MLB Owner and Philanthropist David Rubenstein | The Takeout with Major Garrett

0:00Hello, 60 Minutes podcast listeners. It's Major Garrett, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent and host of The Takeout with Major Garrett, which airs weeknights on our streaming news network, CBS News 24-7. Today, I am thrilled to share a special presentation of The Takeout here on the 60 Minutes podcast feed, featuring my extended interview with businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein. Last weekend, I sat down with Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity fund, the Carlisle Group, and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, for a wide-ranging conversation. To hear more interviews like this, follow and listen to The Takeout with Major Garrett wherever you get your podcasts.

0:40David, it's always great to see you. I want to talk to you about sports in America and cohesion in America, Because it strikes me that sports is one of the few places anymore where we can all get along, regardless of our political attitudes. Well, we can all agree that sports is really probably more popular than they've ever been in terms of people watch more sports, live stream more sports, attend more sports events, bet on more sports events than ever before. And it's one of the few things that people all agree on, that sports is a good thing. Now people have different team rivals and so forth, but I've been amazed at how the value of teams have gone up The value of TV rights have gone up and we've never seen anything quite like this Now you are not overly sentimental.

1:27I am not overly sentimental and we don't want to get gauzy and Pretend that we can think of sports as the way to solve all of America's problems, but it does seem to me to be a convening place That could have some value in restoring a sense of civic connectedness? There's no doubt that people feel if you're connected to sports, you're connected to the American people. So what do politicians often do? They go to sporting events. You'll see presidents of the United States, many of them go to football games. They'll go to a tennis match today, perhaps. And I think presidents and senior government officials feel if you get connected to a sports event and a sports team, it doesn't hurt your popularity.

2:09And so politicians want to be popular, going to a sporting event connects you with the American people. And I've come across some recent polling data that indicates that people who follow sports are more civically engaged, they're more politically engaged, they vote more often. They're just more connected to the fundamentals of what America and its experiment is all about. Well, as an owner of a team, maybe we should require more people to attend sporting events because it makes them a better citizen. Maybe that's a good idea. I hadn't thought of that before but that's a good idea I'm gonna work on that how emotionally involved do you get in to the night tonight successes and travails of the Baltimore Orioles and has it been a surprise to you your emotional reaction yeah I'm not the most emotional person the world people will probably say and so I didn't like before I bought the Orioles with some partners I would watch this box scores and say okay this team losses team one person did pretty well Now I watch it obsessively to see how we're doing.

3:07And I do get upset when we're losing, when I really am happy when we win. I guess maybe it makes me live longer because I'm happier when we win. And happiness is an elusive thing in life. But I am very engaged with the team in terms of how they perform and so forth. As we talk now, we just came off an historic win last night where the Orioles were, with one out to go, they were going to lose a no-hitter. One of our young players hit a home run with two outs in the ninth, and then we scored three more runs and a walk-off win. And in the history of baseball, they never happened before. We foiled a no-hitter and then came back to win in a walk-off win.

3:43So it's really high, and I'm still recovering from the excitement of it. It was great. It is an elixir, isn't it, things like that? When you get older, you get more jaded about life, and you kind of say, what is it that can make me feel better that isn't going to make me unhealthy? I mean alcohol makes some people happy, but it doesn't make me happy. I don't drink. Drugs can make some people happy, but I don't take drugs. So what can I do that's going to make me happy and not get me in trouble? And watching a sporting event, hoping they're going to win is one of the best things to do. So as you get older, and I am now just turned 76, when you turn 55, it's my theory, that you've lived more than you're going to live.

4:21And you begin to worry about what I call longevity. And you want to live longer. And so there are many ways you can live longer. But one of the things is to have something that you really care about. And when you care about a sports team and it does well, you might live longer. So I'm going to get more and more people to kind of say, come to sporting events, come to the Orioles events, and maybe you'll live longer if we do well. And as the saying goes, faith is free. Correct. So if you're going to be faithful in something and the upside of a sporting event, it's not a bad place to start. Sporting events, it's interesting.

4:53What kind of events do people enjoy the most? I have thought over the years, when you go to a wedding, a lot of people are saying, this marriage isn't going to make it. You know, you hear that all the time. This marriage is not going to make it. The muttering in the back pews, right. You know, nobody's happy going to funerals, right? But people love commencements because everybody is thinking at a commencement, this is great, people are graduating and so forth. But people love sporting events, too. When you go to a sporting event, you're hoping your team is going to win, and you're going to see some great athletic performances.

5:23And when you do, you get excited about it. And so I'm amazed at how many people come to me and say, Mr. Rubenstein, thank you for buying the team, but you should know I've been a season ticket holder for 45 years. 45 years! I mean, I can't believe it, but they are. And some people have shown up in the owner's box. They've had season tickets for 50 years. So some people are obsessed with sports, and they seem to be happy. And so I'm trying to, you know, produce more happiness. Happiness is the most elusive thing in life, for sure. Thomas Jefferson talked about it in the Declaration of Independence, but never actually defined what happiness is.

5:56And happiness varies from people to people about what makes them happy, but clearly sporting events make people happy, particularly when their team does well. Did you experience or have you experienced sticker shock as an owner of this ball club? Well, when the Orioles came to Baltimore in 1954, the purchase price was$2.2 million. $2.2 million, and they had a hard time raising it. It was later sold to Edward Bennett Williams for about, I think it was$12 million. His estate sold it for around$75 million. My predecessor owner paid about$155 million 30 years ago. And so$155 million 30 years ago became$1.7 billion.

6:37But$1.7 billion, some people said to me, you've got to bargain. And some of the owners said, you didn't pay enough. You should have paid a higher price because we want the team values to be higher. But look at what's happened now in sports. The L.A. Lakers were recently valued by somebody that bought them at$10 billion valuation. The Boston Celtics were recently valued at$6 billion valuation. Somebody bought a stake in or was about to buy a stake in the New York Giants football team at roughly a$10 billion valuation. Somebody bought a stake in the Miami Dolphins football team at roughly a$10 billion valuation.

7:08Staggering amounts of money. So yes, the increase in value is reflected in the fact that people love sports, particularly baseball and basketball and football. And the TV rights have been so valuable and that people are paying attention to these sports such that people think it's worthwhile to pay$10 billion valuation for a basketball team. But do you find yourself hesitating when you see the price of a free agent or something and know the unpredictability of money allocated, money guaranteed, and lack of clarity about what's actually going to happen? Well, it's different than the private equity world in which I've lived.

7:47You know, people do well in a year, you give them a bonus, and you see how they're going to do the next year. Next year, year to year. Right. But here, because of the way baseball is set up and other sports as well, you have longer-term contracts. And we just entered into a longer-term arrangement with a young man who's just turned 21, I believe it is. And he gave him a long-term contract. He's going to be here for quite some time. And the price seemed high to me for a person at the time who'd only played four Major League Baseball games. But he did a great job. He had a walk-off home run the other night.

8:17And we're very happy with the arrangement. And we hope we can do other things like that as well. You mentioned a moment ago, betting is part of the popularity of sport. Do you have any anxiety about where betting and sports is ultimately going to land? I don't know. When I was a young boy in high school, I bet on a sporting event, and I lost. I was told I couldn't lose, and I lost. And I swore I would never bet again in my life, and I never have. I don't gamble, never bet at all. But there's no doubt that other people have a real affinity for betting. And so people think they're going to win, and everybody who goes to Las Vegas thinks they're going to win.

8:50Usually they don't. But I think betting is a complicated subject, not just because you bet on who's going to win or who's going to lose, But people are betting on whether a pitch is going to be a strike, whether it's going to be a curveball, what the score is. And they're betting on so many little picky you and things that it's hard to really police those things. So it's a challenge for sure. And I've read stories about harassment of players derived entirely from disappointment, if not bitterness, over betting. I have read that. And obviously, we recognize that many people have been caught betting who are players, and they've been penalized for that.

9:25But people who are not players who are betting, they're often doing some things that aren't appropriate. On social media and things like that, you know, barking at them, getting into their direct message feeds, and hassling them in deeply personal ways. And this is something that players say is a new dimension to their lives. It's unfortunate because players should be playing to the best of their abilities and shouldn't be trying to shade things or do certain things that are going to help bettors. I don't have an answer for it. It's been going on for quite some time. I'm not going to solve that problem.

9:54But I hope somebody can deal with how we can make certain that the games are as honest as possible. Is baseball healthy? Baseball is healthy. We have more than 70 million people a year going to Major League Baseball games, which is a lot of people. Baseball could always have more people going. Sure, we're happy to have more people come. Baseball is healthy. People love baseball. But it has changed a bit. When I was a boy, young African-American athletes would want to go into baseball. Now they tend to go more into football and basketball. So the major league percentage of African-American players is now relatively small compared to what it used to be.

10:30Although the major leagues are working on that in a lot of different ways. Yes, and they are trying to do that. We are now doing the best we can to get more people from urban areas to come to the stadiums. Because, you know, if you come, maybe you'll induce your children to want to be baseball players and so forth. So we've got to work on that. But baseball is pretty healthy. Remember, you've got 30 teams, and 30 teams are really doing pretty well in attendance. We get a lot of people coming to the games, not as many as, let's say, an NFL game, because there are fewer NFL games, for sure. But I think baseball is pretty healthy, but it can always be better.

11:01It can always be better, and we have a very good commissioner working on making it better, and the owners are determined to make it a better sport. You recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak. At the time, many people thanked Cal Ripken for saving baseball. Part of that was performance-enhancing drugs, but also part of it was labor strife. Looking forward, how do you perceive the potential dangers of labor strife? You never can predict where the situation is going to go. We have a contract with the Players Association such that through the end of the 26th season, we have a contract.

11:41And so generally the way baseball works is you don't tend to negotiate until the contract is up. Maybe there'll be some discussions before. I don't know. I'm not involved in that part of baseball. I'm too junior an owner to be involved in it. But the commissioner and a lot of the owners that are on the executive committee and on the labor committee are spending more time on it than I am on the junior committees. So I do think that baseball is something American people really want to see, and they want to see it played. And I think American people and the owners and the players want to continue baseball and not have any interruptions.

12:13I'm hopeful that'll happen. Last time we talked, David, President Trump was about to be inaugurated. And you were relatively sanguine about how the second iteration of President Trump's presidency would go. Are you still sanguine? Well, he's different than he was the first term. The first term, he had never been in office before. He had a lot of people who had been in government before around him. He wanted people who knew more about government than he did he didn't know much at that time He's now been president for four years before now He's in his second term and he's bringing different kinds of people people who feels much more comfortable with so There's the second term is different than the first term for sure in many ways different bad different good I won't Categorize it or say it pejoratively or positively.

12:57I would say it's different It's different because he's much more self-assured much more confident of his judgment and he knows what he wants to do as opposed to the first time around, I think he was feeling his way. He did some good things in the first term, some things I wouldn't agree with necessarily. In the second term, he knows what he wants to do, and he's proceeding to do it. And some people like it, some people don't. How would you assess where the economy is right now? The economy? The economy is something where it's a$30 trillion economy,$30 trillion annual economy. So it's hard to say where a$30 trillion economy is going to go.

13:32Things move it relatively relatively slowly. But I'd say right now, I don't see a recession imminently in front of us. We haven't had a recession for a while. Normally, you have recessions every seven years. And we really haven't had one. We had a technical recession during COVID, but not a real recession. So I think the economy is always due for a recession when you're going this long without one. But I don't see one on the horizon. Right now, while the jobs numbers are softer, softer than everybody would like, I think inflation is not as bad as it was a couple years ago. It's coming down still could be a little bit better.

14:04But generally, I think the American technology world is so strong. We dominate the world in technology, and that's fueling the economy and fueling the global economy too. And as artificial intelligence becomes more and more powerful, I think it's going to really help fuel American growth even more. There's a push and pull on that though, with technology and particularly artificial intelligence. I've read analysis of companies that are projecting much higher growth and profitability but almost zero increase in personnel because of productivity gains they are going to assume from AI. So that makes them wealthier but it doesn't create more jobs.

14:43There's a push and pull there. When the Industrial Revolution came along in the late 1800s people said jobs are going to be taken away and people are going to lose their jobs and yes there was transition but anytime something comes along that's new some Some people are displaced, unfortunately, and some people get new jobs. And so people may get different jobs. Right now, we have a relatively low unemployment rate, relatively low, a little bit more than 4%, which is not that bad relative to the economy of our size. And we now have more people, more job openings than we have people to fill these jobs.

15:15So I think the economy is going to go through a transition. AI will ultimately do what people probably think it will do, which is to change the job mix a bit. But ultimately, you're going to have people trained for AI kind of jobs. And ultimately, over a period of time, I suspect it'll be good for the economy. So when the naysayers say this is a fundamental shift that's not like the Industrial Revolution, it's not like any other technology before, because it's all-encompassing and because it takes so many human tasks out, you say it's going to be all right? Well, as one person once said, I think it was Lord Templeton, the most dangerous words the English language are, this time is different.

15:51And so to say this time is different is really dangerous because I don't think it's that different than other things We've had that have changed the economy remember when the internet came along people said oh people gonna lose their jobs now We won't have The needs for certain things before that we had before the internet has fueled a lot of jobs Remember we didn't have let's take uber uber is possible because the internet and that's create a lot of jobs And you know, so I think it's too difficult for humans to say what's gonna happen five years ten years down the road in the economy as a general rule of thumb.

16:22Given where we are today, I'd much rather have our AI position than the AI positions of other countries. Other countries, I think, are really envious of what we've done in AI so far. And we're really at the beginning of the first inning, really, I would say, in AI. We just don't really know yet how it's going to work. But I'd be happy to have the valuations of some of the AI companies in my portfolio because they have done quite well, and I think they're going to continue to do well. You and I are gentlemen of a certain age. Well, you're younger than me, so you're being polite. Just by a smidge, just by a smidge.

16:52We remember when ATMs came in, and there was a tremendous set of conversations going on about ATMs eliminating bank jobs. What happened is, yes, tellers did fewer things, but then banks provided more services because that transaction was now electronic, and more people got hired. That's just one small example of what I think you're driving at. Yes. Look, when ATMs came along, people said we're not going to need branch banks anymore. We have plenty of branch banks. Now people are saying ATMs are dated because everything is done electronically. You don't even need to get cash at all. So a lot of my friends say to me, why do I actually show up with cash from time to time?

17:30You can just put everything on an electronic device, and I'm too old-fashioned how to do that. So I'm still going to the bank machine to get some cash. Me too. But I'm amazed how many people don't get any cash, and they don't use cash at all. David, I get on planes with paper tickets, just so you know how rooted in my ways I am. You mean they have something other than paper tickets? I don't know. Word association, tariffs. Tariffs are something that's been around since the beginning of our country. Normally, you have tariffs when you're trying to protect your economy. In our case, our economy is in pretty good shape.

18:02But the dilemma we now have is that because the big, beautiful bill was structured in a certain way, it assumes there's going to be a lot of tariff revenue coming in over the next 10 years. I think the latest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office are somewhere between$3 and$4 trillion are going to come in over the next 10 years. So if you were to eliminate the tariffs and we don't have this revenue, we're going to have much bigger budget deficits. So we've locked ourselves in the position we probably need the tariffs because the budget revenue is necessary. We have a big budget deficit problem, as you know, in this country.

18:30And we have now about$36,$37 trillion of total indebtedness. And that's a big problem. And the Supreme Court's going to have to decide about the legality of these tariffs because they are imposed under authorities that no previous president has claimed under a 1970s emergency economic law. If the Supreme Court says, wait a minute, you've exceeded your authority and Congress is the one, and the Constitution is very clear about this, if there are going to be tariffs that need to go through Congress, Trump could suffer a defeat and all this could be turned upside down. Well, I think what happened was they used the 1977 emergency tariff legislation to justify it.

19:09But there is other legislation that could have been used and may well be used. And so they may use that other legislation, which does give the president more rights than that 77 legislation. The Supreme Court is a court that doesn't try to make bold decisions and say, we're going to solve all problems in the world when a case comes to us. They try to look at the narrow way that they can decide this case. and they might decide it on narrow grounds. I just don't know. It's going to take a while before it's resolved. But I don't think that the tariffs are likely to be completely eliminated because there's other legislation that could pass.

19:41And the current Congress, which is controlled by the president largely, could pass legislation that might give him the authority he might want anyway. So I'm not sure that this case is going to resolve all these tariff issues. Kennedy Center, what's going on there? I served as the chairman of it for 14 years. I was very proud to be chairman of it. and we had some great events there at the time and some of the most exciting events I've ever been to in terms of the entertainment world were at the Kennedy Center, the Kennedy Center Honors. President Trump decided he wanted to be the chairman. He's now the chairman of it.

20:12So I'm not involved any longer in it and so I've been focusing on other things. So I wish the Kennedy Center the best. I think it's a great organization and I hope people who go to the Kennedy Center are pleased with the performances there but I'm just not involved any longer in it. By inference, the president has said that the building is dilapidated and the entertainment selections had become overtly woke. Do you want to address either one of those? Because they reflect on your chairmanship. Well, I'm proud of what I did as chairman. I gave the Kennedy Center more than$100 million of my own money to try to build certain things there and help programs and so forth.

20:47So I'm proud of what I did when I was chairman of the Kennedy Center. And I'm not going to respond to comments that say the Kennedy Center is not as good as I thought it was. Everybody who's a chair of an organization thinks they do a good job. I thought I did a good job, but other maybe other people can judge and then I didn't do a good job But I was happy with the job we had and we had it through Republican and Democratic presidents And I'm just you know, we'll leave it there You think deeply and writes frequently about the arc of America's history its story its ambitions its faults David I don't need to tell you there is a pretty intense conversation going on right now about what is the strength of our institutions?

21:26What is the direction of our country? Are things that we've once valued and assumed were permanent or falling apart before our very eyes? How would you assess that? Any given time in history, people are always saying the world is falling apart. This happens lots of times. I would say today the United States is in reasonably good shape. We are the envy of the world in many areas, not every area. I think many of our universities are the best in the world. I think our technology companies are the best in the world. I think right now, American young people, I think increasingly are well-educated and I think are ambitious and building new companies.

22:02So I wouldn't say the country's in any peril. I would say you can always do better. And certain things I would change if I was president of the United States, but I'm not going to be president of the United States. I'm too young. I'm only 76 years old. You need to be older. Certainly it appears that way. And you don't feel that our institutions are under any greater threat than they have been in the past? Well, some institutions have some challenges for sure, but I think it's too early to say that the institutions are going to be falling apart. We have a great resilience in this country, and while there are challenges from time to time, I think that the resilience of the country and the American people will help these institutions get through the challenges that they have at this time.

22:43Remember, we've seen this kind of thing before. Many times institutions are challenged, They survive. They come back stronger. And I think many of the institutions we're now seeing as being somewhat challenged will come back stronger after a while. And as you know, those who love President Trump say, look, he won and he is a unique figure in American politics because that's what the country wants. It wants something shaken up and it wants these institutions, if not toppled, certainly viewed with a more skeptical eye. Look, the president of the United States won two presidential elections. And I didn't think he would win the first time he ran because he had no government experience, but he won.

23:20My surprise. I was surprised that he won this time, but he did. And I think elections have consequences. And we are dealing with the fact that he's now in charge of the federal government. And I think he's doing things that many people like and many people don't like. And I'm not really able to really comment on all the things he's doing. But generally, I would say he's fulfilling the mandate he thinks he has. He is a unique figure in our history, is he not? He's unique because no president had ever served before not having had government experience, for sure. And he's now doing things that many presidents didn't do, but maybe other presidents wanted to do.