00:00:00
You're much more promiscuous in loading up your information. Yeah, my attitude is violate my privacy as long as I can
00:00:05
see that my QX60 is one minute away. I I could just eat edibles and order Ubers and watch how close my car is. I find it
00:00:11
[ __ ] fascinating. Why is he making a right turn on Broom? Doesn't he know where he's going?
00:00:20
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisser and I get a
00:00:26
call from this iconic media company that is doing or reporter there and I won't say which company that is doing a
00:00:32
profile on Cara Swisser. You've had one there. And her first uh question was, "What qualities make Cara such an amazing leader?" And I'm like, "Oh, [ __ ] This is going to be rough. This is
00:00:46
I literally I'm not exaggerating, Cara. I went and made myself a drink and I'm like, "Okay, okay, this is how it's
00:00:51
going to go. this is how it's going to go. And it was literally like getting a colonoscopy without anesthetic. I just sat there and said, "Okay, it's going to be over soon. It's going to be over
00:01:03
soon." Did you embarrass me? My instructions to you were to embarrass me in some fashion. Well, here's the thing.
00:01:08
When you do these things, what you realize is it's entirely up to them. They could twist your words anyway.
00:01:14
Yeah. and they could use, you know, one or two things I said to support some narrative that was negative or but I I definitely got the feeling it was gonna it's going to be a giant puff piece, but
00:01:26
we'll see. No, it's not. No, I have a very complex, you know, they'll find someone who I'm not saying you deserve a
00:01:32
puff piece. I gave them I gave them recommendations of people who don't like me. I'm like, they're going to give you an off thereord piece on me, so you
00:01:39
might as well just call them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I do the same thing, but I just make sure they're [ __ ] I I'm
00:01:44
a big believer in what FBR said and that is please judge me by my enemies. I love giving out the names of some people who
00:01:50
hate me. I'm like here she's going to say something to me nice on the record and that not nice off the record. Here's someone who's going to you know I gave
00:01:56
him a range of people. I think it's focused on me helping people get away from old media. I think that's my
00:02:01
impression. Yeah. They wanted to talk about the people you've nurtured and all that stuff a lot. There are quite a lot.
00:02:07
There's quite a few. Yeah. Including you, Scott Galloway. Yes, that's right. Although I I was never really in in
00:02:12
media. I was um No, you weren't. I brought you I always say the same thing. I'm like the most rewarding thing about
00:02:18
our relationship is that it is very purposeful and nice to resuscitate someone's flagging career and that has been very nice for me. I saw that you
00:02:29
were struggling and I thought, okay, if Tina Fay can do this for Alec Baldwin, there's no reason that Scott Galloway
00:02:35
can't do it for Cara Swisser. I know. Thank you so much. I I just I'm in so much in your debt. I was struggling.
00:02:41
Success has many fathers and failure as an orphan. I remember I remember working at Levi Straussing Company in the 90s
00:02:48
and this is the weakest flex in the world. But the fastest zero to billion apparel brand at that point and then the
00:02:55
fastest one after that was Old Navy but before that the fastest one. What apparel brand? It's literally the lamest
00:03:00
apparel brand in history but it was the fastest zero to a billion apparel brand and it was owned by Levi Strauss company. It wasn't Levis's. You know what it was? What? Jord? No. Oh, it was like screaming to the world, don't have
00:03:12
sex with me. It was Do you remember Dockers? I love Dockers. Oh god, don't say that. Jesus, stop. Please make her
00:03:20
stop. They had extra pockets. The thing is, I can see that. I can totally see you in Dockers.
00:03:26
Oh my god. They're very comfortable. Oh my god, Scott. I literally have the same clothes since high school. Anyone who
00:03:33
believes being gay is anything to do with nurture, it is so nature. You were literally born in Dockers, weren't you? I was. I love Dockers. Dockers in a I'm not even going to try and describe the
00:03:44
kind of lesbian fashion or lash extra pockets. That's all I remember. Anyways, back to me. I would walk around. Levi
00:03:50
Stson was my biggest consulting client or profit for like two years in the '90s and everybody everybody would introduce themselves as the founder of Dockers because it had been so successful. There
00:04:02
would be like nine people who were the not the co-founder but the founder of Dockers. Everybody decided that they had
00:04:07
started this idea and it it it's so interesting. It basically took advantage of this huge trend and that was casual
00:04:16
work Friday was the stay-at-home work from home trend of the '90s and men had no [ __ ] idea how to dress for it and
00:04:23
Docker said just trust us. I use them as as f you know we went to this party last night for Keith McN. Uh he has a Manetta
00:04:30
Tavern here. What a great restaurant, by the way. And he's lovely, let me just say. Um, and it's he's written this
00:04:36
astonishing. It's the best book party I've been to because it was not about the book. It was, but they read from the book. Richard Eye Grant read sections
00:04:42
from it and everything else. Um, and it was great food. They said it was dinner adjacent and then it was bigger than any
00:04:48
dinner I've ever eaten. And he's, you know, I don't know if you know this, he had a stroke. Um, we chatted about it quite a bit. um he he's much he has much
00:04:55
more issues around speaking and his one of his sides of his body, but just a beautiful book that he's written and
00:05:01
they had music and food and everything else really fun. But I wore like such sloppy clothes and I said Amanda's like,
00:05:08
"Oh, I should dress up a little bit." I said, "Do matter what you do, I will be more underdressed." And she goes, "Oh,
00:05:14
okay." And felt better. I show up in like almost pajamas to parties now. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, you can get away with that though. It's sort of your brand. I know. I can't. I don't know why
00:05:25
every once in a while. No, not really. Not really. I'm gonna I'm gonna get my Dockers and find them and wear them with
00:05:31
you on something we do. I think that we should officially I think if Vogue ever decides we've just [ __ ] had it with
00:05:37
this Matt Gayla [ __ ] and they want to jump the shark, they should invite us. They should absolutely invite. We would We would literally put an end to
00:05:44
that whole thing. We would put an end to it. Oh my god. Anna Winter. Anna Winter, if you're listening, if you need a
00:05:50
reason to retire, do you know what? I'm going to somehow get that message to her that she should invite us. Maybe they'll do a tech one and then we'll show up as
00:05:56
like a we'll dress like Elon or something. Back to me. So, in the '9s when I started Red Envelope and because
00:06:02
I had a shaved head, I was white, had outdoor plumbing and a pretty good gab. I could raise tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars for my crazy e-commerce startups. And I'd raised so much [ __ ] money for Red Envelope. And
00:06:14
we'd all, you know, I was the brand guy, so I thought, "Oh, we got to build a brand." So my college roommate David
00:06:20
Kerry who was the head of magazines I think at Condast. Yes. He's he'd always been just a lovely guy. We were friends. But I used to fly to New York cuz I wanted to hang out in New York and spend
00:06:31
overspend on Vanity Fair and um Vogue magazine, these ads for Red Envelope. And literally the weapon was the coolest place on the planet was the Vogue cafeteria. Did you ever eat there? Oh,
00:06:44
it's Oh, yeah. It was beautiful. And it was all these ridiculously beautiful women and hot gay men. And then Sai New
00:06:51
House and Anna Winter would be sitting in the corner and you'd walk in. I remember thinking, I got to move to New
00:06:57
York. And I would buy these $120,000 a page ads. I don't even know if they worked or not, but I just wanted to go
00:07:03
to lunch with my friend David Carrie. I probably spent seven or eight million bucks of other people's money just so I
00:07:09
got to eat in the cafeteria. Well, that's nice. That's a good thing. At the common cafeteria. Certainly. Well, we've got a lot to get to today, so we got to
00:07:15
move on. Including Meta's creepy new AI app, Pete Hegsth, and Tulsi Gabbard's continuing sloppiness around like
00:07:23
digital privacy and protection of their stuff and Disney's latest earnings. But first, tensions between India and
00:07:29
Pakistan are escalating after India launched military strikes against targets in Pakistan this week in retaliation for deadly attack in
00:07:35
Kashmir. This conflict is happening at a pivotal economic moment. India is doing trade deals with the US and the UK and
00:07:41
Pakistan is emerging from a years'sl long financial crisis. You've also got China recently uh allied with Pakistan
00:07:48
recently calling Pis Pakistan an ironclad friend and an all-weather strategic uh cooperative partners
00:07:54
partner for his part. President Trump has offered to help to diffuse things saying if I can do anything to help I'll
00:07:59
be there. Of course the Trumps themselves are doing some some deal with Pakistan too a personal deal. So there's
00:08:06
that thrown in there. Both countries are uh nuclear powers. Um I I in fact interviewed Christian Amenpor so I'm going to channel whatever she says in my comments and pretend they're mine. Yesterday she had a lot to you know it
00:08:18
was an interesting inter interview but this is sort of the the day conflict. Any thoughts? Well yeah whenever there's
00:08:25
a border skirmish with nuclear powers you have to take it very seriously. And on a much less substantive level India
00:08:32
is a big trading partner with us on the economy. you could see oil prices and gold prices uh skyrocket with that kind
00:08:39
of instability. But when two nuclear powers who border each other start you know arguing it's very scary and it can
00:08:46
all be sort of reverse engineered to of course the west uh specifically the UK dividing up India into Pakistan in a
00:08:53
very sloppy way that's created all sorts of uh religious and regional tensions and fights over Kashmir and um China
00:09:00
will probably or China is a very strong ally they describe themselves as an ironcloud friend of Pakistan uh India
00:09:07
has very strong relationships with Japan and Isra Israel and the UAE. I just hope the adults show up and and diffuse the
00:09:14
tensions because typically these types of crazy conflicts are real exogenous shocks. It's not the [ __ ] you're worried about that gets you. It's the [ __ ] you're not thinking about. Well, you
00:09:25
know, Cristian was saying that it requires really good diplomacy and she's worried about the Trump administration
00:09:31
because the US has always been a key person here and she said into a vacuum something always flows. And so that
00:09:37
would be China. and you know there are these complications of the Trump's personal financial interests um in in
00:09:44
the countries uh and it it just makes a big mess of it and she was worried there wasn't someone who could like they'll
00:09:50
send in that idiot Steve Witco or someone like that to deal with it rather than someone more competent and if
00:09:56
Steven Miller becomes the national security ad I mean seriously so over his skis um and doesn't like brown people
00:10:04
from what I can tell um and uh so they it's a real problem if you don't have the US in a in real fighting shape among
00:10:11
these people to sort of shut the whole thing down. Um and you know it's another one of these conflicts. The next one
00:10:17
will be possibly Taiwan. And so there's going to be one conflict after the next as China starts to really flex its
00:10:23
power. Um especially as its economy is uh suffering uh because of the tariffs, it'll it'll want to it won't expand elsewhere. I think anyway we're not experts on this but uh I would recommend
00:10:35
listening to Scott interviews lots of foreign uh experts and I just did Christian and so listen to them but um
00:10:42
but still troubling for the for the for the stock market for the economies and for stability in general with all the
00:10:47
different conflicts around the world. I thought he was going to be the settle president but I guess not. Um Open AI
00:10:53
will abandon plans to place its AI business under control of a for-profit entity. Instead, it will transform its
00:10:59
for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation controlled by the nonprofit parent, which I think was they
00:11:05
were considering a lot of things. The decision was made after talking to civic leaders and AGs of California and
00:11:10
Delaware, who would need to sign off on the plan. Obviously, they didn't like what was, you know, the possibilities.
00:11:15
Sam Alman, CEO Sam Alman said the changes will still allow the company to access $30 billion investment from
00:11:21
SoftBank. As a reminder, Elon Musk has been attempting to block the company's restructuring. His lawyer says the announcement changes nothing, which
00:11:27
means he didn't really care about the nonprofit part if this is what they're doing. Uh, obviously he wants his vague
00:11:32
because that's what Elon wants. Um, I talked to to um Sam and Brett Taylor about it. And I think, you know, I was like, this is a a back walk. Um, they were like, no, because we were
00:11:43
considering lots of things. Then we got feedback and we made the decision and said that the Musk thing had nothing to
00:11:48
do with it. And it was evidenced by the fact that Mus didn't pull the lawsuit after uh they did this and they felt
00:11:54
like they still had enough ability to um um you know to to raise money. I think their issue is they've got to raise money and at the same time reward people and then they have a lot of people
00:12:05
feeling they should stay true to their original roots which was an was a missiondriven company. So probably will
00:12:11
be a good thing for them to get this in their rearview mirror and then move on. Um but I don't know if you have any thoughts. So I I I'd love to speak to
00:12:20
prear someone who's close to the issue but my general take uh on first blush is the following and that is uh Elon Musk has absolutely catalyzed this and that is just as there's lawfare I think this
00:12:32
is what I would refer to as nomenclature fair and that is the judge a judge the attorney general essentially told open AI that the proposed transition doesn't fit the the strict criteria for
00:12:43
transition from a nonprofit to a forprofit and so effectively What they've done is by saying, "Oh, no, just
00:12:49
kidding. We're one of these ridiculous private benefit corporations that a bunch of VCs could virtue signal and say, "I still want the money, but I want
00:12:55
to pretend I'm actually helping humanity." I think it's the most ridiculous corporate classification in history. Um, they they go back and say,
00:13:02
"No, we're a not for-p profofit, but they're lifting the cap on when the for-profit is entitled to the profits of above hundred billion, which I think only three companies have ever
00:13:13
achieved." So this effectively from a mechanical situation or the complexion of the company, the operations or the shareholder governance has absolutely no impact, but I think somewhat inoculates
00:13:25
them from the kind of the the white meat of Musk's accusations in his case. I think the lawyers came back and said, "Okay, fine. Tell tell uh Musk and his
00:13:40
lawyers, oh, just kidding. You win. We're still a a nonprofit, but it's not going to change anything we do practically. No, let me tell you something. They said the for-profit
00:13:50
corporation board and the nonprofit board will be the same people, right? And so, you know, it's usually this
00:13:56
nonprofit has a geminy over the for-profit corporation now, but it's the same board. It's the same board. It's the same It's the same. Nothing changes here
00:14:08
except OpenAI's lawyers can say, "Oh, we are a not for profit. He has no case." That's how I read. Except he didn't pull the case cuz he wants He's not He didn't do it to help anybody at all. Helped
00:14:20
himself to help himself or slow them down. That's what he did it for. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So, we'll see. I think it'll give them it'll it'll get
00:14:27
everyone else will back off and he will just continue because he thinks he's owed more. I think that's really at the
00:14:33
heart of his case is he thinks he created it and funded it and deserves more money from it. Sell his remorse. He
00:14:39
walked away. One of the biggest mistakes ever in terms of just pure wealth is he said, "I'm out of here." And he said he
00:14:46
signed away the company ironclad documents. He's out which he did with Twitter. remember he was going to buy it
00:14:52
and then he I my house in San Francisco is next to where Mark Zuckerberg moved and I bought it for $760,000 and 24 months later when I moved to New York so I could spend more
00:15:03
time in the Continent cafeteria. I sold it for $950,000 and I thought it was the [ __ ] greatest real estate investor in history. Uh Cara, it is worth
00:15:10
substantially more now. It is. I live in that neighborhood. Okay, it's worth substantially more. This is absolutely
00:15:16
no different in terms of legal veracity than if I went back and said, "I want my house back. I want my house back. I want
00:15:23
the money. My house is worth. I want my house back. You owe me." It's gone up. I I know I signed legal documents transferring ownership of this asset and
00:15:30
private property laws are pretty pretty detailed. But I've decided because I [ __ ] up selling it that I want it back
00:15:36
or at least I want threw a tizzy. She threw a [ __ ] tizzy and lost money. And they're pulling way ahead. I mean to
00:15:41
chat GBT is really the numbers are really quite startling in terms of the usage. Um they're also spending money
00:15:47
too. This is really but it feels like they're really pulling ahead in that regard and they're going to get they're going to get there. One of the things
00:15:53
someone was like why is it so chaotic? I'm like you were not around for Google and then they were fine. You know what I
00:15:58
mean? Like I think they're probably on a Google trajectory and not a Netscape trajectory. Um, but Google was a [ __ ]
00:16:05
chaos monkey of a [ __ ] house for a long long time and before they settled in and and uh went. Anyway, before we move on,
00:16:12
we're going to be listening to some predictions from listeners today, just so you know. Um, let's listen to the f
00:16:18
we asked we asked listeners to give them our predictions because I'm trying to replace you quietly. So, let's listen to
00:16:23
the first one now because we're already on the topic. Hey Karen, Scott, Matt Mar here from M7 and my prediction is on the
00:16:30
AI arms race and which model will win in the long run. It's not going to be GPT even if it's the superior product. Now
00:16:35
Gemini not caught it will be Meta's llama. It's the only model that is truly open source which means it will be the
00:16:42
technical layer of infrastructure developers and vibe coders can build upon and oh yeah they can flip a switch
00:16:47
and connect your entire social graph through the decades of data they've collected on you. So open- source plus
00:16:52
social is, as Scott would say, the peanut butter and chocolate of AI models. That's a good argument. That's a
00:16:57
good argument. He's right. I mean that I mean I when I interviewed AMD's CE uh CEO, Lisa Sue, she was sort of
00:17:03
everyone's sort of leaning into the open source model. They definitely are the second competitor. I think that's what
00:17:09
OpenAI thinks. I think they think it's Gemini themselves and and Llama and Llama would be number two. Scott, my um
00:17:17
view is that Meta is the AI company actually of 2025. Uh they're they're the second largest purchaser of Nvidia GPUs
00:17:25
just behind Microsoft. So they have the most processing power other than Microsoft. In addition, what is
00:17:32
underappreciated is Reddit, which is an amazing company and the fifth or sixth most traffic site in America, generates
00:17:38
1.3 trillion tokens of data. And that's really the, you know, that's the, you could argue that's the rare resource here. It doesn't, it doesn't matter how much refining capability you have if you don't have the fossil fuel to put into
00:17:49
it or the coal to put into the furnace. And so, Reddit has 1.3 trillion tokens of data. And just to give you a sense
00:17:55
for just how much data Meta produces. They have 183 trillion tokens of data. And I think they made the move. And unfortunately, um, Mark Zuckerberg is as brilliant as
00:18:09
he is. sociopathic and I think he decided okay the the train has left the station around a for consumer uh subscription model. So what we're going
00:18:20
to do is we're going to make this open source and we're going to use this the same way we use WhatsApp as a body bag for data to feed our other paid
00:18:27
platforms. I think that Meta and Llama and if you look at Llama, Llama is really frightening because it has
00:18:33
because it's open source and has absolutely as far as I can tell no guardrails. If you go to Llama and say,
00:18:39
"How to kill your husband slowly?" It literally goes, "Well, what kitchen supplies do you have? How often is he in
00:18:44
the house?" I mean, it's Mark Zuckerberg, people. I give you It's got It's got no guardrails. It'll it'll and
00:18:49
it'll start helping you do whatever it is you would like to do. Sounds about right. And he'll get massive traffic. He
00:18:56
I think he'll make it free and then he'll use all of that data such that I get served ads for you know for you know hemorrhoid cream at at the exact right moment. Uh I think I think meta I mean
00:19:10
four out of five people who aren't in China are on a meta platform once a week. He has more data. He's making huge
00:19:16
visionary investments with the capital he has. He made the pivot from the metaverse quite smartly. Yeah. So I
00:19:23
pulling the money on Yeah. I I think this guy's right and I think Matt is the AI company of 25. We like the thing,
00:19:28
Matt. I see your point. I'm just saying right now open a eye is in the lead, but you're right. They've got a lot of
00:19:33
throughput. I suspect that open will get sold as one of them at some point or maybe not now that they're a nonprofit. But well just on a meta level though um
00:19:40
a meta a meta meta level uh I now believe that similar to uh jet transportation technology or um the personal computer I'm not convinced that
00:19:52
anyone company is going to be able to sequester trillions of dollars in shareholder value. I think the big winners are going to be open source and
00:19:59
the general public. I do think that AI is going to make everyone more productive or mostly everyone 100%.
00:20:06
Electricity. Yeah, we have to move on though. Um, as that was a great one, Matt. Thank you. That's really smart. And the fact that you're using Scott's
00:20:12
phrases now is she's not that nice. She interrupts me all the time. Just saying. I said that. I said that. Okay. I know
00:20:18
you did. And Matt, we appreciate it. As we tape on Thursday, President Trump is set to announce a framework of a trade
00:20:23
deal with the U with the UK. Teasing the announcement on True Social. Trump called many other deals will follow. And
00:20:28
speaking of our allies, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sat down for a meeting with President Trump at the White House this week. Trump was of
00:20:34
course asked about Canada becoming the 51st state again. Let's listen. Mr. Prime Minister, I'd like to get your
00:20:40
response to this too, but Mr. President, you have said that Canada should become the 51st state.
00:20:46
No. No. Well, I still believe that. But but you know, takes two to tango, right? Uh but no, I do. I mean, I believe it
00:20:53
would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens. Uh you get free military, you get tremendous uh medical cares and other things. medical care.
00:21:03
You get tremendous medical care in Canada. Canadians are dying for our medical care system so they can be more obese, depressed, and anxious and pay
00:21:10
more. Pay twice twice as much for their healthcare. Anyway, when Trump eight times what anyone else plays for for
00:21:16
don't have any cares about medical. Anyway, when Trump was asked about whether Carney could say anything to lift the tariffs on Canada, he said no.
00:21:23
Uh the president also told the room that Canada is very special place to him and that he loves the country. Speaking of
00:21:28
tariffs, uh we will this will this is an interesting thing. Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post show
00:21:34
that the State Department pushed uh nations to clear hurdles for Starlink. Huh. Leading to some uh leading to some
00:21:42
to believe there would be a tariff relief for following through. Totally by the books as always. Total grift. Um so
00:21:48
what I want to just note some things. Um Matt Stler, who's um sort of person who
00:21:54
deals with a lot of stuff like this, noted that this UK is hoping to get reduction on 25% tariffs the US is
00:22:00
loving. Um but the baseline 10% tariff will remain in place. Officials say in return, Britain is offering concessions
00:22:07
on a digital tax it levies on U big US companies uh big US tech companies. Um and so Stler noted so these trade deals are just cuts and tariffs in return for Google and Meta. Explain how this is an
00:22:19
attempt at manufacturing renaissance by demanding consumer sacrifice. Uh so let's go from there. First the the
00:22:26
British thing, then Canadian, and I love Mark Carney. He's such a hunk. Um, and and the Starling thing is exactly as I
00:22:33
expected, total pay-per-play. Go ahead. I thought the more insightful and and in
00:22:39
educational clip was what how Mark Carney handled the question. And I think anyone who's in communications or anyone
00:22:46
who handles does speech writing or or generally just wants a lesson and how you push back forcefully but in the most
00:22:53
dignified way and you don't antagonize uh a very sensitive person who's entirely about ego and not about stakeholder value i.e. the president. He Mark Carney's comments were just such a
00:23:05
a masterclass in terms of tone of what he said and he said well you know because he he gave him an opening. Trump
00:23:11
said, "Well, I think of it as a real estate deal, and you look at the big, beautiful nation of Canada." Having met
00:23:16
with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign uh last several months, uh it it it's not for sale,
00:23:22
won't be for sale, uh ever. Uh but the opportunity is in the partnership and uh and what we can build together and we have done that in the past. And I thought that was such an insightful way to frame it. And he said, "And the
00:23:34
owners the owners have told me that this piece of real estate is not for sale." And that is such an elegant and
00:23:41
non-combative way of saying go [ __ ] yourself. Go [ __ ] yourself. And then of course Trump goes never say never. Yeah.
00:23:47
Like so that's he did a great job. I thought Carney was quite a spectacularly just he seemed arerudite
00:23:54
and approachable at the same time. So go to the tariffs because I do think this is like they're all like really not
00:24:01
tariff deals. This seems like a bunch of shakedowns all over the world, including the Starling thing, which is exactly
00:24:07
what I expected and remains horrifying. This is a kleptocracy is you you figure out a way to ascertain or usurp or attain power and then you use that power
00:24:19
to make a small group of people very rich who have proximity to you who then give you a vig and everybody else gets
00:24:24
less wealthy. And that is what is happening across the entire country as we have an individual that is acting like a mob boss who monetizes the United States and the White House. And this is
00:24:36
exactly that. This is he has proximity to big tech firms. He wants a he thinks of them as iconic. They give them a lot of money. He calls them and they take their their their tariff pricing down.
00:24:48
He calls them and they say, "Oh, we're now in the business of of quote unquote free moderation and we call Trump a
00:24:55
badass and we give a million dollars to his inauguration and okay, so we're going to give them a lead over every
00:25:01
other tech or media firm in exchange such that we can call it victory and small and medium-sized media media firms
00:25:08
are [ __ ] out of luck. It's like okay, they don't get this special advantage. they don't get this relief and he can
00:25:13
claim victory by and this this Starling thing is literally like okay this guy put a quarter of a billion dollars into my campaign and so I am going to force countries I'm going to I mean Buffett
00:25:26
said it he said trade these types of trade wars are a form where tariffs are a form of warfare so the US is
00:25:33
threatening war in exchange you have to give sweetheart deals non-competitive advantage to the companies owned by the
00:25:40
guy that gave me a quarter of a billion dollars to my campaign. He's literally And who does that hurt? It hurts
00:25:47
everyone. We're paying unfair taxes, unfair prices in the small and mediumsized businesses in this country who create twothirds of our jobs and don't have lobbyists and don't can't get
00:25:57
on the lunch calendar of the president and can't donate to his campaign or aren't going to, they lose. Essentially,
00:26:05
look look at the biggest kleptocracies in the world. whether Poland was emerging into a kleptocracy. Russia has
00:26:11
been a kleptocracy for a long time. There are some of the wealthiest people over the last 30 years have been generated in ch uh generated in Russia.
00:26:18
Meanwhile, there's potholes in Moscow. Senator Warren summarized it perfectly and that is she said, "Okay, they're getting rich, you're losing your healthcare." That purpose that that
00:26:30
perfectly describes what happens in a kleptocracy. And this is a kleptocracy. If they were to say, "Fine, no tariffs
00:26:36
across. you have to drop your tariffs on all of our media or all of our tech companies and have a systemic law.
00:26:42
That's fine. But when the president starts picking winners and losers, effectively everyone loses. Yeah. Cuz he
00:26:48
loves to be like, I make a deal. I make a deal. But it's always in the interest. The Starling was amazing. Maybe it's the best one, but these countries shouldn't
00:26:54
have be forced into if you only take our, you know, if you take our salami, you know, you'll you'll get what you
00:26:59
want. You won't be like beat up kind of thing. And that's what it feels like everything. And of course, it's
00:27:04
Starlink. And when there's other choices that they could make with European satellite, whatever it matters, that might be their choice in the end, but
00:27:11
they don't get the choice of the choice. And it's it's what the worst thing is it's a lot of small countries, right? A lot of small African countries. It's not
00:27:18
just one. There could the post noted it was noted that was like Vietnam was in there. I forget the Congo may have been
00:27:24
in there. But um and these are not all the ones on the list. So this is a policy of the government to sell
00:27:30
Starlink. Our government does go around and sell our companies, you know, for for decades, you know, use Lockheed,
00:27:36
used Boeing, whatever, but nothing this explicit with someone so close to the president, right, in terms of like, let me get you a deal and giving them unfair advantage. our our trade representatives
00:27:48
or our our head of our commerce secretary will take a group of iconic American companies, but they will also take a representative for small
00:27:55
businesses and they will say, "Okay, we're here with Boeing, Proctor and Gamble, Estee Lauder, North Face, and
00:28:01
trade representatives for small and medium-sized businesses and manufacturers and we're here and we go to China and we try and cut a deal and
00:28:07
we speak with one voice and talk about, you know, great American companies, but they don't go over and say, "Oh, by the
00:28:14
way, you know, Exxon gave me a [ __ ] ton of I need you to build a an Exxon field
00:28:20
here. Then everyone in oil and gas but Exxon loses. And what happens is companies start allocating more and more money to the kleptocrat which their consumers pay for and the companies it
00:28:33
creates just an incentive system that's just a downward spiral. Absolutely. And it's a similar incentive system right
00:28:39
now unfortunately because of Citizens United around companies allocating more and more capital to lobbing and
00:28:44
weaponizing. Interesting. It's a waste of money. Lobbying is a waste of money. And and and then the Trump boys go around the world doing either you you
00:28:51
were on Anderson Cooper uh I think it was last night. Um the crypto stuff, the real estate stuff. They're building a
00:28:57
big building in um uh in Saudi Arabia, one in all over the Middle East and just getting like they're just going with the with like a bag of money. Like it's they feel like mob people like here put the
00:29:10
money in the bag and then we'll do whatever you want. Anyway, it's it's grotesque. It really it is. Anyway,
00:29:16
Scott, and these trade deals, let's watch, let's take them apart very carefully, but most of them are going to be in this genre, giving a favor to
00:29:22
someone and not bringing manufacturing back to the US. That was never the goal. That was a giant lie they were telling.
00:29:28
Um, and people did these sort of virtue signalings of things they were already investing in um to pretend that they
00:29:35
were bringing manufacturing back to the US. So, regular workers are not probably not going to benefit very much as they
00:29:40
didn't in the first Trump administration. when we made all those promises, none of which came to fruition about manufacturing facilities. Okay,
00:29:47
Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Heg says password fails. What a surprise.
00:29:52
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. That's that's that's working hard, that word right there,
00:29:58
those two words. Um, reportedly has a history of not following best practices when it comes to cyber security. Gabbard
00:30:03
used the same easily corrected password across multiple accounts. I'm surprised it wasn't 1 2 3 4 for years. According
00:30:09
to Wired, the password showed up in multiple data breaches and was linked to her Gmail, Dropbox, and LinkedIn
00:30:15
accounts, and it was apparently some nickname she had in some strange group she belonged to. During the time the
00:30:20
breaches occurred, Gabbard was serving in Congress and sitting on the intelligence related committees with access to sensitive national security
00:30:27
information. Then again, not hold my beer, a lot of beers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegats also had passwords exposed in multiple data breaches, including the one that was reused across personal
00:30:39
email accounts according to New York Times. I mean, this is like worse than my mother, these two. And um we also
00:30:45
learned that he used Signal, Pete Heg says, even more for Pentagon business, engaging at least a dozen separate
00:30:50
chats, the Wall Street Journal reported. I mean, I've never seen more promiscuous
00:30:56
people when it comes to bad data practices. And talk about your concerns about this. It doesn't like these people
00:31:01
do not know how to keep classified information safe. Um, and even their own personal information at the same time.
00:31:08
Well, you know what happens when Pete Hexath takes Viagra? What? He grows taller. Cara, he grows taller. Uh
00:31:20
look, when we send our young our daughters and our sons to serpent uniform, Mhm. they leave their families for months at a time. They forego
00:31:30
economic opportunity and they put themselves in harm's way and oftenimes come back severely traumatized because, you know, they face such intense and
00:31:42
incredibly stressful situations. And in exchange for that, we have unprecedented
00:31:49
ability to deliver violence all over the world that has created prosperity and security for Americans for 250 years.
00:31:55
And the reason why the US military is the most impressive organization in the history of the West is because from top
00:32:02
to bottom, people take it very seriously. And that is they appreciate even even if you're anti-war,
00:32:09
anti-military, if you're in a position to help and protect our men in uniform, you do it. and you don't do
00:32:15
anything, you know, you don't do anything to to threaten their safety. And this is especially true, it is very
00:32:22
hard to ma hard to maintain morality or excuse me, uh maintain morale if anyone within the organization, whether it's the CIA case officers on the ground feeding them bad information, whether
00:32:33
it's the person repairing your plane, trusting they're literally sweating all night that there's not going to be a mechanical failure. And the idea that the defense secretary is being reckless
00:32:44
with classified information and putting them in harm's potentially in harm's way. And you may even know know how this
00:32:50
manifests. Let's you know who should comment on this. Let's uh use let's get Pete Hexath's words on this. In 2016, he said the following when referencing
00:33:01
Hillary Clinton storing confidential information on an email server. How damaging is it to your ability to
00:33:07
recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross
00:33:12
negligence, of their recklessness in handling information. Oh, he's such a hypocrite. And uh he then went on to
00:33:19
say, "The people we rely on to do dangerous and difficult things to us rely on one thing from us. That we will
00:33:25
not reveal their identity. That we will not be reckless with the dangerous things that they're doing for us. That's
00:33:30
the national security implications of a private server that's unsecured. I mean this guy he literally defines hypocrisy
00:33:38
and uh then he went on to say if at the very top there's no accountability then there's two tiers of justice said Hacksath yeah Pete the secretary Hagath
00:33:50
there appears to be two tiers of justice here and this is you know these the people in the military have one thing in common they all the most patriotic people in America are our veterans And
00:34:04
anyone who has kids knows why when you make this type of investment and sacrifice in something, you become invested in it. Success. And that's one
00:34:10
of the reasons I think we need mandatory national service. This guy does not appear to be invested in our success by
00:34:16
virtue of the fact he's just so [ __ ] reckless. And then all the planes falling off of aircraft. I've never
00:34:22
heard of this. Like what in the world is happening? All this sloppiness. They'll blame it on Bernie Sanders. They'll
00:34:27
blame it on someone. I just I've never heard of blame. Like when's the last time that was a story? And now it's like
00:34:34
a double story. Like these people are sloppy in every single aspect of their lives. Anyway, whatever. There'll be
00:34:40
more of it and we'll find out. I mean, I'm sure our our our rivals are just loving it. And they're really kind this
00:34:46
this kid named this ROC kid who couldn't go to college unless it had been for ROTC. Martin Ortiz, uh, my fraternity
00:34:53
brother. This guy was so irresponsible, so reckless, so crazy, right? I mean, we were literally, you know, we didn't shy away from crazy behavior in the fraternity. Everyone was scared of this guy. He would come to my
00:35:07
apartment because he lived far away from his base. And he would sleep in our room on the floor and he would wake up at
00:35:13
3:45 in the [ __ ] morning after drinking all night. So, he could be a half an hour early at his base because
00:35:20
he knew when it came to when he came to when it came to his military service, there was no margin of error. Period. No
00:35:27
margin of error. And this is a guy who couldn't who couldn't get a D in in in basic English and couldn't figure out a way to rally himself to write a paper or
00:35:37
whatever. But when it came to the commitment to the armed services, the culture they have created is you have to
00:35:44
be near perfect. Yep. And Pete Hagath is not anyway. Whatever. It's going to be a
00:35:49
constant disappointment until they dump this guy. And he'll probably get dumped cuz he dumps planes off of aircraft carriers that cost $60 million each.
00:35:57
that the money that we're supposed to be saving. Anyway, uh the Gates Foundation is marking its 25th anniversary with a
00:36:02
major announcement that will officially wind down operations and close its doors permanently in 2045, decades earlier
00:36:08
than originally planned. In the meantime, Bill Gates has committed over $200 billion in aid over the next 20
00:36:13
years, astonishing number, with a focus on ending preventable deaths, eradicating infectious diseases, and
00:36:18
lifting millions out of poverty. The announcement comes as the US foreign uh and foreign aid faces growing political
00:36:25
pressures. They're cutting it everywhere. Trump administration is Gates has been really has got a hair up his ass about this for sure because in
00:36:31
an interview the New York Times, Gates pulled no punches about recent cuts in US aid, putting the onus on Elon Musk,
00:36:38
saying he put uh he put it in the wood chipper because he didn't want he didn't go to a party that weekend. Gates went
00:36:43
on to say, "The world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children." I was like
00:36:49
he's been a little bit more um like Trump positive just cuz he he wanted to sort of get the aid back in some way, but now he's like [ __ ] it. Like I don't care. This is what's going on here. So
00:37:02
the fact that the the one of the other world's richest men is spending $200 billion of his money in stuff that the
00:37:08
US government should be doing. Um and the fact that he's calling on Elon, I thought it was good for Gates. Good for
00:37:14
Gates because I I was worried he was sort of modulating himself in a way that I know he doesn't think. So, what do you
00:37:21
think about this? There's a popular saying that um a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade
00:37:26
they know they shall never sit. And Elon Musk is is cutting down these trees. America has been planting shade uh planting trees the shade of which we will never ever sit under. George Bush
00:37:39
with I think it was PEPAR. He saved tens of millions of people by making a huge investment in rallying really competent
00:37:45
people to try and distribute AIDS cocktail drugs to people in Africa. I that had no impact on me
00:37:53
other than it was nice that we had the ability to do it and we used our scale and our strength and our expertise and
00:37:59
our science and our universities to do that. Elon Musk is doing the opposite. He's cutting down the trees, the shade
00:38:05
of which he will never sit under because his attitude is if it's not providing me with shade, I don't give a [ __ ] And
00:38:11
I'll call it I'll say that I'm in I'm saving money for the government in order to go to Mars. Mars is what we really
00:38:17
need to do so we can save humanity. There are certain investments where if you make a small amount of investment and $75 million is not a lot when you look at the world's issues, you can
00:38:28
allocate that capital to places of such need that a little bit of money has enormous ROI. Well, this is 200 billion
00:38:36
Scott Gates. No, I'm talking about USA 75 billion. My point is I think Gates who's one of the most brilliant people and also I think later in life as you would hope from a man really developed a
00:38:50
great deal of empathy. He thought okay what could I do with my quarter of a trillion dollars in wealth. I could
00:38:56
create other great companies. I could build the biggest VC firm in the world. I could decide who gets to be president or who doesn't. And he said at the
00:39:02
margin of the efficient frontier efficient frontier I can save tens of millions of lives because one small pill that staves off or prevents a case of
00:39:14
malaria is not that expensive in certain regions of the world or netting or whatever he was doing all kinds of
00:39:20
different toilets. He spent a bunch of money on toilets. He's like, "It's not romantic, but if I can bring safe
00:39:25
potable water and sanitation to certain regions, I will literally save millions of children who otherwise would have died of dysentery." He's a complex guy
00:39:33
and and not always listen, he was a very difficult person. I was there when he was younger and kind of a jerk. He was a jerk. Um, and all kinds of stuff he's
00:39:41
done that is not great in lots of ways. At the same time, the transformation of this person into this kind of
00:39:47
philanthropy is really something to see. and the fact that listen it's not it's no small risk for him to call out Musk
00:39:54
who has been by the way attacking him relentlessly with fake stuff around vaccines Musk was one of and Twitter has been the purveyor of this nonsense that
00:40:06
Gates is putting chips inside of people's heads all kinds of like through the vaccine and I the fact that this
00:40:13
Musk all he does is make trouble for this guy and insult him and and create all kinds mis dangerous misinformation about him and then I'm glad he did this.
00:40:25
I'm glad he said it because it's what he thinks. One of the most wonderful things about America as a society is we have created
00:40:30
uh a complexion or a gestalt in our society where typically as you become more powerful there's an onus in an
00:40:37
environment that encourages you to evolve to become kinder. Bill Gates has become kinder. I think guys like Mark
00:40:44
Benoff and Brian Chesy and even, you know, I I interviewed Melinda French Gates, you can tell as they've gotten
00:40:50
more powerful, they really take it very seriously that I need to evolve as a person. I need to become kinder. The worst thing that can happen in a society is where you create a gestalt that okay,
00:41:02
once I become president or once I become the wealthiest man in the world, I digress. I become an even bigger
00:41:08
[ __ ] I become even more damaging to the world. And it's not an I I got to think quite frankly and this is more of a philosophical question. What is it about our society where we are evolving
00:41:20
this new species of man in the United States where as they become more powerful even the robber barons who were
00:41:25
not nice people once they achieved a certain level of power they did flip the switch and think how can I build big
00:41:31
projects and big universities that would help society and these guys are not thinking that way. If only someone had a
00:41:37
book coming out in November that discussed what kind of men we should be. Go on. It's more a discussion of what
00:41:44
kind of man you shouldn't be. It's a sort of You're telling it. Anyway, we've got to go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Disney and Uber's
00:41:51
latest earnings, but good for you, Bill Gates. Good for you, Scott. We're back. Disney is out with its latest earnings.
00:41:56
I'd love to hear what you think about this. The company reported $23 billion in revenue, up 7% from a year ago, and
00:42:02
$3.2 billion in net income. A big turnaround from the net loss of $20 million last year. These numbers were
00:42:08
fueled by higher streaming profit that seems to be doing well. Good bet by Bob Iger. Domestic theme parks and home
00:42:13
video sales of Moana 2. I can tell you I've watched it 109,000 times. And speaking of theme parks, Disney has also announced plans for it a new park in Abu Dhabi. That makes sense. It's seventh
00:42:25
theme park resort. I thought they had one there. I don't know why. Disney is often seen as a bellweather for consumer
00:42:30
confidence. These numbers tell you consumers aren't too worried. Or is it just another convoy from earnings report? Um I'm going to add in Uber's
00:42:37
earnings, too. The company reported 11.5 billion in revenue, up 14% year-over-year. Good. Not a huge
00:42:43
company, but a good solid revenue thing, but slightly below Wall Street's expectations. Total bookings grew 14% to
00:42:50
42 billion. Um, that's the amount. And then they have to take out blah blah blah. They have to pay drivers, etc. Uh,
00:42:56
Uber has also just announced a joint venture with Chinese self-driving car company Pony AI to roll out robo taxis
00:43:02
in Middle Eastern markets. look like Uber is becoming the partner for all these things like Whimo and and and uh
00:43:08
what Pony AI is doing around the world. So, um I'd love to hear what you um what
00:43:14
you think about then we have another listener uh prediction around earnings. But first Disney and then Uber. Well,
00:43:19
Uber was Uber just sort of barely missed expectations. I would argue they met expectations. And what's interesting about Uber is their relationship with
00:43:26
all the they're striking up with all these different autonomous driving company. It feels like there's an old Hemingway line uh how did you go
00:43:32
bankrupt gradually then suddenly is the answer. It feels like the autonomous wars have been slow and now it feels
00:43:40
like it's about we're on the eve of war among uh autonomous whether it's Uber doing deals, Whimo at some point Musk
00:43:47
will enter. It feels like autonomous. Whimo and Uber have a deal. Like because they're the reservation system. Like
00:43:52
that's what I've always thought Uber was the reservation system for someone. The consumer and you're used to you're used
00:43:59
to just booking a car on them. But I that's what I took away from the Uber earnings, but I didn't I didn't think
00:44:04
they're that interesting. The more really the more interesting one was the surprise to the upside from Disney. And
00:44:10
that is their stock popped 10%. It's at after really touching kind of 10-year lows. revenue up 7%. Uh the Disney Plus
00:44:19
uh not only raised prices but grew their subscriber base which a lot of us weren't expecting. Hulu added over 1
00:44:26
million subscribers. But the real story here is that I think strategically they're being very smart because what
00:44:31
are they doing? They're leaning into their core advantage and point of differentiation and that's its parks
00:44:36
business. Uh, Parks was mentioned five times more in this earnings call than the prior quarters call because they
00:44:43
realized that Netflix isn't opening a park. Alpha Metac, it takes 10 years, 20 years maybe to build a park like this. Their cruise line is killing it. Um, and
00:44:55
they also realize quite frankly they're probably always going to be a distant two or three maybe if they're lucky in
00:45:01
streaming, but they can be number one and command unfair margins in their parks unit. And their parks unit is just
00:45:08
killing it. And to Bob Iger's credit, this was this was the strongest earnings call Disney has had in a long time. And that is, okay, the streaming is no longer a sinkhole of capital. And we are
00:45:22
we our parks business which is truly differentiated and singular is killing it. So good good for them. I I you know yeah I think he's and then we'll see who he takes over. But he he's you know he's
00:45:34
a pro. This man is a pro. Um okay Scott, while we're on the topic of earnings, let's hear for another prediction from a
00:45:40
listener. This one about the economy. Let's play it. By the way, our listeners are so smart. Hi Karen and Scott. This
00:45:46
is Rich, an American living in Germany since 2016. My prediction is that the US falls into a recession, possibly even worse than 2008. On the consumer side,
00:45:58
tariffs push prices even higher after years of inflation, crushing demands. Businesses cut jobs even more than they are already due to tariffs and AI. Then
00:46:11
on the credit side, investors demand higher yields after we've voluntarily drive our economy off a cliff. Unlike 2008 though, the Fed can't just cut
00:46:24
rates in a stagflationary environment. We're stuck in a vicious cycle or toyful k as car knows. To c this is this is, you know, most people
00:46:36
are can't tell if we're going to run into this recessionary environment. Um it it certainly feels like that's what
00:46:42
we're being set up for unless he does something. I mean this is self selfinflicted of course.
00:46:48
Well there's there's sort of the known unknowns and then the unknown unknowns and it's usually the unknown unknowns
00:46:54
that that get you. But in terms of the known unknowns, the fulcrum here about whether we probably go into a recession
00:47:00
or worse stagflation is this nonsense around around tariffs and what happens. If anything resembling the proposed
00:47:07
tariffs actually sticks, you're going to see an increase in inflation, an increase in interest rates, and a
00:47:13
decline in the economy. The word for that that most young people don't know is stagflation. And when you have
00:47:18
stagflation, when the economy is shrinking, even as interest rates go up, which is the worst of that's, you know, that's nitro and glycerin for an
00:47:25
economy, you have to sacrifice jobs and massively increase interest rates because basically typically what the Fed
00:47:31
says is we will opt for lower or higher unemployment versus higher inflation. That's the real danger in my opinion. If we go into recession, that's that's something that's supposed to happen
00:47:42
every seven years. It brings down prices, quite frankly. It gives young people over the medium-term a little bit of an opportunity to buy into assets at
00:47:48
a lower price. I don't think recession is the worst thing that could happen to us. If you look at the Fed's uh notes or
00:47:54
or Chairman Pal's notes yesterday, he essentially said we're in a bit of a vibe session. and Kyla Scanland, who I
00:48:01
love, this young uh woman who does a ton of great um work on uh economics. Uh essentially, consumer
00:48:09
confidence is at a low since co the uncertainty index is at a high since the 80s. But if you look at the underlying data, if you look at employment, if you look at retail sales, if you look at
00:48:21
spending, quite frankly, the economy still looks pretty strong right now. And so he he kept interest rates he kept
00:48:28
interest rates flat. So this is all about in the short term unless you know if look if there's a nuclear detonation
00:48:35
on the on the Indian Pakistani border all bets are off right. But in terms of where we are economically right now the fulcrum or the arbiter will be just how [ __ ] insane how down crazy road we
00:48:48
travel with these um with these tariffs. So we'll see. But the thing I'm most scared of um is not a recession. I actually think that recessions I think we're due for not an extended recession.
00:49:02
Housing prices and stock prices need to come down such that people like you and me, Cara, maybe transfer a little bit of
00:49:08
our wealth and create some opportunity for younger people who want to buy their own homes and buy their own stocks. I
00:49:13
don't think that'd be the worst thing in the world. What would be nearly the worst thing for the economy would be a
00:49:19
spike in interest rates as the economy goes goes down. And the thing what's so interesting is any economist under the
00:49:25
age of 50 doesn't even know the word stagflation. They don't even think it can happen. It can happen. It happened in the horror movie stagflation. I feel
00:49:32
like Bessence's got the upper hand here. Besset and Rubio over the crazies. I think I suspect a little bit more. So
00:49:39
it's the tenure. It's the bond. If the bond market starts spiking, they all freak out. They all freak out. You're
00:49:44
right. I'm saying with the ter with having to do with Trump's crazy, he seems a little more willing to deal
00:49:50
besides himself self deal. Um, in any case, um, we'll see. We'll see. Great. Great. Thank you so much, Rich. That was really great. Um, very quickly, the new Meta uh AI app is creepy. According to a
00:50:02
detailed account in the Washington Post, speaking of of these AI stuff that were met, it probably will dominate in many
00:50:08
ways. The app assures personalized AI and delivers via personal information from Facebook and Instagram and memory
00:50:13
files where details about users are kept. Jeffrey Fowler, who wrote the post, the article found his memory file
00:50:19
contain interest like natural fertility techniques, divorce, and payday loans. Uh Meta Meta also feeds conversations
00:50:27
back about Meta's AI training system without an option to opt out. I like I know you're saying they're going to
00:50:32
dominate. There is thing I worry about. You always say, "Oh, I loaded this up. I loaded that up." And I'm always like,
00:50:37
"I'm not loading my stuff up, you know, and you can pay a little more to chat TPT so they don't train on your data and
00:50:44
they allegedly protect it." Um, I would not load up like what I ate for lunch yesterday to Meta. I have to say, I mean, except for Instagram and threads, which I use largely for marketing. Um, I
00:50:57
got to say, I'm not loading a damn thing up to this person because of the way it was used and the lack of any guard
00:51:03
rails. I I would never use their AI app. I don't know how you feel about it, but
00:51:08
you're very you're much more promiscuous in loading up your information. So, yeah, my attitude is violate my privacy
00:51:14
as long as I can see that my QX60 is one minute away. I I could just get high. I could just eat edibles and order Ubers
00:51:20
and watch how close my car is. I find it [ __ ] fascinating. Why is he making a right turn on broom? Doesn't he know where he's going? Maps. I find that [ __ ]
00:51:28
fascinating. And occasionally I have a moment I'm like, how do they know? Like I, you know, how do they know I have
00:51:34
prostate itis? How are they know? I mean, I find this [ __ ] fascinating. Mine is food po food food porn like people
00:51:40
making food. uh tool tips tip like little hacks hardware hacks and Mission Impossible Mission Impossible Dockers which is
00:51:51
coming out May 23rd and I'm going by myself just so everybody knows do not speak to me on May 23rd I'm going to see
00:51:57
the final reckoning and I'm going to probably see it twice but go ahead Scott. So so what do you think about
00:52:02
this this this app? Are you going to use it? You probably will. Look, I I am I'm I'm do a talk. I was just in Hamburg, Germany, and I do a talk on
00:52:14
that everyone want everyone wanted to know had two, you know, questions really around two topics in the Q&A. What the
00:52:21
[ __ ] is going on in America and they want to know about AI and I've said I'm an AI optimist for the most part. I don't think it's going to turn on us. I don't see any reason why AI can't be used to create defensive measures
00:52:32
against offensive measures. I don't think it's ever going to become sentient. I think in the short run it'll
00:52:37
destroy jobs, but like every other technology, it'll create, in my opinion, more jobs than it destroys over the medium and the long term. The biggest
00:52:44
threat of AI is that it's going to speedball loneliness, and that is I'm I'm frustrated. I can't I don't have friends. I I can't figure out the social pecking order. I I am really upset. I
00:52:58
don't have a girlfriend. So, I have this incredible uh AI girlfriend that's a mix
00:53:03
of porn and maybe I even have an AI robot sex doll and I never develop the skills or take the risk to establish a
00:53:09
romantic relationship. And this is the fear. This is what young men have fighting against them is they have the
00:53:15
deepest pocketed most talented people in the world trying to convince them they can have a reasonable faximile of life
00:53:21
with no human contact. You need you need So you're not concerned with loading your stuff up, which is my question.
00:53:28
Well, okay, it's too late for me. And not only that, quite frankly, I have economic security and people who love me unconditionally. So I I'm there. I'm at
00:53:35
the promised land. What I'm worried about is young men who are struggling to find a connection to school, to work, or
00:53:40
to other people and get a reasonable fact similarly of that dopa hit that you get from a relationship from Reddit,
00:53:46
Discord, porn, Robin Hood. Oh, I'm I'm not gambling. I'm investing. And they spend all of their time in their basement never going through the hardship of trying to make agree
00:53:57
relationships work. Let me say we have to move on. But Scott, every Scott will be everybody's friend. Next friend, just
00:54:04
so you know, Scott is everybody's friend. I'm very unfriendly, but Scott will be everybody's friend. Um, okay.
00:54:09
Uh, I'm not using that app. That's all I'm saying. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, including one more listener
00:54:17
prediction. We're going to do a prediction now. Scott, I'm going to do a very brief one. They're giving out
00:54:22
Golden Globes for best podcast next year. I think we need to win even though we're not in the top. You have to be in the top 25 to be in it. Um, we have to
00:54:29
get to the top. Top 25 most listened. Yes. Apparently some crazy right-wingers that are in the top 25. I know that. Exactly. So, we need to we need to What about the top 25 revenue? Because the
00:54:40
thing is the people who listen to those people don't have any money unless they're like looking for dental implants or like trucker hats. So we need to kiss
00:54:47
up to the Golden Globe people. All those foreigners to tariff them. Let's threaten to tariff awards ceremonies. We
00:54:53
want to come. We are so much fun at a party. We would have such a we would be so good at a Golden Globe. We will drink. We will cause problems etc. et so
00:55:01
much is doing a lot of work there. But okay, you fall asleep on the couch. Everyone's wondering who the nine-year-old boy who is asleep on the
00:55:07
couch. And everyone's like, who's the guy just at the bar who won't leave? That's correct. Um and as I said, I will
00:55:13
be at Mission Impossible. One thing I will I'm going to do a quick prediction. I was talking to the people at Aurora,
00:55:19
which is the self-driving um trucks, right? Um everyone's focused on self-driving cars, but these driverless
00:55:25
runs of trucks, they're now going to on every day between Dallas in Houston. Um I just think that's something that isn't focused in on. Um they hauled pastries. The first driver is hauled transported
00:55:36
pastries. This is an area nobody's paying attention to. I think that is the real money is is that kind of stuff cuz
00:55:43
that's where it's going to be. That's where we really do need these these driverless things going on. Um and I'm
00:55:50
I'm excited by driverless cars in cities. I am personally, but I think that's where the big money is going to
00:55:55
be. That's where you should be focusing in on if you're interested in the sector. All right, Scott, make a prediction.
00:56:02
uh this first 100 days of the Trump administration mostly using the vehicle of the Trump coin will go down in
00:56:08
history is the greatest grift in the history of our economy in terms of the amount of money stolen and the size of
00:56:13
it over the shortest period billions. Just some just some data here. Uh so Trump affiliated entities have made at least $300 million. This is distinct to the value of his stake in Trumpcoin in
00:56:25
trading fees. The Trump family's net worth has increased by $3 billion or a billion dollars a month since he took um
00:56:34
he took office. Just some timeline, the Trump coin launched on a Friday night under cover of dark with all the news about the inauguration. By 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, it was valued at more than 70
00:56:45
billion. And there were a small number of coins uh small number of investors who made large investments on a Friday.
00:56:52
Maybe they got a tip or something. They made they made tens if not hundreds of millions and then over the course of the
00:56:59
next couple weeks about 800,000 smaller investors lost billions. So that's the Melaniacoin one. The Melania coin two dozen traders made us almost hundred million the weekend it came out. Right.
00:57:13
So, one person uh uh 64 seconds invested almost a million dollars 64 seconds before the project was publicly announced and with within 24 hours had made 40 million. But since then, Melania
00:57:26
has lost 96% of its value. Sure has. And this market manipulation, this what would technically be called insider trading by the SEC. We'll never know because on April 8th, Trump's deputy
00:57:39
attorney general ordered the DOJ's crypto fraud investigation arm to disband. Mhm. The next day, the the next
00:57:46
day on April 9th, the same day that Treasury Secretary Scott Bassant affirmed that it was Main Street's turn
00:57:52
to get wealthy, Trump posted on Truth Social, "This is a great time to buy Donald Trump Media at 9:37 a.m. Between
00:58:00
1 and 1:10 p.m., there was a huge increase in bullish zeroday uh S&P 500 call options. And then just 8 minutes later, uh, Trump announced a 90-day pause on all of his tariffs and the
00:58:14
market soared almost 10%. One of the biggest one day gains in history. So, someone knew what was going on. Of
00:58:19
course they do. He calls them. Like, it's called inside That's called insider trading. The market gained $4 trillion
00:58:26
while Trump Media closed up 23%. Trump's 53% ownership stake in the company uh increased his net worth by 415 million. On April 23rd, Trump
00:58:37
announced that the top holders of the Trump coin would win an exclusive dinner with him in the coin surge over 60%. A
00:58:44
small group of investors have generated massive returns. Just 58 wallets made more than 10 million a piece totaling approximately 1.1 billion in gains. Meanwhile, 800,000 wallets of mostly
00:58:56
smaller holders have lost money on the Trump coin. And this isn't just a vessel for corruption. It's an open invitation
00:59:03
for foreign manipulations. Threearters of the token value held among the top 220 wallets are believed to be held by
00:59:13
foreign owners. So, if he's hosting a dinner for for his Trump pack and it costs a million and a half dollars and say you're hungry and
00:59:24
you want to get rid of these tariffs, don't you pay someone have someone a proxy go spend the million and a half
00:59:29
bucks and go, "Oh, just FYI, let the president know as a gift to him, we're going to buy $50 million in Trumpcoin
00:59:37
this week, which will increase the value somewhere between half a billion and a billion, which means he'll get somewhere between 4 and 800 million. And we're
00:59:44
really hoping he's kind to us around the terrorists. I I agree. I've been talking to a lot of investigative reporters right now. And by the way, a lot of
00:59:50
techies are keeping tabs of this stuff. I have to say a in a couple of years there's going
00:59:56
to be a massive investigation. He'll probably be not too old to put him in jail for it. But boy is this a grift.
01:00:02
You're absolutely right. Well, it gets worse. Now the the kids run on it. World Liberty Financial crypto firm run by
01:00:08
Trump's sons, Eric and Don Jr. uh 60% of it is owned by Trump affiliated entity and they are entitled to 75% of its revenue. It's raised more than a half a billion dollars from investors who
01:00:20
purchased the um World Liberty Financial Governance token and now it's being leveraged to facilitate pardons for criminals. Justin's son, a crypto
01:00:31
billionaire, was under SEC investigation for securities fraud under the Biden administration after investing 75
01:00:37
million in World Liberty Financial. Guess what, Cara? The SEC dismissed his case. That's correct. This is a This is a crash. We We have to move on, but it it is really This is the story I keep
01:00:48
telling reporters and you've talked about it quite a lot. This is the story. The the the absolute kleptocracy, and
01:00:54
it's in plain sight. Absolutely. But this is what this is what [ __ ] infuriates. I'm a real politic guy. I
01:01:00
don't mind a little bit of corruption as long as it's good for all Americans. I don't mind a little bit of strongarmming. But here's the problem or
01:01:08
the tragedy. If Trump bought h if Trump brought half the competence, expertise, and elegance to governance as he does to grifting, the country would be in a much
01:01:20
better place. We have a mob family running the country. That's the bad news. The worst thing The worst thing is
01:01:28
that Michael Corleó is managing the crime and Fredo is managing the government. Yeah. It's like for God's sakes, that's a good analogy. You are you are so good at stealing. Yeah. Can
01:01:41
you bring some of that elegance, that timing, that expert, that expertise to the government, to actual government
01:01:47
usually is in charge of our [ __ ] military right now. And Michael Corleó is in charge of the Trump coin. So I
01:01:55
forgive everything if you take the people managing your grift and put them in charge of our military. And we do not
01:02:00
want Eric Trump. But you get my point. This is just Yeah, I get it. But they're not even smart. I don't even think
01:02:05
they're smart. I think they're stupid and they're just putting their bag out and say, "Put money in here." Mobsters are notoriously stupid. They just are
01:02:12
just muscle. And that's what's happening here. Anyways, the prediction is the biggest grift in history is happening as
01:02:18
we sit here right now. In 5 years, 10 years, when this all comes out, and it will, this will be the greatest grift in
01:02:25
an economy over a shorter period of time that has ever taken place. This will make Putin blush. Yep. Absolutely. Okay,
01:02:33
Scott, you've made your prediction. Now, it's time to hear one last one from a listener. This one is super serious, so
01:02:38
please try to focus. Okay, let's play it. Uh, this is Mike from Oakland, California. And I think my prediction is if Scott isn't already shaving his
01:02:50
balls, he's going to start doing that because I think there's nothing more depressing than gray ball hair. Um, and
01:02:58
that's really my prediction. Okay. Uh, I am speechless. Uh, excellent. I occasionally clip my whole body so I can feel like a jungle cat and then I put lotion all over my body and I just love
01:03:13
me. Yeah, I'm not a big I'm not a big manscaper. I like Big Ed and the twins have a little bit of a beard. Yeah, I got to say it's a big business. It's a big business. No, they have good names.
01:03:25
They all have such good names. all those manscaping things. They have really funny um brand names. Anyway, I don't
01:03:32
see how I know this, but I do. My junk looks like like an aging anteater. It just looks sad. Okay. It just looks sad.
01:03:40
Well, I don't know what to say that, but Scott is speechless, which is excellent. Thank you, Mike. Yeah. All right. We
01:03:46
want to hear I think clipping is good. Keep it clean for the ladies, Scott. Keep it clean for the ladies. This is
01:03:52
what I tell my sons. Keep it Keep it clean for the ladies. My wife came in or actually like came in on me while I was
01:03:59
manscaping once and she asked me what I was doing. I apparently meal prep was not the right answer.
01:04:06
Okay. Keep it clean for the ladies. That's my advice to all men. All right. We want to hear from you. Send us your
01:04:12
questions about business. Ladies and men, let me be clear. We want to hear from you. Send us your question about
01:04:17
business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot. Elsewhere
01:04:25
in the Cara and Scott universe this week, uh this week on PropG conversations, Scott spoke with Anne Applebomb, one of my favorites, Pula
01:04:31
surprise winning historian. So good and she's so good and staff trader at the Atlantic. Let's listen to a clip. Donald
01:04:38
Trump is somebody who's constantly seeking to shape reality to his own benefit and he feels no need to to be
01:04:44
accurate. And so anybody who does, anyone who cares about telling the truth or or who cares about making policy based on reality and not on this fiction
01:04:55
that that Trump promotes is uncomfortable. And that means that all the people around him are either
01:05:00
manipulable and they're willing to just do whatever he says or they're people who have made a big a kind of moral
01:05:08
sacrifice, you know, who who are doing something they know to be wrong. Hello, Marco Rubio. Ann is terrific and that's
01:05:14
I can see why you're in the grift mode right now because she talks about this a lot. She's an expert on this. I love her. I love her. I love when I love when
01:05:22
unfortunately I'm like it's it's terrible she's having a moment. It's like if someone writes about famine I hope they don't have a moment but she is
01:05:27
having a moment. She is she's great and well worth reading. Uh okay that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be
01:05:34
sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out. Today's show
01:05:40
is produced by Larara Nemans, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Bernie Rad engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrough,
01:05:46
Mia Sabaro, and Dan Shalon. Yach Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on
01:05:53
your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at
01:05:59
nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, what economic theory opposes manscaping? [Music]
01:06:11
Lazy fur. Golden globe. Golden globe winner for best podcast. [Music]