Trump assassination attempt, Secret Service failure, Inside the RNC, VC liquidity problem

Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 5, 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris 312–226 in the Electoral College and becoming president‑elect.​ (en.wikipedia.org) He was subsequently inaugurated on January 20, 2025, as the 47th President of the United States.​ (en.wikipedia.org) This matches Jason’s characterization of Trump as the “likely 47th president,” so the prediction is accurate.

Donald Trump did, in fact, win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Official results show Trump/ Vance defeating Harris/Walz with 312 electoral votes to 226 and winning the popular vote with about 49.8% to 48.3%.(en.wikipedia.org)

Joe Biden subsequently did drop out of the race on July 21, 2024, and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee; Trump still won against her in November.(en.wikipedia.org)

So in the scenario that actually occurred (Biden drops out and is replaced by Harris), Friedberg’s effective prediction that “it’s over, Trump’s won” was borne out. The stronger claim that Trump would win even if Biden had stayed in is counterfactual and can’t be directly tested, but standard forecast scoring evaluates only the realized world. On that basis, the prediction is judged right.

Subsequent official investigations align with Jason’s core prediction that Thomas Matthew Crooks would be treated as a lone-wolf attacker rather than part of an organized political plot. A major FBI briefing in November 2025, summarized in outlets like Fox News and People, reported that after reviewing 35 financial and social‑media accounts, 13 devices, and over 1,000 interviews, the Bureau concluded Crooks acted alone and found “no evidence” that any foreign or domestic individual, organization, or government directed, inspired, or assisted him. (foxnews.com) Other coverage of the same findings likewise emphasizes that there was no supporting network and no second shooter, debunking conspiracy or organized‑plot theories. (nypost.com)

On motive, the FBI and independent reporting still state that it is formally unknown, and that investigators have not identified a clear ideological or political driver. Wikipedia and later summaries describe the motive as “unknown,” and note that extensive inquiry has failed to produce a definitive political or organizational explanation. (en.wikipedia.org) However, multiple FBI‑linked briefings and expert analyses paint a picture close to what Jason anticipated: Crooks is described as a socially isolated “loner” who fit standard assassin / mass‑shooter profiles, with the FBI suggesting a “complex interplay of personal grievances, mental health issues and a desire for notoriety,” and former agents saying he appeared less like an ideologue and more like an anti‑social individual seeking fame. (foxnews.com) These accounts explicitly contrast psychological and anti‑social factors with organized or ideological direction.

Because the investigative consensus is that Crooks was a lone actor and not part of any organized political plot, and because the post‑hoc framing emphasizes psychological/mental‑health and anti‑social issues rather than a clear political conspiracy, Jason’s directional claim matches how the case is now officially characterized. The narrow detail that investigators have not formally declared “mental illness” as the singular, primary cause keeps the prediction from being perfectly word‑for‑word accurate, but its main thrust—lone disturbed individual, not an organized political plot—has been borne out, so it is best scored as right.

Donald Trump did win the 2024 U.S. presidential election and began his second (non‑consecutive) term as the 47th president on January 20, 2025, so the condition of Chamath’s prediction (“if Trump were to win”) was met.

However, the composition of Trump’s second cabinet is not “a very youthful cabinet of a lot of 30‑somethings and 40‑somethings.” The core cabinet (vice president plus department heads) and cabinet‑level officials are mostly in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. For example, the Second Trump Cabinet list shows senior posts held by Marco Rubio (Secretary of State, born 1971, mid‑50s), Scott Bessent (Treasury, born 1962, early 60s), Pam Bondi (Attorney General, born 1965, 60), Doug Burgum (Interior, born 1956, 69), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Health and Human Services, born 1954, 71), Chris Wright (Energy, born 1965, 60), Linda McMahon (Education, born 1948, 77), and others in similar age brackets, along with Trump himself as the oldest person ever to assume the presidency at his 2025 inauguration. (en.wikipedia.org)

There are some officials in their 40s—Vice President JD Vance (born 1984, about 40–41 in 2025), Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (born 1980, 45), Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (born 1981, 44), EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin (born 1980, 45), OMB Director Russell Vought (born 1976, 49), and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer (born 1979/1980, mid‑40s). But there are no cabinet or cabinet‑level officials in their 30s, and people in their 40s are clearly a minority relative to those in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the actual cabinet is older on average and is neither dominated by 30‑ and 40‑somethings nor plausibly described as “very youthful,” Chamath’s prediction did not come true.

The prediction is explicitly long‑term: that Trump’s choice of JD Vance "means that this America First MAGA message is going to continue into the future, many years into the future." Evaluating whether a faction will dominate a major party for "many years" requires observing intra‑party dynamics over multiple election cycles, not just the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election and the 2025 political environment. As of November 30, 2025, only one election cycle (2024) and part of one presidential term have elapsed since the prediction (July 2024), which is not enough to determine whether the MAGA / America First faction will continue to dominate the Republican Party for "many years" beyond 2024. Therefore, the accuracy of this prediction cannot yet be determined.

Donald Trump did win a second, non‑consecutive term in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and was inaugurated again as president on January 20, 2025, beginning his new administration at that time. (en.wikipedia.org)

Lina Khan’s official FTC biography lists her as former Chair, stating that she served as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from June 15, 2021 to January 20, 2025. (ftc.gov) Independent biographical information likewise records her term as FTC Chair ending on January 20, 2025, with Andrew N. Ferguson succeeding her; it also notes that while she remained an FTC commissioner briefly until January 31, 2025, she was no longer Chair (the head of the agency) once Trump took office. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because:

• The condition in the prediction (“a second Trump administration beginning in January 2025”) did occur, and
• From the start of that administration onward, Lina Khan was not serving as Chair (i.e., not “running that agency”),

the prediction that she would not be running the FTC in a second Trump administration was borne out by events.

Donald Trump did win the 2024 U.S. presidential election and began serving a second (non‑consecutive) term on January 20, 2025, so the conditional part of the prediction about his returning to office has been met.

However, the substance of the prediction concerns whether his second administration “will permit substantially more mid‑market M&A” in tech (roughly under $100 billion) than under Biden. As of late 2025, the evidence is mixed and still very early:

• The Trump DOJ and FTC have kept the 2023 Biden‑era merger guidelines rather than explicitly rolling them back, signaling continuity in formal merger review standards. (cnbc.com)
• Enforcement against significant tech and tech‑adjacent deals has continued: DOJ sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks and the FTC sued to block GTCR’s $627 million acquisition of Surmodics, and DOJ reaffirmed a Biden‑era push to break up Google; major antitrust litigation against Meta is also ongoing. (mondaq.com)
• At the same time, some commentary and data suggest overall M&A activity (across sectors) has picked up and that enforcement is easing somewhat compared with Biden’s term, with fewer merger challenges so far and more willingness to settle or allow deals with remedies. (wsj.com)

But Trump’s second term is less than a year old, and available analyses focus on broad M&A or individual high‑profile cases, not on a robust, quantitative comparison of mid‑market tech deals allowed versus those during the full four years of the Biden administration. Given the short time window and the mixed, still‑evolving enforcement picture, there is not enough evidence yet to say that U.S. antitrust policy under Trump has clearly permitted “substantially more” sub‑$100B tech M&A than under Biden.

Because the relevant policy outcomes over the full 2025–2029 term are still unfolding and the comparative data are incomplete, the prediction is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than clearly right or wrong.

Public reports and later historical summaries agree that President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race on Sunday, July 21, 2024, via a letter posted to his X (Twitter) account in which he stated he would stand down from seeking reelection but continue serving as president for the remainder of his term. (en.wikipedia.org) He did not resign from office, but the prediction was explicitly disjunctive: it allowed for him either to resign from the race or from office. Because he formally stepped aside as a candidate within the specified weekend window (from the episode’s release on Friday, July 19, 2024, through the end of Sunday, July 21, 2024), the prediction that he would “resign this weekend” in the sense of exiting the 2024 race was fulfilled.