00:00:00
Like it's it's sad. He's 53 years old. And we talk about him as if he's a teenager. He's about to start getting a
00:00:06
AP mail. Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisser. And I'm Scott
00:00:20
Galloway. I flew all night and boy are my arms tired. I did it just Where did you come in from? DC to San Francisco.
00:00:28
DC. Oh, you're you're in your favorite place, San Francisco. Indeed. I'm And you're you're collecting a bunch of
00:00:33
awards. And you're also Look what I'm wearing. I know. You're wearing thing. It's very I'm wearing a Bill Maher shirt
00:00:39
because I know you're going on Bel Mer. I'm hugely jelly. And I'm also wearing my Beverly Hills Hotel hat. And I need you to go down to the pool, go to the polo lounge, have a few makers and
00:00:50
gingers, say hello to Jorge, the concierge there. And any any Russian woman that gives you eye contact, return her eye contact. Um, it you go down to
00:01:01
the counter for breakfast, go to the pool, put on a big pair of black sunglasses, and any modestly attractive
00:01:07
woman that walks by and put an unlit cigarette in your mouth and go, "Jackie, marry me. I make you very happy woman."
00:01:13
And then, I'm doing none of this. I am so good there. Out. I am in and out. I come back to San Francisco because I have to get a second award on Saturday and also do a charity second award
00:01:25
thing. I am so by the way Chich and Chong and Cara Swisser. That was not the crossover I was expecting. Yes, they're Oh, they're the main guests. Yeah. And then Kevin McCarthy and I are on the Kevin McCarthy. Oh, at least one of you
00:01:38
has a dick and it's not the former speaker. What? What? I don't even know. I don't get it. It's fine. Whatever. I'm
00:01:44
saying that you bring more masculine energy than Kevin McCarthy and that he lacks a bad backbone and testicles which
00:01:51
produce uh uh or testicles that produce testosterone which make you more risk aggressive and have certain leadership skills which he brought none of. Yeah, I know. I don't know why. I don't know
00:02:02
why. Well, and it really paid off for the guy. All that ass kissing really paid off. If he does an ass kiss the way
00:02:07
the Trump cabinet did yesterday to him, the suckupery. It was like, you know, and Coulter even was like, it was like Kim Jong-. Yeah, but she's getting paid. He's not They all find their backbone
00:02:17
when they're out of his orbit, which does us no [ __ ] good. You watch tomorrow, he'll be or Friday, he'll be
00:02:23
really reasonable and because they all find sanity and all realize I want to go on I want to be a guest on MSNBC. I want a corporate board to hire me and realize I'm not as [ __ ] crazy when it m than
00:02:34
when it actually mattered when I'm supposed to be. I think these people sound like they believe it. They do.
00:02:40
They They were such suckups and then crazy RFK Jr. You you noted that the whole thing about child Oh, the guy who said that when he was a child he there
00:02:51
were no kids with diabetes. My favorite one was that the Spanish flu was a vaccine induced pandemic. I mean, and
00:02:58
then the whole child trafficking thing. What was he talking about? What on earth? They must sit there and be like
00:03:05
that. That's like one of the It's so weird. It is like Kim. It's like North Korea. It was crazy.
00:03:11
Yourself with the with the dolls. Nobody can have any dolls. You can have two dolls. But let me ask you this. Do you
00:03:17
think there's do you think there's any veracity to the notion that Trump says, "All right, I want people to look away
00:03:23
from the fact that I'm crashing the economy and deporting four-year-olds with stage four cancer." So, just be as [ __ ] crazy as you want. If if people
00:03:30
want to have their hair on fire about the stupid [ __ ] you say, have at it. Anything that distracts them from the fact that I am I am crashing the global
00:03:38
economy. the the US is literally going to be like an estate sale where there's no will and people just show up and
00:03:44
fight over like mom's, you know, mom's sub-zero refrigerator. Every country in the world is now saying, "Oh, we want
00:03:51
that part of your trade." Yeah. Oh, we want your PhD students. It was It was something. It was something. And we'll
00:03:57
talk about it more, but seriously, it was so like I've never seen I mean, you're supposed to be sort of peppy at
00:04:03
those cabinet meetings, but not like that. It was like ew. And the thing is Donald Trump was the craziest of them
00:04:09
and I was like this is like they were competing for crazy and once again he wins he wins the pri in this case like
00:04:16
when he's always saying he wins at the golf club this time he won on that particular praising himself. He kept
00:04:22
adding to their praise. Oh, don't forget the firemen. Don't forget the I don't know. I'm excited to see you with
00:04:27
Speaker McCarthy. He reminds me of my dog and that is when I ask him to speak he will but it doesn't mean [ __ ] anything. If he depends it and and that
00:04:35
was a joke. You didn't even give me a laugh on that. No, I didn't. Sorry. Go say it again. When Speaker McCarthy is similar to my
00:04:41
dog, and that is when I ask him to speak, he will, but it doesn't mean anything. I think that's really good. I
00:04:48
did. I think that's really good. I expected a laugh from you. I need your affirmation, Cara Swisser. Sorry. I'm
00:04:53
sorry. Here in California, I want to go to that Bel Mara afterparty with Chich and Chong. What is the likelihood someone's going to spark up? I'm going to get a whole bag of weed. That's what I'm going to do. Listen, they invited
00:05:04
you. Speaking of weed, they invite you to club random. They want you in that little Well, you should go for your book
00:05:09
tour. That intimidates me. I No, it's like up in the hills at his beautiful house. No, no, but they get high. Bill
00:05:16
gets smarter when he gets high. If I got high, he'd want to talk about transhumanism. I'd be like, "Dude, you got any frozen snicker bars?" I just
00:05:22
don't I get dumber when I'm high. Comfortable. You'd like it. You could have drinking. You don't have to get high. You don't have to get I can get
00:05:28
high. He intimidates me. I don't I I don't really know the guy. I He doesn't hang out. He hangs out with everyone after the show but me. Yeah. And I don't
00:05:35
really know him. He kind of intimidates me. Disdain you to Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. Scott five times. Everything
00:05:42
happened to you in high school and it continues to this day. Oh, you think I think what you think? You think Amy
00:05:48
Atkins not not letting me French kiss her and then going to the prom with some other guy that was three years older.
00:05:54
You think I still remember that? You think that still makes me insecure? Yeah. You think the four women I asked
00:06:00
to prom who said no. You know, you think that doesn't have resonance. Prom thing. I'm not going to I told you I went to
00:06:05
four proms each year, but I'm not going to go. Here we [ __ ] go. In between in between collecting awards and having sex with straight men. I'm not even gay. Straight. But go ahead. Sorry. I'm just
00:06:18
saying. I'm way too straight. Anyway, I'm also How much a gay man would I make? Oh my god. It's like my ex used to
00:06:24
say, gay by day, straight by night. Okay. Okay. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. I'm a little slow cuz it's early here in California. Beautiful sunrise happening right now. Um, we lots
00:06:36
going on. Microsoft and the Meta's latest earnings. Wow, those were pretty impressive. And Donald Trump getting
00:06:42
pissed with Amazon and then kissing because when they kissed his ass, it was fine. But first, Tesla's board was
00:06:48
reportedly looking for a successor to Elon Musk last month. According to the Wall Street Journal, Journal says the board got frustrated with falling sales
00:06:54
in Musk's DC focus. you think? And told Elon he needed to publicly announce he would spend uh more time on Tesla.
00:07:00
Tesla's board chair, Robin Denhelm, denies the reports. She has almost no credibility. She just backs up her back
00:07:07
her tr her trunk and they fill it with money, posting on X that they are absolutely false. Not just false, but
00:07:14
absolutely false. Meanwhile, M said goodbye to the President Trump's cabinet on Wednesday claiming Doge has so far
00:07:20
saved $ 160 billion. It's pathetic, actually. And most people think that number is not even accurate. He did so
00:07:27
wearing not one but two Trump hats. It was so so so painful. Let's listen to the goodbye. You know they say I wear a lot of hats and as you can see it's true. Even my hat has a hat.
00:07:44
Um so um you know the American people voted for secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending, and that's what they've
00:07:57
gotten. Uh tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first 100 days. As everyone has said, it's more than has
00:08:02
been accomplished in any administration before uh ever. Period. More lies. More lies. Well, I do agree that I do agree that more has been accomplished. It's just how you would define accomplished.
00:08:14
I think in a 100 days the entire world economy is being reshaped uh around I mean the kind of post World War II o order has absolutely been is being reshaped and you're going to see I mean
00:08:29
first off prime minister Carney was elected because of Trump and you're about to see the same thing happen in Australia because the other party has
00:08:36
become associated with you know the other party went on kind of this DEI they were trying to take a page out of
00:08:42
Trump's notebook and they realized Oh, this isn't working out well, right? Yeah. Even though, you know, they would
00:08:48
do well there. They were Murdoch there and stuff like that. So, so the Tesla, the hat thing, I just it's so painful.
00:08:55
He's worn severe he wore the big hat and then he had the gothic like it's it's sad. He's 53 years old. It's so sad. I
00:09:02
mean, and we talk about him as if he's a teenager. He's about to start getting a AP mail. Honestly, tell me about the
00:09:09
lead the Tesla board thing now. They're denying it, but it makes they have got to be open to lawsuits and everything
00:09:15
else, even if Elon runs the place, but the numbers don't lie. I mean, and gravity is a thing. Like, what what do
00:09:23
you I don't I believe they were looking for a CEO or I believe they told him he needed to publicly say he's going to
00:09:29
spend more time at Tesla. Yeah, I don't So, I don't know. Obviously, we don't know if this is true or not. And if it
00:09:34
is true, it reflects a couple things. One, there's someone leaking it. Um, two, it probably means the stock is, and
00:09:42
don't, this isn't financial advice, is a really great short right now because it means that they they're going to cut
00:09:49
this guy a lot of slack because he's built an incredible company and they've all made a [ __ ] ton of money because of Elon Musk. And so, there's got to be a
00:09:57
ton of goodwill just based on what they've put up with so far. They have put up with more aberrant um,
00:10:03
unacceptable behavior from a CEO than any board in history. And so, So for them to cross the line means that there's abs fuckingutolutely nothing in the product pipeline that is going to
00:10:16
that is going to stop this company from crashing that it's about it's going it's going to go sometimes its darkest before
00:10:21
it's pitch black. It feels like if they are in fact looking for taking the bold step of looking for a co it means that
00:10:28
they look at this company like wow there is we are we are in really um big trouble and I mean it just the but the thing I didn't agree with is that people said
00:10:40
who would take that job a lot of people would take that job okay before I get to that tell me you've been on boards I
00:10:45
have not give me the strategy of leaking something like this I think it ab the journal has been right about the drug
00:10:52
use it was right about they did a lot of board stuff so they know that board that has been very accurate has turned out to
00:10:58
be accurate they even did a story about him sleeping with Sergey Brin's uh uh wife at the time accurate the vice presidential candidate yeah right her um
00:11:09
anyway I just feel like they wouldn't write this if they didn't have it I I have a lot of regard for the journal and
00:11:14
so someone on that board was telling them or more than one person or there was some messaging happening here to
00:11:20
Elon himself So what if you're on a board? What how does this look? Leaks usually are okay.
00:11:29
Our stocks getting so so so on a metal level, it is amazing how much boards will put up with when the stock is going
00:11:35
up. And it's amazing how much unfair blame they'll put on the CEO when the stock is going down. This notion that boards this [ __ ] virtue signaling
00:11:46
narrative that they adopted in the odds that it's about stakeholder value. It's not. It's about shareholder value. If
00:11:51
the shares are going up in price, you know, he can be banging his assistant and her dog and we'll find reasons to
00:11:58
to, you know, say you're you're going to rehab, but it's better now. And, you know, we'll figure out a reason to bring you back or maintain you're the CEO and call you chairman. When the stock's
00:12:10
going down, uh, you're in trouble. You're on the green mile all the time. Uh, at least for two or three years. A
00:12:16
new CEO gets two to three years. And a lot of CEOs that are there for a long time will populate the board with their
00:12:22
golf buddies and the the board becomes ineffective. In terms of actual leagues, sometimes it's a a board level thing where they say, "All right, there's a narrative out there that we're an irresponsible board and that we need to
00:12:35
find a new CEO and so so let's leak it that we're looking for a new CEO." I don't think he would have wanted this
00:12:41
message to be leaked because it makes him look bad. When you have I've been on boards where there's leaks where there's
00:12:47
a proxy fight and the board is at each other's throat and then one or more people start leaking [ __ ] That's when
00:12:52
boards start to really digress and dissolve into chaos because nobody trusts each other. Everyone's like, "Okay, who the [ __ ] here is leaking."
00:12:59
And most of the boards I have been on, generally speaking, they don't leak. They don't they just don't um they
00:13:06
realize it's bad for the bad for the governance. It creates tremendous distrust within and among board members.
00:13:12
They don't want to work with each other. You know, there's two board meetings, one of the people on X side, one on Y
00:13:18
side. So, I don't I I'm confused a little bit by this because they don't want to announce this
00:13:26
until they have a new CEO. So, someone leaking this let me I don't think it's on the board. I don't think it came from
00:13:31
the board. You don't Okay. So, um when you Who would be the CEO? You said that. I I I mean, who who would do this? And more to the point, if he's running it, what does he do? What's his what does he
00:13:43
do except go on and on and try to do this hypnotic thing? And by the way, Henry Blah wrote a piece about my idea
00:13:50
and likes it. The idea of merging Tesla with XAI, FYI. Yep. I said I rendered you speechless, which I did, which I did, which isn't easy to do. So, who would be the CEO or what should Elon do
00:14:01
as CEO? Whatever. Um, I'm sorry. Repeat the question, Cara. who should be the CEO? Should they replace him? And if they don't, and he is the CEO in this these days, what
00:14:13
should he do? Because he seems entirely uninterested in the business. Or pretending it's another business. We're
00:14:19
going to have millions of Optimus Primes. This is this is a a data company or we're going to have robo taxis. None
00:14:26
of which exist. No products exist. It feels like a Cybert truck part two essentially, which was a huge dud by the
00:14:33
way. Yeah. Look, I don't the who should run it. Um, so first off, if he he he shouldn't have been CEO two or three years ago when he started committing securities fraud and started
00:14:45
getting really awful accusations and decided that he wanted to be CEO of three or four companies who shouldn't have been CEO. They should have said
00:14:51
hats in case you're interested. If you want to do this, you can be chairman and have huge input, but we need to bring in
00:14:57
a full-time person who's CEO and has the license to make decisions and has accountability for these decisions. In
00:15:03
terms of who should be CEO, I think it needs to be someone from the automobile sector and there's a lot of great there
00:15:08
are a lot of great leaders in the automobile sector. Um I I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being someone um
00:15:15
from outside of the US. I think that person in their contract says, "I have total support of the board and if something goes wrong and you fire me because I'm not getting along with Elon. I'm getting the most ridiculous [ __ ]
00:15:26
severance package because this guy's going to need or gal is going to need the mother of all kind of parachutes.
00:15:33
They could go more design or more cool product or something around manufacturing. Pick someone from the cloud or something. But I think the
00:15:39
automobile sector is so much about I think it's such a unique industry and so complicated and so much about supply
00:15:45
chain that I think they would want someone from the automobile. What if he stays? What
00:15:50
should he do? Because he's keeps he's the only one who can do his flim flamy around the robots and the he should do
00:15:56
what you're suggesting. He should do a slide of hand and merge it with XAI and pretend that it's not an automobile
00:16:01
company to get people to look away from the fact that his automobile sale his pipeline is weak and his sales are crashing. Yeah. No. Okay. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm sure he
00:16:11
looks like unhappy to be back working on that. He seems entirely unexited by it, which is is hard to do. I understand
00:16:17
that feeling of you don't want to keep doing the same thing. But um tell me about it. But he made a disaster doge.
00:16:23
So, he's going to make another disaster here cuz he's uninterested. Um, President Trump sat down, speaking of
00:16:29
Flim Flamry, uh, President Trump sat down for a contentious interview marking 100 days in office with ABC News Terry
00:16:36
Moran, uh, who's he's never heard of, apparently. It was so ridiculous. Some highlights. I gave you this chance,
00:16:42
Terry, and you [ __ ] me. Um, in regards to Pete Hegath, the president remained optimistic, but when asked, he wouldn't
00:16:48
say he had 100% confidence in him, calling it a stupid question, which is his go-to. Trump dismissed backlash to
00:16:54
terrorists, saying they were just what people voted for and everyone's going to be just fine. When discussing the case of Kilmar Argo Garcia, this was a
00:17:01
whopper. When the administration whom the administration sent to El Salvador in in error, Trump referred to a
00:17:07
photoshopped image of MS13 on Garcia's knuckles. Let's listen. And you'll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on
00:17:20
his knuckles he had MS3. There's a dispute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS13 on his knuckles. Oh, he had
00:17:28
some tattoos that are interpreted that way. But let's move on. Wait a minute. Terry. Terry. Terry. He did not have the
00:17:34
letter MS13. It says MS13. That was Photoshop. U. So, let me That was Photoshop. Terry, you can't do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly,
00:17:46
I never heard of you, but that's okay. Oh my god, he's such a nagger. It's so amazing. Like neag nag neg. But let me
00:17:52
say it it was photoshopped. He didn't he doesn't know that that was trying to say the tattoos on there represented MS13
00:18:00
and someone put those to give reference and he he's insisting that MS13 was actually on there. It it was total like I or just just lying almost continually.
00:18:14
Everything he does he breathes he lies. Um any thoughts on that interview? The thing that struck out for me was first
00:18:20
off, Terry Moran is a world-class journalist. He's been covering the Supreme Court and the I believe the White House for a while. He's in this I
00:18:28
thought he put on a master class and I think the big winner here was Terry because this is an impossible position.
00:18:34
You you have to maintain some decorum and dignity and respect for the office. And so when the president says no, you
00:18:40
got to trust me on this. It's this. It's hard. It's really hard to push back. And he was forceful yet dignified. and
00:18:48
attempted to show grace and not just say, "Okay, Mr. President, stop [ __ ] lying. Stop lying, please." See, that's
00:18:54
what I would have done. I would have had to I would have But that's why you'll never interview the president because So
00:19:02
these people have to these people have to walk a very fine line and that is they get criticized if they don't push back on obvious lies. At the same time,
00:19:09
they have to maintain a certain they have to maintain a certain decorum that respects the office. Terry thread that
00:19:15
needle perfectly. It reminded me of that interview on CNBC with Dedra Bolson and Keith Rabois where basically Keith
00:19:21
committed securities fraud over and over and over about Open Door claiming it was profitable and she realtime fact checked
00:19:28
him in a very kind of dignified non-combative way. By the way, I think their stock that stocks off like 70 or
00:19:33
90% since he went on. I journalists who want to give people the benefit of the doubt, want to show some decorum, and you have to show the president a certain
00:19:43
amount of grace. Otherwise, you're here. I'm going to push back on you because I'm an interviewer. So, I I feel like in
00:19:49
that case, the constant lying, this is Biden's, you know, GDP drop. This is this. It's just you it's is it you
00:19:57
cannot let him continue to make things up. It's it's lit. Although what I got the the vibe was as an old person I it
00:20:04
literally brought me to an argument I had with my mom like no it's this no it's absolutely this and I was like it's
00:20:10
not it's not this. Yeah but he got don't you think Terry made it clear to anyone
00:20:15
with an IQ over I don't know 40 that he's he is lying or uninformed and he did it while maintaining some He did he did I was going back and forth on it. I think he should have pulled the picture out and said Mr. president. These
00:20:28
numbers were put on by Photoshop to indicate and been polite that way. This was not actually on his fingers. Here's
00:20:35
the picture of his actual fingers. Can we move on? Did you What's so interesting? It's interesting what the media focuses on. The media is focusing on that. I thought by far the most interesting and damning part of the
00:20:46
interview was when he asked him what the Declaration of Independence fun of it. Yeah. And of course you have the Declaration of Independence. What does it mean to you? Well, it means uh
00:20:59
exactly what it says. It's a declaration. It's a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot
00:21:06
and it's something very special to to our country. It was hilarious. And the look that Terry Moran gave was the same look and Desi Leic said this that when a school teacher decides a kid needs to
00:21:18
see an adolescent psychotherapist, it was the look he was like he's like, "Oh my god, we're in worse trouble than
00:21:24
I thought." Yeah, he definitely this person needs help, you know. Break glass. This is an emergency. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz he said the Declaration was about unity. And Desi Ladic like that is the
00:21:37
only thing it wasn't about. What's interesting though is that just to call some of balls and strikes here. The
00:21:43
people around Biden clearly knew Yeah. he was cognitively impaired and they hid him from the media. Sure did. I think the people around Trump would probably or anyone smart would like to say,
00:21:53
"Let's let's pull back on the media appearances." But there's no way. He thinks he's doing great. He thinks he's
00:21:59
doing great. He thinks he's doing great. He does. You know, with Biden with Biden, they said, "No, don't go on John
00:22:04
Stewart. We're just going to reheat your soup and Nana's coming home." And he listened and he was I told you the well-
00:22:13
behaved guy in the old folks home. And Trump's the one that's like, "Where's the soup? I ordered soup. No, he's the
00:22:20
guy leading water aerobics. Yeah. Well, Joe's leading water aerobics today in regarding the stories of of Korea. Yeah. And how he fought a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
00:22:30
He's doing He does think he's doing great. It's really something. No, he thinks he's killing it. He thinks he's
00:22:36
killing it. He feels really old. Everybody's I have an old I think he feels crazy. I don't see the physical
00:22:42
impairment you see. No, but it's like, well, you don't have an elderly parent you're dealing with who is absolutely
00:22:47
certain they didn't block Amanda on the phone. I did not like she she blocks my son. She she pushes somebody, but it's the longest running argument we ever have. I'm like, you did it. No, I did
00:22:59
not. The phone did it. That's what it feels like. Anyway, um I I'm not going to go into it, but that was a long
00:23:05
argument. Um and I I don't know why I have to be right. I should be like Terry Moore and like, okay, let's move on. No,
00:23:10
but seriously, Terry Moran did it just to again shout out Terry Moran was fantastic. He he handled a very
00:23:16
difficult situation very well, I thought. Anyway, lastly, a federal judge dismantling Apple's control of the app
00:23:21
store and ruling said the Apple violated orders in a 5-year antitrust case bought by Epic Games. In a previous ruling, the
00:23:27
judge ordered Apple to allow apps to use external payments to avoid 30% commission charges. The judge accused
00:23:32
executives of lying, saying Apple created a new system, forcing external sales to be charged 27% commission. Now,
00:23:38
the judge says Apple may no longer take commissions from sales outside the app store. Let me just say, I do not
00:23:44
understand this cuz Apple won almost everything except this one thing and they did not follow it along. Now, the app store is a large part of Apple's hundred billion annual services revenue.
00:23:56
I I don't imagine it's an enormous blow because it's difficult to do those outside external sales, but seemed like
00:24:02
a real error on Apple's part here to do something like petulant like this given how much they won. Look, the the biggest toll booths in the world are Google and
00:24:12
arguably Apple's app store. And to think um your buddy um Barry Diller summarized
00:24:18
it perfectly. This is like a credit card company. The app store provides infrastructure, payment technology,
00:24:24
security, safety, a certain level of of assurance that if if something goes wrong, they vet the stores, they vet the consumers. Um, credit card companies
00:24:34
charge between 1.8 and 3%, Apple charges 30 or 15, I think, if it's recurring revenue. But they have such a lock even though they have I think have about what
00:24:45
40 or 50% market share in the US. I think they have closer to 80 or 90% of actual revenue volume because anyone
00:24:50
with any money has an iOS or people with the most money have an iOS. So, I've been saying this for a while. The best ways to oxygenate the economy would be to one for China and the US to kiss and
00:25:04
make up because everything would get 10% cheaper around the world, but two to basically bust up these toll booths and
00:25:10
have other toll roads or other players. I mean, I don't know if you saw in the in the wake of just monster earnings
00:25:16
from Meta and Alphabet. We'll talk about that in a minute, but go ahead. Pinterest and Snap are just dying a slow
00:25:22
death. I mean, no one can compete with their scale. So, u and the app store is just another example. I mean, you could easily break a great company in terms of a breakup would be Apple services, which
00:25:34
would probably be the app store. Why would they do this given they really did sort of win in this case except for
00:25:40
this? I don't I don't understand. What What do you think? I think I have no idea. It seems like Well, they just
00:25:45
don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it. Like, they're going to just challenge it. Um and now, of course, the judge is saying, "Well, they'll appeal
00:25:51
it." These people know how to appeal. I guess I assume that's what they're going to do. Anyway, it seems to be a real tip
00:25:57
unusual error on their part to do some being petulant. I mean, I can see petulence from Mark Zuckerberg or or
00:26:03
Bezos or any of them, but not Tim Cook. But here we are. But another a real winner though and a player in this is is
00:26:09
uh and I have an investment in them is Epic. I don't know if you uh they're Minecraft.
00:26:14
It's one of the highest killing it FYI. It's one of the highest gross It's one of the highest grossing movies in history. Yeah. And who would have thought the Minecraft movie? I would
00:26:26
like my kids were obsessed with it. I could see that. Yeah. It's just and and they went up against Apple and sort of I
00:26:33
don't know if I don't know if you'd say they won, but they didn't back down and it doesn't appear they didn't really win. It was it was more in Apple's
00:26:39
favor, but in this case now they're able to do what they want. We'll see how much that sticks. I mean, I think Apple's
00:26:44
playing the very long game with Trump and everything else, the quiet long game. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Going get back. Microsoft and
00:26:50
Meta earnings, which we will discuss because they were pretty fantastic, and why Trump is getting compared to the
00:26:56
Grinch who stole Christmas. Scott, we're back. Met Microsoft and Meta shares are up both uh after companies reported
00:27:03
quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday. And and how Microsoft sales surpassed $70 billion,
00:27:09
up 13% from a year ago. The company's Azure cloud unit posted a 33% revenue gain. Meta sales grew by 16%
00:27:16
year-over-year to $42 billion. net income was 16 billion. The company isn't slowing down on capex spending either,
00:27:23
boosting its forecast as high as 72 billion. This is mostly around AI. Of course, the weak spot continues to be
00:27:29
that first shift that Mark made. U Meta reported $4.2 billion in losses from its reality labs division. That's why they
00:27:36
call themselves Meta. Um it also announced the launch of Meta AI this week. It's a standalone AI app sort of
00:27:42
to compete with ChatG. Makes sense. So far, the companies have avoided getting dragged down by tariff chaos, which is
00:27:48
interesting. We'll see if it it goes on. Mark Zuckerberg addressed the concerns about tariff impact as Ernley's call
00:27:53
saying, "I think we're well positioned to weather the economic uncertainty." I think advertising is is an open question. Just for people to know,
00:28:00
Amazon and Apple earnings coming after we record, so we'll dig into those next week. But talk a little bit about these
00:28:05
earnings. Each company, let's start with Microsoft. uh staggering um you know revenues on a
00:28:12
big base up 13%. Their cloud revenue is up 20%. 33 u uh Microsoft I have Microsoft cloud revenue is up 20 and 33 up in Azure. Anyways
00:28:24
up a lot. Yeah. and what you have here and also Microsoft is probably I don't want to say it's a defensive stock but it's least it's kind of most recessionp proof and also it doesn't seem to be
00:28:35
subject to real damage other than a slowdown in the economy from from these tariffs and keep in mind the majority of
00:28:41
their biggest customers are global so even if the US gets hit they're pretty well insulated you know Apple's going to
00:28:47
take a hit if the tariffs continue you know continue to um escalate Amazon will absolutely take a that uh Microsoft Meta and Alphabet are more insulated because they're digital marketing, but Microsoft
00:29:01
has exposure to the cloud, it's a very diversified, robust business. It's really well managed. I mean, it's just
00:29:06
it's staggering. And then going from better to amazing. Can I just say with with Microsoft, um Sacha Nadella, I
00:29:14
think even though he's the quietest of them, and by the way, if you've noticed, he hasn't sucked up to Trump. He's doing
00:29:19
he's he's he's just doing his job like kind of thing. and try and of course his job doesn't have that much the
00:29:25
interaction they have has to do around national security and everything else and they do have let me tell you that's where their big weakness is around
00:29:32
security issues around their software etc but um but I have to say he deserves much more credit than almost any CEO in terms of really making this this company
00:29:43
shine I I I I'm always impressed with him and especially how he handles things um he manages not to lose his soul every
00:29:50
5 minutes um but go ahead on on mic meta which I think is hugely impressive. Mark
00:29:56
Zuckerberg really knows how to run a company. He really does. Well, revenue increased 16% and even I think even more
00:30:03
impressive their price per ad was up 10%. If you're looking for how AI is impacting our economy, their ability to
00:30:10
target I mean haven't don't you increasingly have more of those moments where you're thinking my shoulders have been bothering me and all of a sudden on
00:30:16
reals I'm getting served ads for like for bands to help with my shoulders. I'm like, how the [ __ ] did they figure that out? The and the amount of time uh in
00:30:26
terms of serving you up incredible um ads. U their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35% increase in time spent on threads, a 7% increase in time
00:30:39
spent on Facebook, 6% on Instagram. Uh he predicted or Zuck predicted AI would be able to handle half of Meta's developer work. Um, so he's able to maintain, you know, other than capex
00:30:51
around data storage and AI, their human capital costs are have decelerated and aren't aren't growing nearly as fast as their topline revenues. Meaning that um meaning that quote unquote um earnings
00:31:04
are going to explode. And just to give you a sense, I do this deck on AI. I think the AI company at 2025 will is
00:31:12
meta because first off if you look at it best well 80% of people in the world outside of China are on a meta platform in addition but can I can I just note something it's the best data like think
00:31:24
about Twitter data it's not good data like you know it's kind of all noisy but this is all people moving and using and
00:31:32
relatively behaving I mean there's all kinds of problems on this platform obviously but go ahead with the peanut butter and chocolate or chocolate and
00:31:38
peanut of AI is loosely speaking the chips of processing power. They're the second biggest purchaser of chips.
00:31:44
They're in they're in line with the second biggest purchase order of Nvidia chips. And then the chocolate is the
00:31:50
actual data the input the coal in the furnace whatever you want to call it right grist to the mill. And just to
00:31:55
give you a sense of just how much data is produced on meta platforms. Reddit which is unbelievably
00:32:02
uh accelerated has the fifth most traffic of anyone in the US any site in the US. Reddit is a source of roughly
00:32:09
1.3 trillion tokens of text, right? 1.3 trillion tokens of text. Meta 180 trillion tokens. So Meta has
00:32:20
more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from and they're going to have the second most um Nvidia chips.
00:32:29
In addition, they not only get the benefit of saying, "All right, we're going to use that to have a consumerf
00:32:34
facing product. Instead, or in addition to, we're going to use AI to give advertisers such extraordinary targeting at the right time for the right person in the right place that advertisers are
00:32:48
going to be helpless not to just reallocate more and more of their budgets to meta." I mean, it's just the
00:32:55
guy. It's look, we all have our issues with Mark Zuckerberg as and it's deserved, but man, can he run. He's like
00:33:01
a Gatesian figure. Remember how well Bill Gates ran during those many years. Brilliant businessman, brilliant
00:33:06
business person. He wore those glasses everywhere, the the metagasses, which are popular. I don't think they're an enormous business for them, but um he
00:33:12
does he does the walk. I mean, he looked he didn't look he wore them everywhere this week, which was smart. It was smart
00:33:19
that he did it. He didn't look as dumb as Elon looks in a hat. But, um I I would agree. I think it's really
00:33:25
astonishing how what what's happening like you were noting and I was thinking about it the rest of the week was Google
00:33:31
has so many good businesses you know within this company so does Facebook right and I like threads I do I do I
00:33:39
like it for it feels like Instagram a little but easier like essentially um and I I'm on blue sky I like blue sky too by the way but um there's so many good products in this in this term I
00:33:51
think the the the two dings on them obviously ly will be their delletterious effect on the entire world. Um, and this
00:33:58
trial we'll see a lot of people, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people, most people, and I agree, think it's a relatively weak case that they
00:34:04
have competition now and they're just doing very well with the competition. Um, but uh, but a lot of other people
00:34:11
think they're going to lose and it's and it's going to be like Microsoft, right? It's not going to really matter. um and
00:34:17
they won't spin stuff off, but we'll see if they have to spin things off like an Instagram or a um a WhatsApp. It would
00:34:24
be certainly be interesting if they did as you and I have talked about. Um anyway, um good job, Mark Zuckerberg. We
00:34:32
have to give it to you. Uh and again, we'll talk about Amazon and Apple earnings. We both think they're going to get hit uh today, later today. There's
00:34:38
only just one thing in the Microsoft earnings that I thought were interesting in the earnings call and that is their
00:34:43
um um their data storage expenditures coming down and I wonder if some of them are thinking um that deep seek maybe there's an opportunity or maybe the maybe the data
00:34:56
storage and the power consumption won't be as great as initially forecast. I think a lot I think a lot of them are
00:35:03
looking at the deepseek innovation and thinking how does this impact our capex moving forward but you're probably going
00:35:09
to see in the back half of the year even more staggering earnings because it feels like they have so much momentum on
00:35:15
the top line and yet on the expense side I think they're going to maintain I think their capex is going to go flat or maybe even down which is just going to be like nitron glycerin for
00:35:26
their earnings. Yeah, we'll see about that. It'll it'll be interesting. Um, and it'll be interesting to compare Amazon and Apple with them. But speaking
00:35:33
of economic uncertainty, um, President uh, Trump is blaming former President Biden for the US economy contracting in the first quarter of 2025, suggesting in this cabinet, this ridiculous cabinet,
00:35:44
meaning that Q2 will be also be tied to Biden. He's going to blame Biden like he mentioned Biden like 912 times or not
00:35:50
that many, but a lot. Um he's taken the same stance on markets, writing on True Social on Wednesday, this is Biden's
00:35:55
stock market, not Trump's, even though he had claimed it was Trump's stock market. Back in 2024 when he wasn't
00:36:01
president, the market was doing well. He was calling it Trump's stock market. Um he's also telling Americans to be patient, but acknowledged there will be
00:36:07
some consequences from his uh his tariffs. Let's get to the doll situation. You know, somebody said, "Oh,
00:36:13
the shelves are going to be open." Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of $30, you know, and maybe the
00:36:20
two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more. Oh my god, it's true. Whoever said that, this idea that I mean, look, that
00:36:27
may be true. I agree. I have too many [ __ ] toys in my house, and I wish I had like a many less. But it's none of
00:36:33
his business if people want $30. Americans are used to products on the shelves and open. Whatever open means
00:36:40
empty is the word he's looking for. Um, toy manufacturers are already warning about a Christmas toy shortage.
00:36:46
Factories in China produce nearly 80% of all toys and 90% of Christmas goods sold in the
00:36:52
US. It's I I don't like he's making a point. Yes, we shouldn't consume as much. The man who consumes more than
00:36:58
anybody who's just like a giant m of consumption is lecturing people. His whole um administration is doing this.
00:37:06
They're very on message. Well, you don't need that stuff. You don't need it. And that may be, but what how do you think
00:37:11
it's going to hit with people, especially if there are empty shelves, not open shelves, but empty shelves. From a guy that golfs every third day
00:37:18
and banks porn stars, he's talking shows off his gold in that Terry Moran interview, by the way. He showed
00:37:25
Americans, we are the most conspicuous consumers in history. America is sort of, you'd argue an insurance company
00:37:32
with a military, but really what it is, it's a platform for prosperity where people get material and hopefully
00:37:37
emotional you know, gains from an incredible operating system. And you could argue that Biden was kicked out of office because the price of eggs went too high, but he doesn't
00:37:48
think people are going to notice. 90% of America is on a fixed budget. And if toys go up in price 30, 40, 50%, that
00:37:56
means a third to a half fewer toys. You don't think that's going to hit home emotionally? When the kids start
00:38:02
noticing, wait, you know, that that just really hits you hard. It hits on an emotion where you when you feel like
00:38:10
you're not providing for your kids on key moments, it really rips at your soul. Yep. And they're people are going to get angry just the notion that oh Americans that these people that
00:38:23
that with his tacky retrofitted 757 that somehow Americans, you know, don't need all this stuff. Well, okay folks, Americans love their stuff.
00:38:35
American America is a land of stuff. We love our [ __ ] There's nothing wrong with it. Our espresso, our Netflix, we
00:38:42
love stuff. And loosely speaking, actually, if you were to pick one thing that impacts the majority of elections in America for the last 50 years, it's kind
00:38:54
of your safety and security around your ability to buy more stuff. it's the economy and so that's just a ridiculous statement. So why did he make it? I mean
00:39:04
he just he and then it was echoed by all his people and then blaming Biden. Obviously he's going to use Biden as you
00:39:10
know 10 years from now he's going to say Biden was the reason. Um what is I mean
00:39:16
I don't think people are thinking of Biden anymore you know or mentioning although his voters had a very
00:39:21
astonishing they are now echoing this. There was a lot of interviews I saw where they're like, "Yeah, we got to
00:39:26
buck up. Like, we're in the middle of the World War II and the Nazis are headed our way." Like that kind of mood
00:39:32
of something like that. Yeah. I think most people now see this or I think more and more people see this as a a self-inflicted injury. And it's just not
00:39:44
I think consumers the idea that you're not going to just remind consumers every day. Let me back up. There is some truth
00:39:52
to the notion that this GDP this so GDP was off first negative quarter since I think 2022 first in three years we had a contraction I don't think it's fair to lay that at the feet of the Trump
00:40:04
administration GDP is a lagging indicator the surge in imports because of these ridiculous tariffs correct took
00:40:10
you know took a large portion of the GDP down consumption down too the both things together but go ahead right but
00:40:17
next quarter there's just no excuses he owns it and you're going to see a contraction. I don't like GDP. I don't
00:40:23
think it's a good measure, but you're going to see the economy contract and it's on its way. I I'm doing a lot or a
00:40:28
decent amount of I have a lot of friends who are impacted by the tariffs and essentially like business has come to a
00:40:35
standstill and they're sitting around trying to guess do we try to move? Do we do we go to our bank, borrow a [ __ ] ton of money, cut 20, 30% of our workforce and spend the next three years trying to
00:40:45
reroute our supply chain through Vietnam or Indonesia? or do we hope this guy pops up, wakes up tomorrow morning and goes, "Just kidding." But in the meantime, they're in a state of paralysis. They have stopped all
00:40:57
shipments from most of my friends from China. Shipping volume is off anywhere, depending on how you account for between 35 and 65%. The port of Los Angeles is less crowded than it's been in recent
00:41:09
memory, and it's the largest port in the Western Hemisphere. And there's a lag effect, but when the ships coming into
00:41:15
the port are empty or they're not coming in, that means in about workers four to
00:41:20
12 weeks, the stores are going to be empty. And also, you're going to start to see layoffs. Yeah. Because I just
00:41:27
interviewed Wes Moore. He's the governor of M of of um Maryland. Um and a very handsome man, as you would say. Um Wesmore, he's going to be a president.
00:41:38
Yeah. and he was talking about the the the the knock-on effects in Baltimore uh in terms of like truckers, unloaders, people around it, restaurants around it.
00:41:49
It's just going to re reverberate all over um these economies um in California, in Maryland, uh New York, you know, of course, these are all blue states, but still it will have so much
00:42:01
reverberations around the country, and then it just keeps having knock-on and knock-on effects. Anyway, uh I don't think he can keep blaming. I agree with
00:42:07
you. he can blame him for a short time, but this is just nonsense lecturing people on how many dolls they should
00:42:13
have. I I agree that we shouldn't have so many choices, but that's my personal opinion and he's the president of United
00:42:19
States. It's none of his business to tell people what to buy. Americans love it's like that it's like that Borat
00:42:25
film, you know, 33 different types of cheeses. That's just who we are. Yeah. The weird thing is just going back to the earnings for a moment, you're
00:42:32
probably going to see a increased bifurcation between the Magnum 7 and the rest of the economy because these firms
00:42:39
so Amazon is the most subject to this trade war than anyone because twothirds of their business comes within the US and a lot of their products are subject to tariffs. A company like Meta gets
00:42:51
only onethird of its business from the US and the majority of its products are not subject to tariffs. Apple twothirds
00:42:58
from outside the US. Um a company like Microsoft half their business comes from outside the US. So these companies are I
00:43:05
don't want to say they're insulated but the big guys and the big tech companies are much more insulated. A a most of the
00:43:11
vast majority of the products are not subject to tariffs and b the majority of their business comes from outside of the
00:43:18
US. Yeah. So who's going to get really hard here are kind of the mainline traditional mainline firms. Yeah.
00:43:24
Absolutely. The main street economy is really going to get hit hard. You're absolutely right. All right, Scott,
00:43:30
let's go on a quick break. Uh, speaking of Amazon, when we get back, we'll talk about Jeff Bezos bending the knee once
00:43:35
again. It's not the first time to Trump. Scott, we're back. President Trump is calling Jeff Bezos very nice and a good
00:43:42
guy after phoning Bezos to complain about a report that Amazon was going to show how much of an item's cost comes
00:43:47
from tariffs. The White House initial reaction was a press secretary Carolyn Levit, also known as Tracy Flake,
00:43:54
calling Amazon's plan for a hostile and political act. And while Amazon first said the pricing plan was only being
00:44:00
considered for its budget site, Amazon Hall, um, in a subsequent statement, the company the plan was never approved and
00:44:06
it was not going to happen. They kept changing their story. Uh, Trump later told reporters that Bezos solved the problem very quickly. So, it clearly was
00:44:12
on deck to happen. who knows where and which part of Amazon. Uh they have their credibility has declined rather
00:44:18
significantly with this incident. Bezos has of course been making nice with Trump for a while. Known back in December at the times deal summit he
00:44:25
said he was optimistic about Trump's behavior in his second term and uh completely wrong. Let's listen. What
00:44:31
I've seen so far is that um he is calmer than he was first time and more confident, more settled. I guess he
00:44:42
wants him to go to his fancy wedding in Venice in June, I guess. Um, what do you think of this? Um, obviously he's going
00:44:48
to do it. You predicted last week the Fortune 500 CEOs and businesses were going to start standing up to Trump.
00:44:53
This is not what happened here. And it looks like Paramounts um is going to do the same thing. Sher Redstone um to
00:45:00
settle a ridiculous baseless lawsuit um uh in order to make nice to get that merger through. Um was the initial
00:45:08
Amazon plan a good idea? Should companies be transparent about these prices and put them on? Some companies are doing this and um there's an
00:45:15
antitrust trial coming up uh obviously for Amazon. Uh it didn't work so well for Mark to kiss up because it's still going forward. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Bezos on Wednesday asking whether he received any promises
00:45:27
or favors from Trump in exchange for scrapping Amazon's plan. Uh thoughts? Well, when the White House um press secretary, she immediately said, "This
00:45:38
was a hostile and political act, and why didn't they put what the prices were because of the Biden um inflation?" I
00:45:45
mean, that's just such a ridiculous statement. One, in terms of Biden and inflation, that's so intellectually
00:45:51
dishonest because of all the G7 countries, our inflation was the lowest. There was tremendous supply chain shocks
00:45:57
from the invasion of Ukraine and COVID. Uh, and two, these guys all claim they're such free speech warriors putting what the ter Airbnb and and
00:46:09
Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on when I order from Caviar, which I
00:46:16
love in New York. It used to piss me off that I wouldn't see up front how much delivery charge and service fee and all
00:46:22
that. Airbnb came under fire. So Airbnb said, "Okay, we're going to put the true cost and they started breaking it out."
00:46:27
That's transparency and it's also free speech. It is entirely reasonable for Amazon to say, "All right, this is what
00:46:34
this is how much the tariffs are costing." It is a bit of a political statement. It's also called free speech.
00:46:40
And two, when you start having Biden came under fire for having one-off conversations with Meta about misinformation around COVID and he got huge criticism and there's some veracity
00:46:52
to the notion that the president should not be having one-off conversations and putting pressure on individual companies
00:46:57
that's supposed to have systemic solutions and laws that impact the whole industry. Otherwise, it just ends up
00:47:02
being corruption as it is now where I don't know if you saw the latest, auto companies are now going to be exempt
00:47:08
from a lot of these tariffs. So, if you're a big company that's on his lunch calendar or you have a popular brand or
00:47:15
you're gigantic or you're get to have lunch with them, you get exemption from this ridiculous behavior. And the problem is is that small and medium-sized business which account for 98% of the companies that depend upon
00:47:27
export and import are [ __ ] out of luck because they can't afford lobbyists and they're never going to go to Mara Lago.
00:47:33
So these individual one-off conversations are corrupt. You're not supposed to have them. And also I got to
00:47:39
be I mean you saw me I was so excited about Bezos. I went out with all these threads saying good for him. Good on
00:47:47
him. And I was so excited. And then you texted me and you're like, "He caved. He
00:47:52
caved." And I'm like, "Oh, fuck." And I had to go back and like, "Well, false alarm." No way. He's such a caver. He's
00:47:59
a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding. Like, are you kidding? He's gone. Jeff Bezos never was there,
00:48:05
but he's gone now. He's down the Mara Lago highway and he's living down there, you know, much more so even than Elon, I
00:48:11
think. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I'm I'm actually excited and we'll talk about it maybe next week, but I'm
00:48:18
excited about um he's about to put a competitor into space with um Yeah, I'm good with his blank slate. I'm good with the the rocket stuff that he's competing with, but it's it whatever. They never they
00:48:32
never fail to disappoint these people. They really don't. They just don't. I just expect disappointment. You're like
00:48:37
that. I do think we're going to see it though. time. You're like, "This time my boyfriend's going to behave and show up
00:48:43
and pick me up." He's changed. He sent an Uber for me. He sent an Uber. The stripper loves me. I swear. I swear she loves me. You can go to a strip club, Scott, but she doesn't love you. Yeah, I
00:48:56
haven't been to a strip club in 20 years. I don't like strip clubs. We should go. We should do a tour. We should do pivot live pivots in a strip
00:49:02
club. No, I'm not into strip clubs. All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions Scott. So, have a
00:49:08
good one. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction and listen up. Uh, time for something new. We want to hear your
00:49:14
predictions. Send us your predictions, 30 seconds or less, and we'll play them on the show if they're good. And if
00:49:20
they're Well, if they're dirty, we'll probably play them, too. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a prediction
00:49:25
for the show or call 8551 pivot. I wanted to create some competition for Scott. So, Scott, up your game today.
00:49:32
Let's go. I don't know if mine's very good, but basically one of the wonderful things about our economy is once a
00:49:39
company establishes something resembling or supposedly monopoly power and can start implementing those rents on
00:49:46
consumers, there's so much profits that that's like chum in the water and other sharks show up. That's the basis of
00:49:51
competition. And hopefully if a company gets too far ahead of another um the FDC
00:49:56
and the FDC and the DOJ move in, break it up such that it can inspire more competition, lower prices, more
00:50:02
innovation, etc. Competition really is one of the secrets to America's success. And my internet went out in
00:50:09
London. I have to have crazy fast broadband. And I spent I'm not exaggerating. I think I spent 50 or $60,000 to have fiber run across Regions Park. Wow. To get the kind of broadband
00:50:20
I need. You're that guy. And it went out. Yeah, I'm that guy. I went out. I I don't have satellites. Um and I went out
00:50:27
It went out this weekend. And so everyone's scrambling, including Drew, to try and figure out a a solve. And
00:50:34
they went out and they bought one of those portable Starlinks. Yeah. And they set it up in about 4 hours. It's an
00:50:39
incredible service. I've used Starlink on a plane before. You can do FaceTime. It really is an amazing product. I think
00:50:44
now close to 2/3 of the lower Earth satellites are owned by um Starlink uh or SpaceX. I guess it's Starlink. And it really is an incredible
00:50:55
product. And I'm just thrilled to see and I think another reason why I think Amazon's going to continue probably to outperform is that they launched their first uh I don't even know how you uh
00:51:07
pronounce it. Is it cupupper? K. I think it's Cooper. Yeah, I've met with the CEOs. It's a It's They've been at it the same way they've been at the rocket stuff, but Cooper, I think it's Cooper.
00:51:18
Yeah, Cooper. So, the first batch of a planned 3,300 Cooper satellites launch from Florida. Uh the mission kicks off a race to rival SpaceX's massive Starlink
00:51:28
network and Amazon can launch uh five more Cooper missions this year. I think the promise of that is going to take
00:51:35
their stock up because Starlink is just such an incredible company that essentially has monopoly power right
00:51:40
now. Yeah, that was run. I forget who used to run that company. I met with them several times. Um, uh, they they've
00:51:46
been trying it like everyone's been trying to catch Starlink obviously and it's a great opportunity to do so. Anyways, the brand the we talk a lot
00:51:54
about in brand strategy, the first kind of key asset in brand strategy is awareness. About 98% of our
00:52:00
purchases, at least until is that true recently? I'd like to redo this data, but up until up until the social graph,
00:52:06
98% of your purchases are from brands you've heard of before. Just think about you're you're just less inclined to
00:52:11
return the email of someone you don't know. Just having heard of somebody or having heard of a brand makes you much
00:52:17
more your purchase inclination or your purchase consideration goes up exponentially. And so I would often say
00:52:24
the first step in any brand is just to be known. And unfortunately we live in a society is the philosopher Italian
00:52:31
philosopher Alberto Ekko said that being famous and having awareness is more important than what you're famous or or
00:52:36
have awareness for. So awareness is enormous and it's a it's a decent proxy for future value to be monetized. And I think the brand that's about to go from zero to 100 in the next six months is
00:52:48
Cooper. Uh because there are it's a $10 billion project that was unveiled in 2019. It's had a lot of delays and it's
00:52:56
finally starting to get its kind of mojo. And I think you're going to see they're going to start doing a good job
00:53:01
of showing real-time footage of every launch. And then when you think about if Amazon can offer a Starlink like service
00:53:08
with their interface, I mean at some point, you know what they're going to do? They're going to roll it into Prime. Anyways, Cooper from Prime is about to
00:53:16
become one of the biggest brands and also be the most formidable competitor to the most valuable private company in
00:53:22
the world, I think, right now, which is SpaceX. Yeah. So anyways, my prediction is the the brand you haven't heard of as
00:53:29
of May 1, 2025 is going to be ubiquitous in the investment and consumer landscape
00:53:35
by the end of the year. And that is uh Project Cooper, which is a $10 billion satellite effort from the good folks at
00:53:42
Amazon. You know what? I've touched a Cooper. They brought one to show it to me once. That was in high school, right?
00:53:48
Oh, wait. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Uh yeah, it's an interesting decided not for me.
00:53:53
interesting but not for me. There's a bunch of interesting for not for me. But Star within hand. But as usual with
00:54:00
Tesla, same thing. People are coming in and they're going to give him a run. And if he's not on his game, Elon Musk, he's
00:54:06
got a lot of competitors headed his way because he's shown the way. And just cuz you're shown the way, Elon, the planes
00:54:12
are covered with the bodies of pioneers, as everybody well knows. Oh, Starling. To be fair, Starling's an amazing
00:54:18
product. It is. But I'm just saying so was Tesla three years ago, right? And then fair enough. Now there's lots of
00:54:24
That's the beauty of competition. That's why folks we need an FDC and a DOJ to break companies up. You need you need these small scrappy star. Anyway, that's
00:54:30
correct. You can't take your eye off the He's lucky in that company. He has a good CEO, Gwen Chwell, who now who is
00:54:36
also much too obsequious to him. But nonetheless, she she really runs that show and that shows the good idea to
00:54:43
have a good CEO in place. All right. Oh, my I think you're going to be outstanding on Bill Maher. Thank you. I
00:54:48
think you're going to be out. We'll see. I crash and burn, but I hope not. Um, I think he likes me like slapping him
00:54:54
around a little bit like just like you do. Anyway, as I said, people give your predictions. Um, we want to hear your
00:55:00
predictions. Send in the predictions. 30 seconds or less. We'll play them on the show. As I said, go to
00:55:05
nymag.com/pivot to submit this prediction for the show and beat Professor Galloway or call 85551 pivot.
00:55:12
And elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, this week on Profy conversation, Scott spoke with David
00:55:17
Brooks. Okay. Okay. for you an oped columnist for the New York Times. I love how can you don't I just I can't. He's
00:55:23
wonderful. Okay. All right. How can you not love David Brooks? So many people don't. Are you not paying attention on the internet? I mean spiritual. Okay. Smart. I don't. Uh big talk. I'm glad
00:55:36
he's very smart. You're right. That's correct. I'm just not a fan. I'm sorry. I can be not a fan of David Brooks. I think he's just a lot. Um he's a writer
00:55:44
also at the Atlantic, too. Let's listen to a clip. And when I look at the Trump administration, I see a massive attempt
00:55:50
to return us to the life of doggy dog. Uh the life of nasty, brutish, and short, the life where gangsters have
00:55:57
maximum freedom to do what they want to do. Uh and that is the evisceration of all the values of civilization that
00:56:03
conservatism is supposed to transmit and preserve. And I think the raw lust for power that Donald Trump embodies has not
00:56:10
only eviscerated conservatism, it's inviscerated Christianity. That's a very thoughtful thought. He's right. He's
00:56:17
right. He's right. I'm excited. I'll listen to it. I promise. Um, what what' you say? I really enjoyed my
00:56:24
conversation with him. I found him very to be very spiritual. By the way, were you out there with Bill Maher? Say hello
00:56:29
to my favorites. Bill doesn't hang out with me, but the executive producers do. Sheila Griffiths. Oh, wait. Sheila
00:56:36
Griffiths, I think, and Mark Gervitz and Dean Johnson. They're literally Friday Night Lights parents. Yeah. They're like
00:56:43
handsome people in their They're handsome people, like good-looking people in their 40s who feel like you if
00:56:49
I ever have a big problem, I'm just calling them and saying, "Can you just pretend to be my parent right now?" And they are so nice. And they come in into
00:56:57
that your little green room and they're like, "We're so happy to have you. They're so nice." And I get nice emails from them. It is the night. And my good
00:57:05
swag, too. Good food, good swag. And beer. I shotguned a beer before the last one.
00:57:11
Going to do that. Yeah, I think that's called alcoholism. And also my um my um my sherpa there is a woman named Susan
00:57:18
Bennett who's wonderful. Susan's amazing. Amazing. So lovely. Bill Maher has a staff that stayed with him for a
00:57:23
very long time and it's a good reflection on him. Even if you don't witnesses in the agency of others same
00:57:30
Scott, same Scott%. Yeah, it's true. The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people
00:57:36
more talented than yourself. That is it. Full stop. Yeah. One of the proud prouder things I had was our and having
00:57:41
a big Cooper and having a really big Cooper. My code team at all things C team was with me for 20 years. The
00:57:47
conference team, they were all the pivot team is nodding right now. They nodding. They're hoping. They're hoping. We'll
00:57:53
see. We've changed. We've changed. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out.
00:58:02
Today's show is produced by Laraman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie or Todd entry into this episode. Jim M edit this video. Thanks
00:58:10
also to Jubo's miss and Dan Shalon. Nishak Kuru Vox Media's executive producer of auto. Make sure you
00:58:15
subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine
00:58:21
at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Tune in to see Chichin
00:58:28
Chong Speaker McCarthy and and and Caris Wisher. [Music]