Keith Rabois and Eric Newcomer's Heated Conversation on Tech, Trump, and Tariffs

25:32Just put that thing there. So we'll see what they eventually do. I like the psychological journey we were going on. You had liberal parents. They told you the sky was going to fall. It didn't fall. And I was like, well, maybe they're wrong about everything. And I started more of the wrong about foreign policy first, actually. As war interventionists at the time? Yeah. Like you supported the war in Iraq. You must have. I don't know that specifically about you, but just given your political – Yeah, but directionally probably at the time, I don't think I ever explicitly commented on it, but probably yes.

26:05I think it's a fair – the people – let's put it this way. The people in power were people I supported. Right. I mean Trump came in obviously sort of being anti-interventionist and now is interventionist. No, I think that's somewhat, let's say, superficial and not in a dismissive way to you, but just like a lot of people. Focus on a couple of his statements. He's an old school. My view is he's an old school Teddy Roosevelt meets McKinley. I've heard you say this. Yeah. Explain it. He's very – Teddy Roosevelt was very interventionist. But defined to a smaller set of things. things like I'm going to care about this and if I care about this you're screwed like you do not like but I'm not going to try to do everything and fix the world in every possible place simultaneously but if I tell you don't do that you don't want to do that that's like Trump more like Trump but more like the big stick you know the famous thing about Kerry that speaks softly he doesn't Trump doesn't follow the speak softly part but the big stick definitely part and And so in the territorial expansion from McKinney, like Stewart's Folly on down and Louisiana Purchase, like this country was built on territorial expansion.

27:21Actually, people also forgot that. So I don't think Trump is like... You want us to take Greenland? Oh, definitely. I mean, not take. Well, no. So let's be careful. We definitely need to have strategic assets and leverage. We already had that. We could put bases in Greenland. Let me give you an example. And Trump is talking about like making U.S. territory. Yeah, well, let me give you a very specific illustration of sometimes why the media doesn't communicate things well So they say okay, we already had the bases or we have the right to the bases or whatever The truth is when you have a base somewhere and we learn this in the Middle East all the time If you want to read about it read about Qatar Turkey air bases We have a base symbol if you just have a base You need the host country's permission to use that for an active operation So Turkey can say no, even though we have a base there You can't you can't use our airspace to fly your planes or Qatar can say no and for a lot of regional reasons, they often do.

28:14If you have actual sovereignty on the base, Denmark or Greenland cannot say no to the US launching a military operation. And that is indispensable and it's very different. And so I think that is fundamental. We've never had an issue with NATO rejecting... NATO is not stopping us from doing what we want to do. Some of the countries are a little soft. Turkey is technically a NATO country, so actually, yes, false. But we're creating some of the drama. NATO as an institution. I didn't say there hasn't been a NATO country that's caused us, like, difficulty. I said I did not say that. I did not say that about an individual NATO country.

28:46But Turkey is a classic illustration. But NATO as an organization is, like, controlled by the United States. It's a vehicle for the United States. Well, we're not technically controlling it. But, okay, so that's one thing is we definitely need military control of some basis there, especially because as the Arctic has melted, like, the Russia, you see those plots people have on the internet of, like, where the missiles go, where the subs go. so we definitely need to stop that second the other big initiative for this administration is supply chain for minerals like China's been using that as a very aggressive like sort of piece of leverage against the United States and so the from JD on down to Jacob are working on mineral supply chain Greenland has some minerals and we definitely need access to that there are There are lots of other ways to get access to it.

29:35You don't have to like take over the country or anything. He was never going to invade the country. That was like silly. Like that was not gonna happen. But in my view, it is perfectly fine to use economic leverage to achieve goals. Like if we have the biggest economy in the world and it's growing the fastest, we can definitely tell other countries that - Is there a loser to alienate Europe? Like it's useful to have Europe as a lot - Well, Europe is alienating us. Well, that's - JD is more right than wrong about this. Meaning like Europe is harassing Jews. So if you're a Jewish person in the UK, in France, you need to get out like now.

30:12Like this is really bad. Like I hope we do things to encourage those people to move to the United States so they're safe. Second, they are cracking down on US companies like Axon harassing them or, you know, and that's going to have to stop. Like we are going to use, This administration is going to use what Jacob likes to call economic stagecraft, which is we're going to use our economy. You're worried about European treatment of Jewish people, but we're getting closer and closer to the Middle East, which has been extremely hostile. Well, I think the whole point is we're going to have more Abraham-esque accords.

30:45But it's like a different set of standards for one country from the other, which is supposed to be what... Well, you'd be safer in Israel than in Europe by far. Sure, in Israel. You'd be safer in the UAE actually as a Jewish person than in any European country. I'm pretty sure of that. Safe is very loose. I would travel to the UAE without security. I would not travel to Paris without security. Really? You wouldn't go to Paris? 100%. No. Like you're worried you're going to get kidnapped or what's going to happen? Yeah. If people identified me as a Jew, you could not wear a yarmulke like in Paris at all.

31:20You would definitely be assaulted. like everybody like is terrified Jewish star like I would not walk down the streets of London or Paris with a Jewish star I would definitely wear one in the UAE and maybe even Saudi Arabia I don't know that for a fun my wife is I mean pretty clearly Jewish we spent two weeks in Paris did she wear did she wear it? it doesn't I don't want to it's an awkward subject because I don't want to speak for how other people feel afraid you know the liberal in me comes out I'll tell you Jacob's mom left Paris they were born and raised lived in Paris forever and they had to escape.

31:54They literally had to move just because of the anti-Semitism. So you're going to see that - So we give up the European alliance now. They're breaking it, we're breaking it. I think they need to rethink their first principles of like what values do they support. Like do they believe in free speech or not? That's a fundamental tenet of the United States. Is it? Yes. All right. I want to get to free speech. I honestly was surprised free speech wasn't sort of a core drive, that foreign policy was sort of the first starter. Well, there wasn't this libertarian authoritarian like suppression of free speech back when I was growing up.

32:30Like if you're like a liberal class liberal, like the ACLU and all these people were like very pro-speech. Like they were the ones, you know, suing like Illinois to let the Nazis protest. Right. It was the left wing. Yeah. The left wing was free speech. More free speech. Right. So there wasn't like this authoritarian, like we're going to stop and suppress ideas we don't like. It didn't really exist, certainly not from the left. So like, you know. And therefore you didn't need to. I'm not trying to drag this up, but you obviously had a very famous example where you used the word. Yeah. And you said it was about testing the borders of free speech.

33:04Well, Stanford was very different. So I grew up in high school and before there was no like constraints on speech. No one even thought this was a good idea. Then I was saying you showed up at Stanford and like everybody's on this like crusade to crack down on ideas that were not what we used to call back then the term was multicultural. Right. It's changed various vocabulary. But like that was like a reawakening. Like I had never even seen people like that thought that way. But there was – Stanford in the 80s was at the cutting edge of like the woke movement. We didn't call it that back then but it was.

33:37And I was pretty resistant to that. But – and so are several of my friends who went on to do interesting things. But yeah. They called for a lot of – I mean what David Sachs and Peter Thiel wrote out against date rape. There are a lot of things that they have now sort of disavowed. So David wrote an article. Honestly, I personally have not read that in 30 years. So I don't – For someone who gets very – you get very schooled on the issues you want to talk about. Well, sure. Well, exactly. I talk about things I know something about. You want to talk about Iran, I know a decent amount about it. You want to talk about the Middle East, I know a decent amount about it.

34:14You want to talk about persecution of Jewish people, I know a lot about it. There's a billion topics. So yes, when I was young, I used to read the encyclopedia, like literally cover to cover. That's what we do for fun. Read every volume. An early language model. I don't have time. I serve on 16 boards. I don't have time to read every issue. Let's drill in on free speech. I won't make you litigate what David said many years ago. No, but we did – at the Stanford Review, we wrote like anti-multicultural things without a doubt. And I think with the benefit of history, look, lots of 16, 17, 18, 19, 20-year-olds will write things that don't look perfect with the benefit of history.

34:50But I think there's going to be a lot of things the Stanford Review published that look great. Like I wrote a piece like for the Stanford Review on the brilliance of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. That was my first piece. That's his title. Say it again? The brilliance of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. That looks profound. Like this was when the Cold War was at its height and I was like Ronald Reagan's gonna fix this. He did. Do you want the United States to have a policy of basically letting white immigrants into the United States and not other races? My views on this are, it has nothing to do with race.

35:20It is a pure talent question. I think the most talented people on the planet, we should have meant to the United States, wherever they're from. Like whether it's an O-1 visa or whatever you want to call it, like we need to be a magnet for talent. But we're letting white South Africans come. It does feel we're targeting Somalians. There is a political asylum question there, which also might be relevant to the Jewish people. Like if you're persecuted and fear death, like we may grant asylum. But I think at some point you look at what the Trump administration is doing, it feels like they are preferencing white people.

35:47I don't think that. And I think there also isn't, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that they let in 37 people. Right. I mean, a lot of these things become. 16 million illegal immigrants against 37 people. Which one should we be focused on? I think it's 37 people. The Trump administration does not want to – they're not like really supporting H-1B visas particularly. There's controversy within the administration. I think there's people who are more enthusiastic about a magnet for talent. J.D. Vance is moving away from that. I think so. I think there's a lot of pressure on reducing – there's definitely been abuses of H-1B visas.

36:31where there has been a clear substitution. But like to the extent tech was misled about what Trump was going to do. I mean, he goes on the all-in podcast. Trump's like, we're going to give everyone. Yeah, no, no. And then it isn't happening. Like we're a year in. Well, yeah, we're a year in a four. He has accomplished almost everything else in year one, which is very impressive. Oh my God, terrorizing Minnesota. The economy is not, he said he was going to bring down inflation. Not like. It is, there's no inflation. Look at true inflation. It's like we're much. We'll go to the economy. I mean, I use true inflation.

37:02This is H1B visas, O1 visas. I personally think we should expand O1 visas, like probably three acts of them. Right. That's my opinion. That is something we are aligned on. Right. I want immigration of all sorts, but certainly elite immigration. People tweet at me like, oh, you just repeat whatever, you know, the administration. No, like I actually think we should triple O1 visas. It doesn't seem like it's going to happen. We'll see. I mean, I think the administration does definitely want to fix lots. Everybody. Like on all sides of the spectrum, things are our immigration process is a mess. Like, I don't, can you meet anybody who's like, oh, this is the system we should have.

37:37So the question is, can you create an alliance of people who want to fix this and this to get enough votes to change that? But I think Trump, as he said on All In, is more progressive about bringing talented people to the United States. Now, there is a tricky issue with the CCP. China has been sending people here and there clearly have been examples of important, material espionage. And so I think that poses another layer to this of what are we going to do about the CCP sending people here designed to conduct industrial or otherwise espionage. So that's also a very complicated issue. But it's complicated.

38:19So let's talk about immigration. You want to talk about crazy immigration? We currently have allowed, and maybe in the last month this has changed, but as of a month ago this was not true. You could as an Iranian citizen go study nuclear physics at MIT. I know this is a fact. That's insane. We are educating the nuclear physicists of Iran to build bombs. We should want them to stay here. To me the problem is we didn't figure out a way to keep people. I don't know that citizens of an enemy state like Iran is technically an enemy state. Foreign adversary defined in law by Congress codified. I feel like you're bringing up a lot of edge cases when they're failing to deliver on the core.

38:58They are delivering on the core thing. The core thing they ran on is we're going to shut down the southern border. Day one, fixed. Like literally fixed. Obama, there were fewer illegal immigrations during Obama than the Trump administration. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Zero. What Obama claims credit for, and I can walk you through stats here, is he said we had more deportations. The reason he can claim that, the stat is very misleading, but here's the definition he's using. If you tried to be an illegal immigrant and come from Mexico during the Obama administration, They caught you and they turned you around.

39:28They called that a deportation. The current definition is if you're in the interior of the United States is – so Obama had many more stop you, but they counted that statistically. It's true that they did actually turn you around. So it's not a bad thing. But the statistics are apples and oranges. And everybody who studied this would agree with me. So it's – but they're both good. I mean, Obama, like, look, if you read Clinton's speeches on immigration or Obama's speeches on immigration, they sound like Trump. Like, this is a very modern change in the liberal Democratic Party, their views on immigration.

40:05I think people could accept certainly freezing the border. I think the interior work. I mean, you were a lawyer. Yeah. So you understand that there are lots of laws that people aren't following. Speeding, whatever. Speeding is the critical. And then there are also people with green cards that we have the right to revoke, but then there's no reason to like scare the shit out of them. When they were allowed to be here, they had a green card or they had some other – Well, they're allowed to be here as long as – Sure, but like they didn't break any sort of agreement with the United States. Well, we do have different rules on green cards.

40:39Like Rubio talks about this a lot. If you're a guest, you don't have the same rights as the person who owns the home. And I think we stopped enforcing that in Rubio and the State Department is enforcing that. So if you're on a green card, your ability to criticize the United States is different than an American citizen. And I think that's very reasonable. It creates a terrible free speech culture in the United States. Not necessarily. The woman, by the way, I think you had sort of pushed back on the idea that the woman who was pushed out of the United States over an op-ed that it was just the op-ed.

41:12And then evidence did come out that it was just the op-ed. Do you concede that one? No, actually. There was an update on that. Send me the evidence and I'll look at it. But I do think Marco's right. We have a scarce number of green cards and we should choose, and it's perfectly proper to choose, people who support the United States to allocate the green cards to. I don't think you can do that for American citizens. You shouldn't. The government shouldn't choose. But the government does have discretionary rights for people who are visitors, just like at your dinner guest. But we're creating a culture.

41:42You don't have a right to a green card. You have to sort of have fidelity to the Republican Trump administration right now. Do you align with their views? They want to be able to scrub the social media of people coming into the United States. You should. If you're cheering out. That is insane. No, it's not insane. It's insane in the context of an administration that very much cares about fidelity to a specific leader. Well, that's your interpretation. You don't think that's what all your business friends are doing? Tim Cook is literally bringing him like golden gifts. Okay, you cannot pretend that kissing up to Trump is the order of the day.

42:13Like Hunter Biden? Hunter Biden that had like a small random contract? But with the CCP... You deny that business leaders today obviously see, and we're starting to see this break because we literally just saw... I don't think it's going to break, but keep going, keep going. Business leaders feel like they need to cozy up to a Trump in a way that is unprecedented in modern American history. I think business leaders in tech feel the need to cozy up to Trump, but let me explain why. They all spent infinite amount of money in 2016 and 20, depending on which year and sometimes bold, funding Democratic opposition.

42:49And I don't think a successful CEO should be that binary with their money, like across an organization. Google, 98 % of all contribution went to Democrats. That is not acceptable. And so they do need to do some correction to that. Facebook, Mark spent$600K personally trying to elect Joe Biden. You can't do that without creating enemies. So I think some of it is a recalibration. Some. I think, well, show me how many tech executives or how many companies, how many tech companies can you find that had 70 % or more greater Republican contributions? But some of these were just employees. Like employees are allowed to be left wing.

43:29Well, you are allowed to be left wing, but I think if you're going to engage. You were. You are, I guess. Well, you got to be careful then. Like, I don't think like... The government is going to come after you. Well, you don't. That is not the free enterprise Republican party. You can't be an ideological supporter as a company. And like, so for example, like there's lots of companies in New York. Fortune 500. Would Citibank ever give 90 % of its money just to one side? No. But you're talking about the employee donations. Yes, but it's through a PAC. So it's organized. Well, it depends. Depends.

44:06But the ones you were saying about tech companies were about employee donations. 100%. It depends on what data set you're looking at. But the company does have, usually organizes a PAC, at least for their leadership. And so it's not totally like just random atoms. I agree the random atoms is slightly different than when the company orchestrates it. But if the company orchestrates, then you have to be a little bit more judicious. We agree they're dancing for Trump. So you think they have to make up for past sort of liberal - Some do. Some definitely have to make up for sins. like if you try like you can argue are literally getting pardoned for criminal acts based on just showing up at mar-a-lago do you disagree with that well i don't i don't think that's actually true you don't you don't think we have a major pardon issue going on in the united states right now well i do think i do think like we have here's a bipartisan like comment i think we need to reform the pardon system like you saw what biden did i think everybody found that outrageous Partying himself when clearly Trump was going to go for retribution.

45:02Who indicted Trump on all these completely fake charges? Every single one of them has been thrown out. Every single one. And they're all like, as a lawyer and as a litigator, I know this stuff well. They've been thrown out because the new Justice Department came in and threw them out. No, no, no, no, no, no. Judges ultimately threw them out. So the New York State one, the Justice Department had nothing to do. The New York State Court of Appeals, which is all liberals, it's 100 % liberal. They threw it out because he is now the president and it was going to make it so untenable. No, because they made this shit up.

45:26So let's talk about New York. I happen to know this well. They changed the statute of limitations. Then they took a paper offense, which is typically a misdemeanor, and said, we're going to now change the law. So if you have this paper records offense and we're changing the statute of limitations, so we can go back to this paper he might have filed. We're going to now change it into a crime. But this is what they do. New York is, yes. Or Georgia. Same thing in Georgia. The key one is the independent prosecutor, the special appointee. Well, I think that, those were legitimate. the confidential classified documents handling was and he was definitely obstructing like those things were happening oh you mean like i like joe biden both as vice president but he proactively returned them it was once there was a there are legal standards there are different things like hillary clinton what like hillary had all these documents what about what about what i'm saying with that is like look if politicians do if politicians of both parties do something it's unfair to harass and prosecute.

46:24What is your take on the$500 million going to Trump's crypto company? That's stupid. He shouldn't have done that. It's huge. It's stupid. $500 million. I'm neutral. I don't think they should do that. But it is a scale of corruption never seen in American history. Well, I think you should read history a little bit. Harding, I'm sure, had just for inflation. Maybe Johnson getting elected. I don't even know if it's corruption. I just don't think the optics are a good idea. Like, I think if you're going to be president focused on achieving things, why bother with the distraction? Like, that's my opinion.

47:01It's ruining capitalism. Like, it's creating a world where fraud wins. But let me give you the pushback. If you were like a MAGA conservative and you wanted to push back, you'd say, of all the modern presidents, the only one who became less wealthy by being in office is Donald Trump. Every other president became more wealthy after being president. So, you know, it's actually true. So he should get wealthy while he's president? No, but the point is he's actually gone down in net worth because he served. Every other president, Obama went from$200K to$200 million. This is very common. I don't know if this is still true.

47:34This$500 million is a lot of wealth for him. Well, does it go to all the hands? Who does it go to? I don't know. It's a lot. Anyway, personally, I don't think they should have done it. I don't think whoever made the decision, I don't think it's a distraction from achieving things. Are you still a China hawk? Yes. And the Trump administration is giving China our most valuable AI powers. Well, there's debate within the administration, as you can see. That's happening, right? Well, no, it's not approved. It's not approved. Like, they don't have to sign off. What's your prediction? I don't think they're going to get the chips.

48:08Oh, really? Well, I personally hope they don't get the chips. Is this wish casting or knowledge? No, I think there's, like, it has been delayed. So, there's a number of people who have to sign off on this stuff. There's, like, a review process. And you're right, correctly stating that the Trump administration gave the first level blessing. But there's several other departments that have to sign off on that. And that hasn't happened yet. To the number one thing, if you were a China hawk, you would not want them to have. I agree with you. It is the most China dovish thing you could do. I agree with you.

48:41David Sachs, he's very smart and very knowledgeable, has a completely different perspective. You should debate it with David. David and I are – I mean, I'm happy. David, come on the podcast. He should. He can articulate his view. I understand his view. I don't agree with his view. And that's fine. We can both be conservatives and debate it. But he has a very strong perspective that has logic to it. He's super sharp. Jensen and David's views are very strong. I happen to have a different view and I'm willing to critique it. I mean, I think we should have a globalist policy, but I think we should extract from China.

49:14Facebook should be able to operate there. I think we need to. I personally am a China hawk. I believe that we need to lock down dual use technology for lots of reasons with respect to China and the CCP. But I understand friends of mine and friends of mine in the administration have slightly more nuanced or different perspectives on this. And, you know, that's what they're empowered to do. But I have my personal views are similar to yours. A lot of this, I mean, the corruption, I think, is terrible. You know, chips, you know, foreign policy, people can disagree. It's very debated. It's very complicated.

49:52I think saying no innocent person was involved with Alex Preddy, cross. I thought that was pretty dark. Well, you can, but it's obvious he was an agitator. Agitate free, you know, protest assembly is part. You're just lying to your readers. Readers were, let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah. That was not a protest. That was an organized obstruction of an ICE operation. There was no protesters. So if you want a new show. They're observers. I wrote in Newcomer that we just lived through this era where people like Elon were calling for independent media. Citizen journalist. And here he is. He's recording what's happening.

50:32With his phone. No. In the first video, he's not recording. He's fucking kicking. So you admit, two weeks before he was outshaded or now he's innocent. Now you're just like, oh, he's a wreck. You don't get shot for that. This is America. You do get shot for that. So what city do you live in? What city do you live in? This city. Okay, you live in New York City. Go downstairs, walk to any New York police officer, literally anyone. You can sample however you want. Go to five. It's actually better than one. Three or five. And ask them what they would have done differently. And you're going to be shocked.

51:03They actually acted, they don't like the result. Like, just to be clear, let's be totally clear. The result was very unfortunate. The process, if you ask any police officer in an urban city what they trained and what they would have done in that exact circumstance. People in use of force are always going to have a very forgiving attitude towards people having to make calls. But I've watched this happen. This happened in Miami. So I was in Miami the week after and I watched my neighbors talking to people love the police in Miami. We have a really great police force. I'm sorry. But anyway, so I watched my neighbors actually talking.

51:35This whole argument could still be made and he could still be innocent. Well, innocent, he's a felon. Innocent from a perspective of should you be shot? I'm not debating that with you. but some people you don't think he should have been shot no but I do know that and do you think he gave them cause to be shot yes by carrying a weapon no definitely not but you cannot the first thing you learn like do you grow up in a city too I grew up in Macon Georgia which actually has a high crime rate yeah so okay great one of the first things you learn is you do not get in a violent altercation with police under any circumstance like this one of the reasons why minorities have not supported you know the protests in Minnesota is they all know that they tell their kids at seven years old, the police pull you over, do not get in a fight.

52:20Like that's the first thing you learn as a kid in an urban environment. He clearly resisted arrest. Now being armed when you're resisting arrest is amplified. He'd been in the vicinity of pepper spray and pepper spray. Yeah, but he was still fighting. And there were six of them. No, I know. They'd taken his gun and they shot him in the back. No, they shot him in the front. No, they shot him in the back. But the officer, the only legal question, only legal question is really simple. And we'll eventually get to the bottom of this. This will eventually become out in public domain. Is did the officers who fired the shots, the two that fired the shots apparently, did they know the gun was taken away or not?

52:57They're certainly going to say they didn't know. No, but you'll be able to tell. You need to be threatened. They were not being threatened. No, you don't have to be threatened as a police officer. That's false. That is not the correct argument. That is not legally true. You do not, you do not, like the Supreme Court ruled nine nothing. Like literally, this is not the standard. But if they knew he didn't have a weapon, that would be totally different. The Supreme Court ruled that you need to bring in like the totality of the circumstances that have happened. And that is not what happened here. He wasn't threatening them.

53:27He was recording and then he helped pick up a woman from the street. Anybody who violently. What did he do? What did he do? What was the court thing? He was violently resisting arrest. You cannot do that. You cannot do that. Period. He was absolutely. He was absolutely - There was six on one. He was still resisting. He was still resisting. ICE intentionally tells people, you drive this way, you go this way. By the way, this wasn't even ICE. This was border control. Sir, I know. That's true. That is true. You can - You can - You can - Every fact is bad. It has just become an American convention that the people doing border control are ICE.

53:58Okay. I'm ICE because we don't like ICE. If that is the territory where you can find some win, if that's the ground, you can find some win to defend yourself. That is such a small piece of this. The issue is very simple and straightforward. If the officers had a - The border patrol authorized by Trump shot an American in the back doing the most patriotic thing he could, which is observing the totalitarian use of authority. He was in the middle of a street. He is a patriot. No, he's not a patriot. Nobody believes this. Yes, I sincerely believe it. You're going to look so fucking stupid when we release his signal chats.

54:30This was an orchestrated - Oh my god, the idea that - yes, of course they're following ICE. No, they're not following ICE. He was in the middle of the street interfering with operation. That is a felony. punished by eight to nine years that that offense before resisting arrest which has a 20 year interfering by picking someone up no if you're in the middle of the street you cannot he was on the sidewalk when they let's do it let's do a thought experiment if tomorrow if right downstairs we go down the studio and the police the new york police department is trying to arrest somebody and either one of us white you know all-american whatever goes in the middle of the street while the police new york police department is trying to arrest somebody will those officers grab us violently absolutely 100 % of the time.

55:08Sure, but they shouldn't shoot him. They should not shoot him. That is the standard. Let's follow this through. The thought experiment's worth doing. They shouldn't shoot us. Depending though how we react when they throw us down violently, they might. Not intentionally, but they might. Like if one of us were to grab. Like if one of us were to grab. You think I already, I don't have this positive view of the police as like the right bar for authority. So I do. Okay, so even so, I think this exceeds what the police would do. There was a great video that was like, if ICE came to New York, at least it's like, I feel like the NYPD would stand up for us because they're like, we're the ones that are supposed to shoot New Yorkers, not ICE.

55:48Oh my God. You have such a distorted view of police. You should be anti-authoritarian. You're in tech. Like, why are you... I feel like fundamentally what I don't understand. Why do you like authority? I like law and order. You're supposed to be a disruptor. I am a disruptor, but you don't get to violate the law. If you do... The law is Trump today. But then you say the people are learning the wrong lesson. So my parents, let's talk about my parents in the 60s and 70s. When they didn't like the law, what did the Vietnam people do? Protests. They protested. Wrote songs, created music. And they were willing to get arrested.

56:18Martin Luther King. Sure. Civil rights, you know, I'm going to get arrested. I'm not going to resist arrest. So the way to show a law is unfair or wrong or whatever your perspective is, is more like the 1960s and 70s. I would support that. But like fighting against police is a very bad idea. I just think it is very hard to comply with six officers at once putting pressure on your body This is how you comply. Like literally tell me you don't know a four-year-old kid that knows that this is what they're - I just think you're getting - You're getting sprayed. They're attacking you. Your body is barely in control.

56:48As soon as a police officer confronts you, if you're in a car, you put your hands on a steering wheel and the hands visible on a steering wheel. You learn that first thing of driver ed, like literally sophomore year of high school. Then if you're not, if the police confronts you and it looks like they're agitated, what do you do? You agree that they're in Minnesota because Minnesota is politically hostile to Trump? No, I think – well, it depends on my definition here. Politically hostile meaning they're not actively turning over criminals to ICE. I'd agree with that. It's true. They want them out of like prison.

57:20Yeah. And they're also making claims that they're not in prison when they are. Yeah, I don't totally understand that. But like fundamentally, I do agree with you that the extra officers in Minnesota are because Minnesota decided, for whatever set of reasons, to not take the criminals in the prison and just hand them over. Which is the historical precedent, even under Obama. Like this came out recently that Obama used to have actually an ICE agent in every prison. Like literally sitting in the prison waiting for them. So like, again, people are being somewhat hypocritical here. Like, so here's another example.

57:54Okay, so you don't like the shooting of an American. Right. So where were you in the Obama administration? You know ICE under Obama shot 59 citizens or 59 people. 23 died. Right. So that's like 10x the amount have died under the Trump administration. Where were you complaining? Where were your friends? I mean, obviously incidents become symbolic. Yeah, sure. So, you know, I totally own that this is a representative of a bunch of themes have in the United States. And some of these themes we focus on and some we don't. Hypocrisy. But I am not. It's okay if Obama does it. It's great if Obama does it, but if Trump does the same thing.

58:35Listen, I support abolishing ICE. So you're like, I'm happy to say that. So John Lott is a. It's an institution that's lost all credibility. John Lott's a famous Chicago professor. Does stats about crime mostly. He published the stats about the error rate of Trump's ICE. Like how many times have they made a mistake of any type? and then the error rate under Obama using the same stats. Trump's ICE is 5x less error prone. I saw a stat that what like the immigration officials in Minnesota committed more crimes than like the immigrants in the same period of time. I doubt that. I doubt that. I mean like look, so you should look and one of the things the administration is getting better at is these people they're deported are really bad.

59:16Like these are like child... Op-ed writers. They literally have... They're leaving people in the middle of the street in the cold. They're abducting five-year-old children. They're not abducting five-year-old children. Someone should sue you for that. Why? Because you know what happened? Do you actually know what happened? Yeah, tell me what happened. Yes. So they were arresting correctly or deporting correctly a father who was illegal and a criminal, like a bad criminal. He had a five-year-old in the house. They asked the mom, would she take care of him? And she said, no. So what are they going to do?

59:51you have to get rid of the criminal and the mom says I don't want my five year old so you know what they did they picked up the five year old and put him in the library like this is literally what happened what kind of speech culture are you encouraging they have a five year old they have a five year old because the mom said I won't take care of him the mom literally said no they're creating the circumstances of these immediate seizures well you know what happened in New York City imagine we go downstairs again and I'm a mom with a five year old and I run away and say I don't want my five year old A, the mom would get arrested right away.

1:00:22Don't you think just this sort of like hair trigger people should be sued over speech is a deterrent to free speech in the United States? You said it just now that I should be sued for it. By the way, where were you in the Biden administration when they lost 139 ,000 kids? They literally lost 139 ,000 kids. Where were you? If you were about one five-year-old, there's 139 ,000 people that somehow were kids were running around. I think it's insane to be upset that we're mad about the optical situation when Trump is doing everything he can to highlight that he's taking an aggressive stance in interior states.

1:00:55He is painting a picture to be responded to. Let's look at Texas. So there's 10x or more deportations from Texas than Minnesota. Zero incidents. You know why? Because the Texas... No, they're not running around trying to make a scene in Texas. I would love them to show the same attitude that they're doing in Minnesota where they have people terrorizing the community in Texas and let the people of Texas get a taste of what's going on. Though obviously I would feel terrible for the actual immigrants that would be affected. You can protest on the sidewalks. You cannot interfere. He was on the sidewalk with the camera.

1:01:31No, he was in the middle of the street obstructing traffic. You suggested on Twitter that Vinod Khosla wasn't your boss. He's your boss. Not really. He would say he's not. He has hiring and firing power. I don't think so. Okay. I don't think I haven't read our LP agreement in a while but I don't think it actually works that way I find it hard to believe the guy on you guys are peers or yeah I mean he's he's like default but actually practices Samir actually runs day to day at KV I appreciate you going back and forth I need to ask about Opendor because there's a set of people I don't cover the public markets but obviously I feel like there's some people watching this show it's like you haven't asked about it I can't go anywhere without talking about Opendor exactly what's the turnaround plan man they want these shares going up is it still meme stock what's yeah well it was never a meme stock what it was is there were retail investors normal people could see the vision and the upside potential of the company better than professional investors which i think is a great thing by the way um i'm a big fan of retail investors even before i got involved re-involved in open door i think like the whole purpose of a stock market let's take a step back why do we have a stock market it's so that we can efficiently allocate resources.

1:02:41That's what you learn in Econ1 or whatever. Consumers voting with their feet saying, I want more dollars to go to Palantir, or I want more dollars to go to pick your favorite company, Opendoor, is a great thing because consumers should get a voice in where do resources get allocated. So I think it's great when retail people participate. So I think the company had been broken and couldn't communicate its vision purpose at all. And fortunately, some set of retail people figured it out that like here's the high level argument. Residential real estate has not been affected by technology, period. It's still, homes are still basically bought and sold the same way they have forever.

1:03:25It's the largest asset class in the world. What's the chance in the next 20 years that that's true? Pretty low. What's the single best company with the best opportunity to improve through technology the process of buying a cellular home, it's open door. That's the investment hypothesis. Now, delivering on that is very difficult, requires lots of orchestrated, talented people working together and innovating. The fact that the company wasn't able to communicate that and convey that is intellectually bankrupt. The fact that some retail investors figured it out is great. That's what propelled the stock to increase because they're like, A, I don't like my real estate agents.

1:04:01I don't like the real estate process. I want this fixed. I'm going to give my money effectively to support a company that wants to do this. And then Kaz takes over with explicit vision of making the process of buying and selling homes easier and encouraging home buying like home ownership. The company's mission is to encourage more people to be homeowners because when you're a homeowner, you're a better citizen. Like there's lots of evidence in every possible way. And so we want to encourage homeownership and we're in the process. What's going to cause like an inflection point? Like I feel like a lot of this is still sort of the big company has been trying to do.

1:04:32So we have this cool thing that actually as far as I know, no other public company has done. So every Tuesday night, we update our metrics on like how many homes we bought. It's called the accountability index or something. You can just watch it every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. And, you know, since he's taken over in October, we've massively increased our growth. We secondarily, this will play out, you know, more as we do earnings on the profits. But we're doing better than we ever have. We're better at pricing. Our pricing engine was broken. It wasn't using any modern AI techniques. like basically the company had been in like maintenance mode from a technology perspective for like three to five years and he's already in like four months or so fixed huge fraction of that and then you'll see us doing some creative things as well that are a little bit beyond the core of just buying and selling homes adjacent product people call it you know technology adjacent products and services and we're basically following the Carvana playbook truthfully which is intentional Carvana is a hundred well they're probably down admit but there are recently a hundred billion dollar company allowing you to get an instant offer for your auto more competitive market and smaller market tam than opendoor actually so we want to follow their playbook i've always been a fan of the carvano model since 2016 i've been like we're on the curve on why can't we just follow the curve on the model like we should communicate this to investors anyway so that's what we're doing i think it'll be successful but obviously you know we have a whole new executive team like literally whole new executive team uh so cash started four months ago we have new CFO new president new COO so it's not gonna all the metrics aren't gonna change like immediately but they're all moving in the right way what is this patch by the way it's a brand it's okay it's too cool for me and I have no idea your producer said don't wear any branded clothes like for the podcast I'm like I didn't know if it was like yeah it was no it's like a golden goose or whatever the sneaker brand is if the um i mean if the and we're about to wrap up but like if the democrats win the midterms is that a repudiation of trump or the uh well historically the out part the out of power party has won midterms so the historical precedent would be that i do think it depends on the magnitude like there's i don't think that's going to happen by the way i think the republicans will absolutely control the senate the house is more volatile and many ways partially with all redistricting left to right and don't even know no one knows who's voting for who but i think the house will be more volatile but the as far as i can tell the economy is improving a lot and people are starting to notice like i saw the right track wrong track metric is your family better off all those are moving a lot in the last two you're predicting republicans win the senate what about the senate and maybe even gain seeds the house is probably a 50 50 deal but i think the first derivative because i think people do care about their Hockeybook like the conventional wisdom in politics.

1:07:26I think Trump will be successful also. One of the magics, there's several pieces of magic which we didn't talk about Trump like there's lots of things to criticize I'll grant you like trust me there are a lot of things in the public domain you can criticize them but people haven't focused enough on the magic of Trump. He is excellent at motivating people who don't vote often to vote and when he's not on the ballot which is typically the case in the midterm, the Republican Party suffers because they're voting for him. They're not voting for Republicans. I think he, now there's so much evidence of this.

1:07:59He understands that. And he understands if he wants to accomplish his goals for the last two years. He needs to loom large. He needs Republicans. Like, otherwise, there's stuff you can do in foreign policy. But fundamentally, to move the needle, and I think he ran for president to move the needle. Since he got shot. So he moves immigration officials out of Maine to make it a little friendlier. Clearly not a winner. He will do well. But I think it really does matter. The economy continues to grow. You're predicting close call. I think the Republicans, we, will win the House. But it's not obvious.

1:08:33I think the Senate I'm very confident in. But anyway, I think it would be bad. And we're going to continue to have free and fair elections in the United States? Oh, yeah. Well, we're trying to pass voter ID. Don't you think passports would be good for Democrats? Like more Democrats have passports than Revolvement. I'm fine with passports. Give me a library card. I'm probably fine with that. Like I just think it's insane. You can't go to a pharmacy literally downstairs and buy Sudafed without an ID. But you think Trump will run for a third term? No. I don't think so. For lots of reasons. I think he enjoys like occasionally, you know, how should I say this?

1:09:14Annoying people. Like he likes tweeting people, like teasing people. Well, it's hard to know when he's joking. I think the literally serious thing hasn't been true. No, but I think you get a feel for when he quit. He did some of the tariffs. People thought he was joking. No, well, I never thought he was joking about tariffs. I believe in tariffs. Vinod actually believes in tariffs. It's one of the things we're very aligned on. But I knew he really strongly believed in it and wanted – the key was to get a treasury secretary and commerce secretary who believed in tariffs because a lot of Wall Street people like are blind about the benefits of tariffs.

1:09:45And so he got a team that believes in tariffs and that's why they were able to execute and that's why we're seeing the dividends. The reindustrialization is very real, the investment in America, but more importantly, the trade deficit has changed radically in nine months. Nobody, almost nobody, including his most positive supporters thought he could change it that quick and that fast. So tariffs are great. I think you're going to see, you know - We go all day. I mean, it's driving Canada into China's arms. Well, Canada doesn't have a choice. Like they can fake this. He already canceled. I think Carney already canceled that deal.

1:10:15He announced it. There are different pieces of it that are coming out. I mean, like, look. Anyway, we clearly see the political world very differently. I appreciate you coming on. That is fair. We'll check in after the midterms. We can run a joint campaign. It'll be great. Well, at least down in China. We both are bullish on, I don't know, capitalism and tech. Yes. But the rest of it. And Rogo. We're both big investors in Rogo. You don't like fraud, but you're willing to tolerate the candidate who's pardoning a bunch of people. I don't know. I think all, by definition, all pardons in history are to people who are convicted.

1:10:46And so Trump does not have the most pardons. All right. All right. Keith, thanks so much for coming on the Newcomer Podcast. Pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to the Newcomer Podcast. I'm Eric Newcomer. Follow us on Substack at newcomer.co. Hope you enjoyed the episode. See you next week.