Jared Isaacman: What went wrong at NASA | The All-In Interview

Yeah, so this is all my parents' fault. They skimped out on a babysitter as a kid and just put me in front of the TV. So, I was watching movies like Top Gun, The Right Stuff, Space Camp, the movie, 1980s movie where if you go to Space Camp, a robot's going to launch you into space. This was all stuff in my elementary school year. So, I mean, I told

Okay. I've been to Space Camp to like speak to the students a number of times and I ask them like, 'All right, raise your hands if you've seen the movie Space Camp here and know who Jinx is' and like no one raises their hands and that just goes to show I'm old. So

Yeah, I mean, so kind of interesting start to the story. I mean, I started my day job which is Shift4, you know, it's a pretty large fintech now when I was 16 and I was just like most you know as you know entrepreneurs you're burning yourself out waking up on the keyboard and you know I said I need a hobby in life, so I picked up my passion for flying and I basically had parallel careers, you know, in aviation and in business and I started flying air shows in 2010 and 2011. And I was flying with a bunch of really talented ex-military, even current military pilots. And they were like, you know, you could fly in the Air National Guard or the reserves and I found out, well, wow, that's amazing. You can fly fighter jets part-time and serve the country. You need a college degree. I never had one because I started my business at 16. So, that's actually why I went back to school, went to Embry Riddle because it's an aviation school. I think it graduates more Air Force pilots every year than the Air Force Academy. But anyway, that's ultimately why I got my degree. But my pursuits kind of in parallel of business and aviation has existed, you know, really since I was a teenager.

Well, I mean, you know, again, I started my business at 16. I started flying a couple years after that. You know, this is before you have a family and other responsibilities. So, like literally all I was doing was working and flying, mostly flying at night, which was great. You know, I did that around the world record flight. Didn't get it in 08. Broke that record in 09. We did it to raise funds for Make-A-Wish Foundation, which was cool and it was a great challenge. And then, later on, started flying air shows, which was great. And we did a lot to raise money for Make-A-Wish there. And then we took the air show flying, which was just maximum fun, super adrenaline, and was like, we're doing loops and rolls to music, 10 feet off the ground, 18 inches between our wings. We probably should pivot this to something that keeps the fun factor up, but has some commercial intent, also helps the country. So, we started a defense company called Draken. We wound up assembling the world's largest fleet of fighter jets, jets just like this behind me. And we were professional bad guys for the Department of Defense, the Air Force. Like we would fly as aggressors just like in Top Gun replicating Russian and Chinese Iranian tactics. I literally remember at Christmas parties in 2014, 2015 speaking to the workforce I was like I hope you all know next to commercial space and what Elon's doing at SpaceX this is the second coolest company. Like we get to be professional bad guys all the time. It was awesome. So I've had two awesome parallel careers. But, hey, running two companies nothing compared to Elon. I think he's got to be up to like a half a dozen CEO titles in parallel right now, not to mention trying to save the country and get it back on good fiscal footing. So, my responsibilities are pale in comparison.

So, it's interesting and I almost like guarantee you wouldn't remember it. After well, first I think like in early 2000. So, I started my fintech in 1999. I actually think we were on like the same old TV show being interviewed in the early 2000s and that was probably the first handshake. It was after we set the, we broke actually, I'm sorry we didn't break the record. This was in 2008 the around the world record. We came up short. Peter Diamandis, Dr. Diamandis reached out and asked if I wanted to go to Baikonur and see a Soyuz launch with some of the early commercial space pioneers. I remember all the Google founders were on that TU-154, Russian transport. I'm like, man, if this thing goes down, you're wiping out a lot of brain power here because Sergey, Larry, Eric Schmidt was on it. And that was coming back from that. I think there was a charity poker event or something at Elon's house in, it was early days of Tesla. So, I think I met him again there. But really, we don't know each other that well. I've only spoken to him a couple dozen times maybe over the years and almost entirely related to my commercial space missions, Inspiration 4 and Polaris.

Yeah, you know, the senators, I think almost every one of the senators on both sides of the aisle made that assumption and asked a lot of questions on that. And I said, look, Elon is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished entrepreneur in modern history. Every one of his companies sets out to solve some of the greatest engineering problems for all humankind. Even his super selfless service to the government of trying to get us back on, again, like I said, sound fiscal footing. I admire a lot of what he does, but honestly, and I told the senators, my connection is I paid his company to go to space twice. And look, if there was more than just SpaceX out there offering this service and you had competition, I probably would have paid less. So if anything, I'm very pro competition in this regard. And I don't consider myself beholden to Elon at all. I want to see all commercial space succeed. I'm a huge space enthusiast.

In 2020, I did hear that SpaceX was doing another one of its secondary rounds and I was connected through, I think it was Citi, and I wound up speaking to the CFO at SpaceX and he's like, 'No, look, the funding round is closed and we're kind of pretty selective on who we let in.' I was like, 'Okay, great. Well, hey, back in 2008, I actually got the first offer to pilot the first Dragon spacecraft, which is wild to think about, like 2008. And even if I can't be an investor, at some point or another, I'd love to have an opportunity.' And he was like, 'Well, can't be an investor now, but we could talk about a human spaceflight mission.' And I had no idea I was going to have an opportunity to be the first. I assumed there was a lot of people in front. And man, it was what a privilege to be able to do that. Be part of mission design and select a crew of inspiring individuals and raise a quarter of a billion dollars for St. Jude. And it was just a successful mission. It helped open the door for a lot of other commercial missions to come. So awesome experience.

Yep. And that was just truly a momentous mission. It was just so beautiful to watch. And I remember it was also like a tough year because it was a year after COVID.

a year and a half days. Like literally from that phone call in October, Inspiration 4 was born. A week or two later, we did a ceremonial signing at the Crew 1 launch, which is wild, too. And it speaks to the confidence of SpaceX that they were ready to sign up for the first civilian mission to orbit before they even returned operational capability for human space flight to NASA. Now, they did Demo 2, of course, with Bob and Doug, but Crew 1 had not flown when SpaceX said, 'We're going to get this done.' And then 10 months later, we were in orbit, and it was an incredible experience. And obviously, we followed it up with a whole development program with Polaris and flew a second mission as well. So,

When did that how did that happen? So it was right after I came back from that around the world flight and again, Dr. Diamandis reached out and we met in the city and he was like you seem to be thinking the way we think in terms of a more exciting future in transportation and aerospace. Now of course his interests cover everything from human life extension to he likes to solve a lot of world problems too. Yeah. And it was through those connections and coming out to Baikonur that I did get that offer. I still have the agreement. It was funny. I showed it to some of the SpaceX folks when we were talking about Inspiration 4, but

Yeah. Just knocked on the door every now and then and got lucky in 2020. It was certainly through the approach of trying to be an investor, but it revisited old conversations and moved very quickly.

Oh, I called the banker.

like hook me up. I want to get in. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, and I'd love to I mean, Polaris was filled with we crammed so many really incredible objectives in five days on top of about 40 science experiments. It was an awesome mission. I'd love to tell you about it, but yeah, so when we came back from Inspiration 4, I thought we checked the box on every objective. I mean, we navigated the whole billionaire in space thing, which at the time with some of the other missions that were going off was attracting a lot of heat and really focused it on trying to do good in the world, that we can make progress in space and try to make Mother Earth a better place. And we focused on raising a lot of money for St. Jude. And anyway, we did three days of science and research experiments. I felt really good and we were a little bit short on our fundraising goal for St. Jude. I mean we set out to raise over $200 million. We wound up raising $250 million but we were a little short when we came back and I was like man we almost got everything done and then Elon sent a tweet right after splashdown 40 minutes after splashdown and he said put me in for $50 million and he already had put in $5 million and we exceeded our goal and I was like man we got everything done. We set the bar high. Maybe this is it. And it was a couple weeks later that I was invited to go to Starbase. This was the second time I went. This was like October of '21. And we sat down with a number of folks including Elon. And we talked about doing a developmental program where we actually can build things and test things that hadn't been done in a while. And I remember Elon, he's like, 'We can build the suit. I know exactly how I would do it. And let's go up really high, let's get past the Gemini 11 record, go farther into space than anyone's gone since we last walked on the moon because it's different. It's hard and we're going to learn a lot. And that's what you need to do when you want to inspire people is not kind of do the same things over and over again, but do things that are different and build up to an even grander objective.' And I was like, all right, I'm totally in. And we contemplated other missions, a follow-on to Polaris Dawn and then the first crewed flight of Starship, but the nomination came in and I had to put my fun space career on hold for an incredible opportunity to serve the country and contribute to the world's greatest space agency.

No. So, and I think that's another thing that almost every senator wanted to ask is, weren't you Elon's guy in this? I have no doubt. I mean, look, he helped the president win the election. He was in Air Force One, Marine One. He was at Mar-a-Lago throughout the campaign. I'm sure he had inputs. I was getting text messages from generals that I got to know when I built, helped build that defense company, Draken. That's where we flew all the fighter jets and they were in now positions of influence and said, 'Would you like to serve in the administration?' And it wasn't even just NASA. I mean, there were roles from Treasury to the Department of the Air Force. And I was like, I am honored to contribute anyway. I've been relatively apolitical, but if I've had one political position that I've been pounding the table on since I was exposed to the defense industry at Draken, it's the competitiveness of the nation. And that's because I saw when we were replicating enemy tactics in 2015 in fighter jets, the gap between our capabilities and the bad guys was wide. And you felt very confident and every year it started to shrink. And it's like, what is going on here? Why are we paralyzed? Why are we slowing down while the Chinese especially are moving wicked fast? And I've spoken out about it from time to time on where I think some of the problems are and over consolidation of the defense industry. So anyway, I was absolutely honored to have a chance to serve. I'm sure Elon contributed, was supportive in it, but it wasn't a number of folks. And I got a call from Howard Lutnick, who was leading the transition team, and he did a phone interview and the next thing you know, like 48 hours later, I was at Mar-a-Lago. He said, 'Hop on a plane. Come out here.'

Oh, man, that was so cool. I mean, it just happened so suddenly. I just put together a quick plan. At that point, I knew it was consideration for NASA administrator, but I'll tell you, in the days leading up to it, I was hearing everything from being at the Treasury Department in various roles to the Department of the Air Force. But I knew it was NASA and I was like, well, I got to come with a plan. And we put together a one-pager for the president and it was a great interview. I mean I never really met him in person. I shook his hand once in passing 10 plus years earlier and the president was incredibly knowledgeable. I was impressed. He knew a lot about the space program which makes sense. He helped with commercial crew return operational capability to the US with Dragon. A big push on the Artemis program, created the Space Force. He knew a lot. He knew a lot about China. We talked a lot about their air force actually, which I thought was interesting. Some of my defense experience and it was incredible. It was an hour plus long, and I came away with it feeling really good about the opportunity.

Nobody coached me on it. It was just I generally I've had an opportunity to interact with NASA over the last, my commercial space career now goes on, it'll be five years in a couple months from when it began. And during Polaris when we were doing suit development, spent a lot of time at NASA using their chambers and facilities, had a lot of firsthand experience certainly at Kennedy Space Center, so I had a good starting place. And I think it really just centered on look, in this kind of environment, budgets aren't getting bigger. We do have to do more with less. The agency is doing a lot of littles. A lot of things that other agencies, departments, companies are capable of doing. That's not why the taxpayers fund NASA. NASA's funded to do the near impossible that no one else can do, not things that companies should be doing for their own competitiveness. NASA helps fund engine efficiency programs for commercial jet engine providers. It's like don't they need to do that themselves or else they lose to their competitors? Like why are we funding? So basically an idea to kind of go in, stop a lot of the littles that are not needle movers, that are not why the agency exists, and concentrate on the needle movers. So that's leading in the high ground of space. Let's complete our lunar obligations because that's a whole other story with China. At the same time, parallel the capabilities to get to Mars, help commercial industry develop the rapid reusable heavy lift capability that allows us to go anywhere, pivot from competing with industry to doing what no company would ever do, which is build nuclear spaceships. There's a lot of advantages to it. Nuclear electric propulsion for sure. We don't have to worry as much about refueling. It's hyperefficient transport of mass. It opens up beyond Mars. And frankly, it takes the pressure off in-situ resource manufacturing, and if you are going to do in-situ resource manufacturing, you're going to need nuclear power, and the farther we get away from the sun, the less reliant we are on solar. A lot of reasons why that should not be a small program in the lab right now doing light bulbs but should be a billion dollar initiative. You know, figuring out the space economy and increasing the rate of world changing discovery. Those have been my priorities. It's what I briefed the president. It's what I went through the Senate and the hearing on. It's what we would have tried to concentrate on if I got the job.

Well, I like you, I love NASA and I was so excited to contribute. I was honored that the president nominated me. I mean, you've got the best and brightest that show up to work every day and want to win in the high ground of space and I would have been thrilled to work alongside him. You're totally right. Everything about it, even just looking at the insignia, how damn inspiring it is. But NASA's got problems, but that's not unique to them. It's going to be governmentwide. Whatever I tell you that I think is wrong with NASA, I would guarantee it's systemic across every government agency and department. The bureaucracy is super real. No one's going to be surprised about that. You have dozens of layers of leadership. Everybody's got a deputy. I mean, things that we know in business that certainly Elon knows and instills in his companies across commercial space like ownership, push ownership down to the lowest levels. Empower the smart people to make good decisions. Give them the tools to make those good decisions. Hold them accountable when they get them wrong. That does not exist inside NASA or the government. There are so many layers of management. Everybody's got a deputy. It's crazy. I would have deleted all that. Not that people don't need to go, but the amount of deputies, assistants, associate assistant to the deputy, the amount of committees, the meetings with 200 people on them, the review boards, all that needs to go. You need so many more doers and there's a lot of them there. They're really smart but you got to push down ownership to the absolute lowest level. So you got this crushing bureaucracy that impedes progress. And then here's where Congress plays a role. Every state's got some equity that they care about and they protect like hell and it impedes the big progress. I love talking to all the senators and the Senate was so fair to me and I know I would have had a lot of great votes, but you talk to some senators and they're like, we have a local rocket club that supports these schools and NASA contributes to it every year and I want to make sure that continues. It's like, well, why can't you do a car wash for the rocket club? This isn't huge dollars. Why can't the community raise those funds? And then you might say, well, what's wrong with a couple rocket clubs to inspire the kids all across the country? Well, one turns to 10 turns to thousands and it becomes a distraction. Those are parts to delete. Those are resources that are draining away from what every senator should care about, which is how do we get to the moon, get to Mars, and shock the world with world changing headlines. That's what people are waiting for from NASA.

A disposable rocket. It is billions that went. I mean, you're talking. So I think it's like five or 600% overrun to build the mobile launcher 2 for the next generation SLS.

So SLS is just repurposed shuttle hardware. So and I don't blame anyone for putting us down this path because at the time you did not have Blue Origin or SpaceX or any of these other commercial companies doing the things they're doing today. But they were like, 'Let's take the shuttle program parts and put it into a program called constellation and let's take the constellation parts and put it in a program called SLS.' And essentially, again, it's the same shuttle motors. It's the same solid rocket boosters. You're basically taking the tank and putting Orion on top of it. Orion is 20 years old, by the way. It hasn't flown humans yet. And it's incredibly expensive and very disposable, but it creates a lot of jobs in certain states. And it's like at some point, look, there's enough hardware now to fly a couple missions and make sure you beat China back to the moon. But you can't be stuck on this forever. This is literally the equivalency, by the way, of taking P-51 Mustangs from World War II and using them in Desert Storm because we got to keep the plants open. And that obviously makes no logical sense whatsoever for factories that are making this stuff that used to make landing ships in World War II that made Saturn rocket that pivoted to shuttle to SLS and now to believe that you can't make another pivot is kind of crazy and the right thing you should pivot towards honestly is nuclear.

No, you know, when you're a nominee, you're actually kept in the dark on a lot of things. You do get briefed on everything that's going on with every center, you know, every major program, things that senators could ask you about from a one-on-one perspective, but you're not given access to sensitive information. You almost need some deniability when you're talking to senators on that or else your nominations could get held up really big time. So, I wasn't aware. I honestly was voted out of committee, you know, the commerce committee by Senator Cruz and 18 other, it was 19 senators in total. And the next day, the skinny budget came out. And if that skinny budget had come out a day or two earlier, I would never have made it out of committee because obviously, as I think is playing out right now, both sides of the aisle are not happy about the budget. Okay. So in this budget there's a proposal to cancel SLS and Orion, terminate numerous robotic science missions including the Mars sample return mission.

Yeah, it's an excellent question. So first, look, the reduction, the big budget reduction, is a great forcing function for change and I know there's a lot of people that probably don't want to hear that, but it is true that doesn't mean I would have landed at 19 billion in this whole thing, but I fully support the president and the goal of shrinking the budget and getting back to responsible footing, and I do think billions can go a very long way. So I will just start with that. Everything you just said directionally is kind of in the right direction. We've already got paid for enough SLS hardware that if you were to terminate for convenience now, you got enough to launch like two or three of them. It's enough to get you back to the moon. Check that box to make sure that you don't have any economic or scientific or national security reasons to stay on the moon and put your energy much more towards commercial industry. Look, nuclear thermal propulsion I'm not a fan of. I like nuclear electric. Nuclear thermal to test it you're spewing radioactive debris here on Earth. It's not going to go over well to anyone and it doesn't really solve your refueling problem. You still need to top it off with hydrogen in space if you want a reusable space plug. So, I don't like that either. And it's subscale. It's a fact. It's a program that sits in a lab forever. What you need in nuclear electric. I'm passionate on the subject. You need us to get back to the good old days. Like we went from the atomic bomb in 1945 to laying the keel on the Nautilus in 1951. Five six years. We didn't keep it in the lab forever. We said, you know what? We're going to do big bold things and that's what we need to be doing in space when it comes to nuclear. Look, a lot of the science programs I'm huge fans of. Mars sample return. The best thing to do is when the astronauts get there to bring the samples home. Why would we spend billions to send a robotic mission? We can put that into commercial industry and accelerate their timeline. So, I wasn't a fan of a pure robotic mission on that one. And you know, a lot of the big science programs, I want to see James Webb and Hubble telescope programs launching annually, if not more. Flagship programs definitionally are billion dollar spends. And if you spend a billion, then you got to get it right. And that means lots of requirements and we can't take unnecessary risk. And a billion becomes a three billion program and it's never on time. Like, we should be challenging the best and brightest. Give me 10 $100 million missions a year. Let's try that and let's accept that three fail. And I was going to introduce like time to science as a KPI. Like why do we accept things taking 10 years when they could be years? Even the decadal process of prioritizing scientific missions over a 10-year span is kind of insane.

I do think overfunding leads to complacency, leads to bureaucracy, which actually leads to a slowdown in discovery, a slowdown in invention, a slowdown in progress. Anyway, I'm sorry for my rant.

Sure.

Let's just say I am in the return to the moon camp. That doesn't mean I know that Elon is very focused on Mars and he has a lot of great reasons why including just the survival of our species. I mean in the long term it is the right move. I remember during my hearing one senator was really grilling me a lot of like what really what's the difference between moon and Mars and isn't the moon a stepping stone? I'm like well one's a planet, it has an atmosphere, and if you looked at the moon it doesn't look pretty. I mean, it's getting beat up all the time. It has no protection from solar radiation. So, reality is you should go to the moon if it because for 35 years we said we were going to. And I think that's very important. It's very late in the game to say, well, we did it in the 60s and early 70s. That would have been the fine position to state the entire time that we've done it and we're moving on. But we didn't. For 35 years, we said we're going back and we spent over a hundred billion of taxpayer dollars saying we were going to do it. And for us not to be able to do it now and watch China do it. It signals a far greater disease across our government and how our system operates. And I don't think we want that reckoning. So look, we paid for the hardware anyway. Let's go back, but let's parallel going to Mars. So that's what Artemis is really about. I mean, you can say Artemis is about Mars, too, but that's like a 100 years down the line. And like I said, it's a giant disposable rocket program that repurposes shuttle hardware. It's incredibly expensive. We signed up a lot of international partners to support it because we like collecting flags. And it doesn't necessarily always mean that what they're contributing to is in the best interest of the program. Case in point, you know, we had Gateway man, like this is going down a rabbit hole of a lot of things because of the shortcomings of the vehicle, but it's expensive. It's disposable. It is not the way to do affordable, repeatable, efficient exploration whether it's to moon, Mars or anywhere else. So let's get it done and then focus on the right way to go about doing this so that we're not seeing people walk on the moon every 5 years or something crazy that it's happening all the time which is what we get excited about.

I think we need to go there. And by going there it is the first step on a far grander journey. You know, Elon is obviously very passionate about it, occupy Mars. He knows it's not the perfect destination. There's nothing like it. It's unlike anything in Earth's history. People say it's analogous to the explorers of the 1400s. Putting people in those shipping containers for six months and saying we know how to live on Mars. You could work your whole life on Mars and you still live in a bubble. So it's not going to be an easy way of life, but it is a step in the right direction. Our destiny is out among the stars. We will inevitably learn something out there that's going to change our thinking and it's going to create a craving for that knowledge and we are going to want to continue to go out and explore and learn even more. Mars is the best stop, first step on that journey. So, let's talk about getting there and achieving some of the other missions that we might have as a country, as a species, and the relationship with private industry. Elon believes he can get payload into orbit for $10 per kilogram with the Starship platform, which is, call it a roughly 100x reduction in cost.

Oh, this is such a deep conversation. So, look, one thing I'd say is I obviously love SpaceX and they safely put me into space twice on two awesome missions, brought me home and I'm cheering them on. I'm happy what SpaceX is doing. I'm thrilled about the investments that Blue Origin is doing, that Rocket Lab is doing, Firefly. So, look, we have a great industry. So the broader question is just why isn't NASA leaning more into commercial? Well, look, it's NASA's foresight that gave birth to the commercial crew program that enabled even me to go to space. So like they are thinking in that direction, but there are politics in play. The nice thing is those winds are shifting throughout my whole confirmation process. You are educated heavily by some very smart political folks. They shepherded you around every senator and they were like, 'Look, a year ago, two years ago, the idea of talking to senators that are in SLS states and convincing them we need to be looking a little bit more to the future with commercial and maybe pivoting to things like nuclear propulsion would be a non-starter.' And I'll tell you, they were very reasonable. All of them were very reasonable that they know that this rocket built on 60-year-old technology that's $4.5 billion dollars a launch has an expiration date. So I do think that ship is turning. It's just this isn't a speedboat. The government is turning like a giant shipping container. It turns half a degree a year and that's not obviously fast enough for a lot of us. But I would say it's moving in that direction. And then NASA also has to repurpose its resources on things that a SpaceX or Blue Origin won't do. They're not going to put a rock, they're not going to build a nuclear reactor and launch it. You're not going to get the indemnities for that. Even shipping highly enriched uranium is a nightmare. That is what the government should be doing. So NASA should be doing what the commercial industries can't. And that by the way takes so much stress off a company like SpaceX trying to get to Mars. If you can minimize the number of space-based refueling or the in-situ resource manufacturing, look, even when a Starship gets to Mars, you're betting on a hundred consecutive miracles happening to top to mine propellant there and bring it back. NASA should be helping. The government should be helping with that because it creates a lot of other optionality. We could have nuclear battle stars in lower Earth orbit as part of Golden Dome. There's a lot of reasons why it's not all SpaceX, all commercial versus NASA. Both.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yes.

Just said the president had decided to go in a different direction. We all serve at the pleasure of the president. Now I mean I started to get some more details as it went on. I honestly also like I'm not playing dumb on this. I had a pretty good idea that the timing was not much of a coincidence that there were other changes going on the same day and it was kind of obviously a disappointment.

I just you know there was obviously more than one departure that was covered on that day and it became at least from what I've heard that it was and I'm just you know I read the news same as everybody else but I had obviously was in DC for the last 6 months getting ready that there were some people that had some axes to grind I guess and I was a good visible target. I know that the news talks a lot about the Democratic donations is the cause. That was not a new development. You just Google, they're all public. The New York Times published an article saying that President Trump knew about your Democratic donations in the past when you received the nomination. So that was actually not news according to the New York Times, that was well understood, well covered. So kind of put the kibosh on that explanation. So what are the axes to grind? Are the axes to grind with Elon? Are there kind of two factions? Whatever you can provide some color on, I think it would be really helpful to understand because there's a lot of speculation going on right now. And I would say some folks are really disappointed in some of the transitions that are taking place and some folks are really trying to grok it and understand it. So anything you can do to help folks understand would be, I think helpful. First I just want to be overwhelmingly clear. I don't fault the president at all. I fully support him. The president of the United States, the leader of the free world, makes a thousand decisions a day with seconds of information. He's got to get a lot more right than wrong. So I don't blame an influential adviser coming in and saying look here's the facts and I think we should kill this guy and the president's got to make a call and move on. I think that's exactly how it went. It was not the Senate at all. You don't get floor time. There are 100 nominees waiting for floor time. The only way you get floor time is when a lot of senators call Senator Thune and say this is our guy and we got to move him along. That's how you know it's like a high you're going to get a high vote count. So the Senate was very fair, really nice. I enjoyed that experience. I think you got one person, and I don't know the history on what the trigger was or wasn't, but decided to make a move and again I don't fault the president for it at all. But in terms of donations, I've always been somewhat of a moderate. I am like a right leaning. I do support the president's agenda, that's why I made as big of a donation as I did to his cause.

I mean, you know, people can draw their own conclusions, but I think the direction that people are going is or thinking on this seems to check out to me.

I mean I think that the people overwhelmingly voted for the president to go in and shrink the government and bring about change and get rid of fraud, waste and abuse of which I am a thousand percent behind the president and I believe that that's what Elon and DOGE was working towards. But people also hate change. We all know this. And people can be very protective of their empire. When somebody comes in, Elon's got a playbook and I think he knows how to get things done. And I think in a lot of respects that rubs some people, or had some axes to grind. I don't know. And we're just waiting. I don't want to speculate on all this but

I have no idea. I wouldn't presume to know what goes on through his mind. Like I said, I think he spends a lot of time trying to solve a lot of world's problems and a problem for this country and I think a lot of people agree with it is that the national debt is just getting way out of hand. I mean, this has been my case for about four years that if we don't fix this, it eventually becomes an intractable death spiral. And when that happens, all of the wrangling we're doing over budget, priorities, programs, interests, jobs are no longer possible. It's like you're trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. You don't get the choice of what programs to fund when there is no funding. And that's the unfortunate iceberg we're running into.

I mean, it was interesting. Obviously there was kind of the grand exit this past week and then I don't know, at least in my Twitter feed, I try and follow a lot of the cabinet secretaries. They were all coming out and saying, DOGE is alive and well embedded inside the. I think it was more implying that we're going to clean house. We're going to take care of our own house as opposed to letting other people help us do it. Problem is, we haven't been very successful at that historically. So, I suspect going into the midterms, people don't want to let the other side be pounding the table on DOGE. So, I don't know. I mean, look, I was an outsider nominee, so I have no idea how it'll play out, but I think some people in the government want to see it go quiet late in the night.

You know, I don't know what I would classify a deep state or not. There is an absolutely bloated bureaucracy that hates change. Gets very entrenched that is happy to ride out political appointees. You're gone in three four years or you're dead before you even arrive in my case. We'll wait you out. So, I think there's some of that. And then I think there's some of that in with actual politicians and political appointees that advocate like hell for the status quo. And some of it might be good intended because they're just afraid of what comes next. Why take a risk when you've got something right now that supposedly works? And I ask, what if that comes at the competitiveness of the nation and our economic security? What if we get it wrong because you weren't willing to take some risk and make changes? So, I don't think they're necessarily all evil, by the way. I just think some people get very comfortable in the status quo.

I don't know. This is like the first time in 26 years that I've been really kind of out of work. I'm sure I'm definitely going to go back and help Shift4. I won't ever rob my CEO of his well-deserved title now. I'll probably be an exec chair or something. And I got to work. I got to have a mission. But I'll find something to contribute to. And man, I love flying and I love space and I like the philanthropic efforts we've been doing with St. Jude. So, I'll keep busy.

Well, thank you. I appreciate having the opportunity to chat.