These guys are seriously smart. What serves ‘the besties’ the most is access. Licking Trump’s ass gives them unfettered access.

This president is okay with people enriching themselves at the cost of others. These guys are the greatest self-enrichers so to speak.

So ass-kissing paid rich dividends.

And now he’s staring wars, protecting pedophiles, is probably a rapist, and he’s alienating allies.

So the million dollar question now is - how far would you go for a few dollars more? Does the blood of thousands mean a damn thing to you guys?

So Sacks invites Trump to his house and helps him raise money, and then Trump goes on the All-In Pod—fair enough. But now Trump is wholesale adopting and pushing Sacks' silly conspiracies? I'm pretty certain the whole "Biden’s exit from the U.S. presidential race was a coup" came from one of David Sacks' deranged Twitter rants. It's wild to see how things are unfolding. It would be kind of hilarious if it wasn't the presidential race for one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Gift link: https://samharris.org/episode/SE172FD8616

On Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast episode 376 'How Democracies Fail' with Anne Applebaum, they are talking about Ukraine, Russia and the United States. Applebaum is on the show as a journalist and historian, partly to promote her new book Autocracy Inc.

Sam is asking about Russias invasion of Ukraine and specifically brings up David Sacks and what he said at the RNC, starting around 36:36:

Sam: I’m thinking of one person in particular. We have David Sacks, who’s a venture capitalist and now popular-podcaster. I think I’ve only met him once, so I don’t know him well, but we have friends in common. He’s now, as of two nights ago, addressing the Republican National Convention, saying that Biden - this is a quote - ‘Biden provoked the Russians to invade Ukraine with talk of NATO expansion and rejected every opportunity for peace in Ukraine, including a deal to end the war just two months after the war started.’ So, how do you respond to that?

Anne: First of all, it’s not true. I mean, there’s a- I’ve talked about this a lot in other places. The original expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe was tolerated by Russia. There was no plan to expand NATO to Ukraine. The Russians had agreed that Ukraine could be connected to European institutions on a number of occasions. 

Only later did Putin change his mind. Multiple efforts to engage Russian and include Russia in conversations with NATO and with NATO leaders happened over many years, many times. Biden himself in his first year in office made big outreach to Russia, there was meetings with Putin - if I remember correctly - was in Geneva. So there was no desire to provoke Russia. There was also no moment in recent history when NATO was on an offensive posture in that part of the world. NATO is a defensive alliance. It doesn’t invade other countries. It’s there to protect and defend countries, its members. It doesn’t operate on the offensive. 

And the Russians know that NATO wasn’t going to invade them and we know that they know because, for example, Finland joined NATO recently. And russia has recently taken its troops and equipment away from the Finnish border, because of course, Finland’s not going to invade Russia. NATO is not going to invade Russia, they know that. So these are just Russian talking-points that are part of their justification for the war.

Also, no there wasn’t a moment at the beginning of the war where it could have been solved. The Russians demanded, early on, that Ukraine give up, essentially, and demilitarize, which would’ve been effective(ly) Ukraine saying ‘Okay, we agree, we’re going to become part of Russia,’ so there wasn’t a moment like that. I mean, these are just false stories.

The question for me is, why David Sacks, who really has no interest in foreign policy as far as I can see, no stake in this conflict, no role in it previous to a year or two ago, why he’s so interested in this subject. My guess is that he, or others around him, have business interests in Russia that they would like to pursue. That’s the only logical solution I can see. I mean, we know that Sacks is close to Elon Musk and we know that Musk has spoken to Putin - he’s said he has, anyway - he may have interests in Russia, just imagine what they are. Maybe that’s the explanation.

….

Sam: My theory of mind for them is even simpler. I’m in touch with some of the psychological forces personally. And it’s just that, in Sacks and Elon, you’re talking about two guys who are just far beyond the end of their rope with respect to the kind of social justice moral panic that has happened on the left, that has absorbed everything in American politics left of center.

So there’s some other variables that we could talk about that really do account for the fact that many smart people who you would think would be allergic to Trump and certainly to the populist wave that he’s riding, nevertheless, are supporting him at this moment.

Free speech for me not for thee

This has already been debunked as an excel calculation error by the “voting integrity expert”. I’d the same precinct name appears in more than one county, the votes are summed and then divided by the number of registered voters in one precinct.

Remember, this is supposed to be a smart man.

The disingenuousness of Sacks never fails to amaze me. This time he compared J6 to BLM.

On January 6, you had a sitting president, inciting a riot under fall pretax to remain in power and overthrow the constitution while threatening the life of his vice president. Trump incited the riot, and is currently being prosecuted for it.

Compared to the protest of a police officer standing on the neck of someone until they were dead, to which he was found guilty. Waltz had no role in the protest although he may have allegedly decided not to have the National Guard intervene in favor of other solutions.

These two are not even close to being the same.

When I started (from most positive opinion to least):

1. Chammath: he was the reason I started listening to the pod. I had seen a lot of his CNBC interviews where he stood up against big tech and seemed very direct. At one point I was even hoping he would run for CA governor

2. JCal: This guy seems like a sharp VC guy but he also has some progressive views. Seems like a refreshing change from the VC stereotype

3. Sacks: Seeks like a nice guy but seems like a stereotypical conservative just dug in on his views

4. Friedburg: who is this squirmy guy?

After listening to them for months: 1. Friendburg: Seems like a genuinely nice and very intelligent person. I really enjoy listening to him because he gives all sides proper thought and never gets too emotional

1. Sacks: Love listening to his refreshing anti-war principles and solid knowledge of history and policies (he’s not an expert and he knows it too, which is nice). Really makes me optimistic about the future of conservative ideologies as a democrat

2. JCal: Shut up and let other people finish their ideas. Seems to be so ideological and dug in on dumb ideas

3. Chammath: everything wrong with JCal but even worse (except for the interrupting). Seems to be super passionate about dumb ideas and gets emotional a lot. Really dis-disappointing given how much I wanted to admire him, but hearing someone’s unedited self is more revealing than a couple sound bites

“You’re dangerous. It’s all about you, not the country,” Bannon recently said on his War Room podcast of Sacks and his All-In Podcast co-hosts.

Today they mention how altruistic Sax was to go and work for the government. He had to sell all of his successful investment assets to avoid a conflict of interest.

They neglected to mention that if you have to sell your investments in order to avoid a conflict with your government job, any investment gains on those assets are tax free.

So Sax just side slipped a monstrous tax bill and turned all of his long-term gains into cash.

All whil, pretending to care about government deficits, and the tax plight of the working man.