This Week in Startups
00:22:29 · Lon Harris
[00:22:29] S2: Yeah. I I think Steven is an interesting case too because he's a he's a diehard Trump fan. If you follow him on x, he's always praising Trump. So this is the guy to talk to. If he's coming to you and he's not... He doesn't have TDS. He's not like some crazed, you know, like, communist who's just trying to bring down the system. He's a guy who liked Trump who presumably voted for him, and now he's got this, you know, unique perspective on what's going wrong with the policy. Why wouldn't you listen to a guy like
00:22:54 · Jason Calacanis
[00:22:54] S0: that? Never felt more pressure in my life than the pressure I received over these last couple of years to join the Trump, cobble, to be Sure. Even to be involved in the administration and to spend time there and to be part of Doge or other things. It was a lot of pressure on me, and a lot of my best friends or best colleagues were pushing me to do it. I said, you know, not for me. I I don't enjoy politics. I don't wanna I don't wanna focus on that. It's not a focus area for me. I don't care about power. I don't care about going to the White House. We had all those jokes. I care about the truth. Yeah. Honestly, maybe it sounds like maybe it makes me sound corny, but I actually care about the truth. Always have. And I'm a truth sinking missile. And so if you want to understand why for the last two years, everybody got it wrong and I nailed it, it's very simple. I just always go look for the truth, and I am humble in my approach to that. I'm not gonna come out and tell you you're wrong. I'm gonna say, hey. I'm investigating this. Here's where the... What the facts say. And and that's why I was pro Trump on some things, and I just gave him an a plus on data centers because I investigated it, and it was very clear to me that people are spinning the data center story. Nothing wrong with data centers. People want them. Only thing that's wrong with them is when they pollute and you put them too close to people's houses. Okay. Let's keep going. By the way, just so people know, the reason I'm doing this is not to take a victory lap. It's because so many people are asking me my opinion on everything, and I just wanna put it out there and have a place to point to to just say, here's We talk
00:24:18 · Lon Harris
[00:24:18] S2: about it on the show. Alright. MCP 2292 from May third of this year twenty twenty six. This is you. I thought this was really prescient as well. This is you talking about sort of the civil war within the Republican Party and within the Trump administration about AI, about tech that was kind of driving the administration apart. And when you look back at it today, that clearly was creating a wedge among Republicans that even drove some people maybe from participating. Let's take a look at this clip.
00:24:48 · Jason Calacanis
[00:24:48] S0: I haven't reviewed any of these. Parts. These are all becoming one issue. Polarization of wealth. Okay. We now have a couple of trillion dollar companies with these AI tokens. We have jobs being retired at an alarming rate. And is every truck driver gonna lose their job? Is every cab driver gonna lose their job? Is every delivery driver gonna lose their job? Every factory worker, everybody at Amazon gonna lose their job? The answer is yes. All those jobs are gonna go away, or the majority of them will go away, and those people will have to be redeployed in some intelligent fashion. You combine that with, hey. The intelligence wants this and America first. This is really about the civil war inside of the Trump administration and the Republican Party. The civil war in that party is people's jobs, America first, and these tech oligarchs, as they call them, are they running away with this and stealing everybody's money, quote unquote, and is it just gonna create a permanent underclass that always loses their jobs? This is what Bannon, Fuentes, Tucker, they've all departed. They've... Meg and Kelly, they're all leaving the Trump camp or trying to put pressure on the Trump camp to stop kowtowing in their minds to big tech, to oligarchs. Trump loves money. Nailed it again, I guess. Yeah. I mean Very captain obvious on that one.
00:26:12 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:26:12] S2: Yeah. Feels feels prescient, but... Yeah. And, and, I mean, I think that now we're we're in this interesting situation of, you know, do do the Democrats who just came out and voted for this blue tsunami who put all of these new candidates of power, are they gonna accept a compromise on this? Like, are they... If if the the Gina Hinojosa's of the world come back in in a few months and say, actually, we're gonna have data centers, but don't worry. They're gonna be, you know, clean. Like, is that is that gonna fly? I don't know. It's an interesting question. [00:26:44] S0: Split government's great. I think the democrats are not socialist lunatics in large part. A lot of the people we saw win were actually moderates. I think they're gonna go to the center. Just like, you know, Hillary Hillary's Clint... Clinton's assessment of the right and MAGA being deplorables was, like, a a dangerous move for her to frame all of them that way. It's a dangerous move for the Republicans to frame everybody on the left as, like, socialist freaks, trans, whatever, blue hair, sept... You know, rings or septum rings and pronouns and all this nonsense. That's just not true. There are a couple of questionable characters in the winning, like... But most of them are moderates. Let's call it what it is. And so they should drop that rhetoric, start working with the left, move everybody to the center, and let's just try to solve some problems for the American people.
00:26:44 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:26:44] S0: Split government's great. I think the democrats are not socialist lunatics in large part. A lot of the people we saw win were actually moderates. I think they're gonna go to the center. Just like, you know, Hillary Hillary's Clint... Clinton's assessment of the right and MAGA being deplorables was, like, a a dangerous move for her to frame all of them that way. It's a dangerous move for the Republicans to frame everybody on the left as, like, socialist freaks, trans, whatever, blue hair, sept... You know, rings or septum rings and pronouns and all this nonsense. That's just not true. There are a couple of questionable characters in the winning, like... But most of them are moderates. Let's call it what it is. And so they should drop that rhetoric, start working with the left, move everybody to the center, and let's just try to solve some problems for the American people. [00:27:34] S2: Yeah. That Talarico stuff just didn't play. You watch him talk, and he's like, he's a... He seems like a pretty normal guy. He's not he's not... That seem like crazy [00:27:41] S0: to me. You know what speaks volumes for him? Day after? He's like, I totally respect Elon Musk. I would love to sit down with him. I think SpaceX is amazing. I think Tesla's amazing. Would love to support him in any way. Hey. Listen. He spent $200,000,000 to... You know, against me, but I don't take it personal. This is how politics works, and I can't wait to sit down with [00:27:59] S2: him. Right.