House Minority Leader Jeffries & SpaceX Investor Mark Pincus 6/25/26

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**SPEAKER_3** (0:55)
Bring in show music, please.

**Katie Kramer** (0:59)
Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod.
Who's in the middle? Really? A question we can't get away from today. Talking about the politics of tech policy with Mark Pincus, the Zynga founder and entrepreneur is out with a new book on the speed of life.

**Mark Pincus** (1:16)
These unicorns, what I call internet treasures, have not been invented yet.

**Katie Kramer** (1:21)
And a Democratic primary that shook up a few incumbents in New York City in favor of candidates more and proudly on the left. The Democrats' leader in the House, Brooklyn's Hakeem Jeffries.

**Hakeem Jeffries** (1:33)
The Democratic Party at its best, the country at its best, believes in a strong floor and no ceiling. In other words, you work hard, you play by the rules in this country, you should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life, at minimum a middle class life.

**Katie Kramer** (1:49)
Plus, memory chip stock surge.

**Joe Kernen** (1:52)
Does the AI build out get to a point where it's built out? Are we going to keep going till we create God?

**Katie Kramer** (1:59)
Does it make a market?

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:01)
So you're saying this time is different?

**Joe Kernen** (2:03)
Yes, I am.

**Katie Kramer** (2:06)
It's Thursday, June 25th. Squawk Pod begins right now.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:12)
Stand, Andrew, by three, two, one, up and Andrew, two.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:18)
Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live at the NASDAQ Market site in Times Square. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, back in the chair with Joe Kernen. Becky's off today, so it's just the boys. Nice to see you, sir.

**Joe Kernen** (2:30)
Good to see you.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:31)
After an eventful week and a half.

**Joe Kernen** (2:34)
Well, I don't have any. Of sorts. You would need to go on a, a dissect every day for you, because you're on, you know, Piers Morgan, you're at conferences with, or you just got a lot going on.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:48)
I've been working, as they say.

**Joe Kernen** (2:50)
There was a vacation in there, too.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:51)
There was a little vacation in between. In the middle.

**Joe Kernen** (2:53)
Was there a week?

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (2:54)
There was a week in the middle, so. But the vacation's off.

**Joe Kernen** (2:57)
Have you been working for me and for Squawk?

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (3:01)
I work for this network every single day.

**Joe Kernen** (3:03)
So, it was in that, okay, because you've got a lot of different domains involved, right, as a renaissance man?

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (3:11)
It's all in the name of Joe Kernen.

**Joe Kernen** (3:15)
You're like, nope, you're like an octopus.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (3:17)
And then there's the energy story, which may, I'm not sure, has actually impacted this piece of it just yet. You'd think it would.

**Joe Kernen** (3:26)
This is, what's happening in the markets is memory. It really is, but this is good, too. A WTI falling back below its level from before the Iran War. It happened fast, didn't it? We spoke with Treasury Secretary Scott Besson about falling energy prices in the broader economy just yesterday on Squawk Box.

**Scott Besson** (3:44)
We went into this on very strong energy footing, but on very strong capex cycle from both the AI and the tax bill. The US economy has really performed, and we're going to get to the other side of this conflict, because you were just showing energy prices are coming down, inflation is going to drop, and the economy, I think, is going to be accelerating on a non-inflationary basis for the rest of the year and for the rest of the president's term.