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Aug. 7, 2024 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy

01:15:44

Vivek Levels With Mark Cuban on ESG, DEI, and Kamala | TRUTH Podcast #58

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	So, we'll talk politics for a second.
	We got Mark Cuban here, by the way.
	This is a guy who...
	I actually...
	I've loved this guy from afar.
	He entertains me because I learn something new when I hear him talk about anything other than politics.
	Politics, maybe.
	But I want to get your take on just...
	As a market participant myself, what do you think is going on in the markets right now?
	And, you know, I want to do the preface, if you don't mind sharing with the audience, too, your brilliant move when you sold your first company.
	You're a guy who knows what direction markets are going.
	You're a macro trader.
	No, I wish I was a guy who knew what direction markets were going, right?
	I just, you know, I tend to be somewhat conservative, unless it's an industry I really, really know.
	But, you know, today as we're doing this, obviously the markets had a rough day.
	And I think it's a function of the fact that...
	Rough week, I mean, it's been a while.
	A whole rough week, yeah, for sure.
	Rough couple weeks.
	And so I think when things are working really, really well, people forget the past.
	And so they tend to assume, you know, the trend is your friend and it'll just keep on going in that direction.
	And, you know, and that also leads to people taking on a lot more debt than they otherwise would.
	You know, things like the Japan, the JP White...
	There's just so many ways where people are like, wait, it always goes up, right?
	This is just a pullback.
	We saw that in the late 90s with the internet bubble.
	And I'm not saying it's a bubble now, but you're seeing that now.
	And the minute something happens, particularly when there's multiple things that combine to create a problem, then you tend to see a more aggressive pullback.
	When did you sell your first company, the tech company?
	No, the first company was a company called Micro Solutions.
	I sold it when I was 29. That was in the 80s.
	And then we started a company called AudioNet, which turned into Broadcast.com.
	And that was the start of the whole streaming industry.
	We were the first streaming company.
	And when was that sold?
	We sold that in 2000. Right.
	So this is the famous one.
	I always liked this as a guy growing up.
	So I got my first job.
	I got into the world of hedge funds in 07. So I was a biology guy, graduated in 07, and I got into biotech investing, which I could tell you more about my background.
	And actually for people to know, this is the first time Mark and I are meeting, but we've texted and messaged each other a lot.
	But anyway, so in 2000, the reason you were famous, in my mind, was actually not even the company you sold, though.
	That was an interesting story.
	Yeah, it was the hedge I put on after.
	The hedge, yeah.
	So how did that work?
	So it was a stock-for-stock deal?
	No, so here's what happened.
	So we sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for stock, no cash.
	And the rules back then were I had to wait six months before I could do anything because I was not an insire.
	Was that a demand of the acquirer?
	No, no, no, that was a law.
	That was the law.
	And so I couldn't do anything for six months.
	And so with that in mind, I went and shorted this one index that had Yahoo that was 5% or less, but it was everything else was just internet stocks.
	And the idea was that...
	That would get me through my six months, after which then I could, you know, do what I was going to do.
	So I put every penny I had, for the most part, into shorting this hedge fund.
	And I figured if the internet stocks cratered within that six months, I would be okay, right?
	And if not, fortunately, then I could put on this collar.
	So it didn't crater.
	I pretty much lost all my money on that short.
	But now I have a lot of money in Yahoo stock.
	And so what I did was I sold calls and bought puts.
	I hedged it.
	And I did it over a multi-period of time.
	And as it turns out, I kind of, you know, a lot of people, not just me, expected the internet stock market might drop considerably.
	Well, it did.
	And I ended up actually making more money from the hedge than I did from selling Yahoo to Yahoo.
	And it was called one of the top 10 trades in Wall Street history.
	And actually, the stock-for-stock exchange, that's even a tax-free trade, basically, right?
	Well, you do stock-for-stock, but not when you put calls and puts on it, right?
	Your stock-for-stock merger was tax-free, but the calls and puts...
	No, no, because...
	Yeah, effectively it could have been, but it wasn't.
	I still had to put the collar on.
	I remember going on CNBC, because I told people I put this collar on, and Yahoo was still going up in price.
	And they were like, don't you feel stupid that you put this collar on and Yahoo's still going up?
	I'm like, nah, you know I'm sitting on my G5, I don't feel so stupid at all.
	Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered, right?
	I mean, I had a bee next to my name.
	It was more money than I ever dreamed of.
	And so I didn't need to get greedy.
	And was that the principal source of your wealth that you're sitting on today?
	Or have you actually compounded more since?
	No, I've made a lot more since then.
	Since that trade.
	What's accounted for that?
	I mean, investing.
	Yeah, Mavs were a big chunk because that was another multi-billion dollar sale.
	I mean, it went up multiple relative.
	Yeah, because I bought it for $2.85 and I sold my chunk for $3.5.
	You bought your chunk for $2.85 and sold your chunk for $3.5.
	Yeah, give or take, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, that's good.
	Not bad.
	Did you buy that chunk the year that you did your Yahoo exit to?
	Yeah.
	Did they have the accelerated depreciation back then for the sports teams?
	I don't remember.
	There were depreciation benefits, but I don't remember the exact text.
	Yeah, got it.
	So you got, we'll get to politics in a second, but one of the things I find so interesting is you have, you clearly have value instincts, right?
	I mean, I think that these are, there's different types of investors, different types of entrepreneurs, but it's like what I call the sniff test for value, right?
	You know what I'm talking about?
	Like, where do you get that?
	Where do you, where do you get the sniff test?
	I mean, I'm a geek and my skill, my skill set is You know, I can take, Steve Jobs said, everything's a remix when it comes to technology.
	And that's what I'm good at, right?
	So I started off my first company, Microsolutions.
	I taught myself how to program, program for eight years, did systems integration, meaning, you know, I'd write software, we'd connect into local and wide area networks.
	And we were one of the biggest in the country at that time.
	And I sold it to CompuServe, which was owned by H&R Block.
	And then I took that and I started trading stocks because I understood how all the networking technology worked.
	And I mean, I killed it.
	I just killed it.
	I was making 80-90% a year trading technology stocks.
	Because like you said, when you understand something, like you understand biotech, right?
	And once you understand it, you know that most people are trading on technicals, on emotion, you know, on, you know, Value proposition.
	The fund life running out, whatever it is.
	Whatever it may be, right?
	But when you understand what's happening behind that drug and you understand the plausibility of it being approved or not approved and then the impact and the market for it, you have an edge.
	And that was the same edge I had.
	And literally, we took my trading success, created a hedge fund, and sold it within nine months for more money.
	You sold the hedge fund.
	Yeah, like in nine months.
	It was like nothing.
	Who'd you sell it to?
	It was some guy who bought it.
	Okay, got it.
	So it's actually, it's really interesting what you say.
	So I'll just, I don't really talk about my business background as much, but actually it's kind of interesting today.
	Do you know much about the premise of the biotech company I founded, Royvent, or not?
	Yeah, well, you go out, you know, a big company would have some product or some drug.
	They couldn't get it approved or they didn't see the market for it.
	They spent a ton of money doing all the preliminary work.
	You would come in and grab it and say, look, I can get this approved for a lot less money than this big company was going to sell.
	We get it through the FDA and all the trials, which I can do more cost effectively.
	And then either I'll market it or I'll license it or sell it to somebody else and make a shitload of money.
	And they get a small piece of the action.
	Welcome to the America way, right?
	Right, exactly.
	And what's shocking is people don't...
	If you're not in it, you've got to think that you'd make this stuff up, which is that a pharma company that's developed this drug and put hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes many hundreds of millions of dollars in, What will usually happen is they'll have a new CEO. You've got to love it when a new CEO comes in for a giant company.
	Because it doesn't fit his vision.
	It doesn't fit our strategy.
	And all the pharma companies like to do the same things at the same time.
	Because they used to hate cancer back when I became a biotech investor.
	Now they all love oncology.
	But they leave the other area, women's health or whatever, behind.
	And so Royvin's whole thing is, okay, it's sitting on your shelf.
	All right?
	We'll take it for pennies on the dollar.
	This was back when I was running the company.
	We'll take it for pennies on the dollar.
	But you get a royalty or an equity stake in the drug.
	Right, because you're going to mitigate the risk for you, right?
	Because you are going to have to spend a lot more money.
	The big company is going to have to spend a lot more money.
	They're not going to be nearly as effective or as efficient or quick to market as you are.
	You get to be very precise on what you do because it's your only focus.
	It's not going to be 3% of a You know, a $50 billion portfolio.
	It's everything.
	Your focus, which is, you know, is business 101. Yeah.
	So, you know, it was pretty obvious what you were doing, but most people don't have the balls to go out there and do it.
	So, I mean, my only my only advice would be in biotech.
	And this is interesting is If you did it with one drug, then you are just taking massive risk.
	But my point is, this ARB exists across the board.
	Yeah, that's what it is, an ARB, right?
	Do a whole portfolio, right?
	That's healthcare right now to this day.
	It is.
	Healthcare remains this, because it's so regulated.
	And the fact that it's a regulated industry creates a lot of these market inefficiencies.
	The FDA process for developing drugs is highly regulated.
	It creates a lot of these inefficiencies.
	So the only thing is some of the drugs we developed, you know, didn't work.
	And that was part of the plan, right?
	Is you've got to develop a portfolio.
	Not part of the plan, but it's part of the results.
	You plan for the reality that some of them aren't going to work, right?
	Correct.
	That's a portfolio.
	But if you actually believe in that inefficiency, do it enough times, you have more than enough successes.
	That's exactly right.
	That'll pay 10 times over for your failure.
	As long as you said, what was the term for you?
	As long as you have that vision to see what's going to work.
	And that vision comes from doing the homework.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So this is where I love learning about you.
	So I was a kid at the time when you were sort of doing this.
	Thanks a lot.
	But, you know, just to age you a little bit now.
	Yeah, right.
	But I think it's pretty cool.
	You still have a young spirit.
	So I was graduating in 07, but your story around 2000s would be one of these things where I was in biology.
	I didn't really study.
	I didn't come from the world of business when I entered hedge funds, but you read a lot.
	You sort of study up quickly.
	And I remember studying up on the hedges you put on.
	It was interesting.
	So I would think that you and I are going to have really similar perspectives, certainly on private market inefficiency, bureaucracy, taking advantage of capitalism the American way.
	I think we're on the same page there.
	So then I start seeing a couple of years ago, and this is where we, I think, maybe begin to have some differences of opinion, where you, I think, end up on the, let's just say, the stakeholder capitalism side of the business debate, right?
	Call it, for lack of better description, the pro-ESG, the pro-diversity equity.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Let's not go to your point, right?
	I always look at what's best for my business.
	And if it's good for my business— I agree with that.
	I agree with that.
	So if it's good for my business, I'm not going to ask anybody to legislate it, but I'm going to tell you what's good for my business.
	ESG is one way to categorize it.
	But, you know, to me, as it applies to ESG, you have young kids, right?
	Yeah.
	And so there's an understanding, and my kids were younger back then, there's an understanding that you have to ask as a parent, what is the world your kids are going to live in, right?
	And to me, I believe climate change is real.
	I believe it's man-made.
	And if that is the case, I'm going to be pro for anything that mitigates that risk.
	Because there is nothing more important to me in the value chain, right, in my risk analysis and dealing with probability than what's going to create the best world for my kids.
	Yeah, so I'll say about my own views on climate change.
	We don't have to debate this, because the more important part is the business part, although we can debate the climate change part, too.
	So, do I believe global surface temperatures are going up?
	Yes, I do.
	Do I believe that there are man-made causes that may be playing a role in that?
	It appears plausible that that could actually be the case.
	However, I do not believe that that is anywhere near an existential risk for humanity.
	So let's just talk probab- okay, go ahead.
	So just a couple facts, because you could put probabilities around it, but if you look at the hard realities are eight times as many people die of cold temperatures today rather than warm ones.
	The Earth is now covered by more green surface area today than it was a century ago because carbon dioxide is actually sustenance, plant food, effectively.
	And the right answer to all of these temperature-related deaths, cold or hot, is more abundant and plentiful access to energy, which requires fossil fuels.
	What if you're wrong?
	What if you're wrong?
	Because we don't know.
	Nobody knows for certain, right?
	I can engage with that.
	I can engage with that, right?
	Because I think that's a legitimate...
	Even if there's a 1% chance you're wrong, how do you know?
	My only answer to that is you could be wrong in both directions, right?
	Of course you can.
	But in my case, it costs money.
	In your case, my kids could be french fries and their kids could have no chance.
	So that debate's going to go on for a really long time, and I'm super interested in that.
	I've got a book coming out later this year evaluating all of the different angles on this for part of that.
	The part I'm interested in, though, for the business point, okay?
	Why should it be an individual business or a CEO that takes into account what they're doing for their own business to address climate change?
	Wouldn't that not make your business...
	Less competitive relative to Chinese peers.
	None of them, by the way, give the first care about climate change.
	Yeah, not necessarily.
	I know what you're saying, though, right?
	China has a 50-year horizon when they make decisions, right?
	We have a three-month horizon when a lot of our businesses make decisions.
	The reason as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, you want to care is you want your kids to live in a world that they can thrive in.
	And even if there's a 99% chance I'm wrong, which I think is far greater that I'm right.
	So that's where we disagree.
	But even if I'm wrong, it costs money, right?
	And money is valuable.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I've been broke as much as I've been rich.
	Maybe not as much, but I've been broke a lot, right?
	But you know, and for my kids, that's everything and their kids and their potential kids, right?
	And it's just not worth the risk.
	So when I have a discussion with yourself or somebody else who's like, I can't believe we have to pay off for all this stuff.
	And in China and India and all these other countries, the pollution just runs rampant.
	And so my answer to that is, first you have to accept the fact that it's a risk, right?
	A greater than zero probability that man-made climate change could really have a catastrophic impact on the world.
	And if you believe that and you start working in that direction, Then, if you're a geek like I am and you trust technology and investing in it, then you can say, you know what, as long as we're working in that right direction, all these CEOs who are smart and start looking at potential solutions to be,
	you know, net zero or making investments in carbon capture or sequestration, whatever it may be, now there's a chance we can solve the problem and get to a point where it's not an imposition on every CEO around the world.
	See, look, I think the what-if-you're-wrong framing is a good question to ask in all directions, 360 degrees.
	But it's not a money question.
	Right, because it's not a money question.
	Let's just say climate change is not man-made, right?
	It's not man-made.
	And temperature is because we're just in this cycle.
	For whatever reason, God's cycle says the average temperature in Minnesota in 16 years is going to be 120 degrees.
	Right.
	It's happened through history, but here's my point about the hubris of this, right?
	This is something I've joked around.
	I'm offering this more tongue-in-cheek, but as a thought experiment.
	Could you imagine a movie, a dystopian movie we'd make for the future, okay?
	Maybe we can co-produce this.
	Where we are 200 years in the future.
	Do you know I've been nominated?
	Movies I've been a producer on, I've been nominated for seven Academy Awards.
	Is that right?
	I didn't know that.
	So I'm an executive producer on a movie that's coming out in September, which is actually about the...
	Challenging issue of child trafficking in the United States.
	America, I think it's good.
	I'll send you a copy and I would love your feedback before it comes out if you have that kind of experience.
	But I'm not serious about making the next one I'm talking about, but I could be persuaded.
	200 years from now, we are churning up coal plants that we have shut down because we're facing a looming ice age.
	And remember, in the 1970s, if you look at the cover of Newsweek or Time magazine, I'm not kidding you, there were cover magazines.
	No, I know, sure.
	Which is what's coming as an ice age.
	I was alive back then, remember?
	I was alive back then.
	That was back when you were broke.
	That was back when you were...
	Right, definitely broke.
	I'm just, yeah, longer rich than broke.
	But the reality is, that was actually the concern of the climate scientists as recently as 40 to 50 years ago.
	So the hubris to think that now, because we're going to restrict carbon dioxide usage...
	But you know one thing that you...
	But I think we agree all.
	Not just on the temperature, but on the effects for humanity or how many people...
	But I think we can agree...
	...lack of energy access in the meantime.
	If we go back to the 70s, we can agree that the number one technological tool was an IBM 360, right?
	Which is not as powerful as your phone is today.
	That just the technological advances we've made in computing power and connecting computing power together in cloud computing In AI, there's so many tools that are available today.
	You can't be shocked when they were wrong back then.
	And those tools only continue to improve.
	So you know in the drug development business, all the work that's being done in AI to try to determine which molecules will work to create drugs better, etc.
	Right?
	Right.
	And so the same thing applies to climate change.
	So while it's great to say you can go back 50 years and say the prediction is overpopulation, we're going to freeze, of course there were a lot of insane predictions back then.
	They didn't have the tools.
	But for burning carbon.
	But they were saying, but for carbon dioxide emissions.
	They recognized carbon dioxide emissions as a problem.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	So you create awareness of issues, and that's the beauty of technology.
	Hopefully we get smarter and smarter and smarter and the tools become better.
	And where we are today is where we're at.
	And what I can tell you from my own investments, looking and working with guys like Chris Saka to say, okay, this could really fuck us all up.
	You have kids, I have kids.
	Vivek has kids.
	What can we invest in so that in the event it truly is man-made, in the event that we have no control, which we don't, over companies around the world that are polluting left and right, what tools can we create?
	And maybe some of those tools end up only being capable to the point like we have to keep the temperature Below this certain number, right?
	You just don't know what the parameters are going to be.
	So you've got to try to improve them all.
	One area of common ground is because you use the word polluting.
	I think clean air and clean water is a totally separate issue, which I'm unambiguously defending.
	Yeah, clean energy is a good thing, right?
	You can argue about- I think clean air and clean water, right?
	So clean, the air you breathe and the water you drink, right?
	That is, we could, you could deal with that issue entirely independently of whatever you believe is going to happen to the global surface temperatures of the climate.
	Okay.
	So the climate issue, we just touched on there.
	What about the diversity issue, right?
	Sure.
	This is the one where- What do you want to know?
	Yeah, because you and I, we were, for people who don't know, we were actually, this conversation came out of, so we weren't on social media, but we're in a signal chat group.
	Checkers, yeah.
	Which actually is interesting.
	I find you could actually have better conversations there than somehow it doesn't work that way on social media.
	Right, because you're not performing for millions of people, right?
	Yeah, but also just the nature of, like, even the format.
	I don't know.
	That's something I've got to think about.
	Because modern social media is not conducive to conversation, right?
	But I think productive discourse.
	For sure.
	But anyway, we had an exchange.
	So let me give you, without using the word DEI, because it's just so tired.
	You can use DEI. That's fine.
	I don't like using it because it causes, especially for somebody I might disagree with.
	I like using it.
	I got no problem with it, even though it pisses people off.
	That's what makes it more fun.
	Well, let's use DEI then.
	Fine.
	So let's say in the name of DEI, Pfizer, this is the example I gave you.
	We started talking about it.
	Pfizer sets a target.
	You can call it a quota, call it a target.
	Not a quota, not a quota.
	Pfizer sets a target, but it is a very precise numerical target.
	And this is not picking on one company.
	Well, it's a percentage.
	It was a percentage, right?
	They're in an industry that I know well, but this is representative across the board.
	And I know that industry well, too.
	Right.
	So it's an industry we both know well, so we're picking this example.
	But this is not unique to Pfizer healthcare.
	It's true across any other industry.
	IBM has done it, others have done it.
	Right, right.
	Something to the effect of, and people can look up exactly what it is, but the punchline is 32% or so was the number for minorities in certain corporate vice president levels or above.
	I get it approximately right, look up exactly what the details, but suppose it's 32% in vice president level corporate executives or above by a certain year in the future.
	That's a corporate target that they have set.
	It's my belief, right, that these types of demographic goals, if that's your basis for setting a target, that that is incompatible with pure meritocracy.
	Absolutely not.
	Yeah, and that's why I know you disagree, right?
	So give me your view.
	Sure.
	So targets are one thing, right?
	They're not a quota.
	If it was a quota, you would be able to...
	Let me take a step back.
	There are these things called EEOC reports, right?
	Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that's what it is.
	Right.
	Where they actually have to disclose the numbers for those vice president positions by male, female, white, black, Asian, other races, and biracial, right?
	And so they have to disclose them, and not all companies do.
	They have to report it.
	They don't have to disclose.
	Not all companies do, but Pfizer does.
	And when you go and actually look at the numbers on the EEOC report, they're nowhere close to those targets.
	And in fact, in some years, they actually reduced the number of people you would think would benefit from DEI, right, based off of the traditional DEI views.
	And that's accurate.
	What you just said is accurate.
	It's fact.
	Right.
	So why bother to specify that target or goal in the first place?
	Because your point is they're not even meeting it.
	And you're right about that in many companies.
	When you say they're not meeting it, that's just confirmation that it's not a quota.
	Because a lot of people will take that number and project that as a quota.
	Why would they do it?
	It's a quota.
	But they never meet it.
	None of the companies ever meet it.
	What's the purpose of setting that goal on the basis of race or gender in the first place, Mark?
	When you talk about portfolio management in your company, right, and you talked about you're going to have failures and you're going to have successes, and you probably had a target for your return on equity that you wanted to get, right?
	And so you said, I've raised this money, I'm investing this money, we're going to have hits and misses, and our target return is 23%.
	Same thing, right?
	Good companies look at their employees as capital, right?
	As intellectual capital.
	And where you want to have a better portfolio outcome for your intellectual capital, there's certain things that you want to see happen.
	One of them is diversity.
	And now when I talk about diversity, and I've put this up on Twitter, that means going out there and just like you look for the best ARBs across all bio companies, right?
	You didn't care where they were, where they were located.
	Looking for the best employee, the most capable employee means turning over rocks where other people don't look.
	And you probably found some of your best deals by looking where others don't look.
	And I found some of my best employees by looking where others don't look.
	I agree with you so far, but why denominate it based on race?
	Why take this top-down category?
	And I'll tell you why it gets under my skin.
	I think it causes us to be more divided when we see each other on the base of our skin.
	So let's go to your point, right?
	Let's go to your question.
	Let's just say I'm looking at a drug company, Royant.
	How do you pronounce your company's name?
	Royant was my first company.
	Royant, right.
	So I have Royant.
	And I recognize that for cancer drugs, they're all ignoring them.
	Everybody's ignoring cancer.
	So I'm going to set a target for cancer drugs because I know everybody else isn't looking there.
	They're missing it.
	And so I'm going to go where these cancer drugs are being made, where they're not making enough investment in them.
	And I'm going to go to focus, not necessarily focus there, but I'm going to extend my R breach and my look to include those cancer drugs from companies I think don't do a good job of...
	Figuring out the value in that drug.
	That is what D in diversity is.
	It's saying, look, there's a lot of women, Black, Asian, whatever it may be, people that I think are not being recruited.
	That there are a lot of people who may not have the best test scores from the best school, but they may have a lot of soft skills from their experiences.
	And I'm going to go out and I'm going to find...
	What's the E? Okay, let me finish this point, right?
	Yep, yep, we'll play it forward.
	Okay, so I'll get to the E, right?
	I'm going to go and find the best possible candidates that I can.
	And they're going to compete with everybody else.
	Just like when you, at Royvent, you compete with your cancer drugs, have to compete in potential return for the non-cancer drugs, right?
	And so in my diversity, when I go out and I look at this, I'm going to say, this person, this woman, African-American woman who was from this small school that I've never recruited at, she's brilliant.
	And when I compare her to other people that I might hire, she's better.
	Now, this other one, this other person, African-American, another small school I typically don't recruit at, they may not be good enough.
	I'm not going to hire them just because they're Black from a small school that nobody else recruited at.
	They have to qualify.
	So then, when I hire this African-American woman from this small school, because she has amazing soft skills, maybe not the best test scores, that's where equity comes in.
	Right?
	Equity means giving, putting people in a position to succeed, giving them the tools that they need.
	So she might have soft skills that I invested in this company called Scoutable, right?
	Scoutable.com.
	And all they do is they have people play these games.
	And when you play the game, and thousands and thousands and thousands of people have played the game, it helps you to it does based off the results in the past you take, they'll compare them to other successful people in other Vertical areas, right?
	Programming, bio, and they'll look for similarities.
	They'll do statistical analysis and they'll say, look, this person who we found in the middle of nowhere doesn't have a computer science degree, but the soft skills that they have, It matches up perfectly to our best programmers.
	So we're going to take a chance on that person.
	And the equity is, the E in equity says, we're going to give them extra computer training, because we know based off of the data that we're using, they're very capable in ways other people aren't going to find the diversity, and we're going to give them the tools to put them in a position to succeed.
	Whether or not they will succeed is up to the ability of us to train that person and up to their ability to live up to what we expect from them.
	Don't get a chance or two like every other employee.
	Don't get, you know, a report from HR saying, here's what you've got to do if you're not doing well.
	And you still have to compete and you still have to do well.
	So here's my own just view on, you know, getting to the best answers on anything, right?
	You got to try on the other side like a set of clothes, trying the best argument for the other side like a set of clothes.
	And if it fits, you keep it.
	And if it doesn't, you put it back on the rack.
	You iterate.
	Yeah, you iterate.
	Always iterate.
	I appreciate a lot of what you laid out.
	I think it's an interesting perspective.
	I'm doing my best to try it on.
	I'll tell you why, for me, it feels like it doesn't fit, okay?
	Sure.
	Is when I look at the results.
	Now, here's where you can measure the results.
	I'll give you a couple examples.
	So I'll give you a couple examples in response.
	One is, one of the areas where you look at results of whether you believe you actually have a true meritocracy or not, where you could actually get the actual numbers to do this, is when you apply that same philosophy to the level of universities.
	So I know you're talking about it from the level of- Two different worlds.
	Two different worlds.
	Two different worlds.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Look, I've said this online too.
	The number of kids who are like Asian kids who can't get into a university because they got a 1600 on their SAT, good at sports, good at musical instruments, and can't get into even their safety school, that is a direct product of a lot of the targets.
	Even not hard quotas, but soft targets that these universities have set.
	Academics are different because the goal is different.
	So we're already on the same page there.
	So you're agreeing with me that DEI... So first of all, let's make sure we're on the same page.
	You're agreeing with me that DEI is good for business.
	No, I'm not agreeing with you there.
	Yeah, I didn't hear any...
	Well, because I was going to go to the universities, but it sounds like we agree on the universities.
	But let me...
	Yeah, look, if it were up to me, universities have too much overhead.
	So I think here's what I would say is on your definition of DEI and the way you define it, which I believe is quite different and far more sympathetic, to me at least, Then the accounts that you might hear from other proponents of capital D, capital E, capital I. But on your telling of it, my pushback would not be that I disagree with a lot of what you said, but that it then makes DEI redundant.
	Okay, because if you're running a business, well, let's just go back to that sole metric that you evaluated in the first place, which is maximizing your return on equity.
	If that's your actual metric that matters, there are a million different targets that need to roll up into that.
	Of course.
	They're not mutually exclusive.
	Of course.
	And it's different for different companies, right?
	Of course.
	So my view is it's got to fall out of the mission.
	It's got to be mission driven by the company.
	Of course it is.
	Of course it is, though.
	If I may, if I may.
	Go ahead.
	Just to make sure we get the view on the table, because it's not the classical disagreement.
	It's just a slightly different type of disagreement.
	So, let's say your company has a mission, okay?
	I'll give you a good example, actually.
	This will be very personal to me.
	Let's say your mission is that you're a steakhouse, okay?
	And you want to serve your steakhouse chain, and you want to serve good, high-quality steak to your customers.
	Like any business, you're going to need different types of diversity to make your business successful.
	There are certain types of diversity you want, certain types of diversity you don't want.
	The kinds of diversity you want, you might want people who are good waitstaff, you might want people who are good at the cash register, you might have good managers, a good chef.
	Okay.
	Even the kind of diversity you want, I would add a lot of diversity to the ranks of a steakhouse.
	I'll tell you why.
	Because I'm a vegetarian.
	I'm a vegetarian on principle.
	It's a part of my religious upbringing.
	I'm pescetarian.
	So I don't believe in killing animals for culinary pleasure.
	It just happens to be a family belief in mine.
	And that I've raised in and that I raise my kids in as well.
	I respect the right of the steakhouse to go pursue its own mission.
	I don't think the government should be stopping them from doing it.
	But even though I would add diversity to the ranks of the steakhouse, I don't think that that would necessarily make them better because it doesn't align with their mission.
	So every business has to ask itself what kind of diversity- Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	So you're saying because you're vegetarian, How would they add you to this?
	My point is, I would add diversity.
	Diversity where?
	Intellectual diversity.
	Diversity of thought to a steakhouse, right?
	But I wouldn't be a good employee because I'm not aligned with the mission.
	Come on, Rebecca.
	Come on, Rebecca.
	The point I'm making is this.
	That's not diversity.
	Different types of businesses need different types of diversity.
	That's the whole thing.
	So how could it be that every business sets the same quota or same target based on race or gender, when in fact every business should say, we need this type of diversity.
	People who have experience in the humanities or math.
	They do!
	And they already do by focusing on return on equity instead of focusing on actual D, capital D. They go hand in hand.
	They go hand in hand because that CEO, if they can't hit their equity goals, their ROE goals, they're getting fired.
	That's what it comes down to, the ROE goals, the return on equity goal, which means there's a million factors you've got to cover.
	Why do you want one blanket category of diversity?
	It's not one blanket strategy.
	No CEO is half a clue.
	No, it doesn't!
	You're hoping it does.
	Race and gender is what it always comes down to, or sexuality now, too.
	No!
	No!
	So I'll give you a good example, Mark.
	So you sold your business in Yahoo!
	They're listed on the NASDAQ, right?
	NASDAQ, or they were.
	I'm back on Yahoo!
	So NASDAQ, in making some of the arguments you have, says they want companies to report the diversity of their boards of race, gender, and sexual orientation.
	Now, when proposing that rule, the SEC, which I know is one of your favorite government agencies, but the SEC has to approve that because NASDAQ's in exchange.
	That means they require what they call notice and comment from the public.
	So people have to provide comment on the rules.
	So they get some suggestions.
	They say, hey, you're asking companies to report their diversity on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
	How about we add a couple of other metrics to the list?
	Veteran status, disability status.
	I don't remember if they said political beliefs or not, but veteran status and disability status are on there, and suppose political beliefs are also on the list.
	Here's what NASDAQ came back and said.
	Okay, after careful review, we have determined that the addition of more indices of diversity have the result of reducing the desired forms of diversity.
	So what does that say?
	It says that every company should be evaluating for itself what kind of diversity matters for its own mission.
	And you just told me an example that they did.
	You gave an example of where they did.
	Right?
	Which is what you mean.
	You said NASDAQ wanted to have ESG-type parameters.
	For any company that lists on NASDAQ, they said you have to tell us race, gender, and sexual diversity.
	NASDAQ said that, right?
	For the companies that are listed and traded on NASDAQ. So NASDAQ is a public company now, but it has its own CEO. It has its own board of directors.
	So they made the determination that it would be in the best interest of their business, right?
	They went to the SEC to get comments, correct?
	The SEC came back and expanded those.
	The NASDAQ said, that works counter to what our goal is.
	Yeah, but this is not for NASDAQ as a business.
	This is NASDAQ's listing standards for any company that's trading on the NASDAQ. Right, but they're a business who gets to determine.
	NASDAQ competes with the New York Stock Exchange.
	NASDAQ competes.
	But the point is, if it was actually, of course, they compete with a different exchange.
	So people go to the New York Stock Exchange or a new exchange that would form.
	Or no exchange, yeah.
	But the reality is, do you believe that Nasdaq's own, because this is all in the name of DI, do you think that their goal for every company, right?
	You have how many companies listed on the Nasdaq?
	A thousand companies, whatever it is.
	Hundreds of companies.
	There's only like 5,000 total public companies now, and that's a problem.
	Right.
	That's a different conversation.
	Actually, we do make it a lot harder to be a public company.
	Let's say hundreds of companies on the Nasdaq, right?
	Let's say hundreds of companies on the Nasdaq.
	A couple thousand, yeah.
	So in that case, why would for those couple thousand companies on the NASDAQ, why would it be the case that only those three parameters of capital D diversity are interesting?
	Race, gender, and sexual orientation for all 2,000 companies.
	As opposed to NASDAQ could have done this, which is to say that provide what type of diversity advances your own business's mission and provide that disclosure to investors.
	That's not what they said, which suggests to me, and I suggest I think to a lot of people who have issues with this movement, that it's not really just about making each business run better.
	It's also about accomplishing some other social objective that's That has nothing to do with the business.
	And maybe it's a good social objective, but it's still here to admit it's something separate from the business.
	You're contradicting yourself.
	I don't think so.
	You are, because NASDAQ is a company that's trying to make as much money as possible and to compete, and to compete with the New York Stock Exchange Exchanges overseas and not listing at all, just being over the counter.
	They, in their own wisdom, for better or worse, like every other CEO and board of directors, decided, maybe they decided, I can't speak for them, that by doing this, that will give more incentive for companies to list with us.
	So that's a fair response.
	That's a fair response.
	That is the only response.
	Let's continue pulling on the string.
	Yeah, yeah, let's keep pulling on the string, though.
	Let's keep pulling on the string, because where the story ends is it ends with the hand of government.
	So who then owns these public companies?
	Who owns these companies?
	Who are the top shareholders of most public companies?
	Large asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, index fund managers.
	So who are the clients of these index fund managers?
	The largest clients of these index fund managers are none other than the likes of CalPERS.
	You'll know this, right?
	CalPERS is California's pension fund system, New York's pension fund system, etc.
	So here's what I'm what I'm surmising now is not is not what I'm saying now is not surmising.
	It's not conspiracy.
	There's just hard reality.
	CalPERS, the state of New York's pension funds, the pension funds that invest with the large asset managers effectively have said that you don't get to manage our money unless you adopt certain of these pre-specified commitments.
	Now, those large pools of capital, you're talking about half a trillion dollars in the case of CalPERS, bigger than that even.
	Those are not pure market actors, right?
	Those are arms of the government.
	Those are organs of the government.
	Wait, wait, BlackRock?
	You're saying BlackRock?
	I'm saying CalPERS.
	I'm saying CalPERS.
	Oh, CalPERS, the state government.
	CalPERS is absolutely the arm of the government, right?
	There has recently been a Supreme Court decision, and there is a whole party of people saying all decisions go back to the state, and that's the way it should be, right?
	But regardless of what I'm...
	My point is, you've got government...
	But I know that's not your point.
	I just had to throw that in.
	And I'm a big fan of going deep on the recent Supreme Court decisions.
	We may have to do that another day, because that's like a whole hour discussion.
	But the point is, you have government actors that are managing large swaths of money that tell these asset managers that are then bound by those constraints.
	So then when BlackRock votes their shares at each of those public companies, here's a particular example.
	In 2022, they voted in favor of—this is actually a great example to respond to your argument, Mark— In 2022, Apple was asked by some sort of social activist group that held a couple of shares to adopt racial equity audits to tell the investors, just tell the investors what they want to know.
	Apple's board said, this is nonsense.
	Okay, it's going to be a waste of our time and money.
	It's going to create litigation risk.
	It's going to restrict our ability to hire for the very best.
	No, we, the board of directors of Apple, don't want to do it.
	Nonetheless, BlackRock and State Street and a number of other asset managers vote for that proposal anyway, after which Apple's board of directors says, okay, all right, well, we've got to reconsider and now do the racial equity audit.
	To me, the idea that that is just a private business making decisions without external influence, because BlackRock's voting that way in part because their clients, like CalPERS and the state of New York, demand they behave that way, yet those clients aren't really profit-motivated alone, they're also solving for governmental objectives, suggests that a lot of this basis for corporations doing it, you're saying that that just reveals that it's in their best interest.
	I don't think is actually true because they're being pressured to do it by government actors.
	That's the point.
	I know you think there's all these ideological perpetrators, right?
	I do.
	Yeah, obviously.
	But there's some other things that have to happen behind all this.
	One, the people at CalPERS, the person in charge, has got to get the return or they lose their job.
	They don't, though.
	At CalPERS, that's the whole point.
	Because they do if they're at a hedge fund like the one that you started or the one that I worked at.
	Okay, well, let's just say- But at CalPERS, that's the whole problem.
	Okay, I'll give you that.
	I'll give you that.
	You would think- In the government.
	You would think, I know- Civil service protections and all of that, right?
	I know, I know.
	More ideological perpetrators.
	They can't be fired.
	I mean, if somebody's not doing a good job, I'd love to fire them.
	In the government, you can't do it, which is unfortunate.
	I'm pretty sure that the head of CalPERS, there's been turnover there, but I don't know for certain.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So let's just put them aside.
	BlackRock.
	Obviously, they have to perform, or Larry Fink is going to fire them, or, you know, people are going to pull their money.
	And that's one.
	Two, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not positive, that CalPERS doesn't own more than 5% of Apple or any company, do they?
	CalPERS does not directly, no.
	They invest in BlackRock and Vanguard.
	But together, BlackRock and Vanguard own about 20% of most public companies, you know, or 15, 15 plus percent.
	Not of the total market cap.
	Of total market cap adjusted.
	You could even add other firms like Invesco that also are played by the same label.
	Right, right.
	But I don't think they own more than 5% because all the rules of how they participate change.
	Yeah, it'll be single-digit percentages for each of these firms.
	No, but once you go beyond 4.99999, all the rules change, right?
	Sure.
	So my point is they're small.
	They're not so big.
	Now, they're influential, so they have a lot of influence.
	It'll be like 8-9% in certain cases, but single-digit is your point.
	I don't know for sure, right?
	But let's just say that still goes to the heart of how do you value a company, right?
	There's a couple ways to value a public company.
	It could just be supply and demand, which means the more demand you create for the stock, the price goes up, right?
	And then there's the discounted net cash flows, the net present value of the discounted net cash flows, right, which go into determine the stock price if you do it on Benjamin Graham type style, right?
	That's what makes decisions.
	That's what it does.
	I agree with that.
	Right.
	But it does look when you have these variables.
	I think you have all as much as you want to make these guys that as much as you want to make.
	OK, so you've got CalPERS and you've got some other large states.
	State of Texas does it the exact opposite way.
	They put their finger on the scale, you know, by saying banks can't do this.
	Banks can't do that.
	So it goes both ways.
	But the realm of the the realm of the world today or the country today is We're letting states make those decisions.
	And so, if you want to take Texas not allowing companies to invest, or not allowing banks to do...
	To divest from oil, gas, whatever.
	Right, whatever it is.
	It goes both ways.
	It's a lot of discussion.
	I like this.
	No, but let me just finish that real quick.
	And then I want to get to the juicy stuff.
	Okay, so then, all of a sudden, it still comes down to what is the company worth, right?
	Because if BlackRock can talk until they're blue in their face, they can make proposals until they're blue in their face, but if the company can't perform, And reach the thresholds for performance that they need to.
	What BlackRock said doesn't matter because big enough to get in, big enough to get out, right?
	So while we can point the gun at them and say, oh, this is awful what they're doing and saying, it doesn't matter.
	They're not the bad guys back in their own self-interest.
	This area of common ground is actually still a belief in the market to be able to solve a lot of these problems.
	So actually, one of the companies I started since my time at Royvent was a company called Strive.
	Are you familiar with that or not?
	Okay.
	So actually, to your point, because this issue itched me, I wrote a book called Woke Inc about a lot of what I saw as some of the inefficiency introduced by the committee class that's taken over a lot of...
	Our culture.
	What is this with all these classes?
	The committee class.
	You guys, you, Rufo, Driesen, like there's this whole ideological group that meets on Sundays, right?
	It's the smoke-filled room.
	You conspiracy theorist, Mark.
	No, it's like all these people that like went to Ivy League schools and got trained by former Black Panthers that now are infiltrating the HR department and they're all grouped together somehow.
	The HR department just means some of these HR Vanguard departments, we just need to downsize them by about 80%.
	But anyway, my point was actually going to be overlapping with one thing you said is believing in the market for people to at least solve these problems.
	I'm a hardcore capitalist.
	The company I started was Strive, which basically says we'll offer the same kinds of index funds that BlackRock and Vanguard offer, but without proxy voting or without shareholder engagement that favors ESG goals.
	Great.
	Good for you.
	And you know what?
	From a retail perspective, there's been, I mean, launched less than two years ago was its first fund.
	The AUM has grown at a faster rate than JP Morgan in their first year when they entered the same line of business because the market exists for it.
	You get to do that and so does BlackRock.
	As long as we're in a free country and everyone's playing by the same set of rules with the government tipping the scales, I'm really happy with that.
	They are.
	The problem is the government tipping the scales is where it actually bothers me, right?
	No, you're talking states, right?
	Different world.
	Maybe a year ago we would have had a different conversation.
	But they're allowed to do that.
	They're allowed to do that now.
	But I do believe in the market solving problems.
	I do believe in the market solving problems.
	And so there's an area of common ground.
	Here's where the market is not allowed to solve the problem though, right?
	Because even if you're a contractor with the government, so even outside the realm of asset management now, anybody who's a federal contractor, And that's about 20, people think that's a small percentage of the workforce.
	No, it's a big number.
	Yeah, it's a big number.
	It's about 20% of the workforce works for an employer that could be classified as a federal contractor bound by these rules.
	You have to, not because the market says so, but because the government says so, actually have certain goals that you have to hit when it relates to the diversity or the demographic attributes of your workforce.
	That's not coming from the market.
	That's coming from the government.
	And so all my point is, Mark, is we can't just say, just because a company is doing it, it's the product of the free market that's told us that's what consumers want.
	You're exactly right.
	There are contractors who make choices whether or not they want to work with the government or not.
	My first company, we could have gone and we could have worked with the government.
	I chose not to, not because we weren't diverse or anything, because all the bureaucracy that I would have had- You don't want the government telling you what to do?
	No, it's not that.
	There's just too much bureaucracy in too many forms, right?
	There's just that.
	Same with the streaming industry.
	We could have done contracting for them.
	Too much bureaucracy.
	And I don't think the government should be tilting the scales.
	And when you have 20% of the workforce employed by a company, then when you say, hey, the company is just behaving this way because the market's telling them to, all my point is, that's not the full story because you do have the invisible hand of government, not the invisible hand of the market.
	Contractors don't have to do business with the government.
	They don't have to, but you're less competitive versus your competitors.
	No, you're probably more competitive.
	They're also getting larger government contracts.
	You're probably more competitive because you don't have to deal with, have the overhead to deal with a bureaucracy.
	Well, but you also get lower cost of capital with a fat margin because they have less competitors bidding for those contracts.
	And so all I'm saying is the government- Okay, well, that's your choice.
	That is your choice.
	Even speaking as a citizen, right?
	The government's not some exogenous agency.
	It's what's actually responsive to us.
	I'm not saying government is efficient.
	I don't want the government imposing that.
	I want them to get the lowest cost provider of IT without regard to what the racial composition is, right?
	A lot of that goes back decades.
	Some of it's more recent, but a lot of it goes back decades, right?
	Generations.
	This life goes back to the 60s, yeah.
	So I read the whole book.
	What the hell was it called?
	I forget, where basically it said the Civil Rights Act led to us losing all these rights.
	But what they didn't answer was, what's a better way?
	What is a better way?
	Because I'm a big believer that we're only as strong as our weakest link as a country.
	The kids that we have, if they're not fed, if they're not closed, if they don't have shelter, if they don't have daycare, if they don't have access to decent schools, then the whole country will fail.
	Not the whole country will fail, but we're going to always struggle to raise up our GDP, to raise up the quality of life in this country.
	Because the outliers make things more difficult.
	And when you're in a country now of 330 million people, just 1, 2, 3, 5% is a whole lot of people you have to deal with.
	So going back to what you said in terms of programs that try to put their thumb on the scale, When you're trying to solve a problem like that, how do you lift up people who have been discriminated against for generations, you know, not just black Americans who, you know, with a legacy of slavery, but immigrants and others who have come over here who have been shit on, right?
	Legally and illegally.
	How do you try to change that to lift them up?
	Because in my mind, and I don't have a model to prove this, but in my mind, it's going to be a lot more difficult for all citizens.
	It's going to be a lot more expensive for all citizens.
	And it's going to create a lot worse issues for all of us if you don't lift up the bottoms.
	So back in the 60s, they did what they thought was right.
	They were wrong in a lot of respects, but that was the shot they took.
	And we've gotten to where we are today, right?
	Now, we can bitch about it all we want, but either we come up with solutions to solve it, just saying it's wrong to have the government on there for a problem they tried to solve 60 years ago.
	But that problem has— And this is a longer discussion, right?
	But many of those problems, what happens is when you create the bureaucracy to solve the problem, once the problem has been solved or mostly solved, the right answer is to move on and celebrate it.
	So do you think discrimination has been mostly solved?
	Well, I think it has.
	So this is a deeper question, okay?
	And it's important.
	I think it has gotten below the level That it was useful to try to use government tools to solve.
	So there was a time and place, right?
	So I'll give you an analogy because we're both in healthcare, right?
	You're in healthcare now and I used to be.
	When the body's fighting off a virus, okay?
	At a certain point, the body needs to mount an immune response to the virus.
	But when that immune response continues long after the virus is mostly cleared, you actually harm the organ itself.
	That's effectively what I see happening in the nation in our fight against discrimination.
	Does some level of invidious racial discrimination still exist in this country in multiple different directions?
	It does.
	But our systematic response pretending like it's still 1960 or 1860, that actually creates more of that same division.
	Okay, so you're making my point.
	You're making my point.
	At a certain point, we got to let it automatically, let the market solve it, to borrow your point, right?
	Don't tell a business what they can or can't do or what they must do.
	Smart entrepreneurs.
	Actually, this is just to bring your own point.
	If we got rid of the categories in the Civil Rights Act, right, of race, gender, you know, sexual orientation now included, religion, national origin.
	And you said, we don't need that because believing in what you do and also what I do is in the power of capitalism.
	That's an opportunity for a different business owner to say, hey, I get to hire all these great people.
	Why do we need the government still creating an EEOC to be able to monitor those decisions to make sure that enough minorities are hired in an era where businesses themselves out of their own self-interest could get to the same place?
	Now, aren't you talking out of both sides of your mouth, right?
	I mean, if I may say so.
	No, and I'll tell you exactly why.
	No, that's fine.
	And I don't mind to give and take.
	Yeah, we're just having fun.
	Right.
	So first of all, you're saying the Civil Rights Act worked.
	I'm saying that...
	Because you're saying it got to the point where maybe we got too far.
	Whether that was the right answer, the culture was changing any way we could debate.
	But do we actually need it now?
	I think there was a strong case and a more persuasive case back then.
	I will admit that.
	That's fine.
	So now let's go to the medicine example.
	The thing about medicine, it's the only place where you can be an expert where you're right 5% of the time.
	Then you're a great doctor.
	And so when you're trying to figure out what that point is where the body has too strong an immune response, you don't know until Sometimes it's too late until after you're sick, whatever it may be.
	And on the flip side, you may not know until it's too late if the body hasn't generated enough of immune response.
	And there's issues there.
	And the same thing applies here.
	It's hard to thread the needle to know exactly where to stop or even if you should stop.
	And so to just shit on the whole thing, that's the problem I have, right?
	You can say, look, let's try to solve a problem.
	How do we get to the point where discrimination doesn't exist?
	Fine, that's a worthy goal.
	But the answer is not just saying it doesn't exist and we don't need any of the things we tried to do.
	But you didn't hear that from me.
	I said there is some level of racial discrimination that probably exists, continues to.
	No, but you said- But at a certain point we should just effectively leave it to the market to solve.
	Right.
	Well, at that certain point, where is that certain point?
	I think we're there.
	I don't believe we're at that certain point.
	I think we're there.
	You do.
	I don't, right?
	That's what makes a market, right?
	But the challenge is, but when you're saying, let's just extract government out, if you have a better solution, that's one thing.
	Just open it up to the market because there are, in the workforce, 77% of the workforce is white.
	Plus percent of investment is with white people, towards white people, right?
	And so if you just leave it to the market, I'm not saying there's no chance it works, but I'm saying there's a good chance it won't work.
	Yeah, and here's what I see happening.
	I think we're actually seeing, and this may be another area of common ground in a certain sense, but for different reasons.
	I think we're actually seeing, weirdly, an uptick in anti-black, Anti-minority and also anti-white racism in a lot of different directions that I would have never imagined even 20 years ago.
	If I was even rewinding to 2007 when I was reading about your old company sale and I was graduating from college, if you told me in the year 2024 we would be seeing an uptick in the level of racial animus in the country that we have now, I would have said that was crazy.
	Back then.
	But I think part of the reason we're seeing it is heightened race consciousness and the feeling that you have a system that's taking something away from you on the basis of your skin color.
	There's no better way to throw kerosene on the final burning embers of racism.
	Where do you think that kerosene is coming from?
	I think it's largely coming from a lot of these maybe even well-intended government policies.
	The idea that you can't be a government contractor unless you're paying by these rules.
	What has changed dramatically over the past five, six years?
	Over the past five, six years?
	I mean...
	You know, economically, you want to think about a lot of disparities.
	The scale of social media.
	The scale of social media, right?
	That's where it's easy because, again, when you have tens of millions of people now able to come on and, particularly lately, over the last two years, say exactly what they want to say without restriction, for the most part, it's really easy for all the people who are disaffected to come together.
	Are you against that?
	I mean, isn't that a good thing?
	No, I'm not saying.
	I'm just saying it's a reality.
	There's a lot of things I think are social media wrong.
	It's just a reality.
	It's really a good thing, right?
	It brings us together.
	Yeah, I just see it as a reality.
	I'm not trying to shut anybody up.
	And certainly you'll never see me try to cancel somebody.
	I think that's the worst from either side, right?
	I would never try to cancel anybody.
	But the reality is that we can't presume, given all the hate that is evident to us on social media, you can't presume that there isn't a need for beyond just the marketplace.
	That is my point, right?
	It is so evident, this increase in hate.
	Now, I understand the perspective.
	I read Rufo's book, right, about decentralized support and all that.
	And I understand the perspective that, okay, if we took the federal government out of it And we took the DEI and the woke ideology out of it.
	And we moved a lot of the problem solving, if you will, the power and the decentralized basis to local school boards, etc.
	It's all going to change, which I think is horseshit, right?
	Because there's just too much hate.
	And the only, in my mind, even though it's not perfect, We have to just accept the fact that we are not in a colorblind society and being colorblind isn't necessarily a good thing.
	We have to respect...
	I respectfully disagree on that, but I hear your point.
	Right, because people...
	I made a mistake in one of my companies, the Mavs, actually.
	And I used to think that treating people equally meant treating them the same.
	That if there was a woman, a man, black, white, orange, yellow, all the rules, everything had to be exactly the same.
	And then I had some people getting harassed because I wasn't paying attention to how everybody was being treated.
	Because saying something to a man versus saying something to a woman can have two different meanings.
	And I didn't know this stuff was going on, right?
	I was just, treat everybody the same.
	Treat them fairly.
	That's just not the way life is.
	You want your vegetarian and family background to be respected.
	But there's a lot of people here in this country that said red meat and beer.
	If you don't eat red meat, there's something wrong with you.
	See, I don't really...
	To me, Mark, that country is not the America I know.
	I mean, look, my view is...
	Come to Texas.
	You want to eat red meat?
	Go...
	I mean, you should be a free country.
	I know, that's your view.
	You're open-minded.
	In fact, I'll fight for your right to.
	But the reality is...
	You're open-minded, but a lot of people aren't.
	So here's my point, Mark, is I think we're actually weirdly getting a little bit more of an uptick of that precisely because...
	Of the obsession.
	No, I understand what you're saying, right?
	But there's no obsession.
	So this is what I think you did in the UK. I think you did a lot of this.
	Yeah, I'm seeing all the shit that's going on.
	I mean, a lot of this reactionary response where you tell people to shut up, sit down, apologize for who you are.
	You actually create more hatred in response that otherwise would not have existed.
	And that's what I'm worried about happening in this country right now.
	I see what's going on in the UK and we'll see what happens there.
	And a lot of that is social media driven.
	A lot of that is from the politicians who are pushing those lines saying, hey, they're taking it from you.
	And it's really geared towards immigration more than anything else.
	It's not so much white or black, green or yellow.
	It's immigration, who belongs and who doesn't belong.
	My understanding.
	Yeah, no, I think it's a different issue.
	It's not about race.
	It's about immigration.
	But yes, when you have unfair immigration, hatred, we tell people they can't talk about or publicly complain about that.
	It spills over in ways that actually are really harmful.
	One of the reasons I go on Twitter, and I love to fight back people, right?
	Not troll, but actually try to have...
	I know that.
	You were coming at me hard during my presidential campaign.
	You rose to me a couple times.
	Right, right, right.
	Because what I see happening is there's...
	A lot of people who create this woke machine, that visual, that say there's this woke machine that's taking over everything and ruining everything.
	But there's no, you know, when they say who, like in Rufo's book, it's like going back to the Black Panthers and, you know, then they taught in the college and then this professor came over from France and he taught and then all these people went to Ivy League schools.
	I've never, in Roy Vint, did you ever feel woke pressure?
	For the first six years of running the company, no.
	In the wake of what happened after BLM and BLM's rise after George Floyd's death, actually, there was a moment.
	I think a lot of CEOs felt a lot of pressure across the country, and so did I, to sign on to, you know, every CEO, you remember that, wrote a public declaration.
	I didn't want to make that declaration.
	And the truth is, I did, like every biotech CEO, feel some pressure to do it.
	That was a unique moment, but I... Right, so that's one moment in time when we're trying to, because we didn't have any leadership in the White House who could potentially defuse those types of riots and those types of protests, right?
	More people died during those protests.
	It was a hyper-charging environment in the middle of lockdowns across the country.
	Right, of course.
	It was difficult, and that's where leadership needs to shine, and there was no leadership.
	You got a few minutes.
	You want to change the channel?
	We didn't actually even get to politics, but we got to do at least a little bit, all right?
	Sure.
	Yeah, at least a little bit.
	And this is too much fun.
	Just give me one second to make sure I'm good here, too, because this is actually fun.
	Let's see here.
	Oh, man.
	Okay.
	I've got to go.
	I've got ten minutes, but we have to continue this.
	We have to continue this, all right?
	I'm having fun with this.
	This is the thing I miss, actually, in the country.
	You don't get people talking across the silos anymore.
	Not in an earnest way, in a way that's public, in a way that actually tells people it's okay to be friends with somebody who you deeply disagree with.
	I think we need more of that.
	But I've convinced you to change your position, right?
	No, you have not.
	But you've convinced me that we actually share more premises in common than I thought.
	I'm a capitalist.
	Exactly.
	We can start there.
	We have that in common no matter what.
	I'm just a little bit more compassionate than some others.
	But I think that...
	But anyways, let's get to politics.
	Yeah, let's get to politics.
	The only thing is assume the best when you can of somebody who you disagree with too.
	Because it may be a compassion for a different thing.
	No, I understand.
	Assume the best is all I'd ask, even to some of the folks you're talking about.
	Politics here.
	All right.
	So here's what I find funny, okay?
	For years...
	And you consider yourself voting Democrat in recent years or you're Democrat?
	No, I'm independent.
	I'm independent.
	And honestly, if there was a non-MAGA when Biden was the candidate, if there was a non-MAGA Republican candidate, I probably would have voted for that person.
	So, and it just maybe to you depends on, I would like to convince you on this another day, depends on how you define MAGA, right?
	Make an America great.
	I don't think you object to that.
	In fact, I think you believe some of the things you just talked about here.
	Well, that's a presumption that it wasn't great before.
	I'm an American exceptionalist, too.
	I'm an American exceptionalist, too.
	I think we need to make America greater than it has ever been.
	That actually should be the goal.
	Well, that's not what they said, right.
	Make America greater than it has ever been before.
	So here's the funny thing.
	Here's the funny thing on the politics of this, because I know you're on the other side of this.
	You're supporting Kamala Harris for president, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	I'm supporting Donald Trump for president.
	But here's the interesting, before we get into the side tizzy that that'll send political discussion into.
	For years, the concern of many earnest Democrats in this country was that the Republican Party was oppressive on issues like abortion, was thoughtless on issues like gun control, believed in leaving the working class behind, was intervening in foreign wars in places like Iraq, That expended our taxpayer money and left the country worse off.
	That was the real concern that people had, is the Republican Party was...
	For Democrats, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There were ideologues, right?
	The Republican Party had ideologues on guns, abortion, foreign wars, and leaving the working class behind.
	And again, I'm not a Democrat.
	I'm an independent.
	No, I know you're not.
	Now I know that.
	Now you mentioned that, right?
	But we can have the discussion either way.
	So it's not necessarily addressed at you, but we're talking about this.
	That's fine.
	No, I understand.
	So now you get a candidate, and here's the thing that most people don't realize, who's actually not an ideologue, certainly on historical Republican terms at all.
	This is true.
	Not an ideologue at all in any sense, actually.
	Who on abortion is against a federal ban on abortion, is a little bit more pragmatic, you could say, in certain other issues.
	On gun control is softer than some Second Amendment advocates, even myself in many cases, would advocate for.
	You have a foreign policy that is against fighting pointless foreign wars or intervention.
	A Republican is publicly against that old Iraq war.
	And yet now the criticism of that candidate is that, oh, he's not principled enough.
	Right?
	So from the Democrats.
	Well, yeah, well, let's talk about that.
	No, no, no.
	You're mixing the principle that people are talking about.
	It's ethics.
	The man told Mike Pence not to certify the election.
	The man called the governor, Secretary of State, or was it governor?
	I forget.
	And asked for 11,072 votes.
	The man has stolen from more hardworking Americans- You were against Trump in 2016, though.
	You were against Trump in 2016. Right, but he was unethical then, and he's still unethical.
	And in 20, right.
	Right, but that's the whole point.
	I actually started off supporting Donald, and then I got to know him back.
	When did you support him?
	Like 2015, I was like, he's great.
	He's not a typical Stepford candidate.
	I thought that was a positive.
	I would think you'd think that's a positive, right?
	A business guy who's pretty practical, not ideological.
	Then a big part of that is I didn't think he had a chance.
	And so I just wanted to kind of, you know, screw things up in traditional politics that I'm not a fan of.
	But the bigger point is Trump University, Trump Soho stole four million dollars from a friend of mine that had sued to get it back.
	Mike Pence.
	You know, 40 out of 44 people.
	Just take a look at the four years, because these are just going to be separate sort of personal attack rabbit holes.
	Look at the country in those four years.
	No, they're not personal attack rabbit holes.
	They're legitimate things that actually happened.
	So do you think the country, do you think the economy prospered and border crossing issues were far better under Donald Trump under those four years?
	No, because if you look at border cards, what was Obama's nickname?
	The deporter in chief.
	If you look at actual crossings, they were lower under Obama.
	And when Obama came in, they were higher, and he continued to lower them until the last couple months.
	On the economy, Obama took a fucked up economy and improved it, and Trump inherited that.
	And actually, inflation grew by 25% under Trump over Obama.
	And what was the third one?
	Border and economies is what I want to start talking about.
	We hit the all-time low on border crossings in about 2019-2020.
	Are you sure?
	Are you sure about that?
	Relative to Obama.
	It's actually the chart that Trump was turning to when he got shot, right?
	That was exactly the wrong chart.
	Right, but that doesn't make it right.
	It went up in the first two years, but then it actually, they only implemented the Trump controls about a year, about a year and a half to two years.
	Let's just put that off to the side and we'll check that to make sure that border crossings weren't lower under him.
	The lowest point was lower than it's ever been.
	The lowest point was lowest than it's ever been.
	Yeah.
	Okay, we'll chat.
	But Obama deported a multiple of the number of illegals that Trump deported.
	Which you're in favor of, by the way?
	Are you in favor of deportation?
	Yeah, I don't have a problem.
	If they're here illegally, just do it compassionately.
	Don't just stick them in a cage.
	But I have no problem with removing people who are here, particularly recent.
	Because, you know, who knows the number, 10 million, 11 million, whatever it is.
	But you can't just, all of a sudden, how you approach it is critical, and Trump has not said a word about it yet.
	And he's been talking about it forever.
	But again, that's not the core issue.
	That is a core issue.
	I get that.
	But you know what?
	The one certainty about the office of the President of the United States is the complete uncertainty.
	That you have no idea what comes next.
	Would you agree with that?
	Yes.
	Okay, and so in my mind, and I think a lot of people's minds that oppose Donald Trump, is that you want somebody there that is educated on The world, but more importantly, just is ethical, right?
	So that they make ethical decisions.
	You want somebody when there is no precedent, it's never happened before, you want somebody that has hired not people who are most loyal, like Tony Soprano might have done, but hired the very best people.
	And those people want to stay and work for them, not that they're loyal.
	You want somebody whose first inclination is not to do what's in their own best personal interest.
	You can't deny that's Donald Trump.
	I'm reluctant to get into, because I'm not a particularly partisan hack type Republican versus Democrat person.
	This has nothing to do with partisan.
	I'm also very critical of the Republican Party.
	Reluctant to say what I'm about to say.
	When you think about this, look at someone like Biden over the four years.
	I know it's Kamala Harris the nominee now, but what is your attitude towards the fact that you talk about self-interest?
	Nothing bothers me more than politicians looking after their self-interest when they're in office.
	What is your perspective on, while Joe Biden's the Vice President of the United States, his son serving without a qualification or an iota of a qualification, On the board of a Ukrainian state-affiliated energy company.
	That's ridiculous.
	That's ridiculous, right?
	It was a mistake.
	Yeah, but his son was an adult in his 40s, right?
	As a parent of...
	I can't control my teenagers.
	You're not going to control an adult.
	But there's good evidence that he's even...
	Not looking the other way.
	And he's going to jail.
	And that kid is going to jail.
	For a felony gun possession charge.
	No, I get that.
	But on top of that, you had Comer and others who tried to impeach Biden and did a complete investigation of it and who came to the conclusion that there was no there there in terms of the big guy, right?
	But let's just say...
	It was completely investigated.
	And we haven't even gotten into the Mueller report, right, and what they came out with.
	Yeah, but the Mueller report, that's actually great to talk about, because that impeded the first two years of his presidency on the basis of allocations.
	Yeah, but you're talking about policies.
	Look, when you're...
	I am concerned about policies.
	I'm deeply concerned.
	I have to admit, I am principally focused on policies.
	I'm not unconcerned about policies, right?
	But it's just like a CEO of a company.
	Would you hire somebody that has a long history of stealing from people, of being unethical?
	You would not, and you know this.
	Is Donald Trump a perfect person?
	No, he is not.
	Am I a perfect person?
	I'm not.
	Are you a perfect person?
	You're not.
	But we have to ask ourselves, who's the actual best president between the choices we have right now?
	I've never stolen money from anybody, no.
	Either have I, right?
	Have you ever had a company that- I have no evidence to say that Donald Trump has either.
	Oh, I do for sure.
	Ask Barbara Corcoran, right?
	You know, she had to sue to get her money back.
	Ask anybody from Trump University.
	Ask people who bought condos in Trump Soho.
	Ask people from, you know, Trump Foundation that gave money there.
	Ask people who are giving money today and he's using that money for his legal fees.
	This isn't like a little discretion.
	This is a habit.
	That's why I can't support him.
	Yeah, so look, I think that's less about politics and more about maybe like a criticism of one man.
	No, but that's the whole point.
	You were talking about ethics.
	Have you ever told any of your employees to short pay a vendor just to try to save some money?
	Either have I. What do you think about somebody who does that?
	You know what was crazy to me during the trial?
	I think a lot of what's happened is, because you saw this in the New York trial.
	I don't know what your perspective is on the New York trial or how closely you followed that.
	I did.
	I think that trial is fundamentally unjust against Donald Trump.
	Okay.
	Do you agree with that?
	Let's just say it is.
	Do you agree with that?
	No, not necessarily.
	I think if you're in a position where if you say a prosecutor comes for you, right?
	Because if you're a business guy, you can empathize with this.
	If you're running a company.
	I've had the SEC come after you, so I get it.
	Let's say you have a lawyer's bill that comes in and you classify it as a legal expense.
	But part of this was you were paying off hash money to Stormy Daniels.
	And the government's theory of the case is, no, you should have classified that as a campaign expenditure.
	Think about this.
	If you had to classify that as a campaign expenditure, had he said that's a campaign expense, so he uses the campaign account to be able to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, They should be and would be coming after him for that, right?
	Because you shouldn't use political campaign contributions.
	But that's what he did!
	He didn't use the campaign money.
	The government's whole theory is he should have been using the campaign money.
	He used personal money for it.
	So my point is, in a lot of these cases, they were going to get him either way.
	Okay, so first of all, Hillary Clinton did something similar.
	And I just worry a lot of this has created distortion.
	My guy here is giving us, like, signs we gotta go.
	I'm going to this magazine interview.
	This is fun.
	If you're down for doing this again and continuing, I would love it.
	Hey, do you know, this is random, do you know Reid Hoffman or not?
	Not really.
	Barely.
	A couple emails.
	Actually, it was interesting, because he also seems like a guy who, more than you, I mean, I would really disagree with him, but he also seems like a smart guy, and he's come up recently.
	Yeah, he's a smart guy.
	If you happen to know, because I've never had any connection with him, I disagree with him on a lot of things.
	But some of his advice for Kamala Harris I thought was pretty interesting.
	I mean, his advice to her, as I was reading publicly, because I was fascinated by this, is fire Lena Kahn and distance yourself from what he calls the Trump-Biden tariffs.
	It caught my attention.
	Let me ask you a question.
	Just a hypothetical real quick.
	So I want to talk to...
	If you, me, and him want to have a discussion...
	I'll connect to you.
	I'll connect to you guys.
	Just have him pop on the equivalent of this.
	No, you just...
	You two could talk.
	He's smart.
	You guys talk.
	But let me ask you a question.
	If...
	You know, you've seen what's happened with the border crossings recently, right?
	They've dropped dramatically.
	She said she would sign the bill that the Republicans put together, right?
	Inflation is declining rapidly.
	She won't have tariffs, right?
	So effectively— We don't know about the tariffs.
	Actually, I want to see what comes up.
	No, I'm pretty sure she won't have tariffs, right?
	Depends on which kind of tariffs.
	Anyways, so what I'm about to say is, if she checked all your policy boxes, would you vote for her over Trump?
	Well, she doesn't check.
	I mean, she's dead setting.
	I'm just saying because she hasn't come up.
	It's only been two weeks.
	It's a hypothetical.
	I'm going to vote for the candidate who I believe has the best policies for the United States of America and who has some basis to carry them out.
	In my mind, that's exactly why I'm voting for Trump.
	That's exactly why I'm voting for Trump.
	Trump and I don't agree on 100% of policies.
	I mean, I ran for president last year, for God's sake, right?
	And there are some areas where he and I have had open discussions where we have slightly different views.
	And that's great.
	But again, let's just say that list of policies you have in your mind- I will vote for the candidate who I believe is committed to enacting the policies I agree with for the United States.
	Is committed to enacting, is what I will say.
	But the candidate who I believe is most committed to enacting the policies that I care about.
	And you know what's number one on the list for me?
	Is dismantling bureaucracy.
	Dismantling bureaucracy is...
	So who do I think is more likely to...
	If Kamala Harris comes out and says that she's going to fire 75% of federal bureaucrats and shut down excess agencies...
	Nobody can do that.
	But you can't do that.
	She'd have my attention.
	She'd have my attention.
	You can't do that.
	You can't do that.
	Well, you and I can disagree on that.
	But what you can do is...
	What you can do is use technology to make the government a lot more efficient.
	Sure, add that in there too, to replace a lot of the existing...
	So that government declines in size while improving the amount of impact it has for the people who need it most.
	They're not mutually exclusive, right?
	But you can't, there's no legal basis to fire 75% of any department, and you can't just throw all that...
	Mass firings are absolutely just like a CEO can do in a company.
	Well, even if you do, so...
	Oh, man.
	We're having too much fun.
	Anyway, we'll do this another time.
	All right, man.
	We'll talk soon.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you, brother.
	Thanks for being here.
	It was.

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