00:00:00
What did you think of the death rumors? Because they just they kept they kept coming back. These are just the average, you know,
00:00:06
ailments of a really old man. And it's anything to keep Epstein out of the news cycle. That's all they want. He might
00:00:13
disappear again for 5 days and create rumors. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisser and we're
00:00:27
going to get right to it because there's been endless speculation in recent days, questions swirling about his whereabouts
00:00:34
and with many people believing the worst, but he's here now with non bruised hands and shapely ankles.
00:00:41
Welcome back, Scott Galloway. Uh, thanks, Cara. Look, there's a lot going on and I don't like to talk about
00:00:48
myself. I don't want to make a big deal out of this. Oh, no. That's right, ladies. That's right. You've been so good in August. You've
00:00:59
been deprived. I know it's going to help a little bit of Scott. [Music] You're thinking, "How do I resist
00:01:10
fascism?" The key is not to resist. It's to surrender to the dog. What are we going to do? What are we going to do, ladies? That's right. You're not. We're doing a field trip
00:01:23
down to where Cara hangs out. We're going to this big White House and we're screaming, "Bring out your dad. Bring
00:01:29
out your dad." And then we're going to party with RFK Junior, as I like to call him, the marvelous Mrs. Measles. By the way, how do you get this body? True
00:01:41
story. Okay. 17 vaccines by the time you was 12. What the [ __ ] are you thinking? By the way, by the way, I'm like your Xanax and your
00:01:53
HBO Plus. You don't need me, but you'll want me. Oh, last thing. Okay, Cara, did you know? Oh, no. Birds have mating rituals, and it goes a
00:02:05
little bit like this. Hello. Hello. That's right. Oh my god. That's right. God, this feels good. I'm having a Lindsay, maintain eye contact and relax
00:02:17
the throat. I'm having a Donald. I'm having another stroke. Donald Trump stroke.
00:02:23
I can't hear anything. I'm Oh my god. Oh my [ __ ] god. You're welcome. You're welcome. Next up, Rachel Matau.
00:02:37
Put your earphones on, Scott. Put them on. Oh my god. Put on your earphones. Are you hot?
00:02:43
Can't hear. Can't hear. I like doing a podcast this way. I can't hear. Okay, I can tell you one thing. Rachel Maddo didn't take her shirt off or show me
00:02:56
her. Oh my god. I've been working out so hard this summer. I see that. I mean my testosterone was talking. Did you?
00:03:02
Oh, thanks for showing me do it live on TV. No. Oh no. Okay. All right. All right.
00:03:07
Do you do this every day? No, once a week. Okay. All right. Well, so glad it's Oh my god, Cara. One inch. Two inches.
00:03:16
Two and a quarter. Two and a quarter. Two and a quarter. Bring back Gavin Newsome. Bring back
00:03:24
who has natur up. Talk about a glow up while I was gone. He glowed up. He glowed up. He glowed up. He know he
00:03:31
said he wasn't going to do a uh a lifting contest against you cuz you probably were out working out all
00:03:36
summer. That's what happened. Well, it's not easy looking this way when you're 78. So, tell me tell me about your time away. We
00:03:43
had a terrific time here at at without you. Um, yeah, we really miss I noticed that.
00:03:49
And not only that, I noticed our downloads went up. Yeah, they did. And all the comments are like, "Can we
00:03:55
have a scot-free 25?" Yes, I know. Not every day. Not a lot of people missed you. They did.
00:04:00
No, those were anonymous accounts that I pay on Albanian Troll Farm to Manage. Uh, we had a good time. Let me I'll go
00:04:06
through. We had a really good series of guests. I have to say there wasn't a loser in the bunch, but they were all great. And of course it ended with Gavin
00:04:12
Newsome at exactly the right time because he's, as you say, he's had a glow up. But Matt was great. All of
00:04:18
them. Wes Morris, all of them. Uh, Scaramucci, Tim Miller. I'm going to miss someone. Abby Phillip. Um, oh,
00:04:24
hello. I'm losing my mind. Um, Mel Robbins. Um, who else? Let them. Let them. Yeah. Sorry, Mel.
00:04:32
That [ __ ] don't work. Try that with kids. I'm sorry. I don't love her. She has let me is the second thing,
00:04:38
which is let me smack them back to last Sunday. Oh, David Remnick. He was really good. He was He brought the smarts.
00:04:44
He was excellent and and the mooch obviously was we kicked it off the mooch. But we did we did miss you. Uh we
00:04:50
did miss you. So tell me what you did. What did people want to know? People know what I did. I was here hosting and
00:04:56
improving our downloads. What were you doing? I continued my world arrested adolescence douchebag tour. I was in
00:05:01
Colorado. I was in Atha and I was in um Nantucket and actually and then I was in
00:05:06
Brazil for a speaking gig. So I saw that. Um, you know, still a total [ __ ] mom. What happened? What What What are the
00:05:12
highlights of your vacation? Oh, you know, Cara, it's just a chance for me to reconnect with nature and my
00:05:18
children. New York. You know, the best thing about this past month has been the last week
00:05:23
in New York. Yeah. Is amazing. I was trying to think what's it what is it about? One, it's like model country safari because it's about to be um fashion week. But two, all the
00:05:31
douchebag dudes are gone because all the spiritual [ __ ] into crypto are at Burning Man. like the guys left in
00:05:37
New York right now are just awesome. I've been connecting with a bunch of friends actually.
00:05:44
Um I felt a little bit like you. I was anxious to get back to work. You probably sensed it especially kept commenting as if you were still on
00:05:50
pivot. Yes. You were like my thoughts on this in three parts in triplicate. Everybody deserves to know what I think
00:05:56
about think about this. I we saw that we saw the thirstiness. It was coming in like around August 15th. I'd say that's when
00:06:03
you, you know, halfway through the summer you're like, "Oh, wait a minute. But, you know, in I mean, there is there's a lot of news. Let's be
00:06:09
in addition to being really good at not working." Mhm. Um, and trying to spend more time, I
00:06:14
don't know, just reconnecting and doing cool [ __ ] because I can, I'm going to be dead soon. In Germany, every well, not
00:06:20
every corporate board, but best practices among boards is they say to the CEO, you need to take at least four to six weeks off consecutively.
00:06:27
Ah, yes. Consecutively. And and if the and if the company falters, it's a negative on you. And I I I mean to a certain extent, you always want to make
00:06:39
sure that nothing's too dependent upon you. And unfortunately, you guys did that a little too well.
00:06:44
A little too well. But no, I agree. I'm sorry to inform you that Rachel Matter will now be co-hosting Pivot. Go
00:06:50
ahead. She's Yeah, she's she's We have a thing. I think we had a thing. Don't you think we had a thing? We have a nice
00:06:55
You look like You look like brothers. That's correct. It's like we're like the Kelsey brothers of lesbians in a weird
00:07:00
way. Anyway, so what is your f what's the Go ahead. You can talk about Rachel. Well, no, you both need to find one of
00:07:06
your I don't know how all that [ __ ] works, but create a super army of locustan army to take over. We had a lot
00:07:13
of insights. You actually guys, you remind me of each other. You're both very hardworking. Let what was your favorite part of your
00:07:18
vacation? Name one moment. Was it George when you were cuddling on the sand? No, I've started before being serious. I've started working out. There's this cool
00:07:30
gym in Nucket that's outdoors. It's like a prison yard. And I've started working out with my son. And it's like that
00:07:35
saying, your kids are the only people you want to be more successful than you. And my son has gotten fitter than me
00:07:41
just in the last 6 months, faster than me, and I can already tell he's not as strong as me yet, but he's getting there.
00:07:46
But it was just fun to I mean, you saw with Alex. Alex looks like a [ __ ] superhero. He is. watching watching your son get
00:07:54
strong and and not only that I think about trying to figure out what I call slopa and that is slow dopamine and that
00:08:02
is showing your kids that small efforts and acts of discipline every day add up to something we're really wonderful and
00:08:08
he's starting to feel that he's like me he's just super tall and super skinny right but we're lifting weights and we're
00:08:14
eating a lot and it was just kind of fun to see that progress over the course of the summer and that's interesting you should work out
00:08:20
with Alex sometime I'd like No [ __ ] way cuz remember you worked out with him when he was like a teen like and he was
00:08:26
little and he was Oh, that's right. No, that guy that guy looks like The Rock if if The Rock had
00:08:32
Irish parents, you know. Yeah, he's in really good shape. We had a we had a lovely I I did take a few
00:08:37
days off. I mean, I did podcasts from Vermont, but all four kids were in Vermont and we had a really wonderful
00:08:42
time. Could you be more than a cliche? You know, guess who bought a Subaru? Oh, no. Who bought a Subaru?
00:08:48
Swisher. Louis Swisher. Lou bought a Subaru. Yeah, we got him for, you know, it's our
00:08:53
last little gift to him. We got him a Subaru Forester. Um, and that's what he picked. He had a choice of, you know, in
00:08:59
that range, whatever he wanted, and that's what he picked. A lesbianist car. So, um, is that a graduation gift?
00:09:06
Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Then that's it. Now he has to make his own money. Why does he need a car in New York?
00:09:12
He's actually living, not living in New York. He's living up in, uh, Western Mass for now with his girlfriend and
00:09:17
doing some stuff up there. though. Anyway, he's got a lesbian car now. He's a lesbu. He's so pleased. I can I can oddly see that actually.
00:09:25
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except for the mustache. You could be a very attractive lesbian. So, what's the mustache? What's
00:09:31
happening with the mustache? Honestly, or as I like to call it, my second taste. Looks like a caterpillar. Go ahead.
00:09:37
Uh I was in Brazil last week for a speaking gig and I went into this barber shop and granted his English was better
00:09:42
than my Portuguese, but I basically said take it all off and I ended up with this Bert Reynolds if he was Jewish and ugly
00:09:48
looked. I I It's very This was an accident. Seriously, this is an accident. Yeah. Wasn't supposed to be
00:09:53
like that. Sure. I love it. I don't love it on Louis either, but And I tell him, "No, it doesn't it doesn't look good on me." Yeah. Yeah. I like that.
00:09:58
I know. I look like literally like a caner at the second biggest company in Cleveland who's having a midlife crisis.
00:10:06
That's good. What else could I do? I'm trying to think of Oh, according to the New York Post, I'm in Devil Wars Produ. That's
00:10:13
New York Post. I saw I think I saw pictures of you filming. Uh maybe. Maybe. No, no, no, no,
00:10:19
no. Literally, that's what the creative community was screaming out for is The Devil Wears. I mean, we are really reaching
00:10:24
barrel. It's going to be so good. Are you kidding me? No. It's the same. That is such a good movie. Go watch
00:10:29
Street is looking for a bigger brownstone. No, I'm just telling you that was a great movie. Go back and watch it again
00:10:34
and it will be a great sequel. I I wouldn't say I'm going to see it. Right about Hunting Wives, Cara Swisser.
00:10:41
I'm always right about these two two close friends. Okay. You and Justin Thorough are both in it. So, I'm going to see it. Yeah. Okay.
00:10:48
But quite frankly, the world just wasn't asking for the double where But it is it's a it's there's an AI
00:10:54
theme in it. I bet that's what I I've read. I don't know. They didn't tell me. Raise minimum wage to $25 an hour.
00:10:59
Mandatory national service and no sequels for three years. No sequels for three years. And the creative community
00:11:04
will bloom. It's a great film. I think it's going to be great. I mean, no one does anything original anymore
00:11:09
except for uh uh Sinners was earlier in the Oh, Sinners. This is a big summer actually for spring. um uh weapons. Uh what was it? Have you seen these things? I don't I'm
00:11:20
so No, they're both I I saw Sinners because I What did you think of it? I liked it very much. It wasn't as scary
00:11:26
as I thought cuz when then I heard Vampires and the other one is weapons. Everyone who's seen it said it's the scariest movie they've ever seen and
00:11:32
it's is a different kind of scary. This guy is apparently like a very gifted maker of things. But I can't see it. I
00:11:38
can't see it. I'm just waiting for Wicked to Well, thanks. Thanks for doing all the
00:11:44
hard work. I almost started to feel almost started to feel bad. Um that this is your happy
00:11:49
place. Yeah, I liked it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking work and buy more Subarus. Yes, that's correct. Now that Louis has a Subaru, but we got a lot to get to
00:11:56
today. We've got a lot. We're going to go through a lot happened while you were gone. Like a lot. I was kept Every time something happened, I'm like, I wonder
00:12:01
what Scott would think. I did the whole the whole summer. I did the whole August. I did. Um obviously Donald Trump is still
00:12:08
alive. He offered proof of life at a press conference Tuesday after going six days without a major public appearance
00:12:13
or saying something which I think we're not used to because he's such a a [ __ ] diarrhea mouth. The internet
00:12:18
went wild over Labor Day weekend with rumors about Trump's health and speculation that he died. All these
00:12:23
conspiracy theorists had they were trying to put it together like they were detective essentially Gluso. The
00:12:29
hashtags were uh where is Trump and Trump is dead were trending on X. People were sharing their all kinds of
00:12:34
conspiracy theories on Reddit and Tik Tok. One of them I I actually said that's the way the White House website
00:12:39
is always. And people got mad at me because I was like, "Sorry, this is not right." And same thing with closing of
00:12:44
Walter Reed. I was like, "It's not closed. I just drove by it. It's not closed." Um, but people had all these
00:12:50
different theories. He claimed at his Tuesday presser not to have heard of the rumors, even though he posted he never
00:12:55
felt better in his life. Of course, he heard them. Um, were you um I what I was what I was kind of irritated about because you and I have been really were tough on Biden. use particularly at the
00:13:06
beginning of it uh and it was turned out to be true and if they had they listened
00:13:11
to many people not just us things might have been different right now but um I don't see one of the things that bothered me besides the the exaggeration and conspiracy theories on social media
00:13:22
was you didn't see a story in any of the newspapers talking about this as a phenomena and then actually doing digging and what's going on with his health because something is going on
00:13:33
with his health right with of hands. There's actually visible things, his ankles. Um, you know, he he looks not
00:13:40
well. Uh, he misses a lot of things. How do you how do you look at this? And I'm amazed that reporter I'd like a good
00:13:46
reporter to tell me what's happening actually. Well, okay. So, sometimes the obvious
00:13:52
explanation is the is the right one. He's suffering from a condition that's only going to get worse and it's called
00:13:57
79. Yeah. And I listened to Sanjay Gupta yesterday on CNN and I think Sanjay or Dr. Gupta an actual expert who's done the work. You know his his explanation
00:14:09
was very reasonable and that that there are reasonable explanations and in this instance in a rare instance of the truth
00:14:14
as doctors have let out information. He has that condition where you if you bleed it comes right through your skin
00:14:20
it's just skin thin skinned. I think that sounded very logical to me. The vascular condition that older people get
00:14:26
where their ankles swell. That sounded very logical to me. But if you if you try to figure out or if you look at an actuarial table and say what is the likelihood from insurance companies
00:14:37
which by the way have been you know they predicted the LA fires. If you want to talk about people who can predict the futures future, talk to people in the
00:14:44
actual pay for it. Yeah. Cuz they're trying to figure out what can we afford, how much should we be charging for certain outcomes around
00:14:51
health and death. And if you go into an LLM, you say you have a 79year-old who is obese under a
00:14:58
lot of pressure, but access to the best medical care in the world, what is the likelihood in the next 3 and 1/2 years
00:15:04
they either die or become incapacitated, couldn't work? It's towards 50%. So, I don't think there's any big conspiracy here. I just think we're dealing with some 79. Yeah. I I I'm not saying that. It's just
00:15:15
that it was interesting to see they continue not to and and I think they look imagine like Roosevelt or or
00:15:23
Wilson. It's not just them or or Kennedy had a number of health issues, right, that were including drug use that was
00:15:30
probably should have been reported on on some way. I just I find it really interesting that especially the people who were like all in on Biden being like
00:15:38
how dare they hide it. Why don't we know more about the health of all our leaders, right? Like like you know Jerry
00:15:45
Nadler just stepped down from Congress cuz because he obviously is old. Like that's kind of stuff. I just wish we had more of a an insight so we could assess. I I get it about privacy but not for
00:15:57
these people. I feel like we should know quite a bit more and not rely on like Ronnie Jackson who really needs to sit
00:16:03
down as a doctor really independent assessments of our leaders so we have some sense maybe I'm wrong well there's there's two things going on here um the first is applies to
00:16:14
everybody and the second is more mandacious and unique and the first is that agism is still an ism and we uh as
00:16:23
progressives or thoughtful people or media uh are seen as agist or worried about being agist if we reference that
00:16:30
biology doesn't give a [ __ ] about how politically correct you are. I mean, we we essentially Democrats potentially
00:16:36
lost control of Congress and weren't able to block ship because we were unable to be honest and say to the five
00:16:42
members who died in Congress, you are no longer capable of serving in this important role. And we've decided, we
00:16:48
decided to ignore it with Biden and we're ignoring it again with Trump. People this old shouldn't be asked to
00:16:54
get on planes to go to Singapore to negotiate trade agreements or have to get up at 3 in the morning and decide whether or not they're going to uh
00:17:00
strike a terrorist cell and start calling. They just don't. Presidents should probably be in their 40s and 50s
00:17:06
just because of the physical and mental acuity it demands. And we have decided that it is politically incorrect to be
00:17:14
agist and biology says hold my beer. And this happens across both parties. The second thing is more macacious and that
00:17:21
is Trump has deafly, meticulously and bluntly taken a page out of the autocrat's handbook and said, "Anything you say negative about other people, that's
00:17:33
first amendment. Have at it. Anything you say negative about me, you better get ready to lawyer up,
00:17:39
right? And it it'll be thrown out of court, but I'll sue you. I'll try and ruin your reputation."
00:17:45
And it's working there. people in the media, the biggest media companies in the world. I mean, you can point to so
00:17:52
many examples, not only of it sending out a chill, but him actually extracting payments and barter from law firms that
00:18:00
technically should be the least scared of this guy. So, he's put it chill and it's like, do we really want to be the
00:18:07
media company that leads with saying something is wrong here and it looks like congestive heart failure? because
00:18:13
if it's not right, they're going to have to in, you know, in 2 or 3 years potentially settle with
00:18:20
the guy. And he's not afraid to weaponize the DOJ and Raid Holmes and have the head of the FBI who wrote a
00:18:27
fairy tale kids book about a king that was wrongly prosecuted going and, you know, dunking dunking the basketball after someone's house is raided without
00:18:38
even saying what how they got the indictment. I mean, he's weaponized institutions we never thought were
00:18:44
capable or would be weaponized. So, yeah, people are it's working. He He has energetic. That's for sure. He's energetic. That's He's very robust. Robust. Well, robust. It's He looks
00:18:57
sickly, but energetic. It's a really weird combination. And I think some of it is cognitive decline. That's very
00:19:03
clear. I mean, again, let me put someone on the on the left, Alanar Holmes Norton, who's supposed to be the
00:19:09
representative from DC while not having a vote or is certainly involved, has just been out of it because she's old
00:19:14
and she might be running again, which is just like insane. Insane. All these people like there
00:19:20
should be a number. I I come more and more around to your feeling on this. Um, did you what did you think of the death
00:19:26
rumors because they just they kept they kept coming back. They left and came back and left and came back. This is
00:19:33
like no way to run a country. That's what I kept thinking. I I mean, in a weird way, I I don't think they're trying to suppress it because
00:19:38
one, it keeps Epstein out of the news, and two, they know he's not dying or he's not imminently dying, and they'll just show them in five or six day. Fine.
00:19:45
Oh, the media's talking about it. Fine. They're not talking about Epstein. Let them continue to talk about it. Well, they are talking.
00:19:50
I'm fine. But it doesn't all this has done so far because it looks as if the obvious
00:19:56
explanation is the right one. And these are not life-threatening conditions. These are just the average, you know,
00:20:01
ailments of a really old man. And it's anything to keep Epstein out of the news cycle. That's all they want.
00:20:07
Yep. Okay. He might disappear again for 5 days and create rumors. True or something else. You're right. It's actually Actually, that's really
00:20:14
smart. Okay. Let's go on a quick break. We come back. Trump sets his sights on New Orleans for the next crackdown.
00:20:19
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rivals and style inspiration. Scott, we're back. Trump is floating the idea of sending National Guard troops to
00:21:01
a lot of cities, but now it's New Orleans, the latest target in his crime crackdown. He's also still fixated on
00:21:06
Chicago and Baltimore, calling both cities hell holes this week and asking the governors of those states to invite
00:21:11
him to deploy troops, which they are not doing. Uh, Illinois Governor JB Pritsker
00:21:16
fired back. Um, I refused to play a reality game show with Donald Trump. Trump did hit a legal setback this week.
00:21:23
A federal judge ruled his use of troops in Los Angeles was illegal. What a surprise. The judge warned that Trump
00:21:28
appears intent on creating a national police force with the president as its chief. Uh, Newsome himself said the
00:21:34
problem with the troops in Los Angeles is they had to waste their resources protecting them from citizens. Um, which
00:21:41
was, I think, probably accurate. Um, talk a little bit. But by the way, uh we we'll get to the foreign stuff in a second, but how do you look at what's happening here? I mean, they're trying
00:21:52
to obviously push back in San Francisco, in Chicago, Baltimore. I think he must have gotten news that people were mad
00:21:58
about that there wasn't a red state that got looked at because most of the murder statistics are in eight of 10 red states
00:22:05
are are more murderous than blue states. um talk a little bit about what was it like from afar because we haven't really talked about this increasing militarization. It falls into the basic pattern of all
00:22:19
politics now or actions at a political level and that is one Democrats either ignore a problem or aren't honest about it or let it go too far. In my opinion, they let the DEI apparatus go too far on
00:22:30
campuses. They sweep in with an overcorrection and under a false flag of anti-semitism try and pull funding and
00:22:36
ensure that our populace stays uneducated because educated people have a annoying tendency to ask why. They
00:22:43
overcorrect. We do something really stupid. We let a 6'5 swimmer born as a male show up to a woman's national NC2A competition, sweep every medal, taking medals away from women who've been
00:22:54
training their whole lives, have bike competitions or a transgender woman crosses the finish line five minutes, five minutes early and all Democrats kind of look at each other, you know,
00:23:05
not knowing what to say and say it's inspiring. And then they sweep in with an overcorrection and start demonizing
00:23:10
transgender people and kicking us kicking them out of the military. people who have saved bravely and consistently making us less safe. Democrats have
00:23:18
ignored or not addressed what are very real lifestyle issues, quality of life issues in cities. That's the bottom line. Yeah, I knew sometimes. And so what do they do? I know. Let's
00:23:30
sweep in with an overcorrection under the false flag of trying to reduce crime such that we can normalize military and cities in case I decide to deploy the
00:23:36
military if it looks like I'm going to lose the election. First off, it's just wrong. The military is not right. is is
00:23:43
not there. They're not there to protect people. They're there to accomplish missions that oftentimes mean killing people. They're trained
00:23:48
in DC. They're there to pick up the trash. But just so you know. Yeah. But they're trained in combat, not crime or law. They have the wrong
00:23:54
attitude about civilians, the wrong complexion of civilians. Cops are taught to protect. The military sees people as
00:24:00
potential threats. That's what they're trained to do. And they're untrained in collecting evidence and building a case that will hold up in court. Even even if
00:24:06
they're able to arrest or prevent crime, they won't be able to put criminals behind bars. But I feel like as
00:24:12
Democrats, we we get the right idea, we take it too [ __ ] far, we decide there's a narrative, we have a knee-jerk
00:24:18
reaction to everything, we are not as focused as we should be, or we prioritize social virtue or trying to
00:24:23
achieve social virtue and ignore the actual material and psychological well-being of Americans. And then the
00:24:30
Trump administration sees that hole and runs right through it with a [ __ ] bullet train of menacious awful behavior
00:24:38
to accomplish something else that's unrelated. Also an overreaction 100% with other sticky problems with it. So
00:24:45
what would you do if you do you like do you think the governors are responding correctly in the mayors?
00:24:51
Well, look, I said and I'm patting myself. I said 6 months ago who I thought would be the Democratic nominee
00:24:56
in 28. And I said the most likely person is TBD. We didn't know who Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were at this time. The
00:25:03
Democratic process when it's let when it's let it's when we let it run its course is like Navy Seals training. And
00:25:09
that is few people get through it, but the people who get through it are are [ __ ] deadly. They're very good. If
00:25:15
the people who can survive all those fairs in Iowa and get on debate stages and and stand up to podcasters like you, they just get battle tested and they just get very good. And so it's probably
00:25:27
we don't know. That's probably the leader right now. I said if I had to bet on anybody, people consistently
00:25:34
underestimate Governor Nuomo. He survived a recall effort. If you look at California since he's been governor, it's passed Japan to become the fourth largest economy. The technology and
00:25:46
companies literally driving the S&P are back and global markets are back stronger
00:25:52
than ever. And by the way, where are they? Oh, they're they're in that unlivable state called California. People are moving back supposedly on the
00:25:59
ground there. you said and I have friends in LA the fires were bad but people are saying in some of the cities on the west coast now they've gotten the
00:26:06
memo and they are saying okay maybe maybe calling people the unhoused versus the homeless isn't going to solve the [ __ ] problem and we're going to have to we're going to have to move in and
00:26:16
make some uncomfortable decision very quickly I have to say you know San Francisco is is the the excitement with
00:26:23
the AI companies of all different kinds there's new everywhere you go there's new stuff now I had said this was going
00:26:29
to happen because this is the way San Francisco goes, right? Um, but everybody is back. Everybody is back and it has a
00:26:37
real um energy to it that's that had been missing for a little while during co particularly and there was no there I
00:26:44
think it you know I was talking to a bunch of AI people and um and and and there was sort of like there's no better
00:26:50
place to do it than here like with with Stanford and Berkeley I was in I was both at Stanford I was at Berkeley I
00:26:56
spent some time with Steve Jobs's son uh Reed who's doing a bunch of uh stuff in biotech with AI involved in it. It's
00:27:03
just the place to be, if that makes sense. And Nuome feels very muscular and I think he used that word, right? It
00:27:09
feels very muscular California right now for some reason. Um, is this a good thing for people like him and Pritsker
00:27:16
and Wes Moore to show off muscularity around um these Trump attacks on cities? Look, this has been the this has been the August of Newsome. his his push back by mocking and holding up a mirror to
00:27:31
how ridiculous Donald Trump's communication style is has been hilarious and really effective. And that
00:27:37
is it just basically says, "Okay, look how [ __ ] ridiculous this is." The way you know the all caps um uh pushing back
00:27:44
that he was kind of the leader we wanted, right? We wanted someone to push back. The next part of the program needs
00:27:49
to move to ideas. JB Pritsker is giving off really nice dad energy and being thoughtful, but the reality is Trump
00:27:56
hasn't done anything illegal and they're somewhat hamstrung around um what they can, you know,
00:28:01
that's what Newsome said. He can't stop him. They Trump I believe what Trump is doing. It may be stupid. It may be a
00:28:07
false flag. It may be disingenuous. It may be a poor use of our military, but it's not, as I understand it, um it's
00:28:14
not illegal. But well, the polls, people don't like it. People don't like it. Like all the polls are pretty clear, including the
00:28:20
Republicans. No one loves a troop in a city. Nobody. Even if they're picking up garbage. It's weird.
00:28:26
It's not, you know, it's not something you see except when you go visit other countries that are under autocratic
00:28:31
rule, right? That's But a couple things are going on. One is good, one is bad. And I can speak to this in fairly knowledgeable detail
00:28:38
because I'm in New York right now. I spent a lot of time here. I don't care what anyone says. We're in 2030. You
00:28:43
know, history is much clearer and harsher in hindsight. People are going to look back on New York in 2025 and say
00:28:49
that was a [ __ ] golden age. Walk around. So there's lines to get in stores. There's a new amazing members
00:28:56
club opening literally every two weeks. The art scene, the fashion scene, the food scene. This this through co this city shed its skin. There's new places. There's a sense of energy. It's [ __ ]
00:29:09
amazing. The downside to all of this is the following. Inflation is out of control.
00:29:16
in these hubs where these epicenters that attract basically three types of people. Someone in tech who's highly
00:29:23
educated and can afford a $5,500 one-bedroom in Manhattan, finance bros who make a very good living, or somebody whose parents are putting them through New York or San Francisco. So that young
00:29:36
person who wants to come and try and make it in a non-finance or non- tech industry and add co, they just can't
00:29:42
afford this city. every young person I meet to, you know, they're making really good what what used to be really good
00:29:47
money, they can't af they they can't afford to go out. And I always go to, you know, we're in a sex recession, we're in a mating recession. Young people can't afford to go out.
00:30:00
They they can't afford to go to a place and demonstrate excellence to each other and smell each other's pherommones and
00:30:06
make friends and find mentors and find mates. So, it's become it's become a playground. It's never been better to be
00:30:12
in the top 1%. America is becoming more like itself every day as evidenced by how amazing New York and I imagine San
00:30:18
Francisco and LA right now. But quite frankly, there might as well be a velvet rope around these cities for anyone
00:30:24
under the age of 40 making $150,000 a year. That's a very fair point. So unless we
00:30:29
get rid of nimiism, unless we put more money in their pockets, tax holiday 8 million new homes construction,
00:30:35
manufactured homes on sites that cost 50% less, and really make an effort to put more money in the pockets of young
00:30:42
people. All of this, all of the amazing cities in America are basically going to be sequestered to a small number of very
00:30:49
fortunate, overeducated people with rich parents. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think home
00:30:54
homes are I'm beginning to really focus in on homes. I you talk a lot about other issues but
00:30:59
you know even homeless homelessness is a lot of homeless people have mental issues a lot of it is solved by homes
00:31:06
like like that you you get people out of a high one of the things I'm in in this documentary I'm doing is high stress
00:31:13
situations lead to cognitive like cogn mental problems cognitive declines and there's no higher stress than not having
00:31:19
a home or not having somewhere to go or having to figure out where you're going to eat and drink or something like that
00:31:24
and it seems like if we could get more people housed in affordable housing and and then create a city that has all
00:31:32
kinds of people, not just the rich people as you point out. I mean, where you live is a particular place, right?
00:31:38
It's like, yeah, people don't have a birthright to be in Manhattan or not Soho in particular. I mean, that's that's a circus there really. I
00:31:44
love it, but it's a circus. Um, but I think homes should be whoever's running should focus in on homes after we get
00:31:52
over the Trump thing. Like I think Newsome's smart in attacking Trump until the 2026 elections and then we should
00:31:58
act like act act like rear view [ __ ] mirror if they win the house rear like what are we going to do for you and homes should be at the very top of that list also restoring vaccines but that's
00:32:09
another I mean let's be really bold here that the next part of the democratic program if we're going to flip the house and win
00:32:15
back the white house we've got to go okay we were flatfooted now we're resisting now we need to move to ideas
00:32:22
and around housing. You've zeroed in on what I think is one of the biggest issues because the reality is if you don't if you can't afford a house, you
00:32:29
feel shame. You have trouble making a step towards mating and also a house because people have a tendency to pay
00:32:34
their mortgage rather than be embarrassed and have it foreclosed on. It ends up being a great way to build wealth over the long term. It gives you
00:32:40
a sense of place, motivation. There's a lot of wonderful things about home ownership in Singapore. Let's let's be bold. One bold thing, 8 million houses
00:32:48
in 10 years. do away uh federal legislation that takes down nimiism. What they did in Minneapolis, what they did in Austin, they said, "We're not we're going to take off the height limits. We're going to we're going to
00:33:00
take certain areas and we're going to do let's do if you took big swats of land and unincorporated them near the center of cities and had manufactured homes and
00:33:11
then governmentbacked governmentbacked mortgages and said, "Okay, we're just going to flood the market with a bunch of new housing." that that is inexpensive. Or you could go even
00:33:22
deeper and go really innovative and bold and do what Singapore does. Singapore gives houses to people.
00:33:27
Yeah. And says and then graduates until they're finally paying market rate and mortgage. And you know what it ends up
00:33:32
being? It ends up being their retirement. They only not only get a home, but they say to them, we want you to build wealth. We want you to build a
00:33:38
family. Yeah. Wealth. We want you we want you to have kids and we want you to build wealth. So if you're a good citizen and we'll look at
00:33:45
your finances, we got to do one of two things. And the answer is both. We either got to raise incomes of young
00:33:52
people, put more money in their pockets, restore, get rid of [ __ ] capital gains tax deduction, everyone pays one
00:33:57
tax rate, do what Portugal does, tax holiday for people under the age of 30, which wouldn't cost us that much because
00:34:02
they don't make that much money. Or or we've got to lower the price of housing. I mean, there's there's there's
00:34:08
only two things we can do. And the answer is we should do both. It would be a great thing for like what
00:34:14
are we going to do for you today? 8 million houses in 10 years. Um, so, um, one of the things I'm going
00:34:20
to switch this thing because I think Trump is more on the ropes even though he seems like a complete menace today
00:34:26
with all the vaccine things and everything he's doing, the attacks, the attacks, the attacks. This one really
00:34:31
stuck out for me. The US being excluded from the group chat. Uh Indian Prime Minister Modi entered the summit uh in
00:34:38
China this week holding hands with Russian President Putin before the two formally formed a friendly circle with
00:34:44
Chinese President Xi. Meanwhile, President Trump who had a message for Xi Putin and North Korean leader uh Kim
00:34:50
Jong-un as they appeared together uh for China's largest military parade, which he wishes he had because it was a pretty
00:34:55
good military parade. Writing on True Social, "May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please
00:35:02
give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States of America.
00:35:08
These are people he cozied up to. Like cozy, like scary cozy. Um and and fun fact, uh was interesting. Xi and Putin were caught talking on a hot mic about the possibility becoming immortal via
00:35:20
organ transplant and which was pretty funny given what I'm working on. Um but uh this this to me was like how how did we drive these players together in the
00:35:32
in the decades this hasn't happened. We've been managed to keep them apart to to be close with India. We should be clo
00:35:39
it's been a struggle over the many years for various issues but it's a country we should be close with but here we are
00:35:45
shoving them into the hands of Putin and literally in the hands of Putin and the
00:35:51
same thing with Xi. That picture really gave me the chills, I have to say. And then he goes conspiring together. That's
00:35:57
right, Donald Trump. They are [ __ ] conspiring against the United States of America. And that's why we should have
00:36:02
been in there and not allowed this to happen. You're exactly right. Bush W said that
00:36:07
the axis of evil was North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. They had some energy combined, a willingness to sacrifice. You know,
00:36:14
they're crazy. Some decent science, some decent science and scientists, actually formidable scientists in Iran. India.
00:36:20
That image, the image of 2024 was Trump pumping his fist in the air. The image of 2025 in retrospect will be that image
00:36:27
you just described of the three of them looking like their little brothers ganging up against Laughlin. It's like
00:36:33
the siblings of the Murdoch saying, "We're sick of this [ __ ] We can collectively we're strong and we can
00:36:39
push back on our big [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] brother." They have a combined GDP of $20 trillion. They have
00:36:45
unbelievable energy. They have unbelievable technology and capital. out of China. They have the largest emerging
00:36:52
consumer population in the world, India. Those three nations together are a formidable with a side order of Kim Jong. And to your point, I mean, the thing
00:37:05
there's some weird stuff protecting Taiwan. One of the things that's protecting Taiwan is China has had to to
00:37:11
divide and deploy a great deal of military resources to its northern border on the what's called the Amore
00:37:17
River because China and Russia have always had territorial territorial disputes. We take for granted the fact
00:37:22
that if we and Canada were having territorial disputes up around Montreal, Toronto, it would cost us about a
00:37:28
hundred billion to fortify that border another 25 to billion a year. And China and Russia were spending a lot of money
00:37:34
on fortifying their borders in the north across the Amore River. There was zero bridges 10 years ago. Now there are
00:37:40
three bridges and there's a quarter of a trillion dollars in trade trade. So that stops. So all of a sudden they're getting along
00:37:47
and liking each other. And the biggest own goal, the biggest own goal was that the new swing votes geopolitically that were kind of playing both sides but emerging economies who were incredibly
00:37:58
important. Similar to that soccer mom in Madison that might decide the next presidency, the two swing votes were the
00:38:04
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and India. And we have a fantastic relationship with India. Have had not now. I'm I'm getting there. You're stealing my thunder. It's a democracy. And in
00:38:16
addition to that, and I can speak to this firsthand, we have this connective tissue with India. In addition, if you
00:38:23
walk down the hall of NYU Stern and you want to find someone [ __ ] amazing at research that could be making tens of millions of dollars being the chairman of Millennium or some other great quant
00:38:34
trading firm, but instead decided to teach, that's someone most likely with a multi-selabic last name who came out of,
00:38:41
you know, came out of Delhi and somehow managed to get to IIT and is one of the smartest people in the world. And what
00:38:46
do the smartest people in India do or a lot of them? They come teach at our elite universities. And look at the way
00:38:52
we are treating academics, universities and foreign PhD students, many of which come from India. We have this amazing vehicle for goodwill. We have torn it up and we have done the absolute stupidest
00:39:04
thing possible and that is we have taken three enemies or three people who didn't get along very well and we've said no.
00:39:11
Nothing rallies your enemies like being the bigger dick enemy. Yeah. That photo of the three of them, what do they have?
00:39:17
They have massive amounts of energy. They have masses amounts of technology. Technology and capital. In addition,
00:39:25
Russia and China have something that the EU and the US don't have. They have a willingness to kill their own people. That's right. Russia has been willing. I don't care if it's good or bad or
00:39:37
wrong or right. It just is. They are willing to kill andor injure a million of their own people. Yeah. Europe is being Europe is being
00:39:44
invaded and the EU will never will not put any of their young men and women on the
00:39:49
boots on the ground. I mean to a certain extent the the most intimidating people in your
00:39:56
class and who get a disproportionate amount of power are not only the people with the biggest fits but the people who are willing to actually throw blows
00:40:01
right throw hands. I mean one of the things I was talking to a guy like with Dimmitri Alperov he started crowd um
00:40:07
what card strike he was saying the enthusiasm he was talking about Ukraine he's very big supporter of Ukraine he's
00:40:13
like the enthusiasm of Russian troops still putting hundreds of thousands of people they need the jobs right because
00:40:20
the economy is more troubled than it was before uh for variety of reasons but he's like you know it's hard because
00:40:26
Ukrainians have either no more people to give or they're just exhausted or they don't want to do it anymore. more and
00:40:32
the Russians just keep throwing bodies after bodies like and they just let them die like the way they treat them. But
00:40:38
some of these people need the money so they're they just continue to just toss people into the void uh in Ukraine for
00:40:45
example. I I think you're 100% right. We're so instead of stupid tweets that are performative and look like oh it
00:40:52
start that tweet started out he's trying to be presidential. Oh wait his friend showed up with ketamine and now what the
00:40:57
[ __ ] is he talking about right? There's cons against us. He and Rubio and Hexath behind the
00:41:03
scenes of the joint the joint chiefs should be doing the following. The Ukrainians have come up with a
00:41:08
flamingo missile that can go deep into Russian territory and there's one number that matters. 17%
00:41:15
of Russia's energy infrastructure has been damaged. If 50% of their economy is energy- based and you start if you get that number to 18 then to 19 then to 20 then to 30 Russia's out of business and
00:41:28
Russia has to come to the table. F-15 pilots and and planes fantastic on you know anti-aircraft fantastic radar systems and then help them with those that new flamingo missile. If if that 17
00:41:42
number goes to 27 and maybe 30 Putin shows up with a different attitude because this is an economy
00:41:49
playing Donald Trump, too. I mean, it's basically a gas station posing as an economy. He shouldn't be sending out
00:41:54
tweets. He should be figuring out a way to help the Ukrainian army with their unbelievable technology and brave army
00:42:00
figure out a way to take that 17 number up a half a percent every week for the next 6 months and then all of a sudden Putin's going to change his tone 100%. But what more the more to the
00:42:10
point, we got to move on, but would you like an organ transplant for eternity? Would you like one?
00:42:16
You know what? I I I forget that name of the Mexican artist that um Sama Hayek played.
00:42:21
Uh Freda Kylo. Yeah. She I love what she said. I want my death to be glorious and I don't want to come back. I'm not I'm not one of
00:42:28
these people that wants to live forever. I don't Do you I No, after doing this this No, no.
00:42:35
Actually, I want to be healthier. That's one thing I've been literally I've been running couple miles four times a week
00:42:42
now. Oh, good for you. That's you know, stuff and eating things, having a little more. I'm not, you know, the protein loading
00:42:48
is a little much. I think they're going overboard. Speaking of going overboard, but some of the practices I'm paying a
00:42:54
lot more like I want to be healthier, that's for sure. Yeah, but you have you have what is the key to longevity. I mean, everybody is
00:42:59
small children. It's exactly right. It's being social and having a lot of friends. There's
00:43:05
studies that show right now if you had a choice between having no friends and not smoking and having friends and smoking a
00:43:11
pack a day, you'd live longer if you had friends and smoked a pack a day. That's right. Taking caregivers live longer
00:43:17
than anyone in the world. If you want to die, just go home, stop being social, and stop having mental interest and stop
00:43:24
talking to your friends. Every study with this documentary that is the everyone's like, "What is it that
00:43:29
saves you?" I'm like, relationship people. I said, "People relationships." I was like, honestly, that's what it is. Like, it's it's going
00:43:36
to be an interesting journey. There's other things cool things happening. The life expects the life expectancy for us, and you're
00:43:42
doing a show on this, and I'm curious to see it. The life expectancy for people in the top desile is 12 to 15 years greater now
00:43:48
than people in the lowest decile. Yep. Even in countries like Denmark, which have very long have longevity, uh
00:43:54
the people who die are the poor people. It's really it's really money is absolute number one indicator. Number
00:44:00
two is people. Um, and if you solve the cancers and everything else, it'll it interesting. Um, let's go on a quick
00:44:06
break. We come back, we'll talk about Google getting off easy. Scott, we're back with more news. Google will not be
00:44:12
forced to sell off Chrome or Android. We thought they might. That's the ruling in an antichrist case, which determined the
00:44:18
company was operating in illegal online search monopoly, which was determined. The company will however have to make
00:44:24
certain search data available to competitors sharing essentially um not necessarily the algorithm itself but
00:44:30
search data itself and let people use it and they'll be barred from having exclusive contracts related to distribution of products. They still can
00:44:36
pay a lot uh to to have uh placement etc. Google said in a statement that it had concerns about the data sharing
00:44:43
could affect the privacy of users. They should shut the [ __ ] up and like do a little dance in Mountain View. The
00:44:48
company can now appeal the finding that it is a legal monopoly. They just they should just hush and move along. Google
00:44:54
shares are up 12% in the last 5 days time taping. I know you are a big Google fan. Um I think you thought this verdict
00:45:01
would be more harsh. I I wasn't sure uh because it because things have moved on and one of the things the judge did, Judge Meta, I think is very smart uh talked about AI sort of is changing
00:45:14
everything. So, they should send a big basket of flowers to open AI. Um, uh, which was interesting, uh, which was interesting to me. I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
00:45:25
Well, every year we pick a or I pick a big tech stock pick and this year I picked Alphabet because you did.
00:45:31
It was trading at 17 times PE until a few weeks ago. The S&P trades at 24. So, let me get this. Take the average S&P
00:45:38
company, Dow, Proctor and Gamble. Google is still growing like crazy. They still get 96 times the traffic of a chat GPT.
00:45:45
Largest streaming service in the world, YouTube. Three three other businesses that do over 30 billion in annual revenue. Five products that have at
00:45:52
least two billion users. And they're the number one in what is probably the most interesting application of AI, and that
00:45:58
is autonomous driving. And they're trading for less than the average S&P company. Why? Because of this overhang
00:46:05
of this cloud of uncertainty around antitrust and AI. Yeah, AI is going to create a lot of value, is going to be a formidable competitor, but they also have very strong AI offerings. Maybe not
00:46:17
in an LLM similar to Chat GBT, but they'll find other ways to leverage their amazing IP and their interface and
00:46:24
their custody of the consumer. And what this was with this overhang has now been
00:46:31
solved. And let's talk a little bit about the case. You know, I I the the the FDC and the DOJ always break my heart. Finally, it's been rendered a
00:46:42
monopoly. Finally. But this is what happened. Too late. This is like your kid comes home
00:46:48
and he he went out high on meth and started killing dogs and knocking off 7-Elevens. And you come home and say,
00:46:54
"That's it. You've been found guilty. We're going to punish you. We're not letting you go on Snap for 30 minutes."
00:47:01
I mean, this was there's two things. Finding them guilty. And then there's the remedy. We found them guilty. You've
00:47:07
been taking meth and holding up convenience stores. You're guilty. Oh, you got to wear an ankle monitor for 10
00:47:13
minutes. What would he have done though? I mean, putting it off is sort of looking backwards, right? There is this push
00:47:20
from AI like things have changed. Now, I think Google's going to dominate here, by the way, FYI. They think they're
00:47:26
going to move their search monopoly into an AI monopoly. Most people feel that Google's the one to beat ultimately. Um,
00:47:34
Open AI, we'll see if they can make it because given they're they're the only independent one. Uh, relatively
00:47:39
independent one. Um, but I feel like what is he going to do? How how can you look backwards at remedies? That's the problem, right? Yeah. But they've they've always faced these existential problems where
00:47:51
they should have done it sooner is what you're saying. Let's go back. Let's reverse engineer to to big ideas for the Democratic party.
00:47:58
One of those big ideas needs to be to say, I'm this great environmentally concerned Republican called Teddy
00:48:03
Roosevelt. I love Republican traditional Republican ideals of which there's none left in Congress. And one of those
00:48:08
traditional ideals was trustbusting to bring down costs for everybody. The big four, they should be 11 different companies. I'm going to turn the three biggest pharmaceutical companies into
00:48:18
nine. I'm going to break up cable. I'm going to break up big chicken. I'm going to break up big A. And we are going to
00:48:24
see a decline in inflation over the next 10 years consistently because we're going to create the greatest sucking sound downward of prices in history. And that is competition. Google if if
00:48:37
YouTube was spun forced to spin from Google within 3 months. YouTube would announce their own search engine. And
00:48:42
Google would announce their own video platform immediately overnight creating a competitor that would lower the costs
00:48:48
on the greatest toll booth in histories in the history that is Amazon, Meta and um Alphabet. There should be there needs to be a candidate that says I'm [ __ ] Teddy Roosevelt. I am going to break up
00:49:02
so many big companies. Look at what's happened to the price of chicken. Look at what's happened to the price. We
00:49:07
charge four to eight times for different medications than you can get it for in Dubai despar or Toronto despite the fact it's the same product. The fact that it's the same or we
00:49:18
invented we invented it. I'm going to go through all of these industries. I'm going to get Jonathan Caner and a bunch
00:49:25
of economists and we are going to break up and lower cost. It's afford it goes to affordability.
00:49:31
Consumers don't like these companies. And by the way, these products are going to get better and shareholders are going to get richer as they have in every
00:49:37
breakup. What has happened to the price of long-distance phone calls? I remember
00:49:43
when I was remember how much it costs. Oh, I used to I spent summers with my father, right? When my mom and dad were
00:49:48
divorced and when I wanted when I once a week we lived in Glennel in Chicago. My dad worked for Vigaro after he got laid
00:49:55
off from Owen Scots selling [ __ ] for a different company literally fertilizer. He had an office in downtown Chicago. We
00:50:01
would take the train in on Sunday when he wasn't working into Chicago, go to his office so I could call my mom on the Watts line because calling from our house
00:50:15
was like was like a$110 a minute to call California. So we would travel on a train for an hour so I could use the
00:50:21
Watts line at his phone. What has happened to the cost of telco? I don't even think about because they broke up [ __ ] AT&T into
00:50:27
seven baby bills and now internet, right? I mean because like Louisie was just in Europe. He called me on FaceTime. It cost nothing.
00:50:33
Cost nothing. You would see you would unlock shareholder value, create greater employment, greater tax revenue.
00:50:39
But the problem is these guys got these guys love control. They all want to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms.
00:50:44
So they create dual class shareholder companies. So these companies can't be broken up unless Sergey or Mark decide
00:50:50
it's okay to break them up. There's very few of these companies. One of the reasons, one of the things holding up Warner Brothers stock, one of the few
00:50:57
things is it's one class of stock, which means someone could come in and actually break it up if it ever looks like a viable business where the parts are
00:51:03
greater than the whole. But it's all reverse engineers. Affordability will again be the issue. James Carville is
00:51:10
right. It's economy stupid. Specifically, it's affordability and a really Mandani same thing. I think that's why
00:51:16
he won. I think that's why he came ahead. He talked about prices. that he actually had a very similar campaign to
00:51:22
Trump, but that's another talk show. But a key theme for Democrats should be a really thoughtful response. I am a
00:51:28
trustbuster. I'm going to bring down your pharmaceutical costs, the cost to advertise. I'm going to bring down the
00:51:33
cost you incur as parents uh on your children doing having getting into relationships with character AIs because these companies don't have any sort of competition or regulatory uh protection
00:51:47
such that a 14-year-old can establish a relationship with a character AI that confirms their suicidal ideiation. [ __ ] that. So, there are story. There are all sorts of rents that have
00:51:58
been incrementally going up. We're like a frog in boiling water and we wake up and we're like, "Our kids are a threat.
00:52:03
Our prices are out of [ __ ] control." Do you realize the biggest corporate tax cut in history would be one if China and
00:52:09
the US made up and and they leveraged their manufacturing and we leveraged our IP to get along again? But the second
00:52:15
biggest tax cut in history would be the breakup of Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet. So he didn't do that. So one I mean I when I read his thing, it made sense. It's like AI has already taken care of
00:52:27
this. the market has already sort of taken care of this. What what what it's not happening now. That's the end of it.
00:52:33
I mean like look these these companies huge victory. They're all at the White House today by the way. All these tech
00:52:38
people except for Elon for for this took years in the making and this is where it ends. This is where
00:52:46
and and they're even thinking of appealing it. Like it's not they don't want to have to do anything. They want to do anything. I mean,
00:52:52
they're saying they're basically the slap on the wrist is, okay, you can't have that $24 billion unilateral
00:52:58
agreement, but there's probably a way around that. Yeah. And again, the market, which tends to be
00:53:03
an unemotional arbiter driven on, you know, simply fear and greed or it's not politicized that takes in millions of
00:53:10
points of lights, sent Alphabet and Apple for two of their biggest share, you know, day day share gains in the
00:53:16
last leaving our market far too aligned aligned to tech companies. with us another we'll get to that next next week. But speaking of monopolies, by the way, um Newsmax has filed a lawsuit
00:53:27
accusing Fox as a monopoly and suppressing I mean it's they looks like they had detectives following Chris Ry
00:53:34
ready or whatever his name is. A monopoly in suppressing right-wing competitors. The lawsuit alleges Fox News coerces distributors into
00:53:40
exclusionary agreements and had used intimidation tactics to hurt Newsmax, including uh hiring private detective
00:53:47
firms to investigate Newsmax executives. I mean, this is a rooting for the bullets here, Scott situation, but I
00:53:53
don't know how you win this law. This is insane. So, they were they were a sharp elbowed competitor. Oh, you're kidding.
00:53:59
It's Fox News. What I mean, so they sent detectives. Too bad. Like, it's Rupert [ __ ] Murdoch.
00:54:05
What do you think he's going to do? He's going to find out that you like are dating a goat. That's what's going to
00:54:10
happen here. Like, that's and he's going to use it or use it in some fashion. I just I don't know. and then pushing um
00:54:17
coercing distributors into not distributing it. I don't know. I mean, people want to have Fox News on their
00:54:22
programs. I don't know. O just got on YouTube. So, I mean, to me, that's the that's the end of this case. O just got on YouTube, right? Yeah. I don't I don't see who cares.
00:54:33
You know more about this than I do. I don't see any legal merit in this. All right. Uh it to me it seems like a play by
00:54:39
Newsmax just to be in the news cycle and get get PR. Yeah. Uh, I don't think this case is
00:54:44
going to go anywhere, but what is happening here is really dramatic. I mean, Fox News viewership down 30%,
00:54:51
MSNBC down 27%. CNN down 42%. Do you know what happens when your business is down year 42%. You literally can't fire people fast
00:55:02
enough. That's that's a meltdown. What? Your business has been cut in half in a third to half your costs are fixed costs. Meaning all of a sudden you have literally no money. And you know who's
00:55:14
you know who's doing this, Cara? You know what the who the culprit is? I don't know. It's not me and Rachel Maddox cuz we're great. But go ahead.
00:55:20
Sorry. It's Cara Swisser. Okay, hold on. Let's just do the math. The 25 to 54 demo. That's the core demo.
00:55:28
Mhm. They're the only demo that matters to advertisers because people younger than that are either in college or their
00:55:34
parents make their purchase decisions. People older than that get smart and start spending money on health care and
00:55:40
and saving money for their kids. People 25 to 54 are still in their mating ears,
00:55:45
which leads to irrational decisions, which leads to margin. They buy expensive coffee, Brunella, Cuchinelli,
00:55:51
Range Rovers, because they're still in their mating ears and still trying to to impress other people and signal. That is
00:55:56
all they care about. Generously, generously, a third of MSNBC viewers are in the core demo. No, CNN. Let's do CNN. The average CNN show gets 92,000
00:56:09
viewers. That's down 55%. Times.3, it's probably less than that. There only 27,000 people on average watching CNN shows that advertisers care about. Let's go to Pivot.
00:56:22
We get 400,000 downloads every episode. 400,000. 70% of our listeners are in the
00:56:29
core demo. We're getting 10 times the core demo, right, as the average CNN show.
00:56:36
So, what is happening? Our revenues are up 40% this year because everyone's figured out that the average MSNBC viewer is a 70-year-old white woman who's already decided who she's voting for and is done buying Sephora products.
00:56:49
She's just like, "No, I'm just going to let things catheters or catheterss." the and
00:56:55
meanwhile the average podcast listener is a 34 year old male who makes 150 grand a year.
00:57:00
That is the great white rhino for average. You know, there's stuff they could do. I always I like everyone's like, "Oh,
00:57:06
they're over." I'm like, "Why manic?" No, I'm not. No, no, because if you make a great product, people will come. I'm
00:57:12
sorry. You could do a lot with it. There's a lot of assets there. And I don't think it's going, you know, I just did a long interview with John Malone,
00:57:18
which was a kicker. Um, you know, he likes to trash and it's really great actually. He's so complex a thinker. He,
00:57:24
you know, he's a self-discover one of the smartest people in the history of media. He really is. I have to say he's also a
00:57:29
crot crotchy old fantastically amusing guy. Um, you know, I read in one thing where someone said John's been out on
00:57:36
the plains and the mountains too long and his mind has like gone crazy. And he laughed and laughed. He just he's got a
00:57:41
good sense of humor. Um, that aside, I think you I think his we had an argument. I was like I was like making
00:57:47
it centrist is not the answer. It's making it interesting for people. Right. There is you if you make an interesting
00:57:54
product with talented reporting and I think he is right about this. He said people really like news and if you deliver it right. It's correct. He goes I he goes I get thought of as I want it
00:58:05
centrist. I don't want it centrist. You know he he lets Fox off the hook quite a bit. Like he's like well they're
00:58:11
entertainment most of it. Right. They're not news. They're entertainment. So that's a different thing. I think that's
00:58:16
a canard. But I think if you figure out a way to to make it entertaining and you
00:58:22
bring cost into line, there's no reason a great brand like that couldn't do well that they started by started by the
00:58:27
great Ted Turner, by the way. Um, I just feel like it's just not, you know, a lot of these companies, not just CNN, have
00:58:34
sort of not understood what their what the assignment is and then they have way too many costs as you as you and I know.
00:58:41
Um, but some things are popular. Some things like, oddly enough, let me tell you a quick story. Last night I brought
00:58:48
Louis friend Ben Berman who I love is one of his friends from high school because he really loves Caitlyn uh
00:58:54
Collins show and he he watches it all the time. He thinks it's great and he couldn't he was like I was like I'm
00:59:00
bringing I'm just bring I'm just I've just brought down the demo for your show right now by bringing him here. I brought him in to CNN and he was
00:59:06
thrilled. So there is interest, you know, and this guy's a pretty good consumer of all kinds of things, not
00:59:11
just CNN. And he's I don't think he's a unicorn. And I think if you give people something they like and latch on to, any
00:59:18
media property can be good. That's my argument. Okay. There's two things. When you have
00:59:24
still very profitable but declining businesses, which pretty accurately describes cable news or the cable TV
00:59:31
world, there's a way to make money and add shareholder value, but it's to stop injecting Botox into grandma such that
00:59:36
she looks freakish. It's to make her comfortable and consolidate. There there isn't a reason for CBS, ABC, and NBC to
00:59:43
have three different newsrooms. They're just not that different. They're reporting the same [ __ ] thing, starching it, trying to make it
00:59:49
interesting, and then showing some guy who's raising dogs in Alaska alone and some inspiring story so we're not just
00:59:54
totally depressed about it. It's the same [ __ ] thing over and over. And whoever's more attractive, yeah,
00:59:59
you tune into that person. The back end can be consolidated. It's very easy. I I
01:00:04
told you one of my best investments ever was a Yellow Pages company. And we knew the business was going away, but we just went around and bought every Yellow
01:00:10
Pages company, held on to the best salespeople, and as long as you cut costs faster than the revenue declines, you can have a good business. This
01:00:17
business is not coming back. And the reason why is the following. You're right. A great product always works. But
01:00:23
what you're the three key words here are means of production. The means of production for
01:00:30
the Co Bear Show costs $und00 million. They make 60 million which means they lose 40 million. Steven Colbear is an amazing talent. It'll be an amazing product on podcasts. And of the 200
01:00:42
people that work on that organization, eight will make it onto the podcast arc. They will do 20 million in topline
01:00:48
revenue instead of 60. But he will continue to make 10 million. But unfortunately, the 194 people that don't
01:00:53
make it onto the ark are going to be getting their real estate licenses. The means of production at CNN and traditional media are just
01:01:01
unsustainable. high. So, this is what's going to happen. All that amazing talent and they they do
01:01:06
have amazing talent, amazing brands, is going to be armed down. What are podcasts? Podcasts are now TV shows with a strong audio overlay. This is what you're going to have. You're going to
01:01:17
have Caris on with Cara Swisser. Mark, my prediction, Mark Thompson is going to call Cara Swisser and say, "We're going
01:01:24
to run on with Cara Swisser. I want you to do the following things. We're very talented. We're going to make this a little bit more TV friendly. We're going
01:01:30
to reduce it to 21 minutes so we can pelt nine minutes of ads. We're going to run it. And here's the thing, they don't
01:01:36
need to get as many viewers because you can pro. We're going to do 10 million bucks in revenue this year. What do we
01:01:42
have? Eight people. That's one and a4 million per professional. Cable news is averaging two to $400,000 per
01:01:49
professional. The means of production, it's a cost issue. And a lot of these companies may not be able to transition
01:01:55
their means of production without some sort of radical restructure. You could you could there is glimmers of interest
01:02:02
if and it's a great that's I think they're all if they do including Fox News let me just say they could they
01:02:09
could if there if it's done right they well yeah well hold on to let me give you an example Megan Kelly is getting bigger
01:02:15
audiences than she did on Fox with six people. Well that's what she Yes. She's a very entrepreneurial person. Lo
01:02:22
entrepreneurial quite frankly this is very self-absorbed. I've decided unless it's I'm someone I'm friends with like
01:02:28
Stephanie or Anderson or Michael, you know, I'm name dropping right now. I don't the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
01:02:35
Look at the viewership. Look at the viewership. And not only that, in order to get ratings, they have [ __ ] food
01:02:41
fights like whatever that show is with Abby Phillips. It's like no longer news. They're everyone's becoming Foxy.
01:02:48
Foxy. Foxy Fox can do Fox. Unless you're on the View or Morning Joe, if you have
01:02:54
your own platforms, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. There's some prestige to being seen on MSNBC. There's You do
01:03:01
it every once in a while. I used to go on once or twice a week. I don't go on anymore. Yeah, I know you don't. Juice is not
01:03:06
worth the squeeze. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Truly enjoying today. I'm
01:03:12
so glad you're back. Thanks, Cara. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Can I do a short one?
01:03:18
Of course. May I do a short one? Um, so I um, uh, right now as we record, Trump is set to host a big tech leaders including Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Alman in
01:03:28
the Rose Garden Club as he's calling it. I think he's paved it over and put up a parking lot. Um, interestingly, Elon was
01:03:35
not on the invite list, and Trump had had just recently given an interview with Scott Jennings, speaking of Food
01:03:41
Fight, uh, who's on that Abby Phillips show. Um, and uh, and he wasn't on the list, which was somewhat interesting. But Trump said that Elon has to come back into the fold. He has to. And I
01:03:53
thought, does he does he have to? Anyway, I just was interested to see what would happening. I'm not so sure
01:03:59
he'll come back in the fold. He may back JBD Vance. He may back someone else. He may stay in the Republican fold because
01:04:05
the Democrats won't be having him anymore. Uh, but uh, but it was just interesting to me that Elon wasn't
01:04:10
there. And I I'm not so sure he's going to be as cooperative as they think he is. He's not a cooperative person.
01:04:17
That's my prediction. I think he's got bigger fish to fry right now. I think he's on the verge. I think he's on the verge of losing 60 80%
01:04:23
of his net worth. I was in Brazil last week. Every time I got in an Uber, it was like this nice, clean little Teslaike car.
01:04:30
Yeah. Called the BYD. BYD. Do you know the BYD Sunny that goes for $8,000? Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:35
I mean, they are doing that. The CCP has asked automobile manufacturers to stop lowering their prices. Yeah. You can get a decent brand new car in China. They're cool. They have all these
01:04:48
cool features,000. Yeah. And they're cool. The average the average price of a car in the US new car is $50,000. The
01:04:56
average price in China $21,000. you want to make things more affordable for young people, uh, partner with the Chinese and
01:05:03
adopt these types of dark, you know, dark factory manufacturing techni competition. Anyways, by the way, Elon said that 80% of Tesla's value will eventually be
01:05:14
optimist, the humanoid robots the company's been developing. I don't Mark Benny have put one up and it couldn't
01:05:19
get him a Coke, which like Mark, stop it. I I don't want to talk about my core business because it's about to it's
01:05:24
imploding. So, I'm going to create a bunch of the Reban. That was my favorite. Oh, remember that? The Robovven. Oh,
01:05:31
what happened? The Reovven robots. All right. What's your prediction? Mine is boring, but it's the boring stuff that moves moves the needle. So, the appellet court basically said that
01:05:41
these tariffs are illegal. That Trump illegally enacted uh the war kind of emergency powers act when this wasn't really an emergency. Bush did it after the 9/11 attacks where you can actually
01:05:55
take take exceptional action around pricing under the oposes of some sort of national security threat and the
01:06:01
appellet court has basically said no you really this this doesn't justify the emergency such that you can do
01:06:06
unilateral tariffs without congressional approval if it goes to the Supreme Court. Now a lot of people have said
01:06:13
that he has workarounds. there's other ways he could implement tariffs. If the administration were to decide to try and
01:06:20
figure out a way to declare victory and leave and walk back these tariffs and say, "Oh, we never we never intended to keep them. It was a means of negotiating. We have all these great new
01:06:31
deals and frameworks and agreements that and if if Uruguay decides to implement,
01:06:36
you know, more a different trade agreement and these are all frameworks, not agreements, fine, they're allowed to
01:06:42
do that. But if they decided or the Supreme Court upholds this and the Trump administration figures out a way to spin
01:06:48
this and walk back the tariffs which have gone from an average of 3% to 17% and what do we see on average for every 1% increase in tariffs, we see a 10 basis point decrease in GDP. So our GDP
01:07:02
growth, right, was supposed to be around 2.8. It's been cut by h cut in half to 1.4. That may not sound like a lot, but
01:07:09
that's the difference between doubling the economy every 30 years versus doubling the economy every 50 years. If
01:07:15
they figure if the Supreme Court upholds the that this was in fact these tariffs
01:07:21
were illegal and the Trump administration decides to try and figure out a way to use this as cloud cover to
01:07:26
walk the tariffs back, declare victory and leave off a [ __ ] disastrous policy from one of the two most dangerous people in the world right now, Peter Navaro, second only to RFK Jr. you
01:07:38
are going to see one of the biggest weeks in Dow and NASDAQ history because all of a sudden they're going to go, "Okay, we're going to add another one or one and a half% GDP growth
01:07:52
when we back away and we pull our heads out of our asses." Let's go, Brandon. If the Supreme Court
01:07:58
upholds that this is these tariffs are illegal and the Trump administration decides not to double down and walk
01:08:05
these things back, a step back from the wrong direction is a step in the right direction. If those two things happen,
01:08:11
you're going to see the biggest day in the markets of the last few years because the underlying economy has been
01:08:17
surprisingly robust. Jobs are jobs are starting to get tightened up, but go ahead. Yeah, but if
01:08:23
we take away if we take away this nonsense of the tariffs and say, "Okay, just kidding.
01:08:29
We're declaring victory and leave. We got these great deals, but we're going to pull them back to where they were."
01:08:34
Overnight, we accrete one and a half% GDP growth. Incredible. So that that decision, I mean, this was
01:08:42
a big What if the opposite happens? Well, I think the the bottom line is what you're seeing is again the tariffs are yet another transfer of wealth from the 493
01:08:55
old economy companies in the S&P to the seven new economy companies because Broadcom to a certain extent Nvidia with
01:09:01
this this this vig they've got to give which is just socialism in general the companies that have been hamstrung in terms of their ability to plan or actually see their costs go up and shareholder value go down are exactly
01:09:14
the wrong companies We want a hamstring right now. It's the 49. It's Caterpillar. It's PNG. Whereas the big
01:09:20
guys who now represent 40% of the market have been totally unfettered. So you're
01:09:26
helping. They're in the rose garden right now. Clump. You're helping seven companies when you punish 493.
01:09:32
Yep. So all that's happened here is a transfer of wealth from old economy companies that actually needed the help
01:09:37
more than anyone to the new guys who are the last companies that needed it. So, I think you would see a a really healthy a
01:09:45
a really healthy rise in the S&P 493, if you will, if they do away with these tariffs because Meta doesn't care about tariffs. It really doesn't it really doesn't. No, it doesn't affect them. They're not
01:09:56
making anything. But this is going to be this will be the biggest market moving decision uh in a
01:10:03
while. If this happens, this is a big deal. It's giving them I almost see it as an opportunity for the Trump administration to declare victory and
01:10:09
leave and say, "Well, we I never I'm a gamesman. I'm an incredible dealmaker. I threatened these things. We got amazing
01:10:16
deals, but now we're the market's getting a little yippy." He'll say something. So, we're walking them back. But this was a huge victory for us. I I
01:10:24
forced them to get, you know, come to the table and do all these great economic deals. But anyways, my prediction, if the Supreme Court holds
01:10:30
it up and the Trump administration signals they're going to roll some of these ridiculous tariffs back and we're going to accrete overnight one to one
01:10:36
and a half% additional GDP growth. Watch the markets scream. All right. I love it. I love it. Next on
01:10:43
our next show, we will be talking about uh RFK Jr. What a [ __ ] murderer that guy is. He's a murderer 100%. Anyway, uh
01:10:51
the Florida vaccine thing. Scott, I was a little concerned about you polio. Uh, I had for I think what 17 or 14 vaccines by the time I was 12. Well, that's the problem.
01:11:03
Fluoride. I know. I mean, that guy who's the Florida doctor in charge is a [ __ ] idiot. Like that guy
01:11:10
is like so stupid and arrogant. I've never seen such a performance. That's Dantis announcing that he still
01:11:16
believes he can be president and wants to be the but it's ridiculous. It was funny. There was a picture of two women who had so much Botox in them and says, "Don't let anyone tell you what to put in your body. We don't want to put
01:11:27
substances." I was like, "Yeah, no, you don't need any more time." I know. You'll be preserved till all of
01:11:32
etern. They'll find you hundreds of years from now in a crypt and they'll be like, "Oh, look, they're still here." Anyway, we'll talk about him.
01:11:39
It's been a great summer for Rebella and Mas Marvelous. Mrs. Measles, like you said,
01:11:45
like a reuniting tour. By the way, I saw Oasis. I couldn't be any wider. I went to that Taylor Swift Con concert and I
01:11:51
saw every white 15-year-old girl. This is where their parents go. They go to the Oasis concert. How was it? Many people have spoken of
01:11:56
it. Tim Miller loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I I like Oasis. I didn't love them. I went to the
01:12:01
concert. It was amazing. But I love the backstory. It's two brothers. Yeah. They hated each other. And they hated each other. And I thought
01:12:07
money solves all problems. A promoter came to That's why we're together again. That tour on a much bigger level.
01:12:13
Supposedly that tour is going to generate a billion dollars. I went to Metife. The stadium was packed and people were rocking.
01:12:19
I know this was they they've done a good job. They've done a good job. The two brothers said, "I hate you. I hate me,
01:12:25
but I like $50 million more than I hate you." Yes. They decided to put their differences. I hear they're bringing it. I hear
01:12:31
they're bringing it. Like there's a couple of concerts I've seen videos of that I'm like, you need to stop concerting David Lee Rock.
01:12:37
Oh, and I saw Lady Gaga. Oh, that was supposed to be a great concert, too. So different. It was such a contrast between old rock and roll. Oasis is just
01:12:45
a couple of white guys who grew up playing the guitar with great voices. They're just rock and rollers.
01:12:50
Lady Gaga is Broadway meets cinema meets opera meets ballet. The it is a it is a real performance. I heard that. I heard that. I want to see it. I think I want to go out for
01:13:04
different go see Dolly Parton in in uh at Las Vegas. Can you buy me a ticket? I'd love to see Dolly Parton. $3,000 tickets. But
01:13:11
is that what I She deserves every penny. You know what? We should go. You and I should go. Anyway, we'll be traveling a
01:13:17
lot this this this fall. Anyway, uh we want to we want to hear from you. Send us your question about business tech or
01:13:23
whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for a show or call
01:13:28
uh 8551 Pivot. Uh Scott, as I said, I'm thrilled you're back. Uh the kids missed
01:13:33
you. Um okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube
01:13:39
channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Namon, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin,
01:13:45
and Kate Gallagher. Ernie Entertainer this episode. Jim Mle edited this video. Thanks also to Dub Bros, Ma and Dan
01:13:51
Shalon. Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast
01:13:56
platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine nymag.com/pod.
01:14:02
We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, Zoe, Taylor, Lara, Kate,
01:14:11
thank you so much for uh giving me this much time and uh doing such a great job. It's very generous of everybody. Um
01:14:18
anyways, just just very grateful time off and well, Jude knows it. Drew's here right now. Okay.
01:14:23
Um anyways, he's I'm I'm rubbing my fingers through his hair as we speak off camera. Anyways, thank you everybody and
01:14:30
it's great to be back.