“Trump Would’ve Won Without Musk” - Ian Bremmer DEFENDS Davos, Deep State & Global Elite Agendas | PBD Podcast | Ep. 542
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You're a New York Times bestseller. You've been shown in many different meetings with some people that would be considered globalists. You've spoken at World Economic Forum multiple times. Some people would consider them deep state. I've gone for 15 years. I can assure you that no running of the world is being done by the World Economic Forum. I see the need for a great reason. You don't think that's a little weird? No. Really? You don't think that's a little weird? Jesus Christ.

You're a smart guy. No, I am a smart guy. Don't go off. I think globalization is good. I think all of you guys are bots on this side. You guys are for sale. And the idea that that's true only of one party, not the other, is insane. Tear apart my argument. Trump sees that he has a tool, and he scattershot, uses it everywhere. I think that is one of the most irresponsible decisions by a president I have ever seen in my life. Honestly.

And why is he doing it? Because he wants to show he can? Do you know what happened to the Democratic credibility to me? Right here. It got hurt. Not hurt. This is not hurt. This is the first time in history. It's shattered. China today, they have advanced technologies. They're ahead of us. I don't know if you can say it because I think you're going to upset some of your friends. No, no, it's not that. Dinner will be canceled. I can say whatever I want. I can. I don't know if you can. I really can. I want to protect you. Don't say everything you want to say. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Very interesting guest today. Two and a half hour conversation. Ian Bremmer, geopolitical expert. For the last 26 years, he comes out with the top 10 global risks every year. This guy's gotten tens of millions of views. One of his TED Talks got 10 plus million views.

You know, spoken at World Economic Forum many, many times. He's been in that circle many, many times. I asked him about Klaus Schwab. I asked him about World Economic Forum. His answer is very different. I asked him, what do you think about the guy that talks about a great reset? What do you think about the fact that COVID happens in March of 2020? Four months later, Klaus Schwab writes a book called The COVID Reset or The Great Reset, COVID-19 Great Reset.

And he had his own opinions on it. We talked about Trump, the relationship with Musk was very, very... The way he explained the dynamics of how he views Trump and Musk leverage each other's relationship...

I've probably not heard broken down by anybody the way he did. This guy's a certified genius at 15 years old. He went to Tulane college by 16 years old, the college sends them to Russia and he's at USSR and he's staying right next to, you know, all the main events in Moscow with everything that's happening. And, uh,

Very rarely I do a two-and-a-half-hour podcast because I've got a meeting, I'm late to 30 minutes. But I really, really enjoyed this conversation. And I hope you do as well with the one and only Ian Bremmer. Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever signed right here.

You are a one-on-one? My son's right. I don't think I've ever said this before. How you doing? I'm doing good, man. Good? Yeah. An Armenian. Two Armenians in a room. Happens, right? I mean, it's a miracle, but it does happen every once in a while. Yeah, I feel the connection already. I see the connection as well. You know, obviously I've seen your stuff for many years. You know, you've done stuff that TEDx, TED Talks, 10 million views. You're always making your predictions every year of what's going to happen.

the risks, all that stuff. How does somebody wake up one day and say, I want to get into this space? How did it happen to you? So when I went to college, I was really young. I was 15. And I grew up with nothing. I grew up in the projects. I never traveled anywhere. I had a professor. This was back in 1986. I had a professor that was leading a trip to the Soviet Union.

This is when Gorbachev like first came in. It was, this was before reform. This is like super evil empire Reagan days. Right. And I begged him, take me to on this trip. And so here I am as a kid finding myself halfway around the world behind the iron curtain, authoritarian regime, communism,

crazy government, but meeting young people that in many ways are just like you and me. Fascinating. And then three years later, the wall comes down. So I was very much, you know, very impressionable in the right place at the right time. The world was changing, felt like democracy was winning. It felt like our ideas were actually, you know, sort of becoming, you know, helping people all over the world. And how could you not want to

do something with that, be a part of that. So that's what inspired me to want to understand different people everywhere and try to do something with that. - 15 years old, you go to Tulane. - 15 years old. It was not my fault. It's not like I said I want to go to Tulane at 15. - 15 years old, you're in a party town. What do you do? Where are you staying at? - One, you lie about your age.

Right off the bat. Well, girls are not going to date a 15-year-old. And it wasn't like I was going to troll high schools, right? No. So, I mean, I just, like, pretended I was just 18. I pretended I was normal. And then I joined a frat, and that didn't go so well. What happened? I don't know.

They promised they weren't going to haze and they lied. I couldn't really handle it, so I quit. But when you're 15 in college and especially at a party school, the hard thing is not your grades and the classes. The hard thing is trying to find a way to actually be a normal kid.

And so here I am by myself for the first time away from family and trying to learn how to socialize with people, how to just be normal. And that was, that took a lot of effort. How's, how's mom handling you? Like, was mom like, you know, we're taking one of our kids to a soccer camp, right? Uh, for IMG. And he,

He's going to be there for a week. Does he stay at the school? Does he stay with us? Does he stay at the campuses? And I said, how does mom handle you being gone at 15? How does she do that? Because mom's Armenian. Yeah. Mom's Armenian. My dad was German, died when I was four. Your dad died when you were four? Yeah. Yeah. They met. My dad was an enlisted man in the army and my mom was in high school. Met on Revere Beach. Yeah.

And she fell in love, quit high school, eloped with him because he was being sent out to Ecuador to be based. And she was an officer's wife. And so that was the background. So when he died, she went back to Boston, Chelsea, where her family was. And I mean, her life came crashing down. And I was her life. And then my brother later. Is that mom and dad there? That's mom and dad. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there you go. Wow. Four years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, four years old. What happened to him? Cancer. That's young. He was in his 40s. He was young 40s at the time. So you go into Tulane. Can you pull up the Tulane picture I just saw? You pulled it up. Oh, my God. That was a great scene. Really? You're playing chess. Oh, my God. That's a horrible photo. Seriously. That's a horrible photo. You're playing chess. Look at those David Stockman glasses. Look at the velour sweater. It's not good. I didn't know you were going to do this to me. I didn't know you were going to do this to me. That's cool.

That is cool. I haven't seen that photo in years. 15 years old? That is weird. So did you do a four-year program, like, you know, in a two-year thing? Is that kind of what happened with you because you were going through it fast? Or did you do a full four years? I did the full four years. But I traveled everywhere. I mean, I went to the Soviet Union a couple times. I went to Japan. I did my junior year abroad. I mean, I went from nowhere growing up in Chelsea, Massachusetts to traveling everywhere because there were all these opportunities. How old were you when you went to Russia? I would have been 16. Soviet Union. First time 16. Like, what?

You know, like, I don't know if you saw when Tucker went to interview Putin and he's explaining what the subways and all this stuff looks like, right? What was it for you? Impressional kid. You're going there. What did you notice? Subways were incredible, of course. And they're super, super deep underground. They were meant to be bomb shelters. All of this incredible marble artistry, grandiose. I mean, you know, communism. And it was meant to show the average Soviet citizen that this is Soviet power. It's accessible to everyone. But my first experience was very different from that.

It's a funny story. So this was the Hotel Cosmos, which was, excuse me, the Hotel Rosia. I was at the Cosmos as well, the Hotel Rosia. And it was in Moscow. It was right off Red Square. And at the time, it was the largest hotel in the world. It was where the Olympic athletes, the Americans, if Carter hadn't boycotted, would have been staying there.

And so here I am. That's the hotel, the Hotel Rocio. You see the Kremlin in the background there on the left. And there's the river. So anyway, there I go. And there's 10 of us, 14 of us on the trip, all students from Tulane and our professor. We're two to each room, these little single beds.

And, you know, you're trundling with your suitcase up the stairs, down these long hallways. And it was dark. And I was jet lagged. I'd never been jet lagged in my life before. I'm zonked out of my skull. I have no idea where I am. And I go to put the light on in the room because it's dark. So it's a single bed. And there's a clip-on lamp that is clipped to the little headboard on the back of my bed behind the pillow.

And so I go to try to turn the knob on the lamp. There's no knob. It turns out that it's on the wire behind the headboard. So I break rule number one in the former Soviet Union, which is never put your hand someplace you can't see. I reach behind the headboard. And as I go to turn on the light,

It turned out that the plastic casing had been broken, eaten through. My finger went into the copper wires. I electrocute myself and pass out. Get out of here. Swear to God. 16 years old. 16 years old. My first 10 minutes in like this hotel in Moscow and I had passed out on the bed. It was, and, and it just, you realize suddenly that, okay, this is not like in the United States, you,

you eat an apple pie and it says caution and it's really hot. There are no fucking caution signs in the former Soviet Union. Okay. So it's, it was just a real come to Jesus moment of, okay, Ian, you're going to need to like actually be a little more aware of your surroundings here. You're going to have to like pay attention. First experience. First experience. What else? What else was it for you? Like when, maybe when you left, you're on the flight back, you're talking to your roommate. What are you telling them?

I'm saying like, what an incredible mind blowing all of these different places. I thought that communists were all the same. I thought like the Soviet Union, there were all going to be these mindless automatons that hated us. Turned out, I mean, you had Armenians and you had Georgians and Azeris and Russians and Ukrainians, and they had different parts of the Soviet Union and they act

differently. Their culture was different. Their languages were different. I mean, and some of it I had some personal and cultural connection with. It was nothing like what I heard in the newspapers, you know, what I read in the Boston Herald, you know, when I was growing up as a kid. It was nothing like that. It was so much more rich.

When's the last time you went back to Russia? Oh, it would have been before the pandemic, but not much before. So 2019, 2018. Yeah. What was it like? What was the biggest difference from 18 to when you went in 86? Oh, wow.

- Oh, I mean, first of all, just how much more money has come into these places, right? I mean, a lot of these countries are now fully integrated into a global economy. And so you've got, that's another funny thing. Not my first trip to the Soviet Union, my second also as a student, undergraduate student, a couple of years later,

And I knew from my first trip there that they were super interested in all of these American consumer goods and technology that they had no access to. I mean, so these were the days where you'd bring a pair of Levi's blue jeans and they'd want to trade because they couldn't get them themselves. They'd want like a ballpoint pen. They couldn't get them. They wanted like, you know, anything that was like decent, basic American branded stuff.

So I went to the, remember the sharper image? Of course. Yeah. So, I mean, as a kid, I remember it was right off of Faneuil Hall in Boston and that was a super fancy shop. You couldn't buy anything from there, but it's cool. You'd like all this fancy stuff. So I went there, I told him I was going to the Soviet Union. I said, would you give me like a hundred of your catalogs so that when I go and meet these kids, I can show them the stuff that Americans have.

that we could just buy, which I thought would blow their mind, right? I mean, like, you know, sort of capitalism, like behind the iron curtain. And so I get there. I remember one of the things that completely blew their mind. This would have been in 88, 89.

This is the second time you went. Second time I went as a student. And there was a cordless phone, right? So a home cordless phone. Sharper image. Sharper image. Sharper image US. It was, it floated and it was waterproof and it was so you could use it in your swimming pool.

Now, imagine the orders of complete befuddlement that the average former Soviet would have with that concept. I mean, one...

Phones have wires. So how is it possible that you can be talking into this device that isn't physically connected? Secondly, what do you mean it floats? What are you talking about a swimming pool? Like what you bring it with you to the common swimming pool? No, your own swimming pool that a lot of them, my aunt had, who was like perfectly middle-class had a swimming pool in her backyard. You could have used it there on your floaty, right? And that's all of that was completely inconceivable, right?

for an 18-year-old kid in the Soviet Union. So that was kind of interesting. Yeah, I mean, I remember in Iran, I had never had, we were told, like, rich people eat this fruit called ananas.

Okay, pineapple. Pineapple, yeah. And banana. Yeah. So I'm like, oh, man, one day that would be so freaking amazing. So we would be every once in a while we would get Nutella. And if you got Nutella, German Nutella would come in. Let me tell you, we're fighting over Nutella. I mean, it was like everybody's fighting to get it done.

But we go to Germany, and for the first time I had, what do you call it, a banana. Yeah. Oh, my God. You'd never had a banana before. I'd never had a banana. How old were you at this point? 11 years old. 11 years old. First time I had banana. Ian.

I'm like, I cannot believe they kept this away from me for 11 years. And then I ate pineapple, you know, like full on. They're cutting it, not the one out of a can. And I'm eating this pineapple, seeing how sweet it is. So the innocence of a kid, you know, in Russia, you're seeing that phone float in water. You don't have to worry about wireless. It's got to be a big deal to somebody like that that's seeing it. But let me ask you, as an impressionable kid, 86, 88, 89, you're going there versus now.

for yourself, majoring in political science or poli sci. Yeah. And you're a brilliant kid. At 15 years old, you go into Tulane. It's not like you're very smart. You're very educated. What's changed for you politically from them? Like what events? Because this is your world. You've been making predictions for years.

Since I think I saw 2000, I think you started the firm in 88 or 98? 98, 27 years. So since 98, and then your prediction's been making every year. But what's evolved with you from the 1986, 1988, 89, first time you went to Russia to today politically? Well, 89 was this incredible moment where the United States actually won politically.

And one without a bullet being fired. One not because our economy was better, though it was. Not because our military was stronger, though it was. But because all of these people behind the Iron Curtain saw the way Americans and our allies lived and said, we don't want to tolerate the loss of these liberties. We want to have freedoms.

We want to have free speech. We want to have a free market. We want to live like these people. And so our political system, our civil society was, you know, the was leading by example. And it was something that I mean, if you think where we are today, when I mean, so many people want to come to the United States, but no one outside the U.S. would say, I want my political system to run like America's like you wouldn't say that today. But 35 years ago, you would say.

You would. And I think that that was, for me, that was really inspirational, that that was something I was a part of. Like I would say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was a kid every morning and I would, you know, put my hand on my heart and I knew it and I would sing the Star Spangled Banner. And those things all felt just like you were going through the motions when you're a kid in public school. But when you then go to the Soviet Union and when you see the wall come down, you see 15 republics become independent countries. And

And I was in Ukraine in 1992, and I was there for their first ever day of independence. Oh, wow. And you saw ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians all come out in the hundreds of thousands and celebrate the fact that they had independence from the Soviet empire. Suddenly, all those things that you did as a kid...

really mean something to you. They really inspire you. Like, oh, I'm proud to come from a system where I can do all of these things, where I can say all of these things. Proud to be an American. Absolutely. Or at least I know I'm free, right? Absolutely. And has that level of

Being proud to be an American, is it the same as it was in 89 as it is today in 2025 for you? No. Why not? It's a little different. Tell me why. I'm very proud to be in a country where I believe that it is still patriotic, essentially patriotic, to say what you disagree with.

to say when you think your political leaders are making mistakes. And Lord knows, as an entrepreneur who started his own firm from nothing and with no money, there's no other country in the world that you could have done that. So I'm enormously grateful to have been so lucky that I could be born in a country where we could do the kind of things that you and I do. That's incredible.

But I'm a little sad that we have not lived up to the promise of 1989 in 2025. Not the role of the dollar, not the strength of our military, not the fact that we have the best universities everyone wants to come to, but the fact that people don't look up to our political system, the fact that we're so divided in this country right now. That is something I'm not proud of. I don't like how divided we are. Were you proud of...

To be an American 24, when's the last time you would say, the last time I was proud to be an American, like 89, was when? Because I'm still proud to be an American. I get that. But that level. But like 89, it probably would have been, oh, definitely after 9-11.

Okay. Definitely after 9-11. I was in New York. I saw the second tower go down. You saw the whole city and the whole country come together. And we did some things that we shouldn't have done, and we over-egged all of that. But in terms of how the Americans felt about the values that we stand for and not tolerating being attacked by nihilists that just wanted to tear everything down, that made me really proud, absolutely. So...

You know, you said divided, where we are today as a nation being divided. This is the world you've been in since, like you said, 98, right? You've been doing this 27 years. How do we get there? Because, like you said, in 9-11, when 9-11 happened, I was working on Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder. I had just started a day before, Glendale, Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder. 9-11 happens. You're seeing...

in New York. No one cared if you're Republican, Democrat, Independent, white, black, Hispanic, Puerto Rican. Look, man, where's your kid? Let's go look for him. Where's your daughter? Let's go look for her. Where's your husband? Where's your wife? Where's your this? It was a whole different thing, right? What's gotten it to be where it's at today? And do you see us going back to being united again? Not soon. I mean, honestly, not soon. But I'm

but I'm an optimist. I think it's incredible that we're here. So of course it's possible. I think there are three big things that have happened.

One is class division and mobility have become a lot harder in the U.S. So, I mean, back in the 80s and 90s, the United States had some of the greatest class mobility of any advanced industrial democracy. Today, it has some of the least. So you can predict a person's wealth in the United States on the basis of their parents' wealth.

much more than you can in other countries like in the UK or Germany or Japan or South Korea. That's not the American dream, right? So the fact that a lot more young Americans today are not confident that they will have the opportunities that their parents or their grandparents or you or and I have had, that's one reason.

I think second is identity politics. I think there was an enormous amount of immigration that came to the United States without a feeling that American leaders were caring about the people that were already here. That's particularly true on the illegal immigration side, but I think it's true generally. The Europeans have already gone through that, and there's now consensus in Europe around that issue. The Americans are still very divided on that issue. And then the third is algorithmic.

The third is the breakdown in media and our information space, talk radio, cable news, social media, and increasingly AI, so that people around the world get their information in very, very segmented and fragmented ways that tear us apart. I think that those are the three biggest reasons why the United States today feels so much more divided than it did when you and I were growing up. So you're putting three is social media.

- Use a different word. You said, what was the word you used for the last one? - I said algorithmic. - Algorithmic, right. - But I mean, even before that. I mean, you remember when you and I were kids, the conceit of advertising is that 50% of advertising dollars are completely wasted. We just don't know what 50%. So you just throw money at the wall and you had three big networks and everyone listened to the same networks, they got the same news.

So even before social media, when you think about how people started segmenting when it was Lou Dobbs on CNN, you know, one of the first that really started segmenting, right? Or when it was in a Rush Limbaugh on talk radio. And definitely social media has done that, has amplified that in an exponential way. But this has been coming for a while now. So you said something very interesting, right?

When you said for Russia in 89, USSR, when Soviets saw, hey, the people want the same freedom that they have, right? Like when I lived in Iran, the way we got movies was bootleg. You didn't get movies because we didn't have access to movies. They're not going to show you the movies. You're going to see the movies or whatever, you know, they were showing us there. But we'd see the movies and like, wow, that's what America looks like. I want the American dream. I want to have something like that.

What was the mechanism or method that Russia saw what was happening to America where Russians revolted against their people? Because you'll hear the story about...

Reagan goes to meet with Gorbachev and is like, hey, what can we do? So look at your people. They're all driving the same cars, all this. Look at our stuff. Look what we got going on. You got to bring this here. It was almost as if Gorbachev was open to the idea. He was. Okay. He was. So was it more the people pushing the change or was it more Gorbachev saying, hey, man, I just feel like if I want to be a better leader for my people, I think we have to open it up like they did.

- I would say, I mean, much as I wanna say it was the people pushing for change, and certainly, you know, you had for years and years and years, the Americans standing tall with those captive nation parades and all of the people behind the Iron Curtain that wanted independence and wanted freedom. And we had dissidents that would get to the United States illegally, right? And they would, you know, become these incredibly inspirational stories about, you know, how much better it was in the US and how repressive it was in the Soviet Union.

And definitely, like there were a lot of big demonstrations that happened first in the Eastern Bloc countries and then in the Baltics, which, you know, had independence more recently and then in Ukraine and then even in places like Azerbaijan, Central Asia. Right. You'd see it.

But after that happened, Gorbachev started leaning into it. When Gorbachev first became general secretary of the Communist Party, the first things he did were not reform. The first thing he did was like the anti-alcohol campaign. He was kind of like Xi Jinping in the early days, right? He was like, no, no, we just need more control. And then when he realized that this wasn't working,

that the economy was falling apart, that they were falling desperately behind the Americans and there was no way to really fix it, he decided to go full on experimental reforms. And he did three different things, right? First, he opens the economy so that people can actually start their own businesses. They can experiment with cooperatives. And that was perestroika, that was restructuring. And then he created openness in the information space.

And then he did a third thing, which was self-accounting. He devolved power to these local republics and let the Armenians have control for local Armenia and let the Azeris have control for local Armenia. It's called Khosrashot. And he did those three things simultaneously simultaneously.

which is incredible for the people of the former Soviet Union, but I mean, was just giving away the keys to the kingdom to the Soviets no longer had the ability to repress, to impose control in a way that say in Iran today, the Iranians are, even though the Iranian people are,

are desperate to have freedoms. The Iranian people are desperate to be independent from the Islamic Republic. But the military in Iran has absolutely zero willingness to give away that kind of power. Gorbachev did that. Well, this is where I'm going, the reason why I'm asking this question. So do you think, because...

89, no social media. You got TV. A couple channels you got in Iran. We have two channels. And it's both ran by the government. So they control propaganda, what to tell you, how terrible America is and the evil empire and all this other stuff. But you had Voice of America that they were able to get. We couldn't get it. We only had the two channels that we could get in Iran.

But today, you got social media, right? So when you're seeing social media where kids have access to it in different parts of the world, and some countries are not happy about the fact that they have some social media platforms are available there.

Do you think that's maybe the reason why some countries are just sitting there saying, you've seen what happened with Trump in 2016 and him coming out with the campaign that he had and was successful, him beating Trump?

a Hillary Clinton type of a caliber person, which was this is not going to happen. This is David versus Goliath. Do you think this is why you're seeing a lot of malaise? Do you think this is why you're seeing the Orban? Do you think this is why you're seeing Maloney? Do you think this is why you're seeing folks that are kind of seeing what's happened in America where other countries' citizens are like, look, I kind of want that. That makes sense to me. These other ideas are not making sense to me. So it's harder for

for the establishment today to keep control because of social media versus what it was in 89. Oh, absolutely. I think that Bolsonaro doesn't win in Brazil in the previous cycle if it's not for Facebook.

I think that a lot of these leaders, that these populist anti-establishment leaders, many on the right, some on the left. I mean, you look at AMLO and now Shane Baum in Mexico, same basic playbook, right? Which is the establishment is corrupt and entrenched. There's a deep state. They don't care about you. We're going to do something completely different. That's how they win. And I think that social media and the ability to communicate directly with the people

with comparatively limited amounts of funds available is a completely, it's a game changer for, and it undermines the establishment in a lot of these places. So who, so the establishment, if we go through themselves, like there's a, I want to get your thoughts on this here, where the concern is.

One of the things that Trump did, you saw Jim Acosta just got fired, whatever you want to call him, stepping away from CNN. Booted to midnight. Whatever you want to call it. It's a way of saying, look, if you're going to quit, we're okay with it. What do you want to do? Go ahead. We don't have to pay the severance and all this other stuff. So he walks. But he's the OG guy with fake news, right? Your fake news. Your fake news. And then Trump started saying, fake news, fake news, fake news, fake news, fake news. And then, oh, shit, he exposed Trump.

a company Ted Turner started that was a very successful company, CNN. And now they're $400 million down there, letting go of 200 million people, 200 employees, MSNBC, now for sale, CNN, now for sale. Fox, top 500 of 500 shows since I think election day, November 5th, have been all Fox shows. And the first one is 507, I think it was somebody that was CNN, I don't know who it was.

Why do you think folks who before were like, well, no, this is how you got to think. No, I mean, I got to take this shot. No, I got to do this. No, this is what they're telling me to do. The level of disruption of social media to the establishment and media, not just social media, media, what effects do you think social media has played for people to kind of start saying, wait a minute, I don't believe you. You're full of shit.

You just try to play games with me. You lied. No, no. This is not cool what just happened here. And RFK, I'll never forget first time Joe Rogan had Bobby Kennedy on his podcast. He says, I thought you were a kook. I think that's the word he used. He says, I thought you were a kook before I had you on here. I'm like, who is this guy? What are you talking about? Vaccines are good for you. All this stuff is good for you. And then...

You know, like maybe he's got something interesting to talk about. Some of the stuff he's saying is kind of interesting. I'm interested. I'm interested. I'm interested. And then now yesterday his hearing, one of the guys says, RFK, you know, Robert, would you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist?

And he says, you know, a lot of people say that. But was I a conspiracy theorist when you guys were told, we were all told that vaccines, if you take it, you won't be able to give the virus to another person? Did I get that wrong? How about the red eye when you guys, the red dye, did I get that wrong? How about when you guys said this? He's kind of going through it, right? Do you think the chokehold, the establishment, media, you know, even our educational system had on the populace,

They have now Trump and others have broken and these guys don't know how to get control back of it like they used to once have. So I'm a political scientist, not an epidemiologist. So I'm not in a good position to try to debate on where RFK is and isn't right or wrong.

But I will tell you more. That's actually not where I'm going. I know. I'm not going to. I understand. But I'm saying more. But more broadly. Right. Right. In terms of whether I think the establishment media has gone way too far on a bunch of issues. You look at the the covid starting with a lab leak.

in Wuhan, China. And that was something that clearly was a narrative that the establishment media decided that they did not want to go ahead with.

And I think they did a lot of damage to themselves as a consequence of that, as the Biden administration itself in the last weeks of their presidency did a study and came out and said, yeah, this looks actually very plausible to us. Well, they weren't saying that, you know, a couple of years ago. I think those sorts of things undermine. I think that when Fauci was aware that, you know, that that it.

N95 masks could be effective, but other masks weren't. And he wasn't saying that to the people because he didn't want to cause panic and there weren't enough of them. Well, that comes back and bites you in the ass, you know, when you're not being transparent and accountable to people. Now, more broadly, more broadly than the stuff around disease and epidemiology,

is I think that the Democrats have gone way too far on a bunch of issues that do not align with where the base of the country actually is, the base of the population. I think the Republicans have done that on one big issue, right? For the Republicans, it was abortion.

We had for 50 years Roe versus Wade. Call it settled law, call it unsettled law. It was very messy, right? And it made nobody completely happy, but it happened to reflect where the average American was on abortion. And therefore, it was a pretty good compromise.

And when a whole bunch of Republicans decided that they were going to push and push and push the bounds, they ended up losing in a lot of different places. Right. And Trump and Vance worked really hard to pull that back over the last campaign and say, hey, hey, hey, we're not trying to like do a national abortion ban and stuff like that. Well, the Democrats.

got over their skis on every identity issue. They went way, way farther than the average American was willing to tolerate. They ended up getting completely captured by a small number of elite, well-educated progressives

in urban centers and they lost the rest of the country on those issues, on migration. They completely lost the country and decided they were going to stand for some progressive values that the average American would not tolerate. And I think that when you do that...

And when the media that supports you reflects that, you lose Americans. Now, is the answer to be found on social media given sort of the I'll do my own research, I don't need to be credentialized, there's massive amounts of verified people that aren't really people, they're bots,

that algorithmically you're promoting an immense amount of disinformation? No, I don't think social media is a better answer for civil society. I don't think that we will become more unified by leaning into algorithmic learning. But I do think that establishment media, mainstream media has destroyed their credibility in the United States over the past 10 years.

How does the Democratic Party recover? I had Ro Khanna here just a day ago. Yeah, just a day ago. By the way, great conversation. But we had him just a day ago. And we're sitting there talking about what policies do you have left for the average day-to-day person to agree with you that's not an extremist? What do you have left? I'm actually curious because you used to be the party that's against war. Now it's the Republicans. Yeah.

You used to be about, you know, hey, working Americans, rich got richer under your term and gas prices went up under you. You used to, what part of it do they have the edge over argument-wise, purely argument-wise? I don't know what argument they're winning.

You know, hey, no taxes on tips. That's low and middle income earners, waiters, waitresses. He said that first two weeks that Kamala says that. Hey, you know, we're going to finish the war. I just don't want people to die. The other side is causing. What argument do they have left? Well, if you're becoming a party that wins with wealthy Americans and loses with poor

labor union members, loses with the working class, loses with middle class. Clearly the Democrats have lost the plot on this, right? I mean, Republicans this time around won with average Americans. That's insane. Well, it's a big difference from where they were. By a billionaire, by a media guy. How did he...

connect with them where the average guy's like, dude, that guy's going to take care of me much more than this guy that's from Delaware. I feel like he's the one. I feel like he's going to do a better job than Kamala Harris. So I'm going to have two answers for you. Please. And they're very different answers. One is that the Democrats really believed

that democracy needed to be on the agenda. If it was just an issues election, they weren't going to win. They had to go after Trump because he's going to destroy democracy. There were very few Americans that actually voted who believed that democracy was the most important issue. But of those that did, they voted more Trump than Harris.

And isn't that fascinating? And that is something the Democrats... How do you handle that? Were you shocked? No, not at all. So you saw this coming? I thought Trump was going to win, yes. But that'll be my second argument. But let's start with this one, which is...

Yes, Trump has done a bunch of things that do not reflect that he is someone that really cares about long-term rule of law in this country. In my view, he is not the poster child for great American governance standards and values historically. I wouldn't put him in that category. But so many people in this country believe that the reason democracy is broken is not because of Trump. He's a symptom.

The reason democracy is broken is because for decades you have special interests in this country that have captured the political system.

and the Uniparty, and the Deep State, and call it whatever you want, but the average person sees that the leaders don't care about them. The elites don't care about them. The political leaders, the business leaders, the media leaders, the university leaders, the whole damn lot. And so why would they vote for Trump? Because they believe that just keeping on keeping on, voting for the establishment time and time and time again is going to do more wars and send poor kids to Afghanistan and Iraq and God knows where else.

and promote free trade that takes, they believe, jobs away from average Americans, support collective security and sending lots of money to other countries. And they're like, well, that may be good in principle, but if you're not going to help me, why should I support that? If it's just going to help the top 1%, why should I support that?

I think globalization is good, but globalization is only good if your leaders also take care of you. So I think the fact is you have lots and lots of Americans that feel like they needed someone that was prepared to break the system.

to challenge the establishment. And that has happened in lots of countries, not just in the United States, but Trump took advantage of that. And not just the first time, but the second time when they knew exactly who he was, when it wasn't an experiment, when he's already gone through the impeachments and was almost assassinated and got convicted and everything else. And people said, no, no, no, exactly. He's fighting against those guys. I want this guy. Now,

Now, there's a second reason that Trump won, and this one is not an American reason, but it's really important. I know you've seen how many elections we've had all around the world over the last 12 months. We have more coming in the next few months. Overwhelmingly, incumbents lost. And that is mostly a hangover from the pandemic.

That is, this was, I mean, of all the things you and I have experienced as Americans, the pandemic has been the most disruptive in our lives. Right.

Every American felt that, don't care your walk of life. The economy was completely disrupted. Supply chains were completely shut down. A massive amount of money, trillions and trillions of dollars were spent. And also people didn't move. They didn't go from state to state. They didn't go from country to country. You finish the pandemic, inflation is at historically high levels. Migration is at historically high levels. Any leader that is holding the bag around the world is gonna lose in that environment.

And here's what's interesting, is that if you were an alien looking down at all the elections over the last year, the U.S. election was one of the closest. I mean, you would be forgiven for asking, why did Harris do so well? And the answer is not that she was a good candidate. The answer is that the U.S. economy was doing comparatively better and inflation was comparatively lower than what they had in Europe, for example. Right.

or in Canada, for example. And that's why that election was close. That's why, despite everything we've been talking about, Trump didn't break 50%. Yeah, I mean, she lost seven states. Oh, I know. Seven swing states. I'm just comparing it to other elections around the world. But then this is what it makes me think about. Rob, you know what I want to know? And maybe you already know the answer to this question. Of the incumbents that lost, you said majority of them lost. Almost all of them, yeah. Almost all of them. What percentage of them were liberals-

and more democratic, socialist, progressive policies that were aligned with what America and Biden did. What percentage of them? And this is for the 2022 midterms. Yeah, no, not midterms. We're talking 2024 because in the last 12 months, we've known for the biggest election, you know, globally. I want to know what percentage of the incumbents who were lost had identical policies to Biden the way they handled COVID-19.

not the way maybe a DeSantis handled COVID. So interesting point, right? Is UK was one of these elections and the conservatives got completely hammered and labor came in. Why? Anti-incumbent. It's like whoever happens to be in power through that, it's not about the policies. You think so? Absolutely. Because it was such an incredible shock and people just said, I want these leaders out. I don't care who they are. I want them out.

I mean, in India, Modi, who's one of the most popular leaders of any democracy in the world, massively underperforms his expectations and has to have a coalition government. In Japan,

LDP leader, right? Again, center-right. It's kind of a uniparty, now has to govern in coalition. Now, there were plenty of examples on the other side too, but I think that the through point here is that if you are in a position of power in that environment, it's a real democracy and the election isn't rigged, you just got hammered.

And that is the reality. Yeah. Did you ask Chad GBT, Rob? Is that the one you asked? I did. That's where that information comes from. So it says over 80 countries representing nearly half of them. But can you find out how many of them are, okay, that's what you're doing? This gave me United States against. I want the world. So it says over 80 countries amongst democracies, more than 80% of incumbent parties experience a decline in support compared to previous elections with many suffering historic losses. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Okay. But I would want to know,

based on what? I understand with UK, they had a lot of weird things that they were dealing with. And I wonder how much, okay, so maybe let me go to a different question with this. Do you think if it was Biden and he doesn't step away, do you think he beats Trump? Oh God, no. Okay. So neither one of them. No. So neither one of them. I mean, Biden gets hammered much worse. How about Josh Shapiro?

I think that anyone in it would have been easier for Shapiro because at least Shapiro wasn't as much of an incumbent. I mean, Harris and Biden are responsible. Put him in the same camp. Put him in the same camp. How about Newsom?

Again, I would say if you are looking at a change election, then, you know, any even Josh Shapiro and Newsom would be seen as largely politics and policy and politics. So so so but but even if you go to UK, how do they handle covid?

I don't know if you handle COVID the way the Sandys handle COVID. No. You know, even if you go to a lot of these, there was some people you can consider conservative, but they still weren't handling it the way it was like open, feel free, what do you want to do? I mean, the best state in handling COVID was probably the state of Florida, my opinion. You may disagree, my opinion, right, on what happened. No, the reason why I'm asking this, I don't know if it's all COVID related. Maybe it is, maybe it's not.

A lot of things happened that were just weird. Like you said that earlier, they try to really push on the identity politics a little bit too much. And they try to say a lot to cave to the one percenters who are very loud and, hey, pay attention to us. Well, we're going to do this and we're going to we're like they're sitting here talking about RFK is not qualified to be the HHS secretary of, you know,

Did you forget Biden's HHS? This is him. This was our Biden's HHS director. I mean, you know who this is, Rachel Levine. You know, we're supposed to sit here and say he's qualified, but RFK is not. So to the average person, logic made no sense the last four years on what happened. And for me personally,

So maybe let me go a different direction because now you're giving good perspectives here. Trump, does Trump win? Take Bobby that goes with Trump. Take Tulsi. Take Rogan. Both Democrats. Take Musk. Yeah, okay. Okay. With which one of them does he not win? As a...

So say that Musk doesn't get behind him and puts a quarter of a billion dollars and go to Pennsylvania to campaign for the days that he did and does the Twitter spaces that gets a billion views. Yeah. Say Tulsi doesn't go to Trump. Yeah. Say Bobby doesn't come out and walk out. Say, you know, who's the other one I'm missing? I'm missing one. Tulsi, Bobby, Elon Musk. Say Musk is with which... And you said Rogan. Yeah, of course. With Rogan, right. Yeah. Which one of them would he have still won? I...

Look, I think that, again, the fact that we had and it's still going on. I mean, the Germans just had their government implode. Right. And Canada just had Trudeau implode. I mean, we are seeing across the board that this is a horrible time to be an existing leader and be attached.

to whatever it is that's happening, attached to this part of the economic cycle, this part of the migration cycle, this part of the information cycle that goes with that. So, I mean, my view was that Trump was

Not a prohibitive favorite, but a fairly strong favorite, irrespective of each of those individual components. Like it was going to be a fairly Herculean task for the Democrats to hold power for another four years after that.

Given where inflation was, given where migration was and how they weren't able to handle either of those things. Gaza was also an issue, right? Because there were a lot of people that didn't turn for Trump but didn't vote at all. They lost a fair number of young progressives because they were seen as too close. Free Palestine community. Absolutely.

Absolutely. That hurt them, right? Of course. So, yeah. I mean, do I think that it matters that Elon threw $250 million and actually targeted it well in seven swing states? Yeah, I think that matters. Do I think RFK helped with people that might otherwise not have shown up? Yeah, I think that matters. All those things matter. But you're saying without them, he would have still won. I think I still would have expected...

Very close race, but I thought Trump was going to win this race. So Bobby doesn't come out. Tulsi, Elon, Rogan, none of these guys come out. You're saying he still wins without him. I do. I absolutely do. Well, that's so then then. OK, case study wise, the part I'm going with is the following. Here's what I'm trying to see if it happened or not. OK, I'm trying to really put myself in a place to believe what you're saying is the reason why that happened.

is to say nobody was going to win. It could have been anybody as president. And even if, let's just say, let's completely change it up. Let's say somehow, someway, 2020, Trump steps out. And let's say DeSantis became president in 2020. I'm just making things up here. You're saying even DeSantis wouldn't have won on his first term.

I'm saying DeSantis in 2024 wouldn't have won, would have had a really good shot. No, no, no, no. Hear me out what I'm saying. Stay with me here. What I'm saying. Okay. So Trump wins 2016. Yes. Okay. 2020 election, your COVID starts, whatever, March 10th, they shut down, you know, all this stuff's going on. Great. So say in 2020, Trump's like, I'm so sick of this. I'm going to go back to my regular life. Yeah.

And guess what? I think DeSantis has done a good job. He gets behind DeSantis and DeSantis runs for president. Oh, in 2020, you didn't have the same issue. Hang on one second. So then say DeSantis wins. He's the president 2021. Yeah. It's his first term. Mm hmm.

He's now going to compete for a second term as an incumbent. Right. But he's going to go against who? Kamala, Newsom, Josh, and all those guys. Someone, yeah. You're saying DeSantis would have still lost. He would have lost. He probably would have lost. I think the anti-incumbent sentiment is overwhelming. I don't know about that. I get you. All I'm saying is that, look. Well, let's debate it because I want to tear apart my argument because I want to really go with it and tell me, Pat, I still think DeSantis would have lost.

We don't know what DeSantis would have governed. What I'm saying to you is, well, no, let's just say DeSantis governed the way he governed the state of Florida. Mm-hmm.

If DeSantis governs the way he governed the state of Florida, do you think DeSantis would have won 2024 election? I think he would have probably had a better shot, right? In the same way that Biden staying in is like a complete disaster because he clearly is not capable of running the country for four years, right? It's just not possible. So again, I hear you, but I think it's important. Americans need to look outside the U.S. more than they do.

there are a lot of democracies out there. They're facing a lot of the same problems. We talk about trade, we talk about migration, we talk about the media space. This is not, you talked to, you asked about Facebook and social media and you asked me about Millet. You could have asked about Bukele and El Salvador, all these leaders. So you're willing to talk with me about all of these like grassroots factors that are causing things all over the world. But then when we talk about the impact that has on an election,

after a unique, extraordinary, global time of crisis. Global time of crisis. And it turns out that that leads to overwhelming pushback against people in power. Let me present it to you and tear apart the argument. So let's say in a...

Fantasy world. Trump steps out in 2020. Yeah. And he says, guys, you know what? I'm not dealing with this. I want to go spend time with my grandkids and go golf. I got 20 more years to live. I want to enjoy my life. I can't stand politics. Plausible. I'm out. DeSantis comes and I get behind him. DeSantis wins 2021. You know, January, whatever it is. DeSantis, the president, there is no J6. Okay? Okay. He wins. Let's go through which events he would have handled in a different way. Okay. So now...

Do you think DeSantis being a president, Trump still tweets? No. No, meaning do you think DeSantis becomes president in 2021? Do you think Trump is still going to be loud and say stuff and tweeting? Not as much. Okay, maybe not as much. Do you think DeSantis being president...

the border would have been handled the same exact way? No. Okay, so stay with me here. That's important. Okay, stay with me here. So I don't think the border would have been handled the same exact way. So we're in 2008, the unaccompanied alien children, UACs. In 2008, Bush's last year, we had 8,000 UACs. We're in 2022, we had 148,000. It's not going to happen under DeSantis. Correct. Okay.

So America was sick of that. Number two, do you think he would have allowed for the amount of abuse that took place for kids to not go to school and leaving kids closed and, you know, been able to control with the funding for some states that are abusing and they're not letting kids go back to school? Probably not.

OK, probably not on how he would have handled because he would have probably shared similar policies that he was doing in Florida across the board nationwide. But the Democrats, Democrats in opposition also wouldn't have been leaning into the crazy populists, the crazy progressive stuff on identity politics to the degree that they were in the when they have power in the White House. Stay on COVID. To me, stay on this COVID part. So now we're talking COVID and school shutdown.

OK, if they opposed him and they said, who the hell you think you are? Our job is to protect the kids and we're going to be able to protect it. And Mayor Rio Grossa, text us if you see people that are driving in the streets because we told people to stay home if they're non-essential and da-da-da-da-da.

Okay, if they oppose DeSantis and DeSantis is saying this policy, it would have backfired on the progressives still, right? Let's go to the third one. Do you think a war would have happened with Russia and Ukraine? I don't think so. Yes. Do you think it would have still happened? Absolutely. Do you think Hamas and Israel still happens? Probably, yes. Okay, so you're putting those two as a yes. So meaning you're saying Putin wouldn't necessarily have the fear towards Russia

DeSantis as a president. Okay, fair. Absolutely. Okay, fair. That's fine. Let's stay there. So then the next one, progressives talking about

Puberty blockers for kids and the LGBTQ and the transgender. We have to make sure we do this. And a Randy Levine. What is his name? Rachel. Rachel Levine. Yeah. He's not going to be in there again. Less of an issue. But because the Democrats aren't in the White House. You're right. So that's exactly where I'm going with you, because the argument I'm trying to make with you is.

The incumbent wouldn't have lost here if a DeSantis was president. I hear you. Because I think it's policy-based, not just because all incumbents lost.

Whoever it would have been, they would have lost. I don't know if I buy that argument. Again, I think that inflation in the United States absolutely would have been at the same rough levels if we had DeSantis for the last four years. Tell me why. In what way? Because the reason for inflation in the U.S. and globally is because you had these

First of all, because you needed to throw a lot of money in the teeth of the pandemic. That had to happen. And secondly, because you shut down global supply chain. And when it reopened, it was reopening at different times in different places. Remember, China had zero COVID for way too long. Europe was opening at some times and wasn't. U.S. different times as well. The ships aren't in the right places. You're paying massively more to get...

All of that is happening. That's an enormously important issue. That's a pocketbook issue. People don't care if their wages are going up if they're paying more for eggs on a regular basis. Listen, used car prices used to – I couldn't believe a guy offered me to buy my – I bought my car for $100,000. Guy offers me $110,000 two and a half years later. I'm like, what are you talking about?

He says, yeah, because the chips, whatever's going on with the chips, you know, all the – you went to a watch store. You're trying to buy a watch. There are no watches out there. They're not even making watches. Like, we don't have any watch. Everything is empty. So you're right. I'm with you on that part. So I'm prepared to accept that if you ask me, would DeSantis have been a stronger incumbent in an environment where incumbents are getting crushed everywhere around the world? Would he have had more of a chance? Yeah. Yes. Yes.

But do I think he would have won? Would I bet on that given that? I would say no. Okay, so you said earlier you used the word deep state and you used one other word. I don't know what word you used before the deep state, but something around the lines of that same community.

Do you, for somebody that you've spoken at World Economic Forum multiple times, you're a New York Times bestseller, you've sat down with a lot of different people, you've been shown in many different meetings with some people that would be considered globalists, some people would consider them deep state and all this stuff. Do you believe at this phase in 2025 with what we saw the last four years, do you believe there is such thing as a deep state or do you think that's just a term that's thrown around as a

Fear porn word. Like all of these things.

they resonate because the basis of the argument has some truth in it. So if you ask me, is there a deep state in the sense that there are people at the World Economic Forum or the Council of Foreign Relations or the Bilderberg Group, all of which I have attended, right, that are actually making it, that have their hands on the levers of power and are strategically figuring out here is how we're going to manipulate and stay in power. No.

These organizations have virtually no power in and of themselves, and they serve as networking organizations to help people get deals done. You think Klaus Schwab is a good guy? I didn't say that. I said that wasn't the question you asked.

Klaus Schwab is someone I know and have known for a long time. He is not someone that I would say is a warm, fuzzy, sort of classical, liberal, care about everybody in the world. The fact is that I wrote a book, not my latest one, but two books ago, called Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism. I think globalism has utterly failed.

in the United States and around the world. A large number of incredibly wealthy people that have bought access to power have used that to advance their own interests against the interests of people that are now saying we're not going to tolerate that anymore. I think that's an incredible, incredible injustice. So I'm not a globalist. I believe in globalization.

Because in the last 50 years, we've managed to reduce poverty and increase a global middle class that can actually live longer. We've managed to like educate women. We've managed to urbanize. We've managed to reduce infant poverty. We've, you know,

We educate people. Those are all great things. Globalization is wonderful. I love the fact that people and goods and services and ideas move faster and faster around the world. And the people like you and I, our families can get the hell out of where we were and make something of ourselves. I believe in all of that. But globalism, the idea that if you can get your hands on power, you can promote these things and not care about the people in your own country. I don't accept that at all, at all.

But my point is, because you asked me about the deep state, you didn't ask me about, like, is Klaus Schwab a good guy? The deep state is true insofar as there are

a class, a tiny class of people that don't care whether it's Democrats or Republicans, they will find a way to ensure that they are close to power and that they are using that to get outcomes that benefit them and not outcomes that are free and fair competition in a well-regulated free market. And who gets screwed? The average American gets screwed. Of course they do. Of course they do. So is that a deep state? I would argue that that is a component of, that's a kleptocratic state.

oligarchical system. It's a little bit like Berezovsky in the early go-go Russian days. Was Berezovsky and Yeltsin, were they good for the average Russian citizen after the Soviet Union collapsed? No, it was a disaster for them. They managed to take the wealth of the country and put it in their own pockets. So deep state. Let's stay on that and then we'll go to Klaus Schwab. So let's talk about deep state. So you think, yes, probably there's a deep state on both sides. Fair. Okay. So...

The question that I would ask when I think about the deep state, people that don't want to give up the card, right? The control card, whatever you want to call it, right? Mitch McConnell. Mark Zuckerberg.

I would put the politician guys first. Let's go McConnells, Schumers, Pelosi's, some of those guys that like to have the power and the control, right? So put them there. The story that came out with Barry Weiss and Speaker Johnson, I don't know if you saw that, where she's doing a podcast with Speaker Johnson, and he says, for nine weeks...

I'm the speaker of the flipping house and I'm trying to get a meeting with Joe Biden. Everybody's telling me he's not. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. He's busy. He's busy. Couldn't get the meeting. They're protecting him. What are you talking about? They're protecting him. Yeah. He's like, hey, President, you signed. I said, I never signed that.

What do you mean you didn't sign this? You signed this for, you signed this. I never signed it. I was at the NATO's 75th anniversary in Washington. I met with world leaders that told me in their meetings with Biden, Biden didn't recognize them. I mean, it was extraordinary that Biden still was running for president at that point. It was extraordinary.

Obviously, there were people around him that were doing everything possible to ensure that the actual state of his health on a day-to-day basis was obscured from the rest of the world. I completely accept that. Right. So when you have... And then he says...

we're sitting in the office, and he says, who's in the room? Hakeem Jeffries, I think he said. He said Kamala Harris and one other name, Schumer. He said, can you guys give him a few minutes to talk to the speaker? And they almost didn't want to leave. And they did. And they left, and he spoke with Johnson directly. So the deep state, Kai, if you sit there and you think about the deep state, again, go to DeSantis. If DeSantis was in,

And he's dealing with that. You think he's going to be helping those guys out? Helping the Democrats? No, the deep state. Whoever it is. You think the deep state is going to like him? You think the deep state would like a DeSantis? Absolutely. Tell me why. Well, I mean, I think about... More than they would like a Trump?

More than they would like a Trump. It's interesting. Trump is more transactional and more pay for play. So if you're someone like Jeff Yass, he will flip on TikTok because you've given money to his campaign. So, I mean, in a way that I think DeSantis would be less overtly transactional. I think that's a fair point you make.

But, I mean, if I think about how comfortable an awful lot of big donors are with all of these people, I mean, it is true that more billionaires, a larger number of billionaires gave money to Harris than gave money to Trump. That's certainly true.

But if you ask me how the American system feels broken, it's not because we're becoming a dictatorship. It's because special interests with a lot of money ensure that they pay for almost every congressional race, House and Senate, Democrat and Republican, and the presidential race. And it's $3 billion, and it takes 24 months, and it's a subversion of democracy. And the idea that that's true only of one party, not the other, is insane.

It's insane. So we all know that, I mean, like no matter who comes in, you know, the people that are doing really, really well in the United States keep on keeping on. The comparison is not even close to it. If you look at the money that goes from special interest to the left and the right, it's not even close. Have you ever looked at the numbers? At the total numbers? Have you seen what kind of numbers are being raised? Have you seen how much money a...

Trump race versus a Biden? Have you seen how much of a Trump race versus a Kamala? Are you seeing where $1.5 billion for Kamala in a span of six months disappeared and, you know, celebrities are getting paid? I certainly saw how much more Harris was able to raise in this last cycle than Trump did. But if you look at Senate races for Democrats and Republicans across the board, I think those numbers are pretty comparable. And those are big races. I'm not, I'm not,

But when you... I'm talking specifically... But you're asking about DeSantis. So, I mean, I'm just saying DeSantis raised a lot of money, right? He did raise a lot of money. But I'm going back to the idea that why is it that special interest groups... Like, if you go to Rob, can you pull up presidential campaign contributions? Like, how much they've raised by president? When you see Biden's number, I mean...

Go to images if you could. By president. I don't think that's the one. There's one that shows how much each of them raised. I think Brandon may have sent it to me. Yeah, and Biden's number is astronomical on what he raised. They're not giving the money to him because they believe on how great of a speech he gives and how great he's going to negotiate. Of course not.

Yeah. Again, I would compare the United States with any other advanced industrial democracy. You look at the Republicans, you look at the Democrats, and you would say, wow, the United States is so out of whack.

compared to every other country. You know, you have an election in Canada and you're talking about raising like, you know, sort of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Germany, I have friends that are running in Germany right now. These are tiny, tiny races. And you're not able to self-fund in the way you can in the United States. Okay, so check this out. Watch this. Okay, can you zoom in a little bit? So check this out. 84. Who runs in 84?

Okay, 84 is Reagan. Yeah. 77 million versus 149. Yeah. Go to 88. Okay, he's running on a second term. Of course, he's going to raise more money because he's on a second term. 92. Yeah. Bush Sr., okay, the VP becomes a president. 96, Clinton. I think that's Clinton goes against Bush. Still, look at red, 2000. Now go from 2000. Yeah. Okay. Blue, Trump.

Blue, look at Obama. Blue, 2012 Obama. Blue, 2016 Hillary. Blue, look at that one right there. $3.1 billion. And then go to 24, Trump against Obama.

You know, the number of money going to Republican candidates versus Democratic candidates. What's that $206 million? Because obviously the Republicans got a lot more money than $206 million. Go a little bit lower, Rob. This is statista. Okay, go and look at the top so you can see exactly what the top is. Top spending of President Kennedy, Majority Leader, from 1984 to spending. This is spending. So when you're looking at that kind of money that's coming in, why is special interest so interested in,

And the Democratic Party, is it because they're bought? Is it because they'll take money and do anything for them? Why are they putting more money on the other side? See, to me, when I'm looking at this, and the reason why I went back and asked you a question earlier, where I said, I had Ro Khanna here, I'm like, what is left for you guys? Is it the fact that there's just more money coming to you? So because there's more money coming to you, it makes it seem like you guys got the policies? Or was the last four years during COVID,

So phenomenal because they went so aggressive on the offensive that the American people finally said, oh, I got you. No, we're not doing this anymore. You guys can give as much money as you want to her or him. I'm done. I don't care how much money you give them. I'm going this way. I don't believe you guys. I think all of you guys are bots on this side. You guys are for sale on this side. The moment Trump wins, Bill Gates has a three-hour meeting with Trump.

Zuckerberg goes over there. And they all go. But this is very different, though. And they're all going to donate. And they did. A lot of them gave a million dollars, two million dollars for inauguration. Absolutely, yeah. So where I'm going is, you know, is this a monumental moment where the Democratic Party got a black eye the way the Republican Party got a black eye in 1960, 1964 with Barry Goldwater?

where the Republicans went from having 64% of the African-American voters voting for Democrat, the other side would be Republican. It went from 64 in 1960 to 92 in 1964, and they lost the black vote until 2024. So do you think this was a...

catastrophic event for the Democratic Party in 2024 or not. It's just normal ebbs and flows. It goes back and forth. That's what I'm trying to see, especially for someone like you. Look, I think that the country is so much more divided. There are so many fewer votes that are up for grabs today than there were 50 years ago in the United States.

I mean, at the end of the day, you're talking about a very small number of people in a very small number of districts. And otherwise, people are reliably red and they're reliably blue. It's very hard to flip most of those people, most of those places. There are a lot more independents in the United States now than there were before. But those independents reliably lean with a party or another, even if they're not a part of that party. That's fair. Yeah. So I think that what we are talking about right now is a country that is heavily

that has most of its population that has decided that they are on team A or team B and the other team is an enemy.

And that's a serious problem. Right. Now, it was at least really good in 2024 that nobody thought the election was rigged. It was good that everyone accepts that Trump is actually the president. I don't know if I think 2025, the other side think the other side's the enemy. I actually don't believe that right now. I believe that the last five years. I don't believe that right now. Let me let me give you an idea why. Yeah. And I'll, you know, push back Bezos.

Go have a good meeting. Wall Street Journal this week. If you go to WSJ's YouTube channel, go to YouTube channel. They interviewed Bill Gates. I don't know if you saw that. I saw it. 12-minute interview. He said good things about Trump. He said good things about Trump. Can you imagine like a world where, yeah, this was five days ago. It's actually a very good interview. I watch. I'm like, okay, good. That's very different from the average American. I mean, again, Bill Gates is. That's not what I'm saying. No, what I'm saying to you is for a guy like him to go to the other side,

for TikTok to get kids and younger boys to go to the other side. You're supporting who? To get African-American numbers where the CNN host is watching this guy, giving the stats, and she's like, that can't be right. That's the numbers. Are you joking? Yes. Even Kamala Harris, the worst with African-American voters for the last four Democratic presidents. That can't be real. That's the real numbers.

See, I think this was a place where, you know, Rogan said something the other day. I actually really like what he said. He says, you know, he says, I still am not a Republican. He says, I'm still an independent. He says, there's some things I agree with with the left. There's some things I agree with with the right. But to him, he saw more common sense and sanity on Trump's side than the other side. This doesn't mean we're...

Two years ago, when I'm on his podcast, episode 216, whatever it was, a year and a half ago, you know, he had no plans of having Trump on. And he's on Lex Friedman. He's like, I'll never have him on. I'll never have him. Look, I think it's a bigger win. And there's no question. I think it's a I don't think it's a win. I don't think it's just a win. The part I'm trying to ask from you is.

I think it's a real shift. Like, I truly, like, you know, we haven't had a third party competitor in a long time since Ross Perot. Whatever, 19 points, 20 points, whatever the number was. Right. And every year we say, well, we need an independent party. We need a third party. Oh, okay, great. Eventually someone's going to say, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat. I think something happened right now. I really think 2020, because when I'm talking to guys right now who are left, right, center,

I run an insurance company and we got agents that are regular guys that do what they do. And so they're not rich people. These are insurance agents that are making two, three, four, five grand. And then we got some people that make millions. But some of these guys are making 60, 50, 100,000 dollars. You're talking to them. It's a very different vibe I get when Trump's name comes up than the level of hate and anger they had towards him in 2018, 19, 20, 2021. They hated this guy.

in 2018-19, they thought he was the Antichrist. And now they're like, look, still don't like the guy, but I don't hate him. I actually think I'm happy he's the president. It's a very different language you hear. That's the part where I'm saying where I don't know if we're as divided today

As we were. I hope I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I don't see that in the United States now. I don't see that around the world right now. I think that Trump's impulses, of course, are still very much about finding people that are the enemy. And I'm going to win and we're going to win together and we're going to go after these people.

I think that Elon does the same thing and not just domestically, but also around the world. I think it works. It produces algorithmically. You know, you get clicks on the basis of much stronger emotions than you do long form nuance and engaging in civil society. And a lot of Americans are hurting.

A lot of average Americans, a lot of young men in the United States don't feel like they're doing well, don't feel like people are taking care of them and they're angry at stuff. And what can you do? You go after. I mean, talk about Guantanamo and I'm gonna set up a camp for 30,000 people. Does he need to do that? No. Can the cruelty be the point in going after folks? Yeah, it helps because they want to say, you're responsible for my pain and I'm gonna do something about that. So I don't...

I think that all of these things play because there's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of feeling of isolation. There's a lot of Americans that are spending much less time with other Americans and instead are being intermediated through their phones. And I think that's a problem. And I think that MAGA has managed to create something that people can aspire and connect to when the family's broken down and when the church is broken down and when public schools aren't doing so well.

Our economy is doing fantastically well at the macro level, but the average American, I think, is still feeling like they're hurting. So I have a hard time seeing America not being as divided until we start fixing those issues. Those are long-term structural issues. I don't think we're getting closer on that. I also worry...

that we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater when the United States, I've never seen a time, I mean, you've been talking a lot about the U.S. over the last 15, 20 minutes. I spend most of my time talking outside the U.S. about what's happening in the rest of the world. The United Nations, the World Health Organization, all of these organizations, we created them. The United States, after World War II, the World Bank, the IMF, NATO, we created them with our values,

And our allies, because we recognize that long term we have a democracy, our system is messy, you go from one president to a different, different types of ideas and policies. But that if we could create institutions where, yes, we'd be responsible and we'd do more, maybe in some cases in our fair share, we'd pay more, we'd be more engaged, we'd show leadership. But long term, we would benefit from that.

But if the average American doesn't believe that they benefit from that, they're going to say, screw you. We shouldn't support that anymore. We don't like the UN. We don't like the WHO. We don't like any of these organizations because you're not taking care of us. But do you know why they don't like the UN? Do you know why they don't like NATO? Do you know why they don't like World Health Organization? I do. Why? Well, I mean, there are different reasons.

But the main reason they don't like them is because they feel like the United States is getting rolled by a whole bunch of countries that aren't taking care of themselves and want the Americans to pay for it. But is that is that that's a different idea than what it was when NATO first got started? Why did NATO first get started? It got started because of Russia, USSR, right? You know, of course. Why is NATO needed today?

And so do they need to counsel? The part with the average person, see what Trump did is, Trump asked interesting questions that prompted everybody to go in, search.

He asked a question like a business owner asks. I mean, you're running a business since 1998, right? Yeah. I don't know what your revenue is. I don't know. How many employees do you guys have? 250. Okay, you got 250 employees. Yeah. You have a board. I own it. So, I mean, I started it. Okay. But do you have a board where you sit and talk to people and have counsel or no? You don't have a board? Okay. So, but 250 employees. 250 employees, it's a legitimate size company you've got. It's not a small business. Okay. So, what do you do? Don't you sit there and say,

The other day, my CTO comes up to me. He says, do you know we pay subscription to 900 different things? I said, what? Why? Who signed up for this? Well, you had one employee that kept subscribing to everything. He's no longer here, so we're looking at the credit card. Let me tell you, we're learning so many different things because we're asking questions. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Ask a nobody. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. 900 subscriptions to different things.

So then I'm asking questions. What are some questions I want to ask? On which credit card were the subscriptions prompted first? Data rolls it and you'll see boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh, shit. 293 came from this one employee. Which one of them were approved? Okay, maybe we approved those, but what is this? Great. How about this other person? How about that other person? Which one of these do we even know what we use for?

Out of the 900, we probably don't even need 50% of them, right? So that person should be these payments going through. He should approve these. That guy did it without getting the approval. Okay, we have to change the, you know, and then you change the prompts, right? Okay. What did Trump do? Trump asked questions that a CEO like you asks.

Any reason why we're giving $350 million to World Health Organization with 340 million people living here while China's giving 39 million, give or take, and they have one and a half billion? Very good question. Any reason why we're giving more money to NATO to protect them while we're not worried about our borders? Why aren't all these other countries giving?

And they're like, oh, shit, nobody's been asking. Guys, let's start giving more money. And useful for them to be giving more money and pushing on that. Absolutely. But what I'm saying is when you're saying we started these things as a form of imposing our values and principles, the challenge then happens is what?

You you're you're like even right now when Trump said, I think we buy 50 percent of TikTok and 50 percent of TikTok goes to an owner in U.S. And I'm going to give you a license. I'm not a fan of that. Why? I don't want the government to own 50 percent of TikTok. Why not? I trust it under Trump. I don't trust it under who's going to be president next.

I don't trust it on two presidents from now. So even though we're creating these world economic – Well, look, and this is an important thing is that in four years' time, Trump is not president anymore. So, I mean, as much as he can impose all sorts of ideas and will that a lot of people are going to say, I like this. The reality is the law of the jungle driven by Trump with all of these things saying you do it my way or you're in serious trouble, when that stops,

and you have a different leader, Republican or Democrat, don't care, but they're not going to have that ability. They're not. He's a unique figure in that regard. They're not going to have that ability. They're not. But then you don't have the same institutional heft to ensure that people otherwise behave that were aligned with the Americans. You're going to lose something. Right. That's important. It is important, but go back to what we discussed. So a lot of these organizations that may have started with the right cause have now turned into a political, you know,

abuse of their power and, hey, we need more money. Yeah, let me send you more money. Let me send, don't worry about it. I got you. We'll send you more money. We'll send you more money. No, we're not sending you more money. And now World Health Organization could potentially be shutting down. They're begging other people for money. Why are we going to do this? We're not going to be doing this. I love that.

I love that part of coming in and asking, hey, any reason why? I like asking. I don't like breaking. Okay. So here's another question to ask. And that is the difference. You're 250 employees. How many of them work from home?

Everyone is three days a week in the office. And where are you based out of? New York, but that's 90 of them. And then the other guys are all over the world. Offices all over the world, yeah. So most of them, what do they do? Are most of them doing research? Are they writing? What's their job? Yeah, probably a solid half are direct analysts in some fashion. Okay. And then you've got, you know, people. You've got tech people and you've got HR people. Do you have a system to track people's behavior that the work is being put in?

Sure, of course. Okay, perfect. It's a company. It's not the government. Brother, the part that... Do I think the government is inefficient? Yes, I do.

Do I think that we should break everything and ask questions later? No, I want us to ask questions first and then break. That's the difference. That's the difference. You're not going to have time because you've got two years only until midterms. Oh, no, my God. Look, I mean, I think that you want to ask questions about Greenland? We can ask questions first. Ask them with our ally, Denmark. Don't break things first and then go and ask the questions. You're talking to a guy. You're talking to a guy.

that is is been doing this for 78 years and it's work I know right I know in a different environment we got two million government employees which only six percent come to the office every horrible I said publicly I tweeted publicly when they said everyone's going to work on every day I said if those does nothing else do that and it's a win I mean this is I completely agree right nowadays more than ever the brand you wear reflects and represent who you are so for us

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Davos. I was invited there this year. Couldn't go. We had stuff going on. And if I were to go, I would have to have the conversation to see what it is. I'm not going to... But anyways, they extended an invitation. Nice of them. Fellow. He had a call with my EA and my couple guys. It was good to go. Klaus Schwab, I asked you, is he a good guy? I didn't say that. You said, I didn't say that. Is he a good guy or not? Um...

World Economic Forum. Good organization, bad organization. What's the motive? You saw some of the stuff on the website. They put some stuff that's kind of suspect. You want us to do what? You're going to own nothing and be happy? Weird things that they talked about. Some of the messages that comes out. Here's an issue that I know a lot about. Perfect. And I want to hear it. Why do you think a lot of people...

who may be sided with Trump don't trust the World Economic Forum? Because it's a conference every year in Switzerland, not in the United States, with a lot of very wealthy and powerful people that are getting together. A lot of them are flying in on their private planes. And

it's very easy to imagine that when you do that, they must be controlling the world. And all you need is to get a quick video and take something out that sort of says the great reset or says we want you to eat bugs or whatever it is that's crazy and stupid. And that suddenly becomes the meme for what they're actually discussing. I've gone for 15 years. They have 600 employees. I think they make $400 million a year.

I can assure you that no running of the world is being done by the World Economic Forum. The reason they are successful and the reason that you should probably go and you would find this out for yourself and then you could tell everybody exactly what I'm now telling you is that the most busy people in the world for whom time is a very precious commodity can get five weeks of work done in five days.

And that is what they do because they are able to get their bilaterals all set up with every other business leader in their sector, in related sectors, all these government leaders. They will not take a meeting unless that meeting will get something done. If I go to London,

And I haven't been to London in six months and I want to see someone, even if I have no business. Yeah, Ian's here. Yeah, I'll see Ian for an hour. And there might be nothing to get done in that meeting. You will not take a meeting at the World Economic Forum because it's such a target rich environment unless you have something concrete that you want to get done in that meeting. So number one, everyone is there. Number two, almost every meeting is productive. And number three, you are filling your time with people that you really want to see. For CEOs...

and finance and foreign ministers whose time is incredibly, incredibly valuable. This is the most...

target-rich environment, the most productive environment they could possibly have, and that's why they go. And that's why it's successful. And everything else, and the memes that you see about what the WEF is driving in terms of some of the research papers they put out, that's like window dressing that shows that they have some stuff to talk about in content, but that's not why the WEF won. No, zero. No, you should not at all buy that.

You should not. Well, so you're saying that they cut a clip of what he's saying to eat bugs and do all this stuff? No.

No, like I've never eaten a bug. I have. I have. I have Mexico. And I had a Quinto Neal. Is that where you went? Tell you, that was great. I had three courses. It was insane. It was good. I actually liked it. No, I mean, if you were eating bugs like that, you would eat bugs. But if I'm going to eat it, I'm going to eat Mexican bugs by choice with the best hot sauce and all that other stuff. We sit at the kitchen bar there.

Listen, it was the most amazing experience. Amazing meal. Four hours. Everything they brought in was ridiculous, right? But, you know, like if you see. You sound like a globalist. I don't know. I'm a little concerned, Pat. You're so funny. I swear to God. But if you see a person getting up there and they give a message. And this guy's up there talking about the great reset and all this other stuff. I know.

And what's his role with World Economic Forum? Is he the director? I think he's executive chairman or something. Wait, who's about to... Harari's about to take his position, I think. I think he's going to pass it over to him sometime soon, right? Yuval Harari? Yeah. No. No? No. Maybe you haven't read this article. There was an article that said Yuval Harari... Let me find this here. Klaus Schwab. I think if that was in an article, I think it's wrong. Yeah, Yuval Harari is his right-hand guy. No, he's not.

Well, listen, these are articles saying it's his right hand. I'm telling you, it's not his right. I thought he wasn't even there. His right hand guy. Who is it? His name is Berger Brenda, and he's a former foreign minister in the Nordics. And he's a perfectly affable, smart guy. When he was foreign minister, he was very well respected by all of the other leaders in the region. And he's good at coordinating these meetings. And, you know.

I think you misread that. I don't think I misread that. I do, because it's not showing up, man. I'm telling you. I'll find it for you. I will find it for you. Yuval Harari doesn't even... I know him well, and he's not someone that's going to take over the WEF.

Okay, hang on. I'm going to find it for you before we wrap this up. And then you can say it's not true or it's inaccurate or whatever. But if you see Klaus Schwab getting up there and talking about we need a great reset...

Every year they try to come up with some interesting ideas about where they think the world is or isn't going. And it's absolutely talked about because they have a big forum. Is it talked about more than, you know, what someone would say at the UN General Assembly every year or at a NATO summit or anything else? No. I mean, it's it's the fact is that the business of the web is, as I've just said,

described it to you. But again, I understand that in an environment where people are doing their own research, there are people that are making up stuff wholesale and they'll take a tiny clip of something and they'll make it into more than it actually is. That's it just is not. I'm going to play you a clip by this guy. Just can you find one clip of him?

Of Klaus? Yeah, of Klaus. And you tell me if this sounds normal to you. You mean his accent? Not his accent. I mean, his accent sounds like, well, Kissinger had his own set of issues as well. I'm not going to tell you Kissinger was an angel. Kissinger could be a reason why you and I are sitting here right now. Because if it wasn't for Kissinger, I may still be in Iran today. I may be in a different situation. It's possible. Because of the promises they made to...

help out the Shah, which last minute they didn't, which I'm sure you know the history of that. But why do you think? Why do you think they don't trust it? Why do you think they don't trust Klaus Schwab? Why do you think they think he's evil? Why do you think when you're, you know, the amount of when they see him as a

You think it's just the clips that are doing that? You think he doesn't have any other motives? I think it's all the wealthy people showing up in a mountain in Switzerland. When you write a book, how long does it take you to write a book? A year and a half. So when all of a sudden COVID happens in March of 2020, where it becomes public, how does Klaus write such a book so fast that comes out in July four months later? I've never written a book that fast.

I don't know if you remember the dates, so here's the COVID-19, the Great Reset. Again, he's got about 600 people. How many people are working with him on that? I've got a lot of people working for me. His book is July 9th, 2020. COVID is a thing in March. You just said it takes a year, a year and a half to write a book. Terry Mallory, I remember Terry. He is a tech... No, it takes me a year and a half because I...

I have a goddamn day job. It's really hard. I have to find time to actually do it in between everything else that I do. It's hard. People that write books for a living, of whom Terry Mallory, who's the second author there, that is what he does. He's a global strategist who writes books and thought pieces for a living.

And I am certain that he did a hell of a lot of lifting there. And can you get that done? And it also was a relatively short book, if I remember correctly. It was like 120 pages. It wasn't 250. No, it was not. Print length, 280. Was it really? 280? Right there.

You've got to get your facts right. You're spending too much time with it. Go screw yourself, man. I swear to God. I swear to God. But the idea, I mean, if you're basing this theory on the fact that he got a book done in four months with a guy that writes books professionally for a living, I don't buy it. I mean, listen, I can ask a question and say that's a little weird. You don't think that's a little weird? No. Really? You don't think that's a little weird? Jesus Christ, man. Yeah.

You're a smart guy. I am a smart guy and I ask questions. Don't go into deep zone. Deep part of the pool on this. Okay, so let me go to a different direction with this one. I'm telling you that if you actually... If you next year say yes to the WEF and you go and spend the entire week and actually see all the meetings, you'll come away saying, yeah, that's a conference. Rahm Emanuel, you know who he is? I know him well, yeah. Okay, he said never let a crisis go to waste. Yes, he did say that. Do you think they saw COVID as a crisis to use?

Do you think the World Economic Forum maybe saw this as an opportunity to really impose their beliefs around the world? A non-profit organization of 600 people, most of whom last for two years and then go on and work someplace else? No! No! People said that about the Council on Foreign Relations. The Council is like a tiny, sleepy non-profit. And why? And they're like, they are the most bureaucratic organization. It's so hard to get things done. And they're nice people. And they're smart people. But they don't run the world.

And so the idea – no, the people that run the world are the people that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, that are directly in meetings with world leaders where they can actually take real advantage of those meetings because they can put cash into play. Like you and I both know the currency of power in the world is about do you have capital, and the WEF does not.

They don't. They're convener. They're conveners of events. Yeah, but you're not a... So the insurance industry has an organization called LIMRA. The guy that was running it was a guy that was very, very powerful in the insurance space. He was a CEO of it. What made him powerful? What made him powerful is the fact that every CEO of 40, 50, 100, 200 billion dollar insurance company went to his conference every year.

You know how much power that guy had? I don't. A lot of power. I'm not in the insurance industry. Oh, it's a lot of power, though. So if you think about...

This guy is getting all of these leaders like Larry Fink, Jamie Dimon, everybody from around the world is coming to his conference? They all have industry groups that are really, really relevant for them. And if you want to talk about where they're applying and making sure that they're aligning their capital, it's in their industry groups. It's not in the WEF with everybody else. In the WEF, they're meeting with everyone so they can get business done. It is transactional. It is not strategic.

Strategic are where they put money into their packs. They put money into their industry groups and figure out what are the things that move the needle for them so that they have more access to the kind of regulations they want, the kind of taxes they want. That's where that power is being levered.

No question. And the guy that hosts it, that brings everybody together, who says things like the following. Let me just read this quote to you. From who? This is the sweetheart of a guy, Klaus. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. I remember that, yeah. You think that's just normal? I thought that that was an odd quote.

You think that's just odd? I do. Odd is an understatement. Odd. That brings all these... The richest people... Oh, my God. If I look at the people that are driving AI in the world today and what they say about the future, and so the idea that, like, you know...

You're going to have digital sovereignty and people are going to upload into the Internet. The guy that's running the whole thing, that's inviting all these guys who sell you'll own nothing and be happy. Running the whole thing. That's normal. He's in charge of a conference. That everybody shows up. Like he's got influence over. Like, for example, if a guy hosted a conference that said, I want the best fighters in the world to show up to my conference. Who the F are you?

But this guy puts it all the fighters show up. Why? Guy's got influence. Look, I mean, if we were to try to find individual quotes that make political leaders that you and I know look batshit crazy and only talk about those things, we could do that.

We choose not to. Yeah. Why it is that we've decided that we're going to key in on this one quote? I think it's the last four or five years that a lot of people started looking to seeing when you make it. I mean, he said in 2016, right? When he said, you'll own nothing, you'll be happy.

And a leader who says you can make a lot of difference. You grab them by X, Y, Z, right? You know, when Trump said that to whatever the Bush guy, right? Yes, of course, on the Axis Hollywood. All right. So what is that? Okay. Got it. Inappropriate. Sure. Sure. Another guy says, you know, we got to get the... They send the worst. They send the rapists and criminals and you know, da-da-da. Oh, my God. Trump just called all these... Hey, they...

I mean, stuff has been said. People have some bad days. You'll own nothing and be happy is a little bit weird. It's a little bit weird. If you ask me what I think that actually reflects, it reflects a view of a technologically driven, some would say utopian, many more would say dystopian,

world when human beings are radically different than they are right now. If you ask me, if I look at where AI is driving, you know, sort of humanity, it's not in a place where most people in the world are going to have a lot of control over productive forces. Labor is getting a lot weaker. Do I think people will be happy about that? No, I don't.

I think people, and if they are happy, it's because they're programmed to be happy. I think that everyone says artificial general intelligence is coming. I think that computers are programming us a lot more quickly than we're programming computers. We are affected much more as consumers and products as we engage on this stuff. I think that if you put it in that context, I think you would find that what he said is much more aligned with a lot of your most advanced tech thinkers and

in the world today. And those are places that we should be pushing back against. - Yeah, maybe let me show you a highlight reel of Klaus Schwab being Tony Robbins here. Rob, if you got a clip, do you have something you want to show us? - Sure. - Here's Klaus Schwab. - It's not just happening. A change can be shaped by us. We have to prepare for a more angry world. How to prepare takes a necessary action to create a fairer world.

I see the need for a great reset. So people assume we are just going back to the good old world which we had and everything will be normal again. This is, let's say, fiction. It will not happen.

It's a change. A little weird. Some of the stuff he says, it sounds like out of a movie. Yeah, the accent I think definitely helps with that too. Even some of the stuff that he's saying. I don't know. I didn't see anything particularly exciting. You? Honestly. Nothing. Exciting? No. Nothing. Great reset. You said you've followed me for a while. I mean...

Look, I may be a kid from Chelsea. I'm authentic. I will tell you what I think. I'm actually really enjoying the conversation. I will tell you what I think. So it's not, yeah. So, I mean, you know, some places you and I clearly agree. Some places you and I have less, let's put it this way, I have less knowledge about a lot of the domestic stuff that you're talking about. I have a lot more knowledge on the international stuff. So if we don't agree, I think it's mostly because... Let's talk tariffs because tariff is something you do talk about. A lot of work, sure. Right? Because let's talk tariffs. So...

The topic of tariff became hot, I think, the last three months of the election. It's always been talked about, but it's kind of like, well, I think tariff is the best word in the dictionary. After love and after God and after religion, it's got to be tariff, right? He's kind of given a message. And he's been saying that for decades. He's been saying it for decades, but it became hot the last 90 days. Well, if we do this, if we do that. What's your concern with tariffs?

Well, first of all, the U.S., you look at the place that tariffs have caused the biggest conversations over the last 10 years. It's been China. And Biden and Trump's policies on China have been virtually identical on this issue, right? I mean...

Biden didn't take any of those tariffs off. Sure. He actually added export controls. There is a move towards a decoupling of the global economy from the U.S. and China that had very integrated supply chains to increasingly less integrated supply chains. Is that good, bad, or indifferent? There are some ways where it's good because you have more control over, you know, you aren't going to be as vulnerable to political intervention stopping you from having stuff.

we're finally starting to move some of our semiconductors away from Taiwan. That was a huge mistake the Americans made over the past 30 years in the same way that the Germans made a huge mistake allowing their energy to come from Russia. And by the way, some of the Europeans are now talking about, let's do that again. That would be another huge mistake if they were to do it. So I believe that

There is a utility for national security purposes in using the strength of U.S. economic policy, including tariffs, to help defend the interests of Americans and its allies. I also think that as the most powerful country in the world, you can use tariffs as a stick that can force countries to negotiate with you in ways that they might not otherwise. So I look at the Mexico conversation right now.

and Trump willing to credibly say... You may want to lift it up and put it back up. Oh, thank you. There you go. That's good, yeah. Trump...

Trump credibly saying we're going to hit you hard will make them take fentanyl more seriously, will make them take border security in the South more seriously. He will get more from them because he is willing to use sticks for the United States. And those sticks are less dangerous if they are terrorists. Yeah, I'm OK with that. I recognize that tariffs also have costs.

We are in a very low tariff environment right now in the world. I think the average tariff on the average good globally is something like 3%. It's almost historic lows. 2%. It's really low. We only get $80 billion in revenue from tariffs. That's not a big amount of money that comes in. It's not a big amount of money. So, I mean, the fact is that moving a little bit on tariffs, if it gets you some outcomes that you want, is not going to have a massive impact. Let me ask you a question. What would happen if we went to 25 points? On everybody? Everybody. Okay.

Well, there you would have a significant amount of near-term inflation, right? I mean, that would definitely happen. So, okay. So are you following? And you'd also have a significant impact on the stock market, which would come down. And corporates would take a hit that have exposure to all those markets. And so they'd have to pay costs as a basis of that.

those are the two major things are you seeing how he's talking about uh lowering taxes or getting rid of it and you know have you heard about him giving the speech on taxes lately sure okay so there have been their costs to doing that right because you're no longer getting that revenue for sure i totally get it i really like to not see the irs um get defunded because one of the best ways that you ensure that you continue to make revenue is to make sure that people that owe taxes actually pay them and are audited so i do think that's important

Yeah, but what he's trying to do is the concept of external revenue service. You heard him talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. So what would happen? Which we have. I mean, he'll rename the existing organization, but yes. But what would happen if we bumped it up from two points on average to 25 points? Hear me out here. Yeah. And that would be instead of $80 billion a year, that would put us at around a trillion dollars a year of REV that's coming in.

OK, that if you want to do business with us, that's the number. Now, obviously, it doesn't work that way. It's not black and white because, you know, other things can happen. Substitution effects. Sure. And they will come back and hit you with tariffs as well. And that's going to be a cost on you and all the same thing. No problem. So but I think at two points, it's nothing at two points. If we were to go to 25 and we stay at 25 for four years, hypothetically, and then he flips and he lowers taxes on individuals.

Okay. On individuals that are paying taxes. How would that sit with American people? Would they sit there and say, wait a minute, you're lowering my federal income taxes? Yeah. You're raising tariffs? Yeah. Interesting. I haven't done the charts to see how the numbers would work. Everybody's people on the left side, they'll never work. People on the right side, it could work. How do you think the average day-to-day worker who hears that message saying,

Let's collect the money that we're not collecting with these other guys unless low-dollar taxes would sit. I don't know how it goes for people that hear the message, but in terms of how they experience the outcomes, I can tell you that people, when they get more money in their income or their taxes go down, psychologically pocket that. That's theirs. They earned it. It's their due.

When inflation goes up, they're angry about that. That's not okay. And it doesn't balance off. So inflation has a significantly greater impact psychologically on people because they're paying that. Now, to be fair, Trump is clearly very concerned about one area of inflation, which he should be, which is oil.

And the reason for that is because guys in the United States that are going and filling up their car actually see the price of oil, price of gas every week, and they see it by itself. And so they're very sensitive to that. So that helps.

And if you bring down the cost of oil and let's say, you know, so do you get oil down to 60 bucks a barrel, which I think is plausible this year. And Trump is leaning into the Saudis to try to get them to pump more. And Trump is leaning into the regs to try to get, you know, sort of U.S. drillers to do more. Then you might be willing to take more inflation in other aspects, even though he'll get beaten up by the Democrats.

And at the end of the day, that might be seen as a wash by the American people. So you might have more flexibility on tariffs. Now, there are some tariffs that he is talking about putting on that I think are a mistake. So, for example, Mexico, you want to hit the Mexicans really hard right now. They have a government that is they have a super majority. They can make constitutional changes. The leader is very popular. She is oriented to do everything possible to get to a better deal. Trump will be seen as a winner.

That's a smart place to use your strength. Canada, huge mistake. Why? Because Canada is heading into an election cycle and everyone in Canada has become really angry about what Trump is saying.

And as a consequence, both the liberals and the conservatives have to outplay each other in who's going to be tougher to respond to Trump. So he should have waited until after the elections if he wanted to hit the Canadians with tariffs when the U.S. would have a lot more leverage and when the politics wouldn't be a play. Because instead, he's going to either have to back down, which makes him look weak, or he has to keep going. And the Canadians have to get into a vicious cycle. It's going to cost us a lot more. And that we will see.

So I absolutely believe that tariffs are an important, even an indispensable tool for the United States in foreign policy. But you want to use them strategically. You want to use them in a more sort of actual – use judgment in how and when you apply them.

Trump doesn't do that. Trump sees that he has a tool and he scattershot uses it everywhere at the same time and see how it goes, see how it sticks. And you break things that way. So it's not that he's wrong. His political instincts have always been incredibly sharp.

But his willingness to actually think through what the implications of some of those knee-jerk statements are and knee-jerk policies are, even as the strongest guy out there, even as a guy who's consolidated power when so many of his allies are weaker, when the American economy is stronger, when the U.S. has a better technological position, when our military is stronger, he can still make big mistakes. And so I'd rather see him as my president, as your president. I'd rather see him minimize those mistakes.

Okay, so this is tariffs here, right? And you said you're not a globalist, but you believe in globalization. Yes, big difference. Big difference, okay. So this is the amount of tariffs we used to, revenue used to come in for the U.S. government. Obviously, it's a different world today than it was before. Tiny. Tiny. What we had before versus today used to be 80%, 90%, late 1800s. Then it was 40%, 50% until 1910s. Then we were still getting some tariff.

1930, 1940, and then all of a sudden 1940-ish, 45-ish, goes all the way down to nothing. And we've stayed at that number 2% for a long time until today. So who did that benefit? You were saying globalization, if everybody is doing better around the world, it's kind of good. People are making money. They're taking care of themselves. Stress is lower. Crime is going to be lower. Overreaction is going to be lower. Fine. But

Don't you think for a country that's helped, when you're looking at the numbers of what the deficiency is between how much China makes with us, how much they're making off of us versus us the other way around, don't you think he has the leverage to be able to say, look, we're just increasing everything

on everybody because people are trying to do business with U.S., not the other way around. Well, you've got to keep in mind that compared with the periods of time when tariffs were a lot higher, you now have global supply chains that are completely integrated.

They weren't before. I mean, you look at US-Mexico and you'll have cars with components going back and forth sometimes 30, 40 times with completely integrated US-Mexico supply chain before it actually gets bought by somebody.

You suddenly throw a 25 percent tariff across the board between U.S. and Mexico and Mexico hits you back with that. Then suddenly, like you're literally breaking that supply chain in ways that makes absolutely no sense, given how corporations and jobs on both sides of the border have been set up for decades.

So you don't want to suddenly break that because that's going to cost your corporations and the workers in those corporations an awful lot. So you can't do that. You have to be careful at being more incremental. This is what Scott Bessent is saying, right? Is that he understands the desire to move towards a higher tariff environment, but he wants to do it incrementally. And he wants to be squeezing, using that power to get outcomes that are more beneficial for the United States. I accept the fact that...

that there has been free riding in a low tariff environment by a whole bunch of countries that are not necessarily providing for the public good globally what they should be. China today is a middle income country. They're not a low income country. They have advanced technologies. They're ahead of us in post-carbon energy. This is a country that can afford

to actually change around their trade relationship with us. They can afford to uphold intellectual property and stop ripping us off. And also, a lot of American companies aren't as interested in being in China because their economy is doing so badly right now. So the Americans have more leverage in that relationship today and should use it. Absolutely. But you've got to recognize that this is not 1925.

No, I recognize that's 1925, but it's also not 1980, 1999, 2000, where we keep doing it for everybody else and we're just kind of leaving that money on the table. So who benefited from globalization? There are two groups of people that benefited, that really benefited from globalization. It's the top 10% globally, and particularly the top 1% and top 0.0001%, right? And then the global middle class.

that really benefit from globalization. And the people that didn't benefit from globalization were wealthy people from a global perspective, but in reality, middle and working classes in the United States and Europe

and Canada and Japan and South Korea. Those are the people that didn't benefit. And the reason they didn't benefit is because all of the benefits that came to the wealthy were not reinvested into those countries in ways that would improve education, that would improve healthcare, that would improve social cohesion. They didn't do that. And that's why globalism has failed.

Because you can't be winner-take-all in a more kleptocratic system and forget about your own fellow countrymen because they will say, screw you. And that's why you had Brexit, right? That's why you have all these Euroskeptic movements too. This isn't just the United States. It's not like the Americans are the ones that have uniquely gotten it wrong and everybody else is on the right side of this. This is a global phenomenon. Okay, I just found where...

Yuval Hari was considered the brain of Klaus Schwab. Oh, that's very different than going to take over Klaus Schwab. The idea was the fact that he could be his replacement. This is in the book, Technocracy.

The Hard Road to World Order by Patrick Wood. Yeah. Okay, you read the book. You're thinking the guy's replacing him. No, you're not. No, you're thinking he's his guy. Like, he's the brain. The brain. I mean, like, he is a very smart guy. Yeah, but that's the premise of... So for you... So the fact that if someone uses your ideas and informs your ideas and inform by him, you're going to let your company be run by that person? If somebody calls, you know, me the brain of...

let's just say this guy's the brain. Hey, that guy could be his replacement. That's how the conversation of Yuval Hari came into play. Okay, so I'm glad that you agree with me on that one. No, no, it's not I agree with you on that one. I'm telling you that's what the discussion was about. I thought someone was saying he was about to take over the weapon. That's not credible. That one is not. You're right about that one. But the other one is this is what prompted that conversation.

But the tariff conversation – I can see that, by the way. If you go back to his book, Sapiens, I can see why Klaus would have found a lot of those ideas very attractive. Right. So going back to – and you've read Sapiens. I've read Sapiens. Everyone's read Sapiens. But going back to tariffs, OK? Yeah.

My brain goes to a different place. You know, there's a camp that thinks very highly of Nixon. And Nixon did this, you know, a lot of people, oh my God, you know, water, get all this up. But then if you really think about it, this guy was a revolutionary guy. Was it good getting off of gold standard? I don't know. Was it good, you know, opening up China? I don't know. Did we strengthen China? Did we benefit more from China being open in the economy to be able to get cheap labor, all that stuff? Did the capitalists,

That's a good question. Right. That's a good question. Companies did. American companies did. Did the average American? No. No. Look at middle class income in the United States since China's opened. Flat. How have Americans, how have the average Americans, how's the average Trump voter saying that they're benefiting from China getting open? No. But that's exactly where I'm going with that. And now...

that we were reading five years ago, made in China 2025, they're going to be the world, didn't happen. Didn't happen? Eight years ago, not even five years ago, eight years ago. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Okay.

So they're trying to sell themselves as they're doing very good. They have a net negative migration rate. They're losing people leaving, right? Billionaires are trying to get away of getting their money out. They can't. It's very hard to do that. Their population is shrinking massively. Population is shrinking. They got the whole, you know, the... Population distribution. Totally. It's terrible. Horrible. You know, the whole one baby rule really backfired on them in a big way. Now they're three. It doesn't matter. No, it really messed it up. But going back to now. So maybe, maybe...

Trump and his administration is trying to look at an opportunity here saying, okay, well, you're saying we can't tariff everybody and go this way. No problem. If we continue going the way we're going right now, that shit's not working either. We're in $33 trillion of debt. We're not doing things in a way that's proven that our system is also working if we go this route. So what if we do a massive disruption to the system? What if we do?

Would it shake things up? Maybe. Would it increase people's median income? Because I sit there, I wonder, I'm like, how are people going to buy these houses? Today we had Byron Donalds here. Byron Donalds is, you know, you know who he is. Yeah. And he says, have to battle with homeowners insurance is the fact that houses cost so much. Salary is not really going that much higher.

Houses just skyrocketed the last four years. Homeowners insurance. I don't want to have freaking homeowners insurance. I'm a homeowners insurance company. I don't want to be in California. I don't want to be in Florida. Look, I mean, it's so interesting because you've got inside MAGA right now, right? You have a whole bunch of people that are not saying I want libertarianism. They're not saying I want tiny government. They're saying I actually want government to intervene more on my behalf. I want the special interest to get hurt and I want democracy

to stay in the United States. And I want the government to do that. And yeah, I want tariffs. Why do I want tariffs? Because I would much rather have a good job that pays me money. Your interpretation is the fact that they're saying they want government to do what? Government to tariff, government to ensure industrial policy, government to force people to invest in the United States. They want government to do that.

They don't want the free market globally. Yes. Look, that's not everyone in MAGA. That's not what Elon Musk wants. But there is a core basis that is saying we allowing free markets around the world and allowing, you know, sort of open, easy capital to move. No, we want government intervention. Do you think Trump wants that or no?

I think that Trump is absolutely prepared to use American power to get outcomes that he wants. Trump, in my view, is not a libertarian.

And Trump is certainly not just a free market guy. I mean, he's very transactional. And Lord knows, I mean, he's in the way he's built his own business. He's built it all over the world. And a whole bunch of the MAGA hats and whatnot have been made in China. And, you know, all of his...

He has no problem with globalization. He's benefited from it. He's had a lot of immigrants from all over the world that are working for sort of his places, not all of them are legal. He even talked about he had H-1B visa. H-1B visa. He supported that. So, I mean, where is Trump on the, what I would call deep MAGA versus dark MAGA? I mean, dark MAGA is the globalist wing and deep MAGA is the populist, like industrial policy wing. I think Trump's both.

Trump's both and he has the ability to decide on any of these issues where he wants to play. You think he's both or he knows how to dance with both? I think he actually is both. How do you become both? Well, I mean, look, Trump used to be a Democrat. Now he's a Republican, right? I mean, because why? He sees that that was where the opportunities were for him to actually win as president, for him to capture a much bigger piece of like the vibes or the zeitgeist of the American people.

I don't think that he is consistent ideologically with one side of this argument or the other. I mean, he was very close with Robert Lighthizer last time around. And now you've got his former chief of staff who's running USTR. Lighthizer grew up in Ohio, working class like me in Chelsea, Mass.,

and feels like I would much rather people not have two or three televisions, but know that they're going to have a good opportunity for themselves and their family going forward. And if that means, you know, that we're going to break some eggs, that's okay. I think that resonates with Trump, frankly. Okay, so it's interesting you say that because just this week, remember the whole deep seek? This happened four days ago. Of course. He's being asked. Yeah, so what do you think about deep seek? And what do you think about, you know, Chad GBT? He says, look, you know, I kind of like it.

$6 million out here, they're building four, and let's see what happens. I think a little bit of competition is good. It's interesting how he dances with this, right? Because that's not a tariff position. So it's almost like he is thinking steps ahead on how to use a certain leverage to negotiate both sides. He will lean on allowing, in my mind, using deep seek to possibly get...

The local guys that have a lot of power, the NVIDIA, the Sam Altman, the Chad GPT folks to be like, hey, we do more. It's such a very, very interesting. He said, well, you know, right now there's a lot of people that are participating and wanting to buy TikTok. We got Larry Ellison and, you know, Elon, but also Microsoft. Microsoft, too. You saw that. That just came out yesterday or two days ago. Two days ago. Yeah.

Very interesting. He was the guy on Huawei and 5G. I remember the CFO's daughter in Canada, Iran. That's right, Meng. And that was a real problem for the Canadians. But at the end of the day, he's a big national security problem. So I think it is a mistake to take a read on Trump and say this guy is only tariff man. This guy also is prepared to cut a deal with anybody. Right. I mean, one of the biggest things the mainstream media has gotten wrong about Trump is they say he's in Putin's pocket.

No, he's not. But he's willing to talk to Putin in a way that Biden was not. I mean, when the guy that is telling the Europeans they need to spend more on defense, you think Putin wants that? It's exactly the opposite of what Putin wants. Are you happy with him as your president or Biden? They're they're very, very different people. Right. It's not what I'm asking. I know. Am I happier? I make more money with Trump.

Right? My taxes are lower. Far more people use our services. Are you safer? Am I safer with Trump? Trump wants to end wars, right?

On the other hand, the likelihood that Trump can get some things, I think that the level of tail risks, upside and downside on Trump, are far greater than they were under Biden. So the potential that you get some really big wins that were not conceivable under Biden, more likely under Trump. The potential that some really big things blow up under Trump, more likely than under Biden. Geopolitically. Yeah, but you see, I think if I would ask you that question, yeah.

In 2017, 18, let's just say if I asked you that question in 2016, 2017, I think you would have said Obama. That's right. I don't think you would have said Trump in 2017. That's right. So, you see, that's the part... My view is different. No, no, no. What I think happened is, in a private, by yourself, without any cameras being around, wink, wink, no one's watching. This is a very small podcast. We only get a couple of viewers a week. Yeah, I know.

I think people laughing in the background here, just, you know, those are the two people I got. My wife doesn't want that. So we got one other person. I like this. I like the self-deprecation. No, but what I'm going with that. No, no. What I'm saying to you is the following is that I think deep down inside, you're kind of happy. He's the president, not Biden or Kamala. Um,

I don't know if you can say it because I think you're going to upset some of your friends. No, no, it's not that. Dinner will be canceled. Bullshit. I can say whatever I want. I can. I don't know if you can. I really can. I want to protect you. Don't say everything you want to say. No, no, no, no, no, no. Consider your career. One of the very few things that has driven my career is the fact that I have to be able to say what I believe because otherwise I can't live with myself. And that's why I've never been in politics. I've never been interested. I've been asked by a bunch of folks. Life's better under Trump. You know, I...

I really worry. You can't say it, can you? I can't. I can't say it because I... Even though you know it's right. I don't know it's right. I think that it's... There are certain things that Trump has done. Look, we have a ceasefire in Gaza now. That would not have happened under Kamala Harris.

I completely accept that. And he was the one that pushed the Israelis. Yeah. And he was the one that through Qatar pushed Hamas. Sure. That got done. Yeah. I think it is more likely that we will get a ceasefire on Russia, Ukraine under Trump than we would have under Kamala. I think that's true.

At the same time, as someone who, you asked me right at the beginning, what got me into what I do? And it was standing up for rule of law, ideals, what America stands for, someone who truly understands that America leads by example, by example. And I find that Trump as a human being does not lead by example. Biden and Kamala do.

Um, I, I, neither of them were the people that I would have voted for. Ideally, your only choice is these three. I understand. Um, and if you ask me, um, where you have, um, an ability to get people around the world to say the United States is a system that I, a political system that I trust, that I stand with.

that I know that I can count on reliably from one administration to the next. I think that the level of longer term strategic damage, which Trump is doing to alliances that matter to the US, I'll give you an example. I mean, I just gave Trump, you know, plaudits on Gaza and on Russia, Ukraine. I happen to believe this is a place that I disagree fundamentally with Trump. I believe in a world that's becoming more dangerous and more fragmented, that a strong, cohesive Europe is

is very valuable for the United States. I believe that.

I believe that Europe as a supranational institution supports rule of law, supports transparency, supports human rights, supports all of the things that we as Americans have stood and put our hand on our hearts since we were kids. They've lost their minds a little bit. Yes. We have too in the United States in different ways. Have you been to UK to see what UK did? Oh, my God. The case study. Let me just make the argument. By the way, UK is not in Europe right now. So-

Brexit. I fully get it. But look at the case study of what they've done. Everybody else is following suit. Germany, go to different... I think that if the UK were still in Europe, they'd be in much better shape right now. Absolutely. And by the way, over 70% of Brits now agree. They recognize this was a huge mistake. So the fact that Trump really believes that Europe should...

go their separate way and fragment, and he wants to support all of these irredentist and Euroskeptic movements, I think it's penny-wise and pound-foolish, quite to use the pun. Long-term, it's a problem. Leading by example, if Narendra Modi in India, Prime Minister of India,

If he were to get on phone calls and meetings with Gautam Adani, the most powerful oligarch in India, and that Adani was suddenly like part of those conversations and driving policy even though he has no official position, we'd say that was a banana republic. I really have a problem with the fact that Elon is playing that role right now with Trump. That bothers me. So how do you – keep going. What do you think about that relationship and do you think it's going to work and last? Of course. Of course.

Tell me why. I do. Well, one, because Trump is really good at managing relations with people that have a lot more money than him and are very useful to him. That was true. It's true with Steve Schwartzman. It's true with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. And I think Elon is even more useful.

And I also think that Elon is very good at keeping his mouth shut when he needs to, like with China. He's never said anything bad about Xi Jinping. He's had lots of reasons to. His business has had its challenges. He's never. He's more than happy to go after the SEC. He's more than happy to go after the British prime minister. He's more than happy to go after the German chancellor because they're not going to hurt him. But the Chinese, they...

They can hurt him. So he's very careful. He's very pro-communist party, says great things about them. You know, all the sort of things that Zuckerberg says to Trump in the last few weeks. Trump is far more important to Elon now than Xi Jinping is.

Not even close. So I think that the ability of these two men to ensure that they continue to keep that relationship very, very strong is extremely high. And everyone I know that really asked the question about, oh, they're not going to last. Those are people that want them not to last. Well, that's not analysis. That's sales. I mean, you know, if you're just telling me what you want, you're not it's not useful. It's not a useful judgment on the conversation. So I have a problem with that. So out of all the good things that you said about Trump has done since he's won,

The border is safer. Children are going to be safer. They're going and getting the criminals and sex traffickers out and arresting them. That protects kids, right? Business is open. All these folks are publicly saying they're going to put a half a trillion dollars, $200 billion, $100 billion, $2 trillion, whatever they're saying, you know, Saudi Arabia. That's a good thing that they're putting money here that benefits the American population.

right here, Russia, Ukraine, every, so you said 90% of things he's done better to make your life better as your CEO of the country that you've chosen to live in. The one thing that makes you be

more supportive of a Kamala and a Biden than him is because of his relationship with Musk. No, that wasn't the only thing I said. What else did you say? I did. I talked about Europe. I talked about rule of law. Look, I... Rule of law? Yes. Do you think rule of law, like, seriously? I mean, on the rule of law situation, like...

What they did to him the last 18 months, you think that was okay? You think they didn't abuse the rule of law against a candidate that's going up against a competitor? Oh, the New York cases? I absolutely thought that was abusive, and I said it at the time. They went to Mar-a-Lago. You think he's going to do worse than what they did to him the last 18 months? Ian, you're a very smart guy. We'll see. We'll see. I don't know.

He can't. I mean, the president pardoned his kids, his family. I'm deeply worried. I am deeply worried about the fact that he has taken the national security detail off of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who the Islamic Republic are trying to assassinate. I think that is one of the most irresponsible decisions by a president I have ever seen in my life, honestly.

And why is he doing it? Because he wants to show he can? Because they did bad things to him because they were inadequately loyal even after they worked for him? That's bullshit. I'm sorry. So again, I mean, I know you agree with that.

I know you agree with that. Hear me out, though. Do you agree with that? Hear me out. Answer my question. I've asked all your questions. Answer that one because I can tell that one troubles you. I'm not going to say it. You're not going to do it. No, it's not about I'm not going to do it. You haven't done any of what I've asked you so far. I have. Let me finish mine and I'll give you mine. I will. Okay? Okay. Ask it. I'll give it to you. So this is the part where I want to go with this. Okay. Okay.

Predictions. You said, "I don't know." I said, "How they've treated him, the government and the abuse of power the last 18 months, you think he's going to do worse than they did to him?" You said, "I don't know. We'll see." Okay. I don't know. Well, come on. I mean, but fine. But let me ask you this question. We have a news site called vtnews.ai. We hired 15 machine learning engineers.

And it's a new site that tells you which story is leaning on the left, being reported. If you look at it, that story is being reported more from the left than the right. Sports, politics, business, and there's AI component. You can ask questions. And on the bottom right of the website, we have a new initiative we're doing right now called The First 100 Days to see how good people are at making predictions.

Trump's first 100 days, what kind of predictions are they going to make? You're a prediction guy. You look at my top risk. I'm going to read it. Here's your prediction. Right at the bottom. Trump fails. Red herring. That's where you're going, right? No, no, I'm not going there. I'm not going there. Darn it. Your prediction is top 10 global risk for 2024. I'm going to read them. I'm sorry, 2025, not 2024. Ian Bremmer. Yeah.

Legit guy. 250 employees. Smart guy. Brilliant. 15 years old college, Tulane, Russia, 86, 89. Crazy, right? Crazy guy. Crazy guy. Armenian guy. I love him. I like him a lot. I just met him for the first time today, right? But you're like, he's surprising me. Fun and charming. No, I actually like him. So Ian Bremmer's top risks for 2025. Yeah. Maybe we'll have dinner together next year in Davos. Who knows? But...

Let me read this to you. Number one. They're going to say the Armenians are in charge of the Great Reset. Can you imagine that? It's going to be horrible. The G-Zero world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Number two, rule of dawn. Rule of dawn, yeah. Number three, U.S.-China breakdown. Yeah. Number four, Trumponomics. Yeah, sure. Number five, Russia rogue role. Number six, Iran on the ropes. Number seven, global economic fragmentation. Number eight, AI unbound. Number nine, ungoverned spaces. Number 10, Mexican standoff. Right? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah.

We're playing a game that's a movie simulation. Okay? Okay. And it's 2016. And this technology we have can predict that the next nine years from 2015 to 20, let's just go, yeah. 16 to 25, yeah. From 16 to 25, January 20th. Yeah. It shows you everything, Trump's first term and Biden's first term. Yeah. It shows you everything except for one thing. Which of the two presidents and who they pardoned

If I was to ask you in 2026, Mr. Prediction, who is more likely to pardon his entire family? Oh, yeah. At that point, you would have said Trump. No, who would you have said? I would have said Trump. But who did? It was Biden. So think about what you just said. I asked you the last 18 months, they destroyed this guy's life. And I said, do you think he's going to do the same? You said, we'll see.

But when I ask you who you think is going to pardon his own family, he never pardons his own family. And this guy pardons his own family. It's interesting. It's never happened before to see something like this. Any pardons Fauci, any pardons Milley, any pardon. I thought it was a huge mistake. Again, absolutely. But the part with that is as a – something gives me – I'm not going to ask you who you voted for, but I have a feeling you didn't vote for Trump.

Yeah, I'm public. I didn't vote for Trump. So literally, you didn't vote for Trump. Right. But the question becomes, this is why I think the Democratic Party took the biggest black eye ever. Because we were told, this is the guy that's going to pardon himself and his own family. And he didn't. Won't do it. And we were told, Biden said, no man is above the law. And he pardoned his entire family. Do you know what happened to the Democratic credibility to me? Right here. It got hurt. It got hurt.

Not heard. This is not heard. This is the first time in history it's shattered. Yes.

It shattered and it hurt a lot of the experts who were saying there, well, here's what's going to happen. 51 secret intelligence signed off that there's nothing in the laptop and Russian collusion shift and all this credibility was shot. I agree. I think that, again, I think the country is incredibly divided. And I think that what you are talking about is something that is very widely felt by, you know, pretty much everyone that would consider vote for voting for Trump.

And I think everyone on the Democratic side would say they do it. This was necessary because look how bad Trump was going to be. That's what they'll say. That's what they'll say. Where is there space for someone to actually have a conversation that can engage with both sides, that can be balanced? And the fact is, it's a really hard thing to do. It's easier in other countries. You know, it's it's a reality.

It's uncomfortable, but I'm not prepared to say this is, you know, all kumbaya on the Republican side. Your life is better today under this guy than the Biden or. Look, I mean, I know you can't say. I spend most of my time, most of my time thinking about the world. I spend most of my time thinking about the eight billion people that are here.

I understand that I'm American. I understand that, you know, we care about Americans first and foremost. At the end of the day, as someone who was born here by stroke of luck, and I'm enormously appreciative about that, but do I consider that Americans matter fundamentally more than everybody else around the world? No, I kind of feel like we're all human beings on this little ball, and I really care about what the little ball is going.

- And I believe you're being sincere. - I'm being completely sincere. - No, no, what I'm saying is we've never met. This is the first time we're talking. I believe you're being sincere. - And I worry more about the future of all of us on the little ball with Trump. I do, I really do. - And I'm on the complete opposite side of my level of optimism to people around the world. We ran election night, okay? Election night, we ran the number one live stream worldwide on YouTube.

That doesn't mean anything to you. I don't give the numbers on what it is. That's pretty cool. That means something to me. No, no. What I'm saying to you is numbers-wise. What does that really mean? We're in D.C. We're talking to YouTube CEO and Google CEO. You know who they are. How'd you guys run the biggest live and what happened? We had 2,000 people on our hangar. You've seen the property, the hangar on the other side, right? 2,000 people are there. You know where people were from? All over the world. Guy flew 24 hours from Australia to come. I said, why are you here? He says, you may not know this.

Whatever happens here, we're going to feel it everywhere. And we're so glad Trump is in because the amount of games that was played under Biden and Kamala, we're just so happy finally another person is in. That's not imposing ridiculous ideas and policies to us.

And so Amendo mindset of... And I'm telling you, the two countries that are closest to us, that know us best, that do the most business with us, that travel the most to our country, Mexico and Canada...

overwhelmingly, these are people, it's not that they're scared of Trump, it's that they really think that things are going to be worse. - Trudeau goes and has dinner with them right after having-- - It's not Trudeau, oh that's horrible. - Trudeau goes and has dinner with them a week later, he resigns. - Don't ask me to defend Trudeau. - Well you just did. - No I didn't. - You said Canada. - I said Canada, I'm talking about Canadians. - Have you seen what his rating is with his own people? - Have you seen how conservatives feel about Trump and Elon?

Well, even worse. I don't know about that. That is absolutely true. Listen, I know what Pierre said. Like I heard what Pierre said when he said, you know, Canada will never be the 51st state. And he has to say that. It's not just that. It's because everybody feels that way. No, but the point is with am I sitting there trying to really make those guys happy? No. No. We've made them happy.

Their life's been better because of America, the amount of opportunities they've had because of us. Yet Mexico, you're sending 10 million people over. Columbia guy gets up and talks shit at 3.40 in the morning. Some are saying he was drunk and immediately later say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, I think there's a guy in charge in America that his priority is me first. And as a guy that lived in Iran for 11 years almost, two years Germany, and I've been here my entire life since then.

I'm glad that this guy's for me over anybody else that he's willing to give money to. Where I will tell you where we agree strongly is I really want him to succeed. I love that. I do not want him to. I love that. And I respect that. That's important. Yeah, I respect that. And we need more people, no matter who they vote for, to be able to come together and say that because I really wanted Biden to succeed. And I hope you did too. He was your president.

You wanted Biden to see, didn't you? When he was there? Of course I wanted. Of course you did. Of course you did. This shouldn't be hard for us to say. No. And I mean, you know, at the end of the day, succeeding as the American president in the most powerful country in the world, in a much stronger position now than we have been in a very long time, you know, means everybody succeeds.

It really should. What will need to happen for you to say life was better under Trump? What needs to happen the next year, two years, three years? I'm going to invite you back. We're going to go to dinner. I'll tell you. What needs to happen for the great Ian Bremmer to say my life changed positively under Trump? What needs to happen?

Armenians are stubborn. I am very stubborn. But if the world is in a more stable place, if we are able to actually build leadership, not just for Americans, but also for people wanting to follow us around the world, and we see that definably in aligning more with collective ideas. The world is fragmenting and falling apart. We need to come together.

And that means it can't just be America first. So let me ask you. So if your parents, let's just say you're married, you got kids. No kids, but I'm married, yeah. Okay, so let's just say you're married. Let's say you're in a house with mom and dad, four kids. I'm just making up a number. You're in the family. What's more important? Would you rather have your family, marriage, family life, everything be good there or bring it down two notch but make sure everybody else's marriage is also better around the community?

I mean, you got the way. That's a very good question. Many, many years ago. My mother would have voted for Trump. And I love your mother. I think your mother is brilliant. And Bernie Sanders. And she wouldn't have. She would have voted for Bernie? Without a question. She would never vote for an establishment politician. Like a Hillary. Ever. Or a Bush. Never. Never. She didn't trust those people. Wow. Because they did nothing for her kids. Nothing for her kids. They knew. She fundamentally knew that everything they said was a lie. So she would have not been for Kamala or Biden.

- No, I don't think she'd be for Kamala Biden. I think she would have voted for anyone on the far left or far right. I think she would have voted for RFK. - The far left or far right, wow. - Yeah, I mean, she brought the National Enquirer. - Because of the anti-Sem. - I learned how to read in part with the National Enquirer every week. - Oh shit, yeah. - And everyone that I grew up with in the projects were like that. - Yeah. - Of course. - Well, to me, I think many, many years ago, I was a salesperson. I went from being an employee to salesperson, started making money. Then I became a sales leader.

And when I was a sales leader, I was making a lot of money. Well, my guys were making money. It's 27, 28 years old. And I'm like, yeah, we got to make some money. And my guys got to make some money as well. And then I, for about three years, all, all I read, any book I read was all about leadership books. So it's my obsession. It's all I read. Everything was about leadership books. And then,

I realized the mindset was about making sure our guys are doing better. Then people started making money. And I said, okay, so what is the philosophy of leadership? It was two things. One is the example, okay? The example you set, how you live. You're setting an example, how you live. And then the other one is getting people to do things they typically wouldn't do on their own. That's the art of persuasion, challenging, driving, motivating, whatever you want to call that, right? I think Trump...

is doing his best to set the example as America's going to lead the free world. And number two, in his own creative ways, using tariffs, challenge, threats, opportunities,

He's trying to get people that would do things that they typically wouldn't do on their own, such as increasing the amount of money they're giving to NATO, such as getting their actor to get back to work. Who was the president of this country? Some of you guys are asking. America is no longer sending us money. Do you know which one I'm talking about, Rob, that Brandon and I were talking about earlier with Rob? You know which one this is. And he says, why are you waiting for America to send us money? Listen, we need to take care of our country.

We need to do something about it. Rob, can you, Brandon, can you send this clip to Rob? Was it Bukele? Oh, no. This is a clip that came out yesterday that was going viral on Twitter. I want to finish on this, but I want to show this. Brandon, if you can send this clip.

It's such an innocent clip, but it makes so much sense. I believe I have it. You said Vinnie sent it. Yeah, Vinnie sent it. I have it. If you can go to it, that's exactly the one. Kenyan president. Kenyan president. Ruto, yeah. Yeah, watch this. Go back. People the other day crying. Oh, I don't know. Trump has removed money. He said he's not giving us any more money.

Why are you crying? It's not your government, it's not your country. Lower audio a little bit, Rob. Watch. He has no reason to give you anything. I mean, you don't pay taxes in America. Wow. He's appealing to his people. This is a wake-up call for you to say, okay, what are we going to do to help ourselves? That's right. Instead of crying...

To you, what are we going to do? I am a tour. You open. What are we going to do? I think that's the most important thing. I think the mindset is to support ourselves. You don't pay taxes in America. He doesn't owe you nothing. I agree. So that's the part where for the last four years, it's been the other way around. We, the taxpayers are sending money to people that were like, why are we sending money to this? I completely understand why the average American would hear that. It would resonate with them. I get it.

I will tell you that if you are in the top 1%, the 0.1%, or if you're in the government and aligned with them, and you have benefited from exploiting resources all over the world, you've benefited from us pumping carbon into the atmosphere when so many of these countries have not had a chance to globalize, and now they're saying, what's going to happen to us? Whether, you know, you're...

a tiny little country in Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, the idea that the Americans don't owe anything to anybody else in the rest of the world is not something that I sit well with.

I'm just telling you. I'm telling you, man. And I think that this is a conversation that I want to see more Americans actually have. It's not just long form, but it's like looking at it from two completely different reasonable perspectives. And that's why these are my favorite conversations. And I want to finish off by saying thank you for coming out to the audience. I hope you guys enjoyed this as much as I have. I can't wait for him to come back and tell us

how great President Trump's been and be a spokesperson, maybe even make a long-form video being complimentary about the president. I'm looking forward to that day. Whether it'll happen or not, who knows? Maybe...

Little bit of inspiration from mom, you know, to come out and say my mom's the anti-establishment side of your mom. But either way, I look forward to continue this conversation with you. I got smarter. I enjoyed it. The debate was fun. And your class act, very likable. I appreciate your time. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Take care. Good to be with you. Tank, take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye. Nowadays, more than ever, the brand you wear reflects and represents who you are. So for us...

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