Latest / Pod Save America / Mark Cuban Wants Democrats to Stop Whining and Do Something

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Mark Cuban Wants Democrats to Stop Whining and Do Something · Pod Save America

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, back hosting
1:32
Speaker 2: another Sunday show because I simply couldn't pass up the
1:34
Speaker 2: chance to talk to our guest today, businessman, reality TV star,
1:38
Speaker 2: and former Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban. Mark may be
1:41
Speaker 2: a billionaire, but he's not the typical tech pro. He
1:43
Speaker 2: was a spokesman for former Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign
1:46
Speaker 2: in 2024, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, and is
1:49
Speaker 2: an outspoken advocate for affordable healthcare and medication. I wanted
1:52
Speaker 2: to talk to Mark about Trump's approach to the economy,
1:54
Speaker 2: how Democrats can do a better job selling our policy,
1:57
Speaker 2: and how he's and how we get attention in this
1:58
Speaker 2: broken media environment. Plus, I had to get his take
2:01
Speaker 2: on some pressing NBA questions. Mark Cuban, welcome to Pod
2:04
Speaker 2: Save America. How are you?
2:05
Speaker 3: I'm great. Thanks for having me on.
2:06
Speaker 2: I know that's a loaded question in this day and
2:08
Speaker 2: age for a lot of people. How are you feeling?
2:10
Speaker 2: Are you legitimately great?
2:12
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit sore from working out today, but
2:14
Speaker 3: other than that, I have the same concerns that everybody
2:17
Speaker 3: else has, just about the uncertainty in the world, in
2:21
Speaker 3: the country, but I still think there's hope.
2:24
Speaker 2: All right, that's good. Well, we'll get into all of that.
2:26
Speaker 2: But I want to just start with some table stakes here.
2:30
Speaker 2: You were out on the campaign trail for Kamala Harris.
2:32
Speaker 2: You were hitting the battleground states. You were one of
2:34
Speaker 2: her most vocal spokespeople. You were omnipresident in the media
2:38
Speaker 2: and on podcasts. From what you saw on the front lines,
2:41
Speaker 2: why do you think Trump won this election?
2:44
Speaker 3: A couple reasons. One, Democrats tried to extrapolate. Everything that
2:49
Speaker 3: Democrats talk about is an extrapolation. If Trump did this,
2:53
Speaker 3: you know, and in their mind they're extrapolating, then the
2:56
Speaker 3: normal conclusion is hell's freezing over at some level or another.
3:01
Speaker 3: Republicans deal with the here and now. You know, they're
3:04
Speaker 3: eating cats and dogs. They're coming to your neighborhood to
3:08
Speaker 3: eat your cats and dogs. There's no question mark about
3:12
Speaker 3: whether or not there's going to be, whether or not
3:14
Speaker 3: they want you to have a visceral experience. Democrats want
3:17
Speaker 3: you to think. They want you to understand what they
3:22
Speaker 3: envision and get you there. Republicans, they're taking your jobs.
3:27
Speaker 3: That's what immigrants do. DEI is keeping your husband, your son,
3:33
Speaker 3: your wife, your daughter from getting a promotion. Those are
3:36
Speaker 3: here and now things that people can, whether it's true
3:41
Speaker 3: or not, assign to themselves and say, this really could
3:45
Speaker 3: impact me.
3:46
Speaker 2: I mean, Democrats, we are probably overly professorial. We look
3:50
Speaker 2: like we're nerds. Maybe that's our problem. But like, I
3:55
Speaker 2: think in this one, the extrapolation, the idea is Trump
3:58
Speaker 2: is going to do these things. He's now ended up
3:59
Speaker 2: doing a whole bunch of these things. Maybe it sounded
4:01
Speaker 2: hyperbolic when people were saying it, that he's going to
4:03
Speaker 2: deport all these people.
4:04
Speaker 3: It's not just about what he does. It's the conclusion.
4:08
Speaker 3: Like you said, you're professorial. The conclusion is always... the
4:13
Speaker 3: end of the world, right? The conclusion is always it's
4:17
Speaker 3: the end of the country. The conclusion is this demographic
4:22
Speaker 3: is done. They're over with. People, when they live their
4:27
Speaker 3: lives day to day, we watch movies to see the
4:31
Speaker 3: end of the world, right? They don't think about end
4:34
Speaker 3: of the world consequences. They think about what's happening to
4:38
Speaker 3: them today, And often it's just an excuse. Often it's
4:42
Speaker 3: not real, but it's visceral to them. You know, and
4:46
Speaker 3: thinking about the end of the world, it's not visceral.
4:50
Speaker 3: You know, it is to Democrats, but not to the
4:52
Speaker 3: Republicans I know.
4:54
Speaker 2: Do you think we oversold the case in that sense
4:56
Speaker 2: that it was not believable?
4:58
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think that's the lesson that Democrats have
5:01
Speaker 3: to learn going forward. You can't project. And I think
5:05
Speaker 3: the guy in New York, I always get his name wrong, right?
5:07
Speaker 2: Mondani.
5:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mondani. We're cutting rents, right? We're changing grocery stores.
5:13
Speaker 3: None of that shit has a chance. It doesn't matter.
5:17
Speaker 3: No one did an evaluation and did a risk assessment
5:20
Speaker 3: to say, well, there's a 50% chance that he could
5:24
Speaker 3: extend rent control so that another 50,000 people could benefit
5:28
Speaker 3: from it. No, not a single person does that. They're like, okay,
5:32
Speaker 3: this could impact me. I mean, what's the difference? It's
5:35
Speaker 3: like what a Trump guy told me in 2016. He said,
5:38
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know this guy, Dan. Why are you voting? Mid-50s, right?
5:42
Speaker 3: Lifetime Republican. He goes, Mark, I've been voting for politicians
5:45
Speaker 3: my entire life. And you know what they've done for me? Nothing.
5:49
Speaker 3: You know the definition of insanity? And the same thing
5:53
Speaker 3: applies here, you know, in New York. I've been voting
5:55
Speaker 3: for traditional mayoral candidates for a long time. You know
5:59
Speaker 3: what they've done for me? And this guy is walking
6:01
Speaker 3: in telling me he's going to walk on water. He's
6:03
Speaker 3: going to make me more money. He's going to save
6:05
Speaker 3: me money. He's going to make my life better. Is
6:08
Speaker 3: it true? Does it matter? Because what's the option? And
6:12
Speaker 3: that's Trump 101. Is it true? Does it matter? If
6:17
Speaker 3: you say it enough times, people believe it. I think in.
6:20
Speaker 2: The Mondani case, and I think this is probably true
6:23
Speaker 2: of Trump too, is maybe I give voters too much credit,
6:26
Speaker 2: which is that I think they know how hard it
6:29
Speaker 2: is going to do some of these things. But the
6:30
Speaker 2: policies that people say show who they're going to fight for, right?
6:34
Speaker 2: I think most voters probably thought building a wall and
6:36
Speaker 2: having Mexico pay for it was stupid and probably was
6:39
Speaker 2: never going to happen. But it said to them, like,
6:41
Speaker 2: he really cares about immigration in a way in which
6:44
Speaker 2: I care about immigration and Mondani.
6:45
Speaker 3: Why does immigration matter, right? Right. Because it impacts my
6:49
Speaker 3: job or it impacts the jobs available to me. It
6:52
Speaker 3: impacts what I earn. It impacts my pocketbook in the
6:55
Speaker 3: here and now. Kamala, and I tried to tell them
6:58
Speaker 3: to talk, Kamala talked about price gouging. How often do
7:01
Speaker 3: you get hit by price gouging? And she was very
7:03
Speaker 3: specific that 37 states already had price gouging laws. And
7:08
Speaker 3: nobody ever knew that those 37 states had those laws
7:11
Speaker 3: or what the impact would be on them. Yet that
7:13
Speaker 3: was her pricing mechanism. When I would go out there,
7:17
Speaker 3: I would say, look, your price of Gatorade might go
7:21
Speaker 3: up 9%. Your price of bread, eggs might go up 9%.
7:26
Speaker 3: But under Trump, your price of health care is going
7:29
Speaker 3: to skyrocket. Your Christmas presents are going to skyrocket because
7:33
Speaker 3: of tariffs. I couldn't get them to focus on the
7:37
Speaker 3: impact on voters in their lives today. And I think
7:41
Speaker 3: that's why they use me so much because, you know,
7:44
Speaker 3: I didn't care what they told me to say because
7:46
Speaker 3: I told them not to tell me. I just try
7:48
Speaker 3: to make it pertain to people's lives in the immediate, right,
7:52
Speaker 3: or businesses in the immediate timeframe. That's what Modani has done.
7:56
Speaker 3: That's what Trump does better than anybody. That's what the
7:58
Speaker 3: Democrats suck at. And why do you.
8:01
Speaker 2: Think we suck at it?
8:03
Speaker 3: Because we want to think. Democrats want to think. They
8:06
Speaker 3: want to engage. They want to have conversations. They want
8:09
Speaker 3: to feel smart. They want to look smart. They go
8:12
Speaker 3: to college. These are college graduates. That's what college graduates do.
8:17
Speaker 3: Everything's like a dorm room discussion. And I think that's
8:20
Speaker 3: a big difference. Most people just want to live their
8:24
Speaker 3: lives and hope things get better. And if both sides
8:28
Speaker 3: are saying things are bad for their own reason, give
8:30
Speaker 3: me the short-term hit that's going to benefit me as
8:33
Speaker 3: opposed to the long-term possibilities that may be a little
8:37
Speaker 3: bit too esoteric for me to even put any brain
8:40
Speaker 3: cells towards.
8:42
Speaker 2: I assume you think that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama
8:44
Speaker 2: sort of avoided that trap. Did they do things differently
8:46
Speaker 2: or politics just changed?
8:48
Speaker 3: Different world. Politics didn't change. The world changed. Social media
8:52
Speaker 3: changed everything. Social media, every single social media users on
8:57
Speaker 3: each individual platform that supports algorithms has their own unique feed.
9:03
Speaker 3: That's night and day different from the Barack Obama, Bill
9:06
Speaker 3: Clinton world. And look at how Donald Trump, what helped
9:09
Speaker 3: him win when Brad Parscale took Facebook and did micro-targeting.
9:14
Speaker 3: You know, he created the algorithm for Facebook because Facebook
9:18
Speaker 3: wasn't as good at it back then, I guess is
9:19
Speaker 3: the best way to say it. Now, you know, I
9:23
Speaker 3: would talk all the time. You got to reverse engineer.
9:26
Speaker 3: You got to do what Mr. Beast does. He reverse
9:28
Speaker 3: engineers the algorithms to know what's going to sell best
9:31
Speaker 3: and get the most engagement. Go talk to him, right?
9:34
Speaker 3: That's probably your best, you know, best person to educate
9:38
Speaker 3: you on all of this. But in a world where
9:41
Speaker 3: everybody has their own unique feed, you have to flood
9:44
Speaker 3: the zone. You have to say things that are going
9:46
Speaker 3: to be fed to each individual person in a way
9:49
Speaker 3: that may connect to them. That's like when Kamala first
9:53
Speaker 3: got picked and the Brat Summer thing hit, everything was
9:56
Speaker 3: about algorithms and social media and that's when all the
10:00
Speaker 3: momentum hit. The minute they started doing testing in a
10:03
Speaker 3: traditional political basis, where it's just like, test this word,
10:08
Speaker 3: test that word. They would tell me all the time, yeah,
10:10
Speaker 3: we tested it. This is what works best. I'm like,
10:12
Speaker 3: fuck that. gonna say that shit right you've got to
10:16
Speaker 3: it's like selling i said it all the time when
10:19
Speaker 3: biden was in the white house he couldn't you know
10:22
Speaker 3: he couldn't sell anything he couldn't sell dollar bills for
10:25
Speaker 3: 50 cents hamla when you sit down if you ever
10:28
Speaker 3: said sat down and just spent one-on-one time with her
10:30
Speaker 3: i have i have yeah she'll start saying fuck you
10:33
Speaker 3: fuck this she's a normal human being that's smart that
10:37
Speaker 3: is you know has some charisma to her but they
10:39
Speaker 3: don't let any of that come out And I think
10:42
Speaker 3: that really held everything back.
10:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting what you said about the traditional testing.
10:48
Speaker 2: Because one of the things that I've taken from this
10:49
Speaker 2: last election, looking back on it, is that– and I
10:54
Speaker 2: get all this testing, right? They send it all to
10:56
Speaker 2: me and it says, this exact phrasing of this word,
10:59
Speaker 2: these issues are the ones that will– they're 99% more
11:03
Speaker 2: effective than any other message we ever tested. But if
11:05
Speaker 2: you say it, the question is, who's actually going to
11:07
Speaker 2: hear it? Right, which is I think a change in
11:10
Speaker 2: like how campaigns work is in the old days, you
11:12
Speaker 2: could just pay to show that to people on linear television.
11:15
Speaker 2: And now it doesn't work.
11:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't work. And you've got to be able
11:23
Speaker 3: to connect personally. You've got to be able to listen.
11:27
Speaker 3: And you've got to be able to put yourself in
11:29
Speaker 3: the shoes of every demographic that you're trying to reach
11:33
Speaker 3: and ask yourself, what is it that's important to that person,
11:37
Speaker 3: that demographic? And what is it that reduces their stress?
11:41
Speaker 3: Like the IRA for drugs, great. But that's big picture.
11:46
Speaker 3: You take, you know, a 35 year old, you know,
11:49
Speaker 3: non-college graduate that's working on a construction site. They're more
11:53
Speaker 3: concerned with immigration and whether or not and actually they
11:57
Speaker 3: could have used immigration against Trump because you could have
12:00
Speaker 3: said you're not going to have enough people to even
12:02
Speaker 3: have a job at a construction site. You know, there's
12:04
Speaker 3: ways to play it to make it personalized to individuals.
12:07
Speaker 3: But they don't have there was not a single salesperson
12:11
Speaker 3: in that campaign. There is nobody that ever, you know,
12:15
Speaker 3: that ever sold magazines door to door or, you know,
12:19
Speaker 3: sold construction equipment or sold whatever, you know, they were
12:23
Speaker 3: lifers in politics. And it was just so obvious where
12:27
Speaker 3: Trump was the exact opposite. He could sell. That's, that's
12:30
Speaker 3: the skill. Yeah.
12:31
Speaker 2: I mean, going back to the messaging thing, what I
12:33
Speaker 2: think is interesting is the thinking of is, I guess
12:35
Speaker 2: Trump really does follow what you say about Mr. Reese,
12:37
Speaker 2: which he reverse engineers from what goes viral.
12:40
Speaker 3: Not what persuades. It's natural to him. Like he says,
12:44
Speaker 3: you know, you say it enough times. Look, his mentor
12:47
Speaker 3: was Roy Cohn. Just read up about Roy Cohn and
12:50
Speaker 3: his playbook is obvious. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
12:54
Speaker 3: You say it enough times, people will believe it. You
12:56
Speaker 3: get it places where it's going to get coverage enough
12:59
Speaker 3: so that, you know, it fill in this day and
13:01
Speaker 3: age fills those algorithms. And so you would always see
13:04
Speaker 3: Trump in your algorithm, no matter what. And their eating
13:08
Speaker 3: cats and dogs was so stupid. It was brilliant because
13:13
Speaker 3: everybody had to cover it and deal with it. And
13:15
Speaker 3: he knows as a candidate, everybody's got to cover him
13:18
Speaker 3: and deal with it. It's not like he was looking
13:23
Speaker 3: to govern. He's looking to sell. Whatever he's saying, he
13:29
Speaker 3: wants it to be ubiquitous. He wants to flood the
13:31
Speaker 3: zone 100 times over so there's no room for everybody else.
13:35
Speaker 3: He crowds everybody else out. Kamala's group was more interested
13:41
Speaker 3: in test, test, test, test, test. How does this work?
13:44
Speaker 3: Traditional advertising. Go out and knock on doors is great.
13:47
Speaker 3: That's face-to-face. Nothing wrong with that. But anything else was like,
13:51
Speaker 3: come on.
13:52
Speaker 2: We're now... seven months or whatever it is into this,
13:55
Speaker 2: into the Trump presidency. Is it worse than you thought
13:59
Speaker 2: it was going to be? Basically what you expected?
14:03
Speaker 3: Um, some things are worse. Some things are better. Some
14:05
Speaker 3: things are what I expected. Yeah.
14:08
Speaker 2: Say more. What do you mean?
14:09
Speaker 3: Um, you know, I expected him to always flood his
14:12
Speaker 3: own every day and that's what he does. There's always something.
14:14
Speaker 3: And terrorists is his fallback. He doesn't want to solve terrorists, right?
14:17
Speaker 3: He wants them to be something he can talk about
14:20
Speaker 3: every day. I was surprised that you know, DEI, immigration,
14:25
Speaker 3: he did it so quickly. I thought he would drag
14:28
Speaker 3: it out to try to use it to his benefit. But,
14:31
Speaker 3: you know, he was smart. And again, this is going
14:33
Speaker 3: to sound counterintuitive, Democrats, and a lot of progressives will
14:36
Speaker 3: hate me for it, but it was direct to the
14:39
Speaker 3: heart of what he said during the campaign. And so
14:42
Speaker 3: by dealing directly and immediately with DEI, even to an extreme,
14:47
Speaker 3: cut out Jackie Robinson, we'll put him back if too
14:49
Speaker 3: many people complain, right? Shut down the border completely. Those
14:55
Speaker 3: two things gave him, in his voters' minds, carte blanche
15:01
Speaker 3: to do everything else. You came in, the things that
15:05
Speaker 3: impact me the most directly, short-term, You know, for so
15:09
Speaker 3: many of those voters, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, right?
15:12
Speaker 3: You can say it's wrong in a lot of cases, right?
15:15
Speaker 3: But he did what he said. So when it comes
15:17
Speaker 3: to tariffs, and even to a certain extent, you know,
15:20
Speaker 3: guys putting on hoods to go just grab people off
15:23
Speaker 3: the street, the most un-American thing that anybody could ask for,
15:28
Speaker 3: his supporters are like, well, he's batting 100 on the
15:32
Speaker 3: first two things. You know, yeah, maybe he's taken some
15:35
Speaker 3: folks that weren't criminals off the streets, but Um, but
15:38
Speaker 3: let's just see what happens in tariffs. Look, all the
15:41
Speaker 3: numbers say prices aren't going up. He ain't lying, right? Well,
15:45
Speaker 3: tariffs are going to do this, this, and this. And I've,
15:48
Speaker 3: including me, I've said it. And I think it's still, well,
15:50
Speaker 3: it ain't hitting me yet, son. So if it ain't
15:52
Speaker 3: hitting me yet, you know, um, so he's, you know,
15:56
Speaker 3: batting 500. And if that's your candidate, you're going to
15:59
Speaker 3: give them every, you know, benefit of the doubt.
16:04
Speaker 2: I get that he has– to his supporters, he has
16:07
Speaker 2: delivered on the things he said he was going to
16:09
Speaker 2: deliver to them or at least seems to be trying
16:11
Speaker 2: to do them, right? Like shutting down the border.
16:13
Speaker 3: There are exceptions, right?
16:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
16:15
Speaker 3: If you were– TPS, right? If you were– and now
16:19
Speaker 3: you're getting kicked out and you believe your family wasn't
16:22
Speaker 3: going to be deported, there's a whole big growing group
16:26
Speaker 3: of people who have every right to be pissed at him. right?
16:29
Speaker 3: But he avoids it like a champ.
16:30
Speaker 2: And there are other people who, you know, there are
16:32
Speaker 2: people even who were supporters of his who, like they,
16:35
Speaker 2: and if you listen, if you read the fine print
16:38
Speaker 2: of all those, they said he had policy papers, and
16:40
Speaker 2: you listen to the entire two-hour rally, you would know what,
16:44
Speaker 2: that mass deportation was coming. But if you just watched
16:46
Speaker 2: the ads and read the news.
16:47
Speaker 3: He had signs right behind him saying mass deportation, right?
16:51
Speaker 3: You know?
16:51
Speaker 2: But I think people's general impression, and this showed up
16:53
Speaker 2: in like polling and focus groups, was they thought, He's
16:56
Speaker 2: coming for criminals and gang members. People just got here.
16:58
Speaker 2: It's when the person who's been in your community.
17:00
Speaker 3: Conversation was, they're sending their worst, right from day one,
17:03
Speaker 3: they're sending their worst to now they're opening up their
17:06
Speaker 3: prisons and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. The Democrats aren't
17:09
Speaker 3: responding in a way that has a visceral impact.
17:13
Speaker 2: What would that look like?
17:14
Speaker 3: So what that looks like is showing the families of
17:18
Speaker 3: every single person who's not a criminal has been deported. Instead,
17:21
Speaker 3: we had the one guy from Maryland, one guy from
17:24
Speaker 3: Maryland who, is big the first week, but when there's
17:29
Speaker 3: just a nonstop progression and we see the videos of
17:32
Speaker 3: people getting pulled off the streets, it's horrific. Every single
17:37
Speaker 3: one of those families should be in front of a
17:39
Speaker 3: camera and we should be working to say, what's going on?
17:42
Speaker 3: They should be putting Tom Homan on blast saying, okay,
17:46
Speaker 3: the FBI has their top 10 most wanted list, right?
17:51
Speaker 3: Let's just get this right. Holman, don't, you know, do
17:55
Speaker 3: it right. List the top 100. Go after them. List
17:58
Speaker 3: the top 1,000, you know, criminals that are here that
18:02
Speaker 3: need to be deported. We'll all help you. But the
18:05
Speaker 3: Democrats would never say something to the effect, we'll help you.
18:08
Speaker 3: They only have to do something that's the antithesis of
18:11
Speaker 3: what Trump says and does. You've never heard a Democrat
18:15
Speaker 3: say in the past seven months, yeah, okay, I don't
18:18
Speaker 3: like it. but this is a step in the right direction.
18:22
Speaker 3: We're going to help because I think the better path
18:25
Speaker 3: is for the Democrats to bring attention to the bad
18:28
Speaker 3: things and the good things and say on the good things,
18:32
Speaker 3: we'll help you, right? Which they would never say because
18:36
Speaker 3: that disarms. Whenever you're in a sales environment and you
18:40
Speaker 3: say something positive about your competition, it's disarming. Yeah, we're better,
18:45
Speaker 3: but these guys, you know, that's not so bad. They're
18:46
Speaker 3: trying really hard. Okay, Tom Holman. We don't want criminals
18:51
Speaker 3: if Venezuela and Colombia opened up their jails and sent
18:57
Speaker 3: all their worst criminals to us. We don't want them
19:00
Speaker 3: here either. If MS-13 has 173 gang members here from wherever,
19:07
Speaker 3: we don't want them here either. Post that list, and
19:09
Speaker 3: you know what? Chuck Schumer, I'm Chuck Schumer. I'm going
19:13
Speaker 3: to help you get rid of them. I'm going to
19:15
Speaker 3: post all those lists everywhere. We're all going to go
19:17
Speaker 3: after those bad guys together because they shouldn't be here.
19:20
Speaker 3: Now you disarm him. Now you disarm the Republicans who,
19:24
Speaker 3: you know, think that you guys, that the Democrats can't
19:27
Speaker 3: get anything right. You know, you do things that you
19:31
Speaker 3: can undermine. Undermining in the Democrats perspective is always you're wrong.
19:38
Speaker 3: You're wrong.
19:38
Speaker 4: It's Trump.
19:39
Speaker 3: It's Trump. You're wrong. The T word Trump is a
19:41
Speaker 3: trigger word. And you can't just always use that in
19:45
Speaker 3: a negative line. The best way to convince people to
19:49
Speaker 3: reconsider is to say, okay, they're doing this, okay, we'll
19:52
Speaker 3: help them. But let's go, you know, what about these
19:55
Speaker 3: people that are pulling off the streets in black hoodies, right?
19:59
Speaker 3: Post all the bad guys. We'll use our resources. Every
20:03
Speaker 3: single sanctuary city is going to, you know, I'm going
20:06
Speaker 3: to make sure that they all allocate resources to go
20:09
Speaker 3: after the Tom Holman 100. And when one of them's off,
20:13
Speaker 3: you put another one on, we'll go after that one.
20:15
Speaker 3: Let's get those criminals out of here like they deserve
20:18
Speaker 3: to be. Now, all of a sudden, what, you know,
20:21
Speaker 3: it's a different conversation. We agree on that part, but why,
20:25
Speaker 3: you know, you've listed the criminals. Why are you taking
20:28
Speaker 3: this mom, this grandma, you know, this kid? Why are
20:31
Speaker 3: you doing this when they're not criminals? Let's get the criminals.
20:35
Speaker 3: Because now if nobody knows which ones are criminals, everyone
20:37
Speaker 3: that's taken off the street could be a criminal.
20:40
Speaker 2: I get, like, I can understand the, you know, like
20:43
Speaker 2: that would definitely get attention if Democrats were to do
20:45
Speaker 2: that because you're right, it's unexpected, which I guess is
20:47
Speaker 2: part of like a good sales technique or a good
20:49
Speaker 2: media technique in this environment is do something It's unexpected
20:52
Speaker 2: because that draws more attention than just doing the same.
20:54
Speaker 3: Thing over again. And it's effective, right? And it's effective.
20:57
Speaker 2: And I can imagine that just for people who don't
20:59
Speaker 2: pay a ton of attention to politics, just Trump bad,
21:01
Speaker 2: Trump bad, Trump bad can sound monotonous enough to the
21:03
Speaker 2: point that you miss what's really, really fucking bad.
21:05
Speaker 3: Turn it off.
21:05
Speaker 2: But I guess here's my question on that, though, is
21:08
Speaker 2: in the last four years, Republicans have won the House,
21:10
Speaker 2: the Senate, and the White House. At no point has
21:12
Speaker 2: any Republican been like, you know what? Here's the good
21:14
Speaker 2: things Joe Biden's doing, right? So what?
21:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
21:17
Speaker 2: But I'm just saying like, just as a, as a
21:19
Speaker 2: measure of political messaging, right? Like why would it work for, why,
21:23
Speaker 2: why can they get away? But if we can't, it's
21:25
Speaker 2: not us versus them.
21:26
Speaker 3: It's what works and what doesn't work. Right. That's part
21:29
Speaker 3: of the problem. It's like, it's my side versus your side.
21:33
Speaker 3: This isn't a basketball game. You know, Trump is really
21:37
Speaker 3: good at half court shots. He sucks at layups. He
21:40
Speaker 3: makes the easy things difficult. And the difficult things are,
21:44
Speaker 3: may not be difficult. Maybe he makes them more difficult,
21:46
Speaker 3: but some of them, like some of the international things around,
21:49
Speaker 3: et cetera. Okay. You can make an argument that it's
21:52
Speaker 3: not the worst thing that happened. Some of them are bad,
21:55
Speaker 3: but you know, you get my point, right? These are
21:57
Speaker 3: things that you, that if you would have told me
21:59
Speaker 3: this would happen seven months in, I would not have
22:02
Speaker 3: believed you. He hit the half course shot. Maybe it
22:06
Speaker 3: was luck. Maybe it wasn't, maybe it was, you know,
22:08
Speaker 3: Maybe it's not real and what we're seeing isn't real.
22:11
Speaker 3: We don't know, but that's what it is. But the
22:13
Speaker 3: easy stuff like tariffs, like having guys in hoodies, pulling
22:17
Speaker 3: people off the street that are not criminals, that's easy stuff.
22:21
Speaker 3: But how you, you know, and it's horrific pulling people off.
22:24
Speaker 3: I can't say it enough times. And the tariffs are
22:28
Speaker 3: not good for anybody. And it's obvious, you know, everybody
22:32
Speaker 3: around him is just placating him and he's just using
22:35
Speaker 3: it as a media tool rather than an economic tool.
22:38
Speaker 3: You've got to come in and do something that people feel,
22:42
Speaker 3: not just talk about how awful he is.
22:45
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the tariffs for a second, right?
22:47
Speaker 2: They're on, they're off. There's a lot of uncertainty.
22:48
Speaker 3: The whole taco thing, yeah.
22:51
Speaker 2: The whole taco thing, right? What's your view of how
22:55
Speaker 2: the tariff policy is going? What are you hearing from
22:56
Speaker 2: other CEOs about this? Because whether the price increases are
22:59
Speaker 2: as bad as we said they would be a few
23:00
Speaker 2: months ago or not, there's just like a massive injection
23:03
Speaker 2: of uncertainty. We're recording this on Monday, July 7th, and
23:08
Speaker 2: Trump has already extended the reciprocal deadline another month. He's
23:12
Speaker 2: threatened a bunch of countries with tariffs that maybe they'll get,
23:16
Speaker 2: maybe they'll not. It's like, how do business people like
23:17
Speaker 2: yourself plan in this environment?
23:19
Speaker 3: It's not business people like me. It's the little businesses, right?
23:22
Speaker 3: They're the ones that are screwed over because they don't
23:25
Speaker 3: have the capital to absorb uncertainty. They, you know, maybe
23:29
Speaker 3: they used up all the capital, you know, they have
23:32
Speaker 3: X amount of dollars and maybe they were trying to
23:35
Speaker 3: hire somebody. Maybe they were trying to, you know, open
23:37
Speaker 3: up a new office. Maybe they were doing, trying to
23:40
Speaker 3: use that capital for, for raises, whatever it may be.
23:43
Speaker 3: But now they're trying to get ahead of the tariff.
23:45
Speaker 3: So I have to take all that money. and put
23:47
Speaker 3: it in. Then he comes back and says, well, okay,
23:50
Speaker 3: we're going to delay them. They just overpaid for shipping
23:53
Speaker 3: and overpaid for a product to try to get ahead
23:55
Speaker 3: of the tariffs. Now, it's costing them money. You see
23:58
Speaker 3: the stock market go up, but you don't see the
24:00
Speaker 3: smaller companies in the stock market go up. Just the
24:04
Speaker 3: S & P 500 and the Dow, smaller companies are
24:08
Speaker 3: being debilitated by the on-off tariffs. Wherever they come out,
24:15
Speaker 3: it's not going to be a positive for them. Big companies,
24:18
Speaker 3: they'll game it, right? They can borrow the money. You know,
24:21
Speaker 3: interest rates aren't so high that they don't have access
24:23
Speaker 3: to capital. There's just all kinds of ways they can
24:26
Speaker 3: play with it. So you don't see it in the
24:28
Speaker 3: stock market. And, you know, you don't even see it
24:31
Speaker 3: in a lot of the inflation numbers yet. But at
24:35
Speaker 3: the same time, if he goes down the path that
24:38
Speaker 3: he said he would, And on August 9th, we get 20, 30,
24:42
Speaker 3: 40% tariffs. The shit's going to hit the fan. And
24:45
Speaker 3: like I said, during the campaign, he'll be the Grinch
24:48
Speaker 3: that killed Christmas.
24:50
Speaker 2: So during the campaign, like Trump had more business support
24:53
Speaker 2: in 2024 than he did in 2016 or 2020 or
24:56
Speaker 2: throughout his presidency. And one of the things you heard
24:58
Speaker 2: a lot, like if you ever turn on CNBC, these
25:00
Speaker 2: CEOs who were like pro-Trump or like going to support
25:03
Speaker 2: Trump really seemed to believe that tariffs were not going
25:06
Speaker 2: to happen, right? Even Scott Besson, his Secretary of the Treasury,
25:09
Speaker 2: suggested that tariffs would never happen before he got appointed
25:11
Speaker 2: to the administration. In your conversations with other CEO business
25:15
Speaker 2: leader types, are they sort of shocked by what's happening here?
25:18
Speaker 2: Do they feel like they made a mistake?
25:20
Speaker 1: Yes.
25:21
Speaker 3: I mean, there were two things, two reasons why they
25:23
Speaker 3: went along. One, because they thought he learned his lesson
25:26
Speaker 3: from Trump 1.0. Tariffs went up, price of washing machines,
25:29
Speaker 3: dryers went up. They had to reduce interest rates because
25:32
Speaker 3: the economy slowed down. He's not going to do that again.
25:35
Speaker 3: That's one reason why they went along with it. Two,
25:38
Speaker 3: and possibly the more important reason, is Biden didn't give
25:41
Speaker 3: any CEO leader the time of day. Not at all.
25:46
Speaker 3: When tech guy, he kept Elon out of the EV meeting, right?
25:50
Speaker 3: You know, it's just, that's just dumb. That is just
25:54
Speaker 3: self-inflicted pain. So one guy won't talk to you, floated
25:58
Speaker 3: a net worth tax effectively, right? And untaxed capital gains tax.
26:03
Speaker 3: There ain't no business person in the history of business
26:06
Speaker 3: persons who are going to accept that and think that's
26:10
Speaker 3: good for their business or the economy. Half of the
26:12
Speaker 3: conversations I had with business people after Kamala came in
26:16
Speaker 3: was explaining to them that the tax on unrealized capital
26:21
Speaker 3: gains was part of a budget just to fill a
26:24
Speaker 3: number and there was no chance it was going to happen.
26:27
Speaker 3: And they were like, you promised me, Mark. You promised
26:29
Speaker 3: me because it would kill me if it happened. It
26:32
Speaker 3: would kill the economy. It would kill the stock market.
26:35
Speaker 3: Who would you vote for if that's what you thought?
26:37
Speaker 2: And there also seemed to be a lot of concern
26:39
Speaker 2: among business folks about the FTC, right? And that it
26:43
Speaker 2: would stop– you couldn't do mergers. I think it's particularly
26:47
Speaker 2: true around the tech people. But then now you have–
26:49
Speaker 2: Trump has come in and you have– Yes, the opposite, right?
26:52
Speaker 3: Yes.
26:53
Speaker 2: Well, you thought– and they sort of thought everyone was
26:55
Speaker 2: going to get the merger and still you have Paramount
26:58
Speaker 2: trying to buy– Paramount's trying to end this acquisition. They
27:01
Speaker 2: have to pay tribute to Trump to get it. So
27:04
Speaker 2: it's like this is not the environment they thought they
27:06
Speaker 2: were getting, right?
27:06
Speaker 3: No, not at all. Not at all. You know, Lena Kahn,
27:12
Speaker 3: I agree with everything she did, actually, except for her
27:15
Speaker 3: attitude on AI that breaking up some of these big
27:18
Speaker 3: technology companies would hurt our– I felt it would hurt
27:21
Speaker 3: our ability to compete globally in artificial intelligence. We had
27:25
Speaker 3: this conversation directly with– I had it with her directly.
27:27
Speaker 3: She disagreed. Um, so I didn't see her as a
27:32
Speaker 3: threat to business in general or to, um, mergers and acquisitions,
27:36
Speaker 3: but a lot of people did. And, you know, be
27:40
Speaker 3: careful what you ask for sometimes because it's worse.
27:51
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29:42
Speaker 2: Last week president trump signed the quote-unquote big beautiful bill
29:46
Speaker 2: tax cuts for a lot of people a bunch of
29:47
Speaker 2: tax breaks uh 700 nearly a trillion dollars in medicaid
29:51
Speaker 2: cuts three trillion dollars in debt what's your what's your
29:54
Speaker 2: take on the bill.
29:56
Speaker 3: I think you can't generalize. I think the Democrats are
29:58
Speaker 3: generalizing too much on it. You know, like Medicaid is
30:01
Speaker 3: a perfect example. It's more about the provider taxes than
30:05
Speaker 3: actual cut to Medicaid. And each state is absolutely different.
30:08
Speaker 3: And you have to go talk to each state to
30:10
Speaker 3: see what the impact is. I think, you know, a
30:12
Speaker 3: couple of states, it's a 9% cost. Well, where do
30:15
Speaker 3: you make that up elsewhere so that you have no results? Um,
30:19
Speaker 3: You know, but the provider tax is just an arbitrage
30:22
Speaker 3: that hospitals use to try to gain money that was
30:25
Speaker 3: created during COVID. And so, you know, from my perspective,
30:31
Speaker 3: I think, you know, it may not be as bad
30:33
Speaker 3: as people expect it to be, but I understand why.
30:36
Speaker 3: And just in terms of Medicaid only, right? Specific to that, right?
30:40
Speaker 3: You know, in terms of some of the other things,
30:42
Speaker 3: like you couldn't, you had to reinstate the tax cuts.
30:46
Speaker 3: You had to. There's just no way that you couldn't
30:50
Speaker 3: do that. That would cost everybody too much money.
30:53
Speaker 2: Could you have done it just for the– you do
30:55
Speaker 2: it like Obama did in 2012 where it's just– for
30:59
Speaker 2: everyone under a certain income threshold?
31:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could. There's no reason to cut my taxes
31:04
Speaker 3: and I don't need my taxes cut. It was a
31:06
Speaker 3: non-event for me. But at the same time, where were
31:12
Speaker 3: the Democrats saying, you know what, let's propose reinstating, put
31:16
Speaker 3: aside reducing, making the same adjustments you just referred to.
31:20
Speaker 3: The problem with the big bill is that it's too big.
31:24
Speaker 3: And it hides a lot of shit that is hard
31:26
Speaker 3: to find, particularly things that give Trump more executive power.
31:30
Speaker 3: That's what I worry about more than anything. It didn't
31:33
Speaker 3: make it easier to pass because it was so enormous.
31:36
Speaker 3: It made it easier to hide things. And that's the
31:38
Speaker 3: concern that I have. Because it's almost impossible to read it.
31:42
Speaker 3: You can plug it in the chat GPT, you know, Gemini,
31:45
Speaker 3: whatever you want, and it's not going to catch everything.
31:48
Speaker 3: But where were the Democrats saying, OK, we're going to
31:50
Speaker 3: extend the Trump tax cuts. Let's just do a bill
31:53
Speaker 3: just for that. And we'll all vote for it because
31:57
Speaker 3: that preempts them on saying we got to get this cut.
32:01
Speaker 3: You know, we got to get this passed rather because
32:03
Speaker 3: we can't have taxes go up for everybody. They just,
32:07
Speaker 3: anything that they think would be even a marginal win
32:10
Speaker 3: for Trump, they just won't consider. And yet, more often
32:14
Speaker 3: than not, when you're trying to get somebody that you
32:16
Speaker 3: know is doing the wrong thing to try to change,
32:20
Speaker 3: particularly when there's voters involved, you've got to give them
32:23
Speaker 3: some wins so that, again, you can preempt them and say,
32:26
Speaker 3: we gave you what you needed. This is what you're
32:29
Speaker 3: saying you need. You need to keep these tax cuts. Okay, yes.
32:35
Speaker 3: Let's propose a bill. Yes. You want to adjust to something? Yes.
32:39
Speaker 3: We're not going to mess with it at all. No
32:40
Speaker 3: pork from the Democrats. Yes. Now what? Now all of
32:43
Speaker 3: a sudden that big, beautiful bill is smaller and people
32:46
Speaker 3: can start paying more attention to the details.
32:49
Speaker 2: This sort of warms my heart because this is one
32:51
Speaker 2: of my arguments was the Democrats should have done exactly that.
32:53
Speaker 2: And this is just me, like as an old retired
32:56
Speaker 2: political hack, just going back to the same old tricks.
32:57
Speaker 2: That's what Obama said when he was fighting with the
32:59
Speaker 2: Republicans about this. He said, I want to extend all
33:02
Speaker 2: the tax cuts up to He said $ 250, 000 originally and
33:05
Speaker 2: the negotiation ended up at $ 500, 000. And so the point
33:08
Speaker 2: is we agree on all people who need the tax cuts.
33:13
Speaker 2: So you want to have this big fight and maybe
33:15
Speaker 2: raise everyone's taxes because you're so hell-bent on raising taxes
33:18
Speaker 2: for the Mark Cubans of the world. Democrats did not
33:20
Speaker 2: do that. I think the reason, if I'm being fair,
33:21
Speaker 2: they didn't do it the same way is they wanted
33:22
Speaker 2: to focus attention on– people getting kicked off their healthcare here.
33:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they're not, okay. First, they're not, some people
33:28
Speaker 3: are getting kicked off because of the work requires, but
33:30
Speaker 3: what is it like 72% or more of people, you know,
33:34
Speaker 3: are already working and they're most likely going to qualify?
33:39
Speaker 2: Well, the hard part here is most people, it's not
33:41
Speaker 2: that people who are not working or getting kicked off.
33:45
Speaker 2: It's that the requirements are so onerous. The people who
33:48
Speaker 2: are working are not going to meet them. Because this
33:51
Speaker 2: is what happened in Arkansas.
33:52
Speaker 3: But it's still controlled by the states.
33:54
Speaker 2: By the states, yes. But in these red states, like
33:56
Speaker 2: this is what happened in Arkansas, where I think it
33:58
Speaker 2: was 94% of the people who got kicked off were working.
34:01
Speaker 2: Like they had jobs.
34:02
Speaker 3: And they did that before, right? But it's still controlled
34:05
Speaker 3: by the states. This bill really didn't change the control
34:08
Speaker 3: by the states. And so you didn't see any, you know,
34:13
Speaker 3: call out, you know, it could be Sanders, right? What
34:16
Speaker 3: are you going to do? It's in your control. Call
34:19
Speaker 3: out DeSantis. What are you going to do? It's in
34:22
Speaker 3: your control. Put the pressure on them, right? The people
34:25
Speaker 3: who actually, you know, can make or break somebody. All right,
34:29
Speaker 3: you know, DeSantis, you, you know, how are you going
34:33
Speaker 3: to deal with these people? Are you going to kick
34:35
Speaker 3: them off? Or because you can make the decision to
34:38
Speaker 3: retain them on Medicaid. We picked the wrong pressure points.
34:42
Speaker 3: It's just Trump sucks. That's the underlying thought of everything
34:46
Speaker 3: the Democrats do. Trump sucks. Trump says, you know, the
34:50
Speaker 3: sky is blue. Trump sucks. You can't. That's not the
34:55
Speaker 3: way to win. It's just not because it's not about Trump.
34:59
Speaker 3: It's about the people of the United States of America
35:01
Speaker 3: and what's good for them. And how do you get
35:04
Speaker 3: them to a place where they're in a better position
35:07
Speaker 3: and it's less stressful for them? And so you go
35:09
Speaker 3: to the points where they're impacted. For Medicaid, you go
35:14
Speaker 3: to the states. I'm not a Medicaid expert. I got
35:18
Speaker 3: a general understanding, but you go to the states because
35:21
Speaker 3: that's who controls it. Maryland has something different than California
35:25
Speaker 3: that has something different. Now, California comes back and says, well,
35:28
Speaker 3: we don't have enough money to do A, B, and C. Okay,
35:31
Speaker 3: what do you have money to do? Let's work on
35:33
Speaker 3: that for the people in your state. You know, Texas,
35:37
Speaker 3: who didn't, you know, expand Medicaid. What are you going
35:40
Speaker 3: to do? Kentucky, you know, bad example. What are you
35:43
Speaker 3: going to do in each red state? We could have
35:46
Speaker 3: gone where you could have put pressure on the governor
35:49
Speaker 3: and made them answer the question. I mean, it's just
35:53
Speaker 3: like the whole Doge thing. It's like, Doge sucks. Yeah.
35:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
35:56
Speaker 3: Because they didn't plan it out. They just cut things, right?
35:59
Speaker 3: And there was a whole lot of red states and
36:02
Speaker 3: red communities that voted for him that lost a lot
36:05
Speaker 3: of jobs, that lost a lot of funding. West Virginia
36:08
Speaker 3: got crushed. Funding for things that they expected in communities, gone.
36:14
Speaker 3: I haven't seen anybody pulled up in front of a
36:17
Speaker 3: camera with a Democrat next to them maybe once or twice.
36:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:22
Speaker 2: There are, I'd say a lot of times this stuff
36:24
Speaker 2: doesn't break through, which is the hard part, which is like,
36:27
Speaker 2: that is a, we're in a chicken or egg problem here,
36:29
Speaker 2: but I will say in defense, there are members of
36:31
Speaker 2: Congress who are doing this, particularly in like the Virginias
36:34
Speaker 2: of the world where they're like specially hit by this.
36:37
Speaker 3: Right. In your local community, that's a great start. Right.
36:40
Speaker 3: But you've got to flood the zone. You've just, that's
36:43
Speaker 3: what Trump does, right? Flood. You've got to flood the zone.
36:47
Speaker 3: If you see enough of these people, that have lost
36:50
Speaker 3: their jobs, that buildings are being shut down, that the
36:57
Speaker 3: person in charge of the mayor is saying revenues are
37:00
Speaker 3: going to be down 20% and we're going to have
37:02
Speaker 3: to cut this service, this service, and this service because
37:05
Speaker 3: our tax base is declining, those people will do a
37:09
Speaker 3: better job communicating for the Democrats than the Democrats themselves.
37:14
Speaker 3: And even though somebody might not care about the mayor
37:16
Speaker 3: of Parkersburg, West Virginia on CNN, Like I push that
37:20
Speaker 3: stuff to CNN and they don't think it's big enough.
37:22
Speaker 3: MSNBC doesn't think it's big enough. Great. Doesn't matter. Put
37:26
Speaker 3: it out there continuously so those algorithms pick it up.
37:29
Speaker 3: Because if you say it enough and you post enough,
37:32
Speaker 3: then more and more people will see it and that'll
37:34
Speaker 3: feed the algorithms and the algorithms will do the work
37:36
Speaker 3: for you.
37:37
Speaker 2: You also need people who can actually draw attention, right?
37:39
Speaker 2: This was the blessing and the curse for Trump of Elon,
37:42
Speaker 2: which is Elon gets all the attention in the world.
37:44
Speaker 2: He's maybe, he's as good at getting attention as anyone
37:47
Speaker 2: maybe other than Donald Trump.
37:48
Speaker 3: Other than Trump, yeah.
37:49
Speaker 2: And so like that was great for Trump in the
37:50
Speaker 2: campaign when Elon was selling it. It was bad when
37:53
Speaker 2: he was in charge of making a whole bunch of really,
37:54
Speaker 2: really unpopular cuts. So it's like having– I joke. It's
37:57
Speaker 2: like having Kim Kardashian drive your getaway car when you're
37:59
Speaker 2: robbing a bank. It's not what you want to do, right?
38:01
Speaker 3: It's a great line.
38:02
Speaker 2: I like that. But like for Democrats, we just– this
38:05
Speaker 2: is part of like– this is a problem that exists
38:08
Speaker 2: every time a party is out of power. But in
38:10
Speaker 2: this media environment, it's like massively– magnified, which is who
38:14
Speaker 2: can actually get attention, right? Like Trump can stand with
38:17
Speaker 2: any single person.
38:18
Speaker 3: Everybody can get attention. The dumbest shit ever goes viral.
38:21
Speaker 3: The dumbest shit ever goes viral. But who's working on
38:24
Speaker 3: going viral in the Democrats? You know, you want to
38:28
Speaker 3: stand in front of an MSNBC camera, a CNN camera.
38:32
Speaker 3: Maybe Pete, you know, goes out on Fox and does
38:35
Speaker 3: a great job. And, you know, we see that and
38:37
Speaker 3: everybody cheers. But Everybody's got a feed on their social media. Everybody. Everybody.
38:47
Speaker 3: That's the only feed that matters because we all see
38:50
Speaker 3: the same things in our feeds. Now we're seeing all
38:53
Speaker 3: this AI video. why aren't they creating just, just tons
38:58
Speaker 3: and tons and tons and tons of AI video? That's
39:02
Speaker 3: all prompt generated. The stuff makes us laugh, right? I mean,
39:06
Speaker 3: you know, you see the gorilla with, um, Downsy and
39:09
Speaker 3: all this stuff that see, you know what I'm talking about?
39:11
Speaker 2: I don't know.
39:12
Speaker 3: Okay. It has me. Cause it like, maybe it's cause
39:15
Speaker 3: I look at my son's stuff sometimes, but, but there's
39:18
Speaker 3: just like, there's stuff that becomes ubiquitous on social media.
39:23
Speaker 3: And that, you've got to use it. You've got to
39:27
Speaker 3: go Mr. Beast. I mean, what percentage of the population
39:32
Speaker 3: isn't on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or
39:36
Speaker 3: blue sky?
39:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:40
Speaker 3: And how much, like you, you don't even see things
39:44
Speaker 3: promoted on any of them. You see, I mean, you
39:48
Speaker 3: see the little things here and there, But when was
39:51
Speaker 3: the last time you thought to yourself, oh, my God,
39:52
Speaker 3: this is too much from the Democrats on social media
39:56
Speaker 3: in your feed?
39:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a problem with the party. I mean,
39:58
Speaker 2: I think I very like and sometimes I think the
40:01
Speaker 2: Democrats and get too much shit because it's like they
40:05
Speaker 2: have limited power to stop some of the stuff Trump's doing.
40:07
Speaker 3: Right.
40:08
Speaker 2: And so it's like we don't have the votes. But
40:09
Speaker 2: I think that a fair critique, a very fair critique
40:12
Speaker 2: is that the leadership of the Democratic Party is has
40:17
Speaker 2: a very poor understanding of the modern media environment. It's
40:20
Speaker 2: like Chuck Schumer, who I like personally a lot. He
40:23
Speaker 2: always calls it the social media when he talks about it,
40:25
Speaker 2: which is a problem.
40:27
Speaker 3: It's like Trump not knowing how to spell AI. That's
40:33
Speaker 3: the tool. It costs nothing to post. You can reach
40:37
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of people in a nanosecond if you
40:40
Speaker 3: get lucky. I mean, Brad Summer changed all the momentum
40:45
Speaker 3: of the election. And it's like nobody remembers it. Nobody
40:48
Speaker 3: learned anything from it.
40:51
Speaker 2: But the thing is, I think the lesson from that
40:52
Speaker 2: also is that's not something anyone put on a whiteboard
40:54
Speaker 2: in the Kamala Harris headquarters. It's like something that just
40:57
Speaker 2: took off.
40:58
Speaker 3: Well, that's okay. It's not like there aren't millions of
41:02
Speaker 3: kids who aren't posting things. Like you go on TikTok
41:06
Speaker 3: and there's, you know, depending on what direction you want
41:09
Speaker 3: to go, there's all pro-Trump stuff and there's pro-Democrat stuff
41:13
Speaker 3: and there's anti-Trump stuff. You get these feeds and it's
41:16
Speaker 3: all coming from individuals who There's no support, no help,
41:21
Speaker 3: no innovation, no creators' creations from Democrats themselves.
41:28
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, I think that's sort of why Zoran
41:31
Speaker 2: Mandani stands out, because he was able to do this, right?
41:35
Speaker 2: AOC stands out because she could do this. What is
41:38
Speaker 2: unique about them, it's not just their populist liberal policies.
41:41
Speaker 3: No, they're authentic in using social media.
41:43
Speaker 2: And they're digital natives, right? They grew up using it, right?
41:46
Speaker 2: No one had to teach them.
41:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, it's all changed. We're in a unique
41:51
Speaker 3: inflection point right now. And this is another topic that
41:53
Speaker 3: Democrats need to get over, right? There is like, if
41:56
Speaker 3: I talk about AI on Blue Sky, I am getting torched.
41:59
Speaker 3: Like I get torched about everything and anything on Blue
42:01
Speaker 3: Sky now and Twitter, so it doesn't matter where I post.
42:04
Speaker 3: But AI is like the antichrist to a lot of progressives.
42:10
Speaker 3: They need to get over that. You know, it is here.
42:14
Speaker 3: It'll be the most impactful technology ever. In our lifetimes,
42:19
Speaker 3: whichever party, whether it's a new or existing party, makes
42:25
Speaker 3: best use of it will have a huge advantage. I mean,
42:32
Speaker 3: what AI does is amplifies the skill set of anybody
42:36
Speaker 3: who uses it. If you're a great writer, it can
42:38
Speaker 3: make you a greater writer. If you're a great creator,
42:42
Speaker 3: it'll allow you to create 100 different versions of something
42:46
Speaker 3: in minutes and then pick out the best one as
42:49
Speaker 3: opposed to say, okay, I only have X amount of time.
42:51
Speaker 3: I've got to make a choice. It may or may
42:53
Speaker 3: not work. There are just so many unique opportunities that
42:57
Speaker 3: it creates. Is there going to be job disruption? Yes.
43:02
Speaker 2: A lot of job disruption, at least for some industries, right?
43:04
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on where you're looking at and when, right?
43:08
Speaker 3: Is there going to be job creation? Yes. I mean,
43:11
Speaker 3: it can take a 16-year-old kid and make him or
43:16
Speaker 3: her as smart a business person as anybody on the
43:21
Speaker 3: planet because it's like having every professor, every research paper,
43:24
Speaker 3: et cetera, available to you if you ask the right
43:27
Speaker 3: questions and are willing to take the time to learn.
43:30
Speaker 3: And it's like I used to love to sit in
43:33
Speaker 3: a library and just read, sit in bookstores and just
43:36
Speaker 3: read because I know nobody else would. AI is that
43:39
Speaker 3: ultimate tool so that the Democrats, whoever, Americans have this
43:46
Speaker 3: tool at their disposal that allows them to do things
43:49
Speaker 3: they otherwise never would have been able to do. And
43:51
Speaker 3: so when I go talk to middle school kids, one
43:56
Speaker 3: of the things I always talk about, I always say,
43:58
Speaker 3: look around you. that chair you're sitting on, that desk
44:01
Speaker 3: in front of you, that projector there, that screen there,
44:05
Speaker 3: there was a point in time where it did not exist.
44:09
Speaker 3: And somebody said to themselves, I have this idea. Now,
44:12
Speaker 3: 99% of the time when people have an idea, they
44:15
Speaker 3: take one or two steps and they stop. Somebody took
44:19
Speaker 3: the initiative to go through and take it to a
44:21
Speaker 3: place where those products were created, however long it took them.
44:25
Speaker 3: Now with AI, that time from thought to creation and
44:31
Speaker 3: distribution and sale, it could be cut by 90% or
44:35
Speaker 3: more in some cases.
44:38
Speaker 2: I get the power of it, and I use it,
44:40
Speaker 2: and it helps me. But it has to be regulated, right?
44:43
Speaker 2: It can't.
44:44
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on where, right? So there's two different
44:46
Speaker 3: pieces there. The stuff about the states being able to
44:49
Speaker 3: regulate or not regulate for 10 years, that's shuffling deck
44:52
Speaker 3: chairs on the Titanic. Because there's nobody who's innovative in
44:56
Speaker 3: creating new AI models who's going to give a shit
45:00
Speaker 3: about any of that. And if you come after them,
45:02
Speaker 3: they'll just move somewhere that lets them. They'll drive to
45:06
Speaker 3: Mexico and it'll be a Mexican product. Because it's just
45:09
Speaker 3: so much so rapidly. And it doesn't take a lot of...
45:13
Speaker 3: You can do it with a laptop anywhere. And so...
45:18
Speaker 3: In terms of regulating, you can regulate it early before
45:22
Speaker 3: something gets created, thinking you're going to be able to
45:24
Speaker 3: stop it, which you won't. Or you can regulate it
45:28
Speaker 3: after it's created and somebody tries to implement it, which
45:31
Speaker 3: is where I think the regulation should be. Because you're
45:35
Speaker 3: trying to regulate ideas. You're trying to regulate concepts. You're
45:40
Speaker 3: trying to regulate computing power, algorithms. Ain't nobody in government
45:45
Speaker 3: going to be able to cover that. But if somebody releases,
45:49
Speaker 3: if NVIDIA releases a toolkit that does A, B, and C,
45:53
Speaker 3: and you say, no, you can't have something that automates
45:56
Speaker 3: the creation of a Molotov cocktail to 16 seconds and
45:59
Speaker 3: buys everything and finds the robot that will assemble it
46:03
Speaker 3: for you. No, that's where we're drawing the line. So
46:06
Speaker 3: that's an implementation issue. We're regulating that. And I think
46:11
Speaker 3: at a state level, it's got to be federal.
46:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with this. The state level thing, like
46:14
Speaker 2: in the absence of any federal regulation, if you can
46:16
Speaker 2: do things that will at least prevent some of the
46:19
Speaker 2: more manageable harms, like some of the deep fake stuff,
46:23
Speaker 2: the stuff in politics, like that, I think that's not your.
46:25
Speaker 3: But even then, you're regulating the output.
46:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. But it does feel like we need a
46:32
Speaker 2: holistic policy here, right? Which seems so far above and
46:35
Speaker 2: beyond what the government can manage. Like you need regulation
46:38
Speaker 2: at the, you know, at the whatever point makes sense.
46:41
Speaker 2: You need something for all the people who are going
46:43
Speaker 2: to lose their jobs, right? Because they're, like, if you
46:45
Speaker 2: are someone who works in, like, there's a whole generation
46:49
Speaker 2: of people whose job was to write SEO copy, right?
46:53
Speaker 2: And those jobs are gone.
46:54
Speaker 3: Like, when I was a kid, like, I knew parents
46:58
Speaker 3: of friends that were, you know, the moms, not to
47:02
Speaker 3: be too sexist, but the moms took dictation. There were
47:05
Speaker 3: secretaries that took dictation. Gone. I went to school in Indiana.
47:09
Speaker 3: Terre Haute, Indiana was the record capital of the world, right?
47:13
Speaker 3: They created more albums and then CDs. Gone. You are
47:20
Speaker 3: going to have creative destruction. Now, can you find ways
47:24
Speaker 3: to create more revenue from all of this to deal
47:27
Speaker 3: with whatever comes along in case it's worse than we expect? Absolutely.
47:31
Speaker 3: You can put, you know, small taxes per hour taxes
47:34
Speaker 3: on robots. You know, you could say, you know, 25
47:38
Speaker 3: cents an hour for every robot. Like we have robots
47:41
Speaker 3: at costplusdrugs.com, right? And we're making, you know, drugs, pediatric
47:46
Speaker 3: cancer drugs that are in short supply. And it only
47:49
Speaker 3: takes us four hours to shift, you know, from one
47:51
Speaker 3: line to another from a pediatric cancer drug to to Pitocin,
47:54
Speaker 3: to whatever it is, and we get it to hospitals
47:58
Speaker 3: and we can move faster and cheaper because of all
48:01
Speaker 3: the robotics and the AI we use. If it was
48:04
Speaker 3: another 25 cents per hour per robot, okay, I could
48:08
Speaker 3: make the argument if I was that type of person, well,
48:10
Speaker 3: that'll increase the cost of pediatric cancer drugs. But I
48:14
Speaker 3: wouldn't because it'd be fair to do that. And collecting
48:17
Speaker 3: that money would make us more effective. And if you
48:19
Speaker 3: took some of that money, and let's just say you
48:22
Speaker 3: take 20% of that collected and reinvest it so that
48:25
Speaker 3: we can become a global leader in robotics and not
48:28
Speaker 3: just software, the software side of it, yes, because China
48:31
Speaker 3: is eating our lunch on that stuff. And we have
48:34
Speaker 3: to learn how to do it. So you can't just
48:37
Speaker 3: dispel it and say, no. No, they can't.
48:41
Speaker 2: The other thing, just the last thing I can say
48:42
Speaker 2: on a holistic policy is you need an environmental policy
48:45
Speaker 2: that has the clean energy you need to actually power this, right?
48:48
Speaker 3: Well, for sure, right? But go to NEPA, right? If
48:54
Speaker 3: I were involved in the political side, in the White
48:56
Speaker 3: House or wherever, I would say, as support side of
49:00
Speaker 3: the White House, I would say, we're going to use
49:03
Speaker 3: AI and we're going to take the time it takes
49:05
Speaker 3: to approve an application under NEPA. We're going to cut
49:10
Speaker 3: the non-environmental study side to three weeks. Using AI, we're
49:15
Speaker 3: going to feed every application that's ever been, you know,
49:18
Speaker 3: we're going to put it into a model. We're going
49:20
Speaker 3: to train the model on all those applications. And then
49:23
Speaker 3: we're going to spit out, you know, a response to
49:25
Speaker 3: each application and put it in front of a committee
49:27
Speaker 3: to evaluate. And we're going to help people that are
49:30
Speaker 3: doing the environmental impact studies that go into ANIPA and say, look,
49:35
Speaker 3: you know, we're going to cut that time down as well.
49:38
Speaker 2: Which would help us get more green energy products. Ultimately,
49:41
Speaker 2: we need more clean power to power this because it's huge.
49:43
Speaker 3: The time it takes to get green is ridiculous.
49:46
Speaker 2: You can use AI to make it so you have
49:47
Speaker 2: more power for AI.
49:48
Speaker 3: It's the whole abundance thing, right? Abundance is the whole
49:51
Speaker 3: innovator's dilemma for government. That's effectively what it is. We
49:55
Speaker 3: can't get out of our own way, so we do legislation,
49:59
Speaker 3: particularly when it comes to the bullet train example, etc.,
50:02
Speaker 3: where it's like this project is never going to change.
50:06
Speaker 3: It's always going to apply the same way it did
50:09
Speaker 3: when the legislation was originated. That's fantasy land, particularly now.
50:14
Speaker 3: It's all going to evolve. And so using AI, we
50:18
Speaker 3: can become a lot more productive. And that's an opportunity
50:22
Speaker 3: that Democrats have. Because I know one thing about Donald Trump,
50:25
Speaker 3: he doesn't understand AI models.
50:27
Speaker 2: As you said, he can't spell it.
50:30
Speaker 3: And, you know, historically, even like Obama, even though it
50:33
Speaker 3: wasn't his strong suit, he sure made a big effort
50:36
Speaker 3: to learn and understand and bring in great people where
50:40
Speaker 3: Trump is bringing in loyalists. And so, you know, we
50:43
Speaker 3: have an opportunity to do something incredible there. But we
50:48
Speaker 3: fight it as if, you know. It's the end of
50:51
Speaker 3: the world again, and that is just counterproductive, and it's
50:55
Speaker 3: not good for anybody. Here's Trump, the big, beautiful bill,
50:59
Speaker 3: and the deficit. Okay, well, the only way, now that
51:02
Speaker 3: it's passed, the only way to overcome that deficit is
51:05
Speaker 3: through productivity and through innovation. We have a chance because
51:10
Speaker 3: we still are at least for the moment the leaders
51:13
Speaker 3: in AI So, how are we going to overcome that
51:15
Speaker 3: deficit through productivity and innovation and what's going to be
51:19
Speaker 3: a huge part of that? artificial intelligence Nvidia is probably
51:24
Speaker 3: the most powerful company in the world right now followed
51:26
Speaker 3: by TSMC We ain't doing shit to try to push
51:31
Speaker 3: that through. Okay, Trump has no idea what he's doing
51:35
Speaker 3: with the big beautiful bill, put aside the things that
51:37
Speaker 3: give him more executive power, but all these things that
51:40
Speaker 3: put us in this bad spot, we're going to come
51:42
Speaker 3: up with solutions because that's what we do. We're going
51:45
Speaker 3: to stop bitching and start solving. Then the perspective of
51:50
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party changes. People, if they start to feel
51:54
Speaker 3: those solutions, because obviously they're going to be afraid of AI,
51:58
Speaker 3: everybody is. But you start feeling those solutions and seeing
52:02
Speaker 3: how there could be some upside to it and it
52:05
Speaker 3: could create jobs and enable things to happen and reduce
52:09
Speaker 3: your taxes or reduce the debt in this particular case.
52:13
Speaker 3: Where are the Democrats in any of this?
52:15
Speaker 2: More of my conversation with Mark Cuban when we come back,
52:17
Speaker 2: but first. From the big ugly bill passing to the
52:20
Speaker 2: lessons progressives can draw from Zoran Mandani's campaign, my Messagebox
52:25
Speaker 2: newsletter breaks down what's happening in the media, why it matters,
52:27
Speaker 2: and helps each and every one of us figure out
52:29
Speaker 2: what we can do to defeat the MAGA movement. So
52:33
Speaker 2: if you want to follow along and join the conversation,
52:35
Speaker 2: head to the absolutely cringeworthy website, crooked.com slash yeswedan, to
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54:19
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about Elon Musk, who announced
54:22
Speaker 2: yesterday that he's forming a new political party called the
54:25
Speaker 2: American Party. You were on Blue Sky, I believe, where
54:28
Speaker 2: you suggested that an organization that you work with would
54:32
Speaker 2: help get them on the ballot.
54:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
54:35
Speaker 2: I saw that that did not go over well on
54:37
Speaker 2: Blue Sky.
54:38
Speaker 3: It's not a surprise.
54:39
Speaker 2: It's not a surprise, no. But so just help me understand,
54:42
Speaker 2: what's your reaction to the new party? And why would
54:45
Speaker 2: you help Elon Musk's party get on the ballot?
54:47
Speaker 3: So a couple of things there. One- What's a party?
54:51
Speaker 3: What's a political party, right? We see it as, okay,
54:54
Speaker 3: we're going to run somebody for every position. We want
54:57
Speaker 3: to have a full slate. We're going to run somebody
54:59
Speaker 3: for president. I don't know Elon, right, other than just
55:03
Speaker 3: fucking with each other on Twitter. But that's not, as
55:07
Speaker 3: best as I can tell, that's not how he thinks.
55:08
Speaker 3: And I think he came out today or yesterday saying
55:11
Speaker 3: there's only going to be six or sevens Spots that
55:15
Speaker 3: he's trying to fill which is smart because that's how
55:18
Speaker 3: elon thinks he looks for leverage And there's absolute leverage
55:23
Speaker 3: in making sure that the two incumbent parties don't have
55:26
Speaker 3: enough power to pass anything And so that's smart That
55:31
Speaker 3: is really smart and the way the parties are right
55:34
Speaker 3: now where it's my team versus your team and that
55:38
Speaker 3: and people do things that are counterproductive and create all
55:42
Speaker 3: these self-inflicted wounds for the American people all the time,
55:46
Speaker 3: I think that's a positive. Everybody wants the Democrats to
55:51
Speaker 3: win or the Republicans to stay in control. No, I
55:55
Speaker 3: want us to get to the point where we have
55:57
Speaker 3: to actually evaluate bills and do things for the American people. Now,
56:01
Speaker 3: do I trust Elon to just do all these things
56:03
Speaker 3: because I think he's a good guy? Fuck no, right?
56:06
Speaker 3: But whatever he does, we're going to be able to evaluate,
56:11
Speaker 3: and that creates a new opportunity. And that is something
56:14
Speaker 3: that I think this country needs. Could it be just
56:17
Speaker 3: dismissed because he's doing it all wrong?
56:18
Speaker 2: Of course.
56:19
Speaker 3: Does it mean just because it's Elon, it must be
56:21
Speaker 3: wrong or right?
56:22
Speaker 4: No.
56:23
Speaker 3: But until we find out details, why are we jumping
56:25
Speaker 3: to conclusions?
56:28
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, we don't have details. He hasn't even
56:30
Speaker 2: formed a party, recruited a candidate. And this may all
56:32
Speaker 2: just be something he does on Twitter and talks about it,
56:34
Speaker 2: whether it actually executes, who knows.
56:35
Speaker 3: It's possible, yeah.
56:36
Speaker 2: It is an either or choice, right? One of two
56:38
Speaker 2: parties is going to be in charge of Congress. It's
56:40
Speaker 2: either going to be the party that's going to green
56:41
Speaker 2: light all of the terrible things Trump is doing, or
56:43
Speaker 2: one party, as flawed as it may be in people's eyes,
56:46
Speaker 2: will actually try to stop him from doing those things
56:48
Speaker 2: or may investigate all of the stuff that's happening. And
56:50
Speaker 2: so we do, like, I would love a large menu,
56:53
Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, there's only two,
56:54
Speaker 2: we only get in one of two dishes, right? One
56:56
Speaker 2: of it's Trump, one of it's us.
56:57
Speaker 3: At the same time, you know, you can still have
57:00
Speaker 3: control of Congress and have six or seven seats in
57:02
Speaker 3: this new party.
57:04
Speaker 2: Or maybe, or not, or he could hand it back
57:07
Speaker 2: to the Republicans.
57:08
Speaker 3: You'll know by the candidates that they run. Because it
57:12
Speaker 3: may well be that they are better Democratic-leaning candidates than
57:16
Speaker 3: the others. And look, the presumption is Elon will just
57:19
Speaker 3: pay them to say whatever and do whatever he wants.
57:22
Speaker 3: So we'll have to see if that's actually the case. Obviously,
57:25
Speaker 3: he'll influence them like any party. But I'm just not
57:30
Speaker 3: going to say no to change when we have a
57:34
Speaker 3: set of circumstances where it's not good for anybody. This
57:37
Speaker 3: bifurcation of the country into red and blue is not
57:41
Speaker 3: good for anybody, short-term, medium-term, or long-term. And even just saying, okay,
57:47
Speaker 3: we're going to stop Trump, well, we don't know what
57:50
Speaker 3: he's going to try to do next, but just to
57:51
Speaker 3: say we're going to stop Trump and we're going to
57:52
Speaker 3: have the leverage to do that, okay, but that doesn't
57:57
Speaker 3: necessarily change our fundamental problems either. And it's not going
58:01
Speaker 3: to change Donald Trump because he's just given himself a
58:03
Speaker 3: bunch of executive power anyways. And he's, you know, and
58:07
Speaker 3: so I don't, unless the Democrats come out with a
58:10
Speaker 3: plan that says, here's how we're going to do things,
58:14
Speaker 3: you know, and here's why we're going to be able
58:16
Speaker 3: to bring the country together. Or here's, you know, where
58:19
Speaker 3: we see these problems and here's the bills we're going
58:22
Speaker 3: to introduce. It's just us versus them.
58:25
Speaker 2: I look, I don't. I think this is going to
58:27
Speaker 2: move in a couple directions, right? One is Democrats will–
58:29
Speaker 2: they will have an agenda of some kind. It will
58:32
Speaker 2: be the things they're going to do. We understand, right,
58:35
Speaker 2: that Trump will still be president, right? And so it's
58:37
Speaker 2: like if they come out and say, here's our plan
58:39
Speaker 2: to make healthcare more affordable, we know Trump is not
58:41
Speaker 2: signing that plan. That's the plan. You don't know that.
58:45
Speaker 3: You don't know that. I do.
58:46
Speaker 2: That I do know. I feel like I can know that.
58:47
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about that, right?
58:49
Speaker 2: Because this is an area I know, right?
58:51
Speaker 3: His MFN for most favored nation for drugs could really
58:55
Speaker 3: change the game. It could cut the cost of drugs. Now,
58:58
Speaker 3: he may not know it, but I'm trying to educate
59:01
Speaker 3: some of the people that work with him. It could
59:03
Speaker 3: literally cut the cost of medications because he's already come
59:07
Speaker 3: out and said effectively he's against the middlemen. everything I'm
59:10
Speaker 3: telling you right now, I've said to Joe Biden's camp,
59:13
Speaker 3: I said to Kamala's camp, Joe Biden had a chance
59:16
Speaker 3: to do something. They didn't do shit. Right. And so
59:19
Speaker 3: if we can change how PBMs work, how insurance companies work,
59:23
Speaker 3: I'd rather see it come from the Democrats. But all
59:26
Speaker 3: the Democrats talk about is Medicare for all.
59:30
Speaker 2: Well, that's not true because, I mean, there are some
59:32
Speaker 2: Democrats that talk about that.
59:33
Speaker 3: On April 25th, Bernie and Jaipal, they came out with
59:39
Speaker 3: a whole other proposal, right? They didn't come out with,
59:43
Speaker 3: here's a better way. And all I have to tell
59:46
Speaker 3: you on that is read it like I did two
59:49
Speaker 3: days ago. And every single-payer system, Medicare for All, introduced
59:54
Speaker 3: in this country, always effectively starts out with, The secretary
59:58
Speaker 3: of HHS runs the show, which makes it like, you know,
1:00:05
Speaker 3: something that could be used and abused in any way, shape,
1:00:08
Speaker 3: or form. You've got to deal with the fundamental problems
1:00:11
Speaker 3: of healthcare. And the fundamental problems of healthcare are effectively
1:00:15
Speaker 3: the middlemen. You know, there's these things called pharmacy benefit managers.
1:00:19
Speaker 3: And when you say why are, for generic drugs, which
1:00:22
Speaker 3: are 91% of scripts, cost plus drugs When we sell
1:00:27
Speaker 3: almost all of those, we're cheaper than almost every other
1:00:29
Speaker 3: country except for China and India. So for 91% of prescriptions,
1:00:33
Speaker 3: the United States is already cheaper. Now, the other 9%
1:00:36
Speaker 3: are the more expensive and cover more dollars, right? And
1:00:41
Speaker 3: so what he's trying to do, the reason that they're
1:00:43
Speaker 3: more expensive is because of these middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers.
1:00:47
Speaker 3: And he has said, let's get rid of them. And
1:00:51
Speaker 3: I've sold every single part of this to Democrat after
1:00:54
Speaker 3: Democrat after Democrat and said, come up with something. I'll
1:00:59
Speaker 3: help you. Nothing. Nothing. And so you can't just say
1:01:04
Speaker 3: he'll say no to health care. Now, you know, maybe
1:01:08
Speaker 3: he'll be the same way in response, you know. if
1:01:10
Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer and AOC and Bernie got their shit together,
1:01:13
Speaker 3: instead of just, you know, doing it the way they've
1:01:16
Speaker 3: always done it and came out with something that's more nuanced,
1:01:19
Speaker 3: maybe he'll just say no because, but at least there'll
1:01:21
Speaker 3: be offering something. And, you know, people who are in
1:01:24
Speaker 3: the industry could come out and say, no, this is good.
1:01:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:01:27
Speaker 2: I think, look, I think the way, the way I
1:01:30
Speaker 2: think this is going to move in cycles is that Democrat,
1:01:33
Speaker 2: the Democrats running for the House will have a set
1:01:35
Speaker 2: of things. Therefore, then we're going to have, uh, a
1:01:38
Speaker 2: group of, I don't know, two dozen Democrats. You have
1:01:42
Speaker 2: told me you're not going to be one of those Democrats.
1:01:44
Speaker 2: I won't bother you with that right now. You've said
1:01:46
Speaker 2: there was 0% chance. So I will take you at
1:01:48
Speaker 2: your word, there's 0% chance. We're all going to have ideas, right?
1:01:51
Speaker 2: And then we're going to have a marketplace of ideas.
1:01:52
Speaker 2: And they're going to have to have a healthcare plan.
1:01:54
Speaker 2: Some of them will be Medicare for all or a
1:01:56
Speaker 2: version of what Bernie had done. Some of them will
1:01:59
Speaker 2: be something else, just as there was in 2019, 2020,
1:02:01
Speaker 2: when Democrats were running. And then the people are going
1:02:05
Speaker 2: to get a look at it and see, what that
1:02:07
Speaker 2: looks like. That to me is when we're.
1:02:09
Speaker 3: Going to have- I'll just tell you up front, it
1:02:10
Speaker 3: won't work. Why not? It can't work because there's no
1:02:14
Speaker 3: transparency in the system.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: But can there be a plan to add more transparency
1:02:17
Speaker 2: to the system?
1:02:19
Speaker 3: You've got to do it up front. It's got to
1:02:21
Speaker 3: be more like Canada. Like Canada, their healthcare system was
1:02:25
Speaker 3: built one province at a time. Started in 1947 and
1:02:28
Speaker 3: didn't really click until 1965 for the whole country. And effectively,
1:02:32
Speaker 3: each province makes a decision what they're going to include
1:02:35
Speaker 3: or not include and what the budget is. They make
1:02:38
Speaker 3: it so it's all transparent. We don't have that transparency.
1:02:43
Speaker 3: Even in the bills that say they'll determine the budget
1:02:47
Speaker 3: and figure out what they're going to pay, they don't
1:02:49
Speaker 3: know what they can and can't pay because there's no transparency.
1:02:53
Speaker 3: What I was going to say is three cost plus drugs,
1:02:56
Speaker 3: the smartest thing we did was we released our entire
1:03:00
Speaker 3: price list. It shows our costs, shows our 15% markup,
1:03:04
Speaker 3: shows exactly what you're going to pay if you go
1:03:06
Speaker 3: to costplusdrugs.com. Three plus years, January of 2022, we're still
1:03:11
Speaker 3: the only company who does that. Now, you've got hospitals
1:03:14
Speaker 3: who have to publish a lot of their procedures, not all,
1:03:18
Speaker 3: but a lot of them. And when you look at
1:03:20
Speaker 3: their procedures, there's a price that they negotiated with UnitedHealthcare.
1:03:25
Speaker 3: There's a price they negotiated with Aetna for, let's say,
1:03:28
Speaker 3: a hip replacement. And then there's the cash price. The
1:03:31
Speaker 3: cash price is always cheaper, right? So we created an
1:03:35
Speaker 3: organization at Cost Plus called Cost Plus Wellness that hasn't
1:03:38
Speaker 3: launched yet, where we're negotiating all the cash prices with
1:03:41
Speaker 3: all these different providers, and then we'll publish those contracts.
1:03:45
Speaker 3: Once all this stuff is published, so there's no question
1:03:48
Speaker 3: about what it costs, then a state, a city for
1:03:53
Speaker 3: that matter, can say, a company, a You know, like
1:03:56
Speaker 3: for my companies, if the drug comes from, there's no premiums.
1:04:00
Speaker 3: If the drug comes from Cost Plus Drugs or one
1:04:02
Speaker 3: of the providers we have an agreement with, there's no
1:04:04
Speaker 3: out-of-pocket for the employee or their family member. Because we've
1:04:08
Speaker 3: got the prices low enough to be able to afford
1:04:10
Speaker 3: to do that. And there's no reason why once there's
1:04:13
Speaker 3: transparency to the price and contract level, and maybe even
1:04:17
Speaker 3: to the general ledger transaction level for providers, then city, states,
1:04:22
Speaker 3: federal government can negotiate all these things. And because it's
1:04:26
Speaker 3: already out there, it's not going to be, you know,
1:04:29
Speaker 3: a battle. It's just like, okay, here's the prices. We
1:04:33
Speaker 3: think we deserve better for A, B, and C reasons.
1:04:36
Speaker 3: And as technology moves on and there's more solutions and
1:04:39
Speaker 3: there's more, you know, cell and gene therapies that are curative,
1:04:43
Speaker 3: we need more transparency to be able to negotiate.
1:04:46
Speaker 2: Could you just require that? Could that be like page
1:04:49
Speaker 2: one of Democrat X's health airplanes?
1:04:52
Speaker 3: But they're going to lie because the way the system
1:04:54
Speaker 3: is set up right now It's so opaque and vertically integrated,
1:05:01
Speaker 3: you couldn't disassociate all the different pieces to know what
1:05:04
Speaker 3: it is. And so you've got to be able to
1:05:09
Speaker 3: show now so that you know what it's going to cost.
1:05:13
Speaker 3: Because just to try to transition, like when you look,
1:05:15
Speaker 3: it's going to take two years to try to do that.
1:05:18
Speaker 3: Every bit of self-interest that providers have, that insurance companies have, look,
1:05:24
Speaker 3: Over 150 million people in this country are provided their
1:05:29
Speaker 3: health care by companies that self-insure. And what that means
1:05:32
Speaker 3: is they don't use the insurance companies for insurance. They
1:05:36
Speaker 3: take on all that risk with maybe reinsurance from a
1:05:41
Speaker 3: company for big expenses. And so for 150 million people,
1:05:45
Speaker 3: we don't need insurance companies already. And so by making
1:05:49
Speaker 3: all this stuff transparent, because those 150, the companies that
1:05:53
Speaker 3: cover those 150 million people, they are getting ripped off.
1:05:57
Speaker 3: They are getting ripped off and they just don't know how.
1:05:59
Speaker 3: And it's just a whole big game that's going on.
1:06:01
Speaker 3: If these companies are, you know, and this transparency will
1:06:04
Speaker 3: save them money, will allow them to do better, allow
1:06:07
Speaker 3: you to disaggregate it from employers. There's so many things
1:06:10
Speaker 3: that you can do, but you got to take these
1:06:12
Speaker 3: first steps first.
1:06:13
Speaker 2: Once you've taken those first steps, can we just like,
1:06:16
Speaker 2: This would be at the core of every– there will
1:06:18
Speaker 2: be different ways to get there, but can we have
1:06:20
Speaker 2: the core principle at the heart of what it will be,
1:06:23
Speaker 2: any Democrat's health care plan, that everyone has a right
1:06:26
Speaker 2: to quality, affordable health care, right?
1:06:29
Speaker 3: Everybody has a right to health care, right? But you
1:06:33
Speaker 3: can means test it all. Yeah, of course.
1:06:36
Speaker 2: Of course.
1:06:37
Speaker 3: And so there's no reason why anybody should ever pay
1:06:39
Speaker 3: more than 10% of their paycheck for care. If you're
1:06:44
Speaker 3: making at Medicaid levels, 138% of poverty should be free.
1:06:50
Speaker 3: If you're making 200% of that, depending on the family size,
1:06:53
Speaker 3: should be close to free. If you're making $ 100, 000 a
1:06:55
Speaker 3: year as a single person, let's just say it's 5%
1:06:59
Speaker 3: or 6% is the most you'll pay with no premiums.
1:07:03
Speaker 3: No premiums out of pocket. There's so many ways to
1:07:06
Speaker 3: get there. You can cut I don't think I'd be
1:07:08
Speaker 3: out of school saying if our spending on healthcare is 4.9
1:07:12
Speaker 3: trillion now, you could cut it 3.5 trillion like that.
1:07:18
Speaker 3: It's just nobody thinks of it like let's get into
1:07:21
Speaker 3: the details like a real entrepreneur would look at it.
1:07:24
Speaker 3: It's like the ACA did a lot of brilliant, amazing things,
1:07:28
Speaker 3: but they set this thing called up medical loss ratio,
1:07:31
Speaker 3: which is 80 to 85% of the premiums collected. Well,
1:07:35
Speaker 3: if you only get to keep 15 or 20% of
1:07:38
Speaker 3: what's collected, what's the one thing you're going to want
1:07:40
Speaker 3: to do? Increase the collections and not care about what
1:07:44
Speaker 3: you said. You've got to get into the details. And
1:07:47
Speaker 3: the Democrats are really, really bad at that, particularly with healthcare.
1:07:51
Speaker 2: I think, I think, well, we can have this conversation
1:07:53
Speaker 2: again a couple of years in the primary steps, but
1:07:54
Speaker 2: I think there will be very detailed plans from a
1:07:56
Speaker 2: bunch of Democrats. They may, you can, you may not
1:07:57
Speaker 2: like the plans. Some of them may be good, but
1:07:59
Speaker 2: I think the one, you know.
1:08:00
Speaker 3: I've read, I've read the proposals, right? I've read the
1:08:03
Speaker 3: single payer plans, you know, And just, they won't work.
1:08:07
Speaker 2: Well, let's put healthcare first every second. I have one
1:08:10
Speaker 2: last 2024 question and then I have a couple of
1:08:12
Speaker 2: basketball questions for you that will not be about the
1:08:14
Speaker 2: Luca trade, I promise. Thank you. The last 2024 question is,
1:08:17
Speaker 2: one of your main jobs on the Harris campaign was,
1:08:20
Speaker 2: you went on all the quote unquote bro podcasts, right?
1:08:23
Speaker 2: You were on Theo Vaughn. You were on Flagrant. You
1:08:27
Speaker 2: went on All In with all the tech guys and
1:08:29
Speaker 2: all of that. And I heard you tell Tim Miller
1:08:32
Speaker 2: of the Bulwark that you told the Harris campaign they
1:08:34
Speaker 2: should go do those things. Why did that not happen?
1:08:38
Speaker 2: What was the response when you said that?
1:08:41
Speaker 3: They were afraid. They were afraid, right? They didn't trust her.
1:08:45
Speaker 2: That she would make a mistake?
1:08:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. And because they had her so wound tight. If
1:08:54
Speaker 3: the cursing Kamala would have gone on the broadcast, she
1:08:57
Speaker 3: would have killed it. Which she did.
1:09:00
Speaker 2: Do with Shannon Sharp, right? When she went on Club
1:09:01
Speaker 2: Shay Shay.
1:09:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could see some of her personality come out.
1:09:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was more relaxed there, yeah.
1:09:06
Speaker 3: Right, you could see some of her personality. But even
1:09:08
Speaker 3: like Alex Cooper, that was so... you know, just preset, right. That,
1:09:13
Speaker 3: that was so overly organized that it made it tough,
1:09:17
Speaker 3: but like flagrant, Andrew Schultz is a Democrat, you know,
1:09:21
Speaker 3: votes Democrat mostly, you.
1:09:23
Speaker 2: Know, not this time, but most, but yeah, yeah, not
1:09:25
Speaker 2: this time.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: Right.
1:09:26
Speaker 3: But he was trying, he was really trying, but he
1:09:29
Speaker 3: said Bernie on, he's had Pete on, he's had all
1:09:31
Speaker 3: these Democrats on and he understands, you know, his, his
1:09:35
Speaker 3: impact that he could have. Theo Vaughn, he doesn't give
1:09:38
Speaker 3: a shit. He'll have anybody on, right? He just wants
1:09:40
Speaker 3: to have fun. And I remember asking him like, why
1:09:43
Speaker 3: do you vote for Trump? Why are you supporting Trump?
1:09:45
Speaker 3: Why are people voting for him? And I gave him
1:09:47
Speaker 3: all these characters, destiny, dah, dah, dah. He's like, dude,
1:09:50
Speaker 3: he's gangster. He's gangster. I like that boy. That boy's gangster, right?
1:09:55
Speaker 3: He don't give a shit. It's not hard to go
1:09:58
Speaker 3: on there and just have a real honest conversation where
1:10:01
Speaker 3: you can, you know, have some fun with it. And
1:10:04
Speaker 3: they just did not want Kamala to do that.
1:10:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's hard to wrap your head around sometimes.
1:10:28
Speaker 1: But that's why NPR Politics Podcast is where you should
1:10:31
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1:10:34
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1:10:37
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1:10:55
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1:11:04
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1:11:22
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of NBA questions here, all right? I
1:11:25
Speaker 2: want to start with the health of the game. You
1:11:27
Speaker 2: were in a, you were in a big debate during
1:11:28
Speaker 2: the finals on various social media platforms with Clay Travis,
1:11:31
Speaker 2: the conservative Fox outkick, the coverage sports guy. He's he
1:11:36
Speaker 2: to every time the ratings are down, he's blames the
1:11:38
Speaker 2: NBA for being too woke, which is a pretty stupid
1:11:42
Speaker 2: argument for all kinds of reasons, but ratings have been down. Um,
1:11:47
Speaker 2: what's your take on the health of the game these days?
1:11:49
Speaker 3: I think the game's in great, you know, great situation
1:11:52
Speaker 3: economically and with fans. I mean, And all television ratings
1:11:56
Speaker 3: are down except for the NFL. You know, it's not
1:11:59
Speaker 3: like you can look at every, the NHL was down,
1:12:02
Speaker 3: but you know, like game seven of the Pacers thunder
1:12:06
Speaker 3: for 18 to 34 of every 18 to 34 year
1:12:11
Speaker 3: old with a television turned on during the game, 71%
1:12:14
Speaker 3: of them were watching the game. That's an insane number.
1:12:20
Speaker 3: You know, we set records and share of people watching television.
1:12:24
Speaker 3: So the people who could, you know, viably watch the game,
1:12:28
Speaker 3: we set records and share. Now, the problem is fewer
1:12:31
Speaker 3: people are watching television, which is why we went in
1:12:34
Speaker 3: a big chunk to streaming. So we'll be on Amazon
1:12:37
Speaker 3: and we'll have other ways to get the games. Now,
1:12:39
Speaker 3: that could work against us because we'll be on too
1:12:41
Speaker 3: many platforms. But at least it gives an opportunity to
1:12:45
Speaker 3: people who can't afford cable, traditional linear television cable, to
1:12:49
Speaker 3: watch games.
1:12:50
Speaker 2: It does seem that there is this– I think there's
1:12:52
Speaker 2: a point you might have made in this argument, but
1:12:54
Speaker 2: like the cultural imprint of the NBA is as big
1:12:57
Speaker 2: as it's been in a while. Maybe not as big
1:12:59
Speaker 2: as the Jordan years, but it's huge. But it's happening
1:13:04
Speaker 2: at a time when like particularly young people are not
1:13:06
Speaker 2: watching the games in the same way because they don't
1:13:08
Speaker 2: have TVs, right? But they may be following the game
1:13:10
Speaker 2: on less monetizable formats like social media, right? Right.
1:13:14
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. So we dominate in social media. Yeah. You know,
1:13:17
Speaker 3: our players are maybe, you know, premier league soccer, a
1:13:21
Speaker 3: little bit bigger globally, but after them, there's nobody, Steph, LeBron, Luca,
1:13:28
Speaker 3: except Kyrie. They have huge social media platforms, you know,
1:13:33
Speaker 3: an NFL team walks through the door. Maybe, you know,
1:13:35
Speaker 3: the quarterback and a running back or wide receiver. And
1:13:37
Speaker 3: that's it. You're, you know, you know, almost every NBA
1:13:39
Speaker 3: player by sight, if you're in, if you're a kid.
1:13:42
Speaker 3: And so, you know, In terms of cultural impact, the
1:13:47
Speaker 3: NBA has never been stronger.
1:13:51
Speaker 2: Do you think the season's too long?
1:13:52
Speaker 3: No.
1:13:53
Speaker 2: Too many games? No.
1:13:54
Speaker 3: I think the game's just getting faster, a lot faster.
1:13:57
Speaker 3: Guys are stronger, quicker, bigger. The game is at a
1:14:03
Speaker 3: bigger pace i saw somebody said that teams run more
1:14:07
Speaker 3: than 200 miles a year more now than they did
1:14:10
Speaker 3: 10 years ago you know that's going to have an
1:14:13
Speaker 3: impact on your body i think the biggest mistake we
1:14:15
Speaker 3: made was you know when we were talking about load
1:14:18
Speaker 3: management and resting players to be in a position to
1:14:21
Speaker 3: win and everybody gave a shit and we caved on
1:14:23
Speaker 3: that and the nba caved on that and now we
1:14:26
Speaker 3: had you know eight guys who had um achilles heel
1:14:29
Speaker 3: tears tears i mean which is brutal but And they
1:14:32
Speaker 3: were all almost the same move, right? Where the little
1:14:34
Speaker 3: step back move. And so, you know, it's just games evolve.
1:14:40
Speaker 3: And the game, just like football went from 250 pound
1:14:43
Speaker 3: linemen to 400 pound linemen. You know, now basketball players,
1:14:47
Speaker 3: they're bigger, they're stronger, they're more talented, they're more skilled.
1:14:51
Speaker 3: And the game is just so much faster. And I
1:14:54
Speaker 3: think that's been the problem.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: But does that, so we can't live in a world
1:14:58
Speaker 2: where the best players at age 27 are tearing their
1:15:01
Speaker 2: Achilles and they're out for a year. So it's like,
1:15:03
Speaker 2: what do you do to prove, to protect them against that?
1:15:05
Speaker 2: Because I think for listeners who may not follow this
1:15:07
Speaker 2: as closely as others, your point about the load management
1:15:10
Speaker 2: was then we, the NBA put in place a 65
1:15:12
Speaker 2: game minimum, where if you wanted to make all NBA,
1:15:15
Speaker 2: which is incredibly critical to how much money you can make,
1:15:17
Speaker 2: because you make all NBA, you can get a super
1:15:19
Speaker 2: max deal. And so all these players in like most–
1:15:22
Speaker 2: not the year he got hurt, but the year before
1:15:24
Speaker 2: Tyrese Halliburton probably played when he shouldn't have played so
1:15:26
Speaker 2: he could get to 65 games.
1:15:28
Speaker 3: Right.
1:15:28
Speaker 2: But even– but we've lost– Halliburton, you've lost. Dame, we've lost.
1:15:33
Speaker 2: Tatum for a year.
1:15:35
Speaker 3: All number zeros too, right? Right.
1:15:37
Speaker 2: I don't know what that has to do with that.
1:15:40
Speaker 2: But just what– So here's what I would do. Yeah,
1:15:43
Speaker 2: what could the league do to protect these players?
1:15:44
Speaker 3: So I would cut the games to 40 minutes. Oh, interesting.
1:15:48
Speaker 3: And for two reasons. So one is college games are
1:15:52
Speaker 3: 40 minutes. WNBA games are 40 minutes. Most international games
1:15:56
Speaker 3: are 40 minutes. So there's already precedent there. But in
1:16:01
Speaker 3: terms of TV ratings, and so back to that, there's
1:16:04
Speaker 3: precedent there. And I think that would reduce injuries. And
1:16:07
Speaker 3: you can even set a cap on the number of
1:16:09
Speaker 3: minutes any one player could play so that the same
1:16:12
Speaker 3: guys aren't playing 40 minutes all the time. I don't
1:16:15
Speaker 3: think that would happen, but at least you don't.
1:16:17
Speaker 2: Well, Tibbs is not coaching next year, so.
1:16:18
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so that's not going to happen, right? Which
1:16:21
Speaker 3: is another thing. So I think that starts to deal
1:16:24
Speaker 3: with the injury issues and wearing guys down over the
1:16:27
Speaker 3: course of the season. And just economically and for a
1:16:30
Speaker 3: lot of different reasons, that's better than cutting the number
1:16:32
Speaker 3: of games. But the other side of the equation is
1:16:36
Speaker 3: if you look at the highest rated sports, There's an
1:16:40
Speaker 3: inverse TV ratings and even streaming numbers. There's an inverse
1:16:44
Speaker 3: relationship between the number of minutes played of actual game minutes,
1:16:49
Speaker 3: action minutes in a game versus ratings. So football has
1:16:53
Speaker 3: the highest ratings. There's maybe 12 minutes of actual playing
1:16:57
Speaker 3: time in a football game. Basketball has the next highest
1:17:00
Speaker 3: ratings typically, or actually college basketball during the NCAAs, you
1:17:06
Speaker 3: could say, and that's a 40-minute game. Then there's the
1:17:09
Speaker 3: NBA and we're a 48 minute game. It's hard in
1:17:12
Speaker 3: this day and age to get anybody under the age
1:17:15
Speaker 3: of 40 to commit to watching 48 minutes of anything,
1:17:20
Speaker 3: you know? And so I think by reducing the length
1:17:23
Speaker 3: of the game, it would screw up records, but so
1:17:26
Speaker 3: be it. But I think by reducing the length of
1:17:29
Speaker 3: the game, I think we would solve a lot of
1:17:32
Speaker 3: the injury problems. And I think we'd also make the
1:17:35
Speaker 3: game more watchable for, whether it's streamed or television.
1:17:38
Speaker 2: It would cost the NBA money, though, because you obviously
1:17:40
Speaker 2: get fewer commercials.
1:17:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, but not that many. I think over eight minutes,
1:17:44
Speaker 3: over four quarters, two quarters, you might lose two commercials.
1:17:48
Speaker 2: And I guess you're making some of that money back
1:17:50
Speaker 2: with the much larger media package and Amazon and all
1:17:54
Speaker 2: of that, right?
1:17:54
Speaker 3: Exactly right.
1:17:55
Speaker 2: Like money's not the problem here.
1:17:56
Speaker 3: Money's not the problem for the next 11 years.
1:17:59
Speaker 2: What do you think about the the NBA's and sports
1:18:05
Speaker 2: in general's relationship with gambling, right? Like, are there dangers there?
1:18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:18:10
Speaker 2: I mean, you have, you have the actual case of
1:18:12
Speaker 2: Michael Porter's brother and being involved with prop bets. There's
1:18:16
Speaker 2: now an investigation into another player on that. How are
1:18:20
Speaker 2: you feeling about that? I know you have, you know,
1:18:21
Speaker 2: you've worked, you have some gambling interests as well.
1:18:24
Speaker 3: You know, if you were to ask me two months ago,
1:18:27
Speaker 3: my answer would have been different. I think, Two months ago,
1:18:32
Speaker 3: I would have said, look, using sports radar and artificial
1:18:36
Speaker 3: intelligence and data tools, we can pretty much catch everything.
1:18:40
Speaker 3: And I think they're showing that we can catch them.
1:18:43
Speaker 3: That's how we're seeing that these guys are under investigation,
1:18:46
Speaker 3: not just in the NBA, but other sports as well.
1:18:50
Speaker 3: But what I worry more about is younger kids, because
1:18:54
Speaker 3: now that my son is 15, I just see more
1:18:58
Speaker 3: of it and we discuss it more. And that worries
1:19:01
Speaker 3: me because it's still possible for underage kids to get
1:19:05
Speaker 3: in there. And I think we need a lot stricter
1:19:07
Speaker 3: controls to keep kids under the age of 18. and
1:19:10
Speaker 3: to keep people from gambling money. They can't afford to gamble.
1:19:13
Speaker 3: It just is.
1:19:14
Speaker 2: It's become a part of the culture now. Like if
1:19:17
Speaker 2: you watch, not that people watch ESPN anymore, but if
1:19:20
Speaker 2: you were, it would be watching sports.
1:19:22
Speaker 3: Almost every show.
1:19:22
Speaker 2: It's all, it's all about the spread. The, you know,
1:19:25
Speaker 2: it used to be very, like very secretly referenced if,
1:19:28
Speaker 2: if they, uh, you know, better.
1:19:31
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
1:19:32
Speaker 2: But now it's very, now like it is a part
1:19:34
Speaker 2: of all of it. And it's part of like, people
1:19:35
Speaker 2: are looking for ways to make money in this economy.
1:19:39
Speaker 2: And so that you, like there's dangers here.
1:19:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. And the funny part of the big,
1:19:43
Speaker 3: beautiful bill, did you see the thing on gambling?
1:19:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been following. I am not a gambler, but
1:19:48
Speaker 2: I am very interested in fantasy sports and gambling. I've
1:19:50
Speaker 2: been seeing some of the discourse about, and there seems
1:19:52
Speaker 2: to be some dispute about what it exactly means. So
1:19:55
Speaker 2: what's in there?
1:19:55
Speaker 3: So the way I read it, right, is that you
1:19:57
Speaker 3: can only write off up to 90% of your losses
1:20:01
Speaker 3: as opposed to previously 100% of your losses. And so
1:20:05
Speaker 3: you know, you can say that's positive in some respects,
1:20:07
Speaker 3: but if you're a gambler, you know, you play professional poker,
1:20:10
Speaker 3: whatever it may be, it's not just sports betting. You're
1:20:13
Speaker 3: not going to be happy.
1:20:14
Speaker 2: Okay. Last question for you. And I'm going to simulate
1:20:16
Speaker 2: this as the former owner of the mass that you're
1:20:19
Speaker 2: going to be very biased on this point, but what
1:20:22
Speaker 2: do you think about the lottery odds flattening, right? Which
1:20:27
Speaker 2: has now led to multiple teams, who are, I know
1:20:31
Speaker 2: you do, but imagine, and I say, and I'm a
1:20:33
Speaker 2: Sixers fan. So I benefited from this.
1:20:35
Speaker 3: This year as well. Yes.
1:20:37
Speaker 2: And I bet we've had this like benefited from the
1:20:39
Speaker 2: flattening odds this year because we were the sixth worst team,
1:20:42
Speaker 2: the fifth worst team. We got the third pick. But
1:20:44
Speaker 2: if you are a fan of a, it used to be,
1:20:47
Speaker 2: if you were a fan of a bad team and
1:20:48
Speaker 2: whether they tanked or they just sucked, you had a
1:20:51
Speaker 2: chance to get a player. And now your chance is
1:20:55
Speaker 2: reduced to the point where It's like the rich aren't
1:20:58
Speaker 2: getting richer, right? But in the case of the Mavs,
1:21:01
Speaker 2: they are. You have a– as they hilariously described the
1:21:05
Speaker 2: NBA draft coverage, they were like a tumultuous season. I
1:21:09
Speaker 2: was like, yes, a very tumultuous season. Yes. But you
1:21:12
Speaker 2: can have an injured player.
1:21:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
1:21:14
Speaker 2: We won't get into the details of why they had
1:21:16
Speaker 2: the first pick, but they had the first pick. But
1:21:18
Speaker 2: like the Utahs, the Charlottes, the Wizards, there is just
1:21:22
Speaker 2: like– they are now– it's much harder for a bad
1:21:25
Speaker 2: team– or the fans of a bad team.
1:21:27
Speaker 4: Right.
1:21:28
Speaker 3: It really, there's the luck of the draft, right. Of
1:21:30
Speaker 3: the ping pong balls. And, you know, right now I,
1:21:34
Speaker 3: what is it? 14.3% or 13.4% for the top three teams.
1:21:38
Speaker 4: Right.
1:21:39
Speaker 3: So there's still an 87% chance that you're not getting it.
1:21:43
Speaker 3: And so it's never in your odds. And even before then,
1:21:47
Speaker 3: you know, it, from the time we went to the
1:21:49
Speaker 3: ping pong balls in 84 or whatever it was, you
1:21:52
Speaker 3: never had a hundred percent chance like the NFL does, right?
1:21:55
Speaker 3: You have the worst, worst record in the NFL. It's
1:21:57
Speaker 3: a hundred percent chance you're getting the first pick. And
1:22:00
Speaker 3: so there's still the, the odds were against you, but
1:22:03
Speaker 3: the bigger problem is really the fact that you may
1:22:08
Speaker 3: have a bad draft class. Like there are teams that,
1:22:11
Speaker 3: you know, got the number one pick and maybe, you know,
1:22:16
Speaker 3: the player that they got, wasn't transformational. And the guy
1:22:20
Speaker 3: who got pick at nine or 11 turns out to
1:22:22
Speaker 3: be the better player. And so it's really getting the
1:22:25
Speaker 3: right player and keeping them healthy, um, and getting lucky
1:22:27
Speaker 3: with the quality of the draft and.
1:22:29
Speaker 2: Not trading them.
1:22:30
Speaker 3: Yes. Right. Yeah. Not trading the odds of getting the
1:22:34
Speaker 3: number one pick. Yeah. Yeah.
1:22:36
Speaker 2: The draft class thing is interesting because it's like if
1:22:37
Speaker 2: the Spurs had won the draft lottery and he, and
1:22:39
Speaker 2: 2024 instead of 2023, um, and they'd ended up with
1:22:44
Speaker 2: Zachary Richichet instead of Victor Webinyama, a different French player,
1:22:47
Speaker 2: people would have felt very differently about how it went.
1:22:49
Speaker 2: And same thing with the Mavs. If they'd won it
1:22:52
Speaker 2: in 23 or 24 instead of the Cooper flag year,
1:22:55
Speaker 2: then people are very different.
1:22:55
Speaker 3: When I first came into the league, it was the
1:22:58
Speaker 3: Kenya Martin draft in 2000, and it was a different
1:23:01
Speaker 3: world back then. A lot of old school owners. So
1:23:03
Speaker 3: I was just buying up number one picks. And I'm thinking,
1:23:05
Speaker 3: you know, it cost me $ 3 million a pick. I
1:23:07
Speaker 3: was trying to set a tone. The Mavs are no longer,
1:23:10
Speaker 3: you know, a trashy franchise. So I bought We had
1:23:13
Speaker 3: our own pick, and then I bought two more number
1:23:15
Speaker 3: one picks. Turns out to be the worst draft in
1:23:18
Speaker 3: the history of the NBA, right? Yes, yeah. And when
1:23:21
Speaker 3: you're scouting these kids, particularly back then, it was harder
1:23:25
Speaker 3: to know who the great players were going to be.
1:23:28
Speaker 3: And while Kenyon Martin turned out to be a good player,
1:23:31
Speaker 3: you wouldn't say he's a Hall of Fame transitional player,
1:23:34
Speaker 3: that generational player. And so you've got to get lucky
1:23:37
Speaker 3: on two fronts. Yeah.
1:23:39
Speaker 2: Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban. This has been a lot of fun, interesting.
1:23:42
Speaker 2: We've covered a lot of things. Great to talk to you.
1:23:44
Speaker 2: Thanks for being with us on Pod Save America.
1:23:46
Speaker 3: Anytime. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.
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