All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:30:55 · Jason Calacanis
And, of course, you you get all the way to the war and the endless allegations of grifting and the endless inflation, and that then just plummeted them from 20 to negative 23. That... That's a series of events that happen. And I just wanna state for the record here, I'm an independent. I I vote now 55% Democrat in my life, 45% Republican. When we started this podcast, it was probably seventy thirty. I have moved significantly towards the right because of the lunacy of the left. But what happened here is the Trump two point o agenda, I think, got abandoned, and there were tons of distraction. President Trump has the right ideas, but often his execution is extremely variable. And that's just a way of being very generous to say it's chaotic. And if you have that chaotic moment and then everything is about the data centers, everything's about our industry, everything's about helping us, and people laugh and mock at the idea of raising the minimum wage. Chamath, you sort of pointed out here during your talk. The the k shape economy is kind of what you were invoking there. It doesn't feel fair to people, and I think you made a very accurate point that people are just swinging and just hoping somebody will care about the bottom half of non equity holders. That's exactly what it is. And Trump didn't make people feel like he was working for them. That's why they abandoned him. And the grifting allegations, whether they're true or not, is all gonna come out. But that's what we need to talk about, and it leads us to our second topic here. Our second topic, which is gonna be what the next twenty four months are gonna be about. So, Sacks, you wanted to get to this. Next eighteen, twenty four months, is there a path to redemption for president Trump? Is there a way to turn this presidency around and maybe save his legacy?
00:32:48 · David Sacks, Jason Calacanis
[00:32:48] S1: Well, first of all, let me put up some charts here since you guys are doing the chart game and I didn't know we were gonna play the the chart game today. [00:32:55] S0: So, Nick, [00:32:55] S1: can can you [00:32:56] S0: Who's got the best charts? [00:32:57] S1: Yeah. Nick, can you throw up these charts? Okay. So so look, Jay Cal, there's all sorts of issues out there that people are gonna point to. And I know you've got yours, and I'm not saying that every single issue has been executed perfectly. I do think that president Trump deserves enormous credit for completely sealing the border and solving that immigration issue [00:33:18] S0: Agree with that. [00:33:19] S1: Just as an example. But look, again, the question is why was this not a normal midterm result? Look at the Trump approval rating versus the price of gas. It maps perfectly. Okay? Trump net approval maps to the price of gas. Okay. Next chart. This was the prediction market for which party will win the senate in 2026. And what you see is that the Republicans were expected to win by a very large margin throughout the entire first year of the Trump presidency, all through the things you were talking about, Jay Cal. Okay? So the tariff rollout did not affect this whatsoever. That was the liberation day in April, not even a blip here. Okay? April 2025 wasn't a blip. [00:34:09] S0: And to be clear, not a blip on the senate balance. Yeah.
00:34:09 · Jason Calacanis, David Sacks
[00:34:09] S0: And to be clear, not a blip on the senate balance. Yeah. [00:34:12] S1: Yeah. Yes. But but I'm using this as proxy I showed. Right. I get it. But I'm using this as a proxy for what just happened where we lost what, like, eight or nine senate seats. Okay. Where does it start to change? March. March 2026. What happened? When did the war begin? 02/28/2026. Very clear. That's where everything starts to change here in terms of losing the senate. Next chart. Okay. Now, just ask voters. What'd you vote for? Why'd you vote? Question. Thinking about your vote for congress, how important to you was the war in Iran? Crucial, 34%. A major factor, 40%. So basically, 74% of the electorate said that it was either crucial or a major factor. And then of those, they broke massively for blue. And this doesn't just include Democrats, obviously. It includes a lot of independents and it even includes, I would say, younger Republican voters. There's a huge divide in the party, I think, between you kinda got the Fox News group, it's kind of the 50 or even 60. They're I think still supportive of the war. But you look at the younger voters, young males, highly against this. Again, it ties back to the podcast bros. So again, there's abundant data to show what I've been saying. Now your question was, can Trump fix this? I think absolutely. Because the root of What's your all top year [00:35:46] S0: three things he can do to fix it? [00:35:48] S1: Just get out of the war. [00:35:49] S0: Okay. End the war.
00:35:49 · Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:35:49] S0: Okay. End the war. [00:35:50] S1: That's my number one, my number two, and my number three. Because what will what will happen? The price of Brent crude will drop precipitously. On the day of the election, the price of Brent crude dropped 10%. Is that because something changed in the straight of war moves? No. It's because the market started to price in the mere possibility that the war would end sooner. And we got a 10% cut in the price of Brent crude. It will go from... You know, it's been as high as $1.17. It'll go from $1.10 to 70. If this war ends, gas prices will drop, diesel will drop, the price of food will drop, and then the underlying strong economic growth, the GDP growth and the employment picture, which are still robust, will come into focus. And I think that Trump's popularity will rebound maybe back in the forties. [00:36:44] S0: Okay. So [00:36:45] S1: I... That's the thing we need to do. If we don't do that... Look. If this war hold on. Let stress this one point. If the war continues, the Republicans will continue to bleed popularity. [00:36:56] S2: I don't think this is the war in Iran. Meaning, it is in as much as it adds to a broken economy. Since COVID, the economy has been structurally broken. And I just think that there's a huge voting block that keeps swinging back and forth to either side asking them solve the problems and giving people mandates to solve a problem. That's why I think somebody needs to understand economic populism. Do you buy that argument or do you think that it's more narrowly just the war in Iran?
00:36:56 · Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, Jason Calacanis
[00:36:56] S2: I don't think this is the war in Iran. Meaning, it is in as much as it adds to a broken economy. Since COVID, the economy has been structurally broken. And I just think that there's a huge voting block that keeps swinging back and forth to either side asking them solve the problems and giving people mandates to solve a problem. That's why I think somebody needs to understand economic populism. Do you buy that argument or do you think that it's more narrowly just the war in Iran? [00:37:25] S1: I don't wanna make it, like, so overly abstract. Like, to me, the issue is affordability. Okay? And I think the electorate really cares about that. It's like the central pocketbook issue. I agree. And I think that both the economic data and the prediction markets showed that in January 2026, we were in pretty good shape on that issue. And since then, we went backwards. And I believe that we can get in good shape again without turning to socialism or completely restructuring the economy. [00:37:54] S2: Remember the twenty four election? I agree with you that economic affordability can be an abstract term, but I think that the voting electorate is smart enough to use a message as a vessel. And I remember in '24, the vessel, which again, I didn't hear it loud enough. But if I look back, and maybe I'm just imposing my narrative bias on it, was do you remember the whole controversy around the price of eggs and Trump hammered Biden and Harris on the price of [00:38:27] S0: eggs? Over and over. Yeah.
00:38:27 · Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks
[00:38:27] S0: eggs? Over and over. Yeah. [00:38:28] S2: It wasn't the price of eggs. I mean, yes, it was, But it was a window into a broad problem and an idea. And I think gas is a problem, but I also think it is a window into a broad class of problems. And I think people focus their energy on a thing because it's easier to message around a thing repeatedly. No. [00:38:53] S0: You're right. But the broader [00:38:55] S1: basket problem data centers. That's what... Look, I I was listening to Gina Hinojosa. This is the new governor elect of Texas. So frankly, it's a race I wasn't even paying attention to because I don't think anyone... [00:39:07] S0: Yeah. We assumed Abbott was gonna win. [00:39:09] S1: Gonna win. A very successful three term governor in Texas presided over an economic boom, that's why we moved to the state. And we thought... I mean, honestly, I think it was the biggest shocker of the whole night. Anyway, so I started watching some interviews with her to kinda catch up on on what I had obviously missed. And I watched one interview she did with The New York Times where the interviewer kept trying to draw her out on social issues, [00:39:34] S0: right, [00:39:34] S1: like let's call it woke issues, identity politics, And she said, listen, I'm not participating [00:39:39] S2: Didn't take the