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JD Vance Is….”All-In”
JD Vance was on the “All-In” Podcast recently and I thought it was really good so I wanted to share it with all of you.
Even though we’ve had JD as our VP candidate for a while now, I feel like we still don’t know a ton about him.
We don’t see him too often, and that’s to be expected when President Trump is soaking up all the attention after nearly getting killed — twice — or is it now three times? Or more?
So JD has flown a bit under the radar, but each time I see and hear him, I like him even more.
I think he was an excellent choice by President Trump for VP and it really demonstrates a lot about President Trump’s decision making.
They actually discuss that point plus a lot more in this video.
If you’re not familiar with the All-In Podcast, it’s actually really good. Here’s a short summary of who’s who:
The All-In Podcast is a popular business and tech podcast where four prominent entrepreneurs and investors discuss topics like economics, politics, technology, and society. The hosts are:
Chamath Palihapitiya – A venture capitalist and former Facebook executive, Chamath is the founder and CEO of Social Capital, an investment firm that focuses on innovative companies. He is known for his outspoken views on business and technology.
Jason Calacanis – A tech entrepreneur, angel investor, and podcaster, Jason is the founder of several successful startups and has invested in early-stage companies like Uber. He also runs This Week in Startups, another well-known tech podcast.
David Sacks – A Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, David co-founded PayPal and served as its COO. He’s also the founder and general partner at Craft Ventures, an investment firm, and a frequent voice on tech policy and innovation.
David Friedberg – Founder and CEO of The Production Board, a company that focuses on solving global problems in food, agriculture, and health. He previously founded The Climate Corporation, which was sold to Monsanto.
The podcast is known for its candid, sometimes controversial discussions on current events and business trends.
Keep in mind JD Vance comes from the Venture Capital world and he knows these guys:
David Sacks: Sacks has been one of Vance’s prominent supporters and donors, contributing to his political campaigns. Sacks, known for his ventures in Silicon Valley and as a co-host of All-In, has aligned with Vance on various issues, especially in areas related to tech policy and conservative politics. Sacks has also invited Vance to speak at events, such as the All-In Summit, where they discussed key political and technological issues.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Although there is no direct personal connection between Palihapitiya and Vance, Chamath is part of the broader venture capital ecosystem that overlaps with some of Vance’s business interests. Both have shown an interest in tech-driven solutions to societal challenges, but their political perspectives diverge, with Chamath being more progressive compared to Vance’s conservative stance.
Jason Calacanis: Like Chamath, Calacanis has not had direct, personal ties with Vance. However, he operates in the same circles of technology investment, and their paths have likely crossed at industry events. While Calacanis tends to focus on tech and startups, he has commented on political issues that overlap with topics Vance discusses.
David Friedberg: Friedberg, as a tech entrepreneur focused on climate and agriculture, does not appear to have any strong or notable connections with JD Vance. Their fields of expertise and political engagements don’t seem to overlap significantly.
Please enjoy (full transcript below if that’s easier for you):
Full transcript:
[Speaker 1]
“This speaker is not on the program, not on the program, but I did notice there was a little bit of security here today, a little extra security. This is your Sax’s red meat moment, yes. All right, here we go. Little red meat for Sax. Uh, please welcome me in joining vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Let your winners ride, Rainman David. And instead, we open-source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy.”
[Music plays]
JD Vance:
“Hey guys, man, good to see you, man, how you doing?”
[Speaker 1]
“Time. All right, see you. Hey, guys, welcome.”
[Speaker 2]
“So, Zach is gonna introduce you. Welcome to the Lions. Who’s here with us, Z?”
[Speaker 1]
“Well, do we actually need a big introduction here? But I’ll give you a few for those of you who are really bad at context clues. I’m JD Vance. I’m running for vice president, and normally, he’s beside his wife, Usha, but now you get me.”
JD Vance:
“That’s right, she’s at like the tarpits or whatever. Yeah, yeah, we brought the three kids out here so she wanted to take them to see some fossil stuff. So, they’ll have fun.”
[Speaker 2]
“Good. I’ll say a couple of things about JD because, um, he’s a friend. What I think really made me want to support JD for the Senate and also for the VP position is that I think he represents two, you could almost say, contradictions. Uh, back in 2003 when JD graduated from high school, you know, this was after the Twin Towers had come down and we’d gotten involved in the Iraq War. He was gung-ho to go fight America’s enemies, and he enlisted in the Marine Corps and went off to serve in the Middle East. Eventually, he came to realize that that war was a mistake. And I thought that really represents one of the traits that we really want in a vice president or someone next to the president, which is that he had the patriotism and the courage to go serve America but also the wisdom to realize when America shouldn’t get involved in a war.”
[Applause]
[Speaker 2]
“Just the other, uh, like I said, almost contradiction that JD represents is that he had worked in the tech industry. He had been a venture capitalist. He had been in rooms like this, and he understands what it takes to make America a more innovative place. At the same time, he comes from a part of the Midwest, Appalachia, that’s a very poor part of the country, and did not grow up in a privileged environment at all. And he still remembers those people, and he represents those people. And I think his ability to understand both parts of the country makes him, uh, I’d say, a pretty unique political figure. So, with that, let me stop, and do you want to react to any of that?”
JD Vance:
“Well, first of all, thanks to all of you for having me. I’ve been a big fan of the Pod for a while. I think this is my first appearance, so it’s good to be with you. You know, the only thing I’ll say to that, David, is I do think there is a deep connection between the poverty that I saw growing up and the fact that our entire economy is just less innovative than we pretend that it is. And, you know, I know Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen, other folks, have talked about this. But if you look at the real innovation of the American economy, it’s been in the world of software. If you look at where the economy has been most stagnant, it’s been in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy, which is where 90% of the people that I represent in the Senate and 80% of the people that I hope to represent as their vice president actually make their living, run their business, and go to work every single day.”
JD Vance:
“And I think that, you know, when I think about tech, one of the things I’d like us to do is broaden the aperture a little bit and think about innovation not just in software but innovation in transportation and logistics and innovation in energy and the whole suite of things. Because unless our economy is actually technologically innovative, then the stagnant economy is fundamentally like the worst thing. And I think a lot of actually America’s pathologies right now stem from the fact that we feel like we live in a very zero-sum country, because in some ways, we do, right? When the economy is growing four, five, six percent a year, then Democrats can kind of get what they want, Republicans can kind of get what they want, and it all makes sense. If the economy is growing between zero and one percent a year, then I think it makes the whole society and our political system much more insane. And I think it’s kind of a subtext of what’s been going on in this country for the last 30 years.”
[Speaker 2]
“Let me start by going back a little bit. I think three of us, um, initially would have been described as sort of, like, you know, non-Trump people. Yeah, um, and in different ways and shapes and forms, we were all very skeptical about it because of what was presented to us through the filter of the media. And we’ve all gone through an evolution, in large part by meeting the person. This is the first time, actually, where a presidential candidate I’ve known, and I’ve kind of known a vice-presidential candidate in this case as well. You know, they try to corner you and paint you in a certain way. Can you just talk about what you realized, the person that you got to know, and what it says about what we need to do so that we don’t get manipulated?”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, so, first of all, when Biden was running against Trump, one of the things the media tried to do was to say, well, you know, you have these two guys who are a little bit older than average, and both of them clearly aren’t fully with it. And I would hear the media talk about Biden like this, and then talk about Trump like this, and it’s like, guys, Donald Trump remembers exactly what I said about him five and a half years ago, to the minute, to the day, to the exact line. Like, trust me, his memory is 100% there, uh, even if it would be more in my interest if it wasn’t.”
JD Vance:
“And, you know, what changed for me? I mean, two things. I mean, one, Chamath, you just sort of hit on this. A lot of the things the press said about Donald Trump and says about Donald Trump are just straight-up fabrications. And so, if you think the press is, like, biased, that’s one thing. But if you think the press is fundamentally trying to tell you the truth, even if it’s in a biased way, and then you realize that, like, Donald Trump never called white supremacists ‘very fine people’ after Charlottesville—a total fabrication of the American media—it’s like, okay, what other things am I hearing about Donald Trump that are actually not true, right?”
JD Vance:
“The second thing is, you know, and we talked about this a little bit last night, but look, if you go back to the date of my—or the year of my birth, which is 1984, there’s this chart that’s really interesting, and it tracks corporate profits, the wages of workers, and the size of government. And for pretty much my entire life, the wages of workers were stagnant, corporate profits were going up, and the size of government was going up. And there was a four-year period where the wages of workers outpaced the size of government and corporate profits. It’s the four years that Trump was president. And I think that we have to, like, give some credit to where it’s due. The policies actually worked. And if you go into the presidency saying, ‘I don’t think Donald Trump’s going to be a good president,’ and then lo and behold, he’s the best president, at least in a generation, it’s like, okay, time to change my mind, admit to myself but also to all the people who listen to me, I was wrong about Donald Trump. He was a hell of a good president. Of course, I’m running as his running mate, and I think he’ll do it again.”
[Speaker 2]
“Let’s flip it around now. What does it say about him that he—how’s that process of saying, ‘JD, you said this.’ ‘Yes, I did, I changed my mind.’ Then, he has to change his mind. So, talk to us about that.”
JD Vance:
“You know, I think the president—one thing I’ll say about him is, again, the media perception of Donald Trump is that he’s this deeply aggrieved guy who holds really terrible grudges. The actual reality of Donald Trump is that, yeah, he remembers what you said about him because it’s like part of the inputs that he takes as he tries to evaluate a human being. But most importantly, he’s asking, like, ‘What can you do now? How can you help the country now? How can you help me as I try to help the country now?’ And I think, for whatever complicated set of factors, he decided that I was the guy who could help him the most. But no, I mean, it is interesting—the perception of him as this guy who holds grudges. He selected a guy who was very much a critic of his back in 2015 as his running mate. Clearly, something doesn’t make sense. And I think what doesn’t make sense is this idea that Trump is more motivated by grievance than he is by the public interest. He’s actually much more motivated by the public interest—that’s the truth.”
[Speaker 1]
“That’s awesome. You’re… uh, thanks for coming, of course. Um, would JD Vance have certified the election in 2020? You’re going to replace Mike Pence.”
JD Vance:
“I hope so, yeah. It’s gonna be a close election.”
[Speaker 1]
“But, um, if you do… Mike Pence, um, your new boss, Trump, is a little upset at Mike Pence because Mike Pence refused to overturn the election results. If you were in that same position, what would you do? Would you have overturned the election results?”
JD Vance:
“Well, I think it’s—let me take issue with the premise a little bit, Jason, because I don’t think the argument was Mike Pence could overturn the election results. I think the argument was that Mike Pence could have done more—whether you agree or disagree, Mike Pence could have done more to sort of surface some of the problems in the election.”
[Speaker 1]
“Would you have not certified the election?”
JD Vance:
“Well, I think that what I would have done—I mean, look, I happen to think that there were issues back in 2020, particularly in Pennsylvania. Even, you know, some of the courts that refused to throw out certified ballots did say that there were ballots that were cast in an illegal way. They just refused to actually decertify the election results in Pennsylvania. Do I think that we could have had a much more rational conversation about how to ensure that only legal ballots are cast? Yes. And do I think that Mike Pence could have played a better role? Yes.”
JD Vance:
“But again, the two premises that I take issue with are: one, Pence was not asked to overturn the election—he couldn’t have. But two, the reason Pence was asked to not certify it—”
[Speaker 1]
“Sure, so would you have certified it last year?”
JD Vance:
“Again, I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of election we had.”
[Speaker 1]
“States to be clear?”
JD Vance:
“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors. That’s what I would have done. Again, I’ve said that publicly many times. But again, Jason, the important part is we would have had a big debate, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the results would have been any different. But we at least would have had the debate in Pennsylvania and Georgia about how to better have a rational election system where legal ballots are cast.”
JD Vance:
“And again, I—you know, look, I have no personal problem with Mike Pence. I’ve never really talked to him. But I think that the idea that the reason Mike Pence isn’t on board with Donald Trump is over the election of 2020, that’s the other thing I want to take issue with, Jason, because I think in reality, that if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia, Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now.”
JD Vance:
“And fundamentally, the reason the old guard of the Republican party hates Donald Trump—it’s not because of January the 6th, 2021, whatever your views on it—it’s because Donald Trump doesn’t think that we should start stupid wars in foreign countries. And that’s why they all hate him.”
[Speaker 3]
“Can I—I have a follow-up on that. Let me continue my line of questioning, then I’ll give it to you because I want to hear JD’s thoughts since he’s here. I’ve heard yours many times. So, uh, how many follow-ups are you going to have about January 6th? We spent two minutes talking about—”
JD Vance:
“I want to hear David, especially if it gets me out of answering.”
[Speaker 3]
“So I think you’ve had, like, three follow-ups on JD.”
[Speaker 4]
“First of all, Freeberg, you never got a chance to ask your question.”
JD Vance:
“I want to talk about policy for a minute. That’d be great.”
[Speaker 3]
“Okay, I’d love that.”
JD Vance:
“I’ll just reflect back on your comment about government growth compared to wage growth compared to corporate profits. There’s only so much capital, and it gets sucked up somewhere, right? There are competing interests that suck it up. The government is a competing interest that sucks up capital. Fundamentally, the government has been successful in sucking up capital, and ultimately, the government has been proven time and again to be the least efficient way to grow the economy, of allocating capital, allocating resources, or labor.”
JD Vance:
“And, um, Trump has made this commentary that Elon, who’s going to be here later today, should come in and help right-size the government. You’ve now spent a few years as a senator, this is my most distressing issue, right? Of all the panic attacks I have that Jason teases me about, it’s government spending, the debt level, and ultimately, you reach a tipping point, I believe, in democracies where the government is spending, uh, more people are dependent on the government than are not. And that ultimately leads to a very bad outcome for democracy. That’s how I feel.”
JD Vance:
“And so, based on what you’ve seen as a senator now for the last few years and based on the commentary that Elon has made, where would you go in, you know, cut? Where’s the most kind of efficiency-gaining opportunity that we can kind of execute against without needing to go and negotiate with Congress? What’s the opportunity ahead for the executive branch to right-size government, to make things more efficient, to hold things accountable, to improve the way that the government is functioning, which I think ultimately leads to better economic growth and opportunity for innovation because capital flows to the right places?”
JD Vance:
“I agree with you, and let me just say two things, and I’ll try to answer briefly because I know there are a lot of topics that we can get through. So, number one is one of the things that our government should do—obviously, I think it should be doing less than it currently does—but what it does, I want it to do well. And most importantly, I want the critical social welfare functions of our government to go to the people who actually deserve to be here.”
JD Vance:
“So, as a United States senator, I have asked multiple staff members, I’ve asked officials in various government departments: if you take the, give or take, 25 million illegal aliens that are here in this country right now, how much money do we spend on illegal aliens every single year in this country? And I’ve gotten estimates that range between $100 billion a year to $600 billion a year. And where does that money come from? Well, it comes from healthcare benefits, even though illegal aliens aren’t entitled to section 8 housing, their children are entitled to section 8 housing. There’s also a lot of Social Security fraud, a lot of Medicare fraud. So, one thing that we could save a lot of money on is actually focusing our national interest on American citizens, people who deserve to be here. We’d save a lot of money that way. That’d be a huge—”
JD Vance:
“$7.3 trillion budget. What do you estimate that impact to be?”
JD Vance:
“Well, again, I’m trying to do that scene in the movie Dave where they go in and they just line up, like, ‘Nope, no,’ or like, ‘No,’ pulling everything off the board. If you call it a $1.7 trillion deficit right now, again, it’s between $100 billion to $600 billion, depending on how you cut the numbers.”
JD Vance:
“Now, the other thing about that, just to answer your question about efficiency, is I think the government procurement process, especially in military equipment, is really broken. If you go back to Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex—I mean, I was a seed investor in Anduril. I imagine you guys have some Anduril people here today.”
[Speaker 1]
“Great company.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, great company, great chat. You know, one of the things that company, as I understand it, founded on was the idea that the procurement process was broken. And that is definitely true. We do way too much cost-plus procurement and way too little actual spurring of innovation. And what it ends up meaning is that our equipment isn’t as good as it should be, and we end up spending a lot more money than we should be.”
JD Vance:
“I actually do think you could cut the American defense budget and make our country stronger, but you would have to make the procurement process much more efficient. Now, that’s a big thing to tackle, but that’s what we’re in this business for.”
[Speaker 1]
“Do you pass legislation to do that?”
JD Vance:
“I don’t know that you have to pass legislation, but you really—as a president and vice president—you have to be willing to take on some very powerful defense contractors. And that’s something that I know President Trump and I very much want to do.”
[Speaker 1]
“And how would you like your role as vice president to be cast, different from how other vice presidents have operated? What would your role as an individual be?”
JD Vance:
“Just speaking broadly, I want to do all of the good things and none of the bad things. That’s my goal as vice president.”
[Speaker 1]
“So, the ribbon cuttings at the new federal building—”
JD Vance:
“I mean, look, obviously joking, but the reality is that I want to be a second set of eyes and ears for the president’s agenda, right? One of the things that was true, and he’ll tell you this, the first time he was president of the United States is there were people in government, there were people in his own administration—he was a newcomer to politics, he didn’t fully trust everybody who was around him. We want to build a team that’s actually aligned on the agenda because, agree or disagree with Donald Trump on a specific policy issue, assuming the American people make him the next president, I think that they will—that is the next president, and his policy determinations should dictate the executive administration of government. If they don’t, we don’t have a real democracy.”
JD Vance:
“And by the way, just not to wade back into January 6th territory, like, what is a bigger threat to American democracy? Is it that we had a big fight about some of the certification on January 6th, and of course, you had some rioters at the Capitol? Or is it that, for example, the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t obey the president of the United States on troop redeployment in Syria, which actually happened during Trump’s administration? Like, if we’re going to talk about threats to democracy, we need the government to be responsive to the American people’s elected president. If you don’t have that, you don’t have a real democracy.”
[Applause]
[Speaker 1]
“A lot of this, if you design it one way, has to go through Congress, which, as we know, is sclerotic and nothing can happen. And then the other path is for you guys to go ham a little bit and say, ‘Okay, what can we do with executive orders?’ Have you had a chance to discuss, if you win, repositioning the focus as basically, what is the totality of everything that we can do from the White House, from the Oval Office, and then getting all of these things?”
JD Vance:
“Well, at a high level, certainly. You know, I’m one of the co-chairs of the transition team. There are a few others of us who are working on it to sort of think about—look, the way the founders set up our government, whether you like it or not, there are certain things, especially when it comes to budget and appropriations, that you just have to go through Congress, right? You fundamentally have to.”
JD Vance:
“Now, I do think that Congress is willing to work with us, at least for the first couple of years of an administration. You can largely get the budgetary and appropriations things that you need, but there’s a lot that you can do through executive orders. And by the way, in a lot of ways, I think the enlargement of the president at the expense of Congress is a bad thing, but fundamentally, there is a lot that happens in our government purely through executive orders, through EO.”
JD Vance:
“And yes, we’re thinking very deliberatively about all the things that you could do through EO on day one or in the early parts of the administration. And again, not to make this too partisan, but one of the ways that Biden and Harris opened up the American southern border was through executive orders, right? It was an executive order that suspended deportations, an executive order that ended the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. So, you can screw up a lot through executive orders, and you can also fix a lot through executive orders, which is certainly something that we’re focused on.”
[Speaker 1]
“Let me, um, go in a different direction just in the last couple of days. Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president, and that endorsement was warmly embraced by Kamala Harris and the Democrats.”
[Speaker 2]
“The same people who called him a war criminal, like, three years ago.”
[Speaker 1]
“Yeah, well, I’m old enough to remember back in 2008, uh, Obama first beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary because he had opposed the Iraq War and she had supported it. And then he got elected president of the United States, and the whole country seemed to recognize that the Iraq War had been a disaster. It destabilized the Middle East. You know, I don’t need to go through all the litanies of horribles that happened from it, but there seemed to be a widespread recognition, and like you’re saying, Dick was kind of demonized as this, um, like, the Darth Vader Prince of Darkness-type figure, which I think was basically right. I mean, he was the principal architect of the Iraq War.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah.”
[Speaker 1]
“And now, I find myself agreeing with everything the Democrats said in 2008 about Iraq. Total coincidence. On a separate track, a few weeks ago, we had Bobby Kennedy endorse Donald Trump. So, you now have a dynamic where the Bush Republicans are now Harris Democrats, and the Kennedy Democrats are now Trump Republicans. Clearly, something big is happening in our politics here. Can you explain this realignment? How do you see it?”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, I mean, look, one way to think about it is that we traded Dick Cheney for Bobby Kennedy, and that’s an upgrade I’ll take every single day, right?”
[Laughter]
JD Vance:
“Look, I mean, one way of understanding it is you have to ask yourself, who has benefited and who has been harmed from the last 30 years of the bipartisan consensus in this country, right?”
JD Vance:
“So, you want to talk about a manufacturing policy that, I think, promoted the offshoring of millions of good American manufacturing jobs and in the process, by the way, made us less self-reliant as a country. That really benefited people like Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris and their donors. It didn’t benefit the people that I serve in the state of Ohio, okay?”
JD Vance:
“If you ask yourself, who actually went off and fought these ridiculous wars? It was very often working- and middle-class kids in communities like mine. It wasn’t the family of our current leadership class, by and large, though, of course, there are exceptions. And you go through each of these issues, and what you find is, increasingly, Republicans are the party of working- and middle-class people.”
JD Vance:
“Bobby Kennedy has talked about this a lot, and I think he puts it better than I ever could. But, you know, you go back even 30 years ago, and approximately 80% of the counties that represent—sorry—80% of the wealth in American counties went to places that voted Republican, and about 20% of the wealth went to places that voted Democrat. Now, 70% of the wealth goes for Democrats, and about 30% of the wealth goes for Republicans.”
JD Vance:
“And you saw this in a big way—I mean, just one illustration is I believe that in 2012, Wall Street, which I think fundamentally has been the main beneficiary of globalization, of a lot of the policies that I pushed back against and criticized over the last 30 years, Wall Street went 3-to-1 for Romney over Obama in 2012. I believe they went 4-to-1 for Clinton over Trump in 2016, and then like 9-to-1 for Biden over Trump in 2020. So, there was a massive shift in who makes up these parties. Wealthy people direct their money to Democrats is what—”
[Speaker 2]
“Increasingly.”
JD Vance:
“Increasingly, wealthy people direct their money to Democrats. Working- and middle-class people direct their money to Republicans.”
[Speaker 2]
“Why do you think that is, JD?”
JD Vance:
“Again, because I think their policies have benefited—look, the uni-party, the Kamala Harrises and Dick Cheney’s— their policies have benefited a certain group of people. Those people are increasingly Democrats. Donald Trump has been pushing back against that consensus, and his policies, I think, benefit the majority of the country. So, increasingly, I think the working- and middle-class heart of the country is going for Republicans.”
JD Vance:
“Like, another spin on this—because I know we’re focused on tech at this conference—is big tech has become increasingly pro-Democrat. Little tech has become increasingly pro-Republican, right? So, if you’re an upstart, if you’re in crypto, if you’re like a small AI company, I think you’re much more likely to be pro-Republican. If you’re a monopolist in big tech—I mean, look at Facebook, Google, how they’re putting their resources—it’s much, much more pro-Democrat. So, there are a lot of different spins on it, but fundamentally, I think the people who’ve benefited from the American decline are becoming Democrats. The people who have suffered from it and are pushing back against it, they’re Republicans.”
[Speaker 1]
“I have a follow-up question on that, JD, which is, um, you were a venture capitalist for a period, and Lina Khan has essentially taken M&A off the table. Um, you well know that if we can’t get those singles and doubles in the industry, um, it kind of freezes the industry, and we have a problem with returns, which then is having—creating a secondary order problem where we can’t get LPs to put more money into funds because we’re not getting those returns.”
[Speaker 1]
“What’s the proper way to look at M&A? Because you want to break up big tech, from what I understand, and you have a major problem with big tech. You mentioned little tech. What’s the proper M&A architecture, you know, to balance those two goals?”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, so this is obviously very complicated, like, Jason, you probably understand this better than I do. But as somebody, by the way, who’s defended Lina Khan against some of her critics from the right, I think what Lina Khan fundamentally gets correct is that big tech really is a threat. It’s a threat to free speech, it’s increasingly oligarchic, it controls too much of what we’re allowed to say, and also, it controls a lot of the ways in which capital gets invested in these various ecosystems.”
JD Vance:
“But where I think Lina Khan goes wrong is that you’re exactly right—you need the singles and doubles. You need, sometimes, a medium-sized company to buy a smaller company for $300 million, right? That liquidates founders, that gives the venture fund some money to go back into the system.”
JD Vance:
“And I think that—not, I don’t know her super well, but my basic read on Lina is that she is so anti-monopoly as sort of a baseline bias, and that becomes anti-mergers and acquisitions as a baseline bias. That Google buying YouTube is a much, much different thing from a $2 billion market cap healthcare company buying a $500 million market cap healthcare company. And I think that we have to sort of draw a very big distinction between little tech and big tech. And look, I’m going to keep on making that argument both in public and private to Lina, and hopefully, she comes around to our view a little bit because I do think some of her ideas on big tech are right.”
[Speaker 2]
“I think a good place for us to pivot would be the border and just talking about this issue more from first principles. When President Trump came on the podcast, we talked about, ‘Hey, maybe really talented people, we should recruit them to our country and give them green cards.’ Um, but very quickly, um, your group walked that back a bit. It’s such a political hot potato, and it doesn’t seem to me that it needs to be.”
[Speaker 2]
“But you’ve spent a lot of time in government now. Why can’t politicians just do what 80% of the country wants, which is allow very talented people into the country, close the border, and make it like a more point-based system like Canada, Australia, and everybody else? Like, why is this so weaponized by both of your parties?”
JD Vance:
“Well, I think the reason why it’s so difficult right now—and I mean, look, generally, I agree that, okay, we’re going to let some immigrants in. We want them to be high-talent, high-quality people. You don’t want to let a large number of illegal aliens in, obviously. That, you know, that is—that’s President Trump’s view. But I think that the reason why it’s so broken down right now is because you have 25 million illegal aliens in this country.”
JD Vance:
“And, like, you can’t fix what I would call the minor or sort of less important immigration question until you fix the real problem. And part of that goes back, by the way, to the way in which the system got broken in the first place.”
JD Vance:
“So, Ronald Reagan, of course, great governor of California, a great president. But Reagan did, in 1986, a massive amnesty program where, in some ways, he was trying to do exactly what you’re talking about—fix the problem of people who are already here, make sure that our immigration system is more pro-skill, but also close down the border. And what happened is we got all the amnesty, but we didn’t get the closing down of the border.”
JD Vance:
“And so, in order to do anything, I think, meaningful on immigration policy—meaning legal immigration policy—you’ve got to close down the border and establish some basic order. And we go back to first principles here. I think that people who are generally—I mean, look, this is, I’m sure, a very diverse crowd, and I’m sure there are a lot of immigrants in this crowd, legal immigrants, hopefully.”
JD Vance:
“I’m married to the daughter—I’m married to the daughter of legal immigrants to this country. And I, of course, love not just my wife but the whole extended family. I do think they’ve brought a lot—”
[Speaker 2]
“Real immigrants.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah. Um, but here’s the thing: when you allow 25 million people into this country, it breaks down the entire social compact, right?”
JD Vance:
“So think about this, okay? You’re down on your luck. You lost your job. You get unemployment insurance. You’re really down on your luck. You need food assistance from the federal government. I believe, as a conservative, that part of being in the same American family, whether your family’s been here for a generation or 10 generations, is that we support people who are down on their luck. We don’t want a cradle-to-grave welfare state, but we want to support people. We don’t want kids who are dying because of starvation through no fault of their own. We want to promote some basic fairness, and we want to help people out when times get tough.”
JD Vance:
“But you can’t do that if you extend that generosity to tens of millions of people who can’t even be here in the first place. And I think that what Kamala Harris has done at the border, it’s not just bad economically, it’s not just bad for public safety, she has eroded the very foundation of the social contract in this country.”
JD Vance:
“And we talk about division in our politics, and Kamala has this ridiculous slogan, ‘We’re not going back.’ The reason why politics is so divided is because she has turned American citizens against one another while she’s placed the interests of illegal aliens above American citizens.”
[Speaker 1]
“Is the motivation—do you believe the motivation is endless empathy, or is it as simple as we want new Democratic voters? Or is there a kind of not-publicly-spoken-about economic argument about bringing wages down, having economic growth, having new buyers in the economy? That there’s some benefit despite the $100 to $600 billion?”
[Speaker 2]
“And I’ll add another one: guilt.”
[Speaker 1]
“Yeah, it’s the endless empathy aspect.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, I mean, empathy is different than guilt.”
JD Vance:
“It’s all of these things, right? I mean, so let me tell you a brief story, and this goes back to my changing my mind on Donald Trump. I was probably—it’s probably 2017, 2018. I was at a business conference, and I happened to be seated next to one of the largest hotel chain CEOs in America. And my wife was there, and we talk about this as ‘the Monopoly story,’ because the guy is just going off—maybe had too much to drink. He’s going off about how Donald Trump’s immigration policies have forced him to raise the wages of his workers.”
JD Vance:
“And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting fact. Like, explain more about this, sir, please. I want to understand.’ And he said, ‘Well, because we can hire a lot of immigrants, and frankly, we can hire a lot of illegal immigrants under the table, and we can’t do that because there are fewer illegal immigrants. So we have to pay our American citizen workers more money.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, that sounds pretty good, actually. Isn’t that like what we want—is for people to be earning higher wages for doing a good job?’ So, there’s definitely an economic piece of it.”
JD Vance:
“But I also think—I mean, look, this has chilled out a little bit, partially because we’re in an election year. If Kamala Harris won, I think it would come back with a vengeance. But think about all these, like, ridiculous land acknowledgements, right, where people say, ‘Well, you know, I want to acknowledge that this belonged to, like, this tribe before I was here.’ And if you genuinely think that you have to acknowledge a Native American tribe from 300 years ago, then one attitude that comes along with this is, ‘Why can I control at all who comes into the country, right? I have no right—’”
[Speaker 2]
“All structural norms degrade.”
JD Vance:
“Exactly. ‘I have no right to say who comes into my community.’ And I think, again, it’s deranged, but I think that’s part of it. I think the economic piece of it is part of it. It’s certainly a vote argument—I mean, Democrats will say this. Of course, Republicans are accused of racism for just repeating what Democrats have said. When somebody like Chuck Schumer says, ‘Well, you know, we’re going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we’re going to have all these new immigrants, and all the old Americans, well, they’re going to vote for Republicans, but we’re going to replace them with a bunch of new people who vote for Democrats.’ It’s like, that’s pretty sick. But again, if you call it out, you’re somehow a racist, even though Chuck Schumer is himself calling it out as if it were a good thing.”
[Speaker 2]
“So, I just want to ask on a different topic now. Thank you for talking about the border.”
[Speaker 1]
“Can I just have one final on this topic?”
[Speaker 2]
“Sure, go ahead.”
[Speaker 1]
“Is your plan to deport tens of millions of these people? Tell us how that will happen, practically. How are you going to take millions of people, put them in cuffs, drag them out while people have their cell phones out recording this, or is that just Trump being Trump?”
JD Vance:
“Well, Jason, it’s—”
[Laughter]
JD Vance:
“I like it. I like the balance in the podcast.”
[Speaker 1]
“Yeah, I do. Though, in fairness, JD told me, JD told me, ‘Ask the hard questions, please. I want to address them head-on.’ You did say that.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, nothing’s—”
JD Vance:
“I think Jason should be on the left, and David should be on my right.”
[Speaker 2]
“Where am I? He’s been pulling me to the right.”
[Speaker 1]
“Yeah, it’s funny. He didn’t have any of these hard questions for Reid Hoffman. I don’t know why.”
[Laughter]
[Speaker 2]
“Sachs, Jason—”
JD Vance:
“Wait, do you want me to leave the left and go to the—”
[Speaker 1]
“I’m on the left right now, but I could go right.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, I guess it depends on perspective. My perspective here. But you know, Jason, if the VC thing doesn’t work out, you’d make a great panelist at CNN. So, back to the—”
[Speaker 1]
“But I, um—no, by the way, I love this, and I like—I genuinely think, like, this is what a person who wants to be your vice president should actually do, is answer some tough questions.”
[Speaker 1]
“I do give you credit for that, that you will face the hard questions. So, back to the question: tell me about dragging millions of people out of the country.”
JD Vance:
“Jason, here’s why I find this question a little off, and I will answer it, but it’s like somebody who comes to me, and I’m, like, eating my lunch, and they say, ‘Look, that sandwich is ten times the size of your mouth. How are you possibly going to eat that whole sandwich?’ And it’s like, well, I’m going to take a first bite, and then I’m going to take a second bite, and I’m going to take a third bite, and eventually, the problem’s going to be solved.”
JD Vance:
“Look, you start out with the million people who are what we call ‘criminal migrants,’ people who have committed violent crimes in some form or another. Get them out of our country. Yes, handcuff those people and force them out of the country. But you also do other things simultaneously.”
JD Vance:
“First of all, you stop the bleeding, right? You undo Kamala Harris’s policies that opened the southern border in the first place. I’ve got a piece of legislation in the United States Senate that we’ve got a lot of colleagues who have signed up for it, which would tax remittances, right? Because we know a lot of people are earning money and then sending it back to Central America or wherever they came from. If you end that practice, then you have a lot of people who go back willingly.”
JD Vance:
“I think you ought to make it harder for people to hire illegal labor as opposed to American citizens. You tick through these things, and I do think that, you know, that’s the sandwich approach to this. You try to take it one step at a time.”
JD Vance:
“But the most important thing—and I think the deportation focus, again, it is important because eventually, we are going to deport people—but the most important thing is to stop the bleeding. You’ve got to stop the millions of people flowing across the southern border every single year. It happened because of Kamala Harris’s policies. It’s going to stop when Donald Trump is president.”
[Speaker 1]
“Let me ask a national security question. There’s a lot of videos—Elon’s gone down there, Bobby Kennedy has gone down there, you’ve gone down there.”
JD Vance:
“Sure.”
[Speaker 1]
“And the interdictions are not necessarily coming from countries in Central and South America anymore. They’re coming from places in, you know, near Asia and a lot of places that you wouldn’t normally think, people coming from the Middle East, etc. From a national security perspective, what do we think is happening? Why is that happening?”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, so, well, part of the reason it’s happening is it’s not Hondurans necessarily, it’s Iranians. It’s people from, you know, all over Asia and Africa. Look, if you look at this, that is the open door, right? So, if you want to come to this country, that is the open door. And God knows why some of them want to be here. I mean, you know, given what’s going on in the Middle East, I do worry about military-age males from Iran coming into this country through the American southern border.”
JD Vance:
“But, you know, I actually asked a Border Patrol agent about this on one of my visits, and you know, great guy, was actually kind of heartbroken because he signed up to protect his country. And he’s a relatively recent immigrant. I could tell that by his accent. This guy’s like very nervous and very heartbroken about the fact that he can’t do his job.”
JD Vance:
“And he told me this story, and I—you know, I feel like an idiot in hindsight because he’s like, ‘We had a guy who came in here. I asked the guy, like, why do you think this guy’s Iranian?’ And he said, ‘Well, because he came through, and he said that he was Mexican.’ And I was like, ‘Well, couldn’t he have been Mexican?’ And he said, ‘Well, he didn’t speak Spanish.’ Like, ‘Oh, that’s a tell.’ You know, a Mexican illegal alien doesn’t speak Spanish. That’s probably a pretty significant tell.”
JD Vance:
“But it’s happening because this is what Kamala Harris has done. She’s created this massive gap in our national security, and people are taking advantage of it. It’s really not that surprising.”
[Speaker 2]
“JD, let me just ask you one more foreign policy question, um, on China. So, there’s a balancing act with China, but the rhetoric is that that’s our enemy, there’s going to be a Cold War.”
[Speaker 2]
“The structural relationship that the United States has with China is a very kind of codependent relationship. They buy our bonds—I guess they’re selling them off now—we buy a lot of products from them. It allows us to go into a Walmart and get, you know, $40 scooters for our kids, or $20 scooters for our kids. The technology industry is deeply dependent on a supply chain coming from China. There’s a great commercial interdependency with China. They have historically been a very important partner to the United States in our economic prosperity. And I know the argument about hollowing out the middle class and so on because of moving everything offshore to China.”
[Speaker 2]
“But, how do we rip that Band-Aid off and not cause massive problems with inflation? How do we not, um, you know, drive the cost of everything up by tariffing things that are coming in from China? What’s the way forward with China? Is it necessarily a deeply kind of divisive Cold War, or is there a path here that allows us to maintain a balanced trading relationship and kind of a peaceful transition with China as they continue to build up their capabilities economically and with energy, which I think is one of the biggest drivers for their success?”
JD Vance:
“Well, so, there’s a lot there, and let me try to sort of take a few pieces of it because I know we’re relatively short on time.”
JD Vance:
“So, number one is the energy piece of it is very important. Part of the way that you reshore American manufacturing is that you open up American energy. It matters for crypto, it matters for AI. You’ve got to open up American energy, or you’re never going to have, whether it’s the next generation of manufactured goods or the past generations. You’ve got to open up American energy, okay? That’s number one.”
JD Vance:
“Number two is, look, I don’t want to go to war with China. I think it would be hugely destructive, but I do think that we have to reshore more American manufacturing.”
JD Vance:
“And one of the weird things about China, if you think about past eras of developing nations—so, go back to when the UK was the most advanced economy in the world, and America was a developing nation—well, one of the things that happened is that capital was flowing from the UK into the United States, right? From the developed into the developing nation. What’s really weird about China is that it’s like Americans borrow money from Chinese peasants to then buy the things the Chinese peasants are making for us, right? So, it’s not just the goods flow that’s jacked up, it’s the capital flows that are jacked up.”
JD Vance:
“And I really think that the next—you know, Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States, and this is something we’re going to have to figure out—is that you need to balance both the capital and the goods flows, okay? I’m not saying we’re going to have absolutely no trade with China, but right now, the relationship is fundamentally that the Chinese have figured out they can create a massively powerful producer society while America becomes a weaker and weaker consumerist society.”
JD Vance:
“That is the broken nature of the relationship, and I think rebalancing is the right way to think about it, but we have got to do it. And I think we’re way, way behind the eight ball on this.”
JD Vance:
“Maybe final question, but you said something which I thought was incredibly well said, so I just want to repeat it. When U.S. growth is one and two percent, everybody’s fighting. But when U.S. growth is four to five percent, everybody prospers. Can you walk us through just how you think about how we get that extra two or three hundred basis points of growth, and where you need to have less regulation so that you can have more entrepreneurship, or more regulation to kind of constrain folks? How do you think about that?”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, I mean, I really do think that we have to recognize that we have massively overregulated transportation, overregulated energy, overregulated home construction. I don’t know that it’s—I don’t know how easy it is to get another 300 bps of growth, but I think you can get a lot more growth, whether it’s 300 or 150, just by massively reducing the amount of regulatory burden in the real economy.”
JD Vance:
“And again, I’m an optimist. I’m fundamentally an optimist on both, you know, crypto, blockchain, Web3 stuff, but also on AI. And the way out of this may very well be to radically open up the way that technological innovation drives things in the United States.”
JD Vance:
“And just on this point about China, I don’t know how much time we have, but I’ll try to be quick about this. One of the things that Bob Lighthizer—you need more time?”
[Speaker 1]
“Okay, we have a little bit more time.”
JD Vance:
“All right, well, I’m a politician, so buckle in, we’re going to be here for three hours. But, one of the real conceits of the 30 years of globalization that I think was really, really deranged in hindsight—very wrong—Bob Lighthizer, who was Trump’s trade representative, talks a lot about this, is we had this conceit that we could separate the manufacture of things from the design of things, right?”
JD Vance:
“So, if you get an iPhone right now, and you get it out of the box, you’ll see that it says ‘Designed in Cupertino, California.’ Of course, the implication is that it’s manufactured in China or wherever they’re manufacturing iPhones these days. The idea that the iPhone was designed in Cupertino is increasingly no longer even true, right? It’s something that we lie to ourselves about because the people who are doing all the manufacturing of the hardware of the iPhone are getting much better at design and innovation.”
JD Vance:
“And part of the reason why I care so much about this manufacturing thing is, whether it’s antibiotics, for example—why hasn’t America invented an antibiotic in 30 years? It probably has something to do with the manufacture of antibiotics being done almost entirely in very low-cost manufacturing areas. You can go through a whole host of goods like this, but if you want to build a high-tech, high-dynamic growth economy, you have to have some native manufacturing and some self-reliance.”
JD Vance:
“And so, these two things are very related, and I think a big part of getting back to four or five percent growth is accepting that, yes, we’re going to have trade, but we can’t let everybody make all of our stuff.”
[Speaker 2]
“JD, I want to wrap this up because I think we’re basically at time by observing that both Donald Trump and JD Vance have been on this podcast. It’s not because I’m a crazy right-winger, it’s because we invited them.”
[Speaker 2]
“Just because, not just because, um, it’s because we invited them, and they accepted. We have similarly invited Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to—”
[Speaker 3]
“And before that—”
[Speaker 2]
“—and before that.”
[Speaker 3]
“But he forgot. So, we’re still waiting—”
[Speaker 2]
“He said yes.”
[Speaker 3]
“Forgot. He lost the Zoom link.”
[Speaker 2]
“So, we want to re-extend the invitation—”
[Speaker 3]
“Yes.”
[Speaker 2]
“—to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. You’re welcome to come on the podcast at any time, and the format will be similar.”
[Speaker 2]
“And I just want to say, JD, I think your answers were fantastic here today, and I really do appreciate you coming on and answering these questions very thoughtfully. And, you know, from my perspective, when I heard that you were announced as the VP, I thought, well, this is great—a young person who’s got a lot of experience in venture capital and building things in the world, and somebody who comes from humble beginnings like the four of us and believes in a meritocracy where people work hard and get rewarded for it. So, you check all my boxes in that way.”
[Speaker 2]
“And I really think—I feel much better, you know, I have my issues with your boss, but, um, when you talk about, you know, the bite-sized steps to it, you know, I think one framework to look at your relationship with Trump is he says things at the top of the highest vibration—’We’re going to deport 20 million people’—and then you have a very practical approach—60% tariffs make no sense, but hey, we’ve got to rebalance this. And so, I really do like your measured approach to this, and I think that you’re a great counterbalance, and I think we understand why he picked you.”
JD Vance:
“Well, I want to say one thing—thanks, and this is not really related to anything except that you are not supposed to be here.”
[Speaker 2]
“That’s exactly right.”
JD Vance:
“Yeah, and that is really inspiring to other people who were not supposed to be here.”
[Speaker 2]
“Thank you.”
JD Vance:
“Well, yeah, I appreciate that.”
[Speaker 2]
“And if you haven’t read JD’s book, I read your book long before all of this, and I just want to say, your book was so inspiring, and I have recommended it long before today to, you know, literally hundreds of people. It’s a fantastic read if you haven’t read it.”
JD Vance:
“Well, and by the way, available wherever books are sold.”
[Speaker 2]
“You’re like Jake Paul now.”
[Laughter]
JD Vance:
“Exactly.”
[Speaker 2]
“Do you have an affiliate 529 account for the kids?”
JD Vance:
“Laughter Just two things. First of all, Jason, I appreciate what you said, but I also just want to defend my running mate here because I think that, again, the media doesn’t often tell you the truth about Donald Trump. Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve ever met in public life. That’s actually real. He thinks about how this stuff affects the real economy and real Americans.”
JD Vance:
“So, if you’re on the fence about whether you like what I said or dislike what I said, I just encourage you, listen to what he actually says because I think that you’ll become a believer that he can make the country great again as he promises.”
JD Vance:
“But, but, separate from that, I just want to say this is such an important conversation, and you guys hold and host important conversations every single day. We should do more of it as a country, but I’m glad to participate today. God bless everyone.”
[Speaker 1]
“Ladies and gentlemen, JD Vance!”
[Music plays, applause]
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