00:00The 4th of July, of course, is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
00:05And there are celebrations, which we've been talking about all across the U.S. today.
00:09Later today, the National Archives in Washington, D.C. is going to hold a dramatic reading of that founding document.
00:16This is a big deal. They do it on the steps, apparently.
00:18An original of that document on display at the National Archives, alongside rare versions of the Magna Carta, the U
00:23.S. Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
00:25And some of these belong to one billionaire, David Rubenstein, who is also the host, I should say, of the
00:30David Rubenstein Show, Peer-to-Peer Conversations, on Bloomberg Television.
00:34He has loaned those documents to the archives.
00:37And in the run-up to Independence Day, I sat down with David in Washington and asked him about his
00:41interest in what he calls patriotic philanthropy.
00:45I coined that phrase, though I don't know that it's a brilliant phrase, because all philanthropy is probably patriotic in
00:51some way.
00:51You're giving back to your country, and most philanthropy, or some other way, you're giving back to society.
00:56But what I meant was philanthropy that reminds people the history and heritage of our country, the things that make
01:02us patriotic.
01:03And so what I was trying to do is say things like preserving documents, preserving buildings, things remind people of
01:08our history.
01:08That's patriotic philanthropy.
01:10Talk a bit about how you decided to do that, how you saw that gap and decided to fill in.
01:15I can't say that I sat down with McKinsey and say, how can I help the country?
01:19It was, like many things in life, fortuitous.
01:21I happened to go to a viewing of the Magna Carta.
01:24It happened to be actually a night before it was going to be auctioned.
01:27The person auctioning it off said that basically it was going to leave the country if I didn't, or somebody
01:31didn't buy it.
01:32And so I got seduced into thinking I should save it and keep it, the one copy of the Magna
01:36Carta that was available to be in this country, in this country.
01:39So I did buy it.
01:40And then subsequently I started buying other historic documents.
01:42And then subsequently I began fixing historic buildings, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and so forth.
01:47Why do that?
01:48Who cares?
01:49Why do we need to preserve, let's say, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta?
01:53We know what's in the text, so why preserve the old documents?
01:56Well, the reason we preserve documents and buildings, in my view, is that the human brain still gets more out
02:02of seeing an original than it does of a document that's on a computer.
02:06And what we're trying to do ultimately is get people to learn more about our country's history, be educated about
02:11our country's history.
02:12The theory of history is that those people that don't remember it are condemned to read.
02:16So I try to preserve history, preserve documents, preserve buildings on the hope that people will actually come visit these
02:23sites, see these documents, learn a little bit more about history, and ultimately be more informed citizenry.
02:28What Jefferson said is a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry.
02:33And if we have an uninformed citizenry, democracy isn't going to work that well.
02:37Rubenstein shares that vision of an informed citizenry with the National Archives, which aims to preserve, protect, and share America's
02:44historical record.
02:45I took a tour with Frank Cordes, who's with the National Archives Foundation.
02:48The Magna Carta is hugely important in our history.
02:53It establishes freedom of the church.
02:56It establishes trial by jury.
02:58Basically, at its core, says that the king and government are subject to law, which is pretty important.
03:06So when you get to 1776, the founders go, hey, you're not abiding by the Magna Carta here.
03:11And that's what leads to them being able to write the Declaration of Independence.
03:14That's only one of Rubenstein's rarities on long-term loan to the U.S. government, including an engraving of the
03:21Declaration of Independence.
03:23By 1820, the Declaration is quite faded, and they commissioned Mr. Stone to make a copy of it.
03:29It is a verbatim copy down to the typo that's on the original, where you see there's a little carrot
03:34with only in there.
03:35He even gets the original typo.
03:37He doesn't fix it.
03:37He makes it as a verbatim copy.
03:39And thanks to that, we have legible copies of the Declaration.
03:44And this one is on loan to us from Mr. Rubenstein.
03:49John Quincy Adams, in 1823, said we have to get some replicas made so that when the original does fade,
03:55we have a copy of what it looks like.
03:57So they made 200 perfect replicas in 1823.
04:01Of those 200 replicas, now there are about 50 of them left.
04:06I own about a dozen of them, and I put them on display all over the city and all over
04:10the country.
04:10But now I'm making replicas of the replicas, and I'm giving one to every Major League Baseball owner, every NBA
04:17owner, and other places where they can be put on display.
04:19And so all the NBA owners and all the Major League Baseball owners will have in their stadiums a very
04:25life-size replica of the Declaration of Independence that are put on display in this year.
04:29So Jim Dolan's going to have a banner at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks.
04:33He's also going to have a copy of this on display as well.
04:35That's correct.
04:36How have they reacted to that, your decision to do that?
04:38How have owners reacted to this site?
04:39Well, I think people are proud of having a copy of the Declaration of Independence there.
04:43It's a symbolic document.
04:44Some of Rubenstein's patriotic philanthropy leaves a larger impression, at least physically.
04:50He gave $7.5 million to repair the Washington Monument after an earthquake in 2012.
04:56And now, a once-hidden space beneath the Lincoln Memorial is open to the public.
05:01This is an early look at the dramatic Undercroft, a museum beneath the iconic structure.
05:07David Rubenstein made the founding investment.
05:10If you go to the Lincoln Memorial, historically, what you saw is basically a big statue of Lincoln and two
05:16of his famous speeches.
05:18Now, underground, under the Lincoln Memorial, you'll see educational opportunities.
05:23You'll have an opportunity to learn more, see videos, and so forth.
05:25And people that go there will actually learn more about Lincoln than they have historically been able to do.
05:30I want to ask you about the Giving Pledge, which you signed in your 50s.
05:33And at the time, in your statement that accompanied it, you said you hoped it would be something that would
05:36encourage other people to follow suit.
05:38I'm curious, now that we're a few decades out from that becoming a thing, if it's been successful in that
05:43way.
05:43How do you gauge the effectiveness of the Giving Pledge?
05:45Well, the Giving Pledge was signed initially by 40 people.
05:48Now there are probably about 250 of us who've signed it.
05:51It's a very voluntary thing.
05:52It says you're going to give away half of your net worth during your lifetime or upon your death.
05:56But if you don't give away half of your money during your lifetime and we wait for you to die
06:00and you don't give it away upon your death, we can't disinter you.
06:03So it's a voluntary thing.
06:05The idea is to really encourage people to give assets away.
06:10And I'd like to remind people that you don't need to be a billionaire to be a philanthropist.
06:14Anybody can give away money.
06:16And people who give away money are, if they're a billionaire or not a billionaire, they're still making a contribution.
06:21But I also like to remind people that philanthropy is derived from an ancient Greek word that means loving humanity.
06:27It doesn't mean rich people writing checks.
06:29And you can love humanity by giving your time.
06:31The most valuable thing any of us have is our time.
06:33You can make more money.
06:34You can't make more time.
06:35And so I try to encourage people to give their time as well as their money.
06:38And they'd be a very good philanthropist if they do that.
06:41There are critics who say the kind of work that you're doing, this kind of public-private partnership, runs afoul
06:47of what we should be doing.
06:48That the government should be spending more money itself.
06:51Taxes should be higher.
06:52People should be paying more for the government to do this work.
06:53What do you say to them just about how well what you've pioneered here is working and how do you
06:58respond to that criticism?
06:59Well, clearly what people like me are trying to do is encourage other people to do similar things.
07:05The government has more resources than all of us.
07:07And the government can always do more.
07:08But as we know, getting the government to move forward is very difficult from time to time.
07:13So sometimes the government can follow the lead of the private sector.
07:16Sometimes the government can lead the private sector.
07:18But when it comes to philanthropy, I think you have to do it more from the private sector.
07:22And maybe the government will fill in the gaps at some point.
07:24If we wait for the government to do all these things, a lot of these things aren't going to get
07:27done.
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