- By Marc Sandalow | Examiner columnist
- Jun 25, 2024 Updated 22 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)
Give credit to four Bay Area billionaires who, for the better part of an hour, got former President Donald Trump to sound like a serious person.
Trump joined the four self-described “besties” — two of whom hosted a Pacific Heights fundraiser this month that raised millions of dollars for Trump — on their “All-In Podcast” last week and provided a glimpse into a measured persona he rarely displays.
Trump said he would guarantee work permits for immigrants who graduate from U.S. colleges, a statement his campaign walked back within hours. He also praised a Democratic economist who has expressed concerns over the inflationary effects of Trump’s tariff and tax-cuts proposals, and even said that he regards President Joe Biden as a formidable debate foe in advance of Thursday night’s event.
He didn’t insult San Francisco, claim to have won the 2020 presidential election or take the bait when asked whether Dr. Anthony Fauci should be jailed. The comments and tone drew rave reviews from the two hosts, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, who held the aforementioned fundraiser.
“He didn’t go scorched earth even when we invited him to,” Sacks marveled.
Sacks and Palihapitiya told fellow hosts Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg — who are not Trump supporters — that if they were surprised by the former president’s tone, it’s because they’ve fallen for a false narrative pushed by the mainstream media.
Their reaction perfectly captures how blinded many pro-business conservatives — even those as smart and successful as Sacks and Palihapitiya — have become in pursuit of a pro-business president.
“The media is trying to portray him as like, seeking vengeance or something like that,” Sacks said.
Imagine that. The news media has portrayed as vengeful a candidate who has said to supporters that “I am your warrior. I am your Justice. For those who have been wrong or betrayed … I am your retribution.”
He calls his political opponents “vermin,” says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” suggested his own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserves the death penalty and rejected TV talk-show host Dr. Phil’s suggestion that he tone down his rhetoric in a recent interview, telling him that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”
To suggest the news media has overplayed Trump’s outrageousness is like suggesting tech moguls are making too much of this internet thing. Even at his most reasonable — and I have never heard Trump as measured as he was throughout the “All-In Podcast” — he repeatedly distorts the truth.
In the space of 50 minutes, Trump falsely claimed to have enacted the largest tax cut in American history in 2017 (It was actually projected to be the eighth largest by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget).
He said Biden will raise Americans’ taxes four times higher (Biden has proposed nothing of the sort).
He railed against high crime in Democrat-run cities, asserting “nobody lives there except the criminals … You can’t survive there” (FBI data from the first three months of 2024 showed violent crimes dropping 15.2% nationally).
He repeated baseless claims that other countries are exploiting immigration policies to send mental patients and prisoners to the U.S.
Trump suggested that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize after getting Israel to sign treaties normalizing relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
And he boasted that he never relied on Dr. Fauci during the COVID crisis — which, if truthful, raises the question of why, in the midst of the deadliest pandemic in a century, the president did not rely on the nation’s No. 1 authority on infectious diseases.
American views on policy and priorities span a wide spectrum. An intellectually honest argument could be made that for all of Trump’s shortcomings, the nation would be in better hands under his leadership. That’s a matter of personal belief and judgment.
But no one should pretend that Trump is not a risk. Not spewing hatred and vitriol during one 50-minute conversation is not the correct measure of fitness for a commander in chief.
Despite Sacks and Palihapitiya’s assertions, it is neither a sign of media bias or “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to express concern over the prospects of another term for a twice-impeached president, who has declared — jokingly or not — that he will be a dictator on his first day in office, suggests migrants should be pitted against each other in cage matches, vows to use the Justice Department to go after his foes, and who since leaving the presidency has been convicted of 34 felonies, had a civil jury conclude that he was liable for sexually abusing and defaming a woman, and was found liable for $350 million worth of damages for business fraud.
Voters have the right to decide what matters most. There are tens of millions for whom Trump’s pro-business, low-tax, anti-immigrant, “America First” agenda, outweigh his xenophobic, narcissistic demagoguery. But those as thoughtful as Marks and Palihapitiya shouldn’t pretend that the negatives are fantasies of biased news media or those who suffer from delusions.
To acknowledge that Donald Trump is either a liar or delusional is a statement of fact, not opinion.
