Mar 19, 2026 · 36m · american-optimist
Jake Paul on Endorsing Trump & the AI Economy · Joe Lonsdale
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of American Optimist, host Joe Lonsdale interviews creator, athlete, and venture capitalist Jake Paul alongside Anti Fund co-founder Jeff Wu to discuss cultural leadership, political advocacy, venture investing in the attention economy, and navigating the impact of artificial intelligence.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Joe holds 33.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Joe as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 2.6 Guest disagreement 1.3 Joe pushing back 0.7
speaking balance: gold is Joe, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 11:02 Jake reframes gambling harms around personal entertainment
When challenged by the host on gambling addiction, Jake firmly reframes Betr's model around voluntary entertainment budgeting and highlights industry-first debit card restrictions.
Hardest push from Joe ▶ 10:46 Host presses on gambling addictionJoe directly questions the societal ethics of sports betting apps, asking whether they ruin people who gamble away money meant for their families.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:02 Jake details advising OpenAI on creator mechanicsJake educates Joe on how he worked with Sam Altman to design Sora's consumer mechanics using his decade-plus expertise in audience psychology and video creation.
Joe holds their own ▶ 26:09 Host educates Jake on boxing's Lord Lonsdale heritageJoe surprises Jake by detailing the historical lore of Lord Lonsdale, an English aristocrat who knocked out the American champion in 1900 and gave boxing equipment its famous name.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Joe as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Joe pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Highlights & Show Title Sequence | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | Joe introduces Jake Paul and Jeff Wu, praising their patriotic stances and recent rally appearance with Donald Trump. The exchange is warm, welcoming, and promotional. | |
| Cultural Leadership, Public Stances & Creator Roots | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Jake describes making the conscious choice to endure celebrity backlash to voice political truths, which Joe validates by noting tech executives often fear going public. | |
| The Attention Economy, Anti Fund & Venture Thesis | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Joe cites the seminal transformer paper 'Attention Is All You Need' when discussing the attention economy, while Jeff explains Anti Fund's strategy of combining attention with venture capital. | |
| Building Betr, Prediction Markets & Responsible Gaming | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Joe challenges Jake on whether digital betting apps like Betr risk addicting users who wager money needed for families, prompting Jake to defend their platform protections. | |
| Incubating Consumer Brands & Onshoring Manufacturing | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Jeff and Jake describe incubating consumer brand W and expanding into physical manufacturing, with Joe referencing Saronic and quoting Ronald Reagan on credit and achievement. | |
| Collaborating on Sora, AI Content & Proof of Humanity | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Jake explains consulting for OpenAI on Sora, leading to a discussion on deepfakes and AI slop where Joe references Benjamin Franklin's pseudonyms to weigh anonymity versus identity verification. | |
| Live Sports vs. Synthetic Media & AI Disruption | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Jeff argues an investment thesis of being short actors and long athletes/musicians due to synthetic media, while Joe adds a counterpoint about the enduring value of live theater. | |
| Influencer Ambitions, Vocational Career Paths & AI Job Impact | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Jake clarifies that young people shouldn't blindly aspire to be influencers unless they possess genuine innate talent, while Joe and Jeff discuss AI disruption and the importance of vocational work. | |
| Disrupting Boxing, Lord Lonsdale & Mike Tyson Relic | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Jake describes professionalizing boxing promotion with MVP. Joe displays deep historical domain expertise by recounting the 1900 origin of boxing's Lord Lonsdale legacy and showcases Mike Tyson memorabilia. | |
| Consumer Execution, Popcorn & Nicotine Culture | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Jeff explains the razor-thin execution margins required for consumer brands over pure tech moats, followed by a shared discussion endorsing modern nicotine pouches over cannabis or heavy alcohol. | |
| Grassroots Action & Inspiring Patriotic Values | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Jake and Jeff share what makes them optimistic about America, highlighting decentralized social media revealing political contradictions and reclaiming pride in patriotic civic values. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Lonsdale: Only 1 of 21 California elites spoke on the record
“I think there was an article I was in recently that interviewed 21 people who'd had ties to California who were very successful, and I was the only one willing to go on the record.”
Wu: Attention is now a scarcer founder commodity than capital
“The best founders have infinite access to capital, but influence attention, to your point, I think, LOM attention and just like cultural attention, I think that's the most scarce commodity”
Jake Paul: Betr hits 1M paying users and partners with Polymarket
“We just crossed one million paying users and just partnered with poly market to bring predictions into our super app.”
Jake Paul: Las Vegas is dying out as consumers gamble at home
“And it's like, people want to just play casino from their comfort of their own home versus, you know, Vegas is seems to be like, you know, dying out a little bit in terms of the casinos and people wanting to go there.”
Jake Paul: Betr is the only gaming firm prohibiting credit cards
“I think we are the only company to not take credit card and actually debit”
Wu: Anti Fund incubated Trump-endorsed deodorant brand W in Walmart
“We incubated a, you know, a deodorant company and I think the president basically. Yeah, called W. Available nationwide Walmart, and the president was, like, basically, you know, endorse that as long as well as endorsing for future political office.”
Jake Paul: Sports betting CEOs are too old to understand Gen Z
“We saw with Better, like, Bad content, bad advertising, clunky apps no connection with the users, all the CEOs, the youngest one is like 50 years old. So they don't understand this next generation. Me and Joey are the youngest two in the space.”
Jake Paul: My team worked with OpenAI for months developing Sora
“We worked with their team for a couple of months, just helping them develop the product and the idea of like what it would even be. And it started from just like chatting with Sam and identifying that there was a gap for a potential social media, new social me…”
Jake Paul: Platforms will require human identity verification against AI
“I think there'll have to be something where yeah, humans Essentially verify themselves.”
Jake Paul claims Netflix bought an AI studio from Ben Affleck
“Netflix just bought a whole AI studio from Ben Affleck, but like will consumers want to go to the movie knowing that like none of the acting was actually real?”
Wu: Short actors, long athletes and musicians in the AI era
“If I were to be like a hot take, I would be short actors, long athletes, long musicians.”
Wu: AI will delete jobs at 100x the Industrial Revolution's speed
“I think a lot of jobs will be deleted. And I think it'll be on entrepreneurs and founders and investors to create new opportunities for people. So I think we're entering a very interesting time where there, it is industrial revolution times the hundred speed, …”
Jake Paul: MVP runs boxing like a startup unlike archaic competitors
“Me and my co-founder Nikisa came in and ran it like a startup essentially. And with values, professionalism, showing up on time, treating fighters properly, contracts ready. These are things that are like not available in boxing besides like our company.”
Wu: Consumer brands need tighter execution because they lack technical moats
“But then I think the execution bar is actually very, very tight because there is like the magic around like the founding story, the problem that we're solving for customers, but because it's less technical differentiation, The execution bar of like every singl…”
Lonsdale: Nicotine culture is much better than marijuana culture
“I mean, nicotine culture is much better than a marijuana culture, I think.”
Jake Paul: TikTok engagement algorithmically amplifies pro-America content and truth
“And I think because of things like TikTok, The truth has just gotten out there more, and so even if you see something of a video that you agree with, just liking, reposting, commenting, those things actually help to drive those videos up and to grow the audien…”
Jake Paul: Open information is exposing political contradictions like Kamala Harris's
“I think, like, people are becoming smarter and becoming more able to see inauthentic characters and actors and contradictions that people have especially in, in politicians and, you know, exposing Kamala saying one thing over here, then later she's saying this…”