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

Can I ask a question about the nicotine pouches?

Yes.

Does it melt in your mouth, or do you have to spit it out later?

You can spit it out. You can swallow it, or you can just savor it. I mean, you throw it in like you would a dip of tobacco.

Okay. But you just let it sit there, and then it soothes your nervous system with life-giving nicotine. It really does feel like the hand of God is massaging you. But does it feel like the high of smoking a cigarette?

It's simultaneously—if you can imagine the Zen paradox—higher alertness accompanied by deep relaxation. It's a Zen experience. You're catlike in your readiness, but you're fully—

And how long does it last?

I always have one going. Sometimes, if I need it, I'll put another one in. So I've got 18 milligrams of nicotine. But that gives me an unfair advantage.

You're banging 18 milligrams. Woo. That's impressive.

I don't like to, because everybody else kind of recedes into the background, and I become this kind of colossus when I do that. I feel guilty about it. Hubris is inevitable at that point, so I usually keep it to one.

I mean, I could use a new addiction.

Oh, yes.

What's the gateway-drug level? What would you prescribe?

It sits between caffeine and— They sell a 3-milligram one, but there's a transition. Like all great addictions, it's not instant. You do vomit at first, but then your body acclimates. It's kind of like heroin in that way. When you first try it, you just have to power through it. You vomit twice, and then you're addicted, and then enlightenment.

Last time you were here, you famously—gosh, we've had a year of feedback on your last performance. Thank you for coming back. We got a lot of crazy feedback from the private equity housewives.

They love me.

But you know what? You're in deep. I'm here in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles studio wives group is really, really pissed off at you because they feel that they're the problem. They feel they're a much bigger problem than the private equity housewives. So: Hollywood studio heads' wives versus private equity wives.

I know some of them, and they're absolutely a bigger problem, but there are fewer of them. God, it's kind of hard to get critical mass.

Yeah, exactly. They're a smaller threat. They're kind of an elite unit.

They're like Delta Force. They have less money, too. They don't get as much in the divorce as these private equity wives.

So they're coming in like a SWAT team. If you want to send them in to deal with a very specific issue, great, but they're not going to cause as much bedlam globally as the private equity wives.

They cause a lot of misery, though, as does one MacKenzie Bezos.

Exactly. Oh, my God.

There's a lot going on in the news. Let's start with the immigration protests, riots, and ICE actions in Los Angeles. I'm actually here in Los Angeles. Last Friday, protests broke out after ICE raided a Home Depot and a fashion wholesaler. In total, 44 people were arrested by ICE—10 times as many, 400 and counting, from the protests.

ICE even ran into a strawberry field in Oxnard to just randomly pick people up. It seems at least a half-dozen Waymos were vandalized and burned. More than 20 businesses were looted, and Waymo narrowed its service area; wait times spiked to 30 minutes. So that's a first-world problem.

Rioters were throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails and shooting fireworks at law enforcement. Completely unacceptable. Two men were charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at officers. Trump deployed the National Guard—2,000 at first, then apparently 4,000. And apparently there's a battalion of Marines here, 700 of them.

Karen Bass instituted a curfew in downtown Los Angeles from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Federal prosecutors are trying to identify hundreds of people. Mayor Bass denounced the raids, obviously, and they're blaming Trump for escalating the situation. Trump and members of the White House responded by calling out California's weak leadership, and now we have protests popping up everywhere else: New York, Chicago, Austin, and D.C.

Tucker, you grew up in Southern California, I think.

I did. Yeah, Los Angeles and La Jolla.

I mean, are these riots more or less than a Lakers championship? How concerning are they to you? Who's to blame?

Well, as measured by violence, they're less profound than what happened in 2020 after George Floyd died. They're way less dangerous than, say, the Watts riot or the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, but they're much more profound. I mean, they really are. They're certainly a bigger deal than anything that happened at Fort Sumter, for sure, which kicked off the bloodiest war in American history.

The federal government has, as a core duty, the right and responsibility to enforce immigration law and police the borders. That's what the government is. That's what the federal government is, really. So if you contest that, it is fundamentally a threat to disunion.

We reached this point because a series of paradoxically weak federal governments allowed sanctuary cities to continue literally for decades, each one its own form of insurrection against the central government. Maybe you don't believe that the federal government has a right to pass laws restricting immigration, that it's in charge of the integrity of the borders. That's a kind of philosophical or constitutional case, I guess, you could make.

But most people accept that those are federal duties. And once you accept that, you can't allow states or municipalities to flout the law any more than you could allow Central High School in Little Rock to keep Black students out, or whatever. I mean, certainly federal troops have been called in for much less.

I think the longer this continues, the greater the threat of disunion, the greater the threat of reaching a point where, I don't know, you can't drive from New York to Los Angeles. We take a lot for granted in this country, and the main thing we take for granted, I think, is freedom of movement between states. But you could easily imagine that ending soon, in the same way that you can't drive from São Paulo to Rio in Brazil—and I've tried. It's a pretty first-world country, but it's too dangerous to do that. You could easily see that happening here.

So I think once the Trump administration commits to putting down the riots and enforcing federal law by force, it kind of can't back away from that. That raises a question: Who's funding these? I think it's a really interesting question. We should find out.

I don't think the only arrests should be on the scene. I do think the drug cartels are involved, flexing their authority in California. They have a lot of control in California, as I'm sure you know. But the bottom-line question is: Does the federal government have a right to enforce federal immigration law? Yes. And if states are out of compliance with that, it doesn't have any option but to force the issue.

Chamath, when you see this amount of paramilitary—literally military—coming in, the dragging of handymen from Home Depot, as opposed to the strategic way this started, which was, “Hey, we're going to go after the felons. We're going after the gang members, the really bad folks,” and this time it seems like, “Hey, we're just going to roll up to a farm. We're going to roll up to a Home Depot. Just grab everybody. We'll figure it out later if their papers check out or not.”

Are you in favor of the “Hey, all 20 million have got to go” position? I'll call that the Steve Bannon position. Or are you into the idea that the 5% of illegal aliens who are criminals need to go, but maybe there should be a path to citizenship for the other 19 million?

I think the president was asked a version of that question today, Jason. And I think what he said is that there are people who have worked, for example, on farms for 20 to 25 years, or they work in the leisure industry. He said we have to take a common-sense approach to those people, because if you do take those people, then you're creating a vacuum where these jobs could get filled by folks who are essentially criminals or other things. So I believe that that's a reasonable starting point.

What I would say is: Where do we go from here? There are 7.5 million legal—not illegal, legal—immigrants in the United States waiting for their adjustment of status. Those are doctors, lawyers, scientists, and family members of existing American citizens. There's an entire body of people that I think we have to recognize have been waiting in line, and their first act in America was a legal action to come in and contribute.

Every time we start this conversation, we go to the plight of people whose fundamental first action was an illegal action, without understanding that there has to be a more balanced approach.

So yes, I think the president is right. It’s common sense for the folks who have now been here for a very long time. But we have to prioritize the people who started by saying, “We’re going to wait in line properly,” and then there are people in the middle. I think there needs to be a way to give those folks a chance to get their affairs in order, but they should be playing by the rules.

Got it. And I think it’s unfair to reward people for not playing by the rules.

Okay. So there’s some middle ground between the extreme “All 20 million have got to go” and the one example that I saw online, Jason, which was to give folks a stipend and a year.

Yes. The stipend has been out there for a while, right, to get their affairs in order.

And Jason said that, right? Jason said that exactly, and I think Jason’s clip is actually the most rational for the middle chunk. But I would really focus on these legal folks and say, “What are we doing about those people whose first action was to raise their hand, stand in line, and say, ‘I want to contribute by the rules that America sets’?” So reward them, punish the illegal folks coming in, and adjudicate everybody else.

Love it. Okay, Sacks, I’m going to play two clips here to level this up, and we can look at this in a multidecade way. Here’s Reagan on immigration

I don't have the right to say that as an American citizen to an IRS agent. I wind up in jail if I do that, or if I break any law, by the way. It's the rule of law, critically important. No, but not only that, it's a double standard.

I live in a place where a lot of the population subsists on food banks and where there are very few jobs. It really is one of those places whose economy NAFTA destroyed. And in the place where I live, immigrants get preference on housing and on jobs, which is actually true. I know liberals watching will be like, "That's not really true." It is true, actually.

And I wonder, because the real number is not 20 million; it's closer to 50 million. I think that's true—50 million illegals in the United States. Clearly, they can't all be deported by ICE. But I also think if you have a system that hands out meaningful grants—in effect, cell phones, travel vouchers, housing vouchers, free education, food stamps—to people who are here illegally or who are here legally as refugees, you are going to draw the world's poor.

And I think it's fair to ask: Do we want that? How do we benefit from that? And are we giving more to foreigners than we're giving to our own citizens? The answer is yes. How dare you? At a certain point, you get a revolution if you keep doing that. That's too much. It's too offensive.

Got it. So I think we all agree: no violence against cops and shut the southern border. Do you think the National Guard should be brought in, yes or no?

If the local police can't handle what's going on, of course they should be brought in.

Sure. I believe that you're questioning that decision.

You asked me the question. I believe they should have been brought in for January 6, for BLM, or for the LA riots if the local police can't contain them. One hundred percent, I believe the National Guard should have been brought in for January 6, when they were beating cops. I believe they should be brought in now if cops are being beaten, and I believe they should have been brought in during BLM when cops were being beaten.

I am pro-cop. I come from a family of cops, so you can ask me the questions.

So Newsom and Bass are out of line when they say that the National Guard should not have been brought in?

I think, well, number one, they should call the National Guard if they can't control it.

But that's their criticism of Trump: that he called in the National Guard. You agree that it was necessary?

It's obviously necessary. Just look at the TV. The city is still on fire. The cops are completely overwhelmed.

By the way, I find it comical that the Massachusetts governor called up the National Guard when DeSantis sent—remember when he sent 50 migrants over to Martha's Vineyard?

Yes.

And they all freaked out, and they literally called the National Guard in because 50 migrants had suddenly been flown into Martha's Vineyard.

They did. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, but was that because there were riots?

Well, that was when DeSantis was making a point, but that was to process them. They weren't rioting on Martha's Vineyard. These were just migrants. Nonetheless, the National Guard was brought in, and you can have thousands of people rioting in LA, but somehow the National Guard shouldn't be brought in.

We're in agreement. So you can try to force me to disagree with you, but I'm in agreement. Anytime the cops are overwhelmed, I think the National Guard should be brought in. Period. Full stop. So we're in agreement on that.

What I'm trying to get to is this: Tucker, if you believe there are 50 million people—let's say the number is 20 million. We split the difference between the two: 35 million, whatever it is. My question for you is, how many should be deported by ICE at $20,000 a person, which is the estimate that both sides seem to agree is what it's going to cost? Should we deport 1 million? Should we deport 10 million? And then how, Tucker Carlson, would you deport them?

Well, I think the goal has to be full compliance with the law for everybody within our borders: citizen or foreign-born, illegal, refugee, green-card holder. If you're in the United States, you obey our laws. And if you don't, we make a good-faith effort to enforce them, despite how powerful the political bloc may be.

50 million?

Well, by definition. Otherwise, why wouldn't I apply that same standard to my taxes, right?

But how do you do it? Citizenship?

Yeah, let's get into that. That's a hostage situation. It's like we've got 50 million here already. We've lied about the number for 30 years now.

Wow.

It's 50 million or 35 million. We need them. Everyone gets a path to citizenship—you know, that's a kind of crime, actually.

But the first step—and the phrase has been devalued—is self-deportation. If you have a system where people come to the United States to make their own way and take advantage of the freedoms offered in the economy, they're allowed to participate in the economy, then I think you could have a system where people really admire immigrants in the way that they did when I was growing up, and that I still do in some ways.

Some of my favorite people are immigrants, and they all tell the same story: They came here with nothing and built this great life. But you make everybody cynical and sort of destroy the idea of the virtue of immigration when you hand people stuff and give them preference when they arrive. We don't talk enough about what that actually looks like.

We spend a lot more than $20,000 a person right now in subsidies to people who aren't even allowed to be here.

They pay into Social Security too, right? To the tune of $100 billion a year?

Oh, okay. Right. No, no, that's just what was reported by our government. If we want to get to conspiracy corner, I think those are fake. I think those are fake numbers.

Look, does anybody really believe that 50 million illegals are a net benefit to the US economy? Are you serious? Have you been to our cities?

No, of course not. It's not. Actually, probably a large number of them are a net benefit because they're working in jobs that Americans don't want to take, and we're at 4% unemployment. So who's going to take all those jobs if they get deported?

Tucker, weren't you just saying that we're on the cusp of a labor revolution, where some 20% of American jobs are going away in 2 years?

It could be. Yeah. So that's the nuance in this discussion. Five years ago, we might be dealing with—it's like a brick wall we're about to hit at high speed. And I don't understand, having accustomed an entire generation of tens of millions of immigrants to government handouts, what the social fabric is going to look like when that stops.

Can I say something? Because Tucker is saying something really important, which I agree with. What should immigration be in a highly developed nation like the United States? My perspective is, you have to ask, "Well, what is the goal?"

I think the goal should be to maintain supremacy. The United States is the most vibrant economy in the world. It's the most important military power in the world. It's the most technically advanced entity in the world. If we do not focus on maintaining our supremacy, I don't think any American wants to go through the process of going from first to not first.

And if you look back in history at all of the other countries that have had to go through that transition, that is where revolutions and chaos happen. So we should avoid that.

Where does immigration play a role? It needs to play a role first and foremost in technical, military, and economic supremacy. The problem, as Tucker says, is when you have 5 or 6 times the number of illegal immigrants as legal immigrants, all of a sudden the idea of using immigration as a cream-skimming technique to reinforce the most capable people in the world coming here goes away, because you can't have that conversation.

We have people languishing for 10, 15, 20 years on visas. Their kids age out. They all go back to India and other places. Why? Because we can't focus on that conversation, Jason, because we're focused on how to give amnesty to folks whose initial action was breaking the law.

Absolutely correct. And this is where the whole immigration conversation devolves. We are missing the bigger picture, and you need to deal—one second. You need to deal with the illegal immigration thing in an extremely foundational way, where you can defend the decision. You started illegally, and you have to now go and conform to the law, which is where I'm trying to steer this discussion.

Number one, we all agree on closing the border. It seems like there's a breaking consensus here. Tucker wants to eventually deport everybody. You want to do something in the middle, like Trump. Sacks, I'm not sure what your personal position is, or if you want to give it. Do you feel we should try to have a path to deport as many of these 20 million or 30 million as possible, or do you believe we should have a path toward citizenship for them? What is your personal belief, or do you want not to get into it?

I remember when you asked that question to now Vice President J.D. Vance at the All-In Summit, and he said that you basically address that problem the same way that you eat a sandwich, which is one bite at a time. So that makes sense to me.

If there are 20 million illegals, you start with the top million who are violent criminals and gang members, and you deport those. And that is what ICE was doing. They were serving criminal warrants. After you successfully do that, you see where you're at, and you can address the next bite of the sandwich. That makes sense to me.

Now, look, I think we're not really addressing a core part of the issue here, which is that for a couple of decades, conservatives were demonized. And Tucker, in particular, I think you were demonized for warning about the policies that have created the mess that everyone can see on TV right now.

And that mess is that we have a large, unassimilated population of military-aged males who are basically rioting right now under a foreign flag, as if they were foreign invaders. We have basically allowed a separatist movement into the United States. That's what it looks like to me.

I remember when Tucker was warning about the policies that might create this on his show for years. You were called a racist. This was “great replacement theory,” blah blah blah. How can everyone not look at what's happening on TV right now and say Tucker was right? That was really dumb.

And look, I say this as someone from a family of immigrants. I'm one of the people that Ronald Reagan was talking about. My family and I came over here. We're immigrants, but we came over here to assimilate. We believed in the melting pot.

Be careful. You might get canceled for bringing up the melting pot.

The melting pot's good. I mean, I think that was the classic American model. Melting is totally good.

You could get canceled. That's what you're supposed to do.

Why would anybody? I came here because I wanted to be American and everything that being American meant. If I was bigger, I would have played football. There are all these things that I would have done to assimilate more and more. I believe in the culture of the United States. That's why people should come, right?

We came here, we assimilated. We were high-skill immigrants. We didn't have a lot, but we had a good education and were willing to assimilate. That's very different from what you're seeing on TV right now.

And again, if the people on TV just wanted to protest immigration policy in the way that you're talking about—and you're describing it in this very nice, gentle way—they would be peacefully protesting under an American flag, saying, “We want to be here. We're willing to contribute.” I think the issue is that that's not what's happening. You can see that, right? I mean, they look like foreign invaders.

I would say, by the way, this is the dumbest PR. If this debate is really about immigration, this is the dumbest way for them to present their side of the argument.

Yeah.

Because who wants to keep in this country a large, unassimilated population that is proud to march—not just march, but actually protest, riot, burn, and assault—under the flag of another nation?

I would say, dollars to doughnuts, the majority of the people who are doing the looting and rioting are not actually immigrants, because they have the ability to be deported. The people who are doing that are the bad actors that we saw during BLM, the bad actors that we saw in LA when the Lakers win.

I've lived here for a decade, and I am here right now. I can tell you it's contained. Eighty or 90% of those people are not the immigrants. The immigrants are hiding right now for fear of being deported.

But let's talk about the path. Where do you guys want to go with it here? I can give you my opinion if you want.

Well, Tucker, I don't know. I don't want to speak for you, but I do think that Tucker should feel vindicated on this issue for speaking about it for so many years.

Do you feel vindicated?

I mean, I never doubted it. I was born in California in 1969, and my family got there in 1850. I have some sense of what the state was like, certainly through my childhood, and it was idyllic.

It's not that now. The rich areas are great. California is still great, I think. Mount Shasta is great. There are lots of great places in California. But fundamentally, the state is a slum Latin American country, and immigration did that.

I say that as someone who's actually pretty pro-immigrant. My best friend is an immigrant. I've always admired and liked immigrants. I'm hardly anti-immigrant or anti-immigration. But the way we did it destroyed the state. Immigration is what made California into a slum, and there's kind of no way around that.

That's not an argument against all immigration. I'm not making that argument. I don't feel that way. But it's an argument against what we did in California. Rather than learn from that, we're doing it in every other state, and I don't know why.

If the other side had a reasonable argument, they would proffer it. But instead, they call you names and try to turn you into some kind of thought criminal or whatever. I don't care, obviously, but it's a measure of how little they have to say in response. They're not actually trying to make the country better. That's kind of the main thing.

I've always thought immigrants are great because they did make the country better. I think that's demonstrable. But the people pushing our current policies don't have that as a goal. This is a kind of punishment for something, and a lot of it's ethnic, actually. It's a kind of attack on the people who were born here. I don't know where that hostility comes from. You can feel it, though, and I think it's foolish to deny it. That is a motive. They're trying to hurt the people who live here.

I live in a place currently where I see that happening, and it drives me totally bonkers. The last thing I'll say is, if you think the way we once did immigration was good—and a lot of immigrants are awesome people, and I do think that—this is discrediting all immigration 100%. It's turning people into pretty radical immigration restrictionists, who are like, “Look, I don't want any more immigrants.” That's inevitable. It's sad to see it.

By the way, what you're saying is most true for immigrants. Legal immigrants look at illegal immigration even more negatively than native-born Americans, which makes sense, right? They waited in line and other people didn't. You would be really upset if somebody cut the line.

Obviously, there's a lot of emotion around this issue. I think numbers help, and I always look to see what the consensus is among the group here and among Americans.

Everybody wants the border closed. Trump won on that. So, okay, we all agree the border should be closed. I think there's 80 or 90% consensus on that. Eighty or 90% of Americans think we should deport violent criminals. Okay, we have consensus there.

What's left is, what do we do with high-skilled recruiting? I like to use the word “recruiting,” and we had that discussion with President Trump here. He promised to put a green card on every degree. I agree with him on that. I think we should be recruiting at least 1 or 2 million amazing people per year. We should match that to what the needs of the country are. If we need energy, if we need doctors, we should match that.

Where we probably disagree is that I think the Democrats and the Republicans share equally in this issue that Tucker pointed out. Yes, there are 40, 30, 50 million—who knows what the exact number is? That's part of the problem. Here's a chart we made. This shows, under each of the presidents of the last almost 50 years, how many people net immigrated to the country.

As you can see, it's been pretty consistent, around 3 million per year. Clinton and Bush had a ton of immigration. Both Bushes were paid for; a lot of their donations came from corporations that wanted free migration. America created this.

Outlier here, Jason, though.

Oh, well, yeah. Biden is the huge outlier. We all agree on that. Biden let it go YOLO, and I understand people have a lot of resentment for that, rightfully so. If you bring in 10 million people, you're going to let in a lot of bad guys.

But you put this all together, and my belief is that this is a country of immigrants and that this country does great when hardworking immigrants assimilate. I think we should take this raw firepower of these incredible immigrants who have been here for decades. If you've been here for 10 or 20 years, pay a fine, pay some extra taxes, and we give these people a path to citizenship. And we recruit the top 1 to 2 million people. That's my belief.

Do you do that before or after the people who have been waiting in line get a fair shake?

I think you have to do it before, because we created this. I know that's not something that people want to take ownership of, but America created the situation. Bush created it. Clinton created it. America—the country that we live in, our government—allowed millions of people here, and the Republicans did this specifically in order to get cheap labor.

Let me ask what we do with these people. Let's just say that you're an International Mathematics Olympiad winner. You get recruited to come to the United States on a student visa. You crush it. Let's say you go to MIT, then you go and do a Ph.D. at Caltech, and then you get recruited on an OPT visa by Google, and you're just crushing it. Awesome.

And you're saying that that person—

Oh, no, sorry. That's a more subtle question. That person we should recruit. As I said very clearly, recruit 1 to 2 million. They're currently waiting in line, Jason.

Yes. So I'm saying yes, let them in, and yes, a path to—

Who do you prioritize? You have one.

You can do both at the same time.

No, no, you don't.

Of course you can. We could have one group recruiting 1 to 2 million highly skilled individuals of the type you're describing, while having another group—

We can do two things at the same time. Chamath, absolutely you can. You're giving a false question here.

Give them a path, a compassionate path. We, as America and as Americans, should take ownership of the fact that we allowed this, and the people who allowed it were Republicans and Democrats. We allowed these people to come in and work in our restaurants and fields, which is what Trump said today. Trump is in agreement with me.

That's not what he said. He said he wants those people not to leave.

It's just amazing to me that on this podcast during the Biden years, you were echoing this party line that the videos of mass migration—caravans streaming across the border, going through the holes in the wall—you said those were videos cherry-picked by Fox News. You told the party line that there was no problem. Now, all of a sudden, you're saying it was a bipartisan problem.

No, no. Fact check. I said, "We don't know because we don't have the metrics, and we don't have a good system," which we all agree on. There's no good system. Anybody who went down to the border was saying that it was wide open.

As we got that data, I said, "This data on the ground shows we should shut the border." I've always been empirical about it, and I've also been compassionate.

This whole "both sides are to blame" thing kind of ignores the fact that you had the Trump revolution in 2016. There is some truth to the idea that both parties neglected the problem. If you go back far enough—Tucker will remember this—when Bob Bartley was the editor of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, they actually supported a constitutional amendment in favor of open borders. They really believed in this whole idea of full free trade, open borders, and the free flow of capital and labor.

Okay, but that was a long time ago. With the rise of Trump in 2015 and 2016, it became a different party. Trump got elected on building a wall.

And what happened? The Democrats fought him tooth and nail. They tied him up in litigation. He was able to build hundreds of miles of wall, but there were uncompleted parts of it. When Biden came into office, there were large pieces of the wall still on the ground, just waiting to be erected. Biden sold them off as scrap metal for $0.02 on the dollar. Do you remember this?

And then Biden and the Democrats proceeded in favor—

Hold on a second. Please don't frame it as though I'm against that.

Okay, just forget about you. You said Democrats and Republicans are to blame for this.

Not in the last 8 years.

No. Biden—Trump wanted a wall.

Yeah.

Biden opened up the border, and Democrats supported him in that. They thwarted every Republican attempt to close the border for 3 years. For 3 years, they gaslit people and pretended it wasn't a problem.

Then, when it became undeniable, they claimed that Biden didn't have the executive authority and that they would need a new act of Congress. That was also total nonsense. As Trump said in the State of the Union, you didn't need a new law. You just needed a new president.

Look, if you want to go back 20 or 30 years, you can blame both parties. If you want to talk about the last 8 years, there's only one party to blame: the Democrats.

That is why, when you look at the polling right now, the Democratic Party is at an all-time low. Let's get the exact number: -49. 21% approve of Democrats, and 70% disapprove, because they know that Democrats caused this problem. Democrats are the ones denying it. They're the ones basically making excuses for the disorder and chaos right now.

The only Democrat—the only Democrat—who's actually talking sense right now is the one with a head injury, ironically: Fetterman. He's a lone voice here.

Don't make it—no, I mean, it's amazing. It's kind of sad.

Look, I'm agreeing with Fetterman. Fetterman says—caveat that he hit his head; I don't know what it is about Democrats. It takes a head injury for them to talk sense. It's like a Bulworth thing.

Anyway, Fetterman said, "My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement." He's talking about January 6. "I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration, but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos."

Kudos to Fetterman, but he's the only Democrat out there. He's a lone voice condemning the violence.

Tucker's our guest, and we're going to give Tucker the last word on this topic before we go on to the next one. You are 100% correct: Biden, 10 million net immigrants, and Trump, 3 million, which sounds like a lot but is actually the lowest in about 10 administrations—the lowest since Reagan.

Tucker, you're our guest. Wrap us up here. What should we think?

I think we should measure the health of a country, at least in part, by the condition of its cities, including the cleanliness of its cities. By that measure, our country is collapsing. Our cities are a disaster. The richest parts of the richest cities are fine, and the rest of them are just absolutely awful.

I think that has got to be job one. If you want to renew the United States, you have to make sure its population centers are clean, safe, and orderly, but especially clean. There's something really important—and I know the left just instinctively discounts that—but cleanliness is next to godliness. Your city is a reflection of your self-respect, how you feel about your nation, and your patriotism.

If you allow it to become like Paris or New York, covered in graffiti and filth, with random people from other countries selling fruit on the street and begging and having sex in ATM vestibules—just the whole Midtown Manhattan, central Paris experience—that's a sign your civilization is going under.

I think it's really important. I do think that decay is not entirely caused by mass immigration, but mass immigration has made it much worse. I know that from walking around, because I like to walk around cities. I think it's a national emergency, and the riots are just the most vivid expression of that.

A burning car is something you can't ignore, but we do ignore the condition of 6th Avenue at 49th Street. How can a self-respecting country allow that? Or the condition of Penn Station, or our airports? How can we allow that?

If I were in charge, I would make you go to Dubai or Doha or Moscow, or some place that has a sense of itself.

When we got soba in Tokyo, remember, 2 years ago, and we were talking about this exact issue—

Well, but it's true. Tokyo is the most radicalizing experience for an American. Everyone who goes there is like, "I can't even deal with this. I'm so angry that we've put up with what we're putting up with."

I had to talk him into it.

You did. Let's not overthink it, I guess, is what I'm saying. It's not even about the Constitution. It's about litter.

Okay. Tucker gets the last word on that.

Now David Sacks gets to take his incredible victory lap. Economic data has been objectively pretty great the last 2 weeks. Tariff revenue spiked to $23 billion in May, 2 times February's figure. There we go. We see the impact of a little bit of extra income.

Inflation continues to come down. What are we at? 2.4%. Across the board, there are some pluses and minuses in there. We'll get into it later.

GDP. Okay, this is the leading GDP prediction model from the Atlanta Fed. It could be as high as 3.8%. Again, this is a prediction for Q2. Q2 is obviously not over, but this would be a pretty big jump over Q1.

Despite all this positive data, the deficit remains the sticky issue. Some of our friends might have an issue with this and have been vocal about it. In May, the U.S. had $371 billion in revenue with $687 billion in spending. Not good. That's a big burn rate: a $316 billion deficit.

We paid $90 billion in May in interest on the debt, almost up to $100 billion a month. And there's a nice key chart, which we all like. We could double-click on that if anybody finds something interesting in here.

Here's your deficit tracker. What I'll highlight here for you is those first 2 lines, 2020 and 2021. You have to give a mulligan for the COVID years. In purple, 2025: We are a bit ahead of the last couple of years. Our spending is now 13% above 2024, 20% above 2023, and 65% above 2022. Obviously, debt service is a big part of this.

The balance sheet of the United States is really bad right now. Sacks, I'm going to start with you. This obviously has been an emotional issue, and—

You'll recall that back in early April, Jim Cramer predicted we'd see a Black Monday in response to Trump's tariffs. That's all the proof we should have needed to know that we were about to get a bunch of good economic news.

It wasn't just Jim Cramer. Larry Summers was on our podcast for that big debate that we did, and he was predicting doom. What we're seeing now is good economic news breaking out all over.

Q2 GDP is on track for 3.8%, according to the Atlanta Fed. The May jobs report was above expectations, up by 139,000. CPI—inflation—is down to 2.4%. Growth is back, and inflation is low.

What you saw over the last few months was the elites in both parties—I’ll give you that—scaremongering about tariffs and predicting doom. They've been proven to be out of touch with popular sentiment and reality. You don't want to spike the football too soon, but things look really good right now.

Yeah. In fairness, when Trump came out with the shock and awe of the tariffs, he came out pretty strongly, Sacks, you will admit, and the market did tank massively for about 30 days.

Tucker, what's your take on the economy today? Does this debt concern you? I'm wondering because there seems to be a little bit of a rift inside the Republican Party on the BBB—not Build Back Better, but the Big Beautiful Bill.

What’s Tucker Carlson’s take? I’m curious about out-of-control spending, the deficit, and this bill in relation to that.

I have the world’s most predictable views. I believe in physics. An unpayable debt tanks your country at a certain point. That was preexisting, and it’s accelerated, as you noted. I don’t know a single person who’s got any kind of plan to fix it. I think we’re just going to ride it into whatever the point of oblivion is.

But I would just say on tariffs, you’ve got the reverse Cramer. David was saying that’s his measure of economic forecasting. For me, it’s the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Whatever they’re for is poison, generally speaking, and anything that drives them insane is a virtue. I can’t imagine a policy more perfectly designed to make them explode than Trump’s tariff announcement.

I have to say, I’ve been a pretty conventional Republican my entire life. I remember when I decided the Iraq War was a bad idea. That felt like an outlaw idea.

What led you to that?

I went to Iraq in December 2003 to see where a friend of mine had been killed. I was there right after the invasion, and I immediately recognized that we’re not a good colonial power because we won’t admit that we are. We won’t admit that we have an empire; therefore, we can’t administer it in a rational way. Just the obvious stuff.

But anyway, the point is, the last remaining unexamined orthodoxy in my head was free trade. I happened to be at the White House, just by chance, the day of that announcement. I remember thinking, “Man, if this works, what a caper.”

What’s the worst-case scenario in your mind for this tariff negotiation? Obviously, there have been multiple rounds of it. I’m not going to use the term TACO, but it does seem like we’ve shifted from shock and awe to maybe a kind of bore. It’s kind of boring, and that does seem to be Trump’s approach, right? In negotiations, big bang and then fall back to a reasonable position. I think we’re in the reasonable-position phase. What does success look like?

I hope—I pray—that’s what we’re seeing on Iran right now. You’re absolutely right. That’s sort of the nature of negotiations, of course. There is nothing in writing with China, so far as I know, and it’ll be reassuring, I think, when there is.

In general, we haven’t seen what Jim Cramer and Larry Summers predicted, and that itself is amazing. It’s amazing, and it causes someone like me, who’s sort of on the sidelines of the economic debate but watching carefully, to wonder what other absurd mid-century orthodoxies about economics I’ve internalized that just aren’t true.

That was the biggest of all: tariffs caused the Great Depression. We know that. What if you can have a mixed approach with some trade barriers that are tailored to your benefit, and that sort of works in a longitudinal way? If that’s true, holy smokes. It looks like it might be true.

So it’s been true for the other side, right? They’ve been doing that. If it’s true for China, South Korea, and Australia, why wouldn’t it be true for us? It seems like we’re the sucker at the poker table.

Well, I think you’re right. I guess all I’m saying—I’m making a pretty pedestrian point, but I can’t get past it—is that this is so far from what the Republican Party stood for 10 years ago: neoconservative foreign policy, free trade, and open borders, as you noted, maybe a little more than 10 years ago, but 15 years ago.

This is the mirror image of it, and it just blows my mind. It’s such a better version. It’s such a more reality-based, flexible, thoughtful version than we had before, and I’m really thrilled to see it.

All right, Chamath. Oh, yeah, sure. No, no, no. I know you like to go right after Tucker. It’s very engaging.

You got me thinking about these unexamined orthodoxies.

This is his dream. When you’re on, he cannot contain himself in the group chat. He’s so excited. Tucker, when you’re coming on, it’s 48 hours of Sacks being like, “When is the pod coming? Is Tucker really coming?”

That’s how I feel about David Sacks. Trust me, if you had a camera at my dinner table, you would hear something similar.

Oh boy. Here we go. Go ahead, Sacks.

It’s great to have someone to the right of me on the podcast for once. It’s not an easy task. We invited Alex Jones and Steve Bannon to have him respond.

Tucker got me thinking about these unexamined orthodoxies. I studied economics in college, and I learned that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Great Depression. In hindsight, you’re like, “How can that even be true?” A tariff is basically a tax rate on foreign goods, and you’re saying that increasing taxes on foreign goods all of a sudden caused a Great Depression. It doesn’t make any sense when you actually think about it.

What caused the Great Depression? I would say when thousands of banks went under, there was no FDIC, and everyone just got wiped out by that. It was a systemic risk, where one bank failure led to the next one. That’s so obviously what caused the Great Depression: Nobody had any money left. They all got wiped out when all the banks went under at the same time.

We take something that happened in the ’20s and ’30s and apply it to a much more dynamic world like today. It doesn’t make much sense. I think what happened is we had all these postwar—meaning post–World War II—understandings that got hardwired into the consciousness of our intellectuals.

If you think about the era right after World War II, the United States was the last great power standing. It was us and the Soviet Union, but they had a different system. They were not part of the, let’s say, free world. They were part of this communist bloc.

In terms of the so-called free world, we were the only country that was relatively undamaged, and we had this giant manufacturing base. Obviously, the fewer trade barriers that existed across the world, the better it was for the United States because it was our goods and our factories that were able to sell all over the world.

We proceeded to define a world order in which we kicked down every single barrier to free trade because that’s what benefited us. I don’t know that that means the situation always benefits us in all times and all places.

The big issue we have right now is that you’ve got a rising China, and they have become the scale producer in the world for all sorts of goods. They now have this giant industrial base that we seem to have exported to them. We exported a lot of that because of this free-trade ideology that got so entrenched in our thinking that we just stopped thinking about under what circumstances this might not continue to be good for us.

We’ve ended up becoming dependent on them for all sorts of goods that we now realize are highly strategic. We’re trying to figure out how to onshore these things because it seems really dangerous for us to be single-threaded to a potentially adversarial power for rare earths, rare-earth magnets, chips, pharmaceuticals, and all these things. Our intellectual class just never seems to revisit any of its assumptions. They just have these dogmas.

Chamath, building on Sacks’s codification of truths and heuristics that don’t get questioned, how much of it is that we just codify, “Trade good, open borders good, free trade good,” and how much of it is just incentives?

Rich people paying off politicians to have more free trade, independent of party, seems to be what’s happened over the last 10 or 20 years. It just made more sense to send jobs to the lowest-cost place to increase profits for American companies—which, let’s face it, although it may have hollowed out our manufacturing and created this weakness in the 4 or 5 areas you point out every week that we need to reinforce quite eloquently, the real issue is we did that because we wanted to make money.

We wanted to have the most highly profitable companies, and we did succeed. But maybe we succeeded too much, and our companies benefited more than the middle class. You’ve got Josh Hawley out there saying, “Hey, we should go to a $15 minimum wage federally.”

The wrong people won in the early 2000s. I think there was a war of ideas, and there was a group of people that advocated for this reckless form of free trade and this globalist view: Every country is going to meld into one mega-monolithic country organization that’ll get governed out of New York by the United Nations and its affiliated organizations.

That worldview won, but it was the wrong worldview. It didn’t acknowledge that we have competing philosophies, competing priorities, and competing ideals of what the future looks like. I think we need to go back and reset all of those things.

If you take where we are, and you can just put the Sankey diagram back up, there are a couple of things that are really worth noting that people need to fundamentally understand. I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought the GDP print was going to come in hot. I think everybody now is sort of where I am, so let me give you the next thing.

Let me ask you, though: Why is it hot? Do you have a thesis on why GDP spiked so much—or potentially did? That’s obviously a forecast.

I don't know the puts and takes yet. When we see the print, I have a way of forecasting this stuff, which is a bunch of signals that my team and also many macro teams all around the world—from the bond vigilantes to the hedge fund guys—all feed to me. What I was noticing was that we were going to come in—I said in the low 3s.

I think, if the Atlanta Fed is right—I don't think they are—it's going to be in the low to mid-3s, meaningfully greater than what people are expecting. So let me just give you my next prediction. My next prediction is 2 really important things.

What this Sankey diagram looks at, which is a snapshot of the balance sheet and the health of the United States in May, misses, in my opinion, 2 very important things that have to change. The first—and this is a positive for the Trump administration and the United States economy—is that we are running $300 to $400 billion above forecast in terms of our receipts, meaning the revenues that we will take in. You get to that number by looking at the last 3 months of tariffs and forecasting forward, assuming a reasonable balance here.

So, back to Tucker's point. We all thought that this was like a boogeyman that you weren't allowed to touch, and that if you touched the stove, you were going to get burned. The mathematical reality is that this is actually going to work out much better for us than we anticipated, and it's going to be somewhere in the range of $300 to $400 billion of extra revenue per year. That's a huge win.

So why is that important? That then sets up this next cataclysmic thing that we're going to see over the next 60 days, which is: What does Jerome Powell do? If Jerome Powell stays politicized, his incentive will be to keep interest rates where they are. If Jerome Powell looks at the conditions on the ground, especially when you start to see inflation stay in the low 2s and approach 2.0, the real thing that he's going to be under tremendous pressure to justify is, "Why are you not cutting?"

Just to give you a sense of how important that is, if we cut by 100 basis points, that's another $300 billion. In that case, that's not money that we get in, but it's money we don't have to spend. So if you add these 2 things together, in the next 60 days we're going to have to reforecast the American balance sheet, where we're actually going to be able to positively forecast an extra $600 billion: $300 billion of incremental revenue and $300 billion of savings. Jason, if that happens, watch out.

What does that mean? Watch out.

It means that every single risk dollar is going to run to America. Every single one. Yum, yum. Forget Japan. Forget Europe. There is no place to put your money except the United States.

So I think that we have to figure out how to get Jerome Powell on the side of America versus on the side of what could happen politically. I think there's probably a version in his head that says, "My gosh, if I do this, it helps Trump, and if I don't do it, it hurts Trump." Practically, that is true. But the reality is the conditions on the ground justify cutting.

So you're predicting this $300 billion 2 different ways, in and out—$50 billion a month. It starts cutting this deficit pretty significantly. Your claim, I just want to be clear here, is that Powell is playing politics, not working toward the dual mandate, which is very clear: controlled inflation at the 2.0 rate and full employment. Your belief is that he's playing politics?

Yes. I believe that these decisions are political. I think that the Federal Reserve has veered away from actually controlling the money supply in the best long-term interests of the United States and more toward what benefits the short term.

And this ties back to how I started this. What is Powell's motivation? Somewhere in the 2000s, Jason, we transitioned away from having the strategic 20-year conversation about what's in the best interest of America. Instead, we started to have these unipolar globalist conversations.

The people who got into these centers of power—the IMF, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve, the central banks around the world—all worked toward an agenda that is now being undone. I'll give you an example of where this is now being undone. Just today, the World Bank undid a rule around being able to fund nuclear energy.

You would have thought, "Well, hold on a second. The World Bank steps in to backstop all these developing countries when they're in the middle of all this nonsense, right?" If you think about a country that's developing, what is the single biggest input to that country? Energy. And you think, for the last 40 years of multitrillion-dollar bailouts, we never demanded abundant, clean energy in the developing world. Of course not, because it was a political decision.

Okay, Tucker, do you believe the Fed is playing politics here? It's kind of hard to believe if Powell was placed by Trump and Biden. There was consensus there, and his mandate is to get to 2.0 and full employment. He's kind of trending toward that. He's made a couple of cuts. The markets predict he is going to make a cut.

Here's Polymarket for September, showing an 80% chance of a cut. Let's take a look at whether that's changed since the last time. So, in September—no. Okay, well, this has changed. All right, so here's your Polymarket Fed decision in September: no change, 53%; 25 basis points, 43%; 50 basis points, 3.8%. You put those 2 together, and you're roughly at a 47% chance of a cut and a 53% chance of no cut. So, a 50/50 coin toss. Do you think the Fed is playing politics?

Do I think the Fed chairman who lives in Chevy Chase is a political actor? I mean, are you serious?

What's his motivation, then? What's his endgame? Why does he not want to cut rates, or why would he not want to put it?

Well, of course. He lives in a world in which there is no one who doesn't want to stick it to Trump. I know the ZIP code that he lives in very, very well. I know the club that he goes to. I know that world.

No, no, I wouldn't, of course not. I'm not mad at him. I'm just saying, I know the world well. Of course, no one in that world wants to be seen helping Trump, and Trump has attacked him, by the way, in public. So I don't think that helps either.

I think the structure of the Fed's governance is very weird. I'm not exactly sure what the Fed is. I've asked this question to a lot of economists, including Larry Summers, and never really gotten a straight answer. How is it that this is beyond political control?

I mean, I don't know—if we're for democracy, shouldn't voters have some say in how this is administered? But they don't. There's no direct mechanism for voters to be heard in this, the single most important institution in the American economy. How does that work when it's a quasi-government organization? It's administering U.S. dollars. I just don't understand it.

I think the idea that you're going to depoliticize it by making its leadership immune from the control of elected officials strikes me as the kind of midcentury dumbness that got us NATO and a lot of other bad institutions. I just don't get it.

The exact purpose of the Fed—I've asked this 2 times and can't seem to get an answer. What's the motivation of the Fed? Is it just to stick it to Trump?

Jason, let me give you another data point. Now, let's assume—let's scenario-play. What happens if Powell rips in a 100-basis-point cut right now? I'll tell you.

One part, which is mathematical, is that the interest on the debt goes down. We save $300 billion. But there's something else that happens, which is that the Fed does control the front end of the curve—meaning, how do people borrow money for small amounts of time, from 1 day to about 2 years? If you make that cheaper, we know, as sure as time, what happens: People borrow more money. That fuels more growth. That will end up in GDP.

So what actually happens if you cut rates 100 basis points is not just the $300 billion, but you can get this reflexive positivity in the economy. What that allows you to do is, even if that causes a little bit more inflation, you're actually growing yourself out of this whole thing.

So then you ask yourself, "Well, hold on a second. If the numerical justification is there to lower rates, and it has all of these other positive externalities for the United States economy, why don't I do it?" The only answer is political.

I wonder if—hold on. Let me just tee this up. We're at 2.6% inflation. He wants to get it down to 2%. It feels like we're in striking distance. Maybe you could give us a theory here, Sacks, of what the political motivation would be.

I find it hard to believe that he's trying to sink Trump for some reason, as opposed to maybe just being scared of inflation popping up above that 3% handle, which then triggers them to raise rates. So what's your theory here, Sacks?

If you're Powell, it's better to take the risk of being Paul Volcker than Arthur Burns. That's basically what it comes down to.

For people who don't know, Arthur Burns let inflation slip the leash in the 1970s, and he's remembered as a horrible Fed chair. Then Paul Volcker came in and jacked up rates to, I think, close to 20% and caused a vicious recession in 1982. But by 1983, the economy had bounced back and inflation basically was under control. Then the rate-cutting cycle started.

That rate-cutting cycle went for about 25 years, and then Reagan got reelected in 1984. You'd rather be a Volcker than a Burns if you're a Fed chair.

Now, you raised the question: Is Powell political? Yeah, of course he is. If you go back to—was it 2021? The first summer of Biden's presidency, we got that shock 5.1% inflation print in May of 2021, if my memory is correct.

What did the Biden administration do? They sent Janet Yellen out to say it was transitory, and Powell got on board with the whole transitory narrative. As a result, he did not raise rates for 6 months. Worse than that, they continued quantitative easing. I think they bought about $180 billion in bonds during that time period, and that's what allowed inflation to get so out of control.

Why did Powell do that? Because he wanted to get reconfirmed. Yes, he was nominated by Trump originally, but Biden renominated him, and he basically wanted reappointment by Biden. He wanted to get confirmed, and the month after he got confirmed, he shifted gears and started raising rates again once he was safely in office. So he did the right thing in terms of raising rates in the face of inflation once he was free from those political incentives, but for 6 months he was intensely political, and that cost the United States dearly.

Now, if you're Powell, you've got PTSD from that whole experience, and you're going to err on the side of not letting inflation come back. With inflation down to 2.4%, I think it is time to cut rates, but he's fearful because, again, his incentives are to be a Volcker, not a Burns.

Yeah. Do you want to read a good book? Paul Volcker's Keeping at It. It's a great book about Reagan going to him and trying to get him to cut rates. This is a recurring story. If he had done the right thing in the summer of 2021, we never would have had that bubble at the end of 2021.

Remember, that basically created a huge crash in 2022, and we could have avoided a good part of that if he had done the right thing. The Fed chair's job isn't hard most of the time. These guys sit in their ivory tower, and once a quarter they come out, testify, and say a bunch of things that no one can understand. But once in a while, you have to get the decision right, and he totally screwed it up at that one time when he had to get it right.

Yep. I would say this could be one of those moments, too, where I think he's being a little bit fearful. I think there's a simpler explanation, quite honestly. If you look at Powell's history, he was nominated as a governor by Obama. Then Trump picked him out of the Fed to be chair, but he was reappointed by Biden.

If you look at the vice chair of the Fed, Philip Jefferson, he was appointed by Biden. Michelle Bowman, who's the vice chair for supervision, was appointed by Trump. Michael Barr was appointed by Biden. Lisa Cook was appointed by Biden. Adriana Kugler was appointed by Biden. Chris Waller was appointed by Trump. So I think the point is that there is a balance of power here.

If you look at the political affiliations that tend to favor a Democratic view of the political landscape, let's be honest: What benefits the Democrats more, a thriving economy and a shrinking deficit going into the midterms, or the exact opposite? The reason I'm bringing this up and harping on it is that he's a Republican whom Democrats have opposed. I'm just trying to reconcile this grand conspiracy that he wants to sink Trump. I don't think it's political. I think it's just a general decision.

I think these guys move the dot plots, and you can see it in the movement. They're going away from reading the actual data and moving in concert with the data to giving themselves a window to let the data play itself out beyond a reasonable point. My point is that “beyond a reasonable point” is the key part, because when you talk to the large, sophisticated pools of money, many of them are saying, “What's going on here?”

Currently, the Big Beautiful Bill is in the Senate. It passed the House by a 1-vote margin. Trump said he wants the Senate to pass the bill by Independence Day, July 4. The Senate math is that Republicans have a 53–47 majority. They can afford 3 no votes on their side, since the Democrats are united against the bill. With 50 votes, J.D. Vance can break the tie, obviously, so it's easier if they can get to 51.

Seven Republican senators are either no or maybe no. Three likely no votes are Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Rick Scott. Four maybe-no votes over the Medicaid cuts are Josh Hawley, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Jim Justice. None of those senators have committed either way. Republicans are now falling into 3 camps on the BBB: hard yes, soft yes, and no until it's fixed.

Some friends of ours were a little upset about the BBB, and we had a pretty chaotic week last week. It looks like the reconciliation bill is in. What's your take on the last week and the reactions to the BBB—and, obviously, Elon and Trump's relationship?

I hate the whole thing. This is not how to legislate. You shouldn't have a bill this big. It's impossible to get your mind around it. No one can read it, and no one understands it. It favors professional staff over legislators. It totally leaves the public out. It'll be a decade before anyone understands what it means.

The lobbyists love it. It's Washington at its ugliest. Not this specific bill, though—it is an example of it—but this is just not the way to do it. It's not the way it has been done throughout American history. There's no reason to aggregate it all together like this. It becomes totally unmanageable and totally undemocratic.

It's insane. It's totally insane. Can you tell me what's in it? No. All of us know about 11 things we've read on Twitter or whatever, but the truth is that even the professional staff who wrote it couldn't, if you had dinner with them for 3 hours, give you a comprehensive sense of what's in it. And remember, when it passes—and I think it likely will—it's the law. That's by design, of course.

It's just overload. You can't understand it. Every single part of this is the economy of the city that I've lived in my whole life. Every single part of this is there by design. It's been managed. It's been thought through. It's been written artfully. And by artfully I mean deceptively. So you can't understand its purpose or its benefit. And literally it is years before the ramifications become clear.

Again, this is why we have committees. A committee masters a subject and then theoretically produces legislation that bears on that subject with knowledge, depth, and hopefully wisdom. Congress is not designed to pass legislation in this way, and we've evolved to this. I would encourage the White House to try to blow that up. I think it would be better for everybody if legislation were passed piecemeal, as it always has been.

I think part of the problem is the leadership in Congress, and nobody wants to say it: It's just embarrassing. It's totally embarrassing. I would say the conference isn't united, either. This is part of the problem with Trump's agenda. It's the beauty of Trump's agenda, in my opinion, but it's so different from what your average 65-year-old Republican was raised believing. It's so different from what Fox News is telling you. It's the mirror image of what the Wall Street Journal editorial page is telling you.

There just aren't that many members of the House or the Senate who are truly on board with Trump's message, even now. Of course, they kowtow to the man, but when it really comes down to it, they hate his stated agenda.

Unpack that. What do they hate most?

It's not even a close call: They hate his foreign-policy views. Out of 535 members of the House and Senate, I would say 510 have given up on improving the United States through their jobs. They know they can't. Their view is that it's intractable. It's complex, boring, difficult, and super hard to solve. The numbers in the House and Senate make it practically impossible to move the ball on whatever issue they care about or were elected on.

So they take all of that energy and apply it to making the rest of the world better—fighting for democracy, or whatever the grander description is. The grander the description, the less accountability there is. If we're just fighting for Churchill against Hitler, it's always a win because we don't know any of the details. It's a simpler cause for them to take on than looking at how to balance—

What would you like to see Trump do, Tucker? What would Tucker Carlson advise if you were in the White House, which many people have requested that you do? If you were at the right hand of the Father, what would you tell him to do?

Understand the politician brain, which is reptilian by its nature. It responds only to pain. Period. Only to pain. So, if you want a politician to do your bidding, it's a super-simple conversation: “Do what I ask, or I will make sure you lose your job.”

By the way, Trump has the power to do that, which is what Elon said on Twitter. Just put it out there.

No, but it's true.

And I do think that, if there's a number of criticisms of any living person, one I would level at Trump is that he's nice. He likes to get along with people. He actually doesn't like to fight in person. No one will believe that, but I've seen it a lot.

I think it's tough for him to say, “It's easy for him to go after a reptile like Mitch McConnell at a press conference. He'll make fun of Cocaine Mitch or whatever. But to really go to McConnell and say, ‘Yeah, listen, son. This is going to hurt in the following 6 ways unless you obey, you little bitch,’” which is really what he ought to be saying.

No, I mean it. I absolutely mean it. And saying that to all of these guys. Tom Cotton, are you joking? How does Tom Cotton have a say in anything? “You’re the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I’m so impressed.” Listen, Tom Cotton, you represent a state that likes me a lot more than you. So if I find you undermining me yet again—and Tom Cotton spends an awful lot of time undermining Trump. Tom Cotton hates Trump, actually, of course—but if I find you doing that, I’m going to take your Senate seat away, and that’s going to be really easy for me to do.

And I really wish he would do that. It would only take 1 cycle to clear out, to really get some discipline, like the French in Algeria—for the encouragement of the others. The first guy goes out of the helicopter, and then the second guy is super talkative. If you did that in the United States Senate, you would have a much more coherent party in about 1 cycle. A little more leadership, a little more stick than carrot. Who wants to go next, Cham or Sacks?

A lot more shtick. Okay, here we go. Tucker says more shtick. Sacks, what are you feeling? Are we still talking about the Big Beautiful Bill? What are we talking about?

Yeah. Well, we’re talking about it all. Everybody wants to hear our takes on the kerfuffle between Elon and Trump, obviously, in relation to BBB.

So let’s just tackle it, or you can pass on it.

Yeah, let’s—we’ve got to put it out here. We’re an hour into the episode. Let’s just talk about it.

Let me speak to BBB for a second. So listen, if the question is whether I can defend a system that produces $2 trillion deficits every year, no, I can’t. I can’t even defend the Senate rules that require you to get 60 votes for some things and 50 votes for other things. It all just seems kind of random when you’re an outsider.

But those are the rules. They’ve got these crazy Byrd rules, and once a year you get to do this reconciliation bill where it only takes 50 votes instead of 60 votes to pass something, which means you can actually get something done without the Democrats, which is a rare opportunity. You just have to basically come up with a nexus to a budgetary issue, and so that’s what the BBB has done. As a result of that, I guess you could say that it’s a way for the president to ratify many of his most important campaign promises from the 2024 election.

So you’ve got the tax-cut extension in here. You’ve got full funding of border security for 4 years. You’ve got no tax on tips. You’ve got “drill, baby, drill.” You’ve got the missile defense shield. These are campaign promises that are important to the president. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass these things. I think Republicans would be committing political suicide if they don’t.

The polling on this—I’ll give you some numbers. First of all, the bill itself is popular despite all the bashing of it.

Popular with who?

Well, this is a national poll by Cygnal, which actually has a bias in favor of Democrats by plus 2.1.

So this is with the public—people who haven’t read it.

I know, believe it or not.

So what does that even mean?

Support for the Big Beautiful Bill: plus 6. Increased funding for border security: plus 35. That will probably be even more now that what’s going on in Los Angeles. Work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP: plus 38. Despite the Democrats’ carping on that point, people really like the idea of work requirements. Permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts: support plus 19.

These are very popular planks of the president’s agenda. It’s the only chance they’re going to have to pass this. Look, I said this 3 weeks ago on the pod, in the last few episodes: I don’t support the bill because it’s perfect. I support it just pragmatically because it’s better than the status quo.

My view is that we should take this now. We should get this done and then come back for more later. There should be a big fight over the budget at some point in the future, but this is not the right time to do it. We don’t have the votes, we’re not organized, and it would compromise these other promises the president’s made.

The time to really have that battle is at the beginning of the new fiscal year, which is October 1. At some point, we do need to have a big fight over the budget. There does need to be resistance to the deficit. We can’t continue in this current state forever, but I don’t think that’s the hill to die on right now. Chamath, your thoughts on BBB and the kerfuffle, if you want it.

Here’s what I’ll say. I was sad at the end of last week. One is my friend and the other is my president, and it seemed like a really profound friendship, so I was bummed.

Here’s what I’ll say this week, though, on a much more positive note: I saw Elon on Tuesday, and I got to spend a couple of hours with him at Tesla. He let me audit a couple of meetings with him, actually. It’s always fun. One was Dojo, and then right after that was the Optimus team.

The one thing I’ll say is that I’ve said this before, but he attracts these incredible men and women to work for him. They are inspiring. Just sitting in a meeting and hearing what they’re doing was amazing. And then, second, to see Elon in action at scale in that way is like watching a maestro paint a masterpiece. It’s really impressive.

Separately, I saw President Trump doing a couple of pressers, and he was in his zone of excellence. So it seems like they’re going to find some common ground here. They are better together. I’ll just say: Elon, amazing. Tesla, incredible. And I would not be sleeping on this company, is what I would say. Jason, what do you think?

We’re not the main characters in this story, obviously. When I saw what happened last week—obviously, this is one of my best friends for many decades—and given the popularity of this podcast, my decision was that I didn’t want to insert myself into this and have my quotes or my feelings about Trump or about the bill get weaponized. That’s typically what happens when you have a friend who’s the number-one story in the world.

I’m not friends with Trump, but he is my president as well, by default. What benefit does it have for me to speak about it and then have everybody weaponize it? I know this is hard for the audience to reconcile, but sometimes it’s better for me to just step back. That’s why you don’t see me commenting on Tesla or SpaceX publicly all the time: People weaponize what I say against my friend, and I just don’t like that.

It’s happened in books. It’s happened in news stories. So when Elon is doing something and it’s this intense, I like to just step back and maybe take a beat. That was my decision. That’s why I didn’t want to do a pod last week. Everybody else can speak for themselves. That’s where I’m at.

How do I feel about it? I think Trump is making a mistake with BBB. I think he should push back on it harder. I said that in a previous episode, and I think Elon’s 100% correct about that. I also think if either of these parties can’t control spending, there needs to be something like the Norquist pledge. You guys would know more about this, but the Norquist pledge, Tucker, where you agree not to increase taxes.

I think we need something like that, where a reasonable party says we should balance the budget. We have to control the deficit. There should be some pledge like that that we force our elected officials on both sides of the aisle to take. I’m going to start pursuing that myself personally. I think there needs to be a pledge that these politicians take to balance the budget and cut the deficit over some reasonable amount of time.

I wish them both the best, and I’m glad that the two of them have reconciled, because that’s good for the country. We can’t have these 2 giants at war: the greatest innovator in our country and a president who’s got an agenda that I agree with two-thirds of. I may not agree with how he’s doing immigration on the margins, but I agree with everything else. I’m just rooting for both of them because it’s so important for America that they get along.

All right, breaking news here. Foreign policy looks like a major escalation with Iran could be happening, maybe on Wednesday. It was reported that some U.S. personnel were being evacuated from the Middle East, including a partial evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Iraq. Oil prices moved 4% on the news.

It was later reported that Israel is prepared to launch an operation into Iran. The U.S. thinks Iran could retaliate on bases in Iraq, which explains the evacuations. Trump was asked about the evacuation and said the following: “They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place. We’ll see what happens.” Classic Trump: “We’ll see what happens.” Then he added, “They can’t have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.” Polymarket odds are spiking on Israeli action against Iran: 50%.

Oh boy. Tucker, can the West allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, or is this more of a WMD situation that we referenced at the start of the program? If Tucker Carlson were in the White House, which many of your fans wish you were, what would your advice be here? Is it up to us? Do we have the power?

Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't think the Iranians want a nuclear weapon right now, judging by their actions. But could we prevent it? That's the question. And if so, how exactly, given that we just lost to Russia and the Houthis? I'm skeptical, but I'm amazed by how close we are to military action against Iran.

It's no defense of Iran. Of course, I'm not a Shiite, for the record, but I think it comes with perils that people are not considering or willfully ignoring. And the main one is that Iran is not Iraq, and it's not Libya. It's not isolated. It's a central player in BRICS. Ninety percent of Iran's oil exports go to China. It just signed a defense agreement with Russia in January.

It has backup. It has big allies that represent the majority of the world's population, the majority of the world's economy, and the majority of the world's land mass. So the potential for this to become something much, much bigger and unmanageable is real. It's there. Their conventional weapons are fearsome and could do great damage to our allies, to Israel, and to American assets in that area, and also to energy production in countries that we rely on.

So I think the downsides are really overwhelming. I think a protracted—meaning anything over a day or two—engagement with Iran would derail the Trump agenda and the presidency, and I think it could really sink this administration. And so I pray this doesn't happen.

I think, by the way, the timetable is distorted. There is absolutely no reason to rush this. The president has said repeatedly, “We will do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.” I think it's a completely reasonable goal. Nobody wants that. I certainly don't want that, and the Israelis don't want it, and the Gulf states don't want it. Nobody wants that.

But it doesn't mean that it has to happen on Friday, actually. There are other forces exerting pressure on the administration to get this done quickly, even before Steve Witkoff, God bless him, meets with his counterparts in Oman in a few days.

Why in the world would you preempt a scheduled negotiation with airstrikes? The United States is driving this. It's a combination of both. And, by the way, Israel is a country with 9 million people in it. I mean, it's the Israeli government, but there are also elements of the U.S. government.

The head of CENTCOM is in favor of this. There are a number of Republican senators who are in favor of this, and they are lying. For example, here's one interesting point, and that's a statement of fact: there's no American intelligence that suggests Iran is in the process of assembling a nuclear weapon or is within months of doing so. There's none.

And yet Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Intel Committee, is out there saying, “We know that they're doing this.” Well, actually, you don't know that. That's not true. Whether he believes it or not, I can't say, but that's a lie. Our intel does not say that. Period.

So why? They're lying because of the military-industrial complex?

Yeah. I think this is not as simple as Bibi wants it. This is a very complicated coalition of aligned interests. But whatever their motives, I don't even need to know their motives. This is not a timetable that we need to adhere to. It's a completely artificial timetable.

The president has done his best to resolve this diplomatically. That's clearly his stated preference. He's said it a million times. And he's being bum-rushed into making a very snap decision that could have bigger consequences than we're thinking through. So I'm very concerned about it.

What are your thoughts here? Can Iran have a nuclear weapon? And if they do have one imminently—which is a big debate, obviously—should the United States participate in stopping them, or should we be doing negotiations, soft power, et cetera?

I think this is where I'm glad that it's President Trump in the seat. I think he's shown a consistent desire to off-ramp all of these conflicts, and if he and Witkoff can hopefully hold the line with Bibi and everybody else, I think we're way, way, way better off.

But you see this every time we're on the verge of victory: somebody in the military-industrial complex invents some escalation of something so that we can just go to war. The answer always seems to be, “Let's go to war,” or “Let's support a war,” or “Let's enable a war.” And the bulwark to that has been the president.

If we go to war, Tucker's right, this totally screws everything up. I mean, you could see oil double. What happens to the economy of the world, to world GDP, to everything, to inflation, if you have oil at $100 a barrel, $112 a barrel? It's not good.

So you have to wonder: why would people want this escalation? Who wants this escalation? You see that it's deeply beneficial for America to avoid anything calamitous happening here. So I hope we find an off-ramp, and I hope that the president gets his way.

One thing people should know about Iran is that there is a massive demographic shift happening there. You can see a chart.

Iran, 2020. If you look at the number of millennials and Gen Xers, this is not a boomer country, and they're going to have a revolution. All those 30-year-olds you see there—that big, fat middle, 30- and 40-year-olds—are on VPNs right now, reading and watching what's happening in the West.

You do not need to interfere with this country. You just need to let those 30-year-olds become 40- and 50-year-olds and take over the country. We need to negotiate heavily. The idea of going in there and creating a war with Iran is exactly probably what those older people want. Demographics are destiny.

Your ability as a moderator to cover so much ground.

Thank you.

Wow. Compliment.

Yeah. Sacks and I have had it for 100 days. I shit on American Express because I think they're just trash, and then they reached out to me. It was so ridiculous with the Black Card. No, they didn't even offer me the Black Card. They said, “Here's a chance for you to apply for the Black Card.” And I was like, “This just proves how insulting this is. So insulting.” They have no idea who anybody is. They're nagging you. I mean, literally, this is the number one podcast in the world, bro.

Generally, if any of the four of us ran a credit card company and decided that we were going to have a $10,000-a-year credit card for big spenders, what you would do is actually run a query to find who your biggest existing customers are and upgrade them so that they're paying you $10,000.