in these prominent places with prominent people?

The Declaration of Independence contains a sentence that has been called, and I think it's true, the most famous sentence in the English language.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Now, that was written by a slave owner, and it was, and, and three-quarters of the people at the, uh, at the, uh, uh, Second Continental Congress were slave owners.

Nonetheless, um, they did say all people are created equal.

Uh, Lincoln later said the same thing in the Gettysburg Address.

And that's became the creed of our country, that everybody should have an equal opportunity.

Everybody should be able to have a chance to, to rise up from whatever their circumstances are.

And what did you do with President Carter? Bring that to life.

So tell us, how was the show last night in Toronto?

Oh, the show was, the was, show was amazing last night.

Um, you know, I s- I saw them the first night in LA, and I was, I didn't know that Aimee Mann was gonna be coming out again for Time Stand Still.

And so when she walked out on the stage, that was just, um, it was just amazing.

And I've never seen them in Toronto before, and so it's just been, uh, super fun to come out on their opening night and, um, and see them here in Toronto.

And been a fan since '79, and-

Wow

... um, I saw them on the Partial Tour of the Hemispheres, and every tour, every tour since then at least once.

How does this come to you? What's the process by which you end up owning this team?

A little convoluted, like everything in the big world of sports.

The team has been owned for 30 years by the Angelos family.

They bought it out of bankruptcy in 1991 or 1992.

And let me just explain what happened.

St. Louis Browns were a team in St. Louis.

They weren't doing well there.

Tell us about that process.

Now, as someone who comes from a modest background yourself, how do you respond to the criticism that Carlyle contributes to inequity?

Well, there are two main criticisms.

One, you could argue that private equity-- when private equity first started, uh, it was seen as, uh, um, the leveraged buyout phenomenon.

And what it was was the early days of private equity, the deals were ninety-nine percent leverage.

The, the, the deal I talked about earlier, uh, gifts and greeting cards, ninety-nine percent leverage, one percent equity, and very typically that one percent was taken out as a one percent fee, so there was almost no equity in it.

The famous RJR deal done in nineteen eighty-nine by KKR was five percent equity, ninety-nine-- ninety-five percent debt.

That was very typical.

What are you paying closer attention to that the American people are either not discussing enough or is underreported in the media?

What happened?

I've been on this crazy journey over the last 12 months.

Having been in sales for a long time, I was starting to feel a little bit burnt out last year, and I'm like, "I'm gonna take the summer off.

I'm gonna play a bunch of golf.

I'm gonna live my best life, and I'll figure out what I wanna be when I grow up in the fall." And that was my plan.

And what I realized really quickly is that I'm not good at doing nothing, and this FOMO with everything that was happening in the world, not being in the game was really hard.

But I didn't want a boss, and so I had to create a project for myself, so I just...

I think it'd also be interesting, you know, beyond the full sales cycle, in that first call, how do you differentiate and cut through the noise?

But tell us about this new book you have coming.

I have actually two books coming out.

One of them is called In the Owner's Box.

And it's basically, a book about what it's like to buy a baseball team.

Three years ago, I bought the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, which is my hometown baseball team.

And I wrote a book about why I did it, how I did it.

And I interviewed other owners of sports teams and other sports about why they bought the team and their teams and how they did it.

I love your

Is the Declaration of Independence the most important document in world history?

Um, I...

Probably not.

I would say the Magna Carta is probably more significant because it was, uh, a precursor to the Declaration.

The Declaration largely applied to the United States.

The Magna Carta probably applied to more than just England, but the Declaration is an extremely important document because it contains a sentence that is probably the greatest sentence ever written.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That became the creed of our country, and while we had slavery when it was written, and we had slavery for over 100 years afterwards, eventually, the concept of actually making everybody equal, men and women, uh, became kind of the creed of our country.

But what from, from an investment risk standpoint worries you the most?

Which makes me, because...

Listening to his message and what he's advocating for, I'm all for it.

The words, to be healthier.

Being healthy is great.

But to say don't die, put it on t-shirts, put it on things, and have people advocating for that, I think is a dangerous spelling game.

And that's why I asked, because I was curious what you thought of it.

Now, what about the structure... that is built into a day.

Well,

Do you wanna weigh in on this before I go to Arjun?

Well, on a, on a couple of points.

One, um, the phrase conventional wisdom was invented by, uh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and he later said, "Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong." And so it usually is.

So I'll tell you what I, I think the conventional wisdom is in Washington today about the economy, and it's probably wrong.

As you suggest, probably the conventional wisdom is wrong, but I do think there is a debt problem that we have to address.

Right now, when the country was first started, we had $70 million of debt that was assumed by the federal government, and almost throughout the country's history, we've had debt, but not all that significant.And really not until around 19- in the year 2000 when George W. Bush came and had some big tax cuts did the debt, the debt amount of the, the United States government really skyrocket.

Now we have roughly $36 trillion of debt, 36 trillion.

Eventually, sorry, distribution.

You've caught up with some fantastic individuals over the last few weeks, including the former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. But I think we want your thoughts, your individual view, um, where we are in this economy and why you think things are heading.

Obviously, um, the economy depends on certainty, and there's some lack of certainty right now about what's gonna happen on taxes and tariffs. So when there's greater certainty, I think we can better predict where the economy is going to go. Um, Mohamed knows that so well. So in my view, um, there's some uncertainty right now. I had a chance recently at a... an event over the weekend to interview the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, um, and, you know, he's pretty bullish on the... his ability to get the tax cuts through the president wants. But the market wants to see if it's actually going to happen, and then what's going to happen in the Senate, and then we have to see whether the tariffs are actually going to go through or on what level. So there's some uncertainty, but right now, the market is not, um, as, um, disappointed in where things are as I would have thought. Um, the market's not collapsing as some people thought it might. So, you know, maybe some of the things that President Trump is doing is... are having some impact on- on the market favorably.

David, where are we on two characterizations about private equity? One is a ton of money on the sideline waiting to come in, and two, distributions back are- are still very, very slow.

Well, for the last couple of years, there haven't been as many exit opportunities as people wanted. As a result, uh, a lot of the private equity firms are ready to sell things. Uh, they were hoping at the beginning of this year as the new administration came in that there'll be looser, uh, regulatory controls, IPOs be better, uh, and so forth. That hasn't yet happened. It may happen. Hasn't yet happened. There is a lot of money on the sidelines for sure, and I do think that some of the deals that have been talked about probably will get done. But I think the- the market is waiting to see whether there are... a lot- a lot of the large deals are going to be approved by the FTC or the Justice Department, and it isn't clear that they will get approved. For example, uh, the Wiz deal that was, I guess, announced or maybe going to be announced, um, it's not clear that'll get approved. It didn't get approved before under Biden, or at least the temporary, uh, indications were that it wouldn't have been approved. Today, I don't know whether that deal will be approved or not. Um, that's a big deal. If- if the market were to, uh... market would be very happy if that deal would get approved, I- I- my guess would be.