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Bill Ackman On CNBC: Inflation Has Been ‘Catastrophic’ For The Poor

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Bill Ackman

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Wednesday, October 23.

Bill Ackman: Trump is the only candidate that’s talked about accelerating the growth of the country

JOE KERNEN: Joining us now, in an exclusive interview, Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman. And the first thing, Bill, I'd just say if someone wants to look more closely at what your views are, this is a pinned tweet. And I think it's kind of a magnum opus on your decision, which you've had to, I think, explain. It must be one of the most interesting periods of your life, I would think, recently.

BILL ACKMAN: I wouldn't say that.

KERNEN: No?

ACKMAN: No.

KERNEN: You've had –

ACKMAN: It's not as consequential, but I think it's a consequential election. With respect to my life, I've had more consequential moments, I would say.

KERNEN: Yeah, hopefully. But we're all inundated with this election, this time around. It's a pinned tweet, Bill Ackman. Number of good friends and family have been surprised about my decision to support Donald Trump. Then you go into what some of the reasons are. Some of them finally, you say, accepted, but they don't want you trying to talk other people into voting.

ACKMAN: So I guess I'm violating that coming on CNBC.

KERNEN: You're violating, but as you said, you think it's so important at this point, not that you're endorsing everything Trump has done as an individual or as a politician, but because you think certain things about the Biden Harris administration or Harris administration, it's that important for you to get this out because it's for the country. And then you mentioned 33 things that are sort of what you're worried about in a Harris administration more than talking about Trump administration.

ACKMAN: Actually, I intend to do the –

KERNEN: Do more.

ACKMAN: In effect, explain why – this is why not Kamala. And I also intend to get why Trump.

KERNEN: Before the election.

ACKMAN: Before the election, haven't had a chance.

KERNEN: Because this is long and there's 33 –

ACKMAN: The why Trump is sort of the inverse of each of these things.

KERNEN: OK.

ACKMAN: We can go through each of these various points. I don't know if I'll get through 33 on the show, but the inverse is a reason to support Trump.

KERNEN: Go, what are the three worst things about if Biden were or if Harris were to be elected?

ACKMAN: I would say, you know, what's interesting is one of the few times in history where you can do a kind of an A-B comparison between two administrations. Alright. We've had Trump's first term. We've had Biden-Harris. And now we have an opportunity to have Harris or Trump. And so we have at least some empirical data to rely on. And I look at the world, you know, during the Trump administration versus the world now. And that's the kind of – it's a bit like, you know, drug testing where you get the placebo to one side and the outcome is.  And you know, I think my biggest issue is, you know, the U.S. does not continue in a – if we have some massive, you know, World War III global confrontation. And I think the world would become a much, much more dangerous place in the last, this administration. And the reason for that, in my view, has been the perception and really the reality of weakness in the executive branch.

KERNEN: Started with Afghanistan, I would think.

ACKMAN: It probably even begins before that.

KERNEN: Before.

ACKMAN: Right. You can look at, you know, what happened, you know, Georgia, the acquisition of Georgia in effect, an invasion of Georgia, the taking of Crimea, the Syrian red line. These are things really, you know, a bomb at Europe. But, you know, Biden really played a role. Then, of course, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think really look like a total abandonment of our sort of partner in the region, and by the way, catastrophic consequences for, you know, millions of Afghani women and the people, sort of generally, if you look at what… a friend of mine was helping to get high school robotic girls out of, you know, they are in this robotics contest out of Afghanistan. All these young women who lost opportunity. So I think it was one of the more tragic moments for the country. But I look at things like foreign policy decisions, like allowing Iran to start selling oil again, right? So they've kind of rebuilt their balance sheet. They have $200 billion. That's what enabled the funding of Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, right? And then our lack of response to U.S. forces and U.S. assets being attacked by the Houthis. The Houthis, by the way, were on the terrorist list. They were taken off by the Biden administration, apparently so that we could provide support to the Yemeni people. And then when they started attacking U.S. assets, we did nothing. Only recently have we been more aggressive in responding to them. So I think, you know, it's a bit like the broken windows thing in a city, right? You know, terrorists kind of test you out. And if you don't respond, you don't respond aggressively. The only thing they respect is power. And I think the result is, OK, you know, Putin rolls into Ukraine.

KERNEN: Right.

ACKMAN: And I think, a major hot war in Europe, I hope – I thought I would never see this in my lifetime, a major war in the Middle East. And it's become a lot less safe to be American. I mean, 45 Americans were killed by Hamas. We still have American hostages being held, which has been completely forgotten and never discussed. Or I haven't heard anything from Biden or Harris about the hostages.

KERNEN: I've heard more, Israel better do this rather than –

ACKMAN: Yeah, I mean, actually, just most recently in the last couple of days, there was some information that came forth that Sinwar told his team, in effect, you know, don't negotiate any further, in fact, pull back from the deal because the Israelis are losing support of the American administration. And where do they get that from? They got that from our withholding weapons and leaking it publicly that we were holding back weapons in the middle of a hostage negotiation. So let's start with foreign policy. I'll call that number one. You asked me three things.

KERNEN: Right.

ACKMAN: Number two, you know, 94 executive orders reversed within the first few days, which opened the border. And, you know, millions of unvetted people coming into the country. But first of all, I am pro-immigration. You know, my family immigrated here in the 1890s and but they were vetted.

KERNEN: Right.

ACKMAN: You know, they were tested for diseases, right? They had to land somewhere where they could, you know demonstrate viable ability to economically support themselves. And I think, even Kamala at this point recognizes the problem. And a series of executive orders from Biden started to address the problem. So I think the open borders been a massive problem. Three, I would say on the economy, you go back to – remember the, if not for Manchin, we would have had to build back better on top of all of the financial fiscal, you know, subsidies coming into the economy. We would have probably 20% inflation or some crazy number if that had been approved. There's really, in my opinion, no real understanding of how the economy works. And again, Biden sort of committed to a certain amount of fiscal stimulus as part of kind of getting elected and just powered through with it. And the impact was actually very, very negative. You know, the people that have been harmed the most in the last four years are the lowest economic strata. And those are people for whom inflation has been really catastrophic inflation, not just in groceries and fuel, but also rents and cost of living, insurance. And these things are driven by, my opinion, a lack of understanding of economic policy. Those are probably the three largest.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Let me ask you this. First of all, you were a longtime Democrat. You've supported Democrats. We talked about this.

ACKMAN: I would say I've always been a centrist, but I’ve supported more Democrats by far than Republicans.

SORKIN: I just want to read you. This is John Kelly, the former Chief of Staff of Trump. He worked with him directly.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: And he says that in many cases, I would agree with some of his policies. So you agree with the policy piece of this that I think Trump is presenting. But he says it's a dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected in high office. He goes on to say, in his opinion, he believes that Trump meets the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of the rule of law. He goes on to say that Trump had made admiring statements to him about Hitler, your Jewish and care about Israel, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans, and it characterized those who died on the battlefield for the U.S. as losers and suckers. How do you get your head around that?

ACKMAN: One, it's one person stating a series of things which I don't know –

SORKIN: There are 28 people who have worked for the president, not just in close proximity, but in the Oval Office with him –

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: – who have come out publicly and expressed things of this sort.

KERNEN: Kamala Harris lost 92% of her staff, too but –

ACKMAN: That's actually – I think that's a relevant sort of point, so if you want to talk about, you know, I don't –

SORKIN: By the way, I just want one point piece on that. There are people who would argue that maybe she was not an organized person and was not a good executive in that regard, right? But I don't know of anybody who came out publicly against Kamala Harris claiming that she was for Hitler, that she was against the Constitution, and that she was calling people who died on the battlefield on our behalf losers. Let's stipulate that.

ACKMAN: OK, let me address. Number one, I don't think Trump is for Hitler. OK, I think that's absurd. OK --

KERNEN: And you know that so why say it?

ACKMAN: Hey, it's my hour. I don't know. Maybe you can give me an hour.

KERNEN: You know it's not true, so why say it.

ACKMAN: So one, Trump's not for Hitler. Most of Trump's friends are Jewish. He grew up in the New York City real estate community. He's got a daughter who's Jewish. He's got grandchildren who's Jewish. He was probably the most pro-Israel president in terms of committing to do things and actually executing on them. You know, moving the embassy, delivering the control of the Golan Heights to Israel… But let's talk for a moment – let's get back to Kamala Harris, right? I actually have personal experience to Kamala Harris and it relates to CNBC. In March of 2015 at Pershing Square, we received a brown envelope in the mail. And in it was a staff memo from Kamala Harris's staff when she was attorney general of the state of California. And it was a memo about why her staff believed they should shut down Herbalife. And the California attorney general got a consent decree in 1986 against Herbalife. And the consent decree basically, they were found to be a pyramid scheme. And they said, look, if you don't commit to change all of your actions, we can shut you down overnight. And that consent decree, we knew about this, was a public document. Her staff apparently unbeknownst to us, took a hardline analysis on Herbalife, came to a conclusion that it was a pyramid scheme, advised her that she should use her powers as attorney general of the consent decree to shut down the company. And she wouldn't. So what did her staff do? The staff leaked the memo to us and leaked it to the media. Now, why didn't she do anything about it? Well, it was March of 2015. She's running for the Senate. And her husband worked for a law firm that was Herbalife's lawyer. And she was told, one, that it would hurt her campaign for Senate. And two, you know, she didn't want to go against the company. Herbalife was very strategic about the law firm that they hired. I don't know if Doug Emhoff worked on the case. But that's a character issue, in my opinion. And you know, for her entire staff, for her staff to leak a memo like that suggests something about what they think of her as a leader.

SORKIN: Do you think her character, do you find the tradeoffs of character alone, you think that her character is worse than his?

ACKMAN: I'm not saying it's worse. I'm saying that I certainly – I called into question – so again, getting back to Herbalife, Herbalife was a company that and still is, that's caused enormous economic harm to the lowest economic strata. In fact, many undocumented immigrants, those were Herbalife's, and probably still are, Herbalife's principal people that have been ripped off by the company. She could have protected millions of them with a stroke of a pen by virtue of being Attorney General of the state of California, and she chose not to because she felt it would harm her Senate campaign and maybe, you know, cause some grief for her husband's law firm. I mean, that to me is a character issue, for sure.

SORKIN: How do you feel about, Mr. President Trump, former President Trump has spoken very openly about how he's very frustrated and upset with Google, which happens to be in your portfolio, by the way.

ACKMAN: Yes.

SORKIN: And how he believes that that company is a rigged company and effectively plans to go after them on a personal basis, right?

ACKMAN: I don't know that he's precise – look, he's unhappy, I think the – we've seen, by the way, Google AI, if you've looked at the early iterations, Gemini and otherwise, you know, there are some facts there that were presented as fact by AI that were not the case.

SORKIN: But my question is how do you feel as somebody who owns a stock like that, and you have a president whose speaking, not just about, look, we could have a philosophical conversation about whether Google is a monopoly or whether they're doing good things or bad things or what have you.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: It is different when you say publicly, look, I hate this company because I actually think that they're doing something bad to me and I'm going to go after them as a result of it. That's a different thing.

ACKMAN: OK. I'm here because as an American citizen, I think it's in the best interest of the country for Trump to be the president versus Kamala Harris. And if it causes harm to a company I have an investment in, so be it.

SORKIN: OK.

BECKY QUICK: It's Kamala.

ACKMAN: Kamala.

QUICK: Kamala.

ACKMAN: Kamala. Sorry.

KERNEN: He's not saying Kamala.

QUICK: No. No, I know. It's Kamala.

ACKMAN: I apologize.

QUICK: Yeah, that's OK.

ACKMAN: VP Harris. Well, look, my point here is I don't think Trump is perfect. I don't think VP Harris is perfect. But I think it's a very different world, again, on global security. I think Trump is going to end the war in Ukraine. I think Putin would like the war to end. It's been a disaster for Russia. I can't see a world in the Vice President sitting down with Putin and resolving the war. I can see a world – Trump is a dealmaker. This is what he – in effect, does for a living. He's going to threaten Putin with hundreds of billions of dollars of new armaments for Zelenskyy. And if Zelenskyy is the problem in the negotiation, he's going to threaten to withdraw support from Zelenskyy. And both will feel threatened by Trump. And that will enable a resolution.

SORKIN: And what happens if Putin then goes after the rest of Europe?

ACKMAN: I think, well, if Putin does that, you know, Trump will be – there's a reason why the world was a safer place. Because the dictators feared Trump. And you know, Trump says, look, if you step into Ukraine, I'm going to bomb Moscow. Let's assume he would say something like that. Putin would take that kind of thing seriously from him. He wouldn't know whether he was serious or not. And I think that is part of the power. That's the, you know, deterrence comes from the perception of power.

SORKIN: That’s a much a higher risk proposition for the country, meaning that's a big delta. That's a big delta on a good outcome and a bad outcome.

KERNEN: What about someone with absolutely no experience in foreign policy being the commander-in-chief for the country?

ACKMAN: Well, I would say the following –

KERNEN: If you didn't receive a single –

ACKMAN: I would say the vice president has had experience on foreign policy over the last --

KERNEN: Bad experience. It's all bad.

ACKMAN: Her experience has been a disaster. The world – I mean, just empirically, right, the world's a much less safe place. Look at what's happened on college campuses, right? You know, kids are afraid to go to class or, at a minimum, their learning has been disrupted by violent protests on campus. We have people – it starts out as an anti-Israel protest and then it becomes an anti-American protest. People are burning flags. This was not happening, you know, during the Trump administration. And Trump has said, look, if any student here on a visa is supporting a terrorist, I'm going to deport them immediately. I haven't heard that from Vice President Harris.

KERNEN: Just as a – do you think that a repudiation of some of the AOC or this part of the Democratic Party, where it is right now, it may be coming. I don't know, you know, if you don't believe the betting odds, fine. But just as a repudiation of some of that, it would almost be a positive for the country.

ACKMAN: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think the single best thing for the Democratic Party, as a party, is for a massive loss in this election.

KERNEN: That's what I mean.

ACKMAN: And that will cause a reboot, will cause a change in the leadership.

KERNEN: The danger is that when you characterize someone as a fascist dictator, rapist, and you've already got him there, and if the American people do elect him, there are certain people that are never going to accept this.

SORKIN: Well, a judge is determined that he – a judge determined of rape. So what are we doing here?

KERNEN: He wasn't convicted of rape.

ACKMAN: Look, unfortunately, there's a lot of legal cases that are brought against Trump, which I think lack loyalty. And there are cases that wouldn't… You know, sometimes juries make mistakes, and juries rely on instructions from judges.

SORKIN: Let me ask you about your own mistakes.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: One of the things I was going to ask you about is, you care about information, misinformation, and truth.

ACKMAN: Yes.

SORKIN: You have been very prolific on Twitter recently.

ACKMAN: Yes, which increases the risk of my reposting something in error.

SORKIN: Well, that's where I wanted to go with this, because you now have a massive following, and what you think your own personal responsibility is, as such.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: Given that – given that. And one of the examples that I was just going to point to is, you had a tweet out earlier this year, directed at Bob Iger –

ACKMAN: Yes.

SORKIN: -- Disney CEO, who owns ABC, effectively alleging or claiming, and you said, if true, that you felt that, or you thought that the debate, given some of this stuff that was going around, was mishandled.

ACKMAN: What I said was the following, someone on Twitter, X, published a, you know, affidavit that made a series of claims about the debate that had some credibility to it, at least, you know, it looks –

SORKIN: Well, it turned out to be wrong. We saw the debate.

ACKMAN: OK. And there were elements of the debate that made it look, you know, the nature of the fact-checking and otherwise. And if that happened on CNBC, the right thing to do, in my opinion, is, OK, fine, do an investigation. Determine whether it's true or false. That's all I was saying to Bob Iger.

QUICK: It was about questions, had they been given to the candidate to Harris in advance –

ACKMAN: Among other things.

QUICK: -- among other things, and your point was, they didn't turn it down. They didn't say, no, this didn't happen. And there were other things there, like the size of the podiums that hadn't been disclosed in advance.

ACKMAN: Yeah, so there were a series of allegations that made it look like the debate was, quote-unquote, "rigged." And so an objective media organization would say, OK, fine, you know what, we're going to take a look at the e-mails. We're going to look to see if something untoward took place. And that's why I thought, again, in light of the proximity to a presidential election, the fact that this is the only –

SORKIN: But it turned out to be wrong.

ACKMAN: I don't know –

SORKIN: You actually published it. It turned out to be wrong.

ACKMAN: No, I didn't say it turned out to be wrong. I said it looks like this was not a true – I don't – there's been no investigation. All we know, I think there's some questions about the credibility of the person who posted it that made me come to the conclusion that it's likely not true.

SORKIN: Do you think that you – are you going to change or shift any of sort of what you post as a result of things like this, or do you think that this is the way to do it?

ACKMAN: If someone were to – if it were to happen again, were someone to question the fairness or treatment of candidates in a debate, and I thought it was credible, and the media organization that controlled the show did nothing about it, I would have no qualms at all about pinging the CEO and saying, look, this is worthy of an investigation or at least a much clearer denial that it's not the case. And we still haven't gotten there.

KERNEN: Do you think that there are – you've heard about our earlier discussion. Do you think there are CEOs that are afraid to come out for Kamala Harris because of retribution from the Trump – or vice versa? Is it harder to come out for Trump or harder for Kamala? I think it's a no-brainer. I could go to every book party in New York and cocktail party if I – and the mainstream media would love me, and Joe Kernen would be great if I were to endorse Kamala Harris.

ACKMAN: You're correct. So by the way, one of the benefits –

KERNEN: It's an absolute nightmare for you.

ACKMAN: One of the benefits of supporting Trump – one of the few benefits of supporting Trump publicly is many, many people come up to me, CEOs and say, Bill, thank you for saying what you're saying. I wish I were similarly situated where I could, but I have – you know, all my employees would quit. You know, I hear stuff like that.

KERNEN: Well, if you read 20 things that Kamala Harris has said in the past, it's all anathema to business, to business and to free markets and to the filibuster and to the rule of law and to the border. And they're all afraid to even say, well, she didn't mean any of it.

ACKMAN: Joe, you're preaching to the converted.

KERNEN: I know.

ACKMAN: And, look, I think we should tone down the emotion. I think it's a really important decision. If you want to make the decision on economics or the stock market, you should feel free to do so. If you want to make the decision on the basis of national security, if you just – I mean, the people who – by the way, I've had many, many people who continue to support Vice President Harris who say to me, you know what, Bill, I agree with basically every one of your concerns, but I just don't like the guy.

KERNEN: Right.

ACKMAN: I think he's rude. I think he's crass. I don't like his style. I hate him. That's a meaningful percentage of people. And then there are the people who say, OK, the world's going to end. Democracy is over. He's going to become a dictator. At 82, at the end of his term, he's going to – you know, he's now Stalin. And there are some meaningful, thoughtful people who this is what they believe in, by the way, I respect them.

SORKIN: By the way, I would argue those people fear the risk of that.

ACKMAN: Yeah.

SORKIN: I don't think anyone thinks that that risk exists with Kamala Harris. Do you agree with that?

ACKMAN: I don't think the risk exists –

SORKIN: You think there's no risk?

ACKMAN: I think the risk – go ahead Becky.

QUICK: Can I just ask you, Bill?

ACKMAN: Please.

QUICK: We've talked to a lot of people this week, or over the last week and a half, we've heard from a lot of people who are major investors, and they're betting one way or another on this. Are you making bets based on what you think is going to happen with the election, and where would you put those bets?

ACKMAN: So, we have no bets in the portfolio on the basis of who's going to be president. You know, we don't short stocks anymore, as you know.

QUICK: Right.

ACKMAN: We own these great American businesses, obviously in a better economy. Let's talk – you know, it's CNBC. Let's talk a little bit about the economics of the next candidate. I mean, Trump is the only candidate that's talked about accelerating the growth of the country. And the only way we're going to dig ourselves out of $36 trillion worth of liabilities is through growth, right? There's sort of two answers when you're over-leveraged, right? One answer is you can negotiate with your lenders. The other is you can increase the value of your assets. And how do you do that? You increase your profitability. How do you increase your profitability? You reduce expenses. He's the only candidate. Actually, let's talk about team for a moment, because it's not really Trump versus Harris. It's the Trump team versus the Harris team, right? So what have we seen? So Trump's picked J.D. Vance as his vice president. I'm afraid of mispronouncing his name. Kamala has picked Walz. Walz is a self-described knucklehead, right? I can't imagine a world in which this guy is president of the United States. And you have to look at the vice president as a potential president of the United States. So if I line them up, you know, you've got a guy who grew up in a very, very challenged environment – addiction, family, rural America – makes his way to Yale, armed forces. Now he's, you know, venture capitalist, senator, extremely articulate, obviously highly intelligent. So you compare and contrast. You have Elon Musk, who's probably the – you know, one of the most consequential – certainly consequential business leaders in the world. It's proven he can take on 12 things at the same time and change the world, OK? As, you know, who's going to take – who really has put himself out here in this election. And first, the only one talking about government efficiency, right, and Trump's all in – by the way, RFK, OK? RFK is a highly intelligent, capable person, and he's focused on a couple of issues that mean a lot to me. Number one, you know, the food industrial complex, what's happened to the health of Americans over the last couple of decades. He's going to focus on that. I think that is a critically important issue. I think examining the 73-shot regime that we give our kids and –

SORKIN: Can I just ask you, though? You've spent your whole career talking about truth, honestly.

ACKMAN: Yes.

SORKIN: You go out there publicly talking about companies that you think are lying.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: And I just want to know what you think when you see, for example, former President Trump publicly say, on the record, that he forced Deere to not move to Mexico. And then the company has to come out with a statement that says that that's false. Fundamentally false. He puts on Twitter or on his social media platform that Jamie Dimon is endorsing him. And then JPMorgan has to come out publicly and say, that's not true.

ACKMAN: Actually, that's not what happened. What happened was Jamie said some positive things about Trump. Someone posted on Twitter that Jamie's endorsing him, and Trump, in effect, retweeted it.

SORKIN: OK. Let me ask you this, though. As somebody who cares about truth, use the Deere example, because that's as black and white as they come. What do you think of that?

ACKMAN: I think there are probably many examples of Trump convincing and or threatening a company that if they open up a factory in Mexico that he's going to, you know, tariff their goods or whatever, and maybe confuse the company. OK, but he certainly has used that kind of technique.

KERNEN: Do you care –

ACKMAN: Hold on.

KERNEN: Go ahead.

ACKMAN: I want to make my own arguments here.

KERNEN: You can, but –

ACKMAN: You get to do it all day. I get to do it now.

KERNEN: There's lies on both sides. It's, like, unbelievable.

ACKMAN: In her Twitter account – OK, Vice President Harris puts stuff out about Trump that are absolutely completely false. Like, so, for example –

KERNEN: Total lies. Bloodbath.

ACKMAN: He's going to sign a federal abortion ban. OK? Trump's not going to sign a federal abortion ban. He's in bold letters, capital letters. He's said it publicly. He's posted it. Otherwise, I can give you multiple examples. Just take a look at her Twitter feed, her X-feed. It's a series of lies about President Trump. So, you know, she's not some – unfortunately – again, I look forward to a world – maybe it's four years from now, and we have two candidates, and it's November 5th again. And none of them have lied. None of them have personal issues. They're, like, the world's most incredible candidates. And it's so hard to decide, because they're amazing. Human beings are flawed. Donald Trump is flawed. Kamala Harris is flawed.

SORKIN: So, they lie, and it's the same. What about, like, eating pets?

ACKMAN: OK. Oh, my God.

KERNEN: I know, because –

ACKMAN: First of all, let's –

KERNEN: We only got a couple minutes left.

ACKMAN: OK, let me focus -- let's talk about the issue. The issue is when you have totally open borders, OK, and you're flying 20,000 immigrants from one culture into a city of 40,000 people, and there isn't sufficient infrastructure, and they don't have driver's licenses, and they have different habits. And, by the way, and maybe, you know, it wasn't cats and dogs, but they were, you know, trapping geese in the pond or whatever, whatever the ultimate truth is. It's the – there's a symbolic element there. And, by the way, in the debate, OK, Vice President Harris said multiple things that were not true. Hold on. She said multiple things that were totally false. She was not fact-checked for one of them. Trump was fact-checked for certain things that turned out to be true. So, for example, you know, he said, hey, you know, crime rate is up, you know, meaningfully. That was fact-checked to be false. And then the FBI updated their statistics recently to reflect, oh, in fact, you know, violent crime has increased over the last four years. So, you know, I think that's why at the end of the day, it's going to be about which team do you want. Do you want Trump, Vance, Elon Musk? You know, I think Tulsi Gabbard is a capable, intelligent former Democrat to come over. And then you have – who are the team members on this side that we know other than Tim Walz? And Tim Walz is an – I mean, maybe he's a good guy, but he's one of the most unimpressive. I can't imagine him being a senator, let alone –

SORKIN: New York Times reported today, I don't know if you believe it, that perhaps Jamie Dimon would be open to being her treasurer's secretary.

ACKMAN: That'd be fantastic. And by the way, whoever ends up being president, I'm going to support that president because I care about the country, and I think the citizen's obligation is to help the country, and whoever the president is. I just, look, first of all, Trump's going to have a very effective treasurer's secretary, whoever that person is. And, you know, Jamie Dimon, I think, is pretty cautious, as is every business leader, about leaning in, you know, kind of either way.

SORKIN: So if Robert Lighthizer is the treasurer's secretary of the United States, or the secretary of state, that would be a good thing, in your mind? I'm just asking the question.

ACKMAN: I don't think he's a treasury secretary candidate.

SORKIN: Secretary of State?

ACKMAN: Here's what I'd say. One of my concerns for Trump this time around was, would highly capable people be willing to step in and work in a Trump administration? And I think the answer has proven to be yes. And I think, you know, the other benefit we have, Trump did not expect to be president of the United States. You know, the polls were like 92% Clinton and, you know, 8% going into the election. He was completely unprepared. At 12:30 in the morning, everyone was, you know, surprised that, although I had bet that he would be president, by the way. I won a couple of nice dinners on the basis of that. And he was unprepared, took time to assemble a team. He was attacked immediately with, you know, the Russian investigation. This time, he's had years of experience. He expects to win. People are publicly lining up to support him, you know, sort of already. I think he'll have no trouble bringing in a very capable team. There are many CEOs who are, you know, former CEOs, other very capable business people who are going to want to be in this administration. I'm going to help him any way I possibly can. I'm not going to be a member of the administration.

KERNEN: Alright. We've got to –

ACKMAN: OK.

QUICK: We're out of time.

KERNEN: Thank you.

ACKMAN: Sure.

SORKIN: Thank you for coming in.

ACKMAN: Thank you for having me. Great conversation.

KERNEN: We can check the markets quickly.

QUICK: Bill, thank you.

ACKMAN: Sure.

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