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VCs Sacks, Palihapitiya Land Trump as All-In Podcast Guest
(Bloomberg) -- After months of saying former US President Donald Trump would appear on the All-In podcast, the hosts finally landed their man.Trump is the official guest on this week’s show, released Thursday. The booking confirms the show’s status as an emerging voice in politics with Silicon Valley flavor. All-In’s hosts — venture capitalists David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis, and entrepreneur David Friedberg — mostly discuss technology trends, but also give their takes on regulation, policy and elections with some chatter about poker in between.The podcast covered topics ranging from a joke about the price of real estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to shoplifting and the war in Ukraine.
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Trump defended his tariff proposals from criticism that they would hike inflation, saying he believed the policy was crucial to keeping the dollar as the world's principal reserve currency. Trump said he would punish countries that abandoned their peg to the dollar by putting “tariffs on your product coming into the United States.”“With tariffs, it gives you a tremendous power,” he said.Trump also cast his energy policy, which would pivot away from renewable energy sources toward fossil fuels, as necessary to keep the US a leader in artificial intelligence.“To be a leader in AI, the amount of electricity that is like double what we have right now and even triple what we have right now,” Trump said, adding that “a windmill turning with its blade knocking out the birds and everything else is not going to be able to make us competitive.”
Trump, asked by the hosts if he would pledge to offer foreign students who graduated from US colleges green cards, said he “promised” to implement that policy.
“You graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country and that includes junior colleges too,” Trump said.
That would represent a significant shift for Trump who as president took steps to curb the use of skilled visas by foreign workers.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, said later Trump’s green card offer “would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”
Calacanis had hinted at Trump’s coming appearance on the pod with a post on social network X on Tuesday. “Something tells me All In podcast will set a record this week,” he wrote, along with a thinking-face emoji.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,” the podcast’s account posted on X Thursday afternoon.
All-In has sought to tap into a growing enthusiasm for Trump among voters who didn’t previously back him, conservatives and also some Democrats, in the technology community and beyond. Sacks in particular has criticized President Joe Biden’s policies, including what he sees excessive spending on Covid relief and too much support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Calacanis, the host whose views are most left-leaning, has repeatedly used the show to call for Democrats to replace Biden as the party’s 2024 nominee.
Trump isn’t the first presidential candidate to appear on the podcast. Last year, All-In hosted Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy followed by Chris Christie, both of whom have since dropped out of the race. The show also interviewed Robert Kennedy, then a Democrat and now an independent candidate, in May last year, and Democrat Dean Phillips in November. Typically the four hosts hold a discussion of an hour or longer with the guest, and afterward comment on the topics covered.
In early June, Sacks and Palihapitiya hosted a fundraiser for Trump that raised $12 million.
--With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron.
(Updates with comments from Trump beginning in the third paragraph.)
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