00:00:00
You know what it would have would give have more babies, JD Vance, in case you're interested. By the way, I have more children than you. Again, let me
00:00:06
stress that is $25 minimum wage. Hello.
00:00:11
That would be a baby boom. 100%. We know how to get people to [ __ ] Scott and Cara know how to get people to [ __ ]
00:00:24
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Carara Swisser. RIP Pope
00:00:30
Francis who died what he love doing what he loved best which was calling JD Vance
00:00:35
an [ __ ] Anyway, Scott, so last night my kid, my 14-year-old comes into my
00:00:40
room in the middle of the night all upset and he said, "Dad, on my group chat, it says we're bombing the Houthis in 1900 hours. Should I be worried?"
00:00:49
Those are two We're mixing We're mixing We're mixing jokes scandals here. We're missing I'm serious. I think everybody,
00:00:56
this is my suggestion to everybody should you decide that there's so much there's so much ridiculously insane
00:01:02
deprived weirdness and competence every day that we don't know where to start. Every text message I send out now I end
00:01:08
with 1700 hours cash F-15s coming into Yemen. I'm every
00:01:15
message I'm putting in fake military information. He's referring Scott's referring to the
00:01:21
second signal gate or probably the 10th, probably the 20th. Uh Pete Hegath was was including his wife, his personal
00:01:28
lawyer, friends in attacks on I think it's Yemen, right? Was it Yemen? Yemen.
00:01:34
Yeah. What a Jesus. This guy's got to lay off the whiskey. Yeah, that's who I want. That's who I want commanding
00:01:39
commanding my women in uniform. And just just add add to this JD the Pope died.
00:01:45
JD Vance visited yesterday Jay and the Pope took his time to insult JD Vance in his Easter essentially what JD Vance
00:01:51
represented in his Easter homaly and then died soon after. Um but um but one
00:01:58
of the third thing that just come in is Christy Gnome got her bag snatched in DC and it carried $3,000 in cash she had in
00:02:05
it which she accused the guy that she sent to the El Salvador in prison of being in MS-13
00:02:12
um for holding $1,500 in cash. Like what was she doing with cash? Like anyway,
00:02:18
the stories these people are just I feel like we're in a simulation. I'm just so here for Christine. Um, it's such a It's
00:02:24
such a cinemax film waiting to happen. She is cinematic. She is. Anyway, she lost your money. Sorry, Christie. You
00:02:30
shouldn't be carrying that much cash. Should we bring this all back to me? Ask me what I do this weekend. Oh, I will. Okay. What did you do this weekend? All
00:02:35
this [ __ ] is so upsetting and boring. Cara, let's talk about the dog. Let's talk about the dog. So, when I moved um
00:02:44
to Florida after I lost everything in '08 and my kid didn't get into school because it was speech delayed preschool,
00:02:50
I'm like, "That's it. We're out of here. We move to Florida. We bid on a house, got it accepted, and
00:02:57
then Goldman, who at that time was managing my money because they were investing in small entrepreneurs, came back and said, "Last year you made
00:03:03
negative 1 and a.5 million, so don't qualify for a mortgage." So, I had to go home and tell my partner that we couldn't get this house. I couldn't close because I couldn't get a mortgage.
00:03:09
Which was really a nice conversation for me. Anyways, we ended up buying a home in Del Re. We built this home and we had
00:03:17
to have a pool cuz we had young boys and uh every morning on the weekends we
00:03:23
would uh get up, make breakfast and our kids would immediately start jumping in the pool with our dog Zoe and I would
00:03:30
play what is my favorite album in the world. Is it my favorite album other than Damned to the Torpedos
00:03:36
by Tom Petty. I played um Morning Phase by Beck. Have you ever listened to this
00:03:41
album? No. Oh, it is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. It won best album was probably the biggest surprise of best
00:03:47
album 12 or 14 years ago. It's an instrumental orchestral album. Don't rush me through this. This is I'm
00:03:54
revealing a little bit about my soul to you. Okay. All right. So, last night I
00:03:59
went to the Royal Albert Hall and I saw Beck play. Oh. With the Royal Albert Hall orchestra, which is one of the most
00:04:06
talented in the world. Yeah. And me and Bata just sat there and cried
00:04:12
for an hour and a half remembering like our kids jumping into the pool. Such a nice It's that last night was literally
00:04:18
the moment also the the mushroom gummy cell but that will be no it was an hour.
00:04:23
It would that will be the moment that's like my crowning moment for London and it was such an outstanding performance
00:04:30
and took us took us back to this really nice moment. Oh my god, music is so powerful that
00:04:37
way. Anyway, there's a lot uh we've got we but but in any case, you want to ask me what I did this weekend? Okay. Oh.
00:04:47
All right. What did you do this weekend? I We had Easter. We did the Easter stuff. It was Oh, yeah. Did he rise? Is
00:04:53
he risen? He's risen. Christ has died. Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ
00:04:59
Oh, you're more Jewish than me right now. I'm Catholic. I'm actually Catholic. if you can believe it. You
00:05:04
know what I'm excited for, honestly? Conclave. Conclave. Like that movie. Did you see Conclave? I don't even know what
00:05:10
that is. It's a movie. It It was up for Oscars. They're going to have a Conclave. It's when the cardinals get together and they all vote and stuff.
00:05:18
There's some interesting prospects for new pope, including a very young one. I actually I love I I would say I love
00:05:25
Easter, but I I Easter for me is something I got to do. You know why I hide Easter eggs where? Don't tell me.
00:05:31
Uh because I don't want anyone to know that I'm [ __ ] a chicken. Oh my god.
00:05:36
Dance school. Oh my god. I had such like I had such I had so many beautiful My grandmother used to make Easter foodian.
00:05:44
She went to mass every day. She would be very interested in who the new pope is. Anyway, we'll see who the new pope is. He's He was a good pope. He was a good
00:05:51
pope. That you want to understand an organization that understands branding that burning the ballots to create white
00:05:57
smoke that signifies there's a new pope. Yeah, you like the garb, the candles, the outfits, the music, the
00:06:04
artisansship. Gay. It's very gay. It's very gay. I'm so glad you said that. And what a shocker. And you can't sleep with
00:06:10
women. And what do you know? I know. What do you know? Klav, you have to watch that movie. Do
00:06:16
Do yourself a favor and watch it with your wife. It's a great movie. It's like It has Isabella. It has Isabella
00:06:21
Roselini in it. It's She's a nun. She's a nun. She's fantastic. She was up for an Oscar, I think. Anyway, word of
00:06:28
advice to the next pope. Stay away from JD Vance. Anyway, we have a lot to get to today, including the Supreme Court
00:06:35
handing Trump a late night loss. Um, Netflix is staying strong and market chaos, yet another Tesla setback. This
00:06:41
company is really done for, I feel like. Uh, Signal Gate 2 has dropped as we just
00:06:46
referenced. Defense Secretary Pete Heg says shared attack plans for strikes in Yemen. Yet another group Signal Chat,
00:06:52
including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. Hegs is blaming disgruntled former employees for leaking
00:06:58
the information about the use of his chat. They are. In fact, let me tell you, these employees aren't being quiet.
00:07:04
One of them wrote a piece for Politico saying how much Pete Hath sucks. In the group where there were around a dozen
00:07:09
people from Hexa's personal and professional circles and was named defense team huddle, Hexath created the
00:07:15
signal group himself and conducted the chat from his private phone. It just gets worse and worse. The details shared
00:07:21
were the same in the chat as Jeffrey Goldberg. It looks like he cut and pasted um uh it looks like he cut it and
00:07:27
and pasted the whole thing. And who among us has not cut and pasted war plan details in all our group chats? I mean,
00:07:34
will he go? Cuz now his people are after him, his his little, you know, his little his stormtroopers are after him
00:07:40
now. Um so do you think he'll he's finished or or not? Or will Trump not
00:07:46
care? Well, I had a question for you because uh the what I saw I love news
00:07:53
not noise with Jessica Yellen. Y and she said what's going on here is a phenomenon in journalism and I'm curious
00:07:58
to get your take on this called taking out the trash and that is when your own team turns on you and starts leaking
00:08:06
everything you're done. There's no way there's no way to plug the boat. Do you think that's what's going on here? Yeah.
00:08:12
I mean they're explicit. One of them who was a a spokesperson in John I think it's Bullot or something like that. He
00:08:17
wrote a whole piece saying you know still saying he loves Donald Trump blah blah blah but Pete Hexets has to go
00:08:23
essentially that's what this piece said which was explicit. You don't often see an explicit one. Now this four people in
00:08:29
this group chat dropped a dime on him and you could I could tell two of them the one two or three who were just fired
00:08:35
by him for things he lied about. These people didn't do what he said they did. So he turned around and [ __ ] them and
00:08:42
then they're like, "You're not [ __ ] us. We're [ __ ] you." And yeah, I think there's And then the the guy in his piece said more to come, which is
00:08:49
like probably around his drinking or whatever. But it sounds like a [ __ ] disaster there at the at at I don't know
00:08:55
how Trump can save this. He's got to dump him. I think there's no question he has to dump him, but it's Trump. So you
00:09:01
never I mean any other president absolutely he'd be gone by yesterday, but you know, he's maybe he's thinking
00:09:06
the pope will give him cover or the pope's death will give him cover. I don't know. I just think he's he's done.
00:09:11
He's done. He's done. I I thought that the last one I thought that was I thought that Waltz was going to get
00:09:17
fired. Yeah. Um Trump does has a different behavior system. But I wonder if at some point the joint chiefs go,
00:09:24
you realize at some point people are going to question orders for fear that that surfacetoair missiles are waiting
00:09:30
for them because [ __ ] for brains over here is is playing is is next thing he's
00:09:35
going to put it out on is Nintendo Wii. What the attack plans are. I mean, at
00:09:40
some point, that's funny, not funny. That's funny. At some point, this begins to compromise the safety and security of
00:09:45
our already has of our men and women in uniform, if it hasn't already. Private is a private phone who knows where he
00:09:52
was. Like, come on. Are you kidding? Just appoint his brother to some sense. His brother is in the defense
00:09:58
department. His per another friend of his, a personal lawyer, was on this thing. Like, I wouldn't put my Oh, god.
00:10:04
This whole thing is just the I sense of it just it seems like it's there's a deeper story here because they were signaling it. This one person in and to
00:10:12
use your name in public to do it. This guy is is either kamicazi or knows something like this going to get worse.
00:10:18
So they're going to find an elegant way to get him out because Trump apparently likes the way he looks. He is a handsome
00:10:23
man. He isome in a kind of a cheesy anxious way, but he's handsome. I think he's very handsome. He's a handsome man.
00:10:30
I think Trump likes his look and feel, but they're going to put someone else who's more competent in there. Presumably, he says he can do five sets
00:10:35
of 40ome push-ups. I can do five of 35. He should go back to Fox News. That'd be great. That would be He should go back.
00:10:40
That's where he belongs. So, speaking of which, the Google Google and the Justice Department, Speaking of people in trouble, are headed to court as we tape
00:10:47
Monday to argue out how to remedy the company's online search monopoly. The outcome could result in Google being
00:10:52
forced to sell off Chrome and share more data with competitors. Witnesses from Microsoft, Mozilla, Perplexity, and Open
00:10:57
Air are set to take the stand. Closing arguments will be on May 30th, a decision coming by August. And for once,
00:11:03
I quote, agree with Bill Bar, uh, the former attorney general, who was just a
00:11:09
sack of [ __ ] really. In an op-ed, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "All the solicitude we express for free
00:11:15
markets is hollow talk without a willingness to confront bad actors that use illegal practices to squaltch rivals
00:11:20
and establish monopoly power." Well done, Bill Bar. Nobody says you're you're stupid, but anyway, what do you
00:11:26
think is going to happen here? because they also lost the advertising case too just last week. So this is the first
00:11:33
case. So they're in the remedy section of it. I think I think they feel the wolves are circling and it does feel
00:11:41
real this time. It feels, you know, while you were sleeping, you know, we're so focused on everything else that it
00:11:47
does feel like the the momentum here is pretty staggering. Um I wonder if they're
00:11:52
they're just so smart and they have so many connections. I wonder if they're going to do a blood offering and offer
00:11:58
to spend something or offer a pretty big fine like some sort of big bargain. 30
00:12:04
billion. No, I can't. I think it has to be a remedy. I think it has to be a spin-off.
00:12:09
But yeah, they my guess is they offer to do something prophylactically because I
00:12:15
think they see But what I think I don't know a spin has to be a spin-off. A spin of their ad group. A spin of what was
00:12:22
used to be doubleclick. I'd like to see a spin of YouTube because I think it'd be so incredibly valable valuable. I
00:12:28
think it'd be good for shareholders and be pretty clean. Yeah, they don't seem to want to spin any of them. Not Mark
00:12:33
Zuckerberg, not Amazon, not any of them. Well, they get to share data and it's also it all comes back to money care.
00:12:41
This is this is the point it all reverse engineers do and it's the following.
00:12:47
Except for Zuckerberg, who I think just at this point lacks control, although maybe that's not true. The way a CEO
00:12:52
gets compensated is the following. There is a subcommittee of the board called the compensation committee and basically
00:12:58
they're there to approve to make sure that we have enough options in a private company for new hires and also to deal
00:13:04
with the hardest part and that is CEO's compensation. And we hire Tower's parent and we pay them $200 or $300,000 because
00:13:10
we don't like to do any actual work ourselves. And they come in and they say, "Okay, New York Times company, you're a five billion dollar revenue
00:13:16
company in a media space. 50% is the exact exact median of CEOs of media
00:13:23
companies making5 billion dollars. And this is what happens. You say, "Well, Janet Robinson's doing her level best.
00:13:29
We'll pay her at 60% because we don't, it feels weird psychologically to pay someone average." But keep in mind, this
00:13:36
is the average of CEOs at 5 billion media companies. So, you pay them
00:13:41
generally speaking 60%. But what that means is when you're paying everyone 20% more than the medium, it means every
00:13:47
three and a half years, the compensation is doubling. And what that means is in 40 years, we've gone from CEOs making 30
00:13:54
times average worker salaries to three or 400. Now essentially what what
00:13:59
happens is that that metric that that scale you get is based on the size of the company.
00:14:07
Yeah. So they get paid. So when the Bank of America CEO says, "I want to make more money," even if he's making shitty
00:14:13
acquisitions that may not pay off in the long term, right? His compensation goes up based on the size of the company. So
00:14:19
there's this disincentive or you're disincentivized a little bit from shareholder value although you have
00:14:25
options, but everybody wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms
00:14:30
versus Westeros. And this is why I have always highlighted uh Jeff Buucas. He
00:14:36
sold the magazine group about two years ago before magazines went into decline. He sold he sold the cable companies
00:14:42
before the the before the the plummet in cable company. He sold Time He sold Time
00:14:49
Warner about five years before it went into structural decline because he said my job is to get shareholders as much
00:14:56
money as possible even if it means putting myself out of a job. So do you imagine they would offer this? I don't
00:15:02
think they will. I don't think it's just because of money. I think they just don't they're hoping to to play the long
00:15:07
game here and just delay and delay and obfuscate and delay. Um when in fact they should have done it. So should Mark
00:15:13
they should spin off YouTube. It will be a very successful company. Uh they should and and give Google I mean give
00:15:20
Alphabet whatever they want to call it. Um they they need to spin this thing off. They need to just take their their
00:15:26
lumps and do it because they clearly use data and other advantages here to
00:15:31
dominate the market. It's and again, if Bill Barr and Caris Swisser are in agreement, it is a real moment in time,
00:15:38
I think. Um, and real Republicans don't like this stuff, right? The question is, is is Trump going to throw them some
00:15:44
sort of lifeline here? Although, I'm not quite sure what he can do. Um because in the advertising case in Virginia,
00:15:51
there's states attorneys general that even if the but the White House looks like it's continuing uh uh with uh with
00:15:57
Pam Bondi and I'm saying the White House and Pam Bondi because there is no independence between the Justice
00:16:02
Department and the White House anymore. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Any give me one quick prediction. I think it's a prophylactic
00:16:09
I think they're so focused on shareholder value. I think a prophylactic spin of WhatsApp, Instagram or YouTube.
00:16:18
WhatsApp is over at Facebook. But go ahead. I know. Well, right. Or so is Instagram. But this is Google, right?
00:16:24
But isn't Instagram? Isn't Meta also that case has got more that is going Yes, that is also that is also but
00:16:30
that's in the midst of the case that hasn't but go ahead. Yeah. Anyways, you asked for a prediction. I think we're
00:16:35
going to we're going to see a spin in the next 12 to 24 months. It's been a I've been and by the way I've been
00:16:41
saying that for a long time and I've been wrong. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Um they are definitely It looks like Trump isn't going to save him a lifeline, but
00:16:46
we'll see. He might do that if he gets enough money. Um just uh for people who don't know, but the production of Tesla's Model Y has been delayed. This
00:16:53
company has one mess after the next recently. The Model Y, more affordable version of Tesla's electric SUV, was
00:16:59
promised in the first half of this year. Pent a way to boost sales. production plans will be pushed back a few more
00:17:04
months, though Tesla will report he still plans to produce them. Maybe they think it's because he wants to double
00:17:10
down on robo taxis and and the optimist prime. He thinks that's where the future is, not in these cars. Obviously, people
00:17:16
are running circles around them, including Japan and China and others. Um, and legally, it's it's settled a
00:17:22
racial discrimination lawsuit after a black employee alleged harassment, gender-based insults, and racial slurs
00:17:27
on bathroom walls, which were pretty heinous. Tesla's also facing a proposed class action suit, claiming this one is
00:17:33
amazing, too. Claiming it speeds up adometers so vehicles fall out of warranty faster. What a my god, it's
00:17:41
just all over the place. So, his car company's given a lot of yips. Um, we're taping this on Monday. Tesla reports
00:17:47
earnings on Tuesday afternoon. Um, any predictions? Like, it looks like he's not interested in making cars anymore or
00:17:54
he's making other things. He wants to shift Tesla and I I think you're going to merge XAI X and this together in a big unhold
00:18:02
and Tesla. Yeah. Mhm. And make it an AI company. Make it an AI company. Huh.
00:18:08
That would be really interesting. And use the Yeah. Use the AI kind of halo as
00:18:13
a means of propping up the company. Wow. That's actually I think that's really interesting. I'm guessing. Look, this company should be a $14 stock. And I'm
00:18:20
not suggesting you invest here because it's a meme stock and there's forces outside of your control. And now that the SEC has been neutered, who knows
00:18:27
what kind of monarch manipulation has taken place here. But it used to be the CEO from the street.
00:18:34
The best thing you could do was kind of underpromise and overd deliver. And there's still a market for that in
00:18:40
traditional mature companies. it unfortunately the the ground has shifted
00:18:46
a bit that in the kind of fake it till you make it economy it's
00:18:51
overpromise and deliver just enough you can underd deliver but just enough so for example some of the promises Elon
00:18:58
has made uh 2200 days ago he said there would be 1 million Tesla robo taxis
00:19:04
within the year 9 years ago he said all superchargers were being converted to solar that hasn't happened Um, another
00:19:12
nine years ago, he said Tesla uh uh uh since Tesla started
00:19:17
charging customers for self-driving software that he said would be able to drive from LA to New York City autonomously by the end of 2017. About
00:19:23
that one. He said that that would happen by the end of 2017. I think he sent it to me on stage at some point. Nearly 8
00:19:28
years since the second generation Tesla Roadster was announced. You can still pre-order one on Tesla's website for
00:19:34
45K. That's interesting. Uh some of the promises that did come to fruition, uh but the details were still a little
00:19:40
fuzzy. The Cybert truck was scheduled for production in 2021. It was supposed to cost $40,000. It came came to market in late
00:19:48
2023 and the base model was over 60K. Um, and it's a heinous looking vehicle. They're getting Yeah, it makes
00:19:55
no [ __ ] sense. It's they're sold that many. They haven't sold They're currently getting hit with a lawsuit
00:20:00
concerning the alleged speeding up of odometer readings. Tesla does not have incentives to fib. Yeah. The odometer
00:20:06
numbers. warranties expire faster, meaning less Tesla covered repairs and extending the alleged range of the
00:20:12
Tesla, which is I remember when I was buying used cars, I thought, why don't people just [ __ ] with the odometer? They
00:20:19
did. That was a big thing is [ __ ] with the odometer. Yeah, but that's literally kind of like fraud on a different sort of masculine level. I was
00:20:25
like, do not ever accuse anyone of [ __ ] with the speed, you know, the odometer, whatever it is. So, like I
00:20:31
don't I don't I think he's lost interest in it. I think your your speculation
00:20:36
that they might combine it all into one company is really interesting. I didn't consider that because he hid to he
00:20:41
hiding X's shitty business within the Xi. By the way, they don't have that many customers. What is their revenues?
00:20:48
OpenAI is making five billion, six billion at least, you know, and actually growing. Um, they have to have C, you
00:20:54
know, it'll just have this halo. So, he's moving it to a new meme stock, just a better meme stock from because the
00:21:00
Tesla meme stock isn't going so well. that that meme is over and then he'll take and then he's getting all kinds of
00:21:05
contracts. He might be in charge of Golden Dome, all this other stuff. And so he's got other he's got better fish
00:21:11
to fry, better better women to impregnate, I think, here. But anyway, um let's go on a quick break. When we
00:21:17
come back, the Supreme Court's late night rebuke to Trump. Scott, we're back. The Trump
00:21:24
administration has a busy few days. Let's dig in for a few. The Supreme Court handed down a rare overnight order
00:21:29
on Saturday blocking Trump from deporting a group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas. The court's order
00:21:36
bars the government for now from using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from 1798. This was a 7-2 ruling with
00:21:44
Thomas and Alo in the minority. Alto wrote in his descent the court's decision was to intervene was not
00:21:49
necessary or appropriate. The Trump administration quickly asked the Supreme Court to roll back the decision, saying the order was premature as lower courts
00:21:56
had not properly weighed in. Um that really it's none of his business what they're going to do. Actually, they're working. This guy is putting them to
00:22:03
work in terms of making decisions. Um they they they might try to keep Trump in check or at least they're at least
00:22:09
moving to do so even before things like that. Also, the Trump administration appears to be preparing for a drastic
00:22:15
overhaul of the State Department. a plan described by one US diplomat as bonkers crazy pants and that's a technical term.
00:22:22
Uh a draft that's a that's a ambassadorial term bonkers crazy pants. Uh that's all the name of Scots and my
00:22:28
band. Um a draft of an executive order reveals plans to shut down embassies across Africa and eliminate State
00:22:35
Department offices focusing on climate change, refugee and human rights. So the entire continent of Africa and anything
00:22:41
nice for people. The draft also calls for ending a foreign service exam laying out new hiring criteria in line with
00:22:47
president's foreign policy vision which means you have to agree with him. The secretary of state Marco Rubio responded
00:22:53
to New York Times report on the overhaul on ex writing this is fake news oh little Marco um if these plans do come
00:23:01
to fruition we'll see what it how it affects our standing abroad. And lastly, and then you can comment all these things, Scott, the White House is
00:23:07
reportedly looking into new policies that will incentivize more Americans to get married and have kids. According to the W New York Times, some proposals for
00:23:14
those policies include a $5,000 cash bonus given to every American mother after delivery. I wish I got that.
00:23:20
Government funded programs educating women on their menstrual cycles to better understand when they
00:23:26
conceive. I wouldn't be against it except it feels very um controlling.
00:23:31
giving the National Medal of Motherhood to moms with six or more kids. I'm almost there. As we discussed, this is a
00:23:37
cause that's near and dear to the hearts of Elon Musk, JD Vance, Conservative Heritage Foundation for his part. Trump
00:23:42
recently coined himself the fertilization president. He's also pitching for the idea of baby bonuses for a while. Let's listen to what he
00:23:49
said at CPAC in 2023. We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom. How does
00:23:56
that sound? That sounds pretty. I want a baby boom.
00:24:03
Oh, you men are so lucky out there. You're so lucky. You are so lucky, men. Oh my god,
00:24:10
he's so He's so gross. He's so incredibly gross. Anyway, uh I'd like your
00:24:17
thoughts. Let's start with the first uh which is the um uh he's done so much
00:24:23
stuff. Is this Supreme Court situation briefly? Go ahead. Well, one of the two pillars of the way
00:24:29
we approach justice or the how we prosecute or acquit or deliver justice
00:24:36
and some general themes and Alto gave a very eloquent speech on this. Um I apologize it was Justice
00:24:43
Scalia saying that every nation has a really powerful bill of rights and we keep focusing on when these decisions
00:24:51
come down but that's not the bigger issue. Russia has a bill of rights that
00:24:56
says you are entitled to free speech and anyone who gets in the way of your free speech should be immediately
00:25:02
imprisoned. Where where a nation's mental and justice system is proven or
00:25:08
dissolves is your willingness to enforce those bill of rights. And that's where we are now is that for the first time in
00:25:14
our nation, it used to be when the Supreme Court or lower court made a decision, it was just a given it was
00:25:20
going to be enforced and that the president wouldn't think of turning back planes against a court order. And we're
00:25:26
giving the president credit right now. It's almost as if we're saying, see, he's actually listening to the Supreme
00:25:32
Court because we no longer have that certainty. To me, that's really scary. The other thing is generally speaking we
00:25:38
have decided with our justice system that it is worth the trade-off and there's always a trade-off to have some
00:25:45
people who are guilty be free OJ versus
00:25:51
imprisoning innocent people right said this yesterday but go ahead who did Joe
00:25:56
Rogan and he likes due process yes he did he said it's better than a hundred
00:26:02
people uh that are guilty get off if one innocent person gets convicted. I think that was his and I right now I I can
00:26:10
hear a lot of Americans saying, "Okay, now do black people because I think there's a lot of black Americans who've been incarcerated unfairly." But those
00:26:17
are kind of two pretty significant tenants and those have been so the notion that this Republican talking
00:26:24
point of well, yeah, it's worth it if there's a couple people in El Salvador that shouldn't be. It's worth the general progress we've made. Meanwhile,
00:26:31
the 60 Minutes said 70 75% of these folks haven't committed a crime. So I
00:26:36
think the bigger issue is we just have to at this point make sure that these decisions are upheld because we have a
00:26:43
strong man who's kind of picking and choosing it feels like what decisions he's going to decide to to comply with
00:26:50
in terms of the natalist movement. Um, I do believe I mean I think of a unifying
00:26:57
theory of everything around what the democratic message should be and I should I think it should be the following that anyone under the age of
00:27:03
40 who works uh should be able to form a household, buy a home or at least afford
00:27:10
rent, meet somebody and afford to have children. So minimum wage of 25 bucks an
00:27:15
hour, national service, 7 million homes in 10 years. Do away with capital gains tax and a tax structure that transfers
00:27:21
money from young to old. universal child tax credit. There's a ton of actual programs I'd like to see the Democrats
00:27:26
actually put forward instead of [ __ ] whining all the time. But here's the bottom line. It's about economic
00:27:31
prosperity such that if the 60% of 30-year-olds that had a kid, now it's 27% want to take it back to 40. That's
00:27:38
fine. But at the same time, if they decide they want to not have kids and spend that money on brunch and St.
00:27:43
Barts, that's their right. Right. So, I want a program that takes the people
00:27:50
under the age of 40 that are 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago and not the 72% wealthier of people over the
00:27:57
age of 70 and levels up young people and gives them a chance to meet each other and gives them economic viability but
00:28:04
only rewarding them for some sort of kind of weird propagation. The reality is right. It's it's ahead. It's a good
00:28:10
thing to have baby. I mean, I've had four kids. I love children. It's it's that it should be one is your choice if
00:28:15
you want or don't want them. But this idea that you didn't put anything else in place. Like, why isn't he talking
00:28:21
about daycare? If you really want people to have kids, give national daycare to everybody. Good daycare. Like, if you
00:28:29
really want to have kids, this is very similar to the abortion thing. If you really want people not to have as many abortions, make it so it's easy to have
00:28:37
children perhaps and maybe people would make different decisions. It's the same. They never want to solve and they also
00:28:44
don't like the kids after they're born, right? They don't help any of those kids that get born who to to to in
00:28:50
problematic homes and everything else. So they don't they all they want is and
00:28:55
you could see it. His giveaway was man, you're going to get to [ __ ] I think that's really what he was saying. he was
00:29:01
saying that I don't think it um so this idea of baby bonuses is fine that seems
00:29:06
fine um the idea of of IVF being inexpensive great it's all like
00:29:12
individual but it's not followed by anything that really matters to people who have kids which is daycare or child
00:29:19
care which is important at every income level by the way even if you can afford it it's difficult same thing with elder
00:29:24
care by the way on the other side also hard um and and but they don't want to do any of this thing they just want like
00:29:31
men to like have 14 babies, Elon, but what do you care if you're a shitty father, right? None of that matters. So,
00:29:37
I I don't you know, just for people to realize um the the these expanded child
00:29:43
tax credit would be better or a baby bonus would require an act of Congress,
00:29:48
by the way. But like expand child tax credit, that's a great idea, too. That's right. But just the other things matter
00:29:54
much, much more. And Scott is 100% right. If you don't have kids, you should not be like ne you it kind of is
00:30:02
remember when people were giving money to pe giving people their college um forgiving the loans. Why does people who
00:30:09
have babies get it and people that don't don't get it? There's that moment. That's right, right? Like why do they get money? Because we want them to have
00:30:16
babies. That's kind of sick. You need young people more economically viable. And if you want to talk about a baby
00:30:21
boom, you got to reverse engineer to why the baby boom happened. Happened. Yeah. And effectively was the following. We
00:30:26
don't like to talk about this because some of it sounds politically off-putting, but 7 million men came home from war and they had demonstrated
00:30:32
heroism and uniform and they were fit. And we put a bunch of money in middle- class homes through the GI Bill, through
00:30:38
FHA loans. And we said, "Okay, young people, here's a bunch of attractive men." And quite frankly, we aren't
00:30:43
producing enough attractive men for the women who have ascended. And we should
00:30:48
do nothing, including some sort of weird tax credit that somehow pulls women out of the workforce and have we should do
00:30:54
nothing to get in the way of women's incredible ascent. What we need to do is lift up men who quite frankly aren't
00:31:00
keeping pace. And the way you lift up men is by lifting up all people under the age of 40 and giving them a chance
00:31:07
to meet, giving them a chance to fall in love. Giving them economic viability, we
00:31:12
we have to make we have to get them together. Do you know realize and I know this sounds 40% of nightclubs in London
00:31:20
have gone away since co. If people aren't going into work, they're not going into bars, they're not going to church, where does a man or where does a
00:31:28
woman who has a much finer filter for sex, because quite frankly the downside of sex is so much greater, ever have the
00:31:34
opportunity to let a man demonstrate excellence. Like where if you talk to people who've been married longer than
00:31:40
30 years, 75% of them say that one was much more interested in the other in the beginning. It was always the man that was more interested. Women are just more
00:31:46
choosy for very strong instinctual and biological reasons. So where does the man have an opportunity to demonstrate
00:31:52
excellence? And now you have men who quite frankly aren't demonstrating excellence. As women have ascended the
00:31:58
the earnings ladder and can contribute more to a relationship, men have not filled that gap. You know what would
00:32:04
would give have more babies, JD Vance, in case you're interested. By the way, I have more children than you. Again, let me stress that is $25 minimum wage. Let
00:32:14
Hello. Like that would be a baby boom. That would housing good housing would cause a baby if you % we are corre we
00:32:21
should 7 million 7 million new homes manufactured homes that cost 30 to 50% less than homes built on site $25 an
00:32:27
hour minimum wage national service do away with long-term capital gains more nightclubs
00:32:33
quite frankly subsidies to places businesses whether it's putt shack whether it's whether it's meeting places
00:32:40
whether it's bars that get young people together whether it's nonprofits sports leagues anything that gets people
00:32:47
together so they can go you know I didn't like him at first, but he's funny. He's nice to his parents. You
00:32:55
know what? We know how to get people to [ __ ] Scott and Car, I'm going to go out with a group of people. I'm going to
00:33:00
have a few drinks and make me make a few bad decisions that might pay off. The most rewarding thing in life is the
00:33:07
opportunity to partner with someone, fall in love, and raise children with a competent person, and have a government
00:33:13
that has wind in your sales to be economically viable so you're not [ __ ] stressed all the time, which by the way is the leading cause of divorce.
00:33:19
My point is, we need to level up young people. I don't like programs that target specifically one gender because I
00:33:26
think it's gets politicized. We need to level up all young people. I agree. Can I ask you a question? you you mentioned.
00:33:32
So were you were you the one that was that you know you said after 30 years they say which one liked one more. Your
00:33:38
wife liked you less than you liked her. Correct. At the beginning I'm just guessing. Is that right? I'll give you
00:33:44
the exactly what happened. I you've told me the story but I Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I saw someone wearing nothing
00:33:50
but a thong who was wearing at a pool party at the Raleigh Hotel. Okay. And I promised myself I'm going to speak to
00:33:56
that person before I leave to that woman. and she was with another woman and another guy. And without the benefit
00:34:03
of alcohol in the the light of the midday sun, I thought, I'm gonna go up and I'm gonna introduce myself. And I'm
00:34:08
like, you can make all sorts of reasons not to take your shot. It's like, how do you do it? What do you say? So, I went out to the valet. I got so angry at
00:34:15
myself. I went back in. I walked right up to him and I said, hi, I'm Scott. Wow. And I introduced myself. Where are
00:34:21
you guys from? 18 months later, our son's middle name is Raleigh. But I'm saying she liked you less than you like.
00:34:27
I'm I'm going. My stories obviously take too long. And I said to them, I hung out with them that day and I said, "Come to
00:34:32
my friend. Come to my place and I'll make you dinner. I have no idea how to make dinner." So I called George and Holly Matson, who I was sharing a place
00:34:38
in Continuum in Miami with. And I said to Holly, was out on a boat with George. I said, "You need to get home and make dinner for me and these three people cuz
00:34:44
I'm really into this one ridiculously cool hot woman." And we had a few drinks. We were having a great dinner. We sat down on the couch. And I sat down
00:34:50
across from her and I said, "Look, I'm like I pride myself on my transparency. This is exactly what happened. And
00:34:56
there's no adjectives or embellishments. I said, "Look, I I pride myself on my transparency. I feel a really nice vibe
00:35:02
with you and I'm super interested in you and I just feel a really nice connection with you. Do you feel the same?" And she
00:35:08
paused and thought about it and she said, "No." And the worst part was the pause
00:35:13
so she could think about it. But she looked around and paused and
00:35:19
went like she really wanted to give me an honest answer. She was moved by my transparency and she's like, "Let me
00:35:24
think." No. No, I'll pass. I'll take a pass. And then the next weekend, I I I
00:35:30
lied to her and said I was going to a party. It was actually the rehearsal party for my friends George and Holly Madson, a rehearsal party. And she
00:35:36
showed up in jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and she was about to kill me cuz I did I lied to her. It was a rehearsal
00:35:42
dinner and we spent every weekend together for the next, you know. Oh, there you go. You worked on it. Well, that's good. You know, with Amanda and
00:35:48
I, it was equal. I have to say it was equal. Although I did say to her, I can't believe she's actually agreed to marry me when I said I'm beachfront
00:35:56
proper. I was single for a very short amount of time. I I haven't been single. You were dating someone and then you weren't. Then you were dating. Yes, I
00:36:02
know. I don't want to talk about that relationship, but um but Amanda, we went out right away, like immediately after
00:36:08
we were fixed up by uh uh by friends of ours. Um and uh and on a blind date. We
00:36:16
were fixed up on a blind date. I literally said to her something very soon after like we started seeing each
00:36:21
other and it was very equal I have to say was that I was beachfront property and she better grab it.
00:36:29
Do you like that beachfront property? I know. Is that the most obnoxious thing ever? Yeah, that's pretty bad. I'm beachfront property. You better grab it
00:36:35
now. It was not It's going fast. Going fast. I'm like a bad condo that's been repossessed in an auction. You're lucky
00:36:42
to have me. Can I have a very brief thing on this bonkers crazy pants, getting rid of our African embassies
00:36:48
across Africa and also cutting all the things that make us Americans which are refugee help, human rights, climate
00:36:54
change, etc. Look, I I don't my view is that with brand, what is a brand? It's a
00:37:01
brand, right? That's why I'm asking a a brand is unearned margin because of soft power. the promise of what you will get
00:37:08
if you buy this brand and you got to deliver it against the performance and the promise is what I would refer to in
00:37:16
terms of aid overseas is soft power and people feel good about us. When you see
00:37:22
the when you see an American embassy, you know it's going to be well staffed. You know they're polite. You know that if you're an American abroad and you get
00:37:28
mistreated, you go straight to the embassy. And the fact that we're reducing our soft power all over the
00:37:34
world, all that means is a reduction in the promise of reduction in our brand, which will reduce our unearned margin
00:37:39
across our business relationships, our safety. Do you think how many people and the problem is you're not even going to
00:37:45
realize how much damage damage it does? Do you realize how many people call our intelligence services when they suspect
00:37:51
Yeah. a terrorist cell somewhere? They call American embassies because they're like, you know what, those are nice
00:37:56
people. They're they're the good guys and we're losing that. This is the a reduction in soft power across America
00:38:03
across Africa. We just decided to to give Africa over to China. Anyway, go ahead. Which by the way has been a
00:38:10
hotbed for quite frankly it's not only it's not only playing not playing offense.
00:38:17
America is pro Africa likely will have the greatest GDP growth over the next 40 or 50 years. It's just kind of time,
00:38:23
right? And it has huge unbelievable human potential, unbelievable natural
00:38:28
resources. is at some point Africa is going to have its moment and we want to be in there in establishing strong business and military relationships. You
00:38:36
know, in addition there are some hotbeds of terrorist activity in Africa and we want
00:38:43
African nations and governments cooperating with us. It all comes down to the same thing. To believe that you
00:38:48
can build a bubble around your shores is just naive. I've always believed you not only take the fight to foreign nations,
00:38:54
you take the empathy and the goodwill. It has to be a carrot and a stick. Yep. I agree. This is it's an astonishing
00:39:00
thing. We're just giving up. Literally, I I know it sounds dumb. Do you remember like sort of the the image I have of
00:39:05
youth is, you know, uh Hershey bars by GIS and stuff like that. Yeah. Wrigley's
00:39:11
gum. Like all this stuff we did. It sounds It's such a trope, but it's so like we are the good we we've not always
00:39:18
been the good guys, but we're the good guys. And now now the Chinese are going to be the good guys. And they are not the good guys, by the way. It's just
00:39:24
grotesque. It's such a transactional nature. Anyway, uh let's go on a quick break. When we come back, China's latest
00:39:30
salvo in the trade war and Netflix. Scott, we're back. China is warning countries not, speaking of which, not to
00:39:36
make any trade deals with the US at China's expense and is threatening retaliation against countries that do.
00:39:42
They're doing the carrot and stick situation. China said it was responding to the foreign media reports that the Trump administration was trying to
00:39:47
pressure other countries as a negotiating tactic. Harming the interests of others for one's own
00:39:52
selfish and short-sighted gains is like negotiating with a tiger for its skin. Oh, that's an interesting metaphor. The
00:39:57
Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. They went on to say, "In the end, it will only lead to a lose-lose situation." Why do the Chinese seem
00:40:05
so reasonable at this moment? What does it make of the strategy? I mean, obviously, they're going to have to
00:40:11
threaten, too, because we're threatening presumably. Our our threats mean less and less. I I do think that one of
00:40:16
Obama's biggest mistakes was not responding when Syria crossed that red line. you should make very
00:40:22
very few threats, but what they should be is not threats, they should be promises. And unfortunately now we're
00:40:30
just we're threatening everybody. So no one takes us seriously. They're like I just don't think we have there's no
00:40:36
veracity with our threats because it's like well he didn't threaten Canada but he came after them for no apparent
00:40:42
reason. And then when he threatens to ban Tik Tok, he Harvard mistake like it's all like it's
00:40:49
all such puffery. I'm sorry. We are not a serious people. It just doesn't we
00:40:55
have absolutely no authority or reliability. We come home every day to a
00:41:01
drunk manic depressive bipolar mate and we don't know who we're waking up against or we don't know who we're
00:41:08
waking up with every morning. And the fact that any nation is going to respond
00:41:14
and back down other than saying, "Oh, okay. Sorry." And wow, have you lost weight, Mr. President? And then just
00:41:21
back channel to China and say, "Hey, we really should have those talks we were talking about about lowering trade barriers." And China, oh my god, they
00:41:27
must be licking their chops. As is Vietnam, as is Turkey, as is the EU. The
00:41:32
EU is I mean, obviously this has hurts them, but they're making all sorts of they're doing all they're working
00:41:38
overtime. They're doing all sorts of trade deals right now. Yeah. And they still don't want to turn their back on
00:41:44
us if they don't have to. Anyway, am I all the economic turmoil and confusion? One company that is weathering the storm
00:41:49
is find that people were worried about this. Netflix. The company reported in its Q1 earnings last week, beating revenue and earnings uh targets. In a
00:41:56
letter to shareholders, Netflix said the revenue and profit growth outlook remained solid and it's not making any changes to its forecast for the year.
00:42:03
Look, this is the one company that stays going even despite the volatility
00:42:08
because it requires I would imagine maybe making they make a lot of films elsewhere, but a lot of their stuff is
00:42:14
sort of tariff protected in a weird way. Correct. Yeah. I don't see how it's subject I mean eventually eventually
00:42:20
it'll impact them but I mean this is this is arguably I mean we always say
00:42:26
this about a lot of companies but one of the best managed companies in the world arguably the best pivot in the world. They were sending out DVDs. Yeah. A real
00:42:32
insight was they said a real insight was the best broadband in the world is the
00:42:38
US postal system that rather than trying to send a movie over pipes send it in
00:42:43
the mail and then when the pipes caught up to the mail they said we're pivoting and they that was the ultimate pivot and
00:42:49
it worked. They then adopted a page out of Bezos playbook and said, "If we can
00:42:55
paint a really compelling vision for this company and deliver against it on an incremental basis, we can attract
00:43:01
more cheap capital, which gives us more and more money, and we're just going to literally outspend. We're going to
00:43:06
overwhelm the competition with capital." And they spent $18 billion a year. And then when they kind of pulled ahead and it was clear no one was going to be able
00:43:12
to caption in terms of capital, they then globalized the industry and did to LA what Tokyo did to Detroit. And that
00:43:19
is they moved huge production facilities overseas and now they can on $18 million
00:43:25
on $18 billion in content which is what five to eight times what HBO, Apple
00:43:31
all of them spend. Apple I think spends five billion. They can spend if they're spending three times what another
00:43:37
company spends in gross dollar volume they can produce four times the content because it's just a better managed
00:43:43
company. about I think now almost 40 or 50% or maybe even more of their capital
00:43:48
is spent overseas in production than spent domestically. Yeah, they really were smart about that. They also brought shows from there either remade them or
00:43:55
used them from there. They were very good about the globalization. So well let me give kudos to Reed Hastings who
00:44:01
has stepped down as executive um he was executive chairman very he was very
00:44:06
quite involved to chairman of the board. I met Reed when he was selling those DV I mean was moving those DVDs very early
00:44:13
in in Netflix's history and there had been a series of companies like this if you recall that were trying to do this
00:44:19
what he was doing um I did a very famous interview with him I think it was 2007 maybe with him the head of Hulu at the
00:44:26
time Jason Kyar and Chad Hurley who was the head of YouTube and we were we were
00:44:32
put down in a basement and I always thought that these three especially Reed Hastings really had a vision for the
00:44:39
future but they they he he really even though he's dropping his status he's he's a pivotal person who made a lot of
00:44:46
these decision and he has smartly followed with executives that he has cycled out some that haven't worked even
00:44:51
though if they did well for a while um I have to say he really is has to go down as one of the greatest executives
00:44:59
agree but I mean and kudos to Reed he brought in Ted Sandos and Ted whose job
00:45:06
as a young man he ran and six or eight video rental stores. I mean, the guy just has a feel for
00:45:11
content. And they now are leveraging their platform. They're going into uh
00:45:16
video games. They're going into uh sports. They're going into, this is a scary one, they're going into
00:45:23
podcasting. Uh the really interesting thing would be the Clash of the Titans, the celebrity death match would be if
00:45:29
Alphabet spun YouTube. YouTube. I mean, and the war between Netflix and HBO and
00:45:37
Disney, not really the war. It's not that's not the war. That's over. The war, if there is one, is between Netflix
00:45:43
and YouTube. That's why they should spin it off. By the way, YouTube happens to be bigger, by the way. Anyway, you're right. And who would be the CEO of that?
00:45:50
I mean, they would try to get Sarandos obviously, right? They try to grab him, but of YouTube. Yeah. Like, oh, I think
00:45:56
Neil Mohan's done an incredible job. I'm just wondering if they would go, but that would be great that he has. And
00:46:01
before that, another person who I had great regard for, Susan Wajiski, who died, uh, also did a great job um, there
00:46:07
while she was running it. And she was one of the very earliest, in fact, one of the earliest Google executives. They
00:46:13
started Google in her garage. Um, so yeah, you're right. YouTube versus Netflix is the story. It was really the
00:46:19
story. Anyway, all right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some
00:46:25
wins and fails. Why don't you go first this week? Oh, I just loved uh uh I've been so uh you have a easier time
00:46:32
disassociating than me. I've been so stressed and upset about everything that's going on that to just be at the Royal Albert Hall listening to beautiful
00:46:39
music that reminded me. But I think it was Dian was it either I think it was Gloria Vanderbilt Anderson Cooper's
00:46:45
mother who said that the happiest time in her life or the happiest time she believes in anyone's life is when you're
00:46:52
when you have young kids at home. And I do think I'll look back on that and look at that as the happiest time in my life.
00:46:57
But feeling that music in that venue, it was just so extraordinary and just
00:47:02
absolutely gave me an hour of peace and emotion to share with someone I care a great big deal about in the cont. I mean, we just knew exactly how we were
00:47:08
both feeling. I felt very connected to London. I felt very connected to music. Uh, and it was just a nice hour.
00:47:15
Anything else remind you of that? Like Saul was wearing a shirt that Louis used to wear this weekend and that gave me
00:47:21
the chills in a good way. Does anything else just music brings you back? You know what is incredible is um a woman
00:47:28
who used to uh work with me at L2. I don't think I'm speaking out of school. I won't say her name, but she just took
00:47:34
on a strategy role at Apples and she's overseeing memories. You know that you have those things that pop up? Yeah, I
00:47:40
love them. Oh my gosh, that you know, as you know, I'm fascinated with death. I'm just going to play that [ __ ] over and over and live my life again. Those that
00:47:48
does, music does, seeing certain people does. I mean that's and the the piece of advice I would give to anyone especially
00:47:55
men who have a tough time with this you know from the I've said this from the age of 29 to 45 I didn't cry I didn't
00:48:00
cry when I got divorced I didn't cry when my mom died I just kind of forgot how and it is a real gift to in a
00:48:08
practice and effort to really lean into your emotions if you hear something
00:48:13
funny force this is one of the things I really like about you you laugh out loud you have a wonderful laugh and it's infectious and it gives everyone else
00:48:20
permission to laugh and it just makes everything a little lighter. If something upsets you or it
00:48:25
moves you sentimentally, let yourself weep. Let yourself cry because it informs what's
00:48:30
important to you. When you see a piece of art or a piece of creative that inspires you, sometimes I even rewind it
00:48:36
15 or 30 seconds and say, "Wow, this is such a wonderful scene. I want to watch it or I listen to music." Really lean
00:48:42
into your emotions because our advantage as a species, you're a crier now. You really are. Oh, I cry at the drop of path. You really do. I'm scared to watch
00:48:49
certain movies with you, honestly. And it's it's one of the things I like. I like the messy part of myself. My kids
00:48:55
see me cry all the time. You fail. Excuse me. You're fail. Don't rush me through my personal parables as I as I
00:49:01
as I open myself to you and you jab. You jab. Oh, come on. I let you cry. But my
00:49:06
lesson here, I like your crying. Is that our advantage as a species is our cooperation and the way we cooperate is
00:49:12
we communicate. A close second is we're able to feel things. That part of our brain is bigger with the exception of
00:49:18
elephants and killer whales, which by the way should not be locked up in tanks when you realize how emotional they are. If you don't lean into your emotions,
00:49:24
you're not taking advantage of what it means to be human. And it's very rewarding. It really informs your life. Otherwise, you're like me, 29 to 45, and
00:49:31
just kind of sleepwalking through life and thinking, okay, how do I make more money and have more sex? Which was, as an empty, meaningless experience goes, a
00:49:37
pretty good empty, meaningless experience. But this is better. Anyways, my win is a royal crying Scott. It's one
00:49:43
of my favorite Scots. Uh, weeping Scott. My win is the Royal Albert Hall and Beck
00:49:48
and listening to Morning Faze and thinking about my boys. Um, my fail is
00:49:54
at the end of the day, management is just one thing. It's your ability to allocate capital to a greater return
00:49:59
than your peer group. And the cruel truth of capitalism is every organization has a finite or scarce
00:50:07
amount of resources. So Tim Cook's job is just to allocate capital more efficiently than the CEO of Meta or
00:50:12
Samsung. And the president has more capital to allocate than anyone in history. And the best allocation of
00:50:18
capital, we talked about this is the investment in um our universities. And
00:50:24
the probably the greatest innovation in history was our race to split the atom.
00:50:30
If we hadn't gotten there first and Hitler had, we'd be doing this podcast in German. and that effort and one of
00:50:36
the things I don't think they did a great job of in the movie Oppenheimer was nodding to all of the universities
00:50:42
that were involved. Oh yeah, you're right. So, and I'm going to get some wrong here, but Caltech, Berkeley, Wu,
00:50:49
Purdue, University of Minnesota, Chicago, University of Chicago played a huge role.
00:50:55
Rochester, Princeton, all of these universities were working on different things from the effects of radiation to
00:51:03
the risk of us lighting the atmosphere on fire. And these individuals were so
00:51:09
who had this incredible esoteric, generic, ridiculously mile deep, and a
00:51:16
centimeter wide expertise in something were all coordinated by the army and the government to try and figure out a way
00:51:22
to get there first to literally save the world. That has happened every day since then and has and has given us
00:51:28
unbelievable return on investment. And it's not only capital through through investments in our great universities,
00:51:35
but it's the ability to attract the best human capital that know that know how to deploy this capital because they're so
00:51:42
brilliant. And when you start sending out errant emails, which by the way end
00:51:49
up are not legal, telling people graduate students to self-deport. Let me give you a basic rundown on who our
00:51:55
students are in our universities. The undergrads at our elite universities are a mix of rich kids and freakishly
00:52:01
remarkable Americans and then a combination of the two from foreign countries. At business school, I won't
00:52:07
speak for other graduate schools, the MBAs are the following. The Americans at business schools are what I
00:52:13
affectionately call the elite and the aimless. They're good, smart kids who hated their first job, don't know what the [ __ ] to do with their lives, so they
00:52:18
go back to business school to try and figure it out. There's nothing wrong with that. I was one of those people. And then the foreign students are the
00:52:24
richest kids from Paraguay whose dad owns the licensing agreement from L'Oreal and the ultimate luxury brand is
00:52:31
to send their kid to uh NYU or to Stanford. And by the way, those are the kids you want to party with because
00:52:36
they're rich kids and they love they love to party and also they're going to be running their country at some point. And then there's the PhD students. The
00:52:43
PhD students, we don't cash their check for $72,000. We pay them and they come here
00:52:49
and take on a very narrow topic and they're so good at what they do that they teach students and then they go on
00:52:54
to do nothing but focus on a tiny part of the world and decide, I am going to know more about this tiny part of the world than anyone in the world. Arguably
00:53:01
the most impressive cohort in America, is our PhD students. We get the Tom
00:53:08
Bradies of every nation who decides, I'm super into liquid particle propulsion
00:53:14
dynamics and I'm going to go to the University of Wisconsin at Madison and
00:53:20
devote my life to it. We find these people that have done nothing but go so [ __ ] deep around this specific topic
00:53:26
that they know more about it than anyone in the world. And yet we've decided we
00:53:32
don't we want to scare these people from coming in. One person has decided this.
00:53:37
Well, we not we elected this guy, but it's as if we're a team and we get the
00:53:43
number one draft choices from everywhere and then Tom Brady shows up and we said, you know, Tom, I hate to say this, but there's a chance you might show up one
00:53:49
day and Ice might be there and ruin you and your family's life for no goddamn good reason. We are scaring away.
00:53:58
One of our our core competences, our core advantages globally is not only the
00:54:03
fact that we allocate capital to this university, but we attract the finest human capital to allocate this capital
00:54:09
resulting in unbelievable innovation that has driven prosperity that has driven unearned
00:54:16
margin. Excellent. Excellent fail. It's a fail. My fail is an unnecessary
00:54:22
turning away of the strongest human capital in the world and that is our
00:54:27
amaz Yeah. You meet a just trust me on this. You meet a PhD student from India.
00:54:33
I don't care what [ __ ] field there are. You're talking to someone who was the best at their elementary school,
00:54:39
then the best in their region, then the best in their their state, and then the best at IIT, and then figured out a way
00:54:46
to come. It is incredible what they're doing here. the the destruction around not just there but at any age that's
00:54:52
that's an excellent that is an excellent fail. Okay, mine are um I have so many wins today. I one I recommend you
00:54:59
reading Larry David's My Dinner with Adolf which is a sort of attack on it's a very funny thing of him having dinner
00:55:05
with Adolf Hitler in making fun of Bill Maher. It's very very very funny. Bill Maher needs to step down on defending.
00:55:12
Nobody thinks you shouldn't have had dinner with him, Bill. They just you're moving into Gail King territory here in
00:55:17
defensiveness. Um, but it's really funny Larry David's little essay in the New York Times. And I loved Larry David so
00:55:23
much. Um, my other my other win is I more seriously is uh Alaska Senator Lisa
00:55:29
Marowski uh one of the few Republicans criticizing Trump. She admitted last week she was afraid and fears
00:55:36
retaliation, but she's doubling down and being sort of a leader in that way. Um, and she know she has won she won despite
00:55:44
an attack by Trump in the last election. So, she's safer than most people at this
00:55:49
moment in time, but good for her for for doing that. And I think it's infectious just like Scott was just talking about
00:55:55
at universities. Um, when Harvard did it, then MIT did it, then others did it. Now, Colombia looks like it might be
00:56:02
finding its spine at some point. Um, and so, uh, so he, uh, uh, um, so I, I
00:56:09
really, uh, admire her for doing that. Um, also I just for a little thing, um, this is a picture of speaking of of
00:56:16
medical students. This is a picture my mom found of my dad, uh, from it fell out of a a drawer of hers this week. And
00:56:23
this is me as a kid. And I just, this was a total win this week of getting these great pictures. Can you hold it
00:56:28
closer to the camera? Yeah. There you go. Doesn't he look like a geek in a
00:56:33
nice in a nice way? Do you see it? Yeah. He looks a he looks like um Jeff. He
00:56:39
looks like Jeff. And this is me. This is us. My mom's pregnant with my brother, but there's our little family being very fckened
00:56:47
Donald Trump, but we did it because my dad was a poor guy like you said, and he got a break. Uh he got he went to the he
00:56:54
went to the Navy, paid for medical school, built his family, was able to lift himself up from not poverty in West
00:57:00
Virginia, but not means in order to go to West Virginia and to to go school there and stuff. How old was your father
00:57:05
when he passed? 34. Wow. Young man. And then my fail uh is this continued uh
00:57:11
it's sort of coming together. Uh Wyard has a piece of something I have talked about on this podcast. The scale at
00:57:17
which Doge is seeking to interconnect data including sensitive biometric data is unprecedented raising alarms with
00:57:23
experts who fear it may lead to the disastrous privacy violations for citizens and immigrants alike. I've
00:57:29
always said their game was uniting the data. Um I heard this weekend, I'm not going to say who it was, by someone
00:57:34
who's considering leaving the United States. Um, European countries are offering our greatest technologist.
00:57:40
Speaking of what you're talking about, Scott, it dovtales perfectly. They're countries are trying to get our
00:57:46
technologist to go there by giving them visas so they're safe. And a lot of people who I never thought would
00:57:51
consider it are considering it because they feel retaliation. Um and um uh you
00:57:57
know the the the the thing the executive order against Chris Krebs has been chilling to a lot of people I know
00:58:04
who've been working on really important things and the the whole point of Doge was to unite this data as I've said to
00:58:10
create a an Uber data situation which has never been united to create an ability to cross reference things that
00:58:17
have never been cross referenced and for good reason. Um it's not for efficiency they're they don't do it. because we're
00:58:23
scared of creating a surveillance state the way they have in China. And so, um,
00:58:28
the fact that it's a reverse brain drain going on really dubtails in what Scott was talking about is we are rejecting
00:58:34
the finest from elsewhere, but our own people will be leaving our country to develop in other countries. And that is
00:58:40
the biggest tragedy of this. At the same time, the government is creating an an uber database. Uh, I have said this over
00:58:47
and over again. I know you said Elon's leaving, but the legacy of what he's doing here is incredibly dangerous for
00:58:53
our freedom as far as I'm concerned. So, I think we should pay a lot of attention to these databases being being joined in
00:59:00
a way that that you'll be searchable and findable and and there will be so many mistakes in the data that it's
00:59:07
terrifying. A lot of people considered dead aren't dead have to prove they're not dead now. People that are getting
00:59:13
arrested that are American citizens now. we shouldn't be arresting these immigrants without due process. Um, but
00:59:19
now it's moving because of mistakes and everything else and also it will not be
00:59:25
mistakes at some point. So, we should be very wary about what Doge is doing in that regard and pay attention even if
00:59:31
Elon's been out of the news a little bit recently because of so many other ridiculous situations. So, I just please
00:59:38
pay attention to that. Wired has a great story on that this week. And so, that is my fail. If we don't pay attention, they
00:59:43
will have all our information and then do terrible things to us. I'm sort of blown away by your u your speculation or
00:59:51
thesis that there all of these both the government and Musk are bringing all
00:59:56
this information together to develop sort of one like I don't know Skynet of surveillance. Yeah. Of surveillance
01:00:04
controlling capital. It'll be used against immigrants first, but it's always you know it's always for more.
01:00:10
And and by the way, I don't want Democrats having this power either. FYI, I don't want any of them having this power. I I I you can have your opinion
01:00:18
about whatever you thought about um the various things of of leaking information, but the government should
01:00:24
never have this much power and information about people in one place. It will always be abused um as as has
01:00:31
been shown throughout history. Anyway, uh we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or
01:00:37
whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call
01:00:42
85551 pivot. Elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, I talked with Melinda
01:00:48
French Gates uh and on with Cara Swisser. Let's listen. I never never
01:00:53
would have guessed that USAD would essentially be folded. You know, it was endorsed by Republican and Democratic
01:01:00
administrations because they saw that people could live where they were if
01:01:06
they had good health and they had peace and some chance for prosperity. And so
01:01:11
to see that, you know, 16 million women won't have access to maternal health
01:01:18
services because of that pullback. How does that make us look better? How does that help us with peace? It's just what
01:01:24
you were saying, Scott. Same thing. you and Meinda Gates are on the same uh wavelength. Uh al also I'll be
01:01:31
interviewing Lisa Sue, the CEO of AMD, speaking of badass women, live on stage at John's Hopkins University Bloomberg
01:01:37
Center in Washington DC this coming Monday, April 28th, a week from now. If you want to hear a smart conversation
01:01:43
about semiconductor chips, industrial policy, and the future of AI, Google Carisser and Lisa Sue SU to RSVP,
01:01:49
tickets are free. Uh okay, that's the show listening. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to
01:01:56
our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show
01:02:01
is produced by Larara Name and Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineer this episode. Jim Mel
01:02:07
edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Miss Seo, and Dan Shalon. Nak Kurwaz, Vox Media's executive producer
01:02:14
of podcast. Make sure you subscribe to this show wherever you listen to podcast. Thanks for listening to Pivot
01:02:19
from New York Magazine of Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back later this
01:02:25
week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Beck's morning phase.
01:02:30
Trust me.
