All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:45:31 · Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:45:31] S0: Yeah. And at a minimum, they're gonna get a great tax basis. I think a lot of the data center stuff is performative. They just wanna get a better deal. If you look at how Gina from Texas looked at data centers, she's looking at it from the community first perspective. If you look at how Trump, president Trump looked at it, it was from the companies and the economy, the GDP's perspective first. But they all... They both wind up in the same place, which is, don't disturb your neighbors. Don't pollute. You know, be a a good citizen and and maybe, splashy cashy a little bit of the funds there. [00:46:02] S2: By the way,
00:46:03 · Jason Calacanis
[00:46:03] S0: Jason. So in terms of the the... What Trump can do, I I have a a take some people might find a little shocking, Chamath. I'm not a big fan of, pardons. Right? But they're they're the law. They're built into the system. Both parties, use them liberally, and every, administration gets more aggressive in using them. So until we change that, I think Trump right now should pardon everybody. Right now, this week, pardon his family, pardon himself, pardon every single person in the administration because he's gonna do it anyway. And then that takes off the table the Democrats doing an endless amount of investigations or it neuters it to a certain extent. And then he should say to them, let's work. Let's make a deal. And the deal he should make, number one, is do some tax reforms on the capital gains laws. Now listen. We we all make our money from capital gains, and then I'm assuming, you know, most of the people in our, circle leverage margin loans. In other words, in taking loans against our equity holdings, we should just say anything over 10,000,000, you tax it at 50% of the capital gains rate. If you wind up paying the loan down, you get that as a credit. If you wind up selling shares, you you pay the rest of the capital gains. Get that out there, smooth it out. It's a revenue stream, and it makes it feel like, hey. When rich people take these loans, at least some tax revenue comes in and you get rid of the Bernie Sanders. These people haven't paid taxes, and this year, they paid zero. Then we gotta work on health care. I'll leave it up to other folks with more experience to say what that should be, but Trump should say, hey. Let's work on health care. I'm gonna keep harping on the minimum wage. There's two ways to do it, obviously. You could say no taxes on people under a certain revenue, or income threshold, as you sort of, evoke their earlier Chamath. But just say two years a year for four years, get everybody up to $15 an hour. I know that people will call me a Libtard for saying this, even though I'm a moderate independent. I think it would be good for the esprit de corps, it would counter this narrative that we don't care about the bottom half of society and in fact, there's only ten fifteen million people who are impacted by under $15 an hour, so it's an easy thing to do.
00:48:00 · Jason Calacanis
I would go with number four, a ban on trading stocks in office and doing business with foreign countries. Rahm Emanuel has this proposal. People on the right have it. So I think we should go get some consensus on that from everybody. And then finally, I think Trump should come to him and say, hey. Listen. We know housing is the thing that's frustrating people a whole bunch. Let's come up with a plan to incentivize the building of new homes. And he should go right into deal mode. He should go right into populist Trump, which everybody loves. If he solves two, three of these out of five, I think it would redeem his presidency. And, obviously, to your point, Sacks, he's just gotta end the war. He's just gotta end the war. However, it's possible. And I think the Dems may force his hand, and then he might say, well, you know, the Dems forced me to do it, and that gives him this golden bridge to cross.
00:48:47 · Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:48:47] S2: Look. Before we totally throw the baby out with the bathwater, I think it's important to realize that if you look at Reagan's presidency, Reagan's presidency has only grown in its stature over time because the structural changes that Reagan made were more obvious to see in its totality the further you got away from it. And I think the reality is even though the Democrats may not want to admit this, an economic populist will have to understand that keeping the borders closed is an incredibly important thing because the base of people that you need to vote for you want more of the pie. And so sharing more of the pie with people streaming across the border is just mathematically a bad decision. So you have that. Then you have tariffs, which if you partner it with the amount of money that people have committed, if that money follows through and it actually revives domestic manufacturing, the further and further you get away from it and is allowed to compound, that's gonna look positive. So I don't I don't think it's fair to say that they lost the midterm, but I don't think it means that history will look at his presidency as failed. Right now, I think what people will say is that these policies, some are obviously good, closing the border. And some, I think people will say are a question mark. And then some, I think people will say, you're gonna have to get out of it like Iran. And the further you get away from it, it'll be clear. So what should he do, Jason, to your point is, I think he should probably figure out ways to support the parts of his agenda that will endure. So to your point, what is a great trade off to make? Keep the border closed in return for some amount of economic changes. Maybe the Democrats want a higher minimum wage. Okay. Maybe what they should do... Again, I think the simpler thing to do is a 125 or under, just wipe out the federal taxes. It's it's a nothing burger. It doesn't really matter in terms of the revenue that it generates. Close the few But trade it off for parts of his core strategy because that's what will endure, and people will know the president as having had the the courage to close the border when nobody else would or when when Biden just let it stream in.
00:51:01 · Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis
And then the populist economic president that then sits on top of those decisions in '28, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, will have to thank Trump because that's how the votes will have come to them, and that's how people will feel like this economic malaise is being fixed. [00:51:19] S0: Okay. Sacks, any final thoughts? I'll give you a last word again. Aside from getting out of the war, we all agree that's number one on the list. What else can president Trump do in the last eighteen months that would be productive for the country and for his legacy?
00:51:31 · David Sacks
[00:51:31] S1: Alright. Well, look, let me just give you three examples of previous midterm elections. Okay? So we've had big midterm elections before. 1994, Bill Clinton lost the house. It was a huge defeat, that's when Newt Gingrich became speaker. Clinton still went on to win reelection in 1996, so he made course corrections. Obama lost seven senate seats and 63 house seats in 2010. That was the shlacking. Made adjustments, still won reelection in 2012. So presidents can definitely come back from midterm defeats. It's pretty obvious. You just have to make corrections. What's the one that didn't work out so well? In 2006, George w Bush lost a pretty bad midterm because the Iraq war, people were very unhappy with it. This was three years after the start of the Iraq war. And then he wasn't up for reelection, but the Republicans then lost again in 2008. Why? Because Bush basically... What did he do after the midterms there? The surge. So, you know, he could have adjusted course, instead he doubled down. So I think this is really what it comes down to. There are a lot of people, neocons basically, who are encouraging the president to do some version of the surge. Some version of doubling down, some strike, Pickaxe Mountain, Kharg Island, what have you. I think if you do that, you're basically gonna reenact the whole two thousand six, two thousand eight playbook. If you course correct and get out now, I think you'll have a very successful next two years. That's what it comes down to.