Theo Von and Pierce dissect the 2024 U.S. election, arguing that labeling Trump a Nazi is an insecure tactic while praising his CEO-style negotiation skills and cross-racial appeal. Pierce speculates on a "dark strategy" involving internet shutdowns or leveraging Elon Musk against Kamala Harris, predicting massive $2 trillion government layoffs if Trump wins. The conversation extends to geopolitical motives regarding Russia's resources, proposed resolutions for Ukraine and Israel, and youth anxiety caused by smartphone overuse, ultimately highlighting the shift from traditional cable news to independent podcasting as a new media landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Dark Strategy Against Obama00:08:36
You said deplorable.
You said garbage.
You say Nazi.
You think this is a powerful position?
No, you've already lost the argument.
I hope she does the podcast.
You know, it's going to be embarrassing.
She's not going to be able to last for two or three hours.
You think Putin really wants to sit down with somebody that knows how to negotiate?
He doesn't want somebody like that.
I asked him the question, when are these things going to be done?
After inauguration or will it be done when you're president-elect?
What is our last chance for taking them out?
How would you have taken on Trump?
You really want me to give you a dark strategy?
Patrick, it's great to finally meet you.
Yes, it is.
We've never met.
Obviously, a massive admirer of your work.
We're in New York.
You pardoned the New York Yankees.
You finally won a game of the World Series last year.
I finally did, yes.
So you've come in to watch them tonight.
You've got to come root for him.
Yes.
You brought the whole family, the whole crew.
The secondary important thing, of course, going on is the American election.
I realize you'd rather probably win the World Series than worry about a trifling matter like an election.
I just want to ask you a sort of randomly obtuse question, because I know you're a Trump guy this time around.
If you weren't a Trump guy and you were trying to litigate against him, in other words, reasons why he shouldn't be president.
I'm going to come to the reasons you think he should be.
But where would you go at in terms of legitimate criticism of Trump?
Well, I mean, think about let's lay out what they've tried already.
Okay, so if I'm, you hire me as a consultant, what is our last chance for taking him out the last week that we have left?
We've done the DOJ.
We've done the humiliation with him in front of his wife.
We've done the pinning the kids against each other.
Well, you notice Ivanka's not that involved.
Jared Kushner's not that involved.
They kept talking about that deal, the $2 billion deal, so that pushed them away.
Very good strategy on what they did to kind of show that the family's not together, but Trump's family, they went about it and they did their thing.
We did the Eugene Carroll, $83 million.
We did the Mar-Lago is not a, you know, $400 billion building.
It's an $18 million.
We've done all of that stuff.
We've tried to burn him out.
We've tried to get his peers, the people he's hired in the past before, to say, look at his track record.
He hasn't done a good job.
COVID.
You've tried misinformation.
You've tried Russia.
There's really nothing left.
You've had two assassination attempts on him.
So at this point, what I noticed when I watched him, there are certain things where in order for you to be able to go up against him, you one have to have a decent candidate.
Kamala has to be the most boring candidate I've ever seen in my entire life, left, right, center.
By the way, I think she's more boring than Jeb Bush.
I think she's more boring than there's nothing there when you watch the interviews.
Tell a story, tell me something, sell me the dreams.
Say when I was six years old, I remember that this.
She can't do that.
She can't tell the story, Partner.
Quite frankly, I think if there was a primary, if the Dems had a primary, she wouldn't have beaten Pritzker.
She wouldn't have beaten Shapiro.
She wouldn't have beaten Newsome.
I don't think she would have beaten Whitmer.
I don't think she's top five.
At best, she's not going to be able to do it.
Which is why the Democrats should have had, I think, a convention where they put it out and had a battle.
It's a big mistake for a big strategy for them.
But at this point of the game, what to do, let's lay out the crazy stuff, the stuff you don't want to use.
Creatively, you have to find a way to shut down the internet.
You have to find a way to create power grids.
You have to find a way.
I'm talking really like the movie that came out with Barack Obama that, you know, leave the world behind where power grid, internet, this is the movie that they produced with Julia Roberts.
It's not like we're talking about something that's not there.
You have to do something in those battleground states with the counties that majority are Republicans to create the fear that people don't show up.
Because if you don't do that or delay, like Maricopa County saying we need 10 to 12 days, you have to do that with Pennsylvania.
You have to do that with Georgia.
They don't do that.
This is done if they don't do that.
They have a terrible candidate.
But if you were to take it back, say you were the nominee for the Democrats right now, I think their strategy of calling him Hitler, branding him a Nazi, all this stuff, insulting his supporters and stuff, none of that obviously has worked.
But if you were trying to pick him off.
You really want me to give you a dark strategy?
Well, yeah.
How would you have taken on Trump?
If you can get one of his kids to come out and do an interview with Anderson Cooper on why Ivanka chose to not be that public about it, and you have to pay them a half a billion dollars to agree to do this interview, even though I know for a fact they want to do it.
You have to either do that.
It can't be the Michael Cohen.
They posted a picture today of a boat with the flags.
Oh, look at the boat here.
What do you think about this, Ivanka and Jared Kushner?
We know that Soros, with the money that he's spending, and you get the video, that's very effective for you to post it out and go viral.
It'll persuade some small percentage of people.
You got to get Marla.
You got to get Ivanka.
You got to get somebody super, super close on the inside.
And it's just not going to work.
Outside of that, think about the Vanity Fair reaches out to me.
What do you think about the fact that President Trump has gone all these different podcasts?
Who goes on these types of podcasts?
And what do you think about this?
I said, this is called disruption and destroying you, the mainstream media, the strategy that he's taken, going and talking to the average day-to-day people.
And she's not doing it, right?
He's having those types of conversations.
I think they have to really, really find a dark strategy to be able to pull this off.
And I just don't think they're going to pull it off because they got what?
They got Beyonce, they got Taylor Swift, they got now Arnold Schwarzenegger today announcing endorsing Kamala.
They got all these celebrities, Steph Curry, they got all of those guys.
They got every one of these guys.
Trump converts and gets Bobby.
Tulsi goes the other side.
Elon Musk, who's maybe the number one voice name in media, and he's not even in media.
I believe he's the most, he's got the biggest weight as a name.
Beyonce's not in that league.
Their competitor, so if you look at Musk is on this side, their Musk is Mark Cuban.
Musk wins.
If you go on this side and think about Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi, who is their Bobby?
Who went from this side to that side?
Who?
Kinzing?
Who do they have?
Nobody.
So match up to match up.
They're Obama.
Obama's the other day scolding.
He just looks out of touch.
They both do, actually, him and Michelle.
It's horrible.
It's embarrassing.
It's desperate.
You know what it's like?
Here's what I'm a man, you're a man.
We both will know this feeling.
And there's three situations where I believe the opposition can feel desperation.
Three situations that I can talk about.
First one, when a man is desperate for a girl and she feels it, she knows body language and eyes and the way we talk.
She feels, this guy's desperate for me.
It's unattractive, right?
In sales, if I come and try to sell you a house or a policy or a gym membership, you will feel, based on my desperation, if I'm going to need to pay my bills and I really need this commission check, you will feel a desperate salesperson.
You know what third one is?
In politics, when you try to become desperate to win a vote, Obama, Michelle, Kamala, all of them look like a desperate salesperson that needs the commission, but no one's buying.
Yes.
That's what they feel like.
I completely concur with that.
Let's turn to Trump.
First of all, his qualities.
Tell me the qualities that make him such an effective political animal, which is what he is.
Did you watch the recent movie that came out about Trump to hit the business?
I haven't seen it yet.
You haven't seen it?
You should watch it.
I watch it twice in the first week.
And the reason why I watch it twice in the first week is I like to know what the enemy thinks about more than my allies.
We went the other day and watched a documentary that was all pro-Trump from the beginning to the end.
And unfortunately, I don't want to hear that because we already know the good stuff, right?
I want to know what angles you're going to take to take me out.
I'm interested in that.
When you watch this movie, $17 million budget, first weekend is $1.4 million that they make, big flop.
They couldn't get distribution until the last week.
We saw no ads at all all over the place.
The acting, I thought, was phenomenal.
I've got to give credit to the acting.
But there's a scene about Roy Korn.
And the reason why I've studied Roy over the years is because I've interviewed the Sammy DeBull, the Michael Francis, the Frank Colada, the Phil Leonetti, who was the former under boss of the Philadelphia Crime Family.
He called me one day, says, I want you to interview me, but I want no lights on my face.
Deception Before November 6th00:11:23
I don't want people to know what I look like.
So I've interviewed a lot of mobsters.
And the name that always comes up is Roy.
Roy was a heavyweight back in the days.
And there's a scene that says, hey, if you want to win and you want to be the king of New York, there's three things you got to know.
Attack, attack, attack.
Always claim victory.
Never accept loss or even claim loss.
Like, oh, we lost, but we're going to get better.
Nope.
Always do that.
Whether that's true or not, when Roy told him that and he believed it, and it became part of his DNA, it's over.
There's certain people in life, Pierce, that we look at.
Kobe modeled his game after who?
Michael, right?
You know, LeBron modeled his game after Scotty and Magic.
Certain players you're looking at, they didn't model their game after anybody, right?
Hey, I want to be like Ronald Reagan, so they speak like Ronald Reagan, and they're very polished and diplomatic, all this other stuff.
Every hundred years, a guy shows up that's not like anybody else.
Kamala is like everybody else, right?
He is like nobody else.
It's attractive, it's different, it pisses people off, it creates envy, it creates agitation.
And those are his strengths on what he's doing.
In regards to the area that hurts him, at this point, anything that hurts him is already been exposed.
So it's no longer as effective as it was before.
As a leader, what are his character flaws, do you think?
I mean, if you were advising him, if he wins on Tuesday and he gets another four years.
My own gut feeling, having known him a long time, is that he'll be thinking more about legacy second time.
I want to say this to you, and I hope their team sees this.
Because let's go and talk deception after he wins.
November 5th, every odd says he's winning.
Kamala's got 80 billionaires that are endorsing her.
He's only got 50 billionaires, right?
Kamala's got all of Hollywood and all these guys.
He doesn't have those guys.
He's got the podcasters.
He's got the day-to-day people.
He's getting the young mill.
He's getting the young African American.
It's the biggest plus-minus ever since 1964.
But there's one thing that we have to be thinking about.
Let's go November 6th.
Let's assume it's November 6th he wins, okay?
We're in a room like this, and it's 10 of us, where all the establishment left, Democrats, and some of the establishment right that want to do everything we can to now identify 2028, right?
It's kind of like World Cup.
You lost, we already got a plan 2028, what's going to happen, right?
Or whatever, 2026.
Today, the most hated man by the establishment, number one, is Trump.
Number two is Musk today.
November 6th, you know who's going to be the most hated man, November 6th?
Number one will be Musk.
Number two will be JD Vance.
Number three will be Trump.
Why?
I'll give you my thoughts on this.
The reason why they'll be over Trump is because it's a one-term president.
They're not going to be worried about him.
JD Vance, the way he's been doing interviews the last two, three, four months, the way he fought Tim Waltz, where you walked away saying, this guy got Tim to like him.
And they were able to build a certain level of camaraderie.
And then he goes up with a fight with Jake Tapper, puts him in his place, then he's go with Dana.
Then he knows how to go with Theo Vaughan and laugh his ass off.
And every different place you put him on, he's doing, well, I think he's doing Joe Rogan today, if I'm not mistaken.
They're going to try to do the following.
And this is what's going to hurt.
Let's say you're JD Vance on mainstream media, CNN, whoever it is, and JD is doing an interview.
Hey, JD, how do you feel about the fact that everybody now is saying that you're the president and you are telling President Trump what to do?
You're not the vice president.
Why are they going to do that?
If they do that and it triggers something with Trump and there is the split, they win.
That is the deception game that's going to be played to try to pin those guys together.
And if the president can still find a way to edify, yet protect in a way where JD stays humble.
And if JD can find a way to stay bulletproof and not buy into the fact that everybody behind closed doors is going to say, it's because of you, you're the one that's making it happen, all this other stuff.
And he stays humble about it, then JD may win 2028 and 2032.
I think Vivek's going to be there.
I think a lot of people, I think 2028 is going to be very, very competitive.
But I think that's the way you divide them.
You have to go after, and the reason why Musk becomes number one is because if you put a bar and you look at the timeline for bars, Trump's is going to be four years, okay?
JD is going to be 12 years, but Musk is going to be 30 years.
That's why Musk is number one.
That's why JD is number two, hated man, November 6th, and third will be Trump.
They're going to go try to find a way to destroy Elon and JD Vance because those guys will be around for a couple decades.
When you had Trump on your podcast, it was a fascinating.
Listen, but what did you make of him when you're interacting with him one-on-one?
You know, one of the things about when you're doing business with a, when you're communicating with a businessman, there's a dealing, right?
Meaning, if we do a deal together and I'm paying you $2 million, okay, and you're asking for three years, but I put a bonus on the back end that if we do XYZ Pierce, you're going to get another $5 million, right?
And you call me, your lawyers call me, my lawyers call you, they're going back and forth.
And then it gets very tough with the negotiation.
Let's just say we're two weeks away from finalizing it.
We haven't signed a contract.
I call you, I'm like, hey, Pierce, do you want to do this deal?
Pat, I want to find a way to make this work.
Okay, you say, do you want me at valutainment?
I say, of course I want you at valutainment.
No problem.
Fantastic.
Let's find a way to get these lawyers to work.
Lawyers do their thing.
Good.
Deal in.
Fantastic.
Let's go on a run and take over the world, right?
You're driven to get your $5 million bonus based on markers to hit.
I'm driven to help you succeed.
I'm not going to backstab you because I want you to hit those numbers.
You know, you're not going to backstab me.
You're going to defend me because you want me to make sure I give you the best team, the resources.
That's not how it works in politics.
When you look at politics, it's a very different game on what they're going to be doing.
So they're going to, it's a very different game that he's going to be playing.
And that negotiation part when you're going through, hey, how about if we do this?
And how about if we do that?
How about if we do this deal?
It's a very different game.
It's a very different game.
How significant has his podcast strategy been this time around, to go and do you and to go and do Joe Rogan?
And that's what I'm saying.
When you talk to him, it's a business guy.
So his answer, if you push too hard and like, hey, here's what I like to do.
What I'm asking you is I'm asking you specifically about this.
And he'll say, what are you asking about?
It's about this.
Let's stay on this.
My question is this.
Okay, and he'll come back and he'll fight it or push back or do his thing.
But you're talking to a man's man.
It's business.
It's transaction.
It's negotiation.
He's been in a lot of different settings for him to do that.
I think the strategy they took, credit I think goes to Bobby Kennedy.
I think Bobby gets the credit.
I think Vivek and Bobby really took it to the next level when you noticed Bobby was everywhere.
He came in our podcast 2020 the first time around.
No, I've had him on six, seven times.
I'm sure you've had him on many times.
Well, he's been on many different places before he was with me.
I'm just saying for us, he debated Alan Dershowitz.
I was very, I'm like, this was great.
I asked two questions.
They went at it for an hour and a half.
And then you saw Bobby on Joe, the first time when, you know, Joe says, I'm not going to lie to you.
At first when I thought about you, I thought you were cuckoo, I thought, you were this, I thought, and then I read the book.
I'm like, no, this guy's actually legit.
And then that podcast blew up, then other people had him on.
And then all of a sudden, like, wait a minute, you can actually, and he announced he's running for president.
Like, wait, who's running for president?
This entire time when you wrote this case against Anthony Fauci, this was your plan of running for president to go up against Fauci and the establishment?
What a straight, and then boom, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 10%.
And then Vivek comes up.
Vivek's on my podcast.
And I'm talking to him, and I'm like, wait a minute.
This guy wrote a book called About Woke Media.
He sounds like he wants to run.
He leaves.
A couple weeks later, he announces he's running for president.
That moment when he came on the podcast, he had 40,000 followers on Twitter, okay?
And we were looking at Mike Pence, we were looking at everybody with the data followership.
Fast forward a year later, 2 million followers, whatever his number is right now, Skyrim.
He's everywhere right now with Vivek.
Trump realized, I'm going to go on this podcast.
Trump going on, Joe Rogan, he got twice as many views as all of Kamala's interviews combined from one podcast.
Theo, funny, you saw a different side of Trump.
Schultz, crushed it, phenomenal podcast.
Nelk Boys, full scent, those guys, cow, they do a great job.
Us, business, different Bloomberg fighting tariffs.
You don't know what you're talking about with tariffs.
I've seen what you said for 30 years.
You watch this and you realize people right now are going like this.
This is what they're looking at.
They're driving in the car watching.
You're no longer watching cable TV, not the audience you want.
So I think 2028, Pierce, is going to be the Super Bowl of candidates realizing we have to go through them.
And when Kamala was negotiating with Rogan and said, hey, we'll give you an hour.
Fly out to us and all this.
Very elitist.
Come to us.
We'll let you interview Kamala, where Trump's like, I'll come to you in Austin.
I'll give you the three hours.
Then I'll get on a plane.
Then I'll go to Michigan.
I'll be three hours late, but I'll still give my talk at mid-night.
When he came to us, by the way, we sat down.
There was a moment in the middle of the podcast.
Samus texted me 50 times.
Hey, their team's telling them they got to go.
They got to go.
They got to go.
I'm like, what do you mean they got to go?
So I pause.
I'm like, hey, guys, let's just pause this real quick for a second.
We didn't put this clip out there, so let's pause it for a second.
So what's that?
So if you don't mind president, what are we doing?
I said, there's nine of them in front of me, and two of my guys are there.
I said, what do we do?
Are we going to do this or are we not going to do this?
You guys are texting me saying, stop.
You've given me 90 minutes.
You were 45 minutes late.
What are we doing with this interview?
And this is all you saw.
He sat there and he says, what do I have?
You saw this, right?
What happened?
What do we have?
What do we have?
Move this to this, move that to this, move this to this.
We're going to give you that time.
Let's go through.
I'm really enjoying this.
And then we went an hour and a half to finish up the interview, and it was great.
That's the kind of stuff where a negotiator driver is not the elitist.
Here's a billionaire that's partied with everybody.
That was a king of New York, is the king.
Now he's living in Florida.
He knew everyone.
He did deals with everyone.
And on the other side of Kamala, who's a claim she grew up in a middle-class family, sitting, you come to us, Joe, and we'll give you an hour.
I hope she does the podcast with Joe.
But if she does do it, you know, it's going to be embarrassing.
She's not going to be able to last for two or three hours.
What do you make of the attacks on Trump being the new Hitler, running a bunch of neoss?
Last resort.
What do you think of that?
It's very simple.
You know, when a guy breaks up with a girl and, you know, he first is like, oh, it's okay.
It didn't work yet.
And then all of a sudden it's like, she starts dating somebody.
And then what is the guy?
He says, oh, she's at this, she's at that, or vice versa.
Okay, we're going through a breakup.
It's going to be fine.
And then all of a sudden, he's over you and he's dating somebody.
He was an asshole.
He always cheated.
He did this and he did that and he did this.
It's all insecurity.
We've seen this when we were kids.
It's just pure insecurities.
They don't have another thing.
The most embarrassing thing for you to do is to go to the Nazi level.
Let me get this straight.
And even this week, you saw with Tony Hinchcliffe, he gets up and gives a joke about, you know, Puerto Rico is a big uh dumpster, or whatever he calls them of an island and oh my god, you know this is what they're doing.
They're against poor Puerto Ricans are great people and look at this.
Sales Breakups and Surplus Fire00:06:26
This is not fair.
That's a comedian that said that the current sitting president says Trump voters are a bunch of what garbage?
Garbage, you said.
Deplorable, you said garbage, you say Nazi.
You think this is a powerful position.
No, you've already lost the argument on what you're doing.
And the more they do that, the average person's watching this and saying, man, I'm a Democrat.
I really want to vote for you, but why are you?
This is embarrassing.
What are you doing to me?
Make it easier for me to vote for you.
I think it's just a failed strategy and desperation.
You have two mantras.
Future looks bright and only the paranoid survive.
Let's start with the paranoia.
What should we be paranoid about after this election is resolved?
A lot of things.
I mean, we have to be worried about.
You saw what happened the other day.
Story came out, the fact that Venezuela and Iran are united against the West.
So Venezuela and Iran are united against the West.
Iran is close to who?
You got whether it's Russia, whether it's China, 400 billion 25 years.
So we have to be careful what's going to be going over there.
We have to then realize what's going to happen with the immigration that we have.
We have to deport people.
I mean, there's no question about it.
They have to deport people.
So the manipulation to say the separation of family and kids and parents and all this stuff.
So that manipulation is going to come here hardcore with gaslighting.
So we have to not fall for that gamification that's going to take place.
And in the economy, we have to kind of go back to the basic fundamentals of the economy with tariffs.
There's a lot of debate right now on both sides on tariffs.
Do you do it?
Do you not do it?
You look at trade surplus and trade deficits, right?
Okay.
So the way to explain that, a lot of people, when you say tariffs, what is a tariff?
What is a trade surplus?
What is a trade deficit?
I don't really know what all this stuff is.
Here's all it is.
Let's say you and I, peers, are in sales.
You sell real estate, I sell auto insurance, okay?
We're in London.
And we meet at a networking event.
You've been in the business five years, I've been in the business five years.
I say to you, peers, why don't you and I, you're successful, I'm successful.
You send me referrals, I send you referrals.
Deal, deal, no problem.
If people want to buy homes, I'll send it to you.
If people want to buy auto insurance, send them my way.
Great.
Six months goes by.
You gave me five referrals.
I've given you zero.
No problem.
Two years goes by.
You've given me 200 referrals.
I've given you 10.
Five years goes by.
You've given me 1,100 referrals.
I've given you 100.
What are you asking yourself at this point?
How much longer are you going to give me referrals?
I'm winning.
I'm making money, but I'm not giving you any of it, right?
U.S., our trade deficit is at $1.1 trillion.
That means we've given the world more business than they've given us.
Number one is China, then it's Germany.
China's trade surplus is $840 billion.
The world has given China $840 billion more than China has given to others.
Number two is Germany.
Germany is around $240.
Someone has to go and sit down with these guys and have the conversation and say, hey, let's just say I'm the guy that gets the job.
Hey, how you doing?
Great, fantastic.
Hey, this is Patrick B. David.
I'm representing the president.
I notice our surplus is XYZ.
We have a new plan we call the XYZ Initiative.
I'd like to come and meet with you and the Treasury, whatever it is.
We have to make a decision.
We have three options.
Number one, we announce tariffs, and it'll incrementally keep going up every month.
Number two, you have to choose to buy from us the same amount that we're giving to you.
And we'll give you 30 industries to buy from.
We need you to buy $200 billion of stuff committed, committed every single year from automotive, from this, from this, from that, from this.
You do that, we don't have any problem.
You don't, tariffs are coming your way.
How would you like to meet sometime next week?
We're on our way.
We called the 30 countries that were giving you more business than you're giving us.
We come to you.
Great.
Can we do a deal?
Love to try your food.
I'd love to try what you have going on.
Fantastic.
Deal is good.
Send us business.
Buy from these folks.
We have to stay strong there.
Jim Jordan was on my podcast yesterday.
And one thing when I asked Jim Jordan, I said, you know how Twitter files took place and we learned about the communication that Twitter was having with Joe Biden and Joe Biden's camp was saying, take this down.
Don't let this Hunter Biden story stay.
New York Post, all the stuff that was going on.
And then Elon Musk shows it to us what's going on to the point that Mark Zuckerberg four months ago had to write that letter to Honorable Chairman Jim Jordan and say, hey, you know, I apologize the fact that we were asked to do this.
And even though we had the choice not to do it, we chose to do it.
Biggest mistake of my life.
I'm choosing not to support anybody.
All this other stuff, right?
I asked Jim, Jim, what can we do to have something like that, except it's called FBI files, DOJ files, IRS files, CIA files?
What if we hire somebody that goes and investigates all the email exchange and shows us exactly what's going on and tell the world, what do you think we need to do for that term?
He says, well, Trump can do that.
I said, who do you think he needs to fire?
He says, he needs to fire everybody and then some.
I said, what do you mean by?
He says he needs to fire some people that he can't even fire.
He should fire those guys.
I said, really?
He says, yes.
Because the people that are in there that don't love America, that don't look at us as number one, and maybe are helping out other people, we have to realize these people that are on the inside don't love America, you've got to be gone.
And if you're another country that you hate America, we don't need to do business together moving forward.
Fascinating.
I mean, it could be very transformative, this second Trump term, particularly if he's being advised by people like Elon Musk, who've gone in and said we can take $2 trillion off the government spending and everything else.
He probably could, given what he did at Twitter.
By the way, if they go in and they pull that off, when Twitter used to have 7,500 employees, Elon comes in with the kitchen sink.
Do you remember that when he came in with that?
Fires 50% overnight.
That's 3,750.
The next day, 1,250 quit.
So now he's at 2,500 employees.
He goes from 7,500 to 2,500 employees.
The company's operating.
The Anxious Generation Playbook00:15:41
There's nothing like you're feeling glitches or anything that took place.
How did you get rid of 66% of your employees and nobody felt it?
What if we do that with our U.S. government, the number of employees that we have?
You think we're going to feel it?
I don't think we are.
If they do that and show results, it's going to be transformative.
And I think at that point, it could be Trump IV, it could be Jay Devants 8.
I think you're right.
The future looks bright.
Let's be positive about the world.
It seems to me there's a lot going on, massively amplified by the way people consume their news these days.
If you actually think back to World War II, World War I, all these periods, far more tumultuous times for the planet than we have right now.
In fact, a lot of the metrics for how we are living these days, we live longer, we live healthier, generally more prosperous, there's less abject poverty than there used to be.
The water's cleaner, we're getting rid of more diseases, et cetera, et cetera.
You've seen that argument.
And yet a lot of people, especially younger people, seem completely gripped with anxiety about the state of the world and can't really deal with regular life.
So you've got these two parallel things going on, where it's probably the best time to ever be alive, but young people don't understand that or can't accept it.
What do we do about that?
I don't think that they don't understand that.
I think when you and I grew up, like my kids, my oldest son is 12, then I have an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter.
100% of my 12-year-old son's friends have cell phones, iPhones, to be exact.
90% of my 11-year-old sons all have iPhones.
My kids don't have iPhones.
My kids can't play video games five days a week.
The only way you get to play video games on the weekend for two hours is if you have no C's.
If you have a C, you will not play video games.
One of my kids had a C for three months during Christmas and three months during summer.
Last year for six months, he didn't play any iPad, no video games, because he had one C. You remember this?
Not one single minute of playing the video game, right?
Okay.
So to them, they're like you and I a little bit.
They don't know what this means.
They don't know what to go through this, right?
Now, bring it to today.
Today, you're a kid.
You're in bed.
Mommy and daddy don't know what's going on.
You're just kind of going through it.
What are these stories doing?
How much anxiety are they creating?
How much fear are they creating?
How much of anything in life that you believe in, the good, the bad, the ugly, how much of it is imagination?
How much is your imagination taking over and kind of manipulating you?
Where let's just say you and I are brothers, and you sit there and you're like, you know what?
I'm going to tell Pat my brother this, and he's probably going to say this.
You know what he's probably going to do?
He's probably sitting there right now saying this to mom, and he's probably saying that to dad.
And screw him.
I remember when we were 12, right?
Our imagination goes, and we do that in our 30s, 40s, 50s.
Now think about when you're 12 years old, 14 years old, 16 years old.
And at all these videos that you're watching, a book came out I think every parent needs to read.
It's called Anxious Generation.
I don't know if you've read it.
Maybe you've interviewed the guy or not, Jonathan Hyde, I think his name is.
Yes.
I've an interview.
I saw a number of interviews.
He did it.
It's fascinating.
He chanced the downturn and kids' anxiety all exploded from when smartphones became smart.
That's right.
That's right.
And he says a few things that are easy things for parents to do.
He says, one of the things that parents need to do is the following.
Get a safe where you put guns so you can kind of lock it up.
At 7 o'clock, when your kids are done doing what they're doing, everybody puts their phones there.
They don't get it till 7 o'clock in the morning.
Because your 16-year-old kid may need to have a smartphone, but they got to put their phones there.
So they don't go through this at night when they're going to sleep.
Then in the morning at 7 o'clock, they get to get it.
Nobody touches their phone.
He says also some things about, you know, we're so worried nowadays with parents who are like, we want to drop off their kids exactly to where school is.
He says, you and I walk to school, right?
He says, drop off your kids five to ten minutes away from school.
Show them a little bit of independence to make them give confidence that you got this.
You got things they're going through.
It's very basic for me when I think about the level of anxiety with kids.
I read a book 15 years ago about anxiety and depression.
And it simplified everything for me.
It said, whenever you're feeling depressed, you're spending way too much time in the past.
I shouldn't have done this.
Big mistake.
Why did I do that to her?
She could have been my wife.
He could have been this depression.
Anxiety comes from spending way too much here.
Kids are anxious right now.
Why?
Because this is where they're living.
What's going to happen to the future?
Climate change.
The world is coming to an end.
These capitalists are taking over the world.
Oh my God.
Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety.
We just need to lower the temperature and say, listen, it's going to be all right.
Future looks bright.
While everybody else is so scared, the more poised and under control you are, the more opportunities you're going to have.
In your world, you're incredibly famous.
In my parents' generation, probably not many of them know who you are.
Again, in the media, there's complete parallel lines going on.
I've come into your world and I'm loving it.
I find it very liberating.
I walk the streets and it's a much younger type of person who comes up and is really engaged.
It's a fascinating place to be doing your stuff, isn't it?
Where are we going to be in five, ten years?
Talk to me about cable news, about newspapers, about traditional media.
Look what happened with all the media companies coming out and saying if your income stays the same, consider that a race today, right?
How many people came in and said, your salary is going down?
Mehri Hassan, they didn't want to renew his contract because they gave him a demotion.
It's like, I'm going to go see what I can do on my own, right?
Guys getting fired, guys leaving.
Madow's not doing it once.
Companies are sitting there saying, I'm not getting the advertisement I got before.
This business model doesn't work anymore.
CNN Plus goes, raises $300 million to create CNN Plus.
They bring this Professor G. Scott, Scott G. Galloway, and Wallace and all these guys.
Boom, failed like this.
$300 million.
Gone, right?
And so the transition from cable to podcasting, it's going to be very weird for these guys.
Because in podcasting, independent, you don't get to say, you better pay me this or else this.
That's not how this shit works.
You got to go try to grind for a year, two years, three years, fly, go interview this guy, that guy, this guy, one thing goes, boom.
Now the interview does 18 million, like, you know, Bassam Yosef, 32, 33 million views.
How much AdSense money did that bring, right?
Just one interview.
And then how many do you have over 10 million?
You have quite a lot of them.
So now for somebody like you, you are a great case study of a guy that can go from there to here.
But you're interesting.
You push back.
You have an element of the mainstream side, but you have an element of Howard Stern, right?
So go to the next four years.
I think the next four, eight, 12 years.
Three things are keeping cable in business.
Boomers, big pharma, sports.
Sports is leaving cable.
The moment a Miami Dolphins game against Kansas City Chiefs, it was a playoff game, I think it was game one, got $110 million.
Was it Roku?
Who was it that gave him, was it Roku or was it Hulu?
Who gave him $110 million game one?
I don't, I don't, it was one of those guys that gave him 100 for a playoff game.
Charles Barkley gets up and he says, look at these greedy people.
What are you doing going away from traditional cable?
What kind of a thing?
I understand this is all about money.
I'm sorry, Barkley.
Do you do NBO and T inside the NBA for free?
Was your agent negotiating a bigger contract?
Are they?
Or are you just saying, just pay me 200 grand a year?
It's market force.
Are you kidding me?
The market's disrupting the entire place right now.
So sports is going to leave.
We're driving the other day.
My son and I, I want to watch Joe Burrow play.
Nowhere on TV are they showing the game.
I go on Hulu.
I'm watching the game of Cincinnati Bengals in Miami and Florida in my phone while we're driving.
The kids are watching Joe Burrow play the game.
It's a very different game.
So that's that part.
Big pharma, if they're given money, like the other day you saw John Legend, hey, go get your COVID shot, and they're paying guys like him or Kelsey 10 to 20 million bucks.
How much longer is that going to work?
And these guys are not getting agitated.
And then the last one being the fact that boomers, boomers are eventually going to age themselves out of this.
My dad's 82 years old.
You know where he gets his news?
My dad's always here.
82 years old.
He's watching this now.
He watches podcasts.
He watches shows.
He tells me, watch this clip, watch that clip.
So they're also going through the transition.
No, this game in the next four, eight, twelve years, those who can't do this without a teleprompter, who don't know how to push back, who are lazy, who don't do the research, who don't do the reading, who don't go recreate themselves constantly, 80% of them are going to get destroyed, even though if they went to Columbia University or they went to Yale, some fast journalistic, it doesn't matter today.
Market's changing.
Let's talk about the world, because that's changing.
Geopolitics right now is becoming complex, but you're seeing China, Russia, Iran, North Korea perhaps in that axis.
You're seeing the West beginning to change the way it does business in the sense if you look at the number of Republicans who are vehemently opposed to supporting Ukraine anymore, for example, against a Russian dictator.
That wouldn't have been the case 20, 30 years ago.
So you're seeing shifting science perhaps in geopolitics.
Where are we going to go with this?
I think everybody at day one was like, we'll support him, right?
Well, yeah, we'll support him.
The one thing that we rarely talk about is, do you know what country in the world has the most natural resources?
You know which one it is?
It's Russia.
You know how much they got?
$75 trillion.
You know who has $75 trillion?
Nobody.
They're number one.
So who do you think is interested in that $75 trillion?
Do you think these big companies in New York who are the BlackRocks, the state streets, the Vanguards, who they see Ukraine gets destroyed and then they come in and they say JPMorgan Chase and whatever, BlackRock got the contract to rebuild Ukraine a $400 billion contract.
Who likes that $400 billion contract?
The guys that are lending and the guys that are getting the $400 billion to go rebuild?
Who's winning?
They're winning.
Who's losing?
Ukraine's kind of losing, but they're winning.
And who's in the way for me to get access to those $75 trillion of resources, natural resources that Russia has?
One guy, Putin.
We got to get rid of that guy.
I need to replace him with somebody that I can buy.
I need to replace him with somebody that will give access to those resources.
We don't have that right now.
This guy's annoying.
This Putin guy is a true believer.
He's a true OG guy, KGB guy from back in the days that we can't buy this guy.
Man, what do we got to do to get rid of this guy?
Let's make him into the boogeyman.
Let's make him into a bad guy.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not telling he's a saint and he's a guy that's sweet and I would sit there and trust him with everything.
I'm not saying that.
But tomb Russia's first.
Very simple.
He's thinking Russia first.
And he's in the way, a lot of people that want the money.
So what I think a lot of times when stories that come out first, we're easy to fall for the trap.
Oh my God, look at the Hamas, Palestine, Israel, Hezbollah, and Houthis.
And all they're doing is they're just trying to be there for their people and they're good people.
Two countries in the history of mankind have said death upon America.
One is North Korea in the 50s and the other one is Iran.
If you think North Korea and the leader is a dictator who is the worst leader in the world that wants no good for America, why would you think the leaders of Iran would want good?
There's only two countries in the world that have said death upon America.
What are we doing trying to compromise somebody being that straight up with you when they're saying something like that?
And then you're seeing that fight taking place.
I think, say Trump gets elected, a lot of people will not be happy.
Iran will not be happy.
You saw Putin endorse Kamala.
Putin prefers Kamala.
It's an easier person to negotiate.
You think Putin really wants Trump?
You think Putin really wants to sit down with somebody that knows how to negotiate?
He doesn't want somebody like that.
He knows that himself.
Russia doesn't want that.
He knows he's going to bring the terrorist back at a higher level.
But I think almost all of us can fall for the trap of immediate reaction to what's going on.
And in a month, three months, six months later, we're like, oof, yeah, yeah, I was way off.
That's enough.
No more money being sent to Ukraine.
You guys got to figure this thing out.
What about Israel, Hamas?
What about it?
The fact that...
How does this get resolved?
Oh, the day he's in there, that's going to get resolved.
I asked him the question, when are these things going to be done?
Will it be done after inauguration or will it be done when you're president-elect?
He says, Ukraine and Russia will be done while I'm a president-elect.
And he says, Iran and Israel are going to deal with that.
But Ukraine and Russia is going to be done when I'm president-elect.
That means from November 5th to whatever, January 20, whatever the dates are going to be.
No, you need a strong leader for those things to stop.
And USA, you know, think about it this way.
In every election you go through, you have to choose to be for someone and be against someone, right?
So what happens here?
Kamala tries to be for free Palestine and to be for Israel can take care of themselves and they're a number one ally.
Who did she lose?
Both of them.
Trump comes out and says, no, no, no.
Here's what we're doing.
I am for Israel.
I am for BB, and guess what?
I am for stopping war, and I don't want to see war in the Middle East, to the point where Muslim leaders in Michigan come and endorse them.
How do you sit there and say, I'm for BB and Israel and peace in the Middle East, and I want to stop all the wars, and you get Jew voters, Bill Ackman that converts and goes to and a bunch of other Jews that are coming for you, and you get Muslim.
Do you realize how weird of a thing that is to get Muslim voters that are now more for Trump than they were four years ago and getting more Jews that are for Trump than they were four years ago?
Isn't it supposedly Democrats that get the Jew vote and a Muslim vote?
Most Muslims vote Democrat.
Most Jews vote Democrat.
They're now leaving and blacks are leaving.
Aren't Democrats the political party that owns the black vote?
They own the black vote.
I do think one of the most fascinating parts of this election is Trump, the increase in support for Trump in black and Latino communities is extraordinary.
I mean, it's supposed to be the most racist guy that's ever run for president.
If he is, why are so many more black and Latino people in America racing to vote for him?
The two positions are incompatible.
Yeah, because, you know, this is the first time, Pierce, guy asked me a question, you know, who you should vote for.
I said, forget, I don't want to tell you who to vote for, but let me give you something here, that 2024 is the easiest time to ever vote.
Why?
This is the first time where you have four years to four-year resume to compare.
I'm Apple.
You've been with my company as a CFO for four years, and he's been with my company in the past, CFO for four years.
It's not hard for me to measure which one of you guys was a better CFO.
Who saved me more money?
Who made me more profitable?
Who helped me have better retention?
Who prevented more lawsuits?
Who did a better job?
That's the person that's getting the job.
This is not a tough election.
This isn't where I need more articles to read.
Just go study four years under Trump, no war, peace, economy was doing great.
People were getting along pre-COVID.
Go four years over here.
What happened with this side?
It's very easy.
It's not that hard to that complicated.
Even if a person is undecided right now watching this saying, you know what?
That is a good point.
If there's two CFO candidates, both have worked for the company, both had the same job, one did better for the company than the other guy, why am I thinking about hiring this person?
Am I a dummy to hire this person?
No.
It's not like this is 2016.
Hillary's never been president.
Trump's never been president.
You can make the argument Hillary would be a better president.
Why?
Because her husband was a two-term president, and he was actually a very good president for a Democrat.
Why Hillary Would Be Better00:00:30
Even Republicans kind of like the way he was doing his policies, him, Newt Gingrich, they got along.
So you have an argument to say, I think Hillary would make a better president than Trump.
But in this case, you know, they were terrible, and he was great.
It's not a hard vote for 2024.
Patrick, great to see you.
Always good.
I've got to let you go because you've got a certain Yankees.
Yes, we do.
We got to go.
We got to go get the second victory.
It's great to finally meet you.
Likewise.
And best of luck to the Yankees, even though I'm a Dodgers fan.
Listen, I won't hold it against you, but we'll figure it