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This is the original heated rivalry, but 100% 100% less [ __ ] >> actually
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200%. >> Yeah, boner killer. Um, so caption this photo. Gay man in his 60s who never
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found love or family of his own goes to Romania to adopt 8-year-old boy. I'm Carara Swisser.
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>> And I'm Scott Galloway. >> And welcome to the first Resist and
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Unsubscribe live event at the Pantageous Theater in Minneapolis. >> Yeah. >> Whoa,
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man. You know, you guys are in the lead right now. We're going to try to We had a a a
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a pivot tour last year. We're doing it again this fall and we have to kill at
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least two or three cities, but I think you just killed one. I'm not sure. I feel bad for Boston right now. Anyway,
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uh uh thank you for showing up tonight and helping us support the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. We're recording
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tonight's show and we'll run it on the Pivot podcast audio feed and on our
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YouTube channel. We're going to do a lot tonight. We'll talk about some headlines
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just like we do on a pivot show and Scott will give us an update. If you've never seen Scott present, it's an
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amazing thing. That's how I met him and ended up in this relationship. Um, he
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was very seductive on the presentation situation. Um, but he's going to give us
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an update on the massive impact of resist and unsubscribe. People have questions and Scott's going to answer
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them and and how much it's made. It really has. and I'm glad to be here to
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support it with for him. Um, but first we have a special guest we're going to
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chat with tonight. We always have special guests you don't know about. Please give a round of applause to
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Governor Tim Walls. I love him. >> Wow. Wow. Maybe you should tell Clolobachar you changed your mind.
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>> Well, I No, this is what happens when you don't run, I guess. I don't know. So
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>> Oh, suddenly you're popular. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. Um I think we're gonna
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start. We're gonna ask him a bunch of questions. We've done this on all the
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tours that we've had and we've had a great time and had a we had lots of
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governors and various things. But first things first, what was your immediate reaction to Christine Gnome's um
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departure, >> self-deportation? >> Well, I was trying to act all serious
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and say, you know, I'm I'm not a petty person. And then I checked myself and I
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said, in this case, I'm petty as hell. So, >> so, >> so it was and I was saying this that I I
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knew Christine Gnome as a member of Congress and I when they get in the orbit of Donald Trump because we I think
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you would have considered us friends at one time. We authored some legislation around water quality and things like
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that and then all of a sudden it it it turns into this. And um but I think for me uh what happened here in in
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Minneapolis was so far beyond the pale that the sense of uh the sense of anger I had towards her that whatever happens
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isn't enough. Um that's kind of the feeling I'm had whatever she has coming
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yet. Um, so >> you >> with justice, but >> you you said last week that Secretary N
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should probably get used to spending more time in Minnesota because we've got
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to get we've got to get accountability. How are you planning on getting that?
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>> Well, look, there's and and I would make my pitch to to the US Congress. Um, and
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especially with uh with her, I guess replacement in Mark Wayne, who I know too. Um,
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one name. We're all getting that. Um, >> I'm making my >> He's having a problem that the border
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between names. >> Get it? >> Well, they can't uh that's they can't um
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they can't do they can't fund these people and they can't give them without
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putting guard rails back around. And I've been I'm I think motans are demanding before they do anything
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confirming someone else, we need to make sure they give us the investigations we
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need here, bringing those people back and and holding accountability. Um the the both physical and moral injury
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that's happened to this state demands that justice be carried out. So look, whether it's, you know, whether it's
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county attorney with Mary Morardi or Keith Ellson, both have talked about it. Both are incredibly talented and both of
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them will get justice. And um it's of course with with Renee and Alex, but this people in Minnesota know there are
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literally hundreds if not thousands of things that were done to motans both physically, mentally, economically.
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Somebody has to pay somebody has to pay a price. So >> do do you do you imagine trials with
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her? I mean, she will say she's acting she was acting at Steven Miller's best
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or >> Well, it's out of my wheelhouse not being an attorney, but um we all know in
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history saying you followed orders didn't get you out of anything. Just following orders didn't get you out of
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anything. And somebody issued those orders and she was more than happy to uh to tell us she was in charge as as she
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rode her horse around telling us that. So, so yes, I I think you know when you're in elected office and you can
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make mistakes or whatever, but this was not mistakes. This was a blatant violation of human constitutional rights
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of motans and she she spoke to that and I was I was in Congress last week too and mine went a little better I I think
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than hers went. Yeah. But but she claimed that everyone knew on this and but I I will say this that yes, I think
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that we need to find out there there certainly needs to be investigations and if those lead to indictments, trials and
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imprisonment for the people who did these crimes that that needs to happen. But um
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>> can I get one >> but I would just leave with this. It all goes back to the top. This is Donald
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Trump's started this. Donald Trump did this. So, >> let me uh ask one question then Scott
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will have one. Is um they're trying to equate her what they're call the right
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I've noticed is saying the fraud around the ridiculous commercials the $200 million given to a friend of hers in
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some fashion or Corine Leandowski's um >> what they're trying to equate it to what
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happened here fraud that happened here like if we go for fraud there we got to go for fraud with Christie.
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>> There's a big difference between fraud and corruption. Um, people stole from
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the people of Minnesota and those people are in jail. We'll continue to do that.
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Uh, ironically, the amount that we know with the feeding our future scandal is exactly what she spent on the riding the
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horse scandal or whatever it was. But this goes a lot deeper where people in government directing money towards their
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clients. These were criminals that stole from Minnesota and motans caught them and put them in jail. So, it was on the
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pretense of this and there's folks that need to be accountable. I I said to all
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the motans over the next 10 months, my job is to make sure again I am not going to apologize that Minnesota has
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incredible social service programs that lift people up, feed hungry kids, put people in. I will
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I will tell you it is my responsibility to make sure those programs are secure as possible and that's what we're doing.
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So they're not interested in any of that. And this that's >> if they were they go to Louisiana, but
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that's another issue. >> Yeah. straight up corruption um of people taking money and uh you know they
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the false sense of they come here they you know right-wing social media uh here in Minnesota there are folks that
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invited those people here there are people here in elected office who will not condemn what happened to Alex and
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Renee or Liam or anyone else and their accountability will come in November but there still needs to be
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other other avenues to make sure that justice is served. Scott, >> if a mayor calls you and says, "We have
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word or suspicion that ICE is about to have an equivalent pre uh presence to what happened in Minneapolis." What
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advice would you have specifically? What do you think you got right? And given, you know, you were in sort of uncharted
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territories, what did you get wrong? What would you do more of? What would you do less of if you were advising a
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mayor about to finish? Just to be clear, >> governor, excuse me, >> the what happened, right, and why they
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left was because of the people on the streets. It wasn't the elected officials. They left because of that and
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parent teacher organizations that turned into food banks and, you know, soccer uh
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and basketball car pools that turned into protecting children and parents surrounding schools. Um what I would
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tell them and and I don't know if you can you can't replicate it immediately
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but that old adage that all politics and all action is local. Motans take that to
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local to your house and the house next to you and the house next to you. So my take is make sure as elected leaders
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that you're watching where the organic leadership is coming from. Make sure you're not doing anything to interfere
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with that. And we were getting a lot of feedback uh from from folks on the streets and and to be prepared and make
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sure that that you are ready to make these decisions that need to be made without any coordination. Like everybody
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in this room knows and everybody knows we always work with the federal government and the FBI. Sex trafficking,
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you know, drug trafficking, things like that. They came in here and tried to make the case that we don't cooperate
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with them. And I'm telling you this, at the end of the day, when Donald Trump
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and Tom Holman stand up and say, "Well, you know, Minnesota finally cooperated,
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that's why we're leaving. We didn't change one damn thing we were doing
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before >> because our job is not immigration reform. We are not going to spend our
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resources going after people who are trying to follow the path towards citizenship and get here. So, my my
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advice to them is stay in your lane. you there's nothing you're going to do like
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all of a sudden we would say oh sure we're going to start giving you names or
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something like that they I I the the thought of that these states that are saying cuz when the president called me
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he said well we didn't have this problem in New Orleans or or you know somewhere
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else and I said we said I said well I said you didn't shoot people in the face
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in those states you didn't do things and I said and he asked what's wrong with
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the people of Minnesota and this was on the call I said not one damn thing is wrong with the people in Innesota. So
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>> it's it's being organized. It's being ready as elected officials. And I think
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what we learned in Minnesota, the coordination between different levels of government because I think it was within
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a matter of minutes of of Rene's murder that Mayor Fry called right away and
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things were starting to be put in place. But just to be very clear, uh, state and
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local governments were following the leads of the organic leadership on the streets and watching what did that. And
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that's the advice I would give. So that's what I'd give. >> So it it's one of the most important
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parts of this and I think most the country got a lot of inspiration from it. Um but Minnesota and and and the
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cooperation with the federal government didn't seem at that point cooperative at
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least with Greg Bevino. May he whatever. I know it's an easy one. He'll be on
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Dancing with the Nazis someday. Um but um and with Cash Patel, as it turns out, if you'd give him a sirly beer, he would
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have been fine. >> Yeah. >> Um he likes beer. >> He chugs it. >> What?
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>> Like a like a freshman in college. That's how he chugs. Like a like you're
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like, "Oh, you're a bad chugger." >> What adult goes into a locker room that
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you had nothing to do with and and acts like it had to do with adults? >> You know, here's my take on this for
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what it's I was telling them backstage. I said, "Well, we got to be afraid." I
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said, I don't care. I can say whatever I want right now. We'll get to that. So,
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my thing is, here's something we have to bring back. Shame has to be something.
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These people don't feel shame. You have to be ashamed to yourself. >> I think the problem is you're dealing
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with people who are shameless. And I say that about the tech people. Uh, so if they don't have shame, they are they are
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shameless. So, Minnesota residents, as you just noted, and activist groups say that arrests are reportedly still
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happening every day, particularly in the suburbs. Talk about what local authorities are doing about it. And then
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White House borders our Tom Hman promised Minnesota would be down to 150 ICE agents by last week. Has he has he
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kept that promise? >> No. No, I don't believe so. Um and this is the other thing. It's very difficult
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for us to confirm that. Um and one of the things is I I again whether there is 650 here or not, the threat of them
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being here and the mental stress that puts on especially our immigrant community. Um, it doesn't really matter
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whether they're here or not. It's interfering with their life. It's causing trauma. It's doing all of the
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same damage. And so I No, I don't believe they probably have. They They Look, all of us here know she did not
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get fired because of what happened here. She got fired because of those ads. And
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they left Minneapolis not because they did some they thought they did something wrong. They left because it became
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politically damaged to them. I believe if they get an opportunity again, they will do the same thing somewhere else.
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And that's why motans, I tell you this, I was in Idaho last night for the Idaho
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Democratic Party. By the way, 1,200 people, largest it's ever been, 800 waiting to get their Idaho. Idaho,
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every single every single one of their they they're outnumbered 102 to 13 in
00:14:11
their legislature, the Democrats are, but they have candidates in every single district. But when we got we got to
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town, the Minnesota flag was unfurled on buildings as a sign of resistance. So So I want to talk about the Democratic
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Party on a more meta level. You went from almost being vice president to facing um impeachment articles in your
00:14:38
home state. And a lot of people >> Good luck with that. And a lot of people would argue that as
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bad as the Republican party is, what makes a lot of progressives angry is that Democrats don't seem to quite
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frankly have their act together. >> Yeah. >> That um we we want to join a resistance, but quite
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frankly, we want to we want to join a more competent aggressive resistance. >> As someone who was on the front lines,
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right, you're the helm of the bobsled. What observations and what advice would
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you offer to democratic leaders around building a resistance that people are just quite frankly more excited to join
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>> and have a more more fullthroated response to being a part of? >> No, I agree. Well, look, I've said it
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here and I might be the wrong person to say this because I, you know, I accept my responsibility because we would not
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be in this crap show if we had uh if we had won. But what I think the Democratic
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Party is is one is we're prisoners to kind of norms mores that are out there.
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We're prisoners to our institutions. And I will give you this and I the tech
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folks drive me as crazy as they do you. The one thing they possess and I I will tell you I don't do this. I'm more of a
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rule follower. This idea of totally breaking something. Now I would usually think if you break it you have a better
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plan to go forward. Um, Democrats tend to be, you know, we got to listen to the system. We have to send a strongly
00:16:04
worded letter. Um, people are sick of strongly worded letters. And I made this case, I made this case in
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in 22. I said, if we're going to ask motans to vote for us and give us a trifecta, and this was with Melissa
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Hortman and Carrie Dick and the leadership there. I said there, yes. And those two women knew it. The Democratic
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Party, Scott, I think in the past has been people want to see a direct connection to what they voted for and
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what they've worked for, to an improvement in their life and the things they asked for. And I remember after
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that legislative session in 23 where we did paid family and medical leave, fed our kids, you know, did uh child tax
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credit 2040, all that whole list of things, new flag, all of those things. Um, I had a young staffer who worked on
00:16:48
my re-election campaign on that and and we did cannabis and everything and he looks at me and he said, "Well, this
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wasn't that hard. We got all this stuff done." And I'm like, "God dang, we've
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been at this for 20 years." But it was a real telling moment on this is if you
00:17:01
want to get people excited, you want to have them believe, then actually do something. And here's what I say. I'm
00:17:06
not going to give Donald Trump credit for anything, but what I have learned from what they did, if they can break
00:17:12
every institution to try and go into people's houses or to kill people on the
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streets or go into wars that are illegal, then we should be able to break all the norms to give universal
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healthcare, break them off to to protect things that we want. Um, >> so who do who do you imagine best
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represents that right now in the Democratic party? I think right at this point, and I think it's healthy, I I
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think we should all agree, we need as broad as possible as we go past the uh a broad as possible people out there as we
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move to 28. I don't know if that person's out there yet, but what I started last January, I was doing town
00:17:47
halls in West Virginia and Ohio where I was saying, by the way, everybody's telling you, you know, uh the road to,
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you know, you're the road to totalitarianism, I said, is littered with people telling you're overreacting.
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And I said, "We're not overreacting." I was encouraging everybody to enter the
00:18:04
fray and fill their lane because I find great joy every day I read Gavin Newsome's stuff that he's doing. There's
00:18:09
joy in hitting him at that. There's there's JB Pritzkar's out there. I see
00:18:13
people like Gretchen Whitman. There's there's a lot of people out there. I
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don't know who's doing it, but here's what I learned. Donald Trump can suck up
00:18:20
so much oxygen. There isn't one single person that is kind of the counterweight
00:18:24
to that. But what we saw in Minneapolis is strength in numbers, strength in unity, and I want a bunch of folks out
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there. >> Right. We just have uh two more questions for you. What does that mean
00:18:34
for your political future? >> Well, I'm I have 10 months to continue to build uh what we've done in
00:18:40
Minnesota. Month 11. >> So, yeah. Um, I think I still have a voice to go out there and and make the
00:18:48
case to to get young people involved again to get like in in Idaho that it's
00:18:53
pretty encouraging to be in there with 1,200 people in Idaho who are sick as hell of what's going on and they were
00:18:59
there to, you know, what can we do about it? How do we get organized? So, I think
00:19:03
for me, taking that message, getting out there. I want to get uh uh out on the road after this and do some more and to
00:19:09
help and and my goal is just to make sure and Scott, your point was there is not only to elect a Democrat. I want to
00:19:16
make sure that that person we elect, we hold them accountable to passing the things we know we need to get done. How
00:19:21
long have we fought on this healthcare thing? We all know, you know, we give them the statistics. We spend more than
00:19:25
any other country. The days of arguing that are over. Whoever wins in 28, in early 29, better fix the health care
00:19:32
system in a way for people, better strengthen the middle class. I want to be part of that.
00:19:36
>> Are you interested in that? Would New Hampshire be a place you might stop? Are
00:19:40
you interested in running? I just interviewed Gavin and he lied. >> No, I am not, but I am interested in
00:19:45
being a part of it and um in the ambassadorship to the Bahamas if that's available. So,
00:19:51
>> all right. I have one last question. Hershel Walker, by the way, is the
00:19:55
ambassador to the Bahamas. Just so you >> So, so the last question is the Republicans using the scandal to It was
00:20:03
partially one of the reasons you left, I think, or maybe it was and you can correct me, but Republicans say the
00:20:08
scandal proves Minnesota's social safety net is broken and Democrats say it proves we need better oversight, not
00:20:14
fewer programs. What has concretely changed since these stories broke and these uh and every state? They broke 5
00:20:23
years ago and folks were on it. And I I remind people that we told the Department of Agriculture and they
00:20:29
didn't do anything. But I I'll own this. What's changed is is we have
00:20:32
pre-approvals. We have things in place. But again, as you see this, they're not
00:20:36
interested in stopping the fraud. They're interesting in taking away meals from kids. They're interested in taking
00:20:41
away Medicaid from kids. And this is why this is not a victimless crime. And it's
00:20:45
why I'm so angry about this because it weakens people's trust in the institutions that are absolutely needed.
00:20:50
What I would assure them is there's numerous things. I will fix this. They won't. They've got corruption. But what
00:20:56
I can tell you, um, we are not going to move one inch. We have the most generous
00:21:00
social service programs and there's a reason that we rank at the top on our category. So my job is to clean those
00:21:06
programs up, make them more secure, but um, I totally reject where they're at.
00:21:11
and and to be lectured by people who spend a quarter billion on horses to be lectured by the crypto boys with Don Jr.
00:21:20
or whatever to to watch the the Trump family make money. And I remind people on this I was the guy who authored the
00:21:27
members of Congress shouldn't be able to trade stocks or own stocks. And I thought it was I'll just leave you with
00:21:34
this. that difference between fraud and corruption. I really thought it was a flex when the Wall Street Journal did a
00:21:40
big breaking story when I got onto the ticket and said, "We believe in our analysis that Tim Walls is the poorest
00:21:46
person to ever run for vice president." Well, you didn't elect me to get rich.
00:21:51
You elected me to do the job. And so I I'm not going to I'll I'll take my
00:21:56
beating, but we're not going to do it. >> Last question. >> Last question. you've had a rough year
00:22:03
or you've had a stressful year. What advice would you have for young people who have this incredible ascent in their
00:22:11
professional life which you have had and then you face disappointment and you face a tremendous amount of stress. I
00:22:17
wish we were talking backstage and I said incorrectly I always feel like I know what to do which is dangerous and I
00:22:24
remember when I saw the situation here I remember put trying to put myself in the
00:22:27
shoes of a government leader. I just would have been so flatfooted. I just wouldn't have known what to do.
00:22:32
>> I can't imagine the stress and quite frankly the disappointment you have likely registered personally
00:22:38
the last 12 months. >> How do you deal with that? What is your own process for managing stress and
00:22:45
disappointment? And what advice would you have for young people who have mostly just known success?
00:22:50
>> Yeah. >> And then face real stress and disappointment. >> Well, I think
00:22:54
>> by the way, you do look good. >> Yeah, you look great. >> Thank you. Um,
00:22:58
>> have you considered running for governor of California? >> Yeah, there you go. Um, no. Look, I I
00:23:03
approached this job. I was 40, a school teacher in Mano. I had no political experience, no money, and and no
00:23:10
connections. I approached it as an opportunity that if I had a skill set that could help. And it's the same way I
00:23:14
told the vice president. I said, "You pick the person who gets you elected. If
00:23:17
you want me to go to Omaha and get a point, I'll do that. You just tell me what to do." So, I always approached it
00:23:22
as it's public. if this isn't my my concern this year and especially around
00:23:26
making a decision to run again. Um my number one concern was we needed to hold the seat, not for me to set in the seat,
00:23:33
but for us to hold the seat. And now Republicans are totally screwed because they're not going to win any elections
00:23:38
in Minnesota. And so I here's my advice to young people and I've told my team this in these jobs and
00:23:47
the decisions you have to make or whether it's at 4:00 a.m. to know your best friend had been killed or to watch
00:23:53
George Floyd or or those things you you elected me to make those decisions to the best of my ability surround my se
00:23:59
people who could make good decisions. But I say the way you manage the stress on this is is I know we make every
00:24:05
decision in the best interest of motans. We try and do it as ethically and as uh
00:24:09
obviously following the law as possible. That's the way you sleep at night knowing you did the best you possibly
00:24:15
can in it. Cuz I've asked I don't know how some of these people sleep and it
00:24:17
might be what you said. They're shameless. They don't have a conscience.
00:24:21
But I would tell young people and it's what we need. Um they've got horrible
00:24:25
role models right now in many cases. But there are public servants out there serving and there's numerous ways you
00:24:32
can do this. Whether it was to be on those streets, whether it was to be in those food banks, whether it was to be
00:24:36
standing at the bus stops helping kids, whether it was be writing letters, whether it was be donating to the
00:24:41
immigrant law center who's doing incredible work. Find a way to find a way to contribute because I think what
00:24:48
what Donald Trump did and what social media in a modern world has done, why we should be more connected, we feel more
00:24:54
isolated. And I always said this as a coach, I knew this that people, it wasn't about the X's and O's. It was
00:25:00
about being part of something bigger. And I know that sports gets overblown the analogy, but Trump figured out
00:25:04
>> you get a pass, but go ahead. >> Well, Trump Trump figured it out. Make
00:25:09
people go to those rallies because it's a place they want to go. He even gave
00:25:12
him a uniform in the red hats and he made them feel like they were part of something. Um, what you saw in
00:25:17
Minneapolis was community is still real. It is still there. There are still places you can go, places you can
00:25:23
contribute. Find your community, contribute to it, make a difference because I think all of us know every
00:25:29
research does this. It's it's far better to give and to help. And motans, by the
00:25:33
way, none of this surprised the people in this room because it's all a correlation to highest voter turnout,
00:25:40
highest volunteer rates, highest donations to charity. That's what we do. So,
00:25:45
>> and happy. >> Very, very last question. >> Are they still weird?
00:25:55
If I had to do it again, I think I would have used harsher language. But um don't norm
00:26:04
Patel that little dude jumping around. I I >> What's your new word? >> We have to and and again there's
00:26:11
something about it that belonging whatever. And and I don't want to say it like flippantly or whatever, but people
00:26:16
want to be part of an organization that they're proud of that things are happening. um we have the capacity to do
00:26:23
that. And one of the things that's more challenging for us, they set a small
00:26:27
parameter and you either conform or you're out of the cult. With us, we're
00:26:30
proud of our broad big tent. Um but that also means um we're going to have to
00:26:36
figure out ways to make people feel more more a part of it. And so I think there's there's somebody out there.
00:26:42
Look, there's a lot of exciting people out there which and again I I swore this
00:26:45
Scott that I would never bet aor's one of my dearest friends. And after the last time Bato ran, I said, "I'm not
00:26:51
putting another penny in Texas. Damn it. It's taking money away." Now we got
00:26:54
James Telerico. I said, "Okay, I'm putting a penny in there." So >> anyway, I want everybody to thank uh
00:27:00
Governor Wald. >> Thank you, Governor. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you. That
00:27:20
was great. We really appreciate it. I liked his socks. His Minnesota socks. Did you see them?
00:27:25
>> You want to see mine? A little different. Says 100% that [ __ ] I'm not running anything but my mouth
00:27:37
tonight. Anyway. All right. Well, we need we need to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll get to some of
00:27:42
the latest headlines. Support for this show comes from Framer. Your website can set the tone for your
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That's cloud.ai/pivot. and check out Cloud Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned
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in today's episode. cloud.ai/pivot. >> Scott, we're back recording live from
00:30:03
the Pantageous Theater in Minneapolis. >> Let's get to some news starting with
00:30:16
Target. Tar um it's one of the biggest employers here. I know. M I know. I know. It's one of the biggest
00:30:24
employers here in Minnesota. It's been getting heat for not pushing back on ICE
00:30:28
and the Trump administration. Two Minnesota Target employees who are US citizens were detained by federal agents
00:30:34
back in January, fueling protests and boycots. Target's new CEO gave an interview to the AP uh this week. He
00:30:41
said the company is working to quote win back trust and the employee and guest safety is their quote northstar.
00:30:48
I have never heard such [ __ ] nonsense in my life. Like, and I I interview a lot of people and I knew Brian Cornell
00:30:56
Cornell who used to run it for a long time because I covered retail and I thought that opportunity was the that
00:31:02
interview was the worst interview I've seen in a while. It said nothing. It was
00:31:06
all talking points. It went out on no limbs. It was not brave. It wasn't genuine. Um, and people have a great
00:31:12
emotional relationship with Target. They have over the years. I mean, there's
00:31:15
other issues they have, but um I thought it was a real missed opportunity for a CEO not to have a fresh start. Um Brian
00:31:22
had been tarnished and rightly so for dumping gay flags as if that's the biggest deal in the [ __ ] world. Um
00:31:29
and and it was an opportunity missed. Um obviously there's secular issues happening around retail, but Target for
00:31:36
a while was really on a on a tear. Your thoughts? >> Yeah, last century. Um,
00:31:41
>> yeah, >> like Target. Target's a great company. They carved out a great position. The
00:31:45
last 20 years they've returned about 7% a year. S&P's up 16%. Walmart's up 23.
00:31:53
Uh, so the bottom line is Target has vastly underperformed the market. And that's what's such a shame. I look at
00:31:58
this through a shareholder lens. That was a big opportunity because I think the biggest commercial opportunity I've
00:32:03
been saying this for 6 months is for someone to elegantly in a non-personal way basically to say no and demonstrate
00:32:10
that we have stronger fidelity to our stakeholders and the constitution without being personally vindictive
00:32:17
around the Trump administration. This is a huge opportunity and it looks like Daario Emod is taking it in the last
00:32:24
week when he kind of refused to comply with certain Trump administration. He's
00:32:28
since backpedal a little bit, but the annual occurring revenue uh of Anthropic has gone from 14 to 19 billion. So, the
00:32:38
opportunity for someone to push back was enormous. And quite frankly, the CEO of
00:32:41
Target missed an enormous opportunity cuz right now what this city deserves is spying, not spin. And
00:32:50
the this was just such a lost opportunity. And I'm I'm going to name drop because I'm desperate for your
00:32:57
affirmation, but I've worked with probably 150 of the Fortune 500 CEOs at some
00:33:03
point in my career and whenever they put out a press release, I know exactly what
00:33:06
happened here. This was a press release that was gangbanged by about a dozen $800 an hour communications consultants
00:33:13
that were worried about >> attractive >> different interpretations. I used to write CEOs press releases in
00:33:19
their IR and I'm like no more than two people can work on this because it'll
00:33:22
get diluted into nothingness. And also what I like to remind CEOs of is when they get stressed out about saying
00:33:28
something or potentially offending shareholders, I'm like, "Dude, you're
00:33:31
already rich and you're going to be dead soon. So why wouldn't you say something?" This was such an enormous
00:33:38
opportunity to say to basically stand up for employees. He would have been a national
00:33:43
hero. So many people would have said, "You know what? I think I'm going to
00:33:46
shop at Target this week." This was the mother of all missed opportunities for
00:33:51
shareholders. So why do you again besides the um I like that spine not spin you spent all
00:34:01
day thinking that one up. >> I like it. >> I did. >> I'm going to steal it. Um but when you
00:34:07
have that when when when they didn't do that because again there are secular
00:34:11
issues around retail we all know and we are aware of and that even Walmart which
00:34:15
was the juggernaut is only up 23%. But what would you when you when you this person had worked has worked there most
00:34:22
of his career, right? As a career person. >> How difficult right now is it for CEOs
00:34:27
to do things like that? Because you don't you keep saying there's going to
00:34:30
be more and more of them. And Daario did backpedal a little bit like he said he's
00:34:35
called Trump a dictator which is technically accurate. Um but they but they but he kind of walked back saying I
00:34:42
shouldn't have been so rash. Uh he's still suing the government suing the
00:34:45
government for the behavior. >> But we've talked about this. Look what's
00:34:48
needed is the following. there's a lack of leadership amongst so I I'm friends
00:34:52
with a guy named Jeffrey Sullenfeld who runs a leadership course at Yale who brings together the largest convocation
00:34:57
of CEOs in the country and I've been having a dialogue with Jeff and I said Jeffe you're the hero we need because
00:35:02
the reality is you have to be empathetic to it's very hard to go first right now
00:35:08
and that is if you go first and you say I'm the president's enemy the largest
00:35:12
customer in the world is the US government and it also has the ability to basically neuter your company and you
00:35:17
do have a responsibility to employees and shareholders. So, what's needed is
00:35:22
collective action and that is somebody has to get 10, 50, 100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs to basically put out, you know,
00:35:29
a real letter saying this has just gone too far. And there are certain constitutional uh and democratic and
00:35:36
civil rights that have made these companies the best performing companies in the best performing organization in
00:35:42
history is the US military. The second best performing organization in the world is US corporation. And one of the
00:35:47
reasons it's performed so well is basic separation of government and business
00:35:51
uniform systemic laws that you get to oblige by you're you're compliant to but
00:35:57
also you have the same treatment and they could just put out a fairly a letter that says we're just not down
00:36:04
with what's going on and it needs to be 50 of them because right now what they
00:36:09
all say and I've heard from probably about 20% of the companies we're asking
00:36:13
you to um resist and unsubscribe from and they all make a big point. They're
00:36:17
like, it's really hard to go first. So, there's a lack of leadership or there's
00:36:21
an opening for someone to organize a group of them to push back. But the fact that effectively in the last week, I
00:36:28
think anthropic has become more valuable than open AI, >> you're going to see more nos, all of a
00:36:33
sudden a bunch of CEOs are going to reach down and find these spherical things and decide to speak up.
00:36:40
>> Well, um, speaking of which, uh, let's go over anthropic. The Pentagon has
00:36:44
officially labeled it as a supply chain risk, but the company says it won't impact business partners as much as Pete
00:36:50
Hexes implies and the ban will only apply directly to contracts with the department. I'm going to call them
00:36:56
Department of Defense because I feel because it's like the Gulf of America. Um, Daario Amodi is also apologizing as
00:37:02
I said for a memo. He basically said the White House punished anthropic for not offering quote dictator style praise.
00:37:08
Um, what is happening here? There's a person as I've talked about a guy name
00:37:12
Emil Michael who is a a tech person who got uh who got who had to leave Uber under very bad circumstances including
00:37:20
reporting by a organization I ran. Um really a a bullying toad is how I would describe him. Um but he said let's use
00:37:28
him pretend he knows what's happening. Um do you think he's they're going to
00:37:32
try to go harder on anthropic now and what is the price because he did pull back some. What do you think went into
00:37:38
that from a >> I think they're distracted and the only way the only thing I'm fairly certain of
00:37:44
is that again I'll go back to my consulting days there actually a wonderful kid Ari who's here who used to
00:37:50
work with me um kid he's now three kids lives in Minnesota um >> that means you're old but go ahead
00:37:57
>> but I always used to say before we'd go in to talk to a board or management
00:38:02
who's in the room that's not in the room and that is there's always context or
00:38:08
atmospherics in a room. Companies are highly politically charged places with leaders who have a disproportionate
00:38:12
amount of influence even when they're not in the room. I'm like, we're going
00:38:15
in and we're talking about e-commerce or shareholder value, but who's in the room
00:38:18
that's not in the room? And I believe almost every decision being made by this
00:38:23
administration is two people who are in the room but not in the room. And that is whenever you see anyone dealing with
00:38:29
the press or congressional testimony, Roy Conn is in the room. And if you look at Roy Conn's, Roy Con was Donald
00:38:37
Trump's mentor. Attack, attack, attack, insult, lie, never deny, never acknowledge, attack,
00:38:44
attack, deny, insult. And basically the one of the greatest brand erosions of the US government is there used to be a
00:38:51
certain decor in civility when you testified in front of Congress. We weren't that nation that broke into
00:38:56
fisticuffs or start throwing water at each other. That's gone because Roy Con
00:39:00
is in the room. The second person that is present in every room right now around every every decision is Jeffrey
00:39:06
Epstein. And I believe and I've said this over and over that there are two very or three very smart people armed
00:39:12
with every LLM monitoring the temperature of the proximity between Trump and Epstein's name in the news.
00:39:19
And when it goes above a certain temperature, they then ask the LLM for what action would create the most
00:39:25
controversy, no matter how ridiculous it is. We're taking tariffs of 50% on st on
00:39:31
Spain. We're going to invade Cuba. Start calling someone racist names that will
00:39:37
push the temperature down again. I think that the Roy Conn and Epstein are literally in every room.
00:39:44
>> So, who is in Pete Hegest room besides Jack Daniels? >> No, really. It's his friend from high
00:39:51
school. >> I don't I I think >> and probably grammar school looking at
00:39:55
him. Yeah, I I I think that Dario is going to get let off the hook because my prediction is in the next two to four
00:40:00
weeks, other CEOs are going to step into the void, the vacuum of leadership here.
00:40:05
>> So, he'll get some help. >> I think he'll get some cloud cover from
00:40:08
other firms that'll start saying we're not going to run firm that would be.
00:40:12
It's not going to be Jeff Bezos. >> I don't know. I really don't know.
00:40:17
>> I feel like it might be Ted Sarandos, someone like that because he doesn't
00:40:21
give a [ __ ] now. Yeah, Ted Ted is in a position to do it now. Um, I mean, in fact, we're going on a diversion here,
00:40:29
but walking away. It's so funny. If you wrote a book called The Worst Acquisitions in History, you just might
00:40:33
as well call it Warner Brothers. >> And by the way, I wrote that book. You did not read it cuz you don't miss
00:40:41
the book on AOL. >> Yeah, I wrote two. >> Yeah, >> it's called There Must Be a Pony Bottle
00:40:48
of Lancers and watching listening to Cisco when I read that. Um, and the English be.
00:40:53
>> All right, finish up. I got the story. >> But effectively, they walked away from a
00:40:58
$120 billion deal. So they have $120 billion. Their stock's up 24% since walking away from a deal. Another 60
00:41:03
billion. So my suggestion to Ted is, you know what, you've just saved $182 billion. You know what's worth 178?
00:41:10
Disney, the most defensible business in all of entertainment, which is the parks. The reason I bring that up is
00:41:16
again, Warner Brothers is about to be the worst acquisition in history. Yeah, >> there's absolutely there's basic there's
00:41:21
a basic rule. Sherry Redstone, Edgar Bronman Jr., now David Ellison. The wonderful thing about income inequality.
00:41:27
Unfortunately, because of our tax structure, we create dynasties. But when we had a more sane tax structure where
00:41:32
we taxed estates because we didn't believe in dynasties, it had we had didn't have such out of control income
00:41:37
inequality. Because here's the thing, rich the kids of rich people are usually
00:41:41
[ __ ] idiots. And they usually spend they usually spend all of their dad's money because they're under the
00:41:46
impression that being rich makes them smart. and they start making really stupid decisions.
00:41:50
>> That's been my experience. Um I always say uh to one of them, I can't remember
00:41:57
who it was, one of these kids, I said, "You, you know, is that you were born
00:42:00
>> the only the only people paying these prices in media are the children of rich
00:42:03
people." Their idea is they were born on third base and they think they've hit a
00:42:07
home run. Um and they haven't and it will be a disaster. You're right. Speaking of unusual people, some Elon
00:42:14
Musk news. He was in a courtroom this week. Investors are suing him, claiming his 2022 tweets about pausing the
00:42:20
Twitter deal tanked the stock price and cost them a ton of money. Elon's defense, he says he put the deal on hold
00:42:26
because he genuinely had concerns about bots and fake accounts. If the jury doesn't buy it, he could be on the hook
00:42:31
for close to a billion dollars in damages. He's managed to to anxious his way out of so many lawsuits, the Pedo
00:42:39
lawsuit, the other one where he said 420. Um, what do you think about this one? He really misbehaved in this case.
00:42:46
He was forced to then buy it. Of course, >> he literally fits the SEC definition of
00:42:50
insider trading and market manipulation. >> Yeah. >> If I had said if I was on the if I was
00:42:56
on the board of a public company and said made an announcement, tweeted that the we had just um that I was buying the
00:43:03
company for $420 a share at a 60% premium and the funding was secured and that wasn't true. I would never be
00:43:12
on a public board again, much less be an officer and most likely I'd end up in
00:43:16
jail. We have sent people to jail for much less than this. And this is the problem with this level of massive
00:43:22
income inequality. And that is generally speaking the one way AI might help is AI
00:43:27
might actually be a means of enforcing the law unilaterally, which it is not now. Because the reality is the top 1%
00:43:33
are protected by the law, but they're not bound by it. And the bottom 99 are
00:43:37
bound by the law, but not protected by it. And Elon Musk represents that in spades. And so what? Because most of the
00:43:43
most of the penalties from the law are civil penalties. And there is no penalty big enough to get Meta to stop putting
00:43:50
out content that convinces teenage girls to to stop cutting themselves. And there's no penalty large enough, no fine
00:43:56
large enough for Musk to stop lying and committing the types of SEC violations that the rest of us have to play by.
00:44:04
>> So what's going to happen here to him? Because he'll say he was concerned about
00:44:07
butts. He had an ironclad deal with no due diligence that he agreed to. >> At some point, the laws the penalties
00:44:14
have to be a percentage of your wealth or the market cap of the company because he might be fined as much as a billion
00:44:22
dollars. If you have the average household wealth of a family in America, $120,000,
00:44:29
that's the equivalent of a $550 fine. >> Yeah. And he's going to be a
00:44:32
trillionaire with the space. >> So, who cares? He doesn't care. and he
00:44:35
just throws money and lawyers at it. >> So, do you think he'll win this case?
00:44:38
Cuz he's he's won them all. >> I don't know enough about it. What do
00:44:41
you think? >> I think he might win it again. I think he he always manages to squeeze out of
00:44:46
things and he says, "Oh, we just didn't mean to say it and he had real concerns
00:44:50
and you know, we talked about this at the time. We're like, he's going to have
00:44:53
to buy it. I don't we don't care what he says." >> Oh, the court the Delaware court was not
00:44:57
impressed with him. He did not want he tried to do everything. He realized in a manic state ketamine he would that
00:45:04
Twitter was worth $44 billion and then when he sobered up he's like uhoh and he
00:45:08
did everything to try and get out of it and the Delaware chancellor said I'm
00:45:12
just not that impressed by you these agreements and to the board the board of Twitter's like if this we don't care if
00:45:18
this guy's really [ __ ] high if he wants to pay us this much money just send an agreement that's airtight and
00:45:22
they did that and they wouldn't let him out of it because they knew that they
00:45:25
was buying a $18 billion company for 44 billion. >> Yeah. But he of course sailed out of
00:45:30
that because the banks didn't foreclose on him. They did because they wanted the
00:45:33
next deal >> and to be fair the company has performed better and he moved it into you don't
00:45:38
know how it's performed. >> Well Twitter most of the metrics >> are lower significant
00:45:44
>> but my understanding is advertisers have returned. That's not your understand.
00:45:47
>> My understanding is the business sucks as it always did and >> and the numbers are down and threads
00:45:53
owned by >> huge inroads is now bigger bigger than Twitter >> but still I mean people do still there's
00:45:59
a lot of politicians on it which and press that continue to stay on it. Scott and I left a long time ago despite
00:46:05
enormous audiences there. >> I I I mean this sincerely and I talk about this a lot. I struggle with anger
00:46:10
and depression and I try and go through a series of things that will be an unlock and I try to keep track of what
00:46:16
causes when I go dark and one of the things I realized about fourth is that 20 to 25 I'm very analytical 20 to 25%
00:46:24
of the time when I went dark was [ __ ] something that happened on Twitter. >> Yep. You used to get upset.
00:46:28
>> So I stopped using Twitter about three and a half three years a last World Cup.
00:46:33
My suggestion is uh one of the most secretive things you can do for your mental health is not be on Twitter.
00:46:39
Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. I have not missed it one bit. Um I had I I continually have tech bros saying,
00:46:46
"You're really missing out." And what's there? And I'm like, "Oh, someone not
00:46:50
calling me a [ __ ] 50 times a day." I'm I'm good. I'm real good with that.
00:46:56
>> What? >> Why does that make me happy? I don't know. >> That's a word we need to reestablish as
00:47:02
a good word to use. They use it in Britain. You live there, right? Don't they call you that all the time? Yeah,
00:47:07
that's one of those words that I should never ever say under any circumstance.
00:47:11
>> Please stand. >> Don't even do see you next Tuesday. You're not allowed to do any of that.
00:47:15
Anyway, >> you you own that word. >> I can and I use it quite a bit. Um
00:47:20
anyway, um all right, next story. More than 1500 transgender people in Kansas woke up this week to find their driver's
00:47:27
licenses are now legally invalid. All thanks to a new state law forcing them to get new IDs that reflect the gender
00:47:33
they were assigned at birth. The law h also has what critics are calling a bounty provision where anyone who
00:47:38
encounters a trans person in a public bathroom and feels agrieved can actually sue for damages. Courts are already
00:47:45
pushing back with legal filing calling the law something designed to quote dis discriminate against and dehumanize
00:47:50
transgender people. You think um these anti-trans laws are popping up across the country again will be uh will
00:47:57
pushing back on this be a winning or losing strategy for Democrats? Obviously, the sports stuff did stick,
00:48:02
but as we get closer to midterms, this this particular thing seems the most dehumanizing thing and sickening thing
00:48:09
is trying to you need your license to vote. People are immediately without a a license, a real ID to fly and everything
00:48:16
else. And um it's really um I think it's one of the crulest things that I've
00:48:21
heard to do to transgender people uh as yet among the many cruel things people do. Uh, any thoughts about how to deal
00:48:28
with a story like this? >> Be careful, Scott. >> So, something David from said kind of
00:48:38
summarized how I feel about the Democratic party right now, and that is if progressives won't enforce the
00:48:42
border, fascists will. And we stick out our chin and we lose our [ __ ] minds when we try to pass legislation that
00:48:50
demands corporations have third bathrooms. or when we let a trans woman, and I realize this is the wrong crowd
00:48:54
for this, but I want to speak as I would anywhere else. Or we decide that a trans
00:48:58
woman can compete in a woman's NC2A meet and all progressives look around cautiously and then applaud and call it
00:49:03
inspiring. So you're telling me all medals, endorsement contracts, professional contracts, all money,
00:49:10
college scholarships are ultimately going to go just to people born with penises. We lost our [ __ ] minds. and
00:49:15
then they move in and see an opportunity to demonize a community and just quite frankly cover it and respond with hate.
00:49:25
So I think where the democratic and I'm torn on this. I think where the democratic commi community needs to be
00:49:30
thoughtful. It's like look we have we have civil rights. This is a community
00:49:35
that deserves the same dignity as every other community, but no, we're not going
00:49:38
to make it our front and center issue. These this should be settled law >> and move on. But it's not settled law.
00:49:45
They took away their licenses. This is this is where it goes. See, this is what >> that but the law in my opinion, my read
00:49:51
of the law is there's no legal justification for taking away their licenses. But don't make it the platform
00:49:57
for the whoever's running for president. I just think these these I think a lot
00:50:02
about uh you know, I think a lot about masculinity and >> I hadn't noticed that.
00:50:09
And loosely speaking, I think of it as acquiring skills and strength uh in the service and protection of others. You
00:50:17
don't h you might disagree with the trans community. You might not believe in uh gender affirm whatever your
00:50:24
beliefs are. But if you think of yourself as a man, right, and you see this kind of demonization,
00:50:31
it doesn't matter your political views, you move to protection. This is just
00:50:34
straight victimization. So where I land, where I land is this should be settled law. Of course you
00:50:44
don't take their driver's license away. That's just stupid. But don't make it
00:50:48
don't make it the lead and opening debate for the presidential election because this is a community that
00:50:55
this is I get it. This is a really tough one, but we really screwed up on this one. And there are a lot of Americans
00:51:03
that have a different viewpoint on this. But in my view, this is something where
00:51:08
we say, "All right, let's be reasonable. We're going to afford this community the
00:51:11
same rights and dignity as every other community, but it's not going to be a
00:51:15
part of our platform that we >> I do think they're trying to definitely
00:51:19
trying to get us to stick our chin out." That same time, this I think it actually
00:51:22
is very helpful when they do this bounty provision thing. It just seems [ __ ] mean. Like I think just like everywhere
00:51:29
else, >> persecution for no for no reason. It's >> I think it had residents here in
00:51:34
Minnesota. I didn't live here. But that definitely >> North Dakota passed a law for no a free
00:51:39
play law or whatever it's called. So no trans athletes in high school. And then
00:51:42
when they were asked to find a trans athlete in any high school, they couldn't find one.
00:51:45
>> Yes, that's correct. There's six of them. Anyway, um it'll be an interesting
00:51:49
thing going forward, but it's astonishingly cruel and I think it will it will hit back at them, especially
00:51:55
these bounties. I think there's a real trend that I think you and I talked about was a lot of people have
00:52:01
immigration issues, a lot of people have this and there a lot of people who were
00:52:05
sort of proTrump or voted for Trump to me has said, but not this way. Right? And I think there's a great deal of
00:52:12
political strength to be saying, okay, you can have that view, but do you really want to do this to people? Do you
00:52:17
really want to do that? And I think Minnesota was was sort of the absolute place where people were like, are are
00:52:23
you [ __ ] kidding me? Like that kind of thing. And I think it does have resonance and especially when the
00:52:28
citizens fight back in a way that is has a lot of dignity and grace and and suffering also at the same time. So, uh,
00:52:35
last one. This one is for you and it's our friends uh at the Minnesota Star Tribune, which we love.
00:52:42
>> Um, this I love this thing. I wear it all the time. It's so great. Uh,
00:52:47
Minneapolis now leads the Midwest in only fan subscriptions according to new data from Only Ger. I didn't even know
00:52:55
there was like a data for only fans, but out of 167 cities, Minneapolis ranks fifth in the country per capita and
00:53:02
sixth in the world. Min Minneapolis residents spent more than $14 million on only fans in 2025.
00:53:14
First of all, what the [ __ ] is going on with all of you? And Scott, will you be
00:53:20
staying a little longer in Minneapolis? It's >> so I'm fascinated with only fans, not
00:53:27
for the reasons you think. Um, >> it's exactly for the reasons you think.
00:53:31
>> It's just it it reflects a lot of things about our society and economics. It's so
00:53:36
84% of the creators are women. 80% of the revenue I'm sorry, 80% of the creators are women. 84% of the revenue
00:53:46
comes from men. Uh it's the highest per employee revenue company in the world right now. It's a
00:53:54
bigger business in the New York Times at 7 billion. And the number of registered
00:54:00
users is greater than the population in the United States. It's effectively a
00:54:03
transfer of it's basically we've monetized healthcare in the United States. We've monetized rage with social
00:54:09
media and now we're monetizing male loneliness. And I think it's a symptom
00:54:14
of something much more insidious and frightening. And that is uh young people aren't having enough sex. And a lot of
00:54:21
it is because young men are not leveling up and taking as much. They're taking
00:54:26
way too much risk online and they're not taking a risk enough risk offline. And uh I offend people when I say this
00:54:34
uh but I hold to it. I think we need >> Here he goes. >> I think we need to celebrate young men's
00:54:39
horniness. Um, but we need to celebrate it offline. And what I would say is that the killers of
00:54:49
masculinity are uh the indoors, a lack of exercise, blaming immigrants, blaming women, and porn, I think, are killers of
00:54:59
masculinity. And I, like I'm very good at doing, I'm going to bring this story
00:55:03
back to myself. When I was about 24 years ago, I was at the Raleigh Hotel at the pool. On
00:55:11
Sundays, they have a DJ day and there was just this scorching hot woman and I made I said to myself, before I leave, I
00:55:19
promise myself I was going to speak to her. I'm like, I'm going to speak to
00:55:23
her. I'm going to make the approach. I promise I'm going to do it. And without
00:55:28
the benefit of alcohol, I chickenened out cuz I'm just not that interesting without alcohol. And so I went to get my
00:55:35
car and I I had the valet ticket and I thought, "Oh, fuck." And I ran back in
00:55:40
and I went up to her and I showed her the valet ticket and I said, "I promised
00:55:43
myself I was going to say hi to you and uh I almost left." Anyways, uh 18 months
00:55:50
later, we gave birth to a son whose middle name is Raleigh. And let me let me be less aspirational
00:56:01
here. I wasn't looking at her thinking I want lower rates on auto insurance.
00:56:06
Um, I think embracing your horniness and wanting to have sex is a wonderful thing. It encourages you to level up. It
00:56:15
encourages you to shower. It encourages you to have a plan. It encourages you to
00:56:18
develop a kindness practice. It encourages you to work out. It encourages you to get girl friends who
00:56:24
can teach you how to behave around women and when they see you're a decent dude,
00:56:27
maybe introduce you to some of their friends. Men need to level up. And the motivation
00:56:33
for leveling up quite frankly is being so horny you're willing to take risks.
00:56:38
>> Oh well. All right. That's your next book then. >> And when and when you're quite frankly
00:56:44
jerking off twice a day to porn, which unfortunately through AI is getting more and more lifelike and more and more
00:56:51
seductive, it's going to reduce your ability to do one of the most wonderful
00:56:55
things in the world, and that is make your own bad porn. And let me just let me just finish with
00:57:03
this. >> I'm waiting for this to end. Okay. >> Let let me just finish with this. I hate
00:57:11
the incel movement. Involuntarily celibate. Like it's so there you face so many obstacles that
00:57:19
you've just given up and you wear like a badge of honor. Well, guess what? 99% of
00:57:23
men through 99% of history have been involuntarily celibate. I was involuntarily celibate for the first 19
00:57:29
years of my life. And this is what men do. They level up such that they can be voluntarily
00:57:37
inselibate. So the fact that okay, welcome. Welcome to the [ __ ] work week, dudes.
00:57:43
Level up. Women are leveling up. That means you've got to raise you've got to
00:57:48
you've got to level up, right? Develop the attributes. I have I coach young men. I call it the the rule of threes.
00:57:55
If you work out at least three times a week, and I have data on this, you spend at least 30 hours a week working outside
00:58:00
of the house, and three times a month, you put yourself in the company of strangers in the agency of something
00:58:06
bigger than you, church group, writing class, nonprofit, and you're willing to
00:58:10
talk to people and endure rejection, express friendship, express romantic interest. Every father has an obligation
00:58:15
to teach his son how to express romantic interest while making that woman or that
00:58:20
man feel safe. Yes, >> that is an obligation. You have you have to 45% of men 18 to 22 have never asked
00:58:27
a woman out in person. >> And there are not enough men leveling up and realizing at some point if you do
00:58:34
those three things you in the top 5% of men and what I tell these young men is that if you're in the top 5% of young
00:58:40
men for long enough you will be I trust me voluntarily incelibate. And the most the most wonderful the most wonderful
00:58:49
thing in life the most wonderful thing in life is building a life with a partner. And guess where it starts? When
00:58:57
dudes are really [ __ ] horny. Embrace their horniness. >> All right. The theory of horny from
00:59:03
Scott Galloway. Um >> it's why we put a man on the moon and have vaccines. There was guys who wanted
00:59:10
to get laid. Um, in any case, you know, Minneapolis, we're going to let you off
00:59:15
the hook cuz it's super cold here. But now that the weather is lovely like today, you better get out there and
00:59:20
[ __ ] Apparently, according That's according to Scott Galloway. I of course have never had a problem
00:59:27
attracting people. But it's not going to happen for you tonight. I'm going back to his house
00:59:34
tonight, but I'm not never happening. No, I'm kidding. Wouldn't that be great?
00:59:37
>> You always bring this up when it's live. Don't. I have no interest in you
00:59:40
whatsoever. I mean, it's like you're you're the reason I became a lesbian.
00:59:44
Anyway, >> we'll take one more quick break and we'll be back with Scott's update on the
00:59:49
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01:02:59
Scott, we're back. Recording live from Minneapolis. And the reason we're here is that back
01:03:08
in February, you started telling people how to resist and unsubscribe on our show. Now, uh, tell us how well it
01:03:15
worked. Scott, let me tell you, you're in for a treat. Scott doing a press. He's He used to be a very good professor
01:03:20
and he's going to show you why in a second. That's how I met him. >> All right. I've got
01:03:27
I've got 55 uh I've got 55 slides in 600 seconds. So, let's light this candle.
01:03:33
Okay. So, the agenda, why why we did this, the weapon that's hiding in plain
01:03:38
sight, what we built, what's next. Okay. So, what we uh don't recognize is we
01:03:44
have a weapon hiding in plain sight. And that is the most radical act in capitalism is nonparticipation.
01:03:49
If you go all the way back to CO, which is the most quite frankly crispest, biggest government action in history, it
01:03:55
wasn't because tens of thousands of people were dying. It was because GDP crashed 31%. The only time the Trump
01:04:00
administration responds is when the markets crashed. I started thinking, how can we send a signal to CEOs and to the
01:04:07
president about uh our objection? What's taking place here? We want to rewire the
01:04:12
incentives. Right now the incentive for all CEOs in tech is to just comply is just to be obsequious to the president.
01:04:18
We need to figure out a way such that when CEOs instead of instead of complying instead of providing data for
01:04:24
surveillance whatever it might be they think there's a d potential downside to
01:04:27
this. And then also just personally I have found that um action absorbs anxiety. This is the first time in my
01:04:35
life I've had I've had trouble disassociating from what's going on politically. And also, I think there's
01:04:40
way too much courage behind a mic and behind a keyboard. And more of us sort of need to have our off mic and our off
01:04:47
keyboard actions foot to some of the virtue we claim to have when we get in front of a [ __ ] keyboard.
01:04:54
I'm not going to go through this. So in a capitalist society right consumer spending 2/3 we are
01:05:00
consumer-driven economy and also uh the wealthiest among us are controlling more
01:05:06
and more. So if you want to hit the wealthiest you go after stock prices and then effectively again what we saw was
01:05:13
the greatest political response in history was when GDP crashed. Want to rewire the incentives. I apologize I'm
01:05:20
being um redundant here. So what's the weapon hiding in plain sight? um economic strikes. It really is a
01:05:27
powerful lever and this is a brief history of economic strikes. And the one I always point to is the Montgomery bus
01:05:33
strike. And there was a very cinematic moment where a courageous woman refused to give up her seat. But actually, what
01:05:38
moved the needle, it was a 13-month economic strike where approximately 300 cars a day organized by a young reverend
01:05:48
named Martin Luther King gave people car pools such that they didn't have to take
01:05:52
the bus and essentially the municipal system started losing a quarter of a million dollars a month and then after
01:05:57
13 months they gave in and they desegregated the bus line. So it needs to be sustained. And essentially our
01:06:05
president does not seem to be moved by outrage, not as much by protest, not as much by the Supreme Court, not as much
01:06:10
by even his own Republican party. He seems to be moved quite frankly by markets. And when he has withdrawn from
01:06:17
discussions of annex in Greenland or of crazy tariff ideas, it has been when one
01:06:22
thing has happened. It's been when the market has crashed. So how do we send a
01:06:26
signal to them? What I think is the soft tissue of the market right now is it's too
01:06:31
concentrated and that is somewhere between a third and 40% of the stock market or the S&P is just a handful of
01:06:37
companies. So that's the soft tissue. We go after these companies and then we go
01:06:42
after the soft tissue of the soft tissue and that is um subscriptions and again these companies make up most of the
01:06:50
market. So when Netflix just announces that for the first time they've lost subscriptions versus gain them, they
01:06:58
lose $58 billion in market cap. More reason recently, T-Mobile was supposed to do add 56,000. This is from our news
01:07:06
call a couple weeks ago. They only added $495,000. So just an 11,000 delta and subscriptions. They lost $30 billion in
01:07:13
market cap. So the amount of power we have when we take when we blow the when we strike the artery of these companies,
01:07:23
the organs of our corpus and government with a blow around subscriptions, it really is the most impactful thing we
01:07:30
can do relative to the amount of consumer disruption. Okay. So what you're going to find when
01:07:39
you go to resist and unsubscribe like me is you might even save some money. I found out that I had four AT&T contracts
01:07:46
that uh for Blackberries and iPads that would have been in landfills for 10 years.
01:07:53
That's my visual. All right. So, what we build? That's what my creative team did
01:07:57
this weekend. What did you do? Uh, so these companies are smart and they make it very hard to unsubscribe. So,
01:08:04
basically the site is just meant to navigate you to a link such that you can unsubscribe really easily.
01:08:10
And what we have found is that of the people who go there, approximately 5% actually unsubscribe versus 4% in an
01:08:17
e-commerce site. And we have driven approximately uh one and a half million. We're coming up actually on 2 million
01:08:23
unique site visits without Thank you. But the most exciting thing is we haven't spent a single dollar cuz
01:08:31
neither Alphabet or Meta would take my money because it was quote unquote political in nature. Yeah. Anyway,
01:08:38
so how did we drive traffic? What's interesting is it's kind of a lesson in
01:08:43
what works the best. And that is if you look at the number of people in the core
01:08:47
demographic, traditional cable is really dying. This is the number of people in the 25 to 50 year old demographic that
01:08:54
these shows on average networks reach versus pivot. It's a little bit of patting ourselves on the back. What was
01:09:00
really interesting, the thing that drove the most traffic was an article po posted at npr.org. I was not expecting
01:09:08
that. We've also built a calculator where if you go on and type in who you're
01:09:18
unsubscribing from and the size of your social media footprint, it will give you
01:09:22
a sense for the economic impact. So, I'll give you an example. If you have uh
01:09:28
if you and your family or you have a decentsized social network and you unsubscribe from chat GPT $240
01:09:35
based on the size of your social network. If it's decent you get another three people. So four people
01:09:40
unsubscribing that's $960 in loss revenue because this company is trading at 40 times revenues. That is
01:09:46
essentially about a 38 or $40,000 hit to their market cap just with you unsubscribing and then posting it on
01:09:55
social media. Again, this is needs to be a sustained effort of small actions adding up over
01:10:06
13 months. So, Instagram, uh, we had huge views and t pick up because we had some
01:10:13
celebrities talk about it and then tried to the cloud cover. Actually, I did doing a bunch of research on protests as
01:10:20
media coverage. Uh, we pelted you with this before. I've been a total [ __ ]
01:10:25
I'm going on everything right now. I'm not going to I realize videos of me
01:10:31
on top of me speaking is like shavings of [ __ ] on a [ __ ] salad. up it. But media coverage is important
01:10:38
because if you look at when a ABC acquiesed and put Kimmel back on the air, it was actually when unsubscribes
01:10:44
were going way down, but the media coverage had picked up because it hurts morale internally.
01:10:50
So, what's next? So, what I'm trying to do is figure out a way to sustain this movement. and I'm
01:10:56
going to be hiring someone full-time and recognizing that it we had some good momentum and we don't want to give it up
01:11:02
after a month and try and add some innovation to it and continue to drive traffic to the site.
01:11:09
Uh also where is our kind of red line, right? Like what is your you know what was your sort of
01:11:19
last straw moment? And for me, um, quite frankly, it was, uh, it happened here when we had a member of the cabinet
01:11:29
describe a nurse taking care of veterans as a domestic terrorist. I just can't, I
01:11:35
I want you to know, and I'm fairly confident of this. I don't have research. I think there are tens of
01:11:40
millions of Americans that just feel your [ __ ] rage right now. Okay. So, we have a lot of companies. We're
01:11:59
going to spend uh a few weeks focusing on one specifically chat GPT and an unsubscribe movement around chat GPT.
01:12:10
Also, I think there's um essentially we get poor if we don't have systemic laws
01:12:15
that affect all companies. When we start punishing some companies and rewarding others with one of the reasons that
01:12:20
America trades at the highest P multiple in other words, if you create a dollar at target, the shareholders, the the
01:12:26
stakeholders get $27 whereas retailers in Japan get much less and in Germany. And one of the re reasons great research
01:12:33
universities, incredible risk aggressiveness, deepest pools of capital. But the reason we have the
01:12:37
deepest pools of capital is because of those things, but also rule of law where they believe that if they invest in a
01:12:42
company, they know what the company is going to get to do or be enabled to or be restricted to because the laws are
01:12:48
supposed to be applied equally. So when we have these one-off punitive efforts that result in CEOs bending a knee to
01:12:56
the president, it not only is embarrassing, it not only denies us of our civil rights and our civil
01:13:01
liberties, it's going to make us poor over the long term. Okay. And we don't realize how good we've had
01:13:11
it for so long. Okay. I'm going to skip through this. Effectively, if you think of it, we have
01:13:20
$5 million for every startup in this nation. Europe has 1 million. We have five times the amount of risk capital
01:13:26
here. And I think it's in large part because until recently we had a set of consistent systemic laws that applied to
01:13:33
everybody in terms if if Palanteer or Anderero want to make weapons or provide the government with information to
01:13:40
surveil citizens, if it's legal, they're allowed to do it. But at the same time, if a company
01:13:45
doesn't want to work with the Department of Defense, they're allowed to do that
01:13:49
as well. And the big myth over the last year is that the markets have performed well. If
01:13:56
you look at the crash in the dollar, we're 21 out of 23 right now. We have underperformed every market except for
01:14:02
New Zealand and Denmark since President Trump was inaugurated. What I would say is one of my role
01:14:09
models around this is Heather Cox Richardson. I think it's really easy to be bereff.
01:14:19
I got about two minutes here and I'll wrap up. Uh, I think it's really easy to
01:14:22
be resigned or bereff to the notion that we're in uniquely dark times, that this
01:14:26
is the worst it's ever been. That just isn't true. This nation has survived
01:14:31
plagues, civil wars, world wars, unbelievable economic disasters. We were interning families because they were
01:14:38
Japanese in what was effectively concentration camps not that long ago. And many of those families had sons
01:14:45
serving in the European theater. But what happened in each of those instances is that Americans were equal to the
01:14:51
moment and our democracy came back stronger. And effectively that's the question now. Are we equal to this
01:14:58
moment? And my fear is that people such as myself that effectively I would describe my economic history as
01:15:06
unprecedented typhoon-l like winds in my sales while paying the lowest taxes in history. Never asked to serve in the
01:15:15
military. never really asked to volunteer. Incredibly low tax rates, free education, UCLA and Berkeley,
01:15:24
unbelievable technology paid by middle class investors, DARPA. I got assisted lunch, I got Pell grants, and I've paid
01:15:32
I think my average tax rate, and I talk openly about this, has been about 20%. For the last 10 years. So in some and I
01:15:41
think there's a lot of you like me in this room, we have a debt. So I think about this a lot, right? I
01:15:54
think this is our moment and I want to be I want to be able to answer this question.
01:16:01
I'm going to summarize. Our objectives are to send a signal to consumers that they have a weapon hiding
01:16:08
in plain sight and to create a series of incentives among CEOs that there's a
01:16:12
downside to enabling this depraved behavior. The weapon hiding in plain sight is economic strikes. Most radical
01:16:20
act in a capitalist society is nonparticipation. I talked a little bit about what we
01:16:25
built and we're going to continue to innovate around it and continue to try and drive traffic to it. I'm going to
01:16:30
hire full-time resources and probably focus in on a narrower set of companies to send a stronger signal. And what I
01:16:37
would ask each of us and I think we've been inspired by some of the sacrifice
01:16:41
that many of you have demonstrated. Uh what I'm asking uh of a lot of people
01:16:46
especially my generation is do you have a debt? You know, are we equal to this moment?
01:16:54
Thank you. All right. Thank you, Scott. So, um, we again, one of the things you can go to
01:17:09
Scott's site, resist and unsubscribe. Anybody can do, one of the things we want to do, and we don't want to like a
01:17:14
lot of stuff when people ask you, you feel guilty. We don't want people to feel guilty. Decide what you can use and
01:17:20
not use temporarily, forever, for whatever you want to do. If you need to watch Severance, turn off Apple TV for
01:17:27
now and when it comes back, put it up and then shut it down again. Like, it's
01:17:31
okay. You don't have to feel perfect and virtue signal all the time. Just make
01:17:35
one. If you leave here today, make one unsubscribe from one thing that you don't [ __ ] need and you don't need at
01:17:42
all. That's all. And it does build. There is a one of the great things about
01:17:48
Minneapolis was there's a stone soup quality to all this. We all can contribute. There's uh talking to your
01:17:55
uh legislators. It's talking to people at work, talking to your community, organizing community groups, things like
01:18:00
that. And the most important thing, the absolute most important tool in your in your entire kit besides your wallet and
01:18:07
everything else is to vote. Voting is the most critical and important tool in this to do. Scott always surprises me
01:18:15
with things like this. And I think it's really important. And you can ask a million questions of why it won't work,
01:18:20
but as Scott says, what could go right? And again, for the people of Minnesota, thank you so much from the rest of us in
01:18:28
the country. >> Thank you, Minnesota. >> Um, when when history is written, this will
01:18:38
be one of the main stories of this era. And I'm telling you, it's changed
01:18:43
everybody's it has. You don't think it has. the the sacrifice has been worth it
01:18:49
even if it seems like an incredibly steep price to pay across the country. People, it has inspired people in a way
01:18:56
that is I think going to change things rather significantly. But it's not over.
01:19:00
Just remember there's still these sons of [ __ ] keep coming. Anyone who's in
01:19:05
any marginalized group like they keep coming. So you got to keep vigilant against what they're doing and don't
01:19:11
assume they're ever going to go away. And so it's well that true that too. Um
01:19:19
so so keep going Minnesota. We have got your back. We really appreciate this. Um
01:19:25
and we're so thrilled to have done this here and we will be back this year. And
01:19:29
you can catch tonight's show on YouTube and in your podcast feeds. That's all
01:19:34
the time we've got for today. Thank you Minneapolis. >> Thank you Minneapolis.