E166: Mind-blowing AI Video: OpenAI launches Sora + Is Biden too old? Tucker/Putin interview & more

26:12or on their phone. And people are willing to pay for these products. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there was another big breakthrough announced today with the new Gemini Pro 1 .5. Can you just pull up Sundar's announcement on it? Yes, Sundar now has found the password to his Twitter handle. He's tweeting. Yeah, the reason I wanna talk about this, if you just scroll down. So when you prompt an AI model, you put in a certain number of words into like an LLM model today and it's words back out. the more words you put into the model, the more compute intensive or challenging it is to do the compute work needed to render the output.

26:49So OpenAI, their GPT -4 Turbo model, has 128 ,000 tokens, which means about 128 ,000 words, can be fed into the model to get an answer back out. So you could put like a whole essay or 100 pages of text and it will read a document for you. You can put a book and it could give you a summary in a couple of seconds. What Google just announced with Gemini 1 .5 Pro is a 1 million token context window, up to 10 million token context window in total. I don't know what's going on here because the problem is the way these models are kind of traditionally built is that that creates a non -linear scaling and compute needs to be able to increase that context window like that.

27:32So there is some architectural work that's gone on to allow these models to scale up in a way that we did not think possible when these models first came out Which is crazy to think was only like 24 months ago that they started to get kind of looked at like this 18 so that yeah, and so There's two kind of things that are happening one is that these models are getting chopped up in a way that you can run small models in a highly trained way locally and you don't need a massive general purpose model and so that's gonna make compute needs very small for very specific tasks And the other one is that there's other architecture that's happening in deploying the models that's allowing massive context windows like this.

28:08So it totally changes how scalable they are with the same number of chips or the same amount of computer or the same amount of power. So there are all these amazing Moore's law effects happening right now in AI technology development on the chip level, on the architectural level, on the how they're being built and how they're being deployed that completely changes the concept that I think most folks had when these first came out two years ago and the potential. So I think the sky is still the limit. We don't really know how big this is going to get. But all of these efficiency gains mean that we can do so much more or so much less.

28:38And by the way, when you can do more with less, it doesn't mean you need less chips. It means you need a lot more chips because the fact that you can do a lot more with much fewer chips means everyone's going to want to do it now. More people can afford to do it. So it unlocks the opportunity for for compute. And so it really starts to rationalize the Nvidia thesis that it could be worth $10 trillion potentially. And for people in the audience to understand what this context window means. I'm sorry if I was to tech. No, no, no, I'm just I always like to just give an example or two after you explain it.

29:09The context window. For example, you could upload the transcript of this podcast, right? And there were only certain services like Claude, maybe where you could put a PDF attachment, boom, you put it in there and say, hey, summarize this using your language model and using this content. Now you could be able to say, hey, take me every Mr. Beast video. Take me, take the top 10 ,000 videos on YouTube, dig the transcript, summarize them for me, give some analysis on it. And that was only available to developers prior to these large context windows being open. And that's going to just open up a massive amount of application, right, Shema?

29:47The results are actually not that much better. There's these third party service benchmarks. Lombard has probably the most often referred to. But what you see if you just look at, for example, all the GPTs, even as they increase the number of parameters in a model, the quality of that model doesn't necessarily increase with the rate of parameter increase. So you have this thing of a little bit of diminishing return, which is more a problem of what we said before, which is eventually when you're scouring the open internet, doesn't matter how fast or how big you scour the open internet, the open internet is a bounded space.

30:19And so you get the same answer. So all of these things are, they're interesting marketing wear, but I would just encourage us all to keep in mind that the shift is not necessarily these kinds of things. It's kind of like saying, you know, in a chip like, oh wow, we built this ship on three nanometer. Okay. What does it mean? Well, no, I think the piece respectfully you might be missing here is like your proprietary data might not be in that language model. So by having this context window and you can add something that you have on your hard drive. But that's not how it works. So my point is the context window is not correlated to the quality of the model outputs.

31:00Correct. But consumers and business users haven't been able to put their data into the models because that has nothing to do with the context that existed when the context window was smaller, that that's what you do things like rag with. Right, but most people don't have access to that. This is like consumers can now just take something off their hard drives and put them saying, yeah, rag is different than what this is. Okay. Like this is this, what you guys just spent all this time talking about is equivalent to saying, I built this chip on a seven nanometer process or a three nanometer process and what I'm saying is it is technically more burdensome as Freebrook said.

31:36It's technically much more sophisticated and complicated. But the translation to quality in the consumer is not what that means. So a 3 nanometer chip is not two times better than a 7 nanometer chip for the consumer. Similarly, a context window that's 5 times bigger than the one before it doesn't make a model 5 times better to the consumer. These are orthogonal ideas. It's not to say that it isn't an important thing, but I would say that it's a reminder for me that we're in the early phases where there's a lot of hay that people can make. But it's important to look at these third -party benchmarks that try to sort through and sift through what matters and what doesn't matter.

32:23And one of the interesting things that third -party benchmarks services have figured out is that irrespective of the exponential growth of these things that parameter size, quality is only growing linearly and now sublinearly. So it's just an interesting point. I understand your point now. My point is, man, when you are a consumer of this and I've been talking to people trying to get their data into you know, the context window to be able to ask a question, they're like, how do I put more in How do I put more in there? And then these language models, because of the copyright issues, they're not able to upload Blade Runner and then say, hey, make me something.

33:05But I was able to, and just to give a very real example, I did a podcast around the Ray Croc movie, the founder that we were referencing earlier, I uploaded the screenplay, I found a PDF of the book, and I found two other like essays about Ray Croc, like HBS studies. And I said, give me like a timeline of it, And I use something called Google Notebook, which has a big context window, and you can upload all this stuff. And that's where I'm seeing consumers and what these things are capable of, vis -a -vis the context window. It just unleashes in people's minds so many applications that you can do.

33:38There are two examples today that caught my eye that I think are worth bringing up. The first one is from Meta. Meta published this paper today, which was like, pretty crazy. And essentially what they said is that or the realm of the software worker, the software engineer. What they basically built is this LLM tool that runs over LAMA called TestGen. And it essentially does automated unit testing to such a high degree of accuracy. So in the software development, if you want to spit out a product, you have to go through this thing where you have to functionally run unit tests and make sure the thing works as advertised.

34:14and this paper essentially now allows you to traverse a code base, understand it, generate these unit tests with high accuracy. So where is this valuable? Think of, remember, the software bugs in like the Boeing 737 MAX issue, Jacob, where it turned out that it was just bad software. Tools like this now will be able to run unit tests where you will not be able to get that plane out the door, unless all of these functional unit tests not only have been written, but run and have been passed successfully. And it'll all be done by bots, which means that you can't gain that system. So that's something today that has the last thing developers get to is writing the unit test, right?

34:56It's always like, which is why there's all kinds of bugs and security holes in code. Now, I thought that that was a pretty large breakthrough. And I think we're gonna go through a bunch of fine tunes on this that make it interesting. And then I saw this other thing, which caught my eye even more, which was this thing that Nat Friedman pleaded out, which is this thing called magic .dev. And what essentially it is is like a coworker. And what they are claiming, and I don't know if it's true, is that now you can basically have this thing understand your style of code, and actually be able to write code that is just as good as the way you write code.

35:33So now it's not a co -pilot, but effectively a coworker. And this is the first real example of what I've seen of a claim that basically says, is, hey, we can now be an add -on to your workforce. And this, to me, is just so gargantuan. Because if you look at the amount of op -ex inside of any company that sits inside of R &D, if you look at the amount of stock -based compensation, if you replace humans with bots, which is what this is, you're going to crush those things. SBC at the limit goes to zero because you don't have to give stock to a bot, right? You have to give stock to people. And OptX gets shrunk because now you just pay a license to Magic .dev or I don't know how they're going to make money on this, but really, really, really fascinating stuff.

36:23It is a scary thing. There was another open source project, I think it's called Maggie MTIE. I don't know if you saw that. freeberg, but Apple has been working on an open source image project. And so you're kind of going to see, I think, in iOS 18 or the next iPhone 16, they're going to have an image model on it. It's on that phone. Where is where is Apple in all of this? It's unbelievable. No, they're, where are they? They are building an image model and you're going to be able to talk to your phone even else anything. I think you're going to see a chip on the next set of mobile devices. is 100 % that will run models locally.

37:03And so this goes back to the point about how the hell is the government going to regulate AI models, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Well, not the stupidest is probably, you know, probably tough 20. But the fact that they're going to be able to be fully vertically designed, that they can have the hardware and the software and integrate all the way through to the application layer, they're going to have, I would imagine, incredible intuitive AI features built into all of their products that can run locally rather than all the other stuff that's going on where you've got to make a request on the internet and get the results back over the internet.

37:37It'll be pretty powerful. But obviously no data, right? We don't know what they're doing. We're just speculating here. Well, no, I mean, you have breadcrumbs. When the breadcrumbs are, they have an image model and I just dropped in the hugging face of it. You can basically upload an image and just give it a text prompt of how to change the image. So, you know, if Nick were to use this, he could upload a picture of you to him often say, you know, give him five o 'clock shadow, give him a mustache, whatever. And Nick, Nick, we do that real quick while we're talking while you're doing that. Can you bring up the video of the robots life in a cyberpunk setting?

38:10Yeah, it's beautiful. Is this a Sora rendering? Yeah, this is Sora. So beautiful. So it's really cool. So, but here's the limitation. And this goes back to what I mean, if you were talking about earlier. Okay, so you've got these people in the background. Let's say they're trying to make the theater backwards by the way you can see the human feet aren't correct sort of like a poly problem Yeah, I mean what school is that okay, so those cars aren't moving they're static you got some movement of these background people right at least so They're kind of they're the extras in a movie but if you wanted to tell Sora this is my guess that okay, I want the people in the background to be doing this it would render a whole different image like your robot might change to right?

38:53Well, sex, this is where your context window matters. So if you repeat the statement, if instead of writing and then iterating, if you just reprompt it and your prompt got longer and longer and longer with the degrees of specificity you needed, that's the way you use these models today. And to your point, what humans are looking for from a UX perspective is an iterative approach to rendering. It's an iterative approach, which isn't feasible in a world where the, This is all a matrix. It's a three -dimensional matrix. There's two dimensions of pixels, and then the third dimension is the next image, and the next image, and the next image.

39:29And so that matrix is re -rendered from scratch. It doesn't have a concept of what are the objects that I'm rendering and has a concept of a matrix of pixels. And so it will re -render a matrix of pixels based on a redefined prompt. But what you're describing would require a very different model architecture than the way all of these trained models operate today. This is going to revolutionize pornography. I think it's the first, no, no, I'm not saying it as a joke. I think that's where you're going to see this first because then all these issues, potential issues of underage people or exploited folks, it goes completely away.

40:02And you're going to come and say, no, and you know, it'll kill only fans. Yeah, as I say, end of the day. And gambling is where every revolution starts. That's where the technological that's where payments started. That's where the web started. That's where payments got refined. but I think that in pornography, you're gonna see this basically destroy pornography and only fence. Well, I don't wanna bring up something that's super offensive, but there was a certain pop music star who had a bunch of images just a couple of weeks ago. That were AI generated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, deepfakes, right?

40:36Yeah, there were a bunch of deepfakes of a pop star. I don't tell like actually highlight the person's name because then it just, I think it's sense more of it. X did a really good job of blocking all of them, water marking them and saying you can't do this. And so this is like a whole new world. Do you take any person on the planet and make porn out of them? That is realistic. Well, I don't mean that. I just mean that you'll be able to make pornography in a way that is totally non -human involved, which is generally better, I would say, for all humans involved. What's great about the deep fakes is that if you have a sex tape come out, you can just say it's a deep fake.

41:12Totally. I was about to ask What is the prop you're going to use to make love to yourself tonight with the new Sauron model? Tremont embraces Tremont. All I hope is I may just need to publish some data so that whatever deep fake gets some parts accurate. This is Apple. Oh, short Apple stock. It's not very good. Yeah. What is this model? This is an Apple model. It's called Maggie MGIE. This is Apple's open source image model. It's way behind. She looks like GPT 0 .1. They got work to do but it's open source. It's gonna be faster. It's very hard to make fine tune changes in these models or to get the result that you want but that's fine This is just this is V0 .9 so if you guys want to see a great fine tune the jargonut excel fine tune Uh -oh.

41:56I would just say try it. It is a fine tune that does not allow Bad -looking people The whole the whole concept is you know only beautiful people so it doesn't matter what your prompt is But these people come up with the most incredibly good looking people I've ever seen. As if the standard wasn't already high enough for filters and everything else. This is going to be a revolution for independent film. This is obviously just tip of the iceberg. The problem with independent film right now is that the economic model literally doesn't work. It's too expensive to make an independent movie relative to the return.

42:33The independent movie business is almost dried up almost completely. This is going to revolutionize it because it will bring the cost down close to zero. Now, I don't agree with Freeberg that everyone is going to design their own entertainment because most people are lazy. No, I'm not saying design. Sex, the way you think about creative production processes is what's going to change. It's all going to reduce down to sitting down and it's like when you ask your spouse or partner or whatever, what do you want to watch tonight and they answer something, that's something will then be delivered to you instantly.

43:04That's what's going to be so powerful. Well, you mean the AI is going to create it on the spot for you? It certainly will, but I think that there's a certain element of culture that gets integrated into the personal AI. I mean, I don't think we have time for this, but I have a whole philosophy. People still want curation. I mean, if you look at something like YouTube, or really any user -generated content site, there are roughly a hundred times more people who are passive than people who are active and actually create stuff. Whatever the ratio is, there's always a lot more passive viewers. than there are creators.

43:37So there's, I'd say most of the content will be created by people who actually care enough to do it. Again, let's call it one or two percent of the population. And then of those, 1 % might actually be really good at it. Yeah, but here's where Freeberg has a really good point because I have been looking into this. Imagine if you took the soprano, something you and I love, Zach, and you just said, hey, for each season, give me 10 more minutes per episode and give me like two characters or whatever. Now, when you watch it the next time, you could say, just fill it in. I want every episode to be 90 minutes instead of 50 minutes.

44:11Or I've been doing this thing with my daughters, we're into Star Wars and the Clone Wars, etc. People have been cutting the shows like Andor or Rogue One, Clone Wars, the prequels, etc. and the bad batch. And they're putting in together like timelines and they're making their new versions of it by super cutting the different series that are filling things in. So you're going to be able to say, hey, tell me the whole Star Wars saga with a little more perspective from Obi -Wan, or give me a little more perspective from this person. And that's going to just make these things, like these franchises, so much more watchable and deep and rich.

44:49Yeah. So this is my point, sex is I don't think it's about ground up personal media creation. I think that it's about the curation model changes. The creator or the central creative force comes up with a genre with a bunch of characters like a Star Wars and General like arcs of stories and then you can go in and you can view it from any character's point of view Imagine watching the Star Wars movie from Darth Vader's point of view Imagine watching the Star Wars movie where you just stayed on end or the whole time and you watch the news on the TV like while you're hanging out with the Dutch or fantasy, you with the you with the you ox for your party.

45:29So you're right. There's a great opportunity for some of these cinematic universes to kind of open up the creative assets and let the fan base do whatever they want with them or create these alternatives. I still think that it's that 1 % of the viewership that actually cares enough to do that. And the reason is because that, I think what you see with all these demos is that it's really easy to get the first 90%. It's really hard to get the next 9 % and then the final 1%. To get to the level of... Of course, yeah. To get it dialed in to the point, again, the first thing it gives you... But the benefits could outweigh those costs.

46:08And this is true in 3D video game playing. I don't know if you play Fortnite, but there's all sorts of stuff that you feel could be better. But the overall value of that experience far outweighs the missing elements of it not being truly photorealistic and I think that's where the stuff goes. It's ski week next week. And I've done this for all both of my older boys and I'm doing it now for my youngest boy who is four and a half almost five. We are going to watch this entire week all of the Star Wars. Fantastic. And then I got it downloaded history. The future of all the movies. Yeah. From and I got an order.

46:46The order was not what I thought it's not as released obviously. So you want to do timeline. So you want to have the prequels? I did that once and I won't tell you. It was super disappointing. Rogue one, the Star Wars, the original sequel. Well, you're saying this order is not good. Here's what I was told. This is what was the internet was the most popular. You start with the phantom menace. Yeah. Then attack of the clones, then revenge of the Sith. Yeah. Then solo is optional. Yeah. Rogue one optional. Yeah. Rogue one not optional. Then four, five and six obviously a new hope. That's when your kids are losing their mind.

47:22They'll be like, what is this? It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, return to the seven. Five and six are too slow for kids. Yeah, that's the problem. That's seven, the four awakens and eight, the last Jedi, the nine, the rise of Skywalker. Skip the last three. Yeah, last year at garbage. They fall asleep during four, five, six, yeah, four, five, six or that's that. The prequels are probably the most watchable. They're very, in retrospect, they're great, but there's also the Clone Wars, which is absolutely fantastic. I would sprinkle in some Clone Wars episodes. Nat and my daughters, I'm forcing them to sit with us for this entire...

47:53That's gonna watch all this? No, she's ready to shoot herself in the face. Yeah, this is her worst nightmare. She and my daughters are like, I put the over -under on Nat sticking through maybe a hundred minutes of this. And she's done. She's done. Amore. Oh, I do you boys and the kids, so with this and nerd stuff, are they're never going to get to girlfriend? You're not the only one. This is not a Phileini. This is a... How about that they watch something where the people make a love instead of the lights they would cut people and watching this exactly. Is that no, there's a no love in a joy. There's a people that we've done.

48:24So it's like light so it's a no fun. But to bridge the gap between your two visions, acts and free parts, just that's a point. So great. This is Tremoth and I will talk when we talk to each other for literally 20 minutes. As Matt will just have a conversation. But it's a conversation we're having. I don't know why Chumat and this idea has such a high interest rate on the conferable note. Why would you do that to me? I'm your friend. Who's going to be on the board that this person looks like a dumb dumb what's going on? I don't understand. Well, it's an independent speech. You're talking me to have us put to supersmart.

49:04This is the opposite of a white truffle. The white truffle is delicious. just this a product, this man is like a poo. But anyway, between sex and free, well, we're literally just talking. Hey, we're coming tonight, ass. Are you making it for dinner or not? We need to. I'm not, I'm gonna try to make it by dinner. I just have, I have to give a keynote at a podcasting conference. Oh my God. Are you, wait, sorry, are you kidding me? No, I'm not kidding. You guys banned me from having advertising here. I have to make cheddar. I got bills to pay just because there's an eight in front of the Uber stock price.

49:38doesn't unite retire. We'll be there by 7pm or not. I'm going to make it by 7. Yes, keep me in forever going to start dinner when you get there. Perfect. I will not do David Sacks time. Okay. Thank you. But between Freiburg and Dave, you know, Sacks you said it's like one or two percent of the audience for, you know, show with a million viewers or 10 million viewers. That could be tens of thousands of lunatics. And I don't know if you knew this, but you remember when Luke Skywalker showed up, spoiler alert in the Mandalorian, everybody was like, oh, his young face does not skip the uncanny valley.

50:13This is why you got to watch the Mandalorian. So then some kid did his own AI re -rendering of Luke Skywalker, you know, after a return of the Jedi, but, you know, after he defeats the Emperor. And they then hired that kid to work at Disney and LucasArts. So what's happening is all these people who are making content for the Star Wars universe, they are going to be the next generation of creators. So between a Mr. Beast way over here and LucasArt, there's gonna be a new fill -in and it's gonna be all these great one -percenters making interesting shit with IP. That's owned by other organizations.

50:50I think it's a whole new paradigm for media and content. It's gonna be so different. The automated stuff. That's custom ice -room. It's almost like what YouTube and Instagram did for user -generated content. There's gonna be this whole new model of AI, I generate content that the real winners are going to be the technology platforms that bring these tools in a simple intuitive way that to SACSIS point doesn't challenge the user to do work, but makes their life feel easier and better and brings them a more rich experience than they're getting today from any other media source. And that's going to be a game changer.

51:22All right. Lots going on in AI. I thought I'd bring up a really interesting story that happened just around stock options and employees and advice you're gonna get generally speaking. Just tons of cash at the startup Bolt. If you don't remember, that's a one -click checkout startup. It was founded by a guy named Ryan Breslow. He's been on my other podcast this week in startups. He went viral in 2022 after he called YC and striped like mob bosses and had this whole conspiracy theory of how they were trying to kill this company. Don't know if it's true or not. But at its peak, Bolt was valued at $11 billion to Moth.

51:58and they're buying back shares at a $300 million valuation down 97 % Yadiata. What makes this interesting was that in 2022, Brezlo announced a new stock auction program for his employees on Twitter. And he did this in a very bombastic lecturing kind of way to the entire industry saying that Bolt would offer loans to any employee to exercise their options early. We all know about these types of loans. From their balance sheet. That is the idea here, yes. and he called it the most employee friendly plan possible and said that half of both 600 plus employees took the deal. He since deleted the entire thread, but at the time, a lot of VCs who had been through this before, you know, explained to Ryan, this is a terrible idea.

52:43Here's GGV's Jeff Richards for what it's worth almost every private company self -money did us in the 90s. It was an absolute disaster. Employees spent years paying back loans for worth of stock tax bills from merely exercising etc. Yada Yada and his now deleted tweet was over half our employees chose this plus I was shrunken encouraged my family and friends to choose this but VCC say it didn't work in the 90s. So it's a disaster VCE Twitter pumps the tweet. This is why VC run companies are never able to make sure it's employees. Obviously all those options at 11 billion are worthless now, but sorry they did this one.

53:16They were worth 300 billion 11 billion. It was reported that at the same time in a new industry publication that Brezlo was selling his shares in secondary. Brezlo confirmed with that newsletter that he had sold 10 million and sources, anonymous sources, Yadiana, take that for what it's worth, said he didn't tell the team. He was doing that. Two investors also accused the company of misleading shareholders and raising capital on inflated metrics. SEC investigated but did not recommend any action sex. I don't know if either one would take this. This is really mechanical, but it does speak to what happens when things implode.

53:58Should employees be taking loans to buy these kind of stocks? At a minimum, hopefully these loans are non -recourse. And at the maximum, if they were recourse, but it looked like these guys were doing these kinds of shady things, they have to kind of forgive the loans and eat it. There's a reason why almost no one does these types of exercise loans anymore. I mean, whoever the VC was who pushed back was right. I mean, these things were common 20 -something years ago. People stopped doing it. And the reason why is that, well, there are a couple of reasons. So the mechanics of the loan are that the company loans you the money to pay down the exercise price, the strike price for the options.

54:37And then you're supposed to pay the company back at some future date, basically when you can sell the shares. And in effect, from the point of view of the balance sheet to the company, this was cashless because it would loan the exercise price to the employee who would then exercise and pay that money back to the company. So everyone's like, what's wrong with this? This just seems like simple mechanics where no one loses. The employee gets to start the clock on their shares for long -term capital gains. That's why they would do it. The problem is that what people discovered is that if the company didn't work out and those shares became worthless, then the employee is still on the hook for the loan.

55:17And if they don't pay the loan back, then there's a loan forgiveness issue. In other words, the forgiven amount of the loan or the defaulted amount of the loan becomes ordinary income. And so what happens is you end up having to recognize as income the loan that you never pay back. So you can lose. Furthermore, if there's spread at the time that you exercise between the strike price and the fair market value of the shares. Then, although if it's the right kind of option, if it's nice, you can defer paying tax on that spread. However, people got waymey by the AMT, that that spread still counted for alternative minimum tax.

55:55So, there were a lot of people during the first dot com bubble who exercised thinking they can't lose because the market was always up and to the right. And then the company would go bust and they would get hit with a big AMT and then they would get hit with a loan forgiveness issue. So that's why everyone stopped doing these things. Yeah, I mean really importantly getting taxed on that spread, you owe that money no matter what, no matter what, no matter what. The IRS demands that money in the California franchise tax board demands that money. So I just want to be very specific so people understand this.

56:26If the value of your company's gone up to $2 a share as a private company and your options are 10 cents a share, you pay 10 cents a share to get those shares, you owe tax. tax on the dollar 90 difference. And ultimately, if the company is now worth less than a dollar when you're finally able to sell or it shuts down, you actually have money. You have to pay to the IRS, the French have tax board, and you did not make enough money to cover the tax bill. The way a lot of these companies do this is they do a cashless, early exercise or cashless exercise loan. You don't even have to put money up to pay the 10 cents a share.

57:01The company is just covering it for you. To Saks's point, you end up getting taxed for that later if you don't pay it back. So the whole thing creates a lot of tax obligations and it's a very complicated structure and system and the reason options exist is so that people could buy their options and not have to pay taxes at the time that they receive them. Because if you just get shares in a company rather than options, the value of those shares is your tax bill even if you can't sell the shares. Well, it's income. And so options were created as a way that you would have a strike and the strike was the fair market value.

57:37So you're actually not getting any value today. That's so you can avoid the tax bill. But now it leads to all these other tax loops. Oh, a true tax benefit for a right -wing -to -file employee. This is what it comes down to. I saw this with senior executives trying to get the top five positions, a CFO or something. The whole thing is to reduce your tax bill from 50 % to 20%. And at the end of the day, you open up all of these other problems if you try and do that. Completely. One of the stupidest things about the way this was used is that they would give the exercise loan to employees who are leaving the company because they said that normally when you're a departing employee from a company you have three months to exercise your options or you lose them.

58:19So they were saying that this would be a solution to that, right? We're loading the money to exercise. All they're doing is creating a huge tax problem for that former employee and you're right, the average employee is not sophisticated enough to navigate all of these issues. It's not clear also why you'd want to create this complicated benefit for departing employees. It seems like if you're going to do this, you would want to do it for a key exec who's joining the company. That's the only context in which I've seen it by the way. Yes, same. So they were trying to solve a problem using this complicated device that really backfired, but it's not even a problem that you should try and solve in that way.

58:57I mean, there's a much simpler solution, which is extend the period of time that employees have to exercise. If you don't want them to lose their option, if they don't exercise within three months, give them 10 years. And there are a bunch of companies that have done that where they give you a lot longer to exercise the option. The trend I'm seeing with startups, like early stage startups, seed stage startups, which are really indicative of what startups will do later on. Hiring people, cash basis, paying them hourly outside the United States, not having to worry about stock options, not having to worry about healthcare, just finding a global workforce and using these third party tools.

59:33There's a lot of third party tools to manage employees in Portugal or Manila or Canada or whatever, South America. And they're just saying, you know what, stock options are going to be for like an elite group, the top 10 % of the company. And then we're going to automate the rest of the jobs with AI and we're going to outsource and have hourly workers or full time contractors outside the United and say it's the undeniable trend. I think that's terrible. Why? That's throwing the baby out with a bathwater. One of the most magical things about startups in Silicon Valley is that when it worked, everyone got rich.

1:00:04I mean, you have the story of the Google chef who made $100 million or the Secretary of Microsoft, you got your retire. It, you know, those are extremely simple. The graffiti artists that Facebook. The graffiti artists that, yeah. He did. He really was his name, David. David Cho. David Cho. But the fact that matter is that Silicon Valley had a share of the wealth mentality where the rank and file employees did participate in the ownership of the company and they got equity. And it was highly motivating, or it is highly motivating, not just lower level employees, but middle level employees and senior employees to basically get equity in the company.

1:00:36That's one of the things that makes Silicon Valley company special or companies created outside Silicon Valley, but using this Silicon Valley template. Yeah, the file philosophy. I'm getting rid of options altogether. There is a terrible over there actually. Doing is more like for the core team that's in Silicon Valley options, but then like for work that is not considered as essential, you know, just hiring people offshore who don't come at the expectation to work nights and weekends the way that you might be if you're the owner of the company. They're not going to have an ownership mentality.

1:01:08Yeah, I agree. I mean, I guess nine to five workers that way. And I think what people are starting to realize is like maybe there's with as remote workers, a lot of people are doing nine to five work. And maybe that like hard working culture just doesn't exist in Silicon Valley like it used to. You may be able to find hard working entrepreneurial like folks that don't necessarily speak English that now with these AI tools basically become some of your best folks, but there are many countries that don't value equity, don't have an understanding of it. And so to Jason's point, it's almost more of a complication to try to give it.

1:01:45So that may be the balancing thing, sacks that happens, which is that all these tools actually allow somebody in some country that speaks some language that's not English, but who can be completely committed, who becomes this linchpin of a business and gets paid an extremely great salary in American terms that makes them rich in their country get to the same place, maybe. Maybe I don't know. Their infrastructure needs to be built for stock options in other countries because I don't know that that exists. Or just pay people more cash because a lot of folks have different, again, stock options make sense when you have a differential in taxation between stock equity and capital income.

1:02:24But in other places where you have a flat tax or no income tax whatsoever, what's the difference? Yeah. If you're in Dubai paying 1%, you could just ship it, right? and ship it. You can always go back to a model where people vest shares rather than vest options and those shares vest on a trigger of time and a liquidity event. And that way they can't exercise or they won't get taxed prior to the liquidity event happening, but then they will have to pay ordinary income tax rates on their shares. Hold on, we're making it sound like exercising options is a bad thing. It can be a very good thing. I mean, if you're an early employee of a startup and the options are worth pennies and you can exercise for, I don't know, a few hundred dollars, then that's a great tax benefit because you start the clock ticking on long -term capital gains treatment.

1:03:18And when you sell those shares eventually, if there's a liquidity event, you get tax at a capital gains rate, not an ordinary income rate. That's the tax benefit. That's why people want to be able to exercise their options in the first place. The problem is that as you join the company later and later, the strike price of the options goes up. And so therefore, if you want to exercise, you're going to have to write a pretty big check. And so you're going to take a meaningful risk. Some people do that, and that's fine. The trouble comes in when you try to get cute and go around taking that risk by saying, okay, well, the employee doesn't have to go out of pocket for their exercise price.

1:03:55We're going to loan them the money. Well, they thought that they had figured out a way to avoid taking that risk. As it turns out, all you end up doing is potentially incurring AMT and a loan forgiveness issue. So there's no way around the fact that if you want to exercise your options to get the potential tax benefit of a lower tax rate, you have to also take the risk of losing the strike price, that check that you ride into the company. That's a fair trade, right? If you want the potential benefit you take the potential risk. But that doesn't that doesn't mean that you should never exercise.

1:04:29There's a lot of cases. Again, I think if you're early at a company, you should have low thousands of dollars, low hundreds of dollars. Go for it. There's all kinds of ways where when the basis is extremely low, it's nominally not a lot of money. So you can take the risk. But when you start talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars and then using loans and leverage and you have the risk of ruin coming out. bad news bears all the way around. No one. All right, sex. Here's your red me. Did you see the poll about Biden's age and the unfavorable percentage of people who think he is too old?

1:05:07How can I not see that? I think the most important thing that we should talk about is that President Biden has decided to not go through a cognitive test as part of his annual physical. It's the first time it's ever happened. Joe Biden now 81 years old, 82 at the start of his second term if he wins, he'll be 86 at the end, making him by far the oldest president ever. Trump is 77. He would be 78 and a half when he gets his second term if he won 82 .5 at the end of his term. Here's your histogram of age of presidents. These are the oldest just to give you a, everybody obviously refers to Reagan as the oldest president prior to this.

1:05:52He was a younger, obviously, than Biden and Trump today. So, sex, thus, or schmoth, thus, let's just say that we've had a bunch of these issues over the last few years. President Trump didn't disclose his tax returns. Is that a huge issue? I think people made it to be a huge issue, but it's more of an issue of judgment. But I don't think it fundamentally compromises his ability to leave the country. You had a different issue, not with the president, but with the current defense secretary who had prostate cancer, the disclosures were, let's just say, somewhat sub -optimal. He had a UTI. He got emergency admitted to the hospital.

1:06:42He just had another acute issue. And those disclosures weren't good. But you're talking about an acute kind of a thing where if you're incapacitated, there's a chain of command that immediately kicks in. Those are a class of issue that I think people can find things that are wrong with, probably correlated to one's political affiliation. The other side probably cares more than the side that the leaders on. But I think this issue is a really big one. And I posted this clip of KJP basically saying nothing to see here move on. And the first comment was Elon, which I think nailed it. He said a basic cognitive test should not be something that someone who controls nuclear strikes is allowed to skip.

1:07:32And I think that that is part of the fundamental issue that I have with what they decided to do here, which is that it just massively increases the risk that you could have somebody that was fundamentally unelected, running and making decisions. And I think that is a huge issue. And it's an enormous reason why for me, this was sort of the straw that broke the camels back and why I just absolutely cannot vote for Biden anymore. I was trying to find a lot of good reasons to support him. Stability, normalcy, all of this stuff. But this is not what stability looks like. And I go again back to this very simple thing, a cognitive test for somebody that can control the ability for us to go to war, or for us to completely eviscerate entire populations through a weaponry that he and he alone controls should be something that is just mandatory.

1:08:34You can't skip it. This is not a thing where it's a nice to have. I think it's a must have and in the absence of it, I think it compromises his ability to be a legitimate choice. And we do have a minimum age, SACs, and what Shemaah is saying is what the majority of Americans are saying, ABC, news ran a poll, 86 % of Americans across both parties. I think Biden is to old be president, 59 % both said both Biden and Trump were too old. You said on a previous episode, SACs, that you thought the public should decide not and that doesn't need to be a cognitive test, Are you sticking with that or do you think you're going to maybe move to Chimaltz position and mine?

1:09:12Cognitive test should be mandatory to be present Well, I think it's a tell that they won't take the cognitive test because they're worried that he might fail Just like it was a tell That they refuse to do the Super Bowl interview which the president always does that's the most softball interview That Biden could possibly have and they refuse to do it obviously because his AIDS and advisors are nervous about how that might go We had the her report come out where the special counsel investigated the classified documents case for Biden Said that we can't prosecute this guy. He'll be too sympathetic a defendant because he's manifestly senile And he'll come across as an old man who can't remember what happened So that's why they decided not to prosecute him the Babylon bee had a hilarious headline or take on this which was man deemed To senile to stand for trial still fit to run country.

1:10:03That's the situation we're in He can't stand for trial, but he's still running in the country. Yeah. And the thing that was most damning about the her report was not just what the Special Council wrote, but it was Biden's reaction to it. Apparently, he demanded that he wanted to go out and do a press conference that very day to refute the idea that his memory was bad or that he was seen out. And he then did this press conference and it completely backfired. He came across as kind of an old man shaking his fists yelling get off my lawn. I mean, that was basically the vibe that he gave to the press.

1:10:41And then the thing that he got wrong was he confused Egypt for Mexico in regards to the whole crisis in Gaza. So it would have been one thing if it was just her saying that Biden was senile, but then Biden himself came out and seemed to confirm it by making these mistakes and gaps. So they know they have a problem. So to my original question, would you be in favor and will you change your position here that we should have cognitive tests for the presidency of the United States? Yes, sir. I think that the real issue is that Biden would fail such a test. I mean, that's the problem is that he is cognitively impaired.

1:11:18And the thing to realize about these sorts of conditions is they're not static. There's a trajectory to them. So in the same way that Biden is manifestly worse than he was a year ago or three years ago. Yeah, when they're obviously sharper. Yeah, whatever this condition is, it's gonna be worse. Okay. I wouldn't ask you a third time to answer the question, but you're choosing not to answer the question. So, when you say that, should the president take a cognitive test, sure, he should take a cognitive test. Should it be the law on the land? Just like we have a 35 year minimum age. I'm just asking you to be specific.

1:11:54You could make him take a cognitive test, but the point is that let's say the doctor says, yeah, he's cognitively impaired. Is that going to bar someone for running for office constitutionally? No, that's not going to be part of the constitutional requirements. You have to pass a constitutional amendment. Would it be a good idea for someone to take a cognitive test part of their physical to be president? Sure. Is that going to be a constitutional requirement? No, you can have some doctor say that. That's my whole point. You could take a physical Bill Clinton did it and people used to joke about his cholesterol levels and he would go for a jog and stop at a McDonald's.

1:12:29So I'm not saying by any means that the results should bar you from the ability to run. It should still be up to the voters. But just like we would make sure that acute or chronic health conditions were well understood. Right? The idea that this entire body of judgment, which is around your brain, around the judgment of the president of the United States, to basically say, no, we're good here. we can skip it, I think that that's really dangerous. And it's part and parcel of a systematic set of behaving now by the Democratic Party, which I think is really not where they want to be. So the only person that's released it up to all of this is Dean Phillips.

1:13:09Yep. But he is being prevented and railroaded from even being able to put that issue on the table so that the voters can decide. My fundamental view is the voters should decide, but all All of these tests should be done and skipping them is a form of a tell, as David said, and I think that this is the most important tell that we've been given about the amount of cognitive decline that he's suffered. And John Stewart, by the way, had the funniest version of this. John Stewart's essentially monologue was like, hold on, everybody is out here giving sound bites that say he is a chess grandmaster in private, but then he shows up in public and it looks like he can't even play checkers.

1:13:48Yeah, freeberg. Let me jump to you there. You shared the clip with us. What are your thoughts on this whole issue? Cognitive tests. I mean, I don't think a cognitive test should be the law because you're starting to get into edge cases where you'll create lots of different requirements. Like what's the strategic test and you know, what's the under pressure test and there's obviously a A lot of ways that folks can game and challenge and create new systems for And you criteria the system of democracy however is meant to solve these problems The system of democracy is meant to allow individual voters to say, we judge that someone is not equipped or prove us wrong, which is what the voters are saying and doing right now based on the polling data.

1:14:30The majority of voters in the United States are saying we do not think that this individual is equipped to be president. Rather than respond to that with a cognitive test, we are stuck with a single candidate. And I think it speaks more to the problem of the Democratic caucus and how the electoral system works in the United States today, where the insiders get to decide who the nominee is for the party. And those insiders are self -delt. They are getting benefits by putting someone in the seat for next term because that person is in the seat this term and is approving things that they want this term.

1:15:06And so it feels very corrupt and it feels very unfair and very undemocratic. I think it leads to either a sense that the individual voters rise up and say, we want a third party because the way that this two party system works and the way that the caucus system works isn't fair. Or we end up seeing a really unfortunate outcome where you have a similar sort of like January 6th type event where folks who just fed up with the whole system and don't trust it. And if the citizens loose faith and democracy were in peril, but if John Stewart said in his monologue, it is the responsibility of the citizens of this country to step up and not loose faith, but to take action and to resolve to a solution.

1:15:47We have the power. We have the authority as voters. And if enough of us get together and say there should be a third party, or we do not want this individual to be the candidate, something will change rather than just resolve to letting the insiders set the terms of the caucus. Third party is seeming more and more viable. As we've talked about here, people forget the case of Ross Perot getting 19 % RFK looking pretty favorable and the third party candidate something. I think the two parties dismiss all the time, but it is completely possible. So maybe this is the time that this is the breakout season for it as sacks alluded to the hard report also came out.

1:16:29It was released, special counsel Robert Herb, Republican and Trump appointed AG declined to prosecute Biden because he feared they couldn't reach the standard of reasonable doubt as SACs pointed out. And I'll just quote from the report, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilty on a reasonable doubt. They also said he was an elderly man with a poor memory, or that's how a jury would view Biden. Democrats felt this was partisan, obviously. And then pointed out a bunch of times that Trump has misstated people's names or been confused. Is there any correlation here between the two candidates in your mind?

1:17:13Trump is Trump right behind Biden in terms of this, and is he too old to run as well? And do you think the gaps that he's made are comparable? I think that he looks much younger and sprightlier than Biden does to be totally honest. Yeah, and look at the schedule he maintains. This is nothing like Biden's. I mean, look, Democrats are trying to both sides the issue because it's their only choice. They're stuck with a candidate who's an obvious decline. And the problem for Democrats wasn't just the her report, which like you said, J. Cal, they can dismiss this partisan because they control the media.

1:17:48The problem is that Biden himself demanded to go out in front of a press conference to refute the report and he ended up confirming it. And the people of the United States can just look at Joe Biden and every time he talks, no matter how much they try to hide him, when he does speak, the American people are left with the impression that this is somebody who is invisible with decline. Trump, although he does misstate a word or two here and there, does not give that impression. Trump maintains a vigorous schedule. not only is he running a presidential campaign, he's battling, he's in court every other day, fighting all this law fair, he is willing to give interviews.

1:18:23In fact, he barely turns down a press interview. And most importantly, he's willing to do a hostile interview. He's willing to step into the lion's den, he's willing to go on CNN to those town halls and basically battle with these reporters. I think that's right. And it won't even sit down for the Super Bowl interview, which is as much of a softball interview as you're ever gonna get. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's your that's your best point. I think who's the taxi driver who does a two or three if you can't do a two or three hour interview I don't think you can be John who do you think is gonna run the country in the second term if Biden were to win?

1:18:57You know that that is the question you think it's by No, the staff runs it listen this will be this will be a region President where the presidency becomes an office instead of a person and it's run by powerful ministers like in some sort of European system. That's what we'll get. Or happened under Reagan. And the fact that matter is, or sex has happened under Reagan. You can tell me in the last couple of years of Reagan. Exactly what happened in Reagan. The sonility started to, or not similarly, he had Alzheimer's and it really, I think, started to become a factor in the last couple of years.

1:19:30Last two years. It was the last two years. Yeah. But the first six years were very strong. 25 % of his presidency, who was running the country is the question, yeah. It's a valid question. Do you think there's a difference, Jake, out between 25 % and 50 %? No, no. I think it's like we only have, I'm just looking for other coral areas where this happened and what happened. Who knows? I mean, this isn't a coral area, exactly because when he ran, when Reagan ran for a second term, he was cognitively sharp. It was true that he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in the second year of a second term.

1:20:03And then that was not properly disclosed to Americans. That was just, it was just the beginning in the last two years. If you look at the 1984 campaign, the Morning and American campaign, Reagan still debates. He was still sharp on his feet. He was debating Mondale, remember? He gave speeches all the time. He maintained a vigorous schedule. There was no evidence of there being a problem. My only point here to him off is, does the public has a right to know when these things happen? The seems to have happened a couple of times in history. I would take Friedberg's side. I'm not sure that the public, you could say irrespective of whether the public has a right to know, the public has a right to judge.

1:20:40And I think in order to judge, you have to make yourself available so that you can actually see it in front of your own eyes or hear it or listen to it or watch it or what have you. And that's the second problem that I think we're starting to see, which is it is so controlled how we get to interact with our leader. And I think that should give people some pause so that they ask themselves, why would this happen? And I think that that's worth internalizing here. Freeberg, would you vote for a presidential candidate who does not debate or who does not subject himself to, you know, serious, strenuous, confrontational, adversarial interviews, those two things?

1:21:25Are those two things a requirement for you to vote for somebody? I don't know how much that matters anymore. The problem with the two party system is you vote for your party. No, I know, but to you. If like a Trump abide and they just refuse to do it, because we're getting to the point where maybe they're just going to refuse to actually abide in or Trump, Trump has refused to do any debates. So maybe they're just both going to refuse to debate. Would you vote for a candidate if they refused to debate? Is my question to you, Frieberg? I mean, I'm just in a very different mindset on this stuff.

1:21:56I'm not excited to vote for Kennedy, but it's not making their priority to fix the fiscal problem of the U .S. All right, so you're back to that topic. It's not that topic. It's like, for me, it's like there's a car driving towards a wall and you've got your foot on the gas pedal. It's like, which guy do you want to keep the foot on the gas pedal? Like, I don't care. Like, we got to take the foot off the gas pedal. That's the point. You perceive there's a difference between the two and spending your talking. Okay. So you're you're voting for a third party candidate that would lean towards Shamath.

1:22:26You would you vote for someone who would I can't win in the system? Well, I mean, they can't until they can right until they do. So we'll see. Shamath, would you vote for a candidate who didn't debate or subject themselves to a rigorous adversarial interview? Not unless I wanted to shadow government. Okay. Sac's same question to you. Jason, you're acting as if we need to have all of these tests because we don't know whether Biden has a cognitive problem or not. Well, I think we also know about Trump. Trump maintains a vigorous enough schedule. He takes enough difficult interviews. He does enough speeches.

1:23:05What about the debate part? That's the one I'm curious. If he refuses to debate, would you, would you still be willing to vote for him? Or any candidate? You're acting like we need to judge this question based on proxies for the real issue. When the real issue is that we know one of these candidates has basically dementia. He's invisible to client. I'm not asking you this about Biden. I'm asking you in general, because we're talking about norms. One of the norms of, you know, really see your taxes. I'm not asking you about Biden. I think you're changing the subject from the core substantive issue.

1:23:37We have already all agreed that Biden is incognitive to client. I'm asking you another question. I'm opening up the aperture as the moderator here, and I'm asking you to address another question. I think Canada should debate period. Okay. That's what I'm asking you. I don't know why you're going back and telling me what I think. Because I think that the tactic of Democrats, the mainstream media right now, is that they can't... There's no way for them to paper over or deny the visible reality of Biden's decline. So they're trying to muddy up the waters. They're trying to claim, well, Trump is old too, or that Trump refused to debate too.

1:24:10They're trying to both sides the issue. I think we all know that Biden has a problem that Trump does not have. Now I think that Shemoth is also right that there's a lot of Democrats who are comfortable voting for a shadow government. They're fine with the presidency being a figurehead or a rubber stamp. And I think the reason why they're fine with it is because Democrats basically control most of our ruling institutions, really all of them. I don't think you can name one major institution run by Republicans. Republicans, and they don't need a president to do anything other than be a rubber stamp.

1:24:43Republicans are looking for something different. Republicans need a president who's willing to push back on the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, push back on the deep state or the state department creating new wars. They want someone to push back on Wall Street. They want someone to push back on all these institutions. Republicans are looking for a tribune of the plebs, basically, to push back on this It's a senatorial class that runs Washington for their own benefit. Democrats are different. Democrats are the ruling elite, and they're fine with the president basically just being a figurehead who will sign their legislation.

1:25:20Or veto bills they don't like. Does he drop out of this point? Is this the moment we're going to look back on and say this is the peak when that 86 % poll comes out and all this negative press. Do you think Biden is, there's an exit ramp here? And do you think there'll be a different candidate fielded by the Democrats? No, this is this was their way of saying we're going for it. Okay. Freeber, you have any thoughts on that? You think they'll make a switch on Biden? Yeah, I think there's a chance There's a chance last we got a few conversations that led me to think that there are not super influential people in the party But people that are in the party that You know have connections to people of influence in the party.

1:26:00I'd love to hear to mouth like like conversations you may have had around this stuff too, but people are not happy in the party. They're very, like, very much unhappy. And everyone would love to see someone else. Now the assumption is Gavin is going to be shoved in that seat, and that's also a losing proposition. So if you shove Gavin in the seat, you're in a worse place than you are with Biden in the seat with respect to your shot at winning. And it's a little late now, but I still think that there's a chance. Sax, what do you think? Biden drops that. First of all, the only reason these people are unhappy is was they think that Biden's problems have become so manifest that it might cost them the election.

1:26:36That's what they're worried about. They don't care about the fact that the Biden presidency will be run by staffers. As long as those staffers will basically do what they want, sign their legislation or veto the money. The question we're asking you, will he drop out? No, he's already said he won't. Look, the problem that people in the Democratic Party have who have this concern about Biden losing the election because of this cognitive issue is that there is no mechanism to replace a candidate Who has won all the necessary primary votes against his will Biden has said he's gonna be the nominee.

1:27:11He has no desire to drop out So unless he changes his mind or there's some act of God. He's gonna be the nominee The time for Democrats to make this change was a year ago. It required a primary challenge to Biden, the way that Dean Phillips has done. The problem is that the Democratic Party elders and the powerful people in the party said were going with Biden. And so no one wanted to run against him. And they basically set up the primary calendar so that Biden would win. And he is going to win. He'll have all of the primary votes he needs locked up by the end of March. And Dean Phillips is not going to be able to basically stop him.

1:27:48So there is no mechanism to remove Biden. He's going to be the candidate, you know, barring active God. Unless he can be persuaded to step down. So it's not going to happen. What do you think about this new third party effort in DC? No label. Did we heard about it? Have you been pitched it? I've heard of it. I've been pitched it. Tomat, have you been pitched it? I host that I dinner at my house with some folks about it. And? Yeah, I mean, I think like it could be interesting. I think that the... Is there room for a third party in the country, you think? Yes, and I think that there is a very reasonable chance and I would put reasonable somewhere between 30 and 50 % That this third party gets created after the presidential election and That is the one of the very likely outcomes of RFK's candidacy because it is an infrastructure that will have got non -presidential ballots in 50 states, and it's an infrastructure that if people are willing to fund, specifically no labels and other people, I think the artifact could be a third party.

1:28:58And if RFK can get 30 plus percent support, which in some states I think he will, I think that there's a decent chance. That would be an enormous outcome. Obviously, the most destructive outcome for RFK would be that he won the presidency, but But I'm just saying that a very powerful outcome that is huge longitudinal benefits to America would be that his candidacy essentially is the founding story of a third party. And that was the shame of what happened with Pro. I think that there was a chance that Pro could have done that. And he must have been under just an enormous amount of pressure. I can't even imagine what he must have dealt with.

1:29:39But that could have been the artifact back then, but it definitely can be the artifact today. So we'll see. They haven't announced either. And there's no timeline for them announcing. They've asked to come on this program many times to just talk about the concept. I think like they want to have like the executive director on or yeah, they've asked. I don't love. Yeah. I mean, when you pick a candidate, that would be a better time than just talking about it in the abstract. I think it's a great idea. I think that's what Americans want. So maybe we'll get to it. Time's the elections in nine months.

1:30:12We're running out of time. I mean, it's entirely too late to be talking about new candidates who aren't even in the race. Not gonna happen. I mean, this whole Gavin Newsom thing's a fantasy. Even if Biden were to see the light and step down, be pressured to do that. Kamala Harris just said, I'm ready to serve. She wants to be president. And even though she's not seen out, Well, she's actually even more impopier than Biden. So you have that huge problem with the Democratic party that even if somehow they could prevail on Biden to step down, now you have Kamala Harris ready to serve. So how do you pass over her?

1:30:46He's not stepping down. He didn't go through all of this craziness this past week to step down. They didn't devade the cognitive test for him to step down. They're not doing all of that. They're not keeping up away from the media so that he can step down. None of that is happening. They're not having people come out with the sound bites about how he's got mastery of everything in private so that he can step down He's running Donald Trump is running and RFK is running those will be the three people on the ballot in November of 2024 Biden staff are the absolute last people who had ever pressure him to step down why because it'd be out of a job I mean from the staff's point of view having a week president who basically they It's not just a job.

1:31:31It's like you allocate the future as the president of the United States. It's the best situation possible for a staffer is to have a president who is borderline and capacitated and you get to do whatever you want. You are the president. Yeah. Jake, I'll give us the rundown of the Tucker Putin thing. What do you think? Just as a programming note, it came out and dropped right after we taped. We would have covered it. Obviously we weren't not covering it for a reason. I give them a B on it. It could have been better. But it wasn't bad. All things considered. I don't think any journalist is ever going to be able to trap Putin or get good information out of him or any of those things.

1:32:08And if you have somebody like Tucker who is obviously very sympathetic to Russia and who believes that, you know, the West forced Putin to infrate Ukraine, you know, you're not gonna get like a really great interview. I did think he had a great moment where he asked for the Wall Street Journal reporter back at that moment to take back with them. He did a lot of softball questions. He asked 43 questions during the interview. About 15 of them were kind of softballs, and he had about six fastballs. But he lost control over the interview very early. Obviously, if you watched it. And that's just common on using.

1:32:43I'm not asking for a talk about a, you're like Chris Collins with you. I'm not asking for a technical analysis of the play. Oh, that's a good reason. What did you think of the interview? What did you take away from it? What did you think going in? Nothing. And it was your Delta and a change going out just a normal no because I've watched the other interviews I watch Megan Kelly as I watched NBC's he's done I Did a research on it's in about nine interviews in the last ten years So it's not like this was anything new and when you watch the other ones It's just Putin spinning and pontificating and nothing gets accomplished.

1:33:15He doesn't answer hard questions So I had six questions. I said he should ask him. He did ask two of them But he didn't ask the other really hard questions I had and so So, you know, he's not, I wouldn't say Tucker is like the useful idiot like Hillary Clinton said, but he is biased. And he didn't ask enough hard questions. I would have asked three or four harder questions, but you're not going to get a lot out of Putin. This guy's like a KGB, Stasi trained manipulator of media. It's his specialty. I had two really interesting takeaways. the first was if you had wanted to see some crazy madman you actually left that interview thinking okay this is a person that's leading a nation that has a deep historical context that goes back to basically the dawn of Christianity of which he has a pretty deep grasp of and it seems that his decisions are rooted in a multi thousand year history I didn't know that and that was an an interesting takeaway for me.

1:34:18So that was a broad strategic takeaway. So he was a little professorial, he was a little historical, and all of that to me made it harder for me to leave that interview thinking that he was a crazy person. In fact, it's more like he's a bit of a methodical thinker, I guess. The second is much more tactical, and I thought super salacious, and I wish Tucker would have dug into it, which is at in 1999 when he was meeting Bill Clinton, he asked Bill Clinton, can we join NATO? And Bill Clinton said to him, yes, and let's go hash out the details over dinner. And then that night, they have dinner, and Clinton says, my team says no.

1:35:02And to me, when I looked at the arc of that interview, that was one of these really unique moments where it explains to me so much, which is a country that's at the, So that's birthing a democracy where Putin transitioning from Yeltsin had to make a lot of very important difficult decisions. The idea that he would have made an intriguing to Clinton to say, can we join NATO? And then to be told yes and then rebuffed. I suspect has an underlying amount of emotion that explains a lot of what's happened since. And I think that that should have been explored much, much more. I think they glossed over it and they went on.

1:35:41But it was a really important moment. Those are my two big takeaways from that from that From that interview. Did you watch your freeber? I mean that's I don't understand I think when he said that point he was talking of in the theoretical not in the I'd like to join NATO because The intention of NATO was to create a unified defense against the Russian Armament which is the most significant besides the US and at that point Before China's rise ahead of China Yeah. So I think it doesn't make sense to be like, hey, there's two sides of this defense system. Let's unify the two sides of the defense system.

1:36:19It literally is a nonsensical proposition. Not true in 1999. That's totally not true. What was the other side? 1999 was where we've toured this whole thing down. It's no longer the Soviet Union. Right. So what it's about. We're going to democracy. It's probably just an organization that looks like any other organization like AZN. What's AZN? Well, AZN is an organization. Could they have military defenses, supposedly? It's a grab bag of countries. What's the bridge? It's another grab bag of countries. Well, this is a defense alliance. This is an economic alliance. But in that moment, the justification for NATO was the least powerful it said had to be a bit.

1:36:58So in some ways, joining NATO would have been akin to dismantling NATO and saying, we don't need this anymore. That's the point. like why would he say, why would the US and the Western Europe allies say, let's dismantle NATO? He did that's effectively what they would be doing. His historical context of that moment is important. He did it at the moment where they were transitioning to a democracy. I don't know. It's like saying, let's get rid of the defense. West Russia was transforming into a democracy. Well, when the USSR was breaking down and transitioning to a democracy, yeah. How did that democracy go?

1:37:25If there was, if there was massive disarmament in Russia. The question is, what would have happened? Had they said yes and Clinton took a different path? all I'm saying is guys without prejudging it, that was I think a very important context that is not understood in history. I wouldn't dismiss it. No, no, I certainly, I think everybody raised around. It's like really that happened. Would you think of that moment? And I also Clinton, who is so steeped in history and policy is not somebody that would say something like that in an uncalculated way only to pull back. That does not seem, and I know, Bo Clinton, that is not who he is.

1:38:03So just in that context, he is a very thoughtful person. So he would have said that, thinking, wow, this makes a lot of sense on many dimensions. And again, the concept was, it was kind of like, let's sit down for dinner and figure out the details. And it's like, my team says no. And of course, the team would say no, because it's like, well, how are we going to sell? We haven't heard from Clinton, you know, confirming this or how it was structured. This doesn't make you guys, it sounds like it was a theoretical, like, yeah, that was my interpretation. It just feels like he would be sadded and kind of shocked, but he's like, let me look into that.

1:38:35That's crazy. What did you think of that moment, Sacks, and then overall? Well, Jason, the fact that Putin sought to join it or at least made that offer is a well -known, well -documented historical fact. This is definitely not the first time this has been raised. More generally, I think what you heard in that interview, once you got past the, this sort of the ancient history lecture is that Putin, when he first came to power, sought cordial relations with the US and with American presidents. And he was rebuffed. His attempt to join NATO was rebuffed. More generally, the US reneged on his promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO one inch eastward.

1:39:15And instead, we began multiple waves of NATO expansion. And I think it's very important to understand that you don't need to believe Putin on this or trust Putin. American diplomats were saying at the time what the reunifications of this would be. And I just want to put two data points in evidence. One is George Kenan, who was the father of the containment doctrine during the Cold War. He was our most respected Cold War diplomat, said in the late 90s when they were first debating on NATO expansion. He said that, quote, expanding NATO would be the most fateful era of American policy in the entire post -Cold War era.

1:39:54So think about it. This is somebody who's been around since the 1940s. He was our chief diplomat and defined our containment policy towards the Soviet Union. And he said that expanding NATO would be the most fateful era of American foreign policy. And he said that a decision like that would inflame the nationalist, anti -Western, and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion. and it would have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy, and it would restore the atmosphere of the Cold War. So this is somebody who really knew what he was talking about and warned us not to go down this path.

1:40:26And then in 2008, second data point, is that Bill Burns, who was our ambassador to Moscow, who is now Joe Biden's own CIA director, wrote a memo to Connellese Arise, who was then Secretary of State, called, and yet means, Niet. And what he said in that memo, So is that NATO expansion to Ukraine specifically is the brightest of all red lines for the entire Russian elite, not just Putin. In other words, the idea of bringing Ukraine into NATO was an idea that was rejected not just by Putin or by hardliners, but even by liberal reformers inside of Russia. And nevertheless, we persisted in this policy.

1:41:04And so I think what you hear in that interview are a lot of points by Putin around how he sought good relations with the West. But what was our reaction to him? Pressure, pressure, pressure. We supported the Meydanku in 2014. We tried to expand NATO into his backyard on his most vulnerable border. And then finally, we supported these hard -right, ultra -nationalist neo -Nazi elements in Ukraine. Now, whether or not you believe everything that Putin said, my takeaway is that this was a rational actor. This was not a madman. This is somebody who we could have negotiated with. And in fact, there was still an opportunity before this war to prevent the war by taking NATO expansion off the table.

1:41:52We were refused to do that. And even today, there was this new press story that in the wake of this interview, the Biden administration still rejects entering negotiations with Russia, even though Putin held out that all of branch in that interview. So, you know, again, this is very sad how we have conducted American Russian relations over the last 25 years. We turned what could have been an ally into an enemy and proven George Ken and correct. I think this has been the most fateful heir of American policy in the last 30 years. Alright, what an amazing episode has been. I think we talked about Tucker and Putin enough.

1:42:32Love you boys. For the Sultan of science, the dictator, and the rainman. I am the world's greatest moderator. We'll see you next time. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. We're like your winners ride. Brain man David Sackett. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. I'm the west. I swing up. I'm going on a win. What? What? What? Your winner's ride. Besties are gone. Go thrift. That's my dog taking it away. It's your driveway.

1:43:13We should all just get a room and just have one big huge or two because they're all just just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that out.

1:43:40you