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