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The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Friedman podcast. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
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We've been talking about it on this podcast, on many podcasts, just how biased specific media sources are. Like most problems in the world, this can be explained by incentives. The funding is drying out for news organizations, so they more and more rely on clickbait journalism, and clickbait journalism requires extreme polarization.
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and for model evaluation, and a bunch of other stuff. Basically, the whole machine learning stack. What they do really well is focus on the data side of machine learning, which does not often enough get the love it deserves. Many of the things they do go under the flag of active learning. This is a topic that's always been fascinating to me. But they just, they pull off the whole thing really well. I just have to celebrate them for doing a great job just on the interface. Getting the annotation interface
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that is using machine learning, go try out Encore to curate, annotate, and manage your AI data at Encore.com slash Lex. That's Encore.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep as pod for Ultra. The night before I had a conversation with Donald Trump, I didn't sleep in my Eight Sleep. I wasn't home.
And so I didn't sleep too well. I was going in my head through all the possible trajectories that conversation could go. But primarily there was a temperature issue because the bed wasn't cold like it would be with a sleep. I just can't understand how amazing it is to have a cold bed with a warm blanket. It's an escape from the turmoil of the world. This temporary respite from the chaos, from the suffering that is life.
And I wonder why it is that the world I saw on ayahuasca is not the world I've ever seen in my dreams. Where was it that I was able to go with the help of this rocket ship that I couldn't go while taking a nap? What is the human mind capable of? That's what psychedelics make me think. What are the limits of my mind?
The limits of my visualization capability, the limits of my cognition capability, the limits of my consciousness. I wonder. Anyway, go to hatesleep.com slash Lex and use code Lex to get 350 bucks off the Pod 4 Ultra. This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. It's the machine within the machine of capitalism.
It helps you manage all the disparate components of a company. Financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and so on. I speak to it at the end of this episode in the AMA. All the amazing possibilities I have in my life to build, to create. And one of them is indeed running a company. Every time I talk about NetSuite, I'm pulled back into this thought, if for a brief moment. Sometimes I feel like it is not me that decides where my life goes.
but some kind of winds of fortune. More and more I'm starting to realize that I'm less the guy who plans and more the guy who follows his instinct. But anyway, it does seem that if I get a chance to follow down this path, it will be a difficult but fulfilling one. And if you are walking down that path, join over 37,000 companies that have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle.
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I've been wearing this shirt that says birds aren't real. If you're not aware, it's a conspiracy theory that birds aren't real, like the name of the conspiracy theory suggests, and that, in fact, the birds we see in the sky are drones used by the government to engage in mass surveillance of a citizenry. So...
I have actually two Birds Aren't Real shirts. In one of them, it says Birds Aren't Real in really big letters. And I wear it around town and I get to start conversations with some interesting people. I think the shirts you wear create opportunities for discovering interesting people. So think of it that way. Merch as gateway for conversation.
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They're getting smaller and smaller. They're getting smaller. Right? I mean, people do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason. No, it's cool. And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to, right? All right. Okay. You said that you love winning and you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business, in TV, in politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?
Maybe equally, maybe both. I don't like losing and I do like winning. I've never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force. You've been close with a lot of the greats in sport.
You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali. You have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys? Well, they do have something different. The great champions have something very different, like the sports champions. And you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend or you see it during a game. And you see that certain people stand out and they keep...
They keep standing out, but it's there for you. It doesn't take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser. And so the sports thing is very interesting, but I play golf with different people, and there's a different mindset among champions. There's really a very different mindset. There's a different thought process. Talent-wise, sometimes you can't tell the difference in talent, but at the end of a weekend, they...
seemed to win. And it's very interesting. Like as an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus, he was a phenomenal winner. And he does have a different way about him. And Tiger has a different way about him. And Michael Jordan. And there's never one, you would think that there'd be one way. Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you'd ever meet. And then you have some champions that aren't really nice. They're just focused on
doing their job. So you have, there's not one type of person, but the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they're very driven. They're driven like beyond. They don't seem to give up easily. They don't give up, but they do seem to be, they have a passion that's maybe more than people that don't do as well. You've said that
Politics is a dirty game in the past. It is a dirty game. That's certainly true. So if it is a game, how do you win at that game? Well, you win at that game by getting the word out.
And by using sense, you have to have a feeling where it's going. You also have to have a feeling of what's right. You can't necessarily just go what's popular. You have to do what's good for a country if you're talking about countries. But you have to get the word out. And you have to just continuously, like, for instance, you have a great show. You have a great podcast. It's very well watched. And I'm sitting here and I do this. A lot of people see it. And I do other things. And a lot of people see that.
And I go traditional also. You have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant. Could be less significant. I don't know. But it's changing a lot. The whole plane of platform is changing a lot. It's changed a lot in the last two, three years.
But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they're watching, and you have to get on. I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate. They're getting very big numbers. I did spaces with Elon, and they got numbers like nobody's ever heard before. So this is...
You wouldn't do that on radio. You wouldn't do those numbers. No matter how good a show, you wouldn't do those numbers on radio. You wouldn't do them on television. You've been successful in business. You've been successful in politics. What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds? Yeah, and it's different, very different. I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful, but
And they'd like to go over to politics. And then you realize they can't speak. They choke. You know, it's hard to make a speech in front of that. Let's say you're talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences. And, you know, for many people, it's virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. You know, it's not an easy thing to do.
and it's an ability. But I have many people that are very, very successful in business, would love to do what I did, and yet they can't pull the trigger. And in many cases, I don't think it would work almost for everybody. It's not going to work. It's a very tough thing to do. It's a big transition. And now, if you talked about people...
into business and politics going into business, likewise, that wouldn't generally work out so well either. It's different talents, it's different skills. I have somebody who wants to go into politics so bad, but he's got a little problem. He's got stage fright. Now, he's a total killer, but if he gets up into a stage in front of people, he doesn't do well, to put it mildly, actually. I mean, he does badly. So you have to be able to make...
hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience? Look, if you're a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people who can't do that. I've seen it. They can't even think about doing it, and they don't. There are many people in business right now, I could name them, but I don't want to embarrass anybody. They've been talking about running for president for 15 years, and they're very big in business, very well-known, actually.
but it takes guts to run. Like for president, I can tell you it takes guts to run. It's also a very dangerous profession, if you want to know the truth, but dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of courage to run for president. It's not easy, but you have, and you know the same people as I do, there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business, but they don't have the guts to do it. And they have to give up a lot.
One of the great things about people from the business world is they're often great dealmakers. And you're a great dealmaker. And you've talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelensky would accept. What do you think that deal looks like? I think the deal, and I wouldn't talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal. If I win as president-elect, I'll have a deal made, guaranteed.
That's a war that shouldn't have happened. It's terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, and she's probably worse than him. That's something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it's a much tougher deal to make than it would have been before it started. Millions of people. I think the number is going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point iron out. I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think.
When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher. They lie about the numbers. They try and keep them low. They knock down a building that's two blocks long. These are big buildings. And they say one person was mildly injured. No, no. A lot of people were killed. And there are people in those buildings, and they have no chance. Once they start coming down, there's no chance. So...
That's a war that absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel, and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now. And a lot of it's because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she'll be probably worse than Biden. I watched the interview the other night. I mean, it was just a softball interview. So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more?
I don't know. I can't believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should have never been in there. They kept them in a basement. They used COVID. They cheated, but they used COVID to cheat. They cheated without COVID too. But you had somebody in there. And now we have a woman that is not, I mean, she couldn't do an interview. This was a really soft interview. This is an interview where they're given a multiple choice, questions, multiple guests. I call it multiple guests interview.
And I don't think she did well. I think she did very poorly. How do you think you'll do in the debate coming up? It's in a few days. So I've done a lot of debating, only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O'Donnell debate, right? The famous Rosie O'Donnell debate, the answer.
but I've done well with debates. I mean, I became president. Then the second time I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win. You can't not win. And I got millions of more votes than that. And, uh,
Lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation, because inflation is just eating up our country. Eating it up. So it's too bad. But...
There are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. We have to get, I'll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East. So maybe let's talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelenskyy.
Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions that are already captured? I don't know. I can tell you that all of this would have never happened and it would have been very easy because you don't have, like, that question wouldn't be asked. You know, that's a tougher question. Once that starts happening, because he has taken over a lot of territory. Now, I guess they're insurgents now too, right? So, you know, it's a little bit interesting that that's happening and that it can happen.
And it's interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen. Look, that's one that should have never started. We have to get it stopped. Ukraine is being demolished. They're destroying a great culture that's largely destroyed. What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of, let's say, friendship? The carrot or the stick? Friendship or...
sort of the threat of using the economic and military power. So it depends on who the person is. Everyone's different. Negotiation's interesting because it depends on who the person is. And then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge, which is more important, the carrot or the stick. And with some people, it's the stick, and with some people, it's the carrot. I think the stick probably is
generally more successful in that, you know, we're talking about war. But the kind of destruction that we're witnessing now that nobody's ever seen, I mean, it's a terrible thing. And we're witnessing it all over. We're witnessing it in all parts of the world. And a lot of things are going to get started. Look what's going on with China. Look at Japan. They're starting to rearm now. They're starting to rearm because China's getting, you know, taking over certain islands and
There's a lot of danger in the war right now in the world. There's a lot of, and there's a great possibility of World War III. And we better get this thing done fast because five months with people like her and him, he's checked out. He just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn't. He's sort of checked out. Hey, look, you know, you can't blame him. That was a coup. They took it over. They took over Russia.
the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup. He had 14 million votes. She had no votes, not one. And nobody thought it was going to be her. Nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said we're going to have to politically, they felt they had to pick her. And if they didn't pick her, they thought there'd be a problem. And
I don't know if that's right or not. I actually don't think it's right, but they thought it was right. And now immediately the press comes to their aid. If we can go back to China on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century? Well, there are ways. Now, here's the problem. If I tell you how, and I'd love to do it, but if I give you a plan, like I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia.
And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China. Because we do, you know, we're in a lot of trouble. They'll be in a lot of trouble too. But we're in a lot of trouble. But I can't give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I'm not going to be able to use them. They'll be very unsuccessful. You know, part of it's surprise, right? Right. But they won't be able to help us much. So you have a plan of what to say to Putin. Yeah, I know. Exactly.
No, I had a very good relationship with him, and I had a good relationship with Zelensky, too, but I had a very good relationship with Putin. Tough topic, but important. You said lost by a whisker. I'm an independent. I have a lot of friends who are independent, many of whom like your policies, like the fact that you're a dealmaker, like the fact that you can end wars, but they are...
troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff, fake electoral scheme. What can you say to those independent voters to help them decide who to vote for? I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud and many people felt it was that and they wanted answers.
And when you can't challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it. Otherwise, it's going to get worse, not better. And there are lots of ways to solve this problem. Go to paper ballots and do it the easy way. I mean, the paper ballots and you have voter ID and you have same day voting and you have proof of citizenship, which is very important because we have people voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they're loading up
The payrolls, they're loading up everything. They're putting students in schools that don't speak a word of English. And they're taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country. So, look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have coming into our country right now millions and millions of people at levels that nobody's ever seen. I don't believe any country's ever seen it.
And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen. We don't do anything. And we have a person who was the border czar who now said she wasn't really the border czar, but she was. She was the border czar, but she was in charge of the border. And we have her, and she's saying very strongly, oh, I did such a good job. She was horrible, horrible. The harm she's done. But we have people coming in from...
Other countries all over the world, not just South America. And they're coming in from prisons and jails. They're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they're street criminals. Right off the street, they take them. And they're being given to our country. Drug dealers, human traffickers. We're destroying our country. This is a sin what's been allowed to take place over the last four years. We're destroying our country. And we'll see...
how that all works out, but it's not even believable. And now you see, you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas, including buildings. They're taking over buildings. They have their big rifles.
but they're taking over buildings. We're not going to let this happen. We're not going to let them destroy our country. And you know, in those countries, crime is way down. They're taking them out of their prisons, which is good because it's good for them. I do the same thing. By the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure that America has every one of our prisoners. Every one of our criminals would be here. I can't believe they're going so slowly, but some aren't. But they all are doing it.
And we can't let that happen. They're emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America. We can't let that happen. So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it's media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people. Well,
I don't focus on the past. I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is, how bad things like... Which is important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think Putin went in. When he said how stupid we were, Putin went in. But it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. I really believe that. But...
You know, we left 13 dead soldiers. Think of it, 13 dead soldiers. Many soldiers horrifically hurt with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind. We left Americans behind. We left military equipment, the likes of which nobody's ever left behind before. Billions and billions of dollars of equipment. They're now selling the equipment. They're one of the largest arms dealers in the world.
And very sad, very sad. And, you know, we were there for a long time. I was going to get out. We were getting ready to get out. Then we got interrupted by the election. But we would have been out with dignity and strength. We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there because they knew it was going to be tough. I dealt with Abdul. Abdul was the leader. And...
We got along fine. He understood. But, you know, they were shooting. They were killing a lot of our people before I came down. And when I got there, I said, I spoke to him. I said, you can't do it. Don't do it anymore. We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened.
We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed. What do you think that was? The carrot or the stick in that case in Afghanistan? The stick. Definitely the stick. So the threat of military force. That was the stick, yeah. It doesn't have to be, but that was the stick. Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?
Well, I hope it's not a close one. I mean, you know, I don't know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our country, the inflation, the bad economy. But to me, in a way, the worst is what they've allowed to happen at our border, where they've allowed millions of people to come in here from places that you don't want to know about. And I can't believe that that's going to be a close election. You know, we're leading in the polls. But
And it looks close, but I think in the end it's not going to be a close election. What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about? Well, you've got to get the criminals out of here fast, right? You know, the people from mental institutions, you've got to get them back into their mental institution. No country can afford this. You know, it's just too much money. You look at what's happening in New York and Chicago and L.A. and lots of places.
And you take a look at what's happening. There's no country can afford this. We can't afford it. And we've got to get the bad ones out immediately. And the rest have to be worked on. You know, it's happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president, moderate type person. But he hated when he saw people pouring into the country. And they were. Nothing like now. You know, I probably got elected in 2016 because of the border issue.
And I told people what was happening and they understood it. And I won the election. And I won the election, I think, because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed. I had it the last week of my famous chart that I put up was exactly that. You know the chart. When I looked to the right, I said, there's the chart. Bing, bing.
That was not a pleasant experience. But the chart that I put up said, and that was done by Border Patrol, that was the lowest number that we've ever had come into our country in recorded history. And we have to get it back to that again. We will. Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection to Project 2025. Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too. Democrats know that. And I purposely haven't read it.
Because I want to say to you, I have no idea what it's all about. It's easier than saying I read it and all of the things. No, I purposely haven't read it. And I've heard about it. I've heard about things that are in there that I don't like. And there are some things in there that everybody would like. But there are things that I don't like at all. And I think it's...
unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn't mean anything because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has absolutely nothing to do with me. You posted recently about marijuana and that you're okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there? Well, I just put out a paper. And first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. It's been
I've had friends and I've had others and doctors telling me that it's been absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana. It's got to be a certain age. It's got to be a certain age to buy it. It's got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way.
And the way they're doing it in Florida, I think, is going to be actually good. It's going to be very good. But it's got to be done in a good way. It's got to be done in a clean way. You go into some of these places, like in New York, it smells all marijuana. You've got to have a system where there's control. And I think the way they've done it in Florida is very good. Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I'm not a drug guy, but I recently did ayahuasca.
And there's a lot of people that speak to sort of the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms, perhaps. Now, I know you don't, you stay away from all of that stuff.
I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it's great and it's interesting that you're thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs, which don't just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose. So we put out a statement today. We're going to put out another one probably next week, B-10.
more specific, although I think it's pretty specific. And we'll see how that all goes. That's a referendum coming up in some states, but it's coming up and we'll see how it does. I will say it's been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it's been very hard to beat it. So I think it'll generally pass, but you want to do it in a safe way. Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him.
So when he said nice things about RFK Jr., I think, you've said some not-so-nice things about Joe. I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world. So what's the story behind the tension? Well, I don't think there was any tension. And I've always liked him, but I don't know him. I mean...
I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he's good at what he does, but I don't know about doing his podcast. I mean, I guess I'd do it, but I haven't been asked and I'm not asking them, you know, I'm not asking anybody. It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation. No, it's not. It's not really a negotiation. And he's sort of a liberal guy, I guess, you know, from what I understand. Yeah.
But he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He's going to be great. He's doing, Bobby's going to be great. But I like that he likes Kennedy. I do too. You know, he's a different kind of a guy, but he's got some great things going. And I think he's going to be, beyond politics, I think he could be quite influential in taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of. The Joe Rogan post is an example. I would love to get your psychology, your
about behind the tweets and the posts on Truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind? And are there times where you regret some of the Truths you've posted? - Yeah, I do, but not that often, honestly. I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get in trouble with are the reposts because you find down deep they're into some group that you're not supposed to be reposting. You don't even know if those groups are good, bad, or indifferent.
But the reposts are the ones that really get you in trouble. When you do your own words, it's sort of easier. But the reposts go very quickly. And if you're going to check every single little symbol and I don't know, it's worked out pretty well for me. I tell you, truth is very powerful. Truth. And it's my platform. And it's been very powerful. Very, very powerful. Goes everywhere.
I call it my typewriter. That's actually my typewriter. What are you doing usually when you're composing a truth? Are you chilling back on a couch? Couches, beds. Okay. A lot of different things. Like late at night? I'd like to do something late at night. I'm not a huge sleeper. But whenever I do them past like 3 o'clock, they criticize you the next day. Trump was up truthing.
Okay. Trump was truthing at three o'clock in the morning. And there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you're like, you know, in a time zone, like an Eastern zone. So, but, but every time I do it after like two or three o'clock, it's like, why is he doing that? But it's gotten, I mean, you know, the truth has become a very successful platform and
And I like doing it. And it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere. The country seems more divided than ever. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division? Well, you can get rid of these two people. They're terrible. They're terrible. You don't want to have them running this country. They're not equipped to run it. Joe just... Joe is a disaster, okay? And Kamala, I think she'll end up being worse than him.
We'll see. I think a lot's now, you know, the convention's over with, and I see I'm leading in just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon period, as they call it. And we'll see how that all goes. Who knows? From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you're talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side. Yeah. I think you have to criticize, though. I think they're nasty.
They came up with a story that I looked down and I called soldiers that died in World War I, suckers and losers. Okay. Now, number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say it to military people? Nobody. It was a made-up story. It was just a made-up story. And they like to repeat it over again. They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said. They don't want to hear about that.
Like she lied on McDonald's. She said that she worked at McDonald's. It's not a big lie, but it's a big lie. They just went and they checked. And unless you can show something, they don't talk about it. The press isn't going to follow up with it, but I'll keep hammering it. But she never worked at McDonald's. It was just sort of a cool thing to say, hey, I worked at McDonald's. But one of the worst was...
Two days ago, I went to Arlington at the request of people that lost their children. There'll always be children to those people. You understand that. That's not politically incorrect thing to say. The mother comes up, I lost my child. But, you know, the child is a soldier. And lost the child because of Biden and because of Kamala. Just as though they had the gun in their hand because it was so badly handled.
It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big airbase. It shouldn't have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where people stormed it. It was a true disaster. And they asked me if I'd come and celebrate with them three years. They died three years ago.
And I said, I'm going to try. I got to know them because I brought them here, actually. One night, they almost all came here. And they said, I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us. I heard they were here. I came. So we stayed for like four hours listening to music up on a deck right upstairs. Beautiful. And they were great people. So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, we're going to have a reunion, a three-year reunion. Would you be able to come?
And it was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, I'll get it done. And I got there and we had a beautiful time. I didn't run away. I didn't, you know, I didn't just walk in, shake hands and walk out like people do. And I wasn't looking at my watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. So I did it for them. I didn't do it for me.
I don't need the publicity. I mean, I get more publicity probably than anybody. You would know that better than me, but I think maybe more than anybody. Maybe more than anybody that's ever lived. I don't know, but I don't think anyone could have any more. Every time you turn on television, there's like nine different stories all on different topics in the world. As an example...
You interview a lot of people, good people, successful people. Let's see how you do with this interview versus them, okay? I mean, I can tell you right now, you're going to get the highest numbers you've ever had by sometimes a factor of 10. But when Gold Star family asks me to come in and spend time with them, and then they said, sir, we did a ceremony, and then we went down to the graves, which was...
quite a distance away. They said, sir, would you come to the grave? And then they said, when we were there, it's very sad actually, because these people shouldn't have died. They shouldn't have died. They died because of Biden and because of Kamala. They died because it's just like if they pulled the trigger. Okay. Now, I don't know if that's controversial to say, but I don't think it is
Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I've ever seen, military or otherwise they're incompetent. But the families asked me if I'd go. I did go. Then the family said, could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son? And we did. Son or daughter, there was a daughter too. And I took numerous pictures with the families. I don't know of anybody else that was in the pictures, but there were mostly families, I guess.
That was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with him. Then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden administration with Kamala is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity. I was in use, just the opposite, just the opposite. And actually, did you see that it just came out? The families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said,
We asked him to be there. Well, politicians and the media can play those games. And you're right. Your name gets a lot of views. You're probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat. Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves or of that persuasion, progressives, liberals, and so on?
Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody's in there. And, you know, to a certain extent, life is what you do while you're waiting to die. So you might as well do a good job. I think in terms of what's happening now, I think, you know, we have a chance to save the country. This country's going down. And I called it with Venezuela. I called it with a lot of different countries. And this country is going down. If we don't win this election, the election coming up,
on November 5th is the most important election this country has ever had. Because if we don't win it, I don't know that there'll be another election and it's going to be a communist country. We're close. And there's a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn't think that Kamala is a communist. Well, she's a Marxist.
Her father's a Marxist. That's right. And she's advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let's say. But there's a lot of people that kind of know the way government works and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It's just being used during the campaign to...
you know, groceries are too expensive, we need them cheaper, so let's talk about price controls, and that's never going to come to reality. It could come to reality. Look, I mean, she came out with price control. It's been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it's never worked once. It leads to communism, it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation.
It's just whenever we use terms like communism for her, and I don't know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist. Yeah, they do. So I figure it's all right to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them. They do indeed. It's interesting, though. They'll call me something that's terrible, and then I'll hit them back.
And they'll say, isn't it terrible what Trump said? I said, well, wait a minute. They just called me. So I believe you have to fight fire with fire. I believe they're very evil people. These are evil people. You know, we have an enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within. And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics. And I think you have to fight back. Whenever there's a lot of fighting fire with fire, it's too easy to forget that there's a middle ground.
of America that is moderate and kind of sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies. Like I said, there's a lot of people that like your policies, that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars, and they don't see the...
the impending destruction of America. You know, we had no wars when I was president. That's a big thing. Not since 78 years has that happened. But we had no wars when I was president. We defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren't anywhere near defeating. But think of it, I had no wars. And Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary,
said the world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump. Now, that's what he said. So I'm not using that term, but I think they respected me. But he said China was afraid, Russia was afraid, everybody was afraid. And I don't care what word they use. Probably that's even a better word if you want to know the truth. But let's use the word respect. They had respect for me. They had respect for the country. I mean, I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline.
Nobody else could have done that. I ended it. It was done. Then Biden comes in and he gave it, he approved it. So we're defending Germany and these other countries for peanuts compared to what it's worth. And they're paying the person we're defending them against billions and billions of dollars for energy. I said, how does that work? And we had it out with them and it worked out good. And they paid hundreds of billions of dollars. Or you wouldn't even have a NATO right now. You wouldn't have NATO if it wasn't for me.
As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you will have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world? No, I don't think so. Look, I've been there for four years.
I could have done a big number in Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president's wife and put her in prison. She's so lucky. I didn't do anything. She's so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me to, they wanted to, they wanted to see something, but I had, I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad. Think of it. You have the president of the United States and you also had secretary of state, right? She was, uh,
But you're going to put the president's wife in prison? And yet when I got out there, you know, they have all these hoaxes. They're all hoaxes. But they have all these dishonest hoaxes, just like they did in the past with Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different, you know, agencies or agents. That was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. The whole, there were so many hoaxes and scams. And, but I didn't want to put her in jail.
And I didn't. And I explained it to people. You know, they say, lock her up, lock her up. It doesn't. We won. I said, we don't want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don't bring the country together by putting her in jail. But then when I got out, you know, they went to work on me. It's amazing. And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS syndrome.
And I don't know if it's curable from their standpoint. A lot of people are very interested in footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos, and there's been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots. So a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available? Oh, yeah, sure. I'll do that. I would do that. I'd love to do that. I have to do that.
But they also are pushing me on Kennedy. And I did release a lot, but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I'll be doing that very early on. Yeah, no, but I would do that. There's a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein, releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation? I don't think I had, I mean, I'm not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately.
But a lot of people did. Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close? He was a good salesman. He was a hale and hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he'd throw around, like islands. But a lot of big people went to that island.
But fortunately, I was not one of them. It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public. Yeah. It's very interesting, isn't it? Probably will be, by the way. So if you were able to, you would be? Yeah, I'd certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy's interesting because it's so many years ago.
You know, they do that for danger, too, because, you know, it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera. So Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing. But yeah, I'd be inclined to do the Epstein. I'd have no problem with it. That's great to hear. What gives you strength when you're getting attacked? You're one of the most attacked people in the world.
In the world? I think you can't care that much. I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying. You can't care too much because you end up choking. One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it? I have a friend who's very, very successful and he's in his 80s, mid 80s.
And he asked me the exact same question. I said, I turned it around. I said, well, what about you? He said, I think about it every minute of every day. And then a week later, he called me to tell me something. And he starts off the conversation by going, tick, tock, tick, tock. This is a dark person, you know, in a sense, but it is what it is. I mean,
You know, if you're religious, you have, I think, a better feeling toward it. You know, you're supposed to go to heaven, ideally not hell, but you're supposed to go to heaven if you're good. I think our country is missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide, you know, to a certain extent it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion, there's no real, there are no guardrails.
I'd love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country. Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there and thank you for talking today. Look, I love the country. I want to see the country be great. And we have a real chance of doing it, but it's our last chance. And I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, as I've started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments and answer a few questions. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfriedman.com slash AMA or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfriedman.com slash contact. I usually do this in a t-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I'll keep my suit and tie on. So first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit.
I've been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say thank you. I'm truly grateful for the support and the love I've gotten along the way.
It's been, I would say, the most unlikely journey. And on most days, I barely feel like I know what I'm doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations. Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can't speak generally to how I approach these. But here, it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history.
and I admire the historian perspective. As an example, I admire William Shire, the author of many books on Hitler, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized a little too much.
I think those same folks criticized Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast. I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree. So in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there's a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal. The outrage mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral.
The current thing. The current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain. And those, the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done. It's not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It's not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at.
But let's say it's a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation. This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they've been screwed over so many times with clickbait gotcha journalism. So to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard.
And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration. And I've been thinking a lot about why. I don't think it's just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details. Because I think it's in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light.
Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every time, as I said. I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary, and on the right, J.D. Vance, Vivek, George W., and so on. And on the topic of politics, let me say as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America. I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth.
And I'm grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well. I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others. I probably should do a better job of that. But I've been doing most of this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research, prep, recording, and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome, with the voice in my head constantly pointing out when I'm doing a shitty job.
Plus, a few folks graciously remind me on the internet the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice. All of this while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students. Or maybe joining an AI company. Or maybe starting my own. All these options make me truly happy. But like I said, on most days, I barely know what I'm doing, so who knows what the future holds.
Most importantly, I'm forever grateful for all of you, for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of a life I've been on. I love you all. Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had. I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest.
So basic facts. Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It's not on by default, and most people don't use the end-to-end encryption, but some do.
Pavel was arrested in France on a long list of charges related to quote-unquote criminal activity carried out on the Telegram platform and for quote-unquote providing unlicensed cryptology services. I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users. For example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree that terrorism is bad. But here's the problem.
As the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are. But there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian inclined governments, tend to propagandize and just call whoever's in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here. But to me,
At this time, it seems to obviously be a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they can have censorship power against the opposition. I think generally, government should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms. And I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built is just nuts.
It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram, and on people working at every social media company. And also people thinking of launching a new social media company. Same is the case of X being banned in Brazil. It's, I think, a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil. He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading quote-unquote misinformation. Elon and X denied the request.
Then, de Moraes threatened to arrest ex-representatives in Brazil, and in response to that, ex-pulled the representatives out of Brazil, obviously, to protect them. And now, ex-having no representatives in Brazil apparently violates the law. Based on this, de Moraes banned ex-in-Brazil. Once again, it's an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication.
I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world, and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people. But as Benjamin Franklin said, those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. So it's a trade-off. But I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty.
Okay, next up, I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I'll condense it as follows. Hello, Lex. I'm a programmer, and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills. Let me first say that I relate to your fear. It's scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away.
For me, programming is a passion. And if not for this podcast, it would probably, at least in part, be my profession. So I get an uncomfortable feeling every time Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time, just writes a lot of excellent stuff.
approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of Stack Overflow exceeds the skill of many programmers, many individual programmers. But in many ways, it still does not.
But I think eventually, more and more, the task, the profession of programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I'm at least doing, is to ride the wave of the ever-improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer.
What I'm doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. So for me currently, I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor. And before that, it was Emacs to VS Code switch. So Cursor is this editor that's based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs.
and integrates the code generation really nicely into the editing process. So it makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. So what I would advise and what I'm trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its code generation capabilities. I personally try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch. So using my understanding of programming
to edit the code that's generated by the LLM versus sort of writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill. I think this applies to many other careers too. Don't compete with AI for your job. Learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary on some deep sort of human level, the threat of being replaced. But yeah,
At least I think we'll be okay.
All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently, he graduated with a bachelor's degree and he's thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering. But there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree. So he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he's done with his PhD. So it's a big investment.
But he said in his heart, he feels like he's a scientist. I think that's the most important part of his message, of your message. By the way, I'll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes. Now onto the question. So thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees. And I took a while, just as you're doing,
I did a lot of non-standard things that weren't any good for some hypothetical career I'm supposed to have. I trained and competed in judo and jiu-jitsu for my entire 20s. Got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature. I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren't at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees.
like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn't directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring. So like you, I took the long way home, as they say.
And I regret none of it. Throughout that, people around me and even people who love me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money. And so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day.
But I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got the things you're passionate about. As you said, very importantly, in your heart, you know you're a scientist. So that's it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor, and do epic shit with them.
And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you're chasing dreams and goals with absolute, unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also, try your best to be a good person. This might be a good place to read the words, If by Roger Kipling, that I often return to when I feel lost and I'm looking for guidance on how to be a better man. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blame it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies. Or being hated, don't give way to hating. And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves that make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, and lose and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss.
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they're gone, and so hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them, "Hold on." If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And which is more, you'll be a man, my son. Thank you for listening and see you next time.
