Looking for a Younger Alternative to Biden?

Show Transcript

Jason Palmer, Dem Presidential Candidate

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: You know the Republicans are doing everything they can to attack President Biden because of his age saying the eighty-one-year-old Biden has lost his capacity to effectively serve as president. Many Democrats share the concern about Biden's age and not so secretly wish there was a younger qualified option to the president.

[00:00:21] Stay with us to meet fifty-two-year-old Jason Palmer, a venture capitalist who is challenging Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination. He's a super long shot to unseat the 81-year-old president. Previously, a general partner at New Market's Venture Partners and deputy Director at the Bell and Melinda Gates Foundation, Jason firmly believes in what he calls conscious capitalism and modernizing our government so the United States can be a true leader in the twenty-first century. 

[00:00:57] Jason's a leader in the technology and innovation space, having served in executive positions at Microsoft, Kaplan education, the Gates Foundation and his impact investor firm, New Markets Venture Partners. 

[00:01:13] A Harvard Business School alumni, Jason believes his 30 years of business and technology leadership qualifies him to run for president, saying it's time to pass the torch to a younger generation. 

[00:01:28] Jason, hey, thanks for joining us on the Lean to the Left Podcast. 

[00:01:32] Jason Palmer: Hey, thanks so much for having me, and I should have you always do my introductions. That was great. 

[00:01:37] Bob Gatty: You can rip it off and use it anytime you want. By the way what is conscious capitalism, man? 

[00:01:45] Jason Palmer: Yeah. Conscious capitalism is a movement that I've been working in for the last three decades that basically believes that business can be focused on good and in fact that a lot of businesses already are.

[00:01:57] But it has these four principles that the business not just be for profit, but it actually have more stakeholders, like its employees, the environment, the community, and there's a whole literature built up around that. And that also it puts people first. So it focuses on people, not just on technology, although it's technology and people together, if you're really honest about it.

[00:02:20] And that when business is focused on good and focused on multiple stakeholders and people, we can build a better country. And and actually that's. Now there's a trillion dollars out of about a hundred trillion dollars, and the global economy is now companies that would describe themselves as conscious capitalists in their nature.

[00:02:40] And in fact, 40 states have passed what are called B corporation laws that actually make it legal that you can register to be a company that's not solely focused on profit, but actually has this multiple stakeholder approach That's more like a you could say it's a more European model, but it actually was invented here in America, in New England, in New Hampshire and Vermont originally.

[00:03:03] And then Maryland quickly followed suit and now 40 states have this law that not that many people know about. 

[00:03:08] Bob Gatty: Okay, cool. Tell us about your background and why you decided to run for President, Jason. 

[00:03:15] Jason Palmer: Yeah, it definitely came to me over the summer and into October of this year when I just kept waiting and thinking, Gavin Newsom is gonna run, or maybe Mark Cuban is going to run, or Gretchen Whitmer, like somebody's gonna get in the race because Biden said he's was a transitional figure, he would do one term and then he would pass the torch and nobody got in the race.

[00:03:40] So finally I started asking the CEOs that I worked with. Would you vote for me for president? Would you donate to my campaign if I actually ran for president? And I talked to people who also work in politics and they all said it would be great if someone like you ran for president because we already have an example of a business person running on the Republican side, but we don't have an example of a successful person in business running on the democratic side and also teaching people about conscious capitalism, teaching them about how business can be for good. And so I said, you know what? I'm gonna do this at a minimum. I wanna bring this message to the country and get young people energized and get people from my community energized that we can actually bring this to the entire country.

[00:04:24] And if I'm lucky, I might actually beat Biden and become the candidate.

[00:04:28] Bob Gatty: If you're lucky, huh? 

[00:04:30] Jason Palmer: And I invest in companies that only have a one or 2% chance of success when I invest in them. So I knew going into this that I had at best, a one or 2% chance of success. And I'm, by the way, I'm still picking away.

[00:04:43] I. With some really creative ideas we're gonna come out with in the next month that I can share a little bit of, or at least tease a little bit on this podcast, right? Because I do think, only a very small percent of the delegates have been awarded. We're still at the very beginning of the primary season.

[00:04:57] Bob Gatty: You gotta admit it's a real long shot. 

[00:05:00] Jason Palmer: Oh, definitely. Yeah. So I love long shots. That's what I, that's what I invest in for a living. 

[00:05:05] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. So how do you see this happening though? What's your path to winning the nomination, do you think? I. 

[00:05:12] Jason Palmer: So at this point, I used to say on my website that I had a path to win the nomination.

[00:05:17] At this point, I don't think it's very likely that I'm gonna win. It's less than 1%. However, my goal is to actually change the conversation, get conscious capitalism on the national conversation, and I have a policy proposal I'd love to talk to you about to move our economy to conscious capitalism.

[00:05:36] And to make sure that education and up-skilling is a key part of the national conversation too. Right now, whenever education comes up, it devolves into should we be teaching slavery in our classrooms? And that is completely the wrong thing to be talking about when we're talking about improving our education and make it focused on the twenty-first century, and help give students the critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills and make college more affordable.

[00:06:01] And give early childhood education as a right to every child in America. Like we need to be focused on positive, progressive solutions that actually move our country forward and, reduce inequality and help everyone get to the middle class. 

[00:06:16] Bob Gatty: Okay, you campaigned extensively in New Hampshire Right ahead of their primary 

[00:06:22]

[00:06:22] Jason Palmer: Extensively in the last four weeks. Okay. I knew, again, many of my, close friends who've been in politics said, you should have started two years ago. This is gonna be really hard to build awareness within the last month. And we had a bunch of really great events with Paul Leblanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire University.

[00:06:41] We had a couple town halls, in the last month there's only so much you could do. 

[00:06:45] Bob Gatty: Yeah. You ended up with a hundred forty-two votes. 

[00:06:48] Jason Palmer: That is correct. And I did write a letter to my supporters saying, I was very humbled by the experience. Okay. Because, I did think I would get more than 1% of the vote.

[00:06:57] And getting less than 1% of the vote was honestly a little bit embarrassing. 

[00:07:01] Bob Gatty: I. Well, I don't know why it would be embarrassing. 'cause like you said, you only started, a few weeks ago. 

[00:07:08] Jason Palmer: That's right. That's right. We did end up getting almost 500 votes in Nevada, so we tripled our vote. That was good.

[00:07:15] And we got in, we came in fourth place in Nevada. So making progress primary by primary. 

[00:07:21] Bob Gatty: Okay. Marianne, Williamson got over 5,000 votes in New Hampshire and she's dropped out now. So you're gonna hang around or what? I. 

[00:07:31] Jason Palmer: I'm definitely gonna hang around and I think it's because my goal is not the same as Marianne.

[00:07:37] Marianne really wanted to win. She's been running for president now, I think twice. Might even be three times. Yeah, I think three times. And at one point and she said this in her, I. concession speech. I really do admire her. And what she was, is trying to do, is trying to do, was trying to do but she was at 15% in the polls, in New Hampshire at one point, and then I believe she ended up around four or 5% in the end.

[00:08:00] So that was, I know that was discouraging for her to have polls saying You're gonna do much better and then come in lower at the end. Yeah. 

[00:08:08] Bob Gatty: It's gotta be really hard. But you believe you can catch fire with these younger 

[00:08:12] Jason Palmer: voters, right? I

[00:08:14] definitely do. So for example, we have a few things we're rolling out that are leveraging the power of ai.

[00:08:20] We have a new commercial coming out as well Okay. That talks about how AI is gonna transform our society. Okay? And by using AI-powered ways of engaging with voters in the Super Tuesday states that are coming up. And also releasing and a new AI powered offering. That'll be the first time a presidential candidate has ever done something like this.

[00:08:42] We think that could be media worthy and could catch attention. But I can't say much more about that 'cause it comes out in the next week or two. I'll just tease for now. 

[00:08:50] Bob Gatty: What do you mean though? AI powered offering. What do you mean? 

[00:08:55] Jason Palmer: I can't go much more into it, except come on.

[00:08:58] I'll go a little bit more 

[00:08:59] Bob Gatty: into it but wait a minute. This thing isn't gonna stream. I'll tell you. It's gonna stream Monday the 19th., 

[00:09:05] Jason Palmer: Monday the 19th all right. I'll give you, I'll give you a few more days, like it's Monday. So right now you probably, like everybody else, get text messages from political candidates.

[00:09:16] And they're dumb text messages. But one of the things that I've noticed in running a political campaign for the first time is about 5% of people write back to those messages, and then they just disappear and nothing gets done with them. But what if we used AI to reply to those people who said, what's your position on Gaza?

[00:09:36] Or, I've never heard of you before. Who are you? There's a way to build kind of an AI based automation to pay attention to what people say back, and so that's part of our solution, which I'm happy to share. Okay. Is that, try to text back to those text messaging solutions you get, not just from me.

[00:09:54] From other candidates, and then I think you'll see an evolution in the smartness or intelligence of those right now dumb ads. 

[00:10:03] Bob Gatty: Okay. That sounds pretty cool. We'll have to say 

[00:10:05] Jason Palmer: that's just one part of it too. There's more. There's more. Huh? 

[00:10:08] Bob Gatty: You're not gonna tell me, you're not gonna tell me anymore. 

[00:10:12] Jason Palmer: I'll tell you a little bit more, just hinting that, text messaging and communication over cell phone is just one thing.

[00:10:20] You probably have seen that there are other ways of communicating with, chat GPT, for example. You can ask it all kinds of questions Sure. And get all kinds of answers. And so if you could do this for a single text message where someone writes back and says, what's your opinion about Gaza or Ukraine or immigration?

[00:10:39] Why couldn't you expand that to be something that everybody could take part in, regardless of whether they received the text message or not. And you can follow that train of thought to think about. Huh. Maybe there's a way Jason could talk to 300 million people at once. I can almost imagine it now, but it really wouldn't be Jason.

[00:10:57] It would be an AI powered version. 

[00:10:59] Bob Gatty: Don't you think people think that's strange or weird or whatever? I. 

[00:11:05] Jason Palmer: That's right. That's why it's a little, people are like, what? I don't know if I fully get it, but Yeah. But I actually did think about at one point replying to the thousands of people who sent me text messages back.

[00:11:15] 'cause I got a giant spreadsheet back. Yeah. From the text messaging provider. I said, wow. There was some way, oh, there is some way that I could reply back to thousands and thousands of messages. 

[00:11:27] Bob Gatty: Okay. That sounds really cool. I hope to see it in action. Me too. 

[00:11:31] Jason Palmer: Me too. It's coming soon.

[00:11:34] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now, besides the age factor, what do you bring to the table that makes you think you can and should be president? 

[00:11:43] Jason Palmer: Well, a lot. So even though some people have said you don't have any prior political experience, I think that's not quite true. So I worked for Senator Moynihan when I was younger in college.

[00:11:56] And so I know about the legislative process through that, working with him. Then I spent three years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where we worked on a lot of policy issues. Related to improving the affordability of college, to helping colleges and universities become more innovative.

[00:12:10] Learned a lot about the Department of Education there. Yeah. And then I also served on the board of the Smithsonian focusing on the National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. And so I do have a pretty good understanding of how government works and some of the complexities they have in hiring people.

[00:12:25] Budgeting, just the whole operation. And then there's a number of people that are advisors to me who tell me this is how it works in the military, which is a little bit different than how it works in the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Commerce, etc. So I've always cared a lot about education.

[00:12:41] I've always paid attention to how public policy interfaces with entrepreneurship. That's really my focus area. Almost all startup companies are leveraging new ideas that came out of government research. That then get commercialized and scaled like most people don't know that the Apple iPhone has in it 10 distinct inventions that came out of government research like GPS, like the Gorilla glass, like the semiconductors. Okay. Like a lot of America's prowess in innovation actually derives from our prowess in R&D, especially in our research labs and our colleges and universities. And this has been a kind of a focus area of mine my entire life.

[00:13:20] So if we wanna be an innovative government. That's modernized and leverages the best of technology. There's no one you'd rather have as president than someone who understands that, and how to build teams to actually make our government of the twenty-first century. Okay. 

[00:13:37] Bob Gatty: Now, what's your message to voters who like Biden believe he's done a remarkable job despite Republican intransigence and push worries about his age aside.

[00:13:51] Jason Palmer: I do think Biden has had 50 years of great public service in general. I voted for the Biden-Harris ticket four years ago, and I voted under the understanding it was a transitional phase and he did pass multiple, very large pieces of legislation. But in terms of implementation. It is pretty clear that Biden and team just don't have it.

[00:14:14] There's a reason why there are all these problems at the border. It's related to getting the machinery of government technologically upgraded, making decisions rapidly iterating. That's not being done. Obviously, there's huge problems at the border. We could talk about similarly, we passed this great infrastructure law, but I don't see Biden going anywhere to do ribbon-cutting ceremonies to say there's now a high-speed train line that's being built from X to Y and it's because of the infrastructure bill. Everything is wending its way through at the super slow pace of government. And that's clear that Biden and maybe his team don't have the implementation chops to actually make these things that we passed come to fruition.

[00:15:00] Now, all that said, if I'm elected as the Democratic standard bearer, I probably would keep about half of the people that are in the Biden administration right now. I think there are great public servants working in government. I think he has recruited a lot of great people, but it's clear that there's too many people from what I'll call the old guard, who believe in slow implementation and government should be bureaucratic.

[00:15:23] And we need to sort through those people and figure out who are the innovators and the change agents, and then who are the. Keep doing the same and move the, keep doing the same's out and move in people from business and industry who will work with the change makers to accelerate all the change that we want to 

[00:15:40] Bob Gatty: see.

[00:15:41] Okay. Now you talked about using artificial intelligence to overcome the fact that you're not a household name yet. 

[00:15:50] Jason Palmer: Emphasis on yet.. Yeah. 

[00:15:52] Bob Gatty: And that's a rapidly growing phenomenon in the United States with potential serious impact on the economy and on employment in many sectors. So what are your thoughts about that and the overall importance of technology in terms of this going forward in this country?

[00:16:13] Jason Palmer: Yeah. So a lot, so mostly I wanna say to the American people who are very worried about all their jobs going away, right? That. Everybody always predicts all the kind of smart people in these think tanks that everything's gonna happen in two years and it really takes 10 years. It doesn't happen overnight.

[00:16:33] So think about all the chat GPT hype from a year ago, and it hasn't all of a sudden blown up hundreds of industries and it won't next year. But in 10 years time, this will really be a dramatic transformation. The biggest idea I wanna share with you is that we tax people on their income that they generate, and that's how we collect all the revenue that we have to run the government.

[00:16:58] What we don't do right now is we don't tax the machines and if we actually set up the right type of tax system that would tax machines when they replace people. We actually can solve this equation as it goes. As thousands of jobs disappear in the retail industry and are placed by machines that are doing the work that used to be done by humans, those machines are generating revenue, generating income, but doesn't go to any people. We could tax those machines. Now, no political candidate has talked about this 'cause none of them have really thought it all the way through, but right now, America is 330 million people and a certain number of machines that are doing human-like work.

[00:17:43] And over time that number is going to increase and we can tax the machines as well. And eventually that will generate more and more revenue for the government that enables it to do things like take care of senior citizens, make sure that Medicare is there when we get old enough to need Medicare help, invest more in education.

[00:18:01] And right now we have a tax system that is set up to not just tax machines, zero. But it actually incents employers to deploy more machines.

[00:18:12] Bob Gatty: I don't understand how you could tax machines. 

[00:18:15] Jason Palmer: I have to tell you it's something that I haven't put on my website yet in great detail. I'm working on a white paper because it's something that I've, yeah, I'm reading a number of scholars who have written about this and thought about this, and it's a complicated thing to solve because there are now machines that are making cars that enable it.

[00:18:32] So it only takes about 25 to 30 hours of human work to create a car from scratch. And that's because so many machines are doing all this work. But if you look back a hundred years, it used to take almost a thousand hours of human labor to create a car. And there was, you would use tools, but you didn't have whole machines that would put everything together.

[00:18:53] So figuring out the right way to tax it. I can't say that I have the exact solution right now. And in fact, I think it's better if I don't have the exact solution. It's better if we convene a task force to think about how do we change our tax laws to actually properly tax machines, and it would be a very small tax.

[00:19:11] This is not, like 30% of the cost of the machine. This is more like. 2%, 1% per year as the machines generate all of this value for the economy. But if we do it right, that machine tax could actually pay for quite a lot for the humans that are benefiting. Okay?

[00:19:29] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now I just bought a new electric vehicle. I'm very proud of it. A Mustang. Me too. I have an electric 

[00:19:36] Jason Palmer: vehicle as well. What'd you buy? I have a Tesla that I bought used a couple years old. Okay. 

[00:19:41] Bob Gatty: Yeah. I bought a brand new Mustang Mach-E. Nice. And that thing is sweet. Now are you gonna tax my Mustang Mach-E?

[00:19:51] Jason Palmer: Not, Right now, in fact, I would say climate change is even more important for us than the AI revolution. But we have many of these things happening at the same time. In fact, I would double the incentive for people who purchase electric cars because we need to electrify everything. Okay? And as fast as possible. And I don't believe in mandates like the Biden administration is trying to mandate that X percent of cars are electric and you won't be able to buy gas-powered cars at all by a certain date.

[00:20:22] I think that's terrible. I'm very against mandates, but I'm very in favor of incentives and we should be giving a $15,000 incentive to every man, woman and child in America who purchases an electric vehicle. And and right now those incentives are decreasing and going away. So that's the first thing I would change is get rid of the mandates, increase the incentives for electric cars.

[00:20:45] Yeah. 

[00:20:45] Bob Gatty: When I purchased my my car, which was just a couple weeks ago, I wanted to take advantage of the federal. 

[00:20:52] Jason Palmer: Yep. I think it's $7,500 probably. Yeah. 

[00:20:56] Bob Gatty: I wasn't able to do that by buying the car. But Ford made it possible through the lease and I ended up getting a check back for 7,500 bucks.

[00:21:10] There you go. And and you're talking about 15 grand. That's really an incentive. 

[00:21:15] Jason Palmer: That's right. That really is, that's right. That's how important, that's how important. It's, if you really want to go from 90% gas powered cars to 90% electric, you need to make the incentives really strong like that.

[00:21:27] Yeah. 

[00:21:28] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Now I'm also about to have solar installed at my house. So what benefits would you say that should incur from the 

[00:21:38] Jason Palmer: government? 

[00:21:39] Yeah. So right now there are a good number of solar programs and it, I'll ask you in your case, like it used to be you had to pay for all the solar up front.

[00:21:48] Do you have solar financing? 'cause that's the biggest thing is to create a big financing vehicle so that people can pay monthly instead of having to pay one giant 10,000 or $20,000 sum. Yeah. 

[00:21:59] Bob Gatty: It's a monthly thing. It's, yeah. And it's very affordable. Totally. It really, yeah. It's really about equal to what I've been paying.

[00:22:06] For my electric bill. 

[00:22:08] Jason Palmer: Yeah. So there's three or four things that need to be done there. One is the financing, which is not available everywhere, so we need to make that financing available everywhere. I'm glad to hear you already got it. Yeah. Second is you should get some type of incentive yourself where you get a tax deduction, even if it's a couple thousand dollars, 2000, $3,000 for installing that on your roof, like the seventy-five hundred for the electric car.

[00:22:30] That would encourage people to do it as well. 'cause it's a lot of work to do this. Sure. The third thing is right now, and you probably aren't into this yet, but all the rules are not set up to make it easy for you to sell the power back to the grid. It's basically set up so that you can only sell at certain times and you can only get so much and it'll probably reduce your bill or maybe even get it down to zero but you can't get to a net positive where you're actually generating revenue from your solar. Yeah. We need to make that more, I would call that more consumer friendly. But market based, and then the fourth is that there's, there are more things you can do than just putting the solar panels on your roof.

[00:23:07] Now since I work in the innovation economy, I have seen windows that you can install where when the light comes through the window, there actually are little silicon strips in there that you can't see, but that actually are gaining energy from light coming in windows. And then you could attach that to the grid.

[00:23:24] So we need to make it so all these different. Things you can do to solar fi your house. Even putting solar panels on your car is another we need to solar panels everywhere is the best way to describe it. 

[00:23:38] Bob Gatty: That's really cool. I like your thinking on that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Now you talked to, you talked about cars being produced with AI and that very few people really are comparatively are needed anymore to produce a new vehicle. What about unions and organized labor and the impact of all of that on unemployment? 

[00:24:06] Jason Palmer: Yeah. That's an area where. I might be the first investor who's ever run for president, who actually is pro-Union, but we need to upgrade our union laws.

[00:24:17] So we haven't upgraded our union laws since the 1950s, and as a result, we've seen unions get smaller and smaller. Now, there's recently a revitalization, but just think about how they need to be upgraded. So when a Starbucks wants to unionize, it's a single Starbucks that's unionizing it's 10 or 20 employees.

[00:24:36] That's crazy. That's because that's a law that dates back to the fifties where you would unionize one factory at a time. Okay. We need to upgrade our union laws so that for example, all of the Starbucks employees in the state of New York could unionize together, or all of the people in the circus industry.

[00:24:54] I recently did a podcast with one of the Cirque du Soleil performers, and they don't have a union. We have not upgraded our union laws to match the professions and the ways that we do our work now. And as a result, we have this crazy situation where you can't unionize in a simple, organized manner for the twenty-first century.

[00:25:16] So we need to upgrade those laws. And where unions exist, employees make 10 to 20% more. They have predictable schedules, they have more benefits. There are more good jobs, there are more pathways to quality jobs. But it needs to be a redesigned union law for the twenty-first century. We also know some of the problems with unions like historically unions were about worker safety protecting workers, and those things are great. But over time, some unions have been more about protecting the bad apples in the unions. Think about what happens sometimes with the police unions and how they're standing up for people when people are brutalized or killed in police custody.

[00:25:56] That's a bad application of unions or it, same thing happens in medicine where unions are standing up for doctors who have actually created grievous medical errors and trying to protect them from being fired if it's happened over and over again. So we both have to change union laws to upgrade it for the twenty-first century. Make it easier to organize. And at the same time, get rid of the problems that we know, that the old laws have, that, that make unions less appealing for people. 

[00:26:22] Bob Gatty: Have you been working with any union leaders to 

[00:26:25] Jason Palmer: generate I've spoken with the folks at SEIU who I think are the most creative in this regard.

[00:26:31] Okay. And then I've been from afar admiring the work of the heads of the leaders of the UAW. I think what they negotiated was actually a kind of a model for how union organizing and unions 2.0 should go. They would be part of my task force for figuring out how to upgrade the union laws. Okay.

[00:26:49] I have a couple. I would also include the freelancers union. 'cause a lot more people are in the gig economy too, and we need to allow the unionization there. And that's a different, that's a whole different ball of wax, but it doesn't have to be so different. We could have one law that encompasses all of that.

[00:27:03] Bob Gatty: Yeah. That's that's amazing. All, I have a couple of questions about specific issues. The first one is student loan crisis in this country. Biden's been trying to do what he can to forgive student loans. He made that promise. And a lot of people are disappointed not realizing that the Supreme Court really is the problem here.

[00:27:25] Yeah. With what you want to do, but how do you feel? Do you believe that student loans should be forgiven? 

[00:27:31] Jason Palmer: This is a tough one. I believe that student loans should be mitigated. So what's happened over the last decade is college prices have gone up, exorbitantly and students have been charged more and more for loans and it's gotten, it is definitely out of control.

[00:27:47] For example. I was in favor of a 5,000 or $10,000 reduction in people's balances, especially people that are low income that this 5,000 or $10,000, the research shows pretty clearly it's preventing a lot of people from moving on with their lives. They can't buy a house, they can't get a car.

[00:28:06] That, there's a lot of people in that basket, and I wish Biden had come out with a compromise like that instead of. Trying to get rid of such a large amount of loans, like 500 billion, $600 billion in loans, it was almost certain that the Supreme Court would strike that down. So I'm more of a pragmatic solution person when it comes to things like this.

[00:28:25] And the Biden administration should be moving quickly to make everything 0% interest loans. And then there already is a great loan structure called an income-based repayment loan, which is legal, which is being used by millions of Americans. Where you pay just 10% of your income towards your loans every month, and then after a certain number of years.

[00:28:47] For some people it's 10 years. If you work in the non-profit sector, it's 20 years. If you work in the for-profit sector, your loan balance goes away. What they should do right now is move everybody into that income-based loan repayment, where you only pay 10% of your income. And it should, you should be able to get out if you want.

[00:29:04] If you don't want to pay it that way, you could switch out. But it should be the default that everybody goes into income-based repayment, and we change the interest rates to 0% or 2% of as low as we're legally allowed to. We should, we have to accept the reality of what the Supreme Court decided and move quickly to mitigate the problems.

[00:29:23] Yeah. 

[00:29:23] Bob Gatty: Okay. Now you have significant business and technology experience that could serve you well as president, as you've discussed. Thank you. But what about foreign policy and other key areas where you don't have experience? What would you do? I. 

[00:29:39] Jason Palmer: Yeah. So as a leader, one of the things I tell all my CEOs at the beginning is, rank your strength areas.

[00:29:44] Are you strong in technology? Are you strong in marketing? Are you strong in product development? And I agree with you, foreign policy is where I have the least experience. And so I would surround myself with experts who have served in the State Department and in the military who have that experience.

[00:30:00] And I do think it's more state department. And people who've been on Council of Foreign Relations, these types of people are the people that you wanna surround yourself even more than the folks from the military, although I'd make sure it's balanced and has people from both communities. And that's who I've reached out to as advisors during this campaign.

[00:30:18] So I did a whole hour on my foreign policy philosophy and what the Jason Palmer view of the world would be. And it was highly informed by about 10 close friends who work in that sector and advised me to put together that program. 

[00:30:32] Bob Gatty: Okay, good. Now to what extent should the USB involved in Ukraine's battle against Russia?

[00:30:40] I

[00:30:41] Jason Palmer: wrote a lengthy post on LinkedIn recently, about six months ago, saying that it was extremely important for us to continue to support Ukraine and the reason why is because Russia's invasion of Ukraine is very similar to Germany's Invasion of Czechoslovakia or Poland. When Hitler invaded those countries in the 1930s and Austria, his goal was to create a recreate a greater Germany that had all the German speaking people under one roof.

[00:31:10] And if you watched the Tucker Carlson interview from a few days ago, it's super clear. Vladimir Putin went on for 30 minutes and he said the same exact thing that he said in a long op-Ed two years ago. He's trying to recreate greater Russia. Bring all the Russian speaking people in the Ukraine and Belarus and Poland and Georgia all back under the same greater Russia paradigm.

[00:31:34] And that, we don't want World War Three, so we have to, and it's a democratic state and we believe in self-determination. So we need to be there to support the Ukrainians. And I still believe that, however, when it's clear that the political support isn't there. I think you need to adjust your plans a little bit, and I'm praying that the proposal that Biden has put forward and the Senate has passed, actually does pass in the house of Representatives. I would vote for that for sure. 'cause we need to continue to support Ukraine, but we're not doing the right things to encourage the Ukrainians to figure out a solution with Russia. Vladimir Putin has said he is willing to negotiate.

[00:32:18] He has expressed it both publicly and then I know behind intelligence channels. We've heard that as well, and we need to keep supporting Ukraine so that there's a strong Ukraine, but we're at a impasse in Ukraine right now where it's just like in World War I, when the lines reached a place where they can't go either way very much.

[00:32:37] And we, I believe in safeguarding human life. And if we just keep fighting on that line in Southeastern Ukraine right now, eventually Ukraine will lose and that will be terrible. But there is a chance right now to help Ukraine with the strength of the financial support they need and to simultaneously sue for peace.

[00:32:59] And I think that's the right choice right now. 

[00:33:01] Bob Gatty: Can you see yourself sitting down face to face against Putin? I. 

[00:33:05] Jason Palmer: Absolutely. Yeah. I watched that interview very carefully. And I couldn't believe that Tucker, Carlson wasn't cutting in more with questions and pushing him. But he, he is a, he's a savvy leader and negotiator and authoritarian.

[00:33:23] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Speaking of authoritarians, that's what Trump wants to be, 

[00:33:27] Jason Palmer: trump already is an authoritarian. 

[00:33:29] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I guess he is. Yeah. He's already beaten down the republicans in the senate on, on immigration. Here they they all wanted this bill.

[00:33:38] They, yeah. Demanded this bill. Then Trump said, oh no, because that'll give Biden a victory, vote against it. And they all voted against it, or not all, but they voted against it, right? And that, it is just a horrible thing. I think 

[00:33:53] Jason Palmer: it is a horrible thing. And Trump is unfit to be president.

[00:33:57] He it is sad to me that so many of my fellow countrymen and women support him. Yeah. But I have seen him on the campaign trial and he draws huge crowds of people. Yeah. And honestly, they're, those people are supporters of him 'cause they believe he speaks for them, that they're the forgotten men and women.

[00:34:18] Of rural America, non-college goers. People who are elitist are always looking down on us and I do. I think we need to do a better job of reaching out to that coalition and say, we want to help you get a union. We need, we want to help you get more pay and better benefits.

[00:34:34] And, it's a very important time right now where, Biden is on the UAW picket line standing up for unions. Unions are endorsing the Democratic party. But at the same time, if you look at the voting, more of these folks are voting at the rank and file level for Trump. We have a, we have a war on our hands with exactly that group who matter so much in Michigan, in Ohio, in the Midwest those states that we need to win this election.

[00:34:59] Yeah. 

[00:35:00] Bob Gatty: Okay. You mentioned a minute ago the situation in Israel. Yeah. What would you do about that? My 

[00:35:07] Jason Palmer: position on that is we need to withhold aid to Israel until there is a ceasefire. Now this isn't because we don't believe Israel has a right to exist. We believe in the two-state solution.

[00:35:22] Israel is our ally in that region, and a very important ally. But it is very clear that the, constant bombardment of Gaza has gone far beyond just finding the perpetrators of the October 7th attacks. We now have 2 million Gazan refugees. I heard Bernie Sanders on NPR the other day and he was advocating almost exactly the same thing as I am.

[00:35:49] I believe in Israel. I support Israel's right to exist, but we can't give them any more money to keep killing Gazan civilians. That's not what America stands for. I'm hopeful that this moment will yield some type of breakthrough to a two-state solution. But it is a really it's a really tough, it's a really tough situation that we need to be using our power more to push for peace and push for hostage exchange.

[00:36:14] And I know that folks in the Biden administration are trying to do that, but when the aid is, automatic with no strings attached, we're not. We're saying more with our money than our words. Yeah. Okay. How about yourself? I'm curious what you think, 'cause a lot of people have different opinions 

[00:36:33] Bob Gatty: on this.

[00:36:34] You know what it's a very tough situation because, you keep hearing about these atrocities that are taking place that were initiated against Israel and. Babies being burned and all of this horrible thing. It's terrible. It is. But then as you say, the incessant bombing seems like it's a, to me, an overreach.

[00:36:58] So I don't know. I'm just glad I don't have to make those kinds of decisions to tell you the truth. I dunno why anybody would wanna have to make those kind of decisions, but. Anyway, 

[00:37:10] Jason Palmer: The biggest reason is because those decisions affect whether millions of people live or die. Yep. And they affect whether millions or billions of people can, be happy, achieve a middle class lifestyle.

[00:37:25] And yeah. And right now our government is being run in a I would call it dysfunctional way. Yeah. And someone was wearing a T-shirt that said Enough with an exclamation point. And I said, I think that's how I feel. That's the biggest reason why I'm running Yeah. Is I'm not okay with the continued dysfunction.

[00:37:44] We need to move towards more bipartisan collaboration, more civility, more solutioning, get more people into government who are younger and who believe we can take our country back from the dysfunction. That's probably why I wear a purple tie. I'm not wearing one today, but a lot of times I wear a purple tie in public to say, I am a blue candidate. You can see most of my positions are very democratic, but I believe we can work together. If I was in Congress, I would join the problem Solvers Caucus, which I think does a great job of coming up with these bipartisan solutions and, that's the right path for America.

[00:38:20] Yeah. 

[00:38:21] Bob Gatty: Okay. Let's turn a little bit to immigration. Your thoughts about the immigration crisis and Trump's ability to stop Congress from passing that legislation that the Republicans wanted so badly. 

[00:38:35] Jason Palmer: Yeah, I'm very close to releasing and I'm happy to share it with you for your folks to, to see it on the 19th white paper about my policy regarding immigration.

[00:38:45] And it actually is the bill that they're almost passed in the senate. Is close to one fourth of my proposal. Part of why immigration keeps failing is the legislators try to create this giant comprehensive immigration reform that will solve everything. And it failed under President Bush and it failed under President Obama and it just failed a few weeks ago.

[00:39:09] And the Senate, because it's trying to solve everything, what we need to do is break it into four parts that solve each of the main immigration issues in our country. Number one, where there's seventy-five percent agreement is that we need to give the Dreamers a path to becoming American citizens.

[00:39:26] Seventy-five percent of Americans, seventy-five percent of Congress agrees on this. We should pass that immediately to help these millions of people who are more American than you or I. They live and breathe America. They've been here since they were young and they are full Americans, and we need to get them into the fold.

[00:39:42] The second is this border situation, which is completely out of control. There are a number of great articles that have been online about how basically people can come into the country claim asylum, and then they are paroled and just allowed to live in the country freely for multiple years before their asylum court date.

[00:40:03] What we need to do is, I can't believe, I haven't really heard anybody talk about this yet, is dramatically surge border judges. Not just border patrol. Border patrol are catching all these people who come across the border, but we don't have enough border judges and we haven't reformed the asylum system so that people can be quickly processed and then you go back to your home country and then you have your court date in two years in your home country, so about 90% of the people that come across the border illegally without documentation right now should be being sent back to their home country immediately after processing with an asylum judge. And so that is a big problem right now. The current process, you don't even get seen by a judge.

[00:40:50] If you do get seen by a judge, it's two years later. That's the problem that needs to be solved. Okay. And then I can tell you about parts three and four. If you're willing to, let me go a couple more seconds. Sure. Go ahead. What we really need is a talent-based immigration system where we need lots more doctors.

[00:41:06] We lead lots more nurses. We actually do need people who are picking fruit in the fields. We, we have employment needs in America. And we should set up a talent-based system that's more like Canada or Australia. Both these countries have been doing this for many decades actually. Where you get points if you have if you're English speaking, if you have relatives in the country, if you have a skill or a profession that we have a need for.

[00:41:32] You would get a certain number of points and then we would let more people into the country and get them on a path to green card and citizenship. If you get a Ph.D. in America, we should staple a green card to your Ph.D. and help you become a citizen. America needs talent and we want that talent, but we need to have an actual qualification system where you know where you are in the ranking order and you qualify to become an American.

[00:41:56] I would love nothing more than seeing a hundred million more people become Americans over the next two or three decades. But they're let in because of their they want to be Americans. Some of the most American people I know are immigrants and children of immigrants. And it's those people who struggled and came here and worked hard, that's a key strength of America.

[00:42:17] So yeah, those are the three main components. The fourth one would be a guest worker program. That allows people to come in for one or two years. A lot of people aren't sure if they want to be citizens, but they just know they wanna come here and have economic, well-being, and then send money back to their families.

[00:42:33] George Bush proposed something like this in 2006. It's strongly supported on the Republican side. It's sad that it's, it has not been implemented. 

[00:42:41] Bob Gatty: Okay. Say you win the nomination what would be your strategy in going after Trump? He who is only four years younger than Biden, faces more than 90 criminal charges stemming from his effort to overturn the 2020 election as well as his business dealings.

[00:43:02] What would you do? 

[00:43:04] Jason Palmer: The main thing to do is set a positive vision for the country of where we can go together. To not get pulled down into the muck. Now Trump is very good at pulling everyone into the muck. Yeah. So in responding to him, you have to use humor. You have to not go to his level. If there was a debate and I was on stage with Trump and he was yelling at me or talking over me like Biden happened the last time in the debate, I would say, are you done with your rant old man?

[00:43:35] Someone needs to talk to him like that. You need to invoke your inner Jon Stewart to put this guy in his place. And that's what I would try to do is use humor to diffuse his maniac-ness. Remind him that was. Not Nikki Haley, that was Nancy Pelosi or vice versa. Figure out there, he, every time he goes on a rant for a minute, there's something in there that you can use to jab him.

[00:44:02] And you have to listen carefully and then job at exactly that weak point. And that's what I would do. 

[00:44:07] Bob Gatty: Okay. That's, you know what, that's what I live in South Carolina. Okay. Yeah. And that's what Nikki Haley's doing right now with her ads here. 

[00:44:16] Jason Palmer: She is, I would say she's pretty good at it actually. Oh man.

[00:44:19] She's on the campaign trail and I was impressed with Yeah. Campaigning and I don't agree with her on everything, but she would be part of that Problem solvers Caucus. 

[00:44:28] Bob Gatty: I'll tell you what, There's an ad, it's not by Nikki Haley's campaign itself. It's by a group that supports a 

[00:44:35] Jason Palmer: super PAC or something.

[00:44:36] Yeah, 

[00:44:36] Bob Gatty: yeah. But it's a chicken and the chicken goes across the screen. What like that and the text is that Trump is a chicken because he won't debate. Nikki. Haley. And that's the whole ad. It's just all the chicken. That's 

[00:44:54] Jason Palmer: interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. It's a riot. I think humor is the way to diffuse it.

[00:45:01] Bob Gatty: Absolutely. And she's got another ad. She's got another ad that half of it. Is about Trump and it's showing how Trump is ranting and raving all the time and he's getting older 

[00:45:13] Jason Palmer: It's the same angle though. 

[00:45:15] Bob Gatty: It's humor. It is, it's the same, it's the same thing. And it's really funny. Oh yeah. He says that he's gonna bring peace. He's gonna bring peace through earth to the world.

[00:45:28] Peace through earth.

[00:45:30] Jason Palmer: Yeah. 

[00:45:32] Bob Gatty: It's oh, weird. Anyhow. So I think you're, I think you're right. That's the only way to deal with this guy. That's right. That's right. Yeah. All right. So what's your core? 

[00:45:41] Jason Palmer: Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was gonna say, I think I would also address the age issue head-on with him.

[00:45:46] Yeah. In a way that I'm going out of my way to not bring up with Biden because I do think he actually still does have his mental faculties. Yeah. But Trump is actually unhinged. And it's a different type of age-related issue there where he is mistaking one person for another. Or, he just doesn't even know how to make sentences that when you see them in written form, they make absolutely no logical sense.

[00:46:13] It's different. 

[00:46:14] Bob Gatty: Yeah. All right. So after all of this, what's your core message to voters? Why should they support you? 

[00:46:20] Jason Palmer: The number one thing is we need a positive vision for America and someone who actually has policy ideas that they're ready to implement to move us into the twenty-first century. We're already well into the twenty-first century, but we have a government that functions like it's 1947 or 1948.

[00:46:38] We need to upgrade our entire governmental apparatus based on technology, based on refreshing those laws that we know are severely broken. And we need to bring a number of people into the government who are entrepreneurial or conscious capitalist business leaders who believe in the people first.

[00:46:57] And I would create a cabinet that is half full of some of the best people from the Biden administration or the Obama administration, and half people who come from the world of entrepreneurship and business. And within four years, we would dramatically upgrade our government. And if you want the same old, you got Trump and Biden to vote for that.

[00:47:17] But if you're ready to move into the twenty-first century, I'm Jason Palmer, and I would love to have your vote. 

[00:47:23] Bob Gatty: Okay. Maybe that's where we should leave it. That's pretty good. 

[00:47:27] Jason Palmer: Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:47:29] Bob Gatty: You got anything else you want to add? 

[00:47:31] Jason Palmer: No, just that I really am honored that you would bring me on the podcast and I do hope that more and more people vote for me. I do realize I'm a super long shot, so if you're voting for me, you're trying to send a message to Washington that it isn't just about beating Trump.

[00:47:47] We won't win a campaign with Biden as our standard bearer. And all he's doing is saying negative things about Trump. You need positive, optimistic vision. There are 25 policy ideas on my website, which I have cultivated from a large group of young people who want change to happen now and don't wanna wait another decade.

[00:48:06] And I hope as many of those policy positions get adopted by the Democratic National Committee as possible for our election this November. 

[00:48:14] Bob Gatty: What's your end game? You just said that a little while ago that you didn't think you're gonna win. You don't really expect to win. So well, 

[00:48:22] Jason Palmer: even if you, they see that's a really, it's a tough thing to thread the needle here is even when you don't think you're gonna win, you run as hard as you can to try to win.

[00:48:32] And so I'm running as hard as possible to try to win while also being honest about the low likelihood of that. And in terms of the end game, eventually I will support the Democratic nominee, whoever that is. I still hope that it's me, even though I know it's a 1% chance that it's going to be me, right?

[00:48:51] And I intend to campaign vigorously for that person in November. Okay. According to the betting odds, there's only a 75% chance that it'll be Biden. They think that there's a 25% chance that it's someone like me or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or all kinds of other people. Michelle Obama has been mentioned.

[00:49:09] So let's go all the way through the the convention. Let's see what happens at the convention. My goal also is to get Biden out on the campaign trail more. I was really excited when he came to Nevada and campaigned for two days, which was not originally on his calendar, but apparently me and some of the other candidates in Nevada were getting enough energy that he said, you know what, I'm gonna change my schedule and come to Nevada.

[00:49:31] I think that did give him another five or 10% boost in the polls from coming to Nevada, and I want him out there campaigning. The more the American people see him, in theory, he should do better. He should have done that Super Bowl interview, or he should have given it to someone like me to do that Super Bowl interview on behalf of the Democratic Party.

[00:49:50] Bob Gatty: I couldn't understand why he didn't do the Super Bowl interview. That was, 

[00:49:53] Jason Palmer: instead he did some commercial about like how Doritos bags are getting smaller. 

[00:49:59] Bob Gatty: Yeah. I know he is got something. I saw something in the Washington Post the other day that he was going after companies that are keeping the same prices but making the product bag smaller or whatever 

[00:50:12] Jason Palmer: that has been going on for decades. It's not a brand new thing. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:50:17] Bob Gatty: I, I thought to myself that's really good, but, aren't there other things that are more important? 

[00:50:22] Jason Palmer: On the flip side, people eating less junk food is probably a good thing. So Yeah, that's 

[00:50:26] Bob Gatty: probably, that's probably true too.

[00:50:28] Jason Palmer: Yeah. Okay. Hey, thank you so much, Bob. This was great. I really enjoyed this 

[00:50:32] Bob Gatty: conversation. All right, thank you Jason. I enjoyed talking to you too.