Morning Brew Daily - Zoom Rallies Takeover 2024 Election & NBC Wins with Olympic Gold Zone

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Episode 375: Neal and Toby discuss Donald Trump's appearance at a major Crypto conference and why it's important to his Presidential campaign. Then, likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is galvanizing the Internet with a record-breaking Zoom meeting. Next, this quietly-dominating cold storage company just made the biggest IPO in the US so far this year. Plus, the Marvel Cinematic Universe just signaled it still wants to dominate the box office and NBC is leaning on the Olympics to win back viewers. Meanwhile, a couple of food debates have people scratching their heads on whether boneless wings can have bones (huh?), and who really invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos? Lastly, the biggest news happening this week!  Checkout https://beehiiv.link/morning-brew-daily and get a 30 day free trial and also 20% off 3 months with code BREW Get your Morning Brew Daily T-Shirt HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-radio-t-shirt?_pos=1&_sid=6b0bc409d&_ss=r&variant=45353879044316  Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, when you order boneless wings from a restaurant, should you still expect bones? The Ohio Supreme Court weighed in. Then Marvel is moving forward by looking back, relying on Hugh Jackman and Robert Downey, Jr. To turn things around at the box office. It's Monday, July 29th. Let's ride.

Happy Monday. Welcome back to the week. If you've got some big ideas cooking up in your head and want to take it. that leap into the unknown, take some inspiration from Olympic rower Olivia Coffey. For her day job, she works as a private equity associate. And earlier this year, the 35-year-old was debating whether to try out for her third Olympics and snag that elusive medal. After weighing the pros and cons, she ultimately came to the conclusion, Excel will always be there, return to training, and now she's in Paris competing for Team USA. By the way, there literally is a financial modeling World Cup, which involves a Microsoft Excel World Championship.

So yes, Excel will always be there for you, but for some of you, maybe it's your path to gold in glory. Also, she's a rower. You know what else has rows? Excel. So even when you try to escape it, you simply cannot. Now a word from our sponsor, Beehive. One of the biggest misconceptions I see about starting an email newsletter is that you don't

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The former president made his newfound love for Bitcoin clear as he headlined the biggest Bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville over the weekend. He shied away from the idea of keeping a formal federal Bitcoin reserve like some in the industry had hoped he would. But he did his best to show that he is the Kansas. that it is on crypto side. It's a symbiotic relationship, too. Trump also held an accompanying fundraiser in Nashville with the most expensive tickets selling for $844,000. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris was reportedly invited to speak by the conference organizers but turned the offer down. She's relying

on a different sort of software to power her campaign, Zoom. She hosted a virtual rally on Zoom that attracted over 200,000 attendees last Thursday, making it reportedly the largest Zoom meeting in the company's history. So, Neil, we have two different campaign strategies playing out here in real time. Trump embracing Bitcoin and crypto, while Harris is embracing Zoom and its power to mobilize massive audiences. What do you make of each of them? Well, first when I heard that Trump was going all in on crypto and we were hearing so

much about crypto and the election, I thought to myself, and I'm sure a lot of people listening, we're thinking something similar. It's like, wait, isn't crypto kind of niche? Like, why is this such a big role playing such a big role in the election? It seems like somewhat derivative of the financial system and broader issues that people care about. But I don't think that's actually the case after looking into it a little bit more. And you can see this by how Democrats are responding to Trump's embrace of crypto and crypto embrace of Trump. They sent a dozens of them sent a letter out to their fellow colleagues and Democrats saying, hey, guys, we need to get our crypto message in order.

We need to relax our regulations on this industry. And they had some interesting stats to back this up. They said over 20% of voters in key battleground states identified crypto as a major issue in the 2024 election. They said 19% of voters have brought crypto. And that 19% are Democrats, 18% of Republicans. and they also come from certain groups like Gen Z, Black, Latino immigrant communities that are key constituents for the Democratic Party. So this is a issue that a lot of people care about because it says speak to something

larger about democratizing, finance people feeling like they're left behind by the current system. So both parties now are zeroing in on this community as a group that could really propel them to victory. There is also just a lot of money in crypto as well. Two crypto super PACs have raised $170 million. are so far this cycle. They said that they're focusing not on one party or the other, but just congressional races and donating to both parties, whoever is most crypto-friendly. So you're right,

it is an issue that they are taking seriously at this point. I also do just want to tap into that last thing you said about how it kind of represents a larger political movement as well. And it does feel like we are seeing two different internet campaigns playing out. Kamala Harris is leveraging memes and TikTok and kind of appealing more to TikTok culture, while Trump is going after more of the maybe Discord X communities where the crypto community is a lot more active. So they're both using these heavily online campaigns, but they're just attacking different, or they're just targeting different parts of the online community. So it's been very interesting to see them playing out in parallel in real time.

Yeah, let's talk about some of Trump's crypto policies. First of all, he said he would fire SEC chair. Gary Gensler, day one of getting into office. Gary Gensler is public enemy number one of the crypto community. After FTX collapsed, he really went on the regulation crackdown. He launched dozens of enforcement actions saying that Bitcoin and crypto, a lot of crypto programs were a fraud, and he was trying to protect consumers and the crypto community wants him out.

And Trump said he would install much more crypto-friendly regulators who would write more regulations that were more friendly to the industry. And this was just music to Bitcoin investors. ears. I do want to talk about Harris using Zoom a little bit too because these Zoom calls have just been absolutely massive. I mean, she had a Zoom call with a group called

Win with Black Women that started, kicked off this kind of Zoom trend. Last Sunday that drew over 90,000 people. Then she had a virtual rally named White Women answered the call that attracted that 200,000 that was reportedly the largest Zoom meeting in history on Monday,

which is today. She has a Zoom call called White Dudes for Harris. that it's scheduled. So really leaning into it because it is a great way. It's basically an online political fundraiser, a political rally, where you can raise a lot of money with a lot less cost. It's not as expensive of putting on an in-person event. So using it to cater to specific identity groups,

using it to reach a wide audience, it feels very, very smart. And I tell you, someone who's loving it, it's Zoom because we're like, we're relevant again, baby. Zoom. Speaking of raising a lot of money, Kamala Harris, has raised now $200 million in just one week since Biden dropped out 99 days to go. Cold storage is so hot right now. The world's largest operator of cold storage warehouses, a company called the lineage, went

public last week and became the biggest IPO of the year so far, raising $4.4 billion at a valuation of $18 billion. This company is an absolute logistics giant, controlling nearly one third of the U.S.'s temperature-controlled warehouse space and boasting 482 warehouses around the world. There's never been a better time to own a bunch of ice-cold warehouses. Demand for this kind of real estate is surging as customers expect perishable food to be delivered to their doorstep within a few days. Buying berries from the supermarket, they need to be kept cold in their journey from

God knows where because they certainly ain't local. Craving pizza rolls, those have got to be kept frozen from the Totino's factory all the way to the freezer aisle before they burn your mouth out of the money. microwave. So many of the things we consume rely on what's known as the cold supply chain and lineage sits at the center of this growing network. And that's why it just had the biggest IPO of the year. These two private equity guys back in 2008 got together and they were in the middle of the financial crisis and they said, what feels safe right now? And they said, cold storage. You're always going to need to be able to keep things cold. The cold chain is very important to the

logistics heart of the United States. So I think that they took the typical private equity playbook. which is they went to a bunch of these mom and pop run businesses who maybe their children didn't want to take over and said, hey, we'd love to buy your business. And they just did. They built this gigantic company by doing that over and over again, using a ton of acquisitions to grow the business. And then they do the typical private equity thing as well, which is you hire some chief information officer to kind of leverage the data that maybe these mom and pop businesses

weren't doing. So through acquisitions and then just tuning up kind of the, the technology side of things, they built a giant company. It's very, very large, biggest IPO of the year so far. They also had great timing. I mean, during the pandemic, a lot of people stopped going out to restaurants, obviously, and started to make things at home and eat more at home. And that led to a surge in demand for frozen food, for people going to the grocery store and just going straight to that frozen aisle. Sales of frozen foods in the U.S. jumped to $74 billion last year, which was up 33% from 2019.

So this is a sea change in how people consume thing, and they sit at the center of people wanting to eat cold and frozen foods. Ironically, one of the biggest threats to this business is their own customers, and it's because they help big chains like Walmart with their supply, third-party logistics, but Walmart said earlier this month that it's building five new perishable distribution centers because they know that the coal chain is very important. So ironically, they've gotten so big that they are competing with the likes of Walmart. So their biggest challenge comes from their own customer base. Quick story time. I used to work in this industry before, in another life before Morning Brew.

I worked in the economic development in the state of New Jersey. And we worked with companies trying to set up shop in New Jersey. And logistics is huge in New Jersey. All of these companies wanted one thing, cold storage warehouses. Like there wasn't enough real estate in cold storage, temperature-controlled warehouses for these companies, and they were just building all over the place, scouring the entire state to find frozen warehouses. So I really should have jumped on this back in 2017, because I saw this trend that this kind of space was just absolutely surging because you need to get it to major population centers within one to two days. And I'm feeling like I missed out a little bit.

Neil could have been a cold storage baron. I know. You would be talking about me on this show, right. I would. The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't command the same aura that it once did, But sometimes the best way to get out of a slump is to go back to what's worked for you in the past. And for the MCU, that's Robert Downey Jr. Yes, R.DJ is back this time as a villain in a decision that shocked Vans and earned Marvel a spot as my coveted winner of the weekend. Even the staunchest of Marvel haters are no doubt aware that Robert Downing Jr. has played the role of Tony Stark ever since the first Iron Man movie came out in 2008. And you are also probably aware that, spoiler alert, Tony Stark died in the final Avengers movie

in 2018. So when Marvel Studios president, Kevin Fage, surprised the crowd at San Diego Comic-Con by announcing Downey's return as Dr. Doom, a famous supervillain from the MCU, fans were left scratching their heads. Even Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred alongside Downey Jr., commented on his Instagram post, I don't get it. Are you a baddie now? We can get into the multiverse of it all in a second meal, but do you like handing the reins back to Robert Downey Jr. to run it back again? Definitely mixed feelings. At one sense, it does, feel like a bit of desperation that you need to go back to this star and a sign that maybe Marvel is not doing as well as it has in the past, which we can get to that. And he kind of

started the everything, he started everything back in 2008 for a franchise that has now earned $30 billion at the box office. In another sense, it's always great to, you know, nostalgia plays and all these sequels this year are running the box office. So I completely understand it. But, and all this speculation is really the point, because now everyone's talking about what the relationship between Ironman and Dr. Doom is going to be and, you know, what is Downey Jr. going to play to his previous role at all? And what is the relationship between the two? So the fact that we're talking about is exactly what Marvel wanted. And Marvel has been playing the sequel game as well, as you mentioned, because this weekend, Deadpool and Wolverine brought

in $205 million in domestic ticket sales. It's the biggest ever opening weekend for an R-rated movie. It's the biggest opening for a movie sense inside out, too. So clearly they are feeling like they're getting their fastball back. By the way, in the movie, at one point, Deadpool turns to Wolverine and says, welcome to the MCU, by the way. You're joining at a bit of a low point. So clearly Marvel knows what's going on. They know the reputation that maybe they've over-saturated the market with some lower-quality films. And they think that the way out is to just go back to Old Faithel, which is Robert Downey, Jr. I am not a fan. innovate because you're sapping all the emotion from Tony Stark's death by bringing them back,

even if it's as a totally different character. Like, what was that death scene for at a certain point? So I'll 100% be watching the movie. But I will say Deadpool and Wolverine represents a departure for Disney's the first time these two characters have appeared for Disney. And that's because of this $71 billion acquisition of Foxx assets back in 2019. That allowed them to acquire Deadpool and Wolverine, which is, probably the two biggest pieces of IP after Avatar that they got in that acquisition.

And in this movie, they reference the Fox acquisition a lot. It's actually a major plot point. So that is a big deal for Disney to release a R-rated film, first of all. I mean, for Disney to release Inside Out 2, which is now earned over a billion dollars, and then to come out then, like, literally a few weekends later, and release this R-rated movie. We talked about Disney maybe losing the children a little bit and going into the adult market. I think this is a perfect sign of that. Up next, Neil hits you with his winner of the weekend.

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Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Well, my winner of the weekend is NBC, which I have to say is doing a splendid job of covering the Olympics so far. First, it got a big win with the opening ceremony on Friday, which drew a U.S. TV audience of 28.6 million. That was up 60% from the COVID-era, Tokyo Games of 2021.

And the biggest audience since London in 2012. It helped that the ceremony was an absolute feast for the eyes, with athletes floating down the Sen River before the grand finale, an emotional comeback performance by Celine Dion. And another thing NBC is doing right about its Olympics coverage, Gold Zone on its streaming service, Peacock. Gold Zone is modeled after the hugely popular NFL Red Zone broadcast, offering whip-around coverage to the most exciting competitions going on at any given time.

And if the Red Zone parallels weren't enough on point, they hired the show's host Scott Hansen to lead their primetime coverage. So, you know, it's in good hands. This type of show is ideal during the Summer Olympics, where there are so many events happening simultaneously. It can feel overwhelming. And the success of Gold Zone could make people forget about the peacock debacles of the last summer games when people could not find what they're looking for,

and the service became a laughing stock. They got their stuff together for this Olympics. It is the perfect Red Zone event, though. 39 different sports. you have different heats. It's all happening in a funky time zone. It's very hard to stay on top of everything and know what's going on. So you need a conductor, you need a maestro to tell you what to look at and why it's important to look there.

And so this was a genius call from Peacock tapping in Scott Hansen. Apparently Scott has been doing his homework too because a reporter talked to him admits his prep. And he was literally pouring over 145 page rulebook for Team handball. He said he still needs to brush up on fencing, water polo, and break dancing. plus he has to learn over 200 plus country code. So just an incredible event, incredible performance by Scott Hansen. And it's just a great vector for enjoying the Olympics. Totally.

Let's talk about some other highlights from the weekend since we're on this subject. And we probably spent more time than anything else this weekend watching the Olympics. I want to focus on those American blue chips stocks, the NBA, the basketball team, the men's basketball team and Simone Biles both started out with great performances. Team USA crushed Serbia and Yokic 110 to 84. So they are on the right track, even though there's a lot of controversy about who played and who did it. I know. Well, Jason Tatum's getting a little sad sitting on the bench there.

The biggest stat I have about the men's dream team, if you want to call that, is that if you go back to the original dream team, they only played nine non-American NBA players at the time. So clearly the competition wasn't as high. This time around in Paris, there are 39 non-American. American NBA players. So it is just showing how big the game has grown, how global the game has become, and how stiff the competition is this time around. That is a fascinating stat. And then Simone Biles, obviously in 2021 with Drew with the Twisties. And she is now back. She performed in qualifying round. She did really well, except there is a little concern about her left calf. So that's all

anyone's talking about this morning. Toby, do have a diagnosis. I know a diagnosis. I saw her rolling it out got very nervous, but I do want to say that keep an eye on Simone Biles later in this games, because apparently she's going to break out a new skill, an original skill that she submitted. And if she breaks this out, it would become the sixth skill to bear her name if she successfully completes it. So she's looking to become the only active gymnast to have a skill named after her in four events. So, I mean, you could go down the laundry list of accomplishments, but having four skills named after you is probably one of the coolest things that you can achieve as an Olympian. and as a gymnast. Let's take it back to middle school here for a second

in a segment for you guys we're calling food fights. There have been two culinary showdowns brewing over the last few weeks that make a Gordon Ramsey run kitchen seem tame in comparison. The first major caloric confrontation comes via Ohio where their state Supreme Court just ruled boneless wings don't actually have to be boneless. It crushed one customer's years-long effort

to get compensation after biting into an order of boneless wings and getting an inch and a half long bone lodged in his esophagus instead, leading to two surgeries. But in a majority ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court cited against the unfortunate eater saying that no one but himself should be responsible for checking his food for bones because it is, quote, common sense that chickens have bones in them. They wrote that boneless doesn't guarantee bonelessness, but rather describes a cooking style in Neil. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Have these justices ever been to a sports bar in their life? Well, this was a contentious decision. It was four to three, and there were judges that dissented.

They said that boneless means boneless, and they called the decision by the majority, utter Jabberwocky. When a consumer orders a piece of boneless wings, they do not expect to have bones. When you bite in, you don't expect to get something hard in your teeth. So I don't know. I've been going back and forth with this. Like, I don't think it's the case that when you order boneless wings, you expect there to be bones, I guess. They're saying that it is very specific to the nature of the product of chicken, that there might be residual bones in it, and that a consumer should be aware that there might be bones included into this.

But, man, I don't know. I don't know about this ruling. The only argument I could possibly understand from the majority here is related to chicken fingers. they wrote that no one would interpret boneless as boneless. Just as a person eating chicken fingers would know that he had not been served fingers. But it feels like that is in bad faith there because one is descriptive. One is more of just actually how you prepare the chicken. So it feels like a bit of a stretch here.

And yeah, you could see from that strong dissent from the three justices that oppose it, saying that they actually, what they want to do is give, open it up to a civil case in a jury trial so that they could, it could be decided by what they called average wing eaters because of course the majority of justices said that they would claim that the average wing eaters would interpret boneless much differently than the way that the justices

in the majority interpreted it. So I am very much on the side of this guy who got the bone lodged in his throat because, yeah, you don't expect bones to be in your boneless wings. Well, I love to hear from people listening. Comment on our YouTubers, send us an email about what you think about this case about whether you would not be surprised to have a little bone

in your boneless chicken because I know, Toby's over there fuming. Our next food fight story centers around a question that keeps all of us up at night. Who invented Flamen Hot Cheetos? Who was the evil genius that created this crunchy, spicy, cheesy, tangy snack that became a billion-dollar brand? That question is now the subject of a lawsuit after the guy who claimed he invented Flaming Hot Cheetos sued PepsiCo, which owns Frito Le, which makes Cheetos, for defamation because Pepsi said he did not invent Flamin Hot Cheetos.

This is a wild story. There are literal documentaries about it. It is so legendary. But the TLDR said a former janitor for Frito Le, Richard Montanjas, claims he invented Flaminadeau Chitos more than 30 years ago after putting Latino-inspired spices on an unseasoned Cheeto and then selling the idea to the CEO. For decades, Pepsi went along with this story and hyped up Montaignez. He became a VP at the company, then quit his job to do speaking gigs. He wrote two memoirs. He was the epitome of the American dream.

But, yes, there's a but. In 2021, the Los Angeles Times did some snooping and found that Montaignez did not have anything to do with the invention of the Flamen Hot Cheeto. After conducting its own investigation, Frito Lay agreed, saying it found no evidence he was involved. It put out a statement that read, this doesn't mean we don't celebrate Richard, but the facts do not support the urban legend. So after those comments discrediting him, he sued for defamation. This is a very tough suit for Frito Lay and for PepsiCo. As a very, well because it is a very feel-good story. Like, of course you want, at that time for Frieda Lay, the CEO said that they wanted to elevate all ideas from all across the company and so that

it supported Montania's story that he was someone who went before a big panel of 100 Frida Lay execs and pitched this idea and they loved it. But then the thing that I think that supports Montagnas's side of the story is the fact that he did move from janitor to VP So clearly he pitched some idea because you don't go on that upward trajectory without some catalyzing event. But at the same time, this investigation seemed very thorough. And a lot of people who were supposedly at that pitch meeting had no memory of it. So very tough to say whose side is here. All I know is that the world is a better place for flaming hot chitos being in it.

It's Monday. And as per tradition, here's your preview of what to look out for for the week ahead. The Fed meets on Tuesday and Wednesday. as Fed meetings go, this week is the one you should actually pay attention to. That's because Jerome Powell could solidify expectations that those long-awaited interest rate cuts will come in September. It's also the busiest week of the earnings season. Big Tech will be the headliner with four of the magnificent seven Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple dropping their reports. But this festival lineup runs deep. And McDonald's, Starbucks, Boeing, and Exxon are also

taking the stage, plus a whole lot more. Feed me McDonald's and Starbucks. I'm a consumer spending guy. I'm a foot traffic guy. So literally feed me McDonald's and Starbucks as well. The Olympics also continuing from Paris. They're going to be gold medal events all through the week in gymnastics and swimming and dozens of other sports and then track and field gets going on Thursday.

And then don't look now, but NFL preseason starts on Thursday with the Texans and bears playing in the Hall of Fame game. It's too early. I'm in Olympics mode. I don't want NFL right now. Well, Thursday is also the start of. August. Thursday is the start of track and field, the start of August. Very excited for that and happy Leo season to all those who celebrate. That would be me. All right, that is all the time we have for the show. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful

Monday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send a message to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yucenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is the real inventor of Flamen Hot Cheetos. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brook. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items. Then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes, so you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries,

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