far enough. And the reality is that Putin has basically gotten rid of the liberal reformers

00:47:58.540 in the government there. The people who are most likely to replace him are hardliners.

00:48:02.960 Yeah, there's no Neville Chamberlain sitting on deck waiting to take over. All right, let me pause it

00:48:09.200 there. Quick break. We'll come right back. Much, much more to go over with the guys. And don't forget,

00:48:13.740 you guys, that if you would like to listen to the show when you're driving your car,

00:48:17.700 you're putting your makeup on, you're running your errands, you can follow and download us

00:48:21.000 on Apple, Spotify, Pandora or Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast for free or go to youtube.com

00:48:26.100 slash Megan Kelly if you'd like to watch it. We'll be right back.

00:48:33.280 So by the way, I did find Biden's schedule. This is just absurd. I mean, think about it. You guys run

00:48:38.240 companies. Think about it. If you worked this level, you would not be the men you are today.

00:48:44.780 Biden's Monday. He will leave Delaware at 1125 a.m., arriving back at the White House at 1220.

00:48:51.080 That's it. That's his big day. Return from Delaware. Tuesday, he will speak at a political

00:48:57.840 event at the Howard Theater. OK, Wednesday, he will speak about the bipartisan infrastructure law.

00:49:05.840 Yeah. All right. Thursday, he will speak about infrastructure in Pittsburgh and take part in a

00:49:13.900 reception for John Fetterman. Friday, he will go back to Delaware for the weekend. I mean, this is

00:49:20.000 like refund. I want a refund on the salary that we pay this guy. He's not doing anything.

00:49:26.440 Megan, on the one hand, he says that we're facing Armageddon and the most elevated risk of nuclear war

00:49:33.440 since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then on the other hand, this is his schedule. It's like we're

00:49:37.280 cosplaying World War III. And the thing that scares me the most is that if you actually study the Cuban 1.00

00:49:43.760 Missile Crisis and how we got out of that situation without nuclear annihilation, it was because Kennedy 0.59

00:49:50.100 did not listen to the staff. He didn't listen to his military advisors. They were all pushing for

00:49:55.180 greater escalation in war. That is usually the dynamic with the staff. And Kennedy eschewed their

00:50:00.600 advice. And instead, he dispatched his brother, Bobby, to go open up a secret back channel with

00:50:05.640 the Soviets. And they cut a secret deal where we would pull our nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles out 0.86

00:50:11.740 of Turkey in exchange for them pulling their missiles out of Cuba. And we promised not to invade Cuba 0.84

00:50:16.480 again. So that was the deal that was cut. And Kennedy actually felt the need, even though he had just

00:50:21.420 saved the world from nuclear annihilation, he still felt the need to lie about the quid pro quo he cut

00:50:28.340 because there were so many hotheads and hardliners in Congress and among the military.

00:50:34.380 So the issue here that I see is just that all of the forces arrayed around the president

00:50:40.820 generally do not really feel this sort of the moment, the sort of the decision-making

00:50:48.900 importance here that the president feels to avoid a catastrophic outcome. They're always pushing

00:50:53.960 for more and more escalation. It takes a really strong president who's mentally acute, who has

00:50:59.580 flexibility, to figure out how to de-escalate a nuclear showdown. And do we really have a president

00:51:04.980 like that in the White House right now? If Biden thinks this is like the Cuban Missile Crisis,

00:51:10.380 he needs to start acting like it. Let's figure out a way to cut a deal here that makes sense.

00:51:15.600 Kennedy was able to do it without compromising our values. We didn't give up anything of vital

00:51:21.040 importance to America. And I believe that we could figure out a diplomatic solution here for Ukraine

00:51:27.100 if only we were willing to try. Now, you remember that that famous debate? You're I knew Jack Kennedy.

00:51:32.920 You're no Jack Kennedy, sir. He's no Jack Kennedy. And I don't I don't know that what we want is more

00:51:39.460 of Biden working. I'm not sure, actually, that that's the solution to anything. I mean, I'll tell you

00:51:45.820 something that jumped out at me is the things he does work on. I tend to find find outrageous. You know,

00:51:51.620 it's like just yesterday they tried to make woke policy on DEI, the federal government, you know,

00:51:56.980 instilling it across the federal government as a mandatory thing. And they want it to be the model

00:52:01.880 for corporations across across America, right, to make skin color and gender and all these things

00:52:06.820 above above everything else as a work quality. He's right now dialing back due process rights for

00:52:13.580 young men on college campuses, all these things. He's he's say he says he's pro woman, but he's

00:52:17.920 elevating trans kids over biological girls at the sport level. He's he's in favor of that. And 0.98

00:52:24.320 that's going to become policy soon, too, if he gets his Title IX revisions. And all this happens while

00:52:29.140 we see him when he does go out on the campaign trail or doing anything behaving in the weird way

00:52:34.540 he always has, in particular with respect to women. I'm sorry, something's off. I don't know what

00:52:41.540 it is. I don't know what he's done, but something's off. And there was yet another

00:52:46.320 example of this just this past weekend where he was in Irvine, California at some event.

00:52:52.880 And this made all the rounds. And I realized, like, his harshest critics love to make fun of

00:52:57.180 these moments. To me, I'm just saying, like, there's something wrong with this guy. There's

00:53:00.420 something off. Normal men don't behave like this. He goes up to a young girl. How old was she?

00:53:06.280 Um, 11. Trying to remember the she was 11 or 12. And look, look what he says and does to this girl.

00:53:14.280 Now, very important thing I told my daughter and granddaughters. No serious guys in your 30s.

00:53:20.700 Okay. No what? No serious guys in your 30s.

00:53:24.520 Don't keep that in line. At least. At least.

00:53:26.660 I'm sorry. It's weird. No one wants him touching their shoulders and giving dating advice to an 0.95

00:53:34.300 11 or 12 year old. No serious guys to your 30. First of all, shut up. Look how uncomfortable she 1.00

00:53:38.940 is. Don't advise my daughter on when she should get serious with a man. Like, what? Step away, 1.00

00:53:43.700 sir. Go back to Rehoboth Beach. Like, I like him better when he's not doing anything.

00:53:48.720 At least he didn't sniff her hair. Well, how do you know? This fact's not in evidence.

00:53:57.420 Yeah. I mean, look, I think. You tell me as a CEO, truly like a CEO of a company

00:54:01.160 would never be like, you'd have the rest of your board pulling you aside immediately being like,

00:54:06.340 yo, stop that. He's, he's not all there. And, uh, it's, there's, there's something distressing

00:54:13.380 about it. I mean, the, the, the, the thing that, that concerns me is that Biden has been in

00:54:20.320 Washington his entire adult life. I think he's been there for something like 50 years. So all

00:54:25.320 of his instincts are shaped by Washington. And what are Washington's instincts first to spend

00:54:29.780 money as much of it as they can. And second to go to war. And if you look at the Biden presidency so

00:54:35.160 far, it has been basically a glut of spending, which has now helped fuel this inflation, which is

00:54:42.940 tanking our economy. And we have this very bellicose policy and uncompromising policy on

00:54:49.040 Ukraine, which is bringing us to a point of geopolitical risk that we haven't seen since 1962.

00:54:55.580 So, and then on top of it, Megan, the things you're pointing out means that we've got a president

00:55:00.500 whose hands are not completely on the wheel. All of these things are, I'd say, rather disconcerting.

00:55:06.100 His hands are everywhere. They shouldn't be.

00:55:07.740 I think this is one of the challenges structurally with democracy in the social media age,

00:55:14.640 because of the fast feedback cycles that we talked about earlier, and that a point of view,

00:55:21.380 kind of the mob coalesces around the point of view, you end up electing the person who represents the

00:55:27.760 mob, which means that ultimately over time in a democracy, in the social media age is you don't

00:55:34.800 end up electing leadership. And leadership, as Sachs points out, needs to and has to be willing

00:55:40.380 and able to lead, which means being contrarian and being inspiring. It means that you need to know

00:55:46.420 when you're right and when you're wrong and when the people are right and when the people may be wrong

00:55:49.840 and how you can lead them to a safer, better place. And what we're doing today in democracy in the social

00:55:56.420 media age is we're electing those who best kind of sit and represent what the mob's opinion is

00:56:02.780 and the mob rules. And so we're seeing leadership, not just in the White House, but around the country

00:56:08.380 today, being those who basically pander to and do what the electorate tells them to do,

00:56:17.260 as opposed to standing up and saying, you know what, this is right and this is wrong,

00:56:21.560 and this is the objective, and this is how we achieve our objective. And that voice is missing in this

00:56:26.420 country today. And leadership is missing in this country today. And it's not just a lack of inspiration.

00:56:30.880 It's a lack of willingness to stand up and say when something is right and something is wrong,

00:56:35.720 even though it may not be popular. And that's what I think we're starting to see kind of happen

00:56:40.720 everywhere. So we heard President Obama speaking out about cancel culture, which, you know, to speak

00:56:47.260 out about it and to stand up against it certainly requires leadership by a corporate head or whoever's

00:56:52.420 employees being targeted. And President Obama has never really been pro cancel culture. If you listen to

00:56:58.080 his comments over the past 10 years or so, he referred to them as these, like, you know,

00:57:03.520 keyboard warriors or something to that effect, you know, with using their thumbs to get people

00:57:07.880 canceled, thinking that that's activism. It's not. So that was good. You know, they didn't listen to

00:57:12.180 him. But it's good to have people on the left speaking out about this. And he did it again. And

00:57:18.420 actually, I'm listening. He went on Pod Save America, right? It's a left leftist podcast with three of

00:57:24.700 his former guys who work for him. And I'm thinking as I'm listening to him, this is great. Love it.

00:57:29.560 Yes. Right on. And then it's got the weirdest landing that I did not see coming. I love to talk

00:57:36.200 about what you think happened here. Take a listen. People just want to not feel as if they are

00:57:43.780 walking on eggshells and and and they want some acknowledgement that life is messy and that all

00:57:51.560 of us at any given moment can, you know, say things the wrong way, you know, make mistakes.

00:58:01.240 Michelle talks about her mother-in-law or her mother, my mother-in-law, who is a extraordinary

00:58:09.500 one. But as Michelle points out, she's 86, you know, and sometimes, you know, trying to get the

00:58:17.180 right phraseology when we're talking about issues. Michelle's like, that's like her trying to learn

00:58:22.340 Spanish. It doesn't mean she shouldn't try to learn Spanish, but it means that sometimes she's

00:58:26.960 not going to get the words right. And that's OK. Right. And that attitude, I think, of just being

00:58:35.460 a little more real and a little more grounded is something that I think makes it goes a long

00:58:39.980 way in counteracting what is a systematic, the systematic propaganda that I think is being

00:58:49.480 pumped out by Fox News and all these other outlets all the time. Wait, what? What happened at the end?

00:58:56.520 I know. What? Megan, I had the same reaction when I started watching that. I was like, wow, this is

00:59:03.380 this is really nice. This is it's a reminder of what we liked about Obama is that he you know,

00:59:09.380 he's gently dressing down these woke warriors. He's trying to bring us together. He's reaching

00:59:14.080 for the center. This is the Obama who did the beer summit at the White House. So you see all these

00:59:21.040 great characteristics. Wow. It's so nice to have a president who's bringing us together. It's been so

00:59:26.340 long. And then he kind of ruins it at the end by, oh, this is just another partisan political attack.

00:59:31.180 So it's yeah, it was very disappointing. I mean, the first 90 percent was great.

00:59:37.100 I've got my producer, Canadian Debbie. She her theory is that he is talking and he realizes he's

00:59:44.460 basically just called his mother in law a bigot. So I need a different landing. I got to stick the

00:59:49.680 landing. I've just revealed something bad about Michelle's mother. Oh, Fox News Fox. We can all

00:59:55.820 agree. They're terrible. I mean, look, that's what he said, though, is correct. Right. Freeberg. It's

01:00:02.300 like life is messy. I've always I've quoted my therapist on the show many times. People are

01:00:07.520 complicated. They're complicated. And that really is all people are looking for is a little bit of

01:00:12.400 grace and interpreting other people's behavior. It's not to say it's happening. And I do think it's

01:00:17.220 it's a big reason why so many Democrats are going to vote Republican in November.

01:00:24.820 Yeah, I think that's right. I think people want some recognition that they need to feel like they're

01:00:31.360 having progress and that they can take care of their families and have a future for their kids.

01:00:35.540 And, you know, besides that, everything's a mess. I mean, that's one almost kind of universal set of

01:00:41.260 truths. And everything else is is not what we expect and not what we want. And I think that,

01:00:47.780 you know, kind of being pushed into places that we've been pushed over the last couple of years

01:00:52.440 is going to cause a lot of people to rethink their politics. I hear it in San Francisco, by the way,

01:00:56.860 a lot of folks who have historically been very solid blue are reconsidering their position and their

01:01:03.380 point of view. And, you know, before we started recording the show today, we were teasing Sachs.

01:01:07.920 You know, I said, Sachs, you should run for governor of California someday.

01:01:12.420 And he's like, I can never win in a plus 30 blue state. I don't know how long that's going to be

01:01:16.440 the case. I'll be honest with you. A lot of people I know who think big donors and big supporters

01:01:20.760 are rethinking their politics because, you know, things seem to be moving and in a very kind of

01:01:27.780 binary way. The that poll that we've been discussing shows, I think it's now 17 percent of black voters

01:01:35.260 are getting ready to vote Republican 17. That's big. I mean, obviously not net net, but just versus

01:01:42.380 where they they've been in terms of the voting bloc. Hispanics are up in the high 30s getting

01:01:48.180 ready to vote Republican. I was just talking about this anecdotally with some friends of mine.

01:01:53.700 A lot of Jewish voters who had been leaning blue are now getting ready to vote red or who have had it

01:02:00.700 with with the Democratic Party, because this wokeness tends to be very anti-Semitic, very anti-Semitic. 0.61

01:02:08.280 And so there's all sorts of different groups that historically had been aligned with the

01:02:12.760 Democratic Party who don't like this rhetoric. Black people, I'm sure, don't like being told that

01:02:17.040 they come into the game behind the eight ball, that their children arrive less liked, less rooted for,

01:02:25.700 less capable of doing the math. You know, all that terrible racist stuff that they say in these woke

01:02:30.320 diversity groups. Same for Hispanics who don't tend to like that nonsense. And nobody likes their 1.00

01:02:36.000 paycheck doing what the paychecks are doing against inflation. So I do I do think like what

01:02:42.020 we've seen in that poll is connected, though it wasn't pulled for to cancel culture and wokeness

01:02:47.880 and this sort of general backlash that we're seeing. I think I think what you're seeing is an

01:02:52.240 look, both parties have always been evolving for decades. There's no static set of objectives of

01:02:59.140 either party. And, you know, the parties evolve such that there's generally a pretty good balance

01:03:04.060 in this country, 50-50 between the two, you know, what we call parties. But, you know, the the the

01:03:10.540 objectives shift over time. What I think is the biggest driver of shifting politics today is the

01:03:17.640 difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. And I think increasingly,

01:03:23.380 we're seeing the blue side, the Democrats push for an equality of outcome set of positions,

01:03:28.860 whereas the red side is increasingly pushing for an equality of opportunity set of outcomes.

01:03:33.840 And I think that the the the dividing lines that you're mentioning, Megan, really speak to the

01:03:38.900 stronger interest by some segments to have an equality of opportunity as the basis of this country

01:03:44.700 and the opportunity for being in this country versus an equality of outcome, which is a different

01:03:49.680 categorization of people that sit in a different position in a different place today. And I think

01:03:54.600 that's going to be the biggest driver over the next decade of how the two parties evolve.

01:04:00.100 You know, on the political front, all of this, I think, goes into why we're seeing Herschel Walker

01:04:05.520 hang on in the Georgia Senate race, despite all the revelations about his past and whether he did or

01:04:12.340 did not pay this woman who bore one of his children to have an abortion paid for the abortion. I should 0.90

01:04:17.880 say he denies it. But, you know, there's a there's a note that appears to be in his handwriting to her

01:04:22.780 cancel check and so on. So he went to this debate the other night. And I think a lot of I listen to

01:04:28.880 a lot of left wing podcasts and read a lot of left wing news. In addition to right wings, I just don't

01:04:33.100 like anybody manipulating my mind. I like to have input from both sides. And the left is completely

01:04:39.320 befuddled as to why Herschel Walker has not fallen apart. They don't get it. They're like,

01:04:44.320 but hello, evangelical Christians, we brought you these stories about other children he hasn't

01:04:50.360 taken care of and an abortion that he paid for. And you're supposed to be the party of family

01:04:55.620 values. Why? Why is not his support cratering? And I think really the party, the Republican Party

01:05:04.060 and the evangelical Christian voters already struck this deal when they elected Trump, you know,

01:05:09.520 and they said, we realize we don't buy two Corinthians. We know that he's got a questionable

01:05:14.580 past when it comes to women. But we want somebody who's going to be a reliable conservative vote, 1.00

01:05:20.720 even if he's not a reliable conservative man. And they got it. That's why we just had Roe versus

01:05:25.820 Wade overturned. They don't regret putting Trump in the office, not even a little. And I feel like the

01:05:31.680 same thing is about is happening right now in Georgia. So they had their debate. It's going to be

01:05:35.360 the one and only because he refused to have a second debate. So they went. Raphael Warnock went with

01:05:38.740 like the libertarian who's got no chance. And Herschel Walker didn't appear on Sunday,

01:05:42.020 but they just had a debate 48 hours earlier on Friday. And lo and behold, even the New York Times

01:05:46.920 had to admit that Herschel Walker held his own and they could feel the jaw drop to the floor. I was

01:05:52.360 like, oh, my God, you know, he's not a Neanderthal. Look at him. He can he can put two sentences

01:05:57.160 together. And this is in part because Herschel Walker had lowered the expectation so much that you

01:06:00.920 didn't know what you're going to get. But I bring you to this debate, for example, on the issue of

01:06:05.680 abortion, which I thought was very telling. Watch. The patient's room is too narrow and small and

01:06:13.160 cramped a space for a woman, her doctor and the United States government. We are witnessing right

01:06:18.600 now what happens when politicians, most of most of the men pile into patient's rooms. You get what

01:06:27.240 you're seeing right now. And the women of Georgia, the women of Georgia deserves a senator who will 0.98

01:06:35.480 stand with them. I trust women more than I trust politicians. May I respond? Very quickly, Mr. Walker.

01:06:43.160 You know, it is. And I heard about him. I heard he was he was he's a neat talker. But did he not mention

01:06:49.960 that there was a baby in that room as well? And also, did he not mention that he asked him that

01:06:57.700 he asked him the taxpayer to pay for it? So he's bringing the government back into the room.

01:07:04.300 That's so interesting. It is a great back and forth between the two of them. And I don't know,

01:07:09.320 what do you think? He's still pulling behind by a couple of points. Walker is, but I think he's

01:07:14.320 going to win that race. What do you guys think? Well, I think the this this wave is breaking towards

01:07:21.520 the Republicans right now. It's been swinging back towards them. We had the, you know, Republicans

01:07:27.880 were up significantly back in June. And then you had the jobs that the Dobbs decision. And it looked

01:07:33.200 like things were breaking the Democrats way. And there were these tactical victories where, you know,

01:07:38.120 Biden got to spend more money, you know, on the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and so forth.

01:07:42.520 But now it looks like obviously the Inflation Reduction Act didn't work. Inflation is still

01:07:48.080 high. The stock market is hitting new lows. And it just feels like the economy is falling apart so

01:07:53.620 quickly that, again, it's breaking back towards the Republicans. And look, my view on candidates'

01:07:59.760 personal lives is, you know, this is an area I feel like, you know, I just never want to get into.

01:08:04.800 I don't think voters think that way anymore. I think they understand that this sort of mining,

01:08:11.700 mining the personal lives of these candidates is it's almost an invasion of privacy. And they're

01:08:17.040 much more interested in making decisions, I think, today based on what their policies are going to be.

01:08:21.880 And I think also voters kind of know that, look, if the Democratic candidate had the same issues that

01:08:28.440 Walker did, would the media really be harping on it the same way? So I think the media is fairly

01:08:34.500 selective and who they try to basically gin up outrage against and who they conduct these types

01:08:41.100 of opposition research tactics against. But at the end of the day, I think voters are going to vote

01:08:45.640 for the policies they believe in.

01:08:47.420 Oh, just today, I was listening to The New York Times The Daily talking about Herschel Walker and

01:08:52.280 Raphael Warnock. And they did have the good sense to point out that Warnock has an accusation against

01:08:57.420 him by his ex-wife that he ran over her with his car over her foot, but ran over her in a heated

01:09:03.660 argument, which is extreme. And they were quick to point out, well, the EMT didn't notice the injuries

01:09:13.080 and they weren't documented. It's like they are so quick to dismiss that if it's against somebody on

01:09:18.520 their side. Right. As opposed to like, I don't I don't remember them pointing out the evidence on the

01:09:23.420 other side of Larry Elder's accusation that came out in the L.A. Times about whether he loaded a gun

01:09:29.280 in front of his ex-wife. Right. Remember all that? They weren't like quick to go, well, well,

01:09:34.320 there's no eyewitness. And they were in the middle of a brutal divorce. And so whatever.

01:09:38.180 It's just so obvious. So I don't know. What do you think is going to happen in Georgia? Because

01:09:42.320 that's that's one of the ones we really need to watch that one in Pennsylvania, Freeburg.

01:09:46.860 You got to ask that.

01:09:47.860 Not a not a political prognosticator. So, so, so, yeah, my my my orientation is I don't follow the

01:09:56.880 races very well. I'm much more interested in kind of identifying and debating the issues that I think

01:10:02.420 are most going to impact us. And I'm less about the politics of who ends up in those seats. But

01:10:08.360 Sachs is the expert. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like. Yeah, go ahead, Sachs.

01:10:12.860 I just think that all these races that are within two points are going to break are going to break

01:10:18.060 red just based on what's happening in the economy. So I think, Megan, I think you're right that the

01:10:23.140 way the media dredges through these candidates personal lives, it's very selective. They don't

01:10:28.640 do it evenly. And voters know that and can see through that at the end of the day, just want to

01:10:34.740 choose the candidate who's going to support the right policies and get the economy back on track.

01:10:39.460 Yeah, we got a 50-50 Senate and they've seen what that's produced.

01:10:42.860 Yeah. No, but I'm saying generally speaking, when the economy has been headed in the wrong

01:10:47.240 direction and generally people think it's headed in the wrong direction, they flip parties and you

01:10:51.100 see a lot of seats turn. So that's what we should expect to see happen. Well, not just that. So you

01:10:54.800 listen to The Daily today and they they went on site and they started asking people, these two

01:10:59.820 reporters from The New York Times saying, you know, are you concerned about Herschel Walker's personal

01:11:05.420 history? Now, have we learned nothing from the polls during the Trump era? The people it's like my

01:11:11.220 friend. I had a very good friend. She's from Texas originally, but now she lives in the Northeast.

01:11:15.600 And she was talking about how she would get pulled all the time and people would ask her,

01:11:20.500 even friends would be like, can you believe Trump? And she'd be like, no, I can't believe

01:11:23.400 he's terrible. As she pulled the lever for me, like people know what they're supposed to say.

01:11:28.600 When the two New York Times reporters ask you if you're concerned about the revelations about

01:11:33.220 Herschel Walker, you say, yes, I'm concerned. And they had quotes from this one woman saying,

01:11:37.340 I'm a Republican, you know, but I might just not fill in that box. I might just vote for the

01:11:41.960 gubernatorial race and not vote. Oh, she's voting for Herschel Walker. People are so stupid. Of course,

01:11:47.980 the Times reporters are going to be told that. Don't believe this woman. She's misleading you 0.96

01:11:52.680 because Republicans don't like pollsters to begin with. I'm just saying I really think Herschel Walker

01:11:57.760 is going to run away with that one. I don't think the Republican base is going to be moved by this

01:12:01.300 so-called scandal. I really don't. We'll find out. All right. Let me let me talk to you about tech

01:12:06.400 because this is your area of expertise for sure. And I thought it was very interesting that after

01:12:11.340 Kanye got booted off of Instagram and then his account frozen on Twitter for these comments about

01:12:17.820 Jews, he's going to go Defcon 3 on Jewish people. He announced he's buying Parler. He's buying Parler, 0.92

01:12:26.680 the embattled Parler that got completely screwed over after January 6th by Amazon and everybody else who

01:12:32.760 wouldn't give it a platform. It did come back, though its battles continued. And now Kanye's

01:12:39.460 buying what's essentially a Twitter competitor. Is it too late for Parler? And what do you make of it?

01:12:45.920 This supports my long running debate with David Sachs, that there is a free and open market to

01:12:50.960 compete effectively with social media platforms, as they're called in this country today and around the

01:12:55.980 world. Sachs has made the case that the town square has become Twitter and we need to have the

01:13:00.940 government intervene to regulate and support freedom of speech on these platforms. And I've

01:13:05.080 made the case that there can be many platforms. The internet is, you know, default open. Anyone can

01:13:11.920 build a website, anyone can build a service, you can build your own server farm, you can build your

01:13:15.820 own data center, you can launch a website. And the argument has been that we need to get Section 230

01:13:20.820 rewritten and we need to get this government to intervene and make sure freedom of speech enables.

01:13:25.660 And I've made the case, I don't think that's true. Because if the audience doesn't like what's

01:13:29.420 happening on one of these platforms, another one will emerge and it will compete. And I think

01:13:33.160 that's what we're seeing. I think Kanye behind Parler might build an audience, they get the right

01:13:38.100 tech people involved, and they could rebuild that service. And ultimately, that could be a viable

01:13:42.080 competitor and a viable alternative to some of the other scaled social media platforms. So I don't

01:13:46.820 think anyone has a monopoly in social media, in video, in audio, in communication channels,

01:13:52.060 in Twitter. I think all of these services are up for competition. And I think that there could be a lot

01:13:56.960 of new services, where you start to see almost like a balkanization of media online, that kind

01:14:03.220 of breaks down a lot of these what people are calling monopolies today. But Sax and I will have

01:14:08.040 this debate. Yeah, well, I want to hear this debate. But let me tee it up to you, Sax as follows. So

01:14:12.060 Elon was reportedly inspired to make his original bid for Twitter after they shut the account of the

01:14:16.720 Babylon Bee. Kanye may have been inspired by the fact that he got bounced off of two of the social

01:14:22.340 media platforms. So it's kind of funny to me to see a pattern of the more right leaning people who

01:14:27.300 get targeted, the more we do see competition. But we all know what happened to Parler when it tried

01:14:32.720 to be the right wing Twitter. These like Amazon and Apple and all these others pulled the platform to

01:14:38.900 where they couldn't operate. So go ahead. I'll give you your response. Right, right. Well, I have a hard

01:14:44.340 time believing that the answer to these big tech monopolies control over speech in our society is Kanye West.

01:14:51.160 I mean, sorry, I just, I don't believe that Kanye is going to be able to break their gigantic network

01:14:56.140 effects that sustain their monopolies. Remember, all these big tech companies generally act in sync

01:15:01.940 and in concert with respect to these speech rules. So if you get banned on one platform, all the others

01:15:06.920 follow suit. That's exactly what happened with Trump. First, he got banned by Twitter, and then all

01:15:11.720 these other platforms followed suit. So it's great that maybe there's some free market competition

01:15:17.540 happening here. I just don't think it's going to be sufficient, which is why I believe that these

01:15:23.360 big tech monopolies need to be treated like common carriers who are not allowed to discriminate on the

01:15:29.040 basis of people's viewpoints. Now, I do think Freeburg raises a interesting point, which is what level of

01:15:36.960 the stack should common carrier be applied at? And I do think you can make the case that it shouldn't be

01:15:43.460 applied at the level of a Twitter or parlor, because those sites will always have some messy

01:15:48.440 content moderation issues to deal with. But I do believe that at minimum, we need to apply

01:15:54.340 common carrier to the so-called dumb pipes below the stack. So that would include AWS. Remember that

01:16:00.660 the way that parlor got thrown off the internet was because AWS canceled them, and also the app stores

01:16:07.860 canceled them. So I do not believe that the app stores, that AWS, that banks, and big financial

01:16:14.880 platforms like PayPal, who should never be in the business of content moderation anyway, those

01:16:20.680 companies should not be able to engage in de-platform and discrimination. Can we just talk

01:16:25.460 about how absurd the PayPal thing was? So as I understand it, they now claim, oh, it was a mistake

01:16:30.620 that that was released. That was never really our policy. But of course, they're going to claim that

01:16:33.260 because they were humiliated. But somehow it was released that they had a plan in place to find

01:16:37.900 users to steal money of $1,500 from users of PayPal who were engaging in misinformation on the

01:16:45.680 internet, not having anything to do with PayPal. It's not like it'd be controversial enough if you

01:16:50.720 were out there saying PayPal's a fraud, PayPal's terrible. And they tried to do this to you. But

01:16:55.480 essentially, I think the plan was, if I went out there and said, the vaccines are killing people,

01:17:00.720 $1,500 was going to be gone from my account with PayPal. Totally unconstitutional and illegal. But

01:17:08.580 this was originally their plan, as I understand it, until it got accidentally leaked and the internet

01:17:14.820 lost its mind. But the hubris of your old organization, David, to think that they could

01:17:20.820 get away with that. I know. And it wasn't a mistake. I mean, there's no way you don't change the

01:17:26.000 terms of service on your website. This is reviewed by hundreds of lawyers that they don't do that

01:17:29.880 accidentally. And the reason why we know for sure it's not a mistake is it's actually a continuation

01:17:34.580 of the policies that have been in place. They started over a year ago. I wrote a piece last

01:17:40.160 summer talking about how PayPal was working with democratic partisan groups like the ADLC, like the

01:17:47.580 Southern Pacific Law Center, to identify conservative individuals and groups to be blacklisted from

01:17:54.800 their service. Again, discrimination on the basis of viewpoint. What business does PayPal have getting

01:18:00.900 into the political views of people using its platform? It doesn't need to be in the business

01:18:05.820 of content moderation. And yet last year, it was proudly announcing that that's what it was doing,

01:18:11.420 is discriminating and deplatforming people based on their political views. This was a continuation

01:18:16.120 of that policy. And they want to encourage other companies in Silicon Valley to follow their lead

01:18:21.920 and follow suit. This is the next wave of cancellation, which is we're not just going

01:18:27.220 to take away your free speech rights. We're going to take away your rights to accept payments,

01:18:31.120 to earn money, to transact. In other words, we're not only going to censor you, we are going to try and

01:18:36.340 starve you out until you have the politically correct views. PayPal and these other big tech companies

01:18:42.540 should not be allowed to do that. This should be agenda item one for the Republicans when they take

01:18:47.760 back Congress, which is to restore the rights of the common man to have speech and to earn a living

01:18:53.960 in this economy. Well, it's like the GoFundMe shutdowns during the Canadian trucker protests,

01:18:58.960 right? I mean, I heard my pals over on National Review talking about how if you're a bank and you

01:19:03.380 need a license to operate or any sort of government permission slip, this should be illegal. They should

01:19:10.040 absolutely be able to stop you from discriminating against your customer base, against them doing

01:19:17.800 business with you based on their political viewpoints. Go ahead, Freeberg.

01:19:21.560 Right.

01:19:22.560 No, I mean, but look, it started before politics. And I think that we need to be cognizant of the

01:19:28.480 fact that there were precedents set here. So about a year and a half ago, there was a claim made about

01:19:34.740 some pornography websites exploiting, I don't know if it was a child porn or a non-consent porn

01:19:42.540 that was uploaded. And the credit card network said, we're going to stop servicing these pornography

01:19:47.680 websites. And they stopped allowing payments to them. And then Bill Ackman earlier this year

01:19:53.700 went on a big crusade. I think this was in August, actually, where he said Visa, MasterCard,

01:20:00.020 and Amex need to stop making payment services to pornography websites in this country. They're

01:20:04.560 exploiting women and there's sex slavery and all sorts of other things happening.

01:20:10.240 And so it may be true that that is what's going on. But the precedent then gets set that the

01:20:15.060 mechanism for resolution isn't to go to the Department of Justice and file criminal charges

01:20:19.260 and get these issues resolved. It's to go to the credit card networks and get them to shut off that

01:20:24.400 service. And as soon as that happens, a precedent is now set that if there's something that the

01:20:29.520 majority disagrees with and that the majority thinks is morally wrong, then the majority

01:20:34.360 can leverage its voice with the network to turn something off. And so a lot of people I think

01:20:40.080 listening might say, you know what, that sounds reasonable. We should shut off payments to the

01:20:43.260 pornography websites. Then the problem comes around that when it's about the voice that you want to

01:20:47.780 hear, or it's about the service that you want to subscribe to, and you can no longer access it,

01:20:51.880 you can no longer get it, you can no longer earn. Now we take concern. Any precedent setting,

01:20:56.320 I think, creates the slippery slope where you have a real problem down the road on resolution.

01:21:01.100 Ultimately, I don't know what porn sites you're referring to. I'm not asking you to. So which

01:21:08.620 one specifically can we no longer hit? No, but I was just going to say, I know that, for example,

01:21:13.760 we did a lot of reporting on Backpage, which was really just a front for sex traffickers. I mean,

01:21:19.820 that's, I'm sure there's plenty of porn websites out there that aren't like that.

01:21:24.500 Yeah, he put this thing out here in August. And he went wild on Twitter. And he tried to get Visa,

01:21:31.920 MasterCard, Amex to stop payments to Pornhub, which I guess operates a very large network.

01:21:37.800 And they said that, you know, there's a lot of bad stuff going on, and it's not being properly

01:21:41.440 regulated. The point is that the mechanism of resolution there was to go to the payment networks

01:21:47.580 and get them to shut down the site, as opposed to going to the DOJ or going to a, yeah, going to an

01:21:52.500 authority to come in and investigate and resolve the matter that way. Yeah, yeah. Like, for example,

01:21:56.140 you see child pornography on one of these websites, you call the police. You don't call

01:22:00.460 the police. Yeah, but but now but now the precedent is set, which is, hey, if you have a loud enough

01:22:05.280 voice, you're Bill Ackman, you can tell the payment networks to stop accepting payment for

01:22:08.940 something that you think is wrong. You know, this becomes the standard. And now you're going to see more

01:22:14.760 more of this behavior. I'm not saying anything about whether or not the pornography site should

01:22:18.640 exist or not. This is simply about the mechanism that which we're now using to resolve things that

01:22:24.920 we're concerned about, or we have disagreements with, which is to go to these big networks and shut

01:22:28.580 down a service and shut down a voice. And this doesn't go through some government or regulatory

01:22:33.220 authority. Did you want to weigh in on that one, Sachs? Well, the founding document of our republic

01:22:39.320 says that all of us have inalienable rights. And inalienable means that they cannot be taken

01:22:44.480 away, but taken that they have been taken away. They've been taken away by big tech. These big

01:22:49.800 tech monopolies have worked together to restrict or limit or take away or deplatform us to take away

01:22:57.100 our rights to free speech and our rights increasingly to earn and to accept payments. And the only solution

01:23:02.620 to this, I think, will ultimately be an online bill of rights where the government steps in and says

01:23:07.400 these big, powerful monopolies, they cannot do this. They cannot discriminate against ordinary Americans

01:23:12.440 because the management of these companies have political beliefs that they want to impose on

01:23:17.080 the rest of the country. That should be completely out of bounds.

01:23:20.500 Yeah, they're now starting to slowly realize the error of their ways, like Facebook has decided it's

01:23:27.380 going to stop censoring COVID misinformation. Oh, thank you. Oh, we appreciate it. Now that it's

01:23:32.600 all turned out to be true, not all of it, but a lot of it that they censored. I'm going to ask you next

01:23:38.060 about Elon and the Twitter deal and what's going to come next and why David Sachs, after speaking

01:23:44.100 about this very issue issue on our show, got a subpoena in the lawsuit. What? We'll talk about

01:23:50.280 it next. And then the gut microbiome and why you may not want to continue taking your probiotic.

01:23:55.560 So David Sachs, you do us a solid, you come on the Megyn Kelly show and whammo subpoena in the Elon

01:24:07.100 Musk versus Twitter battle, which is which feels very wrong because you talk about that on your

01:24:11.700 podcast, too. But we apparently got you in some trouble not long after you appeared. They wanted

01:24:16.460 all your communications regarding Twitter with Elon and so on and so forth. What happened?

01:24:21.880 Yeah. I mean, no, no good D goes unpunished, Megan. No, I mean, I've been a commentator

01:24:26.840 throughout about this issue. And because of that, yeah, I got subpoenaed and depositioned

01:24:32.880 in this case. I told them and gave them everything I had, which certainly wasn't very much.

01:24:39.520 My lawyers have advised me not to comment further till it's over. So I guess I'll listen to their

01:24:44.860 advice. But yeah, it's, you know, it's called a non-party subpoena. I'm not a party to the

01:24:51.360 litigation, but they wanted to know what I know, which, like I said, wasn't much, but

01:24:55.340 you know, we've given them everything. I love that they, one of the things they wanted was

01:24:58.760 all the documents concerning any of your tweets, like, like you and your team sit, sit together

01:25:05.780 and you get your files together before you, before you put your 240 characters together,

01:25:10.380 whatever they are. Like you're a busy man. I'm sure you don't have time for that.

01:25:14.400 So it's, I mean, do most people extensively document their tweets? I don't think so.

01:25:20.800 No, I mean, it, it was, it, it, it always felt a little bit paranoid on their part. I think

01:25:25.300 if I were just to speculate, I think they bought into this media narrative that was created,

01:25:31.300 I think by the wall street journal, something like this, that there was this so-called shadow crew

01:25:35.280 is what they called it advising Elon Musk. It was a totally made up news story. And, but because I was

01:25:42.380 mentioned that article, I think that that, if I had to speculate, that's the reason why I got the

01:25:46.400 subpoena and deposition. And, uh, my guess is they were disappointed with, um, how little I knew about

01:25:53.260 the, the, the matter because almost all of my information has come from, um, what's been publicly

01:25:59.300 reported about it. Yeah. Well, just FYI. So this was an, uh, article in business insider from August

01:26:04.380 in which they, they quoted you calling the subpoenas harassment and a fishing expedition.

01:26:09.360 That's petty and vindictive. The subpoena, uh, 30 pages long request any communications with your

01:26:15.920 friends over the past six months, including requests for documentation relating to your

01:26:19.680 public tweets about Musk's purchase and on and on it goes. Um, I love all this. I think it's actually

01:26:26.260 very funny. And I, you know, in the end, I guess it's fine because they reached a deal. Elon is said

01:26:32.240 to be buying Twitter at the original purchase price. So do we believe, are you, can you comment on that?

01:26:37.000 Do we believe this is actually going to go through or do you, I just don't know anything that hasn't

01:26:41.360 been publicly reported. So because I am still under the subpoena and deposition, I'm not seeking to

01:26:47.720 reach out to Elon or something. Did you get a subpoena Freedberg? Did they want you to, or just,

01:26:52.080 just your pal, David? I got friends on all sides of this debate. So I'm kind of sitting here neutral

01:26:57.500 party. Um, I've got friends that are involved in the financing syndicate or, um, yeah, I, uh, and,

01:27:04.880 and friends at Twitter and on the board and so on. So I'm, uh, uh, I gotta be a little careful. Um,

01:27:11.240 but I, I think it's pretty clear that Elon sees an opportunity for doing something pretty significant

01:27:18.100 and transformative with Twitter. I think it's a very large user base that's very engaged. I think

01:27:23.200 we're all on Twitter all the time. And I think there's a lot of people like us and he sees the

01:27:28.220 opportunity to create a more open dialogue and an open forum where voices don't get shut down.

01:27:33.120 So I think the fundamental interest in the, in the platform is certainly there. And I think he's

01:27:38.400 obviously very, uh, encouraged to try and close this thing. The challenge is in this market,

01:27:43.760 some people have said that Twitter is probably only worth $15 billion if it were to just be

01:27:48.780 trading today. And he's doing the deal at $44 billion. So there's a syndicate of people that

01:27:54.100 are supposed to put money into this deal at 44 billion that are saying, Holy crap, I'm putting in

01:27:58.360 money at three times the original of the real value of this thing. What am I doing? And that's

01:28:03.020 what's creating a lot of tension on the other side. Like, is there a way we can cut a better

01:28:07.440 deal? Is there something else that we can do to get out of this? There are banks that are on the

01:28:11.020 hook for $13 billion of debt that are freaking out because they're not going to be able to sell

01:28:15.200 that debt at the price that they're paying to get into the deal. So it's, it's creating a lot of

01:28:19.880 tension and a lot of torment. Ultimately, I think he wants to get it done. I think the other side wants

01:28:24.360 to get it done. And, um, you know, I think there's going to be some pain felt by somebody

01:28:29.480 to get over the finish line here. Oh, let me, let me ask you a question now. So let's say

01:28:33.900 the, the very first thing that happened when Kanye started tweeting again, after Instagram shut him

01:28:39.460 down, cause he made an anti-Semitic remark over there and then they shut him down. So we went to

01:28:43.680 Twitter and then he made the Defcon three against Jewish people remark on Twitter. And, uh, so they shut

01:28:49.500 him down on Twitter. And, but the very first thing that had happened to Kanye when he reappeared on

01:28:52.940 Twitter prior to that tweet was Elon tweeted at him, welcome back to Twitter. And then he made

01:28:57.820 boom. How do you like me now? I do wonder what would an Elon Musk control Twitter have done with

01:29:06.100 a Kanye tweeting about, I'm going to go Defcon three on Jewish people. And I know you don't know the 0.99

01:29:10.860 answer, but what do you think? My guess is you'd let him keep tweeting. I think Elon's all about open

01:29:15.940 free speech. When I worked at Google early in, I worked at Google when it was a small private company

01:29:20.220 before the IPO and everything back in 2004. And the founders of Google, the founder of Facebook,

01:29:27.600 the founders of Twitter all had the same ethos, which is the democratization of access to information

01:29:33.540 to allow every voice a chance to proliferate and to speak their mind. The challenge and Reddit was the

01:29:39.880 same. And the challenge with all of these platforms ultimately is that very nasty voices get very loud on

01:29:45.400 these platforms. And then the rest of the audience and the rest of the community says, I don't want

01:29:49.400 those voices on here anymore. And all of these platforms ultimately resolve to being less open

01:29:54.780 and more editorialized and narrated and closed. And I think that's what's happened with Twitter.

01:30:01.240 And I think it's a bit of an idealistic point of view to say, let anyone say anything until you see

01:30:05.580 how nasty it gets. Just go to the forums on 4chan or go look at what Reddit used to allow. And you'll

01:30:11.020 recognize pretty quickly why most people said, I don't want that. And I don't want to be on here.

01:30:14.660 If you allow that to happen. So over time, maybe he'll change his point of view,

01:30:18.420 but I think he has the same sort of idealism that all of the founders of all of these platforms had

01:30:22.760 when they first started out. Yeah. There's a bedrock principle of our country that, which is

01:30:27.940 the answer to speech you don't like is not less speech. It's more. Now, wait, I got to pause you,

01:30:31.700 David Sachs, because if I don't get to why you shouldn't be taking your probiotic,

01:30:35.380 my, my hardcore listeners are going to be upset and I got to get that in. So David Friedberg,

01:30:40.140 in addition to his other talents, has been an angel, an angel investor in technology, food,

01:30:45.420 agriculture, life science startups. You bought the largest quinoa supplier in Canada, which is,

01:30:52.980 I think, why you guys call him the quinoa king. You know about a lot of these issues because you

01:30:59.280 put a lot of money there, lifelong vegetarian and so on. And I take a probiotic every day. And this

01:31:04.120 jumped out at me because you were saying on one of your recent shows, probiotics do not work because

01:31:10.100 they're single microbes. Instead, we should be considering, wait for it. Well, why don't you

01:31:16.220 tell him? What do you think works better? Well, yeah, this, you know, the research in the gut biome

01:31:21.820 really proliferated when DNA sequencing costs came down. It cost, you know, a hundred million dollars

01:31:26.700 to get your genome sequence. Now you can do it for $200. So DNA sequencing is so cheap. We started

01:31:31.780 sequencing human poop to see what was in the gut, what the gut microbiome showed us. And it turns

01:31:36.960 out there's 40 trillion bacterial cells that live in your gut and your body's only made up of 10

01:31:42.760 trillion human cells. So the gut microbiome is really a big part of your health. And it turns

01:31:47.760 out that that microbiome is releasing chemicals and absorbing chemicals that truly do modulate your

01:31:52.800 health. So now we can see what DNA sequencing, what's going on in the gut biome, what probiotics are

01:31:58.400 doing and how human health changes from the biome. And it turns out that a lot of probiotics,

01:32:02.680 they don't really inoculate your gut. They don't stay there. They don't live there because putting

01:32:06.880 a probiotic in your belly is like putting a house cat in the jungle. It doesn't have the right food to

01:32:11.420 eat and all the other animals will eat it. There's already an existing ecosystem in your gut. So the

01:32:16.660 best way to transform your gut microbiome is to use prebiotics. It's why we started this company

01:32:21.180 SuperGut. I'm not trying to promote the product, but the research really showed-

01:32:28.400 Yeah. I mean, the research really shows that the best way to change your gut biome to what we would

01:32:33.240 call healthier gut bacteria that secrete what are called short chain fatty acids. These are

01:32:37.940 little compounds that end up in your bloodstream, drop your blood sugar, modulate your metabolic

01:32:42.180 health. And there are other compounds that help you sleep better, reduce anxiety and stress.

01:32:46.340 So much of your health can be modulated by changing your gut biome. And the best way to change it is by

01:32:51.060 putting the right feedstock so that the good bacteria thrive and the bad bacteria die.

01:32:55.700 Wait, so now you're saying what I need to do is a prebiotic, but what I thought I was going to have 0.90

01:33:00.580 to eat fecal transplants or something. Yeah, you don't need to do that. So this is what's,

01:33:06.380 yeah, this is what's really interesting. Going back to my point, probiotics are one microbe.

01:33:10.520 You put them in a pill and you swallow them and they don't really last in your gut.

01:33:13.700 It turns out if you take the whole ecosystem of someone else's gut and you put it in your gut,

01:33:18.700 it changes your gut biome. So we can take the gut-

01:33:21.240 Somebody else's fecal matter. Yeah. So believe it or not, there are what are called

01:33:25.620 fecal microbiota transplants, FMTs. And there are research studies going on right now for multiple

01:33:30.500 sclerosis and a lot of other disease indications where people will take freeze-dried poop, put in

01:33:35.580 a capsule, swallow it, and it inoculates your gut, changes your gut biome, and actually modulates your

01:33:40.700 health, decreasing the frequency of things like MS attacks and lesions. And a lot of other disease

01:33:45.640 conditions are being tested for this. So it's a really incredible kind of advance. Now, I don't think,

01:33:50.940 no one thinks that fecal transplants are going to become standard medicine. It's really creating a

01:33:56.940 series of discoveries that are allowing us to figure out what microbes, what combinations of

01:34:01.860 microbes, what prebiotics can really change the biome and how they actually modulate disease and

01:34:06.760 human health. And that's a really burgeoning area right there. Nearly every human health and human

01:34:12.860 disease research department right now is running some sort of fecal microbiota transplant program.

01:34:19.000 So it's really interesting to see all this come to fruition. Our very common mainstay product that

01:34:24.520 we have is called SuperGut, which is just a prebiotic. And it's really targeted at people

01:34:28.980 with high blood sugar, high A1C, you know, for weight loss and so on. But I think there's a whole

01:34:34.560 set of medicine research underway right now. Wait, SuperGut. And what's the company?

01:34:38.620 SuperGut.com. Yeah.

01:34:41.080 Okay. SuperGut.com. All right. So just a viewer warning, do not try this at home because if you

01:34:45.920 just eat crap, you're going to wind up with E. K. Oh, very dangerous. Very dangerous. Don't do 0.85

01:34:50.020 that. Yeah. Yeah. This is all done through hospitals with research institutions. Yeah.

01:34:54.540 Yeah. Well, it's fascinating research and I love anything that settles that microbiome. And I will

01:34:58.820 say that once you get a better balance going there, you can eliminate bloating. I mean, it's like a

01:35:03.260 vanity thing, but it also feels uncomfortable to be bloated all the time. So I'm going to check this out

01:35:07.560 today. And I know that you, David Sachs, have eaten a lot of these bars and so on and you've

01:35:12.100 lost weight thanks to your pal. So thank you both for the tip, for the thoughts and all the wisdom

01:35:18.540 and insights. It's a pleasure to have you guys on. Thanks, Megan. Thank you. All right. I like that

01:35:23.100 a lot better than the Jason guy. Thank you, David Sachs. Darren Oleon is a health and wellness expert

01:35:30.580 who hosts a show with Zac Efron. He's here tomorrow. You're going to love it. See you then.

01:35:34.600 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 17, 2022

Biden's ＂Strong＂ Economy Spin, and Smears Over Ukraine Nuclear Concerns, with David Sacks and David Friedberg ｜ Ep. 413

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