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#FinanceDaily: DeSantis on Twitter | Major AI Updates | Debt Ceiling
Recorded: May 24, 2023 Duration: 1:27:31Space Recording
Short Summary
Twitter is increasingly becoming a central platform for political discourse, with figures like Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis leveraging its reach for campaign announcements. This reflects a broader trend towards digital-first political engagement and media transparency. The platform's growth in user engagement and potential for hosting large-scale live events indicates its rising influence in the political and media landscape.
Full Transcription
Hey, Justin, how's it going?
Good morning, good morning.
I was reading an article about Linda Yaccarino and from Wired.
I'm probably just going to put it in the comment section.
The hit piece?
The hit piece, yeah.
The Glasscliff piece.
Craziness.
Yeah, this drive me crazy.
The continued effort to try to kill the platform is just insane to me.
Well, beyond that, I just found it to be incredibly sexist, actually.
Like, as if female leaders can't lead turnarounds.
It's like, yeah, I'm just putting it in the comments.
The mental gymnastics people have to do to attack something so ridiculous
makes them basically write idiotic stuff without knowing it.
Yeah, hold on.
I'm putting it in there.
There we go.
I'm actually going to post it at the top
so that people can read the ridiculousness unwired.
But for people that haven't had a chance,
it just came out maybe like, I don't know.
I think I saw the article a few minutes ago.
It came out at 8 a.m.
Oh, 8 a.m. a couple of days ago.
I did not read this at all.
I guess everybody else might have already read this piece
on Linda Yaccarino,
but they're calling it the Glasscliff
which is apparently another made-up term that I've never heard of.
So it's the thought that struggling companies
will often hire a female CEO when they're in crisis,
and that's actually throwing off the numbers
of success for female CEOs.
And it's like, well, maybe they're realizing that women make good CEOs.
I mean, I'm not sure if that's, is that at all possible that perhaps they're realizing
that companies may need a steadier hand.
And so, and Linda Yaccarino is, it's not like a, sorry, the words I'm going to use are a little bit
ridiculous, but.
She's not a child.
She's an adult.
She knows what she's getting herself into.
She's been in corporate America for a very long time.
And she is exceptional.
She's like well known for being exceptional.
Again, I'm not sure Twitter's going to exist long term, right?
Like most of us don't know the future.
We can't predict the future.
But this constant like,
Like, how is this not incredibly gendered and completely messed up in some ways?
Where we're saying that Linda Yaccarino is being put in a position to fail.
Well, she's choosing to be in that position.
No one's forcing her.
This is not indentured servitude.
And just this incredible, like, it's like, it's as if they're talking down to people.
It's kind of nuts.
Yeah.
sorry, I just read the article and it kind of like freaked me out a little because, you know,
I have family that have been in this position where they've led turnarounds and one of them is a woman and
She was exceptional.
Like, she was amazing at a turnaround.
And so I don't know if there's something else going on here.
They're just trying to say that Linda is like a token.
Those are the words that are coming to my mouth.
Is she like a token hire?
Like, what kind of bullshit is this?
Sorry.
It's like crazy that they're writing these kind of things.
It doesn't seem to matter.
It's, uh,
they have their target.
They don't like Twitter and they're going to find every negative angle they possibly
can.
And I mean,
this is,
this is,
This is why their subscribers are across the board decreasing and Twitter's users are growing because I want, you know, I don't want spin too far to the right or too far to the left.
You know, you remember what I had that.
Well, I don't know if I brought this up.
I used to have a radio show.
And...
It was on a station that was traditionally more right.
And so I took this neutral approach.
I called it data-driven opinion.
And I remember distinctly one show, someone texted in,
shut the F up, you Nazi fascist.
And five minutes later, someone said,
go back to CNN, you liberal hack.
People, you know, they need to put you in some camp
and destroy you as their enemy.
Yeah, but there's something special about what they're doing to her.
It's as if they're saying that she's going to be the scapegoat, which is just not the case at all.
I think she's going to do great.
I think what's happening right now, and that's sort of the big topic for today.
Outside of the major AI updates and...
especially the major AI updates that are occurring at,
there's something very interesting that's going on in the AI world,
and I want people to push back a little bit on this.
So, you know, if people do have opposing opinions, I'm interested.
But AI is definitely benefiting the incumbents
much more than is benefiting startups.
It's actually kind of interesting.
And we're going to see this probably play out,
because to win an AI,
A lot of these incumbents are really focusing quite significantly on using their own proprietary data.
And they have a huge advantage in that.
And they're essentially making walled gardens.
So this walled garden strategy is actually working out for incumbents much more.
We'll talk a little bit about that.
And then obviously we're going to talk about the debt ceiling.
What is the market thinking about the debt ceiling?
How is it all kind of playing out right now?
Because there's a lot of mind games going on.
And the market...
doesn't like mind games. The market wants clarity. And, you know, we're seeing CDS's go up
slightly or significantly. We're seeing some market movement now. I think the market's starting
to panic, but we have some market experts, Gaila Mish and others that can kind of give us a sense
of how the market is feeling about this.
But, you know, and then I'll bring up Shermichael as well.
He's an incredible expert.
He's a political strategist.
I feel a GOP political strategist.
And Brian, thank you for joining us.
You know, but I wanted to start with the story that's hitting everybody,
which is DeSantis.
I have to say, what an interesting move from DeSantis.
And of course, I'm biased.
I spend my mornings at 8 a.m. Eastern with all you lovely, beautiful folks.
Yes.
on Twitter spaces. I am clearly biased. But what a crazy move to do your launch on Twitter
spaces, not even streaming, just to be clear, not in front of a crowd, but probably in an empty
room with Elon Musk and David Sachs. What a weird move for a launch for what is probably the most,
what I would call...
you know, confusing timing for a launch,
confusing type of launch.
This is a very weird move.
But is this the right move?
So for people that don't know,
Ron DeSantis will be announcing at 6 p.m. Eastern tonight on Twitter spaces,
the announcement will be moderated by David Sachs.
What the fuck?
And it will be,
it will include Elon Musk.
Now, Elon Musk has since come out and said that he is not supporting any candidate at this time.
But last I checked, he brought Tucker onto Twitter, and now he is helping, or not helping,
he is involved in the launch party for our friend Ron DeSantis.
What's going on?
Can someone explain to me why this is the strategy?
Sure, because it's a platform that won't censor them.
I personally think that it's a good move by Desantis.
It's going to kind of open them up to a younger audience.
I also think that Elon is probably looking at this as kind of maybe opening the floodgates to other politicians who want to have equal coverage.
Like you said in that tweet today or was it last night, he mentioned that he'd do the same for Biden as well as for Trump.
So I think media is changing.
I think the political media landscape's changing.
And this is clearly a good move by Musk, I think.
Well, didn't RFK, what was the news network?
RFK went on and they like censored part of his speech.
So you do that, you do something like that.
People, ABC, people are going to be a little hesitant to,
go to those type of channels that don't let them get the word out.
And love them or hate him, Musk has been adamant that I don't care what your view is.
If it's left or right, I'm going to make sure you can get the entire view unfiltered.
So that's pretty tempting for political candidates.
But usually, one second, Jeff, I was going to say usually you want your crowd with you.
Like if you saw Tim Scott's announcement, seeing the crowd like sort of energized,
seeing him energized.
Now he had the crazy scream
that she'll not be repeated too much.
But, you know, it was, you know,
it was very energizing, I think,
to see the crowd behind him,
see the type of coalition he's building.
All of that,
kind of, and remember, DeSantis has been, has been called robotic.
He's been called not, like, that he can't connect with people.
So this kind of plays into that a little bit, I have to say, but, Jeff, go ahead.
Sorry.
Well, I mean, if you're DeSantis and you see, you know, just put the name aside for a minute.
You know, Tucker posted, I think, two videos on Twitter, and one of them has 85 million views
and the other has 133 million views when his show,
has, you know, what, three, his show on Fox,
just has to have like three million viewers per night,
something in that area.
So when you see that kind of amplification,
I could see why candidates would be attracted to the platform.
Yeah, but that was a video.
This is audio only, and it's spaces.
Spaces can glitch.
like we have often sometimes Mario and I will run a room and they'll be like fifth like during
Silicon Valley banks crash we had what 15 20,000 people and it would glitch like actually break down
now imagine million people listening in through spaces uh you know what if it glitches what if it breaks down
No, I can see that.
I just, the really quick one, the BBC spaces with Elon, where that was like set up, I think, with like a half hour's notice or something.
That had like three million viewers at one point.
The one with Ron Khan or?
No, the one where he was interviewed by the BBC reporter like a month ago or so.
That was just set up like within an hour and it attracted, I think, three million concurrent viewers.
So if they can do that, then why don't my spaces ever freaking work?
Sorry, go ahead, Brian.
No, I was just going to say, I feel that, like, as important as this space is,
I'm guessing that they're going to have a lot of engineers watching in the background
and making sure things don't go crazy tech-wise.
That's a good way to get fired.
I'm sure they're going to have more resources, but at the same time, as folks in the tech world,
know more people.
People time where engineers don't necessarily equate to better results, but I think you're right.
Yeah, the wear of the live demo, right, Eugene?
We always say that.
And so, like, now suddenly, but even beyond that, I think, one, the optics of it.
I want to see the candidate announce.
So, sure, Michael, I've seen that you were critical of this strategy.
I think a lot of us are so indoctrinated in the beauty of Twitter spaces
because that adds so much value to our worlds.
And I'm assuming the people that are listening.
But I do want to get from a strategist perspective,
why is this an odd move and in your opinion potentially a bad one?
Yeah, thanks for having me, and that's a great question. For DeSantis, someone who does indeed have a problem, in my opinion, with connecting with voters or what we would call in the political world retail politics, some people just have a natural affinity for that skill set.
DeSantis isn't that person, and one merely needs to look at his performance against Andrew Gillum, who he barely beat, by the way, his debate performance.
It wasn't very effective.
If you look at many of the clips of him interacting with people across the country when he went from New York to Iowa with the recently released book that came out several months ago, I remember having conversations with several of my friends and –
Republican side of politics and the general consensus was, God, he is really, really bad at this.
And one of the more critical and crucial things about a candidate is they have to be able to have an emotional buy-in with voters.
Oftentimes, we think people get into the nuances of complex data about economics or finances
or crime and immigration.
And those things matter to a certain effect, I suppose.
But the person needs to buy into you first.
Think of voters as a consumer buying a product.
When you go to the store, grocery store, a target or Best Buy, whether it's Apple or Android,
we sort of have an emotional connection to those things.
A voter in many ways is almost like a consumer in that regard. And if you look at political science data on this kind of stuff, there's been years worth of research into this. Now, some individuals have argued, well, this enables DeSantis to bypass legacy media outlets. And I would, to an extent, agree with that.
But I'm not necessarily certain that this would have the same impact as the Trump campaign in 2016 when it used Facebook as a toolkit to target voters at an extremely granular level, right?
I mean, I was a part of the Trump campaign at the very end once my candidate got out of the race.
And I know very well how effective that tool was.
Twitter, at least at the time, and I don't think as of today, I have those same capabilities.
What, 23% of Americans use Twitter compared to close to 70% of Americans on Facebook.
And so as a political strategist, I'm looking at all of these things.
I'm trying to figure out, well, what is the net benefit to the candidate who's at,
19 to 20% compared to Trump, who's over 50% support with Republican voters.
I want the image of my candidate in a large arena or at a town hall with voters who are excited to see his announcement.
I want to showcase the ability through commercial advertisements.
on social and TV in some of those battleground states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina,
the first several states that are going to come starting in January in the Republican primary.
He is not going to have that ability by doing this on Twitter spaces.
And I think this is a great platform.
There's a lot of potential here.
But politics in many ways is still traditional in those battleground states for the primary.
And I just don't think that this is a wise move in my opinion.
And, you know, you see Tim Scott, who, by the way, in my opinion, had like the most technical malfunctions possible for a launch event.
He had the, you know, the scream that I mentioned at the end.
But I have to say that as somebody who probably wouldn't vote for him, I was still moved by him.
And that's the honest truth.
I think most people that have actually watched him speak about his background,
about where he comes from, about his approach and his mindset.
I think a lot of us could probably agree with him.
And I think that was because I was seeing him speak.
You know, there was a connection.
You saw the crowd gasp.
when he was talking about his family life and where he comes from and i think that you know
and we've heard this story before by the way from tim scott but it was incredibly moving so did
did he pull a howard dean yeah he did is that way that's that's too bad but but again it didn't
matter as much no our dean when that happened there wasn't much in the news cycle now there's
something new in the new cycle every 30 seconds
And so, you know, the Howard Dean thing,
I don't think would have been as much of a deal anymore.
Back then, everything bought...
Can you imagine a world in which the way you screamed
affected your ability to become president?
I mean, what a freaking crazy time that was.
And so I think that, you know, but this really, I mean...
I think DeSantis is doing something different because he wants people to talk about it.
That might be another reason because he's been out.
Like the only thing that people are talking about with Ron DeSantis recently is how he's not a good candidate, which is crazy, right?
Well, where is he going to go, though?
Like, he has a challenge.
Where is he going to go?
Because now even the Republican base hate CNN.
They hate ABC.
They hate MSNBC.
They don't even like Fox anymore.
Now they hate...
They hate Fox.
Yep.
So where's he going to go?
Well, he could have done it on all.
I mean, he could do like, you know, YouTube.
You could have done on like YouTube live or whatever.
I think it, you know,
he could have also done a video streaming, by the way, on Twitter.
Why odd?
Ron DeSantis is the number two candidate.
as of today in the potential Republican primary.
There is no way in the world that a CNN, that an MSNBC, that a Fox News, that an ABC, that a CBS would not cover that announcement.
And it's a bit of an absurdity to say, well, where would he go?
I mean, guys...
I've done this three times.
You make an announcement.
You connect with voters.
When you know that your biggest criticism is your inability to connect with voters, you need to disprove that narrative.
And DeSantis doing this on Twitter, in my opinion, is counterintuitive to what will position him as a potential legitimate alternative to the current frontrunner who may indeed be the Republican nominee in 11 months.
Yeah, the one of that's fair.
Sure Michael, do you think he is one second, let Eugene push back first, Justin.
Go ahead, Eugene.
Yeah, so I actually, and I respect all the things you touch,
Michael, so, and I think this is, you know, a lot of things that the audience in us to learn.
But I think there's something special about Twitter spaces.
Like, it's not just like the publicity stunt aspect, though I think there's something to that.
But now that we live in a Zoom age, I know video in some respects is coming to Twitter spaces.
We'll see how that works.
I'm actually not so convinced it's going to work as well.
And I think this is after years and years of using Zoom.
I think there are going to be some additive to it, but it's almost like it's a different medium, right?
So kind of like, you know, how in 1960, when, you know, JFK, you know,
JFK really beat Nixon largely on the fact that television became,
it became the first presidential election where television became like a really big thing.
And what was really fascinating is the television audience,
JFK pulled better because he looked composed.
He looked great.
He connected, as Donish said, with the audience.
But Nixon actually did better in the radio shows.
So when people didn't see Nixon sweating and his palms doing the things, you know, palms are sweaty, weak knees, you know, all that stuff.
He, um...
he actually uh you know he actually did better with the radio audience so um i think it's just a
different medium and i have been surprised at how how effective twitter spaces has been and i think
if it does go to video and be more like a zoom call i actually wonder how different of a
well also interestingly eugene i realize as you were speaking that one thing about
twitter spaces that is special eugene is that you can have conversations with people around
the world very easily
And so one thing that has been confirmed by Fox News yesterday
was that he will be taking questions from people listening.
So from listeners, and it will not be choreographed.
It was very specifically said,
you know, that it would not be choreographed.
That's pretty cool.
I didn't know that.
And that's a really...
For Michael, what do you think about that?
I think it's interesting.
I don't think it's any different than from when I work for Newt Gingrich or Dr. Carson or Mitt Romney or heck, even at the end of Carson when we jumped on Trump's campaign.
It's a little different than a candidate having a town hall taking questions from individuals...
at that particular event. So I think that's a very positive thing. However, as a political strategist, I have to look at the scopes and methodology of data in order to design strategy. That's how I make decisions. And I have not seen a correlation at this point in time. It's very early with Twitter spaces as
the previous individuals have stated to see a correlation to what impact this will have
an in net positive for DeSantis.
I think it's a great positive for Elon Musk and Twitter as a business.
I must be frank, but for the candidate himself, knowing what his weaknesses are,
knowing that the first Republican debate is in August, the first votes are cast in January,
knowing that there's a plethora of very, very talented candidates jumping into this thing,
If I'm advising to Santis and I'm trying to chart a mathematical course to the first votes in January, this to me would not be the way I would roll out my campaign.
100%.
I want to go back to what you said.
Just one last thing.
I was going to double click on one thing and I'll go to you,
right to you, Justin.
I was going to say,
sure,
Michael is not wrong about the analytics.
I'll give you guys some context.
So I know Brian runs some large rooms,
you know,
and we,
Mario and I have run some very,
very large rooms.
Do you know how much analytics we get on those rooms?
Like,
about the type of people that are in our rooms,
what are their interests, what is, you know,
what do they do outside of our rooms?
Do you know how much information we have on those people?
Brian, how much information?
Tell me.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I know more about the randos that go on my Facebook page,
like my cousins and shit,
than I do about the people that are coming to our rooms.
And we have thousands of people coming every day.
thousands every single day, right?
And we have no clue who they are, what their interests are, why are they coming?
Did they have an intention to buy something?
Did they have an intention to learn something?
By the way, if you know Facebook analytics, it's crazy.
So what Sharmichael's talking about cannot be overstated.
We have no clue what's going on.
We just do a show every day and a bunch of people show up.
That's what happens.
So Justin, go ahead.
Sorry, just wanted to double click on that.
Yeah, I'm really curious, Sher Michael. You brought up a, like, a great point. Could the motivations or the demotivations be different, though, for Fox News and the other? Because, you know, we see RFK, who's not conservative, but they still edited what he said. So I can see DeSantis' motivations for skipping the ABCs, the CNNs because he doesn't want to get edited or taken out of context.
But the motivation for avoiding Fox News, perhaps, and you'd probably know better than I would, obviously.
But perhaps that's simply because right now there's all this rage surrounding the network.
And later, it'll be back in play for Republican candidates.
I'd really love your thoughts on that.
I know I think the thought process more than likely is from the Santis camp that this is a direct way for them to go to his potential voters.
It's a direct way for him to communicate with swing voters who may be a bit on the fence.
And if that is a thought process, I wouldn't necessarily be in disagreement with that.
Again, I think you have the announcement, have a public announcement.
Do it in Florida. Florida is going to be a very critical state. Or if you're really thinking about the primary process and you're thinking, oh, my God, I need to figure out a way to increase my numbers against Donald Trump. If you look at some of the early predictive modeling, at least some of the modeling that I've seen from some political scientists and other data folks that I've worked with in the past on the Republican side.
DeSantis really has quite a few hurdles to overcome some of those key primary states.
So if I'm looking at those numbers and I'm trying to figure out, well, what counties in Iowa do I need to move the numbers, what counties in potentially New Hampshire, I need to move the numbers, then I'm going to look at some of those states and say, maybe we should do the announcement there.
You do your announcement for about 30, 45 minutes, and then you come on Twitter spaces.
Exactly. Why not do both? I really don't understand why he didn't do both. By the way, the people that are listening, we have a bunch of, you know, as people know, we have the best looking listeners on Twitter spaces. You can just start scrolling down and take a look. I was going to say that, you know, please do go to the bottom right where
where we have comments.
In those comments, I want you to tell us
why I'm wrong or why
Sher Michael is right or why
I just want to hear people's thoughts
because I think the people, and I also
want to know why the hell do you show up to Twitter
spaces every day. I know
I upset like 90% of you.
Yet you show up every single day
to hear me and the other listeners.
And because Twitter gives me
Because you're the best looking host on Twitter.
That's what I keep telling myself.
That's what my mom says.
And so I was going to say that, you know, that ultimately I don't understand why people are here in general.
And so if you can go into the comments and tell us why that will be super helpful.
Because like Shermichael has said, we get zero information.
Right.
maybe that's a feature and not a bug.
Maybe people like the fact that you know nothing about them
when they come on Twitter spaces,
but it's really hard to build an audience
and continue to grow that audience if you don't understand it.
And, for Michael, you know, one last thing I was going to say was,
yeah, can you tell me why he did?
What, if you were to put yourself in the position of his team,
what could be the impetus to not do both?
Yeah.
Like, is there a reason why you wouldn't do both?
I really don't know.
I have to be honest with you.
And I've thought about this.
I even text a friend of mine who's close to a mega donor on a Republican side, who's actually
been a pretty big supporter of Trump and dissent.
And I said, what are your thought processes on this?
What are you guys thinking about this?
And he said, they thought it was odd.
He said...
why not have a campaign style rally and then go on Twitter.
And I said,
okay,
so I'm probably moving in the right direction with my thought process is here.
I mean, again, guys,
just to be clear,
and I know there are a lot of people who are going to push back on this,
and I completely understand the reason why.
But again, from a political strategist position, I just need to see a correlation with data.
I have a lot of predictive models from the past where I can showcase a projection from a televised announcement that could lead to some momentum for a candidate,
particularly a candidate who struggles with retail politics.
I can't do that necessarily with this new platform.
I don't know how the campaign is going to take advantage of this.
and run ads between now and August showcasing DeSantis in front of a crowd of thousands of
people. That type of excitement is really, really important. As I said at the onset of this,
and it's really important for people to understand this. Politics is about an emotional connection
first before you can even get to the issues. There are 40 years of research on this very
salient point. And if you missed that opportunity, I...
I have to question your ability, the direction of your campaign to pick that up later on.
Why not start off strong?
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
This is like an incredible, yeah, the optics of having the massive crowd is a big deal.
I'm curious.
Is he trying to paint himself is completely different than Trump?
Because Trump has the massive, you know, the Trump's optics are the mat.
He fills the stadiums.
He has all the hoopla.
And maybe DeSantis is trying to paint himself as, like, I'm right in your living room,
just sitting on your couch, having a cup of coffee on Twitter spaces.
Is he trying to draw a distinction?
I think he's trying to get some brand equity from...
Elon Musk. That's actually my actual belief. I think Elon is, this week, there was data that came out that Sir Michael, I'm sure saw as well, which was that Elon Musk is actually one of the most liked people across both party lines, which is fascinating. Yeah, you should see the favorability ratings were incredible, like crazy high. For somebody who was...
in my opinion, polarizing, his favorability ratings were really high.
And so, you know, one thing that people realize is that Elon Musk doesn't connect with voters, with people, I mean, in general, right?
Like, he's not seen as this, like, super...
emotive person, but yet he connects with people in a different way.
And I think that what Ron DeSantis is trying to say is,
hey, look, I might not draw the big crowds like Trump does.
I might not be that super, you know, eccentric person,
but I'm honest.
Right.
I do what I say.
I govern how I said I would govern.
And I will bring Florida to the rest of America, the Florida politics, the rest of America.
And by the way, I'm not scared, which is why I'm going to let random people on the day of my launch ask me questions.
You don't think there's going to be like a crazy Trumper who's going to come up on stage.
and ask him like a crazy question,
like, are you part of the deep state?
Like shit like that,
like the crazy shit that they've been spewing on these platforms,
they might actually say that to him.
And I wonder how he's going to respond to that.
And maybe that's what he's really excited about
is he wants some of that Elon Musk,
goody, goody,
Elon Musk,
you know,
brand equity.
He wants some of that,
that's a fairy dust over him.
And I think that's sort of what I think might be of interest.
I brought Michael up because,
but does that translate,
to actual votes?
And then that's one of the key questions.
It translates to a big politics.
So Michael,
it's not just about getting potential votes today, right?
This is a long game,
right?
And so ultimately,
Let's just be honest, campaign announcements, do they really sway that many people usually?
I mean, I actually want to get your thoughts on that.
My understanding is that campaign announcements usually, you know, get into the news cycle and then get out of the new cycle.
But you know what earns people's votes?
Right.
being honest, being open, being crazy, like doing crazy shit, like what Trump did, right?
And so my only thought is like maybe he's earning deeper seated voters.
Who speaks more about...
you know,
in the universe is Twitter, right?
The Twitterverse.
And so when you think about it,
if a bunch of people start saying,
you know what,
fuck it,
he came up here,
he answered some tough questions.
He wasn't scared of anyone.
And you know what?
I kind of like him.
And him and Elon Musk kind of make a really good pair.
Don't you think,
for Michael,
that it could lead to a stronger base,
like what we've seen with Trump?
Trump has a crazy base.
Like yesterday,
just,
I'm sorry,
one last thing I was going to say,
yesterday there were people
that were up on stage,
with Mario,
by the way,
that were saying some things that have,
you know,
when Carrie Lake lost Arizona,
like just complete,
like,
you know,
this is being done.
I mean,
someone came in and said,
hey,
we followed the addresses
and it went to Chile.
Like crazy shit.
Like,
The Trump voter base is so strong.
Maybe he's trying to build a different voter base.
Maybe he's trying to build a David Sachs,
All In Pod type voter base,
which, by the way, they worship All-N.
Right?
And so I'll let your Michael respond to that and then I'll go to others.
So to the question on the long-term efficacy of campaign announcements, you're right.
I mean, there are sort of snapshots in time.
One of the benefits, however, in having a successful announcement is that it can lead to momentum going forward.
And I think if you're a candidate who needs to make significant grounds between now and the first debate
and then from the first debate to the second to when the first votes are cast,
that's really going to be an important push.
With that said, to your point on connecting directly with voters who may say this guy spoke directly to us, he avoided mainstream media outlets that may take his questions out of context.
He took questions from individuals who vociferously disagreed with him.
That's also a very valid point.
But then my counterpoint to that would be, again, if I'm looking at the primary, remember we have to get to your primary first before we get to a general election.
Will this translate over time to the point that you made to moving voters in Iowa, then Ohio, then New Hampshire, then South Carolina, then after South Carolina, I think it's like several states all at once to sort of wrap up the Republican primary.
I'm not personally convinced of that when I look at the age group of Republican voters in those primaries based on previous exit results from past elections.
And so again, I need to see a correlation, and I just don't see it.
Interesting.
You know, I wanted to, I brought Mickle up.
Because for Michael, we don't know yet, to be fair, right?
We don't know anything yet.
Because again, we have no analytics.
Right.
So, like, we have no clue.
What if it really translates into, like, incredibly deep-seated voters?
I have no...
We're just making shit up.
I know that you...
This is going to be the exciting thing about today.
It's the fact that this will be the sort of first data set that we could use...
Rob, why would you take this risk?
What kind of craziness is this shit?
Well, because he probably knows...
you know, I like it.
I like US elections a lot,
but the primaries are way more exciting
than the elections are,
because you really don't know.
Like Trump came out of nowhere.
DeSantis probably feels like he's up against,
he definitely is in the numbers,
up against Trump.
He's going to have to do something different to Trump.
And so he's coming to Trump's platform.
I think like, you know,
from my perspective,
Elon's doing this just to draw Trump back to Twitter.
This is all this is to me in terms of, I don't think, he clearly likes DeSantis.
He said it before.
But in terms of like bringing his best, his sort of biggest rival potential in the primaries to Twitter,
it's just going to try and see Trump back to using Twitter.
I think this is just a pure play.
It's always about Trump in the end.
That's messed up.
I don't like that.
Can I jump in here quick?
But, Mickle, I brought you up because of your commentary.
And by the way, for the people that are listening, if you comment in the bottom right, there are two things that get you up on stage.
One of them is an insightful comment.
The other one's flattery.
But go ahead, Mickle.
You made an insightful comment, so I wanted to go to you.
Yeah, I just think it's interesting.
Everyone is saying how Ron DeSantis isn't good at connecting with voters,
but I can't think of a better way to connect with voters than coming up here
and directly answering questions from voters.
And I just want to tell you,
me and all my friends, I'm from a younger generation.
None of us are going on to a cable network to watch some politician confirm our own bias and talk about why we're already going to vote for them.
Like it's a complete show for the people who are already going to vote for that candidate.
Like if I was going to vote for Ron DeSantis, I would go on to a mainstream media platform and watch him talk.
But no one who is a swing voter is going to watch that.
Twitter space is such a great place to bring people together and share opinions and talk about things we don't agree with.
And this happens every single day on this platform.
And I just think...
This is a new way of doing things and in such a smart way to do things.
People are talking about there's not going to be a crowd.
He'll get a crowd at other events.
He's trying to make a statement with going on Twitter that, hey, I'm not going for people's confirmation biases here.
I want to start a new conversation with a broader group of people.
And I think it's going to end up being pretty powerful.
Can I just say we have the smartest listeners.
Did anybody hear, there's one big thing that Mickle brought up
that I have to kind of repeat again.
You brought up a lot of good points.
But the one point was,
for Michael, people that are watching certain media,
like if you're watching Fox News,
you're not a swing voter anymore.
If you're watching NBC,
you're probably not a swing voter.
ABC, probably not a swing voter.
He is going after...
he wants to, oh man, Ron DeSantis might be trying to build a big tent primary.
It's a very different strategy that I don't think people have heard.
And what is interesting, and you know, we will pivot to this part, which is around Elon Musk and your commentary around Elon Musk.
But, you know, I wanted to hear from others as well.
I know Alan's been waiting for a while.
Alan, I want to go to you.
You know, do you think this is a good strategy and what are your thoughts on DeSantis doing this?
I think it's intriguing and I appreciate all the comments that were made by the experts.
I think that we are truly in a social media marketplace, whether that's for elections or whether it's spun over to elections.
I don't know.
But I just have to ask Sir Michael, prior, when Trump entered the primary race,
I believe his ratings were extremely low.
And as social media, whether it was Twitter or, you know, the Metaverse or whatever, his ratings continually moved up.
Now, if this strategy works, there's two things that are going to happen here.
Musk is going to have a tremendous new platform.
And also, DeSantis will end up getting some money from some people that he normally wouldn't reach out to.
Whether this works, it's going to be intriguing.
But there's another question I wanted to ask you.
Polling data, it's always been flawed.
I've never seen polling data was consistently right.
And most polling data is kind of spotting depending on which...
entity is producing this data. So I think it's all skewed. I think this is very intriguing. I think
it's going to be the continuation of the social media platform. Now, after he gets done with this,
who knows, he'll find out what city, oh, by the way, you can get data on Twitter.
Not on analytics on spaces.
Exactly.
You have to pay for it.
No, no, no, I know.
We do pay for it.
It's not good.
You can't get space.
Trust me, space.
Do you use data miner?
That's what Mario's team uses.
It's just not what I'm talking, Alan, what we're talking about on the data is granular
data around identity of the listeners and of the people.
That level of granular data is really hard to get access to on Twitter spaces.
Yeah, so maybe, I don't know. I have not spoken to data miner, even though I'm an investor in them. And I know they use, extensively used data research for this research. But I will tell you.
Sorry, we're going to move on. Jeff, you can't. You can't buy it. I'm kidding. It's a joke. All right. But I wanted to go to Jeff. Jeff, what are your thoughts about this strategy? We'd love to hear from you.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, he's going to be the candidate to launch on social media.
And it just, it just, he's trying to separate himself, I believe, from traditional politics.
I think he's trying to do that his whole, you know, political career as governor.
And I agree with Michael's points.
Like, you're just...
You're not going to reach an undecided voter and you're not going to reach a younger voter.
They're not going to, they don't have cable news subscriptions.
They don't watch cable news.
So, and that's what the Republican Party is.
needs. They need to bring younger voters in.
So I like your comment about, you know, the bigger tent.
So I think he's just, I mean, maybe he's just trying to like stake his claim on like,
maybe he's just trying to, you know, he's, maybe he's going to be more active on Twitter.
You know, and Trump is on true social. He's going to be on Twitter.
Twitter has far bigger reach, obviously, and it's, you know, it's less of an echo chamber.
So I think he's trying to stake his claim.
I think he's going to get more views as it's not even going to be close.
Yeah, but the question is do those, again, you got to think likes for Michael.
That's going to be my new line about politics.
You got to think like for Michael.
You know, do those views translate into votes?
That is the hard part, right?
Like, we actually don't know.
Ed, is this a good idea?
I know you guys have been very, very active on spaces, but do you think that this is a good idea?
I do. I think it is. I think DeSantis, what he wants to do is kind of conquer the Twitterverse. I think if he can be the first one to do this, kind of get on Elon's good side, which I think he already is. I think Elon supports DeSantis or likes him a lot.
I think it's good for him in the long run.
You know, you establish yourself on Twitter.
Social media is huge.
And I think if you can become like that guy that has grasped social media, we know he's been paying certain influencers to kind of side with him on social media.
I think, I think this is just a strategy.
And you know, like you talked about earlier how.
you think he should be doing a more formal announcement,
or at least doing it simultaneously or, like, right next to each other.
I think he can still do that.
You know, he can still do a formal, you know, rally type announcement
in a couple days or even in a couple weeks,
and I think it would be just as successful.
But I do think that needs to be done.
I just think, like, you know, he wants social media,
and I think that's what he's going for.
Right.
Yeah, I would just say really quickly, I've heard quite a few people note the fact that this would give Ron DeSantis the ability to connect with potential swing voters or indecided voters or non-traditional voters.
Right.
And I would agree 100% with that.
And I think that's important during a general election.
But I just have to remind people again, we are talking about a primary process,
which means you're targeting and focusing exclusively on Republican and Republican-leaning voters only before you switch to a general election strategy.
You usually wouldn't start to pivot to a general election strategy until towards the middle-to-end of the election.
Of that primary process.
Maybe he's giving up on the Trump voter.
Sure Michael, maybe he's giving up on the Trump voter.
Sorry, just to push back.
If he is, he cannot become the nominee.
There's just no mathematical path if that is indeed the case.
So the-
Sure, Michael, one of the questions besides data, lacking data in Twitter spaces,
do you, do you, is also the lack of video,
the lack of ability to see him?
Like, how big of a factor is that?
And how big of if it is just about data?
I'm just curious.
Because I think intuitively Twitter spaces is so powerful, but it is hard to back that up with data.
And I do love my data as much as as the next person.
But I'm curious, is it really just the lack of being able to see him that bothers you about the space or the lack of proven path?
No, what bothers me is just the lack of proven path.
I mean, as I've stated...
pretty consistently here as a strategist, I have to go off of data. And I know folks have questioned
or call into question polling analytics and data. And keep in mind, polls are really just snap
shots in time. That's why we continuously do them over and over again. That's why we continue to
recreate our models and predictive models over and over and over again as we're crafting and making
adjustments to the overall campaign strategy. But for me, I just have a hard time finding a
proof of concept here without being
able to look at some tangible
data. You think he did a space
once, sir Michael. At least once do
a space before you do your long time.
I mean, like, what the
hell? This is crazy.
I see, sir, she never been on the... I don't have to
I don't know. I don't know. Sorry, go for it, right?
No, Eugene, why don't have to go?
And I was just quickly going to say, do it. I think
this is smart, but I still think
He should have some type of a big public announcement.
There's a lot of data on Rob on the importance of that when making a campaign announcement.
As the doc stated, it's brief, but it does give a candidate momentum.
And I think DeSantis needs as much momentum as possible in the early start.
My question to you, Sir Michael, is this.
Okay, so he comes on a spaces.
I agree that he needs to focus on the Republican vote, get that because of the primaries.
How is he going to convince a Trump voter to vote for him in the primary when they're embedded if he isn't trying to convince the public that he's essentially like Trump in many ways in terms of policy, but maybe a little bit more like, you know, polite.
I don't know, polite is the right way, but has better bedside manner, right?
Trump says what he wants to say and blurts it out,
and he's trying to, I guess, be Trump light.
So how does he do that unless he goes to the public
and trying to convince the whole public that, you know,
he's done this in Florida and he's essentially going to export Florida politics
to the rest of America and then tackles Trump on stuff
that he wouldn't have done that was along those lines
and kind of gets the public on side.
How else does he do that?
Because a big rally is fine,
but none of the swing voters he needs to the primary are going to be at that rally.
Well, but it's going to be televised.
How does it?
To be fair, what people...
Yeah, but Rob, there aren't really...
Go ahead, Sharm Michael.
Rob, so when you think about a primary, with the exception of states where you don't have to register by party like a state like Virginia, for example, I'm a Republican, I'm going to vote for a Republican, regardless if I'm registered or not.
So when you think about swing voters in the traditional sense...
In the primary, you don't really have swing voters.
You have sort of hard Trump voters.
You have soft Trump voters.
I think that represents about 11% of the Republican Party, give or take, based upon the current approvals that Trump has.
It could certainly be a lot more, but this is only based on his 56, 58% approval.
The soft folks, I think, are going to be pretty easily movable for DeSantis.
Those hardcore, ardent, diehard Trump supporters are not going anywhere, whether DeSantis is on television or on Twitter spaces.
Right.
And so I don't think that there's a lot of room there.
However, what I will say is that there are quite a few Republicans who are undecided in the primary process.
And it will be questionable whether or not Descentes can move enough of those individuals to see a 25, 30 percent increase of his approvals that will be necessary to be competitive.
I'm sure Michael, a little bit of some of those.
a few questions about that. Again, we are a finance space, not a political space, but today
finance politics and finance are way more interconnected than they've ever been. We're going to be
talking about the debt ceiling. We're going to be talking about other things. But what I was going to say was that
You know, my question is the voters that are still undecided in the Republican Party, do they tend to be more educated?
Are they more likely to be on Twitter?
Are they more like, I mean, I don't know if people know this information, but I'm assuming that working class, non-college educated, white males tend to vote Trump more than DeSantis, correct?
Right.
Yeah, that is correct.
And if you look at both the Democratic Party and Republican Party as far as college matriculation and graduation rates, Democrats have far higher numbers in that regard than Republicans.
But also people that may be undecided within the Republican Party, you know, again, we're talking about the primary here.
You know, do you think he's trying to sway a specific group within that larger party?
You know, I think that's possible.
And I wonder, and that's really good question.
One of the things that I've been wondering,
and I guess we'll probably figure this out over the next couple of weeks,
if you're looking at demo groups,
Trump typically does pretty well with individuals over 30 to 55.
You look at the numbers from 2020 compared to Biden.
He did really well there, does really well with older voters.
Typically, that's pretty well with non-college educated Republican voters.
I do wonder if DeSantis' camp, if they've done some internal modeling and they're showcasing numbers that say if we do this,
We can reach those educated Republicans.
We can reach those Republicans who are really involved and engaged in the political process.
And that's a pretty sizable number.
And so if that is the thought process, then I would say, hey, that's kind of smart.
Let's see what the results ultimately end up being in the next couple of months.
Man.
Yeah.
Sure, Michael, I have a question for you.
You know, I've got a personal ethos, like data over feelings, and it's probably to a fault.
So I'm totally within your camp and, you know, working in tech data, sort of reigns your cream and things like AI and, you know, Metaverse.
So I'm with you on that philosophically, but the question I have for you is, didn't Trump?
And you know a lot more about this.
I mean, it was an earnest question.
I mean, didn't Trump effectively break all those molds, right?
Like, you know, at the night of the election, he had like a 30% chance of,
of winning at least you know 538 projected that which by the way is bigger than people think so you know i mean it clearly
happened uh you know but um you know trump repeatedly just broke the molds and a lot of that was based on
intuition over even just like what data might suggest he should do right um
So I'm curious if you have any comments on that and whether that's sort of breaking a new path.
I mean, often the role of a CEO, for example, or a leader is to make intuitive decisions, gather all the data, but make decisions that might seem counterintuitive to the data.
But that could be proven correct.
I'm curious how the Trump model.
People lost their minds on that note, Eugene, when Trump was just tweeting from his bathroom.
I mean, like, can we just be honest that, like, the whole, we have no idea what's going to work.
The dude was on the John and just tweeting away, talking crap about everybody, and it killed the Internet.
It broke the Internet.
I mean, again, Tremichael, maybe traditional thoughts...
may no longer matter and doing crazy stunts
is actually the road forward.
Clearly the Republican Party likes a little out of the box thinking.
Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.
I think Trump...
So when Trump won, I mean, I was there, Dr. Carson, we're all there in New York.
And some of us were actually surprised to be quite honest with you guys.
It's like, holy smoke, this is actually happening.
And I'm just being very honest.
I mean, I was in the room.
It was like, wow, okay, here we go.
Okay.
What that said, though, if you look at how Trump won and you look at this really interesting and stitched together a coalition across states from like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan, it's fascinating because he did something that Republicans haven't ever really done before.
I also think when you look at Hillary Clinton, there was a decrease in black turnout that was problematic.
Trump saw an increase in Latino turnout.
He saw an increase in disengaged in new voters.
And so again, as a strategist, I hear what you're saying,
but I'm looking at the numbers,
and I'm seeing who turned out and why.
And when you add all of those things up,
then you do see a path for Trump to become president.
Now, fast forward to 2020,
and people say, well, Biden won by millions of votes.
Yeah, he got five million more popular votes.
That is absolutely irrelevant.
as it pertains to the electoral college.
Biden only won by 84,000 votes across four states.
Again, 84,000 votes across four states.
And when you break it down, you see 22,000 votes here, 15,000 votes there.
So the margins are ridiculously slim in many of those states.
But when you add them all together and patch them up,
it's enough to win enough electoral votes to become president.
Absolutely. Dakota, you were going to jump in, and I wanted to start pivoting the conversation to what this means for Musk, but go ahead.
Yeah, definitely. I was going to say, I think the reality of it is everybody knows that he was going to put his presidential bid in.
I think that, you know, to your point, Sir Michael, like, this is going to give him the momentum that he's looking for.
He has 4.2 million followers or something on Twitter currently. I wouldn't be surprised that this is the largest Twitter space ever hosted.
Probably somewhere around 6 million people will be listening to this. I mean, what's going to capture more headlines and
across media sources than him just blowing this thing out of the park from a viewership standpoint.
Yeah, nothing.
And ultimately, imagine all the news media and what they'll be thinking to themselves saying,
holy cow, he just...
hired probably one of the most well-known people,
Linda Yacarino, she can get access to advertising.
He just got, I mean, he didn't get,
but Tucker just decided, Tucker Carlson did,
that he's going to be doing all of his shows on Twitter,
and now he's getting the second person in line
for the Republican Party to do his launch announcement on Twitter.
Right.
Is Musk going to completely make Fox irrelevant?
It was mind-blowing yesterday.
I'm in England, right?
And I come downstairs, and on primetime television,
the third news item is that Ronda Santis will be interviewed by Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces.
And then they had a live reporter outside the governor's mansion from the UK in Florida with Twitter spaces running underneath as a main headline bar saying, like, we'll be on Twitter spaces.
We will broadcast the Twitter spaces live.
And I'm like, you guys are so fucked.
So yes, I think you're right, Dennis.
even in the UK.
I think it's incredible.
By the way,
Musk is,
I posted this a little
on the Ness,
but Musk is currently
the most favorable political figure
with U.S. voters
survey run in May,
just a few days ago in May.
That's,
I think it's astounding, right?
I mean, obviously he can't run
because of his,
you know, he was born
not on U.S. soil.
Yeah, so when you think about it,
One, Musk is very favorable.
He wants him in the room.
I bet you if you looked at the all-in pod, I can't remember, but I think it's the most listened to podcasts, or one of the top five or ten, most listened to podcasts.
So David Sachs is going to be there.
And by the way, talk about a cult following.
People swear by the all-in pod.
Like, I hear it very annoyingly at many dinner parties.
Okay.
And, you know, people think that it's gospel.
It's unreal.
And so, you know, you've got David Sacks, who, by the way, probably has a decent,
favorable rating amongst Republicans, probably a very good one because he's been, you know,
doing a lot of the things that the populists like.
Like, for example, he's anti-war and so on.
And by the way, I bet you, David Sacks, one of the questions to expect is he's going to make
Ron DeSantis clarify his point of view on Ukraine.
That will be...
freaking crazy. Can I just say that I am looking forward to that question? David Sachs is going
to ask, and I think people are going to be surprised by what Ron DeSantis says. That is my prediction
for tonight, on Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine, specifically. Because I know that he knows that that's a very
important issue to especially the popular swing of the Republican Party, which is probably the biggest
part now. But, you know, David Sachs, Elon Musk, now we're sitting here and we're thinking about the
the fact that he is not only getting brand equity from those two, again, it's a primary,
not a general. And then two, giant reach, broad distribution, possibly to the educated
voter within the Republican Party, which is a part that is not yet decided. And then when
we're thinking about Musk and his strategy, Musk is building a media company.
You know, what are people's thoughts about this concept of must legitimately pivoting 100% to media?
I mean, this is a big media play.
Suddenly, everybody, not just us fools, will want to be on Twitter spaces.
And that is good for Twitter spaces, but also with video and Tucker, people will start using that.
And I actually don't know how Tucker will make money on that,
probably advertising,
especially since, you know,
we have Linda Yacarino coming in and bringing an ad brain.
What are people,
Jeff,
what are your thoughts about the move that's happening at Twitter
going from, you know,
140 characters to becoming a full-blown media company?
Yeah, I think it's on its way.
I think that's part of,
the construct that Elon wants to build at Twitter.
I was just thinking, like, if they had the ability to run ads on spaces,
I mean, I guess you could put stuff, you know, up in the nest,
but if they could sell ads for this, I mean, what would they go for?
And...
You know, I believe that's, that's the route he is taking Twitter.
And I just, I wonder what, I don't know if Linda's going to be a part of this or not.
I think the other thing is, I don't think we know actually how this is going to play out.
We know what Twitter Spaces looks like, but, you know, when he did the BBC interview,
he had it, it was simulcasted.
And there was video.
So, I mean, I don't know if we know what's going to happen.
And I also believe Desantis is going to be on Fox.
the hour after the interview.
So I think there's a number of things that are going to happen.
But I mean, it goes back to the Tucker videos.
Like, again, 85 to 133 million views.
Like, where do you get that kind of reach?
And then, again, it's unique reach.
It's not the Fox News audience or the ABC News audience.
It is, you know, you're just, and it's 30, 40 times that.
So where are you going to get that?
There is so much incredible potential in the middle.
Arthur Brooks, I don't know if he's Harvard professor, does the happiness course at Harvard.
I had him on my podcast, and he talked about, I think, I want to say it's about 90% of the country absolutely hates how divided we are.
And so when I was, I had a radio show on WHO Radio.
It's a heavy hitter in the political space.
And for a little while, the WHO, for those that don't know, is a conservative
leaning station.
And so I was given a talk show there.
And I was like, ah, I'm just, I'm not this guy in the right that's going to say how the left is all awful.
That's just not me.
But at the time, it was Rush, and the local radio host was a guy named Simon Conway.
And so I was like, that's just not me.
I can't possibly make it.
I'm going to have this center view.
I'm going to do data-driven opinion.
And I'm going to lose listeners.
In the first about month or two, I did.
I would do call-ins.
I would do the text line.
Literally, I thought no one was listening.
Then about month three, it turned, and it ended up being the highest rated show in that slot, and Michael Medved was on that slot before. And the calls improved. The ratings went crazy. I ended up writing a piece in the local paper about that reception.
And there is so much value in the middle, the objective middle, and having a thoughtful
and a strong point of view for sure, but not just raging on the opposite side, but for some
reason all these media entities have completely ignored that.
And so Elon Musk is paying attention to that.
Twitter is paying attention to that.
And there is an enormous market there that everyone is too scared to go after.
And when I was doing this show, I was told by a lot of the executives at I heart that, you know, you need to take that polarizing left or that polarizing right opinion in order to get a following. That's what I was told. And they were all wrong. So.
all these networks are being told by these uppers,
like you need to rage on the other side
and paint the other side as an enemy to get the ratings,
and it's 100% off.
And actually, if you watch the comments, hold on, Cody,
I'll go to you next and I'll go to Ed after.
But, you know, if you read the comments on the bottom right
and you read why people are joining us every day,
it was kind of heartwarming.
Again, flattery will get you everywhere with me.
But you should read those comments for people that do join us every day.
A lot of people are saying that the reason why they join us every day,
and we get thousands every morning at 8 a.m. Eastern, which, by the way, is pretty early,
is because people are saying, you know, we like the fact that,
Donish is
They're calling me a liberal, which is funny.
But yes,
Donish is a liberal
and that he brings different voices
that disagree with him on like 99% of things.
And they like the fact that we duke it out,
but we're still respectful in the middle.
So Justin, to your point,
he has,
Musk has figured that out.
Cody, do you agree?
I completely agree. That's exactly what I say.
You know, Just, I love your point.
And I think that this will be very data choreographed.
They're going to hit some hot button topics that are kind of sitting in the middle for the purple people.
And they're going to have some hot button topics that will drive straight over to Fox News.
And that's where he's, like you said, Jeff, he's going to jump over there an hour after,
the Twitter spaces and really lay into those topics and drive to that user basis as well.
Yeah, Ed, what do you think? Is there a room in the middle?
Yeah. Is there a middle of the Republican Party anymore?
A middle of the Republican Party? I don't know. I mean, I think there's a small percentage.
If you're saying, but, you know, I don't know. I feel Desantis is more to the right than Trump, so...
I don't know. I don't even know how to answer that question.
I would agree 100% with Justin, though, with what he said.
I think he's right on.
And I mean, if you go back three years and look at my Twitter account,
you'd see that I was basically doing the same thing.
I'd reply to every Trump tweet and come up with whatever I could to, you know,
counter Trump when everything he'd tweet.
And now I kind of realize, you know, that wasn't the smartest thing to be doing.
It's not, it wasn't good for the country.
It wasn't good for me.
But as far as...
What was the other thing you guys were just talking about?
I had a point I wanted to make on that.
Yeah, I'm Musk kind of focusing on the middle and having...
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah. So, like, while I think Musk has a goal of focusing on the middle, I think...
Twitter is going, they're not able, they haven't been able to get people in the left to be as enthused about it as people in the right.
And I think that's something he needs to do is work on, you know, you have the Tucker Carlson's coming over here, you have Desanta's coming over here.
I think you need to be able to bring a more left-leaning,
news podcast or broadcaster or commentator over here not quite the status of tucker because
you know tucker's probably top echelon but i think you need to be able to do that before because
you don't want twitter just become known as you know the more mainstream gab or the more mainstream parlor
and i i don't think it's close to that right now but i think there's the i think the left
doesn't like Elon Musk running Twitter.
For whatever reason it is, you know, they refuse to say paid.
If you look at the favorability ratings up there,
it's actually much higher without the left.
you know, he couldn't have such a high favorability rating.
I will say the mainstream media doesn't like Musk owning Twitter.
There's a pretty big difference around corporate media.
I'm left off center.
I am a liberal in some senses.
I'm like an old school liberal.
You know, and I will say that I love Musk owning Twitter.
So I think that, and I think, Ed, you probably would say.
I'm with you.
Yeah, I'm 100% with you. I think Elon Musk on Twitter is better than Jack Dorsey on Twitter. But I think so many people, so many of the big people on Twitter, the leftists on Twitter,
don't like Elon Musk.
They prefer Jack Dorsey.
And they're,
they're skeptical of paying.
Is it because it's hurting them?
Is it because it's hurting their pocketbook?
Are they speaking their book,
possibly?
Like,
is it possible that it's,
you know,
because you and I don't make money
with news stories,
right?
I run resilient.
You have,
you know,
you have your own entire newsletter
that you have millions of people
that come in and read your stuff.
It has nothing to do
with mainstream media.
And so, you know, my point is just that maybe people are just talking their book.
Like, did you just read the article on Wired about Linda?
I mean, that was crazy.
They literally called it a glass cliff.
Absolutely.
The media is to blame, too.
Like, I think, you know, the media has...
push things in this direction. But at the same time, I don't know if it's so much the pocketbook
or the pocket of these people concerned about making money. I think it's more, you know,
Twitter was run more by people on the left for so long and now it's being run by Musk, who I would
argue is center right. You know, he says center. I think he's,
They're calling him all right.
Like literally in mainstream media, they're calling him alt-right.
They're calling him Rupert Murdoch, man.
Like, this is like, it's crazy.
But yeah, I'll let somebody else take over.
But this is helpful to go.
Love the sustainable guy.
He's being called All-Right.
Rob, say that again?
I love that the guy who's trying to bring around, like, electric vehicles and is alt-right.
I just love that.
That's funny.
I mean, exactly. The guy believes in climate change. He has, in many ways, an activist, right? He has been probably the most influential person when it comes to accelerating sustainable technologies. He believes in technology as being a, you know, again, if you talk about all right, they think technology is being used to suppress people. He's saying that,
it can actually be used to enable people.
We're seeing that with Tucker, by the way.
Tucker is no longer going to be...
Pretty sure he endorsed...
Didn't he also endorse Bernie?
He did originally endorse Bernie,
but to be fair, he said...
But go ahead, Rob.
Yeah.
He said he voted for Hillary.
I think he said he would have voted for Biden or did vote for Biden.
He did vote for Biden.
It's absolutely nonsense.
I don't understand as well.
Like, how is the guy, I just, when did, the only thing that they've got him on for this
alt-right thing is that he, what, stands up to everybody having a right to say what they want to say unencumbered.
So free speech.
Well, to be fair, old school liberals would say.
When did the left lose the argument?
on that.
believed
in complete free speech.
Now,
obviously hate speech.
Yeah, when did that become that...
When did that become the right wing thing?
I don't understand.
That was such a mind melt to me.
Like in the last few years,
it suddenly became that freedom of speech is a right, alt-right ideal.
I just like, what the hell do that happen?
That was such a bizarre concept to me.
But anyway, that is dark.
No, but it's interesting because as in,
from a business perspective, being, uh,
you know, a complete free speech person and free speech platform is clearly working out quite well for Musk, especially if they can monetize it.
Yeah, of course it is. Right? So the monetization still has not been figured out.
People...
I think people during the pandemic got very, very, very, very skeptical, very quickly about narratives that were always there, but they just, and it doesn't matter what narrative it was, what when you believed.
We all knew that what we were seeing was not the full picture and we felt like we were being lied to or misled or misdirected and they were deliberately polarising something that was in its,
very essence unpolitical. How did we manage to make a virus political? And yet we managed it. And so
literally, you know, that's, that's become the main thing. And so now this new guy comes along who we've
kind of trust and he's got this big business and he's lots of people rely on him. And he comes along.
He says, actually, by the way, free speech should be allowed. You should be allowed to shout at me.
I should be allowed to shout at you. You know, as long as we're not.
committing any crimes here,
why can't we just say,
speak our minds?
And people have gone,
you know when you like get off a,
a plane or something
when you're on a holiday destination,
you've been somewhere cold and you open the door
and it's like sun hits you and you're warm instantly
and you're like, ah,
and I think it felt like that for a lot of people
and that's brilliant business
because at the end of the day,
all we really want to do is de-politic our lives.
Everybody who's like highly politically motivated,
I fundamentally distrust because you sit there
and you're like, I'm sorry guys, but you know,
in your private lives as well?
Like, I understand if it's your job,
but at home, you're like politicising
everything, really? No, you're not.
And I think people just want to like relax
a bit and feel like they can speak their minds
without being a crime every five seconds.
And I think broadly everybody's
well-intended, mostly speaking.
I don't think people deliberately want to hurt people.
I think people just want to get on with their lives.
I think Elon Musk is the first person that I've seen who's
taking the balls out to get like billions of billions and billions of dollars behind a company
and actually just publicly say it's okay to be you and you know we will work this out together
without this being this huge debate and that is going to win in business because at the end of the day
the consumer wants to do that and they'll put their money behind that and what's what's fascinating
is he's opened up founders like himself to speak freely you know i i
You'd be surprised how many of our investors, resilience investors, are actually in the crowd right now.
It is kind of funny, right?
And you would think that that would be scary for me.
But every single one of my investors knows that at 8 a.m. Eastern daily during the workday, that's what I do.
I get on spaces and I talk to really interesting people and it's part of my sort of way of relaxing.
Everybody's got a hobby.
I've got a weird one.
It's okay.
And people need to understand that I'm going to speak my mind, right?
And so ultimately, he's also charted a path for the business side of things where people aren't going to be scared.
And he's built this platform to do that.
Shremichael, you know, what does he need to do, in your opinion, to become the performance?
preferred platform for politics and political action.
Because right now, again, how does he prove some of the things of the TV?
I mean, TV has had what, you know, cable news has had decades to figure out how to court
all of the people.
But you just said it's untested.
How does he go from untested to the preferred method?
And is that the strategy for Twitter moving forward?
See, that to me is some of the excitement about Twitter spaces, videos coming soon.
I want to just touch on a point that Ed mentioned.
I think it is going to be important to have ideological balance here, and I think Musk needs to
and probably would like to be careful in that regard from a business model.
But Rob is absolutely right, that the fastest growing party is,
is a non-party in the United States right now. And that's independent, unaffiliated voters.
People are saying they hell with Democrats, excuse my language, guys, to hell with Republicans.
I don't want to be a part of a party or a tribe that's constantly perpetuating thought process.
Allow me to subscribe to my own ideals based on the evidence, objectively versus subjectively, right?
And so I think Musk creating this space, this.
unfettered space where people who are liberal or progressive or conservative or hell, maybe even reactionary and their world views and allowing people to come to that space to find individuals that they want to listen to is incredible. There's a reason, guys, whether it's CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, they are all seeing their numbers decrease.
rather significantly. And that's because people are looking for direct sources of information.
Can Twitter sort of become that new home, that direct space of multiple viewpoints? I think absolutely.
And from the perspective of trying to generate revenue, Doc, that you mentioned, how does the
company generate revenue? I think advertisers over time, whether it's Tucker Carlson, other big-named
individuals, I think tonight what Governor DeSantis is really brilliant because it
gives the company the ability to showcase people want this that the listeners are there the
tweeters are there put your money where the consumers are and i think businesses ultimately will
this is brilliant on elin musk's uh part does this increase the valuation like significantly cody like
does this make twitter now well it went down it went down in the point but you know uh actually
eugene why don't you know since i know you were on the investor side of the table um
Doesn't this automatically give you a sense that, hey, look, if Twitter is being valued as a social media company, I'll have one valuation.
But if it's valued as a multimedia company with advertising revenue, have they just transformed their valuation?
I mean, I was saying actually in one of the very first spaces from months ago, I think one of the things I said at the end is not only have I learned more about media,
but...
you know, in just Twitter spaces in just a few days than I have in traditional media in years.
I wish I could invest in I really wish I could invest in Twitter stock, right, even though it's private.
So yes. So in short, yes. I think I think so. I mean, obviously they take a hit on the valuation.
Heck yes. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, they're taking a hell on the valuation because, you know, the comparable companies, the comps are have, you know, gone down just because tech companies have gone down so much.
But if you just think about the long term fundamental, so there's several ways to think about valuation.
One is just what's the free cash flow? You DCF it out and all that.
And you look at the comparable companies. I'd say if you look at it fundamentally from a long term perspective, I'm just super excited.
If you could let me buy it, buying a Twitter stock.
When I was in BC many years ago, like a decade ago, we actually almost bought secondaries before Twitter went public at like an $8 billion valuation.
And that looked ridiculous at the time, but it still would have been a great investment.
You know, even at 40, I think it looks pretty good if you got a 10-year horizon.
Yeah.
And most recently it was valued at 20.
So there's only upside now.
I think.
I mean,
and I think that
if they can be
profitable,
if they can bring in
advertising revenue,
if they can bring in
political revenue,
right,
like where people
want spots
and maybe they pay
for that,
the subscription
revenue has been
very interesting.
I know Mario's
opened up as a
I know Ed, Ed, I believe you also have subscriptions?
Yeah, you do.
And so, you know, a few people on stage actually have subscriptions open.
I know it hasn't really taken off yet.
I believe Doc also has subscriptions.
No, you don't.
Okay.
But what I was going to say was that, you know, there are people here that do have subscriptions,
and it is driving some revenue.
And again, as a reminder that, you know, this is going to change the way that,
people look at Twitter.
Doc, I know I brought you up because you do have an opposing viewpoint on DeSantis,
but I don't want to really go into Trump versus DeSantis,
but I am interested in,
would this potentially bring people that are very much,
people that are excited about Trump and not DeSantis,
to at least come and listen and have a shot at asking a question, for example?
We'd love to get your thoughts.
Well, I've...
I think this is a brilliant move by Elon.
I'm getting a lot of grief about Elon and my support for Elon from the right because this is seen as a political move as opposed to a business opportunity.
this being, you know, bringing DeSantis on.
Sorry, I want to understand that a little bit better.
Are people saying that they're going to leave the platform,
that they want to go to Truth Social,
or are they just saying, no, that Elon shouldn't do this at all himself?
It's okay if DeSantis does the spaces, but Elon shouldn't join him?
Like, what aspect of it?
Sorry, just to, because this is different.
I...
Sure. So, no, I don't think anyone is saying that they're good to leave the platform. I think people on the right and the left are enthused about the platform. I see it as a growing entity. I think it will eventually become the number one social media company. I'm very excited about it. No, I haven't started subscriptions. People have asked me. They're starting to pay for my substack.
but I'm holding back because I wonder,
there's no barrier of entry, you know,
for people to go or trying to start a subscription.
So I just struggle with a notion that who wants to pay for my opinion
when they can get similar opinions for free?
But overall, you know, you said that Twitter, in your opinion,
so one question I have for you is,
Why do you think DeSantis is doing this instead of like a traditional rally?
Well, I think he'd love to have the support, the full, the full-throated support of the richest man in the world with this media company.
Right. Does it really matter, you know, in terms of his campaign and the long-term success of his campaign where he announces? You know, I don't think so. He's always going to have Fox News 1,000 percent behind him because of his associations with the Bush family and Carl Rove at all.
So he's got the mainstream media behind him.
It's a smart move, I think, to try and get this platform,
at least to be not hostile to his candidacy on the conservative side.
So I see it as a real smart move for both of them.
And I think it validates...
the thought from those of us who really like this platform and expect and hope for its growth
that this is only going to bring more people in. It's going to bring more listeners to spaces.
It's going to bring more people who be interested in this description.
I think when they go to video in spaces that that's really going to be
the next lifting off point for valuation.
So I'm waiting for Twitter to do that before starting a podcast.
I mean, I'm all set.
I'm just not,
I'm just waiting for Twitter to get to that point and really expand the platform here.
This is where people know me.
They don't know me in the pod, you know,
out there with podcasts.
There's just a billion of podcasts out there.
But I've got a following here.
That's what I'm here.
Exactly the same.
Cody?
Hey, Doc, do you think that during this political campaign we'll see an actual debate happen on Twitter?
Could that be an interesting platform?
That would be interesting.
Our listeners can jump in.
You know, okay, I've got a theory in my head.
What if Trump decides to tweet whilst he's on tonight?
While Ron's on?
Well, yeah, can you imagine?
That would be like the most perfect time for him to say,
considering coming back to Twitter.
I've advised that, Rob.
I've advised that, so let's see.
Oh, my.
We're getting some information from from Michael.
Oh, man.
Sir Michael, you've advised the Trump campaign that Trump should start tweeting during
Cassantis.
I did. I actually text one of his closest advisers this morning and I said it would be absolutely smart for the president.
I think it would be such a, because then, but also like specifically get him to like ask a maybe highly politicized very Trumpian style question.
Because somebody's going to ask DeSantis that lie.
It'll be so funny.
Yeah.
Don't you think, at least I have thought that one of the reasons that at least motivated Elon to do this, forget about DeSantis, but Elon's motivation is to get Trump, you know, to tease at Trump's, you know, competitive juices and get him to come back to Twitter to have a similar space just to do a tit for tap.
Yeah, of course it is. It's perfect.
Yeah, I think Elon is the ultimate audience harvester.
Yeah, he's trolling Trump is what he's doing by bringing DeSantis on.
Because that's going to increase traffic here to bring Trump back.
I just don't think this is going to bring Trump back, but I'm very –
because I think Trump has a deal with Truth Social where he cannot tweet, I believe.
That might be what's actually going on.
Legal restrictions.
Plus, he just filed what a $3.5 billion lawsuit against the Washington Post for defamation.
I would love Biden to fucking come into the room.
That would be so funny.
I don't think Biden knows how to use Twitter.
I mean, I don't know if Biden's not worried that.
What about AOC?
I think Biden may not know how to use Twitter appropriately.
Maybe the social media person at Twitter.
You know, AOC knows how to use Twitter, right?
That's true. Wow.
I mean, the craziness, I mean, I have to say, Eugene, that would be crazy.
That would be incredible if AOC comes up.
But, you know, what is interesting, but again, listen to the possibilities.
I mean, that's the craziness.
Dakota was bringing up the first debate on Twitter spaces.
and and you know I'll ask a question because I know we have six minutes and we're going to talk death ceiling and other things
I guess that's going to get pushed off to tomorrow.
You're still going to try to fit that in here?
I'm not. I'm not. But I will have to fit in one thing, which is that thank you everybody
for putting in comments. I know we didn't get to talk about AI, but if you are building an
AI company, do reach out to Mario and the team. They do help incubate with IBC. And then,
you know, they are doing Shark Tank style pitches. Now that I've paid our sponsors, sure, Michael,
go ahead.
I just wanted to say really quickly, one of the things that I'm really excited about in terms of the possibilities, and I know I've been somewhat skeptical about Governor DeSantis primarily doing the announcement here. As a political strategist, I'm hoping at some point soon, Twitter will give
campaigns, political campaigns, access to data that showcases people's online behavior
on Twitter.
That's very helpful to target individuals to understand that voter behavior based on their
tweets, some of their likes, retweets.
I think also from a marketing perspective, if you're a company and you're trying to figure
out who those potential consumers are for said product...
offerings. Similarly to Facebook, I think that's also smart. So again, I'm excited about Twitter.
I think what Elon Musk here is sort of testing out really has some great impact for the business
space, but certainly a lot of impact for the political space that I'm in every single day.
And so having that ability to target people, see where they are, they are, their thought
processes, and to craft messaging and maybe even policy positions specifically to those voters
will be a huge enhancement.
I'd pay $100 a month to make sure that
Sher Michael cannot get hold of any of that information about me.
No offense, Sir Michael, I love talking to.
One last question I have for everybody.
I want to see a show of hands of people that are on stage.
Does anybody think, who thinks that,
you don't have to put your hand up yet.
I was going to say, who thinks that he'll at least get
one million viewers tonight, live?
Holy cow.
All right.
All right.
Put your hands down.
It stands a really good chance.
All right.
So that's like nearly 100%.
Okay, cool.
Everybody put their hand down.
Rob, put it down.
Come on, man.
All right.
My hand is that.
It doesn't get ragged.
Next, who thinks that he's going to get 10 million viewers tonight?
Well, aggregate, like, or live?
Live.
Nah.
Yeah.
Wow, really
I bet you if he was doing a YouTube stream
He'd probably get 10 million views
Yeah, this isn't this this ain't YouTube man
I think somewhere around five or six.
I will say, I will take the other side on that bet.
I bet you he'll get at least $10 million, if not more.
Okay, okay.
And we will talk about it tomorrow at 8am Eastern.
I know we didn't get to cover the AI stuff,
and we didn't get to cover the debt ceiling.
We'll have a lot more information on debt ceiling tomorrow anyway.
This is our first...
Fabulous, fabulous space.
Thanks, fabulous.
Are you going to pin your Venmo in the top so we can send you the bet money?
That's right.
You know, I'm telling you right now that tomorrow I will feel incredible taking my victory lap around all of you motherfuckers.
All right.
See you tomorrow.
8 a.m. Eastern.
Bye.
