Pivot - ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel, Pam Bondi’s Free Speech Mess, and Trump Sues The New York Times

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss ABC pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for a joke about the Charlie Kirk shooting, Trump filing a defamation suit against the New York Times, and Pam Bondi attempting to clean up her “hate speech” mess. Plus, FBI Director Kash Patel’s heated testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Nvidia's $5 billion investment in Intel, and President Trump's fourth extension of the TikTok ban deadline. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠. Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠. Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What Donald Trump is doing right now is different in kind from everything that's come before? I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, former federal prosecutor and stay tuned contributor Ellie Honig joins me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet. We discuss the special counsel's office, its evolution, its biggest cases, and whether independent investigations are really all they're cracked up to be. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. The news today is this sort of a shit salad with shavings of shit on it.

Mm-hmm. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I have not been canceled yet. What about you? I think the key word there is yet. As if. As if. Yeah, I'm Scott Callow.

Yeah, I don't care. Yeah, still. Unless they rename you because they don't like that name. I'm sitting here in Nashville massively jet lagged. I was in London about 22 hours ago, and I'm in New York and now here. And I'm watching across, I'm staying at the, where am I, the Grand Hoth? No, I'm staring at the Grand Hyatt, and the J.W. Marriott. And across the street is this parking lot.

being torn down by these two massive cranes. That's fun to watch. And it's oddly relaxing. Yeah, it's fun. I've just been sitting here thinking about, you know, metaphors with the U.S. society. But anyways, I'm in Nashville. Where are you? I'm back in D.C.

I was in Ann Arbor yesterday doing my class at the University of Michigan. And also interviewing Pete Buttigieg. Yes, yes. Oh, my son is. I'm sorry. What are you teaching in Michigan? Justin. Scott Gallo, a 101.

That's really. I just talk about you. Baby, unlocking my heart is an enigma. Well, you come talk to the class. I think they would like that. Oh, 100% no. Remote, yeah, I would do remote. You have to look at the cameras

so people look at your pretty face. No, I'm sorry. I'm looking literally at this parking lot being torn down. Next thing you were going to want me to stop masturbating in the middle of our podcast. Leave me alone. All right.

Listen to, Ben. Listen to it. I think I'm the only person who didn't care that he did that. I saw him recently at CNN. You know, remote work? Is this going to have some externalities, folks? I don't care.

I was like, is that okay, whatever. I mean, it was not in good taste, I would say, but I wouldn't have said fired him. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Good taste immediately implies that he made a conscious decision to masturbate with the camera on. He didn't. He didn't realize, he was at home. I'm going to go out of a limb here and say he's not the first person to masturbate at home. I don't think he thought, I know what I'm going to do.

I just thought, he's like the lawyer. I'm talking about habeas corpus. So I think I'll yank one out. Those were the simple days. Those were the simple days. Such innocent times. Such a simple time. Such innocent times.

Listen, you have to stop looking at the window and pay attention. You've got a lot to get to. You know, Saul has a video he watches of diggers, and this is what it's like. You're like a three-year-old boy. It's like amazing. Well, you know my favorite TikToks now? Have you seen these amazing, like, mastive pit bulls? And they have some guy lay out like a raw turkey.

A chicken bone, eggs, tomatoes, and like a pineapple. And they say, okay, Brutus, and Brutus just eats all these things whole. Scott, you're so weird. I'm like watching flour arranging and cooking, and you're like a guy who makes French onions. Oh, trust me, I've watched much weirder stuff. I figured. Leave your video on so you don't masturbate today. I'm not in the mood.

I've watched much weirder stuff and then done my impersonation of Jeffrey Toobin as I watch it. We're going to leave Jeffrey Tuben out of this, because we got a lot of news to get to, as usual. I mean, Jesus. Okay, let's go. ABC is pulling Jimmy Kimmel live off the year indefinitely after a comedian made a joke about the Charlie Kirk shooting, which is actually factual. Let's listen to exactly what Kimmel said. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving.

On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. My condolences on the loft of your friend, Charlie, Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir? I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks?

They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. and it's going to be a beauty. Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief. Construction. By the way, Kimmel posted on social media

after Kirk was killed, sending his love the Kirk family into all victims of gun violence. FCC chair, Brendan Carr, who's got to be the most unctuous toady in a sea of them in the Trump administration, blasted Kimmel in an interview with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday calling Kimmel's comments,

It's the sickest conduct possible, which is inexplicable. He suggested ABC's broadcast license was at risk, threatening we can do this the easy way or the hard way, which gives me every indication his penis is very small. Next star, the owner of several ABC affiliates and the company seeking FCC approval for its $6.2 billion acquisition of rival media company, Tegna, they need an out because there will go over 39% ownership across the country, announced it would drop Kimmel's show, Sinclair, broadcast group, which is also owned by conservatives who also own ABC stations, followed demanding Kimmel apologize and make a personal donation to the Kirk family and

Turning Point USA, Kirk's organization. Disney CEO, Bob Iger and the company's TV chief, Dana Walden, then made a decision to take Kimmel off the air. Trump celebrated the move as great news for America and urged NBC to pull the plug on Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon.

I don't know where to fucking begin here. Is Bob Ligerd the worst person on earth at this moment, I think possibly, and I'm not really clear what happened here with them. Secondly, Nexstar and Sinclair are now telling us what we can do and don't do that. They can take it off the air. They own the company. Fine, whatever. Brendan Carr, to me, should be the focus of this and Donald Trump. This was a shit rolls downhill kind of thing. He essentially threatened them, and we can do this the easy way. I'm excited for the lawsuit that will ensue because of this. They are quashing free speech, and I'm not talking

about Nexstar and Sinclair. They're just horrible, Jodes. This is a problem with Brandon Carr, who's always been a problem, who has had millions of quotes saying, we should never do this. I can read them over and over again. And then, of course, it began with Donald Trump, who's been attacking Kimmel for a long time and predicting he would be fired. Scott? initial reaction when you heard the news? Well, I think Bob Eicher is going to go down in history as Neville Chamberlain in a cashmere sweater minus the dignity.

I mean, unfortunately, Neville Chamberl was actually a pretty decent man and thought he was doing the right thing. And he's become a bit of a footnote in history as someone who defines the word appeasement. But I mean, one thing's clear. I doubt Bob Eiger is really happy he came back. I think this is a terrible footnote on his legacy.

And when, you know, these people bent to knee, they kind of broke the dam. So Sherry Redstone paid basically a Vig to get her deal done. Eiger did. And now you have this guy, Brendan Carr, these people aren't, we don't have a director of an FBI. We don't have an FCC chair. What we have is people who are acolytes of President Trump

and are just enacting his will and hope that once they got out of office, he'll carve up, bite dance or some other company and make them rich. This is full, this is full oligarchy now. It has nothing to do with the government. They control all three houses. They essentially have a very sympathetic Supreme Court. And, you know, I kind of admire it. They're like all about, we're just going to do everything we want.

We're an autocrat. They're not even, you said something that has struck me that I love the Washington Post statement, democracy dies in darkness. And you've always said, no, it's dying in full light of day. And so, look, I don't, they could make an argument. I said this about Colbert. I don't think this is the same here. Let's just talk a little bit about Jimmy Kimmel.

Disney is not losing a lot by canceling Kimmel. Only 12% of his viewers are age 18 to 49. And at an average of just 220,000 viewers within the demographic, and by the way, that's down 10% from the same period last year. it's down two-thirds by 2015. Overall, the show averages about 1.8 million viewers a night. That means about 1.6 of that 1.8 are 50 plus. So, look, it's not, and the show has probably a hundred-eat-

Sure, that's a different decision. It's 180 employees. Having said that, if the folks, if Bob Eiger had decided, you know, I'm a billionaire, I've had a wonderful life in no small part because of the rights of free speech an appreciation for basic capitalism, an appreciation for fidelity to the law. You know, I'm already a billionaire. Maybe it's time I actually tried to do the right thing. He decided not to do that.

He wants to get the stock price up and I think just get the hell out of Dodge or get the company sold. I don't know. He wants to sell it to Apple from what I, that's what it feels like to me. I want to read some Brendan Carr quotes because I think we should, listen, Eiger, I don't even want to speak to him again at this moment. And I really like Bob Eiger. We know each other very well. I've interviewed him dozens of times, but I am so embarrassed for him. I'm embarrassed for his wife who runs a journalism school. I don't know what she's going to say to her students today. I don't want to drag her into it, but she runs a journalism school. So she's got some explaining to do, I think, on behalf of her husband. It's not her decision, but nonetheless, it's awkward, I would say. Iger could have quit. He could have, he could make excuses all he wants about shareholders. I know he had some right-wingers on his ass.

a bit, including Elon Musk, including I think it's Ike Palmutter, etc. It doesn't matter. He had a duty to something bigger here and is one of the few people who probably could have done this and pulled it off correctly. I know he was very upset when Nazis were and worried about danger when Nazis were protesting outside of, neo-Nazis are protesting outside of Disney. I get all that. I get the shareholder thing. I get worried about safety. But at some point, stand up, man. Like, this is just, like, Rudy, and he could do it. Let me, let me focus on Brandon Carr, though, because this is really the real problem here. All the right is now saying, oh, Sinclair can ask anything of anyone. Of course they can. They're terrible people, and they want to,

that used to happen in the old days when television first started. But let me read some Brandon Carr things from 2019. Should the government censor speech it doesn't like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the, quote, public interest. Then he said in 2003, free speech is the counterweight and is the check on government control. This is why censorship is an authoritarian's dream. And then back in 2022, President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion.

That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for, censorship. J.D. Vance today, everyone, please congratulate Marker Rubio, the host of ABC's new late-night show. I mean, whatever that alleged couch fucker says is always stupid. I don't think he did fuck a couch, by the way. Let me just be clear. And this is what's the problem here. And then today, Carr also then said, FCC, he said, Sinclair has every right to demand that Jimmy Kimmel donate to Turning Point USA. He needs to shut the fuck up. I honestly don't know what else to say about this guy. He's going to be lawsuits.

He is crossing the line as a government official making these kind of threats due to speech. I don't know. He's the one we need to focus on despite the fact that Iger is such a disappointment. Well, just I want to talk about, I mean, it's going to be easy to talk about how insanely hypocritical this is. And then we should try and move to, I mean, going down a rabbit hole around what we can do about it. In 2023, Fox described cancel culture driven largely by woke ideology. Tucker Carlson asked his audience, if you want to know how free your society is,

just ask a really basic question. Am I allowed to make fun of people in charge? Can I mock them? Can I tweet that not with violence, but with words? And if you can, you're in a free country. If you can, it's not. That's Tucker Carlson. Representative Jim Jordan claimed in 2021,

that cancel culture is the most dangerous thing happening in our country today. In 2020, Trump told the R&C, the goal of counsel culture is to make decent Americans live in fear of being fired, expelled, shamed, humiliated, and driven from society as we know it. In a 2020 campaign rally, Trump said the unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history and punish counsel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control. Pam Bondi, targeting hate speech on the Katie Miller podcast. We're going to play. This is Attorney General Pam Bondi is cleaning up after the mess after remarks about free speech. pissed off people on both sides. Let's listen to it and then you can comment on it. She made this on the Katie Miller podcast. There's free speech and then there's hate speech. And there is no

place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society. Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action? We will absolutely target you, go after. you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. Now, to be fair, as you know, Tucker Carlson was one of the ones on the far right who was pretty fired up about this, but in the way that's different. Let's listen.

You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment. for civil disobedience than that ever, and there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think, there is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human. They don't believe you have a soul. A human being with a soul, a free man, has a right to say what he believes,

not to hurt other people, but to express his views. You can also hurt people with your speech. That's fine, too. I mean, anyway, we'll get to Trump in a minute, but go ahead what your point is. Well, okay. So hate speech. What Jimmy Kimmel said, I thought I had the wrong clip. That qualifies as hate speech. I mean, there are, the First Amendment, it basically says, all right, it's not absolute. If you incite violence, if you defame people, that's not legal. But quite frankly, we said much worse things about Trump than what Jimmy Kimmel said. And this notion, so, okay, could hate speech be, President Trump should be incarcerated at a minimum and possibly executed while in prison. Is that hate speech? Well, Charlie Kirk said that about Biden.

So we're going to have the Attorney General is now threatening to target people, and that's an authoritarian government. So it's pretty clear what's going on here. CBS has been sold to the Ellison's, and NBC and ABC are basically under three. of being silenced and potentially losing their business because the, you know, the acolyte of Trump running the FCC is threatening to pull their licenses, and the top nation's top cop is threatening to target people based on what appears to be a bar for hate speech that is the following speech that disparages or that is critical or even mocks in a humorous way. So I'm sort of, I mean, this is just so we're going to spend the next few days distracting from Epstein, talking about and validating what we all know.

This is a violation of law, which may not be upheld or take a long time in court to be upheld with the current Supreme Court. We know it's directly contrary to everything or one of the things that's been key around free speech in our country that makes our country great. and we're going to spend a ton of time talking about it and what I want to talk about and what I've been researching getting up at 3 in the morning with Jallag is what we can do about it. And I used to think, well, people will rise up,

they'll vote in 26, okay, I don't know how much damage will be done by then. People will be outraged. But the bottom of the majority of people I'm here in Nashville went out to get some coffee are kind of just going about their lives and don't see a big difference. So to call on them to think they're going to do something.

Yeah, you hope so, but so far, I mean, the markets are up today. What I think we need to think about, and I think the only thing that moves the needle here, I'm increasingly convinced, is some sort of national economic strike. And I was going pretty deep into the rate cut yesterday and some of the economic reports. And get this, the top 10% income earning households now are responsible for 50% of the spending, which basically says what we all know. Income inequality is out of control and storage people who have all the money.

But the top three and a third percent are responsible for 25 percent of all spending. And I don't think consumers and people who have money realize how much power they have. They have more power now than Senators Warren or, you know, any comedian on the left. I think what we're going to need to do, and I've been thinking about this myself, or I was doing a ton of research this on this morning. I mean, there's the meaningful and there's the profound. The meaningful would be to, or the trivial, I should say, cancel your Disney Plus subscription. Okay, and then we're going to see a bunch of screenshots

that people have canceled their Disney plus a subscription. Oh, my God, the whole fucking parking lot just collapsed, Kara. I wish I had that on film. Anyways, Jesus, that's a metaphor. Did it just happen? Did they just cancel Anderson Cooper? Anyways, what I'm beginning to think about personally

because I don't want to wait until 26, I have business relationships and capital with and in, Silicon Valley Bank, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Northern Trust, Goldman Sachs. I'm contemplating, transferring all of my assets to Lloyds or HSBC. I'm trying to figure out if there's someone we could call on who's a real leader who could rally the top three and a third percent responsible for 25 percent of the spending to in, say, December, not by Christmas presents, maybe stay at home, not go to St. Barts, maybe, you know, try and reduce their spending by 10, 20 percent, which quite frankly really doesn't

impact the top 300% income-earning households. That's just, that is literally pure consumption. And trying to take the economy, if you took the economy's growth down for one month by 1% in protest, that's what you're saying. Say, look, I'm not going to fund a move towards an autocracy. Well, unfortunately, the people you're talking about feel very comfortable. And that's what they do. They keep those people comfortable. Before we get to that, I'll just know, the issue is, This group of people is not stopping. And before we get to fixes, you need to know what's coming. Trump kept up his litigious streak this week filing a $15 billion defamation suit against

the New York Times and four of its reporters as well as publishing house, a Penguin Random House. And as comedian, as comedian Margaret Cho put it, no matter what he cancels, he can't cancel himself off the Epstein list. Let's keep that in mind. Now, Bondi tried to walk it back a bit because she was getting so much flack largely from Maga, freedom of speech. is a sacred in our country, we will never impede upon that right, but her comments came as the Trump

administration officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, are calling on people to report Charlie Kirk critics. These people are so hypocritical that they just don't even care anymore to even hide it. Let's listen to what Vance said while he was hosting the Charlie Kirk podcast. Civil society, Charlie understood this well, is not just something that flows from the government. It flows from each and every one of us. It flows from all of us. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell. Call their employer.

Oh, good Lord. This is exactly what Charlie Gerard said not to do. Like, that everybody, there's evil speech is fine. He even said it in one of his speeches. He said, this is what great is our country. This is so ridiculous. Trump is also now designating Antifa, as we, which means anti-fascist, as a terrorist organization,

despite the fact that it's an ideology, not an organized group. So that's another thing. But there are relentless. They will next go after NBC, presumably, because Trump puts a roadmap up. They will, Ellison is trying to buy CNN, which should not be allowed, but under Brandon fucking car, it will be, you know. You know, everyone who needs something from the government should realize they are a target. Everyone that needs them from the government, and even those that don't,

hell call your employer that kind of thing um the vice president who was just so inadequate to every task he is given um that's what's going to happen so one of the things you should realize is try to anticipate their next move i think it'll be NBC then CNN um they'll continue to go at the new york times that they will lose but it'll still take time and effort from the new york times um they've already got the washington post under the overly steroided looking jeff bezos with some very bad facial changes he's made. But this is, it is, come on. You'd think you were that rich, you'd have a better,

just my opinion about that. I don't like it looks good. I think it looks great. No, I think he looks shiny. He looks like one of those housewives. I think the facial hair, the facial hair of Pete Buttigieg and the chess and the pecks of Bezos, and I'm rethinking everything here.

I know you are. I know, I know. I know. Listen, I know you like a train daddy. So any other thoughts on this? I mean, I understand what to do, but I don't think, I think these people are going to be relentless until they are stopped at the voting booth. And that is the only place.

I don't know if we can, I don't know if we can wait that long. First off, okay, so let's look what's going on. Because that's what they're targeting next to, the inability of people to vote against them, which people want to do. Normalizing the National Guard in cities. You have CBS NBC and ABC. CBS has gone to Ellison, and NBC and ABC are now under threat of having their licenses pulled. And then you have, so what did we have?

We saw that a concentration of power and consolidation of media in the media that counts, basically alphabet and meta, has led to a dramatic uptick in rage, a dramatic uptick in teen suicide, and basically a coarsening of our discourse. Now we're seeing a concentration of what I'd call traditional media. Frankly, that symbolism is really dangerous because it symbolizes a move towards an authoritarian rule. It doesn't have that much impact because the reality is these are declining businesses with less and less influence. In a weird way, it's going to help some of the new media properties that are a little bit more fearless. I mean, if NBC and ABC just become kind of starched, whitewashed, scared, I mean, even MSNBC, when I was on there and I said we elected an insurrectionist and a rapist.

And Mika was compelled to say that he was actually found liable for sexual abuse. When they have to do that, all that's going to do is make these shows seem so fucking vanilla and boring that they're going to turn to some of the new media outlets online. And there's a lot of them, and it's going to put new wind in their sales. The issue I have is, I just am kind of done. We know this is wrong, and I'm frustrated that there isn't. more thoughtful, strategic economic pushback, because we know this is wrong. I don't, look, this is pretty simple. That, that Kimmel clip was like, really, that's what got them removed? So,

but let me ask you, what do we do? Other than wait for 26, what do you think we should do? I do think just, I think focusing in on media that can't be manipulated like this so easily. of course lawsuits are always hanging over the head of everyone in media but look CBS is dying let's be clear away from all of this stuff the fact that Trump is targeting

the stuff that nobody watches anymore is kind of interesting like and Jimmy Kimmel late night has like it's a whole plot on hacks that it's dying right it's already in the zeitgeist so late night is too expensive and doesn't have enough audience

cable same thing networks forget it. Like, I would think these companies would get out of the broadcast business, like, and say, fuck you, Brendan Carr, do whatever you want with this, because nobody's watching the TV. They're watching it on YouTube. They're watching it on Reddit. They're watching it on, you know, wherever kids and not just kids, everybody's watching it. They're streaming. Are they going to try to regulate streaming now? They can't. They don't have that pull into streaming. So put it, put Kimmel. If I was eager, I would have put Kimmel on streaming. Just put it, okay, you don't

like them here. Let's just put them on streaming. and cut costs and work that. Well, that's what he'll do. Right. But, I mean, if I were Eiger, I would have said. No, no, no, Iger won't do it. Jimmy Kimmel will do it. Jimmy Kimmel has a big opportunity.

He's going to take his 180 people. He's going to take his best 15. And he's going to start a YouTube channel. Same thing with Colbert. Right. That's the thing. Like, let's just make our things and be very careful. You know, they will, law seats will be their next thing.

That's what will, obviously. But there is way too much media that is growing for them. to control all of it. And so I think, like, look, let's just, we got to just burn those ships and move on. Like, that's the thing. Because they're, they, this is how Trump lives. He lives in the 80s in his head. So CBS, ABC and NBC are the be all and end all. But they're not. They're not influential anymore. And we should just move along, like, and make our stuff. And like, we should grow and conservative outlets should grow. Whatever it happens to be, you know, I was, I was sort of, Although I think Tucker Carlson's really something's going on with him.

When he's articulated, it was absolutely right. Tucker, I mean, okay, we both have our issues with Tucker. I think Tucker right now is the most likely nominee for the Republican nomination. I think he has been very good lately. Well, he's consistent, at least, right? Well, about housing. It comes across for young people, he comes across as intellectually honest. He comes across as courageous, not afraid to go against his own party.

And I realize I'm talking to our own book here. we're our downloads are up 10% in the last 30 days and guess what everyone from Megan Kelly to Joe wrote you're going to see a lot increasingly people turn to podcasts like the daily because the New York Times is is fearless and does the work you're just going to see media that is not scared of Brendan Carr or can't be controlled by Brendan Carr boom because people are really interested in what's going on and they like they like fearless you know I'll give me an example. Don Lemon.

Don Lemon's doing a great job. Don Lemon is doing such a fantastic job. First off, I love people who just work really fucking hard. I was watching Senator. People don't know explain what he's doing. I love this. He's a man on the street. He's totally unafraid.

He shows up to everyone with a mic. He responds thoughtfully. He's forcefully yet dignified. He's clearly working his fucking ass off. The reason I love Don Lemon is the same reason I loved Secretary or loved Secretary Clinton or Senator Klobuchar. It is just so obvious these people work their asses off.

They get up early and they think, how can I be great at what I do by just showing up over and over and over? Don Lemon must be working 14 fucking hours a day. He's outside. He's running around. He wrote me, he's like, what do you think? I'm like, I love the Don Lemon in the streets. He's doing a great job.

Great job. And everybody should watch it because he's actually, this is where he shines. I have to say. Same thing, Brett Stevens wrote a great piece. Carl Rove wrote a great piece. He's like, this is not good. You know, who else does do a great job?

And again, I go back to the same thing. Regardless of AI or what happens to our economy, people who are curious and work really hard and try to be courageous and even take some risks and maybe they make mistakes are still going to have great economic futures. The bulwark, Tim Miller, how are they putting out all that content all the goddamn time?

I mean, I don't know who Tim's husband is, but he's not seeing Tim a lot because, or Don's husband, These people are, they are working so hard, they're rising to the occasion, they're being totally unafraid, and you're going to see a massive, the continued, the acceleration of the flow. So it's not meaningful. What's most meaningful here is this represents a naked disregard for many of the laws and American principles that have given us so many freedoms and so much economic growth. But the actual tangible business level or it's not going to really decrease our inability to get information. If Jimmy Kimmel launches Timmy Kimmel live now streaming or on substack or podcasts with great video production, it's going to get the same audience with more young people. Yeah, that's right.

That's right, because he's funny, because he's funny. He's talented. He's talented. And by the way, you know, just like anyone, I also urge people to watch the episode where, and Gene Smart gave an amazing statement on Kimmel, but there is a scene where she gives a speech. this happens to her. They want her to cut someone, the woman she's very close to, who got her where she is, and she won't do it. And she ends up quitting on her dream of being a late-night show host. But her speech is astonishing. And I would, they already presage something like this happening. And so, and Tony Golland plays a sort of evil looking like Bob Hager type of person. And I have to say that it just really was prescient. Hacks was in the last season. It's coming back for another season. So anyway, good luck, Jimmy. One of the things, though, I do think people are a little more upset about this. They're coming for the straight white guys.

And that's something that is worrisome. Say more. I hadn't even thought about that. I mean, it's like, you know, listen, there's all kinds of attacks on Letitia James and everybody, a lot of black women cook at the Fed, which was untrue, et cetera. And so now they're coming for the straight white guys. And so I think a lot of people are like. Hold on. What? Like, that's the kind of thing that I think starts, I hate to say, it starts to get people going. And it shouldn't, obviously. But they've been coming for trans people. I don't sense out at all. You have a better spotty sentence. I didn't even cross my mind. I do. I think trans people are like, oh, that's bad, but, you know, black women, that's bad, but. And now it's like, what? Like, look at the reaction. It's overwhelming in the media. I mean, it's not, it's indignant and angry. I don't think. My sense is that the thing about Kimmel was with,

Colbert and I believe this, this was, I thought Colbert was an economic decision. Kimmel, when, I mean, people just look at that clip and go, wait, that gets you canceled now? And also that it came right after Brandon, fuck that guy, car said something. And then when you have Pam Bondi, the nation's top cop saying we're going to target people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're not supposed to target people. You're supposed to find evidence of wrongdoing. Sinclair and Nexer has every right to do this.

It still makes them assholes. Well, and we have every right to cancel our subscriptions and not watch their programs and sell their stock. By the way, their programming sucks. Anyway, we have to go on a quick break because when we come back, we have more ridiculous clown car activity. FBI director Cash Patel faced Congress.

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Scott, we're back with more news. FBI director, Cash Patel testified for the House Judiciary Committee for two heated days this week. It was kind of ridiculous. Before questioning began, Patel used his opening statement to take credit for identifying Charlie Cook's assassin and told the committee he wasn't going anywhere. It's probably true. Donald Trump doesn't fire incompetent people. When questioned on the Epstein files, Patel claimed he is barred from recent quarters,

from releasing all the documents. This is not. So let's listen to a clip of Representative Erick's Wall Wall, pressing him on the issue. It's a simple question. Did you tell the attorney general that the president's name is in the Epstein files? During many conversations that the Attorney General and I have had on the matter of Epstein, we have reviewed. The question is simple. Who can you tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files?

Yes or no. Why don't you try spelling it out if you're going to mock? Use the alphabet. Yes or no? No. ABC. DeF. It sounds like you don't want to tell us. Did you tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name was in the Epstein files?

Why don't you try serving your constituency by focusing on reducing? producing violent crime in this country and the number of pedophiles that are legally carbored in sanctuary cities in California. Oh my God, he's such an idiot. He's such an idiot. Like, it's just answer the question.

Like, it's rudimenting swaddled. It's just, of course, a lot of this is theater, but God, he's stupid. Like, that's what I came out from it. Yeah, it's just bad for the American brand. When you see that sort of uncivil back and forth I mean, a little bit of it is a little bit of is that these hearings have become not really doing their job. They're more or less just to, I mean.

It was okay with RFK. I think that was actually helpful to see in that way. Yeah, I think so. This is just, I saw the whole thing. And I thought, here's another instant where people just feel bad about America. because Director Patel is being incredibly disrespectful of people who are elected by their constituents. They are meant to provide oversight.

I mean, they're his boss. They provide oversight for these agencies on behalf of the American people. And when he gets back in their face like that, he's playing to an audience of one. And I just found the whole thing really discouraging. The good news is, what's the name of the, I forget, the suspected murderer, what's name of his family, Tyler. Tyler Robinson. The good news is, my understanding is the Robinson family has cleared a bunch of other crimes.

That's a joke. He cared a man. Yeah, that's a good joke. I mean, they did the work of the FBI, and they're supposed to be a bunch of other time. A hundred percent. Cash Patel is destroying the agency, and I'm certain. I think the agency's stronger than that. I think it's a lot.

Let's hope. Let's hope. But he's just, you know, he's just so dumb. Like, so dumb. I don't even care about his stupid back and forth, because he's not even good at that. Like, literally, he's not good at any of it. And so, you know, whatever.

He's just, he won't be fired just so, you know, neither will Christenome incompetent. Neither will RFK incompetent and dangerous. Neither will. But while we're all distracted and angry looking at this, the important shit is no one's noticing. I mean, you realize Putin flew attack. drones now into Romania. Yes, exactly. I mean, it's just so funny. Trump's out there saying

Putin would have never attacked Ukraine. By the way, Putin is basically sending an attack aircraft into NATO countries now. And we're listening to Keshe Patel make us look like assholes. Instead of immediately, Trump should be unified with Starmor. He shouldn't be at the Windsor Castle, in my view, getting a rub and tug from the royal family. He should be with Starmor. He should be with McRan. He should with Holtz, and they should be essentially meeting very visibly, quietly, not saying anything, and then within slowly but surely within the next 7, 14, 20 days, we should be jamming all sorts of military aircraft and material and hitting back very hard. Absolutely.

Because basically, Putin now has said, oh, they're so distracted and they're so weak, and this guy loves me so much, I can pretty much do whatever I want. And we're sitting here talking about... Same thing with Netanyahu. What a fucking idiot, Patelism. You're right. interesting. But meanwhile, Europe, meanwhile, Putin is following attack drones over NATO. Yeah. I think people are distracted and they aren't actually paying attention because, as you said, as you noted, NATO, the stock market was up largely on the cut, the fade, which was expected. The cut was expected. But one of the things that was interesting was NVIDIA investing $5 billion in Intel. Even Joe Karner didn't like this. The stake was worth about 4% of the company. As part of the deal, Nvidia, Intel would collaborate on developing chips for,

personal computers and data centers. Intel stock jumped over 25%, not a surprise in pre-market trading. By the way, and other Nvidia needs to focus on this because China's Internet watchdog has instructed companies to terminate orders for Nvidia chips, which is one of its bigger clients. What do you think about this? I mean, Joe Turner was even like, does this feel like industrial policy or that he's trying to please Trump or create this national chip? Part of me is like we do need to have stronger chip companies in this country at the same time. This seems, I don't know, it feels very industrial policy Soviet Union. I'd love to know what you think of this.

Well, I think this is the kind of thing that warrants. If we had a, you know, a DOJ and an FTC that hadn't been weaponized, and a lot of people would argue there's still good people working there, the thing I don't like about it is I don't like, in an environment as important as chips, I don't like the idea of these guys coordinating. And that is, now, at the same time, you could argue Intel's a shadow of itself and needs to be bailed out. And the government's gone in, bought a stake. Now, NVIDIA's bought a stake. But the problem with your competitor buying a 5% stake is, say some engineer from Intel pops up and says, you know what, I think I can build the equivalent of a GPU hopper chip from NVIDIA for 20% less. We just need a billion dollars. And they say, yeah, but one of our owners is NVIDIA. You want the full-body contact violence of capitalism.

You want crazy out-of-control competition. So when these companies start buying, I mean, people could probably fairly look back on Microsoft buying a stake in Apple. Yeah, that's a very good comparative. Different political environment, right? But this is the kind of thing where I want really thoughtful economists and lawyers reviewing it and saying, is this likely going to reduce competition across, you know, the most important, and high-margin products we produce in America right now, which is these chips. So the honest answers, I don't know, but I think it at least warrants a pretty thoughtful review.

And will it get that? So if you speak to Jonathan Cantor, he says there's still really good people at the FTC and the DOJ. But in this environment, it just feels like anything that sends stocks up the Trump administration likes and is going to squelch. I'm just trying to find the deal for Trump in here, you know, everything he does with Any chip steal, there seems to be a Trump family member there ahead of the deal to get their vague. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know. I just, I would love to know. I would love some reporters to explain what happened here and how it happened. But it seems like NVIDIA is just, you know, jumping at whatever Trump says. He, I think Jensen Wong was not that, that really weird looking dinner in Britain with the king, the king and queen, Britain. That was one weird, weird dinner. Yeah. And I mean, the more, the more significant news with Inv.

is basically China has announced they're striking back and they're saying, okay, we're not going to buy any, we're not going to buy any soybeans. So all you farmers who love Trump, you want to trade war, fine. We'll go after, we'll go after your heart and lungs and that as farmers. And two, they basically said we're no longer going to buy Nvidia chips. They've even told companies to stop the integration of Nvidia chips because they've come up with their own. So it makes sense for China. That makes sense of China. So these guys are basically everything that was supposed to happen, whether it was bringing back manufacturing, a combination of rating Hyundai plans and putting a chill across any investment from South Korea. God, these people are incompetent. Like, stop with the indignant. They're incompetent. Vote, get them, organize, and vote them out.

That's, even if they're going to try to steal the election, don't let them. Like, it's just, I don't want to really sit around and, like, bemoan the situation. We just, I'm with you, sister. We can't bemoan. No bemoaning. All right.

Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back. New details about Trump's TikTok deal. Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn ads. Sometimes the best B2B marketing doesn't fail because of your message. It fails because it never reaches the right people. You can have the sharpest creative, the most persuasive offer, and a campaign you're proud of. But if it lands in the wrong inbox or shows up in the wrong feed, it's wasted.

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Hey, pivot listeners. I want to tell you about a new podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network called Access with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger. It's a show about the inside conversation happening across the tech industry. You may know Alex Heath from shows like Decoder and the Vergecast, and he's a founder of sources, a new publication about the tech industry, and a contributing writer for The Verge. And you'll probably only know Ellis if you worked in Silicon Valley yourself.

He's the former tech reporter turned tech industry insider working closely with today's hottest startups. Their first episode features an interview with Mark Zuckerberg about meta's latest smart glasses, the AI race, and what's next for the social media giant. You can find the Access podcast with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Scott, we're back. I know this will shock you, but Donald Trump has extended the TikTok deadline again. I don't even know if it's illegal this time until December the 16th. It's the fourth extension so far for those keeping score at home.

We're also learning more about the deal if it goes through. Bight Dance would spin off U.S. operations into a new company owned by an investor consortium. Oracle Silver Lake and Andreessen and Horowitz are among the investors. Expect to own about 80% of the company. What a shock. All Trump supporting. people. The company would have a majority U.S. Board, including a member,

appointed by the Trump administration. That gave me pause. And Trump just said that his news conference with the U.K. Prime Minister Kier-Starmer, that the U.S. is getting a tremendous fee, plus for just, this VIG, for just making the deal. It's basically another payoff. It's going to go in the hands.

There's all this question of how, what's really happening to the algorithm? I suspect the Chinese will only go along if they're allowed to keep their algorithm. And And if it's in this system, that's a problem. If it's not, that's a problem for the product. So I don't know.

I feel TikTok is below, I think Instagram and others will bypass it rather quickly, given all the Sturm and Drong around this. Any thoughts? Yeah. The news today is just sort of a shit salad with shavings of shit on it. So this is effectively the whole point of passing a law, assigned by the president, Biden, passed by both houses. of Congress, was that TikTok prevents a defense threat.

We have two-thirds of our nation's youth, spends time on TikTok every day, the average of an hour and a half. So TikTok has more influence over our future business, nonprofit, civic, and military leaders than NBC, ABC, and CBS did during their height in the 60s. And as a result, people my age, or one of the impacts is people my age,

50% of us feel good about America. It's 1 in 10, Gen Z. And I think there's no doubt about it. It's the connection to the rage machine, but also, I think in addition to the rage equals profitability, Bightance has a vested interest with coordination with the CCP of dividing us internally. So that was a threat.

All of the government, all branches of government, decided this is bad, let's ban it. And then the president decided, no, I'm not going to ban it. I'm not going to enforce it. And I think I can do a quote-unquote great deal here. First off, this is such cronyism. So I would like, I'm hoping that you and I can play a role in getting the next president elected,

And then I'm going to ask him to give me the license, the U.S. license to LVMH because I'm really into Ramoah luggage. But that's exactly what this is. This is, I am going to use the power of the presidency to force a great company in terms of economics and upside to be sold to my donors. Right. That's not how you do. You know, that's literally we're in Russia where Putin carved up all of the commodities and companies and said, okay, you're a billionaire who's friendly to my interests, and you're going to give me transfer money to my Swiss banking account, I'm going to give you the biggest nickel mine

in our Cutsk, and you can go buy Premier League's football teams and have yachts in the south of France. That's exactly what this is. You don't carve up companies and give them to your political allies. And then it's also not as a cronious. Let's say you're also ignoring law. It's also cronious, and that is, well, that's the cronious part. It's also socialist. Also, someone from the government is going to be on the board here. What we're going to put, we're going to put Peter Navarro on the board of bite dance. I mean, what, that is, that is socialism. That is when the government thinks they're smarter than private enterprise and tries to get involved in the means of production. That is a bad idea. In addition, the whole thing that

started this was the defense threat of having the world's most elegant propaganda machine in the world implant a neural jack into the wet matter of America's youth. That was the whole point. And guess what? the one component of this is that in the deal is that we are going to license the algorithm, but they are still going to control it. So this is all of the bad taste of cronyism and socialism with all of the calories of a lack of doing anything about the true defense threat here. And he doesn't understand, he doesn't care. The silver lining here is, I don't think it's going to happen.

I think she is just, she is like, okay, pretend this guy is the physical embodiment of a on meth, who can't stay focused on anything, waste a bunch of time, go through this deal, we have till December, and then we'll put it off again. This guy has shown Trump is not, Trump keeps blinking, blinking, blinking. But the deal, just to talk a little bit about the deal, the new entity would be created to control the new and separate American version of TikTok. And the U.S. companies, Oracle, silver like Andrews and Horowitz, all Republicans, and other existing bite-down shareholders would hold a roughly 80 percent stake. Also, like, creepy old guys.

Sorry, all three, Trump, Ellison, whatever. They really know they have their finger on the pulse of the young people, but go ahead. And then the new company would have a majority of American board with one member designated from the U.S. government directly. Okay, thank you, socialism. But again, the key, the only thing that matters here, in addition to carving up an amazing company and giving it to your Republican allies, is that it's very unclear who is still going to control the algorithm or mostly clear that the C's season. CCP is still going to have input into this algorithm. So, and also-

Shit sandwich, like you said. Larry Ellison, if this deal goes through, which I don't think it will, it's only going to get richer because the most overvalued companies in the world right now are Tesla and probably Palantir trading at 40 to 60 times revenues. By-Dance, which economically has operating margins of like, you know, literally like 30 percent. It's an unbelievable company growing really fast.

is trading it two times revenues because of the overhang of geopolitical concerns. So these guys are about to, if they, in fact, do you take control of it, are going to make tens of billions of dollars. Yeah, which is why they're here. So, and your point. They're pigs at the trough. They're pigs at the trough. Do you really want Ellison controlling CBS, CNN? No. Paramount and TikTok?

So this is, this is, I'm more upset about this economically. We need, I like, I like, Look, I don't support Mumdami because I'm a big fan of capitalism. I'm a big fan of full-fucking, full-body contact capitalism that creates violence, blood, and competition and amazing products at a low price that creates shareholder value and profits, the likes of which no one has ever seen, and then the government gets their Vig in the form of taxation, not moving in and trying to pretend cosplay investment banker. Okay, but did you see who he just met with the psycho after him?

because you've got Cuomo saying all manner of nonsensical things. Eric Adams is a corrupt. Yeah, I'm not going after him. I'm saying I think it's socialist ideas are bad. I am not for socialism when it comes from a Democrat or the president. What does it look like he's doing? He's attacking and listening to business people. He just met with Bloomberg.

Oh, he's moderating. He's being, he's a smart candidate. He's modulating. Yes, but not modulating. He's meeting with Bloomberg. That to me says a lot about that he's willing to at least understand he's going to be the mayor of New New York and not just agree, and he's also toned down his comments.

He's now said that he realizes things like Globalize the Intifada are insensitive and he will no longer support those statements. He is a fantastic candidate. My point is the following. I don't like socialism when it comes from the left or the right. And this is, you want to talk about an embrace of socialism, having a golden share in U.S. steel

with a government basically gets to decide? Yes, that's what I'm saying. The only person who's being a socialist here, Mom Dani has never done anything. He's just talked about bringing veg support people. That's pretty much where he's... You mean government-sponsored food lines? Stores operated by the government? He was talking about in neighborhoods that are problematic.

It's like four of them. It's just four of them. It's just four of them. There's got to be some. I love that in an argument over the mayor's race. No, no. I'm just saying, all I'm saying is he's done nothing. Trump has proved himself to be a socialist. That's his qualifications for mayor. He's done nothing. Oh, come on. Come on. Let's a fucking city councilman. Good for him. And long line of people who've done nothing who are like, hello. Cash Patel, hello. Come on. I'm with you. It's a long fucking line. I don't think Mom Dami should run the FBI either. He'd be better at it than Cash Patel. That's for sure. You'd be better at than Cash. I wouldn't want you to have any kind of subpoena power. In any case, we need to move on. Oh, my God. You know what I have? I have sub-penous power after Lily Dee. Little drugs.

Oh, my God. Why did I even say the word? Oh, my God. I can't say. If I said the word peonies, you'd make a joke, wouldn't you? Literally, I'm looking at this parking lot. I got to. Can we, should I take a picture shot at us? No, no, no, you shouldn't. Oh, it's amazing. It's so much fun. All right. We're going to take one more. Let's talk more about Gene Smart.

Let's call on Dami, who's done nothing versus Trump, who's like literally a communist at this point. Anyway. My point is I don't, I'm an equal opportunity hater of socialism. And I love capitalism. Bring it on. Let's compete. American companies are the strongest companies in the world. We know what these people are doing.

They're corrupt. They're cronies. They are, they break First Amendment rules. Like, I'm with you. I'm just saying, these people are actively shitty and we'll wait for Mom Dhanie. Mom Dami is like shitty and waiting. Let me, he's not. I don't know.

What if he's great? You're going to eat your words. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Well, I got to be honest. When I say, Kara, I don't think I'm thinking very straight. I was asked to do a prediction on Prof.Chi, and I'm like, I'm just out of sorts right now.

And so I don't feel like I'm thinking clearly. The only prediction I could sort of muster is the following. You have, with NVIDIA saying they'll take a 5% stake in Intel, that's like the sweat off their brow. It's just not a big deal. So if it, it's like these companies now representing 40% of the S&P, like, I don't know, 20 trillion in value. What you do when you're, so, and I like to point this out a lot, I've been a lot of corporate boards, when you feel like your stock is inflated in a bit, we call it fully valued, which means our stock is overvalued for some reason. What you do is you go shopping because what you want to do is find companies that are undervalued because then the acquisition is accretive. If you go buy, when you have a lot of money, when you're trading at 80 times earnings, if you buy a company that's trading at 20 times earnings, it's accretive right away. So it's like, okay, we have a lot of money on our credit cards that may not be there in three, six, or 12 months, let's go shopping. And I think Intel, I was thinking about invading Intel, and also a total

absence of any sort of scrutiny or DOJ or antitrust concern. It all adds up to me to, I think the next two quarters are going to be historically good or the best in 10 or 20 years for M&A. Because I think everyone is going to say, well, we would have never even contemplated buying a company like this because the FTC at the DOJ would get in the way. Warner Bros. Stock, get this, Kara, it was up 55% last week because the father of a rich kid increased his wealth by $90 billion in one day at the hands of AI. So you have so much money, such inflated earnings of companies who could make so many acquisitions that would be accretive that I would bet Goldman and J.P. Morgan are in the offices of the magnificent 10 saying,

here's a list of 30 companies. Let's go. Let's go. That's a great prediction, Scott. But that is a great prediction. But a company that they would have never been able to acquire or never been able to afford to acquire that's 10, 20 or 30 billion, these guys... Give me one. Give me one. Give me one. You were blank. You would... Comcast. Well, the thing is about Comcast, though,

it's controlled by the Roberts family, but that's an interesting... That's a really interesting idea. You could see, I don't know, there's just... Who are the biggest media companies that are still independent and out there? Warner. They should try to grab it from my...

You mentioned one. You mentioned, absolutely mentioned one. You mentioned Disney. Disney, Disney at this point is flailing and Bob Eager might just throw up his arms and say. Bob out of his misery. Because I'm sure he's very agonized about this, Bob. And, okay, what's, I think the market, I think the market cap of Disney is $120 billion or something. You'd have to pay a premium, call it $150. That's like a 5% dilution for some of these companies.

Apple. Well, if Apple bought, I'm not sure, I'm not sure Tim wants those headaches, but Just to give you an example, if Apple bought Disney, it would be a 5% bet. So even if it didn't work and the thing ended up being 1%, it's not a career-ending injury. It would be a great acquisition for them at this point. It's not that hard. They do a very good job at Apple TV with a lot of good shows. They need more scale, and that this huge amount of IP.

But Apple doesn't, Apple's been smart about that probably. He's got to do something spectacular. They like to build internally their own culture. I know, but he can't build that. And he needs to do, look, they've got a lot of hair on that because are they in AI? Are they enough? Their phone sucks. They need something pretty.

And the president will let it happen since Tim was also at that dinner sucking up. You think bad, every investment bank, these investment makers with these key relations that's been there and like, here's 20 companies we would have never suggested that you could buy. And they're going to go, yeah, why not? It's kind of, it's almost free for them at this point. These companies are trading. You don't think Palantir is looking at every analytics. I mean, Palantir is like, okay, we have a $600 billion market cap at a $10 billion. Jesus Christ.

How about, how about they buy, they buy, do? Disney and lop off ABC and let, I don't know, fucking Sinclair have it and do their shitty programming that no, anyone over, under 65 isn't watching. By the way, Sinclair, all your, all your audience is dying. So good luck with that. This is just, all these companies that have broadcaster, just lop off ABC. Just say, just let it go. Let it go. I was so depressed. I was like literally saying it out last night. All you did was eat cash. I was on a plane. I, last, yesterday I heard about the news about Jimmy Kimmel, and I thought, you know what? I'm just going to turn on Spotify, type in 80s. And I got back to the hotel in Nashville. I took a 10 milligram gummy, and I just slept for nine

hours. Well, good. And I woke up. And now you're staring at construction. I woke up at 3 a.m. Went and worked out. And I've been watching this parking lot being torn down. And I'm okay. It's one of the stages of brief. Demolition. Construction. Demolish. Anyway, um, all right. Let's go on Jimmy Kimmel on. Jimmy, if you're out there, we like you. We like you. He'll get lots of requests. I have interviewed him. I'm going to repost my interview. him, but... Let's have to one-up me. I'm just telling you, I've already been there.

I've been everywhere. You know where you go? Like, you know, Kilroy was here, Carol was here. All right, we want to hear from you. That's an old reference. We'll send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to end my back. Oh, wait, but Caitlin Collins wants to interview me.

Oh, she does. Okay, go on Caitlin Collins show. I can't get another text from their people. You need to go on Caitlin as a personal favorite of me. Will you go on Caitlin Collins show? Let's be honest. It's not about the brain. It's about the broad shoulders and the good looks.

No. And the Bruce Dern-like sexiness that she wants on her program. She needs to get a ratings test. Just go on her show. She does a great job. Yeah, she does a great job. She does a great job. And she deserves your attention.

Just you can make other friends besides Anderson Cooper. I'm just telling you. I love AC. If he gets fired, I'm going on strike. Okay, you do that. I told him. I said, you know, be careful, Anderson. Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot. Just submit a question for the show. We call 85551 pivot. elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week. As I mentioned, I just sat down with Pete Buttigieg for an upcoming episode of On with Kara Swisher. I asked him a very important question

about his future. Let's listen. Are you going to round for president again in 2028? Oh, I don't know. Please don't be caught. Come on. I don't know. Really? It's 2025. That's not very long. Have you lived through the last nine months?

Yes. That's true. I got to tell you that was better than the Gavin answer that said he said I could sleep in the Lincoln bedroom so we know where he is on that it's my greatest goal will you let me sleep in the Lincoln bedroom

sure okay there we go anyway it's really fun actually he's loosened up considerably which is great because he's very charming and the that was a real zinger are you running for brazen he is running for brazen why do I think he's coming on with Kara sweatsh why do you think he's doing this well I have to ask that well I understand that but you still have ask it. Anyway, Tamila Harris wanted to pick him for vice president and didn't have the

balls to do so, so to speak. Well, it's good to know that now. Yeah. It's good to know that. That helps. That helps. That's good. The rumor I always heard was that it was Governor Shapiro. No. And then over the weekend, the Black Caucus went fucking crazy. And she picked walls. Mayor Pete. That's what she wanted, Mayor Pete. She just didn't think they could take a black lady and a gay man, I guess. That was her calculation there. Wow. Yeah. I think she would have won with Mayor Pete or would have angered? I don't think it would have made a difference. And I love Mayor Pete. And I'm going to be, he's one of, you know, there's like one of 12 candidates all supporting good money to and see how the process plays out. I think Maripita is an inspiration.

How was, anyways, how is the interview? Any interesting things from him? Yeah, I asked him about him being a fake gay and about Tucker Carlson accused him of being not a real gay. It's not a real gay. Apparently. He has a lot, actually. He was, you know, He's sporting a beard now, so he's looking... He's not a real gay. Well, I'll say this. He gives a great head for someone who's not actually gay. Oh, that's wrong. Is that wrong?

That's wrong. I'm jet lagged. Wait, who cancels me for that? Yeah, I think he's fantastic. I really hope that, you know, served his country, super smart. Yes, I think his path to the presidency or his messaging, I don't know if he talked about this, but something that's really powerful that I had Ezra Klein on my podcast. that he pointed out

that I thought was really powerful is that he can speak in a very authentic way and it was very moving when he talked about it about he grew up believing that he wasn't going to have the opportunity

to have his own family. Yeah, he did. And the fact that he does have this really what appears to be a wonderful, beautiful family because of our embrace of civil rights and the right to pursue happiness

and he can speak to that powerfully in a way that I think will rather resonate with a lot of, with a lot of moderates and a lot of Republicans. We talked about parenting. We talked about that issue. Of course, you never asked me if I ever thought that as a case, because I'm older than him, too. I'm much older than him. Well, that's, that's fair. I just think it's much more important for men to have families. You guys have cats. You guys have cats. You've not, still not asked me. Here it is an opening with me. How are you, Scott? No, how are you? No, no, no, no. Kara, when you were young, did you dream of having a family and think you wouldn't be able to have a family?

Interestingly, Pete and I did talk about this. I wanted to have a family from the get-go. But very early, as I told, I bought a onesie when I was 18 because I went and had kids. I was going to have kids. I didn't. I thought, I didn't think I couldn't. I was like, fuck you, I'm going to have kids. I'm going to have a family. So I think we had a different approach to it. I was more aggressive and angry and about it. Pete was more sad about it, which is the same difference, right? Because you have, how old is Louie? 23. Which means you had him when you were 60?

No. That's good. 39. 39. 39. And I used to, and when I had a uterus back when I had a uterus, yeah. Yeah, I had my first at 42. Yeah.

I think it's good having kids when you're older. I do. Yeah, me too, except when they keep getting sick, as the young ones are. They keep trading the same illness back. poor. Yeah, no, it's, you've locked and loaded again. I actually, if I was a little bit younger, I would do that. You can borrow my kids for the weekend and I take Amanda away. That would be great. And it's the gay, you've said this. It's the gays that are the only ones keeping, gays and immigrants are the only ones keeping our population growth at a study level, right?

That's correct. And Elon Musk. And Elon Musk. Yeah. And by the way, you, you know all these guys. Yeah. I think, like, I want to be, I'll tell you what, if I have any pull, you can be ambassador to Australia. I want him ambassador to Spain. Oh, okay. I'm sure I'll give that to you. We'll give them some money. All right, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.

Ambassador to Mexico, don't they sell a Bibliuze. No, no, no, no. Oh, my God. Oh, la, machaches. Scott, ambassador to like Lichtenstein. You can have Lichtenstein. Don't esther. Don't I call it, Dancatoria. Okay, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Amin, so I, Marcus, Taylor, Griffin, and Kay Gallagher. Ernie and her taught entered in this episode, Jim Mac will edit it. video. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Neil Severeo and Dan Sjelan. Great data, by the way. Nishak Krua is Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for

listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at Nymag.com. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business. I'm in Tennessee, Kara. I'm in Tennessee watching parking lots being destroyed. Thank you.