Really, the issue, honestly, the issue is not about giving up money or paying taxes. The issue is about creating the idea that people can get taxed on their assets after they've paid income tax, or illiquid assets before they've paid income tax, because it creates a mechanism that I think ultimately leads to ruin and socialism that makes it very hard for anyone in the country to progress individually. And I think the lack of progress that arises from these sorts of structural tax systems are what will be the ruin of Silicon Valley, the ruin of California, and potentially the ruin of the country. So that's what I'm most worried about.
Okay, that is an important issue. Looks like Steve Hilton was trending not so great. Chamath on Polymarket, like a 2% chance last time I checked, and we'll pull that up in a second. Unfortunately, more of the same for California in terms of putting unqualified people in positions of power to run the state into the ground. I, of course, fled three years ago. How are you feeling tonight, Chamath? And what are your thoughts? Generally speaking, you chose to stay in California and fight.
To be honest, I stayed for my family and to keep building the businesses that I'm involved in. And if I have to pay the tax, I'll pay the tax and I'll move on. But I do think it has a pretty negative slippery slope for the incentives to build here. And I think that that's not going to have some cataclysmic overnight effect, but I think it's going to cause the slow burn and decay of the state. So I'm hoping that Prop 40 fails and I hope Propositions 41 and 42 pass, and if those don't happen, we'll absorb the consequences, you know. But I do think it has a really bad impact on Silicon Valley and then broadly America. And then more generally, I'm really surprised at where the betting markets and where the polls and the exit polls are putting this election. If it stands — again, I don't know if it stands, because most of the polls haven't closed yet — but if it stands, it's a pretty enormous shift in the sentiment of the country, and I think that it's going to take a little while for us to unpack why and what that means.
Yeah, and we're going to do that tonight. We've got an incredible lineup of guests, and we'll bring our first one on in a moment. It is 7:04 p.m. in the great state of Texas, which means it's 5:00 p.m. on the left coast and 8:00 p.m. on the right coast. Polls have closed in more than a dozen states: Georgia, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina. They're counting their votes. Still early, but it does not look like this will be a blue spritz. Looking like it's going to be a blue tsunami, as some people predicted. Let's pull up the balance of power here. 2026 midterms on Polymarket just in the last hour. If we were looking at it in the last hour, gentlemen, an hour ago it was looking like low 80s — 83, 84, even as low as 82% for the sweep. Sweep chances now 93%.
And these tend to be — I think we all agree — if we can't trust the polls as much as we used to, and for any number of reasons, whether it's biases or their methodologies, Friedberg, when people do put large amounts of money in, the volume on this one that we're looking at is 68.7 million. When you get to that level, you are talking about a pretty significant amount of money. And here to talk about it with us is the sitting senator from the great state — now my state — the great state of Texas. My guy, the senior senator, Ted. How are we feeling tonight? You were caught on some microphones. I don't know if it was public statements or not. They were framing it as this was leaked audio. I don't think it was leaked. You had concerns about tonight. And are those concerns realized?
Well, I will say I was amused when it was characterized as leaked audio, because it's what I said on my podcast I do every week, Verdict with Ted Cruz. So it's like saying your comment on the All-In podcast was leaked.
It was leaked from Apple Podcast and Spotify. They both were involved in this leak.
So, listen, I am very worried about tonight. It's early still. There's still people voting, but we have polls closed on the east coast. The early votes we've seen all over the country, the Democrats have had a sizable advantage. I can tell you in Texas, if the election had closed yesterday, we would face devastation in Texas. The early vote, the Democrats had a big advantage. That's true in most states across the country. Now, there's good news and bad news from that. If you look at how you analyze elections typically, you break voters down on the Republican side into what are called four Rs, three Rs, two Rs, and one Rs. A four R is someone who's voted in four of the last four Republican primaries. A three R obviously is three of the last four, etc. The Democrats do the same thing. If you look at early votes in Texas, you had about three-fourths of the 4Ds and 3Ds had voted early in Texas, and about half of the four Rs and three Rs had voted early in Texas. So there was a big differential. So if you ended it there, we were facing a bloodbath. That's the bad news. The good news: Republicans have a lot more outstanding votes that were available to come in on election day. There were a lot more three Rs and four Rs that hadn't voted than there were 3Ds and 2Ds.
The question that I don't know, sitting here just eight minutes after polls closed in most of Texas, is what turnout was on election day. To win, we need a big, big Republican turnout. That's true in Texas. That's true in most states. And by the way, as we get further west for the folks still voting, and there are congressional races in particular in California where turnout is going to matter. And so even if we're looking at a really nasty election on the east coast, and we might be — I mean, right now Florida is basically tied, the governor's race and the Senate race. I think we'll win both of those, but they're neck and neck. It's not encouraging. Georgia, the Senate race, it should have been our best pickup opportunity this cycle. They called it at 7:02 p.m. Texas time, about an hour after the Georgia polls closed.
So, but I will say for everyone where polls are still open: if you are Republican, if you're libertarian, if you're independent, if you're just a normal common-sense person, please come out and vote anyway, because it can still make a difference while the polls are open.
Ted, what do you think about the comment that this makes about specifically the president and the economy versus what has been, you know, a pretty consistent behavioral pattern in many elections before this, which is you tend to keep the balance of power by flipping? And so how do you, how do you aportion what is happening here? Like, what is the signal that the observer should take away?
Yeah, look, there is a structural dynamic that typically the party out of power gains seats in an off-year election, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One, the party out of power, they're usually angry, they're pissed off, and they're unified. In this case, if you are a left-wing voter, you hate Donald Trump with a fury that could ignite a thousand suns. That hate motivates a lot of people to go online and give money, and it motivates a lot of people to show up and vote. And so the left is all unified, and even the differences among the left, hatred of Trump manages to paper over that. On the right, look, right now Republicans have control over the White House, the Senate, and the House. The danger is a) that our people are complacent. They say, 'Gosh, things are pretty good. I don't need to show up.' And b) that we're divided, that you have different factions of folks in the middle and right that are upset at one thing or another. So in Texas, you have conservatives who are mad that Congress hasn't passed the Save America Act. I'm mad that Congress hasn't passed the Save America Act. I've been fighting hard for it. We haven't had the votes. We haven't had 50 votes in the Senate, but I understand that frustration, but that may well have kept some conservatives at home. In Texas, you've got moderates, at least some, who are mad that John Cornyn lost the primary, and if conservatives stay home and moderates stay home, very quickly you start running out of votes. That happens in most elections. So I wouldn't necessarily overread it. I will say I appreciate the president went all in. I mean, he was on the road for the last month. He was doing rallies all over the country. I did a bunch with him. Part of the reason my voice is so weak: I did 17 rallies in nine states in the last 14 days. I can barely speak. But as we sit here right now, we don't know if that was effective turning people out or not. And if folks stayed home, this night has the potential to be a really, really bad night.
Senator, what's the setup if the Democrats sweep the House and the Senate for legislative process going into next year? You know, what's going to happen and how are things going to get done, or what's not going to get done? Are we going to face a big shutdown? Maybe talk through some of the big moments that are ahead here.
Yeah. Look, I think if Democrats take one or both houses of Congress, and tonight that is looking very, very likely, we will see almost total legislative gridlock. Remember, this is a party that's animated by hatred for the president. So I don't think we're going to see our Democrat colleagues come in and want to do much productive, actually want to do much legislating. So I think most legislation will grind to a halt. We'll name a few post offices. We'll do a few things that are not terribly consequential, but I don't expect major legislation to move if the Democrats take one or both houses. If the Democrats take the Senate, that's not the only thing that halts. I think confirmations grind to a halt. If we have cabinet vacancies, I think those cabinet vacancies stay open. We have sub-cabinet vacancies where the president has not nominated. I think those stay open, that the president will no longer be able to put his team in place in the executive branches. And I believe Chuck Schumer, if he's got a majority, will stop judicial confirmations as well. That's never happened. In the past, when you had a president of one party and a Senate of the other, you moved forward with judicial nominations. It moderated some. So the nominations would be less extreme if you had divided control. I think Schumer and the Democrats will just halt all judges, which means if we have a Supreme Court vacancy, I think they'll keep the vacancy open for two years. I don't think they care, because their base is that radicalized. I think we will also see two years of relentless impeachment. I believe the House will impeach Donald Trump if they have the House. They may impeach him multiple times. We will see subpoenas. We will see investigations. I think they will go after President Trump. I think they will go after his family. I think they will go after cabinet members. I expect in the lame duck we will see an impeachment of Pete Hegseth. I think they're eager to go forward with that. And so I think it's just all-out partisan war. And the problem is, if tonight is a really good night for the Democrats, it encourages the crazies in their party. It encourages the open communists. It encourages the open Islamists. And I will say, for the topics you guys focus on, which is tech and AI: if tonight is a big night for the Democrats, it is a very bad night for the economy in this country, and in particular for AI and data centers, because the Democrats have decided that AI writ large and data centers in particular are the devil. And I think you're going to see, if they have one or both houses of Congress, a relentless assault on both AI and data centers, which will be a massive in-kind contribution to communist China, because they'll do everything they can to slow America down, which, as you know, if we halted all data center construction in America, that would likely put the American economy into a recession. Unfortunately, the Democrats would celebrate that, and they would blame it on Trump and say, 'See how bad Trump is? Now we're in a recession.' I think they're going to do everything they can to try to make that happen.
To your point, I think the game theory — we talked about this, Ted, on our pod last week — which is exactly what you said, which is if you have majority control of both houses, the Democratic agenda would be to subpoena everybody, get as many documents as possible, either release those documents or leak the documents so that you create as much, you know, FUD around all of these folks as much as possible. And then to the extent that you can actually get something to the president's desk, you're going to do things that are so counter to what they would logically want to have happen that it forces the president somehow to veto them if possible. And so the setup is to almost push uncertainty into the marketplace, specifically the capital markets, and that freezes the markets. And if you freeze the market, to your point, you do induce a recession. And that's probably the best setup for a Democrat to run. There was an interview that Peter Thiel did that I don't know if you saw it, but he said that if there was a blue tsunami, it actually unshackles the Democrats to run their most extreme candidate, because they would view this as legitimization of the far-left edges of the platform. Do you agree with that? And how do you see that playing out into '28 if you do?
Yeah, I think that is very likely correct. One of the states that I campaigned, barnstormed the whole state with is Michigan. I don't know what the results are going to be in Michigan, but I think the two most dangerous Democrat candidates this cycle are Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and James Talarico in Texas. And I think if one or both of them wins — I said this on the trail — if El-Sayed wins in Michigan, I think it makes it much, much more likely that AOC is the Democrat nominee for president in 2028, because I think she's already one of the top three contenders. I think AOC, Gavin Newsom, and probably John Fetterman are the top three right now. The main knock against AOC in a Democrat primary is she's too extreme to win the general. If you get El-Sayed winning in Michigan, the quintessential swing state, I think they say, 'Look, it doesn't matter. You can go full-on crazy and win anyway.' I think that's bad for the country, but I do think it makes the Democrat party more extreme. I will say also, look, the Democrats have already foreshadowed that if they have one or both houses, they're going to use subpoenas to go after business executives who've worked with the president, to go after Elon Musk. They've already declared they intend to engage in lawfare and in open attacks. Bernie Sanders has suggested nationalizing, seizing SpaceX and Starlink. I mean, this is stuff out of like Fidel Castro's Cuba that they're talking about. Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan, who styles herself a moderate, has said they have a whole strategy of targeting business leaders who worked with the president and worked with the administration, and also targeting young people, like a 25-year-old who goes and works for the federal government. They want to go persecute those young people to disincentivize anyone working with Republicans. I mean, you can say it, Senator. They're going to go after Big Balls. It's clear.
They're going after Big Balls. Here's the Texas Senate election winner. Wow. Don't blame me. I just got here, and I was told when I go vote to just go straight red and don't bring blue to Texas. I'm wearing my red tie right now. I can assure you I have not brought California to Texas. But it's time right now, I think, Ted, maybe for a little reflection on why people are so charged up about what happened over the last two years. I'm sure many people are listening right now saying, 'Hey, these guys aren't even doing any kind of self-reflection.' What do you think the Republicans can learn from tonight's shellacking? Are there things in the first two years of this president? And I know we're not allowed to criticize President Trump and everybody has to be in line and the criticism has to be very moderate, but you are an independent thinker and you have broken ranks with President Trump. Why is he getting such a strong reaction here? If you had to list two or three things he should have done better in the first half to avoid this, what would they have been? Senator Ted Cruz.
Well, listen, I don't want to overreact until we see all of the results tonight. There are a lot of signs that indicate it is bad, but elections — I want to wait till all the votes are counted.
But it's clear the warning signs, there are a lot of people that are unhappy. One of the real drivers that makes so many elections bumpy is rural voters. Farmers and ranchers are really unhappy, and that's made a big difference, particularly right up the middle of the country. So it's a big factor in Texas. It's a factor in states like Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Michigan, states where you've got big ag communities. And farmers and ranchers, they're frustrated. They're frustrated because diesel's six or seven bucks a gallon. They're pissed off because fertilizer has gotten really, really expensive. And the impact of tariffs has really impacted them. And so you've got a lot of farmers that historically show up in big numbers for Republicans, both in turnout and margin. And one real possibility, we'll find out after election day, is if a bunch of those farmers stayed home, if a bunch of those ranchers stayed home, or if they voted Democrat — even worse — that could lead to a terrible outcome. You've also got suburban voters who have been a swing vote. Where suburban voters ended up this cycle, I don't know. You look at a state like Georgia or a state like Arizona, where just a few years ago Georgia and Arizona were bright red, they've now turned purple at best, if not blue, because suburban voters in Atlanta and Phoenix turned against the president. And so in Texas, I am worried. We're going to see the numbers, but you look at Hispanic voters, particularly Hispanic voters in South Texas. So, in my re-elect just two years ago, I won statewide by nine points. I won by a million votes. And what I was most proud of is I carried Hispanics across the state of Texas by six points. And that's never happened. That is unprecedented. No Republican Senate candidate has done that. And the Rio Grande Valley, which has been bright blue for a hundred years, we flipped it red. And I carried the valley and Trump carried the valley. Now, what I don't know, but I'm quite concerned about, is those voters in the valley who came out for the first time and pulled the lever Republican in 2024 — did they stay home or did they switch back to what they and their parents and grandparents had been doing for a hundred years, which is voting Democrat? And that's going to be something people are going to look at: farmers and ranchers and ag voters, they're going to look at blue-collar voters, they're going to look at Hispanic voters, which have a heavy overlap with blue-collar voters, and they're going to look at suburban voters. And if we're having losses with all of them, that leads to a wave, if not a tsunami.
Yeah, and that means it's an opportunity — work to do winning those folks back. Same way Trump won a lot of moderates. A lot of moderates were, you know, Trump 2.0 curious. So you got a lot of work on your hands, Ted, as an elder statesman in the party. Thank you for coming as always. We appreciate you here in the great state of Texas. Thank you, Senator.
Thank you, Senator. Okay, now from the other side of the aisle, and we have an update here. 42 Senate results right now: 42 Democrat, 31 Republican, according to New York Times. A long way to go. I don't think it's going to be 11 people as the delta. But with us now from the other side of the aisle, or straight down the middle, is a friend of yours, Dave Friedberg: Rahm Emanuel is joining us, former ambassador to my favorite country, Japan, former mayor of Chicago, and President Obama's chief of staff. Welcome to the All-In election night coverage for 2026. Rahm Emanuel.
Okay, a little technical difficulties there. Friedberg, your thoughts while we wait for Rahm here on Ted's comments there, especially towards the end — lessons in what happened over the last few years. He mentioned tariffs, he mentioned diesel, which obviously goes to the war obviously. Any thoughts there while we...
Just, I'll just reiterate what he said about farmers, because I work in the agriculture industry. 98% or 97% of farms lose money now. They can't make a profit. We lost our biggest customer, China, for our ag export. The US is the world's largest exporter of agricultural products. China, our biggest buyer, disappeared. And the fertilizer cost, which is the number one input cost for farming row crops, the price doubled, and as the senator mentioned, fuel prices doubled. So structurally, farmers cannot make a profit. So they've received multiple government checks, ad hoc payments over the last two years to try and keep them afloat. So it's a crisis in agriculture right now, and I think we're seeing that play out in these rural states in the results.
Yeah. Okay. I believe we have Rahm Emanuel with us. Rahm, are you here?
You remember your good friend Dave Friedberg. Great to see you.
You guys had a wonderful show.
Thanks for coming back. You're always welcome, Rahm. And meet my good friend Chamath Palihapitiya, part of our quartet here. David Sacks couldn't make it. Rahm, we have what looks to be right now 43 Democrats, 31 Republicans on the Senate. I think this is looking like the tsunami shellacking that was predicted. The polls seem to have been correct, and certainly Polymarket correct. Rahm, what do you take away from tonight? And then what can we expect from the Dems if they do sweep the House and the Senate?
Look, I mean, a couple things. One is I think you're going to see Dems all over the country win. I think that the truth is it will be that the Republicans lost, it was repudiation, but that's an opportunity for Democrats to solidify this coalition. And we've got to be clear that we can make this the winning coalition of strong Democratic turnout, what I call non-MAGA Republicans or John McCain, Mitt Romney Republicans who voted for Democrats, and a larger share in places like South Carolina, Kansas, and other kind of congressional districts, and independents. We got to make this election not transactional but transformational: do things on ethics, do things on tariff relief, do things on a minimum wage that makes bills not only that we down-pay on the change they voted for and also builds and rebuilds the trust, and don't just spend it on our version of Donald Trump's Hunger Games, a Democratic version. Actually do the work. And I always use this out on the campaign trail: you know, the kids on the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier were at sea for 322 days straight. Bathrooms didn't work. It was rancid food. The Congress was in session for just shy of 100 days. Why don't you show up like the kids on the Abraham Lincoln? Pass a comprehensive ethics bill that affects all three branches of government. Ban stock trading. Ban participation in prediction markets for the executive branch. Mandatory blind trust if you make over a million dollars. Mandatory term limits or age out — I say 75 — what I call the Jared Kushner rule: you can't be in government and taking foreign money, and when you get out you have a two-year hiatus before you can take any foreign investment. So to me, that would be a way to establish that you actually heard the voters and are going to do the work. The other thing is: look at Florida, look at Texas, look at North Carolina, and look at South Carolina. In each of those states, Senate-wise, Donald Trump picked the candidate. We had very good candidates. And I always said this when I was chair 20 years ago in 2006 for the Democratic efforts to take the House: quality of candidates in the end of the day is very, very important and is underappreciated. And I think the president interjecting in South Carolina, picking Darlene Graham, a place we had no right to compete, we had a great candidate there; Annie Talerico versus Paxton as opposed to incumbent Senator Cornyn; Marshall in North Carolina kind of chasing Tillis out, giving Governor Cooper a real chance, and he I think just got called from what I said. So in each of these cases, the president being involved — Georgia is another example. Hassell was supposed to be a battleground. He just clean-clocked Collins. Again, a candidate picked by the president in a crowded primary. I think that is a message as it relates to how the president got in the middle of the primary, selected a candidate, and put the weakest foot for the Republicans forward.
Maybe you have a question here. Yep.
Yeah. You had a really interesting strategy which I just want to double-click on. Your perspective — I just want to make sure I represented it accurately — is you think that these guys with majorities in both houses should be legislating and actively have an agenda that they can kind of come together, caucus on, agree on, and then start pushing forward legislation in these two periods, versus what a lot of people think happens in a moment like this, which is a lame-duck two years. Everybody focuses on '28. People kind of run to the exits. Can you just explain why that's so important?
Well, let me walk through a couple things. One is everything I picked would unite Democrats and divide Republicans. That's on the political level, and that's important to 2028. And B is, I don't want to go in having just rented the voters in 2026. In a lot of states, independents and what I call non-MAGA Republicans are going to do something they don't normally do, which is vote Democrat. Affirm that vote. Don't just use it and dump it.
I'm all for hearings on follow the money. I want to know where the Venezuela money is. I want to know what deal was cut as it related to Qatar giving that plane. Follow the money. But if you end up going impeachment versus ethics reform, impeachment — Republicans will solidify. On ethics reform, you're going to get half the Republican caucus to vote with you, and you're going to make a difference, and you're going to clean up the Supreme Court, the federal branch, the executive branch, the cabinet, and the House and the Senate. It's not like only one branch of government needs a good cleaning here. And so...
Do you think that the ethics... Sorry, go ahead.
My point is, in that case, when you have that kind of big bipartisan vote, you'll affirm that you're governing. The same thing with raising the minimum wage, you're going to get a lot of Republican votes; tariff relief, a lot of Republican votes, and the Democrats will be united in that effort. And so to me, in each of those cases, you know, and I draw a piece of history: in 1991, George Mitchell sent George Bush 41 a tax and budget bill, and the president broke his pledge, ended up getting Pat Buchanan in primary, and Bill Clinton was set up in '92. One year later, in 2007, we sent George Bush 43 a kids' health care bill, and 60 Republicans voted with us. It becomes the second bill that Barack Obama signs into law as president, and 60 Republicans voted with us when George Bush vetoed it. So to me, what unites Democrats, what divides Republicans, and how do you make progress in telling the voters that took a lark on you?
Are you aligned with the Democratic establishment on ethics reform, or do you think that this is going to be a situation where, you know — I mean, you're an elder statesman of the party suggesting something that in practice it doesn't seem like either side wants a lot of, for example, like the stock bans and whatnot.
No, I think there's no way — when you look at, first of all, as somebody who, on Ezra Klein's podcast in December of 2024, literally 22 months ago, the headline of that podcast with me was 'It's the corruption, stupid.' I said that corruption is going to be the major issue because Donald Trump was very clear that this was going to be a tenure of greed, grievance, and grand. And he's fulfilled exactly what he was going to do. And the greed is — and I'm from Chicago, I got a high standard — I've never seen corruption like this. And it's blatant. And he tells you, 'I never got credit for what I did in the first term. Forget about it.' And they've just been going to town now.
Yeah. Let me let him finish.
Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish. I just want to run out of time.
I think you can't — the Democrats ran on the closing three weeks, 70%, if my math is right, of the ads were about corruption. If you do nothing about it, you're going to have, in my view, wasted this second look that the public is giving you. You cannot spike the ball as a party on the 20-yard line. If you do this — as I kind of say tonight, the Republicans are going to get a shellacking, they're going to lose. What we do in 2027 will determine whether we won.
What do you think needs to be done to help the American people? Chasing the corruption helps with the politics of the governing of the people, but the cost of living, the lack of wage growth, the challenges that the everyday American is facing right now, the reason that people are so angry and feel so left behind. What can be done if this legislative structure causes what Ted Cruz calls a gridlock? What do you think can be done? How would you advise the party leadership going into this next cycle to actually solve the American people's problems?
You're making it as if the corruption is over here and the cost of living is over here. They're actually heads and tails of the same coin. By way of example: president gets a $450 million Qatari-gifted Air Force One, you get four bucks — 50 cents a gallon of gas. He's fixated on his arch, and your family can't afford a meal at the Golden Arches. Don't think for a moment that corruption is some common cause Harvard good-government issue and has nothing to do with the economy. The American people think the reason they can't afford is because everybody else is making money. And this election, unlike '06, has a level of anger towards the president because he promised money in your pocket, and they watch him every day putting money in his own pocket. So don't separate. Now, two — to your longer-term problem. While a lot of the media focuses appropriately on gas, groceries, etc., the number one issue that's driving Americans on inflation is health care costs. 40 million Americans put health care costs on their credit card. It's the number one reason for personal bankruptcy. And you have premiums going up at double digits and incomes are stagnant, right? Not counting utility rates, not counting gas prices, everything else that's piling on. Health care costs are the — when you think, if you go talk to people, which I have been in all corners of this country, health care costs is what is top of mind. And it's — and look, I'm going to be as somebody that's taken on the insurance companies and the health care industry twice: one for kids' health care under President Clinton, and then ACA for President Obama. The insurance company's business model is literally structured around the word 'no,' and your payments on premiums is based on the premise of 'yes.' There's a mismatch here, right? 25% of all hospital costs are driven over administration of insurance claims. The system needs a good restructuring to align people's interests towards better health care coverage, better health care results, and more importantly, where the econ — where the citizens of the industry.
Can both parties — yeah, can both parties align on that? I mean, I do think intuitively I've heard both sides speak in the same vein as you're speaking. You know, knowing that insurance, the insurance business model in health insurance is to take a percentage of the cost ultimately. So as costs go up, if you're taking a percentage of the cost, you make more profit. So the insurance business model is fundamentally aligned with getting everything to be more expensive. And I would also argue that there's a role that inefficient government services play in this, but we can have that debate another time. But like, yeah, we can have that conversation, but can't they get aligned on this? I mean, what do you think happens on this?
Well, let me — look, by way of reference, the insurance claim area is $1.5 trillion. I think every one of you are business people. Taking 10% out of that, $150 billion is really not hard. You can almost do it almost on just the pre-approval area. And again, 25 cents out of every dollar for the hospitals is dedicated to administrative costs, which is all around insurance compliance. There's a mismatch in economics. You can get consensus also in and around — I would do it on reimportation of pharmaceutical, both drugs and prices, so there's greater competitiveness. There's greater things you could do on transparency. And since the hospital costs that are driving the insurance numbers and the hospital numbers are directly related to insurance, so those are examples of what you could do. And I think, like I say this, I took on the insurance companies to get 10 million kids health care for President Clinton. Obviously did what I did for President Obama through ACA. There's a place here. You could try to do Medicare for all. That means nothing else will happen. I don't think it will happen. Or do what I think are very doable bipartisan things that get at the cost structure and allow you to get better coverage.
Rahm, can I ask you a technical question? Um...
Yeah, it's your — I got to get going, but yes, you can get one or two more. Go.
Would you advise the Senate to eliminate the filibuster?
Well, I'm the wrong guy since I'm a former House member, and anybody knows anything — anybody from the House thinks the Senate is a constitutional mistake. Look, I would not do that, but I — no, I wouldn't do that. And that's not for me, but I would say no. But you have a lot to prove, otherwise we're going to start carving things out on the filibuster, meaning things that you can't filibuster around. So you have a chance to govern.
Rahm, let me ask you a final question here since I know you have to go. There's a large number of moderates. I think you're obviously in that group. I think most of the people on this podcast are as well. But I don't speak for them, but generally we have a country now that has extremes in both parties. On one side, you got America First and really dark characters, anti-Semitic, racist, Nick Fuentes, that whole cohort. And then in the Democratic party, we now have these socialists and then also anti-Semitism and all kinds of ugly stuff. Is there a way to get people back to the center and working together on these? You've obviously done that in the past yourself, but how do we get the country back there?
In a post-Trump world, right? My general view is to seek common ground, but I also know how to hold my ground. Okay? So my attitude — and I did this when I was mayor, when I was negotiating: tell me what you want to do here. I'm going to tell you what I want to do. You tell me what you can live with. I'm going to tell you what I can live with. I'm going to tell you what I'm not going to live with, and we'll compromise on this. That's my general approach. It doesn't mean that it's moderate. It means you're hearing, listening, and where you can, accommodating. Okay? But there are certain things you won't go towards. Now look, by way of reference, I think what Gingrich did in the government shutdown in '95, absolute mistake. Three years later, we got to a balanced budget agreement. So things were, you know, hold your ground, but then seek common ground. And that's where the bill...
Okay, guys. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from Rahm in the future. He hasn't announced yet, Friedberg, but based on your encouragement, I'm sure he's thinking about it. You two guys have had some great moments here on the show already. Hey, really excited for our next guest to jump on. Do we have... Oh, we don't. Not yet. Okay, so let's get an update here. 43-32 for the Senate. We'll pull that up again. North Carolina looks like it is going to the Democrats. Cooper has won. And what are your thoughts here, Chamath, on the never-ending lawfare between these two parties? Obviously, there were a bunch of cases last time when Trump was running for a second term, they targeted him. You could argue some of the cases, you know, he maybe had stepped in it or made a couple of mistakes, but it was pretty obvious that a number of the cases were specifically because they wanted to stop him from running for president. President Trump, he's then gone out and done a bunch of lawfare himself, going after the people who went after him. And now there's this expectation in this interim second half of President Trump's 47th term here that it's all going to start all over again. And this is something I don't think any American wants to see. Is there any off-road for these two parties to stop fighting each other and get back to work for the American people? What are your thoughts?
I mean, I hope that they would find a way to take the high road and start to focus on '28. I think if what Rahm says is actually quite smart for the Democrats, and I hadn't considered that option, which is you want to reward the swing voters that came over to you by actually legislating along the lines of what the candidates have asked for. The thing that I struggle to understand, though, is the candidates are of such a wide spectrum on the Democratic side. It's not clear what the actual legislative through-line is through all of them now. So, but if they can caucus and figure that out, I had not considered that as a viable option. My presumed approach that they would take is sort of a scorched-earth approach, which is just to try to slow the president down and to put a scarlet letter on as many people around him, so that they are almost like in a very difficult position and not in a position to run effectively in '28. Again, that's what I thought that their strategy would be. I think that there's a version of this maybe...
Where the president, in focusing on his legacy, can maybe negotiate some sort of an understanding, which is there's a set of concepts that are maybe, you know, down the middle and most people would agree with, and that gives the Democrats a win, but it also gives the president a win. Maybe that's, Jason, how you negotiate an off-ramp.
I think it's going to be very dynamic in these next six months because you're going to see the tenor of what the goal is. I think the Democrats have to come together, though, and coherently develop a strategy. What is it that you want to accomplish? Is it the scorched-earth path, or is it the reward-the-swing-voters path going into '28? I don't think you can do both because I think the legislative horsepower that's required for one doesn't leave much room for the other.
Yeah, I think you got to go with the latter, as you're saying. One of the things the socialists and a lot of the folks on the left have done really well is just say, 'Hey, it's about affordability and, you know, stopping foreign wars and increasing the minimum wage and just getting really focused on affordability,' and saying that over and over and over again.
Freeberg, the last time the Democratic Party tried to put Trump in jail, all they did was make him a superhero and a martyr, and everybody came out in force to say, 'Hey, this is unfair. We got to vote this guy back in.' So you'd think the Democrats would have learned their lesson that being the anti-Trump party and not having ideas would be a mistake. What's your take on how these two parties move on and maybe start working for the American people, and if there's even a chance of that?
Vis-à-vis lawfare, etc. You think there's no hope? I don't know if there's like a working-together thing that's going to happen. This, I think the next year, Rahm is right, is going to be quite instrumental in figuring, and Ted said the same thing. I think 2027 is the year where the Democratic nominee is selected for president. They're going to just try and hold on. I think the Democrats are going to be very calculating and thoughtful going into '28 because they're going to want to make sure that they keep themselves aligned, and they're going to want to make sure that the people continue to view them as the antidote to their anger.
And they're going to try and find someone that's going to be angry and that's going to be strong and that's going to speak up for everyone that feels unheard. And going into 2028, I think that's who they're going to pick is that person. It's why I've said for a long time, I think AOC is going to end up on that ballot.
That would be disastrous for them.
I don't know. I don't know if that's true. You could have said the same about El Salvador two years ago. You could have said the same about a lot of these candidates that are winning tonight. I don't think that that's true. I think that the tides have turned. I will argue once again that the cost of living in this country has gotten too high primarily as a function of the government being too high a percentage of our GDP and our spending. And I think it's very hard to get out of that cycle of inflation and that cycle of stagnant wages. And I think that the economy is stalling out for the majority of people, and they're seeing their assets decline, and they can't afford healthcare, and on and on and on. And I don't think that there's a good alternative to socialism for the majority of Americans today.
Yeah, I think that that's the view, and I think that because there isn't a good alternative, I think that the sweeping-up moment starts to happen in '27.
I've given them my advice, very simple. Take a look at what Trump did. He created a huge tent. He invited everybody to Washington, D.C., business leaders, etc., celebrities. You got to have a big tent, and you got to try to win that middle. And he can do that by just inviting Tim Cook, inviting Elon Musk, inviting anybody who wants to support America in this next presidency in the 48th term. You guys should just invite everybody to be part of it. The Democrats had that purity test. They kicked everybody out of the party. They were super critical, and they lost, and they kept losing. Maybe they take the note that they don't have to agree with everybody on every issue in their party and just start recruiting people to join forces with them.
Next up on the All-In election night livestream, our guy Shane. Shane, are you here? There he is. Hey Shane, how are you? You're on mute. Shane Coplan is here, the founder of Polymarket, our special guest. Shane, are you there? Testing, one, two.
Guys, thanks for having me.
Oh, okay. Well, we got to get it out of the way. Knicks in five.
Shane has the technical skills of his grandfather. Can't unmute the—
Knicks in five. Shane, how are you feeling after the Knicks win? How you feeling after the big Knicks win?
Incredible. It was incredible. We lugged out to San Antonio twice.
Yes, we did. I saw you there. You were able to get on the floor. I was three rows back, but I saw you were able to get on the floor and celebrate with the champions.
Had a long time to save up for that moment.
Yes, it was quite amazing. So Shane, tell us what's it like tonight at the desk at Polymarket. This must be a lot of volume to deal with and a lot of pressure. There was a lot of talk, and let's just get right to it. The hardest issue: are these markets, our prediction markets, being manipulated in order to benefit certain parties? In other words, could the Russians create a bunch of accounts and start betting on one party, create momentum, and get people to not turn out in that state? What is the way that you deal with these kind of possibilities? I don't know if they've been tried. Have people tried to swing and create fear, uncertainty, and doubt for one political party with the platform? And how do you protect the platform against that kind of abuse?
Yeah, it's a good throwback. I would say that obviously in the early days with Polymarket and prediction markets, it was always like the most vocal criticism was, 'Hey, what if someone just put a ton of money on one side?' And yeah, I'm sure as you guys all remember, the last roundabout two years ago, there was always the big story that Trump's price was being inflated. I think the thing people miss is that at Polymarket, when you look at these markets, they're basically shares of candidates, and the share becomes worth a dollar if that candidate wins. And what that means is that at any given moment it trades not too dissimilar to a stock, where people are buying and selling it, and the price, let's say it's trading at 25 cents, it's implied that it's 25% likely to happen because it's trading at 25 cents to win a dollar. And you can map 25 cents to 25, and you can map $1 to one. So it's, you know, that's the probability.
And I think the biggest misconception with Polymarket is that it's sort of like a seesaw of how much money is on either side. What it actually is, is it trades like a stock, where when you're buying, someone else has to be selling. So what we've seen is anytime someone has said, 'Hey, we can go and push the price high or something like that,' especially for these types of markets where there's not someone who knows what the answer is going to be, right? Like there's a lot of data. Everyone's going and trying to make their best prognosis of what's going to happen, how likely they think it is to happen. And the whole thing is that if someone's trying to push the price up, what they're basically saying is they're trying to pay more than market price for the share. So you can just think like, hey, if you've got a marketplace and there's tons of people, there's pro traders, there's market-making firms, there's people who are political analysts who really believe in their models of who's likely to win. If someone's like, 'Hey, I have a ton of money and I'm just going to pay above market price,' there's usually this flood on the other side once they notice, and they can notice damn near instantly, to go and take the other side of that trade. So the market rebalances is the—
rebalances basically instantly. And you know what people said about prediction markets when they were talking more about them abstractly, like before this idea was really practical, was that the more people try to manipulate the market, the more of an incentive it is for the market to become more accurate, because there's more financial incentive for people who can price it correctly to come on board and go and book the trade, so to speak. So I think that there was this cycle of every time there was a big election, whoever was losing, I got a lot of hate messages from, and you know, I had to kind of give this spiel. And at this point, you kind of don't hear it as much anymore because I think so many people, you know, whatever your political affiliation is, like you've kind of been on either side of the Polymarket coin, where it's like one is Polymarket is favoring your candidate and you love it and you look at it and that price is going up and you feel good. And the inverse is, 'Hey, this thing can't be right.' And I think that we've built up enough credibility over time that, you know, Polymarket's right.
What happened with the LatAm elections? So there was a number of Polymarket markets that ended up being on the wrong side of those trades, Shane. Do you have a view on, you know, where those participants were? Why they bet the way they did? I mean, Polymarket has been quite predictive in the past, but it was pretty wrong consistently in these elections that happened in the south.
Yeah. Well, for the Brazilian election, which I'm sure we were talking about a week ago, you know, when it says someone has a higher price than the other person, it doesn't mean it's like a lock that that's what's going to happen. So in polling, if you hear that someone's going to get, you know, 70% of people like one candidate, and that's what you know you're supposed to believe, that's indicative that that candidate's going to run away with it. But 70% likely means that, you know, if you go and flip the coin 10 times, three times the other candidate's going to win.
And what's cool about Polymarket is not that whoever has the higher price always wins, right? Because that's just not how it works. When you go in and you look at the odds of anything, when you look at the odds of a game, the underdog wins, you know, it happens all the time. That doesn't mean that the market was priced inaccurately. And I think that the thing that we saw with Brazil that was so interesting was everyone was looking at it the night of, and then there was this extension. And again, I'm not going to be one to opine on Brazilian politics because what do I know? But there was this extension by the Supreme Court, and everyone who was Brazilian, because everyone I know who was Brazilian was sending me Polymarket screenshots all night. They're like, 'Everyone's looking at Polymarket,' etc., etc. And the moment that the Supreme Court extended, you saw Bolsonaro's odds just tank because the market was basically interpreting this extension as like, 'Oh, something funky is about to happen.' What it is that happened, above my pay grade, but I looked at it more as a real-time barometer of the interpretation of what was going on at that point. And it's so hard to distill the signal from the noise, especially, you know, for people like me. I know you guys are all your own political experts, but like for me, I just kind of just want to know what's going to happen so I can just look at the site and see things change in real time. And yeah, you know, like the odds of Bolsonaro, it said he was likely to win. And then before you know it, it was swinging in response very explicitly to this progress. And, you know, at that point, people realized, oh, this is really material.
What do you think has surprised you the most about markets that are trading actively in the last, call it, year or two since you've been on the show? I mean, we always see examples of markets that are surprisingly deep, a lot of activity happening on random stuff. I mean, what's been most interesting to you that surprised you?
Well, I think the coolest thing is when you think about these global markets, like you look at oil, and there's just the—when oil the other day, oil went down a ton, and you're like asking people, 'Why is oil down?' If you ask five people who are really smart, they'll all most likely give you different answers, or you'll get two or three different answers. And what it really is is a ton of people who have their own Polymarkets in their head about these different topics, and they're ascribing their own probabilities of what they think the likelihood of these different things are. And from that, they're deducing what they think the price should be. And they're all trading on that. And by letting people go and trade the market as well as look at the price of the market for the actual important inputs that go into the price of such a big market like oil, it just goes and one leads to better price discovery for the underlying asset and helps people understand better what's likely to happen and what are the moving levers in terms of why the price of the overarching asset is fluctuating the way that it is. But secondly, the other thing is just like these things are already implicitly being traded and priced. But there hasn't really been a venue that's been able to aggregate that and have the right distribution on the demand side and the supply side. So it's been cool that we've been able to do that and become sort of a marker for a lot of these topics, especially with geopolitics and like just—
What's—Shane, what's the deal with LeBron? What are you guys doing with LeBron?
You know, he's a partner of ours, and he's been in ads. And, you know, whenever he comes to the Garden, I'm never going to cheer for him because I'm a Knicks fan, but, you know, he's the GOAT.
Yeah, it's kind of hard for Knicks fans after The Decision that was so heartbreaking for us. We never forgave him. But he is, you know, he's the GOAT after Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan one or two.
I don't know exactly what Shane was thinking.
No. I mean, for Shane's generation, he, you know—
No. Shane didn't get to see Michael Jordan. How old were you when Jordan was playing in the Garden? Did you ever see him in the Garden, Shane?
Of course not. Yeah. It was two years.
I used to just go on StubHub, man, and just scroll through the tickets and just be like, 'Man, one day.'
One day. Exactly. And then Shane's court said, 'Listen, Shane, continued success. Thanks for everything you do at Polymarket. It certainly has made the world much more interesting, and I think it's fantastic that people get to have this resource. It really has changed everything in the media space and for people trying to make crisp decisions in the world.' We'll drop Shane off. By the way, speaking of Polymarket, in the last 40 minutes, 30 minutes, Texas governor has just flipped. Gino, Gino.
No. Oh, we're not going to have Abbott. Oi.
Greg Abbott on his way out.
I looked at the districting. All the blue districts have reported.
I don't think that this holds. But if it were to hold, I just want to be very clear. Remember I told you guys there's only one thing that sinks the U.S. economy.
AI trade. And the only way to sink the AI trade is to sink the data centers. And the only—
We just threw the baby out with the bathwater.
And all the power that matters right now is in West Texas.
Yeah. Get your checkbooks out. I don't know, man. I may need to go to Singapore or Tokyo. Hey guys, I know you didn't want him on the program. I know you guys banned our next guest, Chamath. You guys refused to have him on, but as the world's greatest moderator and executive producer for life, I went over your heads and I invited Sloppy Steve Bannon to come on. Here he is, the one, the only Sloppy Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon, how are you doing, brother?
I'm excited because this is the last time I'm going to see you guys before you're brought in before a tribunal.
I mean, this is the end of the road for you guys. Number one podcast in the world scam. It's been a good scam. It's gone for years—
More than we thought. A lot of money.
But soon you are going in front of a tribunal and you're going to have to account for your crimes. Let's be honest.
It'll be the time to pay the piper and to account for the criminal behavior.
Tim, tell us what happened. What is happening?
Well, what is happening? I don't know. One of Donald Trump's biggest supporters, Tucker Carlson, came out two days ago and said he's considering nuking Iran. That's happening. I mean—
No, no, no. Meaning, what I mean very precisely is like, what is this? Is this a vote for Democrats? Is this a vote against Trump? Is it a vote against the cost of living? Is it what? How do you interpret it?
It's been said before, we have an economic war that's disguised as a culture war. Meaning that I think people that don't have the confidence in their economic standing are attaching meaning to a lot of things culturally where there is none. And I think it's a vote against the cost of living. I think it's a vote against, in some ways, the corruption that people see is inherent in the system right now that Donald Trump won, claiming that he was going to correct. I think it's a vote against, you know, what Donald Trump unfortunately has become, which is the system.
This is a vote against the system. The same people that elected Trump because they wanted cheaper gas, cheaper groceries, they didn't want to go to war with Iran. Nobody wanted that. Ten people wanted it, and they gave Trump a lot of money, but nobody wanted this. I think it's a vote a little bit against people's circumstances, their economic circumstances, and that's why people vote. And that's why I think you're going to have a massive shift to the Democrats.
Any concerns on the Democratic side? See the sort of socialism, you see some of the radicalism over there as well, kind of brewing up the same way we see on the other side the America First movement. What's your take on the horseshoe theory? You've talked about it before, and essentially I think you've talked a little bit about, you know, the end of the empire here. Is there a way to turn it around? And what do you think about the extremes in this country at this point? People can't own a house, get married, have children, live—they're going to become radicalized in some way to some end of the political spectrum. I mean, that's obvious.
The people that voted for Mamdani were four-year college graduates who took out a lot of student loans. They're living in a very expensive city. They feel like they're losing ground. And they were incredibly excited to vote for somebody who was going to restore some type of balance, whether that happens or not, whatever. But that's what motivated people to get out there. You're not talking only about the poor people or the working poor or even the working class. There's a lot of white-collar college graduates that are voting for the DSA candidates because they're mired in debt. They don't own anything, and they don't feel like they ever will. And Trump was supposed to address those concerns. And if he doesn't, somebody else will.
I know what you guys think. Let's just build another data center on top of all of those people that are angry. Put another—
Yes, they could work in the data center.
Put another data center. I know it's always the data centers with you. It never ends.
It never ends. We were thinking Central Park. Tim is doing it.
I know you're kidding about putting a data center in Central Park, but there was a sparkle in Chamath's eye when you said that.
Well, here's what I will say. And I've said this before. If you go back to the Gilded Age, and I agree with you, Tim, at some point the leading oligarchs of that era sat around a table, and they allocated responsibility for societal good, and they understood that unless you created economic gains that were far-felt, nobody wins. And so, you know, you dispatch Rockefeller, you dispatch Carnegie, you dispatch J.P. Morgan, and all these folks had to do stuff. And if you compare that moment to this moment, to your point, you have these symbols of a handful of companies, which really means a handful of thousands of individual employees winning these totems. I think that's what Freeberg called it, which I think is very accurate. And you don't see any broad-based gains. And it's clearly catching up with everybody, where I think at first they thought that President Trump was the antidote, and maybe now what they're saying is the other side is the antidote, and they're going to keep looking for the more extreme version until they break the system. Do you buy that or no?
Yeah. I mean, I think that's absolutely true. I think that if one party does not address these concerns, another party will. And that's the entire story of tonight, is if you're a Republican strategist, you had nothing to sell. You know, what were you selling? I mean, that's the reality. Like two years into this administration, what are you selling to people? And the Democrats, in my estimation, lost two years ago because they were selling, you know, this very kind of—you know, it was all about democracy. It was very symbolic. The Democrats were selling symbolism. Democracy was on the ballot. They were saying all of these things, but they weren't addressing those core concerns. The Republicans are now in the same position where they're selling symbolism, but people are going to fill up their car, they're going to the grocery store, they're going in, you know, to pay their rent because they're not paying a mortgage. And that's why the Republicans don't have a coherent message two years in. And a lot of people are drawing a line between what seems to be this misadventure in Iran and the rising costs at home.
And when you have the Pentagon going, 'We could have a wave of cyber attacks and bases need to be self-sufficient for 90 days,' and you have Europe—and I know this isn't directly, you know, necessarily American—but you have Europe telling people you should stockpile food. I mean, this doesn't fill people with overwhelming confidence. We're making people extremely uncomfortable with these predictions that you're going to lose your jobs, the robots are coming. I got to get into what's happening in comedy circles. I know you're on all the group chats, Tim. You're with all the great comedians in the—
I love how much you guys love comedy. It's so wild to me how much you love it. It's like, it's unbelievable how much you love it. It's like—
We're your subs. You can dom us anytime.
We are your stans. We are your—
I love that it's like they just came out, Palmer Luckay is going to have genetically engineered robot dogs, and you're like, 'What's going on in the comedy circles?'
Yes. Well, no, here's my specific question. The Overton window is about to close a bit. What's going to happen at the Mothership when Tony Hinchcliffe, you know, and Joe Rogan can't use the word anymore? What's going to happen in comedy circles when this closes a bit?
I think they'll be all right. You know, I'm a survivor. You know, truly I am a survivor. I'll throw on a burka tomorrow and I'll do what needs to be done.
Burka done. I'll be in Minnesota with a burka on with Abdul Shik Muhammad bin Sim, whatever his name is. I don't even care. I will be there doing everything I have to do. What the hell do I care? I mean, I'm a survivor, baby. I've been in this business a long time. And I will get out there in sub-45 degree weather with 15 Somalis, and we will do a daycare comedy benefit because I don't give a—
You need to get that. You got to keep those corporate gigs alive.
Have you done a corporate gig at a mosque? Have you done that yet? Where do you draw the line? The comedy there. Can you do it?
I was fired from Saudi Arabia because I offered a defense of their indentured servitude program, which I think was productive for them. And they fired me.
Not for being gay. They were fine with gay.
They were fine with that.
Fine with it. Hey Tim, just before we get away too far from comedy, I just want to ask one more question around what you're seeing on this night and what else you've seen. Is there an alternative that you've seen that sells well that isn't socialism? What is out there that doesn't taste and look and smell like socialism that seems to be a shot at working?
