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Scorched Earth is his kind of policy in lots of ways. He doesn't care. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisser and this
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episode is sponsored by IBM. Scott is off today sailing in some place, maybe a visa, who knows? So, in his place, I brought someone actually smart, a fantastic co-host, uh, Kristen Sulttus
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Anderson, who is a pollster, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and co-founder of Echelon
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Insights. I was on the Chris Wallace show with her. Um, and she is a Republican pollster. I am obviously,
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well, I don't know what I am. Anyway, welcome, Kristen. Thank you so much for having me. I miss our weekly
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gettogethers uh with with Chris Wallace refereeing. Yes, I know. They're they're
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quite good, but you're never really like you're always so reasonable and then you convince me of things I don't want to be convinced of. So that's why I'm having
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you here today. Um, but there's a ton going on. What What are you up to mostly right now? I mean, obviously you've been
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inundated with information as a pollster, right? Because there's so much constant information. There's a ton of
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stuff going on. So you've got uh the tariffs that next week we will see 90 bill 90 deals 90 days. Does that work out? So, lots of people interested in what's public opinion on tariffs in the
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economy, everything that's going on in the Middle East. Do people feel safe? Do they feel unsafe? What's their reaction
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now that we've had a little bit of time to digest what happened? Um, and then of course, what's going on with one big
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beautiful bill? And the many different ways you can try to gauge, do Americans even know what this bill is, and from
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what they've seen, do they even like it? Right? Which they don't, right? I mean, we'll get to that. We'll get to all
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those things. Um, do you right now when you are doing polling, there's so much polling out there and there's so much
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internet polling and everything else. Talk just a tiny bit about the business because people like don't trust polls
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but they're glued to them at the same time. So, give me an idea of how you figure this out when you're in in this
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pool of info. You're right. It's very much one of those like the portions are terrible and so small kind of situations
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where people will say that I hate polls, I don't trust polls, but they seem to know exactly what's going on in the
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polling averages. Look, distrust of polls or skepticism of polls is completely natural. I I understand it.
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Um, often times polls are used to do something they are not built to do. They are not actually great at predicting
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down to within a point or two how a fluid situation might turn out a week or two down the road. And so, uh, I get why people are skeptical. The other challenge we're facing is technology
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makes it easier for me as a pollster to find you and ask you questions. And it makes it easier for you as a respondent
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to evade me, ignore me, block me, and so on. And then you add to that the way that AI is going to change our industry.
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um it's going to make it so that you have uh more hurdles to jump through as a pollster to try to make sure are the
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people that I'm contacting and surveying really legitimate or are they bots? Are they bots that look an awful lot like
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people digitally? Um these are challenges that we as an industry are facing. Um, and really right now the big
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thing that I am watching is, uh, there was a Great Atlantic article, I think a week or two ago that was about how
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teenagers are asking for landlines again. Um, and gosh, the return of the landline would be like the greatest thing ever for full because people answer the phone. Cuz people do. I never
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answer my phone. No one answers the phone anymore. No one answers the phone. Not at all. But when you have so many of
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them out there too when they're doing them online, Elon Musk just did one. We'll talk about that in a minute, like about whether you should start an
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American party. He did one around a lot of things this week. He does it all the time. But he's not the only one. Everybody seems to have a hot take or
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I've pulled these people. How do you stand out as an actual pollster with actual standards?
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So, there are a couple things you can do to stand out. One of them is you're not just looking for the cheapest, fastest data you can find. Um, the reason why
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these panels exist of people that you can survey is not actually mostly for political purposes. It's because every
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brand under the sun has a marketing department that's trying to gauge how's our new ad campaign going, what do
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people think about our new consumer product and so on so forth. So most of these polling panels that a pollster in
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the political space is using don't first and foremost exist for political purposes. So if you want to stand out as
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a political or whatever Yeah. Yeah. You you have to be good at knowing how to take this these panels that are made
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mostly to gauge what do people think about bleach or sneakers or anything and make it into something that looks really
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like what an electorate will look like. What we do at my firm, we use the voter file. It's the publicly available list
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of everybody who's a registered voter. It's pretty frequently updated in most states and that can at least give you
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some ground truth of who is and isn't registered to vote. How often do each of those people vote or not vote? And that
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can help you have some sense that the people you're talking to are real people. They're registered voters and
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you have a good idea of how often they are a voter. And last question, you do this thing for the New York Times where you have the same people that you talk
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to. Um is that is that helpful because you're trying to gauge their opinion over time. Correct. So for the New York
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Times, what's really fun is that's qualitative. We are bringing in you know 8 to 12 people depending on the the
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group to just talk to them for 90 minutes about what they think about a key issue and there you know you're
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getting real people uh you know you're not getting bots you're looking at each other face to face you can see how they react to each other and what's neat
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there is we have as you mentioned had times where we bring the same people back you know a year later we did one
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like that around um January 6th we had some Republicans come one year after January 6th and tell us okay a year
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later how are you feeling ing about this horrible thing that happened in our country. Um, and then we had those same
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people back a year after that to see, okay, how had the horror of the day converted into belief in a conspiracy theory or just a belief it's not that big a deal and so on and so forth. Oh,
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that's interesting. Now, one one more question. Are there beefs between pollsters? There's beefs between journalists, that's for sure. For the
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most part, pollsters are all friends and that includes pollsters across the political aisle. So Republican and
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Democratic pollsters, we generally all view each other as part of the reality- based community who are trying to live
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in a world that is driven by data. And so you find a lot of these fun partnerships between Republican and
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Democratic pollsters that do not exist anywhere else in the political consulting space. You don't find
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Republican and Democratic like ad makers working together that often, but you will find that in in polling. the beef
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is less, you know, your right versus left. And it's more quality versus people who are pedalling garbage. Um,
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and they the folks that are pedalling garbage make it harder for the good pollsters to do their job because they
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quote lower prices. They set different market expectations and then they're the ones that are out there sort of pushing
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narratives to debunk. Right. Right. And it doesn't really matter if they're right or not. Right. They don't they
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just move on to the next thing. Um, all right. So, we've got a lot to get to today and you're bringing us some stats, too. Um, we're also going to talk about
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the Paramount settling with Trump and Trump's latest target, New York City mayoral candidate, uh, Zoran Mandani,
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uh, who did spectacularly well now that the results are in. But first, so President Trump is hitting back at Elon
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Musk after days of Elon railing against Trump's big beautiful bill. He's continuing to do so, which just passed
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the Senate. Trump took aim at the government subsidies that Elon's companies received, and said the country would save a fortune without them. He
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also threatened to sick Doge on Elon and said it would quote take a look at deporting Elon when asked about that. He
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also said Doge would eat Elon for some reason. I'm not sure why. After those comments, Elon said it was so tempting
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to escalate, but he would rerain for now. And I had predicted that he was going to slap back over this bill
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because he really I I know him pretty well in previously and this would bother him. He's been ramping up the rhetoric,
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posting on X that Republicans who vote for the bill will quote lose their primary next year if it's the last thing
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I do on this earth. Okay. And after declaring that we live in a one party country, the Porky Pig Party, Elon
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renews his calls to form a third party, the America Party, if the bill passes. So, we're going to talk about the bill in a moment. Let's start with the return
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of the feud. Now, I am not surprised Elon erupted like as I said he would when he did his first eruption and then apologized. But Tesla shares took a tumble on Tuesday, filing 5%. That's
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ahead of Q2 earnings, where analysts expect to also see declines in actual car sales. Now he's expressing regret
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over his chainsaw stunt, saying it it lacked empathy. You think? Um, so he's threatening this third party. Let's stop start with this. You have some brand new polling on third parties in the United States, which has been tried and tried
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again, although it has happened in the United States several times. Yeah, polling uh on this really shows that a
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lot of Americans don't think that the two existing political parties are meeting their needs, but there's really
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not a lot of consensus about what a third party would look like. And the bad news for Elon Musk is that this kind of
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libertarian type viewpoint is most likely not where you would find a real viable third party spring up. Um, so I've been doing uh research at my firm
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for the last number of years where what we do is we ask people, do you think of yourself as liberal or conservative? But then we also ask them a bunch of issue
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questions to get their sense of, you know, are you picking the conservative position on 10 out of 10 economic issues
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or 10 out of 10 social issues and then we kind of plot everybody out on a chart and we see where do people fall and only
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11% of voters are strong conservatives, right? They're picking the right-wing position on almost everything. And only
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13% of Americans pick the strong liberal position on everything. There's a lot of people that choose a little from column
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A, a little from column B. But the problem for the libertarians is only about 5% of people tend to choose a
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bunch of liberal social positions and a bunch of conservative fiscal positions. there are significantly more people who
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are the opposite who take a more sort of socially culturally conservative viewpoint but then also believe that
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yeah we should have robust government safety net and those sorts of things. So the problem that Musk is going to run into is yes Americans don't love the
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two-party system. Yes, there's a hunger for a third party but no it doesn't necessarily look exactly like what I
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think Musk's politics look like. Right. So what would that look like? Like that they're socially conservative. That's
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interesting. Usually it was the socially liberal and fiscally conservative. That used to be kind of a thing from a lot of
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people. And you know, I do a lot of presentations to business leaders and I'll ask, you know, how many of you in this room would describe yourselves as
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fiscally conservative but socially moderate to progressive? And tons of hands go up. And like the bad news for
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those folks is in the data, it's actually a very small portion of the electorate. Um, we tried asking it a
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different way where we uh gave people five different hypothetical parties to choose from. One is kind of a far-right
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nationalist populist type party. One is a more centerright maybe old school Republican party. One is a center-left
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labor party. One is a Green Party. And then one we jokingly call it the Asella Party, but like that's not really what
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it's called. But it's this kind of Mike Bloomberg like socially moderate centrism. And that only gets 13% of
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voters. Oh wow. Which one gets the most? The most is the Labor Party. uh 31% of Americans and part of that is because Dem the Bernie Sanders so I I don't know if I would say that's
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Bernie Sanders. I would think of it more almost as a like maybe a John Federman setting aside like I know he definitely has some views that are at odds with the Democratic uh majority on a couple
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cultural issues these days. this idea of like middle class economics, labor unions, tax the rich a
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little bit, um support programs for those less welloff, but it's not like break up big corporations. Like that's
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what we said for the Green Party, and that only got 6% in our polling. The more interesting thing, I think, to me,
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too, is that the right is really split. So while most Democrats coales into that kind of labor party type model,
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Republicans are very divided between this more old school, you know, three-legged school stool of
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conservatism, right? Strong military, strong families, uh limited government versus a like we're cracking down on
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illegal immigration, we're stopping political correctness, America first. Like that really does divide the right
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in our polling. No foreign intervention, that kind of thing. So So they are they headed for a crackup in that way? It
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seems like it once Trump is removed from the situation, there's a real crackup about to happen. It feels like Donald
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Trump is holding a lot of pieces together that in the absence of a strong dominating personality who has just captured this party entirely, those
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cracks would begin to show. A lot of this Musk feud reminds me of the Tea Party days. I think I described it on air once as like the reheated leftovers of the Republican party's interf family
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drama from like 2011 that these fights feel familiar but they feel old. They feel like they come from an era before Donald Trump came in and said it's my way or the highway. Right.
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So So but is there a chance for him to have a party in here? What would it be if you were m if he said to you uh
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Kristen I want you to create a party for me? What would you advise him? and he he's going to give you a pile of money
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and you'll do it right. I don't know if you would, but you should because you would be a good influence on him. Um,
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what would you advise him, Elon? This is the party you need to start. So, I think
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he's got some good instincts in the sense of uh anti being anti-establishment, right? I think the
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problem that too many attempts to start a third party have had is that they have been too captive by existing
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establishment or it's like elites driving it and so your sort of average American is like well I I want a third
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party but maybe not that. um he is of course an elite himself, but I think he is more comfortable breaking out of that sort of elite bubble. And I I so I think there's
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something about the anti-establishment vibe you would need to pull this off. But I do think that this idea of just
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like slashing government and that being the main thing you're all about, that's tough to build a party around because, you know, Republicans, they love to cut spending. um they love to talk about it
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at least, but the political reality of the popularity of cutting spending is very different. And so if you can talk a
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big game about it, but then when push comes to shove, what is it that you want to cut, you know, Doge has already cut
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most of the things now that were politically uh lowhanging fruit. Um and we I think we're going to see some
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thermostatic backlash to some of this too. Like foreign aid is something I've seen in poll after poll was pretty
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popular to cut. Well, now that we've cut it, we're going to see the consequences of that. Wouldn't surprise me if all of
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a sudden funding for foreign aid becomes more popular than it was five years ago precisely because we've now cut it.
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Interesting. So, one of the things he said is he he lacked empathy. Again, polling on him is terrible, right?
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Correct. He he the the biggest brand Scott talks about this, the biggest brand diminishment and it's affecting
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his businesses. Um, if you were hired by Tesla or Starlink or whatever, what would you say he do? He said it lacked empathy. That's sort of a little step towards I was an [ __ ] right? I
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shouldn't have been such an [ __ ] essentially. How do you What do you say to someone like that to get his brand
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back to where it was? Probably never. This is part of why I'm surprised that he's picking the fight again because I
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think he had an opportunity to say, I went in, I was trying to do things that I thought would be good for the country.
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I made some progress on some things. I didn't get some other things done. I'm now turning back to my businesses and
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I'm going to focus in on the core things that Americans thought were really cool about me before I got to into politics
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that they think I'm a really smart person. They think I'm really innovative. They think I'm building things that are cool and are going to
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change life on this planet. I would encourage him to go back to those brand attributes like less chainsaw, more
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Mars. and and that to me feels like it would be the smartest short to medium-term play for him in order to
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kind of rebuild his brand. I mean, I don't know that he's ever going to be back to like strong favorables among Democrats, but I mean, we live in a
00:16:33
world where anything's possible. People love reinvention. And I think if he goes back to the things that have
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traditionally made people think he is a voice worth listening to, those attributes can still exist. They've just been blocked out by so much of the noise and the insanity. the insanity. But at
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the same time, right now, Democrats are not reaccepting him. And now Republicans who he thought were his new customers
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are now not accepting him because he fought with Trump. And he continues to fight with Trump. Even if he doesn't name him, that's exactly who he's
00:17:03
fighting with. And he is going to when he says I can respond for now, he's going he he is going to escalate.
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There's no question in my mind he's going to escalate. What do you I'm curious, what do you think escalation
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will look like from Musk? Because when he talks about how he's going to go primary every Republican that votes for
00:17:21
this bill, that's a lot of people to primary. Like the nuts and bolts of politics of going in and finding a
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viable challenger, building their name ID, taking out an incumbent, that's hard to do in a handful of races, much less
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taking out almost the entire Republican conference. Like I think he's going to find that that's more challenging than
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he thinks if he really tries it. But what do you think escalation would look like? I think he'll like he said he's going to back Thomas Massie. Where is he
00:17:44
polling? Right. He's the one that pushes back on Trump. He's been the one who hasn't backed down in that regard and
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Trump has threatened him. Now, the other two Trump threatened are leaving essentially, whether it's Tillis or or
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Don Bacon or whoever. Trump definitely has levers he can pull. Trump can make Elon Musk's life very difficult. I am
00:18:03
skeptical about how difficult Elon Musk can make Trump's life, right? Right. That he could he could do something. What would if if he wanted to, what would be the best thing he could do? He
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shouldn't insult Trump. Correct. I think he's not going to resist. I think he's going to go back to Epstein. I think he's gonna go I don't know. I feel like
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scorched earth is his kind of policy in lots of ways. He doesn't care. I think the smallest the smartest business
00:18:28
leaders in this crazy political moment are the ones that try to stay as far away as possible from anything partisan and from anything involving directly
00:18:39
addressing Donald Trump. If the word Donald Trump is coming out of your mouth, you have created problems for
00:18:45
yourself. The way I describe the Trump effect on everything is that that science experiment you can do as a kid where you put a bunch of pepper into a dish and then you put like a drop of dish soap in the middle and all the
00:18:57
pepper like flies out to the side of the dish. That's what happens anytime Trump gets involved in anything. Everything
00:19:03
flies out to the side. And that's a terrible way to run your business when you need to be reaching customers ac
00:19:08
across a political coalition. you need to be maintaining uh favorability from stakeholders. Donald Trump is the drop
00:19:16
of dish soap that just makes everything fly to the sides. And so Musk has he has gotten himself tangled up in Trump. He
00:19:23
has bene he had benefited from that by being a very powerful individual for a while. But it's there is there is a trade-off there and that gamble does not always work out well for everybody.
00:19:34
Yeah. So Trump can do him more damage. eventually he'll be able to do more dam I just this guy didn't blow up rockets
00:19:42
for no good I'm just saying he's a blowup rocket kind of fella that's my feeling is that he is and he could do
00:19:47
damage in the constant drum beatat of things you know what I mean like if if he was a normal person and he cared about blowing up his businesses that's one thing I don't think he cares that's
00:19:58
you know what I mean like he he math is very important to him and this math doesn't work right and so he he couldn't
00:20:05
hold it in you know you'd think he wouldn't say anything about the bail, but he can't help himself. He cannot he
00:20:12
you you you saw how little control he had over himself, right? Physically and mentally and everything else. But he
00:20:19
really doesn't and it's not a game. It's not a I don't know. We'll see what he does. Um eventually he will cause damage
00:20:25
to these people, you know, because he doesn't care um about the repercussions for himself. So, let's let's move on to
00:20:32
where things stand with the big beautiful bill, which most Americans according to several polls, I think some of your own, aren't exactly thrilled
00:20:38
about. The bill narrowly passed through the Senate on Tuesday in a 501 to 50 vote with three Republicans siding with
00:20:44
Democrats and Vice President J. Dance, having to break it with a tie, break at the tie itself. As of the recording, the
00:20:51
bill is now back in the House where Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to get the bill over the line. He's been very successful previously in doing this. Um,
00:20:58
by the time you're listening to this, this may or may not have happened. Now, I want to note a few things about this Senate bill. The latest estimate from
00:21:04
the Congressional Budget Office has adding more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The bill
00:21:09
cuts about $1 trillion from Medicaid and other healthcare programs. It also makes cuts to SNAP. Nearly 12 million people
00:21:16
will lose healthc care coverage if it becomes law. Um, what jumped out at you over the last few days when we saw this
00:21:22
debating and negotiating in the Senate? Obviously, Sen Senator Lisa Mowsky, who I'm calling the quizzling, said it was
00:21:28
an agonizing to vote for the bill and yet she did. She kept trashing it as she was voting for it, which is of course
00:21:34
typical of her. Talk a little bit about what jumped out at you and then this data you have. Yeah. So, this bill is uh
00:21:42
it was always going to be a massive challenge because it is the like cheesecake factory menu of conservative
00:21:51
priorities that some people in the coalition love and some people in the coalition hate, but you're kind of
00:21:57
asking them to eat everything on the Cheesecake Factory menu all at once. Um and and so you the the thing you may love like I may love my 1600 calorie
00:22:08
Santa Fe salad. Uh but like in order to get that I have to agree to try a little
00:22:14
bit of everything on the menu and that's that's the legislative situation they've all found themselves in. There's three
00:22:20
things that are making this bill move even though the polling isn't great. The first is the power of Donald Trump. He
00:22:26
says this is my agenda. This is my bill. You're with me or you're against me. and he's a very powerful force in the party.
00:22:31
Nobody wants to cross him. He could more so than Elon Musk cause people problems
00:22:37
in a primary. The second thing that's driving them is Republicans love cutting taxes. They like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017. Their regret is only that
00:22:48
they didn't do it earlier in that year in 2017. That instead of doing it at the end of the year, they should have done it earlier so it could have in their
00:22:55
thinking helped them in the 2018 midterm. So they're like, "We love this. We want to get it done. Even if it is
00:23:01
loaded up with all this other stuff that we might have questions about, the core thing is the tax cuts and we've got to
00:23:06
get it done." And that's the carrot that's dragging everybody to this bill, even if they have other reservations.
00:23:12
But the final thing is that I think Republicans, not incorrectly, believe that they will be able to turn these
00:23:19
numbers around. So, because this bill contains so many multitudes in a poll, how do you even begin to ask about it? It is a Medicaid reform bill. It is a
00:23:32
spending cuts bill. It is a tax cuts bill. It for one point in time was an AI regulation or non-regulation bill. It it it's an EV tax credits bill. I mean, it is a child tax credit increase. It is
00:23:45
the number of different ways you can describe this bill is almost infinite. And so the question is going to be
00:23:50
Republicans have started to coalesce around we're going to describe this as it's a tax cut andor preventing a tax
00:23:58
hike and it is focusing on making sure we're putting America first and they describe that as we're funding stuff for border security. We are putting in these work work requirements on Medicaid which
00:24:08
in and of themselves test well. Democrats believe lazy Medicaid people right that that that's the Republican
00:24:14
message. The Democratic message on the other hand is you're calling these people lazy Medicaid people. In reality,
00:24:21
it's going to be hardworking people who can't figure out how to file the paperwork and they're going to get dropped from their healthcare because they can't navigate your new
00:24:27
requirements. Um, and that's going to be, as you mentioned, it's going to be 12 million people, many of whom you
00:24:32
would say are deserving or are your neighbor or did vote for Donald Trump. And so the reality is like Republicans
00:24:39
do have a message that can work. But if the reality of it is that the economy is
00:24:44
not actually doing better by next November or that these policies in states that begin to try to implement
00:24:50
work requirements earlier, if that creates snags and causes people who voted for Trump to lose healthare, there
00:24:56
could be really big backlash to that to create that would create problems in a midterm. Why right now is it polling so
00:25:01
badly? I think it's polling badly because if you don't like Donald Trump, you know
00:25:08
you don't like it. And so you're already starting off with almost half of America right there that's like, "Oh, it's Trump's bill. I'm out." And then of
00:25:15
those voters who do like Donald Trump, there's not unonymity that it is a good thing. Because for some of them, they're like, "Well, I like Trump, but this has some things that I'm not crazy about."
00:25:26
So it's easy for the opponents to all be unified against it. We don't like Trump. This is Trump's agenda. Trump bad, bill
00:25:33
bad, done. But for the supporters of it, you've got the criticisms from the middle, the Mowskis, the Mike Lawers of
00:25:41
in the House, but you've also got attacks from the right, from the Chip Roy, the Thomas Massies, and so it's the
00:25:48
front war this bill is fighting. Yes. Right. What Margie Taylor Green says is a [ __ ] show. Why is she doing that? What
00:25:54
why are they all doing this on from the right? I believe a lot of them, again, to the extent that this is echoes of the old Tea Party moment, they want to be
00:26:05
the one that says, "I stood up for true fiscal discipline, but they don't want to be the one that sinks the bill." Like, if the bill is already going down, they will happily be like, "Yes, I I was
00:26:19
part of helping to tank it because it's bad and we need to demand that we get a better deal." But like none of them wants to be the one that causes this to
00:26:26
go down. No, none of them want that headache because if so, they're not just going to be held responsible for you
00:26:33
tanked the things that are unpopular. They're like they're worried you'll be held responsible for per by for making
00:26:39
taxes go up and that's not anything any Republican wants to do wants to do that. So the taxes is at the center of it.
00:26:46
Correct. the idea of giving these even if if the Democrats are are putting it out as a as a gimme for wealthy people. Is that a good message from a polling point of view? Um it's one of those
00:26:59
things where when you test it, should we cut taxes for wealthy people? Even a lot of Republicans say no. But the reality
00:27:05
is that the tax cuts and jobs act from the first time around, the economy was doing pretty well under Trump during
00:27:11
that first term. And so if Republicans say, "We just want to keep that going. We don't want to undo that." That's a
00:27:17
way you message it that people say, "Oh, well that actually makes sense." So just using the same messages against it that
00:27:23
were used last time, I'm not sure actually moves the needle for Democrats. And it'll all also come down to what does the economy look like in November of next year. If the economy is in the tank, uh, then everybody's going to vote
00:27:35
for Democrats and Republicans are going to be in big trouble. If the economy looks good, then it'll make Trump look
00:27:40
like he was right. Mhm. And what do you what would you advise Democrats to do at this point to just keep pounding in on
00:27:46
the people are going to not have their healthcare or the sort of scare tactics? I mean, I think they need to coalesce
00:27:52
around a message because, as you noted, I mean, one of the downsides of the bill
00:27:57
having a million different pieces. It is a target-rich environment for Democrats, but if they don't pick one or two main
00:28:05
targets, um, that's going to be a problem. if and right now even though Republicans are having struggles, it is not as though the brand of the Democratic party is great. It is not as
00:28:16
though voters are saying they think Democrats have strong leadership and a clear vision and so like they need to sort some of that out as well if they
00:28:23
want to have a chance at having a really good midterm next year, right? So the best message for them right at this
00:28:28
moment, it depends on the economy, right? It's the economy stupid. It depends on the economy. I do think that the Medicaid message is potentially
00:28:35
potent in part because of the new coalition Republicans have put together that includes a lot of people who are on Medicaid who may think of themselves as
00:28:46
hardworking people who nevertheless find that the new work requirements and such
00:28:52
uh actually do catch them up in a paperwork problem and suddenly they're without healthcare and that is a huge
00:28:58
huge huge potential problem if that's how this comes to pass. That's sort of the leopard ate my face argument. So, so
00:29:04
one of the big points of the contention of the bill as you just talked about was something we've been talking about here a lot on pivot too, the 10-year
00:29:09
moratorium on state laws regulating AI. The Senate voted 99 to1 to strike the provision from the bill. They also got
00:29:16
rid of the one about selling off public lands, but the lone hold out was Senator Tom Tillis, who's not running for
00:29:21
reelection as of a few days ago. Open and a few other big names in Silicon Valley have been lobbying for this amendment. I find it to be a silver
00:29:28
lining in this whole mess. But um how does that poll like states should be able to do green was on board for that?
00:29:35
Lots of people, Democrats and Republicans. Yeah. So this is an an issue that I did some polling on for
00:29:42
common sense media uh which they're uh focused on kids safety online and they came to me because I can help understand
00:29:49
Republican voters and they wanted to know, okay, how does this actually test with the GOP? Um, and this was a
00:29:56
provision that was really unpopular. It was unpopular on the left, it was unpopular on the right. And I wanted to
00:30:03
know in this poll, okay, even if you're if you're just asking people, do you think states shouldn't be allowed to regulate AI? That tests terribly. But I
00:30:10
wanted to really pressure test it because at a like a policy level, I understand the instinct to say it's
00:30:17
really bad if you have a patchwork of 50 different state laws all telling tech companies what they can and can't do.
00:30:22
We're in a race against China. We need to be able to uh survive and be competitive and be cutting edge. And we
00:30:28
can't do that if states red and blue are passing all kinds of nonsense legislation. I get the argument. So, I
00:30:35
wanted to test it. And we pitted the strongest possible case for uh this legislation up against an argument that basically says it should be states rights. Um states should be able to do
00:30:48
this. We need to be able to protect kids and families. Um, and even when you pit
00:30:53
those things together, you still find a huge number of Republicans saying, "Yeah, I get the arguments that we need
00:31:00
to be competitive on AI, but that doesn't mean you just handcuff states for 10 years." Um, and so this was one
00:31:06
where that's that's how you get to 99 to1, the Senate going, "Yeah, let's take this one out of here." So they just
00:31:12
states rights always prevails. In other words, well, and it wasn't just states rights. think in and of itself a states
00:31:19
rights argument doesn't get you all the way there because it's kind of wonky. It's process. Um I think the thing that
00:31:26
added to this and made it so powerful was the like the safety of kids online. Um, you know, it is possible for the federal government to pass legislation
00:31:37
uh or for there to be regulation that that people really like around AI, things like the take it down, you know,
00:31:43
around things like revenge porn or AI, you know, that that kind of stuff gets really uh popular. But when we ask, you
00:31:49
know, even when you're presenting, here's the reason why you don't want to have too much regulation on AI and you
00:31:54
spell it out for people. Even then, we still had by a 12-7 margin people saying no, a blanket preeemption on states goes too far because it could roll back these red and
00:32:06
blue state protections for kids from techreated dangers. There was an attempt at a compromise where they had um
00:32:12
Senator Marshia Blackburn from Tennessee. She's really big on this because she represents country music as well as, you know, she's, you know,
00:32:18
socially conservative. They have a lot of interest in this like legislation around protecting kids. They tried to
00:32:24
come up with language that would be a carveout that would try to exempt like kid safety focused stuff from this blanket preeemption, but ultimately she decided that the compromise wasn't worth
00:32:35
it. And so, yeah, this was just stick to it. I agree with Marsha Blackburn. Well, we can come together. Wow. Wow. I know. You bring a Republican on the show, all of a sudden you're agreed with
00:32:46
Marcia Blackburn. You know what? Everything else about her is just a hot [ __ ] mess. But this one, she's she's
00:32:52
When someone's directionally correct, Kristen, I'm I'm going to go with them, right? She's directionally correct. All
00:32:58
her reasoning I appreciate that about you, Cara. Yeah. All her reasoning is like anti-gay. It's always something
00:33:04
terrible. She, you know, she'll I'll agree with her and she goes, "It's cuz we have to protect ourselves from the gays." And I'm like, "No, no, that's not
00:33:11
why, but I'll I'll bring you along, Marca." Anyway, whatever. I'm with you, Marca, today. Just today. That's it. Um,
00:33:18
okay. I I was kind of pissed. She was actually making a trying to make a a five-year. They were going to do a
00:33:23
five-year or whatever. I thought, no, either stick to your guns or you don't. And I'm sure she has plenty of guns.
00:33:30
Anyway, Kristen, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Paramount settles with Trump.
00:33:35
Support for Pivot comes from IBM. Bigger isn't always better, especially with AI.
00:33:40
Superersized models can drain your budget fast. Smaller ones are smart and can help cut AI cost up to 90%.
00:33:47
Rightsize your models at ibm.com. The AI built for business. IBM. Kristen, we're back with more news. And actually, this is what you were dubtailing is it's better to keep your head down. Paramount has agreed to pay
00:34:00
$16 million to settle a lawsuit with President Trump that alleged a 60-minut interview with Kla Harris was
00:34:06
deceptively edited. The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret. And in fact, Paramount had said
00:34:13
this is just a ridiculous case, as did most lawyers think that. Aides from legal fees, the payment will go towards
00:34:18
Trump's future presidential library. The settlement comes as uh Paramount seeks to complete a merger with Sky Dance
00:34:24
Media, which requires approval from the Trump administration. Reminder that ABC News has agreed to pay Trump $16 million
00:34:31
to settle a defamation case late last year, which is a much stronger case. In this case, it's it's not. It's just not.
00:34:37
So, talk about this the the repercussions. I mean, obviously, they want to get this deal uh through. It has
00:34:44
the feel of a shakeddown and a bribery that has been brought up against Sherry Redstone. Um it feels very uh orban,
00:34:52
autocratic, very strange and and uh you know lawfare which is what something that conservatives complain about and it's also heinous on many levels. Your thoughts? So, I can't help but think
00:35:05
about this in the context of a couple of other lawsuits that have proceeded further down the road against media organizations, not necessarily from Trump himself, but
00:35:17
I think a lot about the Fox News defamation case and how much they had to pay out uh regarding um you know, the
00:35:24
Dominion, Smartmatic, all of that. And then, you know, CNN where uh I'm a contributor where where we've met doing
00:35:31
Chris Wallace show. I mean they they have had to settle a case around um some stories earlier this year about someone
00:35:37
uh who was trying to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. At any rate, a lot of these media organizations I think feel
00:35:44
like they are nervous about what happens when even if you feel like you've got a
00:35:50
really good case and even if you feel like I'm just doing good journalism, it's not fair. I shouldn't be in this
00:35:55
position. This just feels like a moment where the climate is not on your side. And so, do you just do the settlement, save yourself the embarrassment of
00:36:07
discovery and going through a trial and all of that pain and suffering? Um, even
00:36:12
though it's going to cost you a pretty penny and even though you're going to have to swallow your pride, like which is the least painful path forward? But I
00:36:20
also think that things like this are part of why if you look over a long enough trend line, uh, do you trust the
00:36:27
news media? I mean, those numbers have been declining for a long time. But most recently, the decline is not actually
00:36:33
coming from Republicans. It's coming from Democrats. It's coming from Democrats. Whether they think that the
00:36:38
media has become too soft on Trump or they've normalized Trump or that they are too sensationalist or what have you.
00:36:44
like the decline in trust in the media from Republicans happened a while ago and that has kind of bottomed out. The declines that we're continuing to see overall are actually being driven by
00:36:55
Democrats who say I don't know that I trust that these organizations are doing the right thing either. Right? So in this case I get the idea, oh let's just
00:37:02
let it go away, right? That kind of thing. And I do I understand in the case of Fox they had a good case, right?
00:37:07
There was so many emails there were like it was like it was frightening how bad they behaved in that situation. and they
00:37:14
knew just they had all the elements of proving it and they'll probably lose their next several cases in that area.
00:37:19
So that was actually really egregious behavior on the point of on the part of that news organization and they deserve
00:37:26
to lose really in many ways. In the case of ABC probably I suspect there was some
00:37:31
emails that weren't so great or texts or something like that. You know there was and there was an obvious mistake it was
00:37:38
when he had the information that of how to say it and we have had to correct it. you know, we have changed stuff when we
00:37:44
edit stuff. If it's said wrong. Um, so you have to really be careful whether he they could have proved there was malice,
00:37:50
that's a different situation. In this case, it's just not the case. And they have a a brand 60 Minutes. Two people
00:37:57
have left the company. the staff is obviously I don't know what they'll do today or or whatever day but it's a real
00:38:04
problem of sort of collapsing what is a trusted institution which is 60 minutes over something that isn't
00:38:12
isn't a problem right is that is that dangerous in the longer term or does it not matter at all yeah I'm I never love
00:38:19
the use of lawsuits to try to achieve an end especially if it's potentially going
00:38:25
to have the effect of chilling free speech I mean this is one of the things that these days frustrates me a lot
00:38:32
about the right is I think over the last decade there have been a lot of very legitimate questions raised about the existence of free speech in this country and the protection of free speech in
00:38:42
this country especially from you know when conservatives say we're being silenced like I'm sympathetic to those
00:38:48
charges that you you need free speech and that has to include even speech that you think is offensive or um is out of
00:38:54
bounds but then once you get the reigns of power deciding that you actually do want to just stop speech uh that you
00:39:00
don't like or you know chill speech that does make me very concerned. Another case that I I sort of think of as part and parcel of this it's very personal to my industry is the lawsuits against an
00:39:11
Selzer uh the pollster in Iowa and the lawsuits against the de mo register. Um the fed the the case I believe the
00:39:18
federal case was dropped in but I believe it was refiled as a state case and it was done a day in advance of the
00:39:25
anti-slap laws coming into effect in Iowa that are supposed to protect against the use of like lawfare to go
00:39:31
after people who engage in speech you don't like. Um, so that's a case that I'm watching very closely because the idea that someone can come after you and
00:39:37
sue you because they think that your poll was wrong. Um, and that you it was reported on, you know, in a way you
00:39:44
didn't like in a paper. That's very very very concerning. Where does it go from here? This is this embolden Trump to do
00:39:50
because they're doing it all over the place. Like anything he doesn't like. He threatened CNN the other day. He threatened for for reporting on an app
00:39:57
like that there exists the existence of an app. They didn't say please buy this or use it. It's about ICE. this ICE app.
00:40:04
Um, does this what what happens here? Is there a point where people say no more or or they overreach or not at all if it works? I mean, if this works and these
00:40:14
people, especially if you're a company that wants something and you always want something from the government, right? Or
00:40:20
it's just once it stops working, it's going to be hell to pay, I suspect, for for Republicans. I I don't know where
00:40:26
this ends. Um, and this is where not being a lawyer, you know, I'm I'm unsure of what the
00:40:33
uh what the strategy is in terms of like continuously trying to push people in courts and like how much pain do you
00:40:39
incur if you do try to fight back? Um, I'm less familiar with that, but I know that if you look at sort of Trump's
00:40:45
target list, he is picking targets that are not beloved by the sort of general public, whether it's the media, Ivy League institutions, you know, big powerful law firms, like he's picking
00:40:57
targets that your sort of median American goes, yeah, I don't really like them that much anyways. Um and I that
00:41:02
has been I think at least savvy political strategy on his part setting aside that I I I don't feel qualified to
00:41:09
comment on it as a legal strategy. Right. And and is there any chance the media's image will bounce forward in any
00:41:16
way? What would what would happen to do that? Well, I I do think that you're right
00:41:22
that at least in the short term, much the same way that we were talking about with Musk earlier, that like he he lost
00:41:28
his credibility with Democrats and now he's picking fights with Republicans, but he's unlikely to, at least in the
00:41:34
short term, see like a resurgence of uh love and admiration among the Democrats that he has alienated over the last couple of years. I sort of feel like this may be the same way, at least in
00:41:44
the short term, that like by doing this, it's not as though you're going to suddenly have a bunch of Republicans who are like, "Fantastic. These news
00:41:51
organizations have all made big donations to the Trump Library. We love them." Like, at least in the short term, it just means that kind of everybody's
00:41:57
mad at you, even if for very different reasons. Yeah, absolutely. You don't win at all. I don't know. I think fighting is probably better, but they want this
00:42:03
deal. They want this deal to happen. Um, there have been threats later to go back at them as a bribe someday. I doubt
00:42:10
they'll get to that, but so they they're making that calculation that Democrats won't wreak revenge once they get back
00:42:16
in power. Um, but we'll see. Maybe they will. They have long memories. And President Trump says he's also has a
00:42:22
buyer for Tik Tok. Another thing that he's doing in the media. Let's listen to a clip of the announcement on Fox News in an interview with Maria Baroma. We
00:42:29
have a buyer for Tik Tok, by the way. I think I'll need probably China approval. I think President will probably do it.
00:42:36
Why? I'll tell you in about uh two weeks. A a big technology company there. Very very wealthy people. It's a group
00:42:42
of very wealthy people. The potential buyers reported the same investor consortium before the first bid stalled
00:42:48
amidst trade talks. Oracle Corp, Blackstone, Inc. and Andre Horowitz. The president recently signed an executive
00:42:53
order extending the deadline for the third time. The law requires bite dance to divest from the platform. So we'll
00:42:59
see. Polling in a few months ago showed support for Tik Tok bans standing at 34%. Not great. Um,
00:43:07
where are we in polling this? Have people forgotten given all the other news happening? Polling on the Tik Tok
00:43:12
ban has been fascinating because a couple of years ago when you did polling around something like Tik Tok, there
00:43:17
were real concerns about it, right? Is this Chinese propaganda? Is this warping kids' minds? Is it taking too much of
00:43:22
their attention? Um, and you know, when this was initially proposed and passed by Congress, it it was reasonably popular. Um really the only people who were particularly mad about it were the
00:43:35
kids who used Tik Tok. Um but Tik Tok very very smartly was able to marshall their users and to make the case how can you take this from us and I think
00:43:48
because Donald Trump perceives that he won his election in part by doing well among some of these disaffected Jenzers
00:43:54
who may be using a lot of Tik Tok, he is not inclined to tick off that constituency. And so he loves to be
00:43:59
viewed as a dealmaker. um he his position on China is fascinating because he likes to talk about being tough on China, but he also likes to talk about, you know, coming to deals with with Xi.
00:44:11
So this is sort of readym made to be the kind of thing where even though being tough on China is almost never a losing
00:44:18
position within the Republican coalition on this one, the very particular constituency of who really loves TikTok
00:44:26
is a group that Trump is trying to win over. And so it's good if he comes to a deal, even if he hands it over to people
00:44:32
or not. If he doesn't, what happens if China says, "Fuck you." Like, "No way. We're doing this." Well, I'm I'm curious about how legally this can all proceed because my understanding is that
00:44:44
Congress was pretty clear that this has to happen. And so I I expect if Trump does, you know, how much longer can he
00:44:50
keep saying like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Congress, you passed this law, but I'm kind of not going to follow it." Congress is so good. At a certain point,
00:44:57
doesn't the court have to intervene? You'd think Congress would do its job, but they seem to be abregating. Well, Congress is saying that they already did
00:45:03
their job. And so that's like this is now, you know, they've already passed a bill saying that Trump has to do this.
00:45:09
Mhm. Yes. They hold him to account over so many things. Kristen just like come on. It's like down the list. Like I
00:45:16
don't know. He doesn't listen to them in otherwise. But it'll be interesting to see if he gets a real bump if something
00:45:22
really comes off. even if he's handing it over to his friends whether it's Larry Ellison um or Mark Andre correct I
00:45:28
mean nobody cares about that that these rich people are getting another break essentially he will just love that he
00:45:35
can say I made another deal and it will just add one more piece to the puzzle of his kind of brand image on that front
00:45:43
right so that works more more than the particulars all right Kristen let's go on a quick break when we come back I'm
00:45:48
very excited to talk to you about this Trump targets New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mandani. Kristen, we're
00:45:54
back. Official results are in for New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, and Zoran Mandani took it away with a
00:46:00
massive 12% lead. Mandani still faces a general election, which will include incumbent mayor Eric Adams and
00:46:06
potentially Andrew Cuomo again. Meanwhile, President Trump was asked about Mdani at a press briefing on
00:46:12
Tuesday and made some pretty bold claims. Let's listen to a clip of Trump's response to being asked what he
00:46:17
would do if Mumani blocked ICE raids in the city. Well, then we'll have to arrest him. Look, we don't need a
00:46:24
communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. Trump then took things a little
00:46:30
further, saying this. A lot of people are saying, uh, he's here illegally. He's, you know, we're going to look at
00:46:36
everything. Mani was naturalized as a US citizen 2018. He responded on social media saying, "We will not accept this intimidation." Any big takeaways from Mandani's official win, Kristen? and
00:46:47
also these threats which are troubling I would say to say the least in terms of the win. First I cannot imagine why the
00:46:55
sort of Democratic establishment thought that selling Andrew Cuomo with all of his baggage was going to work. Um it is in some ways kind of appalling and an
00:47:06
indictment of New York's Democratic establishment that they couldn't come up with a better alternative. Um but I also don't want to take anything away from
00:47:12
Mom Donnie here. Um, I think making the number one issue the number one issue, which is cost of living, stuff costs too
00:47:19
much and it should cost less is it is that's the right strategy. And he paired it with, and this is something that I also think AOC is so good at, despite the fact that like I don't agree with
00:47:30
her on a ton of policy, but I I rate her very highly as a political communicator.
00:47:36
She's very good at showing up where voters are and speaking to them the way voters want to be spoken to. It's not
00:47:42
condescending. It's not overly fancy or overly technical, but it's not dumb. It's not dumbed down, so to speak. It's just speaking normally. And like most politicians are just allergic to doing
00:47:54
that for reasons I cannot comprehend. And he's very good at it. The video of him talking about like make halal $8
00:48:02
again. Like is it was a really great video. Like stuff like that's so good. You liked him a little bit, didn't you?
00:48:08
You liked him. You liked him. You're like, I like him. I don't know why. I think that populism plus
00:48:15
t not even TV savvy but like media savvy is a very potent combination and I think
00:48:20
he has it. Um and but I would also say I think there's a lot of like overreading
00:48:26
into this about what it means ideologically. There was a quote from a Democratic strategist like the morning
00:48:31
after the win that was something like uh our base they're always voting for these insane ideas and these far-left lunatics
00:48:40
and it was this like real contempt for the democratic base coming from this like centrist democratic strategist but
00:48:46
I don't actually think that the democratic base on the whole is super ideologically to the left um on economic
00:48:55
issues like they are very open to a robust role for government but I don't think that actually the majority of the
00:49:00
Democratic electorate is like truly DSA aligned. Um and so what works in a Democratic primary in Manhattan is not necessarily transferable anywhere. The other thing that I think is very
00:49:13
valuable though to learn from Mamani's win. If you looked at the age breakouts of people who voted in this primary,
00:49:20
younger voters were like the biggest group of voters. That almost never happens in especially in a primary,
00:49:28
which is always like a really low turnout sort of thing. It's exactly the kind of contest young voters typically sit out. He turned them out. So, I take
00:49:35
nothing away from him on those grounds. Even though I I disagree with him on a lot of policy, I think this feud between
00:49:41
him and Trump is uh it's probably going to benefit both parties involved. As much as I think like the whole idea of trying to denaturalize someone because you don't like what they're saying, I think is terrible. everything I said
00:49:52
earlier about free speech, right? We should not be in the business of of trying to punish people's speech and
00:49:58
saying we don't like what you said. People do not want people generally just like deported because you are, you know,
00:50:04
left-leaning or you said even even in the cases where you said something that's really offensive like if you are a naturalized US citizen, being deported
00:50:13
I cannot imagine is something that would be popular. At the same time, Donald Trump is going to love the elevation of
00:50:18
mom Donnie as like the face of the Democratic party. he will think that is a very advantageous dynamic for the
00:50:24
White House at the same time that it's probably good for Manny politically to be coming under fire from Trump because
00:50:30
to the extent that there were any like wavering establishment Democrats or centrist Democrats who are like gh maybe
00:50:36
we just vote for Eric Adams because we can't with this crazy guy. If all of a sudden he is like the poster child for I
00:50:42
am taking the fight to Trump that probably does pretty well to unify the Democratic base behind you as you move
00:50:48
into a general election in November. So, it's not to say that there was like a Republican candidate who I think was
00:50:54
going to win and become mayor of New York, but um to the extent that there are independent challenges, it's
00:50:59
probably good for Mandani to have to be in the line of fire from Trump. The ratings are good as Trump would say, but
00:51:06
talk about where he he did well. He did well with young people. What kills me is that like they're like young people don't vote and then they vote. They're
00:51:12
like, "We don't like how young people vote." Like it was sort of like they're voting and it's their it's up to them to decide what they want. Um, do you see,
00:51:20
you know, the the Democratic reaction has been really interesting and sort of they're upset, they're largely upset
00:51:25
around globalize the inifat push back on that. That seems to be the focus. But they also were sort of shocked by this in a way that I I wasn't shocked or or
00:51:36
other people weren't. But what's interesting to me is that they um continue to dismiss these movements
00:51:44
which often can be very powerful whether it's Mum Donnie or AOC or Bernie Sanders
00:51:50
very popular including across party lines right Sanders was very popular with people who then became Trump
00:51:56
supporters well this reminds me a lot of the sort of freakout that a lot of Republican uh strategists had when the Tea Party movement was getting going in the sense that it was very like it felt
00:52:10
like oh these people are kind of offputting to me and they're going to drag our party in a direction that's going to make it impossible for us to
00:52:17
win elections and that wasn't 100% true. Um and I think the same thing is the case here that I think there are certain positions that the the sort of further
00:52:29
left wing of the Democratic party takes that have been a big political problem for Democrats. I think it is true that
00:52:34
they pulled Democrats to too far to the left on a number of things that gave Trump this big opening. Um, but with
00:52:41
that said, like I think in the case of New York City, the idea that suddenly like somebody like Mom Donnie is going to win a primary for like the South Carolina Senate seat. Yeah, if that
00:52:52
happened then Democrats aren't winning the South Carolina Senate seat. Like that's true, but you also have to adapt
00:52:57
to like what's what's the right candidate for my area and like who are who are the voters there? What do they care about? Um and so something that is okay in New York may not be okay for
00:53:09
trying to pick up a swing congressional seat in Iowa. But smart parties are able to to understand that different
00:53:14
electorates exist in different places, right? And so mom Donny's approach can be used by a centrist, right? It just
00:53:20
depends if you're genu the the qualities here are genuineess. And one of the things I was struck by is Bill Steppian
00:53:26
who's a very well-known uh Republican um campaign person um said don't make fun of this guy. He's like in the similar way people are like I used to say don't make fun of Trump. Like Trump is
00:53:38
interesting right? Um do you see that at all? He it was interested that he said that when they were sort of touting oh
00:53:45
no now we've got them. I'm like, do you because he's really attractive like in so many ways. I 100% agree with Steppian
00:53:53
on this one. I I think communication savvy, genuiness, as you described it, that matters so much. There is so much
00:54:02
noise and there is so much stuff that politicians say and do that just sounds the same and it just washes over people.
00:54:09
Um, people can pick up a talking point from a thousand yards away. And if you are able to communicate in a way that does not sound like you're just regurgitating talking points, that doesn't sound like it's something
00:54:20
you've, you know, you're you're just saying because like you've been fed it by a consultant. The benefit that the
00:54:26
thing that makes Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders similar is that you actually believe they believe the things they are
00:54:32
saying at some level. And that goes a long way. Like I believe Manny believes the things that he says. So even if I
00:54:38
don't agree with him, like at least that's you get you get some points for that. What about freshness? Is that
00:54:44
something that's important? Do you think they're calling it an earthquake for the Democratic party? Do you think that's the case? I would caution everybody from
00:54:51
reading too much into a primary election in New York. But I think it ought to be
00:54:57
a wake-up call for anyone who thinks that you can just defend the status quo. um that this is a wakeup call that in order to win elections in 2025, you have
00:55:08
to be the candidate of change. You have to be you had to be the candidate of change in 2024, which was a big reason
00:55:14
why Joe Biden was in trouble and then the handoff to Kla Harris was ultimately unsuccessful. You have to be the
00:55:19
candidate of change. You have to be the candidate of what's new. And Manny was able to channel that very, very, very
00:55:26
effectively. Now, last question. What would you advise him to do now if he, you know, he's going to do what he wants
00:55:32
to do, but what's the most important thing he do? I would advise mom Donnie to focus in on the cost of living
00:55:39
question relentlessly. Do not get pulled in these other directions. He has said and done a lot of things in his past that his opponents did not dredge up in the primary that are going to get dredged up now. But I think if he keeps
00:55:51
his mo his message focused on cost of living and does not become overconultantified and keeps his message
00:56:00
uh pretty focused on we need New York to be a livable city again. I think he will
00:56:06
succeed. Now if he ultimately becomes mayor and he tries to implement these policies and things like cityrun grocery
00:56:11
stores or rent freezes have all of these second and third order negative effects that folks on the right think are
00:56:17
inevitably going to happen, then the backlash will come. But for the moment, I do think that Republicans should be
00:56:22
wary of thinking, "Oh, let's just elevate this guy and like it'll be great that he's the face of the Democratic
00:56:28
party." I think media savvy populism really sells and be careful of thinking that you can make that really, really, really unpopular. Yeah. I always see them put up lists on
00:56:40
Fox News and I'm like, "That sounds good." Like, it was just I'm like, "Are you trying to get him elected?" It's
00:56:45
it's kind of funny. All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Kristen, let's hear a
00:56:50
prediction. I predict that the F1 movie starring Brad Pitt, which came out a week ago and did very well at the box office, both domestically and globally. I think it's going to have legs. Um, I
00:57:01
know this weekend it is going up against a new Jurassic Park movie, but I think this F1 movie is fantastic. I'm a big F1
00:57:08
fan. I saw it last week. I almost never see movies in theaters anymore, but it was so worth it. My prediction, this
00:57:13
movie is going to have legs. Uh, I'm excited to see it. Um, my prediction has to do with Mark Zuckerberg's creation of
00:57:19
Meta Super Intelligence Labs this week. This is a group that will be focusing on Meta's AI efforts. He's been on a hiring
00:57:26
spree grabbing uh top talent. Uh, Zoe Shiffer from Wired had a great scoop. Zuckerberg offered pay packages up to
00:57:32
$300 million over four years. One Open AI staffer told Wire that's about how much it would take for me to go work at
00:57:38
Meta, though Meta is saying the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the
00:57:43
place. That's not He is trying very hard to do this. I do not think he's going to be successful. I mean, I don't think
00:57:50
they did a lot of due diligence on scale AI as much as they should have. I think it's a lot more internally um um kind of
00:57:58
a chaos. I think there's going to be a lot of chaos here. And just grabbing all these people and creating like an
00:58:03
Avenger team, that's what they're calling it. I don't think it always works. I don't think doing that is is
00:58:09
particularly smart. He has had a lot of misses. Although the stock is at an all-time high, let's be clear, they're doing great in the areas they've always
00:58:15
done great in. Um, but you know, he he we renamed the company Meta in order to go into the metaverse, and that was a 1020 billion disaster, and they can afford it. Um, I just don't think he has
00:58:27
the same sense of innovation that someone like Elon Musk or or even Open AI or other companies has. So, I think this might be um I think he can afford to do this, but I think it's really the
00:58:39
wrong way to go about doing innovation. So, I'm not so sure it will pay off in the way he thinks it will. We'll see.
00:58:45
How does he poll not well, I guess. Correct. I I think that most of the tech billionaire uh type folks have not pulled particularly well. I think like 10 years ago there was a sense of like
00:58:57
cool and excitement around them uh that now has has sort of faded. Has waned. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Oh, he's leading the way anyway. And the the wedding the wedding probably didn't poll well, did it? Did you do a poll on the wedding? I
00:59:10
have not. You know what? I haven't pulled on it, but we're actually putting a survey in the field next week. So, if you think of any question you would want
00:59:15
me to ask the American public about this wedding, you let me know. Is this a heinous display of wealth in the most
00:59:22
grotesque and tasteless way? There's my question right there. If you had gotten invited, would you have gone? That might
00:59:27
be an interesting question. That would be a fun cross tab if nothing else. Of course you want to see this ridiculous
00:59:33
traffic accident up close. I mean, and for the bag alone, the swag bag alone, I suppose, I guess. I don't know. I'd want
00:59:40
to see it. Um, but I would be terrible and take pictures and put them out the whole time. I'd be terrible. I'd be the
00:59:46
worst guest. You would be you would break the rules right away. You remember wedding the wedding guests with the
00:59:51
wedding crashers? That's Cara Swisser. Anyway, um, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business
00:59:56
tech or whatever's on your mind. can go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 8551 pivot. Okay, that's the show.
01:00:04
Kristen, thank you so much. I find you to be so smart. I like I could almost become a Thank you for having me. This
01:00:10
is an honor to be on the big show. Yeah, the big show. You're on the big show. You did. You delivered with all kinds of information. Scott should hang his head.
01:00:17
You have so much good data and that's what's important to our listeners to get the real deal. Um and and to really say
01:00:23
what's happening, which is really important. Anyway, thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, which
01:00:29
is fast growing actually. We'll be back next week. I will read us out. Today's show is produced by Larara Neon, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdott engineered this
01:00:40
episode. Thanks also to Kate Gallagher. Nishhat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to
01:00:46
follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
01:00:52
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01:00:58
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