Pivot - Elon’s Harem, Trump v. Harvard, and Zuckerberg on the Stand

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss President Trump lashing out at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, The White House asking the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status, and Elon Musk trying to build an army of super-babies. Then, Nvidia says it will start producing AI supercomputers in the U.S., Mark Zuckerberg takes the witness stand, and a federal judge rules that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology. 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 at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can go EV without changing a thing. Learn more at chevy.com forward slash equinox EV. The manufacturer's suggested retail price excludes tax, title, license, dealer fees, and optional equipment. Dealer sets final price. Tick tock has figured out I want to see an economist talking about interest rates

or a woman talking about social issues that forgot to put a bra on. What about if it was economists putting his bra on? That's good. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher.

So when I'm in New York every morning, a ritual for me is I make coffee and I order a quiche, a blueberry muffin and a chai latte from Balthazar. And then I go and I have my morning ritual as in my sit down, you know, I like to stay regular. And then the doorman will put the Balthazar delivery in the elevator and I heard the elevator door open and if I don't get it, it goes all the way back down

and I'm always worried that someone's gonna steal my chai latte from Balthazar. Okay. And so I literally, with all the grace and strength of a jungle cat, I leapt up from the basin and at that moment it dawned on me, I'm an astronaut. And in between the time between my flight, between the basin and the ceramic, I realized we're all one part of the same species, Kara. We're all- Oh, Katy Perry.

Why can't we just love each other? Oh, man. And I recognize when I got back to Earth, everything had just changed for me, Kara. Yeah. Everything had just changed. Yeah, did you kiss the ground or kiss the basin? Can you get over how much shit these women are getting?

Oh my God. But can I tell you, I'm sorry to say, deserved. I was trying to see the goodness in it. It's because they won't stop defending themselves when something was just, they should shush. Also, let me say, they did some stuff for women in STEM, but they're talking about themselves and not

girls and women in tech, especially when people are getting cut. It's just that they just need to stop talking. There's so much about this I love. My favorite moment was when they live broadcast it. The people kind of, you know, there was the actual people at Blue Origin, you know, saying, you know, two minutes to launch. And someone said, and this is so exciting when they're up there, Katy Perry is gonna sing. And right on cue, someone from Blue Ogen goes, one minute warning. That was classic.

That was just perfect. The memes are fantastic and they are funny. And I think they're hitting because they're true. Like the one about the best one, I think you, I posted and so did you was, you know what happens when a bachelor party comes into a gay bar? This is the picture. This is what happens.

Exactly. Like a straight lady's like whooping it up and stuff. I think we should start a conspiracy that the Katy Perry that came back is not the same Katy Perry that went up. Something is going on here. Oh, they may have replaced her. But there's actually, I have two sort of observations

or two, a couple of things that struck me. The first is kind of trivially, the other I think is more, I don't know, meaningful. If the magazine industry, did you see the cover of Elle? Yes, it was, yes. If the magazine industry wanted to just confirm that it's become totally irrelevant in tone deaf, they managed to do it. For people who don't know, they were, Elle did a cover with them on it. For people who don't know, Elle did a cover with them on it. But go ahead. And it's not just hers. I mean, did you see the Vanity Fair cover

of Tim Cook with his mixed reality headset on? Yes, that was a while back. They decided that that had something to do with... Anyway, and then that cover from Elle was literally like, we need the world to... We need to put a fine point on the fact that we as magazines are not only no longer relevant, but we're totally tone deaf.

Anyways, that's my trivial observation. My more- What's your deeper one? My more substantive observation that I'd like your thoughts on is that, when we get to these levels of income inequality throughout history, they self-correct through war, famine, and oftentimes revolution.

When the guillotine shows up, it's, okay, they come up with a crime and maybe this person committed the crime, maybe they didn't. But they're essentially at the end of the day, the crime is that the 1% have been just fucking the bottom 99% for way too long. Way too long. I was gonna say, I think it's really interesting

how much it's stuck in, especially what's really fun is people having fun with it, one, which I think is funny, and I like that. But it's like very high profile people. Like, there, you know, just a lot of celebrities are like, what in the actual fuck is going on? Which is surprising. They usually keep quiet about each other.

You know what I mean? I mean, they really do. But a lot of people who don't are saying things. Some are doing really funny things. Like the woman who's in Hacks who plays, she's amazing, she plays a manager, I'm blanking on her name. She did this whole fake space flight. Everyone's really being creative,

but it strikes at a chord of something that is, and especially I think it is when they're saying, it's sexist to say it's a ride. I think this is what Gail King said, it's sexist to say it's a ride. When Alan Shepard did it, when she did it Alan Shepard compared- Alan Shepard?

That's who she was comparing it to. You mean someone who trained as an astronaut his whole life? This was the 60s, Gayle. This was hard. This was dangerous back then and more dangerous, obviously it's always dangerous to go up in space. But the fact that they're pretending it's feminist when it's not feminist is anti-feminist, right?

That's the thing. Is, is... Well, they look ridiculous. They make attaching it, it's vanity rebranded as feminism or adventure. But where I was headed was the following, is that I think this can be reverse engineered to income inequality.

And that is my thesis around Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement was that these were righteous moments inspired by real concerns over systemic racism, the murder of George Floyd, over the fact that women have just been taking on the wrong end of abuse and unjust power dynamic at work. These are credible movements.

But if you look at who they went after, they didn't go after sexism at small or medium sized business. They didn't go after sexism at small or medium sized business. They didn't go after racism across the middle class. They go after rich people. And I think this is part of that revolution. And that is people are just so sick of rich people trying to claim the little social status they don't have. And people are just fucking angry. If they had sent up, you know, six middle-class teachers or whatever,

it wouldn't have gotten any attention. But this is, every revolution, and I think we're quote unquote rounding up people, it just takes on a different complexion. We're rounding up people and sending them to El Salvador. This is a form of revolution, but it's little revolutions. And if you look at it, that who people are going for, they're eating the rich because at the end of the day, they look at these people and they go, you know,

this system has just become so perverted and slanted towards giving the top point 1% everything, including some sort of false sense of adventure or heroism. And people have just had it. I think this all can be reversed to income inequality. Rich need to stay quiet. That's what I feel like. Like, shut up. Be rich and anonymous. Go to space on your own time. Good for you. You know, it's really interesting because, you know, this White House Correspondents' Dinner is happening next weekend. And one of our friends, I don't think I'm supposed to say who said it, but said one of the problems with it is that the sort of prostrating before

administration thing has always been an issue. Like they go and they yuck it up with their sources kind of thing, and it has a real bad feel to it. Why not invite real journalists? If it's about the First Amendment, that dinner, instead of trying to like hustle to get a good celebrity at your table, like that's what the press does. It tries to outdo each other and celebrity gets. Get real journalists from across the country and small towns and everywhere else doing things and celebrate them at the dinner. That's the kind of thing that the people that really do labor in very difficult circumstances aren't getting the attention when all these other people are just performing in front

of us and sort of stick. One of the best lines would let them eat space, which I thought was great. That's good. Let them eat space. That's good. I was like, ugh. I want you to stop defending it. You realize I was awkward. That's good. Let them eat space. That's good. And I was like, ugh. And I want you to stop defending it. You realize I was awkward. We get it.

We should have given a bunch of money to women and girls. We should have talked about the inequities. And even there was the Breakthrough Awards that Silicon Valley does every year, another celebrity fest where the rich people give money to various and sundry scientists and stuff like that. Seth Rogen made a comment that was really true about rich people and they cut it out of the feed. They cut it out of the feed. Seth Rogen is so funny.

That kind of stuff. They can't even make fun of themselves. It's a really weird time. Can I add something else? We're going to move on because we've got a lot to get to, including Trump versus Harvard, which I know you see you're wearing a Harvard shirt, Elon's harem obviously, Zuck on the stand, and a bunch of stuff. But just briefly, what was super funny is that the disconnect is

really real and people are trying to figure out a way through it. I went out to dinner last night, I took my mom out to dinner with a bunch of my friends and we're coming out of the restaurant and one of our pivot fans stopped us. And she worked for Pat Murphy and her boyfriend said, I work for Kristin Jillebrand and my mom was there in her wheelchair and my mom's son goes, ugh, like that, right?

Cause it's Kristin Jillebrand. And the woman goes, oh, you're the Fox mother. You're the Fox mother. You're lucky. And it was so funny. And tried to get, so humor is a good way to do it. I know it sounds crazy. We were in hysterics and mom was even laughing because everyone was doing their little performative part,

but it was actually true. And so the thing I do like about this whole space thing is humor, like there's humor here. I agree, it's funny. Which is funny. Anyway, I just, that's the only part. They need to like stand down or shut up. Stand down, laugh at themselves or shut up.

That's my feeling. Anyway, let's go first because a very important thing, President Trump has lashed out again at Fed chair, Jerome Powell saying, Powell's termination cannot come fast enough. The attack comes a day after Powell warned that tariffs could create a challenging scenario for the central bank as it decides whether to control inflation or support economic growth. I mean, that's

like the calmest thing, challenging scenario is like a calm way of saying, you know, man the barricades. Let's listen to what Powell said exactly about the Fed's independence to speaking at the economic club of Chicago. So our independence is a matter of law. Congress has in our statute, we're not removable except for cause. We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms. So it's, we're protected in the law. So, you know, Congress could change that law, but there's, I don't think there's any danger of that. Fed independence has pretty broad support across both political parties and in both sides of the hill.

So I think that's not a problem. Powell's term ends in May 2026. Oh God, I'm so nervous about that. So he keeps threatening to fire him and he's done it at the FTC, which had a level of independence and he just does it. Obviously, he's doing it with everything, like whether it's Harvard or we'll get to that in a second. Do you have much confidence in staying power of the Fed's independence in the Trump administration?

He's doing it at the Justice Department. Pam Bondi has lost her ever-loving fucking mind, the way, speaking of which her appearances this week have been embarrassing. Can you talk a little bit about what happens here? Because he just runs through stop signs like no problem whatsoever. I have such an inability to protect what's going to happen here. There's been so many things that have been disqualifying, what I thought were red lines that they've just blown through and people are sort of, I don't know, seem fairly numb to. But if you want to talk about a move

that could take the market down five or eight thousand points, it's fire Chairman Powell. Because the separation of central banks from politics is one of the key stabilizing factors in the Western economy. Because what you have is a group of people who leaders, elected leaders who panic, and the reason they usually get voted out of office can almost always be reverse engineered to economic strain on the citizens. And a quick kind of fix or sugar high

to get you out of trouble would just be to flood the market or lower interest rates, which might be over the medium or the longterm, absolutely disastrous. So Western nations, I mean, I think every Western nation through Central Bank or their Fed chair, whatever, or I just interviewed Prime Minister Carney, he was the first non-Brit to be the head of the Bank of England. Yeah, he was. He's a big deal. They all, almost from all political persuasions, all agree that if we subject these people to political pressure, it could be disastrous for the economy because these people have to look at the data and make

very important decisions about interest rates that affect currency, flows of capital, and the temptation to just put pressure on the Fed share and say, lower interest rates, I need a sugar high right now. I need the markets to go back up, whatever it is. the Fed share and say lower interest rates, I need a sugar high right now. I need the markets to go back up, whatever it is. And then you might end up with crazy inflation or stagflation. So the independence, I don't, I think it's going to back down because just the same way he blinked last week when you saw the 10 year spike, 50 basis points. I think someone will say, you do this.

Hold on tight when the market opens tomorrow at 9 a.m. So I don't even think it's, I think they've decided the courts will side with them. Who cares? We get a court order to turn around a plan. We got a court order to bring someone back and we want to claim we can bring Katy Perry back from space, but we can't bring a person we sent incorrectly to these El Salvadoran prisons. By the way, they brought people back.

Initially they brought back women and some Venezuelans. So, but I don't think, I think the thing that stops him from doing that, right now, Chairman Powell is probably the most respected appointed, he's the most respected person in the Trump administration right now. If you could call him part of the administration accidentally. Sure, but let me, what is Powell's termination

cannot come fast enough? Because his job terminates next May. So is he meaning that? What is the language here, termination? I don't know. He's starting to fire him. I don't know what it is. Is he?

I don't know. You tell me. That's the problem. I mean, saying things like this, by the way, are so dangerous. Just saying them, what he's doing, is so ridiculous. Brand toxic uncertainty. Yeah. And I think that's exactly the term that's correct. I think Powell is really just like, fuck you. Like, come at me, sir. Essentially, the way he's talking.

Chairman Powell is literally, he's going to leave his tenure as someone who pulled us back from COVID, his tenure as someone who pulled us back from COVID, whose economic policies, the markets set new unprecedented highs. Some people would probably criticize that. A little too much parting. Well, or a little too much, I would say, policies, although you could argue he doesn't control this. The reason we're in such a crazy corner right now

is because we as Americans, and this is true through Democratic and Republican administrations, are under the delusion that all this. The reason we're in such a crazy corner right now is because we as Americans, and this is true through Democratic and Republican administrations, are under the delusion that we can spend $7 trillion a year while taking in $5 trillion in tax receipts and that everything will be all right. And then we get back into a corner where the whole world owns our debt, and they not only are reciprocating with the trade war, they're reciprocating with a capital war. That is they just go into the market and sell a disproportionate number of our treasury bills and the 10-year spikes,

and all of a sudden we have an additional $175 billion in interest rate payments which we weren't planning on making. We have put ourselves in such a vulnerable position because if you think of the US as a household, we make 50,000 year in tax receipts, we're spending 70,000 and we have credit card debt of 370,000. And the scary thing is the kids, despite not spending any of this money, are really benefiting from it, are going to inherit those credit card bills. And everyone has power over us now. We no longer really own our home.

So this is, if you, anyways, back to Chairman Powell, he probably can't wait for his termination because guess what, he's going to go be chairman of like Bridgewater. No, I don't, I think he is, I think he's taking his, listening to him, I think he's taking his job rather seriously. I think he thinks he's the bulwark against this lunatic.

I agree. And he came out, he's one of the few people, he's really the first kind of what I'll call leader to just in a thoughtful, methodical way, to stand up and say, okay, just in case you didn't believe every point of light from every economist or anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass and is trying to contort themselves into figuring out some way to justify this. The interpretive dance

taking place across podcasters and officials trying to support these tariffs is almost, it's literally hilarious. It's like modern art that doesn't make any fucking sense, right? I don't, for what? And for what? Because I was thinking as I was walking the other day, especially listening to that idiot Pam Bondi, it's like, you know, if the Democrats win in two years, you're all super fucked. Like super fucked. You have to win in two years. And of course, they think they will through strong arming, but what a risk they're taking because they're going to be investigated out the yingity yang, and deservedly so.

Anyway, let's move on. Go Jerome Powell, we're on your side. We think you're behaving correctly. Trump's feud with Harvard is escalating. The White House is asking the IRS to begin the process of revoking Harvard's tax exempt status. This is not an easy thing to do, by the way, but the IRS, because it's under the control of Donald Trump, is reportedly considering it. The move comes after Harvard declined Trump's demands to scrap DEI programs and overall hiring teaching admissions. It made a ton of changes, by the way.

It has made a ton of changes that are probably laudable in many ways. Trump's initial response to Harvard's pushback was freezing more than $2 billion in federal funds for multi-year grants and contracts. Apparently it wasn't enough. The Harvard president, Alan Garber, condemned the Trump administration in an open letter earlier this week writing, no government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire,

and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue. What do you think? The Harvard fighting back here is really interesting. Let me give some statistics. Harvard is gearing up for this fight financially. They issued $750 million of taxable bonds last week to shore up liquidity. It does have a $53 billion endowment, but there are restrictions on how the money gets spent. I see you're wearing a Harvard t-shirt. I can't believe, one of the jokes on threads was, I can't believe we like Harvard again. Like we're backing Harvard here, which is sort of the pinnacle of snooty

elitism, I think, for most people in general. But at the same time, this is a real shot across, along with MIT, Princeton, Columbia, of course, caved. So it's a really interesting situation happening here with these schools saying, no fuck, we've done enough and showing their work. Now today, for people that don't know, the Trump administration is trying to do this with no proof whatsoever, very similar to what they did with the migrants who they sent out of the country, with no proof on any, they don't give any proof to their allegations on almost anything they're doing,

no matter what, across the spectrum. And in this case, they filed something without any proof that Harvard did anything wrong. So there's several, and of course they're hurting funding of really important research that's going on. Scott? Yeah, it took Donald Trump to get me to like Harvard. Yeah. That t-shirt is handsome. Where'd you get that?

My assistant got it for me because I just wanted a Harvard t-shirt to. Um, I was strolling around in a Canada t-shirt last week. And it was the, like, if you look at the, the darkest moment of the last hundred years, there was some key attributes of a move to fascism. Uh, one, they start demonizing people and rounding them up. And it takes on a different complexion, but let's be clear. We have demonized illegal immigrants, of which we have turned a blind eye to because it's very profitable. And now we're rounding them up. And we're taking them off the street and we're sending them to hellscapes. One of the other key

steps is you come for quote unquote the academic institutions and the cultural elite and you demonize them. And that's what's going on here. So this is, you know, I'm not a fan of these institutions. I've even suggested their tax free status be revoked if they have an endowment over a billion dollars and not growing their freshman class faster. But you're about making bigger, becoming bigger, not to tell them what to do or how to run their program. No, I don't care.

They have the right to pick their curriculum. They have the right to pick their faculty. They have the right to talk about what they want to talk about on campus. I think if you're going to have a law. And be clear, folks, this has about as much to do with anti-Semitism as evangelicals liking Israel. They just see these, the notion of anti- putting this under the banner of anti-Semitism, they're just using it as a vessel to go after an ideology and centers that typically,

traditionally and right now are not supportive of these types of policies. Is it true that there's not enough intellectual diversity at these campuses? Sure. But when you start targeting individual universities and going after, quote-unquote, the cultural elite under the auspices of anti-Semitism, it's just, it's not, A, it's not true and B, it's morally corrupt, but more, I'll just go to the economic argument. The funding of research at universities has been the greatest investment in history. And that is, and I've said this before, that the most successful venture capitalists in history are middle-class taxpayers who give money to the government

and then the government funds research that private enterprise can't afford to make these types of staggering investments. Traberculosis, for example. Or a catalog listing all things on the internet for academic research that ultimately ends up becoming a $2 trillion company called Google. Or vaccines looking at how mRNA might be more effective than traditional vaccines. Or diabetes medication.

Most studies show, and then the vessel for this unbelievable investment are universities. Government funding of university research has proven to be one of the highest ROI public investments with economic impact studies suggesting returns of get this, Kara, somewhere between 20 at the low end, 20% and 60% annually on federal research dollars through job creation, new industries, and increased productivity.

And agriculture, genetically modified crops,, new industries, and increased productivity. And agriculture, genetically modified crops, food safety technologies, and energy, solar panels technology, advanced battery companies. You have had your researchers going all week. This is fantastic. Natural gas racking, LED lighting, advanced materials, Moderna and BioNTech, hundreds of drugs including Lyrica,

Remisate I think it's called, we did that. The HIV protease inhibitors, the cocktail drugs, came out of universities. Genentech was based on recombinant DNA technology from UCSF and Stanford, Google, Smartphones, Cisco Systems. I mean, this is the best, the US does actually a small number of things better than anyone, but we do them really, really well.

And people think it's not enough because they haven't been as involved in AI and it's been taken up by private. What happens is private enterprise takes the juicy bits and the parts that are harder, the universities used to do and they used to do them in combination. Then no one else will find. It sometimes end up being unbelievable.

Lithium ion batteries. You don't have to make, this is fucking ridiculous. harder the universities used to do and they used to do it in combination. Then no one else will fund. It sometimes ended up being unbelievable. Lithium ion batteries. You don't have to make the... This is fucking ridiculous. And here it is. Why do you think Harvard decided and fuck this shit and Columbia didn't? Like, think about being inside these places. Columbia has literally... has just this virus of a lack of leadership right now.

I would argue that Columbia between the response, I mean, there were two campuses with protests. President Linda Mills just handled it much differently than the folks at Columbia. And I also think Columbia quite frankly, for whatever reason has been a flash point and has been unfortunately targeted, whatever you wanna call it.

But I do think the reason that Harvard decided to stand up, I think they have more leadership. I think they have more leadership, I think they have more moral clarity. Quite frankly, it just really helps to have $54 billion endowment. They can afford to do this. It's great for their brand. Harvard probably, this is probably one of the better brand moves of 2025. Yeah, because they were sort of the like the irritants and now they seem like freedom fighters.

Yeah, and the president of Harvard unable to condemn anti-Semitic speech as hate speech or whatever it is. You know, they've had their hits the last six months. This is absolutely them standing up and doing the right thing, even when it's hard. So we'll see if the IRS does this. It takes years. This is going to go, by the way, everybody, again, it's going to go through lots of courts with the IRS. They're going to try to do this.

It will be litigated. And by that time, if Donald Trump is lost, the people who are doing this to Harvard, the IRS are going to be fucked royally at some point. If they make these moves, they think that Donald Trump's going to be in power forever. That may be, but if he's not, you're taking a rather large risk that all of you aren't going to jail at some point for these behaviors.

What you're saying is so important, and I've been talking to a lot of Democrats. I was on Governor Newsom's podcast yesterday. And I think when something that's missing from the Democratic Party, I don't believe that when they go low, we go high. I think that's just like trying to capture social status. I absolutely think we need to get in the mud.

And I think there needs to be a Democrat who basically says, I'm running for president. I'm going to win. And when I win, I am absolutely targeting, I'm going to have the SEC look into all trading on April the 9th. I'm going to look at all illegal deportations. I'm going to look at the unlawful seizure of constitutional power. It's going to be done to the letter of the law, but be clear.

Be clear, folks, if you're breaking laws and you're under the impression you're no longer subject to the law, but be clear. Be clear folks, if you're breaking laws and you're under the impression you're no longer subject to the law, that might be true for the next, you know, 40, you know, 44 months, but in 44 months the law is coming back. The sheriff is coming back. Not just that, in two years. In two years, if the Democrats win, this is just going to be... I like that even more, in 20 months. Let me say, it also doesn't help people, it doesn't bring the price of eggs down. This is what we're doing, this tit for tat. And by the way, this tit for tat is going to be required.

They have to go down. And it's going to waste everybody's time, what they're doing here. They're going to do this, they're going to lose, and then they're going to jail. But it's just such a waste of time and effort. And Harvard could be doing all kinds of really interesting things in research. Anyway, this is the greatest brand change for Harvard, you're right.

I think that's really an important thing. And we'll see if Donald Trump could pull this off. Just because he's going through stop signs right now doesn't mean he can keep doing it. There will not be consequences later. Okay, let's go on a quick break when we come back. New details about Elon's creepy harem and legions of babies. Support for PIVOT comes from Intuit QuickBooks. Are you a business owner looking to grow? You already did what most dream of doing, starting your own business. Now you're faced with the reality of making that small business run smoothly. Intuit QuickBooks can help. QuickBooks is a

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money transmitted by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Hi folks, this is Kara Swisher. This week on my podcast, On with Kara Swisher, I'm speaking with philanthropist, businesswoman, and women's rights advocate, Melinda French Gates, on how she's refocused after her divorce from tech mogul, Bill Gates. We talk about why investing in women in politics and business is playing the long and smart game, and we discuss her new memoir, The Next Day. My mom used to say to me as I was growing up, set your own agenda or someone else will. I know society is better off

when women are in positions of power. I really enjoy this conversation because it's an interesting moment where women in technology are having much more of an important impact than men who are still moving fast and breaking things. Have a listen to On with Kara Swisher wherever you get your podcasts. How do you navigate an entire career change after losing everything? This week on Network than Chill, I'm chatting with Louis Howes, the host of the School of Greatness podcast with over 500 million downloads. Louis

went from rising professional athlete to broke after a career-ending injury. I believe self-doubt is the killer of dreams. When we doubt ourselves, it doesn't matter how talented or smart you are, you're good to limit yourself on what you're able to do. But that was just the beginning of his story. It's an episode packed with raw honesty and failure, practical advice for career pivots, and the financial wisdom that comes from losing it all and rebuilding it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash Your Rich BFF.

Scott, we're back and Elon Musk is trying to build an army of super babies with, quote, no romance, just sperm. It feels like you would have said something like this, Scott. That's from an explosive report in the Wall Street Journal about the tactics he used to recruit and manage his offspring and their mothers. This romantic hero has even used social platform X to recruit willing wombs. Here's what Jimmy Kimmel had to say about the latest revelations. It is believed that Elon has fathered at least 14 children, and based on this photograph, he may have given birth to them too.

He's happy carrying a few around in his pouch like a kangaroo. Sources told the journal they believe there could be more mini musks out there. Many more mini musks. You've heard of Alien versus Predator? Elon might be both. So another, another tidbit from the journal's reporting. By the way, I've spoken about this with so many reporters. I'm so glad that they're finally writing about this and not pretending it's just a silly,

you know, an ex who's mad at him. This is really significantly weird stuff. And especially since he's in such a position of power. Musk believes population decline is a massive threat and wants to make enough babies to quote reach legion level before the apocalypse. And Musk urged former girlfriend Ashley St. Clair to, or I don't know what she is, I guess girlfriend, to give birth via C-section because he believes that vaginal births limit brain size. You remember I was arguing with him about this given I had a C-section.

Scott, where shall we go with this? Where shall we start? I mean, I'm thrilled that reporters are actually doing these things around the drugs, around these weirdnesses around children. It is really demented in a way that's really around the bend. And it's fine if someone wants to have a lot of kids, but this is a whole theory. I think the one person in this story that didn't get enough shit is Jared Burchall, who works for him and is his facilitator. He's happens, they wrote about him being a Mormon and he talking about him having such a stable

family. Jared, if you're facilitating this, you don't get to hide behind your perfect family and that you don't behave like this. You're just facilitating a rich person behaving badly and manipulating women who are having kids. I mean, everything sounds so pathetic. And I'll let you go on, Scott, but the children are really what really concerns me here is that these kids are getting manipulated by Musk

in terms of what they're going to pay the mothers and this and that. You don't need $15 million to raise a kid or anything else, but the ethical implications of all of this for all of you who are facilitating this for Musk are rather deep and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Go ahead, Scott. Look, there's a kernel of truth here, just calling balls and strikes. There was this fear

or this moral panic around a population explosion that we were going to absorb that our population was growing faster than the Earth's resources and it was going to collapse under population growth. What's actually happened is that bomb has detonated, but it's imploded. And that is Western nations as they become wealthier and more educated, women decide having a lot of kids is a bad deal for them, and also men, and basically birth rates go down. And evidence has shown that as population has gone up, poverty has gone down. It ends up that if you put 10 new brains into society,

you know, one is a problem, eight do just fine, and one might solve more problems than those 10 brains create. So population growth is actually really, it's a huge problem in Japan, in South Korea, supposedly like only three or four people will have grandkids right now with these birth rates. Now you can solve it with thoughtful immigration policies and also restoring a tax code that doesn't rob from the young

and give money to the old such that young people should they decide to have kids, which 60% did 40 years ago at the age of 30, now it's 27%. So we can solve for this problem. I do believe that his basic theory is rooted in something that's true, like having more kids. Now, having said that, having said that, if you look at what I believe, maybe next increment of quality is the biggest thing threatening the U.S., it's extremism led by a group of young men who feel are sequestering from society and becoming shitty citizens.

They're not attaching to work, they're not attaching to school, they're not attaching to relationships, they become prone to misogynistic content, they start blaming women and immigrants for their problems, they become less likely to believe in climate change. And if they don't have a relationship or work by the time they're 30, the levels of substance abuse and self-harm just go crazy, just go crazy. That is a huge, struggling young men in this country is a huge threat to our society. I wonder if someone wrote a book about it out in November.

There you go. What, now, if you were to reverse engineer it to the point of failure, where a boy with a lot of potential comes off the tracks, you might say, well, the prefrontal cortex doesn't mature as quickly. Well, the education system is biased against them. They're twice as likely to be suspended

on a behavior adjusted. There's a lot of things. They've been told for 40 years that they're the oppressor and they're starting to believe it. They have big tech trying to sequester them from society with gambling and porn. They have a lot of things going against them, but the number one point of failure

to be reverse engineered to is when they lose a male role model. The worst thing or one of the worst things you can do as a man, or let me put it this way, the best thing you can do is to stay involved in your kid's life. He's not around. And what's interesting is that when you have a single parent household, which he's creating, he's

creating 14 single parent households. He doesn't have 14 kids, he has 14 single parent households. More kids than that, I think. And what's interesting is that the daughters in single parent households have similar outcomes as dual parent households. I'm not saying girls don't need their dad, but if you look at high school and college attendance and rates of self harm, they're not materially different in single parent households and dual.

It is an entirely different story for boys. And what it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker. But him creating a series, a cadre of children that don't have their dad around, even if he sends checks, that is bad for society. But he also, Scott, two things. He uses checks as the control point, by the way. And secondly, it's, I, listen, there's a pronatalist movement

going on obviously, and he's part of this. They're not, he's talking about smarter people and that reads to me white people essentially, right? I don't think he thinks all people are equal. And that's- Well, it's almost as if he'd give a Nazi salute. Right, yes, exactly, who knows. Or that his dad started banging his stepdaughter,

is that right? I mean, that level of this, his stepdaughter, I mean, the level of his stepdaughter, I think. Yeah, correct. But here's the thing, it's about white people, more white people, or more people he considers smart, which is, I think, the same. I hadn't even thought of that. Is he only procreating with other white women? I guess that-

He did try, he is someone he didn't know online named Tiffany Fong, I believe, so she's Asian but but here's the thing. He thinks his genes are smart So who isn't smart where there is our population increases? Brown people that's what they're that is what he is doing here. So I agree listen Nobody believes in kids more than me like I have for like I'm not the Elon Musk of lesbians. But you're openly lesbian, Cal Swisher. You're openly lesbian. At least you could be a closet. At least you could drive your Subaru with blackout windows.

Stop being so openly straight and masturbating at all times. At least you could hide that German shepherd. Anyway, nonetheless, he thinks there are smart people and dumb people and all the smart people are not. You know, this has a racial element to it. Let's be clear. Let me ask you this. Is it true that on all dates with lesbians, they hug for three hours, cry and then decide

never to see each other again? Is that true? No. Is that true? You know what? You're coming to Lesbian Zoo Tech this year and we're going to- I went three years ago. You're doing it again and this year we're going to kill you

and do a ritual sacrifice. I took my shirt off and the whole audience is like, I made the right choice. Literally every woman in the crowd is like, I did make the right choice, seeing me let my shirt off. I was the second straight guy to ever be on the stage. First was Mark Benioff.

Anyway, Elon, you are a sick puppy. I have to tell you one sick puppy. And I feel bad for these women. I feel bad for these kids. And the story was terrific. The journal, that the journal's doing it is amazing. I have to say, I told, oh, a half a dozen top reporters about this Ashley Sinclair to like, this was really weird what was happening.

And nobody followed it in the journal, they did a really good job. I have to say, I have to give them credit. It is not purient. It's really, along with their board coverage of how they party with him, along with his strange behaviors, I think the journal's doing amazing journalism here, as is Christian Grind of the New York Times, who was previously the journal. I think it's important though that we bring this back to me. Okay. All right.

So I have more kids likely, substantially more kids than Elon Musk, you know why? Oh, right, because you gave, we know this, we talked about this, sperm donor. Yeah, I could get 40 bucks a shot because I was a quote unquote athlete at UCLA. Anyways, I got called back four times a week for a full year.

Oh, so you must have had dozens of kids. And I couldn't figure it out because the two guys I went with were, the two guys I went with were literally blonde gods. They were water polo players, I went to the Olympics, they were smarter than me. These guys were specimens. Jewish, you've said this story.

That's right. And I said, why do I have the golden seed here? And they said you have the two things are- Did you just say golden seed? No, baby, my man gravy is like, literally it's like Nvidia chips. and they said you have the two things are- Did you just say golden seed? No, baby, my man gravy is like, literally, it's like Nvidia chips. The reason why my sperm was literally an Hermes bag,

I was the Hermes of sperm, was two things. What are the two things that people in West LA, parents want in their sperm? Tall Jewish babies. Tall and Jewish. I have the peanut butter and chocolate of sperm donation. There are Scott Galloway's all over. Can you imagine how many receding hairlines

are out there right now? I don't even wanna know. I don't even wanna know. I don't even wanna know. Thank God, not my children. Anyway, here's an idea. How many angry depressed people? They didn't test me for that shit.

All right. You know, I didn't pick someone because they're hit of history of depression in his family. Anyway, here's an idea. That's a good idea. There's some hot new real estate about 120 light years from Earth where Elon could go. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they've

discovered a massive planet known as K2-18b. I'm going to call it Galloway. Thank you. Whose atmosphere suggests the possible presence of living organisms. It's really hot and wet. That's really pretty much what's happening. Don't say anything.

Don't say anything. I don't say anything. Anyway, just really quickly, NVIDIA says it will start producing AI superconductors manufactured entirely in the U.S. The announcement comes conveniently after reports of upcoming tariffs. We'll see. The company plans to produce $500 billion of infrastructure in the U.S. via manufacturing partners over the next year. They all say $500 billion.

Apple did this. They commissioned over 1 million square feet of manufacturing space to build ships in Arizona. They're working with Foxconn and Taiwan's WisDron on additional plants in Texas, of course. And then Trump said all the necessary permits will be expedited and delivered. They're trying to appease Trump or I'm sure he'll still screw them on tariffs. Jensen Wong said, made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese trade officials as follows. Nvidia is revealing on Wednesday, it's taking a $5.5 billion hit thanks to new

U S restrictions on the exports of its H 20 chips to China. Uh, the shares have been plunging very quickly thoughts on the planet or Nvidia. And nothing other than the, there's all of this stuff announcing investment is performative thinking he's an idiot if we just repackage existing investments, he'll go for it and he'll potentially leave us alone. And the stocks are now trading based on the prediction markets of the mad king. I mean, this is just not the way to run an economy.

They weren't going to do this before. And you know, just this, you know, you can force manufacturing back in the US, but it will have a price later if it's not economic. That's just the way it goes, unfortunately. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Zuck taking the stand and how much he was willing to pay to get the antitrust case to go away. We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.

That is not a recipe for economic prosperity. Vice President JD Vance defending the Trump administration's tariffs on China hit China squarely below the belt and China hit back with memes. Cue music. Americans on assembly lines at sewing machines in fields, eating chips, drinking coke, looking ill-prepared for factory work, to put it politely, which the memes are not. China's argument since this trade war began is that America cannot win it. China is tougher, more resilient, and better prepared. On Today Explained, as this trade war escalates, we ask, what if that's true?

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available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back with more headlines. There's lots going on. Mark Zuckerberg has taken the witness stand for three days in Metta's antitrust trial this week over its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Also, Sheryl Sandberg was also on the stand. If the FTC wins, Metta could be forced to sell off the app. Some highlights, years before the FTC sued Metta under the Trump administration, Zuckerberg considered having Instagram be its own company to avoid antitrust issues.

Metta tried to buy Snapchat for $6 billion, which actually, I think I broke that story at the time. He thinks it would have been bigger now if it accepted the offer. Zuckerberg had, of course, then copied Snap, everything Snapchat did. It's buyer Barry, really, and Barry was the choice that, that unfortunately Snapchat had to face. Zuckerberg once had a crazy idea to wipe out all Facebook users' friends, to start again. The Meta CEO called TikTok the highest competitive threat for Facebook and Meta. If it were up to Zuckerberg, this trial never would have happened. He offered the FTC $450 million, which is laughable, later upping the amount to $1 billion,

but the offer was well below the $30 billion the FTC $450 million, which is laughable, later upping the amount to $1 billion, but the offer was well below the $30 billion the FTC wanted. This is under its current chair, Andrew Ferguson. You got a set there, Ferguson. Zuckerberg reportedly felt confident President Trump would back him. Obviously he didn't and allowed it to go forward. It's not the strongest cases that we've talked about and this idea of who its competitor is. In the then, it's a strong case. In the now, it's not a strongest cases that we've talked about and this idea of who its competitor is.

In the then, it's a strong case. In the now, it's not a strong a case. And everybody has shifted from social media to entertainment in a lot of ways, social media with a stress on media, not on social. So give me, this ask kissing doesn't work. Give me one of your crazy ideas, Scott, here on this trial. So there's different remedies.

One is a fine, which it looks like they're pursuing right now if they're found guilty of monopolistic behavior. And certain consent decrees also, along with the fine, by the way. Nine out of 10 people in the world outside of China are on a meta app. If not, I think it's either every day or every week. And they have 70% share of social media. Now that alone isn't illegal. What's illegal is if you're using that 70% share

to deploy monopoly pricing that's bad for consumers. And I would argue or engage in anti-competitive behavior. And if you look at the notes that have come out in discovery, a big justification for acquiring Instagram is that we need to neutralize a competitor. That right there, that statement, that's illegal. That you're not allowed to acquire a company to neutralize a

competitor. You're not allowed to do acquit kills. In addition, what I always like to appeal to people's greed glands on this, if they were forced as a remedy to spend Instagram, you know who wins here. WhatsApp. WhatsApp. You know who wins here? Shareholders. Because the company right now,

it trades at a really healthy multiple of 7.7x times revenues. Instagram on its own, I think would trade at 15 to 20 times revenues. Instagram, just to give you, you were at my birthday in Scotland. Scotland is overrun because a bunch of Instagramers went there and went crazy talking about Scotland two summers ago. And at the same summer, a bunch of Instagramers were highlighting that a drink

and Mykonos was now 30 bucks and travel was off 30% last summer. Instagram now dictates global tourism patterns. It does. You see it happen in Los Angeles, in parts of your neighborhood. People take a picture in front of- Oh, if we went to my window right now, we would see three or four Asian women with their Hermes bags on my cobblestone street taking pictures of one another. There's one area where they're all taking pictures. You talk about commerce, you talk about, I mean, that Instagram is an independent company.

Everyone would wanna own that stock. So shareholders would do better. I would buy that stock. In addition, the competition here would lower rents. And specifically, I've argued that the rents that have gone up here are the biggest rent increases in non-economic. Think about the rents that parents have had to pay because of the monopoly control of

Metta. So the fact that they wouldn't compete and coordinate with core Facebook, the fact that WhatsApp would probably be the largest telco in the world and rather than being a vessel for finding data for better targeting for the core platform, Facebook or Instagram, they would have to figure out a way just to be the largest telco and start charging money. I think share, if they announced they were breaking up these companies, I would buy metastock because I think that ultimately shareholders would win more tax revenue. By the way, employees win because there's more companies trying to rent your labor.

Employees win, tax revenue, shareholders win. The only person that doesn't win is the person who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros. But I've always thought the two best things you could do to oxygenate the global economy are if China and the US kissed and made up. We have IP, they have manufacturing, enough already, let's lower everyone's costs by getting along again. And obviously President Trump does not get that. And then the second biggest way to oxygenate

and unleash the global economy would be to take Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Metta and go from four companies to 15. It would create, it would unleash so much competition and innovation. And innovation, new things, innovation, innovate. Like that's the thing, like everyone's like going on about Tesla, I'm like Innovation. Like, that's the thing. Like, everyone's like going on about Tesla.

I'm like, their car sucks and it's not innovative. Did you see the Japanese stuff that's coming out, the EVs? They're so adorable and fantastic. I just keep thinking, why didn't any, why didn't Tesla do this? Like why didn't they have the, well, that's it. Because he's having lesions of babies and taking ketamine, apparently, and running the government into the ground. But you're right, you're absolutely right.

We'll see what happens. People find this to be a very weak case, though, because the limits of who they're, it doesn't address what's happening now, which is intense competition in this social media space. Again, as I said, emphasis on media. He's trying to get away from the social part of it, by the way, which is really interesting, because people aren't doing what Facebook was originally intended for anymore. Now they're like consuming just like they did television. There has been a shift, don't you think? Don't you find you're using social media for consumption more than declaration or friendship now?

I've got to be honest. I'm addicted to both Instagram and to TikTok. But for consumption, you like looking at it, right? Well, honestly, it's now my news source. I get really good. TikTok has figured out I wanna see an economist talking about interest rates or a woman talking about social issues that forgot to put her bra on. Those are the two, that's how my feed, that's how my feed is. What about if it was economist putting his bra on?

And then, ha ha ha, that's good, that's good. He has a bra on. Or chiropractors aggressively adjusting people. Oh, I love that. It's amazing, like, oh my God, she has neck pain. Oh my God, what is he gonna do? And then all of a sudden you hear celery,

and she's like, I can walk again, I can walk again. I love that, oh my God, what is he gonna do? And then all of a sudden we hear celery and she's like, I can walk again. I can walk again. I love that. Oh my God. And I see Great Danes. We are sick people. They have figured out I love Great Danes. I could watch Great Danes all day.

I do. Also, have you seen the new ones where some chef will take like a $300 Chateaubriand and line up three dogs at a table and then show them the Chateaubriand and line up three dogs at a table and then show them the Chateaubriand and then literally the chef will cook it in front of them and get in front of them and then slice it for them and create some amazing sauce and then just feed these three pit bulls this amazing Chateaubriand.

What? Oh my God, that's end times. That's worse than meal time. It is. Maybe it's late stage capitalism, but it sure is entertaining. Oh, wow. That's really. meal games. Maybe it's late state capitalism, but it sure is entertaining. Oh, wow. That's really- Oh my gosh.

I watch it. I do on threads a thing called food porn, which I love, which is they just cook shit all over the place. I love cooking videos. Anyway, we got to get back to the important things. I'm not sure where this case is going, but it sure has a lot of cool emails of them acting like assholes, all of them, like, we're going to kill this company, we're going to do this. This is exactly how they talk in reality,

and it's just very entertaining. But one of the things coming out of it is how much Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like his actual business, the social part of social media. That's been really interesting to me. There was a big announcement this week. I think the biggest story that people haven't been talking about is OpenAI deciding they might get into social.

Yeah. We're going to talk about that next week. We'll see. I think they're just tweaking. They love to tweak everyone. But yes, they could do that too. Again, consumption, consumption of videos. That's where they're going to go in the creation and the creativity of people with this stuff. This is just in, by the way,

a federal judge has ruled that Google did act illegally to maintain a monopoly in online advertising technology. The judge said in a ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance. No shit, Sherlock. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of the sale.

Yes, because they're on both sides of the deal, everybody. Remember, a federal judge ruled in August, a separate federal judge, that the company had a monopoly in online search. He is now considering a request by the Justice Department to break the company up, spin parts off. Google's, this is a much stronger case, and it is so obvious, the dominance of Google in both advertising and search and their behaviors around this. It's really interesting.

Of course, Sundar was at the inauguration. It doesn't seem to be helping. Now, a lot of these cases were started in the previous Trump administration. Again, I cannot underscore this. So thoughts on this one? This one's stronger and they've lost. They've clearly lost.

This will go on, they will appeal, but they've lost again, once again. Like I said, I think everybody wins if these companies start to, I think their share price goes up. I don't know what to say other than that. Although I was more cynical about antitrust under a Trump administration and Jonathan Cantor,

who knows a lot more about this than me, sent me straight and said, you're underestimating some of the people who are at Justice and the FTC. Yeah, the person who replaced him is very well, Gail, I think it's Sla, Sla, Slauter or Slater, is very well respected. She's a JD Vance person from the JD Vance side

of the aisle who has been very anti-trust focused. Great respect for people, like in terms of, they understand, here's the thing everybody, less competition, less innovation, higher prices, shittier products. That's the thing everybody, less competition, less innovation, higher prices, shittier products. That's the way it goes. And the fact that these companies, and by the way, the side effects of both these companies

for their dominance in both social media and advertising and search, which is linked to, they're all linked to advertising, is the death of regular media. They have, two of these two companies have run over. Now look, media, old media has done a lot of things to kill itself, but the hollowing out of the business model by these companies using these tactics has been right in there to really hurt these companies. So that's another deleterious effect of these things. Anyway, we'll be right back and we'll get to predictions.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. What's a prediction from you besides children of Scott all over Southern California? Are you creating a legion of babies? Well, there's now a website if you go to it, you can type in your name and say this is the clinic I donated. Yes, I know all about it. And they send you a certified, think certified mail and if you sign it,

an email goes out to all your biological children saying, this is your biological father. I would do it if you could gate it and you can't. And the problem is you don't know if it's- I'm absolutely going to do this now so I can meet all of Scott's children. Well, that's why I don't do 23andMe, because people get figured out. But I don't know if I have two kids or 2,000, because it wasn't regulated back then. You may have like hundreds of kids.

You remember the Vince Vaughn movie where he had hundreds of kids. I told you that. My mom made me stop because she said, I put my- I'm not exaggerating. I paid for my junior year at UCLA doing this. And my mom said, you need to stop. And her rationale was, what if your son ends up marrying your daughter? Oh my God, that's the typical fear thing, the fear thing. I know, but anyways, she had a real point.

She's like, you're going to go up in LA and you're going to come and you're going to meet. Anyways, but it's a weird thought. I've thought about maybe like, I don't know, leaving him some money when I die or something like that. But anyways. I know, I've used those sites because I saw other, how many other kids my sons are related to.

Make for a fun party. Think about what an awesome party I would throw for 238 year olds that all sort of look like me. That would be a fun party, wouldn't it? I feel like I wanna go find all your children. And apologize and give them therapy. I'm going to make a documentary searching for Scott. Oh, let's start a podcast network.

Yes, let's start a Vox Media podcast. With just your children. Why is that? Oh my God, that's so fucked up. I know it's so fucked up. Let's hear a prediction. Anyway, sorry. I predict this would be disastrous. Then they could marry all of Elon Musk kids. Anyway's hear a prediction. Anyway, sorry. I predict this would be disastrous.

And then they could marry all of Elon Musk kids. Anyway, sorry, prediction. I think my prediction is the following, Kara. I think the worm has turned. I think that my sense is that the things that have kept Republicans quiet because of their dear leader has more power in this cult where he can vote them out of office, the fear factor of saying,

I'll weaponize the DOJ against my enemies. Donald Trump, I'm not comparing him to Hitler, but Hitler's biggest mistake that reshaped the world was he decided to open a second front in the war and he declared war on Russia. That is, we probably would have had to come to some sort of agreement with him where he got Europe and Britain got the empire or whatever.

But that is what kind of lost the war. Was in addition to British brains, Russian blood and American brawn, Russian blood, they sacrificed 20 million people and they were allies at the beginning of the war. Trump has decided to fight everyone all at once. He's not going after targeted tariffs against China or figuring out if there's certain tariffs on dairy

that are not reciprocal or asymmetric. He's not saying to the EU, we need you to pay more for our NATO, but he's just declared war on everyone all at once. And it is literally the only, we had to ally with dozens of countries to get Hussein out of Kuwait, but this guy's under the impression he can declare war on everyone. And he does feel like declare war on everyone, doesn't he? Everyone, all at once, whether it's Harvard or Kazakhstan, he's just declared war on everyone.

And they're gonna be very creative and strike back. They're just gonna be very creative and strike back. Anyways, I think the worm has turned. I think that so many public company CEOs who wake up in the morning and say, hello, Mr. President, they think that someday they're gonna be drafted because of their incredible leadership skills

to run for president. Let me save you three classes at a business school on ethics, leadership, and sustainability. Ethics is like, think about what the right thing is. Leadership is do the right thing even when it's really hard. And sustainability is doing the right thing when it's really hard, you might actually make money.

There, you don't need to take those three classes. You're about to see, I believe, some very high profile business leaders and Republicans come out in the next week or two and say, this is just bad, and they're going to get a ton of attention. I can't think of a Fortune 500 CEO who has spoken out. I can't think of a Republican who has really taken a stand here. The person I am reminded of is a guy named Martin Niemoller. It was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany in the 20s and early 30s.

He sympathized- They came for me, right? That guy? That's exactly right. Very well done. He sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Hitler came to power in 33, Niemoller became an outspoken critic of Hitler's interference in the Protestant Church. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in prisons and concentration camps. And Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for his post-war statement, which begins,

first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out. And his full quote is, first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. I mean, that is really powerful. And what I would argue, I have a lot of faith in America over the medium and the long term. We get it wrong the short term a lot,

but over the medium and long term, we demonstrate tremendous generosity and leadership. And I think we're at a point where people realizing that, okay, a guy with the wrong tattoo who gets basically rounded up, a university or the cultural elite that are targeted under bullshit narratives of anti-Semitism coming after weaponizing the DOJ

against your political enemies, I think the school is about to rise up against the bullies. Yeah, although Scott, in the short term, Chris Krebs has to leave his company because he got targeted by Trump. Oh, there's been care. There's been, there's been uncalculable economic and moral damage here and loss of brand equity and a loss of moral authority. I'm not in any way assuming this will repair everything.

What I'm suggesting is the following. There is now, it is so obvious how damaging this is. Republicans showing up to their town halls and literally getting just absolutely ravaged. The AOC thing continues, although there's so much hostility towards her. It's really fascinating from some Democrats. But I think you're going to see in the next one or two weeks, a cadre of Fortune 500 CEOs, Republicans stand up, business leaders stand up 500 CEOs, Republicans, stand up, business leaders stand up and say,

okay, enough already. While you all claim he's playing 4D chess, at this point we're worried he's gonna start eating the pieces. This guy is making the stupidest decisions. And the first person, I love Nike. I used to do a lot of work with Nike. I'm gonna call, I don't know if he'll call me back, I'm gonna call Elliot Hill the CEO know if it will call me back,

I'm gonna call Elliot Hill the CEO today. The biggest opportunity right now in the commercial consumer world is for the CEO to weaponize their creativity and their agency and to come out against this bullshit and say this is anti-American, this is not part of our values, this is not what it means to be an American.

Someone in the Fortune 500 is gonna come out and say this is bullshit and guess what? The people who actually have the money to buy this shit are gonna think, you know what? I like the swoosh again. I like your prediction, I hope it's true. They made Harvard, he's made Harvard likeable again. Yeah, and you know, interesting,

Josh Shapiro who got attacked on Passover, his house, who's the governor of Pennsylvania, Trump has yet to call him, which is really an astonishing thing. Of course, if there was a Tesla in the driveway, he certainly would call it terrorism. But of course, he's not. Yeah, he wanted to label people throwing shit at Tesla

as an act of domestic terrorism. Also, Pam Bondi again. But the governor of Pennsylvania, someone tries to burn his house down with him in it during Passover. I mean, but oh, we're just gonna keep that. Governor of Pennsylvania, someone tries to burn his house down with him in it on during past, I mean, but oh, we're just going to keep that. We're just going to ignore that. Anyways, I like to think that all of a sudden a bunch of leaders in the Republican Party

and in the business world are reaching down and finding these spherical things called testicles because- I don't know. Marco Rubio keeps making stupid arguments. They're trying to say this guy who's in El Salvador is M13 with no proof. People in the administration are, they've signed up for the Deere Leader Pack.

They're in. They're in the cult. They're like, OK, maybe I disagree with Jim Jones, but I came down to Guyana. I'm going to drink the Kool-Aid. I'm talking about Fortune 500 CEOs, and I'm talking about even some Republican Congress people. This has gotten so out of control,

and they're gonna do it out of greed. The first consumer brand that stands up and says, I am standing up to this, the first Republican that stands up and says, okay, come for me. This is insane, especially in a district where like in Kentucky where Canada being more strategic is like, no, let's just not do blanket tariffs. Let's go after red states.

I mean, this, I do think anyway, my long-winded way of saying my prediction is the worm has turned and we're gonna see people who supposedly were part of the cult, the fortune 500, which has been visibly absent, they're going to remember that's going to... This guy's quote, you know, first they came for the socialists, right? Okay.

Be clear, folks. Everyone could get this knock on the door. And I do think the worm has turned. I think there is economic incentive now to come out against this shit. And you know who provided cloud cover for it? Chairman Powell. Yes, he does, but we'll see, we'll see. From your mouth to all your legions of babies.

You're cynical, you know, or you don't think, you're skeptical. I don't know. I think it'll take longer than you think it'll be more damaging. I think he will have damaged and wrecked people's lives and in the process. Oh, I think that's already happened.

Yeah, I think he's gonna keep doing it. I think until the midterms and if the Democrats win, he's in for a world of pain for the rest of his life. That's where I think it is. Anyway, that's a great prediction, Scott, by the way. And as I said, from your lips to your legions of babies' ears. Elsewhere in the Scott and Kerry universe,

Scott, you just had a big interview with Canada's new Prime Minister, Mark Carney. Very nice get. You chatted about a lot of things, including Canada's role in changing world and whether the US-Canada relationship can be fixed as trade tensions rise. Obviously, Scott is a particular friend of Canada and they love us there. Let's listen to a clip. You know, from a Canadian perspective, we are willing to take the price to restructure

our economy in a different direction. It's been such a sense of, I mean, the word that's used is betrayal. So we signed a deal, we've had this partnership, we observe it in good faith, we set up businesses, we know lots of Americans, we like Americans, we listen to American podcasts, there's such a thing. And all of a sudden, you know, we get these, you know, these attacks, which is the way this is viewed, is okay, so it's gonna cost us for a period of time, and we'll build out and build with others.

What a nice voice he has. He's a very impressive guy. He was asked to be, again, the first non-Brit to head the Bank of England. I asked him, I thought the nicest part of the podcast, I asked him in a lightning round, I said, if you could go back and speak to someone who's not with us anymore, who would it be and what would you say?

And he paused and he said, my dad, and I would tell him I love him. Oh, wow. It was really a nice moment. Scott, you probably weeped, didn't you? Oh, my God. Well, he got emotional, made me feel very emotional. Very nice. He's an impressive, and by the way, incredible turnaround in Canada for the liberals. Like this weird little conservative was going to win,

and now he looks like he's going to lose. Pierre Poivre. Trump is literally toxic for the entire world right now. The most elegant way to reduce everyone's prosperity, but in terms of popularity, he's taken Claudia Schombach's popularity above 80 percent. Incredible. Incredible. I mean, everyone is rallying against this guy.

We'll see if he wins. We'll see. But anyway, it looks like that's the case. It was a good interview, Scott. I listened to it. It was terrific. Okay, 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. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Laren Amon, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Untertide engineered this episode.

Jim Mackel edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Mia Severio, and Dan Chillon. Nishant Kherwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.