In this episode, Joe Rogan welcomes JD Vance for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on the surreal experience of hosting a UFC event at the White House, the dynamics of modern political discourse, and the looming economic challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.
Key Discussion Points
- The White House UFC Event: Vance describes the surreal nature of seeing a massive combat sports infrastructure built within the grounds of the executive mansion.
- Combat Sports vs. Boxing: Analysis of the cultural shift where the UFC has largely overtaken boxing in intensity.
- The Economy: Discussion on the “rigged” system and the impact of AI.
Full Episode Transcript
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. >> U. So, the last time we talked [music] uh last time I saw you, we were at a cage fight at the White House. >> That’s right. That’s [laughter] That’s >> one of the craziest experiences of my life. It must have been one of the craziest experiences of your life. >> Oh, yeah. It took me like 2 weeks afterwards to recover just to like go, did that actually happen? That seems It seems so insane. >> Okay. The most insane part of it, which I guess was was before you got there to to me at least, is you like you come into work every day in the White House, right? You you know, I have an office in the West Wing. There’s the Oval Office in the West Wing. And you look out the window and as this like eightstory complex was growing up, it was the it was just the most unbelievable thing. I think it’s like the south lawn of the White House, but you’ve got the eighth wonder of the world [laughter] being built up around it. And every day I’d look at it and be like, it would take me a couple seconds to be like, “What the hell is going on?” And I like, “Oh yeah, it’s UFC. It’s UF UFC coming in a couple weeks.” >> The whole thing was surreal. First of all, it was crazy that the weather just went around us. >> Like there was a real moment where the fights would have been postponed until 10:30 p.m. to start. >> Correct. And uh last minute the storm just diverted. >> That’s right. Well, and uh you know this this uh this book that I have that I’m I guess we’ll talk about a little bit, but the book tour started the next day. So I was flying to New York the next day to talk about it. And all I could think about is every time we got the update from White House weather, oh it might not start until 10:30. I was thinking to myself, “Holy that means I’m going to go to bed at like 4:00 a.m. I’m going to look like a total crazy person when I try [laughter] to go talk about go talk about this book.” But yeah, it it it amazingly it did work out. Honestly, it actually helped a little bit because, as you know, it was hot as hell out there and it was super humid, you know, mid June in in in DC. And I think the weather actually helped cool it down a little bit because by about 10:00 or so, I was not thinking it’s hot as hell out here anymore. >> Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. But I talked to Justin Gatey about it and he said it was a problem when he was fighting. He said the air was very thick. Okay. >> Like it like right after the first round, he was like, “Boy, >> like this is rough.” Cuz that hot humid air and you know it’s >> Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s fine walking around. >> It’s it’s I mean it’s okay walking around. It still feels it is a swamp, right? That’s why people call it the swamp. So, you know, that’s obviously June 14th. That’s the president. >> That’s not why they call it the swamp. [laughter] >> That’s one of the reasons why they call it the swamp. >> They call it the swamp. >> They call it swamp because of my colleagues, too. >> Cuz it’s filled with [laughter] mud and water and gunk and and swamp monsters. >> Oh, man. So, that’s June 14th. So, it’s the president’s birthday. That’s also was that was my 12th wedding anniversary. >> Oh, wow. and uh my wife. So that’s that’s the one thing like if somebody runs in here, it’s because my wife’s going into labor cuz she’s like 39 weeks pregnant. But uh I remember we go out to dinner like right before the UFC fight and we’re of course checking the weather report to figure out what’s going on. And you know, my wife normally likes to come to the cool stuff of being vice president. That was the one where she was like, “It’s hot. I’m super pregnant and I’m not going to sit sit out there for six hours.” So >> yeah, I couldn’t imagine [laughter] Also, it was just there was so much chaos and and the potential for real chaos was always there. First of all, you have the Ellipse. So, the Ellipse has what 85,000 people outside >> and for people that watching at home like we could hear them like when the fights when when something would happen >> in like kind of a delayed way, right? >> You hear the cheers from the people that were near. So, it was like 3,000 plus people tightly close to the octagon and then you had 85,000 people in the Yeah. >> Yeah. >> in the background. It was very eerie. >> Yeah. >> I actually loved that. Like I loved the delay reaction to where you know somebody get a good punch in or you know you get a takedown and then it was almost like the wave, right? Cuz there was the initial center of it and then the people outside of it. >> It was pretty sick. >> It was pretty sick. It was very [laughter] cool. I think Dana said not once in a lifetime or not once in a generation or once in a lifetime experience. >> Yeah. I mean, it’s once ever. Yeah. I don’t see any other president. I mean, if you become president, you’re not going to do that, [laughter] right? >> Uh I don’t know, man. >> It’s I wouldn’t I didn’t want to do it. >> Very cool. Get it over with. Do it once. >> It was the only time in the history of the sport where there’s been seven stoppages. Seven Seven knockouts. Like every single fight was a knockout. >> I didn’t realize that. >> Yeah. Every single fight. Okay. >> But the thing is like we’ve had seven knockouts in a card. I think this last weekend we had 10 10 stoppages. >> But um >> that was different because it was like 14 fights. That’s right. >> This is all fights. Every single fight was a knockout. >> So the last fight. When did you realize that was over >> with Connor? >> Yeah. >> Um when he fell down the second time I was like this is not good. F the first time I thought he just slipped. It’s hard to tell. It’s wild. It’s in the moment. I thought he slipped and then when he got up and he threw a kick again, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t like how his leg just gave out.” That didn’t seem like I’m still hoping he’s just slipping. >> Yeah. >> I’m hoping he’s just freaking out cuz he hasn’t been in the octagon in 5 years. >> And then he started moving around and he he like grabbed his knee and buckled. >> Okay. >> And there was some conversation that Yeah. There was some conversation going on between him and Max Holloway. And I was like, >> you know, Max is saying he can’t fight. Like something’s wrong. and he’s saying, “Fight me.” He’s like, “Get up.” And so he lets him up and then his his knee buckles. Then the referee stops the fight. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There it always So so the the very I think it was the very last fight where the the ref tried to call it at the end of the third round and then because he was he was saying that there was a concussion issue. I mean I couldn’t tell what was going on. >> This the Ilia Tapora fight, the Justin Gate fight at the White House. >> The Taporio Justin fight. >> He couldn’t see. >> Okay. >> He was saying he couldn’t see. Well, something was wrong with his right eye. >> Well, I mean it looks like his whole face was puffed up, so he couldn’t see anything, but Okay. So, I thought it was a concussion thing, but it was it was because of his vision. >> No, they never got they I mean, the concussion thing would only be if someone had been battered. There’s a lot of times where fighters are fighting with concussions. >> Yeah, it happens all the time. You get dropped in the first round, you probably have a concussion. You get back up, you keep fighting, you’re fighting on instincts. There’s been many times where fighters wake up in like the fourth round >> and they’ve fought three rounds and they don’t remember it at all. >> God, that’s pretty crazy. >> Not the best way to make a living. [laughter] >> Not the best way to make a living, man. Yeah. No. So, we saw Gachi um at the White House a couple of weeks ago and I asked him, I was like, “So, are you done fighting?” And he kind of hesitated a little bit and then I think it was his mom was in the Oval Office with her. She’s like, “Yes.” [laughter] >> Yeah. But, you know, if they offer him some life-changing money for one more fight after that performance, I have a feeling he’ll take it. >> Like, what is what could he fetch for his next fight? Like 50 more? >> It’s a good question. You know, I don’t know what his contract is. I don’t know how it works. I don’t know what the most anyone’s ever I try not to pay attention to that stuff >> because I’m not on the business end of the sport. >> It kind of color your perception a little bit. >> It can. And it’s also it’s I mean I want them to get paid the most amount possible. That’s my perspective. Yeah. >> But what I’m my job is just to analyze and to see what’s going on and to commentate and try to give color and life to what’s happening inside the octagon. And I don’t I try not to dwell too much on the money. I just want them to get paid a lot. Yeah. >> I want them to be able to retire and never have to do anything ever again. >> Sure. >> I don’t know if Justin could do that. What’s crazy about it to me is just how much the sport has replaced boxing and like there’s still obviously boxing is still a big deal and fighters still get paid a lot of money but like I remember when I was I don’t know in high school I feel like people would get really excited about the big heavyweight heavyweight title bout. Now it’s the UFC thing. >> So culturally it’s like UFC has taken over boxing and I don’t I mean I don’t know how or why that happened. Like I don’t know if it’s just good marketing or if it’s just the fights are so much more real and intense. Like I but it’s it is a crazy shift that’s happened in 20 years. >> Well, I’ve had some I had some friends this past weekend that manage fighters. My friend Josh Dubin and a few other friends that actually manage boxers come to the UFC and they were all like, “Oh my god, this is so much better than a boxing promotion.” Because you c all the fights are exciting. With boxing, most people are just there for the main event. >> And a lot of people don’t even stroll in until like 15 minutes before the main event. Sure. >> Like all the famous people that sit in the front row. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh in the UFC, that place is packed for, >> you know, five, six, seven fights in. >> Yeah. >> You know, and there’s 14 fights in the night and all of them are amazing. It’s like in the beginning it’s usually like half full >> depending on where you are. If you’re in a place like Salt Lake City, it’s pretty packed like right away because they only get like one event every year or >> so. >> But um it’s just a more exciting sport. There’s more ways to win. It’s more dynamic. More things happen >> and there’s more stars. There’s so many stars in the UFC. >> Yeah. So I’d never seen a fight live before. Like I’ve watched them on TV, but I’d never been there live. So kind of crazy that it’s literally in the south lawn of the White House. But the thing that I found completely shocking about it was like I would think those those like arm bar takedowns are just done. Like that’s it. You’re over. But there were a couple of times where somebody had another person’s arm and >> Yeah, that was Josh Hoit and Derrick Lewis. >> Bless you. >> Um and it’s like holy >> Yeah, he >> you’re going to have your arm broken off and yet he didn’t. >> He wasn’t doing it right. >> Okay. [laughter] Josh Hok is a great wrestler and he’s an excellent fighter, but he’s not really a submission specialist. I mean, he did get the arm bar, but he didn’t do it right. Okay. >> He was basically like pulling on. You have to elevate your hips and you have to create space so that the arm is bending back this way. His arm is essentially flat to his chest, which is not what you want. What you want is >> a back arch like this where you see like how it is right there. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, what he wants to do here, what he should do instead of having his hips down, his knees up, what you’re supposed to do is heavy leg curls with the leg and elevate the hips up and pull it way back. So, he’d almost be bridging it. He would be on the top of his shoulders and bridging and then he would have broken his arm. The other option is you pull it off to the side like this. >> Yeah. >> And you put it to the side of your hip and you can break it that way. >> Okay. >> But it’s just bad technique. >> Okay. So, watching it. No offense, Josh. >> Yeah. Yeah. Watching it, I didn’t realize that. I just could not believe that dude held out for like 30 seconds with his >> Was that more shocking or when he said Michelle Obama is a man? [laughter] Which one was more shocking? >> Uh, definitely the armbar part. Man, [laughter] I I work in politics. People say crazy stuff all the time. >> Well, he says that every fight, does he? >> Yeah. Yeah, he said it. He said that the last time I interviewed him. >> Oh, man. Well, it’s >> He’s like a pro wrestling character. People lost their minds about it. >> I know. >> Lost their minds about it to the point where again I had the view either the next day or the day after to sort of promote this book. >> That must be fun. >> It was crazy. It was harder than any anything I’ve done in politics. But the the the to the point where all of my comm’s people, the thing they were most worried about was they’re going to ask you about Michelle Obama being called a man. Like what what are you [laughter] like what are you going to say about it? And I was like, what an amped up fighter told a joke after a fight. Said something after a fight and that’s actually national news. I’m still surprised. I’ve been in politics now for three or four years. I’m still shocked the that people get really fired up about. >> Well, I kind of understand it because it’s at the White House. First of all, a cage fight at the White House is crazy already. I mean, if he said Michelle Obama’s a man at the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas, it’s like, okay, >> less of a story. He what he is is he’s a very good fighter first of all and but sometimes that’s not enough to get attention and so what Josh has done is created this persona like this pro wrestling bad guy persona when you talk to him offstage he’s like very normal very smart guy >> it’s just like he’s decided like look I want to maximize the amount of eyeballs that see me and I’m going to create this crazy person he comes out to the Hulk Hogan song I’m a real American who has sunglasses on, American flag band. It’s, you know, he’s >> I mean, I love I love the I love the presentation, but again, I like >> not the best thing to say at the White House. Michelle Obama’s a man is not the best thing to say. >> Fair, but the reaction to it to me was still totally disproportionate. >> Yeah, of course. >> People say, Dude, people say stuff all the time. And what I Okay, I I live I I I work in a business where obviously people make life decision, life and death decisions all the time. And I’m always a little bit caught off guard by the culture that just overreacts when clearly the thing what that Josh is trying to get is the overreaction in the first place, right? >> So you give him exactly what he wants and like the worst you could say is, “Oh, that was an offensive comment.” And you get on with the rest of your life. Like that’s the worst that you could say. the people who really flip out about it and kind of lose their minds. I just I don’t understand that. >> Well, first of all, I think a lot of it is there is an economy that is essentially based on getting reactions. >> Correct. >> And there’s a lot of people that are just, for a lack of a better term, they’re they’re not real. They’re they’re reactions are performative. Like a lot of what they’re doing is just trying to trying to comment on things and get clicks and likes and views. And social media has ruined discourse in a lot of ways because people >> it has >> people are not having like real conversations about things. is they’re reacting to things on Instagram and Twitter >> and you know they’re just they they look at an opportunity like that like oh I found a gold nugget >> they’re like this is going to give me money or this is going to give me attention this is going to give oh I can’t wait to have a take on that. >> That’s exactly right. So but okay so my response to that is so many things is like oh he was being funny he was being outrageous and I just move on with my life. What I find very interesting is the people who say, you know, oh, that was a joke. Like when when Kill Tony, you remember he told like the joke heard around the world in Madison Square Garden during the 2024 election. >> I remember getting into an argument with somebody about this and I may have even been like in an interview, but >> I don’t remember. It could have been private, too. Anyway, I I’m like, he told a joke and then the person’s response is, well, it’s not a very funny joke. And my response to that is, you know what happens when somebody tells me a joke that’s not funny? I don’t laugh and then I move on with my life. This whole industry around outrage, >> especially getting outraged around humor, I think is actually really hurting the country. >> Well, in that case, first of all, I told Tony a long time ago that joke was going to get him stabbed. I really did. He even jokes around about it on stage. He talks about me telling him, “That’s the one, dude. That’s the one’s going to get you stabbed.” Any good joke at least is going to run you some risk of getting >> well certainly a a racial joke and that joke being about Puerto Rico. By the way, no one takes a joke better than Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are some of the best people at telling jokes. Like there it is a culture of joking and and around with each other and talking Like >> they’re great at it. So like >> some Puerto Rican guys in the Marine Corps, man. That’s absolutely true. >> They love him still, you know, like even after that joke. What? So you you you advised him not to tell that joke. >> Well, I was kind of half joking. You know, Tony that’s what Tony does. You know what? By I just said that’s the one that’s going to get you stabbed. But I mean that’s what Tony does. Tony is like the Josh Hokit of comedy. Like he but very talented. You know, he’s a really good he’s a roaster. >> He’s like roasting is is his specialty, but it’s also like he’s trying to ruffle people’s feathers. That’s what he wants to do. He wants to piss people off. That’s he likes being a pro wrestling heel. He always he’s a huge pro wrestling fan. >> Well, so well he so Tony I like I’m a huge fan of his comedy. I’ve only you know met him a couple times. I don’t know him particularly well but he’s actually like you know more political I would say than most comedians. >> Do you think that’s fair? Okay. >> So um >> well very supportive of like Trump >> like he’s on the Republican team. He’s on their 100%. That’s because he’s experienced so many loony leftwing people in California and that’s why he had to move. >> Well, somebody sent me a clip. I think it was Shane Gillis at a roast where the the joke was they were roasting Tony and they’re like, Tony Hinchcliffe is the only dude who would be excited if JD Vance was here. [laughter] And I was like, one, that’s a very good joke. And number two, I feel like I had made it. Like there have been a few moments where I feel like I’ve made it. When >> you’re the vice president of the United States, I think you made it. >> When when South Park spoofed me, I felt it more than when I got it sworn in as vice president of the United States. >> That’s hilarious. That’s very funny. This episode is brought to you by the farmer’s dog. Here’s a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn’t that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So, why is feeding vague scoops of ultrarocessed kibble still the status
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ense of the American dream and of possibility in the future, they’re going to become socialists. Like, if if you have a zero sum environment for a 25-year-old in this country, they’re going to start to say, “The only way for me to get anything is to take away from somebody else.” So we have to get away from like the zero sum thinking. I think that’s like the root cause of this. But I I also think that look we’ve ran an experiment in the United States of America and you know I think that we have we have undone that experiment taken in a different direction in the Trump administration where ship all the factories overseas and let low-wage foreigners make our stuff. That was a bad deal for American workers. Again, it takes a long time to reverse that trend, but I think it’s one of the best parts of Trump administration policy is you do see that trend starting to reverse. This idea that nobody should own anything. We should all become renters, whereas what we’re trying to do is lowest lower interest rates. You actually have seen housing costs stabilize in the country over the last year and a half, frankly, because of immigration. We had way too many people going after way too many homes. You close the border. This is one of the reasons why rent and housing costs have stabilized a little bit. So, I think that unless you go down that pathway of allowing young Americans to own something, socialism is the inevitable outcome. Do I think that’s good? No. But I I really do worry, and I I see this frankly more in my own party than I do on the other side. There is this revulsion to socialism that’s totally justified without enough thinking about how did we get here in the first place. And if man if we don’t fix that and I I would say if we don’t get back to a more Christian sort of understanding of of economics socialism is the alternative like that that is where this goes. People don’t own anything rigged. >> Exactly. And in some ways Joe the game is rigged. >> Yes. the I mean if if you look at >> I mean again I I just I think so much of housing because you know this happened I think it was during the presidential campaign maybe it was right before but I was I was talking to some family members over Thanksgiving and you know just a sort of a younger friend of of my wife’s they were like five or six years behind us they were just about to get married and this this young woman successful engineer makes a higher salary than most Americans. She just sort of like tossed out there that, you know, when her parents’ generation was coming up, it was like possible to own a house and to raise a family and not be worried that much about things. And my thought was, okay, you’re an engineer. You make way more money than 75% of people your age, maybe 90% of people your age, and you think that it is like this ridiculous unachievable objective to have literally what your parents had, which is a decent job, a nice house, and a and a safe place like at that literally that same that same dinner like another guy another friend of my wife was talking about this and he you know South Indian family grew up you know his parents immigrated he was born and raised in San Diego and he was like you know when I was growing up in Oceanside. This is like a suburb of San Diego where there a lot of Marines live in Oceanside. It’s close to Camp Pendleton. Said when I was growing up, all of my like the kids that I played with that I rode bo bikes with, that I was, you know, playing street hockey with and football with, all of those kids were the sons of enlisted Marines in Oceanside, California. And then we went and looked at like Oceanside, California rents. Again, this is a couple years ago, rents and housing prices. Like every house was north of a million dollars on the street this guy grew up in. And listen, Marine, frankly, most Marine officers could not afford to buy a million-dollar house. So, like, does the socialism thing scare me? Yes. Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative if we don’t have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable. That’s like our job. That’s what we have to do. I’m not saying Rome was built in a day. It’s not going to be easy to undo some of these economic trends. But man, we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable, you know, line goes up asset. And what has that done? It’s created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism. >> We have to fix that problem. >> Well, kids that do feel, and you’re correct, and I I I agree with you, the system is rigged. Kids feel like there are no options other than to burn it down. Yes. And that’s the problem because they feel very frustrated. >> And this is part of our job is to provide an option that isn’t burn it down, but is not just doing the same things that we’ve done for the past. But they’re also terrified about the future because of AI because they feel like jobs are going to be taken away and there will be no place for people that have education in very specific [snorts] avenues like very specific jobs are going to just be irrelevant. >> Yeah. >> They’re going to be completely wiped out by AI. >> There is a huge fear over this. So I let me kind of give my own my own spin on this. >> Yes. I was talking to a CEO not of an AI company but of a tech company and he’s one of the few CIO CEOs that’s sort of right or center and I was like well you know what do you think do you think AI is going to come and take all the jobs and his basic take was the the real historical analogy is the industrial revolution and you know did the industrial revolution displace or change a lot of jobs yes it also created a lot of jobs that didn’t exist before so he was like my concern here is not that 50% of Americans are going to be unable to find a job. There will be some displacement, some sort of churn in the labor market, but that’s not the main issue. He said the main issue, if you go back to the industrial revolution, is that there was a lot of demand for workers, but the inequality in the country got completely out of whack. Like this is the era of the robber barons. And then the robber barons in both Europe and the United States led to fascism. It led to communism again to this point about giving people an option. if you don’t give them a good option, then it leads to fascism and communism. >> Now, there’s this fascinating encyclical um written by by Pope Leo I 13th. I’ll send it to you. It’s one of the the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader where it’s it’s written in the late 19th century. And the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way between six-year-olds working on the factory floor and socialism. And part of that solution is to give workers a sort of say in what’s going on. Give normal people some power in this in this in this system. And I think that’s the thing we have to figure out with AI. I won’t say that I have all the solutions because I haven’t. But I think the fundamental question is how do you ensure that normal people have some control over this? control over what’s their kids are seeing, control over, you know, the the the economic forces that are being unleashed by AI, some certainty that they’re not going to wake up in a world where they can’t buy a home, but some other guy owns 35 mansions, right? That that to me is is the fundamental challenge of AI is it’s going to unleash a lot of wealth creation, but if that wealth creation all goes to some some segment of people, you’re going to have communism. like that that is that is the choice before us is a lot of wealth being created that’s good by the way I like I like wealth being created but if if you don’t ensure that there’s some broader prosperity from that wealth creation like we have run this experiment before and it leads to communism >> right so if the system is how do we unfuck it >> so [sighs and gasps] >> you have a magic wand >> I I mean look I I this is what I’m I’m saying I’m being honest with you that I I don’t have a magic wand I I think there are a few things that that that we should sort of take from this I think. Okay. The first is that we should give workers a real say at the bargaining table. Okay. So, what really worries me about AI is the is the fact that private sector unions have largely disappeared from the United States of America. There are a couple of exceptions, but if you go back to like why did the United States and Britain weather um the industrial revolution better than literally every other western country? I think you could make a good argument. Strong religious institutions. Right now, we have very weak religious institutions. Number two, I think you could say strong worker participation institutions and not just private sector labor unions. That was a big piece of it. But people don’t realize that, you know, Hollywood major studios would actually work with community groups and churches to sort of help like develop content. Now, this was an organic. This was a natural cooperation. And this wasn’t mandated by some law, but where they’d go and say, “Help us produce content that actually speaks to your membership, that speaks to your community.” And there was this sense of participation in American society that I think we’ve lost. And and that’s the thing that I think that we have to rebuild a little bit. It’s interesting that, you know, the Trump administration, the president personally, certainly me have been accused of being too pro- labor for Republicans. But one of the reason why I’m pro- labor as a Republican is because, and I’m not saying unions are perfect. Some of them have very serious problems. Like I’m opened about this, like the alternative may very well be communism in the United States of America. Not next year, but down the road, you’ve got to give people a seat at the table. And I think that’s that’s one answer to the question. Um I I think a second answer to the question is is competition. So if if you go back again to what worked and what was broken about the industrial revolution, hyper monopolist style companies that had way too much power. I mean Teddy Roosevelt famously talked about how um you know some of the steel trusts were more powerful than the United States government. So you could vote your vote didn’t matter as much because the corporations were more powerful than the government. I think reigning that in making sure that like how do you what’s the most obvious way to give normal people participation it’s democracy but if a single corporation has monopolized an entire space then you don’t have a real a real democracy unless you reign in the power of that company and I think that that is another big risk with AI it’s that we have a hyper monopouist who dominates the space and then influences the government influences the nonprofit sector and then real people are effectively cut out of the bargain. So again, I’m not going to pretend sitting here that I have all the solutions. I think about this more than almost anything else right now. But it’s the solution has to be giving normal people actual authority over their own lives. >> But how can the government get involved in those steps? Like what could be done on a federal level to implement that? Well, [sighs] you know, I I think one of the things and and we’ve we’ve looked at legislation along these lines, we haven’t yet pushed anything, but you know, one problem with the 20 with with like the private sector labor union. One reason why you Democrats will say you private unions are at super low participation rates because the government is, you know, been anti-UN. There’s like some element of truth to that. But the reality is that a lot of workers don’t see the utility in joining a union because it’s like in a lot of ways it’s a 20th century institution when you need a 21st century institution. So I think updating the modern union to be to make more sense in the 21st century I think that’s that’s a part of the story. Um you know I think I think antitrust >> how would you do that? Well, a friend of mine, his name is Orin Cass, actually, very fascinating guy, sort of a right-of-c center economic thinker. you know, his his idea is that 20th century labor law presupposes a sort of zero sum conflict between the company and the union and that where you’ve seen unions actually thrive certain places in Europe, it’s a little bit more cooperative and the the unions actually have a little bit more power themselves where they can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit more breadth and a little bit more freedom. Whereas in the United States, we sort of set a floor. we make we we create a very small number of things the union can actually negotiate over and so a lot of people say well why would I join a union why would I participate in it so basically making the union a little bit more cooperative which requires changing the legal form of it I think that’s interesting I think antitrust is a huge piece of the story now it’s it’s a little early with AI because we don’t yet know which companies are dominant but I think one of the big mistakes man we made in the early 2000s is we should have gone after the big tech companies with antitrust like there is like a trustbusting mechanism that exists in the US government. We just didn’t use it. We’re going to have to be willing to use it in the 21st century. >> And when it comes to unions, um what like what what is wrong with the current structure um in in terms of what what power the unions have to negotiate for for labor. So let me look. So there’s a concrete example that that Orin uses all the time. So in in some European countries, you have a minimum wage, right? In some European countries, the union can can actually cut a deal with the employer to where you pay a brand new employee less than the minimum wage, then you pay a more senior person higher than the minimum wage. But in order to pay the junior employee less than the minimum wage, you have to provide them job training and better benefits and so forth. And so the idea is you turn the employ for the first couple of years you turn the company almost into an educational institution but in order to do that the union has to have flexibility. That kind of arrangement is effectively illegal in the United States of America. So it’s that you create the ability for the union to be more flexible in how it negotiates. You don’t set all the terms for it. You allow the union to figure out what’s in the best interest of its membership. But people are opposed like initially knee-jerk reaction to lowering wages and even in lowering minimum wage. I mean the most people feel and I agree that minimum wage is almost impossible to live off of especially with >> 100%. Yeah. That it is but but but what these unions are not asking for I mean you have to kind of trust the labor representation of the people to sort of make the right arrangement for them. And so it’s not, hey, let’s create a minimum wage or a wage floor that’s lower than the minimum wage. It’s what about taking for the first year of a person coming into the labor market where, you know, they work an internship for zero dollars, right, at a at a company. Why don’t we allow our workers to work effectively an internship, get the training they need, get the benefits that they need, and then join the workforce full-time at a much higher wage? The the idea is that you trust the union to come up with this or or the labor organization, whatever you want to call it, is you actually give the union the ability to sort of negotiate over this stuff on behalf of its members. You don’t assume the way the United States we do it is we we basically take all that authority away from the union itself and we try to settle this stuff at the level of the government. But again, where unions have been more successful, where they actually have higher membership and participation rates, what you see is the the these organizations actually have much greater flexibility and that ends up meaning that more people want to join. That means these organizations have more power and then that means they can figure out the arrangement that works best for their membership. So you kind of have to trust people. You have to trust that people are willing to do this thing um for for their own for their own benefit. And you know, so long as they’ve got the right authority and so long as they’ve got the right tools, you give you kind of trust people to do what’s in their best interest in these organizations to do what’s in the best interest of their membership. >> Well, the the problem that people would have with that is that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders and they always want to make the most money possible and they have to make more money next quarter than they made this quarter. And one of the ways they do that is by paying people less. >> But that’s why I think that you have to give workers some some seat at the bargaining table. There there there is a there is a theory of like economics that dominated in the late 20th century America which is that basically that you know the labor market was entirely efficient and maybe the corporation didn’t want to pay their workers more money but they would be forced to pay their workers more money purely because if they didn’t do that then they wouldn’t be able to get enough workers. Now, I do think that there’s an argument for like there are all of these ways why we should give workers more bargaining power. One of them and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about labor organizations and that’s important. Man, one of the reasons why I’m such an immigration hawk is because it is really important not to flood the country with low-wage immigrants, right? Because if you give a corporation a choice between a low-wage immigrant and a native worker who’s going to require, by the way, a native worker of any race, they’re going to be forced to pay the native worker more if there’s not a pool of low-wage workers to to go to. And this is like a consistent finding in the economics literature, but also just common sense that when you flood the country with low-wage immigrants, this is why I think the DSA types are a little full of when they talk about helping normal people. If you want to help a normal person, don’t provide a corporation nine low-wage migrants to compete against them when they’re bargaining for wages. You actually give workers more power when you have a more restricted immigration policy. >> Well, this is that’s the that that’s that’s where the real con is, right? Because a lot of Yeah. You’ve told me that you had a conversation with uh someone who was at the head of some corporation that was upset that they were trying to shut down illegal immigration because he said it’s >> head of a hotel chain. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Cuz he said basically I want to be able to pay my workers less money and it’s very hard because the native workers expect higher wages. >> It’s crazy. I mean there there dude there’s there’s this story from a few years ago. It was the New York Times. It was like unintentionally hilarious. And it’s talking about a, you know, why Apple would choose to manufacture in Asia over the United States of America. And it’s talking about how, you know, the American workers and it’s it’s almost kind of judgy towards the American workers. It’s like, well, you know, the American workers want to go home and see their kids and have dinner with their kids. And it’s like, by the way, you go to the Foxcon factory in Apple in China, the Foxcon factory that develops products for Apple and China, and what do you see? You literally see suicide nets around the top of the building because, yeah, the workers work 72 hours a week and they sleep in little apartments four to a bedroom, but they also are so miserable, you have to take steps to prevent them from killing themselves. So, you know, what I want out of American life is a little bit more dignity, a little bit more, oh, you know, yeah, I can I can I can afford to feed my family. I can also go home and actually watch my kids’ baseball game. And that balance, I think, if you’re looking at it from a pure profit motive, you know, maybe the corporation isn’t going to think like that, which is why you have to give the people real power to push back and advocate for their own interests. I think a lot of people in this country, if they had to choose, especially people that have money, if they had to choose between a phone that was manufactured in America where people were paid a very good wage and had benefits and you have an iPhone that has a little American flag on the back and you have one that doesn’t. I think a lot of people would buy the one with the American flag on the back because >> just they would feel better about their purchase. They’d feel I feel weird when I’m holding a phone [laughter] and I know that someone was working in some factory in some foreign country working 15 hours a day and and being paid nothing. >> That’s right. I think that’s true of our food, by the way, too. >> Yeah. >> They they’d much rather it be, you know, made locally. They’re willing to pay a little bit more so long as it’s it’s healthier and it’s made locally. There obviously are exceptions to every rule, but I I do again I think that we have run the experiment where we just try to do everything with low-wage foreigners, whether they’re in the United States via illegal immigration or whether they’re outside the United States via offshoring and outsourcing. And what it has led to is I think a society where socialism is a bit on the rise. And one of our jobs in the administration, I think about this all the time, is how do you make things I’m not saying we’re perfect and I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of work to do because there is like we were left in quite a hole by 40 years of bad policy. People always talk about the Biden administration inflation. Yeah, the Biden administration inflation was terrible. Got up to 9%. By the way, I think today’s CPI report is you had deflation in the United States. We actually had prices coming down which is good because the Iran war gas prices came down. But like >> gas prices have come down now because of the Iran war. >> No, no, no. Compared to where they were a month ago, >> right? >> So they’re they’re not down from the beginning of the war, but they’re down from where they were a month ago. So you had a good CPI report, uh a consumer price inflation report today. My my point is, yes, I don’t ever get to the 9% inflation of the B administration. Yes, the Trump administration has had a much better record on inflation than the Biden administration. nothing close to 9% even in our worst month. But some of this stuff is actually much longer term. This is 40 years of failed bipartisan leadership which has created really a kind of shell corporation out of the United States of America. We don’t make enough of our own stuff. We don’t have enough self-reliance. Our workers don’t have enough bargaining power. That has led in a lot of ways, I think, to this kind of socialism fervor. And we have to keep fixing these problems. Again, I think that we’re going in the right direction. Maybe people disagree, but it’s going to take years to fix this problem. And if we don’t, we are going to end up with a socialist president in this country. >> I think it’s also a narrative change. And that the the narrative is stopping immigration is cruelty. Correct. And you’re you’re you’re racist or xenophobic and that uh we should just instead give these people citizenship. And it’s it’s not a coincidence that I mean like what we dealt with over the last four years was insane where they just opened the border and not just encouraged people to come across but facilitated it helped them got them on Medicaid got them on social security got people the they told people do you have a bad back okay well you’re permanent disability and you get free money put them in a hotel give them a phone like that’s crazy and then move them to blue states and then you realize that that has a direct impact on congressional seats >> because of the census which is also nuts. The census should count citizens. >> It should only count citizens but it doesn’t and that actually steals congressional representation away from areas that have lower illegal immigration, right? >> Which is its own its own problem. So yeah, it it’s it’s the thing that I don’t understand about the Democratic Socialists of America. And obviously I disagree with a lot of their ideas, but like if you go back to Caesar Chavez, one of the original like founding fathers of the American workers rights movement, okay? He was a hardcore restrictionist on immigration because he thought that the bosses would bring in low-wage immigrants to compete against his workers and that would drive down their wages. And yet the DSA, which says they care about the wages of workers, is quite literally like an open borders organization. So I I tend to think that it’s it’s all BS that they are actually pursuing a set of policies that are good for that are like corporations care way more about open borders than they do about any other policy the DSA cares about. So while these people say that they’re trying to fight for workers and they’re trying to fight for the working man, the actual end result of DSA policy is to flood the country with low-wage immigrants which will destroy the middle class in this country. In fact, we have run this experiment for decades now and we have a much weaker middle class than we did before it started. And I think this is a part of the the problem this country has that there’s this narrative uh Republicans are cruel and they’re anti-worker and that they’re anti- lower class people or lower middle class people. >> Yep. >> That narrative has to someone has to do a better job of messaging. >> I’m trying to, man. I’m trying to. But, you know, it’s it’s one of those things that it’s it took a long while for it to set in. It’s going to take a long while to to get out of it. But what I just I try to remind people is that anybody who actually cares about the safety of your community is going to care about not empowering police brutality, but empowering the good cops to do what they need to do. Anybody who cares about law and order is going to want to throw violent criminals in jail, not close down the prison. Anybody who cares about your wages and your safety is going to want to control the border. So I I I just all I can think to do is to remind people that I’m not saying Republicans are perfect and you know I have disagreements of course within my own party all the time but fundamentally our party is right now pursuing a much better set of policies when it comes to safety of your home, your wages, your ability to keep more of your money. I just got to keep preaching that message and you know the chips fall where they may. And if you just look at the result of what you see in these cities where they don’t enforce crime, where they don’t enforce immigration laws, they provide sanctuary states, you see disasters over and over and over again. >> Yeah. >> I mean, and I I don’t understand >> exactly >> why people who are voting for these things can’t see that. They can’t see that the results have been catastrophic year after year. They keep getting worse. >> And the idea of voting a new better person to do the same thing is just crazy. >> Yeah, it it’s it’s totally crazy to me, too. I think part of it is we haven’t done a good enough job of actually going to some of these places. Part of it is that it is shifting and sometimes these shifts just take a long time. If you look, the Republican party under Trump’s leadership is way more workingass, way more middle class than the Republican party of 20 years ago. So these things are starting to shift. But the public safety thing is very interesting to me because like one of the promises of America is that every man, woman, and child, rich or poor, black or white, deserves public safety. Like it every rich person ever has had public safety. Every rich person ever has been able to afford some security guard to make sure that somebody who comes and tries to steal their stuff or kidnap their kids, they’re protected against that. What America did is we democratized public safety. Every person gets to keep their property. Every person gets to not be stolen from. Every person gets to walk down their neighborhood at night without being being mugged. And obviously we have imperfectly applied that. But what the left has done over the last few years. Why I think the crime thing is it’s not just a sort of public safety thing. It’s also a class thing is they have made working people less safe. Like if you look at my neighborhood, the neighborhood that I my working-class grandparents raised me in, it became less safe over time. And really workingclass neighborhoods had much higher rates of violence, much higher rates of carjackings and so forth. That happened during Biden’s administration. >> That’s not a coincidence. >> No. Uh anything else? [laughter] >> Anything else? >> Go by Go by Go by Communion, Joe, and we can we can talk about uh religion and faith and the Ten Commandments next time. But thanks for having me, man. >> Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. All right. [music] Wrap it up. Bye, everybody. Great. [music] Hey. Hey.
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ense of the American dream and of possibility in the future, they’re going to become socialists. Like, if if you have a zero sum environment for a 25-year-old in this country, they’re going to start to say, “The only way for me to get anything is to take away from somebody else.” So we have to get away from like the zero sum thinking. I think that’s like the root cause of this. But I I also think that look we’ve ran an experiment in the United States of America and you know I think that we have we have undone that experiment taken in a different direction in the Trump administration where ship all the factories overseas and let low-wage foreigners make our stuff. That was a bad deal for American workers. Again, it takes a long time to reverse that trend, but I think it’s one of the best parts of Trump administration policy is you do see that trend starting to reverse. This idea that nobody should own anything. We should all become renters, whereas what we’re trying to do is lowest lower interest rates. You actually have seen housing costs stabilize in the country over the last year and a half, frankly, because of immigration. We had way too many people going after way too many homes. You close the border. This is one of the reasons why rent and housing costs have stabilized a little bit. So, I think that unless you go down that pathway of allowing young Americans to own something, socialism is the inevitable outcome. Do I think that’s good? No. But I I really do worry, and I I see this frankly more in my own party than I do on the other side. There is this revulsion to socialism that’s totally justified without enough thinking about how did we get here in the first place. And if man if we don’t fix that and I I would say if we don’t get back to a more Christian sort of understanding of of economics socialism is the alternative like that that is where this goes. People don’t own anything rigged. >> Exactly. And in some ways Joe the game is rigged. >> Yes. the I mean if if you look at >> I mean again I I just I think so much of housing because you know this happened I think it was during the presidential campaign maybe it was right before but I was I was talking to some family members over Thanksgiving and you know just a sort of a younger friend of of my wife’s they were like five or six years behind us they were just about to get married and this this young woman successful engineer makes a higher salary than most Americans. She just sort of like tossed out there that, you know, when her parents’ generation was coming up, it was like possible to own a house and to raise a family and not be worried that much about things. And my thought was, okay, you’re an engineer. You make way more money than 75% of people your age, maybe 90% of people your age, and you think that it is like this ridiculous unachievable objective to have literally what your parents had, which is a decent job, a nice house, and a and a safe place like at that literally that same that same dinner like another guy another friend of my wife was talking about this and he you know South Indian family grew up you know his parents immigrated he was born and raised in San Diego and he was like you know when I was growing up in Oceanside. This is like a suburb of San Diego where there a lot of Marines live in Oceanside. It’s close to Camp Pendleton. Said when I was growing up, all of my like the kids that I played with that I rode bo bikes with, that I was, you know, playing street hockey with and football with, all of those kids were the sons of enlisted Marines in Oceanside, California. And then we went and looked at like Oceanside, California rents. Again, this is a couple years ago, rents and housing prices. Like every house was north of a million dollars on the street this guy grew up in. And listen, Marine, frankly, most Marine officers could not afford to buy a million-dollar house. So, like, does the socialism thing scare me? Yes. Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative if we don’t have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable. That’s like our job. That’s what we have to do. I’m not saying Rome was built in a day. It’s not going to be easy to undo some of these economic trends. But man, we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable, you know, line goes up asset. And what has that done? It’s created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism. >> We have to fix that problem. >> Well, kids that do feel, and you’re correct, and I I I agree with you, the system is rigged. Kids feel like there are no options other than to burn it down. Yes. And that’s the problem because they feel very frustrated. >> And this is part of our job is to provide an option that isn’t burn it down, but is not just doing the same things that we’ve done for the past. But they’re also terrified about the future because of AI because they feel like jobs are going to be taken away and there will be no place for people that have education in very specific [snorts] avenues like very specific jobs are going to just be irrelevant. >> Yeah. >> They’re going to be completely wiped out by AI. >> There is a huge fear over this. So I let me kind of give my own my own spin on this. >> Yes. I was talking to a CEO not of an AI company but of a tech company and he’s one of the few CIO CEOs that’s sort of right or center and I was like well you know what do you think do you think AI is going to come and take all the jobs and his basic take was the the real historical analogy is the industrial revolution and you know did the industrial revolution displace or change a lot of jobs yes it also created a lot of jobs that didn’t exist before so he was like my concern here is not that 50% of Americans are going to be unable to find a job. There will be some displacement, some sort of churn in the labor market, but that’s not the main issue. He said the main issue, if you go back to the industrial revolution, is that there was a lot of demand for workers, but the inequality in the country got completely out of whack. Like this is the era of the robber barons. And then the robber barons in both Europe and the United States led to fascism. It led to communism again to this point about giving people an option. if you don’t give them a good option, then it leads to fascism and communism. >> Now, there’s this fascinating encyclical um written by by Pope Leo I 13th. I’ll send it to you. It’s one of the the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader where it’s it’s written in the late 19th century. And the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way between six-year-olds working on the factory floor and socialism. And part of that solution is to give workers a sort of say in what’s going on. Give normal people some power in this in this in this system. And I think that’s the thing we have to figure out with AI. I won’t say that I have all the solutions because I haven’t. But I think the fundamental question is how do you ensure that normal people have some control over this? control over what’s their kids are seeing, control over, you know, the the the economic forces that are being unleashed by AI, some certainty that they’re not going to wake up in a world where they can’t buy a home, but some other guy owns 35 mansions, right? That that to me is is the fundamental challenge of AI is it’s going to unleash a lot of wealth creation, but if that wealth creation all goes to some some segment of people, you’re going to have communism. like that that is that is the choice before us is a lot of wealth being created that’s good by the way I like I like wealth being created but if if you don’t ensure that there’s some broader prosperity from that wealth creation like we have run this experiment before and it leads to communism >> right so if the system is how do we unfuck it >> so [sighs and gasps] >> you have a magic wand >> I I mean look I I this is what I’m I’m saying I’m being honest with you that I I don’t have a magic wand I I think there are a few things that that that we should sort of take from this I think. Okay. The first is that we should give workers a real say at the bargaining table. Okay. So, what really worries me about AI is the is the fact that private sector unions have largely disappeared from the United States of America. There are a couple of exceptions, but if you go back to like why did the United States and Britain weather um the industrial revolution better than literally every other western country? I think you could make a good argument. Strong religious institutions. Right now, we have very weak religious institutions. Number two, I think you could say strong worker participation institutions and not just private sector labor unions. That was a big piece of it. But people don’t realize that, you know, Hollywood major studios would actually work with community groups and churches to sort of help like develop content. Now, this was an organic. This was a natural cooperation. And this wasn’t mandated by some law, but where they’d go and say, “Help us produce content that actually speaks to your membership, that speaks to your community.” And there was this sense of participation in American society that I think we’ve lost. And and that’s the thing that I think that we have to rebuild a little bit. It’s interesting that, you know, the Trump administration, the president personally, certainly me have been accused of being too pro- labor for Republicans. But one of the reason why I’m pro- labor as a Republican is because, and I’m not saying unions are perfect. Some of them have very serious problems. Like I’m opened about this, like the alternative may very well be communism in the United States of America. Not next year, but down the road, you’ve got to give people a seat at the table. And I think that’s that’s one answer to the question. Um I I think a second answer to the question is is competition. So if if you go back again to what worked and what was broken about the industrial revolution, hyper monopolist style companies that had way too much power. I mean Teddy Roosevelt famously talked about how um you know some of the steel trusts were more powerful than the United States government. So you could vote your vote didn’t matter as much because the corporations were more powerful than the government. I think reigning that in making sure that like how do you what’s the most obvious way to give normal people participation it’s democracy but if a single corporation has monopolized an entire space then you don’t have a real a real democracy unless you reign in the power of that company and I think that that is another big risk with AI it’s that we have a hyper monopouist who dominates the space and then influences the government influences the nonprofit sector and then real people are effectively cut out of the bargain. So again, I’m not going to pretend sitting here that I have all the solutions. I think about this more than almost anything else right now. But it’s the solution has to be giving normal people actual authority over their own lives. >> But how can the government get involved in those steps? Like what could be done on a federal level to implement that? Well, [sighs] you know, I I think one of the things and and we’ve we’ve looked at legislation along these lines, we haven’t yet pushed anything, but you know, one problem with the 20 with with like the private sector labor union. One reason why you Democrats will say you private unions are at super low participation rates because the government is, you know, been anti-UN. There’s like some element of truth to that. But the reality is that a lot of workers don’t see the utility in joining a union because it’s like in a lot of ways it’s a 20th century institution when you need a 21st century institution. So I think updating the modern union to be to make more sense in the 21st century I think that’s that’s a part of the story. Um you know I think I think antitrust >> how would you do that? Well, a friend of mine, his name is Orin Cass, actually, very fascinating guy, sort of a right-of-c center economic thinker. you know, his his idea is that 20th century labor law presupposes a sort of zero sum conflict between the company and the union and that where you’ve seen unions actually thrive certain places in Europe, it’s a little bit more cooperative and the the unions actually have a little bit more power themselves where they can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit more breadth and a little bit more freedom. Whereas in the United States, we sort of set a floor. we make we we create a very small number of things the union can actually negotiate over and so a lot of people say well why would I join a union why would I participate in it so basically making the union a little bit more cooperative which requires changing the legal form of it I think that’s interesting I think antitrust is a huge piece of the story now it’s it’s a little early with AI because we don’t yet know which companies are dominant but I think one of the big mistakes man we made in the early 2000s is we should have gone after the big tech companies with antitrust like there is like a trustbusting mechanism that exists in the US government. We just didn’t use it. We’re going to have to be willing to use it in the 21st century. >> And when it comes to unions, um what like what what is wrong with the current structure um in in terms of what what power the unions have to negotiate for for labor. So let me look. So there’s a concrete example that that Orin uses all the time. So in in some European countries, you have a minimum wage, right? In some European countries, the union can can actually cut a deal with the employer to where you pay a brand new employee less than the minimum wage, then you pay a more senior person higher than the minimum wage. But in order to pay the junior employee less than the minimum wage, you have to provide them job training and better benefits and so forth. And so the idea is you turn the employ for the first couple of years you turn the company almost into an educational institution but in order to do that the union has to have flexibility. That kind of arrangement is effectively illegal in the United States of America. So it’s that you create the ability for the union to be more flexible in how it negotiates. You don’t set all the terms for it. You allow the union to figure out what’s in the best interest of its membership. But people are opposed like initially knee-jerk reaction to lowering wages and even in lowering minimum wage. I mean the most people feel and I agree that minimum wage is almost impossible to live off of especially with >> 100%. Yeah. That it is but but but what these unions are not asking for I mean you have to kind of trust the labor representation of the people to sort of make the right arrangement for them. And so it’s not, hey, let’s create a minimum wage or a wage floor that’s lower than the minimum wage. It’s what about taking for the first year of a person coming into the labor market where, you know, they work an internship for zero dollars, right, at a at a company. Why don’t we allow our workers to work effectively an internship, get the training they need, get the benefits that they need, and then join the workforce full-time at a much higher wage? The the idea is that you trust the union to come up with this or or the labor organization, whatever you want to call it, is you actually give the union the ability to sort of negotiate over this stuff on behalf of its members. You don’t assume the way the United States we do it is we we basically take all that authority away from the union itself and we try to settle this stuff at the level of the government. But again, where unions have been more successful, where they actually have higher membership and participation rates, what you see is the the these organizations actually have much greater flexibility and that ends up meaning that more people want to join. That means these organizations have more power and then that means they can figure out the arrangement that works best for their membership. So you kind of have to trust people. You have to trust that people are willing to do this thing um for for their own for their own benefit. And you know, so long as they’ve got the right authority and so long as they’ve got the right tools, you give you kind of trust people to do what’s in their best interest in these organizations to do what’s in the best interest of their membership. >> Well, the the problem that people would have with that is that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders and they always want to make the most money possible and they have to make more money next quarter than they made this quarter. And one of the ways they do that is by paying people less. >> But that’s why I think that you have to give workers some some seat at the bargaining table. There there there is a there is a theory of like economics that dominated in the late 20th century America which is that basically that you know the labor market was entirely efficient and maybe the corporation didn’t want to pay their workers more money but they would be forced to pay their workers more money purely because if they didn’t do that then they wouldn’t be able to get enough workers. Now, I do think that there’s an argument for like there are all of these ways why we should give workers more bargaining power. One of them and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about labor organizations and that’s important. Man, one of the reasons why I’m such an immigration hawk is because it is really important not to flood the country with low-wage immigrants, right? Because if you give a corporation a choice between a low-wage immigrant and a native worker who’s going to require, by the way, a native worker of any race, they’re going to be forced to pay the native worker more if there’s not a pool of low-wage workers to to go to. And this is like a consistent finding in the economics literature, but also just common sense that when you flood the country with low-wage immigrants, this is why I think the DSA types are a little full of when they talk about helping normal people. If you want to help a normal person, don’t provide a corporation nine low-wage migrants to compete against them when they’re bargaining for wages. You actually give workers more power when you have a more restricted immigration policy. >> Well, this is that’s the that that’s that’s where the real con is, right? Because a lot of Yeah. You’ve told me that you had a conversation with uh someone who was at the head of some corporation that was upset that they were trying to shut down illegal immigration because he said it’s >> head of a hotel chain. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Cuz he said basically I want to be able to pay my workers less money and it’s very hard because the native workers expect higher wages. >> It’s crazy. I mean there there dude there’s there’s this story from a few years ago. It was the New York Times. It was like unintentionally hilarious. And it’s talking about a, you know, why Apple would choose to manufacture in Asia over the United States of America. And it’s talking about how, you know, the American workers and it’s it’s almost kind of judgy towards the American workers. It’s like, well, you know, the American workers want to go home and see their kids and have dinner with their kids. And it’s like, by the way, you go to the Foxcon factory in Apple in China, the Foxcon factory that develops products for Apple and China, and what do you see? You literally see suicide nets around the top of the building because, yeah, the workers work 72 hours a week and they sleep in little apartments four to a bedroom, but they also are so miserable, you have to take steps to prevent them from killing themselves. So, you know, what I want out of American life is a little bit more dignity, a little bit more, oh, you know, yeah, I can I can I can afford to feed my family. I can also go home and actually watch my kids’ baseball game. And that balance, I think, if you’re looking at it from a pure profit motive, you know, maybe the corporation isn’t going to think like that, which is why you have to give the people real power to push back and advocate for their own interests. I think a lot of people in this country, if they had to choose, especially people that have money, if they had to choose between a phone that was manufactured in America where people were paid a very good wage and had benefits and you have an iPhone that has a little American flag on the back and you have one that doesn’t. I think a lot of people would buy the one with the American flag on the back because >> just they would feel better about their purchase. They’d feel I feel weird when I’m holding a phone [laughter] and I know that someone was working in some factory in some foreign country working 15 hours a day and and being paid nothing. >> That’s right. I think that’s true of our food, by the way, too. >> Yeah. >> They they’d much rather it be, you know, made locally. They’re willing to pay a little bit more so long as it’s it’s healthier and it’s made locally. There obviously are exceptions to every rule, but I I do again I think that we have run the experiment where we just try to do everything with low-wage foreigners, whether they’re in the United States via illegal immigration or whether they’re outside the United States via offshoring and outsourcing. And what it has led to is I think a society where socialism is a bit on the rise. And one of our jobs in the administration, I think about this all the time, is how do you make things I’m not saying we’re perfect and I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of work to do because there is like we were left in quite a hole by 40 years of bad policy. People always talk about the Biden administration inflation. Yeah, the Biden administration inflation was terrible. Got up to 9%. By the way, I think today’s CPI report is you had deflation in the United States. We actually had prices coming down which is good because the Iran war gas prices came down. But like >> gas prices have come down now because of the Iran war. >> No, no, no. Compared to where they were a month ago, >> right? >> So they’re they’re not down from the beginning of the war, but they’re down from where they were a month ago. So you had a good CPI report, uh a consumer price inflation report today. My my point is, yes, I don’t ever get to the 9% inflation of the B administration. Yes, the Trump administration has had a much better record on inflation than the Biden administration. nothing close to 9% even in our worst month. But some of this stuff is actually much longer term. This is 40 years of failed bipartisan leadership which has created really a kind of shell corporation out of the United States of America. We don’t make enough of our own stuff. We don’t have enough self-reliance. Our workers don’t have enough bargaining power. That has led in a lot of ways, I think, to this kind of socialism fervor. And we have to keep fixing these problems. Again, I think that we’re going in the right direction. Maybe people disagree, but it’s going to take years to fix this problem. And if we don’t, we are going to end up with a socialist president in this country. >> I think it’s also a narrative change. And that the the narrative is stopping immigration is cruelty. Correct. And you’re you’re you’re racist or xenophobic and that uh we should just instead give these people citizenship. And it’s it’s not a coincidence that I mean like what we dealt with over the last four years was insane where they just opened the border and not just encouraged people to come across but facilitated it helped them got them on Medicaid got them on social security got people the they told people do you have a bad back okay well you’re permanent disability and you get free money put them in a hotel give them a phone like that’s crazy and then move them to blue states and then you realize that that has a direct impact on congressional seats >> because of the census which is also nuts. The census should count citizens. >> It should only count citizens but it doesn’t and that actually steals congressional representation away from areas that have lower illegal immigration, right? >> Which is its own its own problem. So yeah, it it’s it’s the thing that I don’t understand about the Democratic Socialists of America. And obviously I disagree with a lot of their ideas, but like if you go back to Caesar Chavez, one of the original like founding fathers of the American workers rights movement, okay? He was a hardcore restrictionist on immigration because he thought that the bosses would bring in low-wage immigrants to compete against his workers and that would drive down their wages. And yet the DSA, which says they care about the wages of workers, is quite literally like an open borders organization. So I I tend to think that it’s it’s all BS that they are actually pursuing a set of policies that are good for that are like corporations care way more about open borders than they do about any other policy the DSA cares about. So while these people say that they’re trying to fight for workers and they’re trying to fight for the working man, the actual end result of DSA policy is to flood the country with low-wage immigrants which will destroy the middle class in this country. In fact, we have run this experiment for decades now and we have a much weaker middle class than we did before it started. And I think this is a part of the the problem this country has that there’s this narrative uh Republicans are cruel and they’re anti-worker and that they’re anti- lower class people or lower middle class people. >> Yep. >> That narrative has to someone has to do a better job of messaging. >> I’m trying to, man. I’m trying to. But, you know, it’s it’s one of those things that it’s it took a long while for it to set in. It’s going to take a long while to to get out of it. But what I just I try to remind people is that anybody who actually cares about the safety of your community is going to care about not empowering police brutality, but empowering the good cops to do what they need to do. Anybody who cares about law and order is going to want to throw violent criminals in jail, not close down the prison. Anybody who cares about your wages and your safety is going to want to control the border. So I I I just all I can think to do is to remind people that I’m not saying Republicans are perfect and you know I have disagreements of course within my own party all the time but fundamentally our party is right now pursuing a much better set of policies when it comes to safety of your home, your wages, your ability to keep more of your money. I just got to keep preaching that message and you know the chips fall where they may. And if you just look at the result of what you see in these cities where they don’t enforce crime, where they don’t enforce immigration laws, they provide sanctuary states, you see disasters over and over and over again. >> Yeah. >> I mean, and I I don’t understand >> exactly >> why people who are voting for these things can’t see that. They can’t see that the results have been catastrophic year after year. They keep getting worse. >> And the idea of voting a new better person to do the same thing is just crazy. >> Yeah, it it’s it’s totally crazy to me, too. I think part of it is we haven’t done a good enough job of actually going to some of these places. Part of it is that it is shifting and sometimes these shifts just take a long time. If you look, the Republican party under Trump’s leadership is way more workingass, way more middle class than the Republican party of 20 years ago. So these things are starting to shift. But the public safety thing is very interesting to me because like one of the promises of America is that every man, woman, and child, rich or poor, black or white, deserves public safety. Like it every rich person ever has had public safety. Every rich person ever has been able to afford some security guard to make sure that somebody who comes and tries to steal their stuff or kidnap their kids, they’re protected against that. What America did is we democratized public safety. Every person gets to keep their property. Every person gets to not be stolen from. Every person gets to walk down their neighborhood at night without being being mugged. And obviously we have imperfectly applied that. But what the left has done over the last few years. Why I think the crime thing is it’s not just a sort of public safety thing. It’s also a class thing is they have made working people less safe. Like if you look at my neighborhood, the neighborhood that I my working-class grandparents raised me in, it became less safe over time. And really workingclass neighborhoods had much higher rates of violence, much higher rates of carjackings and so forth. That happened during Biden’s administration. >> That’s not a coincidence. >> No. Uh anything else? [laughter] >> Anything else? >> Go by Go by Go by Communion, Joe, and we can we can talk about uh religion and faith and the Ten Commandments next time. But thanks for having me, man. >> Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. All right. [music] Wrap it up. Bye, everybody. Great. [music] Hey. Hey.
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