The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 201 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Vance says he would have requested alternative elector slates on Jan 6
“I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we have in these important states.”
Friedberg: Sam Bankman-Fried would be greatest investor ever if not liquidated
“SBF pretty much would have been the greatest investor of all time if he didn't get liquidated. Same dynamic. I mean, obviously there was fraud in terms of how he was allocating capital, but his actual portfolio over the long run was absolutely correct.”
Karp: The US military would have been more brutal than Israel
“Has Israel done something America would not have done under certain, the same circumstances? I think America would have been a lot more brutal.”
Sacks: Removing NATO expansion could have prevented Russia-Ukraine war
“And in fact, there was still an opportunity before this war to prevent the war by taking NATO expansion off the table.”
Musk: Would have activated Starlink in Crimea if requested by Biden
“If I had received a presidential directive to turn it on, I would have done so, because I do regard the president as the chief executive officer of the country, whether I want that position If I'm not, I still respect the office, and so, if, you know, if we've…”
Sacks: Fauci's career would have ended if lab-leak role was exposed early
“Because Fauci had funded gain of function research at the Wuhan lab via EcoHealth Alliance. So he knew that if at the beginning of this pandemic, it turned out that he had been partially responsible For the creation of this virus that had now turned into a pan…”
Sacks: Ukraine war would not have happened with three specific US concessions
“If we had just done those three things, there would have been no war.”
Sacks: Closing NATO's door likely could have avoided the Russia-Ukraine war
“Because there's a good chance we could have avoided This disastrous war if we had just been willing to close NATO's door.”
Sacks: US State Department could have easily avoided Ukraine war
“This war was easily avoidable. I mean, the State Department could have avoided this war very easily.”
Sacks: A deal could have been negotiated to prevent the war in Ukraine
“I strongly believe we could have cut a deal on Ukraine a year ago to diffuse this whole situation before it turned into a war.”
Sacks says Capitol riot death toll would be identical for Black protestors
“Honestly, I think it would have been the same.”
Sacks: Mamdani would not have won NYC mayoral election without migrant vote
“Mamdani would not have won the mayoral election in New York if it had just been native-born New Yorkers voting. It was the mass migrant vote in New York that swung it to Mamdani.”
Chamath: Meta capping headcount at 3,000 would not have changed its outcome
“Ok, you could have stopped the company at 3000 people when I left, and it would not have changed the outcome of that company. There was no need to go to 90,000 people and burn fifty billion dollars on VR.”
Gerstner: Data center moratorium would trigger negative GDP and 15-20% market drop
“Bernie Sanders calling for a moratorium, shutting out all data centers. We'd have negative GDP growth this year. The stock market would be down 15 to 20%. Unemployment would be on the rise.”
Sankar: Early US regulations surrendered the global consumer drone market to China
“There is a counterfactual world where General Atomics had a consumer subsidiary called DJI, and the consumer drone market was entirely owned by the US, and it provided for economic prosperity for America, and wrote us down the price production curve that we co…”
Mahan: Federal wildfire aid would have flowed without California-DC political fighting
“They're not getting the help that they need, and part of the reason they're not getting the help that they need is this hyper-partisanship in which California and Washington are fighting rhetorically and politically, and the people who are being hurt are the f…”
Pishevar: Iran would have used nuclear weapons already if available
“There's not even a doubt in my mind that they would have used it by now if they had it.”
Sacks: Trump would have won nine more electoral votes without illegal alien census counting
“In the last election, President Trump would have won an additional nine electoral votes If we had an accurate accounting.”
Chamath: Biden administration would have leaked Epstein files if Trump was implicated
“If you had something that was incredibly salacious and accusatory of, Trump, it would have been released during the Biden administration because it would have made a lot of sense politically to try to damage his candidacy. So the fact that we haven't seen much…”
Chamath: Biden AI rules would have caused US to lose to China
“These diffusion rules, the gatekeeping, all of those things, Pete, would have seen us lose to China.”
Ro Khanna says Kamala Harris should have admitted border policy mistakes
“I think that should have been Vice President Harris's answer of what she would have done differently. And she could have even said, I learned we made a mistake. We didn't have the right approach on, on border security.”
Sacks: Palisades wouldn't have burned if Caruso were mayor
“Because I think it's pretty obvious that the Palisades wouldn't have burned to the ground if you had been the mayor, because you would have made sure that there was water in the fire hydrants.”
Calacanis: Trump administration pressure caused late-night show cancellations
“I think they would have let both of their contracts run out, renegotiate them for smaller dollar amounts, and reset the economics of those shows, if not for the pressure put on them by the 47th administration.”
Yakovenko: Crypto industry might not have survived four more years under Gensler
“I don't know if the industry would have survived another four years of the Gensler regime.”
Trump claims threatening 200% tariffs would have stopped semiconductor offshoring
“They would have said, no, you want to build in Taiwan, you're going to have to pay a 200% tariff. And nobody would have left.”
Sacks: Censorship of Hunter Biden laptop could have changed 2020 election
“There is a very plausible argument that the censorship of this story could have swung the results of the twenty-twenty election, okay?”
Sacks: US would be heading to World War III under Democrats
“I have no doubt that if the Democrats were still in office, we would be in an escalatory spiral right now with the destination being World War III.”
Summers: Targeted tariffs would not have caused a $5 trillion stock drop
“If President Trump had announced a big broadening of anti-dumping law to confront a variety of instances of what he, what the administration, after careful economic analysis, saw as inappropriate subsidy, I might or might not have thought that they were doing …”
Calacanis: A Dean Phillips and Josh Shapiro ticket would have easily beaten Trump
“If you had picked Dean Phillips and Shapiro, I think they would have beat Trump very easily or because remember Trump was phenomenally unpopular.”
Cuban: FTX and 3AC would survive under Japanese crypto regulation
“If he had followed the same rules for crypto that Japan did, FTX would still be in business. Sam Bankman-Free might still be in jail, But FTX, three euros capital, they, they'd still be in business, because he did the wrong thing.”
Sacks: Biden administration shot down early Russia-Ukraine peace deal
“We could have agreed to a deal in the first month. The Biden administration shot that down. That is why we have the war going in Ukraine.”
Sacks: Biden would be in a stronger position if he had closed the border
“Look, if Joe Biden had just shut down the border for the last four years, he would be in a materially different position.”
Trump: Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president
“This would have never happened if I were president. It would have never, Putin would have never done it.”
Trump claims October 7 attack on Israel would never have happened under him
“That attack would have never happened in a million years.”
Sacks: Ukraine war could have been avoided by ruling out NATO expansion
“I think it's really clear that we could have avoided that war if we had taken NATO expansion off the table.”
Christie: I would not have brought the NY or Georgia Trump indictments
“I would have indicted both federal cases. I would not have indicted the New York case or the Atlanta case as to Donald Trump.”
Christie: Trump would have willingly accepted overturning the 2020 election
“I don't think he would have any, he would have had any problem with the election being overturned. And I think if it was, he would have been more than happy to have his rear end sleeping in the white house tonight.”
Christie: Trump wouldn't face prosecution if he returned documents when requested
“If he had turned over the documents he illegally had at any point when he was being requested to from February of 20, 21 through to when the search occurred, there would be no prosecution.”
Ramaswamy: Refusing NATO expansion would have prevented Russian invasion of Ukraine
“Because I don't think that we would have, if I was president, I don't think we would have gotten to the point of those things rolling in. Angela Merkel made some disastrous comments. Putin made a hard demand. We would have said hard no to Ukraine joining NATO,…”
Ramaswamy: Trump would have won in 2020 without laptop story suppression
“The sense in which the election was stolen was the Hunter Biden laptop story and the systematic suppression of information. I think that there is no doubt. That is no doubt. I think that the evidence strongly suggests that Trump would have been elected and not…”
Ramaswamy says he would not get COVID vaccine today with current data
“Had I had the facts that I do now as a young, thankfully healthy male, I would not have actually chosen to get vaccinated.”
Sacks: War in Ukraine was avoidable by halting NATO expansion
“They've chose to fight an optional proxy war of choice that was easily avoidable if they'd just taken NATO expansion off the table because they thought it would weaken Putin”
Chamath: Trump would have blocked NATO expansion, preventing Putin's invasion
“So I think he would have shut the door so ferociously on Ukraine and NATO, and anybody that crossed that line, he would have tarred and feathered publicly. And I think the end result would have been that Putin could have found an off ramp well before he invade…”
Chamath: Joe Manchin prevented US inflation from reaching 15% to 16%
“The fact that Manchin prevented six trillion more dollars of being pumped into the economy in the last two years is probably the single thing that prevented inflation instead of being peaking at nine. From peaking at 15 or 16.”
Sacks: The Russia-Ukraine war was easily avoidable through diplomacy
“My point is this, that this war was easily avoidable through the use of diplomacy.”
Sacks: Netflix would have dropped Dave Chappelle without his major deal
“They absolutely would have thrown Chappelle off and done what a lot of those employees wanted if they didn't have such a big deal with him, if he wasn't such a big deal.”