Nvidia scandal: How close was ex-CEO to Trump?

Joining me to discuss this further and the fallout from Jensen Wong's exit in the tech giant that he built is our commentator, Douglas Herbert. So, Douglas, yeah, it's always great to see you here. Great to have these discussions. Well, Wall Street reacting. Negatively to what's been happening. What's the fallout? What are we looking at? But let's go beyond Wall Street and let's go beyond the tech industry. This is having fallout in terms of the broader political landscape in America and the whole sort of, you know, zeitgeist, right? What's going on? People now, this nexus, as it's seen, especially in the Trump era. Yeah, you could say it's always existed, but especially it's been at the forefront of the Trump era between business. And not just any business, but these extremely powerful tech titans. They're almost like the robber barons of another century. They are more powerful, perhaps, in America than anyone similarly across American history in their time. Them and government, being cozy with government, this sense that they are literally all in bed together. And NVIDIA has been perhaps sort of the exemplar of that trend. And what have we seen? The midterm elections, the Republican wipeout, the blue wave, and the election in which You know, Trump's own unpopularity, but also corruption was a giant issue. And this sense that these tech titans, these billionaires are lording it over Americans lives and doing it in a way that just isn't too. It's not a good look. You know, ties with business and politics. So this is a lot of that is what this is about. The three Republican led committees, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the House Select Committee on China, all plus the Banking Committee, all of them want to hear Wang testify. Yeah, they want to testify. What did he know? When did he know it about this? This woman who is having the relationship with that allegedly was a Chinese spy, according to the to the report. But also... How close was he to Donald Trump and his administration? How much influence did he have? We know that he gave a lot of money towards Trump's nice big ballroom there. We know that Trump took him along on big trips when he went to go visit Xi in China and so on and so forth. This is sort of unseen across American political dynasties and administrations. administrations. Yeah, rich people have always had influence. Yeah. They've always had sway. But if anything, the midterm elections plus Wang's exit is presenting this. Golden opportunity, this window of opportunity, if you will, to really do a root to branch rethink of this tie, these nexus between tech titans, billionaire tech titans, let me add the word billionaire, and government. How does it work and how does it work specifically in the Trump era? If he doesn't show up for these committees, they're threatening to issue a subpoena, which is literally a summons that legally obligates him to come or else. Doug, you mentioned those hearings that are going to be going on on Capitol Hill. The Commerce Secretary is also, he's been summoned to testify, Howard Lutnick. So why is he under scrutiny? And also, it already looks like there's a little bit of a finger pointing going on between Commerce and the Treasury Department. Yeah, there is. Look, Howard Lutnick, the head of the Commerce Department, he is. Essentially, the allegations, the accusations that his critics are saying is that he was way too cozy with NVIDIA and specifically with Jensen Wong and with Trump. This goes into the ties we were just talking about between business and politics and that he really went against the grain of what most senior officials, both even in the Trump administration, but also in his own department, were saying there needs to be some sort of greater controls on the export of NVIDIA's advanced semiconductor chips, because these chips. The charge sort of being against him is that he was too fast and easy and too loose with letting NVIDIA basically export these chips to whoever it wanted. But China's especially been on the radar. So that cozy relationship, allegedly cozy relationship between Howard Lutnick and one of the biggest tech titans in the United States, Jensen Wong, now out of NVIDIA, his commerce department and the nexus with China. All of that coming together. They want questions answered from Howard Lutnick. They want to see if he was going against sort of, you know, the grain of his own advisors at the Commerce Department, how much sway he held at the Commerce Department.