ICE Raids, LA Riots, Strong Economic Data, Politicized Fed, Iran War with Tucker Carlson

25:16I mean, so my favorite people are immigrants and they all tell the same story. Came here with nothing, built this great life, but you make everybody cynical and you sort of destroy the idea of the virtue of immigration when you hand -pundal stuff and give them preference when they arrive. And we don't talk enough about what that actually looks like. If we send a lot of money, and we're going to be in a person right now in subsidies to people who aren't even able to be here. And they also pay into Social Security too, right? To the two and about 100 years. Oh, okay. Right. I think it was reported by our government.

25:50If we want to get conspiracy, that's not your fake number. Look, does anybody really believe that 50 million illegals is a net benefit to the US economy? Are you serious if you've been to our cities? No, of course not. It's not. It actually been probably a large number of them are a net benefit because they're working in jobs that Americans don't want to take and we're at 4 % unemployment. So who's going to take all those jobs if they get deported, Tucker? But weren't you just saying that we're on the cusp of labor revolution where some 20 % of America jobs are going away? In two years? Well, that could be.

26:22Yeah, so that's the that's the nuance in this discussion is five years ago. We might be not just Just like a brick wall we're about to hit at high speed and I don't understand having accustomed an An entire generation of 10 sub -millions of immigrants to government handouts What the social fabric is gonna look like when that stops? Yeah, can I say something because I Need an internship mom Tucker saying something really important, which I agree with what should immigration be in a highly developed nation like the United States and My perspective is you have to come and say, well, what is the goal?

26:56I think the goal should be to maintain supremacy. The United States is the most vibrant economy in the world. It's the most important military power in the world. It's the most technically advanced entity in the world. If we do not focus on maintaining our supremacy, I don't think any American wants to go through the process of going from first to not first. And if you look back in history at all of the other countries that have had to go through that transition, that is where revolutions and chaos happen. So we should avoid that. So where does immigration play a role? It needs to play a role first and foremost in technical, military, and economic supremacy.

27:39The problem, as Tucker says, is when you have five or six times a number of illegal immigrants as legal immigrants. All of a sudden the idea of using immigration as a cream skimming technique to reinforce the most capable people in the world to come here goes away because you can't have that conversation. We have people languishing for 10, 15, 20 years on visas. Okay, their kids age out, they all go back to India and other places. Why? Because we can't focus on that conversation, Jason, because we're focused on how do we give amnesty to folks whose initial action was breaking the law? Absolutely correct.

28:20And this is where the whole immigration conversation devolved. We are missing the bigger picture. And you need to deal, one second, you need to deal with the illegal immigration thing in an extremely foundational way where you defend the decision. You started illegally and you have to now go and conform to the law, which is where I'm trying to steer this discussion. Number one, we all agree on closing the border. It seems like there's a breaking consensus here. Tucker wants to eventually deport everybody. You want to do something in the middle like Trump. Sax, I'm not sure what your personal position is or if you want to give it.

28:56Do you feel we should try to have a path to deport as many of these 20, 30 million as possible or do you believe we should have a path towards citizenship for them? What's your personally or do you want to not go? Well, I remember when you asked that question to now Vice President JD Vance at all in Summit and he said that you basically addressed that problem the same way that you eat a sandwich which is one bite at a time. So that makes sense to me. If there's 20 million illegals you start with the top million who are violent criminals and gang members and you deport those. And that is what ICE was doing.

29:32They were serving criminal warrants. And then after you successfully do that, then you see where you're at and you can address the next bite of the sandwich. That makes sense to me. Now look, I think that we're not really addressing a really core part of the issue here, which is for a couple of decades now, conservatives were demonized and Tucker in particular, I think you were demonized for warning about the policies that have created the mess that everyone can see on TV right now. And that mess is we have a large unassumulated population of military age males who are basically writing right now under a foreign flag as if they were foreign invaders.

30:16We basically have allowed a separate movement in the United States. That's what it looks like to me. And I remember when Tucker was warning about the policies that might create this on his show for years You know virtually alone probably alone on Fox News, you know You were called a racist. This was a great replacement theory blah blah blah. How can everyone not look at what's happening on TV right now and say Tucker was right, you know That was really dumb and look I say this as Someone from a family. I'm one of the people that Ronald Reagan was talking about you know my family and I came over here were immigrants, but we came over here to assimilate, you know, we believe in the melting pot.

30:51That's all good. You might get canceled for bringing the melting pot. That's kind of the melting pot's good. I mean, I think that was the classic American model. No, the melting pot is totally good. I agree. I'm just saying you can't still call for a picture in voting. That's what you're supposed to do. Like, why would any but I came here because I wanted to be American and everything that American men. If I was bigger, I would have played football. You know, like, there's all these things that I would have done to assimilate more and more. I believe in the culture of the United States. That's why people should come.

31:18Right. So we came here, we assimilated, you know, high school immigrants didn't have a lot, but had good education and willing to assimilate. That's very different than what you're seeing on TV right now. And again, if the people on TV just wanted to protest immigration policy in the way that you're talking about, I mean, you're describing it in this like very nice, gentile way, they would be peacefully protesting under an American flag, saying we want to be here. Well, I'm going to contribute. I think the issue was not what's happening. You can see that, right? I mean, they look like foreign invaders.

31:52I would say, by the way, this is like the dumbest PR that, you know, if this debate is really about immigration, this is like the dumbest way for them to present their side of the argument. Yeah, because you want to keep in this country a large, unassuminated population that is proud to march, not just march, but actually protest and riot and burn and assault under the flag of another nation. I would say dollars to no one is that. That's an intolerable situation. The majority of the people who are doing the looting and writing are not actually immigrants because they have the ability to be deported.

32:24The people who are doing that are the bad actors that we saw during BLN, the bad actors that we saw, you know, in LA when the Lakers win, I've lived here for a decade and I am here right now. I can tell you it's contained. And those 80, 90 % of those people are not the immigrants. Immigrants are hiding right now fear of being deported. But let's sort of talk about the path. But where do you guys want to go with it here? I mean, I can give you my opinion if you want to talk about it. I mean, I do think that like Tucker should she'll vindicate it on this issue for speaking about it for so many years.

32:59You feel vindicated? I mean, I never doubted it. I grew up, I was born in California in 1969 and And my family got there in 1850. I have some sense of what the state was like, certainly through my childhood, and it was an idyllic. And it's not. The rich areas are great. Beller is great. Loyal is still great. I think there are great Mount Shast is great. Lots of great places in California. But fundamentally, the state is a slum. It's a Latin American country, and immigration did that. And I say that as someone who is pretty pro -immigrant, actually. My best friend's an immigrant. I mean, I've always admired like immigrants.

33:35I'm hardly anti -immigrant or anti -immigration, but the way we did it destroyed the state. Immigration is what made California into Islam and there's kind of no way around that. And so that's an argument against all immigration. I'm not making that argument. I don't feel that way, but it's an argument against what we did in California. And rather than learn from that, we're doing it in every other state. And I don't know why. And I think, you know, if the other side had a reasonable argument, they would prefer it, but instead they call you names and try to turn you into some kind of thought criminal or whatever, I don't care, obviously, but it's a sort of measure of how little they have to say in response, they're not actually trying to make the country better.

34:17That's kind of the main thing. I have always thought immigrants are great because they did it make the country better, right? I mean, I think that's demonstrable, but the people pushing our current policies don't have that as a goal. This is a kind of punishment for something, And a lot of it's ethnic actually. It's a kind of attack on the people who are born here. I don't know where that hostility comes from. You can feel it though. And I think it's foolish to deny it. That is a motive. They're trying to hurt the people who live here. And again, I live in a place currently where I see that happening.

34:48And it drives me totally bonkers. And the last thing I'll say is if you think the way we once did immigration was good and a lot of immigrants are awesome people. And I do think that this is discrediting all immigration. 100%. And it's turning people into pretty radical immigration restrictionists. Or like, look, I don't want any more immigrants. Yeah. You know, that's inevitable, but it's sad to see it. By the way, what you're saying is the most true for immigrants, legal immigrants, look at illegal immigration even more negatively than native born Americans. Which makes sense, right? I mean, they waited in line and other people didn't.

35:27You would be really upset if somebody cut the line. Jason, what do you think? Obviously, there's a lot of emotion around this issue. I think numbers help. And I always look to see what is the consensus amongst the group here and amongst Americans. Everybody wants the board of clothes. Trump won on that. So, okay, we all agree the board of should be close. I think 80, 90 % consensus in that. 80, 90 % Americans think we should deport violent criminals. Okay, we got consensus there. So then what's left is what do we do with high skilled recruiting? I like to use the word recruiting and we had that discussion with President Trump here.

36:00He promised to put a green card on every degree. I agree with him on that. I think we should be recruiting at least a million or two million amazing people per year. One to two million amazing people, we should match that to what the needs of the country are. If we need energy, if we need doctors, we should match that. Where we probably disagree is, I think, the Democrats and the Republicans share equally in this issue that was created. That Tucker pointed out, yes, there are 40, 30, 50, who knows what the exact number is? That's part of the problem. Here's a chart we made. This just shows you under each of the last you know, uh 50 almost 50 years of presidents how many people net immigrated to the country and as you can see you know, it's been pretty consistent you know around three million per and Clinton and Bush had a ton of immigration both Bushes were paid for.

36:56A lot of their donations came from corporates who wanted free migration. America, creators, hold on. Let me finish my thought. There's an outlier here, Jason. Biden is the huge outlier. We all agree on that. Biden let it go yolo. And I understand people have a lot of resentment for that and rightfully so. And if you bring in 10 million people, you're going to get a lot of bad guys. But you put this all together. My belief is that this is a country of immigrants and that this country does great when hardworking immigrants assimilate. I think we should take this raw fire power of these incredible immigrants who have been here for decades.

37:30If you've been here for 10 or 20 decades, pay a fine, pay some extra taxes, and we give these people a path to citizenship. And we recruit the top one to two million people. That's my belief. You do that before or after the people that have been waiting in line get a fishing. I think I would start before or after. I think you have to do it before because we created this and I know that that's not something that people want to take ownership of but America Created the situation Bush created it Reagan created Clinton America. Yes. The country that we live in our government Allowed millions of people here and the Republicans did this Specifically to get cheap labor.

38:09Okay. Let me ask you are really very specific for what we did with these people Let's just say that you're a international leaders. Let's just say you're an international mathematics Olympiad winner. You get recruited to come to the United States on a student visa. You crush it. Let's say you go to MIT and then you go and do a Ph .D. at Caltech and then you get recruited on an OPT visa by Google and you're just crushing. And you're saying that that person... Oh no, sorry. That's a more subtle question. That person we should recruit, as I said very clearly. recruit or a top one to two million. They are currently waiting in line, Jesus.

38:45Yes. So let's just saying yes, let them in and yes, a path to who do you prioritize? You have one high self at the same time. No, no, you can't. Of course you can. We could have one group recruiting, a million to two million highly skilled, highly skilled individuals of the type you're describing while having another group. We can do two things at the same time, Shamaaf. Absolutely you can. You're giving a false question here. Then we take the person who's been here for 20 years as a dishwasher as a nanny who has been an amazing citizen Who has been paying into social security give them a path a compassionate path and we as America and Americans Should take ownership of the fact that we allow this and the people who allowed it were Republicans and Democrats We allow these people to come into work in our restaurants and fields which is what Trump said today Trump is in agreement with me That's not what he said.

39:36He said something. He said he wants to not have those people leave. It's just amazing to me that on this podcast during the Biden years, you were echoing this party line that the videos of mass migration, caravan, streaming across the border, going through the holes in the wall. You said those were videos cherry picked by Fox News. You echo the party line that there was no problem. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, It was a high partisan problem. No, no, fact check. I said, we don't know because we don't have the metrics and we don't have a good system, which we all agree on. There's no good system.

40:10Anybody who went down to the border was saying that it was wide open. And as we got that data, I said this data on the ground shows we should shut the border. That's been my decision. You suddenly became very empirical about the issue. I've always been empirical about it and I've also been compassionate about it. This all like both sides are to blame thing, kind of ignores the fact that you had the Trump revolution in 2016. There is some truth to the idea that both parties neglected the problem. If you go back far enough, like, you know, Tucker remember this when Bob Bartley was the editor of the Wall Street Journal op -ed page, they actually supported a constitutional amendment in favor of open borders.

40:43I mean, they really believed in this whole idea of - Pull that up for you. Free trade, open borders, free flow of capital and labor, okay? But that was a long time ago. And, you know, with the rise of Trump in 2015, 2016, it became a different party. Trump got elected on building a wall. And what happened? The Democrats fought him tooth and nail. They tied him up in litigation. He was able to build hundreds of miles of wall, but there were uncompleted parts of it. And when Biden came into office, there were large pieces of the wall that were still on the ground, just waiting to be erected. And Biden sold them off a scrap metal for two cents on the dollar.

41:20Do you remember this? And then Biden and the Democrats proceeded. I have been in favor of the board. They proceeded. should include the board of the board. Please don't frame it as I'm against that. Okay, just forget about you. I'm just, you said Democrats and Republicans are blamed for this. Not in the last 40 years. Not in the last eight years. No. Oh yeah, I don't buy the entire wall. Yeah, buy the entire. Yeah. Opened up the border and Democrats supported him in that. And they thwarted every Republican attempt to close the border for three years. Hold on a second, for three years, they gaslit and pretended it wasn't a problem.

41:52Then when it became undeniable, They claimed that Biden didn't have the executive authority so they would need a new act of Congress. That was also total nonsense as Trump said in the state of the Union You didn't need a new law. You just need a new president Look if you want to go back 20 or 30 years, you can blame both parties if you want to talk about the last eight years There's only one party to blame The Democrats and that is why you look at the polling right now Democrats their party all time low Well, it is, let's get the exact number, negative 49, 21 % approve of Democrats, 70 % disapprove because they know that Democrats cause this problem and Democrats are the ones denying they're the ones basically making excuses for the disorder and the chaos right now.

42:37The only Democrat who's actually talking, since right now, is the one with a head injury, ironically, Federman is a lone voice here. I want to pull this quick. No, I mean, it's kind of sad, but look, I'm agreeing with Federman. Federman says, but the caveat that he hit his head. He's about Democrats. He's about Democrats. He's about Democrats. He takes a head injury for them to talk sense. Okay. It's like a bullworth thing. Anyway, Federman said, my party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn I'm setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement. Yes. We talk about January 6th.

43:24Unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, immigration, but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos. So who is the federal men? But he's the only Democrat out there. He's a lower voice, the devin, the violence. And Tucker's our guest. I'm gonna give Tucker the last word on this topic before we go on to the next one. And you are 100 % correct, Biden, 10 million net immigrants. and Trump, three million, which sounds like a lot, but it's actually the lowest in like 10 administrations, the lowest since Reagan. Tucker, your guest, wrap us up here. What should we think?

43:56I think that we should measure the health of a country, at least in part, by the condition of its cities, including the cleanliness of its cities. And by that measure, our country is collapsing. Our cities are a disaster. And the richest part of the richest cities are fine, and the rest of them are just absolutely awful. And so I think that has gotta be just job one. If you wanna renew the United States, you have to make sure its population centers are clean, safe, orderly, but especially clean. There's something really important in it. I know that the left just instinctively discounts that. But cleanliness is next to godliness and your city is a reflection of yourself respect, how you feel about your nation, your patriotism.

44:39And if you allow it to become like Paris or New York, covered in graffiti and filth and random people from other countries selling fruit on the street and begging and having sex in ATM vestibules and just like the whole midtown Manhattan Central Paris experience like that's a sign your civilization is going under I think it's really really important and I do think you know that decay is not Entirely caused by mass immigration, but mass immigration has made it much worse And I just know that from walking around because I like to walk around cities I think it's a national emergency and that riots are just the most Florida expression of that you know a burning car is something you can't ignore But we do ignore the condition of sixth avenue at 49th Street like how can a self or the condition of Penn station or You know of our airports like how can we allow that?

45:29So if I were in charge, I mean I would make You got to do buy or dohar or Moscow or some places a sense of itself But when we got so bad token remember two years ago and we were talking about this exact issue It just well, but it's true. I mean Tokyo is the most radicalizing experience for an American everyone who goes There's like I can't even deal with this. I'm so angry that we've put up with what we're putting up with I had to talk I don't know what you did and let's not overthink it I guess is what I'm saying it's not even about the constitution about litter. Yeah, Tucker gets the last word on that and now David it's actually has to take his incredible victory lap.

46:08Economic data has been objectively pretty great the last two weeks. TARF revenue spiked 23 billion in May, 2X from February. So there we go, we see the impact of a little bit of extra income. Inflation continues to come down. And what do we add? 2 .4%. Across the board, there's some pluses and minuses in there we'll get into it later. GDP. OK. Okay, this is the leading GDP prediction model from the Atlanta Fed. Could be a size 3 .8%. Again, this is a prediction for Q2, Q2 is obviously not over, but this would be a pretty big jump over Q1. Despite all this positive data, the deficit remains the sticky issue.

46:50Some of our friends might have some issue with this and been vocal about it in May. The US had 371 billion in revenue with 687 billion in spend. not good, big high burn rate, $316 billion deficit. We paid $90 billion in May, in interest on the debt, almost up to $100 billion a month. And if there's a nice sand key chart, which we all like, we could double click on that if anybody finds something interesting in here. Here's your deficit tracker. What I'll highlight here for you is those first two lines. 2020 and 2021, You got to kind of give a mulligan there for the COVID years and Purple 2025 we are a bit ahead of The last couple of years where 13 are spending now and you know obviously the debt services a big part of this 13 % above 2024 20 % Above 2023 and 65 % above 2022 the balance sheet of the United States is Really bad right now sacks.

47:52I'm gonna start with you this obviously has been an emotional issue and oh apology to you, Moth, I just noticed. I got to hit publish on last week's episode, but let's let that go. I won't happen again. Sacks, where are your thoughts here? Well, I mean, you'll recall that back in early April, Jim Kramer predicted would see a black Monday in response to Trump's tariffs and that's all the proof that we should have known that we're about to get a bunch of good news. It wasn't just Jim Kramer. I mean Larry Summers was on our pod with that big debate that we did and he was predicting doom And what we're seeing now is good economic news is breaking out all over so Q2 GDP on track for 3 .8 % according to the Atlanta Fed the major off -support was above expected plus 139 ,000 CPI you know inflation down to 2 .4 % so growth is back inflation is low and what you saw over the last few months was because the elites in both parties, I'll give you that, they were scaremongering on tariffs and predicting doom and they've been proven to be out of touch with popular sentiment and reality.

48:59I mean, you don't wanna spike the football too soon, but things look really good right now. Yeah, and I mean, in fairness, when the Trump shock and awe with the tariffs, he came out pretty strongly that you will admit, and the market did tang massively for about 30 days. Tucker, what's your take on the economy today? this debt does it concern you? And I'm wondering what, because there seems to be a little bit of a rift inside of the Republican Party on the VBB, not bill back better, but the big beautiful bill. What's Tucker Carlson's taken? Curious on out of control spending the deficit and this bill in relation to that?

49:38Well, I mean, I have the world's most predictable views. I believe in physics. So, you know, an unpayable debt, tanks your country at a certain point. That was pre -existing. It's accelerated as you noted. I don't know a single person who's got a, any kind of plan to fix it. I think we're just gonna ride it into whatever the point of oblivion is. But I would just say on tariffs, you know, my, you've got the reverse -cramer, David was saying that's his measure of economic forecasting. for me, it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, whatever they're for is poison, generally speaking, and anything that drives them insane is a virtue, and I just can't imagine a policy more perfectly designed to just make them explode than Trump's tariff announcement.

50:25And I have to say, I mean, I've been kind of pretty conventional Republican my entire life. I remember when I decided the Iraq War was a bad idea that felt like an outlaw. you know, idea. But the kind of last point, what led you to the point of breaking? Well, I went to Iraq in December of 2003 to see where a friend of mine had been killed. And so I was there right after the invasion and I just do immediately recognize this is not, we're not a good colonial power because we want to admit that we are, we won't admit that we have an empire therefore we can't administer it in a rational way. Just the obvious stuff.

51:00But anyway, the point is the last remaining kind of unexamined orthodoxy in my head was free trade and I happen to be just by chance at the White House the day of that announcement. And I remember thinking, man, if this works, what a caper. You know, I don't know what is the worst case scenario in your moment of, you know, this tariff negotiation. Obviously there have been multiple rounds of it. I'm not going to use the term taco, but it does seem like we've shifted from shock and awe to maybe like kind of bore, it's kind of boring. And that does seem to be Trump's approach, right? In negotiations.

51:36Big bang and then fall back to a reasonable position. So I think we're in the reasonable position phase. What does the God's willing, I hope, I pray that's what we're seeing on Iran right now. But you're absolutely right. I mean, that's sort of the nature of negotiations, of course. And there is nothing in writing what China so far as I know. and it'll be reassuring, I think, when there is. But in general, we haven't seen what Jim Kramer and Larry Summers predicted, and that itself is amazing. It's amazing, and it causes you, someone like me, who's sort of on the sidelines of the economic debate, but watching carefully, it does make you sort of wonder like what other absurd mid -century orthodoxies about economics have I internalized that just aren't true?

52:21Right? Because that was the biggest of all. tariff, they cause the Great Depression, we know that. And so what if you can have a kind of mixed approach with some trade barriers that are tailored to your benefit and that sort of works in a long -distance way? If that's true, holy smokes. And it looks like it might be true. Well, it's been true for the other side, right? They have been doing that exactly. I don't think so. It's totally right. Totally right. It's true for China and South Korea and Australia. Why wouldn't it be true for us? It seems like we're the soccer at the poker team. Well, I think you're right.

52:52I guess what I'm saying, I'm making a pretty pedestrian point, but I can't get past it, which is this is so far from what the Republican Party stood for 10 years ago, which was neo -conservative foreign policy, free trade, open borders as you noted, maybe a little more than 10 years ago, but 15 years ago, this is the mirror image of it, and it just blows my mind, and it's such a better version. and it's such a more reality -based, flexible, thoughtful version than we had before. And I'm just really, and most Republicans in the Senate are not even aware this is happening. They are the most recalcitrant people in the world, also the dumbest.

53:31So most of them, you know, don't accept any of this, but just as an observer, I'm thrilled to see it. All right. Shema, can I get... Oh, yeah, sure. Do I have to ask? No, no, no. I mean, I know you like to go right after Tucker. It's you can bring Gigi for you. I know you got me thinking about these. On the screen when you're on, he cannot in the group chat. He's so excited. Tucker when you're coming on. It's 48 hours of sacks being like, when does when is the pod coming? It's not really coming. That's how I feel about David sacks. Trust me if you do. If you had a camera at my dinner table, you would hear something similar.

54:04Oh boy. Here we go. Good. It's great to have someone to the right of me on the podcast for once. You know, it's not an easy task. We invited Alex Schoen and Steve back to have fun. Talk about me thinking about these unexamined orthodoxies. And that is a good way of putting it. I mean, you know, because I studied economics in college and I learned that the smooth holly tariff caused a great depression. And it's like in hindsight, you're like, how can that even be true? Like a tariff is basically a tax rate on foreign goods. And you're saying that, you know, increasing taxes on foreign goods, all of a sudden, cause a great depression.

54:38it doesn't make any sense when you actually like to think about it. Now, what caused great depression? Well, I would say when thousands of banks went under and there's no FDIC and everyone just got wiped out by that and it's a systemic risk. So like one bank failure leads to the next one. That's so obviously what caused a great depression is nobody had any money left. They all got wiped out when all the banks went under at the same time. Right? So... or something that happened in the 20s and 30s and apply it to a much more dynamic world. Well, but it doesn't make much sense. Well, I think what happened is we had all these post -war, meaning post -war war two, understandings that kind of got hardwired into the consciousness of our intellectuals.

55:22And if you think about the era right after World War Two, the US was like the last great power standing. It was us in the Soviet Union, but they kind of had a different system. They were not part of the, let's say, the free world, they're part of this communist bloc. So in terms of the quote unquote free world, we were the only country that was relatively undamaged and we had this giant manufacturing base. And so, yeah, obviously that the fewer trade bearers existed across the world, the better it was for the United States because it was our goods and our factories that basically were able to sell over the world.

56:00And which we just get down every single barrier to free trade because that's what benefited us. Now, I don't know that that means that that situation always benefits us in all times and all places. I mean, the big issue we have right now is that you've got a rising China and they have become the skill producer in the world for all sorts of goods. They now have this giant industrial base that we seem to have exported to them. And again, it was, and we exported a lot of of that because of this free trade ideology that got so entrenched in our thinking that we just stopped thinking about under what circumstances this might not continue to be good for us.

56:40And so we've ended up becoming dependent on them for all sorts of goods that we now realize are highly strategic and we're trying to figure out well, how do we ensure these things because it seems really dangerous now for us to be single threaded on, you know, potentially, at an actual power for rare errors or you know, rare magnets and chips and pharmaceuticals and all these things. But you know, our intellectual class never seems to revisit any of its assumptions. They just kind of have these dogmas. Chimoff, building on sex is sort of codification of truths, heuristics and not getting questioned.

57:18How much of it is we just codify, hey, trade good, you know, open borders good, free trade good. And how much of it is just incentives? Like, I mean rich people paying off politicians to have more free trade, independent of party, seems to be what's happened over the last 10, 20 years. It just made more sense to put workers and to send jobs to the lowest cost place to increase profits for American companies, which let's face it. Although it may have followed out our manufacturing and created this weakness in the four or five areas you point out every week that we need to reinforce quite eloquently, the real issue is we did that because we wanted to make money, we wanted to have the most highly profitable companies, and we did succeed, but maybe we succeeded too much, and our companies benefited more than the middle class.

58:03You got Josh Holley out there saying, hey, we should go to $15 minimum wage federally from the wrong people one. In the early 2000s, I think that there was a war of ideas and that there was a group of people that advocated for this reckless form of free trade and this globalist view like every country is going to meld into one mega monolith country organization that will get governed out of New York by the United Nations and its sleeve organizations. And that World View won, but it was the wrong World View. And it didn't acknowledge that we have competing philosophies, competing priorities, competing and we're eating ideals of what the future looks like.

58:51And I think that we need to go back and reset all of those things. If you just take where we are, if you can just put the Sankey diagram back up, there's a couple things that are really worth noting that people need to fundamentally understand. I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought the GDP print was gonna come in hot. I think everybody now is sort of where I am. So let me give you the next thing that I think. Can I just ask you though, why is it hot? Do you have a thesis on why GDP spikes so much? Or potentially did. That's obviously a forecast. I don't know the puts and takes yet. And I think when we see the print, we have, I have a way of forecasting this stuff, which is a bunch of signals that my team, and also many macro teams all around the world, the bond vigilantes to the hedge fund guys, they all feed it to me.

59:42And what I was noticing was that we were going to come in, I said in the low threes and I think you know, if Atlanta Fed is right, I don't think they are, but I think it's going to be in the low to mid -grease. It's going to be meaningfully greater than what people are expecting. So let me just give you my next prediction. My next prediction are two really important things. What this Sankey diagram looks at, which is a snapshot of the balance sheet in the health of the United States in May, misses, in my opinion, two very important things that have to change. The first, and this is a positive for the Trump administration and the United States economy, is we are run rating 300 to 400 billion dollars above forecast in terms of our receipts, meaning the revenues that we will take in.

1:00:35And you get to that number by looking at the last three months of tariffs and forecasting forward, assuming a reasonable balance here. So back to Tucker's point. Yeah, we all thought that this was like a boogeyman that you weren't allowed to touch it and that if you touched the stove, you were going to get burned. The mathematical reality is that this is actually going to work out much better for us than we anticipated and it's going to be somewhere in the range of 300 to 400 billion dollars of extra revenue per year. That's a huge win. So why is that important? That then sets up this next cataclysmic thing that we're going to see over the next 60 days, which is what does Jerome Powell do?

1:01:21If Jerome Powell stays politicized, his incentive will be to keep interest rates where they are. If Jerome Powell looks at the conditions on the ground, especially when you start to see inflation stay in the low twos and approach 2 .0, the real thing that he's going to be under tremendous pressure to justify is why are you not cutting? And just to give you a sense of how important that is, if we cut by 100 basis points, that's another $300 billion. Now, in that case, that's not money that we get in, but it's money we don't have to spend. So if you add these two things together, we are in the next 60 days going to have to reforecast the American balance sheet where this is or we're actually going to be able to positively forecast an extra 600 billion 300 billion of incremental revenue and a 300 billion of savings.

1:02:22Jason, if that happens, watch out. What does that mean? Watch out. It means that every single risk dollar is going to run to America every single one. Yom, I forget Japan, forget Europe. There is no place to put your money except the United States. So I think that we have to figure out how to get Jerome Powell on the side of America versus on the side of what could happen politically. Because I think that there's probably a version in his head that says, my gosh, if I do this, it helps Trump. And if I don't do it, it hurts Trump. practically that is true, but the reality is the conditions on the ground justify cutting.

1:03:04Okay, so you're predicting this 300 billion two different ways in and out 50 billion a month. It starts cutting this deficit pretty significantly. Your claim, I just want to be clear here, is that power was playing politics, not working towards the dual mandate, which is very clear, control unemployment at the 2 .0 rate and full employment. Your belief is that he's playing politics, yes? I believe that these decisions are political. I think that the Federal Reserve has veered away from actually controlling the money supply in the best long -term interests of the United States and more towards what benefits the short -term and this ties back to how I started this.

1:03:49What is Powell's motivation. Somewhere in the 2000s, Jason, we transitioned away from having the strategic 20 year conversation about what's in the best interests of America. And instead we start to have these unipolar, globalist conversations and the people that got into these centers of power, the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve, the central banks around the world. They all worked towards an agenda that is now being undone. I'll give you an example of where this is now being undone just today. The World Bank undid a rule around being able to fund nuclear energy. And you would have thought, while hold on a second, the World Bank steps into backstop all these developing countries when they're in the middle of all this nonsense.

1:04:33Right? And if you think about a country that's developing, what is the single biggest input to that country energy? And you think for the last 40 years of multi trillion dollar bailouts, we never demanded abundant clean energy in the developing world. Of course not because it was a political decision. Okay, Tucker, do you believe the Fed is planning politics here? It's kind of hard to believe if Powell was placed by Trump and Biden, there was consensus there, and his mandate is to get to 2 .0 and full employment. He's kind of trending towards that. He's made a couple of cuts. The markets predict he is going to make a cut.

1:05:07Here's polymarket for September showing 80 % chance of a cut. Let's take a look at that's changed since the last time So in September no, okay, well this has changed three two All right, so here's your polymarket Fed decision in September no change 53 % 25 bips 43 50 bips 3 .8 so you put those two together you're roughly at 47 % chance of a cut 53 % chance of no cut so 50 50 coin toss. Do you think the Fed is playing politics? do I think it's a shame who lives in who lives in Chevy chase is a political actor? Are you serious? What's his motivation? What's his end game? Why does he not want to cut rates or why would he not?

1:05:50Well, I mean, I think Chimoff wants to stick it to Trump. He put it well. Of course. I mean, he lives in a world in which there is no one who doesn't want to stick it to Trump. I mean, I know the zip code that he lives in very, very well. I don't know. I know the world that No, no, of course not. I'm not mad at him. I'm just saying I know the world well. And of course, no one in that world wants to be seen helping Trump and Trump is attacked him, by the way, in public. So I don't think there's a problem. I think the structure of the Fed governance is very weird. I think, I remember exactly what the Fed is.

1:06:27I've asked this question to a lot of economists, including Larry Summers, never really gotten a straight answer. or like how is it that this is beyond political control? I mean, I don't know if we're for democracy, shouldn't voters have some say in how this is administered, but they don't, I mean, there's no direct mechanism for voters to be heard in this, the single most important institution of the American economy. How does that, which is a crypto government organization? It's, you know, administering US dollars. I don't, I just don't understand it. I think it's very, the idea that you're gonna depoliticize it by making its leadership immune from the control of elected officials strikes me as the kind of like mid -century dumbness that got us NATO in a lot of other bad institutions.

1:07:08The exact all of this is that they have it. The exact all of this is that they have it. Exactly. I'm thinking of the exact all of this is that they have it. The paradox. Exactly. Sacks, what would the motivation of the Fed be here? I'm the vastest two times. Can't seem to get an answer. What's the motivation of the Fed? Just take it to Jason. Jason, let me give you another data point. Okay, now let's assume let's just scenario play. Yes, please. What happens if how will Rips in 100 basis point cut right now? I'll tell you so one part which is mathematical is the interest on the debt goes down.

1:07:37We save 300 billion but there's something else that happens which is the Fed does control the front end of the curve meaning how do people borrow money for small amounts of time from one day to about two years. If you make that cheaper We know it's the test that's true as time. What happens is people borrow more money. That fuels more growth. That will end up in GDP. So what actually happens if you cut rates 100 basis points is not just the 300, but you can get this reflexive positivity in the economy. What that allows you to do is even if that causes a little bit more inflation, you're actually growing yourself out of this whole thing.

1:08:21So then you ask yourself, well hold on a second, if the numerical justification is there to lower rates, and it has all of these other positive externalities for the United States economy. Why don't I do it? The only answer is political. Let me just take a few questions. Let me just take a few. Okay. So we're at 2 .6 % on inflation, you want to get it down to two. It feels like we're striking distance. Maybe you could maybe give us a theory here, SAC. So what would the political motivation be? I find it hard to believe that he's trying to sink Trump for some reason, as opposed to maybe just being scared of inflation popping up above that three hex handle, which then triggers them to raise rates.

1:09:06So what's your theory here? If you're Powell, it's better to take the risk of being Paul Volker than Arthur Burns. I mean, that's basically what it comes down to. because for people who don't aren't. Well, because what happened is Arthur Burns led inflation slip deletion in the 1970s, and he's remembered as a horrible Fed chair. And then Paul Volker came in and jacked up rates to like, I think close to 20%. 70. And it caused a vicious recession in 1982. But by 1983, the economy had bounced back and inflation basically was under control. And then the rate cutting cycle started, and that rate cutting cycle went for like 25 years.

1:09:44and then Reagan got reelected in 1984. So you know, you're rather be a vulc or then a burns if you're a Fed chair. Now, you raised the question is pal political. Yeah, of course he is. If you go back to, was it 2021? So the first summer of Biden's presidency, we got that shock, 5 .1 % inflation print in May of 2021 if my memory is correct. What did the Biden administration do? they sent Janet Yellen out to say it was transitory. And Powell got on board with the whole transitory narrative. Exactly. And as a result of that, he did not raise rates for six months and worse than that, they continued QE.

1:10:26They bought like 180 billion of bonds in that time period. And that's what allowed inflation to get so out of control. Now, why is it that Powell did that? Because he wanted to get reconfirmed. And yes, he was nominated by Trump originally, but Biden re -nominated him and he basically wanted the reappointment by Biden He wanted to get confirmed and then the month after he got confirmed all of a sudden He shifted gears and started raising rates again once he was safely in sconson his office So he did the right thing in terms of raising rates in the face of inflation once he was free from those political incentives but for six months He was intensely political and that costs the United States dearly I really do.

1:11:11So now if you're pal, you've got PTSD from that whole experience and you're going to air on the side of not letting inflation come back. I think what with inflation down to 2 .4%, I think it is time to cut rates, but he's fearful because again, his incentives are to be a vocal and not a burns. Yeah. And we want to read a good book, Paul Vokers, Keeping At It, great book about as a Reagan going to him and trying to get him to cut right. So this is a reoccurring story just on. If he had done the right thing in the summer of 2021, we would never have that bubble at the end of 2021. Remember that that basically created a huge crash in 2022 and we could have avoided a good part of that if he had done the right thing.

1:12:00You know, like the Fed chair, it's not a hard job most of the time. I mean, these guys sit in their ivory tower and then once a quarter they come out and do this, you know, and basically testify and say a bunch of, you know, things that no one can understand. But like once in a while, you got to get the decision right. And he totally screwed it up in that one time where he had to get it right. Yep. And I would say this could be one of those moments too, where I think he's being a little bit fearful. I think that there's a simpler explanation, quite honestly. Like if you look at Powell's history, he was, he was nominated as a governor by Obama, then Trump picked him out of the fed to be chair, but then he was reappointed by Biden.

1:12:37If you look at the vice chair of the Fed, Phil Jefferson, he was appointed by Biden. If you look at Michelle Bowman, who's the vice chair for supervision, she was appointed by Trump. Michael Barr appointed by Biden, Lisa Cook appointed by Biden, Adrienne Cougar appointed by Biden, Chris Waller appointed by Trump. So I think the point is that there is a balance of power here. If you look at political affiliations, that tend to favor a democratic view of the political landscape. And let's be honest, what benefits the Democrats more, a thriving economy and a shrinking deficit going into the midterms or the exact opposite.

1:13:17The reason I'm bringing this up and I'm just harping on it is he's a Republican who Democrats have opposed. So I'm just trying to reconcile this grand conspiracy that he wants to sink Trump. I don't think it's a Republican. I think it's just the general decision. I think these guys move the dot plots and you can see it in the movement, okay? They're going away from reading the actual data and moving in concert with the data to giving themselves a window to let the data play itself out beyond a reasonable point. And my point is the beyond the reasonable point is the key part because when you talk to the large sophisticated pools of money, many of them are like, what is going on here?

1:13:56All right, currently the big beautiful bill is in the Senate passed the House by a one vote margin. Trump said he wants the Senate to pass the bill by Independence Day July 4th Senate math Republicans have a 53 to 47 majority as you know they can afford three nose on their side since Dems are united against the bill with 50 votes. JD Vance can break the tie obviously So it's easier for them get to 51 seven GOP senators are either no or maybe no three likely nose, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, for maybe nose over the Medicaid cuts, Josh Holley, Susan Collins, Mrakowski, Jim Justice, none of those centers of community the way.

1:14:39And Republicans are now falling into three camps on BBB, hard yes, soft yes, no until it's fixed, fixed. Obviously, some friends of ours were a little upset about the BBB and we had a pretty chaotic week the last week and it looks like the reconciliation is in your take on the last week and the reactions to the BBB and obviously you on in Trump's relationship. Tucker golfing. I hate the whole thing. This is not how to legislate. You shouldn't have a bill this big. It's impossible to get your mind around it. No one can read it. No one understands it. It favors professional staff over legislators.

1:15:20And it totally leaves the public out. I mean, it'll be a decade before anyone understands what it means. The lobbies love it. It's just, it's Washington at its ugliest, not this specific bill, though it is an example of it, but just this is not the way to do it. And it's not the way it has been done throughout American history. I mean, there's no reason to aggregate it all together like this. It becomes totally unmanageable and totally undemocratic. So, you know, I mean, yeah. Well, it's insane. It's totally insane. I mean, can you tell me what's in it? No. All of us know 11 things we've read on Twitter or whatever, but the truth is even the professional staff that wrote it couldn't, if you had dinner with them over three hours, really give you a comprehensive sense of what's in it.

1:16:09And remember when it passes and I think it likely will, it's the law. And that's by design. In order to make it a design of, or since by design. It's just, well, I mean, look, It's, you know, it's just overload. You can't, I mean, every single part of this, this is the economy of the city that I've lived in my whole life. Every single part of this is there by design. It's been managed, it's been thought through, it's been written artfully, by artfully, I mean, deceptively. So you can't understand its purpose or its benefit. And literally it is years before the ramifications become clear. And again, this is why we have committees, You know, a committee masters a subject and then theoretically produces legislation that bears on that subject with, you know, knowledge and depth and hopefully wisdom.

1:17:01The Congress is not designed to pass legislation in this way and we've evolved to this and I guess I would encourage the White House to try and blow that up. I think it'd be better for everybody if legislation was passed, piecemeal, as it always has been. I think part of the problem is the leadership in the Congress and nobody wants to say it is just embarrassing. It's totally embarrassing. And I would say the conference isn't united either. I mean, this is part of the problem with Trump's agenda. It's the beauty of Trump's agenda, in my opinion. but it's, you know, it's so different from what your average 65 -year -old Republican was raised believing.

1:17:44It's so different from what Fox News is telling you. It's the mirror image of what the Wall Street Journal of Toral Page is telling you that there are just not that many members of the House or the Senate who are truly on board with Trump's message even now. And of course, they cow -tow to the man, but when it really comes down to it, they hate his stated agenda. And that's why the agenda unpack where are the hate most what they hate most is not even a close call they hate his foreign policy views They hate his foreign policy views because look out of 535 members of the House and Senate I would say 510 have given up on Improving the United States through their jobs like they know they can't it's like intractable.

1:18:27This is their view It's complex. It's boring. It's difficult and it's super hard to solve and the numbers in the House and Senate make it practically impossible to move the ball on whatever issue they care about or were elected on. And so they take all of that energy and they apply it to making the rest of the world better, fighting for democracy or the grander the description, the less accountability there is. If we're just like fighting for Churchill against Hitler, like it's always a win because we don't know any of the details. So it is a simpler, yeah. Of course. It's a simpler cause for them to take on than looking at how to move back.

1:19:01Exactly right. And if you would you like to see Trump do, Tucker, what would Tucker Carlson advise if you were in the White House? Which many people don't have requested that you do that if you were at the right hand of the father. What would you tell him to do? Understand the politician brain which is reptilian by its nature. It responds only to pain period only to pain So if you want a politician to do your bidding, it's a super simple conversation should do what I ask or I will make sure you lose your job. And by the way, Trump has the power to do that. Which is what Elon said on Twitter. Just put it out there.

1:19:36No, it's true. And I do think if there's, you know, the number of criticisms of any living person but one I would level at Trump is he is nice. Like he likes to get along with people. He actually doesn't like to fight in person. That is true. He likes to get along with people. No one will believe that, but I've seen it a lot. And I think it's tough for him to say, It's easy for him to go after a reptile like Mitch McConnell, like at a press conference. You'll make fun of cocaine, Mitch, or whatever. But to really go to McConnell and say, listen, son, this is going to hurt in the following six ways unless you obey you little bitch, which is really what he ought to be saying.

1:20:16No, I mean it. I absolutely mean it. And be saying that to all of these guys, Tom Cotton, are you joking? How does Tom Cotton ever say in anything? You know, and oh, you know, you're that chairman of the Intel committee. I'm so impressed. Listen Tom Cotton, you represent a state that likes me a lot more than you. So if I find you undermining me yet again, and Tom Cotton spends an awful lot of time undermining Trump, like Tom Cotton hates Trump, actually, of course. But if I find you doing that, I'm going to take your sentence to you away, and that's going to be really easy for me to do. And I really wish he would do that.

1:20:47It would only take one cycle to clear out, you know, to really get some discipline. Like the French and Algeria, you know, for the encouragement of the others, the first goes out of the helicopter and then the second guy is super talkative. If you did that in the United States Senate, you would have a much more coherent party, I think, like in about a cycle. A little more leadership, a little more stick than carrot. Who wants to go into a lot of other sacks? A lot more stick. Okay. Here we go. Tucker says more stick. Sacks. What you're feeling? Obviously. I always tell about the big, beautiful bill.

1:21:19What are we talking about? Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, we're talking about it all. Everybody wants to hear, you know, about our takes on the kerfluffle between you on and Trump obviously in relation to BBB. So let's just talk about it. Let me just talk about it. You can pass on it. Yeah, let's, we got right out here before we're now into the episode. Let's just talk about it. Let me speak to BBB for a second. So listen, if the question is whether I can defend a system that produces $2 trillion dollar, deficits every year, no, I can't. I can't even defend the Senate rules that require you to get 60 votes for some things and 50 votes for other things.

1:21:53I mean, it's all seems kind of random when you're an outsider. But those are the rules is they've got these crazy bird rules. And once a year, you get to do this reconciliation bill where it only takes 50 votes and says 60 votes to pass something, which means you can actually get something done without the Democrats, which is a rare opportunity. You just have to basically come up with a nexus to a budgetary issue. That's what the BBB has done. As a result of that conduit, I guess you could say, it's a way for the president to ratify many of his most important campaign promises from the 2024 election.

1:22:36And so you've got that tax cut extension in here. You've got full funding of border security for four years. You've got no tax on tips. You've got drill baby drill. You've got the missile defense shield. So these are campaign promises that are important to the president. It's kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to pass these things. I think that Republicans be committing to a local suicide if they don't. I mean, the polling on this, I'll give you some numbers. So first of all, the bill itself is popular despite by all the bashing of it. I think that... Popular with who? Well, this is a national poll by Signal, which actually has a bias in favor of Democrats by plus 2 .1.

1:23:15So this with the public, it's who haven't read it? I know, believe it or not. So... What does that even mean? Is that support for a big, beautiful bill plus six, increased funding for board security plus 35. That'll probably be even more now that what's going on in LA. work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP plus 38. So despite the Democrats carving on that point, people really liked the idea of work requirements. And then permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts support plus 19. So these are very popular planks of the President's agenda. It's the only chance we're going to have to pass this. Look, you know, I said this three weeks ago on the pod last few episodes that I don't support the people because it's perfect.

1:23:56I support it just pragmatically because it's better than the status quo. And my view is that we should take this now, we should get this done, and then come back for more later. And there should be a big fight over the budget at some point in the future, but this is not the right time to do it. We don't have the votes, we're not organized, and it would compromise these other promises that the presence made. And the time to really have that battle is at the beginning of the new fiscal year, which is October 1st. So we, at some point, do need to have a big fight over the budget. there does need to be resistance to the deficit.

1:24:26We can't continue in this current state forever, but I don't think that's the hill to die on right now. Shemat, your thoughts on BBB and the kerfluuffle, if you want. Here's what I'll say. I was sad. At the end of last week, one is my friend and the other is my president. And it seemed like a really profound friendship. And so I was bummed. Here's what I'll say this week, though, on much more positive note. I saw Elon on Tuesday, and I got to spend a couple hours with him at Tesla. He let me audit a couple of meetings with him actually. Thore is fun. Yeah. Yeah. One was Dojo and then right after that was the optimist team.

1:25:06One thing I'll say is, I've said this before, but he attracts these incredible men and women to work for him. They are inspiring, just sitting in a meeting and hearing it. what they're doing was amazing. And then second, to see Elon in action at scale in that way is like watching a Maestro, paint a masterpiece. It's really impressive. And then separately, I saw President Trump doing a couple of pressors and he was in his zone of excellence. So it seems like they're gonna find some common ground here. They are better together. and I'll just say Elon, amazing, Tesla, incredible, and I would not be sleeping on this company.

1:25:52That's what I would say. Jason, what do you think? So we're not the main characters in this story, obviously. And when I saw what happened last week, obviously this is one of my best friends for many decades. And given the popularity of this podcast, my decision was I don't want to insert myself into this, have my quotes or my feelings about Trump, about the bill get weaponized. And that's typically what happens. When you have a friend who's the number one story in the world, and now enough friends with Trump, but he is my president as well by default, what benefit does it have to me to then speak about it and then have everybody weaponize it?

1:26:33So I know this is hard for the audience to reconcile, but sometimes it's better for me to just step back. That's why you don't see me commenting on Tesla or SpaceX publicly all the time because people weaponize what I say against my friend. And I just don't like that. And it's happened in books, it's happens in new stories. So when Elon is doing something and it's this intense, I like to just step back and maybe take a beat. That was my decision. That's why I didn't want to do a pod last week. Everybody else can speak for themselves. That's where I'm at. How do I feel about it? I think Trump is making a mistake with BBB.

1:27:06I think he should push back on it harder. I said that in a previous episode and I think Elon's 100 % correct about that. I also think if either of these parties can't control spending, there needs to be like the north, what was it? The Norquist, you guys would know more about this, but Norquist Pledge, Tucker where you agree to not increase taxes, I think we need something like that where a reasonable party says we should balance the budget. We have to control the deficit. There should be some pledge like that that we force our elected officials on both sides of the aisle to take and I'm going to start pursuing that myself personally.

1:27:41You can go to join the responsible party document. And I'm just going to start an email newsletter and just talk about it. I think there needs to be a pledge that these politicians take to balance the budget and cut the deficit over some reasonable amount of time. But I wish them both the best and I'm glad that the two of them have reconciled because that's good for the country. We can't have these two giants at war, the greatest innovator in our country. And a president who's got an agenda which I agree with two thirds of. I may not agree with how he's doing immigration on the margins, but I agree with everything else.

1:28:12So I'm just rooting for the both of them because it's so important that for America that they get along. Great. So in summary, you're not setting yourself, but you have a website. I have an opinion. Yeah, it accepts Apple. They're not telling you to go to found or not university $1 a month. But if you subscribe every year, it's $6. Yeah, you actually threw in a plug. I have an issue. I'm throwing a plug in. That was insane. I don't care. Listen, also sign up, join the responsible party .com. I'm going to start my own your quest pledge, but also join SACs. It's insane. I also like the plugs. Shamaats, Substak, it's $1 ,000 a year to get his reports.

1:28:52And you can, of course, by David Saxas to kill all in .com. So I've never, what plugs do you have? Never plug. No, no plugs from Tucker. Tucker, what's in the merch store, Tucker? You got to have something in the merch store. Alp America's greatest nicotine pouch. That's all. Okay. Here we go. Flugs essential. It has breaking news here. Foreign policy looks like a major escalation with Iran. It could be happening. maybe on Wednesday it was reported some US personnel were being evacuated out of them in at least partial evacuation of the Iraqi embassy. Okay. Oil prices move 4 % on the news. Later reported that Israel is prepared to launch an operation into Iran.

1:29:32US thinks Iran could retaliate on spaces in Iraq, which explains the evacuation's Trump was asked about the evacuation said the following quote. They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place. We'll see what What happens? The classic Trump will see what happens. And then he added, they can't have a nuclear weapon very simple. Okay. Polymarket odds are spiking on Israel action against Iran 50%. Oh boy. Tucker, can the West allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Or is this more a WMD situation that we referenced at the start of the program? If Tucker Carlson was in the White House, which many of your fans wish you were, what would your advice be here?

1:30:20Is it up to us? Do we have the power? Nobody wants a run to have a nuclear weapon? I don't think the Iranians want a nuclear weapon right now, but judging by their actions. But could we prevent it? Is the question? And if so, how exactly, given that we just lost to Russia and the Houthis, I'm skeptical, But I'm amazed by how close we are to a military action against Iran. It's no defensive Iran. Of course, I'm not a Shiite for the record. But I think it comes with the perils that people are not considering or willfully ignoring. And the main one is Iran is not a rock or it's not Libya. It's not isolated.

1:30:58It's a central player in bricks. Ninety percent of Iran's oil exports go to China. It's assigned in a defense agreement with Russia in January. So it's not, you know what I mean? It has backup, it has big allies that represent the majority of the world's population and the majority of the world's economy and landmass. So the potential for this to become something much, much bigger and unmanageable is real. It's there. Their conventional weapons are fearsome and could do great damage to our allies to Israel and to American assets in that area and also to energy production in countries that we rely on.

1:31:34So I think the downsides are really kind of overwhelming. I think a protracted, meaning anything over a day or two, engagement with Iran would derail the Trump agenda and the presidency. And I think it could really sink this administration. And so I pray this doesn't happen. I think by the way, I think the timetable is distorted. There is absolutely no reason to. The president has said repeatedly, we will do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. and I think it's a completely reasonable goal. Nobody wants that. I certainly don't want that. And the Israelis don't want it, and the Gulf States don't want it, nobody wants that.

1:32:10But it doesn't mean that it has to happen on Friday, actually. And there are other forces exerting pressure on the administration to get this done quickly. Even before Steve Wittkov, God bless him, meets with his counterparts in Oman in a few days from now. So it's like why in the world would you preempt a scheduled negotiation with air strikes? Which is what the US is driving. But there is a reason for this. And we're just having information. Well, it's a combination of both. And by the way, Israel is a country with 9 million people in it. I mean, it's the Israeli government. But there are also elements of the US government.

1:32:51The head of Senkham is in favor of this. There are a number of Republican senators who are in favor of this who are lying. for example, here's one I think interesting point that's a statement of fact. There's no American intelligence. This is a statement of fact that suggests Iran is in the process of assembling a nuclear weapon or within months of doing so. There's none. And yet Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chairman of the Intel Consent and Intel Committee, is out there saying, you know, we know that they're doing so actually you don't know that. That's not true. Whether he believes it or not, I can't say.

1:33:23But that's a lie. Our intel does not say that period. So they're lying because industrial military industrial complex. Yeah, I mean, I think they're a whole, it's not as simple as, oh, BB wants it. I mean, I think this is a very complicated coalition of aligned interests. But whatever their motives, I don't even need to know their motives. This is not a timetable that we need to adhere to. It's a completely the artificial timetable. The president has done his best to resolve this diplomatically that's clearly his stated preference. He said it a million times and he's being bumrushed into making a very snap decision that could have bigger consequences than we're thinking through.

1:34:11So I'm very concerned about it. Chimoff, which are thoughts here, can Iran have a nuclear weapon and should the United States participate in if they do have one imminently, which is a big debate obviously? Should we be involved in stopping them or should we be doing negotiating the South power of I think this is where I'm glad that it's President Trump in the seat. I think he's shown a consistent desire to off -fram all of these conflicts. And if he and Whitcoff can hopefully hold the line with BB and everybody else, I think we're way, way, way better off. But you see this, every time we're on the verge of victory, somebody in the military industrial complex, invent some, you know, escalation of something so that we can just go to war.

1:35:05It's the answer always seems to be, let's go to war or let's support a war or let's enable a war. And the bull work to that has been the president. If we go to war, Tucker's right, this totally screws everything up. I mean, you could see oil double, double. What do what happens to the economy of the world, of world GDP, of everything, of inflation? If you have oil at a hundred bucks a barrel, a hundred and twelve bucks a barrel, it's not good. So you have to wonder like why would people want this escalation? Who wants this escalation? And you see that it's deeply beneficial for America to avoid anything calamitous happening here.

1:35:48So I hope we find an off ramp and I hope that the president gets his way. One thing people should know about Iran is that there is a massive demographic graphic switch happening here. You can see a chart. Is this from your paid newsletter site? This is, yeah, this is from shmoff .subst .com $1 ,000 a year, $700 a month. You get to have lunch with him twice a year. Is this from chooseyourresponsibleparty .org? No. No, this is from founder .university application coming in for around the world. Here we go. Take your nicotine patch and come to founder university. Iran 2020, if you look at the number of millennials, gen exers, this is not a boomer country.

1:36:32And they're going to have a revolution when all those 30 year olds, you see there that big fat middle 30 and 40 year olds who are on VPNs right now and reading and watching what's happening in the West, you do not need to interfere with this country. You just need to let those 30 year olds become 40 and 50 year olds take over the country. We need to negotiate heavily. The idea of going in there and creating a war with Iran is exactly what those older people want. Demographics are destiny. And this is an amazing actual Anthony Bourdain episode from Iran. And he said it was his favorite episode, Reston P .S.

1:37:07at the name of Bourdain. But the demographics here are just going to draw on this year. The ability as a moderator to cover so much ground. Thank you. Wow. Compliments. All right, this is a hard turn to make Tucker, but this week's all -in podcast is brought to you by the Trump card Everybody go get a Trump card and use the promo code promo code Jake Owl and I just full disclosure get paid $500 ,000 every time you buy a Trump card, but the Trump card website is up use the promo code Jake Owl 10 % off Tucker 12 % off and and Saxe Poo for 15 % off. You know, 15 ,000, 15 ,000 people have signed up.

1:37:46That's $75 billion there. If you convert them all. Let's go. I mean, I'm an idiot because I proposed this years ago for $500 ,000 and you know what, the genius of Trump is? Well, you are a king of gold and end of zero. You have consistently proven to your friends that you misprice by an order of magnitude. Absolutely. And now I add zero every time, all right, listen, thank you Tucker for coming on. What's the website to get our nicotine helps helps helps what I want the website help pouch dot com All right, Tucker you got to get us in on this. We need out pouch dot com slash all in we need an all in branded one Okay with the flavor of what's the flavor trim off we should do here?

1:38:25What's the flavor money? Can we do a burgundy? Why I'm in but how do we get how do we get promo? this, we need to get some, we need to get in on this. Oh, it's like a, it should taste like a 2001 maceto. Can you do that? Can you get the team on a maceto flavor? Press it. I'm actually going to talk about it. I am sending this in right now. I'm going to start with barata flavor to then go from there. I would, if you can make a cool steak for me, a rare cool that steak would be great as a flavor, a wagyu, a waga. For sacks, what do you got for a flavor here? To something minty, maybe. A little minty, okay, minty fresh.

1:39:00because you want to get the breath go this is dual purpose. Why'd you go on when you can just go right to a pouch? There it goes. Clip that I just texted. I texted the factory and I said we need specially branded out for all in. Let's go. You think I'm kidding? We're in BD mode. We're in BD mode. We're not kidding either. We're in BD mode here at all in. Good. All in .com come to the summit. Tucker why don't you come to the summit in September? What are you doing? Done. Done. It'll be fun. as long as it's not, it's not the end is um, grow season. So I can't, I'm not allowed to leave during grow season because I've got dogs, but um, is it before the end of September?

1:39:36September, it's in seven eight nine. I think it is. Oh, yeah. Oh, what? Oh, rovers, grassliver, pouch. Those that's a little game, it's a little game for a nicotine. Yeah, but I'll think about it. Yeah. Take it under and fight some G .G. me. All right, everybody. We missed you. Solten of science. We'll break your chops, but we wish you were here. David Sacks, the ZAR. miss you buddy, see you in LA, hopefully, at the all in to kill a lunch later this month. Jamal Pauli Haapatia. Great to see you. Good luck with your health and for my guy, Parker Carlson, Alpthpouch .com slash all in and get your promo codes going.

1:40:13This is the number one podcast in the world after the talk of Carlson show. My last shout out, I would like to thank Robin Hood for sending me their gold card. You finally, yeah, Sachs and I have had it for 100 days. I shat on American Express because I think they're just trash. Oh. And then they reached out to me and it was so ridiculous for the black card. No, they didn't even offer me the black card. They said, here's a chance for you to apply for the black card. And I was like, this just proves something. That's my own thing. They have no idea who anybody is. They're nagging you. They're literally, this is the number one podcast in the world, bro.

1:40:49I mean, I just think like the president, If any of the four of us ran a credit card company and we decided that we were going to have a $10 ,000 your credit card for big spenders What you would do is actually run a query to find who are the biggest vendors? You didn't find them you what you already have and upgrade them so that they're paying Who wants to do the all -in card with us email Jason at all in dot com B .D. Lines are open. We're gonna monetize this brand All right everybody thanks again Tucker. You're awesome. We appreciate you guys and Beth. Thank you to greatest See you next time.

1:41:22Bye bye. Love you Saks.

1:41:34Love you Saks. Oh, I'm thirsty. That's my dog taking a wish to drive away. So, wait a minute. Oh, man. The gesture will meet me. I'm going to sleep. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two because they're all just like this sexual tension that we just need to release that. What, your feet? What, your feet? Your feet? Be a wet. We need to get wet. We need to get wet. I'm going, darling.