All-In Podcast E155: Tucker Carlson, OpenAI [Summary + Transcript]

00:00
Jason Calacanis
This is Sax's big day.

00:01
Chamath Palihapitiya
There he is.

00:02
Jason Calacanis
Oh, there's Tucker. Oh, look at the smile on Sax's face.

00:06
Tucker Carlson
This is the greatest day in the history of the all in part.

00:09
Tucker Carlson
Look at how happy Saxon is, by the way. I'm not ashamed of that. You're not? I'm honored. This heated up, quickly threatened.

00:25
Tucker Carlson
Do you feel right now this is the highest rated host in cable history? This is the world's true greatest moderator.

00:31
Chamath Palihapitiya
Exactly.

00:32
Jason Calacanis
No doubt.

00:32
Tucker Carlson
No doubt.

00:33
Jason Calacanis
Absolutely.

00:33
Chamath Palihapitiya
Zach, where is this in relation to your marriage and the birth of your children?

00:37
Jason Calacanis
Don't ask.

00:38
Tucker Carlson
It's right up there.

00:39
Jason Calacanis
Up there.

00:39
Chamath Palihapitiya
He's like, what children?

00:40
Tucker Carlson
It is for me.

00:44
Tucker Carlson
Let your winners ride, rain man, David Sack. And instead, we open sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

00:55
Tucker Carlson
Love you, queen of Kinwa.

00:59
Jason Calacanis
All right, everybody, we've got an amazing guest for you today here on the all in podcast Sachs. His dream has come true. Tucker Carlson is with us today. You know, Tucker, he was the number one tv host for much of the past decade, including last year when, shockingly, he was fired from Fox News on April 24. Reason for the firing? It's never been pinned down. But maybe we'll get into it today and we're going to find out what is motivating a post Fox News Tucker, who has obviously launched a show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He's done 42 episodes and counting. He's had everybody from Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Dave Portnoy, and the newly elected president of Argentina on the program. So welcome to the all in podcast, Tucker Carlson.

01:51
Tucker Carlson
Thank you for having me. It is a legit honor to be here.

01:55
Jason Calacanis
Two part question to kick us off here. First, have you figured out why you were fired from Fox? And let's get into that a bit. And second, given that you were the number one host for much of the past decade, and I think probably in the top five highest paid of all time, what's motivating you now? What's the mission here as an independent journalist? Take those two questions in whichever order you like.

02:19
Tucker Carlson
I don't know why I was fired. I mean, it kind of is an Agatha Christie story. There are like so many suspects. You know what I mean? But I don't know. I was never told. I can only speculate. There were a lot of different things going on. I had a lot of opinions that were unpopular with people who might have influenced my show getting canceled. So I really don't know. I will say right after it happened, people said, well, how can they fire the top guy, because that's what it is. I'm certainly not the first high rated host to get fired. It's not only about ratings. There are a lot of different factors. It's a big company.

02:55
Tucker Carlson
You all have worked for and run big companies, and, you know, there's a lot of complicated stuff going on, and it's never exactly clear why things happen the way they do. But I was not shocked by it. I mean, I was shocked by it in a short term sense. I didn't expect to have my show canceled that morning, but I was not shocked at all when I thought about it for a minute. I'd expected that you can't kind of give the finger to everybody and persist in a corporate job, so no hard feelings. And, in fact, I said that on the call when I received the news. It's not my company, and I never felt like I had a right to be on the air.

03:33
Tucker Carlson
I was working at the pleasure of the family that runs the company, who treated me very well, and they wanted me off, and so I was off.

03:41
Chamath Palihapitiya
Did you ever have moments where somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, advertiser XYZ is getting uncomfortable, or we're trying to lend this new advertiser, and they want you to shape things in one. Did you ever feel that pressure, or is that just a thing that is kind of like a boogeyman that doesn't actually exist?

03:59
Tucker Carlson
Oh, well, it not only exists, it defines news coverage, especially on know, because pharma is the biggest advertiser in television, as I know, you know. And so for, you know, Pfizer is sponsoring your show. You're not going to question the facts. I mean, it's kind of that simple, so. Absolutely. And of course, that's why they're the biggest advertiser, so they can shape news coverage. I mean, that's the point. But I personally never had a single person say to me, don't say this, that I recall. I haven't thought about it too much, but that certainly, I was there 14 years, and I didn't have that experience regularly or at all, really, that I can remember.

04:34
Tucker Carlson
And I think my producers may have been told that, but it didn't ever get to me because I was always really clear, which is I always said out loud to the supervisors there, I work for your company. I don't own this network. All I can control is what I say. If you don't like what I say, don't have me on tv. But as long as I'm on tv, I'm going to say what I think is true. And in a million cases, I said only part of what I think, not because of my employer, but just because you shouldn't actually say everything you think. I mean, I have some crackpot views too, or I have resentments that I didn't want to work out on the air. I mean, you're straining yourself and you ought to, as you do in your personal life.

05:14
Tucker Carlson
But on no question of principle did I ever pull back, because I wouldn't do that. And again, I was just super clear, if you don't like what I'm saying, take me off the air, but I'm not going toe a line. And because I was so clear about that, I just think they didn't think it was worth having some kind of dispute with me. And to their great credit, for the time that I was there, and I said this many times in public, like, I took positions on the Ukraine war, on the COVID vaccine, on the COVID lockdowns, among other issues that I think I've been vindicated on pretty conclusively on the origins of COVID And all of those are super unpopular. On January 6, which was so hated at the company where I worked that people resigned.

05:55
Tucker Carlson
A number of people, including on air people, four that I can think of, resigned in protest over me, suggesting that actually it was more complicated than it looked, and there were a bunch of federal agents in the crowd. How can you say that? Are you claiming a false flag? Well, not. I wouldn't use that phrase, but, like, this is something weird going on here. Well, I've been vindicated on that. That sounds like I'm bragging. I'm not. I'm just stating factually that I said things that were truly hated by a lot of the people who worked there. And they let me keep saying them. So it's kind of hard to complain, really, at this point. Right? Again, it's not my company.

06:30
Tucker Carlson
Just from a business standpoint, I think it's weird for a company to fire their top performer and to do so without giving any notes. I mean, if any of us had a superstar executive or a superstar engineer, like a 100 x engineer working at one of our companies, and, like, day in and day out, they were hitting every milestone and crushing it. If you had a problem with them, you would give them a note. You would just try to say, hey, can we just like. So I just think from, like, a business standpoint, it's so weird. It just seems, like, self destructive. And I think it was. I mean, their ratings really cratered in the wake of making this change. Maybe they've come back a little bit, but I don't think it's ever been the same.

07:12
Tucker Carlson
I just think it's a crazy way to operate a business. So, yeah, it's their right. I mean, they can do whatever they want, but I don't understand it as a way of doing business.

07:19
Tucker Carlson
Well, I don't understand it as a way of living either. I mean, everybody in the course of life, whether as a parent or an employer or just a friend, has to deliver uncomfortable news or disagree with someone that you deal with, and you have a moral obligation to explain the disagreement. You can't just levy the penalty and leave it at that. You have to explain why you're doing that. And I think it's incumbent on us morally to do that. I wasn't that mad about it, actually, because I know the rules of that particular business, which are really harsh, and I've been in it my whole life. And so I've seen a lot of people as talented or more talented than I meet bad ends for reasons that I thought were not justified. And I know them all really well.

08:02
Tucker Carlson
So you work in a business like that, you know what it is. You know, the black car is going to show up at 03:00 a.m. And Tochi to the Lubianca. And that's just what it is. You know what I mean? You can't kind of whine about it.

08:13
Jason Calacanis
How much of it was the. This is a family owned business, and the patriarch obviously pioneered opinion based journalism, entertainment, commentary. And the younger ones maybe were on the other side of the political aisle and maybe were not as, I don't know, cutthroat or maybe didn't share the same philosophy of their dad. What was your relationship like with the new generation, with Rupert, et cetera, and how much did that play into it, do you think?

08:44
Tucker Carlson
Well, my relationship with the father and son who are directly involved in that company was, from my perspective, very strong. And I will say this about the Murdochs. They're very polite. I mean, they're really kind of very anglo, almost elaborately polite in a way that I'm not mocking, I'm complimenting, and they're not confrontational, they're not nasty in the way that they deal with people directly. And I prefer that as sort of a way of communicating with people. So I got along with them very well. I always liked them, and they were very nice to me, elaborately nice to me, and always gave me assurances of my right to say what I thought was true. And so, again, I can only speculate. I will say, though, and you see this with Trump especially, I don't think I'm anywhere near as divisive as Trump.

09:32
Tucker Carlson
Obviously, I'm not as powerful as Trump. I'm not the figure Trump is. But one thing that maybe Trump and I have in common is we're really disliked by a certain set of people, affluent people, highly educated people who work at ngos, government, finance, really kind of hate a certain brand of politics. So it's not being conservative. You can be conservative in the sort know, I work at Cato or heritage, or we need to get back to free trade or whatever, that kind of thing, the reaganite forum policy, that's all fine. But if you start asking questions like, well, why doesn't our country act in its own interest? There's something about that's uniquely offensive to them, to that whole class of people. Now, I could not have more contempt or loathing for those people. Having grown up among them. I know how repulsive they are.

10:15
Tucker Carlson
So their hatred of me I wear as a badge of honor. It actually makes me happy. But it's hard to take. I would mean, again, I'm just speculating in my specific case, but I know more like it's very hard to have lunch at the four seasons in Jackson during the winter because there's some private equity wife who's going to scream at you on your way to the men's room because that world hates you. And so if you live in that world and you're employing someone, like, know you hear about it. I guess that's my point. You hear about it like, that guy's a, like, who wants to deal with that?

10:50
Chamath Palihapitiya
I want to actually pull this thread. I would love your perspective on the state of american society, just less on the political spectrum of Republican versus Democrat. But just observe for us, Tucker, what do you see in american society? Where are we as a society? What has happened? What is happening?

11:06
Tucker Carlson
Well, this isn't an eight hour podcast. I could actually give you my very lengthy theories and views on that. But I will just say one thing that I've been thinking about a lot recently. I just had my college roommate staying at my house. And we're, of course, the same age, known each other our whole adult lives. He's been very successful, and he lives in an enclave of very successful people. We're familiar with this culture. And were talking about american, and he's from an immigrant family, so he's got a kind of broader perspective, I would argue a broader perspective on America. He's 54, as I am, and were talking about how obviously this is not a democracy. It's not even sort of decent facsimile of a democracy. To call it a democracy is, like, ridiculous, actually. But it's even worse than that.

11:52
Tucker Carlson
Our politics, and not just our politics, but our public conversation, reflects the very specific and parochial concerns of a tiny group of people, which is middle aged, affluent women who tend to be very angry and tend to mostly with their husbands, but probably for other reasons, too, and exercise this wildly disproportionate power over what we can talk about and think about and the rules that the rest of us live by. It's just kind of amazing. And he happens to live in Jackson, Wyoming, and I go know to ski and to fish, and I have for a very long time. And I always say to him, I can't go anymore because I yelled at lunch over my elk chili or in the lift line or whatever, or at the west side market.

12:39
Tucker Carlson
Literally, a relative of mine yelled at me while buying bananas in the west side market. She lives there. And I'm thinking, what is it about this group of people that hates me so much when, again, I know them really well, I'm related in some cases to them, and I'm not quite sure, but I see our politics and our concerns, which, if you take three steps back, are like, insanely picky un. Like trans black lives Matter. Well, I never said they didn't. But if that's your main public policy objective, to celebrate trans black lives in a country of 360,000,000 people, it's got a lot of big problems. You are not seeing the whole picture. What is that? And what it is, again, is the disproportionate influence of a class of people and their neuroses.

13:28
Tucker Carlson
I wouldn't even say policy concerns, but, like, their things they're worried about and their weird personal ticks and, like, the result of years of therapy and ssris on their brains. That kind of controls our whole conversation. And my friend was saying, because he's really smart, he's like, yeah, but the good news is this can't last because it's just too stupid. And at some point very soon, the country is going to revert to the place that all countries begin, which is in a conversation about things that matter, like who comprises the population? Do we have enough water? Where are we on energy? Exactly. How are we going to manage these complex relationships with other countries? Like the things that. The stuff of government, the stuff of resources. Well, of course, resources.

14:09
Tucker Carlson
But, like, just the basic questions that should dominate the consciousness of any country and should dominate our public conversation. It's like our public obsessions are getting increasingly irrelevant, actually. Increasingly. It's like crazy as our problems get bigger. Yeah.

14:27
Tucker Carlson
The conversation becomes more inane as the problems get bigger.

14:30
Tucker Carlson
Thank you. Exactly.

14:31
Chamath Palihapitiya
So when you look at that cohort's disproportionate impact, and then you translate it. For example, last night there was, I guess, like an almost riot protest when folks were trying to light the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, I guess, and there was like a huge pro hamas, I think, somebody check me out if this is wrong protest. And then people were pushing back on the cops and all of this stuff, and all these folks were trying to do was just light the Christmas tree. Can you connect the dots? How does that cohort get to.

15:01
Tucker Carlson
No, but it's actually a branch from the same tree, Christmas tree in this case. Because that whole conversation, while I think it's interesting and I think it's geopolitically significant, and I've been to those countries and I know people there, so I'm interested in it, and there's a lot to care about and be interested in. But the displacement of all of our public passions onto a conflict in a foreign country, however important that conflict may be, really kind of tells you a lot. It's like, in other words, yeah, I care what's happening between Israel and Hamas. I have views on it, which are probably pretty mainstream views, whatever. I don't have any very interesting views on it.

15:40
Tucker Carlson
But it's a little weird for your entire country, thousands of miles away, to be so preoccupied with that conflict that they miss big history changing events happening, like in their own country. And I think that's, again, a species of the same problem. The problems that confront us are so big that we can't deal with them. And actually, my wife and I, this conversation the other night, I was for years a magazine writer, and I have to file every Friday. I worked for Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard, and obviously, I regret that. But it was interesting at the time, and I have to file the story every week. And I'd stay up all night because I'm very lazy and I put stuff off, and I'd stay up every Thursday night, all night.

16:18
Tucker Carlson
And my editor would call it going to the printing press in Pennsylvania. This was back when it was in print, and you got to file it. And right around 08:30 a.m.. On Friday morning, I would have this overwhelming urge to rearrange the books on my shelves into my library, by title or by subject. I'd, like, have all these weird kind of librarian fantasies about rearranging books, which on a normal day, why would you do that? Better things to do. But as my problems mounted and I couldn't write the lead I wanted, I would transfer all my anxiety onto something I felt I could control, or that was of lower stakes, less consequence. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing a little bit.

16:57
Tucker Carlson
Like we care more about foreign wars and trans lives as the obvious things that hold our society together start to fall apart, because how do you even deal with that? I don't know if I'm being very.

17:09
Jason Calacanis
Articulate, but I think that's what makes perfect sense. What do you put on the top of that list of things we should be focused on, Tucker?

17:17
Tucker Carlson
From my perspective, by far, the one, two, three.

17:20
Jason Calacanis
This is what America needs to put its energy on.

17:22
Tucker Carlson
It's not even close national cohesion. And by which I mean something specific. What does the majority of the country have in common with one another? Because, look, if the arc of the last century's american history is super interesting, so you have this massive influx of immigration, the Ellis island generation, late 18th, 19th, early 20th century, and it's both good and bad. We only remember the good. But there was a lot of social volatility. Like, a lot. Like the mayor of Chicago got shot in his House. There was bombings on Wall street, like the whole. The wobblies, the anarchists, like the foot soldiers that were immigrants, working class european immigrants. And part of the problem was there were just a lot of immigrants. And Sacco and know who shot the clerk in. Was it Brockton, Mass. Anyway, it was in mass, outside Boston.

18:16
Tucker Carlson
They had been in the country for just a few years, and they immediately got sucked into radical politics. Well, why was that? Well, because they weren't kind of bought in or rooted in or hadn't been fully assimilated into american society. So then you have the first world war, and we basically shut down immigration, and we have this period of settling where, like all Americans, let's think through our civic religion, what ties us together? And then that leads into October of 29, and you do have this national crisis that lasts for more than a decade, and we didn't blow up. And we had a successful. The CCC. We had these big programs, which I'll say this, as a conservative, kind of worked in keeping people fed and focused. It gave them purpose kept the country from collapsing during the Great Depression.

18:56
Tucker Carlson
If that happened now, when there is no broad agreement on what it means to be an american, no agreement at all on what we all have in common, I don't think we can withstand it, actually. I really don't. And I'm not even convinced it matters as much what that civic religion is as it does that we have one. If we don't have anything that ties us together when that day comes, and you know what I mean, when the economic crisis comes because it's coming, what's that going to look like? It's going to be very scary. So that's what I'm most worried about by far.

19:28
Chamath Palihapitiya
How do you define national cohesion? I guess maybe then, like, what are the few elements that you think America needs to agree on as a majority?

19:36
Tucker Carlson
Wake me up from a deep sleep and ask me what it means to be an american, okay, and then do the same to a thousand other people, and we'll just do a survey on it. And do the majority of those people give the same answer? And if they don't, I have so many theories. God, donut, I'm going to control myself. But I would just say one other thing, which is we overestimate people's ability to metabolize change. I'm not like a strict darwinist or anything, but I do sort of believe that over time, people adapt to their environment, and that in us, is most of our abilities are inborn. Like, that's just true. Sorry, I have dogs. I know that. And people just haven't. The world didn't change that much from 460 or whatever, the sacking of Rome until the Renaissance, it just didn't.

20:24
Tucker Carlson
And then the industrial revolution to now has been like such massive change that it's driving people insane. People can't handle relentless change. And technologists love relentless change. And I like a lot of technologists, a couple of really good friends of mine, but they're anomalies. A lot of them are literally autistic. I'm not attacking them, I'm praising them, but they're different from most people, you're right, but, you know, they can handle it. They want a world that's totally different from today's world, tomorrow.

20:52
Chamath Palihapitiya
They want, they thrive in that flux.

20:54
Tucker Carlson
They like, but they don't understand how rare they are. And if you impose that on a society, and you don't ever have a period where you pause and let things settle, you will blow up that society. And the Chinese, who I don't admire for many things at all know this, and I admire that about them. They think that change for its own sake is dangerous. Now, they think it's dangerous to their power, and they're absolutely right. But it's also dangerous just to the idea of a society. What is a society? And so, anyway, I could go on and on, but that's my main concern.

21:28
David Friedberg
Let me propose a theory and see if you react to it. I think that there's a big orientation in society where it's constantly about trying to shift the power dynamics, that everyone always feels like they don't have something that someone else has. And that other person that has it, for some reason is advantaged in a way that to them always feels unfair. And everyone feels this way. Everyone.

21:53
Tucker Carlson
That's right.

21:54
David Friedberg
You're at the top of the food chain. You feel like someone else has something you don't have, and it's unfair. And the system is set up that way, no matter where you sit. And as a result of that, and by the way, this goes back, I get waxed super philosophical on this stuff. But Buddhism has always had this point that the desire that humans have is the one thing that causes all of societal suffering, behavior, everything. But it all comes down to this. It's that you see that someone else has something, you desire it, and then you want to change the dynamic of how the system, how society is organized to fix that. The thing about technology, if you think back, the catapult gave an advantage to an army that allowed them to win in a war.

22:34
David Friedberg
So did the rifle, so did the nuclear bomb. That ultimately, technology was the enabling force that allowed a rapid shift in power dynamics. And all technology ultimately creates leverage for the creator of the technology initially, and then it diffuses to everyone. But that is perhaps why this is a theory I have, which is that there's generally pessimism towards technology because it creates unfair advantages that shifts the power dynamic too quickly and too advantageously. And it's also why I think you don't hear a lot of support for technology from most of society, because technology creators are such a small percentage of society. So I don't know if that resonates with your point, but for me, it's.

23:15
Tucker Carlson
Always, well, I think that's really smart, and I think it's indisputably true. Absolutely. I will say you're making an argument, in addition to many other things, against tribalisms, because tribalism accentuates these preexisting impulses in people, which, again, like all impulses, are just inborn, like human nature. Is immutable. So let's just start there. It cannot be changed. AI will not change human nature. It'll change everything but human nature and envy and the fact that prosperity is a relative measure above starvation. Totally. So it's like there's a famous russian proverb, like, I've got a cow. My neighbor has a cow. He gets a cow. Now he has two cows. I kill his cow.

24:03
David Friedberg
Right.

24:03
Tucker Carlson
Totally right. But tribalism, especially in a country like ours, which, as noted, doesn't have a working majority of people with obvious connection to each other, it really exacerbates that a lot, and because it makes it more obvious. So all of a sudden, it's not just like, hey, the smart kids are richer, they have two cows. It's like the Jews are richer or the Indians are richer or the whites are richer or whatever. It's like, just name the group. And once you go down that road, that leads to violence and mass violence.

24:41
Jason Calacanis
Actually, a lot of people listening right now, Tucker, are probably a little bit confused hearing you talk about cohesion of the country when most people would look, know the tribalism as almost most manifested in cable news. You and Rachel Matto, every night know number one and number two in the ratings, taking either side of the tribe. So is this something that's evolved? And how did your time in cable news inform you to this? Because most people would say, wait, isn't Tucker and Rachel, aren't those the two tribe leaders?

25:14
Tucker Carlson
I think there are dumb people who think that. But no, here's the difference. My views. I'm not including you. No.

25:34
Jason Calacanis
Why should you be any different than the other panelists?

25:38
Tucker Carlson
No, I love, and not only do I love, I don't always love, but I certainly think that reason disagreement is essential. It's the alternative to violence, by the way. That's what that is. Debate and politics are the alternative. Violence. You get two choices. We're going to do it by arguing about it or we're going to do it by force. Okay? So I absolutely think it's essential to debate things, because if we don't, then we just have to shoot each other. And I'm against that. But that's very different from tribalism, because tribalism is based on things that you can't change. So, for example, in 2002, I hosted a show on CNN, and it was the run up to the war in Iraq.

26:18
Tucker Carlson
I was uncomfortable with the idea that we would be invading Iraq to respond to an attack on America that had nothing to do with Iraq. I did think that didn't make sense. But I was sold on the idea finally by someone, and I foolishly parroted the Bush administration's line on that. So I was a pro war person for a time. Then I went to Iraq and I changed my views completely. So I switched sides completely, and I wound up on the other side, anti war in Iraq. And that took about a week. I was born a white man. You were born whatever you are. Everyone's born whatever they are, that can't change. So if we stoke division along lines that can't be changed, then we're really at a cul de sac. Our differences can never be resolved. You will always be what you are.

27:02
Tucker Carlson
You can't change it. And the same for me. And so those are the things that wind up becoming generational conflicts, civil wars, Rwanda. And so I've always been against that my entire life. And my entire time on Fox, I argued against that. I think affirmative action is completely not only immoral, because it's an insult to the idea of America, which is like, the people who do the best get the most, but it is also a recipe over time for violence. And I've made that case every single day since David and I had lunch 30 years ago. I've never not thought that. I've always had the Dr. Seuss view of race relations, which is we should deemphasize race and elevate merit, achievement, hard work, character, the things that we can control. But the other side has gone.

27:55
Tucker Carlson
And by the way, liberals used to agree with me. That used to be a liberal position within my lifetime, and then all of a sudden it became a nazi position. And that's just a manipulation of language. But the truth is on the race stuff, which is what matters over time. If you convince people to hate others on the basis of their race, you've committed a massive sin and you've done a lot to wreck our country. That's coming from the left. I'm sorry, that's just true.

28:17
Tucker Carlson
Just to connect these ideas, I think that is a major source of our division, is one of the reasons why people have a hard time saying what it means to be an American is because there are dueling visions of what it means to be an American. The left has been trying to change or rewrite american history. So, for example, the key year in american history, the founding of the nation, was not 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. It was 1619, right? This is the base of the whole 1619 project of the New York Times, is that the founding of the nation began with the importation of slavery to the new world. That was the key year.

28:52
Tucker Carlson
And so I think there has been an effort for a long time on the part of the left to rewrite what it means to be an american and to rewrite american history. It's actually, in a weird way, it's the opposite of what Deng Xiaoping did in China, where Deng basically, he flipped the doctrine over there from communism to capitalism. He didn't outright declare it. He said that it doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice. And they didn't change the name. They didn't change the party. It's still the chinese communist party. They didn't change the flag. But he did a hot swap of the back end to capitalism, and they changed what the country was about in that economically, it worked out great for them.

29:34
Tucker Carlson
I think in a similar way in the United States, they haven't changed the flag, they haven't changed the name, but there is an attempt to hotswap the back end of what it means to be an American. And I think this is the root of the conflict.

29:45
Tucker Carlson
I mean, I agree with that completely. And I don't think we've thought through what it means to change out of many, one out of one many. I think we've set ourselves up for something really scary, again, for violent conflict, because I don't see how that resolves itself. Wise people understand this in a diverse society, pluralistic society, whatever you call it, in a society where you've got a lot of different people with a lot of different backgrounds and shades and religions and all that stuff, you need to deemphasize the things that divide us inherently and emphasize the things that unite us. That's not hard. And it's also so obvious that if you're not doing it, my first question is, why are you not doing that? Why are you not?

30:33
Tucker Carlson
And that kind of explains the true loathing that I have for the people in charge on both sides. Because if you did that in your household with your children, your kids would be in rehab or jail or dead. It's that obvious. Like, you would never do that to your kids. So why would you do that to your population?

30:52
Tucker Carlson
Seriously?

30:52
Jason Calacanis
You had a question.

30:53
David Friedberg
Well, where does responsibility lie there, Tucker? What's the mechanism for doing?

30:58
Tucker Carlson
Often, and I find in conversations everyone.

31:02
David Friedberg
Says the government should. And I often question why the government should anything in my life, in my social settings, in how I live, how.

31:14
Tucker Carlson
I do business, does the government, the.

31:18
David Friedberg
Federal government in the United States, have a role and responsibility to do what you're suggesting we need to do in the United States? Or is it the media or is.

31:29
Tucker Carlson
It social leaders or is it business.

31:33
David Friedberg
Leaders or is it local governments, who is responsible, ultimately, for creating the social cohesion necessary for the US to enter a new era of prosperity? And why is that the right group to be responsible?

31:47
Tucker Carlson
Well, look, I would say. Well, it's a great question, and I would say new era of prosperity, I don't think that's really the goal. We have prosperity, and I think it's a real question as to whether people want cohesion. Right, but do people want. I think there's actually a lot of evidence that human beings sort of hate prosperity. Actually, we're not designed to be prosperous. And the second we are, we invent climate crises to make us less prosperous. I mean, that's really what that is. Right? But anyway, leaving that aside, it's incumbent on all of us, anyone with authority, anyone with a voice, anyone with money. And it's really kind of as simple, and I do think government is kind of the last to fall in line. It's really as simple as making things socially unacceptable.

32:32
Tucker Carlson
I grew up in a world where people smoked on airplanes. Okay? Now, that was banned by the FAA, but it was also made totally socially unacceptable. You couldn't light a cigarette in someone's kitchen. You just wouldn't think to do that in the same way that you wouldn't think to give the middle finger to an old lady, which is not actually illegal. But nobody would do that, because it's so appalling in the minds of everybody, and everyone's happy to say, what the hell are you doing? And I feel the same way about the race stuff. It's like, oh, race this, race that someone should say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop that.

33:04
Chamath Palihapitiya
There's part of what you're saying, which I think is, which I really agree with, which is this idea that we have gone as the human race from having to make major adaptations over the arc of our evolution as a species to now what you're kind of saying is we're now dealing with all these minor adaptations, and it kind of breaks the entire circuitry of the brain, which is like, before we had to fight to evade the animals, to feed ourselves, to build the machine, to all of a sudden go from an agrarian to an industrial. These were huge adaptations, and now we have all of this almost surplus in excess, and it's a little bit of a head scratcher for a lot of people, because now all the adaptations that are left are very minor in shape.

33:48
Chamath Palihapitiya
Because all of these other things that would other occupy your time, sustenance, survival, resiliency, are taken off the table. I get that. The other part of what you say, which is very Renee Girard, which is like, hey, there's all this copying of people and desire. There's going to be violence if we don't figure out how to decharge it. What do you think we need to do in order to do that discharge? How do you get these people to stop focusing on the small order bits? And how do we reorganize people to focus on the big order bits so that we minimize this risk of violence? We minimize the one group of immutable traits fighting another group of immutable traits. How does that happen, do you think?

34:37
Tucker Carlson
I'm pretty pessimistic about a country this big. And we say the mean, like, when I talk about the country, I'm talking about people I know or grew up with or people who speak my language. I mean, the country is so big that something can happen in New Mexico, something big can happen in New Mexico or San Francisco, for that matter, and people don't even know. But in general, I would say.

35:00
David Friedberg
It'S.

35:00
Tucker Carlson
Hard to see changing course before we're forced think.

35:07
Chamath Palihapitiya
You think basically there has to be a moment of something that's so egregious that causes a national reconciliation of some kind, essentially that says, hold on a second.

35:17
Tucker Carlson
You want to know what I really think? Which is like kind of crackpot, but I know that it's right. Yes, I do think the problem is prosperity. And I've noticed this as a middle aged man, as I've gotten older, and I know people who've been successful, in some cases very successful. And I've noticed that when they succeed, when they get everything they want, they destroy themselves. I've noticed this again and again. You are the dog who caught the car. And actually, it's more than just having idle time. There's a metaphysical quality. There are factors here that I don't understand that are deeper, actually. But I just notice it. There's something about affluence that over time convinces people to kill themselves. And you see it, like in a literal sense, in the euthanasia numbers out of Canada and out of, well, you.

36:07
Chamath Palihapitiya
See it in a literal sense when you look at the incidence of diabetes as correlated to GDP.

36:12
Tucker Carlson
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

36:13
Chamath Palihapitiya
You look at these emerging economies, and as GDP cranks, the first thing that happens is heart disease cranks up and diabetes cranks up, because to your point, Tucker, they start to enjoy the prosperity of their earned life, but they're not enjoying it.

36:26
Tucker Carlson
That's the thing. The other thing you see is they stop having children, which is a form of suicide. You're not reproducing. There's no other culture who has left a written record in history that didn't see having children as like the primary, first of all, the primary source of wealth, and not just because they worked on your farm, but because they exist and so do your genes. So if you start to see every. It's not just a matter of culture. It happens in non christian Japan, it happens in post christian Spain, it happens in South Korea with a 0.7 replacement rate, reproduction rate 0.7. So what is that? And again, it's the same thing. It's that affluence kills you. And if you don't believe it, fast for three days. Fasting, by the way, is a feature not just of christian history.

37:17
Tucker Carlson
Every religion and every culture that I'm aware of has acknowledged fasting as an important religious ritual. Why is that? Why would foregoing food be so important? Well, try it for three days and experience. You're quivering like a tuning fork. Your sensitivity just explodes. There's something about eating too much, literally satisfying the most basic need of all, which is for calories. There's something about that kills you, and there's something about foregoing it that enlightens you. It's like, super interesting. Look, there's so much. I don't know. I'm the last person you want to listen to. These are deeper waters that I'm qualified to wait in. But my senses tell me very strongly that the core problem is having too much. And I'm not calling for taking things away. I think the global warming bullshit is bullshit. Okay? I mean, obviously it is climate crisis.

38:07
Tucker Carlson
It's propaganda, but it's coming out of. It's also sincere to some extent. It's not just a power grab by Davos. It's more than that. It's people's gut level sense that we need to have less because this is killing us. And that is real.

38:21
Jason Calacanis
Freeberg Tucker said global warming is bullshit.

38:24
David Friedberg
I'm just going to pull up an image for him. I just want his reaction.

38:29
Jason Calacanis
You just said that of science. Let's see.

38:31
David Friedberg
No, but no, I think it's like, just on that topic, data shows temperatures are getting warmer off of a baseline of 500 years. And now things get warmer.

38:42
Tucker Carlson
No, I'm sorry. Can I just make a small correction. I'm not saying it's not getting warmer. It seems to be getting warmer. I'm really saying this whole elaborate theory that humans are causing this rise in temperatures and we know how to reverse it through, say, shutting down the use of hydrocarbons. Yeah. And even if that were true, what we're doing to affect those changes shows how fraudulent the whole thing is. You know, the whole arguments. But I'm not actually calling it a question that's changing. Temperatures always changed. I live in Maine, which was shaped by the glaciers 10,000 years ago. So, like, yeah, we've had some climate change.

39:17
David Friedberg
Do you think that human civilization is not threatened by the changing climate? This is a quick little point.

39:24
Tucker Carlson
Well, sure. I mean, it's threatened in some ways, probably help in other ways. I personally hate hot. You know, I don't care for it. I think there's quite a bit of evidence that previous, that actually temperature changes can be much more radical than we think. And I'll just give you one example that no one's ever explained but you're aware that there are all these woolly mammoths found encased in ice in Siberia. And the soviet early soviet 1920s expedition to map all of Russia found these things, and at least one stranded expedition ate them. Okay. They ate the woolly mammoth because it had been frozen so thoroughly that after thousands of years, the meat was still edible. Yeah. Well, the question is, how did that happen?

40:05
Tucker Carlson
And I think it was the guy who ran bird's eye frozen food, who was an expert on freezing meat. It's like, wait a second, that weighs x thousand pounds. It would have to be frozen extremely quickly. And I know this from hunting, too. You have to freeze meat very fast to keep it from spoiling from the bacteria. How did that happen? Well, no, for real, though, because it decomposes very. A big animal. If you shoot, say, a moose or a big deer or a mule deer, you have to open it up immediately or the meat will spoil, because the bigger it is, the more heat it generates. Right? Do we know that? Okay, so how exactly did hundreds or thousands of large animals get frozen so quickly that the meat is still edible thousands of years later?

40:45
Tucker Carlson
That's an honest question that no one's ever answered. And the only potential or even plausible answer is temperature changed so fast it flash froze them. Well, how did that happen? Like what? No, these are sincere.

40:59
David Friedberg
I'll look into it. I'll get back to you. I've not heard about this.

41:02
Tucker Carlson
No, but what is that?

41:03
David Friedberg
Flash frozen.

41:04
Tucker Carlson
Well, that's interesting.

41:05
David Friedberg
No, this reminds me of that Marlon Brando film, you remember, where he goes to an island and eats the super rare food. It's like a Komodo dragon or something. The graduates. Matthew Broderick's in it. So good. It's like the expedition to Siberia to eat the flash frozen woolly mammoths to make a good sequel. But it's interesting. I'm going to look into it. I don't know the answer to how.

41:24
Tucker Carlson
And why, but the point is, here's the point. That we have physical evidence that the climate on earth, inside our atmosphere has changed dramatically, so dramatically that it would kill every person who was affected by it, like a number of times that we know of over the course of the history of the mean. I think we could be in for actual climate change that killed everybody. That's entirely possible. But the idea that it's the fault of the United States because of you drive an f 150 is so absurd, it's like, hard to believe anyone takes that seriously. There's like no evidence of that, actually. Sorry.

42:01
David Friedberg
Yeah, I'm an optimist about solutions anyway, but I think human ingenuity has always prevailed. So all this pessimism and catastrophizing, I do disagree with respect to, like, there is science that indicates that there are elements that were kind of affecting things in an adverse way, in a challenging way. But I'm not concerned about the challenges just because of where human technology sits and the things we can do. So I have a slightly different point.

42:29
Tucker Carlson
Of view, but I hear you on it.

42:31
David Friedberg
I don't want to debate the point. Sorry, chamath, go ahead.

42:34
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, that's a whole nother thing.

42:35
Chamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, I just want to up level this back to something, because I think if I had to summarize what you're saying is you're saying, chamath, our society is too prosperous, and as a result, that prosperity creates small fringe issues that dominate, which then creates an inability for us to be cohesive. So then if we have something that allows us to be forced to be more resilient, we will actually wake up from this fever and say, hold on, guys, what are the big issues? Let's really figure out what matters. Let's get organized and let's go after those. And that both is a healing of the country. But it's almost like our insurance policy. Is that a fair summary? If I had to put what you're saying in a box, or is that.

43:14
Tucker Carlson
Well, I would hate ever to seem like I'm looking forward to catastrophe because I'm not. And I hope it doesn't unfold. No. I mean, I used to drink too much, and I know a lot of people used to drink too much and use drugs or whatever, and some of them didn't get better till they went to jail, as people who drink too much tend to do over time. That never happened to me, and I'm so grateful for it. You don't need to get. You don't need to get there. You don't. I don't think that you do. I'm just really worried that we're not even having a conversation about this. But I, again, would point to what I said a second ago about there's something metaphysical here.

43:50
Tucker Carlson
There's something deeper than just the search for advantage, which is a big motivator among people, but there's something more than that going on. Why are we intentionally wrecking the society? And we are. And I hear people say, well, it's because some people are getting paid. Yeah, it's not really an adequate answer. It's more than that. There's something going on. Like, instinctively, some people want to tear it all down, and I don't think it's necessarily so they can rebuild it to their own advantage. I think, like, destruction is the point. And I just watch carefully and I don't really know what's going on here, but something much deeper than what we're acknowledging is going on here.

44:32
David Friedberg
Well, I think it comes back to this point about I can't get what these other people have, and there's now an insurmountable barrier that I cannot ever get.

44:42
Tucker Carlson
Why. But hold on, that doesn't explain why, for example, Dustin Moskowitz is supporting revolutionary politics and chase of MBL.

44:51
Jason Calacanis
I think it's a good example, Sachs. I think it does when you have massive abundance. To Chamot's point about the idle mind, Duskin Moskowitz has achieved more than any human could achieve, billions of dollars, and now he's got this surplus. And then to Tucker's point, whatever he's dealing with personally now becomes this canvas under which he's going to deploy that wealth in an outsourced way. I think it actually does explain it.

45:16
Tucker Carlson
It fits more with luxury beliefs than with the idea that scarcity or envy is somehow driving it.

45:23
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, but, yes, so those are luxury beliefs. And he's got a huge bankroll. Therefore it has an outsized impact as sort of Tucker's.

45:30
David Friedberg
I think the luxury point is once you reach a certain point, your attention can then shift to morality. When you're starving in a street and you need to feed your children.

45:41
Jason Calacanis
Correct.

45:42
David Friedberg
You're not focusing your whole day on the morality and better treatment of others in the world and extending morality to the rest of the world. But when you have that luxury, you have to focus your attention in that sense. I do think that there's this large element that the term equality gets recast into every aspect of society which ultimately leads to this general point of view of Marxism, which is everyone has to have an equal outcome versus an equal opportunity. And that's where the prosperity takes this.

46:12
Tucker Carlson
But I think I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think it's maybe more profound than that. I mean, you're absolutely right that only societies that have reached a certain point can afford to think about certain things. You don't see hunter gatherer societies don't debate effective altruism because they're looking for roots. Okay, so I agree with that. However, if you look at the behavior of some of the richest people in our society, and I can't speak to Dustin Moskovitz, but I know people like that what they're funding are not exactly luxury beliefs. They're like funding destruction. Actually, previous generations of liberal rich people funded things like public libraries, summer camps for poor kids. Remember the New York Times used to have these fundraisers like fresh air fund or whatever, and people made fun of. I always kind of liked that.

46:58
Tucker Carlson
Like you have extra money and help the poor kids whether it works or not. We can debate, but I get it. But if you're Dustin mosquets or any, I don't mean to pick on him, but any really rich person and you're at Baker's Bay or some discovery property that you and your billionaire friends go to, you might occur to you, like, why not build one of these for all the poor kids? Only poor black kids get to go to this resort for a week. And that might be, it might work. It might not work. All of american social, the history of american social reform is kind of species of that. Like we're going to help poor people by doing this or that. That's not what they're doing. It's like, hey, poor people, here are some more crackpipes.

47:34
Tucker Carlson
And it's immoral to criticize your drug addiction. And what we need are more black people selling weed, or it's cool to set fires, or we can't criticize you for burning down Wendy's. Like, what? That is not the same thing. That is super dark. There's no even possibility of uplift or advancement. It's just the opposite. They know it. These are smart. So, like, what are we looking?

48:00
Jason Calacanis
In Dustin's mind, I'm sure he believes he's doing the right thing.

48:05
Tucker Carlson
He thinks he's funding social justice. I think, like, Soros would be an even better example, right. Where it's hard to argue that what he's funding is not extremely destructive. So the revolutionary politics are not somehow coming from below the way you would expect a revolution to normally happen. They're being imposed from above by some of the biggest winners in our society. And that is weird. That is a contradiction. That is not what you expect.

48:29
Jason Calacanis
It is a bizarre outcome.

48:31
Tucker Carlson
It's exactly what you'd expect. And it's exactly what happened in the bolshevik revolution. I mean, half of the, you know, Nicholas II, who was murdered with his wife and children in the basement, as you know, by the Bolsheviks, his extended household supported the Bolsheviks, rich people who were a small minority, by the way, there are a million different revolutionary groups at the end of the first World War in Russia. Clear. There was going to be a change. Clear. The monarchy was doomed, and there were a lot of different options. And the most radical, crazy, nihilistic, atheistic option was the Bolsheviks. And they had the support of the rich people, including the family. So, like, what is that? It's the same thing. Always the same thing. It's the people with the most have the strongest desire to kill themselves and their society. That's just true.

49:15
Jason Calacanis
It's an interesting theory. I mean, there are some people who are very thoughtful, right? You have bill Gates or Jeff Bezos who are thinking about philanthropy in a very thoughtful way. Now, they can make mistakes, of course, but they're thinking, hey, where's the most suffering? How do I work backwards from mosquito tents to vaccines or whatever they perceive is the most suffering they can relieve in the world? So it does seem like it can go either way.

49:36
David Friedberg
Tucker, do you think it's because most people that get very wealthy very fast feel like it was unfair and they feel guilty, and then they have to.

49:45
Jason Calacanis
Destroy the system that got them lot?

49:49
Tucker Carlson
I think that's such a deep point, though, because I know that you live among people. I mean, you're familiar with this world, and only someone who is could say that, because you're absolutely right. Rich people are not all the same. If you meet someone who made his money incrementally, over time, he's much less likely to have the desire. You may not agree with him on everything. He may be a good person, a bad person, but he doesn't want to tear it down. And he doesn't feel especially guilty for what he has. And I have found just a non political point. But as I get older, I want to spend less time with people who hate themselves because they're not capable of loving other people. That's not a good place to start, actually, as a person, to hate yourself or feel super guilty.

50:28
Tucker Carlson
It really isn't. You don't end up helping others when you feel that way. But when you find people who inherited a lot of money, we never talk about that. It's a huge problem in this country. I'm not arguing for the death tax at all, but I'm just saying as an observation, there's a huge class of people with massive inherited wealth, and they're almost all horrible. Not all of them. I mean, I know very well. I know some of them and they're fine. Some of them are great. But as a class, they're awful and they don't help at all. And they're also super annoying and dumb. And I think it's the wealth. No, it's just true. And everyone knows it's true.

51:01
Chamath Palihapitiya
We're about to do that for tens of millions of Americans.

51:04
Jason Calacanis
Right?

51:05
Chamath Palihapitiya
We're about to go the largest generational wealth transfer beyond imagination. We're talking trillions and trillions. I know that problem that you just encapsulated. We're going to cascade across tens of millions of Americans, which also happens in Japan.

51:20
Jason Calacanis
And in Japan, they have negative growth rate as well. Let's pivot to a topic that, wait.

51:26
Tucker Carlson
Can I ask you, have you been to Japan recently?

51:29
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, I was there last year.

51:30
Tucker Carlson
Okay, so me know you always read, like, all the libertarian economists and the Wall Street Journal. They're always like, oh, Japan's a disaster. Negative growth. And then you go to, oh, it's the best place you could ever visit.

51:45
Jason Calacanis
My favorite country, hands down. Did you go tokyo? Did you go skiing in the seco? Where'd you go?

51:48
Tucker Carlson
I went to Kyoto in Tokyo, and I'll be back to ski on the North island because it's like, why wouldn't you?

51:53
Jason Calacanis
It's like, have you ever ski seco?

51:56
Tucker Carlson
It's incredible.

51:57
Chamath Palihapitiya
I went last year.

51:57
Jason Calacanis
It is like 25 out of 30 days in January and February. It dumps powder and the powder is like dust. It makes Utah powder look, like, heavy. It is insane.

52:09
Tucker Carlson
I'm going back.

52:10
Jason Calacanis
If you want to go February.

52:15
David Friedberg
Right.

52:15
Chamath Palihapitiya
Now, you guys can have one clean bed.

52:20
Jason Calacanis
This is going to make Zach lose his mind. If Tucker and I coda but can.

52:23
Tucker Carlson
I just ask a question? Like if Japan is the butt of every joke that economists tell or the focus of the concern of economy. Lots of chin tugging and fretting about Japan's negative growth economy. And then you go to Japan and there's literally not one piece of litter and four year olds ride the subway.

52:40
Jason Calacanis
On a company highest function society you could imagine. But birth rate is going down. That's the only thing.

52:45
Tucker Carlson
The birth rate is a real thing. I totally agree. That's probably the product of getting atomic bombs dropped on you. And maybe the fact also that the highest testosterone males flew their planes into us aircraft carriers or whatever. There's probably a lot of reasons. Interesting theory. That's a real thing by the way. You kill all the high team males and your society changes. But I don't think that we're using the right measurements. And I do think that we're taking economists a little more seriously than they deserve because they're not describing what Japan actually is, which is freaking awesome and way more functional than our society. Despite the massive disparity in the thing.

53:18
Jason Calacanis
You'Ll find is every person in Japan takes their job that they're doing as incredibly important and has massive pride in it. That's why when you go there as an american, you're like, wait, wasn't this what America was about? It's really shocking as american because you're like, this is what I want society to be. I want the person who works in the subway or the stock market or the newspaper to take their job deadly serious and put their best effort in.

53:40
Tucker Carlson
Why should I care about growth rate? Wait, but hold on though. Why should I care about economic growth at least as measured in the conventional sense?

53:48
David Friedberg
The only reason is if you have a lot of debt, that's it.

53:51
Jason Calacanis
Yes, right.

53:52
David Friedberg
If you didn't have all the debt, you shouldn't care about economic growth rate with respect to the measure of prosperity.

53:58
Tucker Carlson
The strange thing also, if the pie isn't getting bigger and people aren't doing better, then that does sow the seeds for a revolution. I mean, all this divisiveness will start to explode if people don't feel like their circumstances are getting better off. This is where, in this one limited way, I guess I'd be in favor of rapid change, which is the technological area. I mean, I'm against revolutionary politics. I'm against that kind of revolutionary change because it almost never works out. But I do think that revolutionary change in the narrow category of technology is ultimately good for us. I know it creates challenges. I know it creates disruption. People do lose their jobs and have to find new ones.

54:40
Tucker Carlson
But it is the basis for american prosperity and the basis for our economy being productive and America having a powerful military and all those things. So I don't know if this is a difference between us, Tucker, but I do think that in this area of technological change, I'm not sort of a dispositional conservative. Mean, this is kind of like Peter Thiel, right? I don't want us to slow down, actually. I want us to be successful. And it feels like, actually, it's the people on the left who are generally in this camp of wanting to slow us down, admire us in regulations, and make it harder to make progress technologically because it's something they don't control.

55:19
Tucker Carlson
I agree with that. I guess the net result is what I care about. I think if you talk to old people, which, now that I'm getting older and I've talked to older relatives and stuff, what bothers you, and I used to think it was taking a leak six times a night, but it's really not. The thing that bothers old people I've spoken to anyway, is the change. They don't just don't recognize it, and that's really hard for people to deal with. And so all I'm saying. I'm certainly not calling for a halt to technological progress. That would be terrible. All I'm saying is, in tandem with those advancements should be the concern about people's ability to digest massive change. And let's keep some things the same. You just can't change everything. It's, like, bad. It's super bad.

56:04
Tucker Carlson
So maybe we get AI, but let's keep Halloween.

56:08
Jason Calacanis
You're arguing for tradition and things that bring people together. This country was built off of immigrants, obviously, and this is one of the most polarizing issues, Tucker, in each election cycle and in the country at large right now, what is your vision for how american immigration should work here in the 21st century, ideally or right now?

56:36
Tucker Carlson
Right now.

56:36
Jason Calacanis
And then ideally. Let's start with, what would you do right now, short term?

56:40
Tucker Carlson
Well, actually, if you don't mind, I'll quickly invert it and say, of course, the goal is just a rational immigration policy whose purpose is to help your country. What would that. Well, I could see an argument, for example, if, you know, I don't know. There was a time for the guy who was just saying, my college roommate, my best friend, came to this country from India because both his parents were physicians and there was a lack of physicians with deindustrialization everyone was moving out of the small towns, and so we expedited the visas of foreign physicians. Most of them were Indians. I think most were Indians. His parents actually came from Africa. But whatever. The point is, they're indian doctors, and they came here and they settled in a little town in Massachusetts, a rural town dying, Milltown. And it was great.

57:21
Tucker Carlson
It was great for them. It was great for the town. The guy became my best friend. I mean, that's what you want, right? We need this, and we're going to, in a very smart, intentional way, try to get it on the world market. And we can, and we will. And I'm totally for that. What we're doing now is throwing open the doors to anyone who wants to come here from the poorest countries in the world at a scale that we can't possibly digest. So how many people are here illegally working off the books? Some estimates 60, 70 million. Those are real estimates, by the way, not crackpot estimates. But the truth is we don't know. We have no idea. So we've completely lost control, and we don't know who these people are. I honestly think most of them are here for a better life.

58:02
Tucker Carlson
I believe that. I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them agree with my politics, actually, for whatever it's worth. Definitely much more than the unhappy private equity wives do, for sure. The average guy from Nigeria is, like, on my side. Every Salvadoran agrees with me, so I like that. But I also think it's too much, actually. At exactly the moment when native born Americans birth rates are tanking, over 100,000 people die of fentanyl ods, and we're pushing euthanasia on the population, which we are. Basically, you're saying, I've given up on the people who live here, whatever their color or background, and we're just going to import new people and replace them with new people. That's literally what's happening.

58:40
Tucker Carlson
And when you say that out loud, they freak out and call you some sort of crazed bigot for saying the word replacement. But that's what it is. It's happening in western Europe and Ireland particularly. That's what those riots were about. Not that I'm endorsing the riots, but that's what that was. And that's, like, insane for a government to do to its own.

58:57
Jason Calacanis
Just.

58:58
Tucker Carlson
It's totally. And more than anything, it is an expression of loathing for the people who live there. It's a dilution of their political power. It's a dilution of their economic power. It's the total destruction of the basic services that they paid for, like schools, hospitals, roads. Those are gone. Last thing I'll say is people say, well, immigrants are coming here looking for a better life. And I believe that having talked to a lot of immigrants and grown up around them in southern California, I totally believe that. But the question for government is, am I making the citizens life better? It's like no one even thinks that. So is importing people making the life. So when my friend's parents came, both physicians, to the little town, little milltown in New England, his parents made the town better for the people who lived there.

59:44
Tucker Carlson
They were the doctors, and they were super successful, actually, and great people.

59:48
Chamath Palihapitiya
Tucker, can you give us a rundown of the current political landscape? Just tell us. I'm just really curious what you think about RFK, Biden, Trump, vive, maybe like 1015 seconds on each.

01:00:01
Tucker Carlson
It's so hard. The thing that jumps out today, my view changes all the time. I don't think Biden can be the nominee. His only point was to stop Bernie Sanders, basically, and he's outlived his usefulness. So I think he'll be, I'm pretty sure he'll be replaced. But as on the republican side and the know, it's so hard to know. I'm just mesmerized by the love for Nikki Haley, who's, like, the most. And I'm like, for example, I saw Jamie Dimon, who I really like, and I know and I have always admired. But when Jamie Dimon starts, like, freeballing on Nikki Haley and saying nonsensical things about Nikki Haley, I'm like, I want to call him and say, you're humiliating yourself. First of all, you're way out of your depth. You have no idea what you're talking about.

01:00:47
Tucker Carlson
But for another, you're just betraying how completely out of touch you were. And I think Jamie got. And again, I say this with admiration for Jamie diamond, which is long held. But if you get to a place where you think that Nikki Haley has a shot of getting elected in a free and fair, like, you have no idea what's going on in your own country, it's just embarrassing to say that. Super embarrassing.

01:01:07
Jason Calacanis
Explain to the audience, unpack that.

01:01:08
Tucker Carlson
Why is Nikki Haley. It's not personal. I actually don't care for Nikki Haley as a person, but that's immaterial. Nikki Haley's program, what she stands for, what she believes, maybe moral or immoral, God will judge. It's not popular with the public. And it's super easy to war specifically.

01:01:26
Jason Calacanis
Yeah.

01:01:27
Tucker Carlson
Her stance on war and on economics. And we know that from looking at the Gallup poll, which is a rolling survey of people's attitudes on things. And in an actual democracy, you would see the leading candidates or people who hope to become the leading candidates, articulate concerns and lay out views that reflected the concerns of the population who are going to vote them into office.

01:01:47
Jason Calacanis
Nikki Haley right now.

01:01:50
Tucker Carlson
Oh, Trump.

01:01:51
Tucker Carlson
Is it fair to say Nikki Haley is basically an unreconstructed Bush Republican? Her views are basically the same views as George W. Bush. She once again is in all sorts of new wars, and I don't even think she regrets the forever wars of the Middle east that were so disastrous. I haven't heard one word of criticism from her or remorse that she supported all of those things. And on the economic policies, this is kind of this like corporatism. It's like the whole Trump rebellion never even happened in the, it's just like right back to the past. And the fact that the establishment sort of coalescing around her kind of tells me that as much as I didn't want to believe this, I think that Trump is still the indispensable figure in the Republican Party.

01:02:35
Tucker Carlson
Because if you take him away, they're going to revert right back to where they were. They're going to go right back to the factory settings on republicans, which is Bush Republicanism.

01:02:44
Chamath Palihapitiya
Tucker, can you just finish the rest of them?

01:02:46
David Friedberg
RFK?

01:02:47
Tucker Carlson
Vivek. Trump. Well, I know Vivek well personally, and it shows that I'm out of touch, too. I mean, I'm 54, so I don't have my finger on every pulse, but, so I like Vivek, actually. But I see these surveys where he's not doing well and people don't like his personality or whatever. He's a little overbearing. That never bothers me at all. I'm just not put off by that at all. And I'm a little bit confused by why he's not doing better again, that's a reflection on, I've just made fun of Jamie Dimon. Here I am doing it myself. Like, why isn't Vivek doing better? I'm sure there are reasons. I just don't, I think his program is solid. I think he's reasonable. I think he's smart. I don't think he's some creepy agenda, but he's not doing well. That's just a fact.

01:03:34
Tucker Carlson
Bobby Kennedy, I know quite well and think a lot of him. I think he's a decent man and a principled person. I think he's smart. I don't have quite as much confidence in maybe some of the people around him. I feel like maybe there are other agendas that he's not aware of. I don't know. I can't.

01:04:00
Chamath Palihapitiya
Trump.

01:04:01
Tucker Carlson
Well, I mean, you know, the New York Times had a piece, I think it was Jonathan Swan who's smart and had a piece telling you what you already knew, kind of, but proving it with numbers, that Trump became the nominee in August of last year, 2022, when the FBI went through his wife's underwear drawer in his house. That was so insane that even if you're like, I can't deal with more Trump. And he didn't actually do anything, and he put Jared in charge. There are lots of frustrations you could have about Trump if you supported Trump, and you could be disappointed. But the second the FBI raids his house on a documents charge, and anyone from Washington, as I am, can tell you that's like every. That's, like, so common. If they're charging him for that's a joke.

01:04:45
Tucker Carlson
Where are the felonies he supposedly committed? I was led to believe he murdered people and buried them in the Meadowlands. Do you know what mean? Like, that's the best they got when they did that. I know for a fact, and this piece showed it, but I knew it already. A lot of people are know. I have mixed feelings about Trump, or I don't want to deal with more Trump drama. But if this is allowed to happen, our system won't continue. That's so outrageous that, I mean, let's just stop lying about it. That's a political prosecution. You can't have that of the presidential frontrunner. You can't have that. We already did it with Nixon. You can't do that again. And so I think that's the key to his surge. I really do think that.

01:05:24
David Friedberg
Who's the democratic nominee if you think Biden's not going to be.

01:05:27
Tucker Carlson
Oh, it's Gavin. Gavin. It's Gavin for sure. Well, of course, because he's by far the most evil person in the democratic party. And in the end, they just sort of rise to the peak oil and water man.

01:05:41
David Friedberg
Tucker, just comment on Gavin vetoing the bill that said that you could kind of remove the child from the parents if the parents don't affirm the transgender rights of the child. I think there was a lot of folks who sit in your camp, typically, who were shocked and surprised and said, wow, I didn't know Gavin actually had a span of opinions. And this is interesting to like, there's.

01:06:06
Tucker Carlson
No one I know who thought that. And everyone I know who watched that thought the same thing they thought when he met with Xi, which is, oh, he's going to be the mean, of course that's what that mean. I know. You know, I think a lot about Gavin Newsom, many different things about Gavin Newsom. But one thing I know for a fact about Gavin Newsom is he has the capacity to be the lie detector test. Gavin Newsom will say anything he needs to say. Not like Biden's, not like this. Actually, whatever Biden's fault, he's not like this. Like Biden, he has guilt. If he's lying to you, he gets twitchy. Gavin Newsom's palms don't sweat, his respiration doesn't increase, his body temperature doesn't change. Nothing changes in Gavin Newsom when he lies to your face. And there are not that many people like that.

01:06:55
Tucker Carlson
Actually, that's a rare quality. Like, to lock down the state to keep people's kids from getting an education and to arrest people for surfing and then go have dinner at the french laundry. Most people couldn't do that.

01:07:07
Jason Calacanis
They'd just be like, you're saying he's a sociopath. He can lie and not care.

01:07:12
Tucker Carlson
I'm not a psychiatrist, so I don't really know the category, and I'm not going to diagnose him. But I'll just say in 50 years of being around a lot of people, I've met very few who can behave that way. Very, very few. It's a very unusual quality. And of course, it's probably useful in politics.

01:07:27
David Friedberg
Is he electable?

01:07:28
Chamath Palihapitiya
Is he electable? Yeah, exactly. Are the american people going to see that the way that you see it?

01:07:32
Tucker Carlson
Well, as you know, the system in California does not include elections. I mean, it has nothing to do with what the people think. It's a machine state. It's the most corrupt out of 50. Kamala Harris was, like, despised by most Californians and she was a sitting US senator. Poor Diane Feinstein, my neighbor in Washington, I don't think she was a horrible person, just for the record. But she was non compass menace and she could have lived well beyond her death as A-U-S. Senator. So it's not a small d democratic state. It's not run on the basis of what the population wants. It's a fixed game in California.

01:08:06
Tucker Carlson
And so it does make me very uncomfortable that someone from that political culture, which is an utterly corrupt political culture, an authoritarian political culture could enter a presidential race because clearly, what are you running on if you're Gavin Newsom? As a native californian? I know what the state was like in 1985 because I live there and it's completely degraded from that time. And how did that happen? Well, part of the big reason is the political leadership in the state. You've got nothing to run on. What are you running? Have you driven through LA recently? Like, seriously? So the fact that he would get in the race suggests they think that they can win without the consent of voters, and that freaks me out.

01:08:54
Tucker Carlson
Well, he'll have the media working on overdrive for him, right? I mean, they will turn him somehow into, like, John F. Kennedy or something. I mean, they will paper over all of his flaws and they'll basically write puff pieces. It'll be like nonstop. And then they'll be attacking Trump. So the media will put him over the top. I think if he assuming that we.

01:09:14
Tucker Carlson
Have the same media that we had in 2020, that's true. But I mean, that's why you just got to pray every night for Elon's health. And I mean it, too. I mean, it's the only platform at scale in the world that's pretty, there's censorship on it, but there's not mass censorship. Actually, there isn't. And that's the only platform of its kind at scale. It's the only.

01:09:37
Tucker Carlson
Let's talk about that. Actually, we've talked in this conversation about how our public discourse is inane and self destructive and divisive. I would add another word to that, which is know controlled. A good example of this, I think, was just on the Ukraine war, David Arakamiya, who is Zelensky's parliamentary leader, who was the lead negotiator for the Ukrainians at Istanbul in the first month of the war, when there was a deal on the table, he just testified. He basically said an interview, there was a deal on the table to shut the war down. We just would have had to agree to make Ukraine neutral. And of course, the Biden administration told them not to.

01:10:18
Tucker Carlson
This war has always been about NATO expansion, and yet the party line from the media, even as all of these proof points stack up, I mean, we're now on, like, the 10th person firsthand witness to say that this is what this war is all about. You still can't get the media to honestly report this. This is one example. Okay. And I believe that this is one of the reasons why you were fired, Tucker, is because you were literally the only person on mainstream network news saying what the war is really about. So this is like one really big example is that we cannot get any truth on an issue as big as Ukraine war. So I guess my question for you is, how does control like that happen? I don't really understand it myself. We live in what's supposed to be a big democracy.

01:11:06
Tucker Carlson
There's supposed to be a lot of media channels, but yet they all enforce a certain narrative on pretty much every issue. But even again, I'm picking on, I think, one of the biggest issues right now, which is this war we've got going on. How does that happen? I don't understand it. How do they maintain that control?

01:11:25
Tucker Carlson
This is one of my personal concerns about technology and about progress of all kinds, which is you don't actually know where it's going. You don't. I mean, your best forecasts, mine, have very often been wrong. And, of course, the promise of the Internet was diversity and access to information from a lot of different sources, unfiltered information. You can talk to people in foreign countries for free. Every American will have an encyclopedia at his fingertips, and people are going to be much more informed, and no one will be able to control it because it's free and open. And the effect has been the opposite. I would argue there's been less freedom information than there was 30 years ago. How did that happen? You guys are much better situated to answer that question. Someone should think about that, I think.

01:12:14
Tucker Carlson
But the bottom line is there are just not that many pipelines, actually, in television, there were three big news channels. Cable broadcast kind of receded in importance. It's mostly about prostate health. Now, there are three big channels, two of them one side, one was on the other, and then there were the social media giants, but there are not that many of them. And they were all locked down, and they were all riddled with intel, in some cases, actual salaried intel officers. Matt Tayibi's amazing reporting has shown this not just american, either, from foreign countries. The whole thing was an op. It was could. I'm not going to beat up on Fox News. But there was kind of a fairly narrow band of acceptable views allowed on that channel. Is that control? Yes, it is.

01:12:58
Tucker Carlson
And so there really was no remaining place with scale where someone with a dissenting view could give it voice. And that's just crazy. It's the opposite of what were promised, but whatever. Not to whine about it, but the existence of X, where anyone around the world, or in most countries anyway, can get for free a whole range of opinions that aren't controlled. That changes everything. The primacy of control of information in a war cannot be overstated. You could debate whether it's more important than ammunition, but it's right up there. So I think this election, if that platform stays free for the next twelve months, I think we have a shot at least of a real election. And I think they're going to do whatever they can to shut it down.

01:13:44
Jason Calacanis
We also have web based shows, podcasts, and that even predated a little bit. Elon taking, there's, there is a self correcting mechanism here. If you feel too controlled, like maybe perhaps you felt or you felt pressure at Fox, I don't want to speak for you. If you did, then all of a sudden, Joe Rogan, all in podcast, whatever, podcasts all emerge, and now your show on X, and I'm sure it's going to be on other platforms as well. Maybe you could speak to what you think the impact of a post Fox Tucker Carlson show will be and how will you be able to sort of shape the show differently, if at all? And what's the mission here? That was my first question we never really got to, which is post Fox, post money, post fame, what is Tucker Carlson's mission statement going forward?

01:14:33
Jason Calacanis
What is your goal?

01:14:34
Tucker Carlson
Just the same as before. And I should just be extra clear. I wish I could tell horror stories about Fox forcing me to take some line or other, but they really didn't. But they didn't want the show anymore. So that kind of tells you. But anyway, the point is, my intent in hosting that show is the same as my intent in hosting the show we're about to launch on X, which is just do your best to say what you think is true. Bring perspectives and information that you don't think are widely covered to a larger audience, and try and stay firm in that. Admit when you're wrong. Just be honest. I got in this business because I hadn't graduated from college and my father's like, it's a pretty pure meritocracy in journalism. You should do it. And it's also pretty simple.

01:15:18
Tucker Carlson
No real skills required, just be literate, which I was.

01:15:21
Jason Calacanis
And is the show going to evolve a little bit because you've been doing this experiment, done about 40 episodes?

01:15:26
Tucker Carlson
Well, here's the way that it already has evolved. So I got laid off in April and I like to fish and bird hunt, so I did a lot of that. And then I was like, oh, I need to do something. So I've been stuck in a studio for all these many years. I couldn't really go anywhere, and I took seven foreign trips in four months. I just went to all these places where I knew people. I was interested in what was going on, and I just found it amazing. Two things I found amazing. One, the view of America. The vantage you get from a foreign country on what's happening in your own is completely different. The whole world is reshuffling.

01:16:01
Tucker Carlson
In my view, after the Ukraine war, February 2022 really did change a lot, particularly with respect to America's place in the world that's worth covering. And the second thing I learned once I started putting videos up on x was that it's international. I mean, I was just shocked by that, because think about it. I mean, I'm working for a us news channel. It's one of three U. S. News channels I've worked for. CNN was international, but I was on CNN Us. So I'm just used to thinking about America being viewed by Americans, having a conversation about this country. I had no experience at all of a big international audience, and that platform has that. And so I was amazed by that. And so we're going to continue to cover the rest of the world.

01:16:44
Tucker Carlson
I'm going over to Dubai in February and interviewing, it's incredible.

01:16:49
Jason Calacanis
I've been spending time.

01:16:51
Tucker Carlson
It's just so interesting.

01:16:52
Jason Calacanis
There's so much going on.

01:16:53
Tucker Carlson
It's like crazy people. And this is not a political point. This is like a human point that bothers me almost more than anything politically, which is the death of curiosity. It's like people are not curious. Like, what the hell? I thought the technological revolution would set off explosions in the brain of every person. Like, what is that? I want to learn more. And it had exactly the opposite. It's like, lull me to sleep with TikTok. Don't tell me more.

01:17:17
David Friedberg
I don't want to double down on what you already know, what you already.

01:17:20
Tucker Carlson
Believe, over and over. I'm less certain in my beliefs. I know that. I know less than any time of my life. And I'm much more interested in many more things than I've ever been. I think that's normal. And I think there's something, like in the water or something that's making people not care. The UFO thing, like what? Whatever your views of that, like, well, what is that? Shut up. And that's normal. People don't want to hear it. Why? I don't know. Whatever. I don't want to preach I mean.

01:17:47
Jason Calacanis
Post Covid, we still don't have an accounting of what happened.

01:17:49
Chamath Palihapitiya
Tucker, what do you think about the clip yesterday of Elon?

01:17:54
Jason Calacanis
Let's play it for 45 seconds and then get your response.

01:17:57
Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson, apology tour, if you will.

01:18:01
Jason Calacanis
This had been said online.

01:18:03
Tucker Carlson
There was all of the criticism.

01:18:04
Tucker Carlson
There was advertisers leaving.

01:18:06
Tucker Carlson
We talked to Bob. I hope they stop. You hope.

01:18:09
Tucker Carlson
Don't advertise.

01:18:11
Tucker Carlson
You don't want them to advertise? No. What do you mean? If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. But go fuck yourself. Is that clear?

01:18:31
Tucker Carlson
I hope it is. Hey, Bob, if you're in the audience.

01:18:35
Tucker Carlson
Well, let me ask you then. That's how I feel.

01:18:39
Jason Calacanis
All right, Tucker. Your response to the good for, you.

01:18:46
Tucker Carlson
Know, interviewed people every week for over 30 years. And so I know what it is to interview. I just dropped my Perry egg. Excuse me. And I know I have a lot of experience interviewing people, and I've interviewed Elon, and I don't understand how the New York Times character, fussy little guy from the New York Times. How could you not laugh? Like, what he just told Bob Iger to fuck.

01:19:08
Jason Calacanis
Don't get me started. You and I are in sick. Andrew Varsarkin is amongst the weakest of moderators and interviewers.

01:19:15
Tucker Carlson
What a fussy little douche. You erupt. Are you joking? Elon Musk just told Bob hugger to fuck himself. Yes. I'd be texting my response. He's a robot. I know. No, of course. I love it. I love it. I am in the iger thing. I don't hate Bob Iger or anything, but I keep hearing from people, mutual people I know, who know Bob Iger very well, that he's very serious about running for president. It's like, if you really think if you're Bob Iger, you can run for president, do you have anything to offer people or they want you to be president? Like, you're pretty out of touch. So I like that. But big picture, I'm not just saying this because it aligns with my interests of some kind. I mean it.

01:20:02
Tucker Carlson
I'm worried about the pressure that's being brought to bear on that platform, on this platform, on x, because it's the only one, the only big one, huge one, international one. Tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people. They, meaning the people who would like to maintain the status quo, kind of have to shut it down. And I am just so hoping that I can help in any way, and that all decent people, whatever their views, add their voice to a chorus that says, no, you can't shut down the one big free speech platform in the world. You can't do that because then it's just dictatorship. You're not free if you don't have free information. And you can't say what you really.

01:20:43
Jason Calacanis
You were subject to a lot of these advertising attacks. They went after Fox and your show specifically, and it worked. They got people to not advertise on your show.

01:20:53
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:20:54
Jason Calacanis
So these advertising boycotts do work. Media matters, whatever, whoever's doing them. So I'm curious what you see the business model being for your show and then how you hope to be resistant to it. Are you going to just go straight up subscription and hope that half your audience, or 10% of your audience pays and you put half out for free, half out for sub? What are you thinking?

01:21:13
Tucker Carlson
You got to have a subscription component to it. And of course, we're selling ads against our content, and we'll be doing that on X and on tuckercarlson.com. We'll be hosting the subscription part of it. Of course we're selling ads. We'll have network ads, too. I mean, there are lots of different things you can do, but in the end, you have to have some subscription component if you're going to do it at scale. I mean, we brought our whole staff, almost our whole staff from Fox with us. So we got a bunch of people. We've got bigger ambitions than have been on display so far. You got to have more information. And I would just say this about just having been in this one business my whole life. The range of stories is the problem. It's not that the stories are all totally dishonest.

01:22:05
Tucker Carlson
Some are dishonest, but some are not. They're technically true, but they're taken from such a small pot of stories that it's like, it's crazy. There's all this stuff going on and it's just not, I mean, I was completely obsessed and remain obsessed with the industrial sabotage of the, that's a major historical event. You just ended the EU, you just hobbled the economic engine of Europe, which is, and like, who did that? And there were very few stories on that. That's like a very big deal. And again, back to the curiosity thing. But it's more than that. It's like people sort of know where not to go. And I just feel like that's, first of all, that's soul death.

01:22:50
Tucker Carlson
You're not a free man if you're that constrained in your thinking, if you're letting somebody else tell you what you're allowed to think, how can your wife even sleep with you at that point? No one can respect you if you live like that. A, b, you can't have a democracy. You can't have a free country under those circumstances. I don't think I'm overstating it. And so we're going to try to, I hope, be one of many different, similar efforts to just add to the sum total of information and analysis of that information.

01:23:18
Jason Calacanis
Well, the end of democracy and sex would be kind of rough, I think. Yeah, go ahead, triple.

01:23:22
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:23:23
Chamath Palihapitiya
I have a final question, and I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist.

01:23:28
Tucker Carlson
But.

01:23:30
Chamath Palihapitiya
If one of the presidential candidates called you and said, tucker, be my.

01:23:34
Tucker Carlson
Vp and replace Kamala Harris, I mean, I don't think I could do that. She's a historic.

01:23:42
Chamath Palihapitiya
Would you consider it if Donald Trump gave you that call?

01:23:45
Tucker Carlson
Well, of course I would consider. Mean, you have no idea how open minded I am. Consider anything, actually. But I mean, the truth is, I kind of don't respect people who do stuff like that. I really believe, I've got a lot of theories which I will not inflict on you, but which I do inflict on my own four children. And my main theory of life is that you should do what you were designed to do. I don't believe this whole you can be whatever you want to be thing. I think it's an absurd lie. I think we're made for certain things. We have certain aptitudes. They're inborn. We can hone them, and we need to, through practice, repetition.

01:24:21
Tucker Carlson
But I think it's a sign of hubris, which is always the death of, particularly of men, hubris, thinking you have more power than you do when midlife, you're like, well, actually, what I really want to do is direct. It's like, you just won best actress, honey. Go back to acting. And I've never been involved in politics. I haven't even voted in all elections. I'm serious. So the idea that I'm going to, at 54, run for national office, it's a little, you know what I mean? I don't take myself quite that seriously. I mean, I can't imagine doing something like that.

01:24:56
Chamath Palihapitiya
My question is that at least the Republicans will now prove that we've lived in a twelve year era of a nontraditional candidate that was essentially a media personality that was able to then curate a plurality of support.

01:25:11
Jason Calacanis
Right?

01:25:12
Tucker Carlson
That's right.

01:25:12
Chamath Palihapitiya
And there's going to be something that comes after him. And so I'm just trying to get a sense of, if it's not you, it's probably, to be very honest, somebody like, just talk to us about that for just a second.

01:25:25
Tucker Carlson
I completely agree with you, and I love your characterization of Trump as someone who's from a media background, because that's closer to the, I'm not diminishing, I'm from media backgrounds, I'm not attacking it, but that's a lot closer to the truth than most characterizations. Casino Magnet developer, he's a media guy. He had lots of businesses, but he was a media guy. He had the top show on NBC. And so I think you're absolutely right. My concern is that, and I have pure contempt for the professional political class. I've written a book about it. I've expressed it daily for a number of years now, and that's real. However, I think that these are complex systems, and it's better to have someone who understands the systems in an ideal world administer the systems because he's more effective at doing so.

01:26:11
Tucker Carlson
And I also think that once you decide that, hey, let's just go crazy, and you couple that with true social disorder, like, you get to a place where you can't buy anything at CVS because it's chained up, because shoplifting has been legalized, as it has been in California, what you're going to get is fascism, because people can't live in that. They can't live with chaos. That's the one thing they can't deal with. And I've covered a couple of wars, and that was my main conclusion. The main problem with war is not that people get killed, it's that people have to live with total uncertainty and craziness, and that's incompatible with what people want. That's the worst thing. We're all going to die. Dying is not the worst thing. The worst thing is living in chaos, and we're starting to live in chaos.

01:26:58
Tucker Carlson
And so the return to order is what scares me. I think it'd be very easy. And I do think Gavin Newsom is a fascist. I think he's the kind of person who have no problem, no hesitation about using the DOJ to imprison his political opponents. Now Biden is imprisoning his political opponents, but at least they're lying about it. Gavin Newsom is the kind of person to be like, well, yeah, you're a threat to the general order and you're going to jail. And I think because we're in a moment of chaos right now. People kind of want that, actually, I think one of the purposes of degrading and confusing our society is to make way for authoritarianism even more than we have now. So that kind of freaks me out, actually. I personally.

01:27:38
Tucker Carlson
What I would really like is a kind of know, boring, non charismatic, like Gerald Ford, Mike Pence, without their views. Both of those men were bad men, in my opinion. But someone like that who could govern without making it about himself and restore the country to a sense of rules based order, that's what I really want. But I'm probably going to be denied that.

01:28:05
David Friedberg
Tucker, I feel like one of the other consequences of the way things have gone is that the solution has always been to throw more money at the problem. And we've got this kind of out of control fiscal condition. What's your point of view on the fiscal condition of the US as a priority of the federal government, that is as a priority. And do we need to shrink government, shrink overall discretionary spending? Do we need to cut these entitlements? Do we need to do it all?

01:28:31
Tucker Carlson
And how do we get there, given.

01:28:33
David Friedberg
That everyone gets elected? By telling people, I'm going to give you more stuff, and then this just kind of cascades for decades until eventually bad shit happens.

01:28:43
Tucker Carlson
Well, who's going to buy our debt? I mean, it's so scary. This is, of course, the problem with democracy. I mean, I think since, you know, from the Roman Republic until 1776, like, how many democracies were there?

01:28:56
David Friedberg
Exactly.

01:28:58
Tucker Carlson
Let me do the math on that. Approximately zero in that range. And this was the critique, of course, in Europe of democracy at the time, is not that it gave too much freedom to the average person, but that it would result in tyranny. And when the majority discovered it could steal the goods of whomever it wanted legally. Legally, you would wind up with dictatorship. I mean, this is like a very well trod path, but I mean, but I hope it doesn't get to that. I'm not making an argument against democracy. I'm just saying it's a little bit harder to perpetuate than we thought that it was. And this is kind of the fear that people have had for hundreds of years.

01:29:38
David Friedberg
The condition is the manifestation of that. Structural.

01:29:43
Tucker Carlson
Exactly. That's exactly right.

01:29:45
Jason Calacanis
Let's end on this. Elon clip from yesterday, just about virtue. Like to get your reaction to this.

01:29:51
Tucker Carlson
Tucker Tesla has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined.

01:29:59
Tucker Carlson
It would be fair to say that.

01:30:00
Tucker Carlson
Therefore, as a leader of the company, I've done more for the environment than.

01:30:04
Tucker Carlson
Any single human on earth. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about that? Yeah, no, I'm asking you personally how.

01:30:13
Chamath Palihapitiya
You feel about that, because were.

01:30:14
Jason Calacanis
Talking about power and influence.

01:30:16
Tucker Carlson
I'm saying what I care about is.

01:30:18
Tucker Carlson
The reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil. Fuck them.

01:30:28
Jason Calacanis
Your thoughts on version signaling versus.

01:30:33
Tucker Carlson
It was like the hand of God massaging my central nervous system. Like every erogenous zone was just heightened awareness.

01:30:44
Chamath Palihapitiya
Full chiropractic release.

01:30:47
Tucker Carlson
I'm sorry. No, but I so vehemently agree, and I don't even like electric cars. I don't think they help the environment. I didn't even agree with that part. I just love his point. Which is the point, which is what actually matters is what you do. It's not what you think. What matters is helping other people. And I also think that the fact that Andrew Ross Sorkin has a television job shows this is not a meritocracy. I don't know how he response. His response to that was like, I'll just kind of say this is, like, so inside baseball, but it's literally what I do for a liver have done all my life.

01:31:24
Jason Calacanis
Yes, that's what we do, Chuck.

01:31:25
Tucker Carlson
Interviewing people. Yes. Is to listen to them. Larry King. I used to fill in for Larry King at CNN. He was number time. I filled in for Larry King. There was no research on the guests. I had two guests, no research. And I said the producer, Larry, was like Cabo with wife number seven. And I said, where's the research? Oh, Larry doesn't do research, so I do the show. And fine. And I called him after. I was like, dude, you do no research. And he was number one most dominant figure in cable news by far. And he goes, no, I just listen when someone says something weird. I pause and I say, wait a second, wait a second. You killed someone in 1962. Why'd you kill them?

01:32:04
Jason Calacanis
You're present in the interview, and then you follow up based on what? The sketch.

01:32:09
David Friedberg
Notice how jason's interrupting you right now? Sorry. Go ahead, Tucker.

01:32:11
Tucker Carlson
No, I listen to what Tucker said.

01:32:13
Jason Calacanis
And reflecting back to what he said. Which is what? Because game realized.

01:32:17
Tucker Carlson
That's great. It's a colloquy.

01:32:19
Tucker Carlson
Jake, how's treating this as validation?

01:32:22
David Friedberg
Absolutely.

01:32:22
Tucker Carlson
There's absolutely Tucker that you don't need to know about.

01:32:26
Tucker Carlson
I can tell. It's penalizing.

01:32:29
David Friedberg
Oh, it is.

01:32:30
Tucker Carlson
Trust me.

01:32:31
Jason Calacanis
Well, let's end here. We have a lot of fans of not only this, about 18% crossover between all in and your work, Tucker. And they send me images of you out there and about in the world. And I just got this one in my dms. I don't know what's going on.

01:32:48
Tucker Carlson
What's going on here? Is that a park in New Hampshire.

01:32:51
Jason Calacanis
Where you guys, this is the bromance.

01:32:57
Tucker Carlson
You know what? That's kind of hunky. I'm just being honest.

01:33:01
Jason Calacanis
It's a lot going on here. Well, listen, we gotta like a Vineyard Vines T shirt. The bromance is now complete. Tucker, we'd love to have you back on a regular basis, actually.

01:33:10
Tucker Carlson
So fun.

01:33:11
David Friedberg
That was super fun.

01:33:13
Chamath Palihapitiya
That was great.

01:33:13
Tucker Carlson
And I'm sorry for talking too much. You guys spun me up into a frenzy.

01:33:16
David Friedberg
But I appreciate it. I understand why you are number one in media. That was so fun. I really enjoyed.

01:33:23
Tucker Carlson
Thank you.

01:33:24
David Friedberg
Really, really good.

01:33:25
Chamath Palihapitiya
Thank you very much, Tucker.

01:33:26
Tucker Carlson
Thank you.

01:33:27
Tucker Carlson
Thanks, guys.

01:33:27
Tucker Carlson
It was amazing.

01:33:28
David Friedberg
Tuck soon.

01:33:29
Jason Calacanis
Good luck with the new launch. Everybody go to Tuckerfarlson.com. And when the subs come out on day one, give them a sub, okay? Sub be Tucker. Sub didn't come out exactly how I.

01:33:40
Tucker Carlson
Wanted to, but sure, you could sub for Tucker Sachs.

01:33:44
Jason Calacanis
Are you going to be a sub for Tucker Sachs?

01:33:46
Tucker Carlson
Are you subbing?

01:33:48
Tucker Carlson
I'm going to Dom for Tucker.

01:33:53
Tucker Carlson
All right. Thanks, Tuck. See you guys.

01:33:56
David Friedberg
What do you guys think? That was fun.

01:33:57
Chamath Palihapitiya
That was great.

01:33:58
Tucker Carlson
Yeah. Let's show you.

01:33:59
Jason Calacanis
Sucker for Tucker. I'll be honest. Can we get him on group mean? Can you imagine being on group chat with Tucker?

01:34:04
Tucker Carlson
Fun guy. Great guy.

01:34:06
Jason Calacanis
He's a great entertainer. And you know what? I know he's right wing conservative, but he's actually, I think, a first principled thinker who thinks for himself. We didn't get into January 6. We ran out of time. But he was not happy about that. He wasn't happy about election denial. I think he's intellectually rigorous.

01:34:22
Tucker Carlson
Wow.

01:34:22
Tucker Carlson
JK, what do you think?

01:34:23
Tucker Carlson
Samar?

01:34:23
Chamath Palihapitiya
I really liked it. I like talking to people that have opinions that force me to actually rethink about how it was. I think the most impactful thing that he said to me, which touches upon my own life, was just how one feels when you have a little bit too much too early versus grinding slowly and compounding success over many years. I think it does create in moments, an element of self sabotage. I've lived it in my own life. So that totally resonated this idea that there's just so much abundance that causes people to not really fight over the big issues and then fight over the fringe issues. I do think that there's an element of huge truth in that. It was really good. I think this is probably one of the very few ones that we've done that I would listen to over.

01:35:17
David Friedberg
Totally. I'd say that was, like, one of my favorite episodes, or probably my favorite.

01:35:20
Jason Calacanis
Definitely a top five.

01:35:22
David Friedberg
Just as a listener, I just enjoyed listening the whole fucking time.

01:35:24
Chamath Palihapitiya
This is the thing. I could hear him talk for hours, probably.

01:35:27
David Friedberg
I know. I didn't want to talk. I didn't have anything to say. I just wanted to chill and hang.

01:35:30
Chamath Palihapitiya
Out, like, listen to great. Yeah, me too.

01:35:32
Tucker Carlson
Have you done Tucker show Jamath yet?

01:35:35
Chamath Palihapitiya
They asked me to do the show in December, which I couldn't do, and at some point in the spring, I will do the show. But then I was like, can you come on our show?

01:35:43
Jason Calacanis
Sure. Yeah. There you go. Doing it right.

01:35:45
Tucker Carlson
It's amazing.

01:35:46
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, that was amazing.

01:35:47
David Friedberg
Zach, didn't you go on his show?

01:35:49
Tucker Carlson
No, I've been on Tucker's show a couple of times when it was on Fox, and one appearance was about Chase Boudin, the DA that we got tossed out and then go team. I went on a couple other times. I think one was about the economy. I was on a show a couple of times, for short. Anyway, I thought. I thought what was interesting about this conversation was that it was much more philosophical than I was expecting. Yes, we touched on a few policy issues, but we spent most of the time talking about his deeper clinical diagnosis of american culture and american discourse. And I would say that one of the things that's maybe unique about his take, and I mean definitely different than mine, is it's much more psychological than metaphysical. Even metaphysical and psychological.

01:36:36
Tucker Carlson
I don't really ask too many questions about why people believe what they believe. I just sort of take it as a given and then discuss whether they're right or wrong. Whereas he actually sort of psychoanalyzes why people have the views that they have. And you know what I mean? It's actually kind of interesting.

01:36:54
Chamath Palihapitiya
That whole methodology, for whatever it's worth, resonates with me. I mean, I think it's the reason early on, I really gravitated to Rene Girard because I thought it demonstrated a lot of how people behave to me in a language that I could understand. So when Tucker describes problems in this context, to me, it's very powerful, just because that is how I kind of frame things. I think humans are driven by psychological incentives, and I think that there is something very worth exploring here. Which is these western cultures get so prosperous that the big things we don't fight over. So then we fight over the little things or we have to invent things to fight over.

01:37:30
Jason Calacanis
And the virtue signaling he kind of brings up in his own personal experience, which is, hey, I go to Jackson hole, I'm getting know in line at the lift. People's wives are upset at me, the husbands are upset at me, the hedge fund people, these are all people of incredible wealth, incredible privilege, who have extra cycles. And instead of having a debate over the issues in good faith, full contact debate like we do here, they just want to vilify people. And I tried to listen to him and say, hey, what does he get right here? Now I obviously think he's wrong about climate change. I thought that was bonkers. But I do think he understands human nature pretty well from doing 30 years of interviews.

01:38:05
Chamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, it's definitely worth exploring, Jason. This idea that the more successful people get, the more self loathing there is, and then it manifests in some really destructive ways, I think, especially if you.

01:38:16
Jason Calacanis
Don'T have a foundation, once you get.

01:38:17
David Friedberg
Successful enough, there's very little progress. I think a lot of human happiness comes from progress.

01:38:22
Chamath Palihapitiya
Progress, exactly. Where's the purpose? Well, there's just no higher order bits. You buy the house, that's a huge accomplishment. But then when you buy your second house or third house, I think the diminishing returns are severe. Yeah, severe. And then these things are just baggage. They're like albatross.

01:38:39
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:38:39
David Friedberg
And then you're spending all this time dealing with headaches.

01:38:42
Chamath Palihapitiya
Exactly.

01:38:42
David Friedberg
What's your progress?

01:38:44
Jason Calacanis
What's the purpose of life? I mean, Sachs, when you bought your 6th house, you can cut that.

01:38:50
David Friedberg
Just busy reorganizing the US political establishment. So I think he's making progress in his own way.

01:38:56
Chamath Palihapitiya
Sachs is making.

01:38:59
Jason Calacanis
Know he's. Where does he sit on the political spectrum today? Sachs, because you and he are both. Yeah, because you're both kind of outcasts in the republican party now, right.

01:39:10
Tucker Carlson
I would describe Tucker as probably the most influential populist on the populism. Well, there's a populism of the left that I guess was Bernie Sanders before he maybe like five, eight years ago or whatever.

01:39:28
Jason Calacanis
Describe to the audience your perception of populism on the left and the right and what they share and what they don't share kind of thing, because this does seem to be the emerging party, I think we would all agree, is that people are sick of these extremes and they want something new. And the something new seems to be populism.

01:39:47
Tucker Carlson
Well, one way to think about populism is just democracy. Populism is the word that the elite gives to democracy they don't like. So, for example, vast majority of the country wants our borders sealed. For some reason, the elites don't want that. So that's labeled populism. I think the vast majority of the country regrets the forever wars in the Middle east and doesn't want us getting involved in more wars. This sort of hyper interventionism, I think that's like a major part of the platform. And then, of course, I think the third big area of reevaluation was around our free trade policies. They really ended up hollowing out America's industrial capability and exported a lot of manufacturing jobs. Globalization to China. Globalization.

01:40:32
Tucker Carlson
So, yeah, I think on the right big picture, I would say that populism is a nationalist reaction to the hyperglobalization that happened, that was encouraged by the elites over the past few decades.

01:40:45
Jason Calacanis
And he hit on that. He said, you know, at some point, are the politicians going to match what the people want? And they call this getting to Denmark. High functioning governments in the know tend to reflect what the candidates reflect what the people want.

01:41:03
Tucker Carlson
Right.

01:41:03
Jason Calacanis
And we seem to have this kind of broken here. We have one other story people have wanted us to comment on when we had our week off, so I thought we'd get into the open AI thing. I just wanted to point out, I don't mean to make this like a love triangle, sacks, but Tucker and I did go skiing last year. We tried to keep it, but now that it's know, here it is. I'm sorry about this, but were actually in this echo at the same time, so it's going to come out at some point, sacks, we might as well talk about it.

01:41:30
Chamath Palihapitiya
Look how old and nasty those ski clothes are.

01:41:33
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, well, you know what? We're both very woke, and we don't want. We're virtue signaling that we want to recycle. So we bought all this stuff on eBay.

01:41:43
Chamath Palihapitiya
I thought that was Phil Helmeth on the left.

01:41:45
Jason Calacanis
I guess that's Jcal. That's me before I was olympic face. All right, let's do the open eye AI thing, if you guys have time. Can we go over this real quick? I don't want to.

01:41:55
Tucker Carlson
We can. I just wonder if the story's stale.

01:41:56
Jason Calacanis
But, I mean, I think one of the things we can do here is just sort of, now that the three acts are complete, we can actually talk about the epilogue, just for people who.

01:42:07
David Friedberg
Have, I don't know, man. I think the epilogue is about to drop.

01:42:10
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, well, that's what we'll get at.

01:42:12
Chamath Palihapitiya
I think we're still in the second act here.

01:42:15
David Friedberg
I don't think this is over by Longshot.

01:42:16
Tucker Carlson
All right, so let me architect, let's see. I'm curious why that is.

01:42:19
Jason Calacanis
I'm going to architect, and I'm going to hand it to you, Jamal. Act one, Sam's fired. Act two, chaos. For a week, were know what were all the reasons? Act three, obviously, just yesterday, sam's back. I think Ilya's out. Microsoft's an observer on the board. So I guess the epilogue, chamath, is what we want to know is what happened? Why did this all happen? Was there a major breakthrough? Was it Sam doing deals with Masiyoshi san or in the Middle east to we? If the epilogue does drop, or if, like you're saying, this is the second act, then the third act is going to begin. Whichever metaphor you want to use, what will it say, jama?

01:42:56
Chamath Palihapitiya
I think we can all agree on what happened, which is that the employees realized that in the absence of leadership, business leadership, that the enterprise value of that company was going to disintegrate and what would have been imperiled was an $86 billion valuation secondary. So I think the employees did what was in their best interest. And it makes the obvious and logical sense, which is we need to circle the wagons and get the business leadership of this company back into this place so that the value of the enterprise is sustained. They did that. So I think this valuation is going to hold. I think this secondary is going to happen. So I think from that perspective, whatever was supposed to happen there happened. So what are the interesting threads that are left over?

01:43:54
Chamath Palihapitiya
We don't yet have a full accounting of what precipitated all of the decision making at the board, number one. Number two is the person who seemed to be the principal inventor is now no longer on the board. And I think based on Sam's blog post, could probably no longer be at the company. That seems like an important thing. And then the third thing, which I found OD was Bret Taylor, who I worked with at Facebook, who I've known for a long time, very sober, reasonable guy, puts out his own addendum to the blog post that basically says his chairmanship of this board is purely.

01:44:40
Jason Calacanis
That. Yeah. What do you take from that?

01:44:42
Chamath Palihapitiya
My takeaway is whatever's happening is still tbD. There is enough question marks that, look, I told my friends on the board without saying who it was. Whatever you guys do, the most important thing that you need to do is you need to retain great counsel and make sure that there, and I said this publicly, make sure that there's phenomenal DNO insurance, and make sure that there aren't any issues where you could be held personally liable for whatever happens in the future.

01:45:10
Jason Calacanis
Piercing of the val, the corporate val.

01:45:12
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:45:13
Chamath Palihapitiya
Now that's a generic thing that I think all corporate directors should do. I think it's even more important here because you have a non standard governance structure that could change, and it could change because the people involved want it to change, but it could also could change because the government says, hey, hold on a second. This should never have been like this in the first place. I'll give you an example of know at Facebook, there was a moment where we divested all of our IP to a subsidiary in Ireland and for tax reasons. And there were two signatories to that deal. It was me and Zuck. And six or seven years later, this is long after I left Facebook, the IRS says, hold on a second. You misvalued these assets. We're owed x billions of dollars in taxes.

01:45:58
Chamath Palihapitiya
It was a huge, long, drawn out thing. So at a minimum, if there's great value created here, there will be consequences with respect to tax and who paid what. And if you have the shielding of a nonprofit entity, there's theoretically a lot of taxes that could have been paid than not. So all of this, to me, says a lot of really open, curious threads, which means it's not the epilogue yet. We're probably somewhere at the end of act two.

01:46:25
Jason Calacanis
Friedberg, my question to you is there's been speculation that there was an super intelligence agi breakthrough, possibly, and that's what spooked everybody. And maybe the claim that Sam wasn't forthcoming with the board was that he didn't tell him about it. The second thing was, there's been some four Chan posts. Again, this is pure speculation that maybe the AI they're working on could break in some way, encryption, and that would have been caused a really chaotic global moment. What are your thoughts on those three potential items or more? Are any of those possibilities in your mind?

01:47:03
Tucker Carlson
Dave Freeberg.

01:47:04
Tucker Carlson
No idea, but I can take a shot.

01:47:06
David Friedberg
Yeah, go ahead, Zach.

01:47:07
Tucker Carlson
Good.

01:47:08
Jason Calacanis
Zach, you take a second.

01:47:09
Tucker Carlson
So I think the best theory on what actually happened here, what precipitated all of this, was broken and a piece by Reuters. And what it said was that there was a letter to the board that was written in the few days before Sam's firing by the board, in which they were raising concerns over the development of Qstar, which was a new breakthrough at OpenAI that allows these language models to do math. And previously, llms just weren't very good at math. It would sort of predict the next word. But that wasn't actually based on mathematical reasoning. QStar actually allows the AI to do math. It understands mathematical reasoning. Supposedly, the capability is only at a grade school level right now, but it is highly accurate, and it can be scaled up with more computing power.

01:47:56
Tucker Carlson
And I don't think it was coincidental that Sam was supposedly in the Middle east seeking to raise billions of dollars to create a new chip company, basically a new specialized chip, or ASIC, to perhaps run these types of models. So they were going to scale up this capability. And what mathematical reasoning allows you to do is unlock a whole new problem set. So, for example, in chemistry, in physics, in computer science, in cryptography, in encryption and encryption, all these things. Mathematical reasoning underpins all of these disciplines. And so it does represent a major new piece towards AGI. And so I think the best theory about what happened is that the board, but I'd say specifically Ilya, had a panic or moment of panic or concern, freak out or whatever concern whatever about this.

01:48:51
Tucker Carlson
And it combined with probably underlying concerns that the board had about Sam's other activity, because he's got his fingers in a lot.

01:48:59
Jason Calacanis
So it hits two of the three potential know, putting aside any personal behavior, it seems like there was no personal behavior here. So it's those two.

01:49:09
Tucker Carlson
Right, right. So they fire him, but they apparently didn't really think it through. At.

01:49:14
Jason Calacanis
Not. It's not a professional board that's constructed.

01:49:19
Tucker Carlson
I think Adam is very.

01:49:21
Jason Calacanis
But the other two were considered, and.

01:49:24
Tucker Carlson
Then the two others, who were from nonprofits, are just not very familiar. And so what happened is they took this drastic action but didn't explain it. And with each passing day, it became more glaring that they would not explain it. So the pressure sort of built on the company to explain itself and provide a good justification for this. And then meanwhile, I think Sam just ran a textbook counter coup operation.

01:49:50
Jason Calacanis
Mean, they got hearts emojis.

01:49:52
Tucker Carlson
There was that aspect of it. But disguised behind the velvet glove of all these hearts and saying, I love you. And all this stuff was the iron fist. The iron fist was they got over 700 of the 770 OpenAI employees to sign a petition. They were going with Sam, and Sam went to Microsoft and set up shop. So the threat to the board was, I'm going to take the whole company with me and set up shop over at Microsoft. And that was sort of the compelling threat. Basically, all the employees threatened to quit and go with Sam. And so the board was under immense pressure. And then at the same time, you got the sense that Ilya was under a lot of personal pressure from his friends, from people he knew at the company.

01:50:34
Tucker Carlson
It's not probably irrelevant that there's about to be a huge cash out. There's about to be a big secondary at an $86 billion valuation. So all these early employees were about to make a lot of money. In any event, for all of these reasons, I don't think Ilya is motivated by money. I think he's motivated by wanting to keep OpenAI intact. I think that he must have had a moment where he realized, wait a second, what we've done here in throwing out Sam is destroying the company. And then he recanted. He basically apologized and signed that petition. And at that moment, it just became a fate accompli that Sam was going to get his job back. And so that's basically what happened.

01:51:11
Tucker Carlson
Now, in terms of the epilogue, where I disagree slightly with tremoth, is that although they still have to form this board, they're going to form a nine person board and they only have three members so far. I think the conclusion here is it's sort of a foregone conclusion, which is the board can never fire Sam again. I mean, they're not going to go through that again. Therefore, he has total control.

01:51:34
Jason Calacanis
It would take a lot.

01:51:35
Tucker Carlson
It would take a lot. So I think that Sam has won and he's going to consolidate his control over the company. By the way, I thought he already had control. I thought that, yeah, you all learned that in previous episode that he had control. Apparently he did not.

01:51:48
Jason Calacanis
Do you think he makes it out and make it a for profit? Do you think he just makes it a for profit and then says, hey, we'll give x amount of the equity or whatever to this nonprofit, but we're just going to flip this thing and separate it out and clean up the original sin?

01:52:01
Tucker Carlson
I think apparently there's, like, tax problems with doing that, but I think that what happens is, look, they already have this for profit LLC entity, which is where all the investors have basically put their money into, and they've gotten shares or membership interests or some sort of.

01:52:16
Jason Calacanis
Profit interest, synthetic shares, whatever.

01:52:18
Tucker Carlson
Synthetic shares, Phantom shares. And then the vast majority of that is owned by this foundation, the nonprofit foundation that I always thought was under Sam's control, but apparently it wasn't. I think it now will be. I just think that what's going to happen in the next few months is that Sam will consolidate his control because he's proven that he has the total loyalty of the troops and they're behind him, and there's no choice. So why won't he get everything he wants?

01:52:42
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:52:45
Jason Calacanis
All of the smoke, I think, leads to the fire that you point out, which is there was some great advance, there was some deals going on, and those things. It matches what the board said. We didn't feel like he was being forthcoming with us, and it could be on two issues like that. It just totally makes sense. It locks the puzzle pieces in place. Dave, let's assume that they have now not only done language models predicting the next word, know, understanding that, but there is some reasoning going on here, and they understand math, and it understands how to do the next math problem. I don't know if we put that under reinforcement learning. It's obviously very different than language models. Explain what you think. If that is what's happening here with the Q project, what that could mean on a scientific basis.

01:53:30
Tucker Carlson
I don't know enough.

01:53:31
David Friedberg
I'm sorry.

01:53:32
Jason Calacanis
This is why we love you, because you're honest when you don't know Chamath anything here. As we wrap, in terms of watching.

01:53:39
Chamath Palihapitiya
This whole bruhaha, I think it's probably not the.

01:53:43
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, yeah.

01:53:45
Tucker Carlson
More drama. I think there probably will be more.

01:53:49
Jason Calacanis
I mean, it's a lot of drama.

01:53:51
David Friedberg
Did you see the article this morning where they started saying all the houses that Sam bought? He bought all these houses. And so I think there's a lot of investigators digging around now, trying to figure out all the backstory because the board wasn't so forthcoming with what happened and why they made this decision. There's a lot of people digging around, trying to figure out more about Sam than may have been looked into in the past. So this will reveal all sorts of new threads that will start to become part of the narrative. It's unfortunate, I think, that the technology, the progress, is what really matters here, not all the kind of personal people stuff. It's weird. The other comment I'll make, I thought one of the biggest takeaways for me on the whole drama last week was that the employees basically got their way.

01:54:35
David Friedberg
Employees got together, voted, and said, this is what we want, and the board did what they wanted. And it really, I think, sets another precedent. Much like I think Elon set a really big precedent in Silicon Valley when he came in and slashed heads at Twitter. The precedent that it triggered a lot of other executives to start to think, well, maybe that's possible, and I should think about doing more cost savings and so on. This is another interesting precedent where an entire employee base gets together and says, we want x, and the board acquiesced and said, here you go, you can have x. Does that mean that other startups and other companies are going to start to see employee groups band together saying, we want x? In a more vocal, public way? Possibly.

01:55:17
Tucker Carlson
Well, I mean, Freeberg, this is not a new tactic.

01:55:20
David Friedberg
Right.

01:55:20
Tucker Carlson
But look, if the employees are willing to sign a petition en masse, and you get over 90% of them supporting something, and then you also threaten to all set up shop somewhere else. I mean, boards usually respond to that pressure. Yeah, but look, I think that it's very clear that Sam has the support of the troops. I'm not questioning that, but I think it would be a mistake to just see this as some sort of spontaneous groundswell. I think there was clearly, like some organization to it. Like I said, I think he ran a textbook operation there.

01:55:51
David Friedberg
Yeah.

01:55:52
Tucker Carlson
And wasn't it Paul Graham who said something like, if Sam were dropped in an island of cannibals, like kind of a lord of the fly situation, he'd be the one to come out on? Really? He is in his. Don't, don't just assume. Look, this is all covered up by hearts and I love you. I mean, I've never read a corporate announcement with the word love in it more times. This was not about love and hearts. There's some. He's a wartime corporate infighting here. Yeah, and he came out on top. But look, the board was totally incompetent. I mean, listen, if a board is going to take a drastic action of firing the founder CEO when everything is going great, because everything's been going great at OpenAI, it's incumbent on them to explain their actions, and there needs to be.

01:56:41
Jason Calacanis
Why didn't they do that, even as a CEO, for their reputation?

01:56:45
Tucker Carlson
I'm saying it was totally incompetent.

01:56:47
Jason Calacanis
Yeah, they should have dropped it.

01:56:48
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, well, no, what I'm saying is either there's a smoking gun or there's not. I don't think you should take an action like this ever, unless there's a smoking gun. And if there is a smoking gun, you need to communicate that. And I think with each passing day that they didn't communicate it. People came to the conclusion, there is no smoking gun. And so my guess is there is no smoking gun. And they were overly hasty about taking this action.

01:57:12
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:57:12
Jason Calacanis
This could have been a very simple discussion. Hey, Sam, can we work on you telling us in advance when you're going and doing deal making so we can be in alignment on, like, it seemed like there was something that could have been done that wasn't firing him.

01:57:27
Chamath Palihapitiya
I don't know.

01:57:28
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:57:28
Chamath Palihapitiya
I mean, you could put somebody on a pip, you could do all kinds of things. So taking the step of letting somebody go in that way with that orchestration again, I just think that this stuff is too juicy and too interesting for the details to not come out.

01:57:49
Jason Calacanis
Oh, it will come out.

01:57:50
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

01:57:50
Jason Calacanis
The fact that it hasn't come out yet is crazy. I would have suspect it would have come out in the first 72 hours.

01:57:55
Tucker Carlson
So you think there is maybe not a smoking gun, but there's something.

01:57:59
Chamath Palihapitiya
No, I think it's what we said, which is that the economically rational decision for all the employees and for Sam and Greg was to do what they did because it allows them to get an $86 billion valuation and a big secondary done.

01:58:13
Tucker Carlson
Right.

01:58:13
Chamath Palihapitiya
So that makes complete rational sense. That is the rational decision that should have happened, and so that did. But it doesn't stop whatever underlying chaos was happening that caused this decision to exist in the first place to not come out. I just think that the incentives for that decision to come out now, for example, from the two departing board members is quite high. How do you get this information from the incoming board members? How do they not say anything? All the new six people that join the board will have to get read into this thing.

01:58:49
Tucker Carlson
Right?

01:58:50
Chamath Palihapitiya
So you're just multiplying the number of people that knows whatever it is, and it's either going to be, David, to your point, path a, which is the board didn't know what they're doing and they acted hastily, or the self preservation of here's what we knew, but it is just going to come out in leak after leak. And then, to your point, the pulling the sweater of all of the other deals that may have been happening on the side or whatever, all of this stuff now comes out because it's just too salacious for too many people. The numbers are too big. Everything just looks too juicy. Now you have this hidden technology that could theoretically ruin the world. Everybody will be leaking to everybody. And that's the only guarantee here.

01:59:32
Chamath Palihapitiya
Which is why I really think that you have to commend the leadership team for trying to become very militaristic about all of this. Everybody had the same tweets, they said the same things, they used the same heart emojis I mean, it was extremely well managed.

01:59:49
Tucker Carlson
It was mantras.

01:59:50
Jason Calacanis
It's amazing what a secondary will do to the troops. There's alignment of the mantra.

01:59:56
Tucker Carlson
The mantra was that OpenAI is nothing without its employees or something like that.

02:00:01
Chamath Palihapitiya
We are nothing without our team or something.

02:00:03
Tucker Carlson
And that was basically something that, on the surface, appeared to be a positive affirmation of camaraderie. But like I said, iron fist beneath a velvet glove. It's a threat. It's a threat. We can set up shop.

02:00:17
Chamath Palihapitiya
It's also formula in an excel spreadsheet that says they are nothing without the team.

02:00:22
David Friedberg
The enterprise value equals zero.

02:00:24
Tucker Carlson
Your company is a zero without us, and we can go set up shop somewhere else. So it was perfect. Velvet glove, iron fist type stuff.

02:00:32
Jason Calacanis
Yeah. Well done, Sam. Well, Sam will be on the pod in the coming weeks, I think. I've been texting with him. So I think if Sam.

02:00:39
Chamath Palihapitiya
I think what Elon said yesterday was also really interesting, which is he described Ilya as an extremely moral person who thinks about these things. So, again, and I've known Adam for a long time, I think Adam is tremendous. He is from Cora.

02:00:57
Jason Calacanis
Adam D'Angelo.

02:00:58
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

02:00:58
Chamath Palihapitiya
He was the CTO at Facebook. We worked together in the trenches in war for years. He is just the best of the best.

02:01:05
Tucker Carlson
Totally.

02:01:06
Tucker Carlson
He's very smart, very knowledgeable.

02:01:09
Chamath Palihapitiya
This is not an irrational, emotional person.

02:01:12
Tucker Carlson
My guess is that they had good reasons to want to act based on the Ilya's philosophy around AI safety. You may not agree with that philosophy, but their mistake was, if you're going to do something like that, you have to be able to defend it, you have to be able to communicate it. And, I mean, if your concern here was around AI safety, write a manifesto, explain the values that you're invoking and supporting.

02:01:44
Chamath Palihapitiya
I think that's a takeaway for all of us on boards that at some point have to make these decisions because we're all faced with them and we've made them. The lesson that I learned is we're at a point where it is so important that you give employees the transparency to re underwrite why they should stay. So when you make a decision like this in any company going forward, my reaction will be, open the kimono and lay out the case bare. So if you have to make a CEO transition, this is exactly why we did it. This was the precipitating events that caused it. Here's the evidence and here's what we're going to do about it.

02:02:21
Chamath Palihapitiya
And I think that's probably a good takeaway for all boards to learn, which is that level of transparency is going to be needed in the future so that folks don't fill in the blanks with their own conspiracy theories.

02:02:32
Jason Calacanis
Also, there were apparently two companies or two organizations running in parallel here. To build on your points, Jamath, which is Ilya and the nonprofit. This might have been the right decision for that organization, but the right decision for the employees who are incented by the secondary that was about to be shipping the employees apparently billions of dollars, that for profit company, this would be the wrong decision. The for profit company should go fast and it should be releasing.

02:03:01
Chamath Palihapitiya
And Jason, like the, from what was reported, there's like this obligation. And it's hard to understand what it means of the board to determine when AGI is reached and then as a result, essentially hit the kill switch on the commercial business. And if I were a board member dealing with that, I would want a gazillion trillion dollars of insurance to cover me. And the reason is that when that's litigated, not if, when that's litigated, it is that board that will be at the center of dealing with that financial responsibility and liability. This is the other masterstroke, I think, of what Sam did. He's not even on the board, so that liability is no longer his.

02:03:50
Jason Calacanis
Amazing. He's got complete control of the business and none of the responsibility and the.

02:03:57
Chamath Palihapitiya
Actual fiscal responsibility he doesn't have to bear.

02:04:00
Tucker Carlson
Can I speak to the kill switch for a second? So I think it's a really interesting point. So by the way, Jason, there is a for profit entity here. The for profit entity is this new LLC that was created.

02:04:09
Jason Calacanis
Correct.

02:04:09
Tucker Carlson
The non profit entity is above it at the governance layer and it kind of owns the LLC. So again, investors and employees get compensated out of the LLC. And then this nonprofit foundation was supposed to exercise a really complicated chart. There you go.

02:04:24
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.

02:04:24
Jason Calacanis
Whenever an.org chart has more than like.

02:04:26
Tucker Carlson
Two arrows, it's crazy.

02:04:28
David Friedberg
You're fucked.

02:04:29
Tucker Carlson
Right?

02:04:29
Jason Calacanis
How many arrows? 1234-5678 arrows.

02:04:33
Tucker Carlson
That's right.

02:04:34
Jason Calacanis
Too many.

02:04:34
Tucker Carlson
But my point is that this complexity was justified by this idea of the kill switch, that if the AI gets out of control, the AGI gets out of control, we're going to have this board of super wise people who are not motivated by a profit incentive. Right. Because we can't trust the profit motive. Right. And so we're going to have this board of wise elders who are going to make this super intelligent decision. And if this whole episode shows anything, it shows this structure completely failed. I mean, the board ended up acting in a completely incompetent way. Either they had good cause to do what they did and didn't explain it, which was incompetent, or they had no cause at all which was incompetent.

02:05:17
Tucker Carlson
Either way, you cannot say that this board acted with a high degree of competence, no matter how competent any of the individuals are. I'm just saying that as a board dynamic, it completely failed. So they did not invent some higher form of governance as they originally claimed was a franken structure, so it didn't work. And I think this all, I mean, it's, I think, important lesson in human motivations, which is just because you take out the profit motive does not mean that human beings all of a sudden become noble. They just pursue other agendas, basically political agendas. Or, and so this idea that we're going to solve the AGI problem or alignment issue by creating nonprofit structures, I think that this episode proves that's not going to work. Like, look elsewhere.

02:06:08
Jason Calacanis
And you and I talked about this on Twitter, spaces and X spaces, which was, people give vcs and investors a hard time about, I don't know, their existence and how they operate in the world. Okay, fair enough. I'm sure there's valid criticisms, but the share price and employees participating and the share price going up and secondaries occurring on a regular basis is the most perfect structure that has been created by humans to date for running an organization. I think we would all agree. And it's super imperfect and there's weird things that happen. But if you want everybody to grow in the right direction, giving them some shares, and then everybody watching the share price go up into the right is pretty phenomenal. This board did not have one vc on it.

02:06:50
Tucker Carlson
And all the vcs in the company, they were the most aggressive tweeters, saying, WTF? Like, what are you doing? Because they could see their investment going up in smoke.

02:07:02
Jason Calacanis
Yes, they had alignment with the share price, but no control.

02:07:06
Tucker Carlson
So as much as you don't like the profit motive, it does create alignment, and that makes people predictable, and that's a good thing. And like Adam Smith said in the 17 hundreds, the reason we can trust that the butcher and the baker will serve us our dinner is because they're going to make a profit. They're aligned with us, and we don't look to charity, we look to their self interest. And like you said, for all the shit that vcs take, if you properly align people, I think it creates a great enterprise. It creates a potential great outcome for a great enterprise. For great outcomes.

02:07:42
Jason Calacanis
Great outcomes. Absolutely. All right. This has been another extraordinary all in episode, probably top five. Thanks so much for Tucker Clawson, for coming on the program and for the sultan of science, David Friedberg. The Rain man. Yeah, definitely. David Sachs and the dictator himself, polyhapatia. I'm the world's greatest moderator. We will see you next time.

02:08:09
Tucker Carlson
We'll let your winners ride Rain man, David Sachs. And instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

02:08:21
Tucker Carlson
Love you. Queen of Kinwa besties are gone. That is my dog taking a note. Driveway. Oh, man. My habitat will meet me up with. We should all just get a room and just have one big, huge orgy because they're all just like this, like sexual tension, but they just need to release somehow. Wet your feet.

02:08:49
Tucker Carlson
Be wet your feet.

02:08:53
Tucker Carlson
We need to get. Merchies are going all in. All in. Close.