Well, look who's popular now.
Eight years after stepping off that golden escalator and facing
resistance at every turn, president-elect Trump is the talk of
the town.
Foreign leaders and tech CEO's are all scrambling to get
a seat at Mar a Lago.
Big names like Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos
have either met with or will be meeting with the
president-elect about his second term, And even Trump himself seemed
surprised by the positive reaction.
I had dinner with sort of almost all of them,
and the rest are coming.
And this is one of the big differences, I think,
between, we were talking about it before, one of the
big differences between the first term and the first term.
Everybody was fighting me in this term.
Everybody wants to be my friend.
I don't know, my personality changed or something.
There's a good reason why president-elect Trump is resonating with
so many in the business community.
At his core, the guy knows how to work a
room.
Even Stephanie Ruhle is giving him props for being more
approachable than Joe and Kamala.
I called him and said I want an interview with
you.
Obviously, he said no.
But my point is, I was able to get to
him by dialing his phone.
If I were to want to connect with VP Harris
or President Biden, there's 50 people between me and that.
I could write a note that maybe could get to
somebody to get somebody.
Then through Pony Express and a pigeon, something might end
up in a mailbox near them.
And I called DJT to say, yo, can I have
an interview with myself?
But I still was able to connect with him.
All right, Dana, you know, yesterday I, I think I,
I either said or asked the question, you know, is,
is that a change in Donald Trump or is a
change in America?
But I think maybe it lies more in the past
four years than having lived through the Biden years and
his disastrous policies.
Which do you think it is?
I think it's a little bit of everything, but in
particular when people, so Joe Biden gets elected by saying,
I'm going to return things to normal, I'm going to
calm everything down.
And then he got into office and with his chief
of staff, Ron Klain, decided to take every squad member
position and move the country so far to the left
that they couldn't tack back.
And then they started the lies.
There's Afghanistan, Mr.
All, etcetera.
So four years of that was like enough before Ronald
Reagan ran for president.
Well, back when he was thinking about running for president,
maybe he even had his hat in the primary.
People said Reagan's crazy.
Then Jimmy Carter became president, and after four years, people
were like, we would like Reagan, please.
And then they started the Reagan revolution.
And an interesting thing about the tech CEOs is this
time you don't have the boards of directors or the
shareholders saying a word.
There's no negativity and no blowback from their customers or
their shareholders or their boards.
And in fact, there might even be some encouragement.
The last thing I'd say is there's something to be
said about conversation and the power to convene.
That's one of the best powers that a president has
and the cabinet will have is let's get together, let's
talk.
And there's a power.
There's power in conversation.
That's what we do.
This one of the reasons the show is so successful
for 14 years because we can have a conversation talk
about ideas go oh, on the one hand on the
other.
Oh, actually, I hadn't thought about it that way.
Interesting.
But meeting somebody and just being able to break bread
together.
This is a way that you can end or at
least mend some of the bad relationships and help polarization
in the country.
You know, Jesse, do we see, you know, big text
change of heart in in terms, I mean, think of
what they did.
I mean, not just in terms of the 2020 election
and shutting down all social media, but they were heavily
invested in making sure that Donald Trump didn't win, calling
him a racist.
And so is this change of heart about business or
politics?
It's probably both my the best story.
So remember when Zuckerberg canceled Trump off Facebook after January
6th?
Well, he invites him down to Mar a Lago for
dinner.
He begs to come for dinner and he brings in
the January 6 choir and the January 6 choir sings
the anthem.
And Zuckerberg has to stand with his hand to his
heart while the January 6 choir sings the national anthem.
And it's a long time from four years ago.
Judge.
You either have to get on board or you're going
to get tied down to the tracks.
The first election was a shocking win.
This was a commanding win and we had a guest
on last night and said some brilliant stuff and I'm
just going to repackage it.
Love that Trump is so unique.
Here's why.
He's wealthy, so you can't bribe him.
He's handsome and so you can't honey trap him.
You know, he's been around models his whole life, and
he's also a celebrity, so you can't influence him with
A listers.
He's not awestruck.
He's not starstruck.
So the only way you can really charm him is
by investing in America.
And we look back at some of the donations from
some of these inaugurations.
They give a couple pennies, usually a couple 100 grand,
and no one makes a thing out of it.
Now it's like press release.
Amazon's donating on a mill.
This company's donating a mill.
Everybody wants to get on board.
And you're right, Dana.
He's so much more commercially viable now because think about
the dark cloud of January 6th, the fine people hoax,
Russia.
No, no one cares.
Everybody wants to get in on this.
Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, Democrat, was trying to
get a picture taken with Trumpet Army, Navy, and was
waiting outside the suite that was locked.
He had to stand out in the hallway, and he
got his picture taken.
And now these donors, Reed Hastings, Netflix, are making a
pilgrimage to the patio in Mar a Lago.
And the Democratic Party can't do anything about it.
So when Kamala Harris says we got to fight, we
got to fight.
All of her donors are at Mar a Lago trying
to get along.
You know, Harold, doesn't this sudden change of heart prove
that when the left said that Trump was racist and
that it was Hitler that even they didn't believe it?
Well, good to be back with you.
I, I always said that people shouldn't be calling people
Hitler and fascist, but we we should all take a
step back.
This is a very, this is a time honored tradition
when you have a president elected that business leaders be
there Democrat or Republican.
It happened in 2016.
Well, it happened in 2012.
It happened in 2008.
It happened in 04.
But I hear you.
But I'm just saying this is not, I understand the
purpose of your question, what you're trying to get at,
but this happened.
What happens with business leaders and we should all we
should all think it's a great thing because the the
thing that is driving and fueling our economy and driving
all of this growth.
A lot of these men and women who are going
to see the president.
Ted Sarandos is one from Netflix.
He reader, he and Reader Co Co heads of the
company.
They're going down because of AI revolution concerns, growth and
antitrust concerns.
Everyone has interests here and it's great to see.
I thought Stephanie Ruhle said it well.
And Democrats had to take a lesson from this.
It's the axis of access and answers versus evasion and
elitism.
We've gotten to a point in our party.
She is right.
You couldn't reach anybody without going through 20 people.
And you hope the 30th person could get you a
call back.
The fact that the president is taking these calls, taking
these meetings, whether he agrees or disagrees, it lets everyone
know what the what the rules are in the playing
field.
And if you know what the rules are, you can
succeed.
Whether it's Tim Cook, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg, whether it's
Ted Saranis, whomever it may be.
And for that matter, I even think that the president's
trying to figure out what his answer is going to
be on TikTok.
I think the question, his answer there is a critical
one.
And if he's lining up some of these guys that
perhaps buy TikTok from Byte Dance, it'd be a great
thing for the country.
And as the president said yesterday, he got such a
big lead with young people.
I'm sure he would like it as well if TikTok
was sold to an American company.
That's right.
He did very well on TikTok.
He told us that yesterday.
Indeed.
All right, Brian, think of how much Donald Trump was
able to get done during his first term in spite
of the impeachment and the protests and the riots and
the hate and all that.
This really can be a golden age for America.
It seems like everyone's on the same page because what
he's saying is not Republican ideas.
It's like, oh, here's my conservative agenda.
He goes, here's the Trump agenda for the country.
And that's why he's blurring the line and making it
hard to fight.
Then I think that's got the Democrats a little off
balance.
So I, I asked one of the Trump officials, what
are they asking?
What's going on at dinner?
Like did they just come down and they just have
a good time?
And he says, first they make amends to look at
the former relationships.
Then they pitch them on their plans.
And then he says, they all say, this is how
we're going to invest in America and hire American workers.
And what they love is that promise of 15% tax
rate if we do just that, make our products here.
I also think we should go to the next level
and allow our first round draft picks, immigrants that are
going to college here.
I think part of immigration could be letting them today
because we need these workers.
Steve Jobs talked about it before he died in Apple.
He goes, I can't bring my I can't bring the
manufacturing back here.
We don't have enough engineers.
So if we're training on why are we sending them
back to India and China?
Let's keep them here.
So I don't think there's any problem with that.
And I would say this to Mark Zuckerberg, especially in
Sergey Brin and that unpronounceable name Pinchow over at Google.
You want to prove to me that that you are.
You want to prove to me that that you are
into it.
Now you're going to be pro American.
Do what Elon Musk did, let Matt Taibbi, let Barry
Weiss and let Michael Shellenberger go into your Facebook files
the way they went into the Twitter Files and talk
about what exactly you did in 2020 and during the
pandemic to silence conservative thought, pro Trump thought, and and
maybe people that were questioning the vaccine then I know
you wanted to make amends.
Until then, you're kind of getting away with it.
You're getting a fresh start.
When the CEO's go to dinner, the first thing they
do is apologize and they look to make amends.
Sorry about that.
Let's get this out of the way.
Can't you see Donald Trump sitting there and say you
go first?
Yeah, exactly.
You know what I think, Judge?
And you know how to CEOs, I think they all
thought they could have done what Trump did.
And they're, like, mad at themselves.
If this guy could do it in 2016, by the
time 2024 came around, they realized they couldn't have done
this.
There's something special about Trump.
Yes, I think everyone agrees with that.