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#064_ STORY INSPIRE: Is America on the Brink of Collapse? Time Is Running Out · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm really worried about where we're headed as a country.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Right now, America's system is so out of whack that
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: if you are a multi-billionaire, you probably pay a lower
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: percentage in taxes than if you're a schoolteacher or a firefighter.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: You have levels of inequality that we've almost never seen.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: There's a rise in political violence, the collapse in trust,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and the biggest thing of all that we're facing right
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: now is this massive debt. But it's now escalated to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a level that no one can ignore it.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: How do you think this plays out?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're on the brink of losing our democracy
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and we're running out of time to do something about it.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Trump made a lot of promises when
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: he came into power. Keen to get your perspective on
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: the Iran war.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: So the president can't explain why we're there. There's a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: lot of reasons to suspect that we're just at war
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: because he wanted us to. And now he can't figure
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: out how to get us out of it. Troops have
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: lost their lives. Prices are higher. You're paying more for gas,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: for food, for mortgages because of this war. And so
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the next president will be doing this at a big
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: disadvantage because so many relationships with our allies have been burned.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: So I am keen to get your perspective on AI, good, bad.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Should we implement a wealth tax? Is there anything you
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: respect about Trump, but also greater Israel, for example? What
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: does Netanyahu want in the region? And then were you
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: the first person in a presidential candidate to be openly gay?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Definitely the first person who's considered to have a shot.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And when I finally made peace with this reality that
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I was gay, I was well into my 20s because
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I wanted so bad for it not to be true.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I'd like to believe we'll get to a day when
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it's just not a thing.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: No one cares. Secretary Pete Buttigieg, are you going to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: run to be president in 2028? No. This is super
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: interesting to me. My team gave me this report to
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And some of you have told us, according to this,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: to ask all of you, please could you check right
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: a regular viewer of the show and you like what
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: there was one simple free thing that you could do
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: show free, to keep it improving year over year and
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: week over week, It is just to hit that subscribe
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: button and to double check if you've hit it. Only
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: you the guests and conversations that you want to hear.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: of the Diary of a CEO, and I will not
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: get on with the show. Secretary Pete Buttigieg, how are
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: you feeling about the nature of politics at the moment,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: but I should probably say the nature of American life
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: at the moment.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I'm really worried about where we're headed as a country.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I think in many ways, our entire existence has been
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: about creating a different kind of political system and introducing
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: it to the world. That's what we're about. And now
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: that whole project is in question. That whole project is,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in my view, it's on the brink.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: On the brink?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you mean by that? I mean, we're
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: on the brink of losing our democracy. The whole idea
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of this country, the whole idea of overthrowing a king,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: was that everyday life would get better if we set
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: up a country where the people are in charge of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the government instead of the other way around. And now
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in this moment, where after all of the things we've
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: gone through for decades, for 250 years, it's not clear
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: if that's going to work out. I think it will.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I believe it will if we do what we have
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to do. But that means reforming, tuning up, changing that
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: political system. Because the problems in that political system help
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: to explain all of the economic problems that I think
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: so many Americans are living with, where you've had enormous
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: economic growth and shockingly little of it making it into
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: people's pockets, where you have levels of inequality that we've
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: almost never seen in this country. And then the other
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: thing is there's the American promise in terms of the system,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the politics, the government, democracy, America's gift to the world,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: creating democracy. But there's the economic version of that, which
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: is the American dream, right? The idea that no matter
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: how you start, no matter who you are, you can
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: come out ahead of where you started economically. That used
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to happen for nine out of 10 Americans. Statistically, the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: place where you're most likely to live out the American
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: dream right now is Denmark. And I want that to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: be America.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And systemically, if we just think from a high level,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: what is the essence of why Denmark is a better
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: place for the American dream? What are the systemic problems?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Is it with the current administration? Is it with a
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: perspective on what a good life looks like in America,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: or is it greed, or is it something else?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say it's just the current administration. I mean,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I think the current administration isn't helping, but I think
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the problem is much deeper than that. A lot of
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it is the last 30 or 40 years, we've had
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: policies in this country that make it harder to get
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: ahead if you're not already starting out well off. Even
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: just the way our taxes work, they tax work more
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: than they tax wealth. That's really catching up to us.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, it has created problems. I believe it's created
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: problems for decades, but you feel it in a different
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: way now. And when inequality reaches a certain level and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: when the inequality of power follows the economic inequality to
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a certain level, that's when I think you start to
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: have earthquakes in the society and what it feels like
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: to live in this country. And I think we're going
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: through those earthquakes, not just Trump and everything he represents,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: but the rise in political violence. the collapse in trust
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: in our society. All of these things I think are
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: related to that. And we're running out of time to
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: do something about it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: David Elikwu- Trump made a lot of promises when he
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: came into power. He won in a bigger than expected victory,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I would say. Why does he resonate? David Elikwu- Well.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: First of all, I think he speaks to a lot
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of people who know that the system has let them down.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And even though I think he's somebody who really benefits
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: from the system, as it is, it's made him rich
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and kept him rich. You know, his message was, I'm
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: going to blow it all up. And I think he's
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: blowing up all the wrong things. But look, if the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: system's let you down, you know, you're only going to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: vote so many times within that system before somebody comes
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: along and says, I'm going to blow it all up.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And you say, well, I'm not even like the guy,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: but I'll give him a shot to see if that
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: makes me better off. Now, I also think he lied
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: to a lot of people. You know, some people voted
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: for him because they believed him. when he said he's
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: not going to start a new war. Many people voted
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: for him because they believed him when he said on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: day one, he was going to start lowering costs. And
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: right now, inflation's higher than it was the day he
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: took over. So these promises weren't true, but they spoke
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to something that I think a lot of people had
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: on their mind that made a lot of people willing
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to burn things down. And there's a lesson for my
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: party in that. I'm obviously passionately against many destructive things
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that he's doing. That doesn't mean the answer is to
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: quote unquote reverse the damage, put everything back the way
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Because you're right that the Democrats have a lot of
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: responsibility here for a lot of reasons. I think the
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: very fact that Trump was voted into power says something
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: about how people felt with the previous administration, which was
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: a Democratic administration. What responsibility does the Democratic Party have
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: for getting the country to a place where they thought
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Democrats weren't the solution? Because that's kind of, I think
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of people feel that's just like more of
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the same.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Maybe people are getting increasingly, I think across the Western
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: world by the looks of it, increasingly tied with like
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: politicians saying these like cute words and like, we're going
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to help the working people and blah, blah, blah, blah,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: and being very polished. And then you see this, these
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: other figures that have come in and said, I'm not
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: a politician.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: And as you say, I'm going to burn it down. Right.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: And for some reason people are choosing that.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Even though when they do, usually that person makes
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it worse. And so that's why the president is unpopular.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: But the president is unpopular. To your point, that doesn't
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: mean people are automatically going to trust Democrats. Yeah. Right? So,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, the answer to your question is yes, Democrats
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: have a responsibility to present something that is better, not
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: just better than now, but it's got to be better
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: than before. The fact remains a lot of these results
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: have unfolded on, you know, kind of regardless of who's
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: in power.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Are you going to run to be president in 2028?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I would have to believe, and this
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: is how I've approached every time I've decided to run
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: for office. It's looking at everything that the office seems
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: like it needs, not just generally, but in that moment.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And then looking at what I bring to the table
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and asking myself, okay, am I bringing something that's different
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: enough from what others are bringing? And that fits like
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: that moment. Like that's what led me to run for mayor,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: which is a pretty unlikely move in South Bend, Indiana
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: when I was in my twenties. It's what led me
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: to run for president when I did almost eight years
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: ago now.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: I'll use your own words here, Secretary. You said politics
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: often favors someone who is completely different to the current
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: leader and that you could not be more different from Trump.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I quote, an intellectual young gay mayor from the Midwest.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: You know, Amazon have this really interesting thing when they
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: hire people, which we've copied. Every time you meet someone,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: you have to vote one of four things. You either
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: vote strongly not inclined, not inclined, inclined, and strongly inclined.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: So you've got four options when you interview someone. We
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: do the same in our company now. We took it
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: from them. And the whole idea here is to prevent
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: people from sitting on the fence, which is like, what
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: is your inclination? So if I presented you with those
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: four options as it relates to you running for president
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: in 2020, as things stand, and this is just a
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: balance of probability are you inclined not inclined strongly not
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: inclined strongly inclined um on these podcasts nobody ever tells
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the bloody truth this is why it's difficult sometimes to
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: interview politicians because we all have an inclination right Yeah.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, one of the reasons why you hesitate to
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: talk in those terms is because, you know, like people
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: are going to run with it and it'll be this
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: like news of the day thing. And it'll, you know,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it'll kind of dominate the next couple of days when
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you're trying to talk about something else.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: But does the truth just not matter more than the
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: consequence of the truth in this regard?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But the truth about like what, you know, what
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I'm maybe going to do, like there's a, there's a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: level of like not even being certain some of the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: things I'll have to weigh. Like before– having made a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: decision like this before, I can tell you that there's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the read– The inclination. I'm obviously not to one end
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: or the other. Yeah.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: So you're not those two. I think I'm like more
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: inclined than not.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that. But there's so much we don't know.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: There's so much I don't even know about what's going
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to happen this year, let alone what we need to
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: know later. And this is not– You know, the weight
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of a decision like that, and I don't just mean
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: like the national political weight, but just like the weight
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: of a decision to run for office for you and
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: your family, which frankly, I did not fully understand until
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I had kids. That's changed all of my equations. It's
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: just something that you really sit with and take seriously,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: which you should.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: One of the big things that people are talking about
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: at this moment in time is the Iran war. And
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: this feeds into some of the points we were touching
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: on around promises kept and not kept. What is going
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: on in plain terms? Because Americans are getting lots of messages.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: We've destroyed everything in Iran. The military bases are all gone.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And then we're back at war and American lives have
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: been taken. Can you help us see through all of this?
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I think what's going on is the president has painted
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: himself and the country into a corner. There is a
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: moment where it seemed to him that he was better
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: off politically if we were at war. even though he
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: promised that we wouldn't be, even though a lot of
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: his supporters didn't want the war, and certainly the American
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: people as a whole don't want it. But he was
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: under a lot of heat over cost of living, over
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the Epstein files, which was dominating the conversation every day,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: being proven to be as connected to an infamous pedophile
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: as Jeffrey Epstein, and then doing everything he could to
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: cover up disclosures about it, right? This is something that
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: obviously was something that was creating a ton of heat
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: on the president. Meanwhile, there's a lot of people in
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: his ear every day, and some of them, from American
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: politicians to people around the world, would really like to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: see him go to war.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of the tradition of the Republican Party
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: is to generally be more pro-war, right? I mean, my
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: coming of age was at the time of the Iraq War.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: In fact, a big part of what kind of told
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: me fully into politics was being opposed to the Iraq war.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: One of the things that a lot of people won't
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: know about you is that you did actually go and
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: serve your country. I've got some photos of you here serving.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: And I think you've got your parents, I think, post-Afghanistan
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the day I got back.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: I just think it's important for people to know that
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: you can speak to this quite accurately, having served your country.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I know what it feels like to
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: get on a gray-tailed airplane that's taking you into a
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: war zone and wondering what's waiting for you there. Where
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: we are now is a lot of troops are in
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that situation. They're in harm's way. And the president doesn't
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: seem to have a plan. He can't explain why we're there.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: He said it's for regime change. He said it's for
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: unconditional surrender. He said that it's to deal with their
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: nuclear program. But last year, he said they obliterated the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: nuclear program. And so there's a lot of reasons to
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: suspect that we're just at war because he wanted us
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to be. And now I can't figure out how to
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: get us out of it. And it appears that any
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: way forward leaves us worse off than we were before
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the war. Prices are higher. Troops have lost their lives.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And it seems like the least bad options still involve
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Iran having more control over the Strait of Hormuz than
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: they were asserting a year ago. Most Americans shouldn't have
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to be worrying about the Strait of Hormuz. They've got
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: enough to worry about. And a year ago, we weren't.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: That was not a problem. Whatever was going on in
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz did not feel like it was
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a problem where I live in Michigan. And now it is.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: Why though? What was the domino effect that caused him
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: to go, do you know what? I think we can
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: just go in there, decapitate the leader and announce victory.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Obviously, this is a question for the president. But honestly,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I don't fully understand why they would do something like this,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: especially because we know You didn't have to be an
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: expert in international affairs and security studies to know. If
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: we actually attacked Iran, they were going to shut down
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the strait and try to cripple the world economy. It
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: was literally the most obvious next thing that could happen.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And yet, it seems like he either didn't understand or
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: didn't believe. Surely he was told this. We know, in fact,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: it's been reported that he was told this. And he
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: did it anyway. So how does that happen? I mean,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I've long given up trying to see into the mind
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of this president.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Dare I say, if you are president in 2028, this
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: could be your responsibility to resolve.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I really hope that the next president isn't
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: facing this war dragging on into 2029. But I mean, yeah,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: one thing we have learned is that it is harder
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: to stop a war than it is to start one,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: which is why if you have any other reasonable choice,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you don't start one.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So what are you going to do? if you will, president?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Look, the next president will face a complicated, violent, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: challenging Middle East and world map no matter what. And
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the next president is going to have to deal with
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that while dealing with a more assertive China and a
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: dramatically swiftly evolving security landscape, partly because of things like AI.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Just as you and I are sitting here now, There's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of headlines about a big safety issue created
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: by an AI model that was supposed to not even
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: be able to access the internet, managing to get itself
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: on the internet and hack into another company to get
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the answers to a test that it was told to solve, right?
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And that's as of today in 2026. The things that
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: could be going on by 2029 are surely going to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: change both what we're up against and what's possible. Look,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in the same way that there was a nuclear hotline
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: between Washington and Moscow, because it turns out, even while
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: at each other's throats in a lot of ways, one
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: thing that Americans and Soviets didn't want was to incinerate
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the planet. There's going to have to be some way
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: for countries that do not trust each other today to
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: coordinate on things like making sure AI doesn't lead to
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: bioweapons being made by rogue actors or even individual actors,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: making sure that it doesn't lead to nuclear proliferation, or
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: any number of other problems, right, that could happen. So
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the security picture, I think, will be more challenging for
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the next president than it's been for any president since
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the Cold War.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So what kind of president, in terms of mentality or
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: character experience, do you think can meet those challenges?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Well, you need somebody who's deliberate and decisive. Those two
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: things sometimes are in tension because deliberation means you slow down,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: you look at what's going on, and you think about it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: But decisive doesn't mean you immediately make a call every
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: time a question is put to you. It does mean
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that once you feel like you've got enough information, you
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: make a decision, you own the consequences of that decision,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: you move on to the next decision. And I think
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: in terms of kind of character and style, we're going
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: to need both of those things. We're going to need wisdom.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: We're going to need judgment. And we're going to need
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: judgment that is not twisted or changed or colored or
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: biased based on corrupt reasons. And the reason I mentioned
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that is because right now we've got, for the first
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: time ever out of all of our presidents, a president
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: whose family is making billions of dollars from things that
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: are sometimes directly connected to the decision of a foreign government, right?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: There was one government in the Middle East that put
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars into the family crypto fund
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: of this president. You got Saudi Arabia investing in the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: first family's business interests to the tune of I believe
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a couple of billion dollars for the president's son-in-law, right?
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And we just can't afford with everything that's on the
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: line right now to have the next president be someone
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: who could remotely be influenced by those kinds of considerations
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: given everything that's on the line for the American people
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and for American security.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: When you look at the picture in Iran, it's all
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: well and good saying we have to get out of there.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: How? No, the only good way to do it is
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: to not be there in the first place. It's too
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: late for that. And so, as is often the case
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: in difficult decisions that executives face, it will be finding
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the least bad combination of options, which probably means engaging
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of other countries, a lot of regional partners,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of allies. Now, again, the next president will
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: be doing this at a big disadvantage because so many
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: relationships with our allies have been burned. And it turns
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: out you build relationships with allies not just out of
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: friendliness or because it's neat. You do it because you're
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: going to need each other someday. And the worse something is,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the more difficult a problem. Just like life. The times
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I'm quickest to call a friend are the times when
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I'm hurting the most or feel like i i need
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: help the most right same is true for countries the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: tougher your situation the more you're going to have friends
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you can count on we are in a very tough
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: situation in iran we will be for a long time
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: we need our friends.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Because you know you're dealing with a lot of um
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: dare i say very large ego leaders around the world
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: you've got your putins i don't even know who's running
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: around at the moment then you've got china um does
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: it need a leader with a ego of the same
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: size Because sometimes I think crazy people kind of respect
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: crazy people in a weird way.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of different ways to deal with
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: people like that. But I think the most useful is
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: to earn a level of credibility. And when we're talking
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: with allies, a level of trust. When we're talking with adversaries,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: it's maybe not the same thing as trust, but it
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: is credibility. That when you say you're going to do
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: something or you seem like you're going to do something,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you're going to do it. it means less energy gets
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: wasted on guesswork. And it means you have just a
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: little more stability. I think something all of us are
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: looking for in the world right now is for it
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: to just be a little more stable. And by the way,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the way to do that is not to like rewind
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and imagine that we can make the world look the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: way it looked in the nineties or the fifties. It's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: not like that. We're going to have to find new
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: ways to create a stable future. But, Look, there are
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: as many different kinds of personalities in world leaders and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: presidents as there are, you know, in humanity in general.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: But it'll need to be somebody who, like I said,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: is deliberate and decisive, tough and fair and credible.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Iran situation is particularly uncertain for many reasons,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: in part because I don't know who the leadership there
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: is anymore. In part because it seems like they will
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: now control the straight of who moves or at least
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: use it as leverage, really respective of what outcome takes place.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: And in part because you still have this nuclear threat.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: But they are probably now more motivated to develop nuclear
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: weapons than they probably were under Obama when he signed
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: that agreement with them.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Yes. They may have less capacity, but they certainly have
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: more motivation at this point.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Would you let them develop nuclear weapons if you were president?
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: No. They should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: A nuclear-armed Iran, I mean, look at the malevolent activities
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: that they already have pursued. with conventional means, terrorist groups
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: around the region and around the world. This is not
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a regime, certainly not in its current form or anything
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: resembling its current form, that could ever be trusted with
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Now, different presidents, each of the last few presidents,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: had a way of making sure that that never happened.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: The best way to do that was through diplomacy. That
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: was the whole point of the Obama deal. The first
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Trump administration tore up the Obama deal but couldn't get
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: a better deal And then when the Biden administration was
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: trying to get a better deal, it was very hard
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to work across the table to get the Iranians to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: negotiate because they remembered that it was Trump who tore
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: up the Obama deal, right? It's part of what I
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: mean when I talk about credibility. It doesn't mean that
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: people across the table have to like you. It means
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: they have to have some sense that it's at least
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: worth dealing with you, right? And there's not a lot
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: of that given that kind of instability, that pattern that
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: we faced.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: You know, I followed American politics, I think, since I
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: was about 10. One of the things I've never heard
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: mentioned so much in politics is Israel. It appears to
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: me as a objective observer that the subject of Israel
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: is now so central to politics.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: What's going on with the US's relationship with Israel and
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the public sentiment towards Israel?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Well, it's getting a lot of attention because many very
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: important things are at stake and they've been put into
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: conflict with each other. Right. And Each of those things
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: is a valid thing, at least in my opinion. And
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I'll name three. One, which has become very challenging for
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: many Jewish Americans, is the safety of Jews around the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: world and in America. Theoretically, that could be separated from
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: what's happening in Israel and Palestine. But in the real world,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: there has been a relationship between what's going on there
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and an explosion in anti-Semitism that has... many American Jewish
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: families afraid for their safety. Another thing is the safety
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and dignity of Palestinian people who in Gaza, but not
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: only in Gaza, have been subjected to horrific violence, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, war crimes. And alongside that, there is
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: the safety and dignity of people in Israel who we
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: have a security relationship with as a country and have
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: since the Jewish state of Israel was founded, the future
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and survival of Israel as a Jewish state, and a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: country that is still responding to the worst day of
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the most violence against Jews since the Holocaust. Those three things,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: I believe, in principle, can be honored at the same time.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: In fact, I believe in principle they have to be
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: honored at the same time.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Is that what Netanyahu wants? No.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think he is remotely interested in the safety
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and dignity and security of Palestinian people. I think he
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: believes that he would be better off if they didn't exist.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Or at the very least, he doesn't want them around, right?
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And so we see a policy which obviously has led
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: to what it did in Gaza, but also in the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: West Bank, which gets less attention, maybe because there's been
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: fewer deaths there, but pretty horrific behavior and conduct and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: violence from settlers that is part of a project of
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: making it impossible for there to be a secure, viable
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Palestinian state.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: So what does Netanyahu want in the region?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that I'm much more capable of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: seeing into the mind of Netanyahu than I am seeing
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: into the mind of Trump. But looking into his choices,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: it seems that he wants to be able to assert
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: domination of any other regional player, and something that is
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: beyond just security and safety for the people of Israel,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: which is something that I believe in and something I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: think is hard to argue with, but something else, which
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: is a project of taking over what is called Greater
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Israel in his ideology, in his worldview. Great Israel. Yeah,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Eretz Israel, which is a vision that does not have
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of room for Palestinians. anywhere between the river
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and the sea. He won't say it in those terms,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: but if you look at his actions, it is hard
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to believe that he is comfortable with anything less.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: What's your take on how Trump has treated Netanyahu in
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: that relationship? Is that the relationship you would have had?
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: It's not the relationship I would add. I think like
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: all things with Trump, it's pretty transactional. It's instrumental. It's
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: what's in it for me. And I think part of
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: how that has developed into a frenemy relationship now is that,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: you know, the relationship that maybe served him well politically
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: is not so good for him now because, among other things,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu has an interest in a continued U.S. presence in
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: an Iran war that has gone from being something Trump
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: thought would be politically useful for Trump to something that
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: is politically dangerous for Trump.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: How do you think this plays out, Secondary? What do
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: you think happens? You know, I said there, I sort
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: of hypothesized that by 2028, this will still be dragging on.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Because from my perspective, you're either going to kind of
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: lie to the American public and say that and declare
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: some kind of victory, or you're going to stay in there.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: I can't actually see a third option, personally. So how
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: do you imagine this playing out?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: There's got to be a way to get out of Iran. Like,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: we just cannot. First of all, the president has already
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: backpedaled a lot, even though we would never admit it,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on what we're there to do. Because he said unconditional surrender,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that's not happening. He said regime change. Regime hasn't changed.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: We went from Ayatollah Khamenei to Ayatollah Khamenei Jr., at
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: least on paper. Who knows if the guy's alive? But
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the regime is alive. But the regime's entire ideology is
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: based on hating the United States, right? And now that
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the United States has done this, hard to believe that's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: going to change. There will have to be an exit
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: that is very unlikely to be the unconditional surrender that
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Trump promised, but has to be something that is tolerable
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: to this country, to our country, to Americans, which includes
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: passage through the Straits of Hormuz. And the only way
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to do that, I think, is with a lot of
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: international partners who want the same thing to happen. Remember,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: anyone east of Iran is feeling more economic pain, even
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: than we are, from what's happening in the Straits.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: China and.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because East Asia relies on oil and goods that
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: go through there more. So I think what you're going
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to have to have is a regional and international partnership
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that ensures something at least resembling free passage of goods
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: and security without the U.S. sending troops in there or
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: continuing to be at war. It seems like the only way,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: but it's unquestionably worse than where we were a year
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: ago before the war started.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Did you hear recently that Trump mentioned, I think it
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: was at the G7 summit, we run out of reserves
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: the world and we would really run out and there'll
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: be time when we wouldn't be able to get it.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: It would be bedlam. And he made these comments last month,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: 2026 at the G7 summit. in regards to the amount
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: of oil the United States have left in the reserves.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: I think he was framing it around why he signed
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: this memorandum of understanding, this agreement with them. But, you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: in the last week, we've gone back to war and
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormuz appears to be closed again. So
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: when we think about oil reserves and how that impacts
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: ordinary Americans and what might be around the corner, there's
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: a real pressure here to find a solution and to
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: find a solution. Yes.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, this is why he signed an MOU
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: that was frankly more on Iranian terms than American terms.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, the ceasefire, so-called ceasefire, emerged from a deal
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: that was really us responding to what Iran came up with,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: not vice versa. Again, he said he was out for
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: regime change and unconditional surrender. We're not even talking about
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: that anymore. We're nowhere near that. And now what we
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: have is a set of conditions. It's us redlining their text,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: not the other way around, right? And then he's trying
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: to figure out how do I go out and sell that?
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And so he points out something that is true. Sometimes
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: he tells the truth when it serves him. And when
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: he was trying to explain why he backpedaled on his
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: war goals, the way he explained it was by admitting
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: that there was a level of economic vulnerability that was
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: unleashed by closing the strait, which is what Iran did
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to respond to the US attacks, right? But the problem
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: is that ceasefire is not happening, at least not as
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you and I are sitting here right now. Still a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: hard thing for them to admit. In the same way
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: that he took out a Sharpie to modify a hurricane
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: map rather than acknowledge that he was mistaken about some
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: detail during a national disaster once. His administration deleted four
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: names from the ranks of those killed in action in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: this conflict because they were afraid that listing their names
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: would contradict him saying that we had a ceasefire.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. At least that's the only explanation I can think of.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: The crazy thing is all of us know there's a war.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: We've even had moments, remember, I think it was Secretary
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Rubio said in Congress, where there's punishment for lying. You're
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: not supposed to lie to Congress. He said the war's over.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: We all know the war's not over.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Are they stuck? Because they seem a bit stuck to me.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: I was watching Hegseth in, I think it was Congress. Yeah,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: it was Congress the other day. And they're just repeating
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: his quotes back to him over and over and over
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: and over again.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because how is he supposed to explain that? that
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: we're in a war that supposedly we already won, that
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: we're not getting any of the things that were supposedly
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: worth going to war over, and that the bill for
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: this keeps getting bigger in terms of tax dollars. I
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: think his latest number was $ 37. 5 billion. That's our money,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: all of us as American taxpayers. And, of course, the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: cost in lives and the cost in terms of everything
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: in America, starting with gas, being more expensive. They don't
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: want to be explaining that, right? But They don't have
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: a great way out either. And they're not prepared to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: lead us to a better place because they don't even
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: know what it looks like.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Is there anything you respect about Trump? Sure.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I think he has been able to create the impression
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: of a bias for action. And I think he gets
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of credit for that. I think in general
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and especially in government, There's a lot of hand-wringing. Like, oh,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: we got to have a 19-step process to get all
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of these things exactly. I saw this during my four
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: years trying to get stuff built in this country as
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation, that there were so many hoops and
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: so much red tape. And he comes in and he says, like,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: don't do that. We're just going to do this. Now,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: often what he's doing turns out to be illegal and
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it gets reversed. And obviously, I think most of his
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: policies are terribly destructive. But I think you have to
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: respect the effect that he has had with that kind
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: of bias toward just doing something. And I think we
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: could learn a bit from that.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Is that a case for less politicians empowering more entrepreneurs?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Look, I think he's a politician through and through. I
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: think that on some level, every CEO is a politician.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Every general is a politician. Every bishop is a politician.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: You just reach a certain level. Where part of what
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you're doing, if you're being honest with yourself, is what
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: is considered politics. Which, by the way, I don't mean
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: in a pejorative way. I mean it's organizing people's choices, loyalties,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and organizing power in order to get things done.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I think the difference, I understand what you're saying. I
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: think the difference, especially with founders, is founders got from,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: started at zero and got somewhere because they had to
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: be like highly... have a high bias to action.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Believe that walls were made of paper and be disruptive
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: in some, I mean, the reason they are successful is
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: because of disruption.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The best thing about founders is they see something
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that could be. Yeah. And the way things are just
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't even bother them. They just see that vision and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: they just go after it and they blow through every
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: wall between them getting it done. That's the best thing
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: about founders. The worst thing about founders from a political
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: perspective is that sometimes because they were so good at
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: one thing, like uniquely, sometimes world historically good at one thing,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: they imagine that they're good at everything. Now, that's not
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: just a problem with founders. That's a problem with lots
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: of smart people. But politics requires you to be a
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: little bit humble about how much you don't know and
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: surround yourself by people who are smarter than you at
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: whatever it is they're in charge of and not imagine
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: that you've got all the answers.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Founders hate bureaucracy.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is why they often- I mean, look, I'm
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: pretty impatient with bureaucracy too. I believe in the idea
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: of a policy entrepreneur who can recognize here's a problem,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: here's a whole bunch of solutions, and here's a window
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: of opportunity, and let's just line it all up and
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: make it happen. Also, the laws exist in order to
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: protect people. And when we're talking about bureaucracy, we're really
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: talking about laws. Now, sometimes those laws need to be changed, simplified,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: stripped down to the most important things. I learned this
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: very early on in my time in office, where sometimes
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I was trying to get something done as a policy entrepreneur,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and somebody tapped the brakes on me and used a
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: bureaucracy to do it. Sometimes they were right. Sometimes... They
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: made me better. They made me sharpen what I was
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: trying to do by fighting me. The other issue you.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Mentioned a second ago that I think is going to
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: be really pertinent over the next 24 months and is
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: increasing in interest amongst Americans, I'd say especially young Americans
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: that are thinking about getting a job and going into
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: the workforce is the subject of artificial intelligence. I've talked
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: to a lot of AI experts on my show over
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the last couple of years, and I've also reflected a
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: lot on the different types of comments that the CEOs
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: of the big AI companies have made through time. and
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: how those quotes have changed. If you go back a
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: couple of years, it was doom and gloom. But now
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: that they are running trillion-dollar companies, the quotes seem to
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: be a bit more optimistic all of a sudden. One
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: thing that I think they do agree on is that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: there's going to be significant job disruption, especially if you
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: look at some of Anthropic's reports, which are the maker
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: of Claude. They already show that entry-level positions are at
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: risk first, especially entry-level knowledge jobs.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: And people are scared. The first time I saw that
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Eric Schmidt speech where the crowds, the college audience are
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: booing every time he says the word AI. This is
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: presumably going to accelerate the sentiment towards AI. And in part,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: because people are going to find it harder to get
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: jobs and they're going to experience more of AI sort
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: of permeating through their life. How do you feel about
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: all of this? What is the balance of AI, good, bad, ugly?
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Risks? I think it can be all of those things.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And we've got some decisions to make about where AI goes.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And the simplest way I put it is this. Either
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: we're looking at a future where because of AI, we
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: have a shorter work week and more money in our pocket.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Or we're looking at a future where there is even
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: more extreme concentration of wealth and power in this country
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: than we've already got. And which way it goes, which
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of those things happen, It's actually not something that's in
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the technology. It's not a tech question. It's a policy choice.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: It's about whether we make sure these technologies unfold in
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: a way that is empowering for families and workers and
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: college graduates and manage all of the harms that could
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: come from it. Every technology brings good and bad things.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: And we've certainly seen that with digital technology. We've seen
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: it with social media. We've seen it with the internet itself.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Good and bad things always. AI has incredible capabilities. I
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: think a lot about something that's not usually in the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: top 10 thing people talk about, but it's self-driving vehicles.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Easy to be freaked out by them. They actually have
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: enormous potential to save lives. That's just one example of
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: how we could be better off if we responsibly develop
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: these technologies. But if we don't, I'll tell you what
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: I think could happen. And I come at this based
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: on where I grew up, right? I'm from the industrial Midwest,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Northern Indiana, a place dominated by the auto industry. And
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: starting in the 60s, but definitely in the 90s when
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: I was growing up in the early 2000s, there was
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a huge amount of job loss because the economy was changing.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: What happened was there were a whole lot of people
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: who didn't just lose their jobs. Often they would lose
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: their jobs, maybe find another job, maybe be trained to
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: find a new career even. but never recovered their sense
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: of identity. You're an auto worker, you're in a tool
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and die shop, and it's your whole sense of belonging
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: revolves around your job, not just your paycheck. It's how
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: your spouses know each other from the union picnic. It's
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: how you're sponsoring Little League. It's what you explain, you know,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: at least in the U.S., We don't even say like,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: what's your job? We say, what do you do, right?
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: What we mean is what do you do professionally? But
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: we say, what do you do basically as a way
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: of saying, who are you? And that's true for blue
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: collar workers. That's even more true for white collar workers.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: And so I think that there is a generation of
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: workers who are about to have their identity, not just
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: their job, their identity disrupted. Whether we can come up
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: with new sources or better sources of belonging than what
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: your job is, could decide everything about what it feels
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: like and is like to live in this country within
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the next few years.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: And I just think about what you said there about
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: growing up in the Midwest, people working in the auto industry,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: making cars. And you also use the example of full
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: self-driving vehicles being a net positive. But when I put
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: those two things together, I thought, okay, so the people
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: in the factories are at risk of being replaced by
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: robotics now. Huge acceleration in robotics, both humanoid, but just
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: generally intelligent machines, which is right here. It's not theoretical,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: it's not sci-fi anymore. They're building them right now. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Sam Altman said on the current trajectory, we believe we
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: may only be a couple of years away from early
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: versions of true superintelligence. If we are right, by the
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: end of 2028, more of the world's intellectual capacity could
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: reside inside of a data center than outside of them. Dario,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: who's also the founder of Anthropic, said, if the exponential continues,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: then it cannot possibly be more than a few years
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: before AI is better than humans at essentially everything. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: the quotes go on and on and on. Demis from
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Google said, we're only a few years, maybe within a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: decade away from systems that have general human level intelligence
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: across the board. And Elon Musk in an interview this
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: week talked about how with robots being physical disruption and
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: AI being intellectual disruption, you have the perfect combination where
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: work will become a choice. What does that mean for
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: those people in the Midwest? Because Dara, the CEO of Uber,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: sat there in front of me and said the 9
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: million drivers he had would be replaced. But also now you're,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: if I think about the production line, the people making
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: the cars as well, theoretically could be at risk.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: There's always going to be something worth doing with our time.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: We need to arrange an economy that rewards things that
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: are worth doing with our time, especially things that only
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: people can do. Some of that is creative work. Some
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: of that is very human work like caregiving. I'm thinking
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: about this more and more because I belong to this
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: sandwich generation that's taking care of kids and aging parents
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: at the same time. But whether those kinds of things
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: are rewarded or not is what I worry about. I mean,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: imagine a world where, just for the sake of imagination,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: you've got a machine that can make more and more things.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: It's like the replicator from Star Trek. You know, I
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: love Star Trek. As a kid, Captain Picard goes up
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: to him and he just says, like, give me a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot. And like, it happens, right?
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Imagine some combination of artificial intelligence and robotics. that leads
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: to factories where you can kind of do that. Over time,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: you need fewer and fewer people in them. And that
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: means that less and less in the economy depends on
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the wages that those workers can command because you need
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: fewer of them. That means more and more is going
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: to depend on who actually owns the machine, by which
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I mean both the intellectual property, the AI, and the
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: physical plant, right? And that's where we've got to make
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: sure that the American people own enough of this or
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: at least own enough of the value that's being created
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that people's needs can be met. Well, there's a lot
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: of ways you can do it. I think some version
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: of a dividend makes sense. What I mean by that
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: is there's some public share. We can argue about whether
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: it should come with like a vote, like being on
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: a board, or whether it's kind of closer to a tax.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: By the way, I think this is also a fair game.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, these things trained on data that all of
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: us put in the world for free. These things are
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: based on the internet, which was created by the American taxpayer,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: basically free of charge in the 1960s when DARPA, the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, created what became the internet.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And now it's time to return more of that to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the American people. You do that, we really could have
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a shorter work week and more money in our pocket.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: But there's a big but here, which is it hasn't
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: always worked out that way with labor-saving technology. A hundred
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: years ago, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. He wrote this in 1930,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and it was all about what the world would be
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: like a hundred years from then, so 2030. And he
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: predicts that the productivity of our economy, because of automation, technology,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: all these things, will go up something like five to
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: eight fold. And because of that, really, we're not going
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: to have to work more than 10 or 15 hours
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a week. And so far, we are on track to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: almost perfectly match his prediction about productivity. But we're nowhere
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: close to that. If anything, we're working more right now.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So how does that happen? Well, it turns out that
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: has to do with policy choices about what is or
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: isn't a good use of time. And it has to
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: do with social choices too, right? I mean, one question
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I think about a lot is if we go into
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the best possible scenario, we get the policy choices right,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: we make sure the companies act right. This is saying
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a lot, but imagine that we do. And we do,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: in fact, have, you know, most of us have a
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: shorter work week and more money in our pocket. How
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: do we know we're going to use our time well?
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Because in many ways, I think many of us are
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: aching to have more time to use well. I know
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: just doing my thing, I wish I had more time
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: with my kids. This is always the lament of a politician,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: but like anybody in an intense job wishes they had
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: more time with people they love. But, you know, also
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of our time right now is being absorbed
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: by bullshit, right? Scrolling. Things where you spend an hour
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: doing it and an hour later, nothing sticks. It's exactly
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: as if you hadn't.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: You regret.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: But your hour, yeah, or you feel worse, but the
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: hour is gone. So we need to figure out how
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to also be better stewards of our own time. These,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: by the way, are not just not, this sounds like
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: a very 21st century problem and in one way it is. But,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: you know, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, The Roman philosophers
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: writing about this kind of stuff more than 2,000 years
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: ago talking about how we are so careful about who
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: can get our money and are very up in arms
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: if anybody looks like they're cheating us or taking our money.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: But then our time, which is the one thing where
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: we have every reason to be even more stingy about
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: it than money because you can get more money but
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you can't get more time in your life. We let
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: it get wasted in all kinds of ways.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Bernie has this proposal where he– I was reading about
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: you discovering Bernie, I believe in college, right? High school, actually.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: In high school. He has a proposal where we should
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: take 50% of the stock of these AI companies. It
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: gives the general public 50% ownership and board voting seats
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: to block job-killing decisions and redistribute AI profits directly to
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: citizens for healthcare, education, and housing.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Viable proposal? Part of that overlaps with what I'm talking about.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I do think a public share of the profits, which
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: could mean a public share of the ownership, can make sense.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And again, for reasons that I shared earlier, I think
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that would be fair. I do think we need to
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: weigh whether the right way to make sure the public
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: has a say in how these companies behave is to
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: be on the board versus just to have some rules,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to make sure that the rules are such that the
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: companies can do what they do best, create value, innovate,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: but they can't do it in a way that hurts people,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: which is generally how regulation is supposed to work. I mean,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I say this having been in the cabinet of the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Department of Transportation where our job was to regulate companies.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: So what that meant was we have something like the FAA,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: the Federal Aviation Administration. It doesn't create aircraft. It doesn't
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: invent aviation technology. What it does is it sets a
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: very elaborate set of rules to make sure that aviation
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: is safe. And the consequence of that is actually an
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: incredible unsung civilizational achievement. Just in the time I was
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation, we had 4 billion people get on
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: an airplane. 4 billion passenger appointments on commercial airplanes. The
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: number of fatalities was zero. Zero out of 4 billion. Crazy.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: There are very few things you can do in life.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, all the way down to like crossing the
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: street or eating a cheeseburger that would have a zero
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: to 4 billion fatality rate. So that's an amazing achievement
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that happened because there is the right framework with technology
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: and rules where you have a lot of innovation. I mean,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the aerospace sector is known to be very innovative, but
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: also you need to make sure it's safe. And it's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: worth considering that when we're saying, okay, how do we
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: make sure that these AI technologies develop so that we
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: can have safer vehicles or you can get a better
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: screening of a radiology scan for cancer or any of
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: these other things, all the way down to like, you know,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: these amazing ideas about curing cancer or figuring out nuclear fusion,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: which are urgently important things to do. without having the
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: kind of AI equivalent of a plane crash.
• 49:06
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  Speaker 2: so much more. They provide over 160 lab tests for
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: what is equal to a dollar a day and member
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: pricing on advanced imaging. Head to functionhealth.com slash DOAC to
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: join and use code DOAC25 for a $ 25 credit. There's
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: also just a broader debate, which I guess in some
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: ways connected to this at the moment in America, but
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: actually also across the Western world. It's happening in the
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: UK as well. around capitalism, socialism, and I think a
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: lot of it's driven by the inequality that people are experiencing.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: And if my memory is true, the US has more
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: extreme inequality. It has more growth, GDP growth, but it
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: has more extreme inequality than a country like the United Kingdom.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: So socialism is often considered to be the solution to
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: this inequality. Memdani is now the mayor of New York.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: And we're seeing, you know, in the UK, socialist parties
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: are becoming more and more popular. The idea of taxing
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: the rich is becoming very popular. Big debate actually this
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: week in the UK is, should we implement a wealth
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: tax on people who have wealth above 10 million? Keen
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: to get your perspective on this. Is socialism, is wealth
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: tax is the right solution to some of these problems
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: of inequality?
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Well, I find socialism is a word that means less
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: and less the more people use it. It gets thrown
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: around as a label. It means different things to different people.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: And I'll take your example to illustrate this. You know,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: higher taxes for very wealthy people is an idea that
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is broadly popular. I think it's the right thing to do.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: And importantly, we have a tradition of doing that already
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: in the United States. Some of the highest taxes, there
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: was a point where the income tax for the wealthiest
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: tax bracket in the country was around 90% in the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: United States. I'm not saying we need to go back
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: to that. I'm just saying. Then that was happening in
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the 40s and 50s and 60s when the Cold War
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: was going on and the US represented capitalism against communism
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: or some would put socialism would lump it in with that, right?
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: So there is a tradition of the US being a
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: fully capitalist country and also doing a better job of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: heading off this inequality. And the point of dealing with
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the inequality wasn't to punish the wealthy. It was to
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: make sure that that level of wealth didn't go off
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the rails and that it didn't turn into a level
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: of political power that could bring down the whole system, which,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: by the way, is the problem I think we're facing now.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: First of all, our tax system taxes wealth less than
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: it taxes work. That's a problem. That's an even bigger
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: problem now that AI is coming for jobs because there's
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: basically a thumb on the scale, a subsidy, in effect,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: from the US government saying, giving you a little more
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: reason to automate a job than you otherwise would because
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: things like capital gains taxes come in lower than things
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: like income taxes. Now, wealth tax, which is a property
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: tax by another name, can be part of the menu
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: of taxes you have to get enough revenue and to
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: make sure that outcomes are fair. You can argue about
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: where to draw the line. I think some people... have
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: proposals that set it too high. You can also argue
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: about whether you have to have a wealth tax or
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: whether you can get the job done with capital gains
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: and income and other taxes. But what we know right
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: now is that our system is so out of whack
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that if you are a multi-billionaire, you probably pay a
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: lower percentage of what you make in taxes than if
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: you're a school teacher or a firefighter. We even, in
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: percentage terms, generally, tax billionaires less than we tax millionaires. Because, again,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: of this system that kind of favors wealth. So the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: more you have, the more you make and the less
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: it's taxed. Surely we can do better than that.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: So you're supportive of wealth taxes. And I'm defining that
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: as not taxing income, but looking at the net worth
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: of somebody and taking a percentage of their net worth.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, to me, that's just a variation on the
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: idea of a property tax. I think it's legitimate. There
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: are some problems with doing it in practical terms.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why it's hard, right?
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Or like how do you test somebody's art collection? There
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: are things that can make it tricky.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I learned when I had
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: this company and it was a public company, so I
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: had public stock. And someone came along and said, Stephen,
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: you know with your public stock that you have? So
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: I started this company when I was 21. It does well.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: By 27, the stock that I have is public stock,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: which means it's on a stock market. Someone came to
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: me at 27 and said, Stephen, do you know you
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: can just take a loan against your public stock? I went, what?
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: You can just get a tax-free loan. So if your
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: stock is worth $ 50 million right now, they will give
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: you a 50% loan without paying tax on that stock.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Crazy low interest rate, right?
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Almost nothing. They will just transfer you today $ 25 million
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: in cash and you will have to pay no tax.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: And guess what? If the stock comes down, they'll just
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: sell it. So you'll never really... have like a real
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: sort of tax liability there. I couldn't believe this was possible.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: I was like, is this what all the rich people do?
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: And they told me, yes, this is how it works.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: This is what Elon's doing. Elon is taking a pretty
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: much tax-free loan against his Tesla stock and they're transferring
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: him a billion dollars in cash and he can live
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: off that, start new companies with that and never have
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: to have a tax transaction. So I thought, why don't
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: politicians tax that?
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: There's always going to be a cat and mouse, right?
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Whenever we figure out a way to make sure you
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: can't hide all of your wealth or all of your
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: income from being fairly taxed, very wealthy people will figure
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: out some other place to hide it.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: And then we'll have to develop a new policy to
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: deal with that. I guess my point is that's okay.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Too often, we have just hesitated to do anything, refused
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: to do anything because it might be hard or because
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it might not last. Yeah. But if the idea that
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: somebody will figure out a way around this law meant
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: that you shouldn't have the law, that would be an
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: argument against having any law. Mm-hmm. So it's messy. It's hard.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: But I am sure that if we had a more
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: reasonable rate of taxation on capital gains and on corporate income,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: and if we made it harder to pass along wealth
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: without– especially inherited wealth without paying any taxes on it
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: or some of these other maneuvers like this borrowing thing
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: you're talking about, we would have a fairer country because
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: we'd still have capitalism. There'd still be lots of motivation
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: and lots of reason to innovate and build a business
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: and create jobs and do all the things that very
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: wealthy people have done. And also, we would be out
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: of this doom loop we're in where they're saying, well,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: we can't possibly have as good healthcare as other countries.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: We couldn't possibly do something like, I don't know, fast
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: trains here in the United States. We couldn't possibly have
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: rural hospitals be properly funded or public education. Of course
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: we can. This is the wealthiest economy in the world.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't add up that we can't have nice things.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: But if we aren't collecting a fair level of taxes,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: then of course, we're going to come up short when
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: we're trying to fund those things. And the biggest thing
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: of all that numerically that we're facing right now is
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: this massive debt. Now, it's not fashionable on the left
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: to talk about deficits and the debt, partly because I
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: think Democrats are pretty sick of that being invoked as
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: a reason not to do things like roads and bridges
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: and schools and hospitals that we believe in. But It's
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: now escalated to a level that no one can ignore it.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: It turns out some analysis has suggested or shown that
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: if you start the clock at the beginning of this
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: century with the big Bush tax cuts in, I think, 2001,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: and then you go through the Trump tax cuts for
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the wealthiest, you add all that up, if it weren't
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: for all those tax cuts, the debt would actually be
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: going down right now. So they can fully account for
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: what's happened to the increase in the debt. And we
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: just don't have to accept that.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: Got this graph here of US national debt growth. I'll
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: throw that up on the screen. Between 1970 and 2026,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: it looks like a rocket is taking off. And I
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: sat here with Ray Dalio just a couple of days ago.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: He talks about these sort of big economic boom and
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: bust cycles. He talks about how every 80 years or so,
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: you kind of see a great power falter and struggle.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: And we are 80 years into the American power. And
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: he says that the writing is on the wall as
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: it relates to what happens next And you let that
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: go like this and you start getting sort of internal
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: conflict and you start trying to please the world.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: And yeah. And what's going on with the debt is
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: both evidence of it and part of the problem. I
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: think it's a symptom, but in some ways it's a cause.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: It could be a cause of a currency crisis or
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: force us to redo our whole tax code within the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: next few years. One thing I learned about recently. There's
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: a principle called Stein's Law. It's named after a Reagan-era economist,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: actually the father of Ben Stein from, if you remember,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Ferris Bueller. The principle is very simple. If something cannot
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: go on forever, it will stop. It's one of these
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: blindingly obvious things that we don't think about enough at
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: a moment like this where everybody agrees the debt can't
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: keep going up like this. It's just almost definitionally impossible.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Pretty much everyone agrees our politics can't go on like this.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: And if something can't go on forever, it won't. So
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the question is, okay, then what's going to happen? I
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: believe one of two things can happen. Reform or catastrophe.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: And the whole reason I'm involved in public life is
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: to try to make sure that it's reform and not catastrophe.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Can I ask a question on this? So on this
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Steins law thing and why, irrespective of what you've just said,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: which makes perfect sense to me, This line keeps going
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: up of national debt. Is it in part kind of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: like musical chess with politicians where you come in for
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: four years and the music is playing and you're kind
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: of hoping that the music doesn't stop during your term
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: because you want to spend money because that's politically positive.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: If you're helping people's health care, if you're building infrastructure, positive.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: People are going to like you more. They're going to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: vote you in. But the nature of politics means that
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: you really do play for four years and then maybe
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: you play for eight.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: But this might be a two-decade catastrophe. The music might
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: stop in two decades. So actually, when you think about
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: people's incentive structures, you're incentivized to actually not think about
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: the future. You're incentivized to be remembered and pass the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: baton to the next Democrat in four years' time in
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: a way that's positive. So that's why we're seeing this.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: Because clearly, if someone was in power for 100 years,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: or maybe if the time horizon was even longer... Maybe
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: they would have thought about this debt rapidly increasing.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think it also comes down to, why
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: do you think you're here if you're in office? Like,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: are you in office just in order to hold it?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: It seems like that sometimes.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: It's not worth it. Being in a position to make
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: a difference and hold public office, like, it's an exciting thing.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: It's a compelling thing. It's a meaningful thing. And it
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: comes with a lot of things that are, you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: good for your ego. I get all of that. But also,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: it's just not worth it unless you understand that you
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: hold an office in order to do things with policy
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and power to make people better off, not the other
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: way around.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: I guess the American people and everybody listening now will
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: be thinking, fool me once, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, because I've
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: sat there and I've watched the elections and all of
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: them talk about bringing down the public debt. And then
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: I look at this graph and I go, oh, it
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: goes up again. And Trump says the same about spending
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: and it's gone up again. It almost feels like in
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: a way that.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I feel like you're trying to be nice.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: I just, I don't know.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: I can understand why people are sort of disenfranchised with politics.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: And I wonder if this is why they're picking a radical,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: you know, this is why.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: So.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: This is why.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: Because this is disruption. This is kind of burn it
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: down to some degree.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Right. So this is why everywhere I go, I'm trying
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: to talk to my own party about making sure that
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: we understand that dealing with this is not the be
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: all and end all. that our mission can't be to
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: just take power and then go back to what we
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: had before. That what we had before is actually what
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: led to this. In other words, guys like Trump don't
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: get very far unless you're already in an environment where
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: the political and social and economic systems are letting people down,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: which is, I think, how we wound up here. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I worry there's a big temptation, there will be a
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: big temptation in my party to say, okay, our job
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: is to take power, turn back the clock, reverse the damage,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: fix what was broken, and get us back to where
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: we were, get us back on track. I hear the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: word back a lot. I hear the prefix re a lot, reverse, rebuild.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And I'm very worried about that, distracting from what our
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: actual mission has to be, which is to change and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: fix things so that we'll be set up well for
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: the next 80 years. So that's a harder project for sure.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: But also sometimes the incentives change because the public is
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: ready for something different. And I think the public tried
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: one flavor of something different with Trumpism and is ready
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: to spit it out. And so the question then is, okay,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: what are we offering in its place? And to me,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: that's where some very day-to-day things like setting up a
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: better healthcare system or reducing what we're paying in tariffs
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: or better infrastructure or any of the other policies, you know,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: paid family leave, all these policy things that I'd like
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: to see happen. really depend on fixing a political system
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: that's just not as sexy. But it can be powerfully
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: motivating because our country was started by people who fought
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: a revolution to change the political system. And I just
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: can't imagine that it was just like Jefferson and Hamilton,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: these guys sitting in their studies, reading, you know, John
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Locke and Rousseau and thinking, oh, it would be neat
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: to try that somewhere.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: They believed that like their lives and everybody's lives would
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: be better, different if we actually had a different system.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: And then they risked violent death in order to challenge
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: the existing political system that was the monarchy and replace
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: it with the republic, the democratic country that they set
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: up that is the United States of America, right? So
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: it's not like this can't stir passion. Should we not
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: be a country where everybody's vote counts the same? That
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: would mean a popular vote for the presidents. We ought
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: to do that. I just think everybody's vote ought to
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: count the same. And the person who gets the most
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: votes ought to win. This is a hard thing for
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: us to buy into in literally any other election we
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: run in our political system. We need to do things
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: like make it just ban gerrymandering where districts are being drawn.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: So consider this. We have 435 seats in the House.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Nine out of 10 are so red or so blue
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: that you basically know who's going to win before the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: first vote is cast. Nine out of 10. In a
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: 50-50 country. That makes no sense. And of course, what
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: it leads to is the people in those seats are
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: either very comfortable and not really worried about being responsive
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: to the people, or if they are in danger, they're
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: in danger from their own side. What's amazing to me,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: when I look at how Americans feel about certain big issues,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: like making sure there's healthcare for everybody, or raising the
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: minimum wage or having higher rates of taxes on the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: wealthy and on corporations or background checks on guns or
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: marriage equality for same-sex couples, all kinds of things. There's
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: like 60% or 70% agreement on most of the issues
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that most people tell pollsters they care about the most.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: So how can we be a country that's got 60%
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: or 70% agreement on issue after issue after issue? And
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: we fail to get those policies done and we keep
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: proceeding like it's normal. to be a 50-50 country where
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: everybody's at each other's throats. That, to me, is evidence
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: of a broken system. If we don't fix the system,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get very far.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because when I think about the last sort
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: of 20 years of politics, we had the Bush era.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: Then we had Democrats and so on that were very polished.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Bush was kind of very polished as well. Then we
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: had Biden, who was very polished, kind of like a
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: career politician, says the right things, reads off the teleprompter.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: And then it seems globally– Like people wanted some disruption.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: We had Brexit going on over there. We've got Nigel
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: Farage increasing in popularity over the last 10 years or
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: so as it relates to his political probabilities. And then
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: over in the United States, we have Trump arrive. Again,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: not a career politician, not clean, not teleprompter kind of guy.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: If Democrats are to win, as you say, it's certainly
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: not going to go back to the polished Joe Biden teleprompter.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: I almost think that there's going to need to be
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: some disruptive character on the left side of politics to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: win over those independents, but also some of those Republicans.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Do you agree with that broadly? I think that's right.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it depends what we mean by polished, right?
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: That can mean a lot of different things, I think.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: But I think you're talking about a sort of authenticity
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: that people expect. And the paradox of Trump is he's
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: authentic even when he's lying. Because it just seems like he's,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever he is, he's not reading talking points.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: At least that's how it seems. I think also part
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: of this is just the, it's actually a technology thing.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: So the technology that dominated politics for decades as long
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: as I've been alive, was television. And I think it
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: produced a generation of people. You know, George W. Bush,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump were all born within a
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: few weeks of each other. Yeah, they were all products
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: of the summer of, I think it was 1946. Coming
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: out of that generation, Joe Biden, near to them in age, right,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: into whatever's next, I think you're going to have leaders,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and this can be potentially a very good thing, who
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: are just a little bit better able to just kind
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: of show their humanity. Being in a long podcast like
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: this one, right? Like I remember when long form meant
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: like maybe a 30-minute NPR interview. Now you're sitting for
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes two or three hours. I don't think it's possible
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: as a matter of physical stamina to stay on talking
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: points for two or three hours if you want to.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, once said that running for office
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: is like an MRI of the soul anyway. But that's
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: even more true now than it used to be because
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: you just– there's so many different kind of ways of
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: having to kind of show who you are. We used
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: to imagine that the people in charge are just like
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: next level– Like on a different plane of existence. And
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's become harder and harder to believe that
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: because we know too much, right? And so I think
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: we're trading that for just wanting people that we have
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: a reason to trust.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: We see the same across business. We talk a lot
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: about over the last 10 years how we've shifted from
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: this black box world where the PR department would paint
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: the image of the company on the outside of this
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: black box.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: And then we move because of phones and everyone has
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: a mobile phone now and a camera in their pocket
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: and a social media platform so they can give their
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: own opinion. There's glass box world where actually the job
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: is to let everybody see inside. Because if you don't,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: someone else will paint the box for you. So actually
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: defense became the big CEOs in the world now coming
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: on podcasts and having a personal brand and having a
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: social media account. I think the same for politicians that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: actually the winning strategy now is being a glass box,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: which is build your own reference points through transparency. Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: which is why the podcasts like this are, I think,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: probably going to dominate the next election cycle to some degree.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's true not just for politics, like
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: running and being a candidate. I think it's increasingly true
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: for government too. I mean, I started to feel this
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: at the Department of Transportation. You're running this huge enterprise, 55,000 people,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: $ 145 billion. It's bigger than most GDPs in most countries.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: And what I found was that there were so many
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: situations where people who just are generally mistrustful of government
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: or media would assume the worst. And the only antidote
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: to that was to be way more transparent than a
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: federal agency or department was used to being. But what
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: I found was kind of the machinery of the department
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: was not set up for that. It was designed to be,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: you know, accountable, but accountable in the sense that if
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: there's something going on and a member of Congress is
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: worried about it, they can write a letter and six
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: months later they'll get a report. And I'm trying to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: figure out how do I– because, you know, I'd carry
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: a phone in my pocket too. Like how do I
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: take it out sometimes and like shoot a video and
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: like tell people what's going on? sometimes they're going to
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: think that we don't care about them, that we're putting
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: a highway through their neighborhood and we don't care how
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: it's going to hurt them, or that we're not responding
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: to a disaster in a Republican area because it's a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Republican area, or any other number of things that people
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: might believe if we don't show them what we're actually
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: doing and why.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: Got this cap here, Pete Buttigieg, 2028. When you think
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: about running for president or being president of the United States,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: the most powerful nation on earth, Do you not have
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: imposter syndrome? And what is it about the job that
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: you think, because, you know, it's pretty crazy for anyone
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: to think they can run the most powerful nation on
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: earth and not think, God, there's a couple of things
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: that I'm not going to be great at.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of the system was
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: that no one person should have too much power, right?
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: That's why we got rid of monarchy. But we've wound
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: up with this presidency that uniquely in our country, not
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: just the country, the world, right, has this incredible amount
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: of power. that the lives of billions of people go
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: differently and could be much better or could be much
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: worse based on decisions that get made in that office.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: And the idea that we would have just one human
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: being doing that is on some level terrifying. But, you know,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: part of what we did as a country is we
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: set up a whole bunch of things around that human being.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: And that's everything from like advisors to laws to Congress,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: you know, and the courts. Like, to make sure that
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: there's some balance to try to make sure that whoever's
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: in that seat can make the best decisions they possibly
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: could and has to act within certain boundaries. But yeah,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, all the way down to when I
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: was elected mayor and I was in my 20s, like, obviously,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I believed I could do the job or I wouldn't
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: run for it. But, you know, even just walking into
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: the office of the mayor of the fourth largest city
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: in Indiana on the 14th floor of the county city
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: building and the snow's coming down the first day I've
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: It was New Year's Day, first day I was officially
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: in office. And I'm thinking, I'm now responsible for making
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: sure the snow gets plowed. And if we don't do
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: it right, not only will I get in trouble politically,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: somebody could be harmed, right? But I think any office,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: any job, you have to let that weight sit on
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: your shoulders and then have it push you to be
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: better at the job. Oh, there we go.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was election day. That was a great feeling.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: But I remember also immediately feeling this thrill of having won.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: And if you're a competitive person, it's also the excitement
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: of having beaten your competitors. But having to balance that with, okay,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I said that if you elected me, I'd be able
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: to get these things done. And now I actually got
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: to produce.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Are you scared of the consequences of being president one day?
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Any president should be. Anybody who's even being seriously talked
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: about or considered for it should be. puts you in
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: a position where you have a responsibility to say things
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: that make sense and think about what you have to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: say and know that your words, even if you have
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: no official power, but that still things that you do
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: or say could help or hurt people just by talking,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: just by going on a podcast that millions of people
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: listen to.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: And there's really four front runners, according to the data
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: that I saw, which is yourself, Gavin Newsom, AOC, and
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: Kamala Harris.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I've now interviewed three of them. Which one haven't you
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: got to yet?
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: AOC. I think this thing is in the works.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: Very different.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: Candidates, I'd say. Yeah. That's individuals.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: If not you, then which one of them?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: It's just a bad idea to answer that question. I'm sorry.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I want to be transparent, but like.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: You must have an answer though.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: Let the truth set you free, Secretary.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: She was lovely. Gavin's nice.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: Which one are you closest friends with?
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, the one I've spent most time with is
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: her because, you know, she was vice president and I
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: was working in transportation. There were times we travel together.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: She was very involved in trying to get the infrastructure
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: bill done, which is kind of the biggest thing that
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I worked on, the legislation to get roads and bridges
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: and airports.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Is she misunderstood?
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: I think anybody at that level is misunderstood. I don't
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: know if I'm qualified to evaluate more or less than
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: other people in that job. I think anybody, the vice
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: presidency or any job with that visibility puts you in
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: a position where It's hard for people to see your
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: humanity when you're bearing the responsibility that you have. And
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: even at other levels of government, I think this is true.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: I think high office does that. I think office that
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: high especially does it.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Do you think she could be a good president?
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Sure. I mean, I campaigned for her very energetically when
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: she was running for president. I went all over the
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: country trying to convince America to And I did that
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: because I thought she'd be a very good president.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: What about Gavin Newsom?
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been– he's not someone I know as well
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: as her, but he's somebody I've worked with a lot. Obviously,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: California was a place where we were doing a lot
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: of our best infrastructure work. And he's somebody who– I
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: think he understands how to break through in this kind
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: of attention world that we're in where– You know, the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: old formats and the old norms just don't cut it
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: anymore in terms of getting your message across.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: And AOC?
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: I think she has spoken to so many people who
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: understand that the system is letting them down. I might
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: not agree with her on every policy. For example, on
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure law that I worked with the vice president
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: on and worked with Gavin on. She didn't see that
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: the way we did. You know, I respect that she
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: has activated a lot of young people, not just young people,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: She's activated a lot of people who were looking around
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: saying the way things work doesn't serve me. And there's
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the generational thing. And when I ran for president, I
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: was running on largely on a message of generational change.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't win, obviously.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden won. You got behind him. Near the end
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: of his time as president, I mean, we all saw it.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: We saw him go out and do those debates against Trump.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: And I think it was obvious to anyone who's being
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: intellectually honest with themselves and objective that Joe Biden wasn't
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: the same Joe Biden that we've seen over the last 20,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: 30 years. And that something had changed quite considerably with
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: his cognitive performance. Were you aware of that? Because you
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: were part of his team at that time. Were you
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: aware that something was different?
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I saw the same thing that America saw, right? It's
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: not like I was in a room with him every day,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: but whether it was in front of cameras or whether
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I was invited to be in a meeting at the
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: White House. I saw what America saw, which is that
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: he was getting older.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, Collins' performance is pretty important for the most
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: powerful job on earth. Were you concerned?
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: I was definitely concerned when I saw the debate.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: I mean... You weren't concerned at any point before the debate?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Up until that moment, I saw that he was visibly
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: growing older. But there was never some moment where I
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: saw him make a different decision or at least in
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: terms of anything that I was involved with, transportation, debt.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: I thought it was going different or worse or I
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't get what I needed from him or from the
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: White House because of his age. But of course, the
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: job is not just policy guidance. The job is also
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: to convey and communicate to the American people what your
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: administration is doing and why. That's the job of a president.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: It's in some ways 100% the job of a candidate.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: And there was no watching the debate and not realizing
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: how much of a burden that was.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: You just said then that you're even conscious of, like
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: even in this medium, every sentence counts. You say one sentence,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: that's the wrong sentence. Theoretically, it could have consequences. And
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: you just said this is someone that doesn't currently have
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: a job. The president of the United States, Joe Biden,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: muddling up his sentences in front of the nation like
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: he did in that debate is probably not good enough.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: To be in that position.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that was the beginning, of course, of the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: process that led him to reach the same conclusion.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: Do you have a private conversation with him?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: No, I wasn't. I was in the cabinet, but that
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean I was invited to rooms when they were
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: talking about things like whether he was going to run
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: for president again.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: Did the Democrats make the right decision there? A hundred
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: days until the election to swap in Kamala Harris at
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: that point? Like in hindsight, if you're honest with yourself. Yeah.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: I thought about the lot because I think in the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: moment it felt like, oh, we have very little time.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: We've all got to pull together. We've got to put
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: ego aside. We've got to put kind of internal politics aside.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: And we've got to quickly speak with one voice. Partly
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: because I knew and we all knew what could happen
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: to this country if Donald Trump was elected again. And
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: I believe– all of those harms and then some have
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: come to pass. But the other side of the coin
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: is if there had been some way to have a competition,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: even with that very short timeline, I think that even
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: if the candidate had still been Kamala Harris, I think
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: she likely would have been a better candidate. I think
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: in 2020, Joe Biden was a better candidate because he
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: had to compete with Kamala Harris and me and like
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: 18 other Democrats before winning that process. And I think
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: that in general, we know the competition sharpens you. We
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: know the competition gets more information out. And I'm not
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: saying I have it all solved in my head how
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: that could have been done on the timeline that we
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: faced or what it would have been like. But I
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: think with the hindsight that we have now, I think
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that we would have been better off
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: if we had that.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we talked about maybe people are looking for
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: something a little bit more radical this time around. What
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: are your most radical ideas as it relates to policies
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: you would be in favor of. I know you're keen
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: to remove the electoral college and do it based on numbers,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: the quantity of votes for either presidential candidate.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: And I still can't believe that anybody considers this radical. Like,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to me, there's nothing radical about thinking the person who
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: gets the most votes ought to be the winner. But
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: I think people haven't thought through how much benefit would
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: come from that. We did that. There are so many
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: votes in red and blue states that you couldn't ignore anymore. Like,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: if you were running for president, as a Democrat, you'd
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: have to go to Texas. And even if Texas is
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: still going to vote mostly for Republicans, you'd have to
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: turn out every Democratic vote you could in Texas. And
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I just think we'd be so much better off if
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: a Republican and Democratic candidate were competing over Texas. And
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: by the way, New York, even if New York is
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: definitely going to vote more for Democrats, a Republican candidate
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: would have to come to New York. And states from
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: Alaska to Rhode Island, so it's small states too, they
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: get ignored now. Would finally be part of this competition.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Electoral College for sure. Supreme Court needs to change.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court? What would you do to the Supreme Court?
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: I would have term limits, more justices, and some process
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: that makes it less partisan who the justices are. Some
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: different ways to do that. The one I think is
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: most interesting is called the balanced bench proposal. We have
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: a mix. But anyway, the point is it needs to change.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives, like I said earlier. should be proportional.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: It means that– I was saying earlier how to work
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: for like school board or city council where sometimes you
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: get more than one vote and more than one person wins.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: We can do that for Congress. People get the top
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: three votes, not just one, get to go to Congress.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: So you'd have bigger districts, fewer districts, harder to gerrymander.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: By the way, an easier change that I think we
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: should do right away is ban gerrymandering.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: Look at four things there.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: Let me give you one more. Constitutional amendments. to deal
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: with money in politics. If the Supreme Court said in
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: the Citizens United decision that a corporation is the same
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: thing as a person for these purposes and that spending
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: money to manipulate an election is the same constitutionally protected
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: behavior as writing an op-ed or carrying a sign at
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: a protest, we need to clarify that corporate spending is
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: not speech. And corporations are not citizens, people in the
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: same way that a human being is. And we can
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: do that with a constitutional amendment.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: And so what would that mean? It would mean that
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: you couldn't just, if a company couldn't just pump money
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: into a political country. Right.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Congress could, then you could actually have laws, which we
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: used to have, like the McCain-Feingold law, which was struck
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: down in Citizens United. But we could get to where
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Congress can once more have laws saying that you can't
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: put unlimited, unaccountable, corporate, dark money into a super PAC
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: to manipulate how an election is going to go. And
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: it's one more of these things that like two-thirds of
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: the people think we ought to do.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Why does it happen then?
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Because so many people who are already in office like
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: the system just the way it is. And because of
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: a Supreme Court. I actually think you could get it
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: through Congress, but the Supreme Court won't let you because
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: their interpretation of the Constitution is that you can't have
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: these kinds of rules. So what do you do? If necessary,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: amend the Constitution. People forget the best thing about the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: Constitution is is its capability to be amended. When we
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: talk about the most cherished part of the Constitution, many
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: people will say the First Amendment, right? That's the one
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: that gives us free speech. And we miss that the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: word amendment being in there signals to us that it
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't part of the original text of the Constitution. It's
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: an amendment. It's something they had to add on after.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: So is the Second Amendment. I mean, all of them
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: by definition, right? So we shouldn't be afraid of that
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's only by an amendment that we
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: get to pick who our senators are. Before that, it
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: was the legislature. Same thing for making sure that black
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: voters and the women could be voters. We shouldn't be
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: afraid to use maybe the most elegant feature of the
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: entire constitution, which is that it has a process to
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: change it.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: We should use it.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: All of the things I've mentioned are these kind of
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: system reforms. They're about the engine. So then the policies...
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: What comes out of the engine? Like, do we get
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: paid family leave in this country? Do we have fair taxes?
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Is there a healthcare system that gets everybody healthcare? All
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: that stuff is decided by a government that works better.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: time consuming and we're all very, very busy. And if
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: you've never posted something before, there's so many factors in
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: your psychology that stop you wanting to post. what people
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: will think of you. Am I doing this right? Is
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid? All of these result
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: in paralysis, which means you don't post and your feed
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: goes bare. I'm an investor in a company called Stan Store,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: which you've probably heard me talk about. And what they've
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: been building is this new tool called Stanley that uses AI,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: looks at your history, looks at your best performing posts
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: and tells you what you should post, makes those posts
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: for you. You can also just use it for inspiration
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: and sometimes what we need when we're thinking about doing
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: a post for our social media channels is inspiration. Building
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: an audience has fundamentally changed my life and I think
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: it could change yours too. So I'm inviting you to
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: give this new tool a shot and let me know
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: what you think. All you have to do is search coach.stand.store
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: now to get started. there should be a button just
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: down below here. And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: favor and hit that button? It helps the show more
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. What do you think of Elon Musk?
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: The richest man on earth, the arguably most famous entrepreneur
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: on planet earth, building companies here in America.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Very intelligent. has had an extremely important impact on a
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of things, is right about a lot of
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: things and is very wrong about a lot of things,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: and lacked the humility to understand some things that would
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: have saved him from doing a lot of damage based
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: on how wrong he was. So you look, for example,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: at the tragedy of the failure of Doge. And the
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: thing that most upsets me about the failure of Doge
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: is that we actually needed an effort around government efficiency.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: But what we got was unbelievably sloppy, making math errors.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: And the one thing they're supposed to be really good
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: at ought to be math. I don't mean like little
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: rounding errors, like saying billion when they meant million on
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: the quote unquote wall of receipts, the whole purpose of
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: which was to show that they knew what they were
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: doing and they were transparently documenting their choices. Firing people
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: they didn't know what they did and then having to
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: scramble and hire them back on things like nuclear weapons
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: safety or managing biohazards and communicable diseases. And leaving a
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: federal government that actually spent more after Doge than before.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: Elon used to be a Democrat.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: He would then have had him say this, that the
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: Biden administration basically snubbed him. They were sort of adversarial
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: towards him. There's always the story people talk about, about
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: the electric vehicle summit in 2021, where everybody was invited, GM, Ford, Chrysler,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: but Elon wasn't invited.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: And that was a mistake. I was there for that.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: I can tell you how the mistake happened. There was
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: a difficult and complex set of negotiations happening between the
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: big three automakers. to try to get to a new
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: framework moving forward on tailpipe standards. This event was built
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: to kind of celebrate the agreement that had been reached
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: around tailpipe standards. And Tesla, because all they make are EVs,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't even have tailpipes. And so people weren't really thinking
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: about inviting Kessler. But what Elon saw was there's an
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: event at the White House about EVs. He is, if
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: not single-handedly responsible, certainly is the person most responsible for
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: EV excellence on American soil. And he's saying, what the fuck?
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't blame him for that.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: And he publicly broke ranks with the Democrat Party. He
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: bought Twitter. and ultimately became Donald Trump's largest donor and
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: key surrogate. I think I ask this question because I
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: think any president is going to need to contend with
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: both solving the problem of inequality, this national debt, while
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: also keeping entrepreneurs happy and highly productive at the same time.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: And of the two parties, Republican and Democrat, The party
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: that is typically, according to the data, more associated with
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: being entrepreneur-friendly is the Republican Party. It's not often you
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: hear billionaires are evil coming from the Republican side. But
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: that's a prevailing narrative on the Democratic side is that
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: billionaires are evil.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the prevailing narrative, but I
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: get what you mean.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: So it's more dominant on the left than it is
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: on the right.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's fair. But look, I mean, you have
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: to engage everybody. If you want to be in a
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: high position of leadership. Like the last time I had
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: a specific problem with Elon when I was Department of Transportation,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I called him. We talked it out and we figured
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: it out and we actually solved a problem together. It
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: is amazing in my experience how many problems can be,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: if not solved, at least better faced if you just
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: pick up the phone. And we have this style of
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: politics now where everything's combat. You're not just disagreeing with somebody,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: you got to destroy them, right? And that's really bad
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: for America. It does not lead to good political outcomes.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: And so especially when I disagree with somebody or I
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: have a problem with what they're doing, we should be talking.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: On the left, you've got AOC saying you can't make
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars. Is that
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: true in your view?
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know. That doesn't make a ton of sense
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: to me. I will say there's a lot of different
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: ways you can get a billion dollars. And right now,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: the easiest way to get a billion dollars is to
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: have $ 10 billion and do nothing. You know, the thing
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: we most admire about the entrepreneur is that they work
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: hard and they do things and they make things, right?
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: And they generate value. And I think most Americans don't
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: spite you the value that you get from having created
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: even more value. I think at the same time, we
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: see a lot of outcomes in the market that seem
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: to be about just like money just sort of happening
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: to whoever already has money. Many of them have seen
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: their wealth go up like tenfold in the last few years.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: way more than how much their wealth went up in
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: the few years before that. So I guess like the
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: thing you did between zero and a billion, in my experience,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: is usually much more impressive than whatever you did between
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: 1 billion and 10 or 10 and 100 or 100
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: and 500. And I think we are in a political
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: system where it would just be so naive to think
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: that the amount that the market gives you is just
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: purely equal to the amount of benefit that you create
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: or the amount of hard work that you put in.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Some people work hard and they earn a lot. And
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: some people don't do shit and they wind up with
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: a lot. And some people are a mix of.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: Those two things. It's definitely not correlated to hard work.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: That is for sure. I've never met anyone that worked
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: harder than my mom and working, you know, coming from Nigeria,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: can't read or write, comes to the UK, works every
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: waking hour that she can, never complains and still financially
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: struggling as a result of that all the time growing up. So,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I know that very intimately that hard work
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't equal wealth at all.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: And I don't think people would be as angry about
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: billionaires as they are. if there weren't millions of people
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: whose story is closer to that of your mom. And
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: it brings me back to this idea of the American
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: dream where, you know, it's supposed to be the case
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: that generally you come out ahead. If you, as the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: saying goes, you work hard and you play by the rules.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: And that definitely happens sometimes, but it doesn't happen enough now.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: And most importantly, it happens less in America than in
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: certain other countries. And it happens less in America than
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: it used to in America. And those two things, are
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: the big blinking alarm lights to me.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: AOC also said a system that allows billionaires to exist
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: is immoral.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I agree with that. It's not
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: whether they exist. It's having too much power. It's being
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: able to turn economic power into political power. And then
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: using that power to get even more wealth. That's why
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: people are so furious because they see that happening and
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: are not wrong. And The role of money in our
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: politics is just one example, probably the biggest example of
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: how that can happen. I think Americans wouldn't mind people
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: being as wealthy as they are nearly as much if
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't have the inequality that we have. And if
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: we didn't have some of those people using their wealth
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: to assert political power in a country whose whole founding
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: principle is that the millionaire, or I guess billionaire, stands
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: in line next to the dishwasher and the taxi driver
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: in the voting booth. Booth and they all have the
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: same political power.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because I can weirdly relate to both
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: sides of the spectrum. If you go back, I don't know,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: 13 years, I am broke. Family aren't speaking to me
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: because I've decided to drop out university and I can't
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: feed myself, to put it in a nice way, for
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: a long period of time, living many hundreds of miles
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: away from home in terms of a round trip. And
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: then you jump 13 years forward and I'm running these
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: businesses and the businesses are going well. So I kind of,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: it's weird, I oscillate between these two worlds of entrepreneurship
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: and being very pro-entrepreneurship, but then falling back into that 18, 19,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: 20-year-old me who really needed society to catch him, to
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: be quite honest. Thankfully, I lived in the United Kingdom
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: where we have healthcare.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: But when I moved here at 25 years old to
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: launch the business here in New York City and run
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: the office here, I discovered that you guys don't offer, like, healthcare.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: And I had to, as the employer- pay for all
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: of my team members' healthcare. It was just really, what
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: the hell is going on? I thought this was the
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: land of the free and all those kinds of things.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: So I kind of understand both ends of the spectrum.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: And it makes me realize that actually it's the inequality.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: It's the people at the sort of bottom of the
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: ladder per se being so far from the top of
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: the ladder that is the central issue. So what is
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: the radical idea that you bring forward to end inequality?
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, presumably it's not just tax cuts Wealth?
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Here's the thing.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: How do you lift people?
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: I actually think the ideas for fixing those economic problems
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: aren't that radical. The weird thing is in order to
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: get what I think of as very reasonable economic ideas through,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: you have to have radical change on the political side. Economically,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: we can do this mostly with tools that are very
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: familiar to us. Make sure that there are higher tax rates,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: not to punish the wealthy, but to get enough revenue
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: to do so government can do its job. Make sure
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: there are higher tax rates on the not on all
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: Americans compared to today, but on the corporate profits and
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: on the wealthiest individuals. Make sure that it is harder
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: to hide and move around money so that you never
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: have to pay taxes on it at all. And then
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: what do you do with that money? You make sure
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: there's a healthcare system where, for example, somebody in the
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: situation you are in still gets to be an entrepreneur
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: because they don't actually have to worry that they won't
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: have healthcare if they don't just take the next low-wage
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: job available to them. Invest in education enough that we
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: are preparing for people who know not just how to
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: work but how to think so that when work changes,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: they're ready. Make sure that we make it easier to
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: have a family. Things like paid family leave and using
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: tax credits to compensate people who give care to their
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: parents and or children can have a huge freeing effect
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: on people. And I think it's the right thing to do.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: And it's a way to respect that that's work too.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: I've had roles and jobs where I have worked very,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: very hard. But the hardest I've ever worked in my
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: life was when I was on parental leave when we
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: adopted our newborn son and daughter, our twins. That was
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: the only time. There they are.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was the only time that I was
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: routinely getting up at 3 in the morning. If I
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: was lucky, I could get a nap at 5.30 in
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: the morning. And it was just working until I physically
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: couldn't work anymore and then tapping out and then Chasten
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: trying to, my husband trying to, you know, we'd alternate
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: and help each other. And that work, which is a
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: beautiful work, very hard work, is work. I think we
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: also need to invest in things like national service so
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: everybody has an experience. Military is not for everybody, but
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: everybody should know what it's like to be part of
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: something bigger than yourself and to work on something that
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: is hard with people you don't already know. I think
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: if we have that, we'll have more trust. Where do
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: you find this one?
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: So these are some photos of a much younger Pete.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: I'm really curious, you know, when I sat with Kamala,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: I learned a lot about her by just understanding where
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: she'd come from.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: And her parents and her early context. What is it
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: about your early context that shapes your worldview as Mayor Pete,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: but also Secretary Pete and potentially someday President Pete?
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Huh. Well... My dad came to this country because he
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: thought he could have a better life here. Not exactly
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: in a rags to riches sense. He came from a
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: middle class family in the tiny country of Malta. And
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: the way he tells the story is that he knew
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: that he wanted to come to the US and go
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: to grad school here. And he had a mentor who said, look,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: if you stay here, I can promise you that you
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: will be a big fish in a small pond. And
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: he said, I'd rather be a medium-sized fish in a
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: very big pond. Which is a great way to think
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: about coming to America. And that's exactly what he did.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: He came, he went to grad school in Binghamton, New York.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: And then he got a job in New Mexico, Las Cruces,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. He met my mother who was teaching there too.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: She was a young linguist. They got married and then
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: the first good job he got was at University of
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. They moved there and
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: pretty soon after that I was born. And so I
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: grew up with parents who cared a lot about literature
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: and learning and they cared a lot about politics. We
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: weren't like politically connected. I don't think I ever met
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: an elected official while I was a child. But I
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: grew up with a sense that it was very important
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: to know what was happening in the world. My dad
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: was always reading the newspaper. The TV was always tuned
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: to the news. It was just a sense like that's
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: the most important thing. Whatever's happening in the world is
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: the most important thing that you ought to be paying
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: attention to out there. I don't know. It was a
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: great upbringing with great parents and a good neighborhood and
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: good friends. You know, I felt both a sense of
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: belonging and a sense of being an outsider kind of
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: at the same time. And I had this name that
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: nobody could pronounce. And we were in this gray neighborhood.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: People did all kinds of different things. Our neighbor to
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: one side laid carpet. A family across from us were
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: retired public school teachers. Laying on the corner was a nurse,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: and I'd see her walk down to the night shift
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: at the hospital a couple blocks away every day. And
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: I felt like the texture of that neighborhood really belonged
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: to me. But at the same time, I also felt
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: and knew that I was different. This was before it
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: was like, trendy to drink espresso, for example. That was
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: like a weird immigrant thing that my dad did. You know,
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: like he had this little thing you would put on
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the stove and make espresso. And I remember them being
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: kind of bewildered when like Starbucks became a thing, you know.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: And then the surroundings of it all, the city of
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: South Bend, which people know that the University of Notre
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: Dame is there. But the other thing that was there
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: was Studebaker. This was as big a car company as
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: like GM or Ford in its day. But it stopped
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: making cars in 1963. They just couldn't quite innovate and
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: keep up and the company collapsed. That was a catastrophic
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: thing for the city. The city lost a big chunk
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: of its population and never really recovered it. And when
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, I didn't really know any different.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was unusual that factories that hadn't
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: been operating for decades, in some cases, that looked like
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: they'd been hit in a war. It was like collapsing,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: big giant structures falling apart all over this city. I'd
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: see him, you know, at the window of my dad's
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: Chevy when he was driving me to school. And gradually
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: as I grew up, I kind of put the pieces
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: together of what it meant to live in a place
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: whose best economic days had been behind it. And the
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: message that I got, the kind of lesson that I
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: was given was, I don't know if anybody said this
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: to me in a sentence, but what the world kind
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: of said to me was, if you want to be something,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: if you want to be someone, you have to get out.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: You have to move out.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: Did your dad say that?
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: Not that I remember. I mean, that's the irony. He's
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: this very worldly man, been all over the world, but
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: he chose to live in South Bend. He died in
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: South Bend, Indiana. That was where he lived his life.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. You just get this sense that
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: that was what you were supposed to do. And then
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: I did. I got into Harvard, got to the East
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: Coast to go to college, and then immediately began to
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: understand that I was from somewhere in a way that
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand when I was growing up and started
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: to feel this kind of loyalty there. It's kind of
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: like almost militant attachment, partly because I heard the ways
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: people talked about where I was from.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: He passed away while you were running for president?
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just right about the moment that I
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: was announcing the beginning of the campaign. Yeah, like literally
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: the same week.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: Unexpectedly?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: He had been diagnosed with cancer in September, and we
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: knew that it was pretty rough, and he passed away
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: in January. So, yeah, I mean, there was... You know,
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: not overnight, but three or four months.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: The stabilizing in the lead up to the most consequential
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: decision and period of your life?
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, this really big, important
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: part of your world. And we were close. You know,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I moved into a house that was on the same
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: block as where my parents lived in South Bend. Home
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: for dinner every Sunday night. I mean, to have him
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: become ill and then to have him pass away. just
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: at the moment that we were starting to launch. Sometimes
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: I look back on it. I actually don't know how
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: it worked. I was trying to remember something and I
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: looked back at my emails and I saw some email
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: I sent at like 3.30 in the morning to someone
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: on my staff, like it was normal. I think on
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: the city staff, because I was still mayor, right? So
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: I was running the city facing my father's death. During
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: that period, my mother had a heart attack and heart surgery.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: And then launching this campaign, like all within a few,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: really few weeks with each other. It's a lot.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: It's a lot at once. It's a lot for one
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: person to take. How do you deal with all of that?
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: The noise, the family stuff at home, the loss of
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: your father all at once. What's the strategy for?
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know if strategy is the word. Um, but
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: my way of dealing with it, first of all, I
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: had a lot to do with Chasten. So, uh, all
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: this happened. Yeah. We got married in. 2018. And all
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: of this happened toward the end of 2019. So we
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: hadn't been married for long. And he never guessed when
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: neither one of us guessed on our first date or
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: even when we got married that this was happening.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: What is the, you know, I've got lots of friends
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: who have been on the journey of sort of discovering
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: their sexual orientation at a young age and then going
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: through the process of being comfortable enough in their environment
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: to announce it to the world. How does that, what's
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: the sort of the journey of you knowing who you
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: were and then feeling comfortable enough to announce it? And
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: what was the, how do I put together the picture
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: of like how your parents understood that, how the world
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: understood that, how you understood that? And also, I guess
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: the other question that I have is like American politics.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: How does that understand it? You know, you've got the right,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: the left. How do you think about all of that
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: at the moment?
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'd like to believe we'll get to
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: a day when it's just not a thing. No one cares.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't affect your career. It doesn't affect your
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: opportunities in life. It just is what it is. That's
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: how I feel it should be. But, you know, that's
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: not how it was or how it is. I mean,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: when I was commissioned into the Navy Reserve. It was
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: still the law of the land that if I was
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: known to be gay, I'd be fired, right? In fact,
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: when I finally made peace with this reality that I
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: was gay, I was well into my 20s because I
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: wanted so bad for it not to be true that
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: even though, obviously, I was the whole time, I just
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: needed it not to be true. And working through that
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: took most of my twenties. And then when I finally
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: kind of came to terms with it, it was also
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: around the time that I was, I was running for
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: mayor and maybe because not being able to come terms
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: with it meant that I didn't have really a dating life.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe in some ways that helped professionally because I had
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: nothing else to do with my energy, you know? Um,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: But I remember when I realized I was going to win,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: I realized it was important that I kind of finish
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: the process of coming out to myself, which meant I
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: had to come out to somebody else. That was what
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: kind of marked it, you know? And so I had
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: a conversation with a close and trusted friend. And I
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: remember part of his reaction was to say, you know,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: To joke that like you didn't exactly make it easy
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: on yourself because, well, you know, my whole professional life
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: had two parts. One was being a Navy officer when
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: that could be career ending. And the other was being
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: an elected official in Indiana, which was well on its
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: way to getting a reputation as maybe the most anti-gay
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: state in the country. Mike Pence hadn't yet become governor,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: but he soon would. On one level, I was at
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: peace with this fact, but I also knew it could
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: be a career-limiting fact. So I kept it to myself
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: for a long time. And then I just hit a
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: point where I couldn't do that anymore. And then it
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: was time to come out because, well, the thing that
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: really put me over the edge was when I was
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan. I was already in there,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: but like a lot of people in the reserve, you
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: leave your day job to go when you get called up.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: So when you deploy into a war zone, they tell
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: you to write a letter just in case you don't
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: come back, which I did. And in that process, you're
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: kind of taking stock of your life. You're thinking about
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: what you want to say. to the people you love
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: most if you don't come back. And that was kind
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: of the moment that really is the final moment where
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: I just thought, here I am. I'm taking stock of
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: my life. I have a great life. But I'm a
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: grown man in a position of responsibility. I'm a homeowner.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be a veteran. I don't know what
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: it's like to be in love. And I just thought
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: that's untenable. And so I promised myself that if I
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: came home safe, I would deal with this. And I
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: came home. physically safe. And the problem was there was
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: a reelection coming up, but I didn't want to have
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: to wait until I'd been reelected. Um, so I figured
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: out a way to come out and I was kind
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: of resentful of the idea that I even had to
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: like straight people don't have to come out. But I
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: knew that if I just tried to just like show
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: up at some chamber of commerce dinner and my date
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: was a dude that night, like that was just not,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: I couldn't do it that way. Um, And I didn't
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: want to be like, quote unquote, found out. Like, I
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: definitely didn't want to be hiding it. But I wanted
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: to start dating.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: What about your parents?
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: I remember it was weird because, again, I knew that
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: they were forward thinking. I knew they were accepting. I
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: knew how much they loved me. But it took me
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: a while to be ready to come out to them.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: And I do, you know, like I said, I used
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: to go home for Sunday dinner every night. And, uh,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: and so I was home for Sunday dinner one night
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: and kind of pushing my ice cream around with a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: spoon in the bowl and just thinking about, and then
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: I just took a deep breath and it's just like,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: I got to tell you something. And, um, yeah, as
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: I expected, like they, you know, responded with love and acceptance.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: And I know not everybody gets to expect that. So I'm,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: I'm thankful for that. My dad was immediately worried about
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: what it might mean for my future. Not in a
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: way that he was trying to like talk me out
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: of anything. He just, bought about that and talked about it.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: My mom wanted to know if I was dating somebody.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: I think she had had her eyes on, you know,
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: maybe becoming her grandma for a long time. I wasn't
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: dating anybody, but, you know, I don't know, it was
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: probably within a year of that that I brought Chasten
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: home for Sunday dinner for the first time and watched
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: him hit it off with my parents, which is just
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: like everything about that, everything about that scene at dinner
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: was just not a thing that I could have thought
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: would have been possible just a few years before it
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: was happening.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: By the way, I just want to say that's really beautiful.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: And I think you probably don't realize the net impact
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: that decision had on many, many people who are contending
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: with their own sexuality by being both a politician. I
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: think you were also the, were you the first person
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: in a presidential candidate to be openly gay as well?
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: Definitely the first person who was considered to have a shot. Yeah.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, not that I was considered to have a
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: shot when I started.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: But I think in the same way that Obama paved
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: the way for lots of other people to expand their
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: minds as to what was possible for them because of
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: their identity, I think you've certainly done that. And I
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: think it's a weird word to say courageous or brave
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: as it relates to just being yourself.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it was a personal decision.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: But I think that when there's consequence and there's obvious
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: consequence and you do something in respect of that, I
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: do consider it to be very admirable in that regard.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: it for. The question left for you is what is
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: the thing that the world needs to hear right now
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: that it maybe doesn't want to hear that is uncomfortable
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: but necessary?
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's that it doesn't have to be the
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: way it is but We have to do the hard
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: things to change it. Like, people can feel that things
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: can't go on like this. And I go all around
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: the country reminding people that it doesn't have to be
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: like this. But it's not going to change on its own. Like,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: you can't just sit back and let some pattern or
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: some wave of history or some technology just, like, come
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: save the day. It doesn't work that way. Everybody's got
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: to be part of it. Everybody's going to have to
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: give a little something up. And if we do it,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: it'll be great. But hard things are hard.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: One of the things that's quite different between you and
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: other politicians as well is I think you are most
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: willing to go and talk to the other side. But
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: just before you arrived here, you were actually over at
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: Fox News. And I think that's also something that, gosh,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: both political sides haven't always wanted to do. If we're
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: talking about the things that are not nice to hear
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: is you actually have to go talk to your quote-unquote
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: enemies or adversaries or those that are totally against you.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: And I applaud you for really leading the way there.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: And you do a remarkable job of it because you're
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: so bloody articulate and smart. But I think that's something
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: important as well in this moment in time.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's like good politics is about encounter. Like
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: it's about encountering people. What's the point of doing this
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: if you're only talking to people who already agree with you?
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: So yeah, to me, it's a very natural part of
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: the job. I get why it's hard. I get why
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: not everybody does it. But to me, it's one of
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: the most important ways to earn my keep.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you for doing that. Because it's so wonderful to
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: see the, I'd say, conflict of ideas in public. It's
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: wonderful to see you going to the other side. And
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: I know you've been on a bit of a tour
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: of red states recently doing exactly that. I wish more
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: politicians would do that because we get to see those
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: ideas that often exist on extreme polls collide and we
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: get to make our own mind up. And please keep
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: doing what you're doing. I think it's really, really remarkable.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: And the values that you have, I also respect a
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: huge amount. So thank you for being here and I
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: appreciate your generosity.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: what video you would like to watch next based on
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: says that this video is the perfect video for you.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: I bet you, you might love it.