Just two weeks after Craft Ventures co-founder David Sacks hosted a high-profile fundraiser for former President Trump at his Silicon Valley mansion, filled with venture capitalists and tech elites, Trump made an appearance on Sacks' podcast on Thursday, covering a wide range of topics from taxes and tariffs to energy to artificial intelligence to foreign policy decisions to Ukraine to China to Covid to immigration and many other issues the Biden administration seems to be failing on. 

The podcast features Sacks, entrepreneurs Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg, who spoke with Trump for about 50 minutes - asking intelligent and clear questions. There were no 'gotchas' like you see with corporate media activists.

Sacks began the interview by explaining how business leaders at his fundraiser expressed tremendous difficulty in today's economy under the Biden administration. 

"You got the crypto guys who just want a framework. They just want the government to tell them how to operate - and they can't get that. You have no M&A happening right now in tech. The real estate guys can't get loans because interest rates are through the roof, and there's a credit crunch. So I think one of the common themes we just heard across that dinner was that it was just so hard to do business right now," Sacks said.

He then asked the former president: "What are the three things that you would do to kind of get things moving again, you know if you're reelected?" 

Trump responded: "Regulation Regulation and Taxes - Okay. I gave the biggest tax cut in the history of our country a lot to the business," adding, "As you know, companies were paying 40% 45% including state and city taxes in many cases, and we got it down to 21% - would like to get it down lower." 

Trump defended his tariff proposals against criticism that they would spark more inflation, asserting the policy was essential for maintaining the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. He stated he would penalize countries that abandoned their peg to the dollar by slapping them with tariffs on their products coming in the US, adding, "With tariffs, it gives you a tremendous power."